Hoi,
Once people decide to leave, the situation is quite stark. There are those
that do and there are those that do not. In my previous mail it should have
been clear that I described the situation after the departure of many
malcontents. That IS a bi-polar state obviously.
That is not to say that the desktop is not important. That is not to say
that the tooling people use for advanced tasks is not important.
The point is very much that in a changing environment, tools that rely on a
stable environment are not stable by definition.You cannot insist on such
stability either. You cannot even insist that the tools that are usable are
well designed and easily adaptable to change. Take for instance gadgets. A
successful gadget it copied from Wiki to Wiki and in the process it needs
to be localised and preferably it should take advantage of any future
development. Work has been done to accomplish internationalisation and a
more centralised development model. Once this is finished one gadget may
exist on hundreds of wikis. That is a maintenance scenario.
Another disaster (IMHO) is that the wikidatafication of Commons is NOT the
wikidatafication of multi-media files. The point is NOT that Commons needs
to be done first, the point is that once Commons is "done", all other Wikis
who have local uploads of multi-media files need to be wikidatified as
well. There is NO reason why the result of the compromises reached in the
Commons process will "obviously" fit elsewhere.When it is clear from the
start that Commons is ONLY the first to be wikidatified, there is a better
chance of getting involvement from people who feel strongly about the
reasons why their Wiki does not upload to Commons. Their involvement will
be a reality check to the Commoners that their POV is exactly that.
The Multimedia Viewer did a good job at showing the extend to which local
edge cases like the German templates Fabrice mentioned in a recent list of
accomplishments pose problems for central development. They exist, they
need to be fixed and preferably only once. If not they will change in the
future again.
Several volunteers like Roan became employees of the WMF exactly because
they were pivotal in the dissemination of technology. When you look at the
work they do, bringing thing back together IS one aspect of their
accomplishments.
Things will break and when we do not want drama again and again, we need to
embrace change and accept that particularly high end tools will break down
regularly. My experience at Labs shows exactly that and it shows that as
things get better organised downtime becomes less of an issue. It also
shows that as our environment becomes more stable, the tools become more
sophisticated and consequently more in need of a well architected
environment.
What we have is the old problem of retro fitting architecture where chaos
reigned supreme. We can do this and this "we" is most definitely an
invitation to every Wikimedian.
Thanks,
GerardM
On 28 August 2014 14:50, ; ) <b...@gmx.at> wrote:
> Hey Jane,
>
> as the desktop is sometimes characterised only as a legacy input
> device for old power editors, while the reading is done from mobile
> devices, often in the form of mash-ups and geo-apps, why is a
> compromise so hard to achieve?
>
> One solution that pops up would be to cache the content (as most
> useful wikipedia apps do anyway) in a light mobile version, while
> allowing an existing group of useful contributors their little island.
> This feeling of belonging makes those editors do all the dirty jobs
> noone wants to do on a regular basis - most of it fact and copyright
> checks that make the content so good it is useful to readers and keeps
> them coming back.
>
> You could create a newbie-friendly version with rich text editing
> optimised for different devices, more customisation in an easy way...
> if we are realistic that would be the way to go anyway, as you can
> start out much easier and with less baggage - and would be able to
> target groups on an individual basis in the process, too. When they
> evolve in the ("bitter-vet") power users and editors, they can switch
> to the still more useful but less pretty interfaces for large data
> manipulation, that the desktop offers.
>
> Shouldn't the focus be on the readers that read the content AND
> the editors that produce interesting content to make readers come
> back? Gerard in this regard seems to have a somehow bi-polar view of
> this process with his us - them characterisation ("the
> community that remains with the WMF will lose all of the
> separatists"). They will just no longer do the hard stuff, if they
> feel that they are not welcome - and finding such people is hard,
> really hard (speaking as a long-term gutenberg proof-reader).
>
> cheers,
>
> g
>
>
>
>
>
> Thursday, August 28, 2014, 1:56:38 PM, you wrote:
>
> > I agree with Gerard, and would add that a good portion of the new
> > readers and "missing female editors" do not own or operate a desktop
> > and are only available on mobile and tablet, so this is not only
> > where the new readers are, but also where the "first edit"
> > experience is for most women (and sadly, a corollary to that is that
> > they don't try again after their first edit failure).
>
> > Sent from my iPad
>
> > On Aug 28, 2014, at 4:30 AM, Gerard Meijssen
> > <gerard.meijs...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Hoi,
> >> Such separate hostings and ownership would not be that much of a risk to
> >> the WMF. The challenges will be first and foremost with the separatists;
> >> then again it is firmly their choice. There will be benefits on both
> sides
> >> as well. The community that remains with the WMF will lose all of the
> >> separatists and they will sadly see some of them go. It will allow for
> the
> >> influx of new people and new ideas. The people that go will get a
> reality
> >> check; they will find out to what extend the things they fought battles
> >> over are actually worth it. I am sure that both communities will
> benefit.
> >>
> >> When the people who talk about going their own way rethink their stance
> and
> >> start considering the other side of the coin it may lead to an
> equilibrium.
> >> However, the Visual Editor is not the only thing that will change the
> look
> >> and feel there is so much more happening and at that, a single community
> >> only considering its own is in effect a cul de sac.
> >>
> >> When numbers of readers are to be our main worry, it should be obvious
> by
> >> now that both for editing and reading they are happening on the mobile,
> the
> >> tablet. This is were our new readers are happening. Maybe not
> necessarily
> >> in Europe but certainly in the global south. They have by definition a
> >> different mode of operandi and consequently much of our current
> bickering
> >> is only distracting from putting our efforts in welcoming our newbies
> and
> >> building a full fledged environment for them.
> >> Thanks,
> >> GerardM
>
>
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