[Foundation-l] How do you fully consult the community consensus?

[Chad]

I of course cannot speak for the Foundation. I only
write this in the view of a volunteer dev, like many
others.

That statement was written a long time ago when
Mediawiki was simply the software that runs Wikipedia.
It's now 2009, and Mediawiki is still the software that
runs Wikipedia. That being said, our outside user base
has grown massively in this time. A good number of our
bug reports and patches come from outside users, not
wikis within the WMF.

That's all fine and dandy, but our number one goal is
still (admittedly or not) to keep developing for Wikipedia.
I of course support full consultation with the wikis when
it is beneficial to do so. Simple bugfixes or enhancements
don't need massive pre-announcement and input. It
slows down the development lifecycle for everyone.
Most devs don't want to be involved in massive enwiki
debates over where to put a link: we just want your
final consensus on what you want done (and that itself
can be very time consuming). Larger impact things (like
the retooling of wikitext) definitely need wider input
than just wikitech-l. I believe that the WMF
community and wider wiki community should be
solicited for such wide-sweeping changes. Tangentally,
I think we all as a wiki community need to standardize
"What is wikitext" in a formal way, but that's another
discussion.

At this day and age, I would hope silly feature hacks for
things only wanted by one wiki could be avoided. We've
had quite a bit of feature-cruft over the years, and a
lot of these things probably would've been better as
extensions to begin with.

In short: I as a developer welcome all input from the
wiki community (both WMF and not), and I highly
encourage those who share an interest in the direction
of the software (not everyone does) to get involved.
I'm not going to track you down and poll everyone
around you, but I will certainly listen carefully to your
ideas.

Always,
  Chad

On Jul 1, 2009 1:16 AM, "Brian" <Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu> wrote:

Going forward, how does the Foundation plan to make large changes to the
software in full consultation with the community consensus?

Is the assumption that all of the members of the community who are
knowledgeable and interested have already signed up to the relevant mailing
lists and all that is needed is to send out a quick 'ping' and get their
thoughts?

What constitutes the community when it comes to the software?

Or is this just a guideline that has been on Jimbo's user page for many
years which is not really relevant since laymen should not really be
involved in technical decisions? Is there anyone at the Foundation who
currently takes this principle seriously? Honestly? What about the
developers - are they aware of and actively engaged in implementing this
principle?

Does the Foundation feel that it doesn't actually need to consult the
community? It can determine the technically best solution for the projects
and then implement it without soliciting feedback from as many people as
possible?

What would constitute due diligence in contacting the community? For
example, suppose that the Foundation had determined that there were 5 really
good solutions to a problem in the software and that they take full
consultation seriously. Could you then present those 5 solutions to the
community en masse using a survey, analyze the results and choose a winner
(or have a runoff?).

How large of a change to the software requires full consultation?

After consulting the community, does the Foundation feel it is within its
power to then choose something different?

Does the Foundation take the requirement that all changes to the software
must be gradual and reversible seriously, or not? What does that mean to
you?

Thanks,
Brian
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