[teampractices] The Rule of Three (+1)

[Maryana Pinchuk]

Update: the Flow team has tried to make the community involvement practice
explicit in its documentation on Mediawiki.org[1] and English Wikipedia.[2]

There is one very important corollary to this that I think we should also
state upfront (and I basically already have): community member feedback –
even the stingingly critical variety! – will be welcomed, taken seriously,
and weighed equally with the concerns of product, development, and design *only
if* it comes from a place of shared understanding of our movement's goals
and guiding principles.[3]

E.g., if a community member is arguing vociferously that users who can't
figure out how to use a talk page (or how to use wiki markup, or how to
write their first article) shouldn't be contributing to Wikipedia in the
first place, *we should not engage in discussions with that user.*

In my experience, those conversations are a massive waste of energy and
time; productive debate can only happen if both sides value openness but
simply disagree about the way to get there. It may be that some staffers
are already following this practice implicitly to keep their blood pressure
down ;) but I'd like for us to go ahead and make this an explicit part of
the way we work in engineering. I want community members to know exactly
how they can take control of software development projects – and how they
absolutely can't.

This is something a group of us talked about at Tech Days, and Oliver is
intending to document the ideas that came out of that session soon. In the
meantime, I've just asked the Core features team to start following this
practice, because the talk pages of Flow documentation are already choked
with dozens of angry threads that go nowhere and just make everyone sad and
grumpy. Experience with/feedback on this from other teams would be most
appreciated :)

1. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow_Portal#How_can_I_help.3F
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flow#How_can_I_help.3F
3.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Wikimedia_Foundation_Guiding_Principles


On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 10:26 AM, Tomasz Finc <tfinc at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Mobile Web
> Mobile App
> Flow
> Language
> VE
> E2
> E3
> ... and more that i have likely forgotten.
>
> On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 10:14 AM, Oliver Keyes <okeyes at wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On 20 September 2013 07:56, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Tomasz Finc, 17/09/2013 19:39:
> >>>
> >>> [...] make
> >>>>
> >>>> sure there was one representative from three departments in the
> >>>> discussion
> >>>> before consensus is reached. That usually meant Maryana (Product
> >>>> Manager),
> >>>> Jon Robson (Engineering Tech Lead), and Vibha (Design) would get
> >>>> together
> >>>> and hash things out by consensus.
> >>>>
> >>>> …
> >>>>
> >>>> [...] make sure to find at least one person in
> >>>>
> >>>> Product and one person in Design before proceeding/resolving/having
> the
> >>>> autonomy to do anything.
> >>
> >>
> >> How many WMF teams have such a trine/trinitarian composition?
> >>
> >> Nemo
> >
> >
> > In terms of having representatives of at least 3 of
> > [design/product/engineering/community]; Mobile, VE, Core, and I believe
> > Platform is now getting some design resources (and now has a PM). This
> is a
> > non-exhaustive list - just those off the top of my head.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> If you can't drag the missing person in, just ping
> >>>>
> >>>> them on IRC on #wikimedia-corefeatures and relay the discussion there.
> >>>>
> >>>> The variation is that I'd like community/product analysis to be a part
> >>>> of
> >>>> this. From a logistical standpoint, it'd not practical to turn this
> into
> >>>> a
> >>>> rule of 4, so I'd like it to make three (plus one). This means the
> rule
> >>>> of
> >>>> three to resolve, and the missing leg would be informed as soon as is
> >>>> reasonable (and can provide their input then).  [...]
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Oliver Keyes
> > Product Analyst
> > Wikimedia Foundation
>



-- 
Maryana Pinchuk
Product Manager, Wikimedia Foundation
wikimediafoundation.org
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