Making proposals easier to find / organize / work on

I wrote a proposal a while back for how we could better visualize proposals and task force activity on this wiki. User:Tim Starling implemented the proposal, and User:Werdna has offered to help refine it.

User:Philippe and I are in the process of spec'ing out how this might apply to Proposals. If you have ideas and want to help, please share them directly at: Proposal:Activity bot for strategy proposals, task forces. Thanks!

To this end, I've mocked up sort of what the average proposal page will look like at User:Philippe (WMF)/Proposal page. There are a couple of things I really need someone better than I to work on tho: The two boxes in the sidebar should be broken into separate boxes and stacked there, rather than just being a single template, for instance.

We also need a fancy schmancy template for "Sign up! Edit this page and add your name to the sign up section at the bottom of the page" to be one of the statuses. Can someone take a run at those things?

Just cross-posting this... because organizing and categorizing proposals is already done. Signing up is tricky.

Gaining consensus for a proposal is very, very hard. There are already mechanisms for doing it at the English Wikipedia (and I'm sure there are similar mechanisms at other projects and other languages.)

Take one proposal to add "... that anyone can edit," to the Wikipedia tagline "the free encyclopedia". Huge, huge opposition, with minimal support.

Another proposal. putting the article rating on the front of a page, instead of hiding it in the talk page. A majority support it, but Wikipedia is not a democracy. Needless to say it won't be implemented.

If proposals were as simple as "here it is! who wants to work on it?" then maybe we would try more things. But it's just not the way the project works. People are entitled to have a say that something should *not* happen. I definitely think it's reasonable for people to offer constructive criticisms, to help a proposal avoid pitfalls. But with a lack of collaborative spirit, people don't hammer out compromises or solutions. A few minority opinions just say "no", and that kills a lot of good ideas before they have time to improve.

So ... what's the role of consensus-building going to be for these proposals? If we're not going to authorize/oppose proposals based on volunteer consensus, what role is the foundation going to take in filtering the good ideas from the bad ideas?

Earlier in this process, Jimmy Wales was describing his role to the Advocacy Agenda Task Force. He said his main role was to say the same five things a thousand times over. I'm starting to feel this way, and I'm hoping some of the longer time participants in this process will help me with this.

This whole process is not about authorizing, certainly not from the Foundation. It's about empowering. The Foundation doesn't have to vet everything that everyone wants to do. That's simply not how Wikimedia works, nor is it how it should work. The Foundation's goal (which I hope is shared by many) is to support and encourage people to do what's good for the movement.

The idea behind this whole proposal process is not to get consensus around a few items and then all work on them together. The goal is to get people to connect their ideas to the strategic priorities, and then encourage people to do what compels them. In some cases, people might be compelled to work on stuff that falls relatively low on the movement priorities, but is still valid and important. In other cases, people might choose to spend time on something that ranks higher on the priorities, even though they're more interested in something else. Both are great.

The role of all of us should be in designing a space that encourages action. That's the intent behind what Philippe is proposing, and I hope that others will help figure this out.

Some of these proposals might require the Foundation to participate in order to happen. Similarly, other proposals might require the participation or buy-in of other organizations. From that perspective, it behooves people to make those proposals as strong as possible, to show the impact of those proposals, and to get as much energy behind them as possible. The Foundation will participate in this process -- I suspect that they're already working on many of the things proposed -- but they will not get in the business of vetting and approving everything.

Let's continue to put our energy around thinking about what we can do without needing to get some official blessing.

Thanks for that, Eekim. I definitely agree we want to get more action going. But there's no empowerment if it's left to the community to implement the proposals. 5 people sign up for a proposal, and in all their excitement they get to work on it. 3 hours later, their work is reverted, because other people say "where's the consensus for these changes"? And when a discussion happens, maybe the original 5 grow to an total of 15 supporters, but there are 10 people in opposition. With no consensus, nothing changes, except you've now wasted 5 people's time.

Bringing people together and encouraging them to do something is a nice thought... but it's not empowering. It would be like asking a few Barrack Obama supporters to get together in a room, and start working on health care reform as a group of 12 people. There's a ton of procedural hurdles that you have to navigate to get anything done, and it's not empowering to ask people to pretend that they don't exist.

I see your point, Randomran - but I think it's safe to say that "working on something" could also include building consensus. For instance, let's say those five people want to work on something.... four of them can bang out code and review, and one of them work on the consensus side of it. I don't think they'd necessarily all be working a single track.

There can definitely be four people who are ready to code it and actually do the hard work of implementing it. But it's all kind of pointless if there is no authorization. And the way Wikimedia is set up, you get authorization through consensus. Even Jimbo runs into problems (perhaps rightfully so) when he wants to make any sort of change.

I respect that we're trying to build a base for change. But the Foundation has to acknowledge that you can't do anything without getting consent (root of consensus) from the community... and that it's very hard to get that consent. Jimbo is one of the few people who can just do something without that consent, and even then he runs into problems (perhaps rightfully so).

I'd really like to find a way to improve how proposals are made, discussed, and implemented. But we already have a place where proposals go to die.

en:Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals

While there are lots of good reasons not to fork the articles - we will quickly end up with an unuseable patchwork of alternative articles each from a different point of view.

I think it would be beneficial to encourage people to fork the page layout. Let a million Main Pages bloom - one for each project, but all accessing the same articles.

Have a site where users (even anonymous IP users) can download scripts to customise and tweak the page (the Wikipedia App store). Track which are most popular and tweak the main page guided by that.

What do you think? Worth creating a proposal?

It may or may not be worthwhile to try to start a process based on

"This whole process is not about authorizing, certainly not from the Foundation. It's about empowering ... encourage people to do what compels them."

but in as far as that would work it would have nothing to do with strategy. By its very nature, strategy must be implemented (in some way or another, and there are a myriad ways) top-down.

Empowering people leads to people doing what they want to do, which mostly was going to happen anyway, leading to the already known results (varying from very good to pretty horrible, depending on the field of knowledge, and existing prejudices). As a process, it is the exact opposite of strategy. - Brya 06:34, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

This is what has bothered me most about this whole Strategy Wiki. To much discussion of what the community ought to do when we have no influence on that.

What the strategy and the foundation can do:

1. figure out what we would like to happen
2. identify the tools needed to make that easier
3. getting (training, employing) people to kick start the process
4. monitoring what happens and tweaking the tools to get rid of any roadblocks that appear in practice.
5. abandon that approach if it just doesn't work and try something else.

So to repeat my question: Does anyone think it worthwhile to develop a public API for viewing and editing the content so that folks can more easily develop alternative ways of our viewing and editting our data?

It's a neat idea to figure out what people would really like to do. But I can already tell you what the results will be. You can either have proposals with divided support, but lots of attention. Or you can have proposals with full support, but limited attention. We already know how most proposals die on the other projects.

We don't need a better interface for making proposals. What's going to make it possible for any of these proposals to actually be tried and implemented?

Hi Randomran,

first, I agree of course with Eugene (and I think you agree as well, but correct me if I'm wrong) that in order for us to be able to achieve scalable impact across projects and languages, the degree to which the Wikimedia Foundation acts as a top-down decision making entity should be minimal. IMO this is best done in the case of foundational policies, such as the licensing policy (wmf:Resolution:Licensing policy) or as community guidance (such as the wmf:Resolution:Biographies of living people).

That doesn't mean that I think the set of foundational principles and guidances is complete. I completely sympathize with your frustration in both achieving consensus, and moving from consensus to implementation. I first argued for a standardized decision-making process nearly 8 years ago (see Wikipedia:Decision Making Process) based on similar experiences, even when the project was still very young. I do think the community lacks tools for more effective self-governance. It would be great if a "constitution" for the movement could emerge organically from its participants without requiring top-level approval, but that may not be possible. That said, I think it's worth pushing self-governance reform as far as possible without WMF involvement.

I also don't think we should be too pessimistic about Wikimedia's ability to agree to and implement changes. Implementing large changes requires dedication, courage, passion, and clarity, but it's not impossible. There are countless essays in Wikipedia which speak to the processes by which we can make, and agree, to changes. There are countless examples of the spontaneous emergence of important changes. I am personally fond of the description that is given in BOLD, revert, discuss cycle. In many cases, beginning by making a change is better than beginning by proposing it. I would add to the essay that 1) it's smart to build alignment with individual volunteers before making a change, to get their backup and support later, 2) it's often possible to pilot a change on a small scale, while still demonstrating its usefulness effectively.

Reviewing some of the most referenced proposals, most of them seem to me to be entirely implementable given enough volunteer effort. Even a controversial idea like Proposal:Expert review can be implemented by example. In fact, this recently happened with the Google project to review health related articles.

My experience is that many people simply don't know how to move past the proposal stage, or how to skip it entirely. They get frustrated by a high degree of opposition or reverts. They lack the time to refute every single counter-argument that is made. I think one of the resources needed to help people turn proposals into reality is a Volunteer Action Manual which gives clear guidance on how to overcome hurdles, what strategies to employ in piloting a new idea, etc. I hope, in coming weeks, that I'll be able to contribute to that document.

Fundamentally, I think the Wikimedia Foundation should, for the most part, only engage in soft paternalism, gently nudging the larger Wikimedia movement in ways that align with its strategy. That is a concession to both its responsibilities and its limitations. It's the global Wikimedia movement which has accomplished so much in under a decade; WMF's job is to help it achieve the greatest possible impact.

I'd like to think that you're right... but for the short year or two I was highly active at Wikipedia, I never really saw a big change occur. Not for anything of consequence. It took months and months and months of arguing to get them to go from a 5-day deletion discussion period to a 7-day period, and it was agony.

I really do think we need some kind of governance reform. There's a kind of "tyranny of structurelessness". People naively believe that we have a lot of freedom on the projects because we have no formal rules or authority figures... but in actuality, there are many editors with a lot more influence, a lot more friends, and cultural norms that are just as powerful and rigid as formal rules. But they're totally invisible, so they're impossible to understand, and even harder to change. We have people who are so invested in this structurelessness, this anarchy... but they don't realize how ineffective it's been.

Governance might be the fundamental problem with the projects... the problem that underlies every community problem, from dispute resolution to content policy to dealing with troublemakers to making things more friendly for newbies. There's enough people who want to improve Wikipedia, but we're stuck on a model of consensus that empowers fringe voices. And I really like consensus for small discussions between a handful of editors. But for any issue of importance, it's nearly impossible to find any common ground between 50 different people.

This sounds somewhat confused to me. Obviously it is so that the WMF cannot control what is happening in the various projects, nor should it want to. For many specialist topics it is only possible to contribute for those with a high degree of familiarity to the particular field. There are far too many 'kinglets' running round trying to control matters they know nothing about.

On the other hand the WMF is the only organisation with an overview of the whole thing, and there are some things it should be doing, because nobody else can do them and because they are essential to the central mission. One of these would be to guard against a take-over of a small-language wikipedia by an interest group (big business, religious group, etc) and to ensure that the central policies of wikipedia are emphasized in all the wikipedia's. Equally, if the WMF gets involved with strategy, the only way this will have consequences for the projects is if strategy is implemented top-down. Obviously, instruments for implementation are limited and the WMF should beware of overreaching. Nevertheless ... - Brya 04:49, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

It is somewhat confused. There's a lot of contradictions coming out of this process. And navigating the obstacles is difficult. I agree that WMF needs to get involved. I can't imagine how the community can do it by itself, because the community is broken in fundamental ways.

I want to make two points. First, I disagree with Brya that strategy is inherently something that must be implemented top-down. That is what often happens, because most organizations are top-down, and frankly, most organizations implement strategy poorly. Did you know that on average, only 5 percent of employees know their company's strategy? How can you expect people to row in the same direction if they don't know where they're supposed to be rowing?

The opportunity we have here is to align the movement around a common set of strategic priorities. If five percent of Wikimedians know our priorities, than we're already doing better than most companies. Imagine if 50 percent understood and agreed with our priorities.

Here's my favorite thought experiment: Suppose you had a jigsaw puzzle with a million pieces, and you had a thousand people who were supposed to solve it. What's the best process for doing so? My answer: Project a picture of the final solution on a wall. If there's alignment on the direction, then people will figure out the best way to contribute. No top down control is necessary.

Which brings me to Randomran's very legitimate skepticism. How can we best empower individuals to make change? The Wikimedia Foundation must absolutely play a role, but I don't think it's necessary the role of authority. I think people at the Wikimedia Foundation must engage in community conversation and show leadership by encouraging people to act.

As Erik stated, there are examples of big changes that have occurred with the projects that have been driven by the community. However, as Randomran has stated, that may be more the exception than the rule, and either way, it can be a frustrating experience.

My challenge to all of you is to go over the Proposals we have right now, and identify the ones that you think might be low-hanging fruit. What can be implemented without a huge consensus process? Keep in mind that one way around project bureaucracy is to implement things on small projects first. We've done a lot of that here on strategy wiki, and there are many projects that have been excellent at innovation. English Wikinews is a great example of this.

Finally, I want to point out my favorite example du jour of an empowered volunteer. Look at the incredible work that User:Witty lama has been doing as the British Museum's first Wikipedian in Residence. None of his work is officially sanctioned by anyone, but it has the potential to make a huge impact.

I remain skeptical. :) If the Wikimedia Foundation wanted consensus on everything, we wouldn't even have the drive the improve the interface. For such a non-controversial idea, there are a ton of "ain't broke don't fix it" comments, plus a bunch of "if they can't figure Wikipedia out, they're too dumb to make good contributions" comments. That's actually an example where the foundation had to step in and say "we're doing this -- give us feedback and criticism but we're doing this".

I'm willing to give it a shot. I'll scan through the proposals in the next week or two. But I suspect anything uncontroversial enough to work without consensus will be very small, and have virtually no impact on the big strategic picture.

We don't need authority, but we certainly need leadership.

Just to make sure we're on the same page: The Wikimedia Foundation doesn't want consensus on everything. It wants to encourage action. I think we all want to encourage action; that's how I'm interpreting from your messages, Randomran.

And I think it's very fair for you to say that the Wikimedia Foundation needs to show leadership. To me, leadership means several things. One way to show leadership is to create a space that facilitates action -- in other words, empowering others.

Another way is to lead by doing. The Foundation is certainly doing that, and volunteers have an opportunity to do this as well.

A third way is to engage. We've seen some of that on strategy from Foundation staff; I hope much more of it happens in the future.

Finally, I forgot to mention something. I leave the project in a few weeks, and I will no longer have any official status. I'd love to stay involved, and I'd love you in particular to stay involved. This is an open invitation, but it's targeted especially at you, Randomran. Find an interesting proposal, let's agree to lead by doing, and let's see what a few volunteers can accomplish together. :-)

Thanks Eekim... I left a message on your userpage.

I agree. At least Wikipedia don´t need much change, but projects like Wikinews, Wikiversity and Meta do need new ideas. Wikis are very much stable, which is positive but if something went wrong, it is negative. Maybe a short time change in the way a wiki is run, could be a solution. Or we could clone a wiki and change the rules for the new wiki. If the new wiki works better than the old ones, we close the old wiki.