Thanks Nathan, I want to raise a point here. You say that "That's a reasonable pursuit for Quim, for instance, whose scope is managing the movement strategy process - not shepherding MediaWiki development strategy." and I must disagree. If Quim's (or whoever, this is not a complaint against Quim, of course) scope is managing the movement strategy process and he thinks that we need better tools for doing that, and those tools are out of his and the team's scope, then the problem is in the management. Who should Quim or his team reach out to ask for investment on those tools? Who is accountable for the decision? Is there someone in this process who should take the decision to invest in better discussion tools for MediaWiki (not only Meta)? If there's someone, and is not the team who has decided to abandon Meta, then that person should tell us why they decided not to invest money on making MediaWiki a better software for discussion. It there's no one, then we should ask why such kind of decisions can be taken without any accountability.
I'm going to give an example. Imagine that my kitchen is broken and I can't prepare my meals there. I have budget to solve it, but instead of that I decide that eating every day in a restaurant will be easier than paying someone to fix my kitchen. Indeed, I will eat good quality food every day, and I don't need to clean the kitchen after using it. As long as I have money, I can do this every day. But my kitchen is still broken, and it would be wise to fix it. Maybe I need to eat out for a week or so, but not solving something I need while I have money to do that, is not the wisest decision I can take. That said, yes, sure, Meta is not the best place to make a discussion. Commons is not the best place to upload a photo. But it's WMF's responsibility to solve that, that's why millions of people are donating every year. Not to pay a team who is deciding to abandon MediaWiki because other platforms are doing better. Sincerely, Galder ________________________________ From: Nathan <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, June 13, 2022 2:51 PM To: Wikimedia Mailing List <[email protected]> Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: Join the new Movement Strategy Forum community review On Mon, Jun 13, 2022 at 6:05 AM Yaroslav Blanter <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Dear All, I thought I would just let it go, but I do not think the discussion currently runs in a good direction. I do not think it is useful to advocate that Meta is a good discussion platform. It is not. It is dead. At best, there are some announcements posted there, and there is a small group of people who monitor and comment on them. If there is something really outrageous going on, such as the recent rebranding attempt, users can be mobilized from the projects to leave their opinion. This is done by the project users who care, it is done inside the projects or using some extra-Wikimedia means, and it can only happen occasionally. If this does not happen, Meta discussions attract at best a dozen commenters, some of whom are just negative towards everything. We tried to do something about this for at least 15 years (I myself was around and have been an active Meta user since 2007-2008). Things are not getting better, they are getting worse. These are great points, thank you Yaroslav. The tone of this discussion is painful to read; angry and argumentative, even rude. But that's likely a function of your last point - things are not getting better, they are getting worse. Yes, Meta is an ugly and dysfunctional place to hold a discussion with many people. That reality leads WMF teams to search for alternatives that work better to achieve specific, discrete goals. That's a reasonable pursuit for Quim, for instance, whose scope is managing the movement strategy process - not shepherding MediaWiki development strategy. Complaints are better directed at the ED and board - why, after all this time, and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on [something] and raising hundreds more, does MediaWiki feel frozen in 2008? Why are discussions so often held on other platforms? If this is a desirable outcome (e.g. a decision has been made that WMF can't replicate the ease of use and modernity of other platforms, which are continually innovating, and we made a decision not to chase Discord and IG and TikTok etc.) then maybe that's ok - if it is articulated somewhere that people can see when they are frustrated with why everything can't take place "on-wiki."
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