On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 4:29 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 16 January 2015 at 07:38, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
These days I'm not convinced it's our job to support every possible scale of wiki install. There's several simpler and smaller wiki solutions for people who can't do more than FTP a few files to a folder.
In this case the problem is leaving users and their wiki content unsupported. Because they won't move while it "works", even as it becomes a Swiss cheese of security holes. Because their content is important to them.
This is the part of the mission that involves everyone else producing the sum of human knowledge. They used our software, if we're abandoning them then don't pretend there's a viable alternative for them. You know there isn't.
What you're forgetting is that WMF abandoned MediaWiki as an Open Source project quite a while ago (at least 2 years ago). There's a separate org that gets a grant from WMF to handle third party use, and it's funded just well enough to keep the lights on.
Take a look at the current state of MediaWiki on the internet. I'd be surprised if less than 99% of the MediaWiki wikis in existence are out of date. Most are probably running a version from years ago. The level of effort required to upgrade MediaWiki and its extensions that don't list compatibility with core versions is past the skill level of most people that use the software. Even places with a dedicated ops team find MediaWiki difficult to keep up to date. Hell, I find it difficult and I worked for WMF on the ops team and have been a MediaWiki dev since 1.3.
I don't think adding a couple more services is going to drastically alter the current situation.
- Ryan