On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 6:09 PM, MZMcBride <z(a)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&dif…
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation