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I feel like this is some dystopian alternate reality post. It took 4 years to release a hover popup! Take that in for a second. And the post seems extremely pro

I feel like this is some dystopian alternate reality post. It took 4 years to release a hover popup! Take that in for a second. And the post seems extremely proud, and self-congratulatory about it. From the post: > Our initial version wasn’t good enough. Our community asked us not to go ahead with it. We answered by listening to them and making it better. This was 2 years ago, and read the comments on the 39 votes it took to not release Hovercards - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29/Archive_131#Proposal:_Enable_Hovercards_by_default https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28prop... This meant that the silent majority didn't get these features for 2 years because some considered it 'intrusive'. A feature that you could objectively argue as being a useful utility. If anything, I think this is an indictment of the complaints against Wikipedia from those observing it and ex-employees. While a benevolent dictatorship might be going too far, such a community process where only the loudest voice wins (over considering what is best for MOST of the users), is surely a broken process. I am surprised that product & design people work there at all in such an environment.

ckoerner 8y ago
>And the post seems extremely proud, and self-congratulatory about it. Well, yeah. Doing anything successfully at the scale of Wikipedia is worthy of some praise - and I say that as a US midwesterner - a culture not exactly known as the epitome of hubris. :) You might claim I have Stockholm syndrome or something since I worked with the team that developed this feature, but the discussion you highlight did have valid feedback. The process for respecting community governance and developing consensus is more complicated than any one person could imagine. It is frustrating and imperfect. Folks at the foundation like myself are trying to do better in how we approach, work with, and deploy software changes. I agree too that it took a long time to develop, but that's not on any one single community's shoulders. For instance, after doing due diligence we approached the English community again earlier this month and the result of that discussion was quite boring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Page_Previews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscel... For a technical example that lead to the time it took, the team looked at how we were generating the previews and saw an opportunity to improve them. Previously we tried to parse a bunch of wikitext with a list as long as my arm of exclusions and edge cases. Then the team figured out a way to return HTML summaries from the source article. Not just something useful for this feature and a huge improvement to how information is rendered (like math formulas). Refactoring the code and implementing a new API endpoint took time. I hope this doesn't come across as too argumentative, I wanted to provide an alternative perspective from someone who works daily with product teams and communities within the Wikimedia movement.
- anotherfounder 8y ago
  Thanks for engaging! To clarify my point, I do think that a the process was followed, and it did lead to some good points but if a process is taking 4+ years to launch something relatively simple (compared to what other companies with similar scale and teams might launch), then the process itself is flawed. I'm respectful of your work, but critical of the system that it operates under. One could argue that Wikipedia has a broader responsibility to the readers than to just the editors, and such a process gives the editors undue weight in the process. The vocal minority cannot always represent the needs of the silent majority and that role would lie with the product team, which in my understanding hasn't been the case at Wikipedia (I say this, and having interviewed and turned down a Wikipedia PM offer and having a few friends worked in Design at Wikipedia and leaving disillusioned).
  - scrollaway 8y ago
    Wikipedia can exist without readers, but not without editors.
tim333 8y ago
Well 4 years to officially release. It's been available as a beta since 2014 and I've been using it for ages https://lifehacker.com/the-best-wikipedia-features-still-in-beta-1654944810 https://lifehacker.com/the-best-wikipedia-features-still-in-...
- anotherfounder 8y ago
  How many of those readers would know that you have to create an account and then know to turn it on?
  - ckoerner 8y ago
    None. They don't need to know that. The feature is on by default without logging-in.

ckoerner 8y ago

>And the post seems extremely proud, and self-congratulatory about it. Well, yeah. Doing anything successfully at the scale of Wikipedia is worthy of some praise - and I say that as a US midwesterner - a culture not exactly known as the epitome of hubris. :) You might claim I have Stockholm syndrome or something since I worked with the team that developed this feature, but the discussion you highlight did have valid feedback. The process for respecting community governance and developing consensus is more complicated than any one person could imagine. It is frustrating and imperfect. Folks at the foundation like myself are trying to do better in how we approach, work with, and deploy software changes. I agree too that it took a long time to develop, but that's not on any one single community's shoulders. For instance, after doing due diligence we approached the English community again earlier this month and the result of that discussion was quite boring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Page_Previews https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscel... For a technical example that lead to the time it took, the team looked at how we were generating the previews and saw an opportunity to improve them. Previously we tried to parse a bunch of wikitext with a list as long as my arm of exclusions and edge cases. Then the team figured out a way to return HTML summaries from the source article. Not just something useful for this feature and a huge improvement to how information is rendered (like math formulas). Refactoring the code and implementing a new API endpoint took time. I hope this doesn't come across as too argumentative, I wanted to provide an alternative perspective from someone who works daily with product teams and communities within the Wikimedia movement.

anotherfounder 8y ago
Thanks for engaging! To clarify my point, I do think that a the process was followed, and it did lead to some good points but if a process is taking 4+ years to launch something relatively simple (compared to what other companies with similar scale and teams might launch), then the process itself is flawed. I'm respectful of your work, but critical of the system that it operates under. One could argue that Wikipedia has a broader responsibility to the readers than to just the editors, and such a process gives the editors undue weight in the process. The vocal minority cannot always represent the needs of the silent majority and that role would lie with the product team, which in my understanding hasn't been the case at Wikipedia (I say this, and having interviewed and turned down a Wikipedia PM offer and having a few friends worked in Design at Wikipedia and leaving disillusioned).
- scrollaway 8y ago
  Wikipedia can exist without readers, but not without editors.

tim333 8y ago

Well 4 years to officially release. It's been available as a beta since 2014 and I've been using it for ages https://lifehacker.com/the-best-wikipedia-features-still-in-beta-1654944810 https://lifehacker.com/the-best-wikipedia-features-still-in-...

anotherfounder 8y ago
How many of those readers would know that you have to create an account and then know to turn it on?
- ckoerner 8y ago
  None. They don't need to know that. The feature is on by default without logging-in.