[Wikimedia-l] What community initiatives have made an impact on editor engagement?

[Tim Starling]

On 05/07/13 22:09, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:
> The recent community initiative with the highest impact I can think of
> is surely what Platonides and other members of the global (technical)
> community did on pt.wiki. Platonides noticed a configuration error on
> pt.wiki: CAPTCHA was required for all edits since 2008. The error was
> fixed in April. <https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/41745>

Saying that Platonides discovered a configuration error on pt.wp and
fixed it is a bit like saying Captain Cook discovered New Zealand and
fixed its lack of pigs.

Of course, the pt.wp community was well aware of the situation. The
response of the pt.wp community to the original "emergency" -- asking
for CAPTCHAs to be enabled for everyone -- was very specific to that
community. I have to wonder whether the requesters were hoping for
implicit permanence.

It's a reminder that we need a robust procedure for making temporary
changes. In the past we have relied on the requester saying to us
afterwards "ok, it's all done now, you can revert it." That doesn't
work if "temporary" is said with a wink.

-- Tim Starling