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Op-ed

Media Viewer software is not ready

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By Pete Forsyth

Last month, I wrote an open letter to the Wikimedia Foundation, inviting others to join me in a simple but important request: roll back the recent actions—both technical and social—by which the Wikimedia Foundation has overruled legitimate decisions of several Wikimedia projects.

The context of the letter has been discussed in many venues, including the Signpost. In summary: Three of Wikimedia's most substantial projects clearly and formally rejected the full deployment of the Wikimedia Foundation's Media Viewer software, and declared that the deployment should be scaled back. The WMF disagreed, and created both technical ("superprotect") and social obstacles to those projects' decisions. In the letter, we requested, and continue to request, that the Wikimedia Foundation remove those obstacles.

I hoped that, if I contacted those who had previously spoken up on the topic, and diligently pursued my friends and close colleagues, I might earn as many as 200 signatures in a month, and thereby deliver a clear, strong message.

The response was astonishing.

In less than a month, the letter has been signed by 824 Wikimedians. An additional 82 people signed a copy of the letter published on change.org, totalling more than 900 supporters.

Numbers like these are, to my knowledge, without precedent; no previous Wikimedia issue has ever garnered 800 supporters. Votes on the US SOPA/PIPA legislation, on allowing proprietary video formats, and for individual appointments to the Board of Trustees have numbered in the hundreds, but none of these surpassed 800.

Signatories by year of first edit

About the signatories

The signatures reflect broad support from those who have built Wikimedia's content, and who are passionate about our vision of freely sharing knowledge around the world; this group isn't narrowly centered on a certain range of experience or a specific language community. More than half of those signing began contributing between 2001 and 2007; nearly 100 started within the last 2.5 years. Wikimedians from 42 language communities signed. Volunteers have fully translated the text of the letter into 20 languages, and discussed it on various "Village Pump" pages across the Wikimedia projects. I have heard personally from Wikimedians around the world, in private emails and public talk page messages, about the letter's importance, and how it relates to local issues.

What the letter is not

Let me emphasize several things the letter does not request or assert.

The letter does not endorse the Request for Comment model, or any other particular model, for evaluating software suitability. It does not propose any specific hierarchy or power dynamic among the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia volunteers. And finally, it does not insist that software like the Media Viewer or the superprotect status can never exist.

When I wrote the letter, I took great care to maintain neutrality on points like these. Dedicated Wikimedians hold a variety of views on such issues. But the letter’s simple requests, if granted, will address an immediate and divisive issue, and will permit those of us who share the Wikimedia vision to deliberate topics like these calmly and productively.

Where do we go from here?

New software should bring celebration, not panic. Together, we need to work toward that reality. But before we can do so, we need an acceptable starting point.

900 people agree on what that starting point should look like.

The Wikimedia Foundation has the next move.

Pete Forsyth is the principal of Wiki Strategies, where he has advised organizations small and large in Wikipedia engagement, including design and recruitment for Wikipedian in residence programs.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author only; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section. Editors wishing to propose their own Signpost contribution should email the Signpost's editor in chief.
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  • Wikipedia:Flow, Wikipedia:Media Viewer, and Wikipedia:Visual editor will drive away the core contributors. I will opt out of all 3 as much as possible. Grognard 123chess456 (talk) 22:02, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hear, hear! The worst part about the Media Viewer is that caption information (e.g., the name of what is being depicted, or the units and axes of a graph) are very often on the File: page, especially when they are important, but disappear along with the caption when clicked on with the Media Viewer. What happened to, "if it's not broken, don't fix it?" EllenCT (talk) 22:04, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • The features are made for readers and casual editors, which makes more sense, so long as it's clear how to opt out. That said, Media Viewer is very flawed as a tool for readers in my opinion—because like it or not, Wikimedia sites were not made for MediaViewer in the past. The biggest reason I opted out of it is that I can't get the exact file name, so as to link it; that would require either including the extension on Media Viewer, or consistently using the same extensions (eg, just .jpg rather than .JPEG as well). For readers, Media Viewer makes the caption and different sizes hard to find. Captions with complicated formatting, like colour keys for maps, don't appear properly. A lot of information may be missing if {{information}} isn't used as still is the case for many files, eg, the author's name might not be visible (a violation of CC licenses on occasion?). I could go on… Media Viewer is a nice idea in principle, but right now it's an ugly, unworkable mess. I imagine most of these issues could be fixed by the people who made it, but right now, no, we shouldn't use Media Viewer, and I'm not sure it's worth fixing. —innotata 22:24, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • These points were brought up during the Community consulatation a couple of weeks ago, and are being addressed and developed. Captions instead of file descriptions will be shown below the image, a proper link to the file page will be clearly available, and there is a metadata cleanup drive being set up to clean up missing {{Information}} templates. Additionally, there will be a way to disable media Viewer in a preferences option right there next to the image. You can see the prototype in development here. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • Until issues like this are actually fixed, the software should not be enabled by default -- if this is not obvious to WMF's software experts, it should be done per consensus on English Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites. -Pete (talk) 22:44, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • (edit conflict) Agreed, Pete. I know, I saw that recently; I don't know why we're using it now (with superprotection!), though, given the scope of the problems and I wonder whether it's possible to ensure all images have all the information they need. —innotata 22:46, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • @Keegan (WMF):: The problem now is that regardless of what get fixed and how the only thing people are gonna see with this is the issues. It was that way with Obamacare, it was that way with Windows 8 (which by the way was a disaster specifically because Microsoft decided to make it "easier for the casual user" at the expanse of well over 95% of it's consumer base), and it will be the same here whether you guys like it or not. When you roll out something this massive the public and the people upon whom your product depends either like it or don't, and when they don't - sometimes with good reason, sometimes without - the only option you have left is to scrap the project and start over again. Regardless of whatever good you may have intended the tools to be for us the fact that we are here complaining loudly and/or proudly demonstrates that somewhere along the line you guys screwed up, either in the R&D phase, the feedback phase, or the roll out phase. Before you make things worse the best option for everyone would be to restore the defaults, sit down with us, and have a long and honest discussion about what happened, why it happened, the underlying causes for the happening, and what can be done to fix it. This is by far the most important part of the process, because you can't learn from mistakes if you keep insisting you have the high ground or a closed mind. I should know this, I've made plenty of mistakes here - some of them real doosies too - and tried to learn from the community so as to avoid repeating them in the future. I've generally been successful in this regard, but it works only because I have the strength to admit I screwed up and the humility to come hat in hand to the community to ask for guidance on what I should have done in the situation. TomStar81 (Talk) 01:26, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • You only get one chance to make a first impression. MediaViewer has made its impression, and it's fairly clear that it's not a good one. It doesn't matter now if it's fixed up, doesn't matter if it makes me a coffee tomorrow morning, walks the dog, and does my taxes for me. Editor opinion is pretty much set now that MV is no good, and after Visual Editor's similarly poor launch, editor opinion is probably also set on the ability of the WMF to deliver major software updates. Lankiveil (speak to me) 12:01, 15 September 2014 (UTC).[reply]
        • After the disaster with the completely rubbish VE, and now the implementation by brutal force against explicit will of the communities of this superficial bling-thing-gadget with no real value but lots of bugs and legal issues, can anyone imagine to ever trust these so-called programmers in WMF again about some piece of software? They botched it so completely, they exhausted nearly all possible credit they had. The next disaster is brewing again with flow, I don't expect those people disconnected from the community to get anything right there, they will try to sell it with force again against the contributors. And something like superputsch has to be restricted to emergencies (this was by far nothing even remotely like an emergency) and elected people like stewards. Staff must never elevate itself above the community except for concrete emergency. --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 15:54, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Update: This letter was delivered last week, with 896 signatures, to Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director LilaTretikov (WMF), Deputy Director Erik Moeller (WMF), and all members of the Board of Trustees. New people continue to sign the letter. -Pete (talk) 22:12, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • How do you opt out of this abortion they call media veiwer, cuz I've been trying to figure that out for a month and the absence of a solution to the media viewer problem is starting to piss me off immensely. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:13, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Media Viewer is a cancer on the WMF's projects - it's useless, horrifically ugly, greatly degrades users' ability to view the image in sizes other than the default, and an extreme hindrance to editors trying to go to the image's filepage to get any kind of information about the image. I wouldn't shed a tear were it to vanish forever and never return, and I'm glad that so many people agree with me on this point. As for "superprotect" - it should be destroyed, atomised, hurled into Sagittarius A*, never to return, the site software should be modified to make it completely impossible to create any kind of protection level prohibiting administrators from editing a page, and every WMF staffmember who directly, blatantly, and unforgiveably ignored and overrode every sort of community consensus, spat, urinated on, and gave the finger to the better judgement of the vast majority of the community of editors, and supported the abominations otherwise known as Media Viewer and superprotection should be blocked for a month and permanently knocked down to bare editor status. Whoop whoop pull up Bitching Betty | Averted crashes 23:35, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • We are seeing the iron law of oligarchy at work. Just as corrupt administrators have worked hard to alienate the editorial class and promote their interests and to prevent any kind of reform that would weaken their oligarchical power, so too has the WMF grown too large bureaucratically and wasted a great deal of monetary resources on "improvements" that were neither asked for nor demanded by the community in order to solidify their power. We see the same oligarchical thought processes at work in both the administrator and WMF power structure. Until the time comes that editors come together and realize that neither the administrator thought police nor their WMF overlords represent them, the "Problem" will never be addressed. If information wants to be free, we must place that information first and foremost at the top of our list of priorities, above and beyond the needs of power playing administrators and WMF politics. The way forward is to begin to address the "Problem" directly without fear: debundle the administrator toolset, devolve and decentralize user rights to the wider community (to anyone who shows a need for them), and immediately organize task forces in the most active areas to elect editorial representatives who will then guide the WMF to make decisions in the best interests of editors and readers alike. Viriditas (talk) 23:03, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do take care with the "corrupt administrators" comment, because I am an admin here on the English Wikipedia and I am with you on this one, but its got nothing to do with any perceived slight on my power - in point of fact, I'm usually slow and/or reluctant to use my admin tools if I can help it. That said, based on prior experiences and word of mouth horror stories from editors, I could see how that impression would be made prevalent here, and I respect your opinion on the matter even though I do not share it. All the same, none of that excuse this kind of behavior. This unilateral dismissal of everything judged to be a threat to the system is something I expect from a fascist or communist system, which is an altogether appropriate observation to be made here since Lila Tretikov's WMF userpage states she was born a citizen of the USSR. TomStar81 (Talk) 23:22, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • 1) I think it is unfair to attack someone based on their country of origin. That's generally considered an ad hominem argument. 2) "Corrupt" administrators refers to the documented tendency of admins to support other admins, right or wrong, and to very rarely discipline them for the same infractions made by regular editors. You are free to go through the enormous evidence for this hypothesis found in the noticeboard archives. Admins can basically do whatever they want as long as another admin has their back. That's where the corruption comes in. Or to put it another way that you may recognize, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Viriditas (talk) 23:29, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • You misunderstand, I was not attacking her based on country of origin, merely pointing out that an oligarchy system such as what the WMF appears to be evolving (or has already evolved, depending on who you ask) is essentially how the Fascist regimes like the Third Reich and communist regiems like the USSR were run, albeit with a politburo rather than an WMF board in the latter case, however if the echos of caution raised here are not clearly heard by and acted upon by the board then there is a very real possibility that the WMF board will become akin to a politburo and the various wiki-related projects will in turn become satellites of the board, bound to the board's will on matters with little or no say in the process. As you've already observed, any system for control is naturally corrupted over time, as the groups party line is handed down to others ascending the ladder, and it takes a moment like Tony Stark's capture by jihadist to open your eyes and see the system and your place in it for what it is (In his case "And I saw that I had become part of a system that is comfortable with zero-accountability.") What I'm hoping is that the board see where the path they are walking is gonna lead them, and that they will have the foresight to step off it before its too late. And your right about the animal equality, the way I sum it up is in my life both on and off the Wiki is that you are "free to do whatever you want, expect where noted.", and it seems that regardless of what I want to do its always a part of the "where noted" camp. (AND it gets damn frustrating after while to keep meeting the same incompetent SOBs who got where they are because of despotism rather than merit.) TomStar81 (Talk) 23:43, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • The old cabal is being destroyed. By the new cabal, the WMF! Hail to the new cabal! Grognard Chess (talk) Help:Getting rid of Media Viewer 23:47, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"800 supporters"

Way more than 800 voted on the GFDL to CC transition: meta:Licensing_update/Result... -- AnonMoos (talk) 22:32, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for that info AnonMoos. -Pete (talk) 22:49, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I too am not impressed at all by the head count. The last arbitration election got over 900 votes. And that's the English WP only; it's an issue most editors don't know or care about; and only editors in good standing with over 500 edits could vote. An issue effecting all Wikis not just en.wp, and without the 500 edit requirement to participate (hosting it off site means there were no requirements at all, and also meant people could sign more than once), should attract many times more participants if many people actually cared about it. The numbers on Change.org are even more disappointing if you compare it to even mildly successful campaigns there. This all suggests far far more people are happy with it and don't feel the need to complain.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 22:47, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Or that far more many people think everything is useless because WMF won't listen anyway. (That's the usual reply I heard.) Consider however, the Wikimedia Foundation trustees had, at best, 787 supporters. What's the legitimacy with which the WMF overrules the global Wikimedia community of editors? (I don't know the answer, but surely one has to ask.) --Nemo 05:55, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Was that on a page that people had to click on and sign manually, or was it conducted by a pop-up window poll? EllenCT (talk) 23:12, 14 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • And keep in number the extensive canvassing about this. WP:SOPA got about 2-3 times that with less. Not saying 800 is bad, but this issue was better advertised, particularly when it comes to talk page advertising on non-en wiki projects (where I guess canvassing technically doesn't apply, through voe befall someone who tries to use the same argument during an RfA, for example...). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 00:16, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • "No previous Wikimedia issue has ever garnered 800 supporters," - is simply not true. The Paid contributions amendment to the terms of use had 1103 supporters vs. 286 opposed. Pete F's. memory must have faded since he was in the minority. Which brings up the question: How many people were opposed to the petition? Where were they allowed to indicate their disapproval of the petition? Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:44, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • The WMF has already addressed the issues brought up in your letter, although it hasn't agreed to the second request and, if WMF engineering starts acting like a responsible technical org, they never will. They've already made their move, Pete. Now you're up. Are you going to work productively with the WMF, or are you going to perpetuate a played-out petition in hopes of "winning" this one? -wʃʃʍ- 04:18, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm not sure why you want to make this about me, Wllm. It's not. I also don't see the relevance of "winning." In a wiki-based community (and, I guess, in general), it's better that everyone win. Factions and battles can be good for egos, but they're rarely good for a wiki-based project. -Pete (talk) 17:21, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Peteforsyth: - as WMF found it necessary to put a sitebanner requesting improvements for MV (sigh!), maybe a sitebanner for notifying readers of the petition would have been an option (sorry I did not think about that earlier). --Dirk Beetstra T C 05:07, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • It's still an option, just needs a sysop. --Nemo 05:55, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • Ah. So that our much more casual editors and readers can get drawn in to a confusing conflict that they neither understand nor care about? Moreover, will we ask for a referendum among all those editors we're trying to retain for an issue that has already been acted on by the WMF and is now simply being perpetuated by people who, as this article suggests, see it as a game that they must somehow "win"?
      • The community has gotten pretty good at shooting itself in the foot, but, as far as I can tell, that would be a new low. -wʃʃʍ- 17:20, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Beetstra: Thanks for the suggestion. I did propose something like that, and you can see the discussion here. I think it's a reasonable option, but I don't think using WMF's approach as justification is a good way to go. Two wrongs don't make a right, and all that. -Pete (talk) 17:02, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Peteforsyth: - I agree, my wording was a bit wrong maybe .. See it as a combination of frustrations regarding reported bugs and feature requests, and MWFs way of .. presenting new features that no-one asked for. I obviously have my priorities wrong. --Dirk Beetstra T C 12:52, 16 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • @Beetstra: No criticism intended. I'm unsure whether adding more signatures is the biggest priority right now -- it's already approaching 1000 (as people have continued to sign). But I'm not entirely opposed to your idea. -Pete (talk) 15:46, 16 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • The title is very misleading; something else that should be mentioned in the "what the letter is not" section is an indication that it is anything to do with MediaViewer or any other software development (perhaps with the exception of SuperProtect). I think MediaViewer is brilliant. I think the same of Flow. And VE is definitely the way to go (but wasn't really ready for full-scale release when it was initially rolled out). I signed the letter not because I believe there is anything wrong with those pieces of software, but because there's something wrong with the way the WMF handled the situation on the German Wikipedia. That, and that alone. The letter has nothing to do with MediaViewer itself, and that needs to be made abundantly clear. As it stands, the title of this article implies something that simply isn't true. WaggersTALK 09:04, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Waggers: Fair point. I proposed the headline, and I agree that it is too much of a simplification; I didn't think it was misleading, but I do see where you're coming from. What I intended by it is, when editors determine by multiple legitimate processes that the software is not ready, that determination should be respected. I did not mean to discount a perspective like yours. My apologies for missing the mark. -Pete (talk) 17:08, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Category:Times that large groups of Wikipedians supported something could use reform. It is not obvious to me how the entries in it should be sorted, but it would be useful if they were. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:48, 15 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • "900 people agree on what that starting point should look like." Well, I have great respect for Pete. I took his OER class---twice. But I disagree with the framing here. That about which Wikipedeans have agreed is what something should NOT look like. Perhaps that is why WMF is finally realizing that for things to evolve they need to lead. I hope that WMF is coming to the conclusion that WP could do with far fewer long-time, status-quo-loving "core contributors." I hope that WMF has come to the conclusion that WP will benefit from a lot more un-intrenched, fresh faces who want to write, research, and edit instead of patrol, revert, and bully. You see, I think these new components have been treated the same way too many "newbies" and a whole lot of women have been treated, namely, with contempt. I wonder if the WMF might do the following: compare the chart showing signatories (above) with those shown here. I wonder if WMF might notice that the further away from the 2006 cohort you get, the smaller the number of signatories; the smaller the number of English-language new articles; the fewer new English-language articles per month. 900 sounds like a big number. But the trend suggests otherwise. I'm sure there will be more signatories. But I'm afraid I won't be number 901. ChristineBushMV (talk) 01:19, 17 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Christine, good to see you here, and thanks for the thoughtful engagement. You make good points. Two thoughts, though:
First, addressing "they need to lead": I think that things are less than optimal in the Wikimedia world, and I think you and I see many of the same problems. I think one of the most effective ways to counter that is with good leadership. I think the WMF certainly has the right, and even a mandate, to provide good leadership (though I think many different kinds of people and organizations can, should, and in fact do also provide good leadership.) But leadership is not a binary, it's not something that you either "do" or "don't do;" one way to analyze it would be effective leadership, ineffective leadership, and counterproductive leadership. If leadership is to bring about good results, many things need to fall into place; my contention is not that WMF should not lead, it's that WMF has charged off in very much the wrong direction in this case, and has disregarded some pretty painless ways to course-correct.
More to the substance of what you say (and since I created my account in 2006, yes, I'll admit a little bias here :) Let me reflect back what I think your argument is, to make sure I've got it right: (a) longer-tenured Wikipedians are the central cause of the poor social dynamics of Wikipedia; and either (b1) by removing them, Wikipedia will naturally revert to a friendlier and more productive milieu; or perhaps, (b2) by removing them, WMF will create the necessary space to substitute its own cultural leadership, and will be able to inject the needed collegiality into the system.
Is that a fair summary? If not, please correct me.
If so, I have to say, I disagree with (a), (b1), and (b2). I'm happy to discuss why, but for the moment I'll leave that aside -- let's just assume that neither of us knows for certain whether any of these three is true.
Wouldn't you say it's a pretty big gamble -- to try to chase away the longer-tenured editors, in the hopes that it will make things better?
In other words -- maybe a compelling theory, but hardly the proper course of action for an organization that carries responsibilities the WMF does. -Pete (talk) 16:41, 17 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Pete. It appears you are familiar with some of the communications strategies promoted by the AVP school. I appreciate how you have echoed back what you've heard here before responding, thank you.
Regrading Dewey Decimal system subject heading 303.34: Agreed. Best construed as a raster object, not a bit ;-)
Regarding a): pointing at a correlation, that's all. Regarding b1): I do not wish WMF to "remove" anyone, but if certain policies resulted in significant changes to behavioral norms, I would welcome that. Regarding b2): this is closest to what I was trying to convey, though---again---I do not wish to see anyone "removed" per se; nor did I use those words. I own the implication, though. My mistake.
Thanks for your work on this. I mainly didn't want to miss this opportunity to model agreeing to disagree with you. I also just came across a fascinating paper by Dr. Andrew Feenberg (Simon Fraser University) in which he presents Ten Paradoxes of Technology, some of which seem to be at play in this discussion. In particular, I am thinking of the ninth one: the paradox of democracy and technology, in which democracy is found to be both shaped by, and formative of, technology. I think we're looking at the same paradox, from different sides. ChristineBushMV (talk) 21:26, 17 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The Signpost: doing it for free since 2005.
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