Ryan,
My thoughts (from a sister project side)
It is useful to go through a few bits to manage expectations.
* General introductory information around the scope, expected outcomes, summary of what
wikis can do and general dates and for this to be placed at the Techblog. This allows
local wikis to know and prepare. As the importance rises, I think that a general
sitenotice for a week is appropriate. Is it possible to do a site notice for admins only?
As that would be most useful. [This lets those who are alert into the playpen and
involved]
* A place where the detail of the project and outcomes, and how to participate, and where
to advise (aka complain) where and when things stop working, or help is needed. If you
are planning to go through series of wikis, then if there is a timetable to which people
can prepare, or even be available to help, and how they can help. [This empowers people
and puts the emphasis on them to get themselves organised for your timetable, your time
being the limited factor]
* Where you are planning on doing work, having generic information at your local talk page
about who you are and that points them to the information pages (general and detail), to
the fact that they had been told it was going to happen and to where they should bitch and
complain. [Akin to TALK TO THE HAND]
While admins will always be protective of their patch, especially if something breaks
universally, none of us wishes to impede progress and we want to know how we can help.
-> Make us do our homework
-> Give us time to marshal resources, and
-> Have expectations that we should be organised to help.
If we cannot do that, then it is somewhat upon our heads if you have to do what you have
to do.
Expectations and activities need to be reasonable and practical to both parties.
Regards, Andrew <- CSS clueless beyond the basics
On 1 Apr 2011 at 17:11, Ryan Kaldari wrote:
Can you possibly get any more hyperbolic? For your
information, I've
been trying to clean up the Javascript of
en.wiktionary.org this past
week, which is a total nightmare (and it's a sister project!). If you'd
like to help, feel free to join the discussions:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Common.js
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary_talk:Per-browser_preferences#Propo…
Ryan Kaldari
On 4/1/11 4:51 PM, MZMcBride wrote:
Ryan Kaldari wrote:
Yeah, the local CSS/JS cruft is definitely a
problem. I've tried doing
clean-up on a few wikis, but I usually just get chewed out by the local
admins for not discussing every change in detail (which obviously
doesn't scale for fixing 200+ wikis). I would love to hear ideas for how
to address this problem.
This caught my eye as Wikimedia has far more than 200
wikis. There seems to
be a shift happening within the Wikimedia Foundation. The sister projects
have routinely been ignored in the past, but things seem to be going further
lately....
Personally, I'm in favor of disbanding all of the projects that Wikimedia
has no intention of actively supporting in the near-future or even mid-range
future. I think the current situation in which certain sister projects are
supported in name only is unacceptable to the users and to the public.
MZMcBride
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