User talk:Jkatz (WMF)/Archive 1

Nemo 20:38, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Collection
Hi, as you asked to share our experience: I suggest to read the Collection extension reports. If that's not enough, we also have Extension talk:Collection and other feedback pages. If you want to familiarise with the feature, I suggest reading Book tool and/or writing an help page here.

For the watchlist, the most important things should already be listed at Watchlist wishlist. --Nemo 20:38, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks Nemo! Jkatz (WMF) (talk) 20:44, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm tempted to just make the edit, but do you have any objection to a major edit of Gather/Moderation_Criteria in accordance with the Administrator's Noticeboard discussion and "Alsee option #3":
 * We could accept this as a WMF project and exempt such pages from our policies and Community management, and let the WMF take on all of the work of policing them.

Alsee (talk) 06:18, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Alsee, thanks for checking in. What did you have in mind? I would rather not make a "major" change, and instead put a line in there at the top that says "due to linked conversation, the current moderation of Gather Collections is not the responsibility of Admins".  I would rather you not delete anything, is what I am getting at, since your input on criteria for how we or other community members manage collections is still welcome.  Jkatz (WMF) (talk) 15:00, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Your proposed "moderation of Gather Collections is not the responsibility of Admins" is not an accurate reflection of the discussion. The conversation was not just about admins. The participants in that discussion were not all admins.
 * When the project was first posted on Admins Noticeboard it was rejected essentially unanimously. We're used to the WMF having zero respect for the Community and Community Consensus. We're used to the WMF ignoring us and steamrolling forwards with projects. But it was a particularly insulting lack of respect for volunteer community labor when the new WMF page showed up presuming to assign a WORKFLOW to the community, on a project that the community clearly rejected.
 * We do work writing articles on physics, philosophy, genetics, music, art... and yes we also write less lofty articles on Pokemon, but we still treat Pokemon articles in a serious manner for those readers who do value those articles. We do drudge work fighting vandals. We do drudge work of hunting down copyright violations. We do the incredibly stressful work of putting Israelis and Palestinians in the same room and forcing them to come to a livable-agreement with each other on how to cover the Israeli-Palestinian violence. We volunteer to do drudge work to protect and serve the other valuable work we've built.
 * The whole point of "option #3" was that the Community is tired of fighting the WMF.... the whole point was that this case offered us the amusing luxury of inviting you to go ahead with the project and simply rejecting the insulting workflow assignment.
 * We have no interest in being a volunteer babysitter labor force for non-editors making lists of their favorite bands (or when they put politicians-they-hate on a rapist list). We don't want it being a disruptive drain on our volunteer admin labor. We don't want it being a disruptive drain on our volunteer editor labor. If the WMF feels this is an important project, if the WMF thinks that it's worth expending labor on collections, then Option #3 says the WMF is welcome expend that labor itself. Option three put it in bold type that all of the proposed work would be assigned back to the WMF.
 * I'm sorry if I was harsh or snarky. The ongoing dysfunctional relationship between the WMF and the Community has been very frustrating. The brickwall reaction to the first Administrator's Noticeboard discussion was very frustrating. And the presumption to assign unwanted work to us clearly hit a nerve for people. I'd be happy to better explain why we view books and collections differently. I'd be happy to offer any help I can to improve understanding and communication. All the socialnetworking stuff directly conflicts with our EN:WP:NOTSOCIALNETWORK policy, it conflicts with who we are, it conflicts with what we do, it conflicts with why we're here. Alsee (talk) 22:17, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi. I hear your frustration Alsee, and I am sorry that the idea of the feature and the way it has been introduced have caused so much angst and insult to you and to others. Neither Melamrawy (WMF) nor I intended that and would like to find ways to mitigate it.  Our goal was not to push additional work onto you: we are testing this feature and thought you might want to take a role in determining what goes in and what doesn't.  If you don't, I think that is fine, but I don't think it is fair to speak for all existing and future editors or Gather users.  If users of collections who are not otherwise editors want to participate in their moderation, I don't see this as a measurable drain on your resources.  I can tell you're fed up, but hope we can still craft some messaging that captures that we will not drain resources from the existing editing community, but does not preclude the involvement of interested "collections" users?  Perhaps:   "The WMF is ultimately responsible for the policing of Gather content, but anyone who uses Gather is welcome to contribute to the effort"  Let me know Jkatz (WMF) (talk) 23:33, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I 100% agree with you on the distinction between speaking for myself and speaking for the community. I am extremely conscious of that distinction when I raise issues with the WMF. I'm not here arguing for what I want. If you carefully look at that discussion, I didn't actually take a position! I laid out what I saw as some possible alternatives.... and my phrasing might have been suggestive of my views.... but I didn't actually take a position on any of them. I very deliberately wanted to see what the community position was. Option #2 was setting up our own policy for acceptable collections and devoting ->editor<- time to policing them. As your final comment there noted, the clear consensus was for #3 "let the WMF take on all of the work of policing them".
 * If the Community had a different position than my own, I would have quietly groaned and I would have accepted Community consensus. I'm not here arguing for myself. I'm here because I'm concerned with the WMF-Community relationship.
 * If you consider that discussion to have been just about Admins, if you consider the outcome of that discussion unclear, if you think that "non-Admin" is a viable alternate proposal, then I'd be literally-EAGER to help you take that to the Community. I'd be eager to help if you'll respect an Official Community Consensus on it. We do that sort of thing at the Village Pump. You can lay out the proposal, you can participate in the debate of pros and cons, and the Community can reach a Formal Community Consensus result.
 * If you do that and the result is that the community accepts editor moderation of collections, I'd consider that a HUGE success. My motives here aren't to get what I want on this issue. My motives are for better WMF-Community interaction. If you disregard the negative reception you've gotten so far, if you just steamroll forwards on a presumption of imposing this workflow on "editors" rather than "admins", you risk exacerbating the already strained relationship. Having a good collaborative relationship between us is much more important than any individual project. Alsee (talk) 15:23, 17 April 2015 (UTC)


 * , I am glad this conversation is happening. It is not a secret that unfortunately WMF and community's relationship/communication hasn't been an example of best practices. Although there is nothing we can change about the past, but we have a chance to change ongoing and the future.  The dilemma of mobile products is that the typical user for those, isn't necessarily (or isn't at all?) a desktop user.  This dilemma puts WMF in a stand where it sincerely (WMF could be sincere sometimes :-)), doesn't want to over burden admins or desktop users with what might seem not even be used by them, even though it already have useful cross-platform uses. So we tried to be proactive and talk about the details around Collections early before and during this beta experiment. I earlier posted a note on VP, and on admin notice board, because admins do have rights to hide lists, so they needed to be notified of what they can do. Ideally, we need to weight things based on what this features brings to the movement? Is it bringing just a mass of accounts who join to create lists while they don't understand how WP works? Is it brining a new experience for users that encourages them to browse more articles, therefore increasing readership, and potentially contribution (even though this shift doesn't necessarily happen by default or directly)? Is it bringing new ideas and some lessons (and some code) for how multiple watchlists could function like? From the past couple of weeks, we have some numbers that we will be sharing early next week, and we need to start some messaging to the +300 users who have created lists so far, to hear their voices and help us both as community and WMF, decide on how to best grow it, and what kind of maintenance task does it require to make the best use of it. This brings me back to your point around EN:WP:NOTSOCIALNETWORK, and the thought that any personalized preferences are completely out of scope, while we have non-encyclopedia content that lives under our user spaces, and in our userpages. Starting to think of one mobile feature, where one of its capabilities is to enable making lists of articles, isn't a bad experiment to try and learn from, keeping in mind, that we extend the use of Collections, to generate lists of wanted articles, or articles with +100 contributors, using lists for maintenance tasks in WikiProjects, or to facilitate the work of the Education program, in addition to very creative uses that could emerge from the test as it continues. Allowing a feature that enable making lists of articles, doesn't directly fall under the evil notion of facebooking Wikipedia :). I am glad you are open to the idea of allowing editors to help with lists maintenance, there is already an existing suggestion that needs further iteration. Please feel free to add your suggestions around that on the existing draft. I am happy to give heads up on VP as well.  Again, really thanks for your active contribution on this topic :) --Melamrawy (WMF) (talk) 19:08, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * , I no doubt that the people at WMF have good intentions. But that doesn't help much when projects get started without realizing the negative impact they can have. It's tempting to cite concrete examples, but as you suggest I want to focus on the future rather than the past. We have a shared mission, and we need better methods to work as partners. Can we take a step in that direction here?
 * The collections FAQ says "The community is responsible for creating moderation rules for the created lists moving forward." Can we work out an RFC to run at EN:WP:Village_pump_(policy), as I suggested above, to see if the Community is willing to do that? An RFC to see if the Community wants to take on moderation of collections? If the RFC passes, great, you've picked up community support for the project and earned general community-goodwill for working together. If that RFC goes down in flames, well, that just means you learn now that the project has a critical block and it's time to stop digging the hole deeper. And you can still pick up community good-will for doing it. Alsee (talk) 23:41, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
 * hmm, but we had the conversation starting early, and community and WMF both are aware of what needs to be watched out, which is why the admins have been allowed to hide lists since first day in beta launch, and which is why you created your example list on testwiki :-). Your suggested approach is interesting, but in addition the feature being in beta, nothing new is being introduced with this feature and its outcome isn't different from Book tool or any content created under user space, and when the same feature is enabled for desktop then what applies for desktop should just apply for mobile. Does that make sense? :-) --Melamrawy (WMF) (talk) 07:34, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
 * , I'm not here to get what I want. Trying to convince me doesn't matter. I'm just one random JohnDoe editor. There is clearly an issue here that the WMF and Community need to address. You said "It is not a secret that unfortunately WMF and community's relationship/communication hasn't been an example of best practices. Although there is nothing we can change about the past, but we have a chance to change ongoing and the future." Well, ongoing and the future is here and today. Instead of trying to discuss this with me, you can talk to the Community. Can we work as partners, setting up the discussion I proposed?
 * Or are we stuck with the WMF and Community always dealing with things as opponents? Alsee (talk) 19:46, 18 April 2015 (UTC)