Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it's Superprotect

[thekohser]

I thought I'd write up a quick piece about the MediaViewer-to-Superprotect anger on Wikipedia. Please enjoy (if you can get through the pop-up ads):

Jimmy Wales mired in Wikipedia anger
August 29, 2014
Gregory Kohs, Examiner.com

[Jim]

I thought I'd write up a quick piece about the MediaViewer-to-Superprotect anger on Wikipedia. Please enjoy (if you can get through the pop-up ads):

Jimmy Wales mired in Wikipedia anger
August 29, 2014
Gregory Kohs, Examiner.com

Excellent piece, Greg. Loved how you picked up on the follow-through with Eric and his "toxicity". See, Jimmy can focus on that - the rest is too big for him. He will fiddle while "Rome" burns, even if Nero really didn't.

And I use AdBlock. No popups at all there for me.

[mac]

I thought I'd write up a quick piece about the MediaViewer-to-Superprotect anger on Wikipedia. Please enjoy (if you can get through the pop-up ads):

Jimmy Wales mired in Wikipedia anger
August 29, 2014
Gregory Kohs, Examiner.com

The image of Wales is perfectly selected. Bravo!

What I'm asking people to do is, as I used to say, "relax a notch or two." Let's calm things down for a couple of months. It seems that the Foundation is about to remove (or has just removed) the superprotection of a javascript file in German Wikipedia, and I beg the German Wikipedians to work to reduce tension by not implementing the controversial javascript hack again. And then let's have a real conversation about what improvements need to be made to the MediaViewer and expect that the Foundation will indeed make those improvements.

It isn't "controversial", nor is it a "hack". What a liar.

[Mancunium]

Did you know that there is a Jimmy Wales doll for children? linkhttp://www.paperblog.fr/5094726/une-fig ... pour-noel/[/link]

"When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies."
- John 8:44

[EricBarbour]

Did you know that there is a Jimmy Wales doll for children? linkhttp://www.paperblog.fr/5094726/une-fig ... pour-noel/[/link]

That's My Face has offered "action figures" of various personalities before. They often disappear from the website very quickly as "products", possibly because the face's owner made legal threats or otherwise "expressed dissatisfaction". Jimbo's doll has disappeared, despite being announced in a 2011 press release. They were selling Edward Snowden and Julian Assange figures, which have also vanished.

[Jim]

They often disappear from the website very quickly as "products", possibly because the face's owner made legal threats or otherwise "expressed dissatisfaction". Jimbo's doll has disappeared

Maybe this should really have been in the "deleted by Jimbo" thread, then...

[HRIP7]

Wales' talk page really is quite something at the moment.

[Jim]

Wales' talk page really is quite something at the moment.

Where he consistently puts forward his position as "Yes, mistakes were made. Yes, we will improve. Shouting about it doesn't help. If you just want to complain, go away."
e.g:

You are wrong. I don't think you are listening to what everyone is saying. We have a new CEO and a new direction, adding a huge amount of emphasis on collaboration with the community to build software features that are needed. The snarky comment about Facebook on an iPhone is just absolutely pointless.
I am asking you: please join in productive conversation or please go away from my talk page. This is not helpful to you or anyone else.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:16, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Now some of that might even be a fair thing to say, if one believed that [a] the message had been heard and understood, and Lila is the solution, and just needs to be left alone to fix it.
Lots of people evidently don't believe that, though, and need to see the actions, before they will trust the fine words. I don't personally blame them for that.
I do feel a little sorry for Jimmy on that page, but he's ended up in a position where he has to try to please both sides, which is impossible, and, ultimately, that's nobody's fault but his own.
This is why he hankers to be seen as a "constitutional monarch". Nobody bickers with the queen. But then he would have to truly stick to just opening garden parties and attending state dinners, and that's not enough for him.

[SB_Johnny]

Wales' talk page really is quite something at the moment.

Where he consistently puts forward his position as "Yes, mistakes were made. Yes, we will improve. Shouting about it doesn't help. If you just want to complain, go away."
e.g:

You are wrong. I don't think you are listening to what everyone is saying. We have a new CEO and a new direction, adding a huge amount of emphasis on collaboration with the community to build software features that are needed. The snarky comment about Facebook on an iPhone is just absolutely pointless.
I am asking you: please join in productive conversation or please go away from my talk page. This is not helpful to you or anyone else.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:16, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Now some of that might even be a fair thing to say, if one believed that [a] the message had been heard and understood, and Lila is the solution, and just needs to be left alone to fix it.
Lots of people evidently don't believe that, though, and need to see the actions, before they will trust the fine words. I don't personally blame them for that.
I do feel a little sorry for Jimmy on that page, but he's ended up in a position where he has to try to please both sides, which is impossible, and, ultimately, that's nobody's fault but his own.
This is why he hankers to be seen as a "constitutional monarch". Nobody bickers with the queen. But then he would have to truly stick to just opening garden parties and attending state dinners, and that's not enough for him.

So now we know: if anything isn't going right, it's Sue Gardner's fault.

[Randy from Boise]

So now we know: if anything isn't going right, it's Sue Gardner's fault.

I was thinking about something this morning. Lila Tretikov is in the wrong job, they should have fired Erik Möller and made Tretikov Vice Supremo in Charge of Software Stuff.™ And Sue Gardner (did they force her out and give her a raise to stay on as a consultant or something???) was actually very well suited to be the formal WMF boss and leader of the movement BUT one that could not properly oversee an incompetent and weaselly engineering department.

Now we have someone who is unsuitable as a movement leader (seeing WP through a corporatist lens) who STILL has an incompetent and weaselly engineering department to deal with — with the guy who should have taken the fall for the VisualEditor debacle still collecting paychecks and spraying his intolerable hubris everywhere...

Oh well, we have a saying at the shoe store: "Bigger Equals Dumber."

WMF is getting big.

RfB

[HRIP7]

More coverage:

Torsten Kleinz, Heise Online, Grundsatzdebatte: Wer hat in der Wikipedia das Sagen?

Nick Farrell, Fudzilla, Wikipedia is revolting: Donations causing splits

There was another article on August 29: Torsten Kleinz, Heise, Wikipedia-Streit: Konsultation zum Media Viewer

[Mason]

There was another article on August 29: Torsten Kleinz, Heise, Wikipedia-Streit: Konsultation zum Media Viewer

Well, at least the WMF isn't the only organization with buggy software:

In a joint statement regret Möller and the new Wikimedia boss Purple Tretikov the escalation

[Zoloft]

There was another article on August 29: Torsten Kleinz, Heise, Wikipedia-Streit: Konsultation zum Media Viewer

Well, at least the WMF isn't the only organization with buggy software:

In a joint statement regret Möller and the new Wikimedia boss Purple Tretikov the escalation

Hence the purple unicorn:

[mac]

More coverage:

Torsten Kleinz, Heise Online, Grundsatzdebatte: Wer hat in der Wikipedia das Sagen?

Nick Farrell, Fudzilla, [b]Wikipedia is revolting[/b]: Donations causing splits

[Vigilant]

After a brief hiatus, a rejuvenated and medicated Witchsmeller approaches his demesne in a cocky swagger with a slight sneer perched precariously on his rugged good looks.

While I missed the shitfit, I am back for the fallout.

WMF got a monstrous black eye here.

Having been CTO/VP/director/etc in the past, I can tell you that Lila had NOooooOOoooOoooo idea whatsoever that this was going to blow up into such an epic clusterfuck. Nobody who has risen to this level would look for this kind of fight.

Nor could she have foreseen nearly 1000 people signing a "get the fuck out" petition against engineering.

It's the kind of thing that nightmares are made of.

Imagine what this does for her future employment prospects.

"So, Ms. Tritikov, you went to the WMF and immediately a huge, sustained user revolt was in progress. Thanks for coming in, we'll keep you on file."

It's a disaster.

And she's got to be looking around to figure out how the hell this happened... What the hell went wrong while I was at Wikimania?

She got lied to by Erik Mo:eller. He played her well and hard.
They put a "community override" feature into the core software. It was done so haphazardly that even this simple fix was broken on the first pass and required a fix. Then they had overlooked the delete and recreate option, so the thing was fixed again.

There was no testing, no writing of a spec, no review for "Is this needed? Is this a good idea?", no documentation, just pure animal rage. "How dare you override my... MY... prerogative to set what software is deployed to all sites?! How DARE you defy me!?!!"


Bottom line, Mo:eller lied to Tretikov and fucked her up good.

I doubt she's going to forget this.

[SB_Johnny]

After a brief hiatus, a rejuvenated and medicated Witchsmeller approaches his demesne in a cocky swagger with a slight sneer perched precariously on his rugged good looks.

Yay, you're back! We missed you, Vigilant!

[Mancunium]

After a brief hiatus, a rejuvenated and medicated Witchsmeller approaches his demesne in a cocky swagger with a slight sneer perched precariously on his rugged good looks.

Yay, you're back! We missed you, Vigilant!

Me too!

[Midsize Jake]

Imagine what this does for her future employment prospects.

Maybe she could get one of those megacorporate stinkbug jobs, where they hire you for the express purpose of causing other employees to quit because of your being there? The government sometimes does that too, though they can't be quite as obvious about it. Saves them a lot of money on severance packages...

Anyway, welcome back, Mr. V!

[HRIP7]

After a brief hiatus, a rejuvenated and medicated Witchsmeller approaches his demesne in a cocky swagger with a slight sneer perched precariously on his rugged good looks.

I was getting worried you'd been run over by a bus or something. Now, back to your desk, and be good!

[Hex]

Out of curiosity, I put the signatures from the letter to the WMF into a spreadsheet and graphed the years in which people had said they'd signed up. This was what came out.

Years joining for signers of letter to WMF.png

Notice how the distribution closely resembles that of the number of editors over time. What this says to me is that the WMF has fucked off the entire editing community, old-timers and recent joiners alike.

[HRIP7]

Out of curiosity, I put the signatures from the letter to the WMF into a spreadsheet and graphed the years in which people had said they'd signed up. This was what came out.

Notice how the distribution closely resembles that of the number of editors over time. What this says to me is that the WMF has fucked off the entire editing community, old-timers and recent joiners alike.

Thanks for that. Yes, it's across the board.

[Poetlister]

Out of curiosity, I put the signatures from the letter to the WMF into a spreadsheet and graphed the years in which people had said they'd signed up. This was what came out.

The X-axis scale is a little confusing. Not many people actually signed up in 2015.

[Midsize Jake]

The X-axis scale is a little confusing. Not many people actually signed up in 2015.

Yes, but they might have said they signed up in 2015, purely for the sake of screwing up the join-date statistics.

These Wikipedians are very clever like that...

[The Garbage Scow]

That Jimmy Wales doll is F-ing creepy. Thanks for the nightmares I'll have tonight!

[HRIP7]

Superprotect has been applied to the Wikidata page on Germany. Apparently, recent edits to that page triggered a bug that made it impossible to edit Wikipedia articles incorporating that Wikidata data-set. The page was reverted to an old version and superprotected by Marc Pelletier; the reason given being that any edit to the page would have inadvertently reintroduced the problem.

Bugzilla discussion.

[Vigilant]

Superprotect has been applied to the Wikidata page on Germany. Apparently, recent edits to that page triggered a bug that made it impossible to edit Wikipedia articles incorporating that Wikidata data-set. The page was reverted to an old version and superprotected by Marc Pelletier; the reason given being that any edit to the page would have inadvertently reintroduced the problem.

Bugzilla discussion.

Here's the camel's nose under the tent.
"We're just trying to protect you from yourself!" types of edits all the while the WMF has known about and done nothing about the underlying bug(s).

And because the full protection wasn't enough. I'm sure admins were just waiting to drive by and mess with that page.

(cur | prev) 22:08, 5 October 2014‎ MPelletier (WMF) (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (160,808 bytes) (0)‎ . . (Changed protection level for "Q183": Editing this item will break mediawiki because of a crash-causing bug (BZ 715189); this is a temporary safeguard until the bug is fixed. ([Edit=Allow only superprotect users] (indefinite)))
(cur | prev) 21:55, 5 October 2014‎ Hoo man (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (306,508 bytes) (0)‎ . . (Changed protection level for "Q183": Freeze on revision 120566337 ([Edit=Allow only administrators] (indefinite)))
(cur | prev) 21:20, 5 October 2014‎ Hoo man (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (514,472 bytes) (0)‎ . . (Protected "Q183": For technical reasons this shouldn't be changed for now. https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=71519 ([Edit=Allow only administrators] (expires 21:20, 5 January 2015 (UTC))))

[HRIP7]

The Media Viewer RfC at the Village Pump is currently at 56 Supports vs. 31 Opposes.

We have a previous RfC consensus that Media Viewer should be default off. That RfC was never implemented due to the Superprotect controversy and a WMF Community Consultation process on Media Viewer. That community consultation process has ended and the outcome can be viewed here. I think it is time to review that outcome and determine whether we still want Media Viewer to be disabled by default. Alsee (talk) 17:33, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

(Note: There is a second question further down the page.) Alsee (talk) 17:53, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Question One. Should we reaffirm and implement the previous RfC: WP:Media_Viewer/June_2014_RfC#Consensus.2Fdisapproval_has_been_established There is a clear consensus that the Media Viewer should be disabled by default for both logged-in (section link) and non-logged-in users (section link).

[thekohser]

When I see Risker, Kaldari, DGG, Smallbones, Carolmooredc, Jackmcbarn, and Herostratus all lined up in support of the WMF's objectives, it gives me supreme confidence that whatever it is that the WMF is doing will be a screw-up of massive proportions.

[Vigilant]

Interesting.
This is a watershed moment for the WMF and "community".

The WMF will never, ever, ever let the MediaViewer, trivial, shitty software that it is, be turned off by the community.

Perhaps the community will finally wake up to what the WMF has become...their captors.

Are WMF employees allowed to vote on these things?

It looks like improvements are still being made and many of the problems of the initial version have already been fixed. Kaldari (talk) 19:54, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

What about wannabe employees?

Abstain Please review the WMF's mission statement. The question of whether MV "empowers" people or not is a matter of opinion. The role of the WMF with respect to RfC's is not. Lila, the Board, and anyone under employment with the WMF has no obligation whatsoever to make decisions based on a community RfC alone. In this case, Lila is following what is widely considered a best practice for online services: if there is a workaround to new issues (clearly there is here in disabling the feature), then avoid creating new problems with a roll back. The path Lila has chosen is to work with the community in improving MV, instead.
Some may dismiss this as the WMF prerogative with a rock-solid argument behind them using the founding documents of the WMF. I won't. I recommend taking Lila and her team directly to task by demanding answers in to what went wrong here. Let's demand something we might actually get: a post mortem on the initial MV rollout. What changes have been made to prevent this happening in the future? I can get things started by mentioning that we have a new VP of Engineering at the WMF, for example. What forward-looking promises can we get from the WMF and Lila that we can actually hold them to? And, more importantly, how can we help them back up these promises up for the good of the entire community and our users? There's been so much talk around MV; it's time for everyone to start walking the walk. I'm going to start by getting back to editing WP with time I'd otherwise waste on these pointless petitions. -wʃʃʍ- 20:48, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Has there ever been a situation where his input has been valuable and useful?

Have I mentioned how much of a manCrush I have on Fram?

I was aware of the disdain some people at and around the WMF felt for the editors in general, but I wasn't aware that it has reached this low point already. There may be a "pattern of people at the WMF actually doing stuff", but it rarely was useful or well thought out stuff. Stuff like super-protect or threatening to block people who opposed the WMF and tried to implement the will of the community. Stuff like the initial VE rollout, the initial MV rollout, the initial and later Flow rollouts (those luckily limited)... Yes, this petition obviously wastes much more time than the countless hours mopping up after the WMF, right. We (the editors that provide the content, the volunteers that created and maintained the software and as a remote third the WMF staff) have built up this encyclopedia to the relative success it is now. The solution when the first group (or a large section of them) notice the third group going in the wrong direction, again and again, and taking the lead in a confrontational and not really successful way, is not to tell these editors that they are free to leave. The solution is to listen, comprehend why so many long-term editors are disgruntled, and work with them to regain some confidence and trust. Not to belittle those who have made Wikipedia into what it is now. Oh, and it would be more honest if you would declare your slight COI wrt WMF and its matters more openly, I don't know if everyone is aware that you are the partner of User:LilaTretikov (WMF), executive director of the WMF. Obviously you are "gonna stick around to see where the WMF is taking this story", you can hardly do otherwise. Then again, what can one expect from someone who has created (one of his two articles) Simple Cloud API, a product from Zend Technologies, which just happens to be your former employer.[5] Basically, you shouldn't start "walking your talk", you should stop talking and start walking, away from here and back to the WMF, where your severe COI editing (then and now) may be less of a problem. Do you really think that rather sneaky tactics like yours will convince anyone of the good intentions of the WMF? You are only making things worse. Fram (talk) 10:38, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Kww

@Fabrice Florin (WMF):"The consultation outcome was not at all pre-determined [...] And we were very clear from the outset that requests to turn off the software were outside the scope of this consultation" is just a short way of saying "we will only listen to people that agree with our predetermined outcome". Do people at the WMF wonder why we consider the statements from WMF staff to be intentionally deceitful, or do you just sit back and laugh after you write nonsense like that?—Kww(talk) 04:54, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Some random IP, not me, kicks Wil's ass around the block several times.

I doubt that most of those who don't like MV would support such a dramatic approach to the issue. And, when it comes to WMF being the boss, there are very few assets in this project that aren't given away for free. Those assets include the domain names. The WMF and the domain names are not sold separately. If you don't like the way the WMF is running things, and you feel you've given an organization with a new chief executive just 4 months on the job enough time to fix everything, your most productive path is to fork the project. Please. There are plenty of people who want to get back to building a great encyclopedia on wikipedia.org, and I venture to say that anyone who isn't interested in working constructively with the WMF won't be missed much.
It's time to call all bluffs: work with us or fork off already. In either case, please stop wasting people's time on these silly and ultimately toothless petitions and RfCs. -wʃʃʍ- 06:34, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

You're not calling any bluffs. I have no interest in working with anyone on Wikipedia and as evidenced by my refusal to actually create an account. I've never expressed any interest. You've lost nothing no matter what I do. I'm not pretending otherwise. I'm not at a point in my life where writing or editing an encyclopedia—or working on any wiki—holds any attraction for me. I'm just sick of the disaster that is Media Viewer being justified in the name of people like me who just read. I'm sick of the complete deafness in the WMF to any feedback about Media Viewer that doesn't fit with the "Multimedia vision" some middle-manager at the WMF came up with one day and now it's the plan, hell or high water—without any any meaningful community consultation. All this, while pretending they're listening. I'm incensed that the community that is actually the heart of the project is being ignored by the legal organization created to serve them when the community spoke with a clear and unambiguous voice that they didn't want this product. And I'm livid that the organization which no longer represents the community it was supposed to is raising funds in the name of that community in order to do more of the same but implying that the money is needed for infrastructure. This is deeply misleading and offensive.
Lila had plenty of opportunity to deal with this better at a very early stage. The negative feedback after the initial rollout was swift and overwhelming. It would have been a good time to rollback and reevaluate. Instead, delay, delay, delay. Let's lock a community out of its wiki when it does something we disagree with—and let's write an emergency software patch on a Sunday morning to do it. Oh, it's been out for months now... we can't roll it back now. It's a rigged game and it's bullshit. And I can't believe Lila, no matter how new she was, had no idea what she was doing.
I'm sick of Media Viewer. I can't get rid of it. Broken opt-out for people without accounts—supposedly the people that this was written for. Media Viewer showing up in external links to the site which I can't fix, even when the opt-out is working. If I cared about the mission, I might be upset about forcing this down the throats of other people similarly situated. But realistically, never show it to me again, and while I'll still think the WMF is rotten, I won't think of it until I see a stupid, misleading advertising banner asking for money the WMF doesn't need. Or the next stupid piece of software that nobody outside the WMF asked for is rolled out and makes the site more annoying to use. --98.207.91.246 (talk) 07:40, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

[EricBarbour]

Interesting.
This is a watershed moment for the WMF and "community".

The WMF will never, ever, ever let the MediaViewer, trivial, shitty software that it is, be turned off by the community.

Perhaps the community will finally wake up to what the WMF has become...their captors.

Subtle signs were ignored, perhaps the baseball bat to the collective head will make a deeper impression.

I'm sick of the complete deafness in the WMF to any feedback about Media Viewer that doesn't fit with the "Multimedia vision" some middle-manager at the WMF came up with one day and now it's the plan, hell or high water—without any any meaningful community consultation.

Said middle manager has a massive Flickr, where one can learn more than any sane person would like to know about him.

[Poetlister]

It might be fun to work out what are the WMF's immovable red lines and what, if any, may connect them. How does this relate to "no paid editing"?

[Thracia]

What about wannabe employees?

Abstain Please review the WMF's mission statement. The question of whether MV "empowers" people or not is a matter of opinion. The role of the WMF with respect to RfC's is not. Lila, the Board, and anyone under employment with the WMF has no obligation whatsoever to make decisions based on a community RfC alone. In this case, Lila is following what is widely considered a best practice for online services: if there is a workaround to new issues (clearly there is here in disabling the feature), then avoid creating new problems with a roll back. The path Lila has chosen is to work with the community in improving MV, instead.
Some may dismiss this as the WMF prerogative with a rock-solid argument behind them using the founding documents of the WMF. I won't. I recommend taking Lila and her team directly to task by demanding answers in to what went wrong here. Let's demand something we might actually get: a post mortem on the initial MV rollout. What changes have been made to prevent this happening in the future? I can get things started by mentioning that we have a new VP of Engineering at the WMF, for example. What forward-looking promises can we get from the WMF and Lila that we can actually hold them to? And, more importantly, how can we help them back up these promises up for the good of the entire community and our users? There's been so much talk around MV; it's time for everyone to start walking the walk. I'm going to start by getting back to editing WP with time I'd otherwise waste on these pointless petitions. -wʃʃʍ- 20:48, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Has there ever been a situation where his input has been valuable and useful?

Wiiam boldly announced in his first ever post here that he'd be speaking only on behalf of the three most important people in his world:

Hi all, I'm Wil Sinclair, Lila's "unmarried partner." Please understand that I'm representing three parties here: me, myself, and I. I'll leave it to Lila, the WMF, and SugarCRM to represent themselves as they see fit.

Perhaps it's progress of a sort that he has increasingly expanded beyond those three original non-entities, and that his most recent public pronouncements have been mostly Lila, WMF, Lila and Lila/WMF.

[HRIP7]

The Media Viewer / Superprotect arbitration case has been closed.

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Media Viewer RfC closed

The Media Viewer RfC arbitration case is closed following a suspension period of 60 days. The following considerations were taken by the Committee:

1. The WMF has introduced a new staff user account policy, prohibiting the use of the same account for both work and non-work purposes. With effect from 15 September 2014, staff are required to segregate their work and non-work activities into separate work and non-work accounts, with the work accounts containing the identifier '(WMF)' in the account name.

2. Eloquence (talk · contribs) has resigned as an administrator on the English Wikipedia. While this does not prevent him holding staff administrative rights on a designated work account, it does mean that as he resigned the tools while an arbitration case was pending, he may only regain administrative rights on his personal non-work account via a successful request for adminship.

3. The WMF has announced a number of initiatives aimed at improving working practices. This includes a new software implementation protocol which provides for incremental roll-outs of upgrades and new features.

For the Arbitration Committee, → Call me Hahc21 00:25, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

[The Garbage Scow]

The Village Pump RFCs regarding the hated Media Viewer have been running for about 2 months and Oiyarbepsy (T-C-L) has requested someone step in and close them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... discussion

Not surprisingly, it's turned into the usual kind of WP "discussion""

* demize (T-C-L) says it wasn't advertised properly and that there was no option to vote "neutral"...

* and then an argument ensues between Fram and an IP editor on one side and Alanscottwalker (T-C-L) on the other

The gift that keeps on giving.