Hello, I am very grateful for Gerards remarks.
Sometimes I see a lot of black/white-thinking in the Wikimedia movement, with statements such as "this is all bad" (and, occasionally, "this is all good"). I am more comfortable with shades of grey, they don't have to be fifty, but at least 5 or 10. On a scale to five, the Visual Editor might have been "2" in 2013, now it looks to me like "3" or "4". Not good enough? :-) Some people in the movement and especially in the communities have found their way of doing things and are happy with it, they don't want to have anything changed and don't see the need for it. That is a legitimate feeling and attitude, but other people allow themselves to point out the downsides. Some find it very difficult to tolerate that, because they don't want their world to change. Software is not the solution for everything, but sometimes it helps to make some things better. Wikipedia editing will always remain a hobby for a very small part of the general population. But those people who want to edit should at least not find technology a treshold. There are other tresholds, such as the often lack of civility in the communities, but that is no reason not to tackle the technological one. (People in my classes wonder why Wikipedia editing is so antiquated, it reminds them of Word Perfect in the 90s.) The real question to me seems to be: who exactly should decide on what software is implemented, what would be a practicable solution that keeps things going and includes the stakeholders. Kind regards Ziko 2014-08-24 11:07 GMT+02:00 Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijs...@gmail.com>: > Hoi, > I am so happy that you know so well that all the millions have been wasted. > As so often, an opinion is just that. When you want to learn about the > effect of the development done, it may be useful to look a bit further > afield. Mobile is one area where the development proves really effective. > Without it our numbers of readers would be down. It is also where the > number of new editors are happening. > > When your idea of editing Wikipedia is business as usual, you have lost > many people because the experience is awful. > > So when I am to accept your argument that the framework is wrong. I will > agree with you when it means that we migrate from the awful framework we > have used for too long. It is exactly the Visual Editor and the Media > Viewer that make sense to our users. Commons as it is is so bad as an > experience that people like me who are committed to WMF do not use it. > > Now what do we aim to achieve? Keeping you happy or making sure we have a > public ??? > Thanks, > GerardM > > > On 22 August 2014 13:05, Henning Schlottmann <h.schlottm...@gmx.net> wrote: > >> On 22.08.2014 09:22, Erik Moeller wrote: >> > >> > - The MediaViewer rollout was very smooth until the deployments to >> > German Wikipedia, English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. There could >> > be many reasons for that -- but it's a fact nonetheless. I do see >> > little evidence that users in other communities are especially unhappy >> > about the feature (leaving aside the politics of it now). I would be >> > very curious what reason people do attribute that difference to, >> > however (understanding that Commons is very different from the >> > Wikipedia use case). >> >> This may or may not correlate with a deep commitment to a) the licenses, >> b) quality. >> >> > - The criticism isn't just about that -- it's about a large number of >> > mostly individually small issues. Generally, the idea that we >> > effectively "munge" some of the metadata by displaying a >> > machine-readable subset below the fold is viewed very negatively, >> > because 1) it doesn't reflect all the available information, 2) it >> > makes it harder for users to discover the File: page, and potentially >> > edit it. >> >> If it does not reflect the license information it is broken. >> >> The license is paramount. We can not accept any kind of software that >> hands out "reuse information" that does not display the photographer's >> name and the license (with link to the license text). >> >> We do not want a default setting, that does not show extensive >> descriptions, map legends, image annotations and the like. All that is >> content we created for the readers. You must not block our readers from >> this content. >> >> MV is broken. It is not ready to be deployed. Not by far. Take it back >> and fix it. >> >> In theory I can see a working MV. I can even imagine a working Visual >> Editor, but am very skeptical about it. I can not imagine Flow to work, >> ever. This one needs to be abandoned now. >> >> Eric, your department has an abysmal record. You have wasted millions on >> software that started with the wrong framework and is not working after >> years and years of development. Please think about yourself, not about >> the communities if you want to understand about the conflicts at hand. >> >> Henning >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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>
