If you don't know what this is about, refer to:
-
http://www.mail-archive.com/wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org/msg01907.html
-
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15607
-
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Interlanguage
-
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/A_newer_look_at_the_interwiki_link
-
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:A_central_wiki_for_interlanguag…
Дана Tuesday 17 March 2009 07:01:39 Nikola Smolenski написа:
Дана Saturday 14 March 2009 23:20:01 Amir E. Aharoni
написа:
2009/3/15 Andrew Garrett
<andrew(a)werdn.us>us>:
> On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 4:10 AM, Amir E. Aharoni
> <amir.aharoni(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> >> Sorry about bugging the list about it, but can anyone please explain
> >> the reason for not enabling the Interlanguage extension?
> >>
> >> See bug 15607 -
> >>
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15607
> >
> > In general, extensions with this status haven't been implemented
> > because they haven't been reviewed by a highly experienced developer.
>
> Brion wrote a few comments there, but i didn't understand what exactly
> is the problem.
I talked with Brion about the extension at the 2009 developers meeting in
Berlin (I'm sorry it took me so long to report on this). He considered the
extension a good idea in general, and he clarified to me what did he mean in
his bugzilla comments. So:
"The lack of automatic updates seems less than ideal" - we actually skipped
this. One of the problems is that there is no way for the new links to
automatically propagate from the central wiki to the client wikis. In order
for the links to propagate one has to edit the page or purge the page cache
on the client wikis for every change on the central wiki.
Currently, if the extension would be implemented, this would either not be
done at all (causing a delay in the interwiki propagation) or be done by bots
(which is stupid). I guess the solution is to add a hook to
ArticleSaveComplete on the central wiki that would go around and purge caches
(how? via API again?) on the client wikis.
"as does the multiple fetching of link data over the HTTP API on every page
render" - Brion would like the links to be fetched directly from the database
of the central wiki (similar to how Commons image description is fetched
now), instead of via API as is the case now. This should be very easy to do.
(I'd keep fetching via API in the extension in case someone would like to
play with it, but fetching from the database should be the default.)
"Management UI by manual editing of offsite pages looks pretty ugly; what
could be done to improve this?" - Brion thought that the interwiki management
on the central wiki should be done on the client wikis.
The first idea was to create some special page for the client wikis that would
enable the editors to add the links to some central database (wouldn't even
have to be a wiki). But this was dropped: it wouldn't be possible to control
who added a link, where, someone could simply delete all the links etc.
Long story short, the final idea was to, basically, enable editing of the
central wiki through the client wiki. Editors of the client wiki could,
probably on some special page, edit the list of interwikis, and these edits
would affect the articles on the central wiki, be viewable in recent changes
and article histories there etc.
This would be humongously complicated and I don't think it could be done in a
reasonable time, if at all. So, I don't think it should be done.