ObDisclaimer: This reply consists of my own personal views and in no way represents anything official.
I think I can leak a little useful information on this topic without fear. ;)
On Sat, Jan 9, 2016 at 3:12 AM, Anders Wennersten mail@anderswennersten.se wrote:
I also think it would be good to remember that WMF transformation from the "Superprotect disaster" to a very much appreciated 2015 Community Wishlist Survey. To go from an "inside-out" to an "outside-in" model in deciding what functionality to develop is a revolution. And even if we as users all applaud this change, we should also respect it can be felt tough to adjust to if you are "inside"
You seem to be assuming that staff have had a negative reaction to the idea of the Community Wishlist. From what I've seen on the internal mailing list, staff are very supportive of this. The word "awesome" was used several times in replies on the thread announcing it.
The closest thing to a negative comment I see wasn't very negative at all. Paraphrased, "At first I was afraid this would be more lip-serivce, but now I see it and you're really interested in community input."
For more positive comments you can see some of the staff replies to < https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2015-December/080329.html%..., since that announcement was CCed to the internal list and some people used "reply all".
I give Lila 100% credit for this change and thank the Board for supporting this change (and also to have recruited Lila with this as main purpose)
IMO, you should give credit to the Community Tech team. They're the ones who came up with the wishlist idea and did it, unless I'm totally mistaken.
You could also give some credit to the staffers who originally proposed creating the Community Tech team. It wasn't a top-down proposal.