On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 6:09 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
I don't think many German Wikipedians or other Wikimedians will be willing to accept your apology until super-protection is disabled.
Our suggestion, which we posted on German Wikipedia, is that we spend some time talking to each other (up to 30 days, so not some indefinite procrastination) without efforts to disable features via JavaScript hacks, and without the page lock, to see if we can come to an agreement on how to resolve the conflict. This is currently under discussion there.
It would be disingenuous for WMF to declare "We will absolutely refrain from using such a restriction ever again". In a conflict, my recommendation is not to ask for a concession that would be only made disingenuously, because it will not last. WMF, organizationally (as has been made abundantly clear by Lila and the Board), is not committed to the idea that some community members want us to be - that we must always follow the outcome of a local vote or poll asking us to do something, to its letter, without any room for discussion.
The underlying reasoning is simple - WMF wants to help ensure that decisions are rational and well-informed consistent with its understanding of a given situation, that we have a level of baseline consistency of user experience, and that we challenge ourselves to think through changes that may take some getting used to, but may represent a long term improvement (with some allowance for iteration).
I know there are some who want to use this opportunity to cement a different relationship - "WMF as servant", without a say. ("You are the servant, not the master, and your opinion doesn't matter very much." [1]) I understand that - I think it's rational, and justifiable, and may even be the better direction in the long run. I personally happen to disagree strongly with that belief, and the organization's leadership certainly does, as well. I hope we can find a middle ground, and I know that some of this is also just a reaction.
We understand that the only path forward that may be acceptable to both parties is to act in a manner consistent with the principle of "shared power", which is why we suggest that we take some time to talk things through with both parties refraining from using technical or other means to force an outcome, and ideally aiming to completely obviate any kind of escalation like this in future.
What's happening here is painful and difficult, and I'm sorry for our role in that. I do believe it's necessary that we work through this, and on a personal level, I honestly care more about doing that and achieving some clarity on our working relationship with each other, than about any specific outcome.
But more to the point, I think it would be helpful if the Wikimedia Foundation could articulate a clear message about why these types of "reader-focused" features are a worthwhile investment. I talk to a lot of people about Wikipedia and the one complaint I _never_ hear is that Wikipedia has a readership problem. It's a fact that the Wikimedia Foundation typically embraces at every opportunity ("top-five Web site").
We are seeing pageviews flatten out, with most readership growth coming from mobile at this point. It's not alarming yet - it's consistent with the overall changes in user behavior - but of course it does mean that especially the experience across devices is becoming increasingly important.
The bulk of WMF's product development effort currently goes towards contribution, not presentation, but we try to ensure that we have an appropriate share of effort to modernize and improve the presentation of information as a whole, to make it easier for people to navigate, discover, re-use, etc. If you take a look at the mobile experience in a desktop browser, you'll find it not so different from many redesigns - large, readable text, narrower measure, deliberately chosen typography, minimal clutter, easier access to footnotes, etc.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Eliensis
Needless to say, it's a lot easier to try new design ideas here, since the level of investment of the community in the mobile experience is not as great yet (it is growing, which will again increase the need for us to have clear rules of engagement) and therefore the tolerance for smaller imperfections is higher. This has enabled a healthy pipeline of moving design changes from mobile to desktop - e.g. the typography changes, and the soon to come frameless thumbs.
What does "modernize" really mean? Well, it means adapting to a changing environment. Connections get faster, browsers become more powerful, screen resolutions increase, web typography improves, new interaction patterns become established in people's brains. In design practice, this has had a number of effects for modern sites, including larger images, greater focus on readable text, less clutter, etc.
It's appropriate for WMF to take into account the full breadth and depth of devices that do exist and are in wide usage, more so than sites developed for users in rich countries. Hence a greater focus on things like image compression, overall page footprint, the no-JavaScript experience, etc. But that's still consistent with carefully updating the presentation. (Introducing a lightbox viewer in 2014 is not exactly a radically new vision for user experience.)
People have cited WikiWand as an example of a third party improved reader experience. It's quite nicely done; I like a lot of the design choices they've made. It's far from a threat (though a more prominent "Edit" link would be nice, especially since the browser extension hijacks wikipedia.org views), but it's the kind of cool third party effort that keeps us honest. They recently raised about $600K in funding, which means that at least some people believe there's a real demand for a nicer, more modern default reader experience.
As a footnote, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that WikiWand includes a lightbox image viewer. I think it's better in some ways than ours (e.g. I like the intelligent resizing of the image as you expand the info panel, allowing you to browse at different sizes with or without the full panel visible; also some nice subtle touches with the animations). It gives less prominent attribution than MV does (you have to expand it first), struggles with the same files that have insanely complex descriptions, and fails on the same files with a simple "License: Unkown" when no machine-readable data is available. No full-size zoom or re-use features, as far as I can tell, but a nice carousel navigation. (Just the kinds of things some people name as reasons MV should never have seen the light of day, incidentally.)
Why is that interaction pattern so commonly used? Because it's a smaller initial mental break when you read a text and want to simply examine something like a photo, a map, or an illustration. Progressive disclosure patterns are used to show additional information as appropriate, with the initial focus being on the image and its caption (using the same text that's used in the article, again both because that text is likely the most immediately relevant, and it reduces the cognitive break). Fast access to other media in the same article can be a nice bonus for articles that are visually rich and readers who are oriented to learning or discovering information in this manner.
Erik
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:LilaTretikov&diff...