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?
efforts to evolve the platform" direction. The
necessary balance and
Fair enough.
On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 5:55 PM, C. Scott Ananian <cananian(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
On Sun, Nov 13, 2016 at 5:08 PM, Rogol Domedonfors
<domedonfors(a)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]]
--
(
http://cscott.net)
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