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

[Risker]

Ummm, no, Erik. The objective was to have consensus to KEEP it on, not
consensus to turn it off, and that was always the agreement. There was
never, until the lack of consensus to keep it on became clear, a direct
suggestion that we'd be stuck with it.  The only reason the trial was
approved in the first place was with the condition that if there was not a
consensus to keep it turned on, it would be deactivated. If the community
had known that going in to the first trial, I rather doubt any more than a
handful of administrators and editors would have participated.

You will also note that in the two weeks between those two polls, support to
*continue the trial* (not keep it on indefinitely) went from 65% to 59% - a
drop of 10% support in only two weeks.  A very significant part of that drop
in support was due to the fact that the WMF had reneged on its word to
respect the consensus in the first place.

I am really sorry, Erik, that you and your team don't see that
this position is really seriously causing harm to the potential success of
the pending changes project. Many of us have already bailed out this project
on multiple occasions, starting from before the trial even started (when it
was discovered that nobody had tested "reviewer" status because that status
wasn't even available on the test wiki), because we took the WMF at its
word.  Don't be too surprised if a fair number of long-term, very committed
editors vote with their feet. Oh, and contrary to popular belief, they're a
lot harder to replace than they used to be.  Your stats should tell you
that.

Risker/Anne





On 28 September 2010 16:39, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> 2010/9/28 Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com>:
> > Thank you for confirming that English Wikipedia does not have a choice in
> > whether or not this tool is deployed on our project.
>
> There have been two massive polls in the English Wikipedia already on
> Pending Changes.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Closure
>
> and
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Straw_poll_on_interim_usage
>
> In both these polls, strong majorities _opposed_ disabling the
> feature, which is why we haven't turned it off. All we're doing is
> keeping the software running and making fixes we know need to be made.
> The process for the English Wikipedia community to determine what it
> wants to do with this technology, if anything, continues.
>
> --
>  Erik Möller
> Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
>
> Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
>
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