Obviously discussions on these six topics are not new as they are frequently discussed on a number of Wikimedia mailing lists and forums. Ideas are often put forward that attract some who say it will work wonderfully, while others doubt if it will work at all, while a third group think it will do harm. One of the issues that frequently arises is the need for some capacity to experiment Will there be any support for testing ideas? That is, to be bold and try something instead of just talking about it? E.g. repeal policy XYZ for a month and see if it makes a difference and whether it is for better or worse. And of course some ideas might require engineering support to test. Will that be available?
To illustrate a concrete example, what if we wanted to trial a grace period for new users (one of the example ideas)? Right now, it is very easy for anyone to undo a newbie's edit and WP:NOBITE is routinely ignored. So, to implement a grace period, we would probably need to do some re-engineering, perhaps require an extra step in the "undo" process where the reverter had to acknowledge that this was a new user within the grace period and then asked if the edit appeared to be good faith (and then directed on to more appropriate ways to respond to good faith edits by newbies) or bad faith (allowed to continue with the undo action). Will there be support for experimentation or for engineering needed for experimentation? Will there be support from the metrics team around those experiments to collect appropriate qualitative and quantitative data to assist drawing conclusions as to whether the experiments were beneficial or not?
It seems to me that without support for experimentation it will be difficult for communities to put forward ideas as even the formulation of ideas will be bogged down from a lack of evidence. As you say, talk is cheap and it is clear that years of talking have not made a great difference. It's time to experiment if only on a small scale (a subset of users, a subset of articles) etc. Are the resources to do this available?
Thanks
Kerry