[Foundation-l] Pending Changes development update: September 27

[Risker]

Rob, without wanting to take any wind out of your sails, please don't start
the next trial so soon.  The analysis from the first trial is nowhere near
finished, the community has just started to consider criteria for a new
trial, and following the very abnormal "majority rules" poll, there needs to
be a lot of goodwill rebuilt in the community for the second trial to have
any chance of success.

Unless almost every one of the identified defects is rectified before the
second trial begins, the repeat will be doomed to failure.  It is better
that you and the other developers take your time and do it right, and that
you ensure that non-technically oriented users have fully tested the new
prototype, before you bring it online. Analysis tools should already be set
up to produce data on an ongoing basis, with people specifically tasked to
provide factual analysis throughout the second trial. As well, there
absolutely must be a clearcut set of criteria for the second trial, and a
guaranteed, no questions asked, cut-off date, complete with the bot already
programmed to automatically switch articles over to semi-protection on the
cut-off date.  A more appropriate target date is 15 January 2011 for the
initiation of the second trial.

I realise that you were just the bearer of the news that the first trial
wasn't going to end as promised, four days after your predecessor promised
faithfully that there was 60-day cutoff for that trial. This time, I think,
the community needs to hear it from either Danese Cooper or Erik Moeller to
believe it; this about-face has truly shaken the community's trust in the
WMF hierarchy. Alternately, if we're going to be required to keep this
software regardless of community consensus, it's better for the WMF to just
say so.  At this point, there is no reason at all for the English Wikipedia
community to believe that our consensus process will be respected in
deciding whether or not this software will be deployed on our project,
particularly as there was a 10% drop in support over the two weeks between
the first closing poll and the second one. Of course, having it deployed
doesn't mean it will actually be used: there are 30% fewer articles on
pending changes now than there were at its peak, and we never did get past
1600 articles in the first trial because very few administrators felt the
cost/benefit ratio was acceptable.

Risker/Anne








On 28 September 2010 13:24, Rob Lanphier <robla at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> As many of you know, the results of the poll to keep Pending Changes
> on through a short development cycle were approved for interim usage:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Straw_poll_on_interim_usage
>
> Ongoing use of Pending Changes is contingent upon consensus after the
> deployment of an interim release of Pending Changes in November 2010,
> which is currently under development. The roadmap for this deployment
> is described here:
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Pending_Changes_enwiki_trial/Roadmap
>
> An update on the date: we'd previously scheduled this for November 9.
> However, because that week is the same week as the start of the
> fundraiser (and accompanying futzing with the site) we'd like to move
> the date one week later, to November 16.
>
> Aaron Schulz is advising us as the author of the vast majority of the
> code, having mostly implemented the "reject" button.  Chad Horohoe and
> Priyanka Dhanda are working on some of the short term development
> items, and Brandon Harris is advising us on how we can make this
> feature mesh with our long term usability strategy.
>
> We're currently tracking the list of items we intend to complete in
> Bugzilla. You can see the latest list here:
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=25293
>
> Many of the items in the list are things we're looking for feedback on:
> Bug 25295 - "Improve reviewer experience when multiple simultaneous
> users review Pending Changes"
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25295
>
> Bug 25296 - "History style cleanup - investigate possible fixes and
> detail the fixes"
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25296
>
> Bug 25298 - "Figure out what (if any) new Pending Changes links there
> should be in the side bar"
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25298
>
> Bug 25299 - "Make pending revision status clearer when viewing page"
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25299
>
> Bug 25300 - "Better names for special pages in Pending Changes
> configuration"
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25300
>
> Bug 25301 - "Firm up the list of minor UI improvements for the
> November 2010 Pending Changes release"
> https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25301
>
> Please provide your input in Bugzilla if you're comfortable with that;
> otherwise, please remark on the feedback page:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Feedback
>
> Thanks!
> Rob
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>