[This is in response to all the bitching and whining that's taken place since December 24th, on mailing lists, bug trackers, village pumps and sleazy little back-alley forums...I apologise for the crossposting. As ever, please feel free to forward this to other appropriate parties or lists, but keep responses and/or discussion on one.]
All right, this bickering has gone far enough. The fact of the matter is that we're under constant pressure to keep the site alive and introduce new features and fixes on a regular basis. I can well understand that a lot of people will object to each change, and we do our best to make things non-intrusive.
When this feature was first introduced, some bright spark on the English Wikipedia edited the global CSS and made the numbers bright, garish green and red, and emboldened them - I didn't agree with that, but whatever. However, there were a huge number of not-too-polite complaints blaming us for doing it, and some of these failed to subside when it was pointed out that this had nothing to do with the development team.
We might not implement their letter, but the spirit of the ideas of keeping civil and assuming good faith *are* applied at the development level; we just reserve the right to be blunt. If I've been particularly rude to anyone over this issue, I do apologise for it - and I'm sure anyone else who may have been apologises too.
If we're to implement certain tweaks for this in user preferences, then we need some co-operation from the user base to allow us time to determine a clean means of doing so (we want to avoid duplication of code when generating changes list items), and we want people to remember that politeness goes both ways.
Just because user A dislikes a feature, it doesn't mean that user B will, and it is not fair to scream and rant and rave over it because we tried to implement something that was useful. I would like to note also that the numbers, as with the "minor edit" flag, and the whole concept of edit summaries, are advisory - what we provide is a factual statement of who changed what, and how much they changed, and we allow that user to present justification for their changes. If that user chose to lie in their edit summary, or deliberately mis-labelled a minor edit, then there is nothing any of us can do - and you (the users) have coped with that well enough over (at least) the past four years or so.
I will open a fresh feature request, giving an opportunity for Brion to say "yes" or "no" definitively, and I will avail myself to Leon or anyone else who would then wish to implement the outcome should they want any input.
I point-blank refuse, however, to work with any user who feels that it is acceptable to assume bad faith on the part of the development team. That attitude could very well lose you a lot of the behind-the-scenes supporting cast one day, without whom you wouldn't even *have* a website.
Rob Church
On 12/30/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
When this feature was first introduced, some bright spark on the English Wikipedia edited the global CSS and made the numbers bright, garish green and red, and emboldened them - I didn't agree with that, but whatever. However, there were a huge number of not-too-polite complaints blaming us for doing it, and some of these failed to subside when it was pointed out that this had nothing to do with the development team.
It's not reasonable to expect the average person to differentiate between "people who hack CSS and JavaScript" and "developers". I read wikitech-l, know what CSS, JavaScript, PHP and MediaWiki are, and still don't really get who is responsible for what, or what caused each visible change. How is the average Wikipedia user supposed to have any idea?
I don't really know how to improve this situation, but some sort of more visible process for improvements to MediaWiki and to the Wikipedia stylesheets might help. I don't consider Mediazilla "visible" at all.
Hope this helps.
Steve
On 30/12/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
It's not reasonable to expect the average person to differentiate between "people who hack CSS and JavaScript" and "developers". I read wikitech-l, know what CSS, JavaScript, PHP and MediaWiki are, and still don't really get who is responsible for what, or what caused each visible change. How is the average Wikipedia user supposed to have any idea?
It is reasonable, however, to expect people not to go ape shit when something happens that they don't like. It's furthermore reasonable to expect that people will listen when we say, for instance, "that change was done by one of your colleagues, not us - please go moan at them, kthx".
I don't really know how to improve this situation, but some sort of more visible process for improvements to MediaWiki and to the Wikipedia stylesheets might help. I don't consider Mediazilla "visible" at all.
If you're suggesting that we need to start asking for permission before we commit every single improvement to the software, then you can forget it; a lot of them have to be done to make the site more stable.
As I've said before, I well appreciate that not every change benefits everyone, but hopefully, none of them seriously hamper other users' ability to continue to operate. I for one *do* solicit user opinion when it comes to introducing major new things, or more likely, making significant changes to existing processes - and I not only involve the users, but I also check with Brion on a frequent basis that what I'm doing is sane.
BugZilla is the bug tracking software, and it's where we track bugs and feature requests. I'm sorry if it's not considered wholly visible to all users, but it's not our fault no-one likes to link to it in, e.g. the sidebar, or other visible places on Wikipedia. If people have significant objections to something, we have that; and we also have this mailing list, which is not private, and at least two public IRC channels, which are not invite-only.
I strongly object to the assertion that the development team is in anyway elitist or deliberately ignorant of user opinion; that is simply unfair and completely untrue. If we didn't care about the user base, we wouldn't actually be doing this.
Hope this helps.
Not really; your attitude is rather what I was talking about in my last post.
Rob Church
On Sat, Dec 30, 2006 at 03:37:45PM +0000, Rob Church wrote:
I strongly object to the assertion that the development team is in anyway elitist or deliberately ignorant of user opinion; that is simply unfair and completely untrue. If we didn't care about the user base, we wouldn't actually be doing this.
And I wanna throw an oar in the water here, too...
40 million users...
10 developers?
Yeah, they're not gonna roll over for everything anyone says; there *has* to be a filtering process or they'll all catch fire, like they were dumb enough to dance for [[Sweet (Buffyverse)]].
That's going to look to the 'civilians' like the developers are copping an attitude, sometimes; I see no way to completely avoid it.
But yes, people are going to be expected to filter themsleves through the funneling system if they want to get stuff done.
Wikipedia probaly serves more 'users' with fewer developers than any other OSS project I've ever seen... and I, for one, think they're doing a pretty decent job...
Happy Next Year to all of them....
Cheers, -- jra
On 12/30/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
BugZilla is the bug tracking software, and it's where we track bugs and feature requests. I'm sorry if it's not considered wholly visible to all users, but it's not our fault no-one likes to link to it in, e.g. the sidebar, or other visible places on Wikipedia.
Good grief, do you want us to get 250 bug reports a day?
On 31/12/06, Simetrical Simetrical+wikitech@gmail.com wrote:
Good grief, do you want us to get 250 bug reports a day?
On the one hand, we have the likelihood that it will not happen, because Wikipedians now believe us all to be blood-sucking, infant-eating monsters.
On the other hand, I believe in the power of WONTFIX.
Rob Church
On 12/31/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
If you're suggesting that we need to start asking for permission before we commit every single improvement to the software, then you can forget it; a lot of them have to be done to make the site more stable.
Asking permission? No. But the current situation looks to me like:
1) Developers randomly without any warning make unannounced changes that affect users. 2) CSS and Javascript hackers randomly without any warning make unannounced changes that affect users. 3) Users get peeved due to their feeling of powerlessness, and not knowing any better, blame developers or CSS/Javascript hackers at random. 4) Developers consider this unfair.
How do you think this can be improved?
BugZilla is the bug tracking software, and it's where we track bugs and feature requests. I'm sorry if it's not considered wholly visible to all users, but it's not our fault no-one likes to link to it in, e.g. the sidebar, or other visible places on Wikipedia. If people have significant objections to something, we have that; and we also have this mailing list, which is not private, and at least two public IRC channels, which are not invite-only.
And I guess the technical village pump (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29).
It's probably fair to say that the developers prefer Bugzilla and IRC, and that users prefer wiki-based discussion, hence the yawning gap between them.
Is there a running changelog accessible from Wikipedia perhaps? Some centralised place where highly visible changes are logged?
I strongly object to the assertion that the development team is in anyway elitist or deliberately ignorant of user opinion; that is simply unfair and completely untrue. If we didn't care about the user base, we wouldn't actually be doing this.
I would disagree with that assertion, too.
Steve
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 12/31/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
If you're suggesting that we need to start asking for permission before we commit every single improvement to the software, then you can forget it; a lot of them have to be done to make the site more stable.
Asking permission? No. But the current situation looks to me like:
- Developers randomly without any warning make unannounced changes
that affect users. 2) CSS and Javascript hackers randomly without any warning make unannounced changes that affect users. 3) Users get peeved due to their feeling of powerlessness, and not knowing any better, blame developers or CSS/Javascript hackers at random. 4) Developers consider this unfair.
How do you think this can be improved?
one could introduce a RTC (review then commit) process instead CTR, whereas one could do the review on a "staging branch" in order to be more efficient.
I am a developer myself and I also would prefer to commit every time I do a change and consider it good, but I had to come to realize that software in general is for people using it and hence the user is king/queen and all good intentions are worthless if such a gap arises.
Just my 2 cents
Michael
On 12/31/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Asking permission? No. But the current situation looks to me like:
- Developers randomly without any warning make unannounced changes
that affect users. 2) CSS and Javascript hackers randomly without any warning make unannounced changes that affect users. 3) Users get peeved due to their feeling of powerlessness, and not knowing any better, blame developers or CSS/Javascript hackers at random. 4) Developers consider this unfair.
How do you think this can be improved?
I don't think it can be. Twenty-nine times out of thirty, step 3 never happens, and any further review processes or whatever will hold up those twenty-nine times as well as (even more than) the last. Generally the only criticism of developers is failure to institute desirable things, not institution of undesirable things. People are happy with almost every change we make, and in fact, in this case almost everyone was happy as well as far as I can see.
On 12/31/06, Michael Wechner michael.wechner@wyona.com wrote:
one could introduce a RTC (review then commit) process instead CTR, whereas one could do the review on a "staging branch" in order to be more efficient.
Review by whom, the users? How would you get the general body of users to review even a few changes a week without making them live? Real businesses and whatnot get around this by market studies and so forth, but we don't have those.
On 31/12/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Asking permission? No. But the current situation looks to me like:
- Developers randomly without any warning make unannounced changes
that affect users.
We try to avoid doing this wherever possible - Tim in particular is very good at alerting wikitech-l and wikipedia-l in advance of making changes, e.g. to the blocking mechanism, earlier this year.
Sometimes, stuff slips through the net, and what seems major to users is not so major to us.
- CSS and Javascript hackers randomly without any warning make
unannounced changes that affect users.
Not our fault, I'm afraid; discipline them accordingly.
- Users get peeved due to their feeling of powerlessness, and not
knowing any better, blame developers or CSS/Javascript hackers at random.
Not our fault.
- Developers consider this unfair.
Well, it is!
How do you think this can be improved?
Encourage administrators with poor aesthetic taste not to make changes to the sitewide CSS without consulting users. I thought this was the usual precedent on your wiki?
And I guess the technical village pump (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29).
No longer an official forum because it's not suitable for tracking bugs.
Is there a running changelog accessible from Wikipedia perhaps? Some centralised place where highly visible changes are logged?
The Wikipedia Signpost has a "bugs, repairs and internal operational news" slot each week, which includes software changes; I used to maintain that bit before I disappeared in August, and Simetrical now does a sterling job of it (although it's not necessarily fair to expect that he will continue to do so), providing a damn sight better description of most things than I ever did.
This isn't necessarily particularly official, either, but since you've got a committer updating it...infer what you like. There's always the Subversion log. Oh, but of course...non developers don't apparently like opening their damn browsers.
I would disagree with that assertion, too.
That's odd, because it seemed to me that your previous post perpetuated it.
Rob Church
On 31.12.2006 19:07, Rob Church wrote:
... discipline them accordingly.
I'm sorry to say this, but it's this kind of language that makes problems larger than they actually are.
People are sensitive to arrogance and it's sometimes a bit hard to find out where the joke ends and the arrogance starts.
Yes, Mets501 was a bit bold adding the colors. But the colors are still in effect, so it can't be that bad.
Repeat after me: Assume Good Faith.
And nobody is perfect.
Happy 2007!
On 31/12/06, Ligulem ligulem@pobox.com wrote:
I'm sorry to say this, but it's this kind of language that makes problems larger than they actually are.
Perhaps I could have worded it better, I do apologise.
Repeat after me: Assume Good Faith.
I have done. I wasn't the one raising objections against anything on the English Wikipedia, because I don't edit it - nothing there affects me.
Rob Church
On 31/12/06, Ligulem ligulem@pobox.com wrote:
On 31.12.2006 19:07, Rob Church wrote:
... discipline them accordingly.
Yes, Mets501 was a bit bold adding the colors. But the colors are still in effect, so it can't be that bad. Repeat after me: Assume Good Faith.
You appear to have confused "assume good faith" with "assume good judgement".
And nobody is perfect.
That's what AGF means, yes.
- d.
On 30.12.2006 10:53, Rob Church wrote:
[This is in response to all the bitching and whining that's taken place since December 24th, on mailing lists, bug trackers, village pumps and sleazy little back-alley forums...I apologise for the crossposting. As ever, please feel free to forward this to other appropriate parties or lists, but keep responses and/or discussion on one.]
I'm not sure what the problem is here. But the change size is pretty cool and I love it. It helps a lot for spotting problem edits on recent changes.
I didn't like the bold red and green either and this has been improved in the mean time by choosing a bit less bright colors in the style sheet :-).
Per the complaints, I saw only the ones on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29 which were pretty harmless given the large user base Wikipedia has.
Disagreeing voices are usually the loudest and fastest. Don't forget all the people who just silently use the cool new features and are happy with them.
So keep up the good work!
Ligulem wrote:
On 30.12.2006 10:53, Rob Church wrote:
[This is in response to all the bitching and whining that's taken place since December 24th, on mailing lists, bug trackers, village pumps and sleazy little back-alley forums...I apologise for the crossposting. As ever, please feel free to forward this to other appropriate parties or lists, but keep responses and/or discussion on one.]
I didn't like the bold red and green either and this has been improved in the mean time by choosing a bit less bright colors in the style sheet :-).
You know, while you do have a point about the colors, I can't help but think the reason this has caused such a tempest in a teapot is that what we have here is a concrete example of the proverbial [[bikeshed]].
(See also http://red.bikeshed.com/ and/or http://green.bikeshed.com/)
On 30.12.2006 17:36, Ilmari Karonen wrote:
You know, while you do have a point about the colors, I can't help but think the reason this has caused such a tempest in a teapot is that what we have here is a concrete example of the proverbial [[bikeshed]].
(See also http://red.bikeshed.com/ and/or http://green.bikeshed.com/)
The colors are just fine now. Also the bolding for larger numbers is very cool.
I thought everything is in harmony now. So I was a bit surprised by Rob's post. But maybe I missed something.
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