On Fri, Jun 9, 2017 at 8:25 AM, James HK jamesin.hongkong.1@gmail.com wrote:
This sounds like a lot of sublayers that can potentially disrupt a simple editing process and I wonder from the many non-WMF MediaWiki installations and administrators, who will be able and capable to debug those once an issue arise.
This is a familiar pattern in the history of computers. Early computers were programmed in assembly, until complexity was added with compilers. Early wikis were simple Perl CGI scripts backed by files, until Wikipedia's scale (traffic and organizational), security and feature requirements made it necessary to add caching layers, isolated services, and distributed storage systems.
Each of these steps added layers of abstraction and complexity, and concerns about understanding all those layers was (rightfully) brought up at each step along the way. And yet the move towards higher levels of abstraction has been highly successful. Complex systems like web browsers or even entire distributed system clusters can now be deployed with a single click, on largely commoditized platforms.
We are not yet at the point where we can offer you this degree of automation for MediaWiki, but we are working on it.