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

[Erik Moeller]

2010/9/28 Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com>:
> If the trial said the extension would be turned off, and it didn't get
> turned off, then whatever the reason...

As a reminder, there was a post-trial poll with very broad
participation and 65% of support for continued use of PC. Jimmy then
put on his traditional leadership hat and quite clearly laid out his
view for a way forward that could help en.wp to get towards consensus:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&action=historysubmit&diff=384071220&oldid=384037298

All WMF did is to not _disable_ a feature that enjoys 65% support. Had
we disabled it in spite of the above events, I have no doubt that we
would now be discussing a different set of objections and concerns,
from some of the same people and some different ones. We're talking
about an environment in which people are already putting Pending
Changes related slogans into their user signatures and user boxes;
this is clearly a heated and divisive internal debate. It seems
entirely reasonable to me that the best environment in which to
continue a discussion that's clearly ongoing is one in which WMF
doesn't close off options prematurely, but one in which the community
can flexibly design and execute experiments, and WMF largely steps
away from the keyboard, except for supplying code and data
unless/until it's clear that this is a dead end.

-- 
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation

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