[teampractices] The Rule of Three (+1)

[Fabrice Florin]

Hi Maryana and team,

I think this is an excellent practice, and am really grateful that you have made it so explicit.

I have been using that approach implicitly in my own work, engaging community members who are committed to our goals and ignoring those who are only looking for a fight.

But I think it is wonderful that we are committing pro-actively to this practice as a team, and making it public. This strengthens my resolve to stay the course on multimedia and other fronts I'm engaged in.

Kudos on this healthy step forward -- and please let me know if I can do anything to support you in this new direction.

Onward!


Fabrice



On Sep 23, 2013, at 2:57 PM, Maryana Pinchuk wrote:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
> teampractices mailing list
> teampractices at lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/teampractices

_______________________________

Fabrice Florin
Product Manager
Wikimedia Foundation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)



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