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Op-ed

Wikimedians are rightfully wary

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By MZMcBride
The views expressed in this op-ed are those of the author only; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section. The Signpost welcomes proposals for op-eds at our opinion desk.

The Wikimedia Foundation sometimes proposes new features that receive substantive criticism from Wikimedians, yet those criticisms may be dismissed on the basis that people are resistant to change—there's an unjustified view that the wikis have been overrun by vested contributors who hate all change. That view misses a lot of key details and insight because there are good reasons that Wikimedians are suspicious of features development, given past and present development of bad software, growing ties with the problematic Wikia, and a growing belief that it is acceptable to experiment on users.

There's a lot of agreement about the major technical pain-points of Wikimedia wikis. Any non-programmer who has interacted with a MediaWiki talk page or tried to edit a marginally complex article can quickly identify problems with the MediaWiki software and its design. Talk pages are horrific. Editing is horrific. Page load time—particularly for logged-in users and particularly for articles with a high number of complex templates—can be horrific. Change is needed; or to put it even more politely, there's a lot of room for improvement.

Agreement aside, we're seeing a disconnect right now between what the Foundation is spending resources on and the issues faced by the community. This misalignment has a number of origins. While many people agree that change is needed, the question is whether the Foundation will deliver these changes.

Past and present projects

Wikimedians are wary because the Foundation has been producing bad software. The bad software can be split into two groupings: older and more bloated, and the newer and less bloated.

FlaggedRevs is an example of the former. After years of delays, it was rebranded at the last minute as "Pending Changes", finally deployed to the English Wikipedia, and was a complete flop. The software was bloated, slow and inflexible, and was marred by poor usability. Ultimately, even its most die-hard fans saw that it was not going to work. Rather than focusing on improving the software, the Foundation dragged its feet and largely ran out the clock on the extension. The hope was presumably that eventually everyone would focus themselves on something other than the BLP problem, a strategy that was successful.

LiquidThreads is another example of older, bloated, bad software. Again, it was developed over years, was finally deployed to a number of smaller wikis, and was a disaster. It had substandard usability and very little support from the Foundation. Eventually it was abandoned, leaving small wikis (and anyone else who had the misfortune of having decided to use it) with absolutely no upgrade path.

Exhibit
New user or not, nobody wants to log in and see this.
On the other hand, people would be thrilled to log in and never have to see this again.

More recently a newer type of bad software has been emerging, less bloated (in the sense of being meant for niche uses rather than general use) and more expensive. This includes MoodBar, ArticleFeedback (in its umpteen versions), and WikiLove. These software come with costs. The first and most prominent is that these features—as childish and valueless as they are—deplete a finite set of resources available for software development. In other words, these endeavors waste human resources. Established editors largely roll their eyes at the features and hope they don't make too much of a mess.

The secondary cost of requiring established users to administer these poorly thought-out and inadequately developed extensions cannot be overlooked. As surprising as it may be, given the years of development ploughed into them, a number of these extensions were deployed without anti-abuse mechanisms. This is unacceptable. Article feedback is a safe haven for spam and other useless noise. WikiLove is more often used by spammers and others who have no idea what it is or why it's there than it is used legitimately.

Some development of bad software is the natural result of the Foundation's growing pains. Not every line of code is going to be magical and work well, especially on first try. But it's unclear how much the Foundation has learned from its past mistakes. The lack of follow-through with its software development and the quick abandonment of any difficult project (FlaggedRevs, LiquidThreads, etc.) is troubling. The same people who worked on some of these past duds are now being brought in to lay the groundwork for other redesigned and re-engineered projects. We're seeing the same worrying trend of bringing in a contractor, who starts the development work, then leaves before it's finished. The code then rots.

Wikiafication

The newer category of software is part of the Foundation's "Wikiafication" efforts. Most people know Wikia as that family of wikis overrun by advertising, full of low-quality content, and bloated by poorly optimized code, making the site slow and generally unappealing. This has become the Foundation's model to follow, and the long-standing closer relationship with Wikia makes many Wikimedians very cautious.

The for-profit nature of the site aside, Wikia has engaged in a number of poor social and technical practices over the years that have disrupted and harmed its communities. Wikia is a bad model, and the increasingly close collaboration between the Foundation and Wikia on projects and development is cause for concern. That said, learning from Wikia's mistakes in areas such as the development of a visual editor is not a bad idea. The Foundation should look at Wikia as a model of what not to do and figure out strategies to avoid following in its footsteps.

Experimentation

As though negative past experiences and a growing relationship with Wikia were not enough, Wikimedians have also become increasingly concerned at the emergence and growth of experimentation on the projects.

The proper role of experimentation is incredibly tricky to tease out. Some of the ethical questions are enhanced on Wikimedia projects because of the volunteer nature of most project participants and the complex relationship between the Foundation and the volunteer editing community.

The Foundation sees it as acceptable to experiment on users. In the Foundation's eyes, users are viewed and treated as customers, not colleagues. This is very dangerous and is a major contributing factor to the wariness (and weariness) with which Wikimedians view the Foundation. There is a cost to any of these experimental features on the editing community, and user experience is difficult to optimize under even the best circumstances. A keen understanding of user workflow is required to make non-disruptive, helpful changes. Many Foundation employees don't understand editor needs because they are not editors. In place of this understanding is the view, as expressed by one Foundation employee, that "we will allow ourselves to behave like elephants from time to time and we expect to be suffered."

Wikimedians are rightfully skeptical.

Moving forward

How do we move forward? The past and the present are interesting to focus on, but the future is of most concern.

The lines of communication between the editing community and the Foundation must be opened. It's not just about soliciting feedback; it's about engaging in useful conversation and adapting ideas accordingly.

With any big change, it helps to be up-front and to give a lot of warning about upcoming changes. People, particularly volunteers, do not like unexpected changes. The Vector roll-out was a slow process and that slow speed helped a lot. Posting mock-ups and design documents on MediaWiki.org (as all engineering projects are now expected to do and are actually doing) is a great step forward. Adding notes to the top of the page that make it seem like outside contribution is unwelcome is a small step backward. The Foundation should not be posting op-eds in which it lays out "changes you should expect to see". Rather, it should post design documents and other pages on mediawiki.org and in other public places that convey a different message: "These are our current thoughts; how can we make this better? What problems do you anticipate with these ideas? Can you suggest any alternatives?". This attitude of publishing edicts on design or features engenders yet more hostility and distrust of the Foundation.

For every change, there must be appropriate planning for Wikimedia's needs. This means asking the editing community what the pain-points are going to be and figuring out ways to solve these early on in the design phase. Building an entire tool without any anti-abuse features is no longer acceptable. Abuse is a known fact with any tool and must be taken into account; only "really wiki" features (based on wikitext in wiki pages rather than JavaScript and database injections) can rely on the normal self-healing features of wikis. For some (though not all) features, an opt-out option must also be provided. And probably most importantly, the features must be integrated into the wiki.

Take a deep breath

The good news is that, despite the somewhat bleak picture painted in this piece, the Foundation does finally seem to recognize some of the big, scary, and difficult problems editors are facing. These problems are now receiving attention and resources. But there's the question of follow-through: Will the Foundation continue to abandon software behemoths? Will VisualEditor be the next LiquidThreads, and Wikidata the next FlaggedRevs?

To its credit, the Foundation has been snapping up every available Wikimedian with an interest in this area of work. A number of trusted and respected Wikimedians now work for the Foundation, easing concerns that it's out of touch with the editing community. Even old hands such as James Forrester and Brion Vibber have now joined or rejoined the Foundation, signaling good forces at play.

There are a lot of smart and dedicated individuals both in the Wikimedia editing community and working for the Foundation who want to see good changes happen. MediaWiki is a classic jack of all trades, serving no project well, a few projects passably, and most projects poorly. But despite ill-fitting and antiquated software, Wikimedians have created amazing content. With better tools (such as a fully functional visual editor and a sane communications infrastructure), there will be even better content. The Foundation understands this; the question is whether we'll see the fruits of its labors. Wikimedians need to remain vigilant about how resources are used, and they need to question the Foundation's output. There needs to be more dialogue and engagement between the community and the Foundation.

Further reading

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Ed. note: I cleared the talk page while publishing, per our standard practice. The (substantial) early comments are viewable here. Thanks, Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:00, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've taken the liberty of making the above link protocol-relative, so it can be viewed conveniently no matter whether the reader is using the standard or secure server. Graham87 09:36, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • In case you didn't know: In general, if you don't want to possibly be part of experiments, visit My preferences > Appearance and check "Exclude me from feature experiments". Although sometimes it will be challenging to avoid exposing the existence of an experiment to existing editors. "Experimenting on users" has a pejorative tone, but researching whether changes to the site are likely to have a desired outcome before making them is surely worthwhile. -- S Page (WMF) (talk) 17:45, 21 August 2012 (UTC) (and a long-time Wikipedia editor)[reply]
  • I agree wholeheartedly that ArticleFeedback is absolutely awful. As a logged in editor I did not see it but when browsing while logged off the pervasive feedback box became extremely annoying. In some cases the feedback was was bigger than the stub article. Everything about the appearance of it is just plain wrong. When can we pull the plug on it and remove the unsightly, useless clutter that it is? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 08:24, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you so much for this article! This is exactly what i've been thinking ever since the Green stars watchlist incident a while back. And I can't believe that Ori Livneh said that. I'm...rather offended. And I should note that behaving "like elephants" isn't going to fix the editor retention problem. In fact, enough of it is just going to drive away us long standing editors that are still around. SilverserenC 08:37, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    When met with someone with an attitude like Ori's, my response usually involves three words: "go" and "yourself" are two. I'm sure you can guess the third. It is in the middle and begins with the letter F. Resolute 13:35, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, that's probably fair -- it was a crude and unfortunate sentiment, and it is right to call me out on it. I'm sorry I wrote it. If I were the subject of criticism, I would leave it at that. But because my comment is presented as emblematic of the Foundation as a whole, I'd like to note that it is at least somewhat improved by context: behaving "like elephants" in this context meant the temporary addition of a query parameter to the URL of the article page immediately after a successful edit, for the duration of a two-week experiment (ironically, an experiment in expressing gratitude to new editors for editing). I also expressed a commitment to thinking through and minimizing the disruptive effects of experiments in the self-same sentence, but MzMcBride did not see it fit to quote it in full, for reasons that are left as an exercise for the reader. --Ori.livneh (talk) 18:09, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Fair enough, and I retract my three word response. ;) Resolute 18:49, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    For what it's worth, my reaction was nearly the same as yours, Resolute. I had to hold myself back from writing "go fuck yourself" in a Bugzilla comment (and in hindsight, I'm glad I did restrain myself, of course). Having gotten to know Ori a bit better and having read some of his writing on the topic (cf. page history of m:Experiments), I'm much more comfortable now than I was previously. He's a good guy, but that wasn't going to stop me from using such a spectacularly stupid quote in an op-ed. :-) --MZMcBride (talk) 01:39, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I wouldn't go as far as calling it "absolutely awful", but I agree that ArticleFeedback leaves something to be desired. It is difficult to manage and often does not serve its purpose, as few editors are willing to go through it all. On the other hand, I find MoodBar and the new user feedback to be positive additions, at least for now. Sure, they aren't perfect, but being able to respond to users' feedback (myself and 130 other editors, at the time of writing, have signed onto the "feedback response team") has had a positive impact on many new users. Receiving a personal response of any sort to their feedback tends to be encouraging, and is useful in addressing the concerns of new editors that otherwise may have been grounds for them to leave Wikipedia.  dalahäst (let's talk!) 08:44, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I checked some of the feedback and there was a lot of rubbish to sort through. The talk page i a good enough forum for feedback. If the feedback system is made too easy we end up getting a higher amount of bad faith edits. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 09:04, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, it's easy for us to say the talk page is sufficient—but I've seen new users who post feedback saying they couldn't even figure out how to save their edits, for example. I guess you could argue "if you couldn't figure that out, we don't want you on Wikipedia", but it seems like giving these people a chance and trying to help them is more likely to be productive than ignoring users that can't figure out the normal editing interface.  dalahäst (let's talk!) 15:27, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Extremely partial article. This is surprisingly unbalanced for a Signpost news. Looks like the author never asked WMF developers how they feel about the community blatantly rejecting the features they have put so much effort to develop. They certainly felt sad, but did not saw any solution trough the poor and demotivating feedback given by the community. I can't consider feedback like "its ugly", "it's bad","it's poorly though" to be of any use. The Wikimedians are pros at acting like a spoiled child over the outdated and extremely complex interface they use. They tend to say that they can't change their habits, so no new features should be created. Grow up, kids. Dodoïste (talk) 09:06, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Without commenting on the content, this is designed as an Op-Ed – in other words, it si designed to be partial because it reflects the opinion of its contributor(s) and no-one else. It is distinct from the rest of the Signpost in this regard. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 09:55, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Do you know what an "Op-Ed" is? The whole point is to give an opinion, not to present impartial news. As for how the developers "feel about the community blatantly rejecting the features they have put so much effort to develop", I frankly don't care. The point is that they develop these things without adequate consultation with the people who actually use what they are creating. If the developers bothered to engage with the broader community of editors, they would get more than "it's bad" or "it's ugly". Every time one of these little projects is launched and falls flat, the feedback is as intensely specific as it is bitter, so frankly that is a lame complaint. Adequately involving editors, rather than pulling the elephant act, could only improve the end product, so what exactly is your problem with it? -Rrius (talk) 10:05, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • You forgot "mobile feedback" which is inundating OTRS with useless clutter. But this is an excellent piece and I think it does a good job of summing up a commonly held view among experienced editors. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:19, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Mobile team here. Last time we checked in with Phillippe he told us that spam was low and that we should keep the feedback channel up. If that's switched then someone should have contacted us and let us know. Thanks for the heads up. I'll follow up with him Tfinc (talk) 18:08, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Many Foundation employees don't understand editor needs because they are not editors." That explains a lot. I was wondering about the editing experience of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) board and employees. Does anybody know the percentage of board members that have little or no editing experience? I don't think there should be any board members who do not have adequate editing experience. How can people run an organization they do not understand? Same for employees. They should not have been hired to begin with. Now that they are part of Wikimedia they need to do enough editing soon to get some real experience, or they should be fired. At least not rehired. It explains why the Board and some employees seem so out of touch. They get little feedback too. Because people can not easily integrate the WMF site watchlist, nor the Meta wiki watchlist, into the English Wikipedia watchlist. So people trying to communicate with them do not follow up much if at all. The WMF board and staff should communicate via English Wikipedia only. The Meta wiki should be transferred to English Wikipedia pages. Then the Meta Wiki should be shut down. Along with the Strategy Wiki. They are near useless wikis responsible for terrible products such as LiquidThreads. Terrible because they got little back-and-forth intense feedback. Impossible without the discussion being totally integrated into the English Wikipedia watchlist. --Timeshifter (talk) 12:31, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Just for reference, most devs by and large ignore meta as well (Except for all the wikidata stuff seems to be there for some unknown reason). With that said, the world isn't only enwikipedia, meta has an important role in cross wiki issues, since it is a place everyone ignores equally (where if everything was on enwikipedia, enwikipedians would notice, but other projects would totally miss stuff) Bawolff (talk) 20:59, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • There are also senior Foundation employees who, while they were very active five or more years ago on the encyclopedia (and other projects to a lesser extent), have not edited substantially for some time. In some ways this creates more difficulty, because, naturally enough, they believe they know what is needed, though the project and community has changed considerably. Rich Farmbrough, 22:10, 22 August 2012 (UTC).[reply]
      • Yes, many individuals with substantial clout in Foundation matters have a mental image of Wikipedia as it was in 2006, & think that is still the case. I'm not sure if the problem is that active Wikipedians are unable to explain the issues intelligibly to non-Wikipedians, or this is a case of intentional cognitive dissonance on the Foundation side. -- llywrch (talk) 17:20, 24 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The piece reads like an old man shaking his fist at a world he does not understand. The complaint regarding "wikiafication" seems to ignore that Wikia is successful and growing. Sites like IGN have caught on to this, and have started to instigate their own wikiafication strategies. ArticleFeedback, soliciting feedback from our readers is "childish and valueless"? The functionality might not be complete - the discoverability of both the box and the responses is poor, but the latest iteration certainly adds value - I'm fairly sure this piece posted 1 minute ago is useful.

    I've been a Wikipedian since 2005, the editing interface is the same. What browser did you use then? What were your expectations? Facebook, twitter, Google, see how they've moved on since 2005. See how publishing is now easier than ever before, and then see how Wikipedia seems to have been left out. Take a look at the real time notifications on every other website in 2012, and then look at how Wikipedia works. The foundation should just move forward, the design by committee bureaucratic bullshit only takes us around in circles. Stop asking what the people already editing want and go for the blue ocean. Because when you ask what editors want, you end up with a 2 month flagged revisions trial. - hahnchen 12:33, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    • What is needed are things like a way to handle references in a straightforward manner; what we get are things like moodbars and article feedback (congratulations on finding a reasonable post there btw, albeit one that is unlikely to be acted on unless someone notices it from this discussion). The Wikia growth is not related to anything that would assist the encyclopedia. Johnuniq (talk) 12:43, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
See User talk:Yair rand/ReferenceTooltips for discussion about WP:Reference Tooltips, the gadget that is turned on by default in My Preferences (gadget tab). It would be nice if there were an edit link added to the tooltip box so that one could be taken directly to the reference wikitext. --Timeshifter (talk) 14:29, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'd guess that Johnuniq's comment about the need to "handle references in a straightforward manner" is related to editing Wikipedia articles, not reading them. It is absurd (in my opinion) that the text for references is imbedded amongst the text of a section, making text editing difficult. Or, with a newer system for footnotes, the footnote text is in a separate section', so it's not possible to edit text and the related footnote at the same time unless you edit the entire article. The solution seems obvious - footnotes should be editable in a separate edit area (box) when a person goes into edit mode. We'll see if WMF comes anywhere close to this obvious solution in 2013 [was 2012, may actually be 2014], assuming they don't declare victory and go home before taking on the really difficult (apparently) editing features. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:10, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
User:PleaseStand/References segregator does the section-separating you ask; it's so simple and so effective - articles that are almost impossible to edit without it due to a forest of inline refs suddenly become editable. A visual editor is in progress which may actually work satisfactorily (I don't have the test link to hand), but it's really a shame that the simple Ref Seg approach hasn't been available to everyone (in all browsers) for years and years while the much tougher challenge of a visual editor has slowly slowly been tackled. Rd232 talk 00:26, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There is some discussion here:
User talk:Yair rand/ReferenceTooltips#Wish list. Edit link that takes one to reference wikitext. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:31, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I am an admin-bureaucrat on a Wikia wiki, and I currently have over 36,000 edits there. Wikia sucks in so many ways. Those in charge there have the same main problem that the WMF board and staff has. People get hired who have little or no wiki editing experience, and are oftentimes clueless. They reinvent the wheel, ignore feedback, and do not have open, transparent discussions.
One good thing about Wikia is that central, community discussions between editors across the wikis are very useful and productive. There are many expert coders participating. They fix innumerable problems caused by the Wikia staff and its software experimentation. Wiki admins add the custom fixes across many wikis.
Those central, community forums at Wikia are much better organized than the Village Pumps here, and have much better software. That is the model that should have been used for LiquidThreads. See here:
http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:Index --Timeshifter (talk) 12:54, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
From a quick glance the Wikia thread system seems quite fabulous! I guess that could even be made backwards-compatible when implemented on Wikipedia. When. If. Nageh (talk) 17:02, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Or the remaining old talk could all be archived with the rest of the archives. It would all be searchable so nothing would be lost. I just proposed converting the Village Pumps to Wikia Community Forum software. See:
Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Convert Village Pump to Wikia Community Forum software. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:55, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I have also been active on Wikia in the past, and to a lesser extent these days. Wikia managed to alienate a whole bunch of communities by forcing a skin change, a couple of years back. Since then they learned the lesson and are more sensible I think. The Foundation also took on board the lesson of the Image Filter debate, and have done much better in their relationship with the community. That is not to say that everything in the garden is rosy, far from it, there is still a lot of ideological baggage on both parts, and a fair amount of assumption that, in the case of dispute, the other side has a lesser understanding. Nonetheless we have made a lot of progress and I believe we can make more if we learn form our mistakes. Rich Farmbrough, 22:18, 22 August 2012 (UTC).[reply]
  • This needed badly to be said, and thank you for saying it. Now the question: Will anyone at the Foundation actually listen? They've proven to be awfully deaf to the community so far. KillerChihuahua?!? 13:19, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • See also here, in a current discussion on the Pump, where an editor discusses a project which the Foundation took over and repurposed, rendering it useless for its original intent. KillerChihuahua?!? 13:30, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The usual rhetoric "turned up to 11" on both sides won't get us far. The truth is that after 10 years MediaWiki is showing its age: but the goose that lays the golden eggs is always the right fable in WP discussions. The developers work for the WMF but the efforts of the community pay the salaries of both, in the end. No point the devs coming across awkwardly with the community: lose-lose. I think the WMF should be concerned about the management of its software projects, in that "cool" is less needed than "meat-and-potatoes". Charles Matthews (talk) 13:47, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, that's half the problem in a nutshell. We're not FB, we should not be trying to be. Yet we get "moods" instead of working tools. KillerChihuahua?!? 14:16, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've been editing for some six years or so, I've done almost 90,000 edits and started more than 20,000 articles. Many times I cannot do what I want because it's technically so complex that it would require full time work on it, like a fulltime job. Thinks that are taken for granted in any spreadsheet or word processor are much too arcane up here. I would like something easier, something working like my car: it has many parts doing many things, but I don't care as far as it starts up when I turn the key. B25es (talk) 14:23, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks to MZMcBride for a significant contribution to an important issue. And, agreeing with Charles Matthews, yes, more "meat-and-potatoes" and less "cool". Unfortunately, having been a software developer and manager of software development for many years, I know just how unappealing that can be. Paul August ☎ 15:50, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the Foundation has been doing good things, too. Partly there's an image problem here, because the bloated cruft that they've also been doing (and that this editorial rightly condemns) is more visible while the good stuff is behind-the-scenes and works by taking away annoyances rather than by forcing change on everyone. An example of a big recent change that made me very happy is the new support for MathJax (buried in user preferences). Previously, we had a choice of formatting math using <math> and getting ugly bitmap images with the font size not even close to right, or cobbling together something in html that looked better but was hard to edit and still not great. Now, with MathJax turned on, <math> formatting just works. That should be the proper model for development: find things that aren't working well, and fix the software so they do work. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:18, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yeah, the foundation, surely. You know very well who has been working on MathJax support for the last almost three years, David. And while I am happy they have copied over my code to implement their "official" extension the complete ignorance I have received since whenever I forwarded the developers bug fixes (for bugs they introduced themselves) or new code to address feature requests by users has eventually left me in a state where I have given it up altogether. I am fine when my contributions are not appreciated, but don't claim the WMF did such a great job when introducing MathJax. Nageh (talk) 18:35, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Please don't think I'm among those who don't appreciate your contributions in this matter. I do, very much. But regardless of their attitude about bugs, or how much of the effort was actually theirs, they did at least get this into release and mostly working, and for that I think they deserve some kudos. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:08, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The last line says it all: <quote>There needs to be more dialogue and engagement between the community and the Foundation.</unquote> I totally agree, just as there needs to be more dialogue and engagement between the community and the Wikipedia readers. After all, there is a huge silent majority of readers who sometimes would be interested in commenting, and the feedback tool is clearly not doing the job in a way that the community can use the feedback in a constructive way. That said, I believe the Foundation is on top of this issue and the feedback tool is a good example of their efforts to plunge forward with enthusiastic innovation in the face of sketchy software and grumpy community members. Jane (talk) 17:11, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I wonder how many readers here followed the link in KillerChihuahua's comment above. And how can the community have any confidence at all in the Foundation when this happens when an experienced user travels half way round the world in an attempt to address the issues in a calm and resolute manner? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 17:42, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have to agree wholeheartedly with an above comment about simply killing off Meta and Strategy. If you're lucky, you get a second- or third-hand mention of a discussion which impacts something you're working on. You go have your say, then it's impossible to keep track of the discussion without an onerous amount of work tracking it.
WikiLove and Wiki "mood rings" (or whatever the fsck it is), ... I only found mentions of it today, going through Special:AllMessages on enWN — they're pointless toys that some geeky teenager would've developed for free. I was in AllMessages looking for still-http:// links that can be changed to SSL; the money's been invested in getting the relevant certificates for all the projects, and I still get talk page alert emails with plain http links. I thought the WMF was getting on-board with the EFF's HTTPS Everywhere, so why aren't those relatively easy fixes in-place?
Flagged Revisions, I know, is intensely disliked by English Wikipedia. It came from German Wikipedia, it's also in-use on Wikinews, so your mileage may vary there. I'll ignore the griping over the technical aspects of it, and sympathise with those who feel it was foisted on them.
  • A "pop-quiz" question would be: How many of those expressing unhappiness here have participated in discussions on bugzilla? Or, how many have experience of, even small-scale, software development or testing? Discounting higher-management input, I've found most MediaWiki developers will listen when you get a point in close-to language they understand. --Brian McNeil /talk 18:40, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:Bugzilla is not friendly software to use. Bugzilla is buggy and baffling to use at times. One big problem is that it is not anonymous (email address is exposed) without special efforts. Another problem is that it uses its own special discussion coding, and only partial use of MediaWiki wikitext. The biggest problem is that there is no preview window. Many people give up after their first attempt to leave a comment, because they don't want to clutter up a thread with multiple mistakes in formatting. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:38, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Before responding to Bawolff's remark, I will first answer Brian McNeil's "pop-quiz": (a) I have participated at Bugzilla, with a moderate level of successful outcomes, but there is a world of difference between working on implementation bugs and developing functional requirements; (b) I am a retired programmer, analyst, and systems manager with years of experience on both sides of the consulting table.

    On Bawolff's first point, yes indeed, developers are not mind-readers. Developers and end users often do not even speak the same language. Discerning and translating the user's wants and needs into functional requirements is a non-trivial task requiring sophisticated skills; and in my experience it is best achieved by developers meeting the users where they live, rather than the other way around.

    On Bawolff's second point, generalizations about the interpersonal skills of developers in general are, at best, generalizations about something in which there is a high degree of variability. When I visited the MediaWiki wiki a few years ago, I was treated with a level of rudeness that would never be tolerated in a face-to-face professional meeting between developers and users. Seriously, people have been sacked for that. I never went back. ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:17, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • I'm sorry to hear you had a bad experience at mw.org. I assure you in general rudeness is mostly not tolerated (or at least I like to think its not tolerated) - and you're completely right, developers do need to talk to the users where they live to get the most effective feedback. But at the same time, sometimes we don't even know there is an issue to talk about. Sometimes enwikipedia isn't what is primarily on our mind (MediaWiki is used by thousands of sites, Wikipedia is just one, albeit a very important one, but still just one). Having a friendly chat with a developer about an issue you (using you in the broad sense to mean Wikipedians) can make the difference in getting a solution. And lets be honest, sometimes it won't result in a solution, but you won't be any worst off than where you started before asking if anything can be done about the issue. Bawolff (talk) 20:39, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Ningauble, what you say about "generalizations about the interpersonal skills of developers" is valid also for your generalizations. Your interaction on mw: seems limited to two projects by the same dev, and surely not the friendliest one. --Nemo 06:54, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    @Nemo: I wasn't trying to generalize, it was just a counterexample. ~ Ningauble (talk) 15:16, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Bawolff: To be sure, one often does not know what issues might arise – this is precisely why it is important to explore ideas with users who can point out unanticipated ramifications (all the more when direction from the WMF involves broad objectives but the devil is in the details). And to be very sure, discussions with users often do not yield usable results very readily. Making the most of them is, as I said, a non-trivial task requiring sophisticated skills. Community discussions are often inconclusive, sometimes fractious, prone to draw unrealistic and impertinent comments, and it seems the larger the group the greater the susceptibility to Parkinson's Law of Triviality. The users may not be able to connect all the dots, but if you know, as you say, that you don't know whether there is an issue to talk about, then this is the way to find out.

      By the way, enwikipedia isn't what is primarily on my mind either, though it looms large. Actually, I am primarily (~90% of edits) a denizen of a non-pedia sister project, where new developments tend to pop up out of the blue. One of the reasons I regularly follow the Wikipedia Signpost is to discover things that might impact other projects, and I am grateful to the reporters and editors who make it happen. ~ Ningauble (talk) 15:16, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

    • Btw, just to clarify (because I realize my previous comment was unclear) - My comment about people should talk to devs more (always a good idea - talking is good - After all we're all friends, and we mostly have the same goals) was more in regards to general developer-wikipedia interactions. If you encounter a bug or issue preventing you from making the best encyclopedia (or dictionary/quote db/whatever else) its important to chat about it and discuss it. However, When it comes to projects specifically focusing on enwikipedia, which is what this op-ed is largely about - it is of course the responsibility of the people doing those projects to directly engage the users where they live. Bawolff (talk) 18:13, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, that seems to be bug 29898. Helder 00:18, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Slow clap. This essay captures most of what is wrong with the WMF. It'll be curious to see if anybody there listens. The point about many employees not being editors is a sharp but important one and I think helps explains a lot of the disconnect. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:09, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • All of the projects singled out for criticism are small projects done by one or two developers, not the large projects that the Foundation is actually devoting significant resources to: mobile, visual editor, Lua/Scributo, back-end scalability/reliability, database sharding, better i18n support (webfonts), etc. The large projects address exactly the problems that Max says are being neglected. It just happens that those projects take longer to see the light of day and are often not noticed by the en.wiki community. Kaldari (talk) 20:14, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't think what you're saying is quite fair. Yes, bigger projects are in the works, to be sure. But there was a point when it seemed like FlaggedRevs was the Next Big Thing. And there was a point when it seemed like LiquidThreads was the Next Big Thing. The questions presented are legitimate in this context: "Will the Foundation continue to abandon software behemoths? Will VisualEditor be the next LiquidThreads, and Wikidata the next FlaggedRevs?" And the broader question of "whether the Foundation will deliver these changes."
    • I think it also makes sense to point out, as I tried to in this piece, that significant staff resources are being spent on projects such as ArticleFeedback and MoodBar. Do you disagree that these projects receive significant staff resources? (And, on a side note, Lua/Scribunto mostly falls within the scope of a project done by one developer.) --MZMcBride (talk) 20:50, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, ArticleFeedback was written by cheap remote contractors and now has 1 developer assigned to it. I don't know as much about Moodbar, but I believe it was mostly written in a week by werdna, and has no developers currently assigned to it. And for WikiLove, I wrote most of it on my own time as a volunteer before the Foundation agreed to give me work time to finish it. For the last 2, Brandon did design work as well. All told, that's pretty insignificant. Regarding LiquidThreads and FlaggedRevs, I think it would be a waste if the Foundation were still devoting resources to those boondoggles, but I can understand the frustration with undelivered promises. Kaldari (talk) 22:08, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • You know, between those things that didn't take up any time or effort, you are more or less describing everything that was put out in the entire year by several staff members and departments. As far as AFT goes, I don't know how much "cheap remote contractors" is, but I do know that an entire team was formed at some point to work on it. Ironholds' sole job was to handle communication and feedback for AFT, if I recall correctly; then there was the Editor engagement team or something to that effect. This doesn't even begin to address the dashboard, that required an entire volunteer team to just monitor and flag problematic posts. I also recall there was an entire "features" department comprising of you, Brandon and a couple of others under Alolita, I don't know what the status is with that since earlier this year. For things that were just thrown together in free time, something doesn't measure up. I would however, agree that the sole exception was Wikilove which you always did say that you worked on in your free time, and rightfully so, from an cost/benefit point of view turned out to be beneficial. But is that what is to be expected after increasing the budget at 30% every year, and constantly increasing the tech staff. The higher the budget, the more distant the dev. direction seems to be getting to. Theo10011 (talk) 03:20, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • Not at all; my job is to handle commmunication and feedback for AFT, Page Curation and anything else that comes up. And, trust me, I'm not very expensive :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:32, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
            • I'm not sure what you are disagreeing with. I said your job was to handle communication and feedback for AFT, and you said about the same, adding another project to the mix. There's a few more staff and contractors working on it, if you wanna give a rundown yourself. Anyway, you are/were the dedicated communications person recruited for it originally as far as I know. Theo10011 (talk) 13:40, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
              • Your original comment made it sound like I'd been recruited explicitly and solely to handle it. I don't think there was a single point at which that was my only duty - that's the thing I was correcting :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:21, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
                • Yes but it's irrelevant. It's way more money spent (on communication in this case) for way less projects than usual, which makes it hard to think that AFT and PC are just very small projects. --Nemo 06:54, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
                  • I don't think anyone said Page Curation was a small project; it's a big one, and, in my opinion, a worthwhile one. And yes, it is way more money than we normally spend on communication (although trust me, I'm not an expensive employee) - this is perhaps not because it's unjustified but because we should be spending more money on communications and on having devs talk to editors and vice versa. I would think that this talkpage is evidence that this is a desired thing :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:11, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • All this is very surprising, I wish there was some clear data about how much projects cost (Eloquence who commented right below should be able to provide it). All the "cheap" projects combined, only in E3, make a total of above a million dollars per year according to the annual plan (discussed at m:Talk:Wikimedia budget). It should also be considered that such projects create costs in other departments, for instance AFT produces an unlimited amount of internationalization issues and it required a lot of attention by platform/performance/DB engineeers as it largely broke en.wiki database at least once. --Nemo 06:54, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the detailed editorial, Mz. As general background for anyone participating in the discussion, I would encourage folks to review the 2012-13 engineering goals. It’s possible to divide these overall goals, and past engineering efforts, into three categories:

  1. basic software and infrastructure improvements that are straightforward and entirely uncontroversial (improving parser cache performance, fixing annoying bugs, revamping our media storage, etc.);
  2. necessary modernization where there’s a lot of potential for disruption and frustration, but also a lot of community support for doing it (e.g. Visual Editor, Upload Wizard, New Pages Feed, the new mobile site, Internationalization improvements);
  3. experimental strategies to increase retention and happiness of new contributors, motivate more readers to get involved, improve the working atmosphere and quality of dialog in the community.

It’s great to see strong (often silent) support for the first category from everyone and some support for the second category. It’s not at all surprising that the third category (features like Article Feedback, Moodbar/Feedback Dashboard, WikiLove) is causing the most friction.

WMF has aligned itself a bit more clearly along those three categories by designating an experimentation team (the "E3" team, for editor engagement experiments) first and foremost to the third category, while having most standing teams (like the Visual Editor team) or fully dedicated individuals working continually in the first and second categories. With regard to experiments, this allows for shorter iterations (like the recent two-week post edit feedback experiment), and a standard procedure for terminating experiments that are wrapped up. This also creates a more systematic check-in point, internally and with the community at large, about whether a certain experiment is worth pursuing as a bigger project.

Why pursue these projects at all? The working hypothesis we’ve been operating under - a hypothesis that you are free to disagree with - is that this third category of change holds a lot of promise to transform Wikipedia and Wikimedia’s other projects for the better. That hypothesis is supported by data from other projects (e.g. Wikihow), and also data from the projects you’re criticizing:

As we move forward and iterate, and discuss what’s working and what’s not, I would request that we engage in an evidence-based conversation. Yes, it’s easy to dismiss anything that’s experimental or whimsical (e.g. MoodBar) based on personal dislike of elements of the user interface or the language used, or an immediate reaction to the perceived signal/noise ratio. But Wikipedia has plenty of examples of whimsy in its community (cf. userboxes, and remember that WikiLove pre-dates its software implementation), and plenty of examples of contribution mechanisms with low signal/noise ratios (cf. IP edits). What matters is whether we're successfully supporting, building and growing a community that's dedicated to developing the encyclopedia, and our other projects -- and that's very much a question that's answerable with facts and data.--Eloquence* 22:16, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you want significant feedback then move that blog to English Wikipedia. Most people have long ago stopped using Meta, Strategy, and other small-wiki talk pages. That is because their watchlists can not be integrated into the English Wikipedia watchlist. People use blog comments even less. There is no comment form on that blog page as far as I can see. So I, and the average reader, have no idea how the existing comments were added. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:53, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Eloquence. Could you comment Kaldari's figures above by providing some data? --Nemo 06:54, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I dunno about anyone else, but I think it would be a really bad idea if everything WMF wanted to implement into MediaWiki had to first obtain a clear consensus at every project. WMF has to take into account the potential opinions of potential new editors, not just the current editing community. Powers T 23:35, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Even if the WMF does not need to get clear consensus, it needs to get feedback. If they want significant feedback they need to move their pages to English Wikipedia. Most people have long ago stopped using Meta, Strategy, and other small-wiki talk pages. That is because their watchlists can not be integrated into the English Wikipedia watchlist. Also, many people dislike LiquidThreads that is used for some discussion. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:58, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I would like to see Meta revitalized and used for this purpose. Even though it is not integrated, and even though it is not the "mother ship", it is far more approachable than the developer hangouts and it is better able to rise above parochial differences between content projects/languages. Of course, important discussions there need to be widely advertised on the content projects. ~ Ningauble (talk) 17:35, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It has been tried for years, and almost nothing works to get enough participation at the Meta wiki. It has been well advertised, too. People oftentimes put up multiple notices across multiple wikis advertising discussion threads on Meta. It rarely works well. English Wikipedia is very accessible, and gets much more participation in discussion threads overall. Much more. Especially relative to the Meta wiki. Meta discussions have almost always been in English anyway, so there really is no need for a separate Meta wiki. Maybe years from now when there is an integrated watchlist then Meta might be useful. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:38, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, engagement at Meta hasn't been working very well: I might have said "vitalize" rather than "revitalize". From my perspective the issue is not language: being primarily a denizen of a non-pedia sister project, the problem I have with using Wikipedia for global discussion is too much discussion that is specific to that project. The sheer quantity of palaver about local matters makes it virtually impossible to monitor discussion pages for matters of global relevance.

Anyway, at least it would be better than WMF staff and developers making decisions in their own private preserves with little engagement of the broader community. (Don't get me started on how many times I have seen people with "(WMF)" in their username make edits that show little understanding of basic wikimarkup: sometimes I think the reason they don't engage on-wiki is because they don't know how.) ~ Ningauble (talk) 20:26, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that trying to monitor any discussion on the Village Pumps is difficult. But I think that is due to the lack of the ability to watchlist individual discussions. I don't see why discussions of global relevance can't be done well in the Wikipedia namespace on English Wikipedia. Offtopic comments can be removed. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:12, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The WMF and the community could collaborate in creating a simple clearing house for community requests, in which techs from the community and the foundation provide feedback and, ultimately, carry ideas forward or reject them. Tony (talk) 01:11, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    We had such a thing in bugzilla. Unfortunately it fell prey to strange social malaise, where the communities input was regarded as an annoyance, and certain developers as minor gods who's word was law (not necessarily by those developers themselves). As such the usefulness was somewhat limited, and without a serious undertaking to respect community wishes any new forum will be equally unconvincing. Of course the Foundation has to worry about the host of issues which the community created them to worry about, and the prime goal is furtherance of the projects, but unless a mutually respectful and dynamic working environment is fostered, we will just get more of the same. I do believe, though that there is no reason this should not happen. Rich Farmbrough, 22:29, 22 August 2012 (UTC).[reply]
    Just to give a little plug, I hope that anyone who wants to help improve bugzilla work will consider the bug wrangler role, either in terms of actively applying or preparing to work from the community side once the position is filled. :) I have high hopes for this going forward. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:16, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't feel that bugzilla was meant as a clearing house for community requests. It is an issue tracker for both MediaWiki and Wikimedia, and to a lesser extend a request queue for site config changes. This is certainly related to the idea of a clearing house for community requests, but not the same thing. A clearing house would ideally be a place to discuss problems and brainstorm solutions (or perhaps brainstorm what the real problem is). Bugzilla is more meant for we have a known problem, well we may not know what the fix is, we would know that the problem is "fixed" if we saw the solution. As well its for keeping track of steps taken to fix the problem so far. It is not a place to brainstorm ideas, and except for very narrow brainstorming, it is not effective when used for such purposes. Bawolff (talk) 20:01, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • My concern about the WMF's software interactions is that they seem happy to leave so much of the useful and vital "watchdog" tools, database reports and bot functions to users and the often lagged, often expired user accounts toolserver. This is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Why does it also have to be the encyclopedia that anyone and everyone must maintain? Article maintainance tools seem to be ranked far below editor retention/recruitment in their priority list. (I have just read the original op-ed and was pleased to see curation mentioned, so I guess it isn't being completely ignored) The-Pope (talk) 02:28, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Note that the WMF is spending literally millions to, among other things, supposedly replace the Toolserver. --Nemo 06:54, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

While we're on the subject of technical improvements, I've been working on a syntax highlighter that's something halfway between the status quo and VisualEditor. Feedback would be appreciated. —Remember the dot (talk) 03:57, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you want significant feedback move that page to English Wikipedia. Most people have long ago stopped using Meta, Strategy, and other small-wiki talk pages. That is because their watchlists can not be integrated into the English Wikipedia watchlist. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:49, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Soapbox time is over, Timeshifter. You've said your piece; stop beating the drum. How moving foundation-wide discussions to English Wikipedia is in any way a benefit to non-English-Wikipedians is a mystery to me. Powers T 14:40, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Related developer discussion of this article ongoing at wikitech-l. — Richardguk (talk) 20:48, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Suggestion: WMF, you need to hire professional and experienced project managers to lead your software development. I'm talking managers experienced enough to command six-figure salaries. The WMF has the funds to afford it. An experienced project manager knows how to identify and define legitimate end-user requirements, develop project plans with measurable and discrete goals, milestones, and complete life-cycle timelines, coordinate efforts between developers, network administrators, and end-users, and apply a realistic testing and implementation plan. If you don't do this, your projects will continue to end in failure or only partial success. Cla68 (talk) 00:54, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes, functional specifications (open to community input for work that affects reader- and editor-facing development) should be the minimum requirement prior to programming. Proper functionals help programming because they anticipate (and answer) all the non-technical questions the programmer will face, and they allow proper test cases to be constructed. This is basic stuff that a good project manager would easily accommodate. GFHandel ♬  05:21, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I feel the need to contribute in this discussion, because I'm part of both developer and community site. In all honesty though, I don't feel like there is anything useful to add. Mutual respect would definitely go a long way however. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:50, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I do not want to give a personal opinion on the viewpoint expressed in this editorial but I confirm that the issues which user:MZMcBride raises and the attitude which he expresses is one that I encounter regularly in the Wikipedia community. This perspective is worth considering and deserves a response and open discussion because it exemplifies the thoughts of a significant demographic. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:58, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • As the cases of BS being forced on the community without consensus, I'm finding it harder and harder to assume good faith on the part of the WMF. I think it's pretty clear at this point that what they want (and what they're getting) is to run the Wikipedias like branches of a big corporation whose primary function is attracting customers. I don't know of anyone who holds this attitude who has actually worked in content editing or vandalism fighting- or just about anywhere other than a board room. So why do we continue to get useless crap like the moodbar that seems designed to convince people we're a social networking site, instead of software that could significantly improve content editing, which is, remember, our main goal. ☻☻☻Sithman VIII !!☻☻☻ 14:45, 24 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't know of anyone who has that attitude, either. :D I've only been working for the WMF for a bit over a year; I have a lot more time in saddle as User:Moonriddengirl, but I've been impressed with how much passion for the Mission I've encountered at the WMF. There aren't always agreements among staff about how to achieve it, but I don't often see unanimous agreement on that kind of thing among volunteers, either (which is one reason why the RFA process remains so difficult in spite of valiant efforts to address it :/). I think it's important to recognize that work is going on in multiple areas at once. While this precedes my employment, the Strategic Plan for 2015 adopted by the WMF after consultation with community (over 1,000 people participated) focuses on five areas of needed improvement: (1) Stabilize infrastructure (opening the Virginia data center, for instance, and promoting more regular and steady MediaWiki releases as well as improving fundraising practices), (2) Increase participation (including moodbar and the template revision) (3) Improve quality (Wikipedia:Page Curation, funding Corensearchbot & Madmanbot) (4) Increase reach (fabulous strides through mobile, for instance, as well as increased focus on the global south), (5) Encourage innovation (such as through supporting community Fellows like User:SarahStierch with her Wikipedia:Teahouse and User:Szhang (WMF) with his Wikipedia:Dispute Resolution Improvement Project). I don't think anyone believes that "attracting customers" is the primary importance, although they do recognize that attracting and retaining editors is a pretty key aspect of maintaining our work. We're not going to be able to keep up the quality of what we have, much less continue growing it, unless we have enough people to do it. :/ The Wikimedia Foundation's mission is to "empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally". They can't afford to focus all their efforts on empowerment, engagement or dissemination. They have to keep working on all of them. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:47, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
All of those are noble goals. But much of the strategic plan is fluff. A typical board document for a business or nonprofit. I could go on for days about why the methods you mentioned that were chosen to increase participation and improve quality are lacking. But that has been discussed already numerous times in the Village Pumps.
The strategy wiki was a disaster. See strategy.wikimedia.org. From the Strategic Plan written in Feb. 2011: "In July 2009, we launched our first-ever strategy-development project designed to produce a five-year strategic plan for the Wikimedia movement. ... The project lasted a full year and resulted in 1,470 content pages on the [Strategy] wiki" There were some good people involved in the strategy wiki, but participation lacked sustained depth in my opinion. Much of this was due to the use of LiquidThreads which many people hate. Also, very few people checked their strategy wiki watchlist daily for very long to follow up on discussion. Even fewer people changed their strategy wiki preferences to get email when discussions they watchlisted were added to.
Eugene Eric Kim of Blue Oxen Associates and longtime Wikipedian Philippe Beaudette helped facilitate the project and the strategy wiki discussions. They were great from what I saw. But they were extremely hampered by having to use the Strategy Wiki in my opinion. Eugene Eric Kim supports a global watchlist. See his user page there: strategy:User:Eekim. He put my user banner on his user page: "This user supports integrated, interwiki global watchlists." --Timeshifter (talk) 18:51, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
An integrated, interwiki global watchlist would be a wonderful thing. :) But this comment make it sound as though you're missing my point, which is that WMF is not focusing its work on one area, but rather in multiple areas--working to meet what I gather you agree are "noble goals". I'm sure that there are many ideas for ways to meet those goals and many views on the work taken towards meeting them; as I noted above, there is seldom universal consensus, among community or staff. But while some of the examples I mention for quality and increased participation have invited considerable discussion, I'm not really aware of discussions of all the methods. Do you have a link, for example, to concerns about the funding of Corensearchbot or Madmanbot? If not, please feel free to drop by my talk page to explain the problem you see with that particular example, as I helped coordinate it and would like to be sure that they're considered. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:00, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I was generalizing, of course, and I haven't studied everything. No one can. But you shouldn't have to use your talk page to get discussion of a particular issue. The fundamental problem is a lack of communication forums that are adequate to the task. There is a solution. Why is no one paying attention? Please see:
Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Convert Village Pump to Wikia Community Forum software
Why does the WMF board and staff, for the most part, expect people to come to them, instead of the other way around? Come to the central forums on Wikipedia. So few WMF board and staff come to the Village Pumps. I can see why, though. It is a terrible mechanism for communication. So Let's Fix It. That is the Wikipedia way. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:55, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, agree, agree. (see my comment below re trying to contact a staffer (WMF). MathewTownsend (talk) 22:02, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps because the operations of the WMF don't revolve solely around the English Wikipedia? You think it's possible some participants in smaller wikis might rightfully complain if asked to do all of their movement-wide communication on English Wikipedia? Powers T 17:57, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If not English Wikipedia, then where? English is the language used most widely worldwide. Meta and Strategy wiki discussions were in English mostly. But people can not integrate the Meta and Strategy watchlists into their home wiki watchlists. If that were possible, then I would support keeping movement-wide discussions on Meta and Strategy wikis. Strategy wiki is being closed down. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:16, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
A semantic point: m:Capitalizing mission considered harmful. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:43, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
What's "semantic" about your personal aversion to capitalizing the generic nouns used to refer to specific entities? Powers T 17:57, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree with the sentiments expressed by MzMcBride. And with comments by Bluerasberry, Sithman, Timeshifter etc. Won't bother to list all my complaints and failed attempts to get any information from Meta or any other WMF place or hiree (WMF) (except Okeyes (WMF) whose communication attempts have been stellar, IMO.) MathewTownsend (talk) 19:22, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'd argue that Maggie's communication attempts have been just as stellar. Aside from that, I don't know how to get you the information you desire. We give as much information as we can in the Signpost, and I think your easiest route is subscribing to mailing lists, like foundation-news-I (full list) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:57, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Oh, I'm subscribed to the Signpost and it's by far the best source of info re WMF anywhere. I first learned about "Chapters" from the Signpost, for example and lots of other WMF shenanigans that I never knew about. (I used to write and copy edit for the Signpost but lately I've been so disgusted with WMF that it's hard to put energy into anything now that I know more. I feel editors of WP are being "used".)
I'm not sure who "Maggie" is. If she is Mdennis (WMF), I couldn't get help from her because I contacted her. There are rules about contacting her that I didn't know about. And because I contacted her, Moonriddengirl couldn't help me with copyvio questions because of the rules. So there was nowhere I could get help, resulting in a frustrating, time-consuming experience. MathewTownsend (talk) 21:53, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I believe Mathew was disappointed to learn that I cannot work on an a single issue in both my roles as staff and as a volunteer. I was happy to talk to him and can point to many links where I did so in both accounts, but there is a separation of duties that I have to adhere to. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 03:01, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Is there is a place where all this is explained? The rules about contacting and that Mdennis (WMF) is also Moonriddengirl, but must not be contacted first? (A place where editors like me can find, no holed away on the WMF site?) I'd much appreciated to be pointed to a place listing these people, their "other" names, and the rules for contact. (Mdennis (WMF) was recommended to be which is why I contacted her originally.) Thanks, MathewTownsend (talk) 00:59, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There is no rule against your contacting me or in what order you contact me; as I explained to you then, you did nothing wrong. The rule doesn't impact you; it impacts the staff. The policies are given to the employees for that reason. People have a right and expectation to my time as an employee, so where there is conflict between the roles, I bow out as a volunteer. In terms of my assistance as a volunteer, I do not know what more I could have done than was done by the volunteer administrator that I recommended, who gave an opinion on the matter just as I would have done. If his help with your copyright issue was not satisfactory, I can't see how mine would have been any better, but there is also the copyright problems board. In terms of your next question, not all staff have active accounts on English Wikipedia, but a good place to look for those who do is Category:Wikimedia Foundation staff. A more comprehensive list of staff members can be found at wmf:Staff and contractors (but, again, many of them do not have active accounts on English Wikipedia). Those who edit here self-identify; for instance User:Ironholds identifies himself on that user page as User:Okeyes (WMF), while my user page identifies me as User:Mdennis (WMF). --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 01:48, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for replying. I'm pretty much giving up. Your explanation (apparently as Moonriddengirl) then still doesn't make sense to me as I don't know who "she" etc. and Moonriddengirl couldn't help and I had to fail the GA review for plagiarism issues, as did the next reviewer as the article was immediately renominated. (So the article nominator - an online ambassador for the education program who was involved in the posts with Mooriddengirl - didn't seem to understand either or she wouldn't have immediately renominated the article with the plagiarism.) I think WMF needs to make clearer what's going on here, who should be contacted, make lists of WMF employees and their functions more accessible. I contacted Moonriddengirl later about multiple copvios accross articles and all she said was that she agreed that it was definitely a bad a copyvio problem and was disturbed by it; she started to clean up one of the articles so I would have an example to follow so I could clean up the others (there were about 10 or more) but she didn't have time to do even one. She didn't offer any other suggestions such as you do above. I really didn't know what to do except to try to notify people without breaking rules. It's very hard to get help. And the (WMF) people, except for User:Okeyes (WMF), don't seem helpful. If WMF is understaffed, then if they are interested in editor retention, they should allot more staff to help I think. MathewTownsend (talk) 13:48, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I am Moonriddengirl. But when you're dealing with me as Moonriddengirl, you're not dealing with the Wikimedia Foundation; you're dealing with with a volunteer, just like you. Alas, like most people, my volunteer time is sometimes limited. But I have done my best to respond to you with suggestions and information every time you have asked me for it, including in the conversation where I was occupied (getting to ready to go on vacation with my family) and in this one. Cleaning up plagiarism and copyright is not a staff matter; the Wikimedia Foundation does not create or curate content on the projects. The place to get help for those kinds of things, if individual editors are busy or you don't know who to ask, are the ordinary help fora, like Wikipedia:Help and Wikipedia:Teahouse. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:57, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Mailing lists are a very primitive form of communication. Totally inadequate for the tasks at hand. I have looked at the archives of the mailing lists over the years. It takes forever to have a simple discussion, or to read it and easily comprehend it. People are constantly quoting each other unnecessarily. The thread discussion bounces around. It is just so much worse than any Wikipedia talk page. One can not use wikitext either. So one can not illustrate many things, or show thumbnails of relevant images, charts, graphs, etc.. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:06, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very few people are that interested when it requires so much time, and is so frustrating, to decipher such a crude communication method. Why not fix the communication problem with better means of communication? Better results are sure to ensue. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:21, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have to agree. Personally, I've taken to exclusively (or almost-exclusively) reporting changes and developments in the projects I'm working on on-wiki. The mailing lists are an outdated format with odd communications protocols and no filtering between "stuff I'm interested in" and "stuff I'm not interested in". I get a far wider range of opinions (and far more opinions) discussing things more transparently onwiki. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:15, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fully agree with the content of this op-ed tho I honestly had no idea about those horrible comments from that bugzilla. While that has been the attitude for quite some time, I didn't expect somebody to put it in writing like that. Snowolf How can I help? 08:19, 6 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

wishlists and budget

The WMF has sufficient budget to make a proportion of it available to community prioritised development. The problem in my experience is not that the devs lack development skill, its just that the projects they are assigned to are either tangential to the community needs or even sometimes in opposition to them. If the WMF were to make 20% of its developer budget available for community requested and prioritised needs then we could get the changes needed to make a step change improvement in the project. As for editor retention, the very act of entrusting a proportion of the development budget to the community would directly address two problems; It would give editors real hope that some of the clunkiness will be fixed; And it would reduce the current problems of active editors eventually realising that they were ultimately seen as users of the site rather than editors. ϢereSpielChequers 13:00, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not so keen on a fixed percentage, but on closer engagement between the community and the techs: we need a noticeboard. In terms of the massive increase in tech budget and staffing this year, I'm wondering whether the mix of junior to senior, the overall salaries on offer (given the Silicon Valley drought that the foundation drums on about in its Annual Plan 2012–13), and the overall skill-profile of the engineering department, are appropriate to the needs of the movement. Tony (talk) 13:36, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Related: <http://www.quora.com/Wikipedia/Are-Wikipedia-software-development-engineers-of-the-caliber-that-could-work-as-SDEs-at-Google-Facebook-Amazon-etc>. --MZMcBride (talk) 13:49, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That is a great article. Thanks for linking to it. I have seen that energy in other movements, too. One thing I read from the article though is that even though the work is inspiring we may have burnt out many workers due to the workload. We need to hire more tech people. There are so many basic features and bugs people have been asking about for years that have not been dealt with. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:08, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
@Tony, a fixed percentage is a pretty blunt instrument, and one that I'm confident would go away fairly quickly once everyone realised that IT developments that the community wanted and thought worth prioritising would be a better investment than ones that derive from the current process. But asking for a small minority of the IT budget to be spent on community prioritised developments is the sort of modest request that might possibly succeed. Of course it would be better if we could revolutionise the whole Wikimedia development process, I just think that a two step process would be more likely to succeed, if only because the WMF will find it hard to argue against the first step. ϢereSpielChequers 14:43, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The problem at Wikipedia is that there is no good way for the WMF to seek ideas about a proposal, and no good way for the community to provide ideas regardless of whether the WMF sought them. For example, mw:Flow is a proposal to replace all talk pages with some new system—a gigantic proposal, yet I am not aware of any community involvement (is there a discussion somewhere; the previous link shows little activity). The design document (at previous link) has an example with avatars and watch/unwatch links, but there is no mention of fundamentals—an easy way for inappropriate content to be removed, and for unproductive discussions to be collapsed. Whatever the intentions of WMF staffers, various comments make it appear that success is measured in terms of number of participants—a bigger number justifies the WMF's budget. That's good at Wikia, but enabling forum chatter at Wikipedia will send the community the way of all Internet forums, with negative effects on the encyclopedia and the community who build and protect it.

A budget for community projects would not help the fundamental problem of the WMF getting realistic feedback early during development cycles (yes, there would be a lot of noise, and somehow that would have to be dampened). Johnuniq (talk) 04:50, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Any thoughts on setting up a group to liase with the WMF about development? The group (say six editors) would be appointed by an RfC; they would report dev proposals at WP:VPT or somesuch, would get feedback, would distill that feedback and filter out general gripes and unlikely suggestions, and would present a summary of the filtered feedback for WMF/dev views at some new page. Johnuniq (talk) 07:30, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not convinced that such a small group would work, better in my view to open it to all. A crowdsourced project priorisation would be a good way for the community to prioritise things that the WMF hasn't thought of, and to deprioritise WMF ideas that are counter-productive. But for that you need crowds, not a committee. ϢereSpielChequers 09:13, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, but my thought was that the committee and the WMF would be exchanging views in public (at a dedicated enwiki page), and there would be a talk page where the community/crowd would poke the committee. Not much good would come from a free-for-all where WMF reps negotiate with the entire community because discussions would get derailed too easily. For example, I expressed some concerns about Flow above. If there were no intermediary committee, I might keep raising that with each WMF rep or dev who turned up (people might abuse me for repetition, and I'd tell them to AGF and to not collapse my comments, and that their ideas are unhelpful while mine are great)—nothing good would happen, and devs certainly don't want to wade through all that to see if something intelligent has been said. With a liason group (committee), I would have to first convince the group that my thoughts had merit. They (with community input) would conclude that some issue needed raising, or not, and they would deal with all the wikidrama. The WMF rep or dev need only deal with what is put to them by the liason group, and that would be free from ranting, and would consist of mostly well-thought out points. Johnuniq (talk) 10:20, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I see a three stage process. The community discusses potential enhancements and ideas, then in an RFC or even Arbcom election style system prioritises the ones it most wants. The devs then try to implement the ones that were most wanted, and as with the revised new page feed it is likely that the system's supporters would naturally want to engage with them. At the prioritisation stage the devs and others have the opportunity to chip in with helpful comments such as that would require 100 million in hardware/license fees/political bribes to change that law. I'm confident that the community wouldn't decide to prioritise something that genuinely couldn't be done. ϢereSpielChequers 18:50, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
But what about the converse - editors deciding against prioritising it because it benefits readers or newbies substantially, but doesn't have a directly discernible benefit for them? And how do we factor in the needs of non-enlang projects - a long-term issue we need to be working harder on? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:18, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is only meant as a way to improve communication between the community and the WMF, not as telling you what to do. To figure out the needs of newbies and readers and to make the final decisions about priorities are separate problems. Concerning the non-enlang communities this could actually be a step forward: in cases where not the whole community speaks English, their committee could also take the task of translating the communication with the WMF (now that it's boiled down to manageable volume) and thus get their whole community involved. Of course something along the lines of global watchlists would still be handy. — HHHIPPO 21:05, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, my suggestion is purely for communication. I have quite a bit of experience with the issues that arise when consumers of a service (here that's editors using the edit/talk tools) liase directly with the people that do the work. It is very hard for implementors to get anything done because the consumers create a great deal of noise, with feature X being vital this week, and feature Y being top priority next week. The WMF must lead, and the developers must follow what they believe, but there needs to be a two-way communication between WMF/devs and the community at all stages of any project intended for enwiki. There will be editors who demand too much, and it would be up to a liason group to deal with that. Johnuniq (talk) 00:45, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
@OKeyes, It is possible that the devs and the remaining 80% of the budget would serve readers and newbies better than the 20% that would be community driven. If that happens then there would be a case for keeping some of the budget under WMF control. It is also likely that there will be further incidents where the board, legal or devs need to veto a community supported initiative. I don't have a problem with that in principle - my criticism of the veto of ACTRIAL was that it was done by a dev not the Board; Devs should veto things that can't be done for IT reasons, the Board should step in when an individual community proposes doing something that breaches a resolution such as openness. But I believe that such vetos would be rare. ϢereSpielChequers 08:53, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, for clarity, it was done by Erik :). He does code, but I wouldn't describe him as a "developer". I don't want to really rehash it all over again, except to say that I think setting the standard of "employees cannot factor movement principles or the wider picture into their decision-making process when approving or declining to implement software changes" is very dangerous. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:13, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It's when WMF techs decide to quash en.WP community consensus without technical grounds that the relationship with the community is really damaged. Like last year. Tony (talk) 11:02, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikia ties: Another conflict of interest for Wales

Jimbo Wales often uses his association with Wikipedia to speak on political issues, such as the SOPA legislation. It is clear that his association with the for-profit Wikia is a conflict of interest, and he should stop appearing as a Wikipedia or WMF spokesperson. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 14:32, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. I don't see how it is a conflict of interest. I also don't see how this relates to the Op-ed in the Signpost. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:20, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Try control-f and then search for "Wikia". Wikia states that it was co-founded by Wales (who claims to have founded Wikipedia, according to Wikia). Kiefer.Wolfowitz 15:35, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No, that is not a correct interpretation. Wikia is a commercial website, and it was not clear that it would be able to keep going (expenditure > income for protracted period). Wikia revamped a lot of things (one simple thing being to allow anyone to create any wiki, whereas in the past new wikis had to be individually approved). By adding more and more feel-good features, Wikia attracted a lot of new contributors and readers. In response, advertising picked up and Wikia has an assured future—that is a strong success story. The comments about Wikia made earlier (and before publication) concern two points: Are any Wikia features (like forum software) useful here? Do WMF staff regard the Wikia strategy as a useful model for increasing participation rates here? None of that is related to Jimbo, and there is no COI issue, and the question is off-topic here. Johnuniq (talk) 23:46, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
SOPA and Wales role as a spokesperson for WMF have been extensively covered and discussed in Signpost.
This is the first I've read about Wikia, a for-profit enterprise whose name invites confusion with Wikipedia.
You claim that no COI exists. So Wales has no financial stake in Wikia? No liabilities if SOPA passed? Kiefer.Wolfowitz 23:58, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My comment was based on the assumption that this page was a discussion about the 2012-08-20 Op-ed. Suggestions that someone has a COI belong elsewhere (perhaps offer to write another op-ed?). Johnuniq (talk) 00:05, 29 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
So you withdraw your denial of a COI? Kiefer.Wolfowitz 00:13, 29 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This page is about MZM's op-ed, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't drag the discussion in an entirely unrelated direction. Thanks, Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 20:50, 29 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal for a Village Pump using DPLforum or other subpage discussion software

See:

See subsection:
Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Proposal for one Village Pump using DPLforum or other subpage discussion software. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:27, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Portuguese Village Pump allows watchlisting of individual discussions

See:

If wikipedia sinks, it wont be so bleak a thing.

Wikipedia is usually but not always trustworthy for pure Science / Math articles etc, but caveat emptor. As for social articles: it always had a right-wing bias: Its coverage of Palestine issues and issues involving male chauvinism stunk, stink and will always stink - with the tokenism of 'some critics have said otherwise'.

It is still *much more* male chauvinistic than encyclopedia Brittanica's 1953? edition (what is known as scholar's edition). And stereotyped about islam etc [even when 'praising it']. Wikipedia Much more informative, but very much more misinformative, if I may coin a word.

On progressive issues wikipedia is not worth as much as some of you might think folks, admit it! Who cares; if Wikipedia loses credibility thee are other sources. And anyone with half a brain *never* accepots wikipedia info blindly; always coss checks and uses their personal awareness of the world. It is like reading any mainstream newspaper - say NYT or Guardian [UK] or International Herald Tribune: intelligent readers cultivate reading between the lines. And they use that experience while accessing wikipedia too.

forgot to sign, sorry. Manojpandeyanarchocommunist (talk) 19:26, 29 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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