Mailing List Archive: Wikipedia: Foundation

How do you fully consult the community consensus?

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Jun 30, 2009, 10:16 PM

Post #1 of 5 (359 views)
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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
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innocentkiller at gmail

Jul 1, 2009, 5:30 AM

Post #2 of 5 (332 views)
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Re: How do you fully consult the community consensus? [In reply to]

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.Mingus[at]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
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gerard.meijssen at gmail

Jul 1, 2009, 7:01 AM

Post #3 of 5 (332 views)
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Re: How do you fully consult the community consensus? [In reply to]

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.Mingus[at]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[at]lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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Simetrical+wikilist at gmail

Jul 1, 2009, 11:50 AM

Post #4 of 5 (328 views)
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Re: How do you fully consult the community consensus? [In reply to]

On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Brian wrote: > 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? Yes, IMO (as a
volunteer dev). If something is expected to be controversial on
non-technical grounds, there's normally a per-community decision, like with
FlaggedRevs or whatnot. The overwhelming majority of technical work
comprises straightforward enhancements and bug fixes that only really
deserves technical attention. Users who are interested can sign up to
wikitech-l and hang out in #mediawiki. Those who aren't can just use the
software. > Or is this just a guideline that has been on Jimbo's user page
for many > years which is not really relevant Yes. > How large of a change
to the software requires full consultation? It's not about large, it's about
the effect it has on users. There are enormous overhauls like the new video
upload system that don't need to be discussed with the community at all,
because everyone agrees that they're wanted. On the other hand, there are
plenty of one-line changes that would require community consensus (like,
say, giving all users rollback by default). > After consulting the
community, does the Foundation feel it is within its > power to then choose
something different? I can't speak for Wikimedia, but I don't see how it
could possibly be considered outside the Foundation's power to ignore the
community. It owns the site. It can and does overrule individual communities
sometimes, in technical matters and non-technical alike. For instance, it
imposes its copyright policies regardless of community consensus (and some
communities don't like those policies at all). An upcoming technical change
that will probably be very controversial is deployment of the Vector skin by
default -- I predict a lot of people will complain about lack of consensus
and be very politely told "too bad, we know better because we just spent a
million dollars on a usability study". > 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? It doesn't mean
anything to me. Many large software changes need to be deployed all at once,
and many aren't easily reversible. That's life.
[]
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jwales at wikia-inc

Jul 1, 2009, 7:32 PM

Post #5 of 5 (325 views)
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Re: How do you fully consult the community consensus? [In reply to]

Brian, along with your long list of negatively-phrased questions, I'd be
interested to see your positive, assume-good-faith list of suggestions.

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