On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 4:42 PM, Marcus Buck wiki@marcusbuck.org wrote:
My idea for that, as I said, is having a pool of possible improvements and then letting decide a mix of user ratings ("pro - we need this!", "contra - not really necessary...") and common sense of the developers. Create a page at Meta where people can propose things. Then check the proposal (can it be implemented in a performant way? is it actually a direction we want to develop to? technical traps? etc.pp.). If the check is positive put the proposal on a second, protected, page on Meta and let users vote pro and contra. Developers can then choose from the list which project they want to implement next (preferring projects with high ratings, but with room for an amount of common sense by the developers because they know better about the technical feasibility).
We have this system already, it's called Bugzilla.
My main point is, that at the moment I as a user have no chance to influence the development of Wikimedia (except for doing it myself).
It's not possible to give users significant direct influence. There are too many users and too few developers. Users are collectively given significant say in development, but the influence is spread very thin because the users are so numerous. You have little say because there are many thousands of users whose say is weighted equally to yours.
I can pray or I can vote on Bugzilla but I have no way to predict when and who takes the time to start a project. It would be nice to know that there are people committed.
You do know when there are people committed, because the bug is changed to ASSIGNED (or FIXED if it's quick). Usually there are no people committed, but this is because there are vastly more ideas than implementer time, not because of procedural issues.
If I have an idea, what do I do at the moment? I can post on wikitech-l. I will be told that the best way to get it done is by doing it myself. I can go to Meta and propose something there. On Meta nobody will even read it. So what I would like to have is a process. When I make a proposal it should either get rejected or it should end up in the above-mentioned pool and be implemented sooner or later dependant on its importance.
This is exactly what Bugzilla does. In practice, of course, the overwhelming majority of feature requests there are not fixed, but again, this is not a problem with the process and it cannot be fixed or even mitigated by changing the process.