This discussion touches on a number of my frustrations. If someone is in a bad mood then they might want to postpone reading my comments below.
As far as I know, WMF wants to advertise itself as being a provider of infrastructure for fundraising purposes, and wants to exercise absolute power over technical matters (see, for example, Superprotect). I think that it would be difficult to reconcile these factors with an attempt by WMF to disclaim responsibility for deficiencies in the technical infrastructure that WMF created and remains in use on Wikimedia sites. (I think that this does not generally extend to bots, tools, etc. that were not primarily created by WMF.) Regarding "There's an anti-pattern here: we all have a big mailing list discussion, agree there's a problem, agree that the Foundation should solve the problem, then ask again in a year what they did even though they didn't actually say they'd do anything about it. That's not a healthy dynamic.": if WMF doesn't say that it will fix a widely known problem, that is not necessarily an excuse for not fixing it by a year later, and may also indicate a failure by WMF to clearly communicate what it *won't* fix. It's true that for profit companies can sometimes ignore important bugs and have poor customer service, but when a provider is not a monopoly then customers who are unhappy can (with varying amounts of expense and pain) change providers. Other organizations being sloppy does not imply that WMF should follow their bad example or make excuses that WMF is probably no worse than others. I don't agree that the technical space is owned by all of us. WMF never apologized for Superprotect, and there is nothing to stop WMF from making arbitrary decisions against community consensus other than the threats of (1) community members quitting in substantial numbers and (2) bad press coverage. Also, WMF's technical services are one of the primary justifications for WMF's budget. I believe that WMF does a lot of good for the world, but it also has a lot of room for improvement, and hearing excuses (or getting no substantive responses) regarding the same problems year after year gets old, particularly as WMF's payroll continues to grow. These subjects are frustrating and depressing for me, so let me close on a more positive note. I am glad that we have these discussions in public, and the strategy process may be a way to make progress. Also, I think that WMF has improved the infrastructure over the years. For example, I like the New Wikitext Editor, and I think that VisualEditor is now a good option for many use cases. Citoid is wonderful. Wikimedia sites generally seem to be more performant than in years past. The Search Platform team seems to do a lot of good work. I like the new edit filters in the watchlist. So, much good has been done, and there remains much to improve. Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine ) On Sat, Mar 9, 2019, 4:13 AM Dan Garry (Deskana) <djgw...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, 9 Mar 2019 at 11:26, Strainu <strain...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > How many successful commercial projects leave customer issues unresolved > > for years because they're working on something else now? > > > > Almost all of them, they just keep it secret. Companies pay millions of > dollars each year for support packages, even after having paid for software > in the first place, specifically because otherwise their support issues may > not be answered in a timely fashion, or even answered at all. I don't think > comparing us to commercial products makes much sense in this context. > > > > There were a > > number of proposals on how to track such issues so that reporters have a > > clear image of the status of the bugs. Have any of them been tried by at > > least one of the teams at wmf? If so, is there a way to share the results > > with other teams? If not, how can we convince the wmf to give them a > > chance? > > > > I don't agree with shifting responsibility onto the Wikimedia Foundation. > There's an anti-pattern here: we all have a big mailing list discussion, > agree there's a problem, agree that the Foundation should solve the > problem, then ask again in a year what they did even though they didn't > actually say they'd do anything about it. That's not a healthy dynamic. > > The technical space is owned by all of us, so if we, as a technical > community, decide this is important to us, then we can look at the problem > and try to tackle it, and then figure out how the Wikimedia Foundation > could catalyse that. > > Dan > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
