2008/12/5 Brian <Brian.Mingus(a)colorado.edu>du>: Up until July 2008, the paid technology team of the Wikimedia Foundation consisted of four people who were responsible for software development, operations management, and office IT support. So, the "powers that be" have been pretty busy. :-) I agree these extensions are very powerful; it's wonderful that they were developed independently, and there are quite a few successful use cases out there already to learn from. We'll have to figure out what their role can be within a specific restricted grant to help first-time authors. If we can't make significant progress on assessing the more advanced features offered by SMW/SMF, we'll certainly target that as a future goal. -- Erik Möller Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate

Hoi, When so many people are turned off by syntax of any kind, it makes sense to prevent them to see such syntax. It should be there however for those who do not consider it a turn off. Thanks, GerardM 2008/12/7 Tim Starling <tstarling(a)wikimedia.org>

Hoi. One thing you CAN do is divorce the text form the templates. When you do not need to parse the templates, you can show the text in a WYSIWYG way. You can then either show the template in final form or with an "anchor" that refers to the source that can be seen elsewhere. Thanks, GerardM 2008/12/7 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>

Hoi, Many organisations use MediaWiki, many organisations use all kinds of extensions to make MediaWiki more usable. Extensions do not necessarily work for stable releases. This is why extension testing is important for us all. Extensions are used in many languages this is why internationalisation and localisation is important to us all. The lack of usability affects all current MediaWiki installations now, and it is for this reason that people are looking for any and all improvements that make a difference. I had a look at the Wikia work and I love it. It indeed makes a difference. How can all this work be leveraged in a more inclusive way. Wikia has invested in usability, so did UNICEF. Because of a lack of cooperation, of sharing the benefits of Open Source do not materialise. With the Wikimedia Foundation receiving much money, we will either find another separate project or a more inclusive project. By cooperating with the people who have been working on usability the return on the investment can be improved. I urge everyone to cooperate because the alternative is a big waste of effort and money. Too much money and effort have already been wasted. I know that Wikia has been working on WYSIWYG but given that they operate their own repository it is not clear if and how we can cooperate. This cooperation can extend to the testing of extensions, localisation and internationalisation... You know, usability and cooperation is needed now. Thanks, GerardM 2008/12/9 Angela <beesley(a)gmail.com>

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 10:07 AM, Angela <beesley(a)gmail.com> wrote: Is it a MediaWiki fork or just an extension? If it is a fork, up to which extent it is compatible with the main MediaWiki? If it is an extension, where is the root of the extension?

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 4:36 PM, Angela <beesley(a)gmail.com> wrote: Do you (and Brion! and other MW developers) have the idea is it hard to implement it into WMF projects?

On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 5:06 PM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote: I would just like to know how hard is it to implement. Usually, all significant technical issues related to WMF MW installations have significant technical problems. This is especially true whenever we are talking about MW Parser. But, if the second largest MW host implemented it, it gives to me a hope that it is possible. Knowing that it is based on FCKeditor, and knowing how it works (including a possibility to switch to wiki markup), it would be really great to see it on WMF sites (even I am not one of those who would benefit from it because it is easier to me to type ''...'' instead of CTRL+I...CTRL+I).

the proper list would be mediawiki-l? On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 00:21, Angela <beesley(a)gmail.com> wrote: