[Wikimedia-l] Go away, community (from WMF wiki at least)

[David Goodman]

Basically, you (in the plural)  thought you could do better than the
consensus, and therefore simply without rejecting it , did not implement it
while you tried other things first.   All these trials would have been
good, ''had they been done before implementation.'' I am waiting for
someone from the foundation to come out and agree to that, a recognition
that the error was that they needed to be done first.

I am then waiting for a statement that all future changes of this sort will
be broadly announced and trialed first,

And I'm further waiting for a statement that the  actual implementation
will depend on the consensus.

Frankly, if these are not forthcoming, the community needs to consider what
it can do to retain control over the interface. While  some individuals at
the WMF may have greater individual expertise at some of the things
involved, they collectively do not have better judgment than the editing
community about what makes a good editing interface. They may have the
power to override it, but  they do not have the right to do so.   If they
think they ought to have the right, let them justify it.

Probably the first step is to insist on its consensus on this feature. I
wouldn't want to make an example of this otherwise, but unless we have  an
acknowledgement that we will have the right to decide in the future, the
time to assert our right to decide is now. The WMF presumably thinks it can
out-wait us, and needs to learn otherwise.   I'm not eager to do this:
I've heard some ideas, and I hope we do not need them.




On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 1:32 PM, Andy Mabbett <andy at pigsonthewing.org.uk>wrote:

> On 13 May 2013 18:01, Oliver Keyes <okeyes at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> >.You bring
> > up Echo; yes, we didn't bring the Orange Bar back. But we spent a lot of
> > cycles coming up with alternatives, running them past people, with many
> > editors and many staffers actively engaged in the process. We had
> > designers, developers, product managers participating in the discussion,
>
> And still you miss (if not ignore) the point; you removed something
> which was useful; consensus - supported by justifications and
> experience - was that it should be restored, and you ignored that
> consensus.
>
> You consulted on options including that restoration; and when it it
> was supported, you disregarded it out-of-hand.
>
> You (collectively) made unsupportable assertions and accusations, and
> resorted to snide comments when called on them.
>
> > and in the end we came up with something that everyone, well,
> begrudgingly
> > tolerates.
>
> And that's just downright false.
>
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-- 
David Goodman

DGG at the enWP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:DGG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG