On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 11:37 AM, Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org wrote:
Agreed.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/**Requests_for_comment/Wikitech_** contributors#First_iterationhttp://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Wikitech_contributors#First_iterationis supposed to be completed in 3 months, and even there you have some easier tasks that could be implemented pretty fast, namely forms & templates for
- User profiles.
- Projects.
- Tasks.
- Events.
Notifications still require more definition and expertise to decide what should be done now. Is Echo ripe for this? Is it worth to use this experiment to prototype Flow there? Or should we fallback to a system like http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/**Extension:**TranslationNotificationshttp://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:TranslationNotifications...?
And then we have Nodes, which is a novel concept and probably requires more complex implementation work in therms of software development and design.
About design and usability... Yes, doing something amazing takes a long time (look at ourselves). Then again, this is parallel work. This project is not contesting Vector, neither the current look & feel. This proposal is first and foremost about the plumbing behind.
If you feel that more design resources / budget should be allocated on a nicer UI then I can also ask for it, but in a context of limited resources the priorities would be clear.
Quim, I think even this first iteration is problematic on a bunch of fronts. 3 months as a first iteration to build several major features as the basic proof of concept should be a sign that you're biting off too much in terms of scope.
I also think it's deeply problematic that you don't seem to have shaped the proposal based on the expressed needs of people who have tried to use the current system and failed, and that you're seemingly ignoring the use case of all the many different kinds of contributors by focusing a comprehensive restructure solely for new contributors. When we make something like Echo, we're doing it first and foremost to attract new people, but we can't get away with ignoring the needs of existing users.
In general, I don't think you've fully considered how the current set up might serve our needs with less heavy-handed changes than migrating to Semantic MediaWiki, and I'm wary of supporting a restructuring of documentation systems I depend of every day based on a grand plan of any kind.
I'd like to add a +1 to Ori's request to trial the project in a much more minimal way, show some results, and then expand from there. If you can show what you're doing is working to bring in new contributors without requiring we rearchitect our entire system from the ground up on top of Semantic MediaWiki, then any change is a much easier pill to swallow.
Steven