4 ms·
Nope, this article isn't exaggerating about these being difficult decisions. I watched it unfold over the years -- because wikipedia is somewhat of a democracy,
by creatonez 5y ago
Nope, this article isn't exaggerating about these being difficult decisions. I watched it unfold over the years -- because wikipedia is somewhat of a democracy, the amount of bikeshedding behind the scenes over the years was insane. Every little detail of these preview boxes had to be perfected or else someone would come out with objections. It is actually a miracle that this feature was able to be shipped at all.
I'd bet if there was a top-down leadership hierarchy from day 1 of opening the website, rolling out this feature would take less than a month.
But Wikipedia would be Microsoft Encarta if it had top-down leadership from day 1.
- londons_explore 5y agoWikipedia should be data driven. Let the bikeshedders all try out their design in AB tests, and pick whichever the user metrics say is best. You're going to get much better results that way than spending 4 years writing specifications and having meetings.
- jhasse 5y agoHow do you measure "best"?
- londons_explore 5y agoHighest likelyhood of returning to Wikipedia within 30 days, not including the day they saw the info card. If people find a site useful, they will voluntarily return again later. That's a very hard metric to game/abuse. Do not count a user returning from a promo email or browser notification or any of those dark patterns.
- creatonez 5y ago> Let the bikeshedders all try out their design in AB tests, and pick whichever the user metrics say is best. This is essentially exactly what happened. But after this was tried, contributors disagreed on which of the metrics are important. Is it more important that a Wikipedia user stays on the site to discover more tangential information, or is it more important that they leave the site as quickly as possible after finding the relevant information? User retention doesn't matter because it's Wikipedia, but which philosophy provides more social utility?
- iudqnolq 5y agoWow, even after your comment I didn't expect the degree of contention. One user fears that this will give a new excuse to "North American Exceptionalists" to use different images on North American Ice Hockey pages compared to Commonwealth ones. This person's signature is "abolish rule #2 like slavery", where rule #2 is > All North American hockey pages should have names without diacritics, except where their use is likewise customary I can't imagine taking a job where my work was subject to review by this sort of person.
- nexuist 5y agoWelcome to humanity. These people exist around us every day :D
- neilk 5y agoIn the best case scenario for top-down Wikipedia, it would have been Google Knol. That was where they were going when it was nominally a startup founded by a guy whose previous venture had been an online men’s magazine. But then the community revolted. We all know what a successful startup looks like. But I feel that the internet lacks criteria for a community like Wikipedia. Or for that matter, the chan sites. The tech can be almost ludicrously out of date, the design can be bland, the programmers sub-par, changes roll out over years rather than days, and yet it can have an unstoppable and highly influential community.