[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Wikiquality-l] Current Status

[Tony Sidaway]

On 14/01/2008, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> This is the one thing that I find
> disconcerting about the rollback episode: if we need 80%+ of support
> for everything, how can we ever hope to make changes to the
> fundamentals, like getting rid of wiki syntax in favor of rich text
> editing, or implementing a better discussion system?

To put it mildly, the community is very conservative and will fight
even beneficial technical changes tooth and nail, when those changes
are presented as a change of culture.  Other changes go through under
the radar without discussion.  For instance, the introduction of
per-edit reverts ("Undo") came in without discussion or controversy,
although it made it very easy for any editor to perform reverts that
were previously almost impossible to perform because there were more
recent edits.  Had this quite powerful facility been presented in
similar terms to the (arguably much less powerful) rollback feature, I
don't think we would have switched it on yet.

As it happens, the developers didn't ask and hardly anybody noticed.
Which is as it should be.