Boards approve high level plans not detailed implementation. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:21, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- I think the report's critiques of the current progress are fair and useful, but I'm actually glad that the WMF is taking a shot on the project. It might work out, it might not, but it's the kind of interesting, innovative idea that's well worth exploring. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:21, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- For those reading this who might not be aware Doc James has extensive WMF Board experience and knows what he is talking about. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:43, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- And in fact he was one of the Board members who approved the resolution in question.
Speaking of the Board, one of the current trustees who appears to be most informed about the project may be the recently re-elected Shani, she has been conducting several interview-like conversations with Denny about it. This part (from May 2022) is interesting with regard to the question about the scope of Wikifunctions: In response to a question about what Wikifunctions is and why it is needed, Denny spends several minutes explaining the pedestrian Wikipedia-focused use cases like calculating a person's age, but never mentions the expansive vision of democratizing programming, providing a platform "where scientists and analysts could create models together", etc. Regards, HaeB (talk) 19:12, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- This makes it sound like the full scope of Wikifunctions was somehow obscured or hidden. It never was.
- Here are quotes from the Introduction from the April 2020 paper: "Wikilambda is a wiki of functions. Functions take some input and return an output. [...] Wikilambda aims at making access to functions and writing and contributing new functions as simple as contributing to Wikipedia, thus aiming to create a comprehensive repository of algorithms and functions." Note that Wikilambda was the working name for the project, and was later changed by a community vote to Wikifunctions.
- The project plan which was presented to the community also introduced the new wiki project as "a project to create, catalog, and maintain an open library (or repository) of “functions”, which has many possible use cases." (see the proposal for a new sister project, May 2020 version) You can find the vision described in detail and its full extend already in the May 2020 overview page.
- Also the mostly weekly news updates frequently discuss the scope of functions, e.g. in its second edition, discussing the scope of functions, where we explicitly speak about democratizing functions; when introducing the mission statement, or when talking about inclusion despite math, or diversity and equity in programming.
- I think there are many valid criticisms that can be raised against Wikifunctions, but implying that we were hiding the "expansive vision of democratizing programming", either before the project started or during its ongoing development, is not one of them. --DVrandecic (WMF) (talk) 19:20, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm always disappointed when a response is entirely defensive. It offers a terrible start at a dialog, if nothing else, and will predictably divide responses into polarized sides. I sympathize more with the critique than the response, myself, and so perhaps this isn't a neutral reaction, but I really wish the official foundation response had found opportunities to embrace criticism and a few opportunities to admit that a change in direction might be warranted. Ie, a "these are the critiques we feel are more valid" instead of a blanket "none of the critiques are valid". You don't have to agree, but offer a counterproposal at least. Doubling down on the original plan with no changes after the initial years experience seems to indicate management failure, regardless of the technical merits. No project survives initial implementation completely unchanged. C. Scott Ananian (talk) 15:43, 1 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- I agree with you that it would be very disappointing if a response were entirely defensive. If I were to solely rely on The Signpost's reporting above, it might easily seem that way. Fortunately, the entire evaluation is available - and it is lengthy, as The Signpost correctly states. As we write in the response: "We have or plan to implement many of the recommendations the fellows have made regarding security, the function model, the system’s usability, etc. Many of those did not make it in either the evaluation or this answer, as both documents focused on the remaining differences, and less on the agreements."
- There are a few recommendations we do not agree with. But with many we agreed, and we either already implemented them, sometimes together with the fellows, or have tasks on our task board to implement them, many before launch. --DVrandecic (WMF) (talk) 19:31, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
- Denny, it's very disappointing to see you double down on such deceptive communications tactics here. I'm excerpting below here the full set of recommendations from m:Abstract Wikipedia/Google.org Fellows evaluation#Recommendations: