User talk:LilaTretikov (WMF)

Welcome to Meta!

Hello, LilaTretikov (WMF). Welcome to the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki! This website is for coordinating and discussing all Wikimedia projects. You may find it useful to read our policy page. If you are interested in doing translations, visit Meta:Babylon. You can also leave a note on Meta:Babel or Wikimedia Forum if you need help with something (please read the instructions at the top of the page before posting there). Happy editing!

-- Meta-Wiki Welcome (talk) 19:15, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations!

Hi Lila, congratulations for your new role! With you as the new executive director, I'm optimist that Wikimedia will get bigger. Best of luck!--Ricky Setiawan (talk) 16:08, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Ricky Setiawan. I happen to believe that knowledge is infinite, and by extension, so is Wikimedia. But it will take all of us to make it happen. Lila Tretikov (talk) 01:14, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Dropped "a"

As an ethnic Russian, surely the name should be "Tretikova"? --Ohconfucius (talk) 09:49, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying Ohconfucius. You are correct, in Russian there is an "a" at the end, in English there is not. Lila Tretikov (talk) 01:20, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Another question about name

Dear Lila, your firstname should be written in Russian as "Лайла" or "Лилия"? --Kaganer (talk) 20:34, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi Kaganer -- thank you for asking. It is actually "Ляля" -- English Wikipedia has it exactly right in Cyrillic. Lila Tretikov (talk) 20:41, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Hmm. In English Wikipedia is written "Ляля" :( --Kaganer (talk) 21:12, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Sorry -- I must have mistyped, it is я (I corrected above as well). Lila Tretikov (talk) 21:48, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Ok, Thanks! --Kaganer (talk) 22:09, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

IRC office hours

Hi Lila—thank you for publishing such a great post about your experiences from the Zurich Hackathon. Is there any reason why you decided to host your office hours in the late afternoon Pacific time? 23:30 UTC is 01:30 AM in Europe (Central European Summer Time), which means that very few Wikimedia contributors from Europe will be able to participate in the discussion.

As far as I am aware, IRC meetings (including the monthly metrics meetings) are generally hosted during San Francisco mornings, which allows both U.S. and Europe-based users to participate in them. Would it be possible to reschedule the meeting to, say, 11 AM PDT (= 19:00 UTC, 21:00 CEST) so as to make sure that we Europeans can take part in it? Thanks! odder (talk) 10:34, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

+1 --Nemo 10:49, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Nemo and odder unfortunately it is not really possible to get one time that provides good global coverage, so our team has scheduled this OH to accommodate towards the Western hemisphere hours (given that I just got back from being in Europe in person). I propose we alternate between Eastern and Western hemisphere office hours. Lila Tretikov (talk) 11:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply: of course you're right, it's impossible to make all timezones happy at once; I'm happy to hear the problem is on your radar. I'm not sure who exactly you have in mind that would be excluded by a time like 19 UTC, but if you aim for thoroughness of timezones coverage via alternating times that sounds like a reasonable rationale as long as you can sustain it. Cheers, Nemo 17:45, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

i'd really love if the schedules would allow volunteers who have normal day jobs to participate as well, i.e. early morning or evening at some times in the respective time zone. --ThurnerRupert (talk) 09:57, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

ThurnerRupert -- I understand. Feel free to propose some hours that would work well. We will try to do our best to accommodate and create a rotation calendar so that we try to account for non-working hours by timezone. Lila Tretikov (talk) 15:12, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

If you have any feedback on the last one -- feel free to post here. Lila Tretikov (talk) 19:01, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Plans for VisualEditor re-launch on English Wikipedia

Hi Lila, would you or one of your employees who knows your thinking about VisualEditor please comment on Grants talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014 round2/Wikimedia Foundation/Proposal form#VisualEditor re-launch on English Wikipedia? Thanks, --Pine^✉ 02:34, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

User:Pine, I saw this question here today, and User:Whatamidoing (WMF) asked James about it during office hour. I've replicated his response at the grants page. Thanks! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Maggie Dennis (WMF). --Pine^✉ 07:22, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Mobile gaming and Wikimedia

I saw that this came up during the hackathon. We discussed this last year on the EE list, here, but I think it wasn't a leadership priority at the time. Mobile seems to be a bigger priority in the 2014-2015 Annual Plan and if you want to give this general idea some leadership support I think it would make a big difference. Thanks, --Pine^✉ 05:17, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

User:Pine, This would be a great project for the community to jump-start. You are correct, there are hard priorities in the development that take precedence next year. Small elements can be a part of the overall design, but addressing this area in-depth needs both analysis and experimentation. I personally believe it is very powerful and would love to see it happen. (talk) 20:16, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Pinging Quim. What would it take to get a project like this into GSOC or OPW and make it a priority? Thanks, --Pine^✉ 07:40, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Pine, all it takes is a project idea backed by 1-2 mentors and posted under "Featured project ideas" at mw:Mentorship_programs/Possible_projects. Proposals going through these initial steps are very likely to be picked up within 6-12 months from now. This also sounds like a good potential candidate for Individual Engagement Grants.--Qgil (talk) 09:31, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Quim, before going there I'll continue this discussion on your talk page. --Pine^✉ 06:40, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

Forbidden discussions

Lila, I am taking you up on your generous offer indicated on your recent Wikimedia blog post, that we may address you on your Meta talk page. You may already be familiar with me. I'm a "banned user" on English Wikipedia, but a welcome contributor on other projects (such as Commons, Wikisource, Wikiversity, and Meta). I thought that this attempt at discussion with Jimmy Wales about "London First" was interesting enough in its own right. I would be interested in your opinion of whether you think there is a certain bending of Wikipedia standards when an article like London First is included in Wikipedia, almost solely on the prompting of its being a Wikimedia Foundation sponsor, or being mentioned on the site Wikipediocracy.com? However, perhaps more important, what do you make of the fact that this discussion was immediately and repeatedly disallowed on Jimmy Wales' talk page, where it is said that an "open door" policy presides? - Thekohser (talk) 15:34, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

I can't talk to all user pages, but I would like to make sure my page is kept open. That said I may not have enough information yet to discuss every topic in-depth. As for the fact that association with wikipedia makes one more notable -- it definitely happened to me in the last couple of weeks (even though this was not something I was personally after), but there was a healthy discussion on whether it should have had that effect. Lila Tretikov (talk) 16:54, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

A quick note

Thanks for all the comments and questions. It's going to take some time to learn enough about these issues- especially since some of them link to information I'd like to go over thoroughly -- before I can address everything. For now, I'll reply to what I can, when I can. Keep it coming! Lila Tretikov (talk) 05:43, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Noted. If you manage to address everything I will be very impressed! (: --Pine^✉ 07:20, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

What to do with unattainable goals

At what point should a goal be declared unattainable? If what we desire most is impossible or simply too big for us, should we pursue something else? Or should we increase the efforts tenfold, try an even harder way? (Possibly needless context follows.)

Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2013-14 contains some crucial passages:

We have known for several years that we will not achieve the 2015 plan targets, which were audacious guesswork [...] We do not believe editor decline is intractable or irreversible. [...]

In 2010 I see that I posted some general thoughts on the strategic planning process and I postulated that we could fail for two opposite reasons: goals too abstract, not concretely workable; or insufficient ambition, making all efforts vain.

In my view the final strategic plan came mainly from a document which, in essence, tried to extract some safe-looking things that could be done centrally, by the WMF, in an ocean of things not in control of the WMF like social dynamics of the Wikimedia projects, internet access, language literacy.

Concretely: imagine that one 10 M$/y WMF program, after several years, despite being good and everything, failed to show any really substantial concrete effect on Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia vision/mission. How to decide that time is up and choose among some options like a) continue all the same; b) make it a 100 M$/y program and ask help; c) shut it down and let it to others; d) shut it down and tell the world we need something completely different, like a 10 G$/y initiative for internet access or a 40 G$/y wiki education program involving all the students of the world? --Nemo 11:27, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi Nemo, there are some other options for dealing with failing or troubled programs besides the ones that you point out. In the private sector a common one is to replace the leadership. I think Lila has some skills that could be very valuable in the ED role and I am cautiously optimistic that having some fresh perspective and new skills in the ED's office is a good thing. Of course, along with having new leadership, this is a good time to review the strategic plan goals and how they are resourced as you suggest. I am not ready to quit on any of the strategic plan goals and I think some of them are in need of fresh perspectives and/or additional resources.

I am specifically underwhelmed with the results of WMF's editor recruiting and retention efforts to this point, including of female editors, and I have been disappointed that I have not felt much urgency in WMF's senior management about dealing with editor recruiting issues in the past year or two, possibly because they have spent a lot of their time recruiting the new ED along with addressing chapter issues, VE, and any number of other urgent problems, and also because the current ED's skills are better suited to other issues. Personally I think WMF has been behind the times on mobile, and I am hoping, aligned with 1. my comments above on this talk page about mobile engagement, 2. comments that hackathon participants made about mobile engagement, and 3. the greater resourcing of mobile in the 2014-2015 plan, that there are some opportunities in mobile that WMF will capture. WMF has been making some progress in mobile for awhile, but I would like to see everything related to mobile in WMF accelerate significantly. I appreciate that Sue agreed to make mobile a priority for the next Annual Plan year, and I think with Lila's guidance there will be further strategic editor engagement successes in mobile. --Pine^✉ 07:18, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Blaming persons is too easy for my taste; hence my (hypothetical) question on "intrinsically" unattainable goals. Of course there are other ways to look at it, like yours. --Nemo 08:58, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Nemo, thanks for clarifying. I understand that some goals are intrinsically unattainable, such as a goal of deploying a bug-free VE within the next 24 hours. That's not humanly possible. In the case of some of these other strategic goals, I think the appropriate quote is emphatically "Failure is not an option!" --Pine^✉ 06:41, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Nemo and Pine for your thoughts on this. I want to address the question of vision to tactics development. As Nemo pointed out a strategy can fail for multiple reasons, including "goals too abstract, not concretely workable; or insufficient ambition, making all efforts vain". In fact the whole point is to tie those two together: the moon shot that we want to achieve and the individual steps we need to take to get there. I would agree that we learned a ton from the last strategy, but we are only starting to think through the next one. Your thoughts now are both important and timely. In my view one of the really important things a strategy does for both organization and the movement is clearing priorities. It answers the question: "Should we be doing this?"

Which brings me to the second point: how do we know when we failed. First I want to say that failure is critical -- without it we won't learn. But repeating and reinvesting in failure is insanity. Usually it is pretty clear when a program or a solution did not hit the mark. And it is important to weed-out programs that are not successful, no matter if there is "sunk costs". I want to differentiate here implementation and goal failures. Both can occur and need to be evaluated. Typically I've managed those with clear set low/medium/high goals associated with timelines. If we hit high, we may want to double-down and replicate what we are doing, if we are barely at low, we may need to change what we are doing.

I am still early in thinking about this, so please feel free to comment. Lila Tretikov (talk) 16:40, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi Lila, the way I tend to think of implementation failures and goal failures is that implementation failures and small-goal projects' failures are sometimes acceptable or good if we learn something from them. Failure, although undesirable, is particularly reasonable in projects that are known from the start to be high risk or experimental and when the costs of failure are acceptable. However, catastrophic failures for strategic goals, or for major projects like IEP, are unacceptable, can cause significant collateral damage, and can endanger the sustainability of entire wikis or the WMF.

As you probably know I'm on IEGCom and we are willing to take measured risks in that committee. (Personally I'm proud of our overall record. IEGCom functions well, gets good support from WMF employees, has a wonderful diversity of capable community members who speak a combined 16 languages from 5 continents, and produces results that are often well received by the communities and WMF departments. I feel the only major failure in that committee was partly my fault, and that the failure was a difficult part of an otherwise solid and growing portfolio of grants).

Anyway, I hope we are thinking about ways to succeed at least as much as we are thinking about how to keep risks and failures to acceptable levels.

I'm sure people in Grantmaking, Engineering and Platform would have some thoughts on these issues as well.

Lila, is there anything in particular you would like to get input on, from Nemo and I or others who may come to this talk page? I'm not sure how much I'm helping vs. just thinking out loud.

Thanks, --Pine^✉ 08:20, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Login

Hi, just a quick note: I see most of your contributions on this page are made under an IP, so make sure you are logged in when you edit, it’s better to track the edits and to sign with ~~~~. Perhaps you may want also redirect User:Lilatretikov/User talk:Lilatretikov to this account to avoid duplication of the identity :) And warm welcome in the Wikiverse! ~ Seb35 [^_^] 18:42, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I always forget to log in. The redirect idea is also a good one. LilaTretikov (talk) 18:31, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations 2

Congratulations from a Russian-affine Swiss wikipedian to a Russian emigrant to your honorable job! -- Хрюша ^? ! ? ! 14:05, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

+1 :) Caspiruant (talk) 19:18, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you LilaTretikov (talk) 18:32, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

A few things

Hi Lila,

• Thank you for interviewing with the Signpost.

• Have you made arrangements to post the responses that you received to your requests for stories about users' first edits? You requested these stories a month ago, https://www.mail-archive.com/wikimedia-l%40lists.wikimedia.org/msg12233.html, and I would be interested in seeing the emails that you received if you received permission to publish them.

• May I suggest that you send a congratulatory note to Wikimedia Bangladesh about their successful registration as a Bangladeshi society? I think a note from you would mean a lot to them. I hope you have read the report about their journey that we published in the Signpost. The Bangladeshi Wikimedians are a remarkable group of volunteers.

--Pine^✉ 20:28, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Pine. Thank you. We have not yet gone through the responses from posting perspective, although I've read them all. This is probably a good post-Wikimania activity and I will take a look at the Signpost article on Wikimedia Bangladesh -- glad to hear they are making strides. LilaTretikov (talk) 18:35, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

Your Position on Access to No-Public Information Policy Revision

Dear Ms. Tretikov,

I assume you're aware of and briefed on the recent revision of the "Access to No-Public Information" policy that allows totally anonymous administrators on the English and all the other Wikipedias to see the IPs and other potentially personally-identifying information (browser version, settings) of volunteer editors. Even though not usually immediately identifying in itself, this information can obviously be used as a stepladder to identifying through tools like Geolocate and TraceIP, as well as supporting indicators in websearching other clues from the editor's edit history.

What is your position on the change? Do you support it, and if so, why?

In my opinion, if there are cases where volunteer administrative participants do somehow need that information, it should be entrusted to identified individuals, not anonymous usernames like "Wizardman" and "Beeblebrox" and "Dord" and so forth. Authorizing checkuser and the other tools to anonymous participants is going to attract, and has attracted, exactly the wrong kind of individuals. I mean creeps and cyberbullies.

Please respond. I really think the community deserves to hear your position on this matter, which represents a significant change in the dynamic between administrators and editors.

Colton Cosmic (talk) 14:53, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi! Lila asked me to respond to this, since the issue was evaluated and decided before she joined the organization. As we've publicly discussed in response to related questions (email, blog), this issue was discussed in public, and then approved by the board. The basic facts of the situation have not changed since then, so we still believe that is the right decision, as we've explained in the email and blog post linked above. We appreciate your concern for other contributors, but this was the best outcome we were able to come to under the constraints we operate under as a volunteer-driven project. We will of course continue to work to protect everyone's privacy, and hope you'll support us in that. —Luis Villa (WMF) (talk) 16:12, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Luis, I appreciate this answer, which is more informative than on the Wikimedia-l mailing list where you gave "there is no silver bullet" non-answers. What should be said (you don't) about those public discussions is that they were intermittent and frequently incoherent with week-long gaps, but the key thing is that they resulted in "no consensus" (and this is by Ms. Paulson's own account in one of your links there ("because there was no community consensus on the matter, we are closing the consultation)." Therefore the change proceeded evidently on the position of WMF Legal. You don't specify the nature of the "constraints" you operate under, but I'll note that these identifications were received for years when the WMF had much less resources than it does now. The problem then was that the personnel in charge then decided to shred them in violation of the prior policy. It was not a matter of constraints. Buying a lockable file cabinet should not be a constraint. You close by saying you will continue to work to protect everyone's privacy, but as I've explained and is clearly evident by the nature of the policy change itself, you're totally doing the exact opposite. Colton Cosmic (talk) 14:35, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

Ms. Tretikov, as Luis above points out the policy change was decided by WMF Legal and the Board before you joined the WMF, but of course it was implemented on your watch. I don't want to encourage suspicions, but the timing is undeniably curious to me. Sue Gardner neatly stepped aside before the policy change occurred.

Let me point you to a particular extreme example of an administrator abusing these privacy-invasive tools to stalk an editor and indeed to to threaten his family: http://encyc.org/wiki/Anvil_email. In there FT2 (who was also an arbitrator) actually says "You have a deadline below, and I'll repeat everything as often as you need to hear it, and consider concerns all the way till then. One minute after that, gloves come off all the way, without any further warning, starting with <redacted>'s workplace for evidence, and the Department of Health, and probably unavoidably, ending with family or someone will inform the police. Do you actually love your family, or need them? ...I don't know what settlement you'd get, but I bet it won't include the things in real life you care most about. Risk it if you like. Your call. And watch me not minding if it hurts you to put this all right." The entire email is incredibly psychotic. FT2 had been using the checkuser tool and so forth. When Arbcom found out, some among them defended him saying the problem in the email was only one of "tone." FT2 was not kicked out of Arbcom. He was not desysopped. Even today he still has access to OTRS, in which personal information of editors is often disclosed.

Finally, and in meager hopes I can convince you to take a stand against this non-identification policy change, I point you to text in one of Luis' links above (the blog one). "Community members underscored ... risks in the retention of copies, and requirements of forced disclosure in light of legal mandates." I believe that the Access to Non-Public Information policy being constructed to dodge subpoenas ("requirements of forced disclosure in light of legal mandates") is clearly in bad faith to the U.S. and other national legal systems, and may in fact be viewed when it comes to it as unlawful. Colton Cosmic (talk) 15:03, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Hi. I'm your personal kitten. There's a lot of kittens here at Wikipedia, but i'm the most powerful, i swear!

Itu (talk) 13:44, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

"powerful" should be in quotes. Never trust kittens bearing matzo. – SJ + 19:15, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

Hi ! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission. I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.

• The Wikipedia Adventure Start Page
• The Wikipedia Adventure Lounge
• The Teahouse new editor help space
• Wikipedia Help pages

-- 05:31, Thursday, August 15, 2024 (UTC) Template:TWA/Navigation2

Media Viewer implementation

Hi Lila Tretikov,

As Wikimedia Foundation's Executive Director, you may be interested in following this Rfc. A reassuring word from you, concerning the enforcement of the new Media Viewer in all wikis against the consensus of the community, would be most welcome. Best regards, Alvesgaspar (talk) 09:04, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

All -- Thank you for your comments, criticism, support and advice on software that you've collected in the RfCs. I agree that we need to improve both our process and our software. MV is a great feature to use as a testbed for those improvements. I also believe it represents a good foundation that we should improve together. We are not going to make any hasty changes, but we will will get back to you on:

• Next steps (in the next 2-3 weeks)
• Process improvements
• Software changes
• Policy clarification (deployment, RFCs, reverts, etc.)

We love your feedback and your support.

Thank you.

LilaTretikov (talk)

Additional Clarification

• Our overall communication, design, prioritization, testing, roll-out mechanisms and general product development practices are insufficient and must be brought on-par with our user’s expectations. We are not planning any new major deployments until some of those basic improvements are put into place. This will be done in the open; it is fundamental and urgent. I've touched on it at Wikimania.
• We are not removing MV. It has been in production for months. Its removal will cause more problems and confusion for our users. We will hold ourselves accountable to getting it to the level of quality that is expected of the top site.
• We are working to post next steps to clarify development and deployment process including rights and responsibilities; you can expect more information in coming days.
• I encourage you to help us improve our process as a whole as well as this specific feature by offering your time, advice, and collaboration. We will be engaging you on it. Please refrain from making unassisted changes to the feature’s configuration.

LilaTretikov (talk) 18:39, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much for sending out this signal, it is very good to hear that the difficult interactions between users and WMF are considered as fundamental and urgent matters which need improvements. If I can be at any help, feel free to contact me.

PS: I hope you liked our stroopwafel(s) at Wikimania? Romaine (talk) 12:18, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Interface

Hi Lila,

Unfortunately software and process aren't the place to start. The relationship and interface between the community and the Foundation is the place to start. I have posted about this elsewhere, so I will not repeat myself, but there is nothing exceptionally difficult to be achieved, provided good will is present.

Rich Farmbrough 18:34 12 August 2014 (GMT).

Rich -- can you point me to those please? Thanks, LilaTretikov (talk) 18:39, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Here, (second paragraph) and part of this post and the sentiments in this post over recent matters. I would be happy to expand on any parts where I am not clear. Rich Farmbrough 18:49 12 August 2014 (GMT).

Rich -- are you suggesting the WMF should get out of the software business and just become a legal/financial entity? Am I understanding right? LilaTretikov (talk) 21:03, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

* Not necessarily, though I think we should be asking this sort of question. I am suggesting that we carefully review the purpose of the WMF, and how it can add most value to the Wikimedia projects. It may even be that we rethink the Memorandum and Articles (and tweak the Mission statement). Maybe this [the rethinking] should be done form a zero-budget perspective.

* Without prejudging that stage, it seems to me that a healthy interface between the community and the foundation is key. In the past we lost the Spanish Wikipedia community, by bad communication, and Wikia lost a significant number of communities when they forced a skin update on them, so we have the empirical evidence that volunteer communities can leave en masse and certainly they can leave individually.

* There is probably consensus over the broad thrust of what the Foundation should do, but there are a lot of problems when it comes to detail. An example from development: I have followed bugs on Bugzilla for years, even very "popular" ones, which have had fixes written and ready to go (by volunteers) have not been released because no-one could be found to do a code review.

* We should retain flexibility, the software development process has done well to use both unpaid, contract and employed volunteers (I am not familiar enough to know much about the difficulties encountered, though I am sure there have been some). Where we have academics, designers, legal experts and so forth we should not hesitate to use their expertise as and when it is offered.

* What is valuable is to make evidence based proposals, the community will probably go along with these. For example in the graphical redesign, had the design team been able to point to an A/B test of readability, statistics on page load time, and reader preference surveys, they would not have had such a rough ride, and we would not be left even now with a suspicion that serif headings and sans text looks like the product of some 1980s desktop publishing app, rather than an authoritative encyclopaedia.

* One thing I would like to see is pilot projects, and careful curation of corporate memory. Many outreach projects have been dismal failures, nonetheless we can benefit from seeing which were more successful (in editathons, notably one or two of the women's have outstripped all others, as far as I can see) and attempting to reproduce these successes.

* An issue with the development staff is that many of them are "minor deities" in the Wiki pantheon - and this can result in an apparent arrogance. They have moved form unpaid volunteer status to employed volunteer status, their priorities have changed. In some cases the wiki-culture has changed dramatically since they were last active in the community, leaving them out of touch. In others they seem to discount community expertise. This latter trait is evident with many of our employed volunteers in other roles, on a good day the combined knowledge and experience of the community will beat any of us into a cocked hat, we should use it not fight it.

* It would be a cultural improvement if the employed volunteers saw the communities as the customers, in the traditional corporate model. Still not perfect (we should be friends and colleagues), but it reconciles the dichotomy between "I do what my boss tells me" and "The community wants something different". We all, I hope, these days are familiar with the importance of customer satisfaction. Building job descriptions and hence job titles in a goal centred way might also help - I notice Gayle Young is "Chief Talent and Culture Officer" (I was searching for her at Wikimania to talk about culture) - this seems to me a good title. (I like the words "Talent and Culture" "Chief" and "Officer" could be improved, in terms of culture.) It is quite important that we try to be "egoless", also that we understand the difficulties in textual communication (I know Fabrice and his team are working on this).

I hope these notes are useful, please feel free to point out difficulties or parts that aren't clear.

Rich Farmbrough 03:20 13 August 2014 (GMT).

Usability Testing at Wikimania

All --

This year we are setting up our first User Experience lab at Wikimania. Please join us to test and provide feedback on some of the features under development.

Here is a post from Steven Walling with more details.

LilaTretikov (talk)

Thank you, Lila. At Wikimania I have attended the research booth twice, once for testing Flow, and once for testing Winter. Is there a way people can participate from in these tests? Could you enable Flow on this user talk page? Ad Huikeshoven (talk) 07:23, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

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)

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)

On a Scale of Billions

All,

Our site, technology and content have far reaching impact and scale. Today, we do not fully appreciate ourselves as a top-5 website from an operational standpoint. This was surprising to me and I would like to bring clarity to what this means in practice for the benefit of the staff as well as the community. I would like to outline a number of operational principles to help us navigate towards this goal. These are not something we are inventing: these are widely used high-scale product practices; we will need to modify and adopt for our use. I look forward to discussing them with you all here.

These core operational principles are the following:

• Responsibility: As a global top-5 website relied on by millions around the world, we have responsibilities and obligations to the world at large with respect to basic stewardship of the technology and brands under our care. This means we are responsible to ensure access to knowledge for every person in the world who can access the internet, any time.

• Input: The needs of billions of users are rapidly evolving. Understanding these needs requires methodology different from what we know and use today. Our current methods are no longer sufficient. We have outgrown that scale, and we require broader, ongoing testing and validation as well as deeper understanding of our users: from viewers to expert editors. We plan to develop and use improved methods over time consistent with best practices in product development. Community discussions as well as staff expertise will always be important, but not sole, inputs in determining the definition of a product and its effectiveness.

• Scope: The WMF is ultimately responsible for the security, stability, consistency, and evolution of the Wikimedia sites and brands; fundraising to achieve global reach; and specific programs to accelerate the goals of our mission.

• Operational Controls and Process: Best practices require that software and operational changes receive appropriate validation and review prior to deployment. Separation of duties, code reviews, training and validation for technical permissions as well as an unambiguous process are required for that. As the organization responsible for the site and the servers, WMF must clarify all relevant practices.

• Accountability: As the Executive Director I am the person ultimately responsible for the direction and actions of the WMF. WMF makes all decisions as a team with my oversight, and we stand by these decisions together.

• Debate, disagreement, and civility: I encourage you to discuss, and debate, any decisions as you see appropriate, and you should feel free to bring issues to my attention. However, personal attacks are never OK on our projects, email lists, discussion pages, or other digital channels. Commentary on individuals is wrong and uncivil: we should demand better of ourselves. I would like to see all comments focus on constructive ideas and suggestions, policies, responsibilities, and, most importantly, desired outcomes.

We owe the world a clear strategy, policy, process, and prioritization of the work completed by the WMF. We are committed to establishing those in the open with clear expectations consistent with our mission so we can hold ourselves responsible for our failures and successes. 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. You should be seeing more on those in the upcoming weeks.

LilaTretikov (talk) 21:00, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Comments

Splitting this off for readability:

First of all, you owe everything to the editors that created the content people can now access freely. From the first dollar donation to the great amount of money the Foundation recieves now every year, it all comes in the end as the result of years of work by volunteers. You and the Foundation should finally show a little humbleness regarding this fact. That would already take most of the sharpness out of any conflict. Totalitarian actions like Erik Möller took in the media viewer case can ultimately lead to really destructive incidents. You may not fear forks. You maybe should see what a fork did to the development of the Spanish Wikipedia. You don't want to try out such effects just for going with the Foundation'S head through the wall. You lost the trust of many editors in many projects. You won't get it back fast or easily. And this statement with no sorry for the opressive actions doesn't make me trust you more. --Julius1990 (talk) 22:34, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree, dear Julius1990: your labor of editing is amazing, invaluable and is the reason we are all here today. Thank you. LilaTretikov (talk) 23:05, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Lila, me and i think most of the other editors everywhere in the projects don't want personal thanks or honor. We want to be respected by the Foundation. We should work together, but that means that you can't use force on the projects. You have no moral right to do so. Noone will oppose good features, but you should change your processes. Requests for comment/Superprotect rights lists some ideas that can work. Maybe it doesn't go then as fast as you are used to regarding the implimenattion of developed software features. But Wikipedias are no normal companies and you should respect that. You should take care of that. In the last three years all i hear is "we loose editors", "we need editors" ... and so on. Engaging new editors is fine thing, but trampling on those who already donated so much work seems to foil that. --Julius1990 (talk) 23:10, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

+1. I should add that Wikipedia is no company at all. Wikipedia is not a commodity, it is a movement led by its editors.--Aschmidt (talk) 23:19, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

I will read through that, Thank you. Our challenge is two fold: 1. we need to support many different types of users: editors that are very experienced, newbies that are currently leaving at a rate of 99+:1 because the experience is terrible, readers, searchers, embedded content, new forms of contributions... just to name a few, 2. we are already starting to loose global relevance, and that is a serious issue -- so speed is of the essence. How do we solve for those while the world is changing way faster than we are... ? LilaTretikov (talk) 23:33, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Lila, on point #1: It is of critical importance that the WMF begin to recognize that it does not have a monopoly on this perspective. In 2009-10 we had a Strategic Planning process that involved 1000 stakeholders, who all bought into that concept; in fact, I think of the many, many the Wikimedians I have encountered, only the tiniest handful are resistent to that notion, and think only of their own convenience. This is a point repeated over and over by WMF staff, as though it were not grasped by volunteers and other stakeholders; please ponder how strange that must seem to those of us who have been volunteering for the projects specifically with the purpose of sharing knowledge with the rest of humanity for 5, 10, or more years. Please ponder how strange the idea that the WMF has greater clarity on this point than those of us who work with new contributors every day might seem to some outside the walls of WMF. -Pete F (talk) 23:47, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

And on point #2, please consider that speed is only beneficial if you are running in the right direction. If you are running backwards, speed makes the problem worse. -Pete F (talk) 23:52, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Pete F. On #2 -- It is true, we have to work towards the right things. Doing nothing, on the other hand, is our biggest danger. Because any progress takes trials and errors and rapid course corrections. On #1 -- we are actually formulating an ongoing community engagement around strategic and operational goals. You should see some movement on that soon. In my personal experience the best innovations come from externally generated ideas -- we just need a better listening ear and a process for prioritization. Thanks for brining it up. LilaTretikov (talk) 00:44, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

"A better listening ear and a process for prioritization" -- you and I agree 100% in principle. On #2, though -- no -- making very rapid changes to the platform, creating chaos and a sense of disrespect, is far worse than merely doing nothing. If the WMF simply keeps the servers running, and permits the volunteer community to do its thing without introducing unnecessary drama, I believe things will go fairly well. It is possible for the WMF to have a far greater impact than that, of course -- but the recent impact has generally been a negative one, not a positive one.

At any rate, thank you for the quick reply! I hope it is possible for you to put some of these principles into action, specifically on the unprecedented approach taken to overruling community consensus in favor of a very imnmature software product. -Pete F (talk) 01:03, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

@LilaTretikov: What a disappointing load of waffles. How does this relate to the superprotection feature? Are you planning to answer any of the questions that are being asked by the community, or do you think that the best way forward is for the Foundation to keep ignoring our questions and treat us with this sort of rubbishy speeches? odder (talk) 22:35, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear odder -- it was not meant to. Please see the thread above for responses on that issue. Thank you! LilaTretikov (talk) 23:05, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Your 'Accountability' paragraph: It would be much better if the foundation saw volunteers as part of the team. See my MV Arbcom case input for background. Regards, Ariconte (talk) 23:09, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Ariconte, agreed. Could you please link to the case? Thanks! LilaTretikov (talk) 23:24, 12 August 2014 (UTC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Media_Viewer_RfC/Evidence#Evidence_presented_by_Ariconte and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Media_Viewer_RfC/Workshop#Proposals_by_User:Ariconte Regards, Ariconte (talk) 00:56, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Lila, your statement is simply embarassing. It is splitting the WMF from its editors, while it were the latter that have made Wikipedia what it is today. This has led to a great number of regular editors on German Wikipedia turning away from the project and going inactive. May I also remind you that you and the rest of the Wikimedia staff are in fact our employees? You live on the donor's money that the editors have made the donors to give to us as an entity. This is our project, and we do not intend to let it be taken away from us by any action. You are in fact obliged to look for the editors in the first place. If you don't understand this really simple point you will lose most of the core of us rather soon. I have a hunch that this is exactly what you are aiming at, for whatever reason. And this is a sad situation for most of us because it puts an end to Wikipedia as we know it. If this is your mission, please say it loud and clear, so that everyone can hear it, or correct your course and remove the superprotect privilege. I for one will not contribute any more unless this new right has been removed.--Aschmidt (talk) 23:10, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Aschmidt -- our common mission is to educate the world -- that is... everyone. We all have a part in this, no? Editors like yourself are critical, but we are all here for a reason: helping others. LilaTretikov (talk) 23:24, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Lila, we discuss the superprotect right here which has not been consented by the community. We discuss the demobilisation of regular editors your recent decisions have led to. Real leadership looks different. I am sorry to say that you are missing the point completely. You are not my ED.--Aschmidt (talk) 23:28, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Aschmidt -- sincerely sorry to hear that. We are not discussing superprotect in this thread however, it is the thread above. We are talking about our responsibility for the generations to come in this world and how we can ensure we do the right thing for them. LilaTretikov (talk) 00:32, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Hm, so you assign the proper place for me where to discuss which points with you? Well, that's one way to do it. I prefer another one, as do most others on this thread, as you may have noticed. We discuss how to abolish the superprotect right where we prefer. Be flexible, please, and approach the editors where they are. They are in this thread now, not the one above. I would like to give you one more example: Just some two months ago I began a project to bring the Wikipedia Library to German Wikipedia. I have already put a lot of time and effort into this. I've talked to publishers, I've talked to WMDE, and to a lot of other people to make this happen. I've been successful in this, we only talk about how to do it, not whether to do it. We wanted to start at the end of this month. But if you proceed like this there simply will be no more long-time editors on German Wikipedia left I will be able to distribute any accounts to. So I've put the project on halt. Most German editors who belong to the core of our community are upset and indignated at what the Foundation does since Saturday/Sunday. Perhaps you did not notice at all what you were doing because this is the way you've been treating English Wikipedia for quite a while already. But this won't do with us, either. Traffic on the Wikipedia Kurier talk page has risen from some 500 to 2500 visits per day. And the news has already spread to the big German IT news outlets Heise and Golem, so it has reached its an important group of donors already. You are in charge. What would you do now? Remember who is your boss? It's the editors.--Aschmidt (talk) 08:42, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough -- feel free to discuss here -- I just could not find my way and started loosing threads. I think the spike of interest is not a bad thing -- what we need is to turn to figuring out a better process, one that is representative of all users and definitely the editors. I will give you an example: MV has been in Beta since November 2013. On DE the Beta link was removed, seemingly without code review. This was one of the reasons people in Germany may not have gotten as much exposure to MV as they otherwise would. This is a small example, but we should have caught this problem and fixed it, engaged better, possibly posted on everyone's talk pages, etc...The process needs improvement. LilaTretikov (talk) 15:51, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi Lila, just to protect you from mistakes: This is not about "people in Germany" because the de:WP is a germanspeaking community. It comprises users from Austria, Swizzerland, Liechtenstein, germanspeaking minorities in Belgium, the Netherlands etc. and at last also Germany. Don´t mix that up, dangerous bug :-) --Gleiberg (talk) 16:29, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

That's right. My bad. Thanks, LilaTretikov (talk) 16:42, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Aschmidt's words don't speak for me, at all. Nathan ^T 23:35, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

• @LilaTreitikov. : Per your statement: "our common mission is to educate the world." — That's an empty slogan. WMF's duty is to raise funds, operate the platform, efficiently manage programs, and to create the software tools that the editing community needs. The 10,000 volunteers' duty is to create content and to manage and improve the casually-contributed content of ephemeral drop-by editors, handling quality control and manipulation of content, using the best tools available to it. The 500,000,000 readers just want accurate, honest, reliable, verifiable information at their ready disposal. We're not "educating the world," we're building an encyclopedia. You create the tools; We use the tools. Carrite (talk) 01:26, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Carrite -- this is a great note. Please see my point under Accountability above. I believe we are saying the same thing. What I was talking vis-a-vis "educating the world" is the mission of the combined effort, that spans more than encyclopedia, and includes other projects. LilaTretikov (talk)

• You seem to be suggesting that we are no longer a volunteer project. If that is so, do you realize that you potentially jeopardize the legal protection the WMF has? Either the community does stuff to the individual projects without being forced around by Moller or the Foundation can be held responsible. There is no middle ground here, and if the legal counsel at Wikimedia claims otherwise then you better find new counsel. Already, there are some cases such as the monkey case that could have some major financial ramifications, and there is a lot of money sitting around at the Foundation that a UK court, for instance, would be happy to divy up. Ottava Rima (talk) 03:43, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

No, that is not what I am suggesting. LilaTretikov (talk) 15:51, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I do not care about the mediaviewer itself. I just wonder; how could wikipedia survive so many years and get so large and well known without the WMV superpower? How were conflicts like this solved in the past? ...Sicherlich ^Post 05:26, 13 August 2014 (UTC) but at least finally someone of the WMV is talking. Not on de with the parties acutally involved but on a private talk page but hey I'm so greatfull

I agree with Sicherlich. @LilaTretikov: a statement here (minus the PR talk) would be much appreciated -- especially since Eloquence/Möller can’t comment at the German Wikipedia at the moment. Rgds _{• • hugarheimur} 08:12, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

+1 I agree with Sicherlich. --Steinsplitter (talk) 09:10, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

@Lila I encourage you to discuss, and debate, any decisions as you see appropriate, and you should feel free to bring issues to my attention. However, personal attacks are never OK on our projects, email lists, discussion pages, or other digital channels. Commentary on individuals is wrong and uncivil: we should demand better of ourselves. I would like to see all comments focus on constructive ideas and suggestions, policies, responsibilities, and, most importantly, desired outcomes. -> Did you tell this to Erik as well? When you have someone who calls himself "Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation" making threaths to volunteers, well, that is the kind of thing you need to escalate a discussion. I think that it is brave to say that you have the ultimately responsible on they other hand. But what are you going to do to prevent this kind of drama in the future? This could and should not have happened. I don't have a strong opinion about the MediaViewer for the record but things where rushed ones again. This happened with the Visual Editor, this happened now. Are you going to change the develop process? Less rushy, primary needs first (SUL-completion for example, maybe some better protection against spam bots) and than maybe a tool to make things look nicer. Another improvement would be to hire somone to support the developers in their communication since they can clearly need someone to assist them. Such a person could also help preventing Erik from doing something stupid like escalating everything when he should have deescalated stuff. Just some thoughts and hopefully you will learn from this fiasco. Natuur12 (talk) 09:50, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, yes and yes -- on the specific points, Natuur12: we need to change the development process (just starting on that, our current process is terribly immature for our scale), we need a communications person (this is in-flight), we need to clarify policies/roles (planned). Clarity around all of the above would prevent this type of things from happening in the future. LilaTretikov (talk) 15:21, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Lila, on your above post, as well as in your post to the mailing list, you are using highly irritating wordings. Here, you say "we need to clarify policies/roles" and there you speak of "clarifying" "development and deployment process including rights and responsibilities". Please be advised that, assuming by "we" you mean WMF staff/board, this is not at all to your availability. There already are conventions in place and active, governing said "rights and responsibilities", which, according to an overwhelming perception, directly exclude measures (introducting "superprotectors" without and even against community consensus and (mis)using them accordingly) such as the ones we are talking here. Several of them have already been named especially on this page. Recent WMF actions are already seen as a breach of contract towards the active contributors of content and also of the technical background. In this light, you (i.e. WMF staff) has stepped out of line and has to reconsider its very rights and responsibilities. In this regard, you should follow the steps outlined above, e.g. by Rich and odder. Afterwards, we can talk about further considerations. But not before that. Ca$e (talk) 18:05, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I am one of those rare creatures ... a new female editor (I joined deWP in Jan 2014). Up to now I did enjoy editing and getting to know the community of Wikipedia. I met Jan Eissfeldt at a "Stammtisch" (informal Meeting) in Munich and got an idea, how complex the process of communication between communities and staff/software developers can be. Being an Idealist myself and seeing the idealistic background of WP I was confident, that all those matters could be resolved in a (perhaps sometimes chaotic) peaceful manner. At the moment I am very confused. The Mediaviewer is no issue that moves me. For my own purposes as an editor i disactivated it, but I can see, how it could be useful for other users. However it is disconcerting to me, to see WP-Colleagues deeply offended and hurt, Colleagues that I have come to trust and respect and that obviously have done a lot to build the deWP. Please come to the German Discussion Page linked above and ask other Staff-Members to contribute there, too, so that a constuctive communication can develop an the feeling of being misused by the WMF does not spread further in the deWP. Thank you very much --Kritzolina (talk) 09:48, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi Kritzolina -- great to meet you. I think all these matters can and will be resolved. I will do my best to read thought the German discussion page although, to the best of mine (and Google Translate's) ability. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 15:58, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Comments (cont'd)

Dear Lila,

seconding the appreciation by Theo1011 of your direct engagement in the discussion, i nevertheless find your answers not quite satisfactory.

This starts with your remark concerning a) the use (by many seen as misuse) of developer resources for the unprecedented modification of the background-software (new „superprotect“ right) creating a new hierarchy and separation between WMF staff and directly elected maintainers of local wikipedias, b) the application of this modification to superimpose a strategic position towards the implication of a software which a majority of active contributors does not want (in this form). To this you replied:

„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)“

I take this reply as implying your consent in using such an unprecedented measure, which many contributors regard as directly in contradiction with conventions regarding the relationship of WMF and local communities, as explicitly stated and as implicitly in action for many years. Is this understanding of your reply correct? If not, i expect you (= you in person and every other WMF staff/board member) to intervene in following the steps outlined above. Allow me to quote (from Rich):

1 Un-super-protect the page.

2 Apologise to the community

3 Give an undertaking not to use superprotect except in a clear emergency (though I can't think of one that would justify its use) - or disable the feature

4 Engage with the community to discuss superprotect.

Once this discussion is concluded, then and only then should a discussion about media-viewer be entered into, meanwhile the community consensus should be respected.

Regarding your follow-up-reply:

„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“

You again speak here as „we“, so i take it as implied that you knew and approved of the above-mentioned measures? Your condition „if there's agreement by admins“ is, however, besides the issue. First and foremost, you have to respect local consensus. Admins will and have to follow this consensus - a so-called „Meinungsbild“ in german wikipedia has a greater binding impact than an „RFC“ here; any admin in the german wikipedia who acts against a binding „Meinungsbild“ will presumably have his admin rights revoked by the german community in short time. Again, the steps you should take have been named above and also by odder.

Furthermore, as Julius1990 already pointed out, „The reasonable way is to comply to the bugreport“. Not only me, but also several active developers and experts involved in the technical background work find the closing of said bugreport highly against all governing conventions in this regard. One could indeed see this closing as the decivise provocative step having lead to the current, unacceptable situation.

As highlighted already by Rich, now is not the time to talk about the MediaViewer in itself but for you (i.e. all WMF staff) to try and repair the damage you caused. However, please keep in mind what e.g. Pete pointed out ([4]):

„many of us who have opposed the default enabling of the Media Viewer have done so *not* on the basis that we personally dislike it, but on the basis that we believe it causes problems for the process of helping readers become effective editors [...]“.

You tried to separate the above measures and their legitimation from your overall perspective on WP/WMF in general. However, as many here and elsewhere have pointed out, this idea of seperation is besides the issue, as clearly your overall perspective governed your appreciation (if i take you correctly on both your replies mentioned above) of said measures. Exactly this interconnection – and not at all the rather minor technical details – is what has produced the largely felt grave affront against local communities.

Here are a few voices from the discussion (all of them by highly active, well-respected and well-known contributors in their respective areas, among them several former members of the german arbcom, e.g.). I took the liberty to edit and partly translate them in order to keep this already large post a bit shorter, please excuse any misrepresentations thereby caused.

Pete ([5]):

„The WMF chose to "Narrow Focus" a couple years ago. I believe that what got "narrowed out" was, by and large, processes that serve the secondary purpose of helping the WMF educate itself, in an ongoing way, about how its projects and communities operate. I believe we are seeing the effects of that decision now.“

Magiers ([6], [7]):

"They are not worried about chasing the active users away. They don't want us. They want new users, different users, facebook users, hyperactive people, that make pictures anywhere and edit with their mobile, that add to the article what goes through their mind at the moment, not what is written in reputable books and found out after a long and tiring reasearch. They want masses, a movement, millions of bot-articles. And they hope that the new masses will finally chase the old users away, those who are questioning their godlike decisions and their godlike self-declared superpowers. You see this in every answer: "You, who have argued and voted, are only the old editors, but we care about the silent readers and the fictive new editors. So of course we stand above your arguments and elections." Our opinions are not in the strategy focus anymore and can be ignored without consequences. In the view of the WMF, the readers are not reading the articles because we editors have written them in a way that is well appreciated, such that it raises multi million dollars of donations a year. The readers visit them because of the great software that WMF develops. They would read anything, if it was just presented by their great software.“

Howwi ([8]):

„These ultra-soft-washed, excessively-complimentary periphrases of disregard leave me fearing that the respective self-understandings and goals have by now become incompatible. Irreversibly. To put it simply: „Here“, among the active contributors, we are mostly unpaid idealists, „there“ increasingly fulltime business-strategists. This will, sooner or later, clash... Or does this only seem inevitable to me?“

Aschmidt ([9]):

„They approach Wikipedia as if it was a company and we were their employees. [...] At the moment, this business is exploding with a speed even i would not have imagined...“

Hosse ([10]):

„after having read through the empty words by Lila and Erik, i am more and more coming to the opinion that this was it for me. In the mentoring program, i already stroke out myself, as i cannot be responsible for the exploitation of even more people.“

Rich ([11]):

„It is stunning that this happened. I see no respect for the community or consensus, let alone "love" or "kindness" here, this is the very behaviour that we relied on developers not doing... The probability of a serious fork grows by the day. We need to re-think the community-foundation interface... To some extent super-ing the German Wikipedia is worse than doing it to the English...“

I hope you can see the wider context your (i.e. WMF-staff’s) actions and their guiding strategy are seen within by this. Now would be the perfect time to show us what your vision really is - not merely by producing more clarifying circumscriptions for it, but by producing welcome outcome (regarding which, see the first part of this thread, as well as many other voices here and elsewhere).

Regards, Ca$e (talk) 09:56, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I just want to clarify -- we are talking about software changes here, not content control, correct? Because it seems that people are really conflating the two concepts. LilaTretikov (talk) 17:23, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes and no: We are not merely talking about "software changes", as if those were on a neutral ground and to your (i.e. WMF's) avail. We are talking about the ad hoc (mis)use of developers to establish a new hierarchy against locally elected maintainers and community members, and (mis)using this hiearchy to intervene against a binding consensus in a local community. Talk about "content control" is absolutely besides the matter, in this we seemingly agree. (I do not, however, see that anyone (anywhere of topical relevance) would "conflate the two concepts" - or if you will insist, maybe some WMF-staff-members did, however, when they tried to legitimate their measures as "office actions", as this concept is by definition only applicable where content control is of the essence. However, according to an overwhelming and well grounded perception, there was not, is not nor will ever be any legitimation at all for said measures.) On further points that may be of relevance regarding the actual topic at stake, please see (among others) my other posts on this very page. Ca$e (talk) 18:15, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, the deciding point is: it are the editors of Wikipedia, mainly the big not bot-generated language versions whose work for Wikipedia is triggering the donated money the foundation is spending including the salaries you are paid from. So I understand your statement above from 21:00, 12 August 2014 as a spit in the face of every user ever improved an arcticle of Wikipedia. That's disappointing. Whatever the WMF does it cannot act against the consensus of the community. By the way, you should read and understand en:User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles, which is official since October 2001. Item four is the most important in this context, but point 7 is crucial as well. --Matthiasb (talk) 10:09, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

looking at jimbos principles Animal Farm comes to my mind. They had commandments, we have principles ...Sicherlich ^Post 10:25, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Lila, adding to ca$e's already rather extensive and well-written post, I would like to stress one point. You have talked a lot about the goal of providing free knowledge to the world. I hardly think that anyone here would deny that this is what we are doing and that this goal has a lot of appeal and has been responsible for attracting users: readers and in particular editors. However, the way that wikipedia works, i.e. that is a community-driven and self-governing (!) project, has played a probably equally important role in attracting editors and this sovereignty of the community has become very dear to us (at least on de.wikipedia, but I suppose this holds for other language versions as well). I feel that WMF either very much underestimates how much this means to the communities or simply does not care because its focus lies elsewhere (because you believe that the readers' interests are different and more important than the editors' or whatever other reason). And this perceived disrespect of the communities is what has angered lots of editors, as evidenced by the statements above both made here directly and quote by ca$e. I fear that wikipedia will lose many of its (best) editors (which are the foundation of wikipedia's success as others before me have pointed out), should the WMF's attitude towards them not change. --Null Drei Null (talk) 11:28, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, Null Drei Null. I think you bring up and interesting point. We latch on to actions we take to achieve some basic goals, but we trigger bigger issues that may not even be clear are there. I have a very very deep respect for our editing community -- every time I meet editors I am amazed at the devotion and commitment there. By no means do I want to disrespect them. I don't think the issue here somehow is editorial sovereignty however. Even though from an neutral point of view we are simply talking about basic change management practices that are baseline for consistency and security of the site -- somehow it is perceived as infringing on sovereignty of editors. It seems this is not logical, it's emotional... Logically, to me it's a real surprise that people would try to change behavior of software for millions of users -- and at that, not improve, but rip-out components. Are we confusing "sovereignty with control? Somehow we need to figure out a method in which no-one is imposing, but we are using representative data (statistically relevant sample) to tell us what to do. -- LilaTretikov (talk) 17:23, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Dear Lila, thank you for your answer, which makes very clear that there are misperceptions of essential parts of what is at stake here. We are not at all talking about "consistency and security of the site". We are not at all talking about "ripping-out components". (Everything that the component MediaViewer is technically capable of is available without it already, and, according to a large majority, currently in much better form, while many essential features are not provided anymore with MediaViwer in its current form.) Indeed, we are talking about "infringing on sovereignty of editors". The unprecedented establishment of a new user group, the provision of overriding user rights to a user group (= WMF staff) without any mandidate by the relevant community, and the overruling of elected local administrators in a matter where strategic issues are at stake held by the party (mis)using their already highly proplematic super-rights is nothing less than a most severe infringing. Indeed, there has never been a more grave infringement in the history of wikipedia as far as i know of. I strongly advise you to reconsider your perspective on this matter. Especially your talk of "emotionality" and "illogicality" is totally besides the issue and can be seen as quite provocative in the light of recent developments. Before "we" can talk on any new "methods", you should follow the steps explained e.g. by Rich and odder above. Ca$e (talk) 17:55, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. I leave all the administrative decisions now entirely to WMF and will invite a WMF employee for code review each time I file an edit request at Commons. I just wonder whether you have the resources. Good luck. -- Rillke (talk) 11:53, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Just so that you, Lila, and others whom it may concern, know: Rillke is referring to his request for removal of adminship (which he had accepted to postpone until an official statement from your part would clarify things) and other rights, having to date been one of the most active and respected admins (among other very important work) ever. He is quite far from being the only one undertaking such considerations as an effect of this development. I strongly advise you and all others who have a say in the matter to read his general remarks (as linked to above) on the perceived direction WMF has taken. I am deeply sorry for his decision, but, as things seemingly stand, do understand and respect his reasoning. Ca$e (talk) 12:08, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

First, contrary to the comment above by Aschmidt, the editors are not your boss, we freely licence our work for others to change or discard, and most all of us do not do it to grab any power to be someone's boss. Second, it makes perfect sense to protect the software common from hacking, deletions, and edit wars. Some users appear to be confused that they are not freely licencing their work on a privately owned website but their confusion makes little sense, and is no basis for making any decisions. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:11, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Again: it is the editors' voluntary work which builds the content of WP, and it is the content of Wikipedia (which some call "free knowledge") which triggers donations. And it are donations who pay Ms. Tretikov. So, Alanscottwalker, who is the boss? Little hint: it is not the foundation. --Matthiasb (talk) 12:28, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

If you come here as an editor to be the boss of someone, these projects are not the place to do it -- pure and simple. Sure, it's editors freely licenced work (and, of course, some (whether I like it or not) get paid for what they do) that builds content, but most of us do not build content to cause people to donate money, nor to pay Ms. Tartikov, so your arguments are all irrelevant, as well as looking power hungry. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:25, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with being boss, but with morals. The donors keep the Foundation and Systems running. The donors come in, because of teh content created by the editors and photographers and so on. Not because people think the presntation looks so neat, at least those are exceptions. So governing the communities with force maybe is possible, but it is horribly wrong by moral standards. And as a Foundation the WMF relies heavily on its moral good looks to people. Anyone organization who has similar goals like human rights, animal rights, spreading press freedom ... whatever relies on it's good reputation. By using force on your volunteers you are in danger to loose reputation. --Julius1990 (talk) 12:39, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

What's "immoral" is your claim that there is any extreme amount of force. That is just so baseless and untrue on multiple levels. As for the rest, see my comment above. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:25, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

I introduced above the concept that rather than one party being the "boss" of the other, if we cannot simply be friends and colleagues, the employed volunteers (the Foundation) should consider the unpaid volunteers (the Communities) to be their customers. Alternative models are possible but this one is simple and well known - customer service is key. It might also be mentioned that any reader can join the community, there is no requirement to contribute content in order to contribute to discussions - we welcome ideas regardless of their origin. Rich Farmbrough 14:33 13 August 2014 (GMT).

Glad to see this

Hi Lila. I just wanted to say, I'm glad to read see you engage directly. Thank you for talking to the community directly, this small first step will go a long way in convincing some folks the top management doesn't live in ivory towers. Some of us might be less than cordial and rough around the edges but your patience above seems promising for the future. I would have wished you engaged on other venues as well but this a promising start. I'd also ask other community members to not monopolize the conversation here. Thank you. Theo10011 (talk) 08:20, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

P.S. sort of a minor tip, you might notice some of your replies don't have a date and time stamp, just your signature because you are probably using "~~~" instead of "~~~~" which leaves only your signature. Ideally it's always better to leave a date and time stamp with signature to distinguish between times and look at the discussion in context. :)

Thanks, Theo10011. Not sure I will be able to do as much of it all the time, but I think this is important. I'd like to see us figure out how to so this better in different languages, at scale. LilaTretikov (talk) 16:56, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, thank you thus far, but still I think your statements are moved by a wrong perception of what has actually happened. It seems to me that Erik and other German-speaking staff members have not translated the outcome of de:Wikipedia:Meinungsbilder/Medienbetrachter correctly. The poll was not a consequence of the community's general conservatism, or luddism, or whatever you seem to think. The German Wikipedia community does not oppose software improvements in general nor even the MediaViewer specifically. We don't think that the media sites on Commons are the best possible solution either (rather to the contrary, they have many problems, too). And finally, we do think about our readers, a lot, and do consider the (high) possibility that they like the new solution better. Still, what we (those who voted against its immediate implication) argued was that the feature has still too many problems to be implemented for everyone on an opt-out basis - for now. There are some serious issues concerning republication of images (compliance with licenses, attribution of authors/photographers) and the display of important media information within the new feature. What we said was simply: These issues need to be addressed first rather than meddled with hastily after going online for everyone. There are several counterarguments to this position, and, trust me, all of these did of course come up during the poll, as is characteristic of any Wikipedia discussion. However, these counterarguments did not gain a majority. Now, an unproblematic and (it seems to me) reasonable way to deal with the poll would have been to accept its outcome (and therewith the German community), to withdraw the new feature for a while from the German Wikipedia, to let your software staff work on it, thereby to consider the arguments brought forward, maybe (a pipe dream) engage in a discussion with the coummunity - and finally simply to reintroduce the feature without anyone complaining (well, there's always the odd complainer, but nevermind him. At least you would have had the majority of the community on your side).

You can still do this. --Tolanor (talk) 11:48, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Your point, Tolanor, is basically the same I made here in German to Eric. --Matthiasb (talk) 13:18, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

It is a bit strange to see this being such a big deal given that the feature has been in Beta for nearly a year, was rolled out almost everywhere else in April with no issues, and has been on the de site since early June. So clearly it has not broken things. Why did it get so "hot" after two month of being in production, without reader complaints? Just wondering... LilaTretikov (talk) 16:56, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Please see, among several others, my post above: The "hotness" did not at all occur because of the existence of MediaViewer, but regarding a) the evaluation of its status in its current form (including if it could be currently termed a "feature" at all!), b) the way it should in the current state be provided (as default? for which user group - visitors and logged in editors?) and above all c) the way both issues were, according to an overwhelming perception, mishandled by WMF-staff (on this, see my and several other posts above and especially this action by Fabrice Florin, which has been regarded as highly ignorant of a binding local consensus and thus was a main cause of said "hotness"; d) what's more, what in the last instance has created, according to lots and lots of community members, quite a few of which having already declared not to be willing to furthermore be part of such a climate of over-regulation by WMF, after tens and hundreds of thousands of edits and other contributions to wikipedia, wikicommons and in other areas, a totally inacceptable state of the matter: the introduction and (mis)use of a new "superprotection" level. On the steps you (i.e. WMF-staff/board including especially you in person) now should take, see especially the guidelines provided by Rich and odder. Ca$e (talk) 17:34, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi Lila, I cannot talk about how hot the topic of the Media Viewer was before last weekend. It was not hot for me, because I deactivated it from the first day. What wonders me is, what made this topic so hot for the WMF, that they first posted a statement, they will not respect the voting on the German Wikipedia (I would have even lived with this) and then escalated things on Sunday: conducting an Edit-War and finally inventing in a hurry a new Super-Power-Right to win the Edit-War. What made a topic like the enabling of a Media Player so hot and urgent, it could not be handled in a normal way by the German community and their local sysops? What made it so hot and urgent, that for this single problem, a user-right had to be invented, that had no guidance (as the legal office actions have) and has not until now? This is disturbing me very much. What can I expect in future from the Foundation? Will they now always act this way and trying to dominate everything with newly implanted technical features like Super-Protection instead of talking with the local communities and let them handle the situations their normal way? --Magiers (talk) 17:37, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

@LilaTretikov:, this is an excellent question, and one I hope the WMF staff is exploring in a diligent way. Truly, I think, the most important question is: how did the WMF staff involved fail to anticipate the strong negative reaction? Of course, it is difficult to predict things like this, but it's not impossible. In fact, I predicted it back in February; while I got a polite acknowledgment, it seems that the substance of my comment was ignored. I know of at least one other longtime community member who made that same prediction (in a private email to me, not long after that) -- and if I can get permission to share that email, I will do so.

So I think a very important corrolary to this question is: why were some Wikimedia community members able to see clearly that this software would spark a strong reaction, but the Wikimedia Foundation on the whole was unable to see it? -Pete F (talk) 18:01, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Lila

Dear Lila Tretikov, we haven't met in London, but your keynote inspired me to a little parody. I prefer to post it here rather than that you spot it elsewhere on the web and wonder how the hell it might be meant. :-) Sometimes I feel that a twisted kind of poetry and humour helps me the best to express myself than other genres.

I don't believe in unicorns and mavericks - but I believe in a fresh perspective from the outside, evolution and occasionally hard but responsible decisions. As German songwriter Wolf Biermann said: Only he who changes remains himself. (Nur wer sich ändert, bleibt sich treu.)

Welcome, and kind regards, --Ziko (talk) 14:27, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

*The song parody was deleted with [12], Ziko was warned,[13] and there was a request for admin attention filed and closed.[14] --Abd (talk) 18:09, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

-- :) LilaTretikov (talk) 15:31, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

All Things Chapter

A section for Chapter related conversations.

„It was only 190”. A reminder as to what a Community actually is

Dear Lila and Erik,

I’m writing this to clarify why the “Superprotect-affair” is such an important matter for us Wikipedians, for the local communities, and probably for the future of Wikimedia in general. In many of the Wikimedia staff’s writing on the matter, I have found the argument that only 190 users in effect voted for the proposal that the MediaViewer be opted in rather than has to be opted out individually. Okay, let’s look at the numbers: 190 users pro, 72 against, 19 neutral. That makes some 300 users participating in the poll, as opposed to (as Erik pointed out) several thousands or even millions who are potentially affected by the decision. That does sound like a ridiculously small number.

And it is. The problem is: This is the community. Well, not exactly: The community of the German (as in German, the language) Wikipedia consists of maybe some 1000 people. These are the people who very regularly edit articles and take part in discussions and talks, and therefore know each other, at least by nick name. Of these 1000 people, maybe half or less participate in polls regularly. They elect sysops, vote for featured and good articles, discuss proposals for deletion. Since not every one of these some 500 users is interested in every poll, it’s fair to say that 300 is a pretty average number of participants in a poll.

I think this needs to be stressed: Only about 1000 people form the community of the German Wikipedia (the third largest one), and only about 300 to 500 take part in important decisions the community wants to make by poll. Wikipedia is a village. (Or maybe more like a Greek polis.) Of course, there are a lot of other people involved: Those who only write articles without taking part in discussions. Those who contribute one article and never return (like PR employees writing their company’s entry). Those who irregularly correct a spelling mistake when they see one. But all of this would not work without the community. These people do the basic work of Wikipedia: Wikify entries, check facts, delete vandalism, check the copyright status of media and texts, delete rubbish, and so on and so forth. Most of them also write a lot of the articles, mostly with a high quality status, some featured. Because featured articles and their like don’t stem from people who don’t feel committed to Wikipedia and care for it. You have to invest months of reading, thinking, and actual writing to complete only one featured article.

And this is the point: Even though what I call the community is not the whole of Wikipedia, it is these people who really care for it. It is these people who spend hours a day revising articles or discussing bread, or quarrelling over some stupid software feature. They only do this because they think it is important. And they are the only ones: The readers certainly don’t think some bread or, for that matter, some software feature is important. But the Wikipedians, the community, care on a whole other level: They spend hours of their day and have spent years of their life contributing to this odd online “encyclopedia”. They feel their life is somehow connected to it.

The Wikimedia Foundation often talks about the so-called Wikimedia or Wikipedia “movement”. That’s right: There is a movement. But even though Wikipedia is one of the most important sites on the internet with hundreds of millions of readers, the “movement” behind it consists only of these few people: the community. Each year, only a few hundred people attend the “WikiCon”, the largest meeting of German-speaking Wikipedians. Here you see them gathered again: The community, the village – the people who voted against the MediaViewer. These 300 people are the community. Wherever else you might look for it, you will not find it there.

Now, I realize that these people are, especially in a group (and they always come as a group), often very annoying. Online crowds look horrible from the outside (and not that much better from the inside). You can’t handle them, can’t organize them, and never get them to do what you want them to. But the beauty of Wikipedia is that you don’t have to. Wikipedia works without centralized governance. Communities have thus far been self-organized, and it worked. They voted their own sysops, made their own notability criteria, decided themselves whether they wanted their Wikipedia to opt in or opt out of an ill-conceived software feature.

But centralized, coercive governance is exactly what you want to introduce here. You don’t trust the communities. A Wikipedia poll always comes along with arguments and arguing, with mile-long texts written to convince others, with pro and con. And pro won this time. Now, you could have said to yourselves, “Well, they have decided. So what is the rationale behind this decision? What exactly do they want? What is their critique? How can we handle this?” Instead, you said, “What a bunch of idiots. Always against everything new. Conservative to the core. And it’s only 190 people anyway. Some ridiculous nerds not wanting us to meddle with their toy. We can’t give in to that, can we?”

The sad thing about the whole situation is that it is so wholly unnecessary. It would have been so easy to prevent it. Again: What we wanted was a better MediaViewer, not its complete abolishment. If you would have read what our actual arguments were, you would have seen that there’s no real problem. We did not say the Foundation was not allowed to introduce software changes. We did not say it wouldn’t maybe be better to have a new MediaViewer, better arranged than the old Commons sites. If you would’ve just listened and taken us seriously, none of this would have happened.

Now, at least, you should take the communities seriously. Even though what they’re doing looks quarrelsome, ridiculous, and messy, it works. What’s more: It would not work without them. So you better stop trying to coerce us with newly invented superpowers, and start talking to us again. Otherwise Wikipedia cannot work. It is much too complicated, messy, and great to be governed solely from a bureau in San Francisco. --Tolanor (talk) 18:10, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

+1 to Tolanor, and one thing I like to add about the "conservative" communities: Writing an encyclopedia (which is still the flagship of the Wikimedia projects) is a conservative task, and this literally: it is conserving the knowledge of the world. The people, that do this, are even so conservative, they go to libraries and search in books for trustworthy informations instead just googling around and copy and paste what they find. Yes, it's tempting, to make everything new, better, modern, but don't loose Your conservative editors in the process, because their quality work will not be replaceable so easily. --Magiers (talk) 18:42, 13 August 2014 (UTC)