On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 3:35 AM, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
Most software is either internal business software, where users are obliged to put up with almost anything, or consumer-oriented, where users are mostly uninvolved and fickle. The product management methods in either of those spaces probably wouldn't work well here: Wikipedians, as volunteers, can't be ordered around. They also aren't just consumers; they're a community, one that wants to engage deeply. But I think we can take tools from both and figure out something that works here.
I was hoping that there might be some paid developers working on it, now that it's become such a high profile featuer. And you *can* order them around.
But in any case, I don't think that developers would object to someone telling them which terms to use, how to lay out the GUI etc. (Most developers I've known are more than happy to abdicate responsibility for such things.)
Are there historical examples of WMF development projects that have gone particularly well? I'd love to look at them in detail.
The Usability stuff is proceeding very nicely!
Steve