Erik Moeller wrote:
Having all technical contributors directed to wikitech.wikimedia.org would address that - it would introduce them to a magical world of dev-ops unicorns and PHP rainbows at the same time. And having mediawiki.org more clearly dedicated to the product would allow it to shine more brightly in its own sunflower-y colors.
:D
At the same time, the amount of wiki-ping-pong we're playing with technically interested users could very well increase significantly as a result. Right now, wikitech.wikimedia.org is relatively quiet, with changes typically either being made by the Wikimedia ops team or by Labs users.
It simply stands to reason that if we distribute a lot of content from a large wiki to a much smaller one, the number of times that you'll have to go back and forth between the two to find what you're looking for will increase. API docs? Over here. Status update? Over there. Extension installation docs? Over here. Specs related to the same extension? Over there. Ping, pong. Ping, pong. The divisions may seem logical to us, but for the confused technical contributor, things could easily get a lot worse.
Yes, this. All of this.
If we do go forward with the migration to wikitech.wikimedia.org, I would argue in favor of largely depleting mediawiki.org of content except for clearly necessary end user documentation and support pages, to minimize ping pong effects.
Before too much gets moved or migrated (for a second time, in some cases, as Daniel F. points out... some of this content was already moved from Meta-Wiki to MediaWiki.org), I'd like to see more thought put into where everything should end up. Moves/migrations are disruptive and the resulting mess may be worse than keeping everything where it is for now.
MZMcBride