On 7/1/2011 2:32 PM, Thomas Morton wrote: > > Very little discussion ocurrred r.e. rolling this out. For example no trial > was offered, no "Request for Comment" was taken to guage community opinion. > I know these are our processes and a significant part of the blame lies with > the editors - but even so announcement of the feature suddenly seemed to > "appear"on-wiki the day before :) (that may not be an accurate picture - but > for most that is how it appeared). > > It was only *after* deployment that is was explained that the extension is > amazing customisable on-wiki (a really thoughtful idea. You guys need to > write more extensions like this, awesome stuff). So, more miscommunication. > > I've seen this happen before numerous times - Wiki does something. Or a dev > does something. There is miscommunication and people who would probably see > eye-to-eye are growling at each other across tables. The established Wiki > editors feel put out and the developers feel under-appreciated (did I > mention: WikiLove guys!). [Ironically *the same problem* is a big part of > the editor retention issue on-wiki] >
Personally, I don't see why "community discussion" and "consensus" is required for each and every change or addition to the software. Sometimes, bold action is truly the only way to move the encyclopedia forward, especially in the face of those who generally don't like change. Many times, the community in general does hold back many additional innovations the developers may come up with solely for the sake of "process". This article parallels such conflict between "process" and "development": http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/05/process-kills-developer-passion.html -MuZemike _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
