Wikipedia:Petition to the WMF on handling of interface changes
The handling of Wikipedia:Interface changes is an issue that comes up again and again. Fundamentally, there is at times a lack of sufficient communication, and a failure to try hard enough to leverage the collective knowledge of active Wikipedians. This applies most obviously to things which do get implemented (like WP:Notifications), but also to things which don't (like cross-wiki watchlists).
This petition is not seeking the right for the community to block everything they don't like. This petition asks the WMF to try to improve communication between editors and those who design, develop and implement changes to the interface of the English Wikipedia. This needs to happen irrespective of whether the changes are by WMF employees or contractors, volunteer developers, established Wikipedians or some combination of these. There needs to be more exposure of what thinking has gone into different decisions, and (if applicable) what sort of evidence base is being used. Some of the problem is the wider editing community not having input into the process; some of it is the community simply not knowing why things are being done, which contributes to a feeling that a change is arbitrary. Some suggestions and examples of good and bad practice are included below.
Petition signatures
Examples
- Please feel free to expand this section
Good practice
- Wikipedia:Notifications/New message indicator - some options for restyling the new message indicator were clearly laid out.
- unfortunately undermined by (a) rushing to a decision, so that different ideas could not be adequately iterated (b) the decision to ignore the most popular option. But the discussion structure, including mockups and followup prototypes editors could test, was good, given the limited timeframe allowed for the discussion.
Bad practice
Suggestions
- Please feel free to expand this section