Hoi, Maybe... but it assumes that we have plenty of time and work sequently. Both are not the case and as it is, the framework is broken.to the extend that people refuse to use it. So yes, ideally you want to fix many issues nicely and in a collaborative manner. At the same time our readers are disappearing from our old platform and new editors are not happening on the old platform.
Open source has a lot of benefits. Delivering quality software '''on a schedule''' is not one of them. But it can be done. We did it with Zend Framework with quarterly major releases. We also turned community sentiment around after the negative reaction to 1.0, which was released right before I joined Zend.
I'd say that the most impactful thing we did to right the ship was hearing people out wherever they chose to discuss ZF. We monitored all channels of communication and responded to frustrations as quickly as possible. Most of our comments boiled down to:
"You're right. We have a problem here. Will you help us fix it?"
In other words, we made sure we walked the walk so that we could invite others to walk with us. And the constructive critics figured out that walking is more fun/satisfying than all the talking. Of course, that meant we walked away from some critics who weren't interested in being constructive. We never looked back.
I believe this community can also turn all this dysfunction and stress in to something positive. So, let's start walking; here's a proposal/challenge for those who think Media Viewer isn't worthy:
Take all that time you're investing in petitioning the community and use it to build something better than Media Viewer. A lot of you have already identified pain points in MV and some solutions have also been put forward; so, if you are not planning to get involved in the project that the WMF has set up for whatever reasons, join us in building what Media Viewer should be without the complications of dealing with the WMF. If it turns out to be a better solution than Media Viewer, then I suggest we create a petition to replace MV with the community's solution. That's the kind of positive, action-oriented petition I can sign.
I'll even kick it off. We can start listing the requirements for the Worthy Media Viewer on this page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WorthyMV.
So, who's ready to walk?
,Wil