Hi everyone,
As I have been talking to third-party MW users quite a lot recently, I notice that one of the major issues they are facing is the lack of visibility on MW.org. I have seen some previous work like that has been reverted because WMF does not want to endorse any external parties on mw.org. However, at the same time I see some pages featuring such users such as http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_testimonials and http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_with_BitNami. So my question here is how much is acceptable?
I think it would be helpful for both the third-party community and for MW itself to give third-party users more visibility. It will help third-party users know about each other and support each other, get more involved with the community and possibly attract more business. At the same time having some success stories visible is likely to attract more MediaWiki users, while a thriving and engaged third-party community is likely to bring more innovation to the software itself.
I have been working on some lists of wiki farms, consultants, developers, hosting companies and interesting installations for my internship, which you can see here. However, I am wondering if I could give the lists a little more visibility with a disclaimer on top that WMF does not in any way endorse the listed companies and guarantee for the quality of their service. Also, I think updating and revitalizing the http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_testimonials page is a good idea. Another way to give some users visibility is having featured projects of the month or something like that, which would require someone's consistent involvement, however.
How much do you think is acceptable?
Mariya