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

[Tim Starling]

On 07/09/10 20:01, Teofilo wrote:
> 2010/9/7, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org>:
>>
>> If you don't like it, you can request that it be switched off, using
>> Bugzilla. You will need to demonstrate that the community is in favour
>> of such an action.
> 
> This is not proactive. Giving more power to the admins is a
> constitutional change. Usually a constitutional change requires a
> referendum beforehand (An amendment to the United States Constitution
> must be ratified by 3/4 of the state legislatures, WP says). You don't
> simply switch to the new constitution and tell the people who are
> unhappy with the new constitution that it is their burden to
> demonstrate that the older constitution was better. And when a
> constitutional change changes a democracy into a dictatorship without
> the freedom of speech, it is too late to express yourself after you
> have lost the freedom of speech.

The feature has been under discussion since 2005.  Maybe you should
have exercised your freedom of speech some time during those 5 years,
instead of waiting until 4 months after admins were given the right to
use it before voicing your objection. It was not discussed solely by
"WMF big wheels" as you put it earlier, it was requested, discussed
and to some extent implemented by community members.

>>> * 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)
>>
>> Is there a bug report for this?
> 
> No and there won't be (at least from me). Because I don't know if it
> is a bug or a feature. Show me the specification of the pdf tool
> first. I will see if the specification says that pictures'
> photographers should be credited. If the specification says so, I will
> report it as a bug. But if the specification does not say so, it
> simply means that I disagree with the specification. And I don't think
> bugzilla is the proper forum to discuss specifications.

You should report it at Bugzilla if you want it to be fixed. Note that
the extension in question was not developed by Wikimedia, it was
developed by PediaPress.

> I think it is partly thoughtlessness, partly an agenda to remove
> contributor's names from wherever is possible, so that the WMF can
> dominate the contents and do whatever it wants with them without the
> contributors being able to control. An agenda to use the volunteers
> not as partners, but as a pleb available for [[:en:corvée]] (3).
> 
> The removal of the article's history tab from mobile.wikipedia.org
> (merely linking to the main websites's history tab is not the same as
> including it within the mobile.wikipedia.org website) sounds more like
> an agenda than mere thoughtlessness.

Presumably this conspiracy would have to extend beyond the WMF to
PediaPress and Purodha Blissenbach, the developers of Collection and
mobile.wikipedia.org respectively.

-- Tim Starling