Re: [Foundation-l] How do you fully consult the community consensus?
I of course cannot speak for the Foundation. I only write this in the view of a volunteer dev, like many others. That statement was written a long time ago when Mediawiki was simply the software that runs Wikipedia. It's now 2009, and Mediawiki is still the software that runs Wikipedia. That being said, our outside user base has grown massively in this time. A good number of our bug reports and patches come from outside users, not wikis within the WMF. That's all fine and dandy, but our number one goal is still (admittedly or not) to keep developing for Wikipedia. I of course support full consultation with the wikis when it is beneficial to do so. Simple bugfixes or enhancements don't need massive pre-announcement and input. It slows down the development lifecycle for everyone. Most devs don't want to be involved in massive enwiki debates over where to put a link: we just want your final consensus on what you want done (and that itself can be very time consuming). Larger impact things (like the retooling of wikitext) definitely need wider input than just wikitech-l. I believe that the WMF community and wider wiki community should be solicited for such wide-sweeping changes. Tangentally, I think we all as a wiki community need to standardize What is wikitext in a formal way, but that's another discussion. At this day and age, I would hope silly feature hacks for things only wanted by one wiki could be avoided. We've had quite a bit of feature-cruft over the years, and a lot of these things probably would've been better as extensions to begin with. In short: I as a developer welcome all input from the wiki community (both WMF and not), and I highly encourage those who share an interest in the direction of the software (not everyone does) to get involved. I'm not going to track you down and poll everyone around you, but I will certainly listen carefully to your ideas. Always, Chad On Jul 1, 2009 1:16 AM, Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote: Going forward, how does the Foundation plan to make large changes to the software in full consultation with the community consensus? Is the assumption that all of the members of the community who are knowledgeable and interested have already signed up to the relevant mailing lists and all that is needed is to send out a quick 'ping' and get their thoughts? What constitutes the community when it comes to the software? Or is this just a guideline that has been on Jimbo's user page for many years which is not really relevant since laymen should not really be involved in technical decisions? Is there anyone at the Foundation who currently takes this principle seriously? Honestly? What about the developers - are they aware of and actively engaged in implementing this principle? Does the Foundation feel that it doesn't actually need to consult the community? It can determine the technically best solution for the projects and then implement it without soliciting feedback from as many people as possible? What would constitute due diligence in contacting the community? For example, suppose that the Foundation had determined that there were 5 really good solutions to a problem in the software and that they take full consultation seriously. Could you then present those 5 solutions to the community en masse using a survey, analyze the results and choose a winner (or have a runoff?). How large of a change to the software requires full consultation? After consulting the community, does the Foundation feel it is within its power to then choose something different? Does the Foundation take the requirement that all changes to the software must be gradual and reversible seriously, or not? What does that mean to you? Thanks, Brian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How do you fully consult the community consensus?
Hoi, The answer seems obvious: in the same way it has always been done. There are a few things that are quite obvious, the community will not be asked when things need to be changed because they are broken. There have been indications that the template stuff has been broken and as it is now clear that it is can and does break the system and it will be changed. There is a discussion going on on the Wikitech list and that is where the community can be found that has a clue. When you consider MediaWiki, it is used in many languages and for many projects. Some basic functionality is just not good enough. I am grateful for the Usability Initiative but for many languages the issues it addresses are already too sophisticated. You may remember my rants about Lingala.. They do not have a community because we do not even fully support the Latin script. At last weeks Open Translation Tools conference I met Dwayne Bailey the leading light on internationalisation and localisation for African languages and he is willing to help us make MediaWiki ready for African languages. MediaWiki is open source software. This means that you pay for what what is not there. You can pay by suffering and you can pay by developing software. When you think you know what the community needs, you can do your utmost to make it happen. I have been active in the development of software and I consider the LocalisationUpdate extension extremely relevant for the community that does not rely on the English language. All in all, the community is only dependent on the Foundation for the assessment of code. When functionality is Brion proof, you may find that the community sets the agenda. Thanks, GerardM 2009/7/1 Brian brian.min...@colorado.edu Going forward, how does the Foundation plan to make large changes to the software in full consultation with the community consensus? Is the assumption that all of the members of the community who are knowledgeable and interested have already signed up to the relevant mailing lists and all that is needed is to send out a quick 'ping' and get their thoughts? What constitutes the community when it comes to the software? Or is this just a guideline that has been on Jimbo's user page for many years which is not really relevant since laymen should not really be involved in technical decisions? Is there anyone at the Foundation who currently takes this principle seriously? Honestly? What about the developers - are they aware of and actively engaged in implementing this principle? Does the Foundation feel that it doesn't actually need to consult the community? It can determine the technically best solution for the projects and then implement it without soliciting feedback from as many people as possible? What would constitute due diligence in contacting the community? For example, suppose that the Foundation had determined that there were 5 really good solutions to a problem in the software and that they take full consultation seriously. Could you then present those 5 solutions to the community en masse using a survey, analyze the results and choose a winner (or have a runoff?). How large of a change to the software requires full consultation? After consulting the community, does the Foundation feel it is within its power to then choose something different? Does the Foundation take the requirement that all changes to the software must be gradual and reversible seriously, or not? What does that mean to you? Thanks, Brian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] How do you fully consult the community consensus?
Brian, along with your long list of negatively-phrased questions, I'd be interested to see your positive, assume-good-faith list of suggestions. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] How do you fully consult the community consensus?
Going forward, how does the Foundation plan to make large changes to the software in full consultation with the community consensus? Is the assumption that all of the members of the community who are knowledgeable and interested have already signed up to the relevant mailing lists and all that is needed is to send out a quick 'ping' and get their thoughts? What constitutes the community when it comes to the software? Or is this just a guideline that has been on Jimbo's user page for many years which is not really relevant since laymen should not really be involved in technical decisions? Is there anyone at the Foundation who currently takes this principle seriously? Honestly? What about the developers - are they aware of and actively engaged in implementing this principle? Does the Foundation feel that it doesn't actually need to consult the community? It can determine the technically best solution for the projects and then implement it without soliciting feedback from as many people as possible? What would constitute due diligence in contacting the community? For example, suppose that the Foundation had determined that there were 5 really good solutions to a problem in the software and that they take full consultation seriously. Could you then present those 5 solutions to the community en masse using a survey, analyze the results and choose a winner (or have a runoff?). How large of a change to the software requires full consultation? After consulting the community, does the Foundation feel it is within its power to then choose something different? Does the Foundation take the requirement that all changes to the software must be gradual and reversible seriously, or not? What does that mean to you? Thanks, Brian ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
