Thread:Project:Current issues/User:MZMcBride and sysopping of User:Fram/reply (90)

Ah, drama! That's exactly what MediaWiki.org is for...not.

Some thoughts on this matter from someone who's been around for a long time and considers themself somewhat senior developer (in case if you're wondering, I'm talking about myself here):


 * RfA process/page is, if not an enwiki-ism directly, at least horribly silly. When I first started out here &mdash; back in 2007, when there was no LiquidThreads, VisualEditor and the WMF had considerably smaller amount of staff &mdash; things were somewhat different. I was quite literally a nobody back then, and with only 29 edits under my belt, I requested admin rights from Rob Church on his talk page. And whaddya know, he granted me those, "out of the blue", as some might say. Like it or not, that's the way this should work in my opinion because this wiki is not and never will be the English Wikipedia. So please take your bureaucratic, drama-filled nonsense somewhere else.
 * VisualEditor is one of those things that everyone seems to have an opinion on, no matter if they've tried it out or not. That's okay. Fram's edit to the VE status page was badly worded and not appropriate, but again, frustrated people can sometimes do irrational things. It's life, and this is a wiki, so nothing's set in stone and everything can be reverted, as was done here.
 * I don't think that Fram was acting in 100% bad faith, trying to harm someone. I have no doubt that VE and its bugs, quirks and other oddities can be annoying, but complaints and feedback about such issues &mdash; especially regarding deployment of said software on WMF servers and WMF-operated sites &mdash; don't belong to the status update page; these comments belong to the appropriate talk pages and maybe on the inboxes of people "in charge" &mdash; for the WMF, these people would be Staff and contractors, especially the management-level people. I'm sure that while many developers might disagree with the management, they just can't override such decisions because it's not how the world, nor Wikimedia nor Wikipedia, works.

It is my most sincere wish that we ("we" as in "every person reading this and who knows what VisualEditor is") can iron out the bugs and other oddities in VE so that MediaWiki can finally have a working WYSIWYG-ish editor before 2040. For this to happen, even criticism is required. But criticism of the Wikimedia Foundation's political decisions should not take place on a technical wiki's mostly technical page.

Finally, I want to say that for the time being, I don't see any reason for deopping Fram and/or MZMcBride. Sure, maybe the sysopping action took place in the wrong time, but mistakes happen. Fram, however, is an English Wikipedia administrator and should he want to help out here, he's more than happy to. If these kind of conflicts happen in the future, then we may need to consider a different approach, but for now, "live and let others live".