Tim Starling wrote:
So, what should be next ancient body dredged up from
Bugzilla and
resurrected by Platform Engineering?
In many ways, I view these two bugs as similar to the departed bug 189 (in
terms of being old, annoying, and seemingly having had some progress made
toward them, but never having gotten finished):
*
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9890
"Reasonably efficient interwiki transclusion"
*
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3311
"Automatic category redirects"
While bug 3311 is apparently slated for GSoC 2013, surely we've learned
our lesson here year after year.
And bug 9890 could save thousands of man-hours per year. Given the concern
that wiki editorship is on the decline, maximizing editor time by
minimizing duplicate effort seems like a pretty clear win.
In my mind, I think the winner would be a proper wiki configuration
graphical user interface, though. This would make MediaWiki far more
attractive and robust, it would help with project sovereignty (by allowing
Wikimedia stewards to implement requests for individual Wikimedia wikis
and by allowing local wiki bureaucrats to administer their own wiki
without the possible need for a shell user/FTP access/whatever), and it's
the kind of undertaking that many outsiders are uninterested in pursuing
themselves, but that would benefit both Wikimedia and MediaWiki greatly.
*
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26992
"Implement configuration database aka configuration management aka no
shell excuse (tracking)"
https://mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Configuration_database
MZMcBride