On 12/29/2010 5:14 PM, MZMcBride wrote:
Neil Kandalgaonkar wrote:
Question: assuming that our primary interest is creating software for Wikipedia and similar WMF projects, do we actually get anything from the Windows PC intranet users that offsets the cost of keeping MediaWiki friendly to both environments? In other words, do we get contributions from them that help us do Wikipedia et al,?
Not generally, no.
MediaWiki is just one of Wikimedia's projects, something that I think is sometimes overlooked or forgotten. Probably as it's the current base upon which all the other projects are built. To me, that appears to be the fundamental problem here. I've said this in a roundabout way a few times now, but the horse is still whimpering, so let's try once more.
I don't think the software that a dictionary or quote database needs is ever going to be the same as the software that an encyclopedia or news site needs. And I don't think the software options that fit those four use-cases will ever work (well!) for a media repository. I don't think it's a lack of creativity. Given the hacks put in place on sites like the English Wiktionary, it's clearly not. But at some point there has to be a recognition that using a screwdriver to put nails in the wall is a bad idea. You need a hammer.
Tim wrote a blog on techblog.wikimedia.org in July 2010 about MediaWiki version statistics. Someone commented that it was ironic that Wikimedia was using WordPress instead of MediaWiki as a blogging platform. Tim's response: they do different things.[1]
This isn't a matter of not knowing what the problem is. The problem is recognized by the leading MediaWiki developers and it's an old software principle (cf. Unix's philosophy[2] of doing one thing and doing it well). The full phrase quoted earlier is "jack of all trades, master of none." I think MediaWiki fits this perfectly.
I don't think using a general purpose wiki engine for every project is inherently a poor idea. MediaWiki is highly extensible. We just, for some reason, haven't really taken advantage of that where it could really matter. Most of the extensions we use just kind of work in the background. I don't know if its due to lack of resources, or whether the WMF wants all the projects to look and work the same.
Wiktionary is probably the easiest example. All of the entries follow a fairly rigid layout that lends itself rather easily to a form, yet we're still inputting them using a single big textarea.
Though that's not to say we couldn't still do better than we are with a general purpose wiki engine. I still stand by my earlier suggestion that we drop the requirement that everything WMF uses has to be able to work for others right out of the box using only PHP. We should use PHP when possible, but it shouldn't be a limitation.