Magnus, regarding, "...at some point, you have to leave the test environment, and test your product against reality."
Of course. But VE was far, far too bad for real time when it was released. Really. It was driving newbies away. The sensible embracers-of-change threw it out, in the end. The squealing Ludites don't have the numbers for that. When the sensible majority starts squealing, the developers really need to pay attention.
I didn't follow it carefully but it seemed to me the release of the Image Viewer was much better timed and handled. Ludites squealed but genuine concerns were addressed promptly and respectfully.
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 11:58 PM, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske@googlemail.com
wrote:
On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 3:40 PM Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com wrote:
Magnus, in the interview you said "From the Media Viewer, the Visual Editor, to Wikidata transclusion, all have been resisted by vocal groups
of
editors, not because they are a problem, but because they represent
change.
For these editors, the site has worked fine for years; why change anything?"
Well, yes. No one here, I'm sure, will argue there aren't such groups.
But the problem with the blog post is you only mention them.
Because they are the problem, and they (by being vocal) often get more attention than a more silent, sensible majority. But by getting attention, they shape the general consensus, in a negative way.
You don't take into account the very much larger crowd, including myself, who were
hanging
out for the visual editor and were contemptuously flicked off by the developers when we brought up fatal flaws, as just some more superconservative no-vision Ludites - haters of change.
I am not going to get into a who-said-what-to-whom-in-what-tone discussion here. I wouldn't be surprised if some developers didn't bother to differentiate between sensible feedback and nay-sayers. As I have said in this mail thread, I hope the Foundation has learned how to deal with feedback more sensibly.
The first version of VE was so bad it was harming our mission. It was far worse than "didn't do everything 100% right." It would have been bounced back from the community to the developers even if that first group of bitter, change-hating autistic ranters hadn't said a word.
Consider this perspective: I doubt the developers would have pushed out that first version if it had massively failed their own tests. But at some point, you have to leave the test environment, and test your product against reality. Remember, WMF is not Microsoft, with an army of thousands of paid beta-testers.
So then it turns out there are more (and more really bad) bugs than anticipated. Then you go and fix those bugs. Which is what they did. But turning a major endeavour on and off repeatedly is just a bad thing to do. AFICT the window where wrong edits were made by VE was not /that/ large. Apparently, the decision was made to "power through it", rather than flip the switch repeatedly. That may or may not have been the right strategy.
I notice VE isn't even an option when I log out and edit en.Wikipedia,
yet
above others are saying it is much improved and ready for release. What
are
we waiting for?
This is the thing. The atmosphere has been poisoned against VE, which now makes it much harder to get a good product deployed.
But I agree with the sentiment. What ARE we waiting for?
Cheers, Magnus
Anthony Cole
On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 10:56 PM, Andrew Lih andrew.lih@gmail.com
wrote:
On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 9:39 AM, Anthony Cole ahcoleecu@gmail.com
wrote:
Magnus, you've missed the point of the visual editor revolt. A couple
of
people here have tried to explain that to you, politely. And you're persisting with your idée fixe.
To be fair, Magnus was addressing more than just the initial complaints from 2013. He said, “condemning an entire product forever because the
first
version didn’t do everything 100% right is just plain stupid.” _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
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