On Sun, Mar 2, 2008 at 4:44 AM, MinuteElectron minuteelectron@googlemail.com wrote:
Wikia don't currently use MediaWiki trunk, surprisingly they use 1.10alpha (probably due to the amount of customizations they have making it difficult to upgrade), so any changes to the MediaWiki core wouldn't help them. I suppose that if Wikia stayed at the bleeding edge like Wikimedia they would have an easier time upgrading, although they don't have direct control over MediaWiki in the way Wikimedia have so this would be harder to accomplish.
They don't have total control, in the sense that they can be overruled whereas Wikimedia cannot, but if their devs are willing to put in the extra effort to write their changes properly (instead of as quick hacks), they can commit just like anyone else. Those who don't currently have commit access could request it. Then there'd be no reason they couldn't keep just as up-to-date as Wikimedia. If my MediaWiki install were important enough to my site that I were hacking it, I'd certainly do so by committing the changes and then svn upping.
It's Wikia's choice, of course, but it seems a little silly. Same goes for Citizendium, which apparently also maintains extensive hacks. (Actually, I noticed CZ extends the max edit summary length, which seems like a nifty change to me. I've been thinking of writing it up as a config option, committing it, and upping the length on my wiki.)