- 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]
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