On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 4:01 PM, Dariusz Jemielniak <darekj(a)alk.edu.pl>
wrote:
On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 10:55 AM, Andreas Kolbe
<jayen466(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Here is what I don't understand: both Dariusz
and James have said that
they
pushed hard for transparency and community
engagement about the project
at
that time, and expressed concern that there
hadn't been any. Do you not
remember that? Yet nothing happened.
My recollection is that we were given a plausible explanation that all the
big visions and brainstorming never went into production. Yes, there were
ideas floating around, but they did not go anywhere.
This is why James motioned to approve the grant, as I understand. I don't
think either of us would support the grant if we were unconvinced at the
time. We did, however, insist that any work going outside of the simple
"improve internal search" scope should be consulted.
Thanks for this, Dariusz.
We should be quite clear here though that the Discovery 0-1-2
presentation,[1] which is still part of the official FAQ,[2] speaks of
"federated open data sources". It envisages far more than a purely
*internal* search engine.
It envisages a volunteer-curated search engine drawing on a whole host of
sources from within and outside of the Wikimedia universe, with output
vectors including "Mobile", "API", "Kindle" and
"Apps".
This is part of the overall strategy to this day. Consultation would really
be appropriate here.
My personal view is also that we need to be careful
not to commit any
resource in the future by agreeing on some relatively small grants in the
present.
If they were in favour, and you were in favour,
why didn't it happen? Who
resisted?
I don't think that anyone resisted - we basically came to an understanding
that the grant was not a big project, and that while there may have been
grand(iose) visions about it, they never materialized to the level that
would require board or community involvement.
Thanks again, that helps.
[1]
https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=File:Discovery_Year_0-1-2.pdf&a…
[2]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery/FAQ