bawolff <bawolff+wn@...> writes:
The reader community is massive and has no voice, except their complaints across the internet. The WMF can and should be the voice for the reader community.
In my experience, the WMF lacks the ability (or perhaps maturity?) to be that voice. Every time someone invokes the readers, usually they do it to re-assert their personal opinions on the manner, because they're losing an argument. After all, its not like the readers are going to rise up and object that their voice is being appropriated. If it was possible for computer programmers to know what there users wanted magically, without gathering any evidence, computer programming would be an entirely different field. As far as I know, misunderstanding user requirements is one of the top reasons software projects fail. WMF has certainly severely misjudged the requirements of the editor community at times, why would they be any better at the reader community?
What I'm saying is that there should be a process to make an interface change directed at readers, with stated test results, A/B tested, and adopted if testing meets the criteria of the test results. The editor community should have little to no say in the process, except to suggest experiments or question obviously incorrect test results.
The basic idea is that through proper testing of features you should be able to know an experience is better for the readers without them having a direct voice.
An example: Make search more discoverable. Add a feature or make an interface change to test this. A/B test it. See if the frequency of search usage increased. See if it adversely affected other metrics. If it helped search usage and didn't negatively affect other metrics, adopt the change.
The issue is that there will be a vocal minority of people who absolutely hate this change, no matter what it is. These people should be ignored.
Blame is easy to throw around. You can just as easily say that the problem is due to the WMF viewing the community as a problem to be worked around, creating an antagonistic relationship that degrades everyone's interests.
I think there's a lot of blame to be thrown around, but the editor community is who's being worked around and they should be worked around when changes are meant to affect readers and those changes don't directly negatively affect editor metrics.
Of course, all of this should be backed-up by data, and it's surely a failing of the WMF that their development process isn't data driven.
- Ryan