I feel like this is some dystopian alternate reality post. It took 4 years to release a hover popup! Take that in for a second. And the post seems extremely proud, and self-congratulatory about it.

From the post: > Our initial version wasn’t good enough. Our community asked us not to go ahead with it. We answered by listening to them and making it better.

This was 2 years ago, and read the comments on the 39 votes it took to not release Hovercards - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28prop...

This meant that the silent majority didn't get these features for 2 years because some considered it 'intrusive'. A feature that you could objectively argue as being a useful utility.

If anything, I think this is an indictment of the complaints against Wikipedia from those observing it and ex-employees. While a benevolent dictatorship might be going too far, such a community process where only the loudest voice wins (over considering what is best for MOST of the users), is surely a broken process. I am surprised that product & design people work there at all in such an environment.