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.
--
-— Isarra