Dear all,
This is a demo of how the Desktop Improvements https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements#What_features_will_be_added project might look once it's finished: http://demian-demo.epizy.com/wiki/Desktop_Improvements_volunteer_demo
Some details are not specified yet, therefore the end result will look somewhat different.
I've implemented this mostly in 2 months' free time, around March-April. Early, partial previews (wmf hosted): http://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/380ec9d400f1bd8a573e09b015352723/w/ http://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/b70f4202792d685831e5f957fb5953e1/w/
About me: I'm Demian (aka. Aron), senior software architect, creator of the most recent Wikipedia Dark Theme https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Aron_Manning/Skin_themes for Vector and Timeless skins, among other various contributions and swift bugfixes.
With this preview I'd like to demonstrate what is possible with collaboration. These demos were kept up-to-date with the project's progress and benefited from the WMF developers' work to iron out some details. If that collaboration would go both ways, the project could have been at the same stage possibly a few months ago, nearing the finish line by now.
There are surprisingly few volunteers, even less professionals contributing at MediaWiki, despite its high visibility. The small number of GitHub stars and forks of the replica repos is also negligible compared to the thousands of stars and forks of similarly popular projects.
The following is my opinion. There is a great pool of talent that could contribute to modernizing the aging code-base and designs (both software and UI), but despite the WMF's regular calls for participation, volunteering has a very limited aspect, more similar to interning at a closed-source project, not reminiscent of the contribution patterns of free software. The development - or community - practices can't benefit from a wide range of volunteers. This untapped potential is of great value, lost for the MediaWiki project and the communities using it.
If the WMF wishes to manifest its vision https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations of an inclusive community, innovation and improved user experience, basic steps can be taken at the back-office in that direction by making development more open and welcoming to volunteers. Openness and collaboration from the developer team would invite more talent and serve as a foundation for a bigger, thriving developer community, similar to open-source projects that succeeded with this model. There is a great unused potential, that's in our core values to invite to the creation of the foundation of free knowledge.
Further resources: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Wikimania_St...
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements/Feature_sequ... https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Aron_Manning/Design/Desktop_Improvements...
Demian (aka. Aron)