Dear Steven, I think I understand what you mean, and I am concerned about a certain conservatism among the editors, too. Some editors complain all the time anyway. But when 87% reject such a software feature I suppose they cannot be all wrong (by the way, I am one of this huge majority). There are two groups among the "rejectors": Those who object a VE in general, and those who are eager to have one but have experienced major problems using it (I am one of them). One of my compatriots has expressed it as I feel it: we often see "beta phase" software, and sometimes after the beta phase there has never been a "final version". But those beta versions usually work well. This is different to the VE version we have experienced. I do appreciate Erik's explanations from above, see that the Foundation does notice what happens, and I agree that the existing community should not have an absolute veto power with regard to the "potential community of the future". I do have the impression that people were used as guinea pigs who did not ask for being that. :-) Kind regards Ziko
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ziko van Dijk voorzitter / president Wikimedia Nederland deputy chair Wikimedia Chapters Association Council Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland Postbus 167 3500 AD Utrecht http://wikimedia.nl -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2013/7/30 Steven Walling <steven.wall...@gmail.com> > On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 11:13 AM, David Gerard <dger...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > de:wp convinced you. What would it take to convince you on en:wp? (I'm > > asking for a clear objective criterion here. If you can only offer a > > subjective one, please explain how de:wp convinced you when en:wp > > hasn't.) > > > > [Speaking personally, not for the VE team in any way.] > > Why should a consensus of any arbitrary number of power editors be allowed > to define the defaults for all editors, including anonymous and > newly-registered people? Anonymous edits make up about 1/3 of enwiki edits, > IIRC. Every day, 3,000-5,000 new accounts are registered on English > Wikipedia. These people are not even being asked to participate in these > RFCs. Even if they were, they typically don't know how to participate and > find it very intimidating. > > This system of gauging the success of VE is heavily biased toward the > concerns of people most likely to dislike change in the software and > frankly, to not really need VE in its current state. That doesn't mean > they're wrong, just that they don't speak for everyone's perspective. The > sad fact is that the people who stand to benefit the most from continued > use and improvements to VE can't participate in an RFC about it, in part > because of wikitext's complexities and annoyances. It is a huge failure of > the consensus process and the Wikimedia movement if we pretend that it's > truly open, fair, and inclusive to make a decision about VE this way. > > In WMF design and development, we work our butts off trying to do research, > design, and data analysis that guides us toward building for _all_ the > stakeholders in a feature. We're not perfect at it by a long shot, but I > don't see a good faith effort by English and German Wikipedians running > these RFCs to solicit and consider the opinions of the huge number of > new/anonymous editors. And why should they? That's not their job, they just > want to express their frustration and be listened to. > > To answer David's question: I think we need a benchmark for making VE > opt-in again that legitimately represents the needs of _all the people_ who > stand to benefit from continuing the rapid pace of bug fixing and feature > additions. I don't think an on-wiki RFC is it. > > Steven > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
