On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 5:51 PM, Marc A. Pelletier <marc(a)uberbox.org> wrote:
On 2016-01-19 12:53 PM, Pine W wrote:
The constitutional crisis that WMF created by
using Superprotect to force
Image VIewer on the communities [...]
... except that this is not what happened. While that narrative might be
satisfying for someone who looks for a sense of being the stalwart defender
of an oppressed community, the reality is that superprotect was created to
block the deployment of a technically inapt and entirely broken "fix" that
was - itself - a kneejerk reaction.
No, Marc. Your version is quite a stretch. According to Lila Tretikov --
the person responsible for rolling out Superprotect -- its legacy is that
it established a "precedent of mistrust
<http://wikistrategies.net/superprotect-removed/>."
It was deployed to block something, but the thing that was technically
inept was the initial deployment of Media Viewer. Even if you (or WMF)
disagreed, there was no real cost to the alternative of disabling it by
default, with the possibility of fixing it and redeploying it.
Even now, more than a year later, independent news organizations and web
sites frequently cite the wrong person when reusing Commons photos -- they
cite the uploader, rather than the photographer. That bug (one of many) was
caught, has now been fixed (in the last couple of weeks). It was caught by
a photographer looking after his own attribution -- a photographer who did
not sign the Superprotect letter, if that matters -- not by Wikimedia staff.
Media Viewer was deployed before it was ready. There was no benefit to
doing so. Superprotect was deployed to reinforce that bad decision.
Which is not to say that its creation or use was wise in any way - it
wasn't. But trying to reframe things in "oh,
evil WMF did all wrong
against the poor, innocent community" terms serves no purpose other than
create a windmill to tilt at.
The Wikimedia Foundation needs, first and foremost, to look after the
principle and unique asset that gives the Wikimedia and Wikipedia brands
value: its volunteer community. When the Wikimedia Foundation conducts
itself in a way that leads to division, it's damaging our shared vision,
and it needs to be held accountable. None of that is to say that the
Wikimedia Foundation should give way before a mob of pitchfork-wielding
anarchists; but to the repeated suggestion that that's what the community
(or those opposed to any specific software deployment) is, I say:
Citation needed.
-Pete
[[User:Peteforsyth]]
Author of letter objecting to Superprotect:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Letter_to_Wikimedia_Foundation:_Superprotec…