(Volunteer with no Wikidata association apart from a couple of edits.)
Risker, while I see your point, and I agree that the deployment cycle is maybe just a
little too rapid (give the editors some time to update their help pages ;) ), then your
last mail is both unfair and untrue.
Most of all, there is nothing forcing you to use the new syntax elements. If you don't
want them, revert edits which add them, and explain this to editors that make them. This
isn't a technical issue.
On Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:59:07 +0200, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
It's disturbing that even at the same time as the
engineering and
operations departments are working so hard to professionalize their work,
to bring themselves up to industry standards, to properly staff themselves
with people who understand not just the technical side, but also the
content side - that there remains this cowboy attitude toward applying
poorly developed software onto huge sites knowing full well that the
software create significant community disruption. This isn't a little
backwater website anymore, and it should never be the subject of a major
test without the active engagement of those who are going to be the test
subjects.
In my experience the Wikidata team has been extremely professional and amazingly
productive, both in the quality and quantity of their creations. I was honestly surprised
that it's possible to get something Wikimedia-related done that quickly. Lydia and
everyone - great job :)
I see no cowboy attitude here. As pointed out, this was already tested on multiple wikis,
some only a little smaller than enwiki. While the software is not entirely complete yet,
this seems mostly by design (phase III, anyone?). It certainly works, and it's
certainly good enough for wider deployment. There are some important bugs to iron out
(
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44874 comes to mind), but they're not
really blockers, and I think (and hope!) they're being worked on.
Wiki design 101 is that nobody gets sent to another
page/website/etc to
edit content on the Wikipedia. (Even clicking on an image that is held on
Commons takes people to a Wikipedia page for the image, and then gives them
the choice to go to Commons.)
But you do need to go to Commons to, say, upload a different version of it. Wiki editing
101 for you.
And I think this was being worked on for language links, anyway. Lydia, is there a bug for
that? ;)
--
Matma Rex