Re: [Wikimedia-l] Open letter to the new CTO

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?

in addition to the "engineering should build what the community wants"

we need to also build the "community should embrace changes arising from

efforts to evolve the platform" direction. The necessary balance and

between these factors has been missing

On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 5:08 PM, Rogol Domedonfors &lt;domedonfors(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Do and hwow curiosity 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 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]] -- (http://cscott.net) _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>