Risker, some replies below: On Sun, Aug 17, 2014 at 7:59 PM, Risker <risker...@gmail.com> wrote:
> <snip> > Perhaps you should get to know a bit more about bugzilla and its current > usage; > <snip> This topic is getting far afield. I have a reasonably good understanding of how bugzilla works, and have reported and commented on a pretty wide variety of bugs. I generally agree with everything you have to say about it. My point really had nothing to do with platforms, though -- it was about the way the organization and the movement approaches design. There might be a worthwhile discussion to be had about platform use, but I don't think it belongs in this thread, and I'm not sure I'd bother to participate -- there are many people better qualified and more motivated than me to dig into this stuff. I'm sorry. How, exactly, do you envision a new editor or reader improving > file pages? There's not very much that can be edited there that isn't going > to cause more problems than it solves. > <snip> I am frankly astonished to see you say this. I don't have to envision anything -- I watch people improve file pages on a daily basis, in much more straightforward ways than the examples you chose. The single most obvious thing is to expand the "Description" field, which often only has a few words -- but there are all kinds of things people can and do improve. And "new editor or reader" -- that may be your requirement, but it's not mine. Paths from "newbie" to "experienced" involve many steps, and I don't see any reason why the *first* step should be so heavily emphasized. I don't think "newness" is the end-all-be-all. If somebody has been dabbling on English Wikipedia for a few years, and comes across an image that they know something about, or have the skills to improve and re-upload, etc., that may be an important moment where they start to realize that English Wikipedia is part of a broader multilingual community. But will that moment occur if they only ever experience media through the Media Viewer? I do not know the answer to that question for certain, but I have a pretty strong hunch. I am at a loss as to why a template on Commons has anything to do with the > privacy of subjects of photos. I'm with you. And if the MV team had taken this view, they might have skipped basing the way that personality rights are communicated to readers on one template that is, so far, inadequate to the task of helping uploaders comply with [[COM:IDENT]]. But they didn't skip it -- they checked "personality rights" off the list by making the MV include this template. Understandable, if you're trying to hit a looming deadline and scrambling to get a lot of stuff done. But in the end, totally inadequate. The way we handle personality rights is a matter of vital concern to the future of Wikipedia -- this has, as you know, been the topic of many discussions on the Gender Gap email list and elsewhere. Well, if you don't have a problem with it, why are you including it in your > list of problems? The list of problems is so huge, Risker, that I hardly think it matters what specifics I do or don't include. This is software that is out of step with what the Wikimedia movement is trying to accomplish, pure and simple. If you disagree, fine. We'll see how it plays out. > <snip> > In other words, you thought a discussion on a single site went well, but > one that took place across hundreds of sites didn't do enough to inform > people and seek feedback. Actually, no -- I think the efforts at notification were reasonably good. The bigger problem I see is not so much with the notification, but the way the design process was conducted. To put it simply, the biggest issue is that the team working on this software has a listening problem. It's one I'm familiar with because I've experienced it in various interactions with the broader WMF over a period of years. There is bias in the assumptions the team brings to the project, and they "hear" the input that comes from volunteers through the filter of that bias. One of the results is that in many cases, they attempt to reflect back what was said to them, but end up saying something completely different. And when you're not doing a good job of listening, one of the overall results is that you have a poor ability to predict how things will go. Lila Tretikov asked on her user talk page last week: "It is a bit strange to see this being such a big deal given that the feature has been in Beta for nearly a year, was rolled out almost everywhere else in April with no issues, and has been on the de site since early June. So clearly it has not broken things. Why did it get so "hot" *after* two month of being in production, without reader complaints? Just wondering..." As I stated in my response, although the WMF failed to predict that this would be a hot issue, I predicted it clearly in February, and so did another longtime community member. (If anybody wants to see that other piece, let me know -- I now have permission to share it, actually an IRC log, not an email.) https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:LilaTretikov&diff=9512960&oldid=9512915 <snip> > In other words....everyone has something to learn here, but perhaps the > most important and valuable point is that changes are going to keep > happening across these sites - in fact, they're made every week, although > not always as major as this - and there is a huge need from all sides for > users to participate and identify concerns while software is being > developed so that problems that aren't necessarily obvious to developers > will be flushed out before largescale deployments. At the same time, > product managers and developers need to work with users to identify the > difference between minor concerns and concerns that should be considered > "blockers" as software is being developed/improved/modified/etc. I agree 100%. Pete _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
