At 8:46 PM -0800 3/29/06, Brion Vibber wrote:
Gregory Szorc wrote:
Will features perhaps never desirable for Wikipedia ever be considered for MediaWiki?
Where nice and clean. Modular extensions are always a huge plus!
I read this as:
If the feature doesn't impair the maintenance or performance of MediaWiki for Wikipedia, and it has a plausible reason for existing, it is likely to be allowed into the mainline code. If it can be written as an extension, so much the better.
MediaWiki isn't a "category killer" for wikis; there are too many ideas about what wiki engines should be able to do. It is an extremely attractive option, however, as I discuss here:
The Project Wiki
Start up a wiki for the project. Take some care in selecting the wiki software. You'll want it to be comfortable, popular, robust, scalable, and rich in useful features. It should also be undergoing active development in areas such as dynamic content, semantic wikis, etc.
My current choice, FWIW, is MediaWiki, the technology underlying Wikipedia. It is written in PHP, so it installs easily on a wide range of platforms. It has extensive documentation, a variety of mailing lists, etc. Although MediaWiki's principal focus is supporting Wikipedia, some of its development goes beyond this purpose. ...
http://www.cfcl.com/~rdm/MBD/mbd_advice.php
It is also an attractive option for developers who want to see their ideas get used by large groups of people. The Semantic MediaWiki folks, for example, are clearly focused on making their additions and changes in a way that would allow use by Wikipedia, etc.
But since we do get used for other purposes, it is worth spending some time and effort to keep them in mind. ...
What he said.
Domas and I are going to be at the MySQL User Conference next month in Santa Clara; if anyone interested in non-Wikipedia-like use of MediaWiki is going to be there, that'd be a great time to meet and exchange thoughts and make evil plans.
Most conferences allow (at least, tacitly) BOF attendance by the general public, so this might be the way to go:
http://www.mysqluc.com/pub/w/45/bof.html
-r
P.S. The person setting up the BOF should be an attendee. Brion, could you be persuaded to set this up?