On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 9:58 AM, Bryan Tong Minh bryan.tongminh@gmail.comwrote:
On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 7:06 AM, John at Darkstar vacuum@jeb.no wrote:
I believe that some kind of document, describing whats important to add to Mediawiki, and why, is very important for the overall community. This would give us an opportunity to clarify why we want to do something and how we would like to do such a thing. It will also make it possible to approach specific benefactors, patrons and donors, especially those that share a common goal with us.
Just as a clarification, things that are important but may seem to be neglected are not neglected because the developers think it is a bad idea, but usually because there is no developer available who has the time for it, especially if it concerns large projects.
Bryan
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Agreed. We've got an excellent team of mostly volunteers who develop MediaWiki. As volunteers, we get a bit of freedom to decide for ourselves what we want to work on. Mostly its things that are interesting or particularly useful.
The hard bugs, especially Parser bugs, get less lovin' because of just that: they're hard. Most volunteer developers would rather work on something that interests them as opposed to a really hard-to-fix edge case for the Parser ;-)
That being said, MediaWiki is currently developed to address the needs of the community first, and I think we do a very good job at that. I know most developers are active on IRC (#mediawiki), and mailing lists (wiktech-l is a great resource). I know several developers keep an eye on the English Wikipedia's Village Pump (technical). There certainly is a lot of communication going back and forth these days, and that's a very good thing to see.
As far as sitting down and formulating a formal roadmap, I can see the benefit. There is [[mw:MediaWiki roadmap]], but it's largely shaped by developers. Perhaps the community could develop its own roadmap and we can keep the MediaWiki.org one a bit more updated with community ideas as well?
The recent influx of developers has brought a lot of talent, and I personally am excited to see where development heads over the next months and years.
-Chad