I really appreciate the thoughtful detail in this thread. Thanks, Scott.
Multi-content revisions are a really good idea and the level of public discussion seemed fitting.
If we clean up a seldom-used corner case in the wikitext specification, is that still "wikitext"? If we replace wikitext templates with Scribunto templates is it still "wikitext"? If we change boldface to {'' ... ''} instead of triple-quotes, is that still wikitext?
Yes ...
in addition to the "engineering should build what the community wants"
direction,
we need to also build the "community should embrace changes arising from
WMF
efforts to evolve the platform" direction. The necessary balance and
interplay
between these factors has been missing
Fair enough.
On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 5:55 PM, C. Scott Ananian cananian@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 5:08 PM, Rogol Domedonfors domedonfors@gmail.com wrote:
I have explicitly asked where plans for the future of the editors and the parsr unification project can be seen, and there has simply been no response.
Do
those plans exist? If so, where are they, and why are they not being shared wth the community. If not, why and how is any work proceeding,
and
what process will be used to developt those plans, and in particular,
hwow
will the community be involved? These are not questions of idle
curiosity
for one particular user's satisfaction, they issues requiring clear and public articuation as key components of any successful future staraegy to avoid the disastrous mistakes of the past.
In the past two years:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_ Summit/2017/Handling_wiki_content_beyond_plaintext (coming up!) https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsing https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsing/Replacing_Tidy https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsing/Replacing_Tidy/FAQ https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Templates_are_ dead!_Long_live_templates ! https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Mediawiki_without_ wikitext https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Wikitext_is_ broken,_long_live_wikitext_(2.0)
Fifthly I note that there have been repeated assurances over time that the
content of the databases will continue to be wikitext, and that wikitext will be directly editable, at least for the foreseeable future. Those assurances came from people who oight to know and who appeared to be speaking on behalf of, and with the authority of the WMF. The comments made by Scott do not entirely support those assurances.
The "assurances" are not as black-and-white as you seem to think. There are a number of ways to translate on-the-fly between alternative representations and wikitext, as well as some debate about what "wikitext" actually is. If we clean up a seldom-used corner case in the wikitext specification, is that still "wikitext"? If we replace wikitext templates with Scribunto templates is it still "wikitext"? If we change boldface to {'' ... ''} instead of triple-quotes, is that still wikitext? Etc. Further, see:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multi-Content_Revisions
for broader context on the backend changes, which will make it possible to store multiple equivalent representations of any of our content ("legacy wikitext", "wikitext 2.0", "HTML", etc), and translate on-the-fly back-and-forth between them. We currently do this for Flow, for example, where the "in database" representation is HTML, even if you are editing it in "wikitext". So there are lots of ways to tweak the dials to always allow "wikitext editing" -- which, indeed, is under no attack. (Our archives, however, are currently in quite a perilous state due to the currently-underspecified nature of "wikitext".)
Multi-Content Revisions has been through a public RFC process: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T107595
Indeed, the short answer to your question about process would be, "Wikimania", "Developer Summit", and "Architecture Committee" ( https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Architecture_committee). It is rare that any substantial project at WMF hasn't been through all three of those public forums, and records of each are posted for the benefit of those who can't attend. (Although this year at Esino Lario the public process determined that the Wikimania attendees didn't actually want to have parsing- or wikitext-related technical discussions, and so instead I participated in a public hackathon for offline functionality organized by the Kiwix community. I surveyed attendees however and everyone I talked to indicated that WMF staff was adequately represented and no one reported any trouble finding staff members to answer questions.) --scott, [[User:cscott]]
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