[Foundation-l] Community consensus for software changes (Re: Show community consensus for Wikilove)

[Michael Snow]

On 10/31/2011 11:04 AM, David Levy wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> As a matter of general practice, the Wikimedia Foundation aims to be
>> responsive to the community both before and after the deployment of
>> software, but it doesn't obtain community consensus before deploying
>> software which it would like to deploy on its sites and services, nor
>> does it necessarily write or deploy software changes if a consensus to
>> do so exists.
> Brandon Harris explicitly stated that "the policy for deployment of
> the tool is that it is by request only, and the requesting wiki must
> ... show community consensus."
>
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-October/070062.html
>
> That leaves three possibilities:
>
> A) Community consensus was demonstrated at the English Wikipedia.
> B) The WikiLove deployment policy was violated.
> C) The above statement by Brandon Harris is incorrect.
If I understand correctly, the English Wikipedia is the main test 
deployment for this as an experimental feature. While the feature 
remains experimental, additional deployments to other wikis would only 
happen if requested by community consensus. At some level, it would not 
make sense to insist that consensus is required prior to conducting any 
experiment, as that effectively defeats the ability to experiment.

--Michael Snow