[Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2

[Chad]

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 4:00 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> In this discussion we don't merely have personal preferences, we're
> arguing principles of design and hypothesizing benefit for the
> readers. And, excluding the foundation staff, we appear to have a
> broad, if not complete, consensus that the inter-language links should
> come back.  In the community-operated model this would already be done
> by now.
>

I'd like to echo Phoebe's +1,000,000 first of all. I agree with everything
you've said.

I'd like to touch on this one particular point. The community HAS spoken
and clearly wants it back the way it was. A volunteer even did so [0] but
was reverted [1] with the message that UI changes to Vector are off-limits
without some sort of prior discussion and approval.

This sits with me _very_ badly. I don't disagree (in principle) that changes to
our user experience should be discussed and not implemented via fiat. But
when you've got overwhelming consensus that this is the right course of
action, reverting the change and declaring it off-limits to our committers
is just wrong. Our volunteer developers do a pretty good job of judging and
implementing community consensus, and saying that some things aren't
negotiable sets a bad precedence.

Of course I don't suggest we start a revert war in SVN over it, but I do think
that Trevor's revert should be backed out and the full list restored until a
better long term solution is thought out (per Erik's e-mail).

-Chad

[0] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/67281
[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/67299