Central Auth has been around for about 5 years now and we still lack a API to interact with it. There is no blocking/unblocking/locking/unlocking ability at all. see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23821 who do I need to bribe/torture/put a fire underneath in order to get basic access to said tools?
John
You know the rules: If you suggest it and no one else volunteers, then you are now the primary person in charge of getting it done...
On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 9:05 PM, John phoenixoverride@gmail.com wrote:
Central Auth has been around for about 5 years now and we still lack a API to interact with it. There is no blocking/unblocking/locking/unlocking ability at all. see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23821 who do I need to bribe/torture/put a fire underneath in order to get basic access to said tools?
John
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
if i knew php (may it forever rot in hell) it would already be done. Since I dont know php it is up to someone else
On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 9:24 PM, David Whitten whitten@netcom.com wrote:
You know the rules: If you suggest it and no one else volunteers, then you are now the primary person in charge of getting it done...
On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 9:05 PM, John phoenixoverride@gmail.com wrote:
Central Auth has been around for about 5 years now and we still lack a API to interact with it. There is no blocking/unblocking/locking/unlocking ability at all. see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23821 who do I need to bribe/torture/put a fire underneath in order to get basic access to said tools?
John
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
I would take it on, but unfortunately I'm trying to work on three different things (and classes are starting for me). But if my time frees up as winter draws closer I might consider doing it.
*--* *Tyler Romeo* Stevens Institute of Technology, Class of 2015 Major in Computer Science www.whizkidztech.com | tylerromeo@gmail.com
On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 9:26 PM, John phoenixoverride@gmail.com wrote:
if i knew php (may it forever rot in hell) it would already be done. Since I dont know php it is up to someone else
On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 9:24 PM, David Whitten whitten@netcom.com wrote:
You know the rules: If you suggest it and no one else volunteers, then you are now the primary person in charge of getting it done...
On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 9:05 PM, John phoenixoverride@gmail.com wrote:
Central Auth has been around for about 5 years now and we still lack a API to interact with it. There is no blocking/unblocking/locking/unlocking ability at all. see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23821 who do I need to bribe/torture/put a fire underneath in order to get basic access to said tools?
John
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
We need some sort of think tank (well some thing with a better name) non-profit that people donate to. To have it hire people to crank out MediaWiki features outside of just the stuff WMF wants.
I'd love to spend 80% of my time cranking out fringe MediaWiki features where what the community wants and what my specialties are intersect.
On 08/27/2012 12:04 AM, Daniel Friesen wrote:
We need some sort of think tank (well some thing with a better name) non-profit that people donate to. To have it hire people to crank out MediaWiki features outside of just the stuff WMF wants.
I'd love to spend 80% of my time cranking out fringe MediaWiki features where what the community wants and what my specialties are intersect.
To borrow from the great Amir: +[[Crore]]
Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
On 08/27/2012 12:04 AM, Daniel Friesen wrote:
We need some sort of think tank (well some thing with a better name) non-profit that people donate to. To have it hire people to crank out MediaWiki features outside of just the stuff WMF wants.
I'd love to spend 80% of my time cranking out fringe MediaWiki features where what the community wants and what my specialties are intersect.
To borrow from the great Amir: +[[Crore]]
Yes, what the world needs is another horribly confusingly named foundation. After we establish the MediaWiki Foundation, we can start work on the MikiWedia Foundation and the WediaMiki Foundation. ;-)
In all seriousness, this has come up a few times before (on wikitech-l and mediawiki-l, I believe) and it deserves thoughtful consideration. I think the first step is to write a draft somewhere on MediaWiki.org detailing:
* what you view as the current deficiencies of the Wikimedia Foundation owning/operating MediaWiki; and
* what possible problems might be solved (or created!) by the establishment of a MediaWiki Foundation.
A discussion of some analogous organizations (such as Mozilla) might be good as case studies to include in such a page as well.
MZMcBride
On Mon, 27 Aug 2012 17:58:56 -0700, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
On 08/27/2012 12:04 AM, Daniel Friesen wrote:
We need some sort of think tank (well some thing with a better name) non-profit that people donate to. To have it hire people to crank out MediaWiki features outside of just the stuff WMF wants.
I'd love to spend 80% of my time cranking out fringe MediaWiki features where what the community wants and what my specialties are intersect.
To borrow from the great Amir: +[[Crore]]
Yes, what the world needs is another horribly confusingly named foundation. After we establish the MediaWiki Foundation, we can start work on the MikiWedia Foundation and the WediaMiki Foundation. ;-)
In all seriousness, this has come up a few times before (on wikitech-l and mediawiki-l, I believe) and it deserves thoughtful consideration. I think the first step is to write a draft somewhere on MediaWiki.org detailing:
- what you view as the current deficiencies of the Wikimedia Foundation
owning/operating MediaWiki; and
- what possible problems might be solved (or created!) by the
establishment of a MediaWiki Foundation.
A discussion of some analogous organizations (such as Mozilla) might be good as case studies to include in such a page as well.
MZMcBride
As you command oh great catalyst[1]. Done in true developer style "[RFC] MediaWiki Foundation": https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/MediaWiki_Foundation
[1] Hope you don't mind. I found it amusing. And it kind of fits in a positive way.
Daniel Friesen wrote:
Done in true developer style "[RFC] MediaWiki Foundation": https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/MediaWiki_Foundation
Thank you for this! This is exactly what I had in mind.
It's interesting, with a lot of (proposed) non-profits, the biggest concerns are engaging volunteers and generating income. With this proposed foundation, I think most of the typical concerns aren't in play. Instead, as Nikerabbit so deftly commented on the RFC's talk page, the big question is:
What projects would a MediaWiki Foundation work on and how would those projects be chosen?
This seems to be _the_ crucial issue. Getting grants from the Wikimedia Foundation or Wikia or others doesn't seem like it'd be very difficult. Assuming there was broad support for the creation of such a foundation from active MediaWiki developers (and related stakeholders), getting the Wikimedia Foundation to release the trademark and domain also doesn't seem like it would be very difficult. But there's a huge unresolved question about how, out of the infinite number of project ideas, a MediaWiki Foundation would choose which ideas to financially support.
As you command oh great catalyst[1]. [1] Hope you don't mind. I found it amusing. And it kind of fits in a positive way.
Cute. :-)
MZMcBride
I'll post more on the RFC, but I wonder if an entity within WMF would be more appropriate and realistic. Utilizing the existing operations structure would be far easier. Perhaps setup something like FDC to oversee priorities and funds.
My hunch is WMF would be far more likely to sign off on something they retain a sense of sign-off on for the sake of maintaining the WMF projects than having to deal with an independent entity that would have the legal right to go rogue one day and not do what's in the best interest of the WMF projects. I recognize to some extent that's the point, but looking down a 5 year road of possibilities, is that something we'd ever want to happen? My feeling is no and allowing WMF to maintain some level of authority in the development of MediaWiki is in our collective best interests. From project management, fundraising, usability, system resources and paid developer support perspective.
I would instead propose a MediaWiki department or collective (insert your favorite term here).
-Greg aka varnent
____________ Sent from my iPhone. Apologies for any typos. A more detailed response may be sent later.
On Sep 1, 2012, at 10:42 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Daniel Friesen wrote:
Done in true developer style "[RFC] MediaWiki Foundation": https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/MediaWiki_Foundation
Thank you for this! This is exactly what I had in mind.
It's interesting, with a lot of (proposed) non-profits, the biggest concerns are engaging volunteers and generating income. With this proposed foundation, I think most of the typical concerns aren't in play. Instead, as Nikerabbit so deftly commented on the RFC's talk page, the big question is:
What projects would a MediaWiki Foundation work on and how would those projects be chosen?
This seems to be _the_ crucial issue. Getting grants from the Wikimedia Foundation or Wikia or others doesn't seem like it'd be very difficult. Assuming there was broad support for the creation of such a foundation from active MediaWiki developers (and related stakeholders), getting the Wikimedia Foundation to release the trademark and domain also doesn't seem like it would be very difficult. But there's a huge unresolved question about how, out of the infinite number of project ideas, a MediaWiki Foundation would choose which ideas to financially support.
As you command oh great catalyst[1]. [1] Hope you don't mind. I found it amusing. And it kind of fits in a positive way.
Cute. :-)
MZMcBride
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
A number of comments:
1. The community is an a massive untapped resource for development. (They like to edit wikis, upload photos and also to code....) e.g. The amount of Template Code in about 20 times the size of MediaWiki code base. 2. I would seriouly look at maximizing its potential before allocating more funds for paid devlopment. 2.1 This means making it much easier to develop/test/deploy to Live wikis. (Short Tutorials, Code Samples, Documentation) 2.2 Create a culture where new coders are assigned to work with experinced coders to fix and maintaining existing code. 2.3 Motivating paid developer to work (i.e. review and direct) the community.... 2.4 Team up with Wikia and WikiHow Devteams on common features and on small wiki testing. 3. Looking at the metrics - The Mediawiki team is still not setup to do developement like other leading Open Souce development communities. Git is a step in the right direction but - the agility of the teams is too low to collaborate at the levels required. to accept "AnonymousDonation" of source from the community. While I applud Sumana who does a great job with the community - this works needs to be followed though organicaly by all members of the development teams or we will continue sending the community the message - that we prefer to delay fixing bugs, pay a premiunm for new features etc ... 4. Only once such issues are adressed would it become productive to engage more developers with WMF or external funding. 5. The one point I do agree with is that features the community asks for should be given due proirity and this process should be more transparent.
Oren Bochman
On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 8:10 PM, Mr. Gregory Varnum <gregory.varnum@gmail.com
wrote:
I'll post more on the RFC, but I wonder if an entity within WMF would be more appropriate and realistic. Utilizing the existing operations structure would be far easier. Perhaps setup something like FDC to oversee priorities and funds.
My hunch is WMF would be far more likely to sign off on something they retain a sense of sign-off on for the sake of maintaining the WMF projects than having to deal with an independent entity that would have the legal right to go rogue one day and not do what's in the best interest of the WMF projects. I recognize to some extent that's the point, but looking down a 5 year road of possibilities, is that something we'd ever want to happen? My feeling is no and allowing WMF to maintain some level of authority in the development of MediaWiki is in our collective best interests. From project management, fundraising, usability, system resources and paid developer support perspective.
I would instead propose a MediaWiki department or collective (insert your favorite term here).
-Greg aka varnent
Sent from my iPhone. Apologies for any typos. A more detailed response may be sent later.
On Sep 1, 2012, at 10:42 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Daniel Friesen wrote:
Done in true developer style "[RFC] MediaWiki Foundation":
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/MediaWiki_Foundation
Thank you for this! This is exactly what I had in mind.
It's interesting, with a lot of (proposed) non-profits, the biggest
concerns
are engaging volunteers and generating income. With this proposed foundation, I think most of the typical concerns aren't in play.
Instead, as
Nikerabbit so deftly commented on the RFC's talk page, the big question
is:
What projects would a MediaWiki Foundation work on and how would those projects be chosen?
This seems to be _the_ crucial issue. Getting grants from the Wikimedia Foundation or Wikia or others doesn't seem like it'd be very difficult. Assuming there was broad support for the creation of such a foundation
from
active MediaWiki developers (and related stakeholders), getting the Wikimedia Foundation to release the trademark and domain also doesn't
seem
like it would be very difficult. But there's a huge unresolved question about how, out of the infinite number of project ideas, a MediaWiki Foundation would choose which ideas to financially support.
As you command oh great catalyst[1]. [1] Hope you don't mind. I found it amusing. And it kind of fits in a positive way.
Cute. :-)
MZMcBride
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
As a new MediaWiki developer (8 merged commits right now, https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/dashboard/417) and an experienced template and Gadget developer on pl.wikipedia (https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedysta:Matma_Rex):
2012/9/3 Oren Bochman orenbochman@gmail.com:
- The community is an a massive untapped resource for development. (They
like to edit wikis, upload photos and also to code....)
Totally this. Don't also forget about non-English wikis; there are many JavaScript programmers and tools developers who for various reasons do not look into MediaWiki itself. (I used to be one until recently.)
- I would seriouly look at maximizing its potential before allocating more
funds for paid devlopment. 2.1 This means making it much easier to develop/test/deploy to Live wikis. (Short Tutorials, Code Samples, Documentation) 2.2 Create a culture where new coders are assigned to work with experinced coders to fix and maintaining existing code. 2.4 Team up with Wikia and WikiHow Devteams on common features and on small wiki testing.
All this could be great, but for me the worst "obstacle" is the glacial pace of gerrit review. As a template/gadget developer I'm used to a quick cycle: code, preview (a template) or test in debugger (gadget), look at it for five more minutes to maybe catch some stupid mistakes, and press Save (of course, I also used dev versions of scripts or templates' sandboxes for non-trivial changes).
With gerrit, I code, check, check on my testwiki, git review (and by god, is that tool a total kludge!), and then I wait for days for someone to look at my changes, or head to #mediawiki and beg for reviews (and apparently the channel is half-dead; is it supposed to be a support channel? Because sometimes I'm the only one replying to newcomers there...). It sometimes looks like all the experienced MW developers are just reviewing each other's changes.
Then someone complains (sometimes about something pointless, or something they could fix themselves in thirty seconds and submit a patchset), I code again, git review again, and wait again.
(I don't mean this all personally, to anyone.)
While I applud Sumana who does a great job with the community - thisworks needs to be followed though organicaly by all members of the development teams
Let me just say that I basically love Sumana already, for her help and encouragement. :)
Also. gerrit is absolute load of poop. The web UI kinda sucks (but we all know this already, don't we?), but my real beef is with the git-review tool. I'm semi-experienced with git, and rebases are not a scare to me; but if it keeps complaining about multiple commits to be sent when I only have a single new one, and if something as simple as creating a commit that depends on two other unmerged commits requires this much arcane magic, and if I can't post a review to go along with my patchset, and if it requires hand-applied patches (!) to work properly on Windows, then something is deeply wrong. I can only imagine what kind of torture using it must be to someone just starting out with git (or, worse, source control).
-- Matma Rex
On Mon, 03 Sep 2012 12:59:19 -0700, Oren Bochman orenbochman@gmail.com wrote:
A number of comments:
- The community is an a massive untapped resource for development. (They
like to edit wikis, upload photos and also to code....) e.g. The amount of Template Code in about 20 times the size of MediaWiki code base. 2. I would seriouly look at maximizing its potential before allocating more funds for paid devlopment.
Volunteers have very little spare time, WMF employees' 20% time is also small, many of our bugs and large features are not useful to WMF's goal, and many of them are large enough simply by unavoidable fact that people avoid starting them when they only have spare time to work with.
How is trying to 'maximize [the] potential' of an unrewarded group of people -- who are here on their own terms, not to be expected anything of -- going to help when many of the features we're expecting to get done are too big for someone to do in their spare time?
We can try to fix the issues with getting the community involved. But I do not believe that doing that excludes also fixing the gap we have of people who have enough time to complete the large features we are missing. They are not mutually exclusive so there is nothing stopping us from doing both.
2.1 This means making it much easier to develop/test/deploy to Live wikis. (Short Tutorials, Code Samples, Documentation) 2.2 Create a culture where new coders are assigned to work with experinced coders to fix and maintaining existing code. 2.3 Motivating paid developer to work (i.e. review and direct) the community.... 2.4 Team up with Wikia and WikiHow Devteams on common features and on small wiki testing.
Wikia has been trying to get some of their tweaks in lately. But in general they build custom stuff for anything they want. I'm not sure how much we can even collaborate with them on.
- Looking at the metrics - The Mediawiki team is still not setup to do
developement like other leading Open Souce development communities. Git is a step in the right direction but - the agility of the teams is too low to collaborate at the levels required. to accept "AnonymousDonation" of source from the community. While I applud Sumana who does a great job with the community - this works needs to be followed though organicaly by all members of the development teams or we will continue sending the community the message - that we prefer to delay fixing bugs, pay a premiunm for new features etc ...
This could be aided by having a MediaWiki Foundation, rather than be a reason to not have one. If the community had an idea of what replacement for Gerrit would work the foundation could hire someone to make it into something that could replace Gerrit and improve the experience.
If there were a MediaWiki Foundation and people liked my Gareth idea, I wouldn't be opposed to working semi-full-time to turn it into a ready-to-use piece of software.
- Only once such issues are adressed would it become productive to
engage more developers with WMF or external funding. 5. The one point I do agree with is that features the community asks for should be given due proirity and this process should be more transparent.
Oren Bochman
On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 8:10 PM, Mr. Gregory Varnum <gregory.varnum@gmail.com
wrote:
I'll post more on the RFC, but I wonder if an entity within WMF would be more appropriate and realistic. Utilizing the existing operations structure would be far easier. Perhaps setup something like FDC to oversee priorities and funds.
My hunch is WMF would be far more likely to sign off on something they retain a sense of sign-off on for the sake of maintaining the WMF projects than having to deal with an independent entity that would have the legal right to go rogue one day and not do what's in the best interest of the WMF projects. I recognize to some extent that's the point, but looking down a 5 year road of possibilities, is that something we'd ever want to happen? My feeling is no and allowing WMF to maintain some level of authority in the development of MediaWiki is in our collective best interests. From project management, fundraising, usability, system resources and paid developer support perspective.
I would instead propose a MediaWiki department or collective (insert your favorite term here).
-Greg aka varnent
Sent from my iPhone. Apologies for any typos. A more detailed response may be sent later.
On Sep 1, 2012, at 10:42 PM, MZMcBride z@mzmcbride.com wrote:
Daniel Friesen wrote:
Done in true developer style "[RFC] MediaWiki Foundation":
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/MediaWiki_Foundation
Thank you for this! This is exactly what I had in mind.
It's interesting, with a lot of (proposed) non-profits, the biggest
concerns
are engaging volunteers and generating income. With this proposed foundation, I think most of the typical concerns aren't in play.
Instead, as
Nikerabbit so deftly commented on the RFC's talk page, the big
question is:
What projects would a MediaWiki Foundation work on and how would those projects be chosen?
This seems to be _the_ crucial issue. Getting grants from the
Wikimedia
Foundation or Wikia or others doesn't seem like it'd be very
difficult.
Assuming there was broad support for the creation of such a foundation
from
active MediaWiki developers (and related stakeholders), getting the Wikimedia Foundation to release the trademark and domain also doesn't
seem
like it would be very difficult. But there's a huge unresolved
question
about how, out of the infinite number of project ideas, a MediaWiki Foundation would choose which ideas to financially support.
As you command oh great catalyst[1]. [1] Hope you don't mind. I found it amusing. And it kind of fits in a positive way.
Cute. :-)
MZMcBride
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On 09/03/2012 03:59 PM, Oren Bochman wrote:
e.g. The amount of Template Code in about 20 times the size ofMediaWiki code base.
[Citation Needed]
This number fascinates me. It isn't that I doubt it, but could you cite a source?
Perhaps it is because so much of my time has been spent as a staffer that I'm not aware of the source.
- I would seriously look at maximizing [the community's] potential
before allocating more funds for paid development.
Are you sure that potential hasn't already been maximized? We have a great thing here with MediaWiki. There are already a lot of passionate developers involved.
Daniel Friesen (a major community developer) has already said that he would like to see this happen so he could spend *more* time on MediaWiki projects.
I've left Wikimedia but I still find time to contribute. I can assure you that there would be a lot more time for me to contribute if I could point to a fungible benefit for my contribution.
2.1 This means making it much easier to develop/test/deploy to Live wikis. (Short Tutorials, Code Samples, Documentation) 2.2 Create a culture where new coders are assigned to work with experienced coders to fix and maintaining existing code. 2.3 Motivating paid developer to work (i.e. review and direct) the community.... 2.4 Team up with Wikia and WikiHow Devteams on common features and on small wiki testing.
I think all these are all great ideas. I eagerly await their implementation.
- Looking at the metrics - The Mediawiki team is still not setup to do
development like other leading Open Souce development communities.
[Citation Needed]
You seem to have metrics I am not aware of.
Also, no other Open Source community has such a large website (Wikipedia) to display its end product. Sure, you could say that lots of them run Linux, but that isn't anywhere as close to what the user sees as MediaWiki is.
Mark.
On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 12:08 AM, Daniel Friesen <daniel@nadir-seen-fire.com
wrote:
Done in true developer style "[RFC] MediaWiki Foundation": https://www.mediawiki.org/**wiki/Requests_for_comment/** MediaWiki_Foundationhttps://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/MediaWiki_Foundation
Some of us chatted on this subject at the tech portion of WMF's all-staff meetings today; while we didn't come to any firm conclusions at this time there's definitely a lot of interest in:
* improving 3rd-party support (installer, dependencies, various features) * getting existing people doing support and contracting more organized * improving distro packages and packaging support * getting big MW users/customizers to share code a bit more (real-world example: WMF and Wikia are collaborating on the visual editor project rather than working on separate incompatible versions)
I definitely want to keep the ideas and discussion flowing, especially from anybody who's already doing 3rd-party support and is interested in organizing a bit more. I've pointed people at the RFC page and hope for more good to come!
-- brion
John wrote:
Central Auth has been around for about 5 years now and we still lack a API to interact with it. There is no blocking/unblocking/locking/unlocking ability at all. see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23821 who do I need to bribe/torture/put a fire underneath in order to get basic access to said tools?
This was kind of enjoyable to investigate.
I was surprised to read that it's been five years. For the curious, Tim Starling is user ID 1 in the CentralAuth database. His registration date is 04:16, 13 March 2008, so it's a bit closer to four and a half years: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralAuth/Tim_Starling. :-)
Anyway, this is actually two bugs currently, both of which probably need to be split out into more specific bugs:
* CentralAuth/global user rights/groups API; Get global user rights, membership to global groups; and userlist of global groups https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/16860
* Write API for CentralAuth extension https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/23821
The first bug is about read access; the second is about write access. The problem you're hitting here is that developers don't do well with broad, overly vague bugs like this. There needs to be something directly actionable (e.g., "implement this specific feature <link to GUI version> into the API").
The read bug can probably be left alone (though it really is three separate bugs rolled into one). It's straightforward enough, I think. I've gone ahead and marked it as easy (with a keyword), which should hopefully get a few more eyes on it.
For the write bug (bug 23821), you should file separate bugs for each feature you want available in the API. Vague mega-bugs will almost always get no response and your most recent comment on the bug (when asked for clarification) was spectacularly unhelpful. You need to be specific and detailed as humanly possible, describing exactly what you want, if you have any chance of getting other who come along to help you out.
MZMcBride
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org