[Translators-l] Thank you for Tech News & see you soon

[Philippe Verdy]

2014-08-11 1:39 GMT+02:00 svetlana <svetlana at fastmail.com.au>:
>
> On Mon, 11 Aug 2014, at 04:07, Tomasz W. Kozłowski wrote:
> > Philippe,
> > the patch is not for the MediaWiki software but for the configuration
> > of Wikimedia wikis (it's in the operations/mediawiki-config repository
> > on Gerrit).
>
> ftr, the change discussed is: <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/153302/>


Read the Gerrit comment: "Assigned to nobody by default."

Erik Möller (VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia
Foundation) did not approved granting this right to everyone in the WMF
staff, but was clear that it would require a policy by ranting the
privilege initially to nobody.

The error was not implementing or deploying that functionality, but
granting it to the staff and an isolated staff member used it in emergency,
ignoring that the German community clearly wanted to have the current
version of the new MediaViewer being used for now under opt-in, and not
opt-out.

Note that I like the new MediaViewer and the benefit it gives to readers. I
don't know what is the issue with Wikiemdia *editors*, but what I've seen
is that there are problems with the mobile version (caused mostly by
existing severe design bugs in its CSS which breaks so many pages that can
only be rendered correctly either in the desktop version or in the mobile
version of wikis).

Of course I support being more friendly with mobile users on their
smartphones and tablets (this is a critical issue even if it's less
critical in Germany). But we've seen a sharp decline of readers recently
(notably in Italy) only because our sites are not enough friendly to
tablets and smartphones (and a considerable number of users are abandoning
their old PCs or Macs to use mobile devices: this is a global trend that
also affects Germany).

Yes we must take actions to preserve our audience because this is that
audience (of readers) that drives funding. But the issue is serious enough:
there's a risk that the German community splits and starts funding their
own wiki projects... financed by Wikimedia Germany alone that has enough
money and technical infrastructure to support it directly.

The Foundation must then agree to cooperate more positively with the German
community even if it takes a (small) decision to use a distinct
configuration. There are some reasons why German users voted against the
new MediaViewer enabled by default to all new users. The Foundation could
have better explained that this tool could still be disabled by editors and
there was no need to start an edit war.

Also the WMF Staff is not there to resolve edit wars (and notbly not when
it is itself a party to this war!).
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