On 21/03/13 19:15, Quim Gil wrote:
On 03/21/2013 11:48 AM, Isarra Yos wrote:
Unfortunately I didn't have any idea when such a change could or would be merged or deployed, so not only did I not have any timeframe to give said the communities, I didn't even know when it would be appropriate to tell them (if it happens months later, mentioning now would not be very helpful) - or even if it ever would really happen at all.
This is so clear that anybody will understand it.
I believe mentioning potential problems when you see them coming is always helpful. Do it in the related bug report and share the URL with the affected parties e.g. at wikitech-ambassadors. Invite them to follow the bug to have the same information than you, at the same time than you, with the same chances of giving feedback and participating than you.
Ideally, by the time a deployment date can be decided they will be the ones communicating with their own communities. Otherwise you can simply go and say "Remember what we told you (link)? Ok, it's coming now."
You speak of an ideal world, which this is not. Those most affected by these things generally do not use bugzilla at all (it's not just an extra hassle, but given the peculiar login system it uses, many wikimedians have incentive to not even try), so linking the bug won't help.
For that matter, do you have any idea how *many* random proposals like this people come up with? Of those that make it to bugzilla at all, only some go through, most don't. And those that do can take months, if not years, to actually be implemented/merged - even after implementation, changes can and often sit in gerrit for months with no indication of progress, even the most trivial things.
So it seems frankly ridiculous to me to suggest effectively going around announcing to folks that 'hey, some things may change sometime this year, but then again they may not, but in the meantime you can go to this strange site that doesn't accept your login and follow its massive forms and disorganised comments!' when instead we could just... I dunno, maybe get more staff and other folks who have merge rights to help work out a real timeframe (or even if it is likely to get merged at all) before expecting *anyone* to announce the matter, then announce something more concrete. (Which would be good because communities tend to be more receptive to that - give them a timeframe, and they'll speak their minds. Give them something vague and it just teaches them to ignore it, since who knows if it'll ever actually be a thing.)
Alternately maybe we could just not expect the volunteers to announce these themselves in the first place like Niklas suggested, since on top of everything else he mentioned, said volunteers tend to lack some key details, along with access to the usual announcement methods in the first place.