On 14.08.2014 15:35, David Gerard wrote:
On 14 August 2014 13:56, David Cuenca dacuetu@gmail.com wrote:
It would be more sensible to let contributors participate in the tech roadmap in more formal and empowered way than now, because without that early participation there is no possibility for later consensus.
A pattern we see over and over is that the developers talk at length about what they're working on in several venues, then it's released and people claiming to speak for the community claim they were not adequately consulted. Pretty much no matter what steps were taken to do so, and what new steps are taken to do so. Because there's always someone who claims their own lack of interest is someone else's fault.
- d.
This is actually not correct. Take pending changes on the English Wikipedia as an example - people used to complain a lot on how RfC's were closed, but this is the business of the community. I have never heard anybody complaining that the trial sucked, or that PC itself does not work properly. There was a discussion, there was a trial, everything was properly announced, and everything from the developers's side was done perfectly or close to perfectly.
Take Phase I Wikidata - this is smth I was actively participating in and watched it from the close distance. Everything went smoothly, with the Hungarian Wikipedia trial starting first, the Italian Wikipedia a bit later, when feedback was taken into account, and then other Wikipedias followed. Again, no problem with the developers whatsoever.
Now compare this with VE, AFT, Mediaviewer, and Flow will be probably the next disaster of a comprable scale - despite the fact that WMF is pretty open about Flow, and there are many people answering questions basically in real time.
Cheers Yaroslav