User talk:LilaTretikov (WMF)

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WMF superblocks its community

Hi,

since Erik doesn't answer, I'm now sending this remark to some other WMF officers and board members. I apologize for using your time.

I'm a crat in german wp. The so-called super-protections that Erik Möller/User:Eloquence and User:JEissfeldt (WMF) have put on our common.js on sunday, acting officially on behalf of WMF, have left some blood on the carpet. Many fellow wikipedians are upset, even those who accept the media viewer (which had been the conflict's origin). Several long-time contributors have left or stopped editing due to this. Journalists picked up the case.

Personally, I strongly protest against the WMF's action, and it's failure to communicate afterwards. Our communities are capable, and willing, to handle problems like this without office-actions.

There have been no official or private comments from WMF in the last days, so I'd like to suggest you have a look and give some response to the criticism.

(apologize again, for my translation errors)

Rfc: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Requests_for_comment/Superprotect_rights

Links to ongoing discussions in german language: [1], [2], [3]

Greetings, -MBq (talk) 20:11, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi, i second MBq request and especially this post by Rich. This issue is not taken lightly especially among german wikipedians. Regards, Ca$e (talk) 20:52, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

This is a temporary measure to prevent churn on the file for the lack of a better process currently in place (more on this here). LilaTretikov (talk) 21:19, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Lila, please stay that sober and unintimidated. I wholeheartedly agree with such a minimal invasion. Instead of blocking or deadminining an entire camp of notorious know-betters, just one template was commensurately frozen from those administrators' access for them to cool down and stop them from disrupting the public user experience with their edit wars. Commentor 188.61.148.188 summarized it well on their central protest page:

Funny: Someone at the Foundation is passing the same medicine to the German admins that they have been passing their authors for years. And now the German admins react with insult since they realized how it feels to be given such medicine. The San Franciscan physician has thus contributed much to the climate and future quality of the German Wikipedia, either by self-aware admins diminishing their kindergarden behaviour in the future or by at least giving their mere mortal victims another parody on the wikihierarchy to laugh about. Also very amusing how the German admins voluntarily put up squeakingly green bars on every page linking to their own idiocy.

Wishing you good luck and the proper amount of patience: IM Serious (talk) 09:27, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Somehow liberally translated. I wrote "humiliation" ("Schmach"), not "idiocy". --188.61.148.188 14:12, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Right! Thank you: IM Serious (talk) 01:03, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello, for two years I was member of german arb-com (only just for your information).

Your post above is no answer. It maybe denote as a declaration of war. Is it that what you want? I hope not.

Please remember, that your money is earned by voluntary!

If we go away, you will earn no money! Okey, no problem for you, because you will get a new job after this...

Nearly 3 hours ago I postet that at de:wp: https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_Diskussion%3AKurier&diff=133016777&oldid=133016774 perhaps this would be a possibility to... I don`t know the right word for: "Das Gesicht wahren" --Hosse (talk) 22:28, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Hosse, in response to your suggestion, while we will not remove the software feature, we would be happy to immediately remove the protection of common.js on de.wp if there's agreement by admins that we will continue the conversation on the basis of the current state and improve it together, rather than disabling the feature. What do you think would be a reasonable way to establish that agreement? And yes, we're absolutely happy to continue the conversation on a page dedicated to this purpose. Thanks for the constructive suggestions! --LilaTretikov (talk) 23:01, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

The reasonable way is to comply to the bugreport regarding the community consensus of German Wikipedia (then also no hack is needed). You work now with and for volunteers. Noone of them has bad intentions, but the WMF lost much trust in the last two, three years for its actions. Why don't you work to convince us instead of forcing? With force you don't get anywhere in the end, you just show how weak your positions and the results of the work of the Foundation are. --Julius1990 (talk) 23:05, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

@LilaTretikov: Thank you, but no, thank you. The volunteer community have never agreed to the superprotection feature in the first place. The only real way forward for you is to unprotect MediaWiki:Common.js, take the superprotect user right from the global staff user group, and then disable this feature altogether. To have this threat of your unilateral and unlimited use of this feature hanging constantly over our heads cannot be accepted at any point in the future. odder (talk) 23:09, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

To prevent "churn on the file", direct WMF staff to quit editing it to overrule consensus, don't "superprotect" it. Seraphimblade (talk) 22:36, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Lila, I created a page at de:wp. Thank you for your nice answer. I hope you (really you) and the staff will take the chance to come into conversation with the German wikipedia. --Hosse (talk) 23:37, 12 August 2014 (UTC) PS: Sorry for my bad English

Hosse -- I will keep an eye on progress there. Looking forward to it! Thank you! LilaTretikov (talk) 00:29, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Lila, "preventing churn" is a task that is dealt with daily on many Wikimedia projects, and I think it's fair to say that Wikimedians have developed sophisticated methods of doing so. Before we talk about super-protection, we should talk about normal protection for a moment, and the practices that have evolved around that. Protecting an article on Wikipedia always involves a judgment about which version is correct, and which is incorrect; therefore, there are some best practices administrators are expected to adhere to when protecting a page. I will speak only in broad strokes here, but I would encourage you to talk to some experienced administrators about this, and explore their wisdom drawn from dealing with this kind of conflict many times, in many kinds of circumstances.

There are some important principles, though, that you will surely hear about if you talk to some administrators:

1. The person protecting a page should not be involved in the dispute, and ideally should not have a very strong opinion on it at all; if the topic is Israel vs. Palestine, for instance, the ideal admin to protect a page might be a career mathematician from Kansas who has never bothered to think much about religion or the Middle East;
2. The protection is considered a temporary condition, not a decision; it is intended to encourage discussion, which is where the actual decision gets made;
3. In discussion, it is generally advised to get more uninvolved editors to give it some thought and weigh in.

These sorts of disputes are brought successfully to resolution on a daily basis throughout our projects. If they weren't, we wouldn't be a successful web site, we would be Encyclopedia Drammatica. The experience and practices that apply to resolving editorial disagreements can certainly be applied here, but they cannot be applied if the organization taking the more radical approach ("We must enable this software because we said we must enable this software") is the one applying the kind of fix that is meant to be temporary ((super)protection), and pointing to no realistic longer-term dispute resolution process on an even playing field.

If you must stick to your staff's decision, so be it; but the credibility of your organization, among a stakeholder group whose paticipation is necessary to the site's survival, is at stake. So please choose wisely. -Pete F (talk) 01:48, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Lila, please remove the superprotect feature and refrain from using it. In my humble opinion, it is not acceptable to overrule a RfC in a community-based project, especially for these reasons. Best regards, --Ghilt (talk) 07:46, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the details, Pete F. I am not sure the analogy is exactly applicable for software, but it is helpful nevertheless. I think the conversation we actually want to spur is specifics on what we need to have changed in the feature in question. I am asking the team to engage everyone here on user tests so we can do just that. -Lila Tretikov 13:39, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I assume this comment above is from Lila -- I have changed the IP address to your name, please revert me if I am incorrect.

My comment was not meant to precisely correlate these admittedly different situations, but to highlight one specific practice that has been found to work very effectively in resolving disputes -- and maybe I did not make this clear enough:

Reverting something to the state it was in prior to the dispute is a tremendously powerful technique for setting the stage for dispute resolution.

With the Visual Editor, the WMF did in fact revert the feature, but as far as I know it did not take steps to continue the discussion in a more generative way. This may have been a missed opportunity. (I am not intimately familiar with how things went with VE, and I know it was before your time.)

With the Media Viewer, however, the WMF is continuing to refuse to take the one step that is guaranteed to interrupt the drama and discord: simply revert the default enabling of the software. The software doesn't have to be removed, none of the 3 projects that have had RfCs have called for its complete removal. But reversing the ill-considered decision to enable it by default on, at least, these 3 sites is a very clear precondition for more sober reflection and deliberation. And let me be clear: I am not stating a personal boundary or condition here, and I am not in a position to negotiate. I am simply stating what the clearly expressed expectation of a very large group of users is. I have no ability to change those expectations, any more than you do.

But as I said initially -- please find some Wikipedia or Commons administrators who have actively worked on dispute resolution, and ask them about these things. You needn't take my word for it -- we have a great many people in our community with deep experience in these matters, much deeper than mine. And a great many of them have not bothered to comment on the Media Viewer situation, and so they might be in a position to give you a more dispassionate and less biased opinion than I am. -Pete F (talk) 19:07, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

You and Erik claim superblocking is a temporary measure but you also name a precondition (if there's agreement by admins…). So if there is no agreement then superblocking won't be temporary, am I right? Somehow this sounds like teaching Wikipedia's community for educating the world. I cannot believe that this is of interest to the Foundation. Please remove the superprotect feature. Maybe this feature is needed but first of all we need a discussion when this feature shall be used and by whom. NNW (talk) 08:18, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

It is temporary for many reasons, including that we are planning to make process changes. But you are right, the timeline is an issue right now. We need to resolve the MV issues so we don't have this corse-grained hammer that only can do on or off switch. We need to collaborate to improve, rather then flipping switches. -- 2601:6:2080:187:A54B:B04B:FB9:1FDE 13:39, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Lila, your accountability as the Executive Director: „Your are the person ultimately responsible for the direction and actions of the WMF.“ Could you please explain what position WMF takes on the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (UNESCO) – refering to WMF superblocks its community. --Edward Steintain (talk) 15:08, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Location of this discussion

Somewhere above Lila said she's not sure where this discussion should happen. The solution is rather simple, she can move the whole content of this page at Requests for comment/On a scale of billions or similar and continue operating in the same way but in a more "official" setting. --Nemo 07:10, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

I think, you don’t mean "move", but copy and paste it there, do you? Because it wouldn’t be good to move (with the function "move") a user talk page to an RfC page, there were also other personal comments on the talk page (also archived ones) before this discussion which shouldn’t end up in a version history of an RfC. But as the comments here all have signatures (or should have), so the authors are clear, there wouldn’t be a problem with copying and pasting the whole discussion to the target RfC page. It would be best, if the RfC page will link to the version history of this user talk page afterwards. The RfC is a very good idea for this discussion, better than here. --Winternacht (talk) 21:23, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Feel free to copy this if you think the new page is a better place. Note the new process page we are pulling together as well. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 21:51, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Pete F can you please copy not delete. Also could you please not copy the Working Together section as it is septate. Thank you! -- LilaTretikov (talk) 22:26, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

OK -- I think having the discussion happen in two places will be really confusing but...I'm happy to revert everything I just did. -Pete F (talk) 22:28, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

@LilaTretikov: Sorry if my move wasn't the way you wanted it to work -- I've reverted, and will let somebody else handle it -- as far as I know there really isn't any perfect way to do it, and I don't want to mess it up. -Pete F (talk) 22:31, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Sorry Pete, my bad. I am not 100% up to speed on talk page mechanics... -- LilaTretikov (talk) 00:00, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Not to worry! I just realized that there was a potential for it to become a big mess, and wanted to revert what I did before it was too late. It looks like @Winternacht: has done a better job of it now. If I could suggest, finding somebody to mark the RfC for translation ASAP would probably be a really good step. -Pete F (talk) 01:05, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

If there are any sections in the RfC that don’t fit there, they can also be placed here again instead.

Translation would be a good idea, I just don’t know how that could be done with these lots of comments there. Or do you mean, the initial statement On a Scale of Billions and Lila’s questions shall especially be translated? That would be a very good idea, because they are essential to the RfC. --Winternacht (talk) 01:24, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Could you create sections for those here so they are visible in the TOC please? In all honesty thought it is easier for me to watch this -- more pages strain my bandwidth for sure. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 15:19, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I think it’s better to copy and paste the discussion, meaning that the content (not the page itself) will move to the RfC. If it is only copied (but not deleted here), then the same discussion will be on two different pages which isn’t good. So, now the question seems to be, which parts of this page shall get into the RfC and which ones should stay here. Perhaps, it would be best to leave the first section #WMF superblocks its community here and start the RfC with the second section #On a scale of billions which shall be the title of the RfC. And as Lila said above, the #Working Together shall also stay here. So all other sections can get into the RfC (copy and delete here and paste it there). Is that ok? --Winternacht (talk) 22:46, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

And, not mentioned, this section should surely also stay here. In the beginning of the RfC, there can be placed a permanent link to the top section here, so that the connection to it will be clear and that it was a response to the questions raised and the discussion there. --Winternacht (talk) 22:59, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

So, I’ve tried to do this. Now the content is at Requests for comment/On a scale of billions. I hope, this is ok this way. If any section shall be at another place now, it can also be copied and pasted this way. --Winternacht (talk) 00:23, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps the top of the RfC could clarify a bit more about the RfC, I don’t know. I tried to put some initial information into it. If you or someone else have a better idea for that, please improve it. --Winternacht (talk) 00:55, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

How do you guys do this???

I am just SOOOO amazed you all are able and willing to make your way through these pages. This takes serious dedication! I am even more amazed how new editors survive this antique experience. This IS the stuff we've got to focus on. MV is such peanuts, we should really not be spending our joint mental cycles on. It will take all of us a lot of time to make this basic stuff work: conversations, data normalization, messages, etc. work... -- LilaTretikov (talk) 15:19, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

We (the users) spend a lot of our time and knowledge in this project. And we were proud to be part of the knowlege project. We are not happy with the MediaViewer at this stage and didnt want to use it in the DE:WP. You will be able to get a true translation of the "Meinungsbild".
But we are really upset and agry, that the developer of this tool can overrule the communities just because he can, in his own case. I called that "Führerbefehl" on this discussion page, which is something that the Americans tried to eliminate from Germany. Perhaps thats the reason for the strong reaction from the DE:Community.
You have to put the superprotect back in the garbagebin. Then we will discuss further on the MV, its merrits (yes he has some) and his deficits. --Eingangskontrolle (talk) 15:45, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Eingangskontrolle; BITTE! Godwin’s law. Das muss doch nun wirklich nicht sein! ...Sicherlich ^Post 16:06, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

@LilaTretikov: its far less about the MV then about the force you use ...Sicherlich ^Post 16:06, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

LilaTretikov, that's exactly the wrong attitude. This does work. It works well. We've communicated this way with each other for a long time and have very few complaints about it (well, until WMF broke sections of it with Echo, very few ... now just "few"). Telling us that everything about the way we communicate is wrong, the things we are upset about are "peanuts", and your highest priority is to make us do everything differently is exactly why we get angry and frustrated with the WMF. Kww (talk) 16:06, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I did not mean to say it was "wrong", I said it was "hard", especially for new people. Big difference in those two. And I also did not say that you are upset about "peanuts", but that maybe lost in translation, I said that MV should be low priority when we have really major issues to work on. Does that make more sense? -- LilaTretikov (talk) 16:11, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually, you said it didn't "work". I agree with you that MV should be a low priority: since it isn't useful for much and isn't critical for anything, there's no reason for the WMF to insist on it being on the German Wikipedia against their will. It's creating a battle over nothing when there are important things to work on, and alienating an important core group of editors for no purpose.Kww (talk) 16:53, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

This was a rhetorical question :) Editors should be spending time on content, right?, not on learning (or dealing with) antiquated software -- I hope we agree there. And we should have clear parameters for "good enough" and strive for an objective Meinungsbild (if I understand the word correctly). What I am saying is that some things are not worth spending OUR (community, which includes the WMF) time... But I understand the anger -- as unintended as it was and, as I mentioned, we are working to lift the superprotect and create a process around managing changes, which we need. Frankly I think that's the real issue, MV is...well... just a symptom that is consuming more time that is due for it. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 16:08, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

But that is a matter of point of view. When i want to programm something, i have to learn the coding language. And for Wikipedia youa lso have to learn certain things, what is quite easy since a technical not very understanding guy I learned to edit Wikipedia well. And we see every day that new users can cope with it. A certain level that must be reached also prevets people who are not able to really contribute to our mission to take part. Your own research signifies this: what holds readers back from becoming editors is their lack of interest in this possibility and their lack of knowledge, technical problems are far less important than the WMF likes to pretend always.

If you want to help people joining technical: Make a good turtorial where they learn the basics from setting a link to using refernces and so on. Every little computer game uses this way, here it would help also. For the rest of the questions we have a mentoring programm at de:wiki and other place where newbies can reach for help and support. But you have to understand that the goal the everyone takes part is neither realistic nor would it be good. --Julius1990 (talk) 16:17, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, of course it should get better, and your passion for making it better, and knowledge about technical options, are going to be a great asset. I suspect that the skepticism you hear from @Kww: is a reflection of the dynamics @Theo10011: brought up. "These things could be better" is a very positive sentiment, and should be applauded. But it can be a very small step to "I know what is better for you, and here is how it will be." Especially in the wake of superprotect, I think you may find that many people respond as kww did. -Pete F (talk) 16:18, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I worry about that use of the term "antiquated". I favor well-chosen software improvements (in fact, I'm donating huge amounts of my time to that end), but not all new software is an improvement on old software. I'm pretty appalled by Flow, for example; I don't think anyone around here has yet come up with anything as good, for general discussion, as directly editing the wiki markup of a talk page. (I've also remarked elsewhere, I think VisualEditor is likely to seriously damage the long-term future of the wikimedian movement, exactly because it prevents the user from working direclty with wiki markup, and thereby cripples their ability to see the markup others have written.) So, depending on what you mean by "learning (or dealing with) antiquated software", you may find we won't all agree. --Pi zero (talk) 16:52, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Pi zero, VisualEditor is in no sense intended to replace wikitext. For example, there are some places where using VisualEditor makes next to no sense and the wikitext editor will be the default (e.g. the editing of pages in the template namespace). But, more generally, wikitext is not going anywhere, and in fact the Editing team has recently taken on ownership of the wikitext editor as well, so that the editing experience can be looked at and improved holistically. You can ask James Forrester for more information about this topic, if you like. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 19:52, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

That's what I'd call 'tentatively reassuring'. And yet, I've actually seen the phenomenon of a user baffled by how to do something they've seen others doing on wiki pages, because they've been using VE so they couldn't see the wiki markup. --Pi zero (talk) 20:22, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I might clarify, that it's tentatively reassuring in the sense that it isn't as bad as it could be. However, there is really no situation in which it wouldn't be better for the wiki to not divert users from experiencing the wiki markup itself; reducing exposure to wiki markup is always damaging. Perhaps the editing experience can be improved; but I believe doing so to be less of an issue in new-editor retention than other issues that nobody wants to face up to because they're 'too hard'. --Pi zero (talk) 21:11, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

To echo what Kww said, the way these talk pages work isn't really the problem. Editing encyclopedias, correcting typos, arguing for weeks over hyphen, em-dash and en-dash, is not a task everyone excels at for a good reason - very few do, even fewer enjoy it. Editors don't mind the antiquated software - some enjoy it, some specialize in it. A good majority of tools, bots were built by those community members before there was this version of WMF - I'm sure they are still more qualified than your staff at it. The learning curve here is steep but most get a hang of it in a few days - you will too. You see this was never meant to be facebook, all our communication is incidental to the larger task. Of course, this seems antiquated, and it is - but that's why we're here. One can argue encyclopedia itself are a pretty antiquated thing, or typing away and researching pages and pages of text about obscure topics for nothing in return. Those new editors that you do bring in who treat this like FB, will not do the "curation" work that rebuilds wikipedia daily. I'm sure, you can "hip it up" with a slick interface which makes everything look quick but you might alienate more than half the community that built it. A slicker system of communication will not change people's opinions - there will still be mountains of tomes to work through when WMF disrespects them openly. If you limit that, then again, off they go with a fork - it's quite easy to mimic this antiquated system too. Anyway, you are probably headed in the wrong direction if you are undermining MV and want to replace the underlying software all together. Theo10011 (talk) 16:57, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Drifting a bit right? :D - I think the idea of the visual editor is quite okay. For new users it might be more easy; if it works properly! - While earning my money I do that with WYSIWYG-software as well so why not in WP. ... Of course, and I include myself, experienced wikipedians might not use it as they dont need it. But as long as an editor can choose; why not giving the option? ... Becuase wasted money? Maybe but we (actually not us but WMF) has more then enough. so spending some on software might not be the worst idea :o) ...Sicherlich ^Post 17:11, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

"This was a rhetorical question :) Editors should be spending time on content, right?, not on learning (or dealing with) antiquated software -- I hope we agree there.

Hi, thank you for getting involved in the discussion. However, I'm afraid we don't agree on that point, for two reasons:

1. There is already one assumption (that the software is "antiquated") leading to one implication (that it is no longer fit for purpose). I do not feel that is a fair representation of the current state of the software--it is quite possible that it needs some improvements, but those should be evolutionary rather than "revolutionary". On a project of this scale you don't really have much choice (take a look at Unix/Linux) for an example of a project were change is "done right", i.e., a small bit of change at a time, and mostly following demand rather than making it up.

2. I realise than in order for the WMF to stay relevant and keep raking money in (which is your job, after all) the project needs to attract some new blood. However, I will posit that you do not want to lower the barrier to entry too much--there must be some moderate level of effort that a candidate editor should have to go through in order to show his motivation to contribute meaningfully to the project, least you end up trading quality for quantity. For example, learning wiki syntax (about twenty minutes) is in my opinion appropriate for someone who wants to make some entry level editing--perhaps correcting a few typos or adding a few links, categories, etc. Someone a bit more advanced and willing to dedicate more time will naturally want to interact with other editors and will end up having to learn about the mechanics of Talk pages and the like (I agree those should not be too arcane, but I don't think they currently are: I'm not even an editor myself and can figure them out just fine... except on some pages where some template tries to make them look like discussion forums, I get lost there actually). Eventually anyway, you are going to end up getting to a point where even the easiest editing / chit-chatting tools in the world are not going to be any help: if you get involved too much you will end up needing to learn about all the (constantly changing) policies and idiosyncratic stuff that more or less governs this whole thing. People are going to have to invest time learning those too.

But the most important point is: the WMF should not be there trying to second-guess Wikistuff users. The WMF should limit itself to 1) running the day-to-day technical and administrative bits and 2) acting upon community requests for improvements to the project and, perhaps very occasionally, new developments. Let us not forget that this project was built not just for users: it was built by users too. Trying to take it off their hands is just begging for trouble.

So, my apologies for being slightly long-winded, but in answer to your question ("How do you guys do this?"), I suspect the answer is: they are a bunch of motivated people who are willing to invest the time to learn how to participate. You would have to ask an editor, which I am not, however. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 2a00:1028:83a0:291e:762f:68ff:fe2d:429e (talk) 00:18, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

@LilaTretikov: You wrote "MV is such peanuts, we should really not be spending our joint mental cycles on." - If it is such "peanuts" for you, then why do you not just switch it to "opt-in" in those 2 wikis? All the wasting of time will be immediately reduced to a minimum! --92.226.45.154 09:13, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

+1. However, i am a bit astonished that, you, Lila, seemingly still not realize why such "peanuts" caused such well-grounded uproar. First, as was explained several times already, it was not caused by MV in itself, but by the behavior of WMF, where on enWP e.g. threating admins and on deWP, superprotect was merely the last straw. This "peanuts" was thus seen as a clear manifestation of an attitude by WMF that we will not accept. Now, we see that we were right in this perception, as Jan-Bart and others are currently laying out their vision for WMF's "future" clearly. There simply will be no more "OUR (community, which includes the WMF)" in this "future". The current "WE" was based on principles such as the 4th mentioned several times here, the rules for WMF office action excemptions and so on. By breaking and ignoring those rules (Jan-Bart: it "applies to some degree"), you have killed this "WE". You also seem to have no idea of how the software you call "antiquated", being software that actually works, relates in comparison to what you spend your money on.

I think, there would be a very time-efficient way to shorten nearly all of these discussions you find so astonishing. I freely translate from User:Micha L. Rieser:

I have a proposal for all current and future WMF members: They all have to write 9 articles of high quality, applying our state-of-the-art rules and methods [i take this to include image upload and inclusion]. The topics will be preselected. They will only research and write the contents for themselves. 3 articles they have to write in the "classical" way. The next 3, however, with VisualEditor. 3 they have to write with the new editing functions of the mobile apps on iPhone/iPad. For the last 3, they are only allowed to upload images with the commons-App. Of those 9 topics, 3 might be irrelevant. It will be guaranteed that some will be proposed for deletion. They will have to provide successful defense in these deletion discussion. For 3, there are sources, but hardly so. When they have done so, and all 9 articles are included in article space, and by that time none of them has been blocked because of rude behavior, they may go on and develop and maintain their software. Let's just see, what kind of software we will then have to expect and how priorities for development will then look. -- Micha 00:39, 20. Aug. 2014 (CEST) PS: in the US, people could call it "eating your own dog food" ...

I suggest Jan-Bart should start first... Ca$e (talk) 09:37, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

---

Dear Lila,

I had the honor to see you in London. I saw with (positive) surprise, how you are responding here. My deep respect for that. Thank you.

I have to admit, that I am very straightforward. But after reading Editors should be spending time on content, right?, not on learning (or dealing with) antiquated software, I can not hold back anymore and have to share my thoughts.

• in fact, learning (and teaching) is a big motivation for me volunteering at Wikipedia
• here are a lot of people, becoming good photographers because they are contributing to Commons, dealing with the difficulties at hand
• here are a lot people, becoming good software developers (you are even temporarily employing some without a high-school diploma) dealing with antiquated software
• here are many people editing code the first time in their life.

Erik asked in London if there are any editors without a certain background, who ever edited templates... I am one of these. I did it, because I saw others were able to do it. 12-year-olds were able to do it. (Because they are aloud to play around.) I experienced a lot of encouragement of my colleagues. So I tried... Doing it the first time it gave me a boost of motivation. Motivation a little "thank you"-notice would never be able to produce, because I had learned something knew. I was able to do something new...

I am spending time on content, to learn... The time I won't learn something new anymore, will be the time I do leave this project and spend my time somewhere else...

I am here, because I was treated with some earnest respect, not as a dump editor, contributing some low-cost-content to an online paper, like The Huffington Post. Wikipedia gave me something back - education, knowledge, self confidence, even some friends. I never wanted to become a regular Wikipedia-editor, but I am. I never wanted to organize an event, cause I did not know how to do. I learned. My second WikiConvention, nevertheless my second one as a member of the organisation-team, will take place 3. to 5. October. The first meeting of Austrian, Czech, German and Polish editors took place in May... followed by a second one with Czech, German and Slovakians in Poland[4]...

Nothing of that would happen, if Editors should be spending time on content, and on content only.

All about Wikipedia and other projects is about learning. Not only about reading a text and contributing text. Taking this away with "hipper software", this experience of doing something new, of helping each other, of seeking and getting help, will do a lot of harm to the movement.[5] More harm, than seeking help of the WMF and getting nothing back, will ever do.[6] The last one is a longtime everyday experience of "just editors", so we learned to expect nothing, the only thing we are hoping for: don't make it worse. Even one click more to be able to edit[7] is worse. A development a company would never tolerate, because it costs time of employees[8] and therefor a lot of their profit.

Today, some of us are feeling used like beeing Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times.[9][10] The only advantage we have: we don't have to build the Tin Lizzy to feed our kids.

Software has to be changing, to improve, not to do the same a different way or to build Potemkin villages and leave the mess behind. New software has to be inviting. 19% of our "future editors" are unaware anyone could edit. Only 6% are not comfortable with tech.

If new potential editors are worth the effort (advertisers are not), today we do start with something people are comfortable with: writing e-mails, encouraging them to use the talk page, showing changes to improve articles, inviting them to edit-a-trons and meetups. It took me months to get a donation of photographs. Time I am willing to spend, writing e-mails, explaining copyright, cc-licenses and the upload-wizard - only to be uploading these pictures myself, waiting for the OTRS-ticket to arrive, half the time. The other half I get nothing. I'd be aloud to use it on Wikipedia, but not with a free license (too much to read). To be able to start a cooperation with a GLAM-institution is a highlight.

The problem we are facing is not an old-style-talk-page or an immature MV. The problem we are facing is: people do not know that there is a talk-page at all. Most readers do not know that there is a history. Readers do not know, that they are able to view a picture with higher resolution by clicking on it. The only thing, most readers do know: there is an article to read. (I got this information while talking to people face to face. People watching me editing and asking questions on a train, in a hotel bar or a library - experiencing for the first time: "I can edit Wikipedia!")

The biggest problem is not the antiquated software at hand. The biggest problem of potential new editors is the unawareness of the possibility to contribute. --Anika (talk) 18:54, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

How we do this

tl;dr: Please don't let Flow make the problem worse as a reaction as to how broken this is now.

You're in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike

--The "Alike" maze in the Colossal Cave Adventure, Will Crowther

We do this with mild annoyance and a lot of experience. Yep, that's a pretty bad thing, and ought ought to be fixed really. I'm going to write a fairly long story about wikis and wikitext here; If you want to be involved in improving that, I think it's important to know some of the background, the prior work, and potential pitfalls along the way. Wikitext - and wikis in general - were created to be able to edit documents collaboratively online. Nothing more, nothing less; see something on a website you think can be done better? If that website is a wiki just go ahead and fix it - without any reading, discussion, red tape, approval committee, delay. Just go in, click edit, change the thing, click save, done. On this foundation Wikipedia was built, and it served us extremely well, at least up until fairly recently.

You have probably noticed that with this model, discussion is just not part of the equation. It doesn't exist. This is very much by design. Be bold! Don't discuss it, just do it! Action before discussion. At Wikipedia we noticed that this does indeed work great in quickly moving forward, but becomes difficult in cases of conflict, and for sharing thoughts, opinions and ideas behind edits. The found solution was simple. Attach a second page to each page, call it a talk page, and use if for discussion. Here, two things went wrong. First, pages of wikitext are not tailored for discussion, and secondly, cross cutting problems that affect multiple pages have no place now.

The first problem was annoying, but not completely impossible; you can construct your own discussion structure on top of wikitext. The advantage is that everyone who wades into a discussion - remember, discussions are secondary to editing the wiki, so by the time you get involved in discussion, you aught to already have a decentish grasp of wikitext - already knows the formatting works, and lo and behold: it actually worked! Plus, it has all the tools we're used to in wikitext! Bonus! Sure, it's not the best software for discussions, but with the added bonus of it being wikitext, and thus being able to discus pieces of the actual article text, it beat the alternatives already present, plus, it can be done with what we have, so no complexity overhead in either the mental model, or the software stack. Double win!

For the second problem, cross cutting concerns, we created a meta namespace to centralize discussions. As the wikimovement grew, and cross-wiki concerns needed to be addressed, we created an entire meta wiki; that is this wiki. It worked, sort of. But discoverability was a problem that was never addressed, and keeping track of which discussion is where, especially once they get moved proved to be a major problem, one we never solved. Meta wiki is fairly small; through recent changes it's possible to keep track of pretty much everything. It's a hack, but a hack that works. It's not, however, a hack that scales. On English Wikipedia for example, it's pretty much impossible to keep track of what's happening through recent changes, even if only the recent changes of the meta namespace are considered. On top of that, there is the overhead of needing to follow meta and your home wiki if you want to keep track of everything. Oh, and if you're interested in what software might be coming to you soon(tm), also keep track of the recent changes on MediaWiki. And the mailinglists (home wiki, mediawiki, wikimedia, wikitech and design) of course, that goes without saying. And better keep an eye on Bugzilla too. Though some projects primarily use Mingle and/or Trello, so those too. Soon the situation will be better if everything switches to Phabricator though. That migration is still in early stages, so for now, while it's a good idea to also keep track of Phabricator for some pilot projects, don't leave the old channels just yet.

But that's insane! I hear you think. Nobody could possibly keep up with all that, and remain productive in writing on the wiki. And you'd be quite right. We don't, generally, keep on top of everything, because there is too much to keep track of. We try to keep track of the important stuff, and let the rest slide. To keep track of the important stuff though, you would have to know what the important stuff is. How do we know? Well, we don't really. Or we notice too late. It should be noted that while the lack of structure and discoverability increases the problem, the problem itself is the sheer volume of meta discussion. There is no real fix for that. The WMF software teams are acutely aware of this problem, as their struggle with it is real. I would easily wager you that if you asked anyone from any software team that had a troubled deployment what went wrong in communications, they would give you an answer that comes down to that there are no universally monitored channels to efficiently communicate in, and that getting conversation started is a major difficulty. Also, that once they find channels have at least some people in it, it turns out those channels are full of unreasonable reactionary critics that don't speak for the entire community. How the people who care greatly about the software correlate with people who are critical of the software, and people who navigate most of the above mentioned maze of different discussion and announcement venues I leave as an exercise to the reader.

The discussion problem hasn't gone completely unaddressed. A community member created Liquid Threads(LT), which addresses some of the shortcomings of the discussion format issue. It had some inherent problems though, was picked up as a WMF project to initially guide and later take over development, iterated to LTv2, needed even deeper refactoring, started to iterate towards LTv3, and was eventually abandoned as ultimately nonviable without re-designing from the ground up, while a competitor that had some similar goals (Flow) which represented the shining light in the glorious future was being also being developed.

Flow, in the mean time, is deeply flawed in its premises. I won't go in to it very deeply here, because that's not what I'm writing about here, but Flow seems to be designed primarily as a means for leaving comments and replying to comments. It reminds me a lot of Disqus, which is absolutely great for leaving comments and replying to comments, and I think Flow, despite having some rough edges at first, will succeed in this goal. Having a discussion meanwhile has very little to nothing to do with leaving comments and replying to them. As such it's no replacement for talk pages. If nothing drastic happens it will be the next major shit storm, and I will take absolutely no pleasure in saying "told you so" when it happens (but I will). I hope I'll be proven wrong.

There is a reasonble line of thought that goes roughly like this: "We have problems with discussions" -> "These problems are large, and need priority" -> "Flow fixes problems with discussion pages" -> "Putting more resources towards implementing flow will help our goals". That reasoning is mostly wrong though. The major problems with discussions is keeping track of them, archiving them transparently, and not overwhelming the potential reader with their quantity. It primarily fixes the wrong problem (and as I explained earlier fixes the wrong problem in the wrong way IMO)! Just take a look at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow#Rationale : All expectations that are violated can be viewed as reasonable expectations, that should reasonably be honored (except IMO that it supposedly is a problem conversations can currently nest to infinite depth. Deep discussion require, well, depth), but they are hardly the greatest problems we currently have with discussions. Just take a look at yourself; you started editing here, and got stuff wrong initially: problems with signatures, problems with where to reply and put your post/reply, what to social conventions are with indentation as a marker of who replied to what, and the good old turn-off called wikitext. Flow will fix all of that. But ultimately all of that is a hurdle that can be fairly easily taken. The penalty for doing that stuff wrong is extremely small: someone will say "hey, you did x wrong. I fixed it for you, you can do it like y in the future". Remember that a fundamental part of a wiki is that if you do something valuable, but do it wrong, someone else will fix it, retain the value, and no harm is done.

edit: I forgot this paragraph, which I inserted after Ca$e replied. As such Ca$e may no longer support everything they wrote (though I doubt it). Sue me ;) The real problem however occurred after the discussion was moved off your talkpage. Where is it now? Where is the context? Where is its history? Are there related discussions somewhere? Where would that be. Are there other discussions elsewhere that are important to the same issues? Where should this discussion be held in the first place? Are there people who would want to see that discussion, but don't see it now? How do you drive this damn thing? Isn't that the problem we need to solve, rather than having signatures inserted automatically, automatic indentations, or limiting maximum thread depth? I would be inclined to say it is. Flow doesn't do a thing to help that.

I lied though. The real stinker here in my opinion is that flow also fixes some of the problems of keeping track of discussions. So it does help with the original greater problem! Pinning our hopes on Flow to at least assist us in making the situation less terrible hinges on Flow actually getting implemented, and because of all of the other stuff, I doubt that will happen in any overseeable time frame - at least without forcing it and/or using superprotect to ensure it. That's a situation nobody wants to find themselves in, and I think we're already made a fair bit of headway into that road. If that happens (again: it will) all the good things in Flow will have an even harder time of finding their way to the wikis and being accepted as the way forward. When people will reject it, or find their way around it, they will find their way around all of it.

It would be really nice if I didn't just have all the questions, but also had all the answers. I don't, I wish I knew how to fix this problem. I can tell you Flow isn't it though, and that it can, in fact, hurt to try. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 10:05, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Martijn, i agree with almost all you of your explanations and hope that they will shed light on critical aspects many WMF employees obviously neglected. In addition, i already commented on Flow on this page: "Flow definitely will impossibly ever work. People who stand behind Flow have evidently no idea how e.g. the actual moderation of discussions works in a very fluent collaborative project that is trolled more every second, that by the minute needs to move discussion threads from here to there, that needs frequent and convenient cutting and pasting of subthreads, on-the-fly indentions, adaptions of signatures, almost all and much more of that also to be done by bots, etc etc. If Flow could be made completely backward-compatible and then also serve a special opt-in role might be open for discussion, but i severely doubt it, maybe subparts of its code could be reused within a proper project design." Just have a look at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow#Rationale and subtopics like "How will Flow handle spam and vandalism?" as well as "Will we be able to edit other people's posts?" and then go and follow a few days how we actually manage high-impact discussion pages, how many subthreads we have to modify, move, rearrange, etc, sometimes on a per-hour basis, and of course not only by admins. All of this already is a very unwelcome business for us, who would much rather focus on direct content creation and improvement, but every single additional click or wasted second in managing discussions would scale immensely. We will never take it upon us to moderate discussions with Flow, which for many cases would already be impossible from the start. Hence, if Flow would become implemented across WP talk pages, this would simply stop our involvement. In a few months, you could then simply freeze or trash WP, as without usable talk pages - and unmanaged discussions become useless in all cases of higher discussion volume -, there would be no more means to resolve conflicts and direct content development from quality erosion to improvements in quality. (We already explained all of this and much more several times and years ago, but, as with other stubborn WMF behavior, we are simply ignored!) Ca$e (talk) 10:45, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, my outlook isn't as bleak as yours. I suspect that Flow will just go largely unused, and more discussion will move to WP: space, which are not talk pages, so won't have any Flow involvements - like ANI, RFARB, and all other noticeboards already are. Possibly Flow will have positive attributes, and the "comment" style can actually work for articles in conjunction with normal talk pages. Time will tell. When confronted with a choice to leave a comment or to edit the article, I fear there will be more readers who do the former, and less who do the latter, and while bleeding out reader/editor conversion, even the comments themselves will barely be used to improve the article. Things like third opinions and small RfC's, smaller move discussions, content disputes, etc. etc. that are now done on an articles talk would move over to WP: space, which would make things less transparent for the reader rather than more inviting to get in to. I would regard that as a mostly failure, and I don't want that to happen. We could actually use something better than current talk (though I maintain that it's not as important as it's made out to be), and there are good parts in Flow. In short, the wiki won't explode, due to the terribleness of Wikitext we're accustomed to working around stuff that doesn't work for us, and I expect that to happen with Flow. But I can hardly call that a positive outcome, especially if it will cause the useful parts of Flow to be dismissed as "just another part of the thing we don't want to use". Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:05, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Flow breaks the possibility to include tables into discussions, it breaks the both the (different) publishing processes in English and German Wikinews, it would also makie it neary impossible to discuss category structures using trees (with asteriskses) and tables, it also hinders the collaborative editing of tect proposals (like in case when article page is full protected, e.g. due to editwar). Flow is just another dead end project and should be abandonded ASAP. --Matthiasb (talk) 17:09, 29 August 2014‎ (UTC)

Hi all, I'll keep my answers somewhat brief, in the hopes that you come discuss Flow in greater detail, over at mw:Talk:Flow. Overall, Flow is a long way off from being ready for wide-deployment. They need and want your feedback/suggestions/bugreports/feature-demands/questions, so that Flow will eventually grow into something that we all want.

@Matthiasb: Tables and lists work completely normally in Flow, as does almost all wikimarkup; see this topic for example. There were some statements about Flow a year ago (from staff and volunteers), that were either inaccurate at the time, or are no longer accurate. There are still a few missing or buggy elements (categories and <math> at the moment), but they're being worked on. Tables, templates, refs, and markup, all work as expected.

@Ca$e: The usergroups that are able do certain actions can all be changed (even per-wiki, and possibly per-namespace or per-page). It could all be opened entirely, or tweaked based on specific needs.

Moderation actions are getting re-examined soon - they're adding (rollback|undo) links to the history pages soon (so we'll have feature-parity there) - the additional/new buttons in the dropdown menu can be adapted/improved based on our feedback.

Move/Split/Merge features are all planned, and are crucial elements before it is widely deployed.

Most importantly, the Flow API is fully functional (albeit not very well documented yet), so bots can work with Flow content already. In the future, with more feedback and development by everyone, bots and scripted-tools should be even more powerful than they are with wikitext, because each person's Flow post is a distinct chunk rather than potentially spanning many ::::indents, and each topic is distinct so it can be categorized (or #tagged as some people have suggested) or used in multiple places (eg. a deletion discussion could be inserted into the article-talkpage itself, as well as a central deletion board, plus any wikiproject-specific boards).

@Martijn Hoekstra: Your explanation starting this section is great. Thank you.

Re: "[...] after the discussion was moved off your talkpage [...]" - The Flow devs are collaborating with the Search devs, now that Cirrussearch is stable and widely-deployed. Helping people to find existing/old discussions, is one aspect that Flow should easily handle. It could (potentially) work like bugzilla's "possible duplicates" suggester, when we start typing a new topic title. It already does keep the Topic's history separate from the Board's history (as well as duplicating it into the Board history, for consistency with the regular wikipages), so when we move/archive/etc a topic in Flow, the history will follow right along (unlike our usual cut&paste archives).

Flow should eventually end up, (imo) as powerful and useful as gmail crossed with yahoo pipes, for working with all the elements of collaboration that it needs to eventually handle. But it needs a lot of time, and more importantly a lot of (forward-looking, large-scale & fine-detail feedback/experiment loop) input from us, for it to get there.

I hope that helps, and that you'll become regular collaborators over at mw:Talk:Flow. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 04:52, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, so that Flow will eventually grow into something that we all want hopefully it will not. If you're talking of the version history. It's confusing, simply not practicable. I don't want Flow, and I hope that most other Wikipedia users share my opinion. --Matthiasb (talk) 13:37, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your commments @Quiddity (WMF):. It's never fun when somebody is critical about something you're putting a lot of passion in making, and I appreciate you're responses. My two main concerns still stand though; firstly that the main discussion problem we have is one of tracking and discovering discussions, and that Flow currently does something, but little to remedy that, and secondly, because to me it still feels mainly as a commenting system (in that regard it suffers the same problems as LT). Keeping track of who is replying to whom in a complex discussion is just hard. The "Disqus" way out, limiting reply depth is far better UX for brief comments and replies than what we have now, but that is the case we need reform for the least; it's the complex, deeply nested, deeply intertwined discussions that are a mess now, and I'm not seeing Flow make it better, or that better coming from the "discourage complex discussion, because complex discussion makes for terrible UX" model. When it comes to organizing discussions, apart from all the non-wiki venues, for which flow doesn't really help much either, I'd much rather see bug 3525[11] (links from mw m w) (from 2005!) solved, than a completely new way to approach talk pages. I see no mention of Flow in that bug, nor in bug 64475[12] (links from mw m w). The main point I was trying to make with this post is that while Flow does some great things, it will not solve the general communication problem, and solving that problem seems to be an afterthought compared to easier comments - in a workflow that is not currently part of our workflow, and stand to debate whether or not it should be - and prettier design. At the same time I can guess (though honestly this is just guesswork at this point) that Flow is being sold as a great way to reduce the complexities mentioned here, and I think that's an unreasonable representation of Flow. That is basically what this post was about. @Mathhiasb: if you're saying it's confusing and simply not practicable, the goal of making it into somthing we all want is obviously to fix that. I don't find your objection to making it better because you don't like how it is now reasonable. wheras I find mine completely reasonable. Obviously Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 16:36, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

To clarify: I don't want to rise the impression that I do not appreciate you work, Quiddity (et.al.), it even seems that compared with other WMF software projects we saw in recent time the Flow project workers pay really attention to user feedback and develop a software feature with trying to avoid to rollout a prealpha version all over Wikipedia – this is quite an achievement for itself. For an, as Martijn pointed out, "Disqus" alike usage it seems to be good, stable and pretty, but it isn't a feature usable in Wikipedia. I think it is very adequate for pages where mostly (if only) not-editing users ("readers") comment, for ex. within the "opinion" namespace in English Wikinews (equivalent to "Meinungen" namespace in German Wikinews). But not in article talk pages, project talk pages and the like. One reason is that talk pages ever are also a kind of sandbox/tutot area for teaching new users how to edit articles. Talk pages also are used as area for drafting parts of articles collaboratively in cases in which the article itself is protected (perhaps due to an editwar). --Matthiasb (talk) 19:25, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

On the last sentence: this use case for talk pages being used to collaboratively draft article text was already flagged up just over a year ago, and was at least seen by developers [13]. Incidentally part of that thread provides an interesting insight into how WMF paid staff viewed the attempts of volunteers ("these people") to discuss their requirements. Whether the use case was accepted by developers and integrated into the design and code, I couldn't say: shortly after that I decided I was wasting my time trying to engage with the design process. Deltahedron (talk) 19:58, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

(after edit conflict) @Martijn Hoekstra:: True, I don't like it. Or better said: I don't like the imagination that Flow changes the way how we were discussing in Wikipedia for years. And I cannot imagine Flow when discussions get out of hand like German Wikipedia:Kurier talk page (caution! at this moment about one megabyte of length) with hundreds of contributions by several dozens of contributors in tens of more or less active threads and sub-threads. I understood that Flow at this moment would not be able to handle such discussions at all, but I even can't imagine to scroll through the page if that page was already done Flow-ish. At my screen resolution I counted 201 page downs to reach the end of the page. Can you imagine how many screen pages would it count if that talk page would have been edited in Flow?? (Note that in German Wikipedia it is rather unusual to archive subthreads on its own but not before the whole thread can be archived.) I also cannot imagine special cases like tables and preformatted texts in Flow, which are not rare even in category deletion discussions. (Note that the linked page shows both examples but technically is not a talk page; I used it because of both examples appear on one page. An example where tables have been used on a real AfD page ist this page. This example shows both lengthy comments and tables on a user talk page.) --Matthiasb (talk) 20:00, 30 August 2014 (UTC), 20:28, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

We were assured a year ago that the Flow team "have a pretty good idea of what our existing users need" [14]. So there's nothing to worry about, is there? Deltahedron (talk) 20:17, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Your statement is meant ironically? --Matthiasb (talk) 20:19, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes. Last year's discussion was an instructive experience for me, but not, I think, a good model for user engagement. Deltahedron (talk) 20:23, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

@Matthiasb: that is a fine example I think of the way where the WMF struggles with communicating with the rest of us. It's fine IMO to say you think you don't see it changing into something we all want. It's fine to say which inherent problems you see with it. But saying that you don't want it to change in to something we all want to use because you don't like what it's now is simply not helpful, and I understand engineerings tendencies to stop listening to such complaints and stop engaging. Reacting like that makes the problem - and the delivered products - worse, because they should listen to our concerns. Phrasing them in a way they can work with to address those concerns, even if there is (justifiable) anger and frustration in it (for example Deltahedrons persistent insistence on acceptable math support and rendering) should be a no-brainer. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 09:55, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Since you mention my efforts, perhaps I'll describe them briefly, although I'm sure Lila knows all about them. My early, individual, efforts were not very successful, as you might expect, and I met with reactions from WMF staff ranging from accepting some points, through a regetful lack of resources, via patronising, condescension and on to deliberate obstruction, childish sulking, outright hostility, personal attacks and dishonesty. At Jimmy Wales's suggestion a group of mathematics editors put together a set of proposals for what might be done in the short term, and how we might work with WMF to improve communication, plan future work, align volunteer effort and get mathematics support appropriately included in the WMF roadmap. Jimmy was enthusiastic and actually forwarded to Lila and the WMF Board with his support. Unfortunately Lila decided that she was unable to allocate resources to any of our proposals. That is her decision to make and I for one am not going to try and change it, although others may wish to do so. As far as I'm concerned, the question is what to do next. I will continue to remind people of the existence of mathematics, but perhaps more out of habit than as a reliastic strategy for actually getting anything done -- it may occasionally help things at the margin and postpone the final catastrophe. For volunteer developers, of whom I am not one, their next step may well be to put together packages of work that WMF would permit them to do, or possibly even fund -- unfortunately WMF does not (yet) have satisfactory processes that would allow that to happen, and indeed it was one of the proposals Lila rejected. In the absence of support and improvement, or any plans or resources, the current and likely future state of Wikipedia and other WMF projects for people like me who want to write and edit mathematics is declining and likely to become unsustainable. For mathematics writers, I fear that the answer is almost certainly "leave". Without mathematics, Wikipedia's claim to represent the sum of human knowledge would be, I think, quite ludicrously false, but that is a risk that I assume Lila and the Board have assessed and are happy with. Deltahedron (talk) 11:02, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

This is Lila's talk page, and so I think it only fair to highlight the issues that she needs to be interested in, which are not the specific details of any bugs, deficiencies or missing pieces in Flow. I think the issues for her are probably along the lines of

• was the overarching vision for Flow the right one, and is it compatible with the way people work, or want to work? is that vision still valid?
• did the initial Flow requirements capture and design processes work adequately, and what lessons about engagement with the community could be learned from them?
• is Flow on the right track? will it deliver what is wanted, on time, and to budget? does it need more or different resources of any kind?
• what further engagements with the community are required to flesh out the vision of Flow as a workflow engine across the language communities and projects? how should those engagements be structured? can they be achieved?
• should Flow as a project be continued as is, modified, or terminated?

I think that's the sort of thing Lila will need to consider. Deltahedron (talk) 20:33, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

The problems of retention and training, new editors and veteran editors, are a big part what I've long had in mind when I've said that en.wn is key to the wikimedian sisterhood because it tackles head-on, day-to-day, in concentrated form, problems that the rest of the sisterhood would eventually realize it desperately needs to address. Why the problems are so concentrated at en.wn: we have a very short timeframe in which we require an article to go from nothing to something comparable to English Wikipedia's confirmed good article status — and it doesn't get published until and unless it gets there within the timeframe. Any veteran wikimedian contributor could probably write up a tolerably accurate list, off the top of their head, of major logistical difficulties with doing this. The thing is, over the years English Wikinews has learned a great deal about how to address the problems; we implement some of it routinely, which is why we still exist at all, and for other parts of it we've been developing software for several years, which is now on the brink of serious deployment. Key to the design of the software, both in its creation and in its intended use, is that good software design decisions for a wiki project are expected to come from experienced project contributors.

What the software is: machinery that acts, behind the scenes, to let users specify, in wiki markup, interactive wiki pages that amount to interactive wizards for doing... anything the wiki community wants a wizard for. The point is that these wizards are edited directly by the community, using the markup language they already know (so that there's no language-differential barrier to moving smoothly from content editing to wizard editing); as a long-time wikimedian contributor, it had, to be honest, seemed obvious to me that the wiki community ought to be directly creating these wizards since 100% of the knowledge needed to design the wizards resides in the community — and "cutting out the middleman" is one of the key concepts that make wikis work. (There's a fascinating contrast between this strategy, which came naturally to me as a veteran wiki contributor, and the strategy behind VisualEditor.)

How does this help (beyond the obvious, of wizards making things easier to do and the software making wikards easier for the community to grow)?

1. Wizards for newcomers allow the newcomers to produce higher-quality contributions from the start. Newcomers are less often frustrated as their contributions are less likely to warrant simple rejection, and veterans are less burdened in coping with low-quality contributions.
2. Wizards for veterans allow them to vet more material, not only faster and with less effort, but potentially with greater accuracy and quality control, and provide more prompt, helpful, and encouraging feedback. Interactions between newcomers and veterans are more useful and more satisfying for both sides.

--Pi zero (talk) 13:23, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Working Together

Thank you everyone for the insights and arguments you’ve shared with me and each other over the past week -- I am continually using them to inform my thinking. Your passion is undeniable, and I want you to know that my passion for this movement is too. I’ve read what you’ve sent my way these past few days. In return I want to share with you my thoughts on where I think we are, and where we need to be.

The Board brought me into this project in order to lead a transformation at the WMF. I accepted the challenge because I believe you’ve created an incredible project that has changed the way the world experiences knowledge. However, I also believe both your contributions and our movement’s mission are at risk of being lost as a result of changing technologies, much as Encyclopedia Britannica was in the 90s.

This means we must make some changes. And we must make them together. I spoke about this at a high level at Wikimania, but in action this means we must:

• Improve our process for software design, user and community feedback, and operations;
• Learn how to work together through disagreements and make decisions that have global impact with objectivity;
• Improve our product consistency globally and think of ourselves as the world’s source of free knowledge;
• Increase the responsiveness and speed at which we develop and deliver product; and the rate of innovating; and
• Do this with mutual understanding and respect.

This weekend I posted a set of questions here, on my talk page. They represent the issues I am grappling with, and the things I wish to understand in order to assess the specifics of changes we need to make. I appreciate the responses you’ve shared so far, and look forward to receiving more. I would like to quote Martijn Hoekstra, who stated on this page that it is “the burden of the person with the initiative to initiate the dialog. In case of WMF software projects, that's the WMF.” We are going to do that.

I want you to know that I hear you, as different as you all are. Everyone has legitimate concerns about the current situation: not just the recent issue involving the WMF and the de.wp community, but the ways in which we work together overall. I actively engaged with you to solve this. We need to transform our conversations into an ongoing and improving process with common goals.

While we are all part of a larger community, we have different tasks. Of our movement entities, the Wikimedia Foundation is in the unique position to lead the continued development of the technology making these projects possible. This means we understand ourselves as a technology organization. This also means we are a global organization responsible for technology powering 800+ projects.

Yet many of you need to be able to influence and affect the direction our projects take -- this means being heard and taken into account even on things you don’t directly work on. We need to find a way for all of the contributors from all of those 800+ projects to participate. You need opportunities to review the development of product earlier and during critical junctures. Our approaches need to evolve and mature. We need to find a better way to collaborate.

The WMF is a part of our community -- the part that is responsible for developing and maintaining software and servers. We all want to want to participate in deciding which features get implemented and how, but the current approach of voting on them post-rollout is disruptive and inefficient. We need to change our processes so that they are iterative, incremental, and inclusive of feedback throughout. We understand that our recent decision to restrict edits to site-wide JavaScript on German Wikipedia was a surprising move that upset a significant number of people - we’re sorry for that. At the same time, it gave visibility to an important issue: we need a better mechanism for managing changes that impact all users -- the way the MediaWiki: namespace works right now is not sustainable. Let's use this opportunity to improve.

At the WMF, we’re preparing to unprotect the disputed page on German Wikipedia, but we need to do so within a framework that allows us to come to reasonable resolutions -- giving everyone a voice and a say in the process, but also understanding WMF’s leadership role in technology. We will post thoughts on how this can be accomplished (and in what timeframe), in partnership, in coming days, starting with a brainstorming process.

As part of this process, we have heard feedback that WMF employees should have distinct accounts for their WMF-related actions as opposed to their personal actions on the projects. We accept that feedback and will put in place such a system within the next month.

In summary:

• You have my commitment that we will work towards a constructive resolution of this current and any future disputes together and in good faith.
• We intend to undertake a review of our present processes immediately and propose a new approach that allows for feedback at more critical and relevant junctures in the next 90 days. This will be a transparent process that includes your voices.
• We will establish improved centralized communications for all wiki software changes.
• All future updates and current developments will be based on this new process.
• For the purpose of additional clarity regarding roles and responsibilities, we will put in place a clear distinction between work and personal accounts for all WMF employees by September 15.

I hope we can agree to exercise restraint in this transformative time so we can work together in good faith and in concert. As Magnus Manske said in his recent blog, “the house that is Wikipedia cannot stand without a foundation, and a foundation without a house on top is but a dirty pond.”

Thank you, -- LilaTretikov (talk) 16:22, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Working Together Comments

Dear Lila, thank you very much, i really appreciate this notice. However, i cannot agree with your proposition "the current approach of voting on them post-rollout is disruptive and inefficient". This should rather read: The current approach of WMF of ignoring important (among them legal) issues, clearly and repeatedly voiced months ahead, and nevertheless rolling out broken und unfixed software, is disruptive and inefficient. Also, i do not agree that establishing "product consistency globally" would be in every case fortunate. Especially, communities should decide on the status of critical new software (beta/opt-out/opt-in) and also, opting-out should always be possible when proposed new software does not include all capabilities of working software (please - as has already been spelled out above - keep this in mind for future software projects). Again, please check out Jimbo's principles: "Any changes to the software must be gradual and reversible. We need to make sure that any changes contribute positively to the community, as ultimately determined by the Wikimedia Foundation, in full consultation with the community consensus." This implies that you should never, ever, find yourself in a position to enforce critical software changes, and especially not broken software like MV, against evident community consensus. Can we agree on this principle? (Else, the conditions for "working together" would have to be rewritten from the start, and it would be very open which part of current communities would accept the outcome. I suspect: not very many!) Ca$e (talk) 17:07, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

We are looking in the particular issue of potential legal implication. If it is a legal issue -- it will be treated as a blocker. If not, we will attempt to fix. From what I understand the issues is affecting about 1% of the images, but I have asked to confirm. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 21:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

CC-BY_SA-3.0 requires at a minimum such credit will appear, if a credit for all contributing authors of the Adaptation or Collection appears, then as part of these credits and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors. [4.c.iv]

Legal issues are two-fold:

1. By breaking this term we are breaking copyright law on around (by your 1% estimate) 220,000 images. (Of course some are PD.)

2. By selectively breaking copyright the Foundation is not acting neutrally, and hence could loose DMCS safe harbour protections under section 230.

Rich Farmbrough 15:23 20 August 2014 (GMT).

Hi Rich,

No, you are not correct that the failure to support the {{Credit line}} template in its current form represents "attribution breakage" for 1% of content. Please take a look at how this template is actually used. Here is an example that includes more than an author name. Both the credit line template and the media viewer attribution include the link to http://www.poczta-polska.pl/mw (which is a 404, but that's a different story). Why? Because that link is cited as a source, and Media Viewer always includes the source in the attribution info.

There are very few cases where the credit line template includes information that's not included in any of the other fields. In addition, it repeats information like author name and license. The license is sometimes not hyperlinked, which is actually inconsistent with licensing requirements and best practices. The template as a whole violates the software design principle of Don't repeat yourself -- repetition introduces error. It also does not emit its machine-readable data in parts (only for the content of the template as a whole), so it cannot be rendered consistently with other forms of attribution.

Here's an example invocation, which is not atypical. Some licenses are linked, others aren't, and the GFDL link goes to the Wikipedia article!

In our view, the template should probably be deprecated in favor of a better solution, e.g. an "other credit" field in the information template that is added alongside author name and source in the rare cases where that is desirable. Supporting a poorly conceived template would perpetuate its use, which ultimately is not in the intrerest of the community.

I suggest rather than focusing on layman's interpretations of licensing terms and safe harbour provisions, we focus on what the desired behavior is/should be, and how to deal with the (as everyone acknowledges) messy templates we need to parse, because this enables us to help all re-users of our content to do not only what's legally defensible, but what's right.--Eloquence (talk) 05:10, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Erik, surely these issues about the legal requirements for MV, and the legal advice you took, and how in the light of tha advice MV was going to get the information it needed to be licence compliant, and where from, and how to capture and parse the data it needed from the various media-related templates, were all resolved during the design phase? Rather than taking up your valuable time explaining them, why not just post, or point to, the design documents in which those issues were addressed?

BTW, while I myself am certainly a layman in the field of intellectual property law, which is why I don't comment on it, it's probable that the community contains people who are much more expert than me, and possibly even than you, on that or indeed any other given subject. Why not find and make use of that expertise rather than dismissing the entire discussion? Again, if you know on the basis of the legal input to the design process that the discussion is indeed misconceived, then again all you have to do is exhibit it. And if these issues are being discussed for the first time ever, then something is wrong. Deltahedron (talk) 06:44, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

A few quick points:

• We of course did ongoing legal discussion of the design for mediaviewer before it went into production. The mediaviewer team has been quite good about reaching out to the Foundation's legal team.
• CC requires that attribution be "reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing" (3.0 BY-SA 4(c); similar language in 1.0, 2.0, and 4.0). This flexibility is granted so that users of the material can innovate while still respecting the spirit of the license. (This is how we can use Flickr-imported pictures in the encyclopedias without in-line license statements, for example.)
• Given the vast diversity of license templates on the projects, and the varying quality of the metadata available, we made a good-faith effort to combine design with the metadata we had (including links to the license), plus a fallback of links to the original image source. I was comfortable approving that design as having attribution that was compliant with CC in a way that was "reasonable to the medium". (In practice, I actually think the more prominent and clear licensing and attribution information is often more compliant with the spirit of the license than the average File: page.)
• It will, of course, be more reasonable if there is post-release improvement of data and code- any good measurement of reasonableness will include an assessment of the intent and activity of everyone involved. In this case, that means it is important for all of us to keep working to improve both the code and the metadata. Thanks to everyone who has helped with this so far - I'm very glad to see so many people pitching in to help improve the situation. (By the way, the people who are helping improve the metadata are not just helping mediaviewer - as I mentioned in my talk at Wikimania, I am expecting many other automated tools, like Commons Machinery, to be popping up in upcoming years, and the more we can standardize and clean up our metadata for them, the better.)
• We did not review every single licensing-related template; there are literally thousands, often used in very complex ways. (The credit line template is only the 247th most used template on Commons, and roughly 26th for purely-license-related templates.) The right approach, when faced with an engineering problem of this scale, and flexible legal constraints like those in CC, is not to demand legal perfection. Instead, we have to be fair and be bold, and work to find and address problems as they come up. And that is what is going on.

That's the analysis in a nutshell. —Luis Villa (WMF) (talk) 09:05, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

IANL, so my question may seem a bit pragmatic: Why not simply disable the MV for files, where the licence can not be read in a proper way, and show only media with up to date licence templates in the MV? Sounds quite simple to me: Is there a machine readable licence? Use MV. Is there no such thing? Go to ordinary media page.

Same could be applied for long and elaborated descriptions, like legends for maps etc. If it could be shown in an appropriate way, use MV, if not, don't use it.

Maps without the legend are usually useless, pics without the proper licence are perhaps against some laws.

--109.235.137.238 12:06, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

@109.235.137.238: Yes, something like that would be manageable, as would letting MV explicitly state its imperfection in such cases be (as e.g. i told Erik previously on this page). @LuisV: Thanks. It is a noteworthy idea that serving incorrect license information could be simply covered by being "bold". In what capacity do you conclude that this solves the legal problems especially for mislead re-users? I wonder, will they, when indicted, also be able to say they were just "bold" and MV told them that is was alright? A subset of the problems are, btw, the same as described in another context here. Among others, note cases where MV does not advice re-users to state the license but only the creator. Ca$e (talk) 14:22, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Of course, I didn't say that being bold solves problems. I said that being bold is an acceptable approach when you've analyzed the license, made strong efforts to address as many problems as you can, and are committed (as we are) to solving new problems that are identified after you've taken action.

In the specific case of attribution problems, I agree that this is something we need to be careful about. But this is not a new problem. In many current Commons pages it is extremely difficult for mere mortals to understand how to do proper attribution- I've struggled with it myself in making slides, for example, and answer questions about how to do attribution all the time. For example, some of the DRY problems that Erik has pointed out are also confusing to regular users visiting File: pages. Improving our metadata will hopefully have the side-effect of making the situation better for those who visit File: pages as well. —Luis Villa (WMF) (talk) 16:22, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

The suggestion to disable MV for those pages that have a problem parsing license or attribution information is, I think, actually a great idea. I love it because it sets a clear course and managble workitems. If we can do that, and make a list of images of which the metadata can't be properly parsed we hit two birds with one stone. First, it takes all doubts and concerns about copyright issues off the table (regardless of their juridical merit, or if they are primarily moral concerns or juridical concerns - personally, I tend to be more worried about the former). Second, it gives the community a list of items to work on the meta data on, which is not only useful for MV but also for other projects. I'm still not without concerns about MV, but if we can take one of the concerns that resonate with many people of the table, that's a great win. We could ask the de.wiki community what they think. How do we gauge if this is acceptable for the WMF? (It just occurred to me that this question and all answers I can reasonably come up with all end in irony). Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 17:33, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Not a crazy question- thanks for posing it respectfully. As I said, as a lawyer, I don't think that the license is actually being violated in the vast majority of cases. As an engineer, we know that on a data set this varied and complex, actually deploying the code is one of the best ways to discover bugs and to encourage people to fix them. (It isn't ideal, as I said above, but individually assessing thousands of templates is also not very practical.) So that's the basic rationale.

If, at some point, there remains a very large number of intractable problems, then I expect that disabling the tool automatically for those problematic files will be one of the options on the table. But this will also prevent functionality for other automated tools, so we should really strive to improve the metadata of those files to the greatest extent possible, not just for mediaviewer, but for other purposes in the future (both internally and externally).—Luis Villa (WMF) (talk) 16:22, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

But wouldn't that have been the duty of those, who so desperately wanted this bling-thing, that they even went as far as putsched against the community by deploying illegitimate weapons of might (superprotect)? The concept of "Shove the rubbish on the populace, and see what's all going downhill" that you propose is imho not really a good one, definitely not, if the populace in some bigger substructures (enWP, deWP, Commons) is clear against it.

I completely fail to see any urgency here, I even fail to see any try to look after this problem beforehand (Erik made some far too late attempt to cover his tracks of negligence here, nearly two weeks past his Putsch), not trying to lock the stable after the horse has bolted. It was known since at least November, is there any track record what has been done by the fan-boys of this bling-thing to deal with the problem in the reality, not some imagined fairyland of machine readable templates?

If the mentioned restrictions to only suitable media files would have been used, perhaps even with a "ping" to the devs every time the MV didn't get used because of unsuited reality for the desired feature, the scope of the problem, whether it's really just some minor fringe problem, as you seem to proclaim, or whether it's more widespread, as deWP thinks, would be better recognizable as well.

You just sweep the problems under the carpet, to get nothing in the way of the newest pet project of the WMF, even use brutal force against the communities that dare to disagree, and seem to think everything's just fine.

No, it definitely is not! --Sänger S.G (talk) 17:17, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Specifically with regards to CC BY-SA 4.c.iv, which Rich raised above:

"CC-BY_SA-3.0 requires at a minimum such credit will appear, if a credit for all contributing authors of the Adaptation or Collection appears, then as part of these credits and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors. [4.c.iv]"

If I understand correctly, the complaint here is that the group of images that can be shown in the gallery/slideshow mode is a Collection, and any inconsistency in attribution of this Collection violates this clause. Assuming that's the complaint (and please correct me if I'm wrong!) there are several problems with the complaint.

• Your quotation of that section of the license cut out the "reasonable manner" part which immediately precedes your quote ("The credit required by this Section 4(c) may be implemented in any reasonable manner..."). See my analysis above for why, given the inconsistent state of metadata on the projects, some inconsistency in attribution - especially inconsistency that people are working to remedy over time - can be compatible with a "reasonable manner" of giving credit.
• The language you quote is intended to cover the case of a combined list that credits all authors of the Collection in one place, not scattered credits all over. That is why it says if "a credit for all ... authors" and "as part of these credits". (Remember, a Collection is a thing like a collection of poems, where you might put all the poets in one list in the front of the book.) Mediaviewer doesn't have such a single list, so this language doesn't apply.
• Tangentially, most (though not all) slideshows, in our context, will not be Collections, since there will not be enough "intellectual creation". (In the US, groups of four or fewer images - which would be the slideshows for many, if not most, articles - never qualify as a creative work.) But we wouldn't want to focus too much on that, since certainly some particularly large galleries might qualify.

Again, I'm not saying this is perfect - I do think it would be ideal to make the attributions as full and consistent as possible. But while all of us (both those helping clean up metadata and those writing code) are working towards that goal, it is not a violation of the Creative Commons licenses to have an imperfect attribution system, as long as the key elements are present in a reasonable way. And they are here. —Luis Villa (WMF) (talk)

There's surprisingly little about community engagement in your analysis. At what point did you engage with the community, especially the people who wrote and use those templates, to discover what the issues were between the proposed MV interfaces and the then-existing templates and licensing-related data? How much use did you make of their experience of the complexity of licensing data that occurs in practce? Surely by now there should have been some convergence between the MV requirements for input and the data output by templates? Deltahedron (talk) 17:02, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

As there again are a few postings beside the crucial points below (not of course by you, Rich!), i want to make sure you, Lila, or the legal consultants you are asking, get at least aspects of the basic problem: Check out examples like https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:2014_-_Olympic_Stadium_(Athens).JPG#mediaviewer/Datei:2014_-_Olympic_Stadium_(Athens).JPG . Neither copyright holder nor correct license information are given via MV and especially not with the function to provide a re-usable inclusion code. It has been pointed at many times, but i should probably state it even once more: CC-by-sa 3.0 requires to give appropriate credit, provide licensing information, e.g. by a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. Omitting the link to the correct license is also a breach of licensing. Ca$e (talk) 15:10, 21 August 2014 (UTC) PS: Also, check https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69496 . Ca$e (talk) 10:04, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear ca$e, the way the viewer works (the only way it can work) is by extracting machine-readable information via an API. There's a standard for such machine-readable info that the community has developed, here. It's evaluated by the CommonsMetadata API. We made efforts to reach out to the communities as early as November to collaborate on the adaptation of templates [15] [16]. However, I'll acknowledge that these efforts didn't go far enough. The viewer links through to the File: page as a fallback with a clear "View license" label, and for cases where there isn't even a standard template on the file page, it's hard to do better. Really in those cases the only way to fix this is to fix the descriptions -- this doesn't just affect tools like the viewer, but practically any automated re-use. So we really have a shared interest in addressing any remaining cases irrespective of what you think about the viewer. We just posted a fix for the German {{Information}} template here and are happy to apply it ourselves if desired. This should do the trick, but we'll help if there are still are problems after it's applied.--Eloquence (talk) 16:55, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

My own opinions do not matter. I would just switch it off. I am concerned for our users. What you should do in case you cannot give necessary information is say so. This especially holds for the function where re-using users should get a working URL with author + linked license info. When MV cannot give it, it should not misleadingly suggest so. This, however, is only my personal opinion. On a completely different point stands the deWP community consensus and the way you reacted to it. Ca$e (talk) 16:59, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Regarding your mail from November 2013: In relation to your colleague's misinformation that "announcements are posted through a number of channels" (see below), posting it to only an obscure mailing list is rather ridiculous. Further, am right in taking this as clear proof that 1) you knew especially of this problem since November, that 2) you knew that you communicated it unsuccesfully, that 3) you knew that communities had not yet themselves provided means so that MV could serve correct license information in those cases, that 4) you knew that we knew of this and warned you especially explicitly in our Meinungsbild, but that 5) you nevertheless chose to ignore this Meinungsbild and enforce a software of which you knew that it would cause legal problems. 6) Did you sufficiently inform your superiors of all that mess before they chose to back you in this matter? A simple yes or no would suffice. Thanks, Ca$e (talk) 10:12, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

You're confusing several things. First, the Meinungsbild (poll) decision had no legal implications, it was just about a software configuration change. So the WMFs rejection of the poll also did not have legal implications. Second, Eriks superprotect action was embarassing, but did not (yet) enfoce anything wich concerns the Meinungsbild: Erik superprotected de:Mediawiki:Common.js, but this file does't matter regarding the Meinungsbild, because it cannot by implemented via Common.js (but e.g. via de:MediaWiki:Gadget-MediaViewer.js). Please don't build legends here, we should stick to the facts. --PM3 (talk) 12:35, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

You're confusing several things. Stick to what i wrote and don't build legends here regarding what i could have written. Ca$e (talk) 12:43, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Also, and this does only in part concern legal problems, below you find my quick translation of the relevant parts of the deWP "Meinungsbild" that WMF chose to ignore and aggressively overrule.

The "old" page for the file description, which included way more information than can be shown via MediaViewer, can now be reached only via detours. This includes most toolserver-expansions and commons-templates. A few examples of a list that could easily be prolonged as there are quite a low of useful templates and tools on commos:

1. While the short version of the license identification is shown, e.g. CC-by-Sa, elucidating templates (e.g. {{Cc-by-sa-1.0}}) of the file description page are included only if mentioned in the "license" parameter of the template {{Information}}. According to the Template Information, however, bigger license-information, that make up their own section, should explicitly not be included there, the field should then rather be kept empty! The omission of templates for summarizing licenses and warning in MediaViewer is promoting "wrong" re-use. For example, {{PD-Pre1978}} warns that a picture should probably not be used in germany following the Rule of the shorter term. One example, where the warning is missing with MediaViewer, thus suggesting that the file would without restrictions be usable everywhere: Stones ad 1965.JPG; especially misleading in this context is the text below "Bedingungen ansehen" (view conditions) and in the bar below the image the term „Gemeinfrei“ (public domain). As MediaViewer invites users to re-use the file, without having checked the file description page first (via the button to re-use, that provides download and inclusion of the file and sharing of the URL independently of the file description), this handles templates that warn of certain conditions for re-use as if they were unnecessary accessories. The provision of an option to download and include without those warnings is in some cases wantonly negligent.
2. 5 years ago, the Credit line-template was introduced on Commons in order to facilitate the correct attribution for re-use cases. It is currently used for more than 194.000 pictures. However, it is completely ignored by MediaViewer (example: Arena AufSchalke Innen bei Konzert.jpg; the Credit-line-content is normally given in the field „Namensnennung“ (name of contributor)). WMF's developers have been warned of this problem May 17th. Since then, nothing has been changed. As the requirements of the author are legally binding, by omitting the credit-line-content, WMF puts re-users into higher risks to provide illegitimate attributions and breaching of licensing and their effects - and this knowingly, thus wantonly negligently.
3. Detailed file descriptions, such as are necessary to understand the caption for maps, are not shown; example: EU member states (using the template {{Legend}}); also, the citation of the historical original text of the map, not being included in the template {{de}}, is not included.
4. In cases where the descriptions are all in template parameters that are ignored by MediaViewer, the misleading information "No description available" is given. Example: Mona Lisa (Commons) vs Mona Lisa (MV). In this case, the informations regarding the original title of the image, the painter, painting technique, current place, inventary number and place of production are actually descriptions, however.
5. Information that appears on mouse-over, such as can be provided on Commons as annotations to images, are practically lost (see c:Help:Gadget-ImageAnnotator/de). Example: historical image of Dresden, which should show descriptions for individual buildings on mouse-over.
6. For images with geo-data, the file-description-page gives links to 4 systems of maps. 3 of them include markings with further Commons-images, enabling the user to discover the surroundings, see building of Berlin Reichstag.
7. Only via detours the ZoomViewer can be reached, which provides targetted, gradual zooming into bigger images like maps. MediaViewer, however, being intended for improving image viewing, lacks such capabillities. Example: below the image, the link to ZoomViewer on Commons and in ZoomViewer.

I hope this concludes a view pointless discussions that have developed especially below. Keep in mind that those are only a quick selection of many more problems caused by MediaViewer. Ca$e (talk) 15:39, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

+1. I appreciate the communication by Lila, but the software features like Visual Editor and Media Viewer were far from being ready to be rolled out since essential problems were still existing. And the communities get ignored on that (still they are). Also i agree with Ca$e that this "consistency" is not a valuabel goal for cultural projects like encyclopedias. This might be nice for Facebook et al, but every Wikipedia should be sensiblel to it readership regarding its cultural background (also on questions of design). The way to go is to build a module based technical infrastructure from which the communities can decide how to serve their respective readership best. And that is not a matter of money as often voiced in the discussions. The WMF has likely more money then it should have (much growth which was not thought through properly happend just because money was there), and there will be more coming in if it doesn't keep on discuraging the people who make such great products that sell so well to the donors. --Julius1990 (talk) 17:25, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

In terms of "ready" we need to define an objective definition of readiness. We can do this together. Current RfCs are not objective, but, by the same token neither is the WMF. So let's find a better solution. Consistency is important from both user experience and cost standpoint. We are a global site with local communities. Technology needs to provide a consistent and predictable foundation for all of them. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 21:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Lila, this is no science. As long as the Media Viewer is not able to display every media file with the right attribution and liscence there can't be a full roll out. Same on the Visual Editor: As long as it was not able to perform at least the mayority of tasks like editing tables and so on but is just useful for typography edits and with saving even caused many deletions of texts as it was during the roll out last year, it was not ready. And I seriously doubt it is now. And instead of taking those concerns seriously I heard developers complain that our editor is simply too complex. Now, our editor works for all the tasks needed. As long as they can't develop something that does the same, no readyness for roll out is given. Beta means fixing up the details to me, not that software features with problems at the core are put to all users. And with doing this, forcing features with core problems on the editors you (meaning the Foundation) destroyed the good faith of many editors in the last years. And with the good faith it is like with the trust that especially Erik Möller destroyed in the current case. The destroying takes short time, building it up again takes much, much longer. That's why you should take us more seriously than you did before and do right now. Even if, as I said your communication right now is good (I haven't seen Sue ever engaging this deep with community memebers online, no offense to her, but a cudo for you) and you still have more trust than the "Community Advocate" or Erik Möller because you didn't destroy it so far. I just can recommand you to act wisely and not to destroy it. Because what is destroyed takes long to be rebuildt. And that'S also a reason for many offensive speech on that. There is so much bitterness caused by the WMF in the last two, three years ... and by Superprotect you gave the people teh feeling of authoritarism and insults are also a form of resistance when you feel overpowered by a much more mighty institution who doesn't seem to want to act anymore according to its Mission Statement, Values and Jimbos Principles. According to Jimbos Principles you should comply to the bug report that asks for your acceptance of teh German Wikipedia vote. A vote that is not against the MV itself, but against teh full roll out while still core problems around teh attribution and license exist. --Julius1990 (talk) 21:54, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Let's decouple some of the issues: we have painful history, let's look forward and try to improve how different parts of the community complement each other. I believe that is important. And it does take time and effort to understand you guys :) Now, on the software side... Actually saying that every corner case needs to be satisfied is a huge product design fallacy. You might be familiar with the 80/20 rule, where you get 99% of the benefit from satisfying 80% of the requirements. This also means that hitting every corner case is completely inefficient from cost standpoint. This is where the tough decisions need to be made. Between us here, no article and no piece of software is ever perfect, but it has to be good enough and we need to decide what that means. I know this is all product mumbo-jumbo, but this does not come from me. So unless we truly have a legal issue, not every corner case should be solved. On the other hand there are other creative ways to solve these corner issues. Since some of them come from template typing we may do better writing a script to convert that specific template over to something more typical. Especially as we move closed to a normalized way to view data with Wikidata project. I am not going to problem solve here. Just outlining the options. And again -- thank you for the feedback (and, frankly, for encouragement) as this can get really tough to stomach! -- LilaTretikov (talk) 22:04, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

But Lila, that the Media Viewer doesn't violate our licences and attribution is not a corner case. It is the most central point according to our free licenced media files. It is at the very core, not some halflid corner ... And the same goes for the Visual Editor. A VE that isn't able to work on most of teh tasks needed to write our articles, but basically is just good for correcting typography has not some pretty unnecessary corner cases that would be nice to be fixed. It has problems at the very heart. And both were because of this not ready for such a roll out as it took place. And the Wikidata has also a core problem: Many data sets are without valid source, because bots simply putted them there before any clear policy was established. A Wikipedia version like the German with its focus on quality won't be able to accept Wikidata as a working tool until this is solved.

The problem basically is that apparently noone at the WMF seems to have any idea what is core case or corner case when it comes about software for the different projects. Maybe everyone of you should be encouraged to use half a workday per week to work on one of the projects, writing articles, doing clean-up work, whatever ... so you can understand the projects from within. Or you need to listen when one or in this case three mayor projects (Commons, de:wiki, en:wiki) tell you what are the core problems to them and what needs to eb fixed before they can accept on their projects a full roll out. Especially since people told on the mailinglist already in spring that this problems would occur.

The very core are also the actions that happend right now and how you deal with them. You do as if this is a pointless looking in the past. But if you don't resolve it, such things will remain and poison all your efforts. I ask you: Do en:User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles still exist? Then why did the WMF especially Erik Möller violate principle 4? Do the Mission Statement and the Values of the Foundation still exist and have meaning? Then why is the Board backing up such actions that clearly violate such three chartas of principles that to em were the fundament of the WMF-communities relation? This needs to be fixed before there can be a moving on from my side. Yes, i could say "let's move on, everything fine", but this would be a lie and this issue would remain in me, decouraging me from further work in the Wikipedia. --Julius1990 (talk) 22:19, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Internet lawyer, is not a good use of any anons time. In the few "corner case" files, attribution is given in the link, that satisfies attribution. This has to be so, because on the face of wiki articles, where we display the image in content, we do not identify the CR owner there, either. At any rate, you're not the WMF's lawyer. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:07, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Do I claim that? No. But that is the critic of many in de:wiki and the Foundation is not able to convince us otherwise. And to us it is the core case of the feature. You can make it easy and label it different to a corner case. But that won't convince for obvious reasons. You have to take the issues raised by the communities as core case seriously or you can just openly confess that you don't care and go for leading the projects in an autocratic way. Then just say it and I won't bother any more with my comments here and my articles on Wikipedia. Heard there are many other nice hobbies around, but then the Foundation will mourn again the loss of more editors and all the classical "we need more editors" stuff starts again ... --Julius1990 (talk) 13:16, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Taking it seriously means analyzing the compliant. You have made a legal complaint, but without competence or responsibility to do so, and moreover are wrong -- that's what taking it seriously looks like. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:50, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, yes, surely the German Wikipedians with interest in this aspect and expertise have to be fully wrong. Just sad that users with a certain profession on it proofed the complaints to be serious. But you can do the Pippi Langstrumpf version of handeling things. But it's not the way you seriously handle the problems that occured and it certainly is not convincing the German Wikipedia community. --Julius1990 (talk) 13:55, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

The expertise you claim is inaccessible to everyone but you, that's what is meant by 'on the internet no one knows who you are'. Your claimed inability, indeed refusal, to consider, with competence or responsibility, demonstrates you are being unserious. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:09, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Sure ... the points were made on the German Meinungsbild and convinced the voters. The Foundation didn't proof otherwise and you do neither but claiming. The same you say applies to your own comments. I tell Lila what for the German community is the core problem and that it believes that this is not solved. If it would be, you easily can show and concvince with arguments, not with your claims. I don't claim to be wrong or right, i just claim to say what for the German voters was one of the core problems. And as i said before: denying this and labelling it to a "not core" problem won't change anything on this tied up situation. --Julius1990 (talk) 14:18, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

No. No one of any responsibility or seriousness is going to put legality to a vote. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:46, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

You try really hard to miss any point i make. Noone voted if there is legality or not. But the argumentation refered often to legal concerns that the WMF neither could solve with arguments nor did it with actions on its product to make those worries loose their substance. --Julius1990 (talk) 16:22, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

You just said it again, they voted on "legal concerns" -- and that makes no sense. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:22, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I imagine that Lila's statement probably is a huge step forward for the WMF, regarding what had happend before during the past week. But what strikes me is that it seems that the superprotect right still will not be abolished. If I got this correctly, I don't think this will bring us much "forward" after all.--Aschmidt (talk) 18:20, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

haha yeah. But sorry Aschmidt; "we’re preparing to unprotect the disputed page on German Wikipedia, but we need to do so within a framework that allows us to come to reasonable resolutions" - means nothing else then; if the german wikipedia does as WMF wants, then WMF will unprotect the page. If not, then not. That is not a step forward. its the same situation since the superprotection was put in place. Just nicer wording :) ...Sicherlich ^Post 18:38, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

So I got it right again. Thanks for confirming, Sicherlich. (I didn't want to be that cynical.)--Aschmidt (talk) 18:52, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

All we are doing is asking everyone to hold the current state until we jointly find a better way to make decisions on product. This includes lifting superprotect. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 21:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

You ask us to accept the dagger in our chest until the argument has been sorted that has led to the fight. Sorry, but the most pressing issue is not software deployment. It is the superprotect mode and the mindset it stands for.---<(kmk)>- (talk) 22:31, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

+1. The "current state" is strictly not acceptable and also goes against the principles that govern the relationship between WMF and communities. There is no ground for discussion or cooperation unless this issue is resolved. You notably did not answer my question from above: Please check out Jimbo's principles: "Any changes to the software must be gradual and reversible. We need to make sure that any changes contribute positively to the community, as ultimately determined by the Wikimedia Foundation, in full consultation with the community consensus." This implies that you should never, ever, find yourself in a position to enforce critical software changes, and especially not broken software like MV, against evident community consensus. Can we agree on this principle? (Else, the conditions for "working together" would have to be rewritten from the start, and it would be very open which part of current communities would accept the outcome. I suspect: not very many!) Ca$e (talk) 22:38, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

But "the current state" is the one imposed by the WMF against German Wikipedia's will. You are, indeed, saying "we won't remove the superprotection until German Wikipedia has agreed on a version of Media Viewer that it will accept as default", which is basically "we won't remove the superprotection until German Wikipedia agrees to lose the dispute." Why not remove the superprotect, set Media Viewer back to opt-in, and turn it to opt-out only after German Wikipedia agrees you've done a good enough job with it for it to be default software? Why is a feature that we did without for over a decade worth forcing on one of the communities? Why is it necessary for you to hold the software in a state where you have effectively won the dispute instead of yielding gracefully?Kww (talk) 23:01, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I wouldn't view this as being about winning or losing, prevailing or yielding, but rather about reestablishing trust in a partnership and working towards a win-win. Unfortunately I currently don't see this happening for the reasons you and Ca$e state. I don't understand what the foundation's problem is. Lila: What stops you from switching MV to opt-in for the time being as requested in the German Meinungsbild and enwiki's RfC and remove the superprotect right until we (the communities and the foundation) have established proper guidelines on how, where, when and by whom it shall be set and unset? Then we have all the time in the world to discuss visions, goals, products and processes to implement them. Cheers --Millbart (talk) 23:29, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

We don't have that much time as those guys have to discuss and we don't have the money to buy huge Conferences with glamorous key notes of outstanding testimonials. Please just stop disruptive sanctions for now. The readers will be thankful, promised :-D --Sargoth (talk) 18:39, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

My two cents on the key points.

• Improve (...) user and community feedback (...). -- There already was feedback galore. Rather than feedback, more feed forward is needed. Communicate to the community early and often. Sell your plans to us before the first line of code is written, persuade us, make us part of the process from day one.
• Learn how to (...) make decisions that have global impact with objectivity (...) Improve our product consistency globally (...). -- That is, ignore the explicit wish of local communities in favour of global uniformity? Since when is global uniformity a necessity? German Wikipedia has sighted revisions in effect and is happy with it since a digital eternity. This is a rather far reaching difference in the UI. Still, the wikipedia as a whole does not seem to suffer tremendously.
• Increase the responsiveness and speed at which we develop and (...) -- I couldn't care less for speed of software development. Do it fast, or do it slow, whatever you feel appropriate. What I do feel, though, is that bugs need to be less long standing. See for example the problems with SVG. The contents are sufficiently accessible with current software. Eye candy is nice to have but in the end it is just that. The fundamental asset of the wikipedia is its content, not its presentation.
• Do this with mutual understanding and respect. -- I hope, these buzz words translate to "Embrace the community. Do not even think to fight against it"

---<(kmk)>- (talk) 22:17, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

"we jointly find a better way to make decisions on product." - we means WMF? ... and the better way means a better technical way to prevent the community to do changes? ... or it really about the decision making? By the community? De-WP had a straw poll on the MV so you want something better? And de-WP has a poll against the superprotect - you ignore it as well. ... So it leaves me to the conclusion that the opinion of the community is not what you accept as a good way. ... Interesting. ....Sicherlich ^Post 07:23, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

(BK) Rather embarrasing to read Lila's responses overnight. I second the critical remarks from my fellow German editors. I also would like to add that we are here to write an encyclopædia, not for giving feedback to software development.--Aschmidt (talk) 07:27, 20 August 2014 (UTC) To make it absolutely clear: This is not about lifting superprotect, but about doing superprotect away, abolishing superprotect.--Aschmidt (talk) 08:38, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

If we are here to write encyclopeida and not give feedback about software -- why there is so much commotion about it? -- LilaTretikov (talk) 16:41, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

I'll answer that, although I suspect it may have been rhetorical. Firstly, the volunteer encyclopaedia writers use the software; secondly, the set of volunteer encyclopaedia writers includes most if not all of the set of volunteer software developers; thirdly, most of the software was written by those volunteer developers for and in cooperation with the volunteer writers; fourthly the volunteer writers have largely not been consulted by or involved with the work of the paid developers; fifthly the volunteer writers experience is that the work of the paid developers is not always fit for purpose; sixthly, the volunteer writers have been sent the unwelcome message that in future they are to be made subordinate to the paid developers. I hope that helps. Deltahedron (talk) 16:53, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

because you (as always: not you in person, but WMF, of course!) are enforcing upon as dysfunctional software that causes problems for us in writing an encyclopædia as we intend to, given, among other concerns already voiced on this very page, we are writing (and illustrating etc etc) with the intention to produce free and quality content. You enforce software that encourages breaking free licenses, that leads to an overflood of unusable pseudo-content we then have to filter again etc etc. You misuse developer resources for unwanted broken pieces of software, while we are waiting for years for these developers to repair critical bugs, to provide much needed functions, etc. We also want to write within a working community, encouraging others to join the effort, while you enforce software that makes recruting fellow editors harder and harder, and, even more hazardously, you severly harm our community e.g. by breaking previous rules of our relationship with you. We e.g. now extensively have to deal with how to react to this misbehavior of WMF, and also to radically unwanted tendencies such as laid out by your head of board on this very page. Given that several fellow colleagues, among them people who did very critical jobs that can hardly be replaced by anyone else, already left us because of your aggressive misbehavior, you already have destroyed very critical parts of our community, and that will hold for quite some time! What is more, many others have already declared, that, should such a "vision" for WMF's "future role" as laid out by our head of board prevail, they will want nothing to do with it! All this in effect stops us from what we would rather do. Ca$e (talk) 16:56, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Because when the WMF makes a change that is disliked or broken, they refuse to disable it. That's what causes the fuss, LilaTretikov: it's not that anyone expects the software to be perfect upon initial release, it's that we expect you not to make it the default software until there's a consensus that it is ready, useful, and an improvement over the current state. Instead, we get new rights invented in order to force the software to stay in place before the repairs are made and threats made against administrators that disable it.Kww (talk) 20:22, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

On Working together: Well, you got your requested comments, when are we going to get our single issue here fulfilled? Please remove superprotect and never use it again. It is an unnecessary (existing means of dispute resolution were not used), previously undocumented and massively unsocial feature for a commons-based community like ours. --Ghilt (talk) 08:24, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

By the way, not only because of reasons already explained, i do not see any basis to discuss in a platform like Community_Engagement_(Product)/Process_ideas. The "status quo" there is not only described with an ridiciulous bias, but simply wrong. "announcements are posted through a number of channels" - that may be your perception, our perception is that they more often than not do not reach us in time and when they do, our input is ignored anyway. "Significant-scale rollouts are staged from smaller wikis to the largest ones" - that is often untrue. "After deployments, ad-hoc straw polls and RFCs/votes are sometimes organized by community members" - that is also misleading. See above where i corrected your own phrasing: The current approach of WMF of ignoring important (among them legal) issues, clearly and repeatedly voiced months ahead, and nevertheless rolling out broken und unfixed software, is disruptive and inefficient. "When following a defined process, these requests sometimes culminate in a request for a configuration change via Bugzilla." - that is also misleading. It should rather read: "Oftentimes, critical and high-priority problems are many months before rollout highlighted by expert community members via several channels, among them Bugzilla, but get ignored or handled with utmost neglect." Also, there is a very criticial point not mentioned about status quo: Oftentimes, WMF produces broken and decidedly unwanted software, and, when it is even after rollout remembered that communities voiced months before that they will not accept anything as broken (and causing technical and even legal issues, not to speak of problems for recruting new editors) as that, this is not even recognized, but the unwanted software change is just stoved down the throat of communities, while WMF-employees threaten admins with revoking user rights and even implement new user hierarchies and superblock their community to enforce such unwanted implementations of broken software. Something like that would fairly describe the status quo. "the editors think the readers can be ignored" - i will not even go into details as to why that is not only untrue but an inacceptable affront in itself towards almost every editor (see Kww above on this topic e.g.). You cannot expect community members to discuss anything 1) before the current unacceptable situation, uniliteraly created by WMF, is resolved by WMF, 2) in a not only highly biased put pullulated with untrue descriptions, environment established by members of WMF, being the party who caused and not yet resolved the affrontation against communities. Ca$e (talk) 09:30, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Lila, I would also like to express my gratidue for the time and effort you take to address this problem - it makes me feel that you take our concerns seriously and this is definitely a good first step. A problem that I see here is that two issues are closely intermingled: The question of how to move forward with the MV in particular and software development in general on the one hand, and the problem of the relation between the foundation and the communities on the other. Concerning the former, you are right, we need to talk with each other and think deeply about issues of speed, direction, uniformity vs. diversity etc. And this probably takes some time and we should not rush our fences on it.

But the other issue is much more pressing right now, and it requires quick and determined action from your side. It all boils down to the matter of trust: The foundation has lost a tremendous amout of trust in the German community over the past few years because many in the community feel that the foundation doesn't listen to their concerns and doesn't respect their specific needs and generally moves on to be something that uses the content we generate to make money, but is not willing to give anything back. Whether this view is justified or not is another question, and I'm probably not the right person to judge this. But that is the prevailing view in many discussions about the foundation.

On the other hand, the use of superprotect makes a very strong impression that the foundation, in turn, has lost their trust in the community, in particular in our ability to resolve wheelwars as the one that happened there. Just in case you don't know: RfC are generally considered as binding for the German community and DaB's edit was not covered by the RfC on the MV. Thus, I am pretty sure that this change would not have prevailed long. The fact that now he is getting a lot of approval for this action is precisely due to the unfortunate action of superprotecting the page. You guys unintentionally put him into the role of the rightful avanger against the evil system, to exaggerate a little (but just a little - that is the sad part).

To make a long story short, I would heartly recommend you to take one step after the other, that is: First unprotect the disputed page without any conditions, just to show that you are willing to trust our ability to resolve possible edit/wheelwars ourselves. Then, start/continue the discussion on the relation between foundation and communities, involving the question of how to deal with similar situations in the future, and the discussion about software development. In the current situation, I'm afraid that most of the community is not able or willing to discuss about content, when feelings are still being hurt. But a clear sign of goodwill could well put a beneficial dynamic into running.

Best wishes, Darian (talk) 09:50, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

@Lila: You say: From what I understand the issues is affecting about 1% of the images, but I have asked to confirm. No, it affects every single media file. If author and licence are not immediately and intuitively accessible especially for the un-experienced user, violations of authors' rights and licences are bound to occur, due to the failure of WMF. This is definitely a legal matter. Moreover, further information about the media files should also be readily and easily accessible (which is not a legal issue but an issue of our mission as an encyclopedia, and as such no less important).--Mautpreller (talk) 13:10, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

1) Incorrect and outside competence, see my comment above. 2) Further information is available. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:45, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

No, it's simply correct. It took me, as a truly experienced user, enough time to find the information relevant, due to the misleading buttons and arrows. There are other problems as well (zoom!) but these are the most important ones. And who should be a competent judge as to intuitive accessibility but a user?--Mautpreller (talk) 13:52, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

No, your first legal point is incorrect and without competence. As for your second, it is your intuitive feeling -- that's fine but your intuition, is your intuition. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:59, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

.:Thanks a lot, I see now what you (a least) mean by "working together" and "feedback". As to legal issues, the point is not that the MV itself violates law but that it is apt to promote violations of law because it fails to give easy and immediate access to the information relevant. As to intuition, look at the results of the RfCs on en.wp and de.wp as well as the reader experience collected by WMF. Seems that my "intuitive feeling" is shared by a good many users, editors as well as readers. Maybe a software developer shouldn't discard such user experiences as irrelevant?--Mautpreller (talk) 14:11, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

"Apt to promote" -- that's rather nonsensical, when you look at this page [17] and see how it identifies no rights holder. Apparently, you admit that MV gives easy access for 99%, but you focus on the 1% -- now if one looks at that objectively that is a mountain out of less than a molehill (and the molehill is largely fictitious). Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:43, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

In order to compare, you should better have a look at this one.--Mautpreller (talk) 16:04, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually no, in order to compare you should look at it in media viewer where the rights holder is named in the immediate window, unlike what you are linking to where the rights holder does not appear on the screen without manipulation. Moreover, you are fixating on a 1%, which is either a matter of misplaced angst or hypocrisy: (rights holder not identified) Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:22, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

The crucial difference is between https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Freiberger_Dom_11.JPG and https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Silbermann#mediaviewer/Datei:Freiberger_Dom_11.JPG. It is easy to see how different the accessability to vital information is. You know youself that pictures (and videos), having only one author and forming a separate file, are a much more problematic issue in terms of licence and authors' rights and other information than texts (or the interface of Wikipedia articles as a whole). Comparison obviously requires the status-before and the status-after.--Mautpreller (talk) 18:16, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

And the media viewer puts the rights holder and licence in the immediate screen (unlike what you apparently prefer) -- and everything else is accessible in MV. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:31, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

So how will an un-experienced user will find all the information (including licence text, description, date and so on) that exists for this file and that he will need for using it? He never even is informed about what the picture shows!! The absolute minimum would be a clear link to the description page on Commons, visible immediately for everyone without any extra activity, stating: if you want to know something about the picture (e.g. what it shows ...) and possibly use it, click upon this link. I prefer to jump right to Commons but that may be an individual feature. But it is absolutely indispensable that you can find your way there as an unexperienced user.--Mautpreller (talk) 19:32, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

It says "Freiberg Cathedral" right there (should I Use !!) in the immediate MV window right over the rights holder's name. If you want to know more on the licence, point to where it says exactly what the licence is, right there in the window (!!) Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:43, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

The picture does not show "Freiberg Cathedral". The object of the picture is named in a description line on the Commons page but not on the MV page (and hardly to find from there). What you need is a link to all relevant information including full licence text, viz. a link to the Commons page right there in the window. This is far better in the old version (and best if you immediately jump to the Commons page). The picture looks fine in the MV presentation but that's all, you have no indication where to find context information (even the meaning of the licence is not evident, you haven't even a hint that you should click upon it). To put it otherwise: presentation seems more important than information (in an encyclopedia! an absurd idea to my thinking). One could improve the way of presentation of the information relevant, good idea; but the media viewer does not do that. It hides the information so that you do not know where it is or even whether it exists in the first place.--Mautpreller (talk) 22:20, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

The picture shows a part of Freiburg Cathedral, and because that is what the rights holder named his composition. It's his composition, remember. The specific description is there in the Media Viewer -- sure it's below the fold, which is the exact same position as on the Commons page (below the fold), but the media viewer is superior for information because it has more information above the fold. What's important is all there. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:18, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Lila Tretikov. Please recommend to the international Communtity of Individual Volunteers (iCIV) the developement of a Charter of Coordination in coordination with the Wikimedia Foundation. Bylaws Article II (Statement of Purpose) mentions the coordination of WMF and the iCIV but does not say how. In On a Scale of Billions it was stated: „This process must have multiple opportunities for community feedback. We realize that has not always been the case in the past, but this will be one of my top priorities as Executive Director.“ and you have discribed further details in Working Together. In terms of "coordination" we need to define an objective definition of how to coordinate.

Please support this recommondation and please compare the Code of Good Practice for Civil Participation in the Decision-Making Process adopted by the conference of international non-govermental organisations (Council of Europe). There has been spent very much and useful work with a high level of agreement – some of it could be copied easily for ccordination, you might call balance, too. --Edward Steintain (talk) 15:07, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

____

All we are doing is asking everyone to hold the current state until we jointly find a better way to make decisions on product. -- Lila, the current state is hurting the dewiki community, because it says: "We don't trust you." WMF has driven a bolt into the community's delicate machinery. Here you wrote: I care and am sincerely sorry for any hurt feelings stemming from this. Then, please stop hurting us! Every "day under superprotect" deepens the scars and damages the community's trust into WMF. There is an increasing group of users starting to hate WMF for that. Are you not aware of this, or do you deliberately accept it?

Though the community is hurt and still angry, it just unlocked Eriks account de:Benutzer:Eloquence, because it realized that this was wrong and as a sign of goodwill. Please do the next step and unlock de:Mediawiki:Commons.js. --PM3 (talk) 19:17, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

My quick response (Rich F)

• "From what I understand the issues is affecting about 1% of the images" Lila

• "[A]s a lawyer, I don't think that the license is actually being violated in the vast majority of cases." Luis

• "the way the viewer works (the only way it can work) is by extracting machine-readable information via an API." Erik

• " If it is a legal issue -- it will be treated as a blocker." Lila

These four statements show that the attribution problem alone means that the MV should be disabled.

Once this is done there are many ways forward.

But the executive decision is: do we stay legal or not?

Rich Farmbrough 14:56 29 August 2014 (GMT).

Our Future and the role of the Foundation

Hi Everyone

This note reflects my personal opinion and might not represent the view of the entire board :)

I am a volunteer. I volunteer for something incredibly special, something that 30 years from now people will either say “That was quite something, whatever happened?” or they will say “I cannot believe it started in such a simple way, and has grown to become a worldwide resource, free for everyone."

Truth is, we are at a crossroads, and unfortunately have been for quite some time. Blaming each other for being there does not make much sense, as it would probably result in us spending more time at that crossroads. If you want me to take part of the blame, I will.

Other internet projects (not limiting ourselves to websites) are passing us by left and right, and none of them have the non-profit goals that we have. In fact, some of them, with more commercial propositions, are actively undermining us.

When we started our search for a new Executive Director, we set out to find someone with a strong executive product background and solid hands-on experience. After years of building up the organization from scratch, Sue made it clear that we needed an expertise different from her own in order to take us all to the next level.

We found Lila, and she is exactly what we need: someone to look at our special thing with a different view. We are unique in many ways, but not unique enough to ignore basic trends and global developments in how people use the internet and seek knowledge. We have to get better at software development, roll-out, and user adoption. And Lila is helping us do exactly that. (a discussion on process ideas has been started here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement_(Product)/Process_ideas )

But at the same time, change works both ways. There is no point in getting better at the development of software if the roll-out of these new features is going to be partial.

We talk often about “the community” (although in reality we have a lot of different communities, with different characteristics). One thing is clear to me: we need to grow that community - not just in numbers, but also in maturity in welcoming newcomers, accepting change (sometimes for the sake of others), dealing with non-productive discussions, and quickly scaling successful new initiatives.

On Wikimedia-l and in some other places I hear a lot from the few and the angry. There is an argument I hear a lot: “We are the community, without us the projects would be nothing. We are the ones who got us here.” That is true, to a degree. But at the same time… we don’t want to be here…. We want to be much further along the road.

1. We want to attract new editors. They don’t have to become heavy editors, they could even contribute once in a while, as long as we get lots of them. We have to make it easy enough for anyone to contribute so that people once again feel that “anyone can edit.”
2. We want to have our information everywhere. Not just on your browser, or integrated in your operating system and phone (as they are now), but everywhere. While 500 million readers a month may sound like a lot, it’s a fraction of whom we need to reach.
3. We need to move faster than ever before. This means we need to be tolerant of things we may not like and let experimentation happen. We also need to remove things we are attached to that don’t have wide adoption.
4. We need to act as one community, not 1,000. This means we cannot enact the wishes of a few hundred, but have to build processes that support the successes of millions.

All of this is going to require change, change that might not be acceptable to some of you. I hope that all of you will be a part of this next step in our evolution. But I understand that if you decide to take a wiki-break, that might be the way things have to be. Even so, you have to let the Foundation do its work and allow us all to take that next step when needed. I can only hope that your break is temporary, and that you will return when the time is right.

There is one thing will never change, and that is our commitment to providing free knowledge to everyone in the world. And while software development is a part of this, we have a lot of areas in which we also need to make progress -- and these are the areas where we look to you to take the lead. I am looking forward to working with you, the individual volunteers, and all our movement organizations in order to grow our successes.

Jan-Bart de Vreede
Jan-Bart (talk) 15:27, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

PS: Unfortunately I am in a location where I have extremely limited bandwidth (loading and saving this page takes up to five minutes each time) and am not really in a position to reply to most messages here. I will try to find a better place to respond in a few days, but this situation could last until the 1st of September. I will come back to the points made here at some time. Jan-Bart (talk) 07:02, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Simple questions: Do en:User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles still exist and have a meaning? Then why did the WMF especially Erik Möller violate principle 4? Do the Mission Statement and the Values of the Foundation still exist and have meaning? Then why is the Board backing up such actions that clearly violate such three chartas of principles that to em were the fundament of the WMF-communities relation? This needs to be fixed before there can be a moving on from my side. Yes, i could say "let's move on, everything fine", but this would be a lie and this issue would remain in me, decouraging me from further work in the Wikipedia.

Why do you think that a way of thinking that works good for Facebook and Google could be any good to cultural projects? We need not growth for the sake of the growth. You sound like a manager of a company listed at the stock exchange who needs to satisfy stakeholders. That is not the right way to handle Wikimedia projects. Encyclopedias are culural products, they reflect the cultural area they are made from and for. With thinking that one solution serves all the same well, you are wrong. And you are just wanting a corporate identity like Google or Facebook. But that is definately not the way o go for the future. We need localization. What do you know about German readers, their cultural backrounds? Or those in China? The local communities do and they are in constantly exchange with their readers who are their target group for every action they take. We need a foundation who understands that. But you are not understanding your own limitations. And when you argument with that Wikipedia is the number 5 page in the internet, it gets totally ridicoulus. You have left serving our mission by thinking like a Google manager. --Julius1990 (talk) 16:10, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi Julius1990, thanks for your comments. I think that the 4th principle applies to some degree. The ultimate responsibility lies with the Foundation, but the foundation should be careful in implementing new features. However, our community does not limit itself to the editors. For far too long we have not paid enough attention to the readers and their experience on different platforms. While I agree with you that editors are constantly thinking about how to best write an article to serve their local reader, they are NOT constantly thinking about the "web-experience" of their local users (sorry if that is too corporate for you). With regards to "one solution", I think that there might be some exceptions, but why would reading an encyclopedic article be so completely different from any other experience on the internet that we have to essentially ignore all webtrends and keep our interface the way it looked 10 years ago? Change is hard, but soon our data will be consumed less on the web than all the other means combined (if that is not the case already, but I don't think we have the data, at least I don't). And seriously, thinking like a Google manager ("how to I reach my audience in the most effective way") might not be so bad for us, because we have a lot of catching up to do... and if we are able to convert a fraction of those new readers into editors by making it easy for them to contribute, then that would really help us Jan-Bart (talk) 18:40, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Jan-Bart, thanks for your comments, which lay out the choices before us all very frankly and usefully. I may not like them, but that's another matter. I take issue with your comment "editors ... are NOT constantly thinking about the "web-experience" of their local users". Well, mathematics editors are not constantly thinking about the web experience, but we have been expressing dissatisfaction with the state of rendering of mathematics for readers for some time. Unfortunately, WMF have not been able to allocate paid developer effort to improving the state of MathJax rendering, and the limited volunteer effort has been held up by difficulties I do not fully understand in integrating their code into production. As you are doubtless aware, Jimmy Wales asked us to state a case, which we did, and which he supported. Unfortunately, we have just been told that it is not on the roadmap for the forseeable future: [18]. So there you have it. A group of editors very seriously concerned about the web-experience of their readers, a well-argued and well-supported case for specific low-cost improvement -- and WMF declines to support them. This does not seem entirely consistent with your new thinking. In what way did our proposals not align with your vision for what we as editors should now be doing? Please help us tounderstand so that we can do better next time. Deltahedron (talk) 18:54, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

You want convienent contributions of quality mathematics content. WMF wants billions of visitors, contributing what-the-hell-we-dont-care, but make it billions, make it top 5, make it fast (if previous community core does not like it, fork off)! It's not so hard to see the difference, is it? Ca$e (talk) 19:00, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

You may be right, but I'm hoping the WMF will say so explicitly whether that is indeed the case. If mathematics content is no longer a desirable goal of the WMF, and a fork becomes the least worst option, then the sooner we know it the better, so that we have good time to prepare a graceful exit. So -- over to Jan-Bart. Deltahedron (talk) 20:01, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I think that the 4th principle applies to some degree. Wrong answer. The principles including the 4th apply to full degree. They are full policy (remember that there wasn't yet any WM Foundation when the founder of Wikipedia declared these principles. Compared to Englisch history these principles are the Magna Charta, and the WMF at the moment tries to be Jack I. --Matthiasb (talk) 09:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Jan-Bart, I appreciate your frankness. Your statement shows me very clearly that we work in totally different directions. I can't find a single word in it that refers to the goals I am pursuing with passion in the Wikipedia. About empowering readers to judge for themselves whether a Wikipedia article is good or bad; about dissolving the borders between producers and recipients; about quality issues; about interdisciplinary issues (one of the greatest potential assets of the Wikipedias); about decision and communication structures between volunteers; about self-education in writing; about all that is unique in the Wikipedia universe. My opinion is that software development basically and fundamentally has to serve encyclopedic aims, not necessarily the ones I value most, but definitely encyclopedic issues, however you don't lose a word about these issues. Obviously this is not your aim. You want quantity and velocity and growth, I cannot hear anything from you about the qualities of Wikipedia (with the exception that they be "unique"); I cannot hear anything about what is to grow, where to go to ("faster"), more quantity of what. Maybe I misjudge your statement, in this case I am very open to any correction.--Mautpreller (talk) 17:08, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

"you have to let the Foundation do its work" - not at all. Let's leave it at that. See where you will end with this arrogant approach. Ca$e (talk) 18:25, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi Mautpreller, I think we are more of the same mind than you think. I just happen to disagree with the way to get there. It should be easy to contribute knowledge and everyone should be able to do it, not just the chosen few. Our strength lies in numbers and diversity, and the English Wikipedia is a good example of where we are not growing those. And with regards to our readers: I see people building applications around our data simply because they find our interface to be too ancient. Our data is being used in phones and operating systems and yet we have no idea how to to facilitate the parties using our data. It is one thing to build an encyclopedia of high quality, and quite another to get it into the hands of every human being on the planet, in their own language. I think that Lila and her team are on the right track to help further those goals. If that means changing the dynamic, this might very well be the time that we have to do that... But I think we share the same goals. Jan-Bart (talk) 18:20, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

"we share the same goals" - No we definitely do not. Ca$e (talk) 18:25, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, Jan-Bart, but I strongly disagree. Unfortunately, we are not only on different tracks but also on tracks leading in opposite directions. You say: "It should be easy to contribute knowledge and everyone should be able to do it." But in fact it is never easy to "contribute knowledge" and not everyone is able to do it from scratch. Even use and application of knowledge is never easy. You have to learn how to contribute knowledge (and how to use knowledge as well!) and that is the task we should facilitate as much as we can: the task of learning. This is not only true for beginners but also for experienced users. We need learning editors and learning readers (and learning "users of data", as to that). Learning is never easy. However, Wikipedia offers enormous potentials to learn without unnecessary bareers, potentials I never saw elsewhere but these potentials are hardly realized. My understanding of your statement is that you want use and contribution of knowledge an easy thing that can be done without an effort, but this is an illusion (which fits in with the reduction of "knowledge" to "data"). The Media Viewer is, in my eyes, a (minor) materialization of this tendency: It shows the picture and nothing else, pretending to give the "whole thing" - but this is not true. Media are never usable and understandable without context, and an effort is needed to learn this.--Mautpreller (talk) 18:44, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, in that case we do disagree. I do agree that there is learning involved before one can contribute knowledge, but that should never be an effort focused on technology. Technology should never be a barrier to sharing knowledge, and right now it is. Jan-Bart (talk) 18:57, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

No, technology should not be a barrier to sharing knowledge, I agree. But again, technology should not deliver a simplified picture because this picture is wrong and prevents learning. If, for example, a better way for referencing (adding sources) could be established, that would be a fine thing, because the way we do this now is very un-intuitive (an unnecessary technological barrier). But an "express way" to isolate a picture from its vital context is just the opposite, it creates an illusion. - My experience is: It is a big mistake to think that an article evolves by way of multiple "contributions of knowledge". Articles need integration, and this is something one has to learn (and many an experienced user has much to learn there, including myself). Not an easy task. However, usually not for technological reasons but rather for social reasons - and most notably for reasons that are in the very nature of knowledge and learning itself.--Mautpreller (talk) 19:13, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

After this statement, I see clearly, how far away the Foundation and especially its Board is away from the Communities and how disrespectful they are acting. You say clearly, You don't care about a single editor, not even hundreds of them, because You want to reach millions. Of course this is just an excuse, that You never have to listen to anything, that comes out of the communities, because they only speak for hundreds or thousands, You always speak for the potential millions. You also state, how different the communities are (meaning, the vote of one single community is not important) and at the end all communities must act as one (meaning of course following the direction, that is given by the Foundation). You may not care about a single person, that is lost for the wikipedia because of Your actions. I care of them. I see, how much they are missing in the daily work of the German wikipedia, every one of them. And I am happy, that I am able to respect them as fellow humans and fellow editors, who sacrificed a big part of their lives for working at the same goal as me, meaning, making the German Wikipedia a better place for readers and other editors, and do not see them only as replaceable numbers and their work as something, that is disrespected as "we don’t want to be here…. We want to be much further along the road." --Magiers (talk) 19:23, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

That is really not what I wrote, I do care about individual editors and respect them, and I care about their concerns, but its not fair to characterize our need to innovate as "not caring". Jan-Bart (talk) 19:42, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes it is. You - as an organziation - are not caring. We explained it often enough now. Ca$e (talk) 19:51, 20 August 2014 (UTC) PS: to be more precise, see Julius1990 below: You "spit in the editors faces". If it is fair to characterize this as "innovate", i leave this up to you. Ca$e (talk) 20:14, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

You wrote: "we cannot enact the wishes of a few hundred", which is completely ridiculous if You would ever have worked in a Wikipedia project and would realize, how a few people, some dozens, in best moment hundreds do all the work at every little corner in the projects, and what a deep hole is torn by everyone who is leaving. But hey: "that might be the way things have to be", if just the Foundation is not disturbed in whatever they want to do. --Magiers (talk) 20:56, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Magiers, it's even more ridiculous since Jan-Bart represents the wishes of a group of 10 ... --Julius1990 (talk) 20:59, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Jan-Bart, I am puzzled by your statement, "Other internet projects (not limiting ourselves to websites) are passing us by left and right, and none of them have the non-profit goals that we have. In fact, some of them, with more commercial propositions, are actively undermining us." How are these other projects passing Wikimedia by?

Excuse me for replying at length, & with numerous instances I have found that proves this statement false, but this is a point that is repeated at Wikimedians time & again without any elaboration. Perhaps the people who repeat this assertion are looking at something I am unaware of.

Consider Wikipedia, for which VE, MV & eventually Flow have been written? How is it failing? It is one of the top 10 sites on the Internet; to my knowledge, there is no other up-to-date general encyclopedia available online or in print as complete as it in any language (Encyclopedia Britannica is on life support); & it is frequently cited as a source of information everywhere I look. Not to say that there aren't problems with its software & community dynamics, but I haven't encountered any online community without problems. (See below for some examples.)

In the case of Commons, I can't think of any alternative to it. I understand that it is harder to upload files to it than it should be, but since I haven't uploaded files there in years, I can comment on that.

As for Wikisource, it has serious competition in the form of Project Gutenberg, archive.org, & books.google.com, but each appears to have defined its own niche & make an effort to work with each other: if I look for a public domain text at archive.org, it is as likely to direct me to Google for an ebook as to its own collection.

Wiktionary also has serious competition from Urban Dictionary, but I find Wiktionary far more useful in general than Urban Dictionary. (I've often used it to translate unfamiliar German & French words -- although that functionality could be made easier to use.)

I'm a member of a number of other websites, & I feel the Wikimedia software compares favorably to those. Both Deviant Art & Tumblr have interfaces suffer from interfaces where features break & get fixed without any warning -- & the relationship between the community & the staff is actually worse at both than here most of the time. (At least here before Visual Editor.) The software at Daily Kos may be better in supporting comments & interpersonal communications, but the feature set is limited & the advanced features harder to sue than any Wikimedia project. (I have yet to figure out how to upload an image there, or to find specific ones from the many in their collection -- unlike using images from Commons.) DK's purpose is to promote political agendas, not to make knowledge accessible, so that may not be a fair comparison. Lastly, many websites have problems with the software engine running their comments board -- Talking Points Memo has gone through several, before settling on using Disqus, none of which support Linux -- making the Wikimedia Wiki software looking not only very solid (comments are rarely accidentally lost) but surprisingly flexible.

If you're talking about comparing any Wikimedia project to Facebook, you'll find you're in a distinct minority. While there are a few ideas worth stealing from there -- as with probably all social networking sites -- it's purpose is entirely different from those at Wikimedia. And every established volunteer knows that. I suspect this difference is one reason for the decline in volunteer numbers from 2007: a lot of people who joined then did so because they thought it was the k-rad kewl place to be, discovered it was full of odd people who were busy writing articles, not exchanging messages on the latest Internet memes, & decided to move on to fora like Facebook, Something Awful or 4chan. And as people have posted time & again, more volunteers do not inevitably translate to better content, so a decline in numbers may not be a bad thing.

But this is all supposition on my part, Jan-Bart. What do you mean when you say "other internet projects (not limiting ourselves to websites) are passing us by left and right"? Please provide specific examples, not vague statements like that. Who knows? I may end up agreeing with you in some or all cases. -- Llywrch (talk) 19:42, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for the clarifying question. Some examples I am thinking of are Quora (who are better at both interface and engaging users), a recent article on Techcrunch and some of the interface of Facebook and the like (because they simple make it a better experience). And to argue that there is no competion to our encyclopedia is probably making the same mistake that Encyclopedia Britannica made several years ago :( Jan-Bart (talk) 19:59, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Your comment shows that you know nothing about why such classical encyclopedias got smashed by Wikipedia. It was because of us editors who contributed more detailed, more accurate, more recent content that was simply better. And we still do by our constant updating and working to fill in the gaps of knowledge. But what do you do? You have big visions about Facebook-like experiences and same time spit in the editors faces. By saying Jimbos Principle 4 is not applying always (it itself states not that there are such cases and no other of the principles do) you deny what made Wikipedia and the other projects big and successful. If you don't stop and rethink, Wikipedia in two years will look like Facebook, but every of it's qualities drops because the people left and the people that came new were into the Facebook experience, not into writing encyclopedia (a strange, somewhet boring and intrinsincly conservative hobby). And by occupying the movement with your "Top-5-internet-company"-vision you as the WMF Board violate also your Mission Statement and your Values that are about encouraging the editors. You do the exactly opposite. To think it to the end: Your denying of Principle 4, Mission Statement and the Values is like a putsch. --Julius1990 (talk) 20:11, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Exactly, only that i call it a breach of contract, not a putsch. Ca$e (talk) 20:14, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

“Even so, you have to let the Foundation do its work and allow us all to take that next step when needed.” … that's not how a community project like Wikipedia works and which will always result in conflicts, either with hundreds or millions. Proposals, discussions, arguments, stepping back, understanding, rethinking, excuses, compromise, that's our daily bussiness and only that way we all can move forward, together with the WMF which involves us in their software programs. Cheers, —DerHexer (Talk) 20:27, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

I only want to focus on Jan-Bart's last point of the four ones above: We need to act as one community, not 1,000. This means we cannot enact the wishes of a few hundred, but have to build processes that support the successes of millions. As a German, this reminds me of a totalitarian nightmare. I will not be a part of a Gleichschaltung Foundation.--Aschmidt (talk) 20:15, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

+1. We don't need the Nazi comparison, but true is: the ignorance for the differences is the ignorance for the biggest values the movement holds. --Julius1990 (talk) 20:17, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

The phrase "the wishes of a few hundred" is presumably an oblique reference to the various RfC processes that have gone against the decisions of WMF to roll out various software products. Unfortunately, as a governing principal, it has unwelcome implications for the contributors interested in writing mathematics, of whom I imagine there can be at most a few hundred, and so I guess that this is why our communal proposals for the WMF to allocate resources to improved mathematics editing and rendering were, and will continue to be, unsuccessful. Deltahedron (talk) 20:26, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

We want to attract new editors - by getting rid of the old ones? The men with the beards? Good idea. I wish you luck. By the way, those millions that you imagine supporting you are not excisting in reality but if they do, they did not chose you to speak for them. Maybe those millions would rather support the old editors who created the content for them. --Sargoth (talk) 21:02, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

"the wishes of a few hundred" - Just count how many edits that few hundred have done in the past ten years. It is not ok to compare accounts which have corrected some spelling mistakes with, for example, the Swiss user "Voyager" which has written 6486 articles in the German Wikipedia so far. [19] And he is not a bot! He don't uses software for creating that articles! He is just an author which spends the most of his free time for Wikipedia! But actually with your meaning and your idea that he belongs to "only a few (unimportant) hundred" you just kick his ass and the asses of a lot similar people of that community. --Micha (talk) 21:12, 20 August 2014 (UTC) And only that you guys of WMF can imagine it now: We need only 270 guys like Voyager and they write the German Wikipedia (~ 1750000 articles)! You need only 1000 interessted people and the Wikipedia is written. And that is it what acutally happened. Actually the german Wikipedia is written by only a "few hundred people"!!! If you believe what often stands in the media and written by naiv journalists that thousends of people have contributed to Wikipedia and that is the reason why Wikipedia is so huge then you believe wrong. --Micha (talk) 22:01, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more: Many of "the few hundred" are part of what I would call the "core community" that does a major part of the actual work on content in Wikipedia and other wikimedia projects. Of course there are many, many thousands of contributors, but those "few hundred" wo tend to voice their opinion in community polls etc. tend to be the same few hundred who are the most passionate and productive contributors. Maybe this comparison isn't entirely unfitting: Like Micha, I'm from Switzerland. Switzerland practices direct democracy on all levels of government, including the municipal level. I live in a municipality with a population of approximately 3800. About 2500 of them are Swiss citizens entitled to vote (the others are foreign nationals or under 18). Major decisions are made by the Gemeindeversammlung (a kind of "town meeting") - the legislative body of the municipality consisting of all entitled citizens who decide to attend. Are 2500 citizens attending? No. 2000? No. 1000? No. 500? No, never. Usually, there are not more than 50 to 100 people attending. These 50 to 100 make the decisions binding for all of us in this small Swiss community - every one of the other 2400 would be very welcome to take part, but for some reason or other they abstain. But they know perfectly well that the ones who decide to get involved are the ones making the decisions, and no one would question the validity of the decisions made. The attendees don't have more rights than the others - they just decided to be an active part of the community. And that's IMHO what happens in Wikipedia communities: Some decide to be an active part, and if you don't want to, then you can't say that you're part of some "silent majority" and therefore the decisions made by the active volunteers are invalid. Gestumblindi (talk) 22:51, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jan-Bart: I am devastated by your approach of comparing Wikipedia to Facebook or other social sites which are no Encylopedia. That completely misses the point. We are making and sustaining an encyclopedia here, which includes a very unique community with a unique culure and unique tools, adjusted on all levels for the needs of encyclopedic authoring. If you try to dilute this with concepts of some arbitrary social media, you will destroy its uniqueness and strength. That can't work out - you are risking the top performers to fork off into an own project. As Micha correctly said: The majority of encyclopedic and administrative work here is done by some hundred people. If you put them off, you can shut up the shop. --PM3 (talk) 22:38, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

To make this clear: Many of the people answering here are not the "grumpy old men" or "rampaging minority" as some in the Foundation might want to picture it. PM3 for example is trying to defend the Foundation on German Wiki, trying to reach there, what he think is a constructive compromise. Comments like this from the head of the Board stab these efforts in the back. It is not about the Mediaviewer anymore, even not about the Superprotect. It is about the complete lack of understanding for the principles of the Wikipeda-projects and their daily procedures, that speaks out of comments as above. And it is about an alarming arrogance that is shown from the responsible people in the foundation against the people in the Communities, that do all the work. This is burning the bridges of any compromise about Mediaviewer or Superprotect and of any future trustful cooperation. --Magiers (talk) 06:12, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't like your term of "defending" (which implies attacking). There is lots of misunderstanding here, and all parties should engage in trying to understand each other. Jan-Barts statement shows little understanding of encyclopedic work, while the statements of some community activists show little understanding of software development. I have done both, developing/managing software projects of different sizes (including a community-driven website) and lots of encyclopedic authoring, and from this background I am sad abot the lack of understanding between WMF and Community. Just sad and terrified about the amount of damage which is done to our common thing, and the resposibility for this damage is not solely with the WMF. --PM3 (talk) 18:41, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

The Foundation staff gets paid, for that we can expect a far better performance than they do. The Board is right now happily breaking the contract that was holding the projects and the foundation together for so long. Have you read any serious excuse for all that? No. Instead the Board talks about visions for which a former German chacellor would have send them to the doctor, and he would have been totally right with it. We were for years patient with the Foundation, now they have put a drop to much in the glass. And they are not sorry for it or think in seriously changing. The Board is telling us that we should go, Erik Moeller tries to make things go so slow that teh community simply will give up out of frustration after some time. No, they crossed a line. --Julius1990 (talk) 18:48, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

@PM3: You may be right in the both sides of the misunderstandings, but there is quite a difference in the significance of them. Understanding enyclopedic work is a must for the WMF and every person in a higher position in the Foundation, while understanding software development can not be expected from the users of the software. I am not worried, that the software development process will make steps forward in the future (starting from a quite low level). But I am very worried about the lack of interest in encyclopedic work - and the lack of respect for the people, that have done this work in the past. I quote: "if you decide to take a wiki-break, that might be the way things have to be. Even so, you have to let the Foundation do its work". If this is the mindset behind the disturbing actions of the last two weeks, I see the responsibility of the disconnect clearly on the side of the WMF. --Magiers (talk) 20:27, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jan-Bart: Your premise that we need lots and lots of new casual editors is incorrect. As the main active WPs "fill up" with content, our need is for specialized, academic expertise. We don't need 100,000 Facebookers to roll by and "crowdsource" half a dozen inept edits each — we need serious scholars to source out, expand, and improve esoteric coverage. As long as WMF remains oblivious to this simple truth, we've got problems... You have grandiose goals for readership but a basic misunderstanding of the actual needs of content creation. Carrite (talk) 00:51, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Every day the English Wikipedia gets lots of new editors, mainly from IP addresses. Unfortunately they are mostly vandals, and we need an increasingly sophisticated set of bots to detect and revert them. I hope that the WMF Board have taken into account that the more editors we get, the more vandalism we will have to cope with? Especially on the more mature wikiepedias where many of the "easy" edits have already been done. Deltahedron (talk) 18:52, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Jan-Bart, I have to say that your statement in this section is highly confusing, and doesn't seem to portray any actual understanding of Wikipedia's goals. This is quite disturbing since you head a service organisation that is supposed to provide what Wikipedia needs. Particularly, I have no idea why you view attracting editors as a goal as opposed to producing a product that attracts readers. Why do you think a large number of editors is a goal in and of itself.?Kww (talk) 03:32, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

I quite understand Jan-Bart's message, although as I say I don't agree with it. WMF projects in general, and Wikipedia in particular, are not where the WMF Board want them to be. They want it to change, and to go somewhwere else. In particular, WMF want the experience of reading and writing WMF projects to be more up-to-date. What they want is probably not what some of the old guard, who actually wrote the encyclopaedias as they stand today, want: but the WMF Board gets to decide. Those who don't like it can leave. That all seems pretty clear. Deltahedron (talk) 06:28, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Additional: I just realised that the message is eerily similar to that of Brecht's en:Die Lösung: the current editors have lost the confidence of the Board and can regain it only be redoubled efforts. The Board's intention is now to dissolve the current community and elect another. Deltahedron (talk) 14:48, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

I suggest that anyone who wants to make Nazi comparisons first listens to the venerable Richard von Weizsäcker (search on Youtube for "Weizsacker Rede zum 8. Mai 1985 1"), and only then decides whether he really wants to go on with that. --Ziko (talk) 09:34, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

@User:Jan-Bart . You wrote, that the Statement of principles by Jimbo "applies to some degree". Do you know George Orwells Animal farm? If not please read it. ...Sicherlich ^Post 13:26, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Just a thought to "they could even contribute once in a while" and "to make it easy enough for anyone to contribute so that people once again feel that “anyone can edit.”" - making it easy okay. But people who once in a while contribute with them you're getting excellent content? Seems for more like you are looking for quantity not quality. But for that we already have bing/google/yahoo... just a thought. Not so long ago it was diversity, before it was women now its the masses. Looking forward what's going to be in 10 years? Maybe you want the Alumni back working? :oD ...Sicherlich ^Post 13:35, 21 August 2014 (UTC) I'm not at all against new members and not at all against better software. But new and good once and better; not only new

Honestly I personally don't care about the "Media Viewer". It is IMHO only a question of design, nice, but not realy a cornerstone of the project to create a encyclopedia. The majority of my fellows in the german writing Wikipedia voted in an another way. What is realy worrisome is the reaction after the voting: The Weelwar was not o.k. - no question. But to create Superprotect was very unclever in a social community like Wikipedia. Wikipedia lives by contribution of many, but less than it sometimes seems from the outside. I contributed only a few hundred articles, but I know a little bit my fellows. They wanted to be treated with some kind of respect. Or in the words of Principle 7: "Anyone with a complaint should be treated with the utmost respect and dignity. They should be encouraged constantly to present their problems in a constructive way. Anyone who just complains without foundation, refusing to join the discussion, should simply be rejected and ignored. Consensus is a partnership between interested parties working positively for a common goal. We must not let the "squeaky wheel" be greased just for being a jerk." By overruling the votes in such a way it is no surprise, that the community feels not treated with the utmost respect and dignity. I feel particularly with regard to fact that is only a question of design concerned that the situation need something like Superprotect.--Kriddl (talk) 20:06, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Ok, just a few points in reference to the remarks made above (I am not going to make them inline because I have limited bandwidth and because a lot of points are repeated here. If I didn't get to your point, I am sorry, After my trip I will be in a better position to go into points that I missed.

• Although I made it clear that this is my personal opinion, a lot of people equate my opinion with "the board" wants a new community. That is both misrepresting my statement and the breadth of it. I don't want a new community, I would like our community to change, and just like some of you argue that you don't want change, I argue that I do.
• I am being accused of forgetting the most important part of our goal: creating an encyclopedia... In actual fact I think that our goal happens to be to get the sum of all knowledge into the hands of all people in the world. Our premise is that people who have access to information are able to make better informed (life)-decisions. That information has to be be relevant, and preferably in a language that makes it easy to digest. That means we need to reach our readers in languages and platforms that they use every day (which might not be a website, and will hopefully be in a local language). The discussion here focuses a lot on the larger projects, and that is way too limited to serve our goal.
• A lot of people argue that not everyone is capable of adding good encyclopaedic content, and that having a hard core group of editors is essential. While I do not disagree that having a very active group of individuals is important, I strongly disagree that not everyone should be able to contribute. When people refer to our core principles with regards to the software deployment, are we conventiently forgetting that the other principle "You can edit this page right now" is a core guiding check on everything that we do'. Because a lot of seem to argue that you are free to edit as long as you have reached a certain skill level in both technology and knowledge dissemination. This seems to limit "you" to a small group of people... which is not going to help us get to the goal of the sum of all knowledge available to everyone.

small subpoint: this is one of the reasons why I am really disappointed that the "oral citations" project never got further than it did. Our entire approach on knowledge dissemination is based on the western idea of an encylopedia and referencing other written sources in order to back up articles. Yet a lot of cultures around the world have a different way of disseminating (and consuming) knowledge. We should be able to get adapt our model to these cultures as well (celebrating the diversity and seeing new opportunities). I see some great examples of this kind of work by local chapters and that is the kind of work which was also showcased at Wikimania.

• Acting as one community as compared to 1000 does not mean that we have to lose our diversity, we have to understand and cherish our diversity. There are MANY smaller projects who stand in the shadow of en.wp and de.wp, yet they might help us reach new audiences which do desperately need the information we have available.
• Listening to others without being offended and triggered into an aggressive response takes two people (the author and the reader). I am sorry if some of my text offended you, it was however intended to give a different view on the issues that we are currently dealing with. If that is not a helpful view in your opinion, I am sorry.
• I have learned that Facebook is a trigger word :) Yes I am aware it is a completely different concept, YET (here I go again) I think we can learn a lot from Facebook and similar popular websites with regards to interface design. But NO we are in no way comparable to facebook, none whatsoever, really NONE (ok?)

Jan-Bart (talk) 11:01, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jan-Bart: Ok, You want the community to change, some people in the community want the Foundation to change. So let's make war and see, who wins at the end. Is this the essence of the conflict? I don't think it is, but it's the way You are talking. You are again missing the opportunity, to make clear, that You want a change in some topics (e.g. better accessibility, better beginner friendliness), which I think would not be opposed by the majority of the communities. But at the same time, there must be an affirmation of the positive values of the communities, their quality work, theit collaborative achievements, their direct democratic decisions. And above all, the encyclopedic alignment of Wikipedia must be out of question. You only say: What You have done is not good, it's not what I expect, I want You to change. And this is offending and not only misread as being offending. By the way: If You propagate, everyone is capable of adding good encyclopaedic content, why You have never tried to? I invite You to the German Wikipedia, there is even a tutor program for beginners. You can learn there, what the real problems in the daily work are for the people, who are building the projects, that You want to decide on. Maybe it would give You a helpful view and make You reconsider some of Your judgements. --Magiers (talk) 12:09, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

The first princible of wikipedia is, that wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Other project like commons, wikisource... have other parts of "the sum of all knowledge in the world", but wikipedia has only this part.

You say, that a core community is important for a project like wikipedia. That is not correct so, a core community is everything for such a project. Only with a high-active community you can have both: a nearly correct, neutral and actual encyclopedia and participation of everybody. It is fact, that a high percentage of the part-time writers are not interestet in encyclopedian work, but only in vandalism, advertising himself or his company and so on. So you need a core community to integrate these edits or articles in the encyclopedia or delete it. Otherwise, you have either a lot of rubbish and outdated articles or you must lock the project, so not everybody can write.

You want to promote the smaller projects. OK, that's good. But I find it a very odd idea, to promote smaller projects by damage or even destroy the bigger projects with functioning communitys. Why should not the larger project go away their own way? In the last ten years, they were very succesful with this way. You should accept, that the big communitys like de.wp has their own mind, what is good and what is not good for them and that they want to decide itself.

When you will go on your way and not go up to the community, it is very realistic, that the damages to the de.wp are irreversible. Even a complete fork of big parts of the community is not impossible. Neither I not other community-members want it, but when the WMF does not accept the independence of the community, it is a realistic option.

Of course, WMF can ignore the wishes of the community and simply go on their way, but you should think very precisely, whether risks and damages to one the most succesful parts of the wikimedia-idea are not too high. --Orci (talk) 13:15, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

As someone who puts their time into a couple of smaller projects (en.wb and en.wn), I find it hard to take seriously a suggestion that the WMF has any respect for smaller projects. They may tell themselves, and others, that they do, but their actions say otherwise. The last time (that I know of) the Board of Trustees spat in en.wn's collective face was just late last year; and Lila said in her keynote address that the smaller projects don't matter. I consider the current crisis quite serious, but from the perspective of a contributor to smaller projects, I'd describe it as the WMF according larger projects the same lack of respect they've given to the smaller ones. --Pi zero (talk) 14:37, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Jan-Bart, that sounds all a bit more softwashed allright. Let's see how others view your future credibility after you initial statement.

First and foremost, it is not possible to take your statements in the current context as merely you personal views: We requested your intervention in a decisive matter of severe urgency where WMF employees crossed several lines. You neglected our request in your function as head of board. This was in itself hazardous and in sharp contrast to you very mission.

You then voiced that you no longer see WMF bound to its founding principles. It is impossible to take this only as your personal opinion, having nothing to do with your duties as head of board. Especially as you neglected to intervene on behalf of these very principles. You told us that you accept them only "to some degree". We will not tolerate this breach of contract.

Next, nothing in what you now tell us makes good on this breach. Let me remind you: For WMF, the community must be its biggest asset, WMF "must respect the work and the ideas of our community. We must listen and take into account our communities in any decisions taken to achieve our mission", WMF has to "empower" and "support" us [20]. You can check how big of an asset, how listened to, how respected and how empowered and supported we feel e.g. here. There never as been a survey among our community with that many participants and that clear an outcome! Now go and read your very own statements and tell us how they can be reconciled with WMF's actual mission.

Next, instead of producing words that many have seen as either empty or the decisive proof that WMF has departed from its very mission, stand up and do something. We have made it very clear what this should be. Afterwards, we may possibly chat about this or that idea of yours. Ca$e (talk) 12:56, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Regarding Facebook, Jan-Bart, has the WMF considered trialling Facebook-like design & features, e.g. chat on projects where Facebook (almost) is the Internet? I dare say the community there would welcome features like that (every I ask in Indonesia says 'duh, yes, of course'), which might be a pleasant surprise rather than trying to force Facebook-like design & features into the English Wikipedia or similar. With Facebook-like features implemented and accepted on one project, other projects might decide it has beneficial qualities for their community also. John Vandenberg (talk) 13:47, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

• Jan-Bart, I have to say that you really don't have the luxury of posting in a purely personal capacity in the way you claim. If you wish your points to be assessed purely on their on merits, and without deriving any of their force from your personal identity, then post under a pseudonym like I do (yes, I admit, my name is not actually "Del") and let your views contend with those of the other contributors. In any situation, especially the current one of tension between the Board and volunteers, when the chair of the WMF board posts under his own name on the talk page of the WMF ED on topics relating to the actions and strategy of the Board on a topic of consuming interest to the entire community, it is going to be seen as authoritative whether you like it or not, and you knew, or should have known, that. At the very least, your personal opinions on current and future strategy are likely to carry significant weight with the Board and the ED, even if those issues are still under discussion; your personal views on the reasons and attitudes for recent Board actions are going to be coloured by the discussions, decisions, formal strategy and views of the Board and ED, even they are not intended to be a comprehensive summary of those topics. So please stand behind your views or modify or repudiate them, but please don't claim that we gave them too much weight. Deltahedron (talk) 13:50, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

• @Jan-Bart: (cc. @LilaTretikov: as well off course): I consider the idea of promoting the smaller projects a good idea, I appeciate this thought. But: The smaller projects do not consist of a number of smaller Wikipedia language versions only (with all their specific different needs) but they include Wikinews, Wikisource, Wiktionary, Wikiversity, Wikiquote, and Wikivoyage, each with their own specific needs as well. And it seems that the WMF is neglecting those small sister projects of Wikipedia exorbitantly. MediaWiki as it is is a software fairly adapted to the needs of Wikipedia but – except for Wikivoyage which to some extent is a very similar to Wikipedia but with other focal points in its arcticles and Wikisource which got some minor software adaptions – is rather unsuitable for those small projects. For example, as an editor and administrator of Wikinews I asked repeatedly for a feature to simplify the inclusion of references what atm. is done through templates (cf. en:n:Template:Source or de:n:Vorlage:Quelle) with its cumbersome and time-consuming multiple copy and paste from the source web page. Is it really so difficult to program (and maintain) an browser add-on like WPCITE.xpi (which isn't maintained anymore)? (To explain: If I write an Wikinews article with a length of, say, 200 words, it's more time-consuming to source the article properly than to write the article text itself. I have not so much a clue on programming but I guess to put those few lines of code needed together, an experienced programmer can do faster than I wrote this discussion entry. I asked for such a little helper at least five times, last but not least during the WikiCon 2013 in Karlsruhe.
• Aside that, what is needed mostly as a feature, is an improvement how to reference sources in articles. Actually it was more easy to include footnotes in MS Word for DOS documents in Version 5 in 1991 or so than in MediaWiki a couple of decades later. That is what is needed most, not a media viewer, and that need is known at least ten years now, that is where work has to be done. Off course, aside those several thousand bugs from which some are open at bugzilla since 2004. --Matthiasb (talk) 14:32, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
• Oh and yet an aspect. It became popularly during the employment of Sue that the WMF focussed on the Global South. On this point I don't want to discuss any of the measures of that time but none of them included Wikiversity. I am sure that any development and improvement on Wikiversity would be a much better investition than WikiZero ever can do. The problem within the board – if they considered it at all – is that that they believe better accessibility to Wikipedia from out of the Global South could improve Wikipedia but at this moment most of the educational material provided to the Global South is provided them by creationistical organizations. I strongly believe that so educated people improve Wikipedia never. It is necessary to open up this blind spot ASAP. --Matthiasb (talk) 14:42, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Jan-Bart, thanks for your statement. The unfriendly behaviour of some community members in discussions - being quickly assaulted, making accusations - is mostly a reaction to the ongoing superprotection of de:Mediawiki:Common.js. Its a flaming sign of mistrust which hurts us and makes us angry. So please stop that.

Besides of this: I agree to most of your points, includung change (although not at arbitrary speed). I also agree that diversity is important - but then, why don't you accept that diversity means being different? All local Wikipedias have different looks and feels, different portals, different structured articles, different design details - and a different community culture. So it is natural that there can also be differences in software configuration, adopted to the local habits and needs. Diversty gets meaningless if you try to force them all to look and behave the same. That's the opposite of diversity. What about fixing this flawed diversity concept? --PM3 (talk) 14:32, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't know, whom You refer to, but my unfriendly behaviour is a direct reaction on the unfriendly behaviour of my dialogue partner. I am always friendly to contributing newbies in German wikipedia. I am not friendly against a VP, that has misused his power and the technical staff against a community. I am not friendly against a Board Head, who has not only exculpated this but who criticizes the community for not building Wikipedia in the way he wants (although he himself has never ever participated in this building process). Both of them had opportunities, to set their words right in a way, that prove respect for the communities and their work. Both of them failed. I can only conclude from this, that disrespect for the communities is a widespread view in the WMF. And to fix this needs for me now much more, then to just unprotect a single page (although of course this already should have been done). --Magiers (talk) 15:23, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Well said. --Julius1990 (talk) 16:12, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Just so that you know: Recent news coverage (of one of the major german online tech news sites with around 20-25 million visits/month) of your weird kind of "communication". Among the german-speaking community, the damage you are causing is about to reach the state of irreversibility. Ca$e (talk) 18:17, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia ist not just a source of free information, it is a plattform (under construction) of how to cooperate successfully, a new design to reach higher levels of cooperation (Nowak 2006). This cooperation is called coordination in ARTICLE II - STATEMENT OF PURPOSE of the bylaws. A resolution of coordination or even a Charter of Coordination must be the first of many next steps – now and in future. WP does not have to worry about technology progress (or restrictions) but needs to improve social skills in its developement: Coordination. The Mothers and Fathers of the bylaws were quite clever, looking back and forward. --Edward Steintain (talk) 20:56, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Coordination is a rarely mentioned word by WMF - so far - and the missing link for succuessful progress of the mission. Could the WMF describe its unterstanding of community, please. It is a group of international individual volunteers with „Shared values in coordination!“, isn't it? --Edward Steintain (talk) 21:16, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

@Jan-Bart: Your confessions (I read it somewhat like a confession) are very instructive, clearly showing how much we differ. You are stating that "our goal happens to be to get the sum of all knowledge into the hands of all people in the world". To me this is a quite strange phrase. What might be the "sum of all knowledge", and how do you "sum up" knowledge? And how could one "give" knowledge into the hands of people, let alone "all people in the world"? In my view, this would seem a very paternalistic idea. Everybody has to do something to "have knowledge", to acquire it, to adopt it and make it his or her knowledge, otherwise it is not knowledge and will never be knowledge. Our goal might be to enable people to acquire their knowledge (or at least to be of some help here), but definitely not to "give them the sum of knowledge" as that would make them passive recipients of a "sum of knowledge" we are defining.

Even more revealing is the idea that "people who have access to information are able to make better informed (life)-decisions". You really believe in this? That a Wikipedia article or other presentation of Wikimedia content will make people able to decide better on their lives? This appears to me as a very strange upshot of education utopism, especially strange because it keeps ignoring the question "who educates the educators?" that is well-known since more than 150 years, as well as the question what relevant knowledge might be and who decides upon that. Of course, you might keep it simple and simply say, why select? Just give them the "sum of all knowledge" in an easily understandable way ("42"?). But knowledge is in itself selection. The "sum of all knowledge" is zero. This idea has nothing to do with knowledge as a concept, let alone as a concept useful for "life decisions".

You say, "a lot of cultures around the world have a different way of disseminating (and consuming) knowledge" (than the "western idea" of encyclopedia). I sympathize with this statement somehow, as it throws light upon a weak spot of encyclopedia projects. They tend to ignore non-scholarly kinds of knowledge that obviously exist (and there is quite a debate about this subject in humanities). However, to bring different kinds of knowledge together is a very complicated process that needs great effort from all sides. Yes, you need skill to do this and to learn to do this, not exactly "a certain skill level" but skills that still have to be developed in discussion and cooperation processes. Unfortunately, this will never be the case if you insist that participation should be a simple thing. It is not. It is a very demanding task. Empowerment does not mean to make it simple and easy but rather to enable people to learn complicated and difficult things in their own way and following their own devices. Even in a country like Germany there are different "cultures of knowledge" that can very acutely be felt in article discussions on the German wikipedia. But it is an illusion to believe: well, let's be "diverse", lets simply collect "scholarly knowledge" and "knowledge of practice" and "knowledge of experience" by many users in one article, everybody can take what he or she wants from this "sum of knowledge". This does not work at all because in this way you get a ruin of an article that is useful for exactly nobody, notwithstanding culture. We (all of us!) have to develop elaborate procedures how these different "knowledge cultures" can be made fruitful in conflict and cooperation. This is a demanding task and not everybody will be willing and able to participate in it. This does not mean that I want to "close" wikipedia but exactly the opposite: I want opening, but this necessarily demands skill and effort from everybody.--Mautpreller (talk) 20:00, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

WikiWand

So the Foundation fears that readers will flock to WikiWand (note their Media Viewer) and other providers like that which piggy-back on Wikipedia with a better-looking reader interface, and Wikipedia.org will lose its top-10 Alexa ranking. This seems to be what all of this is about. Andreas JN466 10:11, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Actually no, I am not worried about that. I think that the open nature of our content allows people to do as much as they want with it, great! Especially when these initiatives add value to our information. BUT: if the only added value is a good interface, then I have to wonder: why don't we have that interface? Jan-Bart (talk) 11:01, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Jan-Bart, that seems at odds with what you said above. You said:

Other internet projects (not limiting ourselves to websites) are passing us by left and right, and none of them have the non-profit goals that we have. In fact, some of them, with more commercial propositions, are actively undermining us.

Llywrch then asked:

What do you mean when you say "other internet projects (not limiting ourselves to websites) are passing us by left and right"? Please provide specific examples, not vague statements like that. Who knows? I may end up agreeing with you in some or all cases. -- Llywrch (talk) 19:42, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

You replied:

Hey, thanks for the clarifying question. Some examples I am thinking of are Quora (who are better at both interface and engaging users), a recent article on Techcrunch and some of the interface of Facebook and the like (because they simple make it a better experience). And to argue that there is no competion to our encyclopedia is probably making the same mistake that Encyclopedia Britannica made several years ago :( Jan-Bart (talk) 19:59, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

The coy reference to a "recent article on Techcrunch" linked to an article that is all about WikiWand. You spoke of "competition", and how Wikipedia might suffer the same fate as Britannica if you ignored it. You said that some of these competitors were "actively undermining" you.

Who is actively undermining you? It surely can't be Facebook and Quora, the other two examples you gave, because they're simply doing their own thing, which is quite different from Wikipedia.

You meant WikiWand, because they are a commercial proposition, and it stands to reason that if people read Wikipedia there, they will not see your fundraising banners any more, and will not see a prominent "Edit" link. The same thing applies to Google of course, who are pulling more and more Wikipedia content into their search results pages, which they earn money off with their ads. Google's Knowledge Graph has been widely linked to the downturn in Wikipedia pageviews last year.

It seems to me you are now making a U-turn. Just call the child by its name, for goodness' sake, and be honest to the community about why you want a more modern interface. Everybody understands that the Foundation's revenue stream, wikipedia.org's Alexa rank and the influx of new editors will be affected if sites like WikiWand take off in a big way. Lila's speech at Wikimania was all about how doing nothing might see Wikipedia being left behind. I didn't quite understand what she was getting at then, but it is clear as daylight now.

As I see it, no one should be surprised that there is a risk of Wikipedia and Wikidata becoming just backroom engines for big and small commercial providers, such as Google and WikiWand, because the projects were set up to be precisely that, their licences from the very beginning making it clear that commercial reusers like Google and WikiWand should be able to earn money off the work volunteers do here for free. If we're honest, it's a big part of what crowdsourcing is all about, and why commercial enterprises (including both Google and Wikiwand) are willing to support it financially, as they have been.

So lay out your case openly to the community for how you want to thread your path, to avoid the project withering in the long term. I may disagree with you about the methods (I really don't think Wikipedia needs more Facebook users; it needs more expert involvement) – but at least we're not shadow-boxing then. The benefit of an honest conversation is that people can debate competing visions. In my view, there is much the Wikipedia movement in general can learn from the German Wikipedia. While it's by no means perfect, it has done far better than the English Wikipedia in many respects: it has a more sensible and transparent way to deal with paid editing (verified company accounts), has Pending Changes to cut down on hoaxes and other silliness, and generally has a more evolved quality ethic.

And if I am really barking up the wrong tree, then please explain to us who are those sites with "commercial propositions" that are "actively undermining" you. Andreas JN466 07:50, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Leaving out that there is much more to it that "all of this is about" (a general vision that goes against basic principles for relationships between WMF and its former community), you are absolutely right. I commented on this aspect e.g. on Requests_for_comment/On_a_scale_of_billions#A_few_comments_and_additions_by_ca.24e: "You should realize that very many (myself e.g. included, in cases where i really only want to read - in every other case, i, like Kww, curse the mobile version and switch to the desktop view!) often read WP by other means: For mobile phone and tablet users, there are apps that provide a very convenient layout (one popular example for deWP would be http://dasreferenz.com/), or web services (like e.g. http://www.wikiwand.com), or readers such as getpocket.com for longer articles. I also find the idea mistaken to invest larger resources in developing an environment to edit WP from phones or tablets. The time has long passed that we would have profited from stubs of, say, the length of a twitter post. We also do not at all need millions of useless pictures, and especially not without proper licensing. What we need, at the moment and in the coming future, are more well-versed experts on topics where WP still severely lacks in article quality. For these topics, we need profoundly worked-out articles which people will, probably for several years to come, not write on their phone or tablet, but on their desktop."

Now, i, as most other contributors, have no problem at all with wikiwand, other apps etc. They after all enable readers to read the contributions of my fellow colleagues in a more convenient way than anything WMF ever came up with. The distribution of quality content for as many readers as possible was our goal from the start, after all! Why does WMF have a problem with it? This connects with what i cited there by H-stt: "The unlimited money supply from the fundraising campaigns shows the tremendous enthusiasm of our readers, but it has seduced people into hiring staff without first agreeing on goals and methods. This excessive staff and bureaucracy then very quickly became estranged from its base, the community, and is now fighting for self-preservation." When people read WP content with convenient tools such as dasReferenz, WikiWand etc, less people will see WMF's campaigns for funding. What they are thus trying to do, and failing miserably, is copying parts of what WikiWand etc do. However, with WMF's development work being as desastrous as it is, and its stance to stubbornly ignore large amounts of community input, we have more often than not now seen what results this brings. In the process of this ignorant self-preservation-attempts (here again applies H-stt's comment), WMF has come to the stance that those former communities will just have to accept broken software being stoved down their throats (or may simply leave). Thereby, WMF naturally alienates itself from its former communities. This will lead exactly towards what WMF fears. For why should we, who make up all the difference to mere content consumption, have anymore any interest in supporting a business that does not support but alienate us? WMF seemingly also has realized that by ignoring former communities, they will need new communities. So, they decided to focus on people who have no ideas at all about content quality control - people like many twitter/facebook users. We have seen where this will lead to, check [21] for example. Who will filter such pseudocontributions? We? Why should we anymore? Ca$e (talk) 10:47, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

• Gosh, talk about en:Streisand effect! I had never heard of en:WikiWand before, and probably never would have if it hadn't been for this discussion. But now, I'm impressed. Rather parochially, it seems to have much better and fast rendering for mathematics. Does anyone know how they do that? Could we do that here too please? Deltahedron (talk) 11:59, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Just in case: You probably are aware of the option to switch on MathJax in your user settings? Ca$e (talk) 14:53, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes: there is a long back-story here, see en:Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive/2014/May#VisualEditor_math_formulae, en:Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics/Archive/2014/Jun#A_challenge_from_Jimbo_Wales, en:Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#A_response_from_WMF. Deltahedron (talk) 14:57, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

• • Heh, it is rather amazing that Wikiwand manages to display maths equations in the same font as the rest of the text. Beautiful (if not yet quite perfect). Perhaps they should be donating programmers rather than money to the Foundation ... but then, of course, they'd be losing their raison d'être. By the way, some interesting figures about VisualEditor from the French Wikipedia. According to that post, for >90% of edits, people prefer the old wikitext editor, even though VE is the default there. Ever onward. Andreas JN466 14:42, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Jayen, Two question: What is their raison d'être? Is their software freely licensed? Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:47, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

For anyone reading this Jayen kindly pointed me to [22] previously linked by Jan, that Wand's efforts arose form "their own frustration with Wikipedia’s user interface". As for their business model the article says: "In the future, the company plans to monetize by integrating targeted ads for textbooks, articles, and classes." Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:40, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

The font matching probably has more to do with Wikiwand choosing a serif font "Lora" [23]. The equations come from wikimedia PNG rendering which also happen to be a serif font, probably Times or a LaTeX font. The problem for wikipedia which uses a san-serif font for text is than maths equation generally look wierd in san-serif, so a font miss match is unavoidable.--Salix alba (talk) 23:05, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

• For a year, I have recommended that the WMF outsource the software engineering tasks, for which it has proved only incompetence, to companies with records of delivering quality software. For example, I have suggested that the WMF outsource Visual Editor to the producers of Scientific Workplace and similar systems.

  Perhaps there is something to Reagan's "Magic of the Marketplace", because WikiWand seems to have delivered an improved interface at no cost to the WMF. Indeed, WikiWand treats the writers with greater respect, in terms of respecting their traditional interface.

  Indeed, Wikiwand stated that it is donating 30% of its profits to the WMF, a terrible waste of its shareholders' value with no discernible benefit. Better for Wikiwand to have targeted giving that focuses on supports writers and maintainers of quality articles and that focuses on the problems of exploiting child labor and harboring child predators. The WMF still has not released its updated child-protection policy. To get Lila to act may take a county prosecutor and grand jury investigating a child-endangerment case.

  Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 13:46, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

“That was quite something, whatever happened?". That's exactly what I think right now. The Foundation has finally lost whatever little connection to Wikipedia communities they might ever have had. A failed project, not due the many problems inherent in Wiki culture and free knowledge, but due to a complete lack of goodwill and competetent, community-aware staff. --AndreasPraefcke (talk) 14:59, 21 August 2014 (UTC) (donator of tens of thousands of photos for the Commons, admin on de.wikipedia since 2004, but probably not much longer)

Some of my toughts concerning the original posting: 1. "We want to attract new editors." (yes, certainly. But keep in mind, it is much easier to keep one power-editor than get as many new uswes to replace his work. Wikimedia ideed does not much in keeping his main asset - the longtime editors. The main problem for new users is not a complicated user interface - this could be fixed in a short time, but the fact that new users in most cases do not understand we develop an encyclopedia not a "heap of information" and they do not understand they have to base their edits on sources. Most problems with new users are vandalism, contribution for self-promotion and advertisement purposes, POV edits, edits without indicating any source etc. It is quite difficult to detect and support new users who really want to contribute in a usefull way. An enyclyopedia is directed at normally educated people (which implicitely excludes part of people as editors at least).
2. "We want to have our information everywhere."
3. "We need to move faster than ever before."
Ist this true? Who is "we"? Some people of WMF or the community, which survey shows this need? The unlimited growth is one basic principle of capitalistic economy as we have. But Wikimedia is no company at the market. Certainly we beed growth: growth in quality, growth in some countries and languages which are underepresented, in some topics as technics. But the internet is for me absolutely enough. We are no google or facebook and should never be.
4. "This means we need to be tolerant of things we may not like and let experimentation happen. We also need to remove things we are attached to that don’t have wide adoption.

   We need to act as one community, not 1,000. This means we cannot enact the wishes of a few hundred, but have to build processes that support the successes of millions." 

Yes but please experiment (together) with us as subjects and not with us (as the object of experimentation). If we cannot enact the wishes of some 100 how can we enact the will of much fewer staff people an technicans the? In my view, we need to know the needs of editors and readers first (based on scientific based surveys, useability studies...). Then we have to develop concepts and software tho fulfill this needs an disuss them extensively with the community in a way anyone haas access, not in some seldom found corner. Then there may be experiementations as usual alpha-stages of software developement with limited numbers of users and the software shall be developped according the results gathered. Then and only then a global rollout might happen. Then, again the user experience shall be gathered and used for further developement. - Andy king50 (talk) 08:34, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

CRM

The deletion discussion for Jan-Bart de Vreede led me to the article about the WMF where I noticed that it uses CiviCRM. As your recent background is in CRM and the foundation is having a difficult relationship with its customer community, this could be a fruitful priority. I'm an active editor and volunteer but the chapters, projects and foundation seem to do a poor job of recording my identity and interests. For example, I was a volunteer at Wikimania, where I heard you speak on the need for change, but all the processes and systems for engaging with me as a volunteer and chapter member seemed quite ad hoc and diffuse. Wouldn't it be good to develop and integrate the profiles of our stakeholders? This might help improve your understanding of what we want and so help you better direct the foundation's resources so that we can pull together in the same direction. For example, I often try using Wikipedia through my smartphone but find the interface weak. You have mobile use as a high priority and I'm keen to support you in this. As your systems could do a better job of bringing us together, what are your plans to improve them, please? Andrew (talk) 08:50, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Edits of WMF employees

'We have heard feedback that WMF employees should have distinct accounts for their WMF-related actions as opposed to their personal actions on the projects. We accept that feedback and will put in place such a system within the next month."

Thats too late. You can write a memo to every employee, that they should use strictly separate accounts as private persons and employees. To be in force immediately. Something like User:Lila Tretikov (WMF). Later you can implement software, that disables normal users to use (WMF) in their signature. --Eingangskontrolle (talk) 15:51, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

no need for rush here IMO. Most of them are not active on Wikipedia anyways. ...Sicherlich ^Post 16:24, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Most stupid idea ever, which will only further widen the gap between WMF and community, but it seems that all reasoning has gone out the window, and we must let WMF employees bleed and we will brandish them... If I were an employee I would start making all my edits using my personal account and never use my WMF labelled account anymore. For the majority of them, the reason for working there is personal commitment to the goals of the movement, so they will want to express that. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 08:03, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

"For the majority of them, the reason for working there is personal commitment to the goals of the movement" - if that would be so, they would have fired their board already, which explicitly tramples on those values. Ca$e (talk) 08:05, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Or perhaps there are different perspectives, all of value and all shaped by the roles and responsibilities that each and every person has. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 08:36, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Of course there are. But the values we are talking about are stated explicitly. For WMF, the community must be its biggest asset, WMF "must respect the work and the ideas of our community. We must listen and take into account our communities in any decisions taken to achieve our mission", WMF has to "empower" and "support" us [24]. You can check how big of an asset, how listened to, how respected and how empowered and supported we feel e.g. here. Now go and read Jan-Bart's statement and tell me again that this is a matter of perspectives and Jan-Bart's stance could be somehow reconciled with WMF's mission. Ca$e (talk) 08:39, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Some answers (Man77)

Hi Lila,

thanks for honestly joining the debate, this is already more than many expected :)

Well then, your questions, to some of which I'd like to post a comment:

WMF and the whole wiki movement(s) have obviously quite a lot to do with technology, therefore it would not make much sense to believe that WMF is no tech org at all. However, what kind of tech org is it? If you compare Wikimedia with other top-traffic websites you'll probably find more fundamental differences than similarities. The common goal of the Wikimedia wikis has been so far, at least I suppose that's the case, free content for everyone, as much as possible and as good as possible. I actually don't think being a top 5/top 10 site has ever really been in our focus (nor that there has ever been a strategy), this rather happened because what we offer seems to have been pretty attractive to quite a lot of people. The offer came and comes from almost uncontrollable idealists who also administer the offer, our visitors came and come for information (be in as a text or as a picture or as a sound), not for being entertained or impressed by software fads or gimmicks. This does not mean that our software should never be updated, but I'd like to stress the point that (for me) first and foremost WMF is not a software development organization, but rather a digital (and free) content organization.

The wikis have developped and administered themselves quite independently so far. Their communities have been and will be among WMF's most valuable forms of capital (see Bourdieu). Erik's actions were quite a shock to our community (German language Wikipedia) and paralyzing to a certain extent, even though they did not happen all out of a sudden. Many of us have the impression that WMF (or at least some of its staff) disrespects and devalues its communities, that our arguments do not bother anyone, that the amount of autonomy that we thought we had is under attack or simply gone. Even worse than that, this "annexation" happened without being deducible from the guiding principles or the WMF charta and it clearly misses the requirements for an office action. And worse yet, the process from an idea to implementation and use of superprotect happened overnight, without proper review and without any guideline about the use of this new feature. In most cases software updates take months or years from the first request to being finally in use. In this case we still don't know if it was an office decision to implement a superprotection level or merely an Erik action, carelessly sacrifizing the community advocate. And finally superprotect as a group right demonstrates a gap between staff and all the others with the staff being in ultimate position of power in a legal vacuum.

Which proofed to be a paralyzing action for de.wp's community. I would say that every editor as much replaceable as he or she is irreplaceable, and everybody has the right to leave at any point, but right now the consequences are definitely negative to daily life in our project, as some of our most vital accounts (experienced sysops, specialized editors, important bots) stopped doing what they have been doing for a couple of years. Which for sure was avoidable. That however left a gap that will take quite some time to be appropriately closed and obstructs our natural development and growth. For me, the superprotection case caused a greater damage to de.wp than what the media viewer or any other new gadget can bring as a benefit in the medium term. Again for me, this should be reason enough to forgo superprotection now and to chose a less extreme interim that does not stand as a symbol of distrust.

Who decides? WMF won't decide those deletion requests, block appeals etc. that would have been executed by those who currently are on strike. Placing the threshold is difficult, but things that directly affect a community should not be imposed against a clear community consensus, unless you have a really good (for instance, legal) reason which I don't see here.

Where communication is concerned, I'd recommend to listen to what those communities really require. Balance prestigious projects "from above" such as MV or VE and work on bugs and requests "from the bottom" better than it appeared to be lately. Last fall there was a survey at de.wp about technical wishes (w:de:Wikipedia:Umfragen/Technische Wünsche) which is now getting slowly evaluated by WMDE. Some of the top wishes have been in bugzilla since 2004/05 (!), to which I refer as "my would-like-to-see features". I, for example, appreciate Echo (which still could be made a lot better) which worked well from the very beginning. VE and MV were simply not ready at the time of their rollout and thus quite a mess. Please keep that in mind for future "big things". (And maybe arrange surveys about WMF plans and community requests once or twice a year.) As Austrian I suppose that WMF had a better reputation if they had a self-conception similar to the Austrian chapter.

Would I write if nobody were reading? Nobody reads what I write. Almost. I cover rather exotic topics. I do it for the idea of an open project of free content about any (notable) topic, not for a specific reader or use. You can't control the personal interests of "the editors", but you will ever need them. The mission is not just about the editors, but the mission depends on their editing.

Thanks again, good luck on your journey, Europe is watching you. :-) → «« Man77 »» ^[de] 18:54, 20 August 2014 (UTC) (currently sysop and arbcom member of de.wp)

Man77 Thank you for your note -- one of the more helpful ones. Yes, I now realize that the "shock" of the protection and the perceived "disrespect" are the emotional riggers we are dealing with. I can tell people that there is no disrespect and that it was the simplest way to stop a revert so we can have hash out problems on the feature, but I don't think it will matter. What I can tell you is that I've learned a few things through this process. It is not trivial, there is a lot of history and emotion, yet a lot to do going forward. We need to better define our roles in building technology and the technology itself. I don't believe our goal is to be a top-5, but we are here now and we have a different set of needs and responsibilities than we did just a few years back. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 16:45, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi Lila, if I may step in here: For me knowing the motives behind an action matters very much. If You say, it was just the simplest way for You, I can understand, that the action was driven from a lack of experience with the communities, because it was of course not the simplest way as is seen now and has put needless ballast on the discussion about the MV. I don't know, why noone in Your office has forseen it, but the use of extended rights for personal advantage is the most serious misconduct in the communities. Any sysop, that would conduct an edit war and then protect the site in his favourite version, would be surely de-sysoped, so everyone reacts very allergic against such a behaviour. It seems with the simple solution of Superprotect, You were directly stepping in a sandtrap. Instead using the normal processes of the community (reporting the edit-war on local sysop-sites) would have had a much better chance of bringing the majority of the local sysops on Your side for at least temporarily disabling the hack and putting the MV on again until further discussions. The community processes are slow and sometimes may seem anarchic, but they have worked for more than a decade without any need of Superprotection. --Magiers (talk) 18:52, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I'd be interested to try and see that in action. Although we still need to implement revision control around production file -- but that's a different issue. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 22:36, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Lila, thanks Magiers for your remarks. In my view, the "simplest" way was in fact way too complicated as it first had to be built by developers and requires (still!) to be given an official policy. On the other hand, the most ordinary step towards restoring the community's confidence in the staff is to finally, after more than 2 weeks, unsuperprotect this js-page. My impression of being in negotiation with a wall is unsettling me more and more. → «« Man77 »» ^[de] 17:33, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Just a few

Hi Lila, Erik and Jan-Bart, you claim again and again that 64+90+190=344 are too few to decide for millions. Now (again) please tell us, how many were you? When you did this decision. --Trofobi (talk) 21:58, 20 August 2014 (UTC) (PS. 627 + counting...)

We did not decide for millions, we rolled out on all wikis incrementally. If we got pushed back along the way we would have stopped, fixed, then moved forward. We are at the last step. At the last push we got some pushback from a few hundreds. However a few hundred can have valid issues, and when we agree on them we should fix them. We are reviewing just that. Is there a disagreement with that? -- LilaTretikov (talk) 23:55, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

Also -- forgot to mention that about 250,000,000+ were on the platform at the time of the roll-out with NPS in 60-70% at that time. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 23:57, 20 August 2014 (UTC)

@LilaTretikov: What does "NPS" stand for? --92.226.45.154 09:18, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

NPS. Sun Creator (talk) 13:37, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

"If we got pushed back along the way we would have stopped, fixed, then moved forward" -- If that is truly the case, that is a great departure from how software deployments have gone in the past. If you had clearly communicated that you plan to run things so differently, perhaps volunteers would have approached this differently. The thing is, the timetables that seem to work so well for the WMF make very little sense if you are outside the WMF office -- and I say this as a former employee.

And -- "would have...fixed" -- have we even arrived, yet, at a shared understanding of what would constitute "fixed"? How can you claim you would have done something that is even still undefined? -Pete F (talk) 00:12, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Would fix the reasoned objections, as they have several times. Are you claiming they have not, because if you are that means you are obtusely and stubbornly ignoring the fact that several changes to MV have occurred. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:55, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Certainly there have been some improvements, but not nearly at the scale that is needed. And I believe it is WMF's responsibility to generally get something to a releasable state, without "crowdsourcing" central design issues to volunteers. If I bought a car from a dealership, I might want to customize the color and the seat material; but if they arrived with a pile of wheels, nuts, and bolts, a lawnmower engine, a jet engine, and a few cans of paint, I'd walk away. The situation we're in now is more like the latter -- except that the dealer is insisting that our readers must drive to work every day in the pile of scrap until we can figure out how to build a car out of it. -Pete F (talk) 02:37, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Your comment is absurd: it's 'you rely on us too little -- no, you rely on us too much'. Alanscottwalker (talk) 03:00, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Your comment, Pete, is exactly to the point. Thanks, Ca$e (talk) 08:36, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

OK now I am confused -- I though you wanted to participate and be relied on? As for the car -- are we comparing Wikipedia to car manufacturing? If we think it is a useful analogy -- let's think about which parts should be customizable and what are the constraints (how many colors?). Let's list them and work towards a secure system that allows for just that. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 15:54, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

@LilaTretikov: Can you say more about your confusion -- what comment does this seem to contrast with? Maybe this will help: I have some, but certainly not all, of the qualifications needed to design a better media viewer. But just because I have them, does not mean I wish to donate my time to WMF for the privilege of working alongside people who are being paid for their time, and have the ability to overrule me at their whim, and who do not make an effort to design an interaction process that lets me use my time efficiently, not have to repeat myself, etc. Is there some reason you think WMF is entitled to the expertise of its community, in the service of its own goals, without offering compensation?

As I think I've made adequately clear in many venues, I'm not willing to work on the design of the Media Viewer while it remains enabled by default, against the explicit wishes of three project communities. -Pete F (talk) 19:52, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

To reuse that analogy: While you would be right under normal conditions, that is, where we can actually buy and configure cars, we are not really offered cars by WMF, but rather a pile of crap (i am not exaggerating at all, see above, as correct license attributions are a key element for a mediaviewer, as is, say, being able to control driving speed, and this also holds for other WMF projects, as was also pointed out already), and we are not offered it, but it is forcefully stoved down or throats, even after we warned months ago. Maybe you get the point with a modified analogy by MZMcBride: "I continue to get the sense that the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for ways to ask (and re-ask) how much would you like to pay for this horse? and the editing community is responding with no thank you, but we would perhaps consider a car.". Now, what would normal conditions look like? Developers with a large userbase like here normally find themselves in the position where users are eagerly asking for some end product, but they first want to fix this minor design flaw first and then that, while voices get louder to finally release the much awaited product (there actually are very many functions we do ask WMF for, some of them for like 10 years on!). Instead, you not only provide but force upon us broken pieces of software we never even requested - and which also are hardly needed, given that convenient mere reading capabilities are already provided, e.g. by WikiWand, dasReferenz etc (on which, see previous posts on this very page) - compared to which, on the reader UX side, WMF's products not even side like the horse against the car! Thus, i do not see that the actual situation connects very much with your example where just minor modifications are concerned. Ca$e (talk) 16:17, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

The main difference is that those few hundred people are the ones that are supposed to make the decision as to how German Wikipedia will operate and what its default settings will be. Dismissing them in the way you do is the problem.Kww (talk) 00:43, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

"We did not decide for millions, we rolled out on all wikis incrementally.". By deciding to develop and implement a change that nobody had requested, did you not decide for millions?

"If we got pushed back along the way we would have stopped, fixed, then moved forward". Pushed back by whom? By one? A couple dozen? A few hundred? Ten thousand? Or would every user on the planet would have to write to you personally and tell you he doesn't like this or that feature you have imposed on them? That's exactly what I'm doing here, btw. As I have mentioned already, I am just a user--I do not bother editing here, and now I know I never will, especially seeing as the WMF seem to have decided that they want a Facebook Web 2.0-y me-too. If you manage it, you will get exactly the same content quality as Facebook. I don't use or read that, why should I read Wikipedia? To tell the truth, since the Media Viewer thing caused me to take an interest on how this project works, I find myself avoiding Wikipedia most of the time. Whereas before I would just search for a subject directly on Wikipedia, now I Google it and go to the most promising non-Wikipedia links. I'm not boycotting though, more like preparing myself for a post-Wikipedia web. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 2a00:1028:83a0:291e:762f:68ff:fe2d:429e (talk) 00:45, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

"some pushback from a few hundreds" ... what of the 3,552 people who said that the Media Viewer was not useful for viewing images? And anyway, I would have given feedback earlier in the process if I knew this was coming. But you did absolutely no outreach that I can tell to readers. And yes, I do take issue with how you're going about this. Media Viewer has been unequivocally rejected by the the people you claim to work for, your users. They say it should be disabled by default. If you want to improve Media Viewer, why don't you listen to the people you actually work for and disable it. Then work on it. Then get the community buy in to push it by default. But stop rejecting the feedback that you don't want to hear—that Media Viewer should be disabled. You say you are listening, but you are doing the exact opposite of what people are telling you to do. You're listening, but what you're doing is worse than ignoring people. -- 98.207.91.246 01:12, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

We clearly need to improve communication and roll-out -- we are not arguing that here. Let's work on what his should look like together -- on the comment's page. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 15:54, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Can we fix the bigger issues, first? You keep on changing the topic from faithfully executing your duties by being a servant of the community to something else. Back out superprotect and make the changes mandated by community consensus. Then we can talk about fixing the damage the WMF has caused and how to prevent similar events in the future. Until then, you're just being a dictator trying to soothe concerns rather than solve problems. This is infuriating. We're playing a rigged game here where nothing we can do can change your mind. --98.207.91.246 16:13, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Apparently, you are (intentionally?) unaware of the owner of these sites, and you're dictatorial directive is ironic. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:23, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Apparently you are unaware that wikis are owned by the communities that write them. Apparently you are unaware that the WMF was created to serve the community, not rule it. Apparently you are unaware that wikis are governed by the consensus of the community. Unfortunately, the WMF is apparently unaware of this these days as well. --98.207.91.246 16:35, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

However much you, or we, might wish it to be otherwise, the WMF owns the servers, has the root passwords, and pays the electricity bills. Anyone who wants to have the pleasure of doing those things for thmselves has te right to fork. Deltahedron (talk) 17:36, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

It's not this easy, since the money isn't falling from the sky for the Foundation. And it is also no direct result of any work the WMF does. The WMF really should ask itself if she is responsible for the revenues or if she should be more grateful to other people who make those revenues possible. --Julius1990 (talk) 17:54, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I quite agree with that. The community can engage, influence, persuade, press, pressurise, leverage, negotiate, lobby, go-slow, work-to-rule, strike, leave, compete, ... and some, any or all of those might be effective. What is not effective is saying that the community owns the wiki as if that assertion would change anything. Starting from a mistaken position rarely leads to effective tactics. Deltahedron (talk) 18:01, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

The point is that there is a difference between law and moral: By law the Foundation owns the servers and the contributers their contributions, morally the position of the contributers is much stronger. A similar devision you can see about looted art by the Nazis: Today's owners often own the artworks and can't be contested juristical, but morally their right of possession is pretty weak. Just an example, quite different, but it illustrates what we have here too: a division between law and moral. --Julius1990 (talk) 18:07, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

A fair point, but I see this about being about power. The WMF has always had the power to do what it has just done, but for various reasons has chosen not to exercise it, presumably bcause they felt it would be counter-productive. WMF have chosen to take the gloves off: they want us to help them do things, and are willing to listen to how we're going to do that, provided we understand that ultimately things will be done they decide. The community can exercise power too, and one way of doing that is to make a persuasive argument based on the moral rather than the legal position. In the light of Jan-Bart's (personal) view, that he is happy to see disaffected members of the community leave, I think moral persuasion is not likely to be effective with the WMF Board. It is possible that it would work with donors, of course, especially when backed with the observation that the WMF position is precisely that they wish contributors, who helped to build the encyclopaedia to go, yet have no credible plans to replace them. But this is exactly the last place in the world to make those observations. What should be pointed out here, in the most constructive way possible, is what the practical consequences for the projects are that Lila will have to deal with. That happens to be power politics too, of course. Deltahedron (talk) 18:40, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

• Participation and reliance -- Confusion possibly arises from an unsopisticated model of how to merge paid, directed effort with unpaid, undirected effort. I have had this conversation before with other members of WMF staff. In fact WMF relies almost totally on the volunteers to write the encyclopaedias (and other content), which they do within an agreed and externally maintained context (the five pillars, for example). On the engineering side, some members of WMF staff have said that they cannot, will not or do not direct volunteer effort at all (and speak as if this would be anathema to the volunteer community). The result is that volunteer effort, aspiration and requirements are divorced from staff planning, design and implementation until far too late a stage, and leads to imbroglios like the VE and MV rollouts. Meanwhile, volunteer effort, devoid of meaningful input from WMF (one senior engineer does not even know where to go to talk to volunteer developers) or engagement with WMF development processes, withers on the vine. Volunteering is not about doing whatever you like whenever you like. It needs a context, and a reasonable degree of commitment. From my own experience, when I volunteered to feed dementia patients in a hospital, I needed to commit to turning up for certain shifts and feeding certain groups. If I didn't they could have gone unfed. I was expected not to come for ther shifts, and certainly not to try my hand at brain surgery instead because it was more exciting. I accepted the responsibility and in return the hospital provided me with the training and equipment I needed to do my job properly. On the other hand, they did not tell me which order I needed to feed the patients in; nor did I have to design and build my own equipment; nor did I have to pay for the food; nor did the hospital suddenly decide that a new piece of equipment, which almost worked for some but not all the patients would replace the older more serviceable items. Similarly, when I was an officer on a charity's board of trustees, I was trained to do the work and given the support I needed from the paid staff to do my job: in return, I did what needed to be done (or got someone else to do it) using my professional knowledge, expertise and experience, without interference and micromanagement. If I had a problem, I talked it through with the paid officers and the other trustees.

The common elements to all of this: the volunteers engaged in a constructive dialogue with the paid staff; they were given a clear context to do the work; they were provided with what they needed to do the job; they were relied on and trusted to do what they had said they would do; and they did it. Can WMF say that currently all these elements are present in their relationship with the volunteer contributors and developers? Are any of them present? If not, how do we get there from here? Is alienating the current set of volunteers and replacing them with a new set solving the problems or just kicking them down the road? Deltahedron (talk) 16:29, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear @LilaTretikov: Thank you for again not answering our questions, who were the executives responsible for the enforced MV-Rollout and the Superprotect operation. (And me, too, asks what en:NPS does stand for in your comment? before I respond to your details. neuropathic pains? ;)) --Trofobi (talk) 05:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Check this. We could go into details as to why WMF's methodology was dubious at best, but some of that has already been explained with less jargon. Ca$e (talk) 08:24, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Any decision we make on a product needs to be driven by data and I don't want us to be making changes in wither direction without having them justified. The reason MV is in place is not because it had the perfect data initially, but because it is already the default experience for all of our audiences -- it is the current "steady state". The kind of data we want is the one that answers the questions of primary use cases at scale and without bias towards a single user group (unless the feature is targeted towards one an dis completely invisible to the others). If we roll-back MV it will be based on the test against those use cases. We can argue weather this was the right feature to work on or roll-out -- or if it was done right -- I don't think that is productive at this point, we should be working to ensure we have it right going forward. And yes, all decisions are my responsibility. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 16:33, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

The decisions you make need to be driven by the decision making processes of the communities that are effected. If a version of Wikipedia decides that Media Viewer should be opt-in, you have every right to attempt to persuade them differently, but you do not have the right to simply override them. Your attempts to persuade should certainly be based on data, but if a community interprets that data differently, you should defer. To override them and then claim that your override is now the steady-state so it has to prevail for any period of time is wrong. The WMF set MV to be on by default without support from the affected communities (or, indeed, by its own data, which showed that the majority of people, editors and readers alike, thought it was useless). The WMF is supposed to be biased towards a user group: the editors that create the product. It is them that you were created to support. It's a free market: groups like Wikiwand, Google, and others are supposed to create profit-making websites that siphon our data and package them into different presentations, and they are the ones that focus on how to attract and please readers. You, in turn, support the editors so that content can be created.Kww (talk) 03:15, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear @LilaTretikov: Thank you for your answer "all decisions are my responsibility". Could you help us understanding, too, at which point and in which ways did you involve the institution you are reporting to and the man who you let implement that work for you? --Trofobi (talk) 04:46, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Your Recent Comment

"All we are doing is asking everyone to hold the current state until we jointly find a better way to make decisions on product. This includes lifting superprotect. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 21:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)"

No. As someone else has remarked, this is like sticking a dagger in someone's chest, then saying that you'll leave it there until we can jointly negotiate a mutually agreed solution. How can you not see the astonishing damage you're doing? I'm not an administrator, or anything else particularly special in Wikipedia. I wouldn't even know about this problem if my partner (who isn't a Wikipedia editor) hadn't had a problem with the insanely incompetent Media Viewer (whoever ran that roll-out should be summarily fired, as they're clearly not up to the job). But the more I dig into this issue, the more I see that the entire supporting structure is rotten. I know you want to save face, but this is not the time for that. This whole issue is now percolating down from the hugely committed highly active editors to the ordinary guys like me, and the more that happens the more difficult it will be to repair the damage. The best thing you could do would be to completely retract all your team's actions over the last 3 months (roll back superprotect, Media Viewer, etc.), and give full, complete apology, with an undertaking to work more collaboratively in future. RomanSpa (talk) 06:19, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

"How can you not see the astonishing damage you're doing?" - i think it's become pretty clear by now. Just have a look at the previous paragraph where Jan-Bart lays out its vision for WMF's brave new "future". Sticking daggers to a few hundred chests does not count that much if you virtualize billions applauding you on your way towards an imaginative top5-facebook-twitter-super"consistent"-lookalike (do not attempt to argue that something like that would not be possible - you are talking with people who never even really used the software they stove down your throats!). You do not like this "innovative" vision? Fork off! Ca$e (talk) 08:32, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Our projects are not Flickr

Lila, I have been very active, and successful, in getting photographers/organisations/governments to relicense their photographs on Flickr to a CC licence. Over the last 12 months I have uploaded around 325,000 images from Flickr as a result of these efforts. The other day I experienced something I have never experienced before. I was contacted on Flickr, not Commons, by someone who wanted to use an image that I had uploaded to Commons. I informed them that I was not the photographer, and pointed them to the photographer on Flickr whom they could contact.

Their response to me, apart from thanking me, was "This is so confusing". I put this down purely to Media Viewer inserting information that is somewhat irrelevant (e.g. who uploaded the image rather than only the author/copyright holder), making it harder for people to contact people on our projects, and generally making it harder to find pertinent information that our re-users require. The person was lucky that my Flickr username is the same as my WMF username, otherwise this person would have been stuck not knowing what the hell to do.

Media Viewer would be great if our sites were purely a Flickr-type site where people basically view photographs. But this is not our "mission". Our entire mission is built not just on the supply of freely licenced content, but re-using that content by anyone for any purpose. Anything that places an obstacle in the way of the average person re-using that content should seriously be reconsidered.

My comments are not being made in relation to SuperProtect, for if Media Viewer wasn't a useless piece of junk, none of the current drama would have ever occurred. We need to fix the ultimate cause, rather than focussing on the effects---which is what is occurring in the community at the moment.

It would be great if you could comment on this general issue in the context in which I have just explained. Russavia (talk) 10:32, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

We need to understand where the confusion came from here and test for that use case. I will ask the PM to get in touch with you. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 16:13, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Right there - I think that is an excellent illustration of part of the problem. I think you just "collected feedback". I think your staff "collected feedback" from our RfC's on Media Viewer. I think your staff "collected feedback" from the responses to your survey. (I read and partially categorized 500+ text responses from the survey, and I've seen the horribly filtered summary that you're being given on it.) I believe "collecting feedback" was emphasized as part of ensuring WMF doesn't waste money on failed projects. "Collecting feedback" is an integral part of advancing the project, ensuring projects don't fail. "Collecting feedback" consists of aggressively searching for things that can be filed as a bug report, to advance the project and ensure that it doesn't fail. When I read your reply to Russavia, I see you jumping on something that can be filed as a bug report..... and missing everything else that was said. When I read Russavia's comment, I see Russavia telling you not to waste money trying to bugfix this detail. I see Russavia telling you a second time not to run off trying to bugfix this detail. (I hope Russavia jumps in to confirm or correct my reading.) Russavia called Media Viewer a "useless piece of junk" - I read this as a clear statement not to waste money trying to fix it - because it will still be a useless piece of junk. Russavia immediately followed that up with "We need to fix the ultimate cause, rather than focussing on the effects", which I take as a second, desperate plea, to please not run off focused on fixing this detail. I see Russavia trying to say that Media Viewer would be great on a Flickr-type site but that it just plain Does Not Belong on Wikipedia. I see Russavia desperately trying to get you to HEAR that is the point by using "Our projects are not Flickr" as the Section Heading for this discussion. I saw very point (with varied phrasing) repeated over and over and over again in the text-fields of your own surveys, but your feedback process completely filtered it out because there is no way to file that as a "bug report" to advance the project. The WMF institutional process seems unable to hear the notion that Wikipedia's baseline image view might be BETTER for Wikipedia than Media Viewer. The WMF institutional process seems unwilling or unable to engage in a discussion of whether baseline image view is better than Media Viewer because considering the possibility carries an implication of Yet Another Project Failure, and another failure is not an acceptable option. I believe the drive to force Media Viewer to succeed has cornered WMF into a position where it saw no option but to steamroll the community. The WMF can't afford to consider the possibility that the wacky editor community process may have developed a unique expertise in how to best serve the reader community because a rejection of Media Viewer would mean another project failure. The WMF can't afford to consider the possibility that the maybe MWF's mission really is be to serve the editor community - to serve the editors even if we make bad editing decisions and we make crappy encyclopedia and we lose page views - because a rejection of Media Viewer would mean another project failure. Many of us do indeed see the manner of image presentation as a VERY relevant editorial choice in the production of a quality encyclopedia.

I don't want to post an even larger wall of text, so I'll wrap it up here. If you see any value in what I've said above, I would be eager to discuss any/all of why I think MFW is mistaken in interpreting data on Media Viewer, why I think baseline Wikipedia image view is better than Media Viewer, how we got into this mess and how to avoid it in the future, or how I think holding the anti-community lock in place is more damaging and more dangerous than you realize. Alsee (talk) 17:58, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Antique versus modern

I was interested by your comment "I am even more amazed how new editors survive this antique experience." [25] A number of people have taken issue with it, but I think there is a point that has been overlooked. The experience has been evolved by a large number of volunteers, almost all also editors, members of and in constant touch with the community of users: the result is that, by and large, it works: indeed, the encyclopaedia was built that way. Replacing it by a more modern experience would only make sense if that more modern software actually works. It would be interesting to hear your views on this particular point. Whatever the aspirations, design goals, consultations and so forth, is your view that Visual Editor actually works? Does Media Viewer actually work? In each case, if not, what plans are there for making it work? Deltahedron (talk) 13:20, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

When I started authoring at WP eight years ago, I was also wondering how new editors survive this experience, which was already looking "antique" then compared to state-of-the-art web UI technology. But I learned that this odd-looking software tools of WP have some special magic, a magic which makes authors work together in a transparent way and encourages them to learn how to master it. These tools are deeply connected to the culture of WP authoring, so they should be evolved carefully and with respect to this culture. The large Wikis like enwiki and dewiki have the complexest and most elaborate and "finalized" culture and community social structure, which is the reason why they react most sensitive to disturbances by abrupt software changes and need special care.

Things that are modern today will be outdated tomorrow. This is especially true for the user interfaces of the digital world. I doubt that the ripe Wiki communites like en and de are able to synchronously follow such fast trends, that would be too disuptive to their culture and work. Seeking a timeless user experience with carful evolution might be the better idea. Not running after trends -- but confidently ignoring them and setting own standards, that's what ingenious tech companies do. It's what Steve Jobs did.

Another wise decision may be to stick to what we are: An encyclopedia, a quality-oriented collection of the world's knowledge, not an arbitrary social network or Q&A website. As encyclopedia, we are in the comfortable position of being the absolute and unchallenged market dominator. So besides of asking "what can we make even better", we should also ask "what are our strengths which brought us here". And besides the spirit of the community, I would not be surprised to find out that among these strenghts are some quirky-looking old software tools. --PM3 (talk) 19:22, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

In 1982, the U.S. newspaper USA Today launched with a bold emphasis on the design of the front page. When the New York Times first ran a color photo on the front page 15 years later, in 1997, was that in response to an emergency? When the Wall Street Journal did a major redesign of its front page in 2001, was that because it was about to slip into irrelevance due to the fancy full color USA Today front pages? Or is it possible that the New York Times and Wall Street Journal had established strong reputations independent of their cover design, and earned the ability to make such changes on their own schedule, and on their own terms?

What is the emergency around photo viewing that requires us to keep the Media Viewer software active? -Pete F (talk) 19:34, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Pete, you can go further and point out that these actions by the Board seem to precede the decrease in editors. The reason why editors are leaving is interference from the top bureaucracy (WMF) or from a mid-bureaucracy (ArbCom). It is the behavior of people unqualified to interact with others that causes this. A lot of good people have been treated like utter crap. The WMF makes money off of the work of other people. The content producers do not make any money from their work. They are also treated like crap. The WMF employees and their fellows throughout act like entitled, spoiled brats even though they get in the way of the content instead of increasing it. Lila is incapable of recognizing that, which shows that the WMF should probably be done away with as a whole. It serves as an entity only to hijack and destroy, not help, the projects. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:41, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Ottava, you are welcome to say those things, of course. I'm not sure why I would say them, considering I don't believe them. -Pete F (talk) 19:44, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

The "you" was the plural sense, i.e. anyone could go further to say such. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:45, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Ottava, i concur with the first part of your post, not the later part. Especially, we are not yet in a position to judge what Lila might be capable of. We can now, however, where WMF's board and especially it's head are concerned. Those should probably in fact "be done away with", exactly. Ca$e (talk) 20:15, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

I wasn't referring to Lila in that, but the many developers of these really awful projects that have a strong track record of making nasty comments and waging war against content producers on the Wikis, in the Lists, and on IRC. I can name 3 major offenders that show that the WMF not only encourages but funds those who represent the exact opposite of what our standards say how to behave while treating the content people like crap. The Queen of Hearts has a far more logical and just way of treating people. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:30, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

An ideal WMF, which would be the only way to truly satisfy the legal requirement that they are not content producers to keep their immunity, would be one that merely operates the servers and is a host only. I would say there could be no more than 10 people in total employed, and the only time they would be allowed to ask for money through banners and the rest is when they prove they need more funds for servers. Ottava Rima (talk) 21:33, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

As one of the top content producers across any project, I have always despised any of the changes and found that they got in the way. The original format was clean, simply, and precise. It allowed for the creation of a true piece of information. All of the other stuff is just unnecessary dressing that takes away from the information and makes it seem less precise, amateurish, and awful. The use of "antique" vs "modern" is like saying there is a difference between graffiti is preferable to the Sistine Chapel simply because your college drop out buddy was the one to create it. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:45, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

As the person who asked the question, let me remind you that the question addressed to Lila was Whatever the aspirations, design goals, consultations and so forth, is your view that Visual Editor actually works? Does Media Viewer actually work? In each case, if not, what plans are there for making it work? Deltahedron (talk) 19:49, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

My view: VisualEditor will probably never work in the sense that it could replace working without it. That might at least theoretically be possible in principle, in, say 5 years maybe, with constant input of very large amounts of developer resources -- almost all of which should be much better spent elsewhere. In the meantime, VE could serve special opt-in roles for subparts of what an actual WP editor does, but never of course as default. Flow definitely will impossibly ever work. People who stand behind Flow have evidently no idea how e.g. the actual moderation of discussions works in a very fluent collaborative project that is trolled more every second, that by the minute needs to move discussion threads from here to there, that needs frequent and convenient cutting and pasting of subthreads, on-the-fly indentions, adaptions of signatures, almost all and much more of that also to be done by bots, etc etc. If Flow could be made completely backward-compatible and then also serve a special opt-in role might be open for discussion, but i severely doubt it, maybe subparts of its code could be reused within a proper project design. With MediaViewer, making it actually work is in principle possible -- depending on what it should achieve. If it should achieve all that is currently achieved, it will still take much time. If however it shall serve just as an optional viewer, without pretending to actually provide useful information especially about license and image content in almost any case, that's not that much of an issue. But whether in that case it should be made opt-out instead of opt-in should be decided very carefully and by the respective communities. Not at all by WMF, who also has multiple times now proven to be incapable of judging on such issues competently. How many board members have even a marginal expertise in what Commons admins are doing on a daily basis? And these people stand behind enforcing such broken software! Ca$e (talk) 20:33, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Hence the proposal for a Board Technology Committee. But the Board hired Lila to manage these things, so I remain interested in hearing her views on the subject. Deltahedron (talk) 10:50, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

We are thinking through how to ensure we hear all audiences. People here most heavily represent the experienced editors, and we need to figure out how to give you more say over what "mature editor features" we will work on and when and what form they take. Keep in mind we work on a lot of features, but the ones that are relevant to you should be especially driven by you. We are not sure that a committee is the right method for making those decisions, but it very well may be. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 16:10, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Welcoming encouragement

Hi Lila, Welcome Aboard! You've got your work cut out for you, as no doubt have already discovered with Media Viewer.

A decade ago, unilateral action like the Superprotect would have made me quite angry-- and even now, I certainly can certainly understand the emotions of those who are presently upset with the process.

But the simple fact is-- we must change. Wikipedia is dying. Our community is dying-- Newbies no longer convert into veterans. Our software looks antiquated in compared to the modern web, pictures and videos are still too hard to upload and include. There used to be a philosophical debate between "Inclusionists" and "Deletionists", but that debate is now over and the deleters do much to discourage newbies.

For-profit sites that lack our values have taken over the innovation we once prided ourselves on-- people routinely choose Wikia or private hosting for specialist Wikis. My father, a genealogy aficionado, shells out $20 a month, EVERY month, to a for-profit company-- renting the 'right' just to access public historical records-- records that WMF could host at little or no cost, if we had the will. I see so much good WMF could do-- if only we could regain the flexibility to innovate once again.

Standing in the way of innovation are two main obstacles. One obstacle is that our existing communities are quite happy with existing system, which seems to works well for them, even if it's toxic to newbies. The other obstacle is that Wikipedia is now mission-critical: our planet is not prepared for a day without Wikipedia. We can't make dramatic and bold changes the way we could during the early days-- too many people depend on us.

Potential Solution

My own humble thinking on the problems is that we need new projects, and hundreds of them. If I want to create a new subreddit or a new FB group or a new Wikia project, I can do so with a few short clicks. But here, it's still 2002-- we only allow one community per language-- we permit only one way of doing things per language.

So long as there's only one project per language, change is nearly impossible. Look at all the backlash even a relatively minor change like MediaViewer is causing-- if the ED can't get consensus for even minor innovations, what hope does the average user have?

I think the solution is to allow new "feeder" projects. When Nupedia was too closed to outsiders, we created Wikipedia as a feeder project. Now that Wikipedia has become Nupedia, perhaps its time to allow new feeder projects to grow.

This would allow our existing community to keep the status quo that works well for them, but it would also allow the Foundation and others to build a better project without having to consult anyone, without having to ask permissions for every change, however small. Those of us who want change could be free to change, without stepping on the toes of those who like things as they are.

Thanks

Welcome aboard, Lila! It is my sincere hope that your joining the foundation will usher in a new era of innovation and the end of our stagnation. --AnonymousCoward8222104 (talk) 10:41, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Where there is discord, may you bring harmony. Where there is error, may you bring truth. Where there is doubt, may you bring faith. And where there is despair, may you bring hope. --Arcudaki (talk) 11:33, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Who can forget those stirring words from Margaret Thatcher? RomanSpa (talk) 06:00, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughts -- I know this is tough for all of us. But I love the fact that there are so many opinions. We indeed have a lot to do. There is the basic issue with the cost of development -- I've spoke about the 80/20 rule elsewhere, there is the issue with changing user experiences (i.e. users are trained to expect different things), issue of new form factors, issue of keeping our current editors happy while engaging new, issue of getting access to records (why do others host elsewhere, when they can share knowledge here, free), issues of embedded content (through search engines and OSs -- so dramatics changes are happening to us, elsewhere), issues of consistency and technical debt... MV is a canary in the goldmine -- we need to be clear on the role and responsibilities of the Foundation within the overall user community in understanding the needs of the users and the changing environment of the world. It is not trivial and it is critically important to our project. . -- LilaTretikov (talk) 16:05, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I used a Thatcher analogy - You used a mining analogy. Sound like fun. Anyway, you also used the 80/20 rule I hear all the time from power pointers in elegant suites. It says that you can achieve 80% of the aim for 20% of the effort. Trouble with implementing that is that now your aim is to use 20 % of the effort and your original target is outside the scope. Ergo you miss.--Arcudaki (talk) 07:32, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Open culture in the WMF

What strikes me most in the whole Superprotect-affair is the communication process in the Foundation. Everyone is hiding, everyone seems unsecure, what he can say, what he is allowed to say, what divergences from the big "We" are allowed in the WMF. The VP, that was himself not only inventing the superprotection right but also using it in the German Wikipedia, is saying, he cannot unprotect the page again without discussions. The board members, from them at least five should feel some responsibility for the communities, are hiding behind the official statement. Noone dares to have a divergent opinion, noone dares to say his own point of view. I get the impression, the WMF is a place, where people live in fear of making mistakes, of saying anything wrong, of walking not in the same line. It seems a very hierarchic and autocratic organization, which is quite odd, when the organization is born out of the open and nearly anarchistic structures of collaborative Wiki-editing, that are still ruling the communities. Because of this cultural divergence noone in the WMF seems to be able to find the right tone in speaking to upset community members. At least some in the WMF should know the communities from their own past long-ago. But noone seems to be able, to express their trust and confidence in the communities, their good will for a future collaboration. It seems to me, everyone in the WMF is so filled up with mistrust against how the communities are working and organize themselfs, that whenever a voice is raised (as Jan-Barts above), it reaveals negative opinions, when it's absolutely not the suitable situation to do so. And so better everyone in the WMF speaks nothing, because when their real thoughts and plans were spoken out, it would only antagonize the communities even more. So better work in the shadows, launch unexpected attacks as the superprotect right, and then crawl back and sit them out in the hope, the communities prove impotent again in their reactions. Of course, this is only my impression, but I cannot help seeing it that way after the communicative disasters the last days. --Magiers (talk) 10:25, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Of course, this is not only your impression ;) → «« Man77 »» ^[de] 14:34, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Aye. --Matthiasb (talk) 15:36, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

i'd say it's a fairly unavoidable impression. Ca$e (talk) 16:58, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

• I presume the Board exercises collective responsbility? That is, once a decision is taken, members are expected to support it whatever their position might have been in the discussions leading up to the decision. A Board member who cannot reconcile that with their personal position would be expected to resign. At least, that's the case on the various trustee boards that I have been on. Similarly, the Board appoints the ED and then backs her decisions unless and until they find those decisions inconsistent with the Board's strategic direction, in which case they fire her. Of course, those positions are somewhat formal -- a Board, and especially its chair, should try to avoid these situations from occurring. So unless a Board member has resigned, they are held to be in agreement with the Board's decisons, and we should not expect to find Board members disagreeing in public with a decisions they have just signed off. Deltahedron (talk) 17:33, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

You maybe right, how the board works, but this I don't call an open culture. It's a culture, where the different views - if there are any - are discussed behind closed doors, but afterwards everyone must speak with the same voice. So the result is, noone dares to say anything in the fear of saying too much or saying the wrong things. In the chair of the German chapter, votes are recorded, so You can see, if it was an unanimous or a split decision. And the highest court of Germany gives a reasoning of the minority vote if necessary. I don't see, what is wrong in showing that decisions are the result of a contreversial debate. Such a procedere would match much better the open culture of the communities, where every edit is saved and every debate and vote can be reconstructed years later. A board, where everyone has to speak unanimous has a bias to hypocrisy and sorting the world in friends or enemies: en:You're either with us, or against us. I think much of the rage in the communities (at least mine) comes from the fact, that there seems to be not the slightest bit of insight in anyone associated to the WMF to a blatant misuse of power. Maybe there is, but it's kept behind closed doors. Then this would be a bad mistake in communication, that hardens the fronts without need. Of course, if there is no insight at all, every word here is wasted. --Magiers (talk) 20:50, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi guys. There is no special conspiracy here and no hiding. For those of you who are speaking to professional responsibility -- thank you for shedding the light on how that works. It is neither possible nor effective to comment on every statement or discussion. The job of the board, myself and the WMF employees is not to make conversations (unless they we are having them to get their jobs done), but to focus on their specific roles and deliverables. So I am doing this mostly in my free time ;) The fact that there is little discord here is not a mystery -- it is the reality that we all understand that we are building a path towards more effective and more engaged process for building software and running the site. And no, there are no activist decisions here, I am responsible for the decisions made by the WMF. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 04:03, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

So focus on your specific roles and deliverables, immediately. Let me remind you: For WMF, the community must be its biggest asset, WMF "must respect the work and the ideas of our community. We must listen and take into account our communities in any decisions taken to achieve our mission", WMF has to "empower" and "support" us [26]. You can check how big of an asset, how listened to, how respected and how empowered and supported we feel e.g. here (short summary of the results of the largest and most definite survey in our community ever).

People have been relatively patient now for 2 weeks while you in effect, that is, regarding your very mission, role and deliverables, ignored us. Time is up. Ca$e (talk) 07:20, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I'ld like to pick up on Lila's point "The job of the board, myself and the WMF employees is not to make conversations (unless they we are having them to get their jobs done), but to focus on their specific roles and deliverables. So I am doing this mostly in my free time." It's great that you are is willing to do that, but I think your view about the nature of "conversation" is underambitious. Firstly, constructive engagement with the community is rather different from conversation. We're not just having merry little water-cooler chats here, we're having serious (in the main) discussions about the nature and future of the relationship beween the paid and unpaid members of the community. Surely a healthy working relationship beween the various parts community is something you need in order to deliver? So at the very least being aware of community thinking and feeling is part of your day job. It is certainly part of the remit of the Board to oversee every aspect of the work of the Foundation and so again being aware of that, how it is being handled, and whether the communications are consistent with the Foundation mission and the Board's strategic direction, is again certainly part of their responsibilities: I welcome the fact that Jan-Bart has chosen to participate in the discussion and be brutally frank about the way the he wants to see the whole Foundation, and its relationship with the community, shift. As you say, there are members of the WMF staff explicitly charged with communications between the WMF and the community. I am a little surprised that they have not been as active as I expected here. I think it's fair to say that the members of staff with an explicit communications role are generally overstretched, and equally that in general communications have been less than optimal, possibly because they have not been seen as a high priority. Again I welcome the initiatives that recognise that and aim to improve on it. It is also fair to say that even if things were working perfactly in general, the current situation would probably have overwhelmed them. But nonetheless, as ED you responsbile for getting things done, and that communication is an integral part of the work of WMF. It is not an optional extra to be done in somebody's spare time, even, or especially, yours. I suggest that you need to task someone, or more than one, from the WMF staff, and equip them with the resources and authority to speak on behalf of the Foundation to manage this communications process. In the longer term I would hope that you would view appropriately constructive engagement with the volunteer community as being an integral part of the day job of every single WMF staff member. Deltahedron (talk) 08:46, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

So I am doing this mostly in my free time. – Imagine that. You probably have learned that, except for the paid-editing contributions, most of Wikipedia has been created in people's free time, but I don't buy that from you because it's your job to get rid of us and to replace us with someone else. Period.--Aschmidt (talk) 08:55, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Lila, the editors are contributing all of the content of wikipedia in their free time, not just this discussion, and i think it should be your job to take part in this discussion, as community relations are part of it. So you don't really need to do this in your free time. I also believe your own job definition should comprise more than the focus on "the board, myself and the WMF employees", as it is also stated in the WMF Values, besides the links provided by ca$e above. So far i have read very little on future cooperativity in regard to superprotect, maybe i've been fooling myself a bit over the last years. How do you expect a cooperation of the communities with WMF, when the communication is 'top-down' like in this superprotect case? The german RfC on superprotect had the highest participation in the history of the german language wikipedia and a quite unanimous result of 86.6%, which rarely occurs in democratic settings. Are there any consequences from the RfC for you? What about the Letter_to_Wikimedia_Foundation:_Superprotect_and_Media_Viewer, are there any consequences you see arising from that? How has this discussion so far been constructive from our viewpoint? --Ghilt (talk) 09:03, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

• Lila, you could undoubtedly spend all your free time debating issues on this page, so perhaps it would help you, and us, for you to give us an indication of what you do and do not find it useful to discuss here, or at all, and where, if at all, issues should be discussed. For example, you might wish to state that broad matters of strategic direction are the responsibility of the Board, and should be discussed with the Board chair, individual members, especially the the co-founder, or at the board noticeboard. You might wish to direct specific proposals for better engagement to the Community Engagement (Product)/Process ideas brainstorming page. You might wish to state what, in your view, is a fixed strategic decision, and not open for discussion. You might, and in my view, should take responsbility for discussing the functioning of the WMF as an organisation. For example, I think it's proper for the community to ask you to account for issues such as whether software products are fit for purpose, and the way in which they are rolled out to the various projects. After all, these are issues squarely within your remit, on which I am sure you already have, or are developing, your views, so it should cost rather little to be open with the results of those assessments. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Deltahedron (talk) 10:35, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer and for the first time showing some anger - maybe it's good, when You start to feel, how many people in the German Wikipedia feel for weeks. But if You say, You are responsible for every single decision in the WMF, than there is no other way as annoying You personally, until the situation is fixed. Of course I would think, it would be much better to have someone to speak to, that knows the communities and their mechanisms, that knows how to find their tones and that also has some authorization in negotiations with the community. I still think, it's odd, when the WMF, that has its roots in the Wiki-editing communities, is build so hierarchic. And when You say, You have no internal discord, because You all want the best, it's hard to believe, why there is so much discord with some community members now. Do You think we all don't want the best? I think, divergence is normal in every culture, when it is not repressed. And it's a quality of it's own. It's hard to understand, why the WMF talks so much about supporting diversity in the editing communities, when there is no diversity shown inside the Foundation itself. --Magiers (talk) 10:49, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello Lila, you state: "The fact that there is little discord here is not a mystery -- it is the reality that we all understand that we are building a path towards more effective and more engaged process for building software and running the site." Imho you've got a completely wrong understanding of what your job is. Not the in-group of bureaucrats in SF matters, but the community. You (and the whole WMF) are a servant of the community, not the other way around. The WMF was only created, because the community became too big and successful and needed some professional support, that's your main purpose.

If you really thing there "is little discord", than you are far removed from reality, there is quite heavy discord here, only the fat cats in SF don't seem to give a f*** about it. They act according to "might is right", best example is the brutal "superprotect"-Putsch by Erik) and that's absolute opposite to any possible principle of a project like WP. --Sänger S.G (talk) 12:09, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I think, You misread her there. She was answering to my complaint, that there are no divergent voices from the WMF. So the "here" refers only to "inside the Foundation". Of course You are right, that the focus should be bigger. Lila also said, there is no decision in the WMF, she is not responsible for, so the Superprotect right was not a Putsch by Eric, but a Putsch by the whole WMF, approved by everyone in the office and the board (who apperently always act in chord). --Magiers (talk) 13:09, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

No. I didn't misread her, I just think it's completely irrelevant what the inner circles of the support professionals in SF are thinking, that's just some marginalia. Whether there is discord or de:Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen is not that relevant, it's the community that matters. And regarding the Putsch: If they are really such a homogeneous bloc, then yes, they are all evil, as the implementation of superprotect was evil to it's core. Superprotect was a declaration of war against the German community, and probably as well a warning shot against all other not subservient enough ones. --Sänger S.G

But if there really is such a culture of obedience, and the WMF is populated by spineless lackeys, that don't dare to utter their own opinions, then they are all not fit for the job. Lackeys are never fit for any job, and esprit de corps is a bad thing usually. --Sänger S.G (talk) 13:24, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Just for the record Lila, in case your sentence "The fact that there is little discord here is not a mystery -- it is the reality that we all understand that we are building a path towards more effective and more engaged process for building software and running the site." wasn't meant as a failed ironic attempt to play down the situation. The actual discord between WMF and German WP community is not a little but is a major one. (And from discussion here and elsewhere I got the feeling that parts in the English WP community have similar feelings.) We are feeling utterly disgraced, deeply misunderstood, fairly hurt, and are very displeased. With every statement from the Foundation through its Board of Trustees and other channels frustration is growing. I don't know wether You (You as the foundation as a whole) are trying to play out but every day this goes on anger in the community is deepening. This won't calm down by playing out, this gets only worse. There is only a small window left open to close the deep trench the superprotect right and the overruling of community decisions have ripped, but this small window begins to close. The German WP community has lost its trust to the foundation to full extent now, there is no trust anymore now, and it will take much more efforts than those seen by now to reconcilate the community again with the foundation, and I am quite unsure wether this is possible on the short run at all. It is high time to take the community serious. Please act now. Remove superprotection rights immidiately and start to discuss how community decisions will be respected. --Matthiasb (talk) 16:54, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Why it is very intelligent, if the comunity decides about software?

Jan-Bart, Lila and Erik presenting shiny new clothes software

There are a lot of good reasons, why the community of the single projects like german wikipedia should decide, if and in which way software is used in this project. I will collect it here:

1. Wikipedia is nothing without the community. Only the community will write new articles, improve and update old ones, protect the articles against vandalism, wrong information etc. Without a community, you will only find empty sites, wrong information, nonsense, advertising etc. That can not be the target of WMF.
2. There is no alternative to the existent community. When you lost this community, you won't find a new one, because writing an online-encyclopedia is a very special hobby and almost everyone, who can imagine to do it, is or was part of the current community.
3. We (as the community) are volunteers. We needn't work for wikipedia. When the conditions for working in wikipedia are too bad, we can decide, that we make another project or something completely different. The worst idea is to try to change the community by command. This will never work.
4. We are the experts in writing an encyclopedia because we do it since over ten years. We know what we need to write an encyclopedia and what we don't need. This includes software and new tools. When we say, that we don't need a special software or tool, you can be sure, that we have good reasons for it. Similar when we say, that first specific bugs must be resolve, before we can use this piece of software.
5. The current version of MediaWiki runs. Of course, it is not perfect, but you can work with it. New software has to prove, that it works better then the old one and has more and better functions. When important functions of the old software doesn't act in the new one, there is no reason for us, to use the new one. We are only interested in better software, not necessery in new software.
6. We have time. We work on wikipedia since ten years and it doesn't need to be finished tomorrow, next month oder year. Wikipedia is a long-time project. Similar in software. It does not matter, if the old software runs one or two months longer before launch a new one, when bugs are removed in this time.

When you can't accept these arguments, you should reflect seriously, if you are the right person for a project like the Wikimedia Foundation. When you can't work with communitys in a way I discribed, you should better resign, before you damage wikipedia irreparable. When you will go on the way of the last weeks, this danger is absolutly real. At best, you should go up to the community as soon as possible. At the moment, the damages of the community and wikipedia are still small, but I can't promise, that the damages are still small in a few days or weeks. --Orci (talk) 09:50, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

To address some of those questions directly:

1. Editors should decide on content of new articles, improve and update old ones, protect the articles against vandalism, wrong information etc. With respect to software, the WMF is tasked with running and developing the sites.
2. I understand this is a choice. Did the MV severely and adversely impact the working condition of the advanced editor like yourself and if so, what do we need to change (in your opinion, we have scrubbed and implemented some of the RfC issues that were raised already)? Or does it not have a place? Can you imagine it being useful for other types of users? Our goal is to understand, but once the feature is live we have to stay consistent and iterate on improvement -- because we need to validate the impact globally against a control group. And, in all honesty, removing a function, a Beta tag for upcoming feature, or other key elements -- is a force as well.
3. I think we need to focus some work specificly on expert editors. But we also need to be bringing into the fold the next generation. We are failing at that as a community (including the WMF).
4. I agree that software has to measure improvement. We are putting that into place going forward. Actually changes in general: additions and deletions should be measured. We are not there today and it will take some time to put this into practice.
5. The problem with software is that we have not seriously updated it in 10 years. We know that we are loosing momentum because our indicators are negative and we were not focusing on it until recently.

I do not think we agree here -- and I am not here to change your mind by words. My job, and my background, is in improving how we understand audiences, including serious editors like yourself. But, ironically, it does not mean doing everything each one of the users wants -- that is not even possible. It means finding the mean and building a system that can be configured and extended. I want us to enable new editors to become as competent and comfortable with editing as yourself quickly (without disrupting your experience as much as possible). I hope you can share that goal as well. That is a hard challenge. But I am here because I still believe it can be done. Perhaps you will convince me that I am wrong? You may not like the fact that we need to close-off books on features like MV and working hard to do so. But I hope that you will see improvements in what we do, especially once we create a focus on the needs of editors like yourself. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 21:54, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Some thoughts on your point 3, "But we also need to be bringing into the fold the next generation. We are failing at that as a community (including the WMF)": I'm more and more convinced that we will never have a "next generation" that is comparable to the first years of Wikipedia in size and activity and that no Visual Editor, Media Viewer, or Flow can change that - because the decreasing attractiveness of Wikipedia for new contributors is based more on content than on interface issues. In the big language versions, such as English, French, or German, Wikipedia has more than reached its originally stated goal - it is now an encyclopedia where most people find what they're looking up. The standard topics you would expect in a "classic" encyclopedia are there; whether you're looking for bread, Beethoven, Queen Elizabeth II oder Queen, the rock band (to name some arbitrary topics), you will find an article that will, though the quality may vary, fulfil most basic information needs. In the past, many new users were attracted by missing topics, glaring gaps in encyclopedic content, and it was possible to quickly enhance Wikipedia by adding some rough basic information. Many casual users are now satisfied by what they find and don't see the need to contribute at all (no, I didn't take a survey, but I speak from experience as a librarian and long-time Wikipedia contributor who often talks to WP user about their experience). If as a new user you still want to start contributing, you face a complex set of rules that may be daunting - but it is the same set of rules that has made Wikipedia successful by readers through enhancing its quality. That's a difficult state of affairs. Neither enhancing existing articles nor writing new ones is as easy as in former times, as changes need to be sourced well, and the topics for new articles get continuously more specialist, needing specialist literature. Wikipedia still needs many, many articles about e.g. villages in Africa or 18th century scientists. But writing such articles is hard. It's hard not mainly because the interface may be clumsy, but because it's hard to research the content and meet the quality standards Wikipedia has now. Instead of focussing on the interface, if I were to decide, I would focus on improvements to access to research material that facilitates writing good Wikipedia articles, and on better pointing out to the general public where we still need (lots of) help, and how exactly they can help. Gestumblindi (talk) 22:30, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

(BK) Point 1 and 5 are closely together. It is correct, that the software is not seriously updated at the last years. On this reason, the community updated it and developed a lot of tools, scripts, bots and so on, to have functions, who are not part of MediaWiki. So not only the foundation develop software, but also the community. And when the software was updated with new fundtions in the last years by the foundation, we decides over it in the community and the foundation follows it. Examples are the flagged revisions (which were accepted and run until today) and the article feedback tool (which was declined and removed). This successful way we want to continue.

It is good, that you will update the media viewer and I am sure, that it would be accepted by the community when the major bugs (especially with licencing) are solved. Neither I nor the german community are princible against new software or better software for new users. That is absolutly not the problem. The only thing we want, is the confidence and respect in decisions of the german wikipedia by the foundation. Not more and not less. This includes not only articles but also software. You can be sure, that we accept good arguments and also think about readers or new users in our decicions. Nobody wants solutions for single users. Therefore we have votings and the wishes of the majority. --Orci (talk) 22:50, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

quite so. "The Foundation has a miserable cost/ benefit ratio and for years now has spent millions on software development without producing anything that actually works. The feeling is that the whole operation is held together with the goodwill of its volunteers and the more stupid Foundation managers are seriously hacking them off." Ca$e (talk) 10:21, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

+1 This sums it up quite good. Currently WMF is actively engaging heavy against it's communities, by imposing state of emergency laws (superprotect) against it, like some third-world junta generals. They act according to "might is right", and thats utterly wrong. Imho anyone who even considers such a "solution" is not suited to get any relevant position in a decent organization. --Sänger S.G (talk) 12:19, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Lila, do you know the folktale The Emperor's New Clothes? Please read it. Executive summary: Even if courtiers assure you that everything is fine, the people on the streets may be right. Cheers, Stefan64 (talk) 14:44, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I believe that we should listen to the needs of our audience first and foremost. It needs to become inclusive, in-time, and measurable. We need to have rational conversations on issues when those arise. For example -- some of the hot issues brought up in the RfC on MV are already addressed, which you may not even know. There needs to be a method by which continual improvement is exposed and understood. As for one-off on Wikis: the WMF provides the foundational functionality that is uniform and the extension framework; the individual projects can extend on top of that. So for MV or any other global feature under development at the WMF, if we were to determine in the upcoming weeks that it is not beneficial to the users, we would remove it everywhere. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 15:50, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I really don't get why you always argument in an all or nothing way. According to the data you gained, the roman languages Wikipedias and their users like the media viewer, while on English and and German Wikipedias the editors and the readers were not in favor of it. So why should it be removed on the first or forced on the latter at all? It amkes no sense, sorry your pursue for only one global corporate identity makes no sense at all. --Julius1990 (talk) 15:55, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Julius1990: Wouldn't it make perfect sense to deploy the Media Viewer as a default feature for the projects where it is welcome / uncontroversial, such as the Portuguese Wikipedia, and at least not have it enabled per default where it's controversial, such as the English and German Wikipedias? The projects are already far less uniform than you may be assuming, Lila... and that's not a bad thing. Notability guidelines can differ greatly, very basic features differ greatly - e.g. in the German Wikipedia, users without an account (IP users) are welcome to create new articles, which isn't possible in the English WP. On the other hand, "sighted versions" (meaning that contributions by IP users and new users have to be checked for possible vandalism and aren't immediately visible to the public) are fully established in German WP since years, whereas this is a "failed proposal" in English WP. So, in ten years and more, each WP language version has, through an often arduous and complicated process of finding a community consens, developed its very own vision of Wikipedia. It's quite fascinating, in my opinion. And the WMF didn't interfere in these processes so far. If the Media Viewer incident is a sign that the WMF plans to reduce the freedom of the individual communities in the future in favor of enforcing the WMF vision of the "needs of our audience", then I'm not sure that the audience will be ultimately very happy when they get less useful content because of a discouraged, dwindling community of content contributors. Gestumblindi (talk) 21:48, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm interested in the response we should listen to the needs of our audience first and foremost coupled with the WMF provides the foundational functionality that is uniform and the extension framework. For some time now the mathematics content contributors have been concerned over the poor state of the mathematics rendering software in Mediawiki: in other words the reader experience for mathematics was poor. As you know, a proposal was put forward (with Jimmy Wales's support) to improve that and it was declined. Mathematics is not on the WMF roadmap. If it were not for the sterling work of volunteers (one in particular), the readers' experience of mathematics would be even worse. This seems incompatible with your statements unless we assume that mathematics is not "foundational" but an "extension". Is that conclusion correct? Or should we conclude that mathematics is indeed foundational, but not foundational enough for WMF to work on in the foreseeable future? Deltahedron (talk) 16:19, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Personally I think mathematics is fundamental (i.e. it is relevant for every language). But I am also biased, given my background. The reality is, we have more work on the plate than we can do -- and this is why the WMF has been growing the technical staff. So the issues here is really lack of resources to add this issue. I would like to see this potentially funded through a grant and then pulled into the "core" for maintenance. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 16:53, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

So, foundational, but not foundational enough. Thank you for that. I will allow myself the freedom, if I may, to express my deep disappointment and disagreement with that decision. I am not expecting you to change your decision, and it is your decision to make, but nonetheless I will just say this. Mathematics is one of the oldest continuing human intellectual traditions, with a connected history of over two thousand years. It is fundamental to the sciences in general: no technological endeavour could succeed without it. It is an indispensible part of the sum of human knowledge. It also happens to be the subject I have spent almost all of my career so far advancing in one way or another, including writing dozens of Wikipedia articles. To suggest that it isn't important enough to allocate your resources to, when WMF has over 200 staff and tens of millions of dollars at its disposal, is a decision I find both incomprehensible and, personally, indigestible. It seems that you would rather allocate your resources to make it easier for readers to view the pornography on Commons than the formulae on Wikipedia. It certainly tells me that the views and values of WMF and myself are now radically divergent. I thought it was about the sum of human knowledge. Apparently that sum does not involve mathematics. Deltahedron (talk) 17:14, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Here, here. First, this is not a decision -- it is the current state of projects in flight. And I agree that math is really important. So I recommend that rather than getting upset, we strategize on how to fund this project and make it happen. Just a thought... -- LilaTretikov (talk) 19:26, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks but I fail to understand who "we" refers to in your reponse. You are the ED and you allocate the WMF resources. I don't come into that. I write articles in mathematics, and in an attempt to continue being able to do that better, and improve the readers and editors experience, have had some interactions with Jimmy Wales and others trying to get WMF to allocate some of its resources. In response to that, I have been told "I don't imagine that we would be able to put it on the roadmap for the foreseeable future" [27]. That sounds like a decision to me (and if it isn't then I have been rather seriously misinformed). You can change that. I can't. I've done what I can do to move the WMF and failed. If you want to ask me for my opinion on how you might want to proceed, I'll give it. Deltahedron (talk) 19:42, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Lila, do you not see anything awkward about the fact that we are here begging and pleading and fighting with you to stop wasting developers and money developing software we never asked for, don't want, which we believe actively harms Wikipedia, and you are here telling us that you can't give us math software, which we did ask for, which we do want, which you and we all agree is valuable... because you "have more work on the plate than we can do". You then proceed to suggest "we" help you get more funding to do math software, when the only talk about funding going around the community right now are suggestions to drop your funding down to a staff of 6 or so, so that you'll stay out of our way and let us get back to improving Wikipedia. If your NPS in the community cratered any harder the dinosaurs would go extinct - again. Chuckle. Alsee (talk) 21:37, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

I think, although I might be wrong, that Lila was suggesting that we could ask WMF for the money, provided that we scope out the project, work out how to interface it with existing software, integrate it with WMF projects, find the developers, coordinate with the users and proritise their requirements, and then roll it out across hundreds of projects for her. Well, that's already rather more than I feel able to do in my spare time. If finding the money is also something we have do do, then I would agree with you. Deltahedron (talk) 21:22, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

It seems, that we read about omplete different things. Uniformity over all speeches and projects is neither important nor necessary nor existent nor preferable. Especially much less important than respecting the own decisions of a single community (and yes, every project has his own community, there is no single community over all wikimedia-projects). Every project has his own culture and his own kind of presentation of articles and even different software (e.g. the flagged revisions are only active in german wikipedia and some other projects and not in french or english wikipedia).

But of course, you can go on on your way and say, that the global wishes of the foundation are more important as the individual wishes of a single community, but don't be surprised, when we draw the consequences and e.g. the whole german-wikipedia-community will go out of wikipedia complete.

I would wish a clear, official statement, that, if applicable, we can plan and decide it. But I sill hope, that this is not necessary and the foundation understands at last, how to handle with communitys (and how not).

The way to develop software in wikipedia succesful is relativly simple: when you have developed a new piece of software like the media viewer, you have to go in the single communitys (not in all projects but minimum in the ten biggest projects) and presentate and try to persuade the communitys of the benefits of this software. Then the community will response, if they find it good, bad or where you have to solve bugs. After this (and when the bugs are solved), the community will decide democraticly (e.g. with an RfC or in german Meinungsbild) if they want to use this software. This decicion is binding on this project. And when four projects say yes and six projects say no, you woud have four projects with and six projects without this piece of software. --Orci (talk) 18:21, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Which strategy of diversity as a matter of success WMF has? --Edward Steintain (talk) 20:12, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

No one can predict the outcome of the competition between BRICS und the en:OINC (Old Industrial Nations & Cities). But at least give it a try. This means diversity even at the international level of WMF – acting globaly. --Edward Steintain (talk) 20:26, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Lila, would you please give an answer to Orcis thoughts? The "reasons" given by him at the start and his points of view given 18:21. Do you agree or where is your different opinion?

I see many people talking to you in a very good manner with reasonable arguments and thoughts - and i am glad to see you answer in a way that gives me hope, you try to understand them. But after all nearly every given answer doesn't meet the point. Kein Einstein (talk) 21:09, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I have thoughts in response:

1. The projects are much more than today's community, which changes, which has and must turnover -- the present community owes debts to the past community and and debts to the future community.
2. There is alternative to the existing community, because it is not and never will be a static thing; if it becomes static, it will be dead.
3. We are volunteers, who love free knowledge. That's it. That's all. And Wikimedia let's us share it in a useful way.
4. We are not experts in anything really, not in a verifiable way.
5. The software, works like it did; that's about all that can be said about it.
6. We have no time to stand still; editing, improving the projects is not about standing still.

-- Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:43, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

To echo what Alan says about #6-- we do not have time. We peaked in 2007. The board recognized this problem and made it a priority way back in 2011. Three years later, things have only gotten worse. We need a new incarnation of Wikipedia, and we need it now, while we can still turn things around. --AnonymousCoward8222104 (talk) 01:22, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Such things can only people say who don't think it through: In 2007 it was the time when the big white parts of the map of knowledge in Wikipedia were already nearly closed. Nowadays it is harder to participate, but not because of technical means (what could be eased by a well programmed tutorial), but for obvious reasons. The articles for most of the common lemma exist. In the beginning articles like "The Atlantic is an ocean." were possible, nowadays it needs special knowledge, the access to scientific literature to add upon the existing. It needs special interest in villages of the United States since all the big, famous cities have already long articles and so on and so on. Many readers just want to be raeders, and the second raeson that hold speople back from editing is the lack of certain knowledge or that they don't want to invest time and money getting access to such information that still could be added and then on third place come technical issues (not nearly as relevant as the WMF tries to make it appear in order to justify its existence). And also the reach out to the global South won't change that pattern. Lila had this photo of an Indian girl in the slums in her presentation at the Wikimania as far as could be heard. As long as Lila won't also offer access to JSTOR or build libraries there this girl will never be able to become able to do more than typography corrections. Same thing: I really would like to see Lila to write an article like for example de:Diego Rivera on a smartphone. It is not possible and noone will ever do that. So if she wants twitter-like articles than this is the way to go. If she wants a good encyclopedia for the people to use than it maybe is the time to accept certain facts: On the level that many Wikipedias have arrived until now, just a small part of people is able and willing to contribute. For those who want to correct typography while reading the Visual Editor might be an encouragement, but it is like still believeing in Santa Clause to think that the editor numbers will rise again to new heights. No, the WMF should care about keeping the interested people who already do the work to keep doing it instead of harming its projects by such decouraging methods like they are used the last weeks and month. --Julius1990 (talk) 01:56, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Neither the data nor anecdotes suggest that people have "run out" of things to contribute-- we still get lots of new users who add new things. The problem is not that Wikipedia already represents the sum of all human knowledge.

Regarding "just a small part of people is able and willing to contribute" and "it is like still believeing in Santa Clause to think that the editor numbers will rise again to new heights."-- I can't accept these. I BELIEVE that EVERYONE has something to contribute-- everyone. If only a tiny fraction of people are able to contribute, that is a failing on our part, not a failing on theirs. Nobody has any trouble contributing to Facebook or Flickr, after all. --AnonymousCoward8222104 (talk) 04:35, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Just that those are no encyclopedias or knowledge projects. If you think foodporn and notifications that you know use the toilet or like Obama's new status update are advances to pur mission, fine ... I certainly don't think so. --Julius1990 (talk) 04:44, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

You joke, but yes, all those types of content enrich our mission. Why should for-profit Instagram get a picture of every dish in the world but not us? If someone wants to log their toilet usage, there are scientists who would love access to that data. And if a President wanted to contribute directly to us, we probably should accept it!

The Wikipedia we know is only the beginning. Long form encyclopedia articles are just one form that human knowledge can take-- our mission is all forms and all knowledge. AnonymousCoward8222104 (talk) 04:51, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

I also have thoughts in response:

1. The projects & communities do need help to remain viable. But the Foundation doesn't appear to be providing the help they need.
2. No one has explained how things like Visual Editor, Media Viewer or Superprotect will help the projects & communities. For the love of God, no one has even thought to investigate why Media Viewer was accepted by some projects while being rejected overwhelmingly by the English & German language projects!
3. The most important thing to keep the communities viable is supporting the belief they own their projects.

   One thing I've noticed over the years is that when responsibility was with the communities, volunteers accepted this responsibility, & when a need appeared someone would step up. The year 2007 was the watershed: when the Foundation started asserting its ownership -- for both justifiable & other reasons -- over the projects, new volunteers declined in numbers. (The more I look at the history in detail, the more evidence I find that these two are related.)

4. Just because time does not stand still, we should adopt changes for the sake of change -- especially if they don't work.
5. We need something like the Foundation to support volunteers in creating this treasure of information. Servers need to be maintained, bugs in the code need to be fixed, volunteers need help finding the raw material to write the content -- & dealing with legal issues. The Foundation doesn't need to be, as one person wrote here, a necessary evil.

-- Llywrch (talk) 01:46, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Lila, thanks again for sharing your thoughts. However, some of them can hardly be reconciled neither with WMF's mission nor its founding principles nor implicit consensus and also the explicit binding consensus of the communities you must "respect", "empower", "support", regard as your "biggest asset", "listen and take into account ... in any decisions taken to achieve" your "mission" (on which, see above):

• "With respect to software, the WMF is tasked with running and developing the sites." - that is true to a degree. It does, for instance, only hold when you "fully consulted" with us and this in extension excludes steps to "develop" the sites into a direction we explicitly deny, that is, currently, by not immediately rolling back superprotect and reopening the bugticket to make MV opt-in until we can decide upon wether it works sufficiently or not.
• "Did the MV severely and adversely impact the working condition of the advanced editor like yourself" - yes of course it did.
  • It harmed severly our effort in sharing free content by giving our users false license informations in hundreds of thousands of cases. Even a single cases would have been too much. Giving correct license information is a condition sine qua non for any "development" of WMF "with respect to software.
  • It also harmed our efforts to provide useful image descriptions.
  • What was must crucial, and we already explained this several times now, was how WMF reacted after we denied accepting MV as opt-out. In the sum, the thereby caused negative impact on our community was the biggest instance to "severely and adversely impact the working condition of the advanced editor"! In effect, the damage can now hardly be repaired anymore!
  • "what do we need to change" - we have told you many times now.
• "we also need to be bringing into the fold the next generation" - that also holds to a certain degree. As long as we agree with the results, that's OK. We will, for instance, not agree with you inviting millions of unusable pictures with problematic licenses, and the same holds for other problematic input.
• "our indicators are negative" - please tell us more about those "indicators". Please tell us in a way so we can judge if in this view you are again mistaken, as you have proven to have been in several places in the past!
• "the WMF provides the foundational functionality that is uniform" - no. "Uniformity" (as well as the other popular buzzword, "consistency") is not a goal in itself and whether in a specific case it is a valid goal has to be spelled out in detail. Evidently, your views differ in many cases from our views. In these cases, as can be deduced from WMF's principles, goals and mission, our views will have to prevail and you will have to "support" and "empower" us to establish them.
• "the individual projects can extend on top of that" - yes of course. This also must include our ability to extend by disabling broken and lacking pseudo-features, so that the full set of working features available can be served to our contributors and readers.
• "if we were to determine in the upcoming weeks that it is not beneficial to the users, we would remove it everywhere" - you may do so. However, it is not up to you to "determine" things like that on your own. For instance, when, say, the portuguese community wants to keep MV despite its many bugs and problems, as other communities see them, you must let them, as long as this does not cause you legal problems.
• "we need to close-off books on features like MV" - i can hardly see what you could possibly mean by this phrase. MV currently is not a "feature" at all. Please stop talking about MV like that, it is wrong and annoying. It is a broken and for several communities unwanted-as-opt-out piece of software. How could you in such a state possibly want to "close-off books" on MV?
• "It means finding the mean" - yes, that should be your goal. The mean will of course not be to keep to WMF's former and wrong position. First, you must rollback superprotect, then you have to reopen the bugticket and assure us that its resolving will be treated as a matter of priority. Then, we can together discuss what "the means" looks like and you and we can together make sure that failures such as the recent missteps by WMF will not arise again and that your money for site developments will be well spent instead of utterly wasted as often in the past.

Almost all of the above was already laid out e.g. by Kww, especially in answer to your initial packet of questions. This is not the time for "words" from you but for action. And your window of opportunity is closing already. If you continue in failing to act in accordance with your mission, there will hardly be anybody left you could then try and find "means" with. Ca$e (talk) 08:52, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

• ""the WMF provides the foundational functionality that is uniform" no. "Uniformity" (as well as the other popular buzzword, "consistency") is not a goal in itself". I think that some people don't really understand how much more complexity and inconsistency we truly have. And that is OK. As an editor, you don't NEED to know about the 30 people who basically deal with that every day. But it is important to realize that the foundation has to spend the majority of it's BEST resources on continuously diving into these nooks and crannies of our systems that get touched about 2 times a year. Flagged Revisions for instance is NOT nice. It's a system on use in about 15 wikis, each and every one in totally different ways. Everytime something needs to change or be fixed there, that can be an effort of days for the most senior people, that really would be better spent on other projects. It is CRITICAL that we get into a more maintainable state for all those various 'hack jobs' on top of the core software. Similar, it is CRITICAL for users to have a consistent UI and recognizable entry points into the different workflows, especially as complexity increases. You cannot just deny the validity of that, without understanding it. I do agree that it is the Foundation's task to explain some of these things, but to what detail ? You seem to want all the details every week, well most people really don't care and don't want to be bothered, such is the reality. If anyone has the brilliant idea on how to solve that last problem that has been bothering everyone for 6 years already, then please share it, because that's where everything tried has truly failed so far.....
• "the portuguese community wants to keep MV despite its many bugs and problems ... you must let them'. NO NO NO NO. This is a time sink, a support nightmare. There is nothing worse than exceptions like these and the development community of MediaWiki and more so the engineering staff on the Foundation has reached its limits as to their capability to sustain 100s of these kinds of exceptions without it having a very detrimental impact on other operations. The software has become too complex to add more of these exceptions. Part of the whole reason why development keeps hammering on consistency is exactly to make these kinds of exceptions more maintainable, because in the current state they are not and cannot be maintainable.
• On the mean... As I see it, the Foundation is currently walking a tightrope. A misstep to the left is 'death due to lack of evolution' and a misstep to the right is 'death due to user revolt'. It seems some people are arguing the Foundation shouldn't walk the tightrope, well... about 6 years too late, our movement is already somewhere in the middle of the rope. There is no magic bullet to exit that tightrope, it's fall or walk. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 10:29, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Flagged revisions - yes, they are rather difficult to maintain from a developer perspective compared to other features. However, we regard them as a major and nowadays very critical improvement for our ability to improve content quality. FR should have very high priority in getting maintained. And obviously there are developer resources for lots of unwanted crap that could and should be directed on FR when needed. Regarding MV - i do not see why it cannot serve the role of a additional module. MV is not that much deeply interwoven with other MW code. I also take it as a given that some time in the future we will have a working successor for MV for nearly all projects, including of course de.WP, probably also as opt-out nearly everywhere. So why should not some projects accept MV already as opt-out (barring possible legal aspects, which always are a matter where WMF must decide on its own)? What major problems for the devs would it cause?

Of course, future processes would need a transparent protocol to include perspectives from community + devs + WMFs. But we are not yet at a point where we could discuss what a working protocol could look like. We are at the point of seeing WMF fall from the rope. The urgent question is not how we can ameliorate dev problems in relation to community expectations in general, but: Will WMF find its balance again or just fall to the ground? Ca$e (talk) 11:02, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

It's silly to foster the belief that today's community "owns" the project. First, none of them own it; Second, that's not how a "free" licence works, and it is inimical to it; Third, in a wiki, the user does not own it. Forth, it's death to any development, and death to development is death. Of course, they have wide latitude in ordering the project, and no one is proposing changing that, but they should know, someone does own the domain, and it is not them. There is no point in fostering fantasy that has no basis in fact and makes no sense in practice. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:29, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

A lot of people who write here know a little something about creating an encyclopedia, they have proven it. Lila is not one of them yet. She has some visions, fine. But she has to convince volunteers to contribute their time and effort to create high-quality content. If she doesn't succeed, the project will be busted. The danger is real. Cheers, Stefan64 (talk) 11:53, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

No. No one volunteers because of Lila, they volunteer because it's in them; if they are doing it for power, then they will be sorely disappointed, no matter what Lila does. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:17, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

"They volunteer because it's in them" doesn't mean they will tolerate to be bossed around, and at some point they will leave. It's already happening. Stefan64 (talk) 12:25, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

If that's the case, than they must realize that others will not be bossed around by them; so of course volunteers should leave, if they come to the realization they can't boss people around and they do not like that they cannot. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:27, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, currently it's more the opposite case, as there has been very little change due to our remarks here. This imho shouldn't happen either. --Ghilt (talk) 13:41, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, disagreements happen, and just because one cannot come to total agreement does not mean that a party was not listened to. No one is even trying to remove all project autonomy, no one is arguing against the fact that reasonable changes should be made, but different parties will have different views on what is reasonable, and will have to sometimes live in their disagreements (they will have to agree to disagree). Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:50, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

I wish we were even close to a partial agreement. The wiki process of consensus is also missed by many here, which is stated in the founding principles as well as the guiding principles and which is a prerequisite for voluntary cooperativity in general. --Ghilt (talk) 15:22, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

That depends on what you mean, every time you press save, you consent to the terms of use and other policies binding on all projects established by the WMF as owner. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:11, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Alanscottwalker: Your cynicism is remarkable, have you ever considered to apply for a job at the foundation? But seriously, some people may not realize how fragile this project is. You simply cannot replace a significant number of good contributors on short notice. Acceptable collateral damage for introducing some buggy software? Uh-oh. Stefan64 (talk) 13:45, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

The reasons why people volunteer for Wikipedia or other projects are complex and multifarious. I don't think it's either true or helpful to suggest that it's just because they want to boss people around. And there is a lot of difference between wanting to boss people around, and wanting not to be bossed around. Deltahedron (talk) 13:59, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

I suggested the exact opposite, for why people volunteer - not to boss people around. My view is not in the least cynical, people do not volunteer to boss people around, they volunteer to share free knowledge, knowledge that may be rejected or changed by others. If they do volunteer because they want power, they will be disappointed and should not do so. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:15, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

I think there was some misunderstanding over the sentence "of course volunteers should leave, if they come to the realization they can't boss people around and they do not like that they cannot". I, and I think the other commentators here, read each occurence of the word "they" as referring back to "the volunteers", so reading the sentence as "volunteers should leave if volunteers come to the realisation that volunteers cannot boss people around and volunteers do not like the fact that volunteers cannot boss people around". I'm sure most people are in agreement with your clarification. Deltahedron (talk) 15:23, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Lila, it seems you may be under a couple of misapprehensions about the software. My take on these (I can hardly expect to be saying things completely new since, as you may have noticed, a very great deal has already been said here. :-):

• Misapprehension: "upgrading software" = "replacing the core software". That's absolutely wrong. The most important thing to do with the core software is to not break it. Provide a stable platform, both for volunteers contributing content, and for volunteers contributing software built on top of the core (disclosure: I am an example of someone who contributes both).
• Misapprehension: all projects should have the same interface. Again, no. The interface, and the software associated with it, are properly part of the product crowdsourced by the individual community. Every project has its own unique character, and the local community are the ones who use it all the time, who would be most impacted by damaging it, who know what would damage it, who know when it is damaged. No outsider can anticipate the subtle ways it can be damanged until after they've damaged it, and they may not even be able to realize they've damaged it after the fact (the effect may be too subtle for them to see clearly, since they're outside the damaged dynamics).

These fundamental differences between projects are more obvious when you contrast different sisters (Wikipedia vs Wikibooks vs Wikinews). Most sisters have some variant of "What Wiki<x> is not", which includes statements that Wiki<x> is not various other sisters. Wikipiedia is not a newspaper. Wikinews is not an encyclopedia. And so on. Most Wikinewses have software requirements profoundly different (and much steeper) than most Wikipedia's. Different-language editions of Wikinews also work differently from each other; granted, for most sisters I'd expect the differences between languages would probably be somewhat smaller, but not for all sisters, and I wouldn't bet on it even for, say, Wikipedia.

I'd also make one general observation. When people start advocating "thinking outside the box" about an existing system, they usually end up effectively destroying the existing system. It's easy to think outside the box, and the vast majority of all the things one thinks of would do damage. There are a few things that would improve the system, and the system only remains viable in the long run if a sufficient fraction of those things are identified and done, but that almost never happens, and it doesn't happen because of someone who comes in from outside with "new ideas" — it requires someone with inside insight. For wikimedia, the local communities are where the insight has to come from; for example, on en.wn, I deliberately immersed myself in the local culture for several years in order to understand the infrastructure inside-out before identifying key components that could improve it. (And of course it's taking me years to implement those components because their design can't be usefully entrusted to somebody who isn't equally inside the project's local culture.) --Pi zero (talk) 12:49, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

I support Pi zero's conclusions. In the German Wikipedia we use the flagged versions (and several other languages do as well) while the English Wikipedia rejected that feature. English Wikinews is using the flagged versions as a very formal step in the publishing process. No other Wikinews language version is using the flagged revisions like this, to my knowledge, and German Wikinews does not use the flagged revisions at all. German Wikinews simply half-protects published articles. (Oh, btw., did you know, that Wikinews articles after they got "published" they won't be edited anymore, aside from fixing sick tippos; they are considered "finished" while Wikipedia articles never are ready. It is similar with Wikisource – after texts have been proofread twice, they get protected, since there is no need for further modifications, it exists only one way to transcript a given text and that is exactly copytyping that text.) It is undoubted that Wikipedia should have a better system for referencing articles (we're talking about inline references, the small numbers) but if one day such a feature will be invented and works as it should ;-) then it will of no benefit for Wikinews (as to my knowledge) there is no Wikinews language version which uses inline references to source articles. It is very obvious that MediaWiki programmers have very little insight into those differences so they'll have to rely onto what local communities tell them. Regretfully I must state, that there is a total lack of interest into the specific needs of those smaller Wikimedia projects at all. --Matthiasb (talk) 17:45, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Specific questions for Lila

I thought it might save time to list specific questions for Lila here. I would suggest (although this is of course her talk page and not mine) that this section be restricted to questions by other people and answers by Lila. Non-Lila people wanting to answer, or comment on, the questions might prefer to start another section. It might also be helpful to ask only questions that are requestes for information that she is in a position to answer, rather than rhetorical or otherwise non-question questions. I've gathered together some that have already been asked and not, I think, yet answered: please add any that I may have missed. Deltahedron (talk) 15:52, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

• Could you please explain what position WMF takes on the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (UNESCO)

• Who were the executives responsible for the enforced MV-Rollout and the Superprotect operation

• Is it your view that Visual Editor actually works? Does Media Viewer actually work? In each case, if not, what plans are there for making it work?

• Is mathematics is not "foundational" or should we conclude that mathematics is indeed foundational, but not foundational enough for WMF to work on in the foreseeable future?

Answers to specific questions for Lila from not Lila

Here is such a section. Please post such things here instead of above so we can keep the above limited to questions for Lila and their answers from Lila. Zellfaze (talk) 19:59, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Your user group

Hi Lila, as I’ve seen, your account has now been renamed into a WMF account, and so have also other staff accounts already been renamed. Thanks for that, that will surely help with communicating. Some of these accounts will be more difficult to split. One question about the user group of your own account: Is there a special reason that it isn’t in the staff user group such as (maybe all?) other staff accounts? Do you perhaps want to test how it is to be a new user without special rights in the wikis? ;) Or has this to do with the fact that it hadn’t a "(WMF)" in its name before today? Regards --Winternacht (talk) 14:41, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

FYI: Staff permissions are designated on the basis of need and by ability, as determined by the WMF, as I recall from reading one of the pages on them (not to all staff). So, if the ED ever determines she has both need and ability, she will likely get them when that comes to pass. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:27, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the information, Alan, which I didn’t know at all. I thought this account would be the only exception of it now (for whatever reason), and that it would only be necessary to look into the staff user group to find every staff account that is onwiki. I even don’t find this basic information about staff user accounts in the ongoing RfC which astonishes me. Or did I overlook anything there? How can anyone comment on an RfC, if not even the facts about the current state have been made clear there?

So, if I’m understanding you right, the staff user group doesn’t contain every staff user account, and there might be more staff user accounts around without WMF in the user names that noone notices to be such staff users, because they haven’t a "WMF" and they aren’t in this user group. This is really very confusing to me, so again, thank you very much for this basic information. In conclusion of this, it would be great, if those ones not being in the staff user group also would be renamed (certainly only, if they aren’t private accounts at the same time – really confusing, this whole issue). This would be a big step forward to minimize the confusions about this. In addition, I would like to add that the link in the special page with the members of the user group doesn’t link at all to an explanation what "staff user group" means or how it has been used, but instead it links to the policy about office actions. This is another fact which confuses me, because as far as I know by now, not every account with staff user rights may do office actions, see office actions#Who does office actions. If I am right there, then this link should not be used, because it is misleading, but it should be replaced by a link to a page with an explanation about what staff user accounts are and how they are used. Now I’m noticing at least, how confusing this has been to me by now. Regards --Winternacht (talk) 17:33, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it's two separate issues 1) there are various account naming styles used by staff (based on legacy), and these are all to be made pretty uniform with some (WMF) style in the near future; 2) In the past, present, and in the future some of these will have Staff Permissions but not all of them. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:19, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

• @Winternacht: I responded on another thread about this a bit but probably makes sense to respond here a bit as well. We are currently in the process (as stated elsewhere) in making sure that all staff accounts have a WMF marker in the username itself. This will be the case for all of the users in the Staff user group but also for all WMF staff members NOT in the WMF user group as well. The staff right (or other rights granted to staff members, some staff members have other global or local rights for work related reasons) is a separate question that was not intended to be part of this specific decision. There is a relatively long, but good, write up about the current global staff group On the meta User groups page and the reasons individual staff members have rights is recorded at WMF_Advanced_Permissions (a bot copies it from a copy of the google spreadsheet I use for tracking purposes).

That said Philippe and I are using this opportunity to review all staff rights. That includes whether people who currently have rights still need them and whether we can give them more restricted rights that will still allow them to do their job. In my current dream of this process we will end up with separated out users rights for different departments and jobs and the 'staff' user right would end up being mostly just a flag (with possibly some auto confirmed type rights) that would allow you to look at it for all 'official' staff accounts. I'm hopeful to finish this process along with the account changes but I can't promise that for sure since we have not finalized any of how things will look in the end and have quite a lot to do in that same time period. Jalexander--WMF 18:37, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

This sounds like a real good restructuring, thanks a lot for that. And thank you also for the information about this. Could you or anyone else put this much better link User groups#Staff into this special page for the word "staff" instead of the link to the office actions page, please? I don’t know, which page has to be changed for that, but it will surely be in the MediaWiki namespace. These links are really misleading and not explaining anything about staff accounts at all. --Winternacht (talk) 20:47, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Disclaimer on you user page

Dear Lila,

your user page for this account still contains a Disclaimer reading "Although I work for the Wikimedia Foundation, contributions under this account do not necessarily represent the actions or views of the Foundation unless expressly stated otherwise. For example, edits to articles or uploads of other media are done in my individual, personal capacity unless otherwise stated."
As you have changed this account to be your official WMF staff account, the situation is in fact reversed: All your edits under this account will automatically be official edits in your capacity as WMF staff unless expressly stated otherwise, so this disclaimer is kind of obsolete. It is irritating and misleading and no longer seems to be adequate. May I suggest that you consider reformulating it or even removing it altogether?
Best regards, Troubled @sset   ^{Work  •  Talk  •  Mail}   20:06, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

• @Troubled asset:, thanks for the question. The disclaimer text that people use is generally a boilerplate that Legal created and we are working right now on updating that given the new rules. Lila's current disclaimer was specifically for 'joint' accounts but once the new text is set (most likely within the next couple days, possibly even later today I'm looking at it as I type) Lila's will be updated as well. Jalexander--WMF 20:18, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks for that James, sounds very sensible. It's been confusing in the past, and it would be good to get it resolved! Hchc2009 (talk) 07:49, 27 August 2014 (UTC) (NB: a quick follow-on thought. Would it be possible at the same time to also clarify which of the staff accounts are paid positions, and which are volunteer? In some cases it is fairly transparent, in other cases it is somewhat harder to tell. This would bring the accounts, and the edits made from them, into unambiguous compliance with the new Terms of Use.) Hchc2009 (talk) 08:12, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

• Hmm, I'll talk to the lawyers and an office volunteer or two (who that would apply to) about the staff v volunteer question. There aren't many people who that would apply too (and I would say they are still very much in compliance with the ToU) but there are some :). Jalexander--WMF 09:16, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

• Cheers. It's more about being clear who's making paid edits that's the issue, rather than identifying volunteers - to pick a staff account at random, User:Jqadir (WMF), a Communications Intern, may or not be being paid to make his edits: you can't tell for certain from the user page at the moment, and I've come across plenty of both paid and unpaid interns. At the opposite end of the scale of obviousness, User:GeoffBrigham (WMF), as General Counsel, clearly is paid by the Foundation to make his edits from that account, so there's little room for confusion! :) Hchc2009 (talk) 10:00, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

German Wikipedia Update

FYI here: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Diskussionen_mit_WMF

And in English translation:

Dear German Wikipedia community,

We’ve been talking a lot with many of you and at the WMF about the current situation regarding Media Viewer and site-wide JavaScript changes.

Restricting edits to MediaWiki:Common.js was a difficult decision for us. We regret that we missed opportunities to do our part in avoiding a conflict that no one wanted. At the same time, we cannot fulfill our responsibilities as the site operator when users take it upon themselves to disable functionality by editing site-wide JavaScript that is executed for all users.

We learned that the use of superprotection unintendedly created the impression that we don't trust the community. This is not the case, so we have therefore removed the restriction.

In doing so, we are investing our trust and goodwill in every community member that you will work together with us before making changes to site-wide JavaScript. And we are specifically asking you to not change site-wide JavaScript to deactivate Media Viewer or to make it opt-in.

Our commitment to you is to address open technical issues with Media Viewer based on a global community consultation process beginning tomorrow. The consultation page will address the scope, intent, and timelines of the consultation will be announced on all projects and will be open-ended. We will update here with the details when the page is live and will support German language participation.

We ask you to work with us in good faith in the upcoming month and through this effort define a better, closer way of working together in support of our common goals.

Sincerely, Lila & Erik

The communities in question have specifically asked loudly and overwhelmingly for you to disable Media Viewer by default. You are not fulfilling your responsibilities as site operators as long as you continue to ignore the communities you work for. For all of your talk about working with the communities, your organization has done nothing but dictate that the Media Viewer will remain enabled. You have stated repeatedly that this is not open for negotiation. This is not an act of goodwill. The WMF did not take part in the RfCs when your input could have been taken into consideration, forfeiting your right to have a say in this. I ask yet again, what will it take to convince you to do your job and disable Media Viewer as requested? If you do so, then you can talk about improving Media Viewer to get the buy in you need to reenable it by default. --98.207.91.246 20:01, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Nevertheless, it's a welcome step in the right direction. Thanks, Lila. --Túrelio (talk) 20:05, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for this first - although rather belated - step and statement.

Could you please clarify whether the above text in english or the text in german is the original version, hence which one is a translation lacking in numerous details. For instance, the german text speaks of "Software-Funktionen deaktivieren" which would translate as "deactivating software-functions", which would be a more neutral phrasing than "disable functionality", which would impose a point of view many do not share, as DaB. did not disable but enable proper and larger functionality.

Further and more critical, the german text speaks of a "globalen, ergebnisoffenen Konsultation", which would read "a global consultation without predefined outcome", whereas the english text leaves open if you will not simply insist on a position we would hardly even start to discuss, as we already explained why we take it to be untenable in the context of WMF's principles, mission and values.

Please keep in mind that you already destroyed almost all "good faith" communities might still have had in WMF. Nevertheless, i appreciate this step. However, it will hardly be regarded as fulfillment of making good on your breaches of proper conduct. You probably are already aware that the largest percentage of active german-speaking community members that ever participated in a survey requested you to not only unprotect this page but also take further steps in correcting your missteps and ensuring that something like that could never happen again - please see this short summary. Many will take these as prerequisites to discuss further developments. Thus, can you tell us when you will fully adhere to this almost unanimous request?

Thanks, Ca$e (talk) 20:17, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Ca$e, to quickly address your questions about the two language versions first:

I'm told the term "ergebnisoffenen" in the German version corresponds to "open-ended" in the original English version. Since I don't know German, Erik and I drafted this in English first. The intended meaning is that there is no pre-defined outcome for these talks.

I'm OK with your more neutral rephrasing of the English "disable functionality". You have captured our intended meaning well.

-- LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 05:27, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Lila! ...Sicherlich ^Post 20:23, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Lila, speaking as someone who doesn't want to see the WMF come to grief, it deeply worries me that that statement apparently misses the point. It says plainly (and afaics through basic structure of the message, rather than nuances of particular vocabulary) that you don't trust the local community to choose its own software configuration; that makes it empty, or worse than empty, to say that you didn't intend to create the impression that you don't trust the community. You didn't intend to create an accurate impression of your feelings about the community?

In your keynote at Wikimania, as I recall, you said something about the great value of the WMF's assets. You seem oblivious that your primary asset is neither the software nor even the database, but the community; the software and the database are tools wielded by the community. I'm watching (deeply unhappily) as your primary asset slips through your fingers because you don't, in practice, recognize it as the main thing you should be conserving. --Pi zero (talk) 20:40, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Lila! This was the first and probably most important step in direction of restoring trust and returning to the founding principles. I hope superprotect will never be used again, as there are other existing methods for conflict resolution. The remaining issue is the vote on the opt-in for the media viewer in the german language wikipedia and also a matter of trust, why not allow the opt-in until the improvements are implemented? Then i'd happily vote for opt-out, if there ever would be a vote on the following version of the media viewer. Promised, --Ghilt (talk) 21:02, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Lila for this very important decision! --PM3 (talk) 21:01, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Levels of Public Participation
					empower
				cooperate
			involve
		consult
	inform
... from information to empowerment: Levels of public participation with increasing public impact

Which level in the decision-making process was achieved? Does WMF know the levels of cooperation/coordination with iCIV (international Community of Individual Volunteers)? Please, have a glance at colour Public Participation beautiful - being used in Spektrum der Bürgerbeteiligung. --Edward Steintain (talk) 21:54, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Lila, I would like to thank you as well for this very important first step in the right direction. I would also like to ask you to answer the - subtle, but important - questions Ca$e asked above. It is crucial that we understand each other's statements correctly, especially in situations like this. Furthermore, while I welcome your intention to discuss the details of the MV and software rollout in general, I would find it very important to start a discussion about the superprotect right itself: Do you think it is necessary to have such a right, and if yes, who should be entitled to use it, and under which circumstances? The German communitiy has articulated clear expectations in this regard (see the summary Ca$e already linked above). So far, I haven't seen any statement of the foundation on these issues - could you briefly comment on whether this is discussed in the board as well? Thanks a lot, and best regards, Darian (talk) 22:15, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Lila, dear Erik, dear Board of Trustees, Congratulatoins for this limpid chess move. Unfortunately some people reading/writing here already fall for it. For you, superprotect was just the bait to distract people from your MediaViewer intrigue. In which you destroyed the longstanding achieved particiation mechanisms (RfC/Meinungsbild), obviously in hope to replace them with your sugarcoated marketing-styled pseudo "better ways to collaborate" like your "improved centralized communications" placebos. You are deliberately using a shock strategy to sow quarrels among the readers & writers to better control them in the future and to get rid of those who are not submissive to your Wiki"plus" world leadership strategies. If you really wanted real participation you would first and foremost apprechiate and follow the established RfC procedures and at best suggest to the communities to improve those, what a lot of people generally agree can be done. Will you ever understand, that Wikipedia is the world's #5 website because it is different from facebook, twitter, google and flickr? Encyclopædia Britannica has never been an autograph book or the yellow pages and was not ended for lacking this. The Wiki writers & readers want software improvement, for ex. they want MV as opt-in while you are trying to ridicule them as being stuck in senile stubbornness. You say "jump" - we say "how high?"? --Trofobi (talk) 04:17, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Lila, this doesn't go far enough. Superprotected or not, you have clearly forbidden any community from disabling MediaViewer and therefore this gesture is empty. If you want to restore community trust, you need to listen to the community and disable it on wikis which do not want it, remove Superprotect from the software and undertake to seek community consensus before performing any new major software changes. We know that Superprotect is still there and it is clear that the WMF is still willing to use it to get its way. For example, I asked DannyH at en:Wikipedia talk:Flow whether rollout plans for it included gaining community consensus and his circumlocution betrays the WMF's intention to force it on wikis à la MV, but of course it will be much worse.

You need to understand that large portions of the community simply no longer trust the WMF. You can argue about the merits of MV all you like, but you have to realise that this is also a prelude to Flow, and the foundation has very conveniently added software tools to help it install it by hook or by crook. BethNaught (talk) 08:45, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I dont' see the word "forbidden" in the statement above. It says "we ask you ...". --PM3 (talk) 17:43, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, and guess what is the thinly veiled threat if we do try to disable MV again? Superprotect is still there. This is just a PR stunt – something certain people around here have experience in. BethNaught (talk) 21:37, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

@LilaTretikov (WMF): Thanks, but no thanks. That's not enough. The MV is just some flippant bling, no urgency to deploy it, definietly not to putsch against the community. As it should only be opt-in, so really nothing bad would have happened at all in regard to it's implementation, the slightly botched js-programming to respect the MB would have been corrected quite fast, hadn't you hacked that putch-device in the system. To retract SP is absolutely nothing, imho that's something inevitable for any decent person. To respect the MB and argue about the deficits of the MV, and to convince the community to make it opt-out, perhaps even in a few weeks, would be the good, and imho normal, decision, there's no need to implement MV as default in a rush. --Sänger S.G (talk) 16:01, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

The MB (poll) on Media Viewer was as poorly prepared and conducted as the MV rollout. I think the best solution now would be to quickly (within the next few weeks) address and fix the major problems of MV, so that MB becomes pointless. --PM3 (talk) 17:43, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

If you do not want to allow users to "edit JavaScript", who prevents from putting a checkbox there to disable the viewer? Audriusa (talk) 10:21, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

AudriusaIt's already there - how to disable; unregistered contributors can only bypass it. --Gryllida 06:36, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Archiving this page

Unless I'm behind the times on the archive bots (which of course I might be), you need a declaration at the top of this page to instruct an archive bot to archive inactive threads on the page after some chosen number of days. Either that, or you have to do the archiving by hand, in your copious free time. --Pi zero (talk) 20:47, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Feedback on the whole WMF vs Community situation

Solutions

1. 1 EASY but hard on the ego: Only activate the pretty viewer on mobile devices per default. See - easy. And those german wikipedians, who are "in Europe but certainly (not) in the global south (GerardM)" can live happily ever after as well as those tablet driven southern rascals who are the future. Give the chapters some clearly defined discretion concerning feature-activation. Define the difference and rights (!) of the community concerning tech decisions, management stuff and content-specific decisions.
2. 2 HARDER but easier on the ego: Just set it active but don't hinder admins to deactivate it after local RfCs. Get rid of the - now - poisonous superprotect function onece and for all.
3. 3 DESTRUCTIVE but great for the ego: do I have to detail it?

Examples To show that this is something cyclic, that is happening all over the place and in all types of organisations, here some examples of other community vs hq processes. Some helped get a more robust system in place, others just lead to a fork.

1. 1 EVE ONLINE

Situation: Space Sim, you fly spaceships. Management wanted to implement an avatar to make it "more attractive" to new players.

LOW: Subscriber numbers went down, CCP had to downsize.

HIGH: Establishment of a player council, which takes part in decision making processes and also has a say in new tech features (hear hear).

1. 2 OPEN/LIBRE OFFICE

Situation: Business interest and top down management decision angered community - noone wanted to step down.

LOW: Fork, Sun lost.

HIGH: Man, libre office has all the nicest features and the apache foundation keeps open office up too.

I just post this to show you the chances and dangers of this situation - if handled right it can be an asset - or not. Cheers, --Gego (talk) 10:53, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Tic-Tac-Toe of Free Content

WMF	competition	Top-5-websites
cooperation / coordination	free content	service to make you love me
Community iCIV*)	migration	Readers

Tic-Tac-Toe of Free Content

Dear Lila, would you like to play Tic-tac-toe? Each of the three respective marks/items in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row provides an information which can be used for prudence to win the game.

Of cource, WMF is in competition as a top-5-website and WMF has a distinct realationship with the iCIV*) (international Community of Individual Volunteers) which could be developed, too. „Cooperation is needed for evolution to construct new levels of organization.“

To move to a higher level of cooperation we – WMF and iCIV – can try to explain what coordination in Bylaws: ARTICLE II - STATEMENT OF PURPOSE means. Someone might even think it has something to do with subsidiarity.

The Game Tic-Tac-Toe of Free Content has a large diversity of rules – not just fight or flight, or tend and befriend if cooperation was not achieved. --Edward Steintain (talk) 08:45, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

P.S. It is well known that in unstructured populations, natural selection favours defectors over cooperators. And thanks for intending to undertake a review of your present processes immediately and propose a new approach that allows for feedback at more critical and relevant junctures in the next 90 days (Working Together).

Update to MediaViewer Consultation

Consultation on MediaViewer is now open to the entire community at Community Engagement (Product)/Media Viewer consultation. This includes an update on recent and planned improvements, and is intended to get a full shared understanding of any remaining critical issues, in order to determine next steps.

Thank you, -- LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 21:23, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Consultation "without pre-defined outcome"?

Dear Lila, concerning MV Consultation you wrote to the German-speaking community: "Wir verpflichten uns euch gegenüber, die offenen technischen Fragen zum Medienbetrachter in einer globalen, ergebnisoffenen Konsultation mit der Wikimedia-Gemeinschaft anzugehen..." [28]. The meaning of "ergebnisoffen" is "without pre-defined outcome". You explicetely stated: "The intended meaning is that there is no pre-defined outcome for these talks." [29]

But after talking with you [30] about MV, Jimbo wrote: "There is no question (none) that the future involves MV enabled universally and by default" [31].

So how shall we understand the meaning of "There is no pre-defined outcome"? Do you mean, you commit yourself to a global community consultation without pro-defined outcome, provided that the global community commits itself to an outcome in which MV will be enabled universally and by default? --Niki.L (talk) 10:15, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Jimbo says stuff. He's not always right (no one is), see Image Filters and Pending Changes, for example. Rich Farmbrough 14:58 29 August 2014 (GMT).

"There is no pre-defined outcome" means that any production feature may run into a difficult and blocking problem, if that happens it may need to be pulled back to be fixed. Examples may include legal violation, significant performance degradation, etc. This is why stating the "I cannot do X, and it is critical because of Y" is the most productive way to work together to resolve this. Please participate here. -- LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

If "fails to adequately advance our shared vision" is not on that list of blockers, I think we may have finally arrived at the core of the problem. -Pete F (talk) 19:27, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Lila, I plead with you to urgently reconsider you latest "pre-defined outcome" comment. I believe it will be broadly viewed as a severe breech of Good Faith. The situation before you stated "no pre-defined outcome" was that the MWF was working on various bug fixes or improvements, with the intent to finalize deployment. That is a pre-defined outcome. Alsee (talk) 04:16, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

P.S. I would like to file a bug report. "19:36, 27 August 2014‎ LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk | contribs)‎ . . (355,406 bytes) (+1,755)‎ . . (undo | thanked)" the "thanked" is displayed as plain text when it clearly should be a link to preform an UnThank. Alsee (talk) 08:16, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

to make it short an clear: change your mind or leave.

hi Lila. to make it short and clear:

• WMF has to respect the communtiy and their decisions.(sic!)
• nobody else than the community has more competence about what is needed for the project of Wikipedia.
• as long as you do not understand Wikipedia you (sorry to be so clear) and any other parts of WMF are bad for this project.
• pls. change your mind or leave.

Regards --Gruß Tom (talk) 21:27, 28 August 2014 (UTC) P.S. WMF should not even try(see) to play chess against the communtiy. short and clear: you will loose.

• Update: read the press[32] Service: "Keine substanziellen Zugeständnisse" ==> No substantial concessions --Gruß Tom (talk) 12:23, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Mathematics under Flow

I just tried this out and discovered to my surprise that a year after starting discussions with the Flow developers, mathematics still does not work properly on Flow. Given our previous discussions about the absence of WMF resources for mathematics, could you let us know what your plans are for mathematics formulae under Flow? Should we assume that they are unlikely to be fixed? No need for you to reply in person, if you would get the person responsible to do so, that would be much appreciated, thanks. Deltahedron (talk) 20:03, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I am not yet up-to-speed with Flow requirements -- I will forward to the PM. But really quickly priority-wise -- I was under the impression that VE improvements were higher on the list. Could you confirm, please. -- LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 20:19, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

In terms of the proposals that you turned down, rendering came first, but sustaining mathematics on VE comes before Flow, because VE is already with us, and Flow isn't. But the strategic question, which I think is for you, is: if mathematics doesn't work, or is hard to get working, under some new product, such as Flow for example, is there effort to make it work, or should we assume from your previous answers on the subject, that it will be best endeavours? Oh, and thanks for passing the specific question on! Deltahedron (talk) 20:26, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

(Copying my reply from the Enwiki talkpage) Yes, <math> should be working. It was working a week ago, as you saw at mw:Topic on Talk:Sandbox, so this is a new bug. I've filed bugzilla:70187 after replicating it and discovering some details. Thanks as always for the pointer. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:46, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt response -- as I said, just my bad luck to come back a year later and find it not working again. Deltahedron (talk) 20:50, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

This is the kind of interaction I am hoping for: have we thought through all the usecases? What is the minimum we are willing to live with in revision 1? in revision 2, 3, etc.. Is it working pre-release? What are the things we *must* support vs. *should* (keeping in mind not everything can be a must in the first revision, or we won't ever get anything to the finish line). In VE, references clearly were a must, for example... We are brainstorming on that here. On Flow -- keep in mind it is under active development, so you are likely looking at an unstable version. -- LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 21:07, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, quite a lot of work was put into the use cases almost exactly a year ago at en:Wikipedia talk:Flow. At that time, mathematics under Flow was not yet working. That's why it is disappointing to come back a year later and find it still not working. We're told that it had been working but somehow got broken again, and that's exactly what's worrying people like me -- the wider point is, given that there is no effort for mathematics, and you declined to allocate even a point of contact for it, what will happen if it breaks again as a result of some other change? There won't be anyone whose job it will be to fix it, or even to advocate for fixing it, or to talk to the community about fixing it. So I have to assess that there is a realistic chance that it will in fact break and just not get fixed? Now that it's not on the roadmap, you can understand my apprehension. Deltahedron (talk) 21:25, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

This is actually a fairly simple bug to fix -- as Nick said, it was working a week ago, but something in the latest release caused a fatal error in that function. So while this is definitely annoying, it's not something that's seriously broken and needs to be redesigned -- just an error in the code somewhere that we can find and fix. I'll talk to the Flow team about adding some automated browser testing for the Math function, to make sure that we catch any future Math-disabling bug before it goes out into production. We've started investing more resources in building browser tests like that -- we're not completely caught up, but we're getting better, and we make sure to write tests when we see a process fail like this. I'm sorry that you caught this just when you came back! That's frustrating. If you see any further problems with Flow, you can let us know either on the Flow feedback page on Mediawiki or on English WP. DannyH (WMF) (talk) 21:53, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for that explanation. I'm glad to hear it's only a bug. My question for Lila is more about what commitment she can give to making sure that effort is available to make sure that bugs like this are caught and are fixed when caught: I don't to trouble her with bug reports, but do want to hear a little about the strategic direction. By the way, should I assume that it's up to the users to find this sort of bug? Deltahedron (talk) 07:48, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

This is what we would call a *regression* bug. This means that we have it in the spec that the "version 1" of the feature must support this use case, we implemented it, and then we broke it as we are building other things. It is a fairly common case in software development, although undesirable, and there are ways to minimize this. No, it should *not* be found by users (unless you are testing -- as in this case -- an interim build). Since testing is a non-deterministic problem it is useful to establish some goals around regressions. Keeping regressions under 1% rate (this is for software, hardware/firmware is much less tolerant) is a target I used before (which means roughly that out of 100 bugs that were previously fixed at most 1 may come back in any given release). When it happens it is an "must fix" blocker bug. -- LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 20:55, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

I hope that Flow will never come. And I won’t edit on a now-being Flow page, because this thing is much too buggy. There are problems which should have been fixed, before Flow is being used on any page. Can’t say more about this. That noone notices this after one year, makes me very pessimistically that Flow has ever been checked at all (with more than one or two browsers or usecases) before using it onwiki. And that anyone shall report bugs on that on a talk page which itself uses it, doesn’t make this better. You better shouldn’t use a buggy software on pages, where people shall report you any bugs. That’s the main error for that. And you should always have a page here on Meta without Flow for reporting errors. Not every user can report on enwiki, where perhaps another user has already an account with his user name. Because the SUL finalization hasn’t come yet. Why is it more important to force new software which make Wikipedia another social media thing instead of an encyclopedia than to fix the main problems here? Why does it take that long (years) for the SUL finalization, and why are some important things never being fixed? There could be so many things done with the money, but instead you force things onto the communities which are buggy, which don’t like many people. I can’t understand that at all. And now, this buggy Flow is already in the preferences here on Meta? Why? Why is it in use, while everyone is seeing that it is „an unstable version“? I can’t see, how this thing does anything useful. And why shall people report problems with itself on Mediawiki wiki by using this buggy, unstable software? I don’t get this at all. --Winternacht (talk) 15:20, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Just to be extra sure: When you ask "What is the minimum we are willing to live with in revision 1?" you really mean "What is the minimum the community of authors is willing to live with in revision 1?", do you? And the WMF will communicate the benefits of the flow to the community on a time scale that reflects the potential disruption a complete overhaul of the discussion technique can cause, will it? ---<(kmk)>- (talk) 00:08, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Three things I don't like about current state of Wikimedia projects

Dear Lila, I see you have your hands full dealing with MediaViewer and superprodect issues. As most of Wikimedians I usually don't bother with metawiki problems as I have enough of them either way on my home wikis. But recent case made me somehow look more into it, so I read far more comments than I would actually liked to. I agree with some, I disagree with others. But I see one thing those have usually in common - deep frustration. The recent case is just the tip of an iceberg in the long line issues between WMF and different wikicommunities. Some of those frustrated people complain on meta, far more work quietly until the point they simply leave. I myself am frustrated as well, there are many reasons to it but I would like to point out three longstanding isues I see. I am not talking in stead of someone else, I am simply talking for myself only, but I know quite a few people who are not active in community processes and who share at least some of those ideas.

It is all about Wikipedia. Yes, Wikipedia is and in forseeable future will be flagship of WMF. It definitelly attracts most visitors and donors. Smaller Wikimedia project could probably not survive without Wikipedia at all. Yet in my opinion they play important role in fulfilling our vision. Each of them in a different way. Yet it sometimes seems to me that these project are only tolerated as compulsory evil. While Wikipedias have hundreds and even thousands of editors we are afraid of Wikipedia's future, most successful sister projects has tens of them, most of these projects must be satisfied with just handful of regular editors. Because of that, these project do not have a capacity to create any visible presure on WMF. People there basicly have two options - to work on these projects with certain effect OR to lobby on meta with uncertain effect and no work done on the project.

Working on these project are completely different from creating encyclopaedia and is not for everyone, yet it is another place where we can gather people with different interests than those needed for ecyclopaedic work. I myself started on Wikipedia but soon after was attracted by other projects with a completely different atmosphere and needs. But how many people do know about those project? There are even regular Wikipedians do not know much about these projects. Even some local chapters do not see any merit in promoting sisterprojects. Lots of Wikipedians mock editors of sister projects or entire sister projects. Do those projects have any support in WMF? Maybe they have, I am not really sure about it.

Sister projects have different needs than Wikipedia. That goes for software as well. Yet almost all software changes are made for Wikipedia and those few people working on sister project must bear with whatever it is. The great example would be Wiktionary. Wiktionarians have been calling for software enhancements better suited for dictionary for years. Those requests have never been answered, Wikipedia issues have developers' priority. Along with Wikidata (yes I know Wikidata development is not fully under WMF) launch there were voices that information from Wiktionaries could be centralised on Wikidata (and thus making Wiktionaries obsolete). At this point of time we know only one thing, Wiktionary will be the very last project on Wikidata (if ever). Nothing else. What it will look like? When will it happen? Is there any point in continuing working on Wiktionary? Those are questions that can be heard among users yet no answers. Developers have their hand full with features needed for Wikipedia, for example marking Good and Featured articles in interwiki. Another example would be book tool developed to allow users to make their own books from Wikipedia articles. As long as Wikisource is all about books et al. the only logical conlusion is to deliver it there too. And so Wikisources got the exact same piece of software as Wikipedia did. While it works quite well for Wikipedia, Wikisource is quite different and so the result there is not that satisfying, especially in languages not using English typography. And it is like that for years already.

I could continue like this but let's move on another point.

International legal issues of free content. It is really not that long various communities faced the problem called URAA and many communities will face it in the upcoming years. In short the problem lies in the fact that work which is perfectly free in the country of its origin is not allowed on Wikis because of some U.S. law. Communities asked WMF to find some solution to this problem. WMF replied that it's impossible because of this and that which could also be read as there will be no solution because we are proud Americans. Billions of readers can't find content that is free everywhere but United States. Administrators are forced to explain such situation to people who usually don't understand even their own national copyright law. We can disagree, we can protest, but it's about everything we can do. Content on Wikis must be free for all.

I could agree with that last statement if there weren't for one little exception of non-free content made for English Wikipedia. The exception called Fair Use. I am sure WMF stated back then some really important reason why is such exception necessary in our mision but for me, true reason is that WMF didn't want to deal with riots which would ban on Fair Use definitely caused back then. Other wikis were silenced by the cake allowing them to use non-free content if it is ok with their law AND U.S. law. For me Fair Use on English Wikipedia is probably the greatest curse, for our mision and free content at all. English Wikipedia is the most influential Wiki at all, with its influence it has the greatest power to persuade people and companies to release some of their works under free license, yet it is the wiki that plays it safe and easy by using Fair Use the most.

I say WMF should stop discriminate other language versions in terms of permited content and it means that WMF should either forbid non-free content including Fair Use completely or find a way wikis could legally use content that is free in country of origin and probably everywhere in the world but U.S.

The state of the software. Wikis right now are definitely outdated in both visual experience and abilities (is that the right word?). Unfortunately it is not only software but also many templates made by users that look ancient. I firsthand understand dificulties in persuading users into something new or different (because new is always bad). But at the same time I don't agree with the idea that the solution to our problems is simply adding more and more new features. MediaWiki has some history and there are many different reasons for its current state. Users came up with hundreds and maybe thousands little improvements that would make their editing or reading experience better. Some of them were realized, many of them didn't. For years! Reasons? No developer interested in it, too expensive for our servers, not satisfactory implementation etc. After years someone finally noticed that readers and editors are not contented with current software and decided it is time to change. And not some change next door but BIG one. And so instead of small continuous improvements based on actual experience that could be delivered fast with little or no resistance we get wannabe revolutionary pieces of software which development takes years, costs hundreds of thousands dollars, is not based on actual experience or needs and is delivered in the state that is far from usable. Well not all the pieeces are like that but it goes for those really important.

I could start with Usability Initiative. It had considerable budget and great plans. In the end it made only a fraction of what I was expecting of it. The most visible changes being new edittoolbar and Vector skin. Both changed greatly the way editors worked. Many administrators liked some of its new features yet they were practically forced to stick with Monobook because Vector made their administrative work much more dificult. There were even some serious accessibility issues in Vector for years! Then there were some pieces of software users had great expectations for and were abandoned as failures soon after, for example LiquidThreads. And now we are moving to most recent duo: VisualEditor and MediaViewer. Both by itself great ideas, high expectectations and then strong disappointment. When VisualEditor was delivered it was good for typoedits only and it made my browser freeze every time I used it. There has been really no reason for me to use it ever after. As for MediaViewer I expected really simple and fast tool to view images in the article in higher resolution. What I got was something slower than wiki itself plus completely useless. When I look at it right now after improvements I wonder why it had to be created as new layer and why file description pages weren't simply redesigned.

Design process seems to be Achilles heel of current MediaWiki. More and more new features and beta features are added. To the point that developers of such features complain it's hard to find a place where to put it. I don't see clear strategy for what we really want in the end of the current process. Instead of making it simple for newcommers we overload them by those features. Same way I do with this terrible piece of text.

--Reaperman (talk) 16:57, 31 August 2014 (UTC)