User blog comment:MisterWoodhouse/Community Contract for the New Fandom Platform/@comment-168424-20190627214915


 * Pursue a win/win strategy in all platform decisions.
 * If a decision is not both a win for us AND a win for the most users possible, it is likely not worth making. We will take a community first approach, knowing that what leads to happy and healthy communities is ultimately what makes the entire platform more successful.
 * It would be nice how to know how you calculate "the most users possible". Depending on how you do that, the outcomes could be very different. FYI, laying off staff who were helping communities does not lead to "happy and healthy communities".


 * Seek solution parity or better.
 * The new platform will solve for the existing problems as well as new opportunities, but the solutions will not always be the same features as on the legacy platform. If a legacy Wikia feature must be removed, we will seek to replace the solution it presents with an equal or better feature. If a feature is no longer providing an effective solution, however, it might not be replaced. Such decisions will be communicated, and we will invite feedback and criticism of those decisions.
 * This sounds great, but it would be nice to know where this assertion is likely to apply in the near future. For example, you may want to take a long hard look at Help:Discussions FAQ and see if it meets this new standard. Right now there is no genuine way to say it does.


 * Take on the responsibility of saying “no” sometimes.
 * We are not going to be able to satisfy everyone. Although we are pursuing a win/win strategy and solution parity, we know that there are times where we have to say “no” to some features or requests and that not everyone will agree. If we said yes to everything, we would be doing a disservice to the stability and future of our community platform by simply replicating the same technology problems we have now. Development teams and other company leaders are empowered and responsible for making final decisions about platform updates and changes.
 * The important thing here is to give a good explanation of the process that led to a "no". If that process is largely made up of items that serve the interests of the company and very few reasons that serve the interests of users, then being responsible enough to say no is largely irrelevant. A vast majority of FANDOM's past decisions have been justified by how they help the company and we users remember that they did very little to help us.


 * Be transparent about how and why we make platform decisions.
 * While we may not always be able to share the specific data used, we will make all decisions with strong data-reinforced backing, not gut feelings, and share the rationale for decisions we make. When we have to say no, or make a difficult choice, you will always know why.
 * As long as the sources of these date are relatively independent and trustworthy. This is a great thing.


 * Communicate clearly and often.
 * This will be a long process and you are stakeholders in the outcome, so it is vital that we communicate often. We hope that the tone and frequency of communication we have established in the past few months gives you a sense of what to expect moving forward.
 * A weekly communication is a good start. However, a gap of a month or so, is fine as long as it is preceded with an explanation of some long process that might not yield publicly revealable results. On the flip-side, big changes that happen less than a week from the last communication should not be embargoed just to make the comms weekly. So far the communications have been descriptive, but short on details and substance. High substance communications are better than quantity.


 * Reach out to the community when input is required.
 * We are building this platform for you and for future generations of fans. While we have a very solid understanding of what you want and need for most of the features, some things will require input directly from our editors.
 * You really need to clearly define what you mean by "community" here. It is fine if it is context sensitive, but just talking to Community Council is not sufficient, especially now that so many members have been subsumed into the Wiki Manager, Helpers, and VSTF groups.


 * Listen to valid criticism and act upon it.
 * We receive a lot of criticism, sometimes very well deserved. If you provide relevant, respectful, constructive, actionable criticism to us, we will review it and act upon it — or, if we’re not acting upon it, we will provide you with a thorough explanation of why we’ve made that decision. Recent announcements from the staff blog should set the expectation for what sort of action your constructive criticism can yield.
 * We'll see about this one. I've been complaining about out-of-date help pages for over a decade and although I see some activity by staff, I'm often having to explain to people that the help pages are out-of-date. Please help me not have to do this.