Brion:
If the project ever actually makes it as far as having
some software, of
course it would be publicly tested first. So far as I know no code has
been written
I'm actively working on it, though of course I'm not going to commit
something incomplete to CVS. It will still be a while until we get from
where we are to a working implementation (I'll post an updated timetable
on Meta soon). This is a very large project and I want to get it right
instead of hacking together some simplistic template-based solution over
a weekend. It needs to be flexible and scalable beyond UW itself.
So, personally, I think a discussion about the usefulness of UW is at
this point a bit premature, as the development has been funded and is
underway, and the decision about whether we want to do this should be
made when people have had a chance to look at a working prototype and
comment on it.
There will be no automatism; just because someone develops something,
it's not necessarily going to be used or even accepted into MediaWiki
itself. Gerard's article is a solid presentation of his view on where we
are going to take this, which I share, but it should be self-evident
that this can only happen with the approval and support of the community.
Best,
Erik