On Saturday, October 29, 2016, chris tharp tharpenator@gmail.com wrote:

Hi All,

As a lone tinker with Mediawiki, who pays some attention to things connected with it, I thought I would ask for a follow up to last year's Mediawiki Stakeholders survey (see: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Stakeholders%27_Group). An itemized wishlist of most requested features was made (see:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Stakeholders%27_Group/Tasks/Feature... )

with the top four being:

1. Easier installation and upgrade (for both core and extensions).

2. Editing and Visual Editor

3. Skinning and UI

4. Access Controls and Rights

I'm asking for this follow up because as far as I can tell little to no process has been made on these issues. Additionally in some ways it seems some things have gotten worse. But I'm hoping I'm wrong and someone with more knowledge will enlighten me.

Here's some examples of things not improving, or getting worse:

1. Easier Installation and upgrade

a. Three years after the death of the Extension Matrix there still is still no way to tell when a new extension is released. b. Composer is an easier way to install extensions, but for those without command line access it's a nightmare. c. The upgrade process is still the same

2. Visual Editor

a. still a nightmare to install -- not in any sense is it an out of the

box

solution. b. On a shared host forget about the Visual Editor

3. Skinning and UI

a. same as extensions -- no easy way to find out about new skins

4. Access Controls and Rights

a. The most popular access control extension (Lockdown) only barely works in 1.27 and causes other extensions to not work: Visual Editor, MsUpload, and Upload Wizard (there's no doubt more). b. Almost every other access right extension is unmaintained. c. The two Semantic Mediawiki Access Right extensions are both unmaintained.SemanticACL does not work at all in 1.27.

I know, or assume some of these things are being worked on, but still it seems the stakeholders feature wishlist is not being translated into

action

in anyway. So anyone know something I don't, or don't see on these issues?

(Btw, this is not a knock on the hard working developers behind Mediawiki, and/or its extensions. But a desire to see if the desires of third-party users have any impact on the direction of software).

Thanks

Chris _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list To unsubscribe, go to: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

I dont think the survey results have been passed on effectively to most active developers. This is the first time i have even heard anything about that survey since it was originally launched. Perhaps the comparision is unfair, but compare it to say the WMF community wishlist survey, which I hear about ad nauseum. The user requests I hear about more often are the one's i am more likely to work on.

-- Bawolff

Chris,

I think invite you and other people interested in this to join us in our meeting this Friday[1].

The MWStake group is currently working on incorporating so that we'll have a 501(c)6 [2] that can gather and disseminate funds so that work on the wishlist items has money behind it and (hopefully) motivated workers.

We'll be discussing as well as the next *MWCon in D.C. this Friday. Please join us.

Footnotes: [1] http://mwstake.org/mwstake/wiki/Event:36

[2] https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/other-non-profits/business-leagues