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The forthcoming WMF website relaunch

Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2018 1:01 pm
by CrowsNest
The Foundation are evidently deep into the process of redesigning their website (wikimediafoundation.org), indeed if their schedule is to be believed, it was finished in April and should be going live this month.

I don't know what this all means for us, except obviously to be aware that this would seem like a great opportunity for things they find uncomfortable having to keep online, to handily get lost. You know how moving day is.

There's details of what will be going where here.....

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimed ... ment_stage

External contractor is muledesign.com of SanFrancisco.

Who? Exactly. Evidently not to be confused with MuleSoft, also of SanFran.

Fun fact: A mule is the offspring of a female horse and a male donkey.

I was most tickled by this blurb.......
Content being developed for the new Wikimedia Foundation website will be focused primarily on external audiences.

The target audiences for the new site include:

Donors
Partner organizations
Press
Job seekers
Potential volunteers
Nice to see they inadvertently reveal their innate sense of priorities. Donors bring the money. Partners provide shit for free. Press help them rattle their tin. Job seekers are always needed because a burgeoning staff is the most efficient way they know how to burn through ever increasing piles of donor money. Volunteers are needed to actually do the things that aren't related to the primary corporate goal of raising and then frittering away pots of money on pointless projects. Like redesigning a website most people have probably never heard of.

That was written by some dude named Gregory Varnum, who calls himself a Communications Strategist for some outfit called the Wikimedia Foundation. Never heard of it myself. Have they got a website? Oh look, a donate button! It's flashing. Neat. How do I stop it? Seriously, my epilepsy. Aaaarrrggghhhhh!!!!??!Q1

Re: The forthcoming WMF website relaunch

Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2018 6:11 pm
by CrowsNest
Gonna bump this because it is painful to watch the Wikipediocrats (definiton: loyal members of Wikipediocracy) flounder around in their ignorance.

Dumbasses.

Re: The forthcoming WMF website relaunch

Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2018 6:46 pm
by Dysklyver
Heh. I missed this and didn't realise the WMF hired it out to Donkey R Us & Co. Maybe the WMF have got too many external contractors to hide what they are doing? Something fishy going on there when they have plenty of in house staff but chose to farm out the work without telling people. (Hint: Big Fish.)

Also all the WMF's new sites are shit. When looking at this one, you need to also consider https://transparency.wikimedia.org as well.

Re: The forthcoming WMF website relaunch

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 12:06 am
by CrowsNest
Eric_Corbett wrote:I can fully understand anyone wanting to move away from the Mediawiki software to something more modern, except for the WMF. If the Mediawiki software isn't good enough for them then it's not good enough for Wikipedia either.

Shooting yourself in the foot much?
In everything they have sole control over, such as their new website, bug reporting, statistics and their outreach efforts, the WMF has indeed abandoned MediaWiki. For good reason. They certainly prefer researchers to bypass it completely, going straight to the database. And they have tried, Lord knows they've tried, to use any and all means to hide the fact Wikipedia runs on MediaWiki, both from readers and editors. The community has blocked them at a every turn. The same community which has, to this day, still not accepted that the Main Page needs an overhaul. There is, AFAIK, a deep desire within the WMF to depreciate MediaWiki completely. Consign it to the dustbin of history. Have a guess what is their greatest fear is, in embarking on such a radical change......

Dumbass. I preferred it when he was rumoured to be no longer of this world.

Re: The forthcoming WMF website relaunch

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 10:49 am
by Dysklyver
CrowsNest wrote:
Eric_Corbett wrote:I can fully understand anyone wanting to move away from the Mediawiki software to something more modern, except for the WMF. If the Mediawiki software isn't good enough for them then it's not good enough for Wikipedia either.

Shooting yourself in the foot much?
In everything they have sole control over, such as their new website, bug reporting, statistics and their outreach efforts, the WMF has indeed abandoned MediaWiki. For good reason. They certainly prefer researchers to bypass it completely, going straight to the database. And they have tried, Lord knows they've tried, to use any and all means to hide the fact Wikipedia runs on MediaWiki, both from readers and editors. The community has blocked them at a every turn. The same community which has, to this day, still not accepted that the Main Page needs an overhaul. There is, AFAIK, a deep desire within the WMF to depreciate MediaWiki completely. Consign it to the dustbin of history. Have a guess what is their greatest fear is, in embarking on such a radical change......

Dumbass. I preferred it when he was rumoured to be no longer of this world.


Spot on.

The community has probably permanently broken Wikipedia by this endless game of attrition with the WMF over software and design. But then the WMF are less than fully competent so would probably have screwed up anyway even if given to go ahead on changes.

Re: The forthcoming WMF website relaunch

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 12:58 pm
by CrowsNest
It's chicken and egg. To a certain extent, the quality of their output reflects the sort of person who willingly takes a coding job, or rather sticks with a job, where your users are the Wikipedia comunity, but your ultimate boss is the WMF.