User:Bawolff/comments on proposal

I thought i'd give my unsolicitated opinion on the contents of Category:Featured proposals. So far i think the most promising: Proposal:Go beyond the Wikis, Proposal:Librsvg development funding, Proposal:Keep the servers running

The good

(not necessarily good ideas, but ideas which have potential)

• Proposal:A "be bold" campaign
• Proposal:A_central_wiki_for_interlanguage_links (not sure if its a good idea. certainly has been proposed a lot, and interwikis are kind of a mess. would depend on implementation)
• Proposal:Allow image rating for Commons - Would allow better sorting.
• Proposal:Board transparency its not that hard to upload an ogg of the meeting to commons. At the very least minutes should be publically available (Are they?)
• Proposal:Core topics complete more, better content = good. However this proposal is a little quiet on the how. Saying we should be really good is fine, but I already take it as a given that more good articles on important subjects are good. Now what should we do about it?
• Proposal:Easier video submitting - server side video transcoding sounds like a good idea (possible patent issues). There is some work being done by multimedia usability afaik.
• Proposal:Geonotice_improvements not sure about the use-cases, but probably useful, especially for fundraisers and wikimeet-ups.
• Proposal:Go beyond the Wikis I like this idea
• Proposal:Implement OAuth for MediaWiki (and employ in Wikimedia) - Maybe. not sure about this (Actual proposal has nothing to do with OAuth or the linked bug, and more about allowing third party tools access to accounts without revealing password + having cool logging of actions done by these tools) However at the end of the day, if you trust a tool enough to use your account, you should trust it enough to have your password.
• Proposal:Keep the servers running I often feel that Wikimedia is loosing focus on its core mission. For things other than keeping server running, we have the community.
• Proposal:Librsvg development funding always good to give back.
• Proposal:Survey Former users
• Proposal:Universal login eligibility by default
• Proposal:Watch Category option - button to add contents of cat to watchlist would be useful perhaps.
• Proposal:Work on developing a sustainable international structure

The Maybe's

• Proposal:Common watchlists
  • Seems like a good idea, and often requested. However, if people want it so much, why don't they use special:relatedchanges? According to bugzilla:21223#c5 the issues with related chages are:
  • you need to access the relatedchanges - well how lazy can you get, to read wikipedia you have to access it too. I don't see how this proposal would solve the issue of having to load a page.
  • there is no dynamic way to add to your watchlist all pages linked on a given page I'm not aware of there being a way to do that with current watchlists, but its easy to do (for related changes) with js.
  • It's also cumbersome to update, you need to sort them, link the talk pages too linking to talk pages could perhaps be script aided, although I'll give that as a benefit for the proposal. I don't know why one would sort them.
  • Thus I conclude that the feature already exists and no one uses it, thus why would someone use the new feature.
• Proposal:Data.wikimedia.org - sounds like a use SMW on wikipedia proposal? from what i understand there are scalability issues on that. I might be wrong.
• Proposal:Get another CMS for Commons I can sort of see where this person is coming from, but i mostly disagree. Some of the requested features should be in mediawiki, some i disagree with (license tags. I'm a soft-security type person), some I don't understand (If someone could explain the difference between tag and category to me, that'd be swell).
• Proposal:Help people understand the variety of ways in which the may contribute - how? with ponies?
• Proposal:Hub_Page Sounds kind of cool, sounds kind of like a community portal. Needs better description for what the actual idea is
• Proposal:Right_to_Left_support Needs more description. Its hard to fix issues we don't know about.
• Proposal:Run an annual prize for best featured content
• Proposal:Support_OpenID Maybe. I'd support allowing wmf to authenticate you on other sites, but i'm unsure if i want people to use open id to log in here.
• Proposal:Support the fight against cross wiki vandalism sure, but it doesn't seem to be a major issue. I find it rare to have cross wiki vandals. Also there is the how, cross wiki vandalism is related to the wiki, so why wouldn't toolserver help?
• Proposal:Universal User Page maybe tie into interwiki transclude gsoc project

The bad

• Proposal:AJAX based quick editing - I'm biased and hate WYSIWYG. (not to mention WYSIWYG is difficult) might be cool to have an ajaxy thing for section editing, but with wikisyntax. I feel wikisyntax is one of our strengths.
• Proposal:Academic degree from Wikimedia giant legal liability i'm sure, and its probably just a Bad Idea^&tm;
• Proposal:Better System For Discussions I like our discussion system. LQT does have its place. I don't think talk pages are one of these places.
• Proposal:Distributed Infrastructure I think this will cost much more than any benefits it will bring
• Proposal:Distributed Wikipedia ditto. Sounds cool, but I don't think its a good direction to go in. Perhaps as a research project.
• Proposal:Easier Editing WYSIWYG sucks. In the long term i think wiki-syntax is a benefit.
• Proposal:Improving our platform ditto.
• Proposal:WYSIWYG default editor ditto
• Proposal:Editing usability improvements How many WYSIWYG proposals are there. Kids these days... back in my day we edited wikipedia in pig-latin upside down and backwards well walking to school through a blizard up hill both ways!
• Proposal:Real-time chat IRC is fine. don't fix what isn't broken.
• Proposal:WikiSportAlmanach I don't know if we should be expanding at the moment.

The ugly

(aka things in the wtf category)

• Proposal:Apply levels of importance wikiprojects already do this (and have for some time).
• Proposal:Brand name consolidation boo! We (the sister projects) ain't wikipedia, and don't want to be
• Proposal:Facebook connect bad idea. Why would we want to do this?
• Proposal:Expert review If i wanted to be at citizendium, i would be at citizendium.
• Proposal:Improve software, keep up with the times I am very very doubtful that this person knows what he is talking about.
• Proposal:Java applet support Security nightmare. (yes I read the section where the author claims it isn't one, no i was not convinced).