Wikimedians are rightfully wary
- The views expressed in this op-ed are those of the author only; responses and critical commentary are invited in the comments section. The Signpost welcomes proposals for op-eds at our opinion desk.
The Wikimedia Foundation sometimes proposes new features that receive substantive criticism from Wikimedians, yet those criticisms may be dismissed on the basis that people are resistant to change—there's an unjustified view that the wikis have been overrun by vested contributors who hate all change. That view misses a lot of key details and insight because there are good reasons that Wikimedians are suspicious of features development, given past and present development of bad software, growing ties with the problematic Wikia, and a growing belief that it is acceptable to experiment on users.
There's a lot of agreement about the major technical pain-points of Wikimedia wikis. Any non-programmer who has interacted with a MediaWiki talk page or tried to edit a marginally complex article can quickly identify problems with the MediaWiki software and its design. Talk pages are horrific. Editing is horrific. Page load time—particularly for logged-in users and particularly for articles with a high number of complex templates—can be horrific. Change is needed; or to put it even more politely, there's a lot of room for improvement.
Agreement aside, we're seeing a disconnect right now between what the Foundation is spending resources on and the issues faced by the community. This misalignment has a number of origins. While many people agree that change is needed, the question is whether the Foundation will deliver these changes.