[Foundation-l] Call for a moratorium on all new software developments

[K. Peachey]

On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 8:33 PM, Teofilo <teofilowiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> During the past few years, the new softwares of the Wikimedia
> Foundations  have been developped in a too much anarchic way.
>
> * They are sometimes implemented as a whim of a few WMF big wheels,
> without consulting the user communities.
>
> * We are never shown specifications defining the goals of the planned
> softwares, which makes me doubt such specifications are ever written.
> With specifications being written and published, problems could be
> talked in a proactive way.
>
> A few problems :
>
> * The developpers have enabled for every Admin of the French
> Wikipedia, the possibility to mask (and exert acts of censorship)
> without needing to be an oversighter (1) Which means that the policy
> page at [[:fr:Wikipédia:Masqueur d'adresses IP]] (more or less the
> same as [[:en:Wikipedia:Oversight]]) is a joke. Every single admin has
> virtually the same power as an oversighter.
>
> * The pdf tool is not fulfilling the licenses of images imported from
> Flickr. This is typically a tool enabled on all projects without
> consulting with the communities. That tool should be disabled at once
> from all project, until it is repaired (which might mean redevelopped
> from scratch). (2)
>
> Conclusion : Because more software means more harm, I call for a
> moratorium (1 year? 6 months ?) on all new software developpements.
> During that time the developpers should be allowed to repair only
> obvious and urgent bugs.
>
> (1) A statement by a French admin saying that such acts are currently
> performed by simple admins :
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikip%C3%A9dia%3ABulletin_des_administrateurs%2F2010%2FSemaine_36&action=historysubmit&diff=56843997&oldid=56843680
>
> (2) Example provided here :
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikip%C3%A9dia%3ALe_Bistro%2F4_septembre_2010&action=historysubmit&diff=56786685&oldid=56786681
>
IF something doesn't meet the expectations or is configured wrongly,
gain local community consensus (mostly for the latter situation) and
then post a bug in bugzilla requesting the configuration be changed.
-Peachey