Risker, I'm actually not going to disagree with you in principle. I ultimately see Media Viewer being used by a good number of users, and said as much from the start. But I also warned that a bulldozer approach was going to cause massive blowback, especially after the previous debacles (VE and ACTRIAL come to mind for me). And well, here we are, with another repeat of the VE situation. That greatly eroded trust in WMF, especially its dev teams and PMs, and that's nowhere even close to rebuilt yet. Now that lack of trust is being confirmed and entrenched.
WMF needs to step very lightly with deployments that will affect editors, and treat the volunteer community as an ally rather than adversary. If that doesn't happen, these showdowns will keep happening. Part of that is pure arrogance. A significant part of the reason the Vector switch worked is because there was an easy, clearly accessible, one-click option that said "Do not want, disable this!". If that'd been the case here, I would have clicked that and forgotten about it. Instead, I had to dig for an hour to find how to disable the thing, after being surprised by a totally unexpected change. But now we hear things like "We made Vector opt-out too easy!" Media Viewer probably does have its place, once it is fully functional and free of major bugs. I might even turn it on at that point. But shoving it down people's throats will only serve to further place the WMF's flagship project and the WMF at odds. That is not, I can't imagine, a desirable situation by anyone's estimation. WMF needs a far better deployment strategy than "YOU ARE GETTING IT, LIKE IT OR NOT, AND THAT IS FINAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!" If the WMF's strategy for when the core community and dev team disagree is "We're right, you're wrong, pipe down", these situations will increase in frequency and intensity. I want to stop that before it reaches a real boiling point, and it could've this time if someone had actually gotten desysopped. On Fri, Jul 11, 2014 at 12:21 AM, Risker <risker...@gmail.com> wrote: > While I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, Todd, there were 14,681 > users on English Wikipedia alone who had enabled MediaViewer using the Beta > Features preference before it became the default. That's a huge number of > people who were all using it every time they clicked on an image in the > weeks and months beforehand, and every one of them had to make a conscious > decision to turn it on. The 64 users who want it disabled as default pale > in comparison to the number of people who were actively using it > beforehand. > > I've asked for some better statistical information because I don't think > the Limn graphs that have been referred to in the discussion of the RFC are > really accurate; it's my understanding that about 1600 registered accounts > have opted out of MV in total (this should be a linear graph of the > cumulative total, not a "daily number of people who opted out" graph which > is what we seem to see now). As well, somewhere in the neighbourhood of > 500 "logged out" users a day are disabling it - this needs to be a daily > number, not a cumulative one, because logged-out disabling is linked to the > individual browser session; those who aren't logged in don't have the > chance to set preferences. There are between 4 and 5 *million* clicks on > image thumbnails every day on enwiki, with only around 500 of those viewing > the images disabling the MediaViewer (excluding logged-in users who have > turned it off in their preferences). > > I suspect that at the end of the day, MediaViewer is going to be more like > the switch to Vector skin: there will be plenty of people who choose to > disable for reasons that work for them, but the overwhelming majority of > users will be entirely fine with the default. It's having nowhere near > the impact that VisualEditor had when first enabled as default; in the > first 48 hours there were hundreds of "how do you turn this off" queries > and complaints about functionality, not to mention pretty much automatic > reverting of edits done by IPs because there were so many VE-related > problems associated with them. We're not at that level at all here. I > agree with John Vandenberg's comments that a clear roadmap and prioritized > list of next steps is probably required for MediaViewer. > > Risker/Anne > > > > > > > On 11 July 2014 00:56, Todd Allen <toddmal...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > If you don't want to do small opt-in trials, release software in a fully > > production-ready and usable state. What's getting released here is barely > > ready for beta. It's buggy, it's full of unexpected UX issues, it's not > > ready to go live on one of the top 10 websites in the world. It's got to > be > > in really good shape to get there. > > > > Until software is actually ready for widescale use, small and very > limited > > beta tests are exactly the way to go, followed by maybe slightly larger > UAT > > pools. Yeah, that takes longer and requires actual work to find willing > > testers. Quit taking shortcuts through your volunteers. > > > > > > On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 10:40 PM, Sue Gardner <sgard...@wikimedia.org> > > wrote: > > > > > Hey guys, > > > > > > I use MediaViewer, I like it, and I am happy to trust the WMF product > > team > > > to build stuff. I didn't know about the RFC, but even if I had I > would've > > > been unlikely to have participated, because I don't think small opt-in > > > discussions are the best way to do product development -- certainly not > > at > > > the scale of Wikipedia. > > > > > > I think we should aim on this list to be modest rather than > overreaching > > in > > > terms of what we claim to know, and who we imply we're representing. > It's > > > probably best to be clear --both in the mails we write and in our own > > heads > > > privately-- that what's happening here is a handful of people talking > on > > a > > > mailing list. We can represent our own opinions, and like David Gerard > we > > > can talk anecdotally about what our friends tell us. But I don't like > it > > > when people here seem to claim to speak on behalf of editors, or users, > > or > > > readers, or the community. It strikes me as hubristic. > > > > > > Thanks, > > > Sue > > > On 10 Jul 2014 16:13, "MZMcBride" <z...@mzmcbride.com> wrote: > > > > > > > Erik Moeller wrote: > > > > >In this case, we will keep the feature enabled by default (it's easy > > > > >to turn off, both for readers and editors), but we'll continue to > > > > >improve it based on community feedback (as has already happened in > the > > > > >last few weeks). > > > > > > > > Thanks for the reply. :-) > > > > > > > > If your feature development model seemingly requires forcing features > > on > > > > users, it's probably safe to say that it's broken. If you're building > > > cool > > > > new features, they will ideally be uncontroversial and users will > > > actively > > > > want to enable them and eventually have them enabled by default. Many > > new > > > > features (e.g., the improved search backend) are deployed fairly > > > regularly > > > > without fanfare or objection. But I see a common thread among > > > unsuccessful > > > > deployments of features such as ArticleFeedbackv5, VisualEditor, and > > > > MediaViewer. Some of it is the people involved, of course, but the > > larger > > > > pattern is a fault in the process, I think. I wonder how we address > > this. > > > > > > > > MZMcBride > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > > > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > > > > 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, guidelines at: > > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > > > 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, guidelines at: > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > > 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, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > 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, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
