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

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Brian wrote: > 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? Yes, IMO (as a
volunteer dev). If something is expected to be controversial on
non-technical grounds, there's normally a per-community decision, like with
FlaggedRevs or whatnot. The overwhelming majority of technical work
comprises straightforward enhancements and bug fixes that only really
deserves technical attention. Users who are interested can sign up to
wikitech-l and hang out in #mediawiki. Those who aren't can just use the
software. > Or is this just a guideline that has been on Jimbo's user page
for many > years which is not really relevant Yes. > How large of a change
to the software requires full consultation? It's not about large, it's about
the effect it has on users. There are enormous overhauls like the new video
upload system that don't need to be discussed with the community at all,
because everyone agrees that they're wanted. On the other hand, there are
plenty of one-line changes that would require community consensus (like,
say, giving all users rollback by default). > After consulting the
community, does the Foundation feel it is within its > power to then choose
something different? I can't speak for Wikimedia, but I don't see how it
could possibly be considered outside the Foundation's power to ignore the
community. It owns the site. It can and does overrule individual communities
sometimes, in technical matters and non-technical alike. For instance, it
imposes its copyright policies regardless of community consensus (and some
communities don't like those policies at all). An upcoming technical change
that will probably be very controversial is deployment of the Vector skin by
default -- I predict a lot of people will complain about lack of consensus
and be very politely told "too bad, we know better because we just spent a
million dollars on a usability study". > 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? It doesn't mean
anything to me. Many large software changes need to be deployed all at once,
and many aren't easily reversible. That's life.
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