User talk:LilaTretikov (WMF)

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Suggestion: a different metric, and a systemic problem

Lila, here's a systemic problem that may be difficult for you to see from your perspective. It seems like something the Executive Director may be able to affect, once aware of it.

Consider the value of the labor that wikimedians donate to the wikimedian projects. This is hard to estimate, but one natural approach would be to estimate how much time contributors donate to the purpose, and multiply by some estimate of the fair market value of their labor. For example, just to illustrate the concept (and yes, I mean to flag out a particular error in these numbers), if you have 1000 experienced volunteers, donating an average of 100 hours per year, and you value their labor at ten US dollars per hour, that would be a million dollars' worth of labor donated per year.

The error I particularly want to point out in that estimate is ten dollars per hour. That's roughly what you'd pay unskilled labor in the US — and the people I'm talking about, the core users who make a project like English Wikipedia work, are skilled labor, worth several times that 10-dollars-per-hour.

Which brings me to the systemic problem I mentioned at the start. A lot of Foundation employees are thinking of "the users" the way tech personnel would think of users at a social-media site like Facebook or Twitter. I know this attitude, I've seen it from both sides. It's the same attitude that causes tech support people to mutter "RTFM" under their breath: the expectation that users are clueless pests who need to be placated. Which, in this context, is a disastrous attitude, because the users are not only clueful, they're also a major financial asset of the Foundation that can be lost by mistreating them.

This isn't an alternative to the other things discussed. Naturally, better processes are desirable. I'm also quite impressed by the acuity of Gestumblindi's recent remarks. But this widespread (though by no means universal) attitude by staff, treating the skilled labor on the wikimedian projects as if they were users of something like Facebook or Twitter — that's a hemorrhage that needs to be stopped quickly, so the patient can last long enough to act on these other things. --Pi zero (talk) 03:09, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree with this to a point. There are some staff, certainly not all, who seem to assume that Wikimedians are less educated, less knowledgeable, less socially skillful, and/or less technically capable than they are. That generalization is questionable. --Pine^✉ 07:05, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

I should acknowledge that we have some volunteers who are difficult to work with, and I'm sure frequent encounters with difficult users wears on the employees. Also, volunteer-on-volunteer conflict is pretty common and quite possibly has a major effect on our active editor statistics. I think this is something we may want to address in the Strategic Plan. --Pine^✉ 18:26, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Community-facing roles

Some of the roles for WMF staff are specifically community-facing. I see such descriptions as "My job is to help make sure the team understands what the community wants and needs, is focussed on the things that matter, and is engaging with and understood by the community"; "ensuring that our community is represented in the decision-making process and that our planned software adequately reflects user needs"; "facilitate communication between staff and all the communities in every project under the umbrella of the Wikimedia Foundation"; "facilitate communication between the Foundation staff and the many diverse editing communities and editors that make the project work"; "empower volunteers to assist their communities with the development and deployment of software"; ""ensure open lines of communication between our editing community and the team, and surfacing issues that are important to our editors" and so on. Might I suggest that each memeber of staff with a specifcally community-facing remit publish their detailed terms of reference, so that we may understand exactly what we, as community members, should and should not expect them to be able to do? It would probably also be helpful to have a prominent link on the front page to a list describing briefly which of the community-facing staff has responsbility for which areas. Deltahedron (talk) 11:19, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

A very good suggestion.--Keithbob (talk) 21:28, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, --Edward Steintain (talk) 21:38, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

@Deltahedron: does it need to be done by each individual, or would a department level roll-up be useful for you? For instance, I'm wondering if something like this, which was written for last year's annual planning process (and describes the work of my team) is useful for your purposes. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 08:34, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Does this in any way fit to the demand of "Might I suggest that each memeber of staff with a specifcally community-facing remit publish their detailed terms of reference, so that we may understand exactly what we, as community members, should and should not expect them to be able to do? It would probably also be helpful to have a prominent link on the front page to a list describing briefly which of the community-facing staff has responsbility for which areas.", especially to the last sentence? Beside that i also find it somewhat disrespectful instead of answering such a reasonable wish of a community member (that also on the long term could help to advance the contact with the community members) to kind of hope to get away with linking to an old paper. But that is maybe my personal problem since i see such disrespect everywhere on the Foundation or at least you do nothing to correct that image. --Julius1990 (talk) 09:40, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Julius, I think perhaps I wasn't clear. I was asking if something along those lines (tweaked to meet the original request) would be adequate as a starting point, or whether it wouldn't work at all. It sounds like, for you, it wouldn't work. That's fine. I wasn't suggesting that it was in any way a completed product - just trying to clarify the requirements. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 05:40, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

@Philippe (WMF):, i simply have no faith left anymore for any of you at the WMF. I can't see how you can think that this list on that page comes any close to the community-faced employees telling what exactly is their respective job, what we as the editors can expect from any single of them, i likely would also like to hear if they would work against the will of the communities by your bosses demands ... but I personally think that it doesn't matter at all if you will ask such questions. You, meaning the WMF, made pretty clear in the way things get handled that we - the editors - anyway don't matter. Okay, message recieved. --Julius1990 (talk) 00:26, 22 September 2014 (UTC) PS: Just to show you how easy it is, and why i doubt on the Foundation's staff abilities: First step would have been setting up a page "community-facing employes" or something similar, the second step would have been to advice everyone of them to go there and then write "i'm xy, my role is xyz. You can expect from me help in this field. It's not my task do engage in this ..." Doesn't sound like anything that would require nobel prize winning abilities, does it?

One followup comment. It confuses me when WMF employees say they are speaking as themselves or as a regular community member in some communications and as a representative of the WMF in others. That makes no sense. If they are an employee of the WMF, they represent the WMF in all their communications with the community, period. If they express disdain as is often the case when they claim to be speaking as something other than a WMF employee, they are affecting the communities perception of the WMF no matter what hat they tell us they are wearing. -wʃʃʍ- 05:47, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Ah, employed people are not allowed to have opinions of their own and are not allowed to participate after working hours.. Someone like brion, who has spent dozens of weekends, implementing a decoder for our for the browsers that don't support our libre-format videos... Because he is a dedicated community member with WMF employment he no longer allowed a voice of his own. classy.. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:23, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

TheDJ it is not a matter of what is permitted but what is possible. Those listening to a WMF staff person speaking will not generally distinguish whether the words reflect a personal or a professional opinion, and will assume professional, regardless of whether such a (non-credible) disclaimer is made. Same goes for the employee of any organization speaking in a matter that relates to their professional role. WMF staff can choose to acknowledge this reality, or they can pretend that it doesn't exist -- those are the choices. -Pete F (talk) 16:47, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

MV update

I don't come to Meta much, but I am back today to post on a Privacy issue.

I just checked #My_quick_response_.28Rich_F.29 above and I am wondering if this was read, as MV still seems active. I tried out the latest MV and it (I.E. the WMF) is still breaking copyright law and arguably contract law. Moreover anyone creating (or editing) a page on any project using more than one image risks doing the same. In other words the Foundation is putting editors in legal jeopardy.

I have notified Luis on his talk page.

Note: With copyright law, as with most laws, it is no defence that "the vast majority" of pages are not breaking the law.

Rich Farmbrough 21:49 7 September 2014 (GMT).

Can I ask you to comment on my Stockphoto discussion as well: Commons VP ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:58, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Rich, I refer you back to previous comments by Wikimedia Foundation's Deputy General Counsel, Luis Villa. [1] [2] [3] You are unlikely to persuade the organization to disregard the opinion of its own legal department in matters of legality, so I suggest we focus on matters of best practices instead.

We absolutely agree that any automated re-use of files (in Media Viewer, in PDFs, in mobile applications, by third parties, etc.) should properly attribute authors. The team has already gone to great lengths to get this right in the viewer and small additional fixes (small because when machine-readable data is present, the viewer generally does the right thing) are forthcoming. More importantly, for files without machine-readable data, we've just started preparing for a file metadata cleanup drive, targeting the hundreds of thousands of files that have only free-text descriptions which cannot be predictably parsed by software. To be clear -- we welcome and seek volunteer participation (we believe the goals of having solid structured metadata are widely shared, independent of this application), but will also ourselves actively move this forward.--Erik Moeller (WMF) (talk) 07:51, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

I'd like to add -- making Media Viewer a stellar example of how attribution and re-use should be done, with great UX and clarity, would be a huge milestone for the free culture community and for Wikimedia Commons. This is a hard problem that no other organization has solved adequately yet, and it is compounded (in our case) by the messiness of our data. I don't think we're there yet, but I think we're closer than we've ever been. If you want to have a constructive conversation, please take a look through the must/should-have list here and let us know if we made the wrong call in over-looking a specific major issue in the viewer itself (template/file-level issues should be handled as part of the cleanup drive and you can prod Guillaume directly about these if you notice them but don't know a solution). Thanks,--Erik Moeller (WMF) (talk) 08:06, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Only one of those diffs is relevant

• 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.

This is, I'm afraid just wrong. Luis talks about the "reasonable manner" part which immediately precedes your quote and omits the two important words provided however - the additional part he quotes does not affect the sense of the part I quoted. The full sentence says:

The credit required by this Section 4(c) may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Adaptation or Collection, 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.

• 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.

This is just "making it up as we go along" how do we know what the language is "intended to cover" - definitely not by guessing! Luis is arguing that "if a credit for all contributing authors of the Adaptation or Collection appears" means a single list because it says "a credit", but later on it says "these credits". This claim also requires us to accept that the Media View of a page is not a "single place", which I would be reluctant to do without case law.

Moreover an article is also a collection, (as is each WMF hosted project), nominally one click takes us to the attribution of the text, similarly one click used to take us to the attribution for each image. Now it takes two clicks to get to some attributions, and one to others.

@ Erik: I would be interested in fixing these issues by working on the Commons pages to ensure that MV can pick up the attributions, but I am wary of this philosophy that if the "vast majority are ok" we should just ride roughshod over the rights of the remainder. Decreasing the problem in this environment makes it more likely that the MV will stay grimly in place, I would rather see it pulled, we fix the attribution problem, then reinstate it.

Rich Farmbrough 22:10 13 September 2014 (GMT).

Flow at enwiki

TLDR version of the below. Hi, there are major problems with the people responsible for Flow (especially DannyH and Erik Moeller) at enwiki, as can be seen by browsing WT:Flow and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#What the heck is this?. Main problems are a lack of responsiveness, a seeming total disinterest in the opinion of the editors, and a presistent "we know better than you" attitude. Many fundamental questions remain unanswered. Some admins already threaten to hand in their tools if Flow is rolled out, and many other regular editors seem equally disenchanted by Flow and its managers. Thanks to VisualEditor, MediaViewer, AFT and so on, patience with Erik Moeller cs is rapidly wearing thin. Fram (talk) 12:32, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi, I'm Fram, editor at enwiki, I have been discussed above a few days ago.

It would be very useful if you would take a more active (or visible) role wrt Flow. Not whether the product is good or bad, ha a future or not, that is a separate discussion (worth having as well of course). But the actions (and lack of them) by the two responsible people, User:DannyH (WMF) and User:Erik Moeller (WMF).

DannyH has consistently refused to (or neglected to, whatever) answer to lots of pertinent and direct questions, mainly on en:WT:Flow. The only tims he answers is when he can deliver good news or when the problem is so minor that he can be magnaminous about it. It started out well enough, around 27-28 August, but after that, when more and more problems came in and more and more of his statements were questioned, he just ignored every slightly tougher question or bug. This starts at the very end of the section "Problems accessing mediawiki flow page - and too many Echo notifications". It continues in sections like "Deletion", "Move doesn't work", "History and watchlist", ...

See e.g. the section "Updated information": he makes an announcement, gets a reply, totally ignores it. Or "Wiki misconceptions": he starts to respond, but when things get tougher, the whole of the WMF gest silent (I cound three pings to DannyH, one to Jorm, and one to Erik Moeller (5 pings by four different people that is, that all remained unanswered).

The section "Deployment venues": no answer. "How to inform about new topics": no answer. "Seeing changes since the last visit" no answer. The section "Deployment" started off with a large misunderstanding, and then nothing, even though again others pinged DannyH as well. "Why roll this out to other pages at enwiki?" No answer. "The Law of Unintended Consequences": no answer. "New topic notifications change": a reply acknowledging that they have to think about it, no follow-up when the questions get more embarassing.

"Get lost, WMF": Quiddity starts incorrectly, but has the good grace to correct his mistake and to stay in the discussion. No DannyH or Erik Moeller of course. "So funny it hurts" no answer from anyone until three days later a patch is written.

"Strike", a section started by two admins (not me) stating flat out that they will go on strike / resign the tools if Flow goes life. Not a peep from DannyH or Erik Moeller. Probably not important enough to warrant a reply.

Erik Moeller then finally appeared with "To Flow or not to Flow". He starts answering some questions, until some harder questions arrive, and people start pointing out inconsistencies between his story and reality. Pings by me, Diego, Victoria, and Seraphimblade, plus unpinged questions by multiple others, got no answer from Erik or anyone from the WMF.

Section "Effort justification" gets no answer. And "Reference does not support contention". "Can Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Breakfast be easily switched back?" gets an answer, but it is wrong. "Communication and action", no answer. "Notifications icon not disappearing", no answer.

Then we come to "Formal request to roll back the change that introduced the "messages" to Echo". DannyH leaves an answer. Questions about his unsatisfactory answer are ignored.

"Deletion of Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Flow test" is one of the worst bugs reported. No answer from anyone at WMF, not even after a ping was added. "A possible fundamental reason for many of the problems", no answer. And so on, and so on.

You already know about Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive853#Inappropriate threats by User:Fram. Now we have Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#What the heck is this? and its subsection, where DannyH once again succeeds in completely ignoring the actual question, and Erik Moeller starts making incorrect claims, then finally answers the question, but succeeds in both missing the point and making it clear that community consensus is of no importance, only they (WMF) can decide whether bugs and problems at enwiki are serious enough to end the test.

Just take a look at how the interaction works, not with me but with others. Notice also the amount of people already seriously pissed off by Flow and the way it is being handled (and discussed), vs. the number of (not WMF) people actually welcoming Flow and its tests on enwiki. Take then into account that Erik Moeller already has estranged a large section of the regular editors by his previous involvements with VisualEditor and MediaViewer. I think it is time that some serious reconsideration is given to the total approach to Flow and the communication around it. Continuing the way things are going now will only create huge conflicts and bad blood on all sides, and will make virtaully certain that Flow will never get accepted by large portions of the existing editing community. Fram (talk) 10:17, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

There's not much to add to Fram's post in terms of the dynamics of that talk page, so I will add my personal experiences by way of illustration.

When I asked these questions, which were about basic functionality, I got a prompt reply which basically said "we are in the middle of building this, details are a bit vague at the moment". The same situation occurred here. However, when I began the en:WT:Flow#Wiki misconceptions thread, I got an initial reply, but when other users gave further questions, including extremely important use cases such as the need for custom sigs so non-latin-script users can sign intelligibly to English speakers, were stonewalled despite pings. With regard to the poorly explained rollout to a Teahouse subpage for testing (en:WT:Flow#Get lost, WMF), User:Quiddity (WMF) explained the situation, and was apologetic and reassuring that it would not happen again, but despite a ping to DannyH no-one seems to have adequately responded to the ton of bugs raised when Fram attempted to delete the page (see en:WT:Flow#Deletion of Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions/Flow test for the conspicuous absence).

In short: in simple situations we get a competent explanation (usually Quiddity) or vague promises of action. In complex cases - and Flow is complex - we get evasiveness or nothing. That benefits nobody in the long run. BethNaught (talk) 14:32, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

I too am an en.wp editor and I think that a lot of people are engaging in hyperbole and jumping to conclusions. Answers are vague, because no one has them yet. Situations seem complex because they ARE complex. Some people demand answers to questions that simply cannot be given guarantees on at this phase. Some people are demanding the city plans before it is known how to build a house... Unless you are Qatar, most of the time that's now how cities get build. We need houses. We aren't sure how to build them. We might end up with 3 cities at some point. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:53, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

"admins already threaten to hand in their tools if Flow is rolled out" - yes, that was, sadly, to be expected (and has been, e.g. on this very talk page, several times in the last weeks actually). I also note that our explanations that WMF is completely mistaken in focussing on mobile editing have been aggressively ignored, check this talk page against e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Flow#Misconception:_Mobile_editing_is_the_future_for_talk_pages . What admins should do, is not, of course, to hand in their tools, which have been handed to them be the community depending on them, but first warn and then block disruptive WMF accounts. In this vein, i strongly endorse examples like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DannyH_%28WMF%29#Only_warning . This disruptive WMF behavior goes completely in line with what we have seen regarding Superblock and MediaViewer. Our decisions regarding both still stand and neither has SP been revoked nor MV been set to opt-in. We will simply not tolerate being ignored like that.

"Real communities aren't your cheap labor force. They are real people with passions, hopes, and dreams. Your job is to help them do what they want to do, not to extract labor from them."

That was Jimbo, April 2013. Now view WMF's recent misbehavior in the light of this exchange:

"If you’ve contributed for years to Wikipedia you must now accept a new political economy: you have permanent lower-caste status, and have simply been working hard for other people to get rich." Opined Wales [(talk) 12:29, 29 August 2014 (UTC)]: "[T]hat's just sheer unmitigated bullshit".

bullshit it may well be, yet it is evidently the new WMF policy. Ca$e (talk) 08:32, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

• Ah people have threatened to hand in their tools have they ? I actually HAVE handed in my admin tools over the community's response and hyperbole. So shit like this works two ways. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:11, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Invitation

Hello! As there is a Wikipedia article about you, you are cordially invited to contribute a short audio recoding of your spoken voice, so that our readers may know what you sound like and how you pronounce your name. Details of how to do so, and examples, are at Wikipedia:Voice intro project. Please feel free to ask for help or clarification on the project talk page, or my talk page. --Vera (talk) 13:19, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

August Board Meeting (London)

In the minutes of the August 6 WMF Board of Directors meeting, it is stated:

"Lila talked about characteristics that she expects for technology in the future, including more integration, mobile and short-form interactions, and predictive software. She discussed some of the challenges that the Foundation faces as the internet follows these and other trends. The Foundation's mission to facilitate collaboration and share knowledge will require better integrated knowledge, with delivery of service on any device and an active participation from a large number and diversity of users. * * *

Board members thanked Lila for sharing her reflections. The Board discussed the presentation, including the integration of Wikimedia projects, the value of predictive content, the importance of focusing on proper metrics, and the impact of product changes on users."

What specifically is the "predictive content" referred to here? Are we speaking of software generation of data that will indicate a tendency to further participation at WP, towards donations to WMF, or something else entirely? Carrite (talk) 14:20, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, i noticed that too and i find that choice of words worrying. Look up en:Predictive analytics. I (and i think most Wikipedians) really hate being treated like a guinea pig that can be manipulated to do this or that. For instance today on german WP (de:Wikipedia_Diskussion:Kurier#Empfehlungen), very experienced users were given the unsolicited mw:Task recommendations by WMF to edit article X and these recommendations were way off. These were +10year editors that were targeted by mistake while WMF was experimenting with newbies. (Earlier similar experiments had rather poor results en:Wikipedia:Geo-targeted Editors Participation/report.) --Atlasowa (talk) 16:35, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Right. This was yet another example of WMF without consultation implementing a "feature" that is 1) totally unwanted and, what's more, 2) totally disruptive against our efforts to recruit new users of the sort we desperately need - and are still losing more and more in protest against WMF's continuing, disturbing misbehaviors! We are seeing crap like that, if i may quote from Aschmidt, "Because the WMF does not understand why someone joins Wikipedia in the first place. It's because you want to work on a particular subject that's missing from Wikipedia up to then. So, the idea of making random suggestions to work on misses the point completely and is even apt to drive newbies away because they feel being patronised by the software. That's not what they've come in for. Remember, this is not Facebook, or Twitter. And this is not America either. They also fail to understand that we have different habits and expectations. There cannot be one solution that fits every community around the globe.--Aschmidt (Diskussion) 11:34, 12. Sep. 2014 (CEST)" WMF has sufficiently proven that it lacks critical understanding whatsoever about what is actually going on in the projects it currently is disturbing on a daily basis! Please stop this, immediately! Then roll back all the other unwanted crap, MV, SP, etc, and get your priorities straight! Our job is difficult enough already without WMF ruining things completely! Ca$e (talk) 16:52, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Staff account names

This is a follow-up to my previous note on English Wikipedia, cross-posted here for additional notice. We committed to move all staff to defined and marked "staff accounts" and to transfer any work-related user rights to those accounts by September 15th. As of today, I believe that all accounts with the exception of employees traveling or on vacation throughout the entire period have been migrated. The remaining accounts will be migrated as soon as the traveling employees return.

We are doing the final review of the accounts over the course of the next few days, but I'm pleased to say that the rename process is now substantially complete. While all WMF employees adjust to these new policies, if you notice a staff member posting from the wrong account, a gentle comment would be greatly appreciated. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 04:12, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

MV consultation

Was there any intent to actually follow up on negative feedback on the Media Viewer consultation? It's painfully clear from the discussion that only comments that affirmed the basic design and intent of Media Viewer were heeded. The majority of the feedback you received was that the tool should be disabled, returned to opt-in status, or completely repurposed, yet the only things being done are to tweak minor features while keeping the original functions. Kww (talk) 16:59, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

I seems it was all just deception of the community. They never intended to do anything substantial, just superficial surface cosmetics. It was created to divert the discussion from the use of brutal force against the communities and to let this real issue die off. --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 11:23, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

The distraction scenario was always one of the major possibilities (realistically, given the history, the most likely of the major possibilities).

Lila appeared, as seen from the wikimedian community, to have had a golden opportunity at the start of this crisis. If she had immediately had superprotect removed from the software, with an abject apology and statement that of course the Foundation had no business overriding community consensus on the deployment, she might have made herself hugely popular with the community, politically well-positioned to heal rifts and broker deals between the Foundation and the community. Potentially, supposing sufficient political deftness. Though still the best course of action, its immediate payoff diminishes day by day. Three theories come to mind for why she didn't.

• She simply didn't realize that was the thing to do. Plausible since she's been inside the Foundation echo-chamber (though plausibility doesn't make it less problematic). If that's the explanation, it seems she still doesn't realize, and as time goes on she'd have to do more, during and after the action, to convince the community of her sincerity.
• She wasn't politically capable of doing it, given the internal power structure of the Foundation. Has some plausibility, since she's a newcomer within the power structure and would need to smooth the ruffled feathers of people who've been there for years. If this were so, there are various political reasons, both internal and external, for her not to say so; but then, if she wanted to do it and needed to play internal power games to arrange it, one has to ask whether her public words would match what she's actually been saying.
• She sees it as her job to help the Foundation dupe the community into not screaming too loudly while the Foundation's will is foisted on them. That's a rather emotionally charged way of putting it, of course; but however you put it, there wouldn't be much point in dwelling on the possibility on this page —really, this page is only useful in the first and some branches of the second scenario— except perhaps to point out to her that because this third scenario looks increasingly likely to the community as time goes on, really substantive action would be needed to make it look less so.

It's sad to think individuals within the Foundation might mistake a tapering off of the initial level of vocal outrage as a good sign, rather than a sign of damage they've caused becoming increasingly difficult to redress. --Pi zero (talk) 13:44, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

What's even worse was the shameful behavior of the so-called "community liaisons" who repeatedly tried to hide feedback the foundation wanted to ignore while the "consultation period" was ongoing. Then in the end, the Multimedia team refused to even mention the #1 piece of feedback in their summary of the feedback. When community members added it, it was removed three separate times by three separate WMF staffers (including the VP of Engineering, yet again!). This was a consultation in name only if the WMF isn't going to even acknowledge the #1 request from the community. Shameful. Shameful. Shameful. --98.207.91.246 16:00, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

email

Hi Lila,

I emailed you with the subject line "From L"

Would you please read it and respond? If you don't see it would you please check your "spam" folder?

Thanks. 195.154.91.100 18:58, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Out of office

It would be nice if people with a job like yours wuld use some kind of "out-of-office" function / indication on their user page or talk page. At the moment, it is totally unclear whether you are not working, not reading this page, or not responding. You obviously don't have to respond to everything, but with this post included, there will now be 50 posts stretching nearly ten days here, without any reply by you. It gives a very strange impression. Fram (talk) 09:26, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

When I configured archiving for this page (see above), I used a conservative horizon of 21 days. Lila indicated about half of the material was archivable at that time. At least half of what was there then has now been archived, so although I'd adjusted the horizon down slightly (17 days), I've now put it back up to 21.

I agree, Lila would do well to catch up on the backlog here. I'm not really sure whether to intervene, in another few days, to prevent archiving of old stuff not responded to (and that's supposing that the massive 80k section archived last night didn't have subthreads that ought to have been responded to). --Pi zero (talk)

Looking at the recent purging action by one of her lackeys it seems she doesn't want to communicate any longer with the unwashed masses. The archive was set again to the last time she posted anything at all here on meta. that's imnsho a clear sign to the community to bugger off and leave the bosses alone in their wisdom, don't disturb them with facts, let alone dissent. I hope it was just some overeager lackey, who misread her intent, and not the obvious contempt that these actions seem to imply. --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 10:13, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, that's a pessimistic interpretation of events. It's not hard to come up with less negative explanations, but by this point she's used up her 'holiday' as a newcomer, so as a practical matter if she wants people to give her the benefit of the doubt she needs to earn it with actions. --Pi zero (talk) 12:44, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

It's hard to come up with optimistic interpretations after the WMF acted so ruthless and with such contempt for the deWP- and enWP-communities in the last months. Nothing so far indicates that they have learned anything over there in their high-paid ivory-tower in SF, this non-answering here speaks volumes. --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 13:09, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

This was just meant as an opportunity for people to let off steam, nothing more. After being on en:wp almost 10 years it's hard to avoid the conclusion that WMF's definition of "communication" is "give them a chance to vent, then go ahead with whatever we had planned." Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:24, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

All -- I am out of office at a conference and a fundraiser until end of this week. I have also been very busy internally with some urgent items. To clarify, I am not going away from this page. I DO want to communicate here, I find it an extremely helpful way to keep in touch, to learn about what matters to you, and to communicate/get feedback on my own thoughts. Please don't be upset with me being spotty in my responses -- I want to make sure I give your posts due attention (not just a brief response) and I am thinking over some of the notes before I respond. Best from NY. -- LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 02:44, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Lila, the really strong reactions here are not because you haven't gotten around to responding to some things yet. They are because, after someone inquired whether you were away, the apparent response was this edit, which changed the archiving threshold downward to only 14 days. That means anything here that you don't respond to within 14 days gets archived despite the lack of response. I had the threshold at 21 days, and was wondering whether to make it even longer; so making it shorter came across as a decision not to respond to things.

Archiving isn't quite like anything else I'm familiar with on any other sort of discussion forum, so I can see how you might not have yet have fully assimilated its implications. It is however basic to wikimedian culture, providing a clear distinction between discussions still active and discussions that have been retired (so that raising the topic again would usually involve a new section, perhaps with a link to the archived discussion(s)). --Pi zero (talk) 11:04, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

The last two items the archiver bot moved out of sight were without any answer by you, Lila, and were started shortly begfore you stopped editing anything at all here. If you need more time inbetween, simply set the time frame for the bot to something more fitting to your agenda, not this obviouly too short 14d. --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 11:17, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

Complaint about some employees of the WMF

As an unhappy contributor, I would like to make a complaint about some WMF employees.

• User:Erik Moeller (WMF): he has single-handedly alienated more Wikipedia editors (all languages) than the rest of the WMF combined. I don't think I need to rehash all his problematic decisions, communications, and actions wrt VisualEditor and MediaViewer, which were basically the culmination of years of problems. Please, if you can't or won't get rid of him, then at least make sure that there is no more interaction between Moeller and the projects, and no more communications from Moeller.

• User:Jorm (WMF) is the proverbial example of a software designer who is not interested in what people need, only in what he can make. His work on Flow, and his communications about it, emphasized the gap between his vision and what was actually wanted or needed, and his inability to grasp this and act accordingly. Perhaps he is a good developer, but then make sure that he only produces things for which others have written the specifications, and keep him away from interactions with editors.

• User:Jdforrester (WMF), doing his best to make the exasperation over VisualEditor worse at every possible moment. Together with Erik Moeller and Jasper Deng (not a WMF employee) the main reason I refuse to edit at Mediawiki any more. A very poor communicator when things go wrong, and the manager of a completely botched product launch. See e.g. en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2014 3#Testing report from Wbm1058 for a typical passive-agressive example of his lack of clue (also here).

• User:Whatamidoing (WMF) is trying her best, but is just completely incompetent in her work as a community liaison (I go with incompetent, as the alternatives are worse). She is not a community liaison but a crony of the WMF, incapable of seeing problems, incapable of understanding needs, wants, or even basic posts, making up things to defend her (or the WMF's) position, and more often than not a total waste of time. It's always hard to find when things started to go wrong, but where it for me definitely went downhill, never to recover again, was at en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2014 1#Feedback request: VisualEditor special character inserter, with unforgettable statements like "I know that some people find the Agile approach irritating, but since you systematically search for incomplete features, you are consenting to it and supporting it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:21, 29 January 2014 (UTC) " Discussions further down that page (e.g. "Empty <ref /> tag added by VE" or "Advanced image settings? More VisualEditor rubbish.") illustrate similar problems with Whatamidoing and JDforrester. These are old, I use them to indicate where things went wrong and for how long these user interaction problems persist already. The current VE feedback page on enwiki shows the ongoing problems with Whatamidoing. See also e.g. en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2014 3#Utter waste of money. Another good example is en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2014 3#Category additions with VE are FUN!, where Whatamidoingis doing everything but helping. Her attitude is "it is a local enwiki non-VE problem unless you prove to me otherwise", not "hmm, I wonder if this is enwiki only, let's try it out". In many disucssions, she makes categorical statements, which give the impression of her being knowlegeable when they are correct, but only make her look foolish when they are wrong, which happens way too often.

Other editors may have other experiences of course, but for me it really has gone to far for much too long. Fram (talk) 09:31, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Introduce the few good things developed for VE into standard wikitext editing

During the years that VisualEditor has now been under development (and the year that it has been the default editor at most wikis, getting some 10 to 20% of the actual edits only though), a few usable things have been developed for it. To make better use of the money and time invested in this, and as a sign of goodwill towards the majority of editors who use wikitext editing, it would be good if these things were introduced in standard wikitext editing as well.

• The file selector: in wikitext editing, you can insert a file, but you have to know the filename. In VE, you get a decent (far from perfect) File suggestion screen, showing files that match the article title. It would be useful if that was possible in wikitext editing.

• The template inserter. In Wikitext editing, we only have optional reference inserters (which are good), but no general template inserter. This has been developed for VE, and ha cost a serious amount of effort from the different language wikis to add Templatedata (which is far from finished). To make optimal use of the time invested by all these volunteers, and the money and time invested by the WMF, it would be very good if this template inserter would be introduced in wikitext editing as well. While it may be hard to turn it into a template editor on wikipedia articles, it would already be very useful if the initial entry was facilitated in this way.

There will probably be some comments about this being impossible due to Parsoid or some such. But the logic has been developed, the TemplateData (which is a lot of work) is in place, so much of the work has been done. Converting this so it is useful in wikitext would go a long way to show that the WMF is willing to spend effort on the tool the vast majority of editors use and are going to use for the forseeable future. At the moment, many people have the impression that the only develoment is being done on VE, Flow, Winter, ... but not on the actual central tool, wikitext editing. Fram (talk) 12:09, 25 September 2014 (UTC)