Topic on Talk:Collaboration

Given the last misplaced thread, I had to add another clarification on top of the page. After a discussion on #wikimedia-dev just now, I think a more correct synonym for the team's name would be "Central features", where central means that it's like a central square everebody goes through i.e. features affecting main/common workflows of (at least some subset of) wiki users. Right?

"Core" is wrong and confusing in so many ways. (Un)relatedly, I wish there was some team devoted to improving the most impactful features of core (like patrolling, recentchanges, diffs)... but that's definitely something this team does not and which is more likely to happen under "Platform" I suppose (if such distinctions even make sense).

+1. A team whose remit involves essentially the major non-core features should not be called core features.

If anybody can think of a better name, go for it. We've spent hours trawling online thesauruses looking for synonyms of "core" that don't sound a) crazy or b) way too self-aggrandizing (Foundational Features? Pivotal Features? Big-ticket Features?), and we've always come up empty. "Central" sounds a bit too close to the latter camp, imho – as opposed to all those little inconsequential, peripheral features, like VE or Login/Account creation? ;)

Also, keep in mind that our sister team is Growth, so something that makes sense as a pair to that would be ideal.

Could call it "Features major" and rename growth to "features minor" (I'm working on the assumption that this team is supposed to be for "big" features, and growth for smaller features that are more experiments to see what works and what doesn't). In any case, what was wrong with "Editor engagement"? It may not have perfectly described what the team did, but a mildly incorrect name is about ten thousand times better then a name that conflicts with existing jargon. A name exists first and foremost to uniquely identify something - having it accurately describe that thing is a secondary concern. A mostly meaningless name, like "team excogitatio" which can gain meanings from the things the team does is better then a name that can be confused with something else.

Thanks for your reply, Maryana. The words can be tricky to choose, but did I get the concept right or not? I don't think "central" is more self-aggrandizing than "core", but that can be seen later; what's important is finding correct descriptions/alternative names to improve the general understanding of the team's work.

As for the opposition to "Growth", I think the main one is what I said above (everyone's workflows vs. specific wiki actions), but another is attack vs. defense, where Growth is about expansion to (new) markets – so to say – and core/central is about consolidation. All teams are about "growth" per the strategic goals so it's hard to find a term to pair to that.

The new name is quite descriptive, thanks for the improvement! It's still ambiguous, in that it may also apply (to quote myself) to «features of core (like patrolling, recentchanges, diffs)» which are the basis of collaboration on MediaWiki. At least there isn't any team or product with the same name!

Phew! I was worried about it (as I do about everything), despite supporting this option myself, and I'm glad that you consider it an improvement. :-) (As someone said to me, "I'm sure it's not the perfect name that we could have, but it's a good name, and now we have one".)

Now if only there were an easy way to rename the mailing lists from ee@ and e2@ ... :-/ [afaik, it is possible, but complicated and very messy for all the various archives (web and personal), so I'm recommending against it.]