Topic on User talk:Qgil-WMF

It's fine if you don't reply right away, enjoy the holidays :)

I mentioned here that there were two issues where I had unsuccessfully tried to get WMF engagement. The first one was regarding the Workflow project. (It currently appears to be in limbo, so there's no rush here.) There was an announcement that the WMF wanted to start working on it. I looked into the available info and the general concept is great. I think the community could potentially be very happy with it. One of the preliminary sketches looks like it would provide an awesome replacement for things like Twinkle. However I spoke with the (former) project manager and I'm concerned with the planned project direction. He indicated that it would be a Flow project, and that it would "not serve" communities or workflows that didn't switch to Flow. I believe the community would strongly want a system that supports existing pages, a system which might be compatible with Flow pages if/when/where we find Flow pages useful. The manager and liaison were less than enthusiastic with my suggested project direction. They were less than enthusiastic when I asked about an RFC on the subject. They were less than enthusiastic when I asked if they would pay attention to cross-wiki RFC's representing a majority of the global community. You can see the current situation here. The project manager was transferred and the liaison promised me a response. I tried for weeks, and got nothing. I think(?) I posted an extremely reasonable request there.

It's not currently an active project, I wasn't expecting it to go silent for two months, but the whole point was to seek community input on project-direction before things get to the development phase. The earlier the better. My biggest concern is that the WMF was actively averse to the idea of community input.

Do you think my request there was a good model for WMF-Community engagement? Can WMF processes and culture shift to actively invite community input before stuff starts getting built? I wasn't even asking for a specific outcome on the Workflow issue - I was asking for the WMF to be open to discussion on project planning. Announce a project idea, and if there are concerns then we discuss it.

Hi @Alsee, thank you for reaching out and for bringing that thread to my attention. I don't think anybody in that discussion was/is averse to community input. When you have no new information (because the question is complex and you are working on something else) one option is not to force yourself to provide a half-baked answer, or an answer based on premature assumptions that might turn out to be not true in the future.

Being silent while developing a big new feature set like Workflows would be bad indeed, but as you can see that development is not happening yet. In terms of product development process, they are still in the Concept stage, no plans to request prioritization and enter the Plan stage. The team wants to do proper research, including engagement with our communities, when the right time comes.

Let's continue in that thread?

The... erm...apparent disinterest in community input... was in particular on the former project manager's talk page, prior to that thread. Where I was told that an RFC was not needed, apparently not wanted, and I got the impression that the impression that the possibility of a majority global community view was not warmly received.

I'll continue that there, but I'll post the second issue here later. My brain is too tired to give it due care right now.

Hi @Alsee, I'm the new PM for the Collaboration team. Pleased to meet you, and thanks for giving a push on this important body of work. As @Quiddity (WMF) noted in your other thread, this is very much in the early stages. Right now, the team is focused on bringing out a raft of new Notification features. I'm focusing on that and on getting up to speed with everything the Editing team has been working on. So as @Qgil-WMF says, it's very early days. From what I can see, there's a lot of interest in taking a hard look at everything connected with Flow. As we do that and begin to focus more on Workflows, I'll look forward to collaborating with and getting lots of input from you and others in the community. Thanks for reaching out.

JMatazzoni (WMF) , I don't feel my question has been answered. You're still referring to Workflow as connected to Flow. The latest discussion about Flow at En-VillagePump was unanimously opposed to Flow.

If there is a demonstrated community consensus, could the community change the project direction to be completely independent of Flow?

Please don't discuss Flow (or any important topics) in my Talk page. Do it in the corresponding project pages instead, where the interested people is watching and can participate better.

That is an excellent point.

I've been trying to get an answer to this at Talk:Collaboration/Workflows for months. I replied here because this is where JMatazzoni replied. I would be eager to see my question to be answered over there.

As far as I know, the team is working on a good reply, not only to your specific question, but to the whole puzzle. It is time to discuss strategy and time to define a solid mid term plan.

Hi. What I'm really trying to get at is your Project Manager approach to community engagement. (That's the topic title here, grin.) The WMF should disregard input from me or other individuals at will. Any random yahoo with fringe or dumb ideas can make an account. But the community should be a partner. A consensus is the community position.

I believe the community in general isn't going to like the idea of a Flow-based-Workflow. We have been eliminating the few Flow boards we do have, and we'll probably be Flow-Free soon. If you want to draft the concept and benefits, and pitch the idea to the community pre-build, sure. Maybe I'm wrong about the Community view, maybe you've got some great concept with valuable benefits.

On the other hand if I'm right, if there is an English wiki consensus (or consensus at English + other wikis representing a majority of the global community), and that consensus is against the Flow-based design, do you agree that it would be a bad idea to build something that the community doesn't want?