User talk:LilaTretikov (WMF)/Archive 6

You're the right person

You're the right person to run WMF, Lila. You've already learned one of the most important skills that every WMF employee should poses. I mean ignoring emails. Way to go! 59.151.103.44 18:33, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

I will only say this once: responding to sarcastic, non-productive comments like the one above will not be my priority. Communicating with good-faith, positive, engaged community members and ideas is. Thank you. -- LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 17:58, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Will you engage in any way with the communities? I mean on the different project pages here and elsewhere, not mailing lists or other more or less hidden and/or nerdy stuff? If I look at your posting history, you're rather silent (168 edits found in 7 projects). --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 18:14, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

What is your recommendation keeping in mind our (currently) highly distributed and unclear communication channels? -- LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 18:34, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

WP-pages in different languages, you can probably post in most of them in English as well. At least your own (talk) pages in the different languages, and ask your community liaison staffers for more, they have to know, they are paid to know. Edith says: ATM I think deWP and enWP would be most wanted, as the WMF acted quite harsh against those communities, with more or less brutal power. You (i.e. the WMF) smashed a lot of porcelain with those communities with your irresponsible behaviour, I think it's your duty to mend this. --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 19:41, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

And yet you have answered that "sarcastic, non-productive comment" in a week. Other comments have to wait for response much longer... Are you sure they really are a priority to you..?

Also, concerning "our (currently) highly distributed and unclear communication channels" - your talk page is as clear and "undistributed" as it gets, yet you fail to communicate much through it. What is the point of designing "communication channels" unless you are going to talk? Somehow all this years-long talk of "communication channels" (and, partially, of "Flow", "MediaViewer", "Visual editor" etc.) loosely reminds me of fable "Quartet" ("Квартет") by w:en:Ivan Krylov (looks like one translation can be found in [1])... --Martynas Patasius (talk) 20:56, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Since 20:45, 11.11.2014, that's more then 2 weeks, you have not communicated at all with the communities on any page in any project in the wikiverse. I take that as a sign of disdain for the unwashed masses, something you don't want to do. And don't come up with board meetings, mailing lists, mingle-thingies or whatever other in-group channels you use to avoid the communities, they don't count at all. If you want to engage with the communities, you have to go to the WPs and their sister projects. --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 15:42, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

• Hey Lila. We have community which is probably more toxic than average, meaning it is unfriendly to insiders much less outsiders. But not all of us are so bad, and the community is not as large as it seems. Look at how many people vote for ArbCom or the Trustees: there's only a few hundred who are engaged at that level in English and an additional few hundred outside that. In terms of recommendations about communicating within our admittedly "highly distributed and unclear communication channels?", I would suggest setting aside a few hours a week to spend time volunteering in an encyclopedias such as the English Wikipedia as a potential start. Start at the Wikipedia:Community_portal and spend some time exploring; sometimes people center around WikiProjects. Maybe WP:COMPUTER might be up your alley? On the administrative side, WP:AFD (Articles for Deletion), WP:RFA (Requests for Admin) or WP:ANI (Administrators Noticeboard/Incidents) have lots of traffic. I'm a bad example as I've had to pull way back, but I think you'll find that those who don't come to Meta may be a bit less harsh. Make sure you add Wikipedia to your search bar then make generous use of the shortcuts to get around. Feel free to hit me up if you're feeling lost. ImperfectlyInformed (talk) 09:04, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Where are we

As you know I am holding back planned roll-out of this feature pending internal review. What I am seeing above is that many requirements requested are satisfied by it at the expense of losing features some of you consider critical. I am asking for a full list of use cases that are to be/not covered and clear roadmap of those and will invite you to review. -- LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 18:32, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

What's the current status of this?

As this question popped up on deWP, and it seems to be a bit unclear whether and how it's going further with this enterprise called Flow (not that may green hooks on the project page recently): Has development stopped? ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 16:09, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Word

This time round I only have an analogy. Emacs scares away new users with it's complicated command structure and scripting. Word is much friendlier text editor in that regard. Question to the community: what do you feel is lacking in Word that you currently have access to in Emacs? We'll take your wishes seriously, and prioritize accordingly. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 19:06, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

I know of nothing in wikimedian realms to which emacs-versus-word is even remotely relevant. --Pi zero (talk) 20:41, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

The more relevant debate is emacs vs. vi(m). Word and emacs have very different purposes; for example, you can't use Word to code, and emacs is much more extensible. On the other hand, Word users are less likely to get RSI. ;) I don't see how this is relevant to anything on-wiki, though, except perhaps the VE vs. wiki markup debate, which is a stretch. PiRSquared17 (talk) 20:52, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

"Word and emacs have very different purposes". Yes. That was rather the point. (I also named Emacs rather than vi(m) because Emacs has always been billed as the self-scripting editor which tied in nicely with wikitext augmented with templates.) Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 21:46, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Word and emacs have different purposes. VE and wiki markup have different purposes. One contrast has no bearing on the other contrast, though. --Pi zero (talk) 00:16, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

We are addressing different problems with one tool. I am reading through many, many different requests for what Flow or Talk should do. Neither on those tools does or could do all of those things really really well. This means we either have to live with one tool that does a lot, but marginally. Or with a few specialized ones. In the analogy above: both tools are needed. Word is for editing text. Emacs is for writing code. -- LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 04:40, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Avoid that "analogy", which lacks useful parallels between the supposedly analogous situations.

That's a false choice between a general tool that does a lot, but marginally, versus a few specialized ones. Setting aside that a bunch of specialized tools is inherently inferior because generality is a fundamental need here, there is no reason to suppose that the general facility cannot be made to function more smoothly. Of course, improving wiki markup requires three things.

• It requires someone to be trying to do so. The Foundation is clearly not trying. It is technically true that it's not possible to do such a thing if one is determined not to try.
• It requires someone to have deep intuitive understanding of wikis and wiki markup. It is necessary, but alas not sufficient, for them to acquire extensive experience with wikis and wiki markup.
• It requires someone to have the right sort of mind to do so. This is not at all a trivial statement. Different people have different sorts of mental skills, some of which can be acquired and others of which are innate (nurture versus nature). I would rather not have included this on the list, but the brutal truth is, no amount of experience with wikis and wiki markup will provide deep insights to someone who just doens't have the right sort of mind to support the right sort of insights.

Wiki markup has evidently undergone various changes in the past intended to be improvements, but the measures taken were often ill-advised, and it seems the Foundation, instead of inferring that those things were the wrong way to go about it, apparently decided it couldn't be done. --Pi zero (talk) 13:26, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Case in point, Microsoft office comes with several "different" tools because none of them is all inclusive, Word can make Tables, but not as good as Excel, Outlook can do word document type stuff, but not as good as word and neither Excel nor word are good at making Powerpoint presentations or sending Email. Same thing applies here. Wikitext is a powerful and easy to use tool that has low bandwidth and browser requirements. It requires almost no computer experience to learn the basics and there are no hardware or software requirements to speak of. With things like Flow and VE, you have severe limitations of Internet browsers, highspeed internet is nearly a requirement, it takes multiple steps to do something that requires almost no effort with Wikitext. So when you add these changes with the argument of making it easier to use, you are really just preventing 2/3rds of the world from using the service at all. VE all but discourages the use of citations because it adds multiple steps to create a citation. All that VE and Flow do, are add functionality to the Core Mediawiki software, they are are and should be optional addons/improvements that are available for use by the consumers of the Mediawiki product. They should not be forced to use them as is the WMF's apparent intent and the WMF should not be forcing the volunteer communities to act as an unpaid software tester. If they want to volunteer to help test the software, and many will, then that is one thing and that is awesome, but many will not and Wikipedia and her sister projects should not be used as Guinea pigs to test the WMF's unfinished and so far poorly designed and implemented software. If your intent is to say the hell with the communities we are going to implement the tools anyway wether they want them or not, then at least have the decency to finish building it first and make sure it works with the communities processes and culture. Reguyla (talk) 14:53, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

That is a good point. I guess it is worth emphasising that, contrary to the claims of WMF, wikitext is extremely easy to use for beginners. They can simply write the plain text - and many do so every day (many new articles and talk messages are just that). In almost all cases that is good enough. And if it is not - that's why other users are there.

So, when Lila is saying that "Yet, we already know what wikitext presents a barrier of entry for a large portion of some less technical, but very important users: educators, scientists, historians, women, emerging regions, etc." (Special:Diff/10158275), that is simply not true. And I think she must be reminded not to think that badly about "less technical" users. The only users to whom wikitext truly presents a "barrier of entry" are illiterate. Not "computer illiterate", just illiterate. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 00:20, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Just can support that point. An assistant teacher from the university chair I work for made her first edits to Wikipedia and found Wikitext extremly easy, even to apply footnotes. She was very surprised since she also had heard the bad mouthing of Wikitext by the Foundation and some parts - lous parts - of the editor community. I think a reality check of the Foundation'S arguments would do good ... --Julius1990 (talk) 17:07, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, same here, I'm training several librarians and some told me seeing the templates as they are in wikitext is more comfortable: I had to "force" them to use VisualEditor! Then they told me VE has its benefits too. But they're librarians, we know their quirks. --Nemo 17:45, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

I have to say that as an "educator" and "scientist" I find the characterization above to needlessly patronizing. Not to mention inaccurate, as others have noted above. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 04:45, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

All -- this was not meant to patronize anyone -- and it would be great if we did not jump to that assumption immediately. Now that out of the way. This was an observation that in general this is yet one new thing for a newcomer to understand and learn, which in theory should hinder their on-ramp speed. We are going to test this. The data will show if my hypothesis is false. -- LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 20:45, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

First, yes, we understand that you didn't mean to insult everyone. And yet you did insult everyone, without intending that. You simply didn't think things through. Yes, I am sure we are all happy to forgive you (although actually taking your words back would make it easier). Still, I hope you will understand that many of things that you perceive as insults are also unintended.

Second, if that really was just a hypothesis, try writing accordingly. Write "We suspect that...", "Could it be that..?", "Perhaps..." instead of "[W]e already know...". That will make communication much clearer.

Third, there is no need to test the hypothesis any more. We already have the data. Newcomers are able to communicate in plain text. That's what you can see in numerous pages every day (would you like some examples?). You are not going to get any data that would be better than that.

That brings me to the fourth point - sorry, but I don't trust ability of WMF to do research. That is not surprising - you are not an organisation that specialises in research. Thus, it is not hard to find many mistakes like the ones mentioned in w:en:Wikipedia talk:Flow/Archive 4#"Test: User messaging 1: Talk page basics" - the methodology (which I have mentioned in Requests for comment/On a scale of billions - speaking of which, if you are still interested in answers to your questions, it has closed long time ago). And WMF does seem to have a conflict of interest.

After all, it is very easy to do such research badly: just forget that plain text is good enough, find new users that do not use some optional features of wikitext and complain that we have a great problem because of that. Unfortunately, that is how research of WMF seems to be working far too often...

I hope that does clarify things at least a little. --Martynas Patasius (talk) 23:11, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

So, a couple of weeks have passed... Have you actually done any research? --Martynas Patasius (talk) 23:06, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

For the record: I've been using Emacs and LaTeX for all my writing since 2001, and I've written all my Wikipedia articles offline. I would never use a browser window for texts as long and as complex as that. Neither would you use Microsoft Office for writing. I did not install these programmes when I set up my latest system because I had not used them for over ten years. As to flow, I don't remember it having been requested by the community. On the contrary, it will make encyclopædic discussions all but impossible because we do not live on threads and smartphone devices, but on archives you can search and read easily. Wikipedia is text, and Wikipedia badly needs a memory. As to the visual editor, I think it is fit by now for minor edits, but, again, I would not use it for writing articles, because you don't do this in a webbrowser window. Both flow and visual editor take away the soul from the project, as both discussions and editing articles is at the very heart of what a Wikipedian does.--Aschmidt (talk) 00:20, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Flexibility

It occurs to me there may be some misunderestimation going on here regarding the significance of flexilbity. Not just how important it is, but why. The Foundation's mandate is to enable the community to make knowledge available. The Foundation doesn't, must not, tell the community how to do that. Forcing the community to do things a certain way is a violation of the Foundation's reason for existing; and rigid tools force the community to do things a certain way. It's not just that forcing the community to accept such tools is itself a violation of the Foundation's mandate (though that's true too), but that the tools themselves are a violation of the mandate. --Pi zero (talk) 15:44, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Infrastructure

Lila, some thoughts I've been developing recently, which may possibly be of use to you, concerning the capabilities of the WMF organization as currently set up.

My main point here is that communication between WMF and the communities is not the full extent of the problem you're facing. The WMF as currently organized appears to be the "wrong tool for the job". My reasoning, as best I can explain it thus far (these are ideas I hadn't been trying to articulate until recently):

The WMF is internally structured to centrally create major software initiatives to be designed, implemented, and imposed all from the top down. This is the way commercial enterprises approach proprietary software, so it's natural that people who come from that world (both administrators and software developers) would tend to do things that way. The approach is well suited to the purpose of creating software that maximizes customers' dependency on the commercial enterprise. In other words, it minimizes customers' ablity to improve, generalize, duplicate, or even maintain the software on their own. However, this approach is deeply inappropriate if you're trying to nurture volunteer wikis. Wikis are inherently bottom-up, and everything about the top-down approach is going to clash badly with what's needed. When you have a well-defined task to perform, you can assign a programming team to write software to do that, which you can then deploy; all centralized and top-down. However, when you have a living community continually growing material upward from a stable versatile platform, improving the platform without destroying the delicate ecosystem of the living community is a subtle and delicate art, requiring both extreme restraint and keen insight into how elements can be used (not how they are used, how they can be used). Specific top-down goals simply do not exist. The traditional, centralized top-down approach not only is not suited for this sort of development, but it has a natural impulse to look for things to do that will be counterproductive.

Hence my suggestion that the WMF as currently organized appears to be the wrong tool for the job. My instincts tell me this is a much deeper structural problem than simply encouraging better communications, and much broader than reassessing the specific objectives of a particular software development initiative. --Pi zero (talk) 03:31, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Cf. Conway's law. --Pi zero (talk) 03:55, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

I am hopeful: WMM and WMF will go organizationally bejond old and new frontiers by structured cooperation. That´s our fate (they, you, and me, which means we: We of WMF and We of MWW) being part of the existing world we are living in. --Edward Steintain (talk) 18:35, 9 December 2014 (UTC) (Please: stop weing in particular! The message is our wiki-idea. 22 million of global contributers shall work with newly structured cooperation together. The wiki-idea has only started.)

„The Wikimedia Foundation is deeply rooted in the values of the free culture and free software movements. With the exception of "fair use" material, all information in Wikimedia projects can be freely shared, freely distributed, freely modified and freely used for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, in perpetuity.“ [2] --Edward Steintain (talk) 18:34, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Ways of communication

Your posting log suggests that you don't like to comunicate in the media you are EO of. Is there any venture you really communicate with those, that you ultimately work for, i.e. the communities? ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 16:50, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

WMF and iCIV have something in common. They synchronize as a new setup for cooperation. Looking forward to next steps to ballance. A Happy New Year --Edward Steintain (talk) 21:34, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Simulated barnstar

I don't know how to do barnstars here on meta, so here is a simulated one. Barnstar For listening to the community. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 05:42, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Some thoughts here

Hi all,

I know this is only a small part of the communities that comes here, but for now I will post some notes here, based on some comments I see above.

1. We have challenges communicating with communities at the WMF. I am not going to go through reasons why, but we are thinking of how to best address this with dedicated channels, languages, events and workflows.
2. We are working on the 2015 objectives and a strategy update process. You will see some of this starting to be visible this month.
3. We plan to work through the draft product design process in Q3. A major focus of it is to ensure we are thinking of all audiences and specifically about our editors.
4. There seems to be a sentiment that we do not focus or value our current communities of editors, curators, developers...This is a problem we need to correct. We believe that current editors are the core of our projects and we need to support you.

LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 23:36, 3 January 2015 (UTC)Lila

What if the community doesn't want Flow, and sees it as harmful negative value? What if you repeat the media-viewer-style "consultation" (explicitly prohibiting discussion of that disagreement), and it doesn't change the community position that Flow itself is unwanted, harmful, negative value? Alsee (talk) 18:24, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

We are purposefully reviewing tools affecting current editors because we are careful to not break things, create harm, or produce negative value. As a result, there is no current global roll-out plan for Flow. That is because we understand that it does not solve all the problems that we want solved and are currently handled by Talk. Flow is a communication tool, but does not provide collaboration/editing capabilities that we know editors need. Editor communities do seem to want better tools and the opinion on those varies dramatically, making it hard to satisfy even the majority of our current communities. LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 20:55, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm really interested where you think you'll get more audience, as you don't post anything anywhere with the communities (see the paragraph above), you seem to stick to your ivory tower in SF and hope this unwashed masses that ultimately pay you will leave you alone. 178 post in all of the wikiverse in nearly one year is nothing, nada, niets, nix, nitschevo.

• What are those pretended reasons not to post anything anywhere? Are you unable to use a computer?
• Where are those musings about the strategy, as ultimately we, the communities are responsible for such stuff, you are just our professional support agency.
• Again this stupid Q3-thingy: Q3 is Juli to September. If you write some in-group lingo from the ivory tower, please either explain or simply don't do it.
• The "sentiment that [you] do not [...] value [the] communities" was proven beyond any doubt with you actions explicitly against the communities for the push-through of the totally irrelevant, and at that time very buggy, MediaViewer. As long as all of those hostile actions against the communities are not reversed, you can't expect any trust from those you simply said "F*** off!" to. Why should anyone believe you will act otherwise with the next useless programmers toy Flow, that for unknown reasons is extremely pushed by WMFers?

--♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 19:32, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Sanger, please stop with the on-wiki insults. Thanks. LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 20:57, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Superputsch and the WMF-behaviour with MV was an insult, a delibarate, vile insult, without any positive implication. I fail to see any decent reaction by the perpetrator Erik and his consorts. As long as nothing is done in that regard, what do you expect? --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 21:03, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

I expect us to disagree respectfully and engage on making decisions when we start building these features going forward (as opposed to on completion). I am taking time to understand communities sentiment around other software projects that were started before my term. If you noticed only much desired developments (like SUL, performance improvements via HHVM, quotes systems) have been slated and/or shipped last quarter. There is also a direct prioritization effort that is under works to give communities direct voice in features development. This does not mean the WMF won't make unpopular moves, but it a change. LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 16:43, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Nobody doubts that the programmers sometimes get some stuff right, and SUL was definitely one of it, HHVM probably as well. The problem is with some projects, that seem to get some massive traction without any real legitimacy, like the MV (superficial bling-thing without real value, but pushed through with might and massive collateral damage), VE (could and should be a good thing, if it's really 100% non-destructive to all existing WP-pages, but was impleemnted in early alpha status, and behaved destructive to articles) and perhaps next Flow (absolutely no reason for pushing this stuff recognisable, lot's of "only in the far future" cool-aid uttered by the fan-boys, but after the MV and VE disasters, AGF really doesn't seem to be a good idea).

All this stuff needs to be discussed extensively in the communities. WMF has no more say about such things as the communities, the WMF is just the professional support agency of the communities. Members of the WMF acted explicitly against the communities in the past with MV and superputsch, and next to nothing has been done to undo the great damage inflicted by them. I really still have the impression, that Erik e.a. have not grasped the huge damage they have done to the Wikiverse with their hostility towards the communities. And as long as they didn't come up with a real heartfelt apology for their bad behaviour, the fear of recurrence will stay.

The WMF has destroyed a lot of confidence with their unwarranted actions against the communities. They broke quite a lot of porcelain with their actions against the communities. They have to do a lot of positive things to regain the trust the threw away with their hostility. They have to be active in accessing the communities in the diverse WPs and the sister projects. With the tons of money they again got in the last begging spree it should not be that hard to invest a bit more in the core of the enterprise, that's the communities, and less in some shiny new software projects without real merit besides for the ivory towers glossy papers. ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 17:40, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Sanger, thank you for productive criticism, sincerely. We are doing a lot of work to make sure going forward we we put money towards the most impactful projects (you will see more of this in the "Call to Action 2015" that I am putting to together for the WMF). We will have to live with the choices of the past: finish projects that make sense (even if they were not the top priority) or kill those that don't. What I would like to hear about from you is how you see us "be active in accessing the communities...invest a bit more in the core of the enterprise"? I understand your direction but can you give me some specifics you are thinking about please?

With respect to "WMF is just the professional support agency of the communities" I don't agree. I think it is a part of what we are and I do think that communities are our main customer, but I think we also have responsibility towards ensuring this works in the future and for people that do not engage with our projects today.LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 02:55, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

First of all thanks for ending your long silence. It's still not that much communication with the communities, i.e. your employer (no, not just customers, we are your employers), but a new beginning. Two month ago I told you this, (now archived here). It's still the same: Ask your community liaison, they are paid to know such stuff. Go especially to the enWP and deWP, the communities you explicitly slapped in the face with might and apologise for your actions surrounding MV and Superputsch. And I mean: Apologise! The WMF was wrong, they have to set the record straight. The communities did nothing really wrong. MV might be OK now, after you finally did some community consultations and got the mayor bugs that were still in it at implementation de-bugged, but this only began after you insulted the communities. Legally the MB and RfCs still stand, and MV should only be opt-in in deWP and enWP, but I think a new MB/RfC about the now improved (and perhaps now ready for opt-out) MV could be done and might end with another outcome (if you go to the communities and set things straight about your misdeeds in summer).

Go to the talk pages about Flow in the communities, put them all on your watchlist (if you not already have them there, what I should expect from you). Use the normal community channels for communication, not some shady back-rooms like mailing lists or phabricator or such. You have time and again promised to communicate with the communities, but as long as your post count won't go up, it's all just empty words again.

You again got that much money in your begging spree, WP could survive for quite a long time if this would be given only to core uses like server maintenance and such. Give some of those multi-millions to community engagement instead of just new shiny software pet-projects nobody in the community asked for, and you will be better of. OK, it's not an easy task to work in such an diverse environment, but hey, you got paid for it, we don't, so we can expect a lot more effort from you ;)

--♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 11:56, 6 January 2015 (UTC) P.S.: I'm Sänger or Saenger, not Sanger ;)

No, the community does not employ Lila; the Board of Trustees does, and it's not the same thing as the community. While I have no doubt that the Board takes into consideration the feedback from the community, it is also responsible for giving direction to Lila, and sometimes that direction may not be the same as what [some members of] the community want it to be. Simply put, if you give her one direction, and I give her a different one, and we both have the same standing in the community, there is no way that she would be able to act on anything. We are not her employers; however, we can act as her advisors. Risker (talk) 15:33, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

The community donates the money, the community donates the content, the community donates big chunks of software, the community essentially is the Wikiverse. Everything else derives from the community. Of course I'm not the community, and neither are you, but the WMF, the BoT etc. are only a necessary evil because the community is too big to get it all sorted out by itself. Every top-down move is in principle not right, and if really necessary has to be extremely well reasoned and founded, and of course be community-vetted afterwards. Not every bottom-up move is a right one, they can be legally or technically not good based, and so they may be, in some circumstances, vetted by professional support agencies like the WMF and the BoT. Most of the work of the WMF should be moderation and support for the communities, and of course maintaining the hardware including the main software, that's the core mission of the WMF. --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 15:58, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

The stuff Sanger wrote, about which Lila said "please stop with the on-wiki insults"? It seems to me, if those are "insults", they're feeble ones. I see things that might be insults if asserted as fact, but instead they're qualified with "seem" (thus criticism), framed as question (thus tart sarcasm), etc., so that they're prickly but not insults per se. Sanger seems the sort of irate but rational person Lila should be able to communicate with if she really expects to improve communications between the Foundation and a wikimedian community already riled by its past treatment by the Foundation. --Pi zero (talk) 00:30, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't think any kind of insult should be acceptable on our sites and I surely hope you are not making excuses for them, Pi zero. We cannot possibly always agree, so we need to be able to disagree, critique, voice disappointment, call for an action, etc. All of that can be expressed without insults or mockery. It is not an environment we should accept as a community and it is each of ours responsibility to call out. LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 16:43, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Point of order! User:Pine and User:Pi zero are, as far as I know, accounts of two (very) different people. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 12:21, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

My apology for confusing two different people, I've corrected above. LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 16:29, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

As far as I (pi zero) know, we are indeed different people.

Lila, you've mistaken me. I've no interest in making excuses for Sanger. I don't think Sanger needs excusing. I saw you making an error of judgement, and attempted to politely point it out. In fact, your misjudgement of Sanger's words seems to me to follow naturally from your standing misjudgement of the Foundation's deeds. The Foundation did things for which it owes a sincere, deep apology to the communities, and there's strong evidence that you do not understand that you owe such an apology because you haven't given it. I (pi zero) suggested to you here, months ago, that you had already missed an opportunity to make yourself hugely popular with the communities, and thus put yourself in an excellent position to initiate a new positive relationship between the Foundation and the communities, by giving a prompt and abject apology to the communities for the Foundation's actions. I suggested that you could, at least, still extract yourself from the political hole you'd dug yourself into but, as time when on, to extract yourself you would have to augment the apology with more and more substantive action. Note, that's not action instead of an apology, but in addition to. --Pi zero (talk) 15:29, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

• I'll throw in some thoughts here. I think that we as editors sometimes don't realise how horribly foreign and byzantine some of our ways of doing things look to the reader or the neophyte. Without exception, every non-Wikimedian I've asked to look at and compare images on MV versus the usual "go to file page" method has preferred the MV page; I'll repeat that - without exception. The only people I've run into who prefer going directly to the file page are those who were already experienced editors or Commons image downloaders. Yes, it's anecdotal, but I've run the experiment with a few hundred people over the last several months. (Myself, I don't know that I care that much one way or the other; sometimes I want the file page, and other times I just want to see a bigger version of the image.) VisualEditor's problem isn't the concept, it is the way that it got introduced far, far too early in its development cycle and made the "default" editor. It simply wasn't ready for that level of intense interaction back in July 2013. Since that situation has de-escalated, the developers have continued to work on it and knock off the bugs, and it is a much different editing interface today than it was back at the "barely out of alpha" stage. In fact, I recently wrote an article from scratch (I think it may have been the third article I've started in 9 years), and 90% of my edits were done using VisualEditor. There were a few things that I wasn't quite able to do, but if I'd not had years of editing experience, I probably wouldn't have noticed those minor issues - nor would anyone reading the article. I've always been fine with the idea of VE, and now it's just about good enough that I'd say it was time to let newbies get their hands on it. HHMV has made a huge difference in load times, to the point that we're all much more cognizant of any kind of systemic slowdown - and yet there's hardly any positive feedback being given about that, which is really unfortunate, and probably somewhat demoralizing to those who worked so hard on it. Finally, I agree with Lila; we can disagree without throwing around harsh words. Of course, the other side of that coin is that it's important that those who speak softly are listened to and given credence. Risker (talk) 04:44, 6 January 2015 (UTC)
• Hi Lila. I want to echo Risker on two matters here. First, I often find the discourse here unnecessarily aggressive and counterproductive to anyone's goals. I also agree that the softer voices (those who you are not likely to find editing here) need to be sought out or expressly invited here if you want broader feedback. The other is the idea that we (the editing community) are largely unaware of the experience of newer editors. I think after some years go by, regular editors (like myself) can barely remember what our first few days of editing and engaging the community felt like when we're in a place now where we've worked together with other editors and are doing things like signing our comments writing out citation syntax without even thinking about it. For instance, I really enjoyed watching the Moderated testing videos for Flow from November last year and reading over the analysis. It is hard, time-consuming work to coordinate these studies, but I think it's incredibly important to be able to convey to all of us the experience of editing as someone new to the place (not to mention, it's valuable research). On the English Wikipedia, there are numerous editors interested in finding ways to reach out to newer editors who need help, and that is evidenced by initiatives like the Teahouse, Snuggle, WikiProject Editor Retention, the old Moodbar feedback program (there is a proposal to reboot it), and the Co-op (the in-progress mentorship space we will be piloting), among others. Personally, I feel valued when I know the WMF is doing its best to reach out to these editors and make the work of helping new editors on-wiki easier than it currently is; I suspect many others involved in these projects feel the same way. I JethroBT (talk) 08:54, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Many good comments here, thank you. I will respond to some here:

• Risker, I JethroBT -- thank you for your advice, I would love to find the "quiet voices" as much as possible. I think they are important but often drowned and disenfranchised. Some of the most productive community members are also the quietest, yet are people we must hear and understand. We have a few ideas in the works on how to reach them. For my part -- I won't respond to mockery and insults when I see them and I will call them out even if people disagree. I hope more community members will do the same.
• Thank you for pointing out, Risker the reporting relationship between me and the Board. Sanger, I do have many stakeholders and customers who's opinions are extremely critical in guiding me. I try to do my best in understanding all the different opinions and voices, overlapping it with quantitative research and making the most informed call I can make.
• I think it is hard for many people to imagine how constraint a chief executive's life is in terms of time. So while I really enjoy talking here, it is a precious time that often comes in "spurts". I interact here, sometimes on the list, lots over email, skype and some in-person. Talk page is a very low-bandwidth interaction method. What I envision is building out a simpler, centralized mechanism so I can be more effective as well as using our staff more effectively, like Sanger pointed out. This is in the works and we will be investing more in the community.
• I don't see popularity as a goal of my job (this is to Pi zero note). My job is to make choices that best support and grow progress towards mission, set direction for staff, inspire/enable/hold them accountable for their work. Will I get that wrong sometimes? Quite possibly. Will I upset some people sometimes? I am sure I will. I am sorry when that happens? Of course. Will I try to please everyone all the time? No. Some critical things we need to do will indeed be unpopular.
• True -- user talk pages are not great for discussion. This use case may actually be good for Flow. I might try on mine it to test :)
• I JethroBT, thank you for pointing out that some community members want to help newcomers. This is critical to our long-term health. As Risker said, as humans we train ourselves to do things a certain way. What we see is that people that reach us today are trained to use the web differently than we did just a few years ago. And much differently than on-wiki user experience allows. We need to do a better job explaining it and it takes time. We have been building out the UX research team that is doing those studies. But it would really help if more people kept this fact in-mind and helped remind others. Risker's ad-hock research is incredible, I would encourage all of you to simply observe how the next generation is using the internet.

This is it for now. Thank you all again. LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 17:46, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Lila, I did not portray popularity as an end in itself. I portrayed it as a tool, a means to an end. I described what you could have used it for. Unpopularity may be a symptom of deeper problems; and at some level of disapproval, unpopularity can itself become a serious obstacle to other goals.

This seems closely allied with remarks being made elsewhere here about who employs whom. If the purpose of the Foundation is to promote the Foundation's mission, it doesn't matter who employs whom. Financially, yes, the Board of Trustees is responsible for taking actions that will persuade people to donate money to the Foundation, which is not an "employment" relationship in either direction; but if the Trustees are really concerned with promoting the mission, all of the core means to that end are provided by volunteers donating labor (in fact, mainly skilled labor), not money, and a sufficient level of unpopularity of the Foundation has a very real negative impact on the mission. --Pi zero (talk) 18:53, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Honestly I think this disagreement is superficial. At these levels reporting structures matter little. The truth is our volunteers are what makes us who we are and are the most important part of our story. My job is to make sure we do the work you need to be more productive and satisfied doing things you do for free -- which is truly incredible. But like with any project of this size, It is also my job to look forward and ensure that new volunteers can join it and learn it given their current backgrounds (which are notably different from those that came 15 years before them). It is a lot to balance and I know this is not an easy task. LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 01:15, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Caveat. There is a basic difficulty with the Foundation wanting to weigh the interests of existing contributors against what the Foundation supposes are the needs of future contributors. It's easy for the Foundation to invent a theory of the needs of future contributors, convince itself of this theory by backing it up with statistics (as in, "lies, damn lies, and statistics"), and then feel virtuous about trading off the actual needs of existing contributors against these fictional needs of future contributors. I'll be very frank. Existing contributors —who undoubtedly share the Foundation's concern for future contributors— are more qualified than the Foundation is to judge what the needs of future contributors are. The design of VisualEditor indicates to me deep misapprehension about which parts of wiki contribution are actually not dependent on the user's hardware platform. --Pi zero (talk) 06:34, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

@Pi zero: Existing contributors —who undoubtedly share the Foundation's concern for future contributors— are more qualified than the Foundation is to judge what the needs of future contributors are. I don't know about that. I think the notifications system, for example, has worked generally well and is a useful tool for newer editors who stick around, and it was based on a sound rationale. Outside WMF-funded programs like IEG grants, there don't seem to be many projects existing contributors are developing to address the needs of future contributors. I agree that existing contributors can have experential knowledge that can make for great ideas in this domain, though. Perhaps I am not looking in the right places, but as I look over the archives of places like en.wiki's Village Pump for proposals, I generally only see ideas that serve the needs of existing editors, like about how RfA works or a new editing permission. Even when ideas for future contributors come up, there is scarce participation. Ideas for existing editors are still important, of course, but the absence of ideas aimed at future contributors suggests to me an implicit belief that there is nothing wrong about the way things are with respect to the needs of future / newer contributors. I'm not saying I agree all WMF judgments and decisions about what future editors need, but I don't see a lot of work being done on that front by existing editors. I JethroBT (talk) 09:55, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps you're looking in the wrong places; in my experience it's all the opposite. --Nemo 13:25, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, if you want to point me to those places, please do. I JethroBT (talk) 15:02, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I might just interpolate the remark, here, that I did not claim, and would not expect, that all wikimedians would automatically agree on all these issues; I maintain, however, that they're more qualified for the discussion than is the Foundation. --Pi zero (talk) 23:34, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Request for updates

A while ago, Lila, you said that an internal review over Flow would be held at the WMF. Has this been held, and if so, what were the outcomes? BethNaught (talk) 19:36, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

For information: It was promised here. And I asked without any real answer here as well. ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 20:03, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi Beth -- thank you for the prompt. We just held our first session right before the holidays. We are still working on the plan of action. But I can tell you in interim my thoughts, in no specific order:

1. Talk pages serve MANY diverse use cases; they have much of the power of a programing language. A single prescriptive/pre-configured tool such as Flow cannot (and probably should not) address them all.
2. Flow is a communication tool similar to many available on the web and for many sites would be great. It does not today address collaboration and complex wiki-usecases. As such it is not ready for "prime time" for us.
3. Flow in the current form is not a replacement for the current Talk pages. If I were to draw a venn diagram of Flow vs. Talk vs. Talk Prime (something super-user would seem to want Talk to become), the overlap would be very modest.
4. It is not clear if Flow could ever be/become a replacement for Talk in its current concept. We are investigating if this paradigm is too fundamentally different, or if we need different tools for different jobs. Flow may be useful as just a communication tool. This is to be validated. The team is doing some prototype testing.
5. Beginner users do need simpler on-boarding process. We need to solve for this on-ramp experience (both to teach new wikipedians and to no burden experienced ones). But we also need to keep in mind our super-editors that know and understand the powerful Talk system. We need to find a way to not break the experience for the super-editors while building a simpler one for newcomers.
6. Finally and most importantly we need to further improve how we conceptualize and build complex features like this one. More early validation and understanding our audience is a must.

Sorry this is not a "final" assessment. But I would be curious to hear your reactions. Thanks. LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 23:10, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

"Talk pages serve MANY diverse use cases; they have much of the power of a programing language." — Bravo. Glad to hear people are thinking in those terms. --Pi zero (talk) 00:10, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks very much for your response here, Lila; it's very helpful, and brings a fresh perspective. Risker (talk) 15:37, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks, Lila.

• I certainly agree that Flow cannot replace all of the use cases of talk pages. I recall there was once talk of building a workflow language for Flow where users could program specific use cases, although now production of basic features (TOCs, well-logged deletion etc.) appears to be slower going than expected, that's a very long way off if it ever happens. Whether it would handle all the use cases we would need anyway is still up in the air.
• I think we agree there is tension between optimising discussion for experienced users and newbies. I would argue that wikitext talk pages are not genuinely hard to learn how to use, but when a newbie is confronted with them cold, it's still offputting, which means I agree that Flow, or something similar, could serve a legitimate purpose. This would be in places with simple workflows, like enwiki's Teahouse or Help Desk. But I question whether, given the immense effort it would take, it is worth attempting to adapt Flow to, say, the Village Pumps or the Administrators' Noticeboard, given that doing so would inevitably disrupt well-established complex workflows.
• You're right, WMF-community relations need improving. What the WMF needs to do is to find ways of reaching out to all users, not just those who watch Phabricator, MediawikiWiki or community spaces like w:en:WP:VPT. Using watchlist site notices to ask for responses to surveys or RFCs on new or proposed software would be a good idea in my opinion. Currently that only happens if local users are canvassing for a particular cause.
• Re "Talk Prime": there are some things that Flow might do that wikitext can't at the moment: live updates to prevent edit conflicts, automatic archiving, and non-breaking section links. But the last two things are already possible, with the help of bots; perhaps the WMF could fork the code and integrate it into MediaWiki? I think there's an assumption that to fix problems, you have to build revolutionary new software, when that's not the case.

Basically, thanks for keeping an open mind on these issues. Please keep us updated as the situation progresses! BethNaught (talk) 16:09, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for this update, Lila. Such recognition from an official WMF position that Talk pages are pieces of software with complex purposes, that serve for more than discussion, is something that several people interested in Flow have been requesting for a long time, and as such it's very welcome. I'm glad that you've stressed the importance of a focus on early understanding and validation as the basis for conceptualizing complex features. Diego Moya (talk) 14:26, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Lila, that's really interesting. As I think that the German-language community will also be interested in this update, I have posted a short summary and pointer to your post at German WP's Kurier page (right column, headline "Zum Stand von Flow"). Gestumblindi (talk) 23:46, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

+1. Evolved to a harsh critic of the WMF because of the actions last year, I must admit, that I am surprised and pleased by some of the statements Lila made in the last days regarding Flow and regarding the value of the editors in #Some thoughts here. It seems finally someone is listening to the editors and trying to understand their objections, which makes me slightly optimistic and hopeful for further steps the future (while I still think, the disabling of Superprotect is needed to regain the lost trust). --Magiers (talk) 11:16, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Communication and Conway's law

Lila, I'd really like to hear your thoughts on how all this emphasis on "communication" relates to the difficulty I was raising earlier re the structure of the Foundation. Briefly: the Foundation is a centralized organization that does things top-down, and creates top-down software initiatives; wikis inherently grow from the bottom up; and by Conway's law, software created by a top-down organization will not be suitable for a bottom-up wiki. Improving communication sounds like a good thing, but it's not obvious that something called "improving communication" is going to mitigate this deep structural problem. Your thoughts? --Pi zero (talk) 16:47, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

I think you have two points here that I don't want to conflate. Improving communication is actually about communicating better: so people can find information we are putting out, it is relevant and timely, etc. Your point about distributed software development is something we are discussing internally. I think it is critical to the project for many reasons, but it needs to be better supported and coordinated (Wikidata is a great example, but is not integrated today). So short version: I think we are in agreement that we should improve how we create software, including enabling more of it to come from the communities (and providing better services and tools for it). LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 17:06, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Interesting to hear you say that about Wikidata. I'm not overwhelmingly enthused about Wikidata, myself. Its main content doesn't share the wiki markup format, which one would expect to cause an impedence mismatch, and its use as a centralized facility for interwiki links diminishes local control by individual projects. I'm aware there are users who are quite enthusiastic about it, which is refreshing to see, and I don't have the sort of strongly negative feelings about it that I have about some other recent initiatives; but I do remain skeptical. --Pi zero (talk) 00:21, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Okay, I'll amend that. As Wikidata is gradually taking over responsibility for Wikinews interwikis, I'm learning more about it, and the more I learn, the more I disapprove of its strategic design. The technical problem of making interwikis simpler and more reliable to maintain could have been solved in some way that retained local control, and should have been; placing control in a centralized site where individuals on the local projects have less direct access to it and far less control over it is a profoundly bad idea, which damages the local projects. The technical problem could have been solved in some way that was based on wiki markup, and should have been; not basing it on wiki markup vastly reduces the versatility of the interface, and tends to prevent wiki contributors from editing Wikidata, further isolating control of interwikis away from the local communities who have the most knowledge of what is appropriate.

I can't help seeing this as akin to the effort the Foundation is putting into VisualEditor, whose stated purpose is to prevent users from learning wiki markup — knowingly preventing users from becoming more expert. (My guess is that the Foundation leadership have truly, sincerely failed to understand the importance of expertise in a healthy wiki community.) The editing interface could have been made awesome with probably no more (one suspects, less) technical effort, without isolating users from wiki markup. Isolating them from wiki markup is like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. --Pi zero (talk) 00:59, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Here's a simple way of putting (some of) it: centralizing interwiki maintenance minimizes flexibility for local idiosyncracies while maximizing the local damage done by inflexibilities. While not using wiki markup also minimizes flexibility, and maximizes software maintenance cost and software instability since it requires customized software for everything. The primary victims are local projects that don't conform to the Wikipedian model based on which Wikidata was evidently planned. (One of these days I should try to explain why the Foundation has a vested pratical interest in giving the local communities maximal autonomy, since too often it's framed in terms of some sort of "moral right".) --Pi zero (talk) 17:45, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

So, instead of working with the communities and communicating with them, the next dictatorial enterprise was implemented without any discussion, with as much as possible opacity, without reasoning, just because you can. So with one stroke you undid all small trust you regained by beginning to communicate with the communities. Obviously it was all just pretence, you're not interested in real communication, just about minor superficial things, like it was done with MV, and not the basic decisions of whether to do it at all.

Please point me to the extensive discussions on diverse Wikis about this extreme measure, as without extensive, open discussions such things like the global ban are an absolute no-go, they are another explicit "Fuck-off you rabble" towards the communities, like superputch before. --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 13:01, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

I continue to offer rational remarks and advice here because I feel it's worthwhile to keep a communication channel open. Giving Lila, and the Foundation, a chance to hear rational voices not limited to their own closed group; and giving them graceful options. I'm not doing it because I naively assume Lila cares what we think. I'm familiar with various ways that officials can distract, or flat-out lie to, the public to keep the public off their backs while they pursue their own arbitrary agenda; objectively, I acknowledge the possibility Lila was hired to act as a hatchet man to facilitate the process of imposing brutal changes (in fact, there's considerable evidence to support that theory; hence the need for deeds rather than words to redress some of the damage they've done to their volunteer support base). --Pi zero (talk) 17:07, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Nomark: Dinasaur and a Mocking Bird

Hi You and Us,

Lila, thanks. But the process you have announced in Working Together has not been so far an invitation to the international Communtiny of Individual Volunteers (iCIV) to particate. Imagine a Nomark: WMF und WMM are for historical sakes obliged to promote free knowledge and successors. I set a nomark to your posting. This is not friendly but it expresses my interests. I want you to recognize my interests as I will recognized yours. Lila, let´s try to cooperate. What is the difference of a Dinasaur and a Mocking Bird? --Edward Steintain (talk) 20:39, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi Edward -- I think there are a lot of good thoughts in your statements. What we need to come out of this with is a structured and repeatable approach: how do we gain initial understanding of what communities need, how do we prioritize, how many people need to participate, how do we engage internationally/multi-lingually... etc. We need to think about the "workflow". I think our objectives are the same: free knowledge. We do need to agree on what and who make it up. Happy to collaborate and discuss further (things get lost on this page, so email or a separate space may be best). LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 21:03, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Dear Lila, I am convinced that WMF has been working very hard since the publication of working together. It is a matter of the difference of a dinasaur and a mockingbird. To this question you could recieve multiple answers. Dinasaur and mockingbird are members of one creation with differrent attributions. Wikipedia is moving a huge mass of knowlegde and is the speaker of many voices. Dinasaur and mockingbird try to convince the other one: Be tolerant to me!

This shows the interests of participants in Wikipedia – they are multiple and very individial as well as the interpretation of the wiki-idea itself. How could WMF and WMM be tolerant? And after deciding to apply tolarance a new level of cooperation can delelope. There is a simple rule: I weigh my benefits and cost. If I do benefit I will cooperate, if I loose I do not. (A nomark indicates the possibillity of shunning: DON'T PLAY – less clicks on Wikipedia)

I suggest that WMF shall ask WMM which values the contributors want personally to be developed and supported on-wiki. This clarification must come first before any decission on working together is made. It is the diversity of a dinasaur and a mockkingbird to be matched. --Edward Steintain (talk) 19:54, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Edward, above -- do you mean values or features? And what is your take? LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 23:14, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

I mean values (with actually felt details and I do not have any reason to doubt that they are true) which might change after five or ten years (as the history of Wikipedia shows). --Edward Steintain (talk) 18:03, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

We shall overcome one day. --Edward Steintain (talk) 20:51, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

„Some day in January“ has passed as annouced by Lila to deliever a new approach of working together, she promissed. Lila did not say which year. --Edward Steintain (talk) 19:43, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

„Mayday, Nomark, Nomark! Mocking Bird to Dinasaur Control! How do you read me? Roger“. – Edward Steintain (talk) 20:45, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

Your absence is noticed

I realise I'm probably one of six people outside of the WMF staff who ever bothers to read all those quarterly reports (and yes, I do read all of them). Your absence in several of the recent series of meetings (mostly on the technical side of the house) is noticeable, based on the minutes themselves. I know you're undoubtedly busy on a large number of other things, but I hope you'll be popping in to a few more of these in the future. Risker (talk) 01:18, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

There are 21 reviews across the org with me attending most (especially those that I consider require my direct attention and direction). The tech reviews are unnecessarily fine-grained today (this is being addressed as we streamline what we are working on) and can be done by our VPE/VPP at those levels. I have been spending much more time on our operations, objectives and strategy, so that in fact, those reviews can be more impactful. You will see our new quarterly report in a couple of weeks. LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 07:08, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Visual Editor Built-out/Roll-out planning -- engage now to define deployment criteria

From Damon:

Dear Wikimedians,

We are changing our engineering processes to improve how we engage with you -- our valued contributors and editors -- around software development.

We are beginning with the collaborative buildout and deployment of VisualEditor. We are moving community engagement processes and product decisions into earlier stages of development, and making them iterative. In a perfect world this process would start prior to feature development, but in this case VisualEditor is already in-flight, so your participation now is critical. With your participation, we can work together to ensure this new process works.

In this new process, we commit to:

1. Collectively identify success criteria for each target audience, from new editors (simple feature set) to expert editors (complex feature set).
2. Ensure success criteria represents the quantified and qualified goals. The feature will only be shipped when the success criteria is met.
3. Enable the feature for only portions of specific audiences that would best benefit (a process known as “incremental roll-out”) at a time.
4. Triage and prioritize all bugs and feature requests on a weekly basis to ensure they are addressed in a timely fashion. Publicly post responses, assessment, and target implementations. This will replace the RFP process and ensure we are tracking on all requested features efficiently.

How you can engage:

1. Report bugs or enhancement requests in Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/visualeditor/
2. Join any of the weekly triage meetings to nominate a release blocker. Please see the instructions at: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:VisualEditor/Portal
3. Participate in development. You can find the team on IRC in the #mediawiki-visualeditor channel on irc.freenode.net.

We are excited to get this long-standing feature to the level of quality and success we all want and need. It is a collective effort. You are not only a stakeholder, but an active contributor in this work. We want to all to be proud of the outcome. Please participate now.

All my best,

Damon Sicore, VP of Engineering, Wikimedia Foundation

WMF (Wikimedia Foundation) asks for the support of WMM (Wikimedia Movement) congregated by the international Community of Individual Volunteers (iCIV). Good – keep on going with shared interests called structured cooperation! --Edward Steintain (talk) 22:30, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Wifione arbitration case and enforcement of the WMF's terms of use regarding undisclosed paid editing

See this discussion on the proposed decision talk page for the recently closed IIPM (Indian Institute of Planning and Management)/Wifione arbitration case, as a result of which a longstanding Wikipedia administrator has been site-banned:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Wifione/Proposed_decision#No_Wikipedia_Policy_on_Paid_Editing.3F

As transpires in the discussion, the consensus position of the English Wikipedia's arbitration committee is that it has no mandate to enforce the Terms of Use regarding undisclosed paid editing. This raises the question who is responsible for enforcing them, given how widespread non-compliance is, and given the potential for harm especially in those parts of the world where hundreds of millions of subscribers have free access to Wikipedia via Wikipedia Zero, while in effect being denied access to alternative sources of information.

Thoughts? Andreas JN466 14:03, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

The effects of WMF intervention

Lila, you may find this excerpt of interest, from a remark I made recently on en.wp (yonder), as it concerns the way actions by the WMF affect the wikis.

One problem I see has to do with the effect of WMF intervention on the wikis. All volunteer projects are fueled by idealism; for wikimedian projects, part of this idealism is a belief that knowledge should come from the people. The Foundation may think volunteers are doing the work for them, but we're not doing it for them. In fact, as the Foundation tries to drum up volunteer support for the projects, they are making the central Foundation more visible, and that directly undermines the people-driven-knowledge idealism that makes the projects work. So the more the Foundation tries to "help", the more they damage what they're trying to nurture. There are various standard excuses for the decline of Wikipedia, but it's also true that the decline started when the Foundation kicked into a higher gear, with a new board chair and a new position called Executive Director.

--Pi zero (talk) 01:31, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

What are your people doing?

The article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_grantmaking

The survey the WMF commissioned http://www.thelafayettepractice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Lafayette-Report.pdf

Discussion http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=6068 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Disclosure_issue

This looks very bad. Thoughts? Heads up purple girl (talk) 16:33, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

The 2014 survey was not commissioned by the WMF as far as I can see (though it was linked here on Meta on 22 July 2014 by a WMF employee). Andreas JN466 20:05, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Update: Unanimous snowball delete in under 24 hours. Alsee (talk) 17:07, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

User profiles for Mobiles

Hi Lila! Today, I discovered for the first time a Special Page "user profile" at deWP. It is, sadly, not listed at de:Special:SpecialPages so that I do not know if the same exists The feature seems to exist at all Wikimedia projects (see i.e. here and at Commons). This "user profile" shows your last edit in the project including an article's first image, your last upload at Wikimedia Commons, the last "Thank you" to that user, his or her amount of uploads at Commons, the amount of edits in the particular project. The results of such a "profile" can be very puzzling and even somehow misleading like in this example (derived from de:Spezial:Benutzerprofil/Achim_Raschka). In a discussion at the German Signpost equivalent "Kurier", we wonder if we could deactivate these profiles if the communty would decide to do so? Whom would we have to address? Thanks for your time and consideration. --Martina Nolte (talk) 19:49, 24 February 2015 (UTC)/21:38, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

NSFW images used as example
Example (1) of a user profile Example (2) of a user profile

Hey Lila. I want to keep myself short, but still it's some more words I want to speak out related to the "user profile" issue pointed out by Martina in particular and based on that some more general words on the WMF's software development process.

There are very many software requests by the authors in the German Wikipedia who contribute to our encyclopedia project by high-quantity and high-quality edits. Some of these requests have been open for round about ten years now, are still up-to-date (i.e. not yet even planned to be realized) and would be extremly helpful for editing Wikipedia articles -- actually, surprisingly, unbelievably, this is some daily business of few leftover Wikipedia authors!

Why I am telling this? Because there are new features (...) being set live to the Wikipedia regularly that have not been requested, not been tested by the community and are not at all helpful to editing or using Wikipedia -- for neither read-only users nor editing authors. This, until here, I consider the business of WMF to decide whether these software features are supposed to be developed or if the WMF rather wants to focus on actual-helpful tools for readers, authors or photographers. However, much too often there are tools I do not only consider senseless but furthermore harmful. The "userprofile" page is one of those. Not only that users have (the opportunity of creating) a user page to tell exactly as much about themselves as they want to (this is the senseless part of the feature), but also it sets the users in a context (pictures / photos included) they not at all want to be set in. I added two examples (anonymized by me, the original screenshots of course contain the usernames), depicting pictures of a "bleached butthole" or an "Uncircumcised and circumcised penis" respectively (both original photo titles) -- because the users did minor edits in the related articles. Both users contribute with their real names; this is the harmful part of the tool. I hardly believe any user wants his real name being illustrated with a butthole or penis. However, it might make users leave the projects when they are scored off like this. // In a nutshell my appeal to you: Please, Lila, please start a process of working out how new software extensions can be tested and "approved" by the communities before setting them live without giving any notice to the communities. The WMF needs to understand that at least in certain aspects WMF and community have to work together. Instead, people feel this is another example how little the WMF cares about the editors, pushing on processes that probably want to make Wikipedia more social-network-like -- in doubt at the editors' cost which is nothing but sad. Thanks for reading, kind regards from Germany, Yellowcard (talk) 21:16, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

@Jalexander-WMF: So you agree with us that this "feature" is not a good one, as it's responsible for this pictures in so-called "profiles" that are anything but profiles. Or why did you hide this screenshots of the profiles, if this is OK. If the profiles are fine, there would be nothing to hide. ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 21:47, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

@Sänger S.G: I completely agree that results like that are a problem, I am just not able to respond about the feature fully and so am poking the people who can. While I agree that those are problematic I didn't want to cause more issues forcing anyone who came to this page to see them without warning too. Jalexander--WMF 21:57, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

• Hi all, this is an easy fix. We'll remove images from the last edited field in the profile (ticket). It's unfortunate, since 99% of the time those are a nice visual indication of a user's last edit. But we certainly don't want active vandalism patrollers to be associated with inappropriate images just because those pages are so often vandalized. Thanks to Jalexander-WMF for clarifying the issue for me :) Cheers, Maryana (WMF) (talk) 22:24, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I still fail to see any use in this totally misnomed "profile", that has nothing to do with a profile. I don't know the reason why anyone created this futile thingy, I can't comprehend any, but absolutely nothing would be missing if it would be ditched completely. I has no use at all, so there's no need to tweak it. ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 22:33, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Maryana, thank you for taking care of the most obvious problem with those user profiles. Maybe you can also answer my question? It was: Could we deactivate these profiles if the project communty would decide to do so? If so, whom would we have to address? Thank you. --Martina Nolte (talk) 23:07, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Maybe even more important, Maryana, why are the users not asked if this could be a useful feature before putting effort on it? I certainly didn't notice any outreach to de:wiki what is one of the most active projects. --Julius1990 (talk) 00:31, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Maryana, please carefully note that absolutely no one requested that the pictures be removed from the profile page. The dick-pics aren't the problem. The entire page is the problem. The question that was asked was: If the Community reaches a formal decision that the entire page should be removed, CAN we get the entire page removed? And if so, who do we talk to to get it done? We don't think we should be posting this stuff on the personal talk page of the Executive Director. Alsee (talk) 19:11, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

The Wikimedia Foundation mobile team inserted Special:UserProfile into the MobileFrontend extension because there was and is absolutely no consensus to implement such a feature in MediaWiki core or even in a separate extension. If a new extension had been proposed for deployment to Wikimedia wikis or this feature had been proposed for MediaWiki core, it would have appropriately received sufficient scrutiny and would have never been deployed to the wikis in its current state.

If we remove images from Special:UserProfile, the page becomes even more useless. As I suggested at phabricator:T90632, we should probably just kill the page altogether rather than making a bad product worse. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:45, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Do I get this right: They implemented it in a more hidden part of the wikiverse, because they feared the communities on this? Why are they so community-averse? If such stuff is not community-vetted, it's illegitimate. Not asking the communities about such stuff shows a hige amount of disrespect towards the core of the wikiverse, the community. ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 05:46, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

As far as I see those profiles show the users in a certain way, and just because it is for Mobile you didn't see the necessity to ask us - the users that you presented with it? Really unbelievable ways of thinking exist in the foundation. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't a hopeless case in the end. --Julius1990 (talk) 07:47, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Apparently, the profile assumes that a Commons user and a Wikipedia user are the same person if they use the same user name. Where this is not the case (i.e. in cases where a Commons user has the same account name on Commons as a Wikipedia user has on a Wikipedia project), it mixes data from different contributors, ascribing the Commons upload to the Wikipedia user. Andreas JN466 08:34, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

After the SUL-Finalization (which is due "real soon now") that should not be a problem anymore … it shouldn’t be possible anymore that two accounts with the exact same username on different projects belong to different people … or am I missing something here? Troubled @sset   ^{Work  •  Talk  •  Mail}   09:24, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Dear Lila, the main problem, besides NSFW images, is that the user does not have control over the content of Special:UserProfile. And every link to the normal user page in MobileFrontend is replaced with Special:UserProfile. *My* user page is de:Benutzer:Raymond and not https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial:Benutzerprofil/Raymond . Maybe the userprofile was born because a lot of normal user pages look really weird on mobile? My one too: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Raymond . I suggest to create a possibilty where users can style their user page mobile friendly. Raymond (talk) 14:18, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

@Maryana (WMF): would you please comment if that is correct (user cannot control visibility of profile)? If so this needs to get fixed.

I see two issues at hand: user requests on current features not being addressed effectively. UP feature requirements not clear/potentially problematic.

1. WMF has one of our 2015 goals to have dedicated resources to working on the bug/feature backlog coming directly from the communities' requests (we don't yet have the prioritization process in place, but that will need to be a part of it).
2. UP feature is designed for building mobile-friendly profiles. As we continue to work on mobile a simple user page is a basic building block for that. LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 22:25, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

LilaTretikov, this feature was built and went live over a year ago, while I was not working with the mobile team, but I'll do my best to answer these questions:

User requirements: I believe they were gathered by the PM and designer with input from the community, onwiki. mw:Structured profiles has more info and documentation.

Visibility: The profile displays information that is public (edits, uploads). The visibility of this information cannot be changed because it is public by design on all wikis. The only exception is the "last thanked by," which is not displayed elsewhere onwiki.

AFAIK, the thinking at the time was for this profile to be used in combination with the watchlist to quickly get a snapshot of a user's recent activity for vandal-fighting purposes. It was a pretty bare-bones MVP and is very much open to being revisited. HTH, Maryana (WMF) (talk) 00:59, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Actually it was part of designers' abandoned plan of "humanizing" WP. Very abandoned. Max Semenik (talk) 01:02, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

MVP? -Pete F (talk) 01:07, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry Maryana (WMF), but the displayed information is public, but still noone seems to have asked us contributers if we wish this form of presentation (what would occur to me as the most basic respect for the volunters!). Since the beginning of all, we were allowed to decide on our own how we present ourselves. Who gave anyone at the WMF the mandate to change this pattern? Seriously, you sit in the ivory tower and have lost us completly out of sight. If you want better profiles for mobile then you can offer a settings menu, where the user can control which information gets displayed or help by creating a customed page that fits mobile requirements, but you can't simply set up profile pages, no matter if the data is publically accesible. This is not how you work for communities like those we have here ... --Julius1990 (talk) 08:40, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Mmh, I am not really convinced or even nearly happy with this ... As you can see, one of the snapshots in the hodden part of this discussion was taken from my user profile - it was the last edit on "Human Penis" (with picture) in combination with an upload of a picture from a German festival - slightly after that I loaded "Stolpersteine" (memorials for killed jews in the WWII in Germany) to the commons and the combination of penis / Stolperstein was even worse. At this minute the profile shows my last edit in Mosul museum again with a band picture I uploaded on commons - none of those article/picture combinations is typical for my work in the German Wikipedia and if I would be asked I would never chosse this combination to show my profile to the public and interested peaople. As you also can see in the profile, I did nearly 100.000 edits in the Wikipedia and uploaded a very high number of pictures to commons - If I hat to choose how to present myself it would be nothing with numbers - 100.000 edits do not count for me as much as the real work on quality I did over the last 11 years in writing articles with more than 100 selected as good or featured in the German Wikipedia; that would be the topic I would choose to present myself to the public, that's what I am working for to rise the quality of the Wikipedia not the quantity of edits. Why is there no option to choose what will be shown to mobile users - and even worse: Why was there never a question to myself or even a message that this profile exist - to be honest I did not know about that befor it came to the discussion on it. Those are the questions I have on this tool - for me in the moment it is more a bug than a feature, sorry. -- Achim Raschka (talk) 14:41, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer, Lila. My question is yet unanswered: Is a single project allowed to decide about deactivating this feature "user profile"? Whom would we have to contact after a community consent? (I do not want to start a community poll without knowing if that could actually lead us to anything.)
I agree to Achim. Same concerns here. My "profile" actually shows an upload at Commons taken by someone else. Before that, I overwrote someone else's image of week quality by a (sligtly) better version; this image did also not nearly represent my photography contributed to Wikimedia projects. As the "profile" shows minor changes in articles it also does not reflect my main article contributions. Thus, this "profile" is pretty misleading. Depending on where and what I edited the last time, it does not even serve as a "looks nice gimmick". I personally would like to see this feature deactivated - better yesterday than tomorrow - and thus am planning to start a community poll at deWP on this. But first of all, I need to know if WMF would be willing, and technically able, to deactivate the feature for a single community.
@Maryana (WMF): You wrote "... for vandal-fighting purposes" - This kind of profile is quite useless for vandalism patrollers. They use special scripts to immediately see recent changes as diffs. If WMF would like to give them enhanced tools (which would probably be very welcomed), you would better ask them directly and specifically about their workflows and needs. --Martina Nolte (talk) 17:46, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Another opinion from dewiki: As a regular mobile frontend user I’ve taken notice of this feature several months ago, and I find it very useful as a “replacement” of user pages on mobile devices. User pages can be very large (you don’t know in advance of loading it) or non-existent and additionally most of the time they aren’t even displayed properly on small devices. However, as the others outlined above, there are basically two serious issues:

1. The naming. The feature is called “Special:UserProfile”, although it isn’t a typical user profile as we are used to know them from other online services. A simple renaming procedure could solve that problem. It would be great if the primary purpose of this feature (usage on mobile view) is reflected in a new name to avoid confusion.
2. The content it shows. I’ve seen a lot of these pages in the past months, but I wasn’t aware of the fact that penises and NSFW stuff could appear there. Please review, which information is useful and required on this page. Most of the stuff that is displayed at the moment is indeed useful: XYZ is a user for 2 years, has made 7k edits, has made the last edit 3 hrs ago, is member of the groups “editor, …”, thanked by User:ABC, add links to user page, user talk page, and contributions. Stuff like this. However, inclusion of detailed information about recently edited pages and new files is not at all important for the feature and very often misleading, so please consider removing it. If the page should be “sexy” (i. e. containing images) then invent a way to pick one or several images from the user page, possibly as an opt-in feature.

In conclusion: in my opinion this is indeed a neat feature for mobile usage in general, but it is seriously flawed at the moment and should be improved. —MisterSynergy (talk) 18:12, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

This mobile "user profile" shows again two key problems of nearly all software developments in the last years:

• It shows no clue about the every day working process in the projects. Obviously someone was thinking "Wouldn't it be nice, if someone, who edits a Kitty article gets a Kitty pic in his profile." Problem is: most user don't work on Kitty articles, they work on the whole range of possible topics, of which some may be totally controversial. In these pages there is no "nice Kitty pic", but maybe a picture of Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein. Not quite what I wish to represent me on my profile. Furthermore the topic of the last edit says nothing about all people, who make minor corrections, who control the recent changes or revert vandalism. If I know, a picture of every article I edit, is shown in my profile, I will avoid from now on all articles with controversial topics and only revert vandalism in Kitty articles.
• Second, and this is even worse, it shows again no interest in the communities at all. Just because You can, You decide how everyone will be presented. You have not asked for the people's opinion, You have not even informed them. The individualization of a user profile is one of the most common ways, to make a user feel "at home" in a project. To take this individualization away, because WMF "knows better", sends a sign, that volunteers shall not feel at home in the projects. --Magiers (talk) 18:15, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

There is still no answer to where this community "feature" was discussed and vetted by the communities. Something like a user profile has to be developed with the communities, a development without extensive discussions within the communities must be impossible. It as well must be very easy for the developers of this "feature" to point to this discussions, as they have to have them somewhere in their posting logs.

In my first ticket I asked the following questions:

• Why was this invented?
• Who asked for it?
• Where was it discussed?
• Why is it named UserProfile?
• What's the official purpose of this?

Still nobody answered any of them. I think this shows quite a lot of disregard to the communities.

BTW: I had to file the ticked twice, as the WMFers didn't like colourful language in their hiding place phabricator, the new one is this one

Ah, and I got my account disabled because I dared to voice my opinion there, but as those responsible for this "feature" didn't give any other place in some wiki (what they had to know off-hand where they anyhow interested in the communities), of course I used the place I know and was in. I'll probably ask some time in the future to re-enable it, but not yet. I don't think this here is the right place for such discussions, but as long as the WMF only talks about community inclusion, but doesn't act accordingly, we probably have to write here instead of the proper place. ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 19:24, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

User:Sänger S.G, please calm down. I’m not surprised that WMF officials aren’t willing to “discuss” with us, if we show up as the dewiki crowd on maximum attack mode. Offer suggestions for improvements instead of just dropping crude and demanding complaints here (or at phabricator).

User:Maryana (WMF) has already outlined the purpose of this feature earlier in this section. In spite of her being slightly unsure about details, her answer is in fact sufficiently substantial to understand the general intention behind Special:UserProfile. As an actual mobile interface editor I can confirm that the page is indeed useful and I would strongly endorse its availability in future (with improvements, e. g. as suggested above by myself). Given the fact that User:Maryana (WMF) even stated Special:UserProfile to be “a pretty bare-bones MVP and … very much open to being revisited” (MVP=minimum viable product), it seems as if WMF considers it to be neither perfect nor complete. Thus, they will probably be happy about incoming suggestions for improvements. (What’s the correct place for those, btw? phabricator?)

In general I don’t understand why WMF should ask the communities about the introduction of quasi-beta features like this one. Fortunately, they are adding mobile functionality at the moment, which is absolutely essential in future. Since Mediawiki is a very complex piece of software, certain things need to be simplified and Special:UserProfile is a result of that. I am really happy that new features are released to the communities early in a beta-like state, because it allows user feedback and therefore prevents the foundation to develop something useless. Regards, —MisterSynergy (talk) 22:06, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

A feature called "UserProfile" is something about the personal representation of users in the community, and as such has to be discussed by those, who are ultimately responsible for this: the communities. I agree, that the current user profiles, i.e. the user pages, are sometimes a bit too mobile-unfriendly, and something leaner should be developed with the communities. So far there was no hint whatsoever about any user/editor involvement at all (I don't blame Maryana (WMF) for not knowing this off-hand (I only blame her for using in-speach like MVP without explanation, thanks for resolving that), as it seems to have been developed before her tenure, but somebody over in Frisco has to have some recollection about this "feature").

Regarding "maximum attack mode" of deWP: the maximum attack was started by the WMF with the implementation of SuperPutsch explicitly against deWP, to make those unwashed masses kowtow towards their highnesses in Frisco. They declared an open war against deWP and up to now never apologized for this. As long as they don't apologize, why should we be willing to work calmly for them? They are supposed to work for us. --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 22:36, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

MisterSynergy, asking before means reducing complaints after. And when we see the examples, no wonder why the foundations gets critizied. And after all what happend, there is also no AGF anymore. The foundation wants to get better, then they need to put the users in the center of everything, and not put own ideas infront which mistakes everyone could have point out with some little thinking. While the WMF seems to lack this "expertise". --Julius1990 (talk) 23:01, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Too sad that some colllegues use this thread to express, and argue about, their personal judgements. I would like to stay focussed on my two questions: Can a single project decide to deactivate these profiles? If so, whom would we have to address? --Martina Nolte (talk) 14:50, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, Martina, to have disgressed. I don't like to discuss such stuff here (or @Jimbo in enWP, another user talk page abused for meta-talk), as there has to be some proper place. Probably the place xou asked for, as the "whom" from your question should not be a single person. ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 18:09, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

If I get this right, and gerrit is definitely something far too nerdy for my programming skills, there is a patch in the making about this. Looks at first sight at the explanation like a good intermediate solution, but again no place for real discussions mentioned. ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 14:24, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Someone should take the above comment from Julius1990 -- asking before means reducing complaints after -- and engrave it on a huge brass plaque to be posted above the entrance door to WMF, where they will see it every day as they come and go. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:41, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello everyone! A better place to discuss this issue is the page where it started here. We agree that further research needs to be done in order to define how a userpage on mobile can best support user engagement on mobile devices. Constructive feedback on how you used the feature, and suggestions on how it could be adjusted to be more engaging, are evry helpful :). Thanks @MisterSynergy: for your input, and rest assured that communication is key. Happy to discuss useful ideas that can help enhance it. Thanks!--Melamrawy (WMF) (talk) 13:00, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

I still don't see the links to the dozens of discussions in the different community, that's just some techno-lingo ingroup non-valid discussion for something called "profile", thus something only the communities have a say in. Only 40 edits at all in that discussion, the last one (before mine from last month) from 2013, that has no validity at all for something called profile. ♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 19:05, 12 March 2015 (UTC)