[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #38064: Surveying system to gather user voices

[WordPress Trac]

#38064: Surveying system to gather user voices
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 Reporter:  schlessera       |       Owner:
     Type:  feature request  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal           |   Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  General          |     Version:
 Severity:  normal           |  Resolution:
 Keywords:                   |     Focuses:
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Comment (by helen):

 Based on this ticket and your linked post, it seems that your premise is
 that you're uncertain if WordPress is a democracy or a meritocracy, and
 that mentions of "the majority" imply some kind of democratic 1:1 voting
 system. Calling an open source project a meritocracy is loaded for good
 reason, but the reality remains that WordPress functions as a meritocracy.
 This is stated clearly in some places, including
 [https://wordpress.org/about/security/ the security whitepaper].

 "Design for the majority" is a philosophy and a goal, not some kind of
 literal process or a singularly decisive factor. I recognize that "the
 majority" constantly gets cited as an argument, but so do a lot of things
 - it does not inherently make that a good argument at all times. And don't
 forget, that same philosophies page that describes "design for the
 majority" contains a reminder about the vocal minority.

 I don't want data collection efforts to center around what people want -
 certainly people's wants should be heard, but the data collected should be
 around what they do and how that informs things WordPress should do to
 better serve the needs that exposes. It seems that you agree with this at
 some level, and you know the vote you cite is not representative of "the
 people", so this ticket is extremely confusing to me.

 That particular poll also exposes a frequent problem with votes, in that
 nuance and reasoning is lost. Do people want Composer in core because they
 want to be able to use something that's in core, or do they want it
 because core can actually use it in an effective way? Is this more of a
 want than, say, a PHP 5.3 baseline, and could it be a million times better
 enabled if that were addressed first?

 What's missing in your specific instance is not a voting mechanism, it's a
 trusted owner to guide the process of discovering needs and defining
 outcomes. What we do about usage data more broadly in WordPress is a
 valuable conversation to have and has been happening in fits and starts,
 but it's not something for a Trac ticket. My suggestion is to focus on
 getting the specific project that is #36335 productively moving before
 worrying about something like votes. It probably needs regular meetings,
 contribution direction on GitHub or wherever, focused writing prompts as a
 means to obtain some qualitative data (e.g. "what would having Composer in
 WordPress core do for you, and can you show a specific example"), and so
 on.

 If you need help wrangling an owner or owners, then please ask for that
 help - software maintainers aren't just decision makers, they should also
 be facilitators.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/38064#comment:4>
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