When I joined Wikipedia more than 2 years ago, I
remember much unhappiness due to lack of information
of some parts of the project. For those who may not
have this memory (omg, I feel old in saying this),
lack of information lead to a fork. Though a fork is
certainly very unlikely these days, I believe the
growing feeling that fair process is not respected, is
bad for general spirit.
I remember that situation improved a lot, partly
because mailing lists were reorganised, partly because
meta became multilingual, and mostly partly because
people made an effort to
1) give information and
2) give it at the right place
3) discuss things before deciding it (or at least gave
people the opportunity to discuss it)
Sorry to say that, but I think we are on the bad slope
again. And I think we should seriously think about it.
Typical signs which I believe show information flow is
broken again ?
-> I hear people complain on irc
-> We start mail crossing again in an attempt to
restructure mailing flow
-> Things are learned again, not by regular channel,
but by personal information network.
Couple of points
* I think that software improvement should follow
needs, not the reverse. It may be either because
there is open and pressing request from users, or
because there was a suggestion and a developer had a
great idea. But it is curious that soft improvements
are made without users knowing (ie, without the
improvement been mentionned elsewhere than on
wikitech). Could soft improvement be mentionned on
wikipedia-l then ?
* When a soft improvement is done to fit legal
requirements, please, could it be discussed on
foundation-l to check if that complies with the legal
requirements ?
* When a hardware update is being done, please, could
it be announced on wikitech, or on meta, so that when
users wonder what is going on, there is something else
to answer than "no idea"
* When a change is made in the purpose of donations,
could it be mentionned on foundation-l (rather than
only on en:) so that all projects could change the
initial purposes given by Jimbo ?
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