Hoi, You have no clue how much money has already been invested in Semantic MediaWiki. This is not where the problem is. The problem is in having capacity to evaluate what is there. The capacity to evaluate and integrate functionality is key. It is for this reason that I am so happy that a tool is being developed for the testing of extensions. This is intended to automate some of the work and thereby make it easier to adopt extensions.
A scheme that I have been thinking of is: get us 50K$, split it between WMF and SMW, have the WMF evaluate and assess code with SMW as its priority and have SMW fix the issues that come up from the evaluation.
NB Five hundred dollars does not cut it. A *really *good commercial programmer may bill you for this amount for a days work. Thanks, GerardM
2009/1/16 Geoffrey Plourde geo.plrd@yahoo.com
Well what I proposed encouraged people to prioritize. For example, if 100 people donate 5 dollars each for semantic mediawiki, it might encourage an outside developer to work on it, freeing up staff and saving money.
From: Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 10:47:20 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Language codes to rename
Hoi, If we want to decrease the backlog, we should not invest in more extensions. We should invest in capacity to assess the extensions that are waiting. We should invest in capacity to triage our problems, we should invest in fixing the problems that we know off.
We have asked the public to help us, they gave us the 6 million dollar we asked for. We asked the Stanton Foundation and they gave us 890.000 dollar to improve the usability of the English language Wikipedia. There is software like Semantic MediaWiki, software to localise the Commons categories to name but two that are not considered at all because of a lack of capacity to assess what is out there.
If anything we need developers that take care of THAT backlog. If anything we need senior developers who will assist in making the software mature enough so that it can be used on our production servers. When you consider that the Tool server tools are not localised, and when you realise that as a consequence these tools have only a limited use you will agree with me that we first of all need to strengthen the fundamentals before we put another floor on the existing building. Thanks, GerardM
2009/1/16 Geoffrey Plourde geo.plrd@yahoo.com
Well if we want to decrease the backlog, we could suggest that people put up money for desired extensions.... I know its come up before and been rejecte, but it might attract people to develop stuff.
From: Marcus Buck me@marcusbuck.org To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Friday, January 16, 2009 8:45:31 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Language codes to rename
Geoffrey Plourde hett schreven:
I am sure he will handle the rename as soon as he can, but patience is
key.
cough, please be patient! It's only been three years since mo.wikipedia was closed. The case will be handled as soon as one of our service team members becomes available.
Marcus Buck
We got 6 million bucks, ain't we? Perhaps we should extend our tech staff a little bit. (Looking at the Bugzilla backlog, looking at the many features we are waiting for since years [global preferences for example], etc.) I don't suggest that Brion and the tech staff do a bad job. I'm sure they are doing their best. But obviously they need more
help.
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