On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 7:02 PM, Risker <risker...@gmail.com> wrote: > I sympathize with your concern, Ori. I suspect, however, that it shows a > fundamental misunderstanding of why the Teahouse works when other processes > (several of which have included cute symbols) have been less effective. > > And the reason is: the Teahouse is explicitly designed for having > conversations. > > Teahouse "convenors" were initially selected for their demonstrated > communication skills and willingness to remain polite when dealing with > often frustrated people, and their ability to explain often complex > concepts in straightforward terms. As their ranks have evolved, they have > sought out and taught others those skills, and there's an element of > self-selection that discourages the more curmudgeonly amongst us from > participating. (There's not a lot of overlap between those who regularly > help out at the Teahouse and those who hang out on ANI, for example.) > We're talking about a relatively small group of people who really excel at > this type of communication, although it is certainly a skill that others > can develop if they have the willingness and inclination - but it really > comes down to being able to identify the right "level" at which to talk to > people, and then actually talking. > > The Teahouse works because it doesn't [obviously] use a lot of fancy > technology, because it doesn't use a lot of templates and automated > messaging, because it's made a lot of effort to avoid massive hyperlinking > to complex and inscrutable policies. It's people talking to people.
Yes, fair point. But as long as there exists a need for developing new features and modifying existing ones, I would like us to consider the contribution that modifications to the user experience make to the interpersonal climate on the wikis. Because the contribution is very much greater than zero. Of course at the end of the day it is about people making choices about how they relate to one another, and no amount of Fisher-Price gadgetry will ever change that. But we don't communicate via mind melds <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(Star_Trek)#Mind_melds>; we use imperfect and idiosyncratic media which end up shaping and coloring both what we communicate and how it is received. So we ought to think carefully about these effects.¹ (By the way, there was a great Radiolab <http://www.radiolab.org/> episode about this recently: The Trust Engineers <http://www.radiolab.org/story/trust-engineers/>. Keep in mind that I am recommending the *episode*, not endorsing all the practices it describes, some of which make me queasy.) ¹ Concrete example: the way that jenkins-bot gives you a -1 for changes it can't rebase. Ugh! _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
