User:Werdna/Comments on main page deletion
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This issue represents a pretty good summary of a number of problems with Wikipedia's decision-making processes. The first is that true consensus is unwieldly with such a large group of active contributors. As a consequence of this, we have a "supermajority" (not really "consensus" at all), as a proxy for consensus. As a consequence of THAT, users who can get away with it tend to unilaterally do things like this.
As I've said, this sort of thing can be avoided if we promote a culture of caution around these sorts of things. We must take a hard line with those who are not cautious, and who, as a result, try to delete the main page, because they "were a bit bored", and somebody told them that it wasn't possible. We must take a hard line with those who operate unauthorised bots to make thousands of edits to pages, in order to exploit a software workaround, instead of simply turning a blind eye to these sorts of things. We have a bot approval group for a reason. If the proper process for bot approval were to be followed, a developer or systems administrator would have doubtless noticed the request for approval, and made the appropriate comments (for instance, that it is considered an abuse of system resources, and that a five minute hack by Tim Starling could have saved the second half of the drama that unfolded).
Of course, it is entirely likely that the request may not have been noticed by a developer. This is a problem. It is my suggestion that the development and systems administration team should play an integral role in the administration of a successful bot system. While the community of the English Wikipedia should be tasked with determining whether the purpose of a bot is sound, it is the general Wikimedia technical community which must evaluate a proposed bot, feature, or other technically-sensitive change for its impact upon performance, and on whether it is better achieved with, for instance, extensions and modifications to MediaWiki.
I further point out that many of these features are implemented as bots, rather than as software features because of the perceived difficulty of having a feature actually implemented. I understand that many bots are coded in lieu of software features simply because feature requests tend to lie dormant, or tend to be dismissed off-hand by the technical team. This is a suboptimal situation.
It is my opinion that these issues stem from a common cause — a distinct separation between the English Wikipedia community, and the MediaWiki and Wikimedia software development and systems administration team. I note that developers and systems administrators tend to communicate primarily via the mailing lists, bugzilla, and via IRC. I note that English Wikipedia meta-discussion tends to take place on-wiki, and on external forums. Obviously, the disparity between these communication media is causing problems — almost all developers do not edit a wiki regularly, nor take part in meta-discussion in the appropriate forums for the English Wikipedia community.
In addition, the power and policy structures of English Wikipedia and the MediaWiki development community are quite different, mostly due to different scales. While the English Wikipedia community tends to favour written policies, large votes and discussions on issues (due to the scale of the community), the developer community tends to operate on the instruction of the paid developers (Tim Starling and Brion Vibber), and has unwritten established practice. As a consequence, the development and systems administration community tends to be quite insular, and requires substantial effort to become an "insider" of.
It is therefore my proposal that the Wikimedia technical team, and the English Wikipedia community, undertake to build bridges and open up communication. I encourage those fellow Wikipedians who use IRC and the mailing lists (or even the technical village pump, which is followed by a number of developers and systems administrators) ask a member of the technical team if server issues will be caused by some unusual trick being employed — such as adding 1200 revisions to a page. I encourage my fellow members of the technical team to, if they don't already, take some time to answer questions and comments on the technical village pump.
