Timwi wrote:

Tim Starling wrote:

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Timwi wrote:

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Last time I checked, you had CVS access.

CVS access doesn't make me an expert on the source code. :-p

Asking an "expert" to do everything for you is not the way to either become an expert or to even get thing in question done.

Tim, I'm very sorry you think of me this way, but I just don't have the time to become an expert just now. My course ends in August; I might become an expert then. I've already installed MediaWiki and I can dive right into it. Until then, however, I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently interested in unpaid volunteer work that I would jeopardise my result.

So, a couple of thoughts I should probably keep to myself.

0) Everybody's time here is valuable. Being respectful of each other's time constraints is probably a good practice for working together successfully.

1) It worries me that programmers would avoid making changes to MediaWiki just because it's hard to figure out where to make those changes. For my own part, I have to admit that I kind of dread going into the MW source -- it sometimes feels like a jungle in there.

Whether that complexity is real or if I'm just a third-rate programmer (more probable) is an open question, as is the question of whether the complexity may just be inherent to our problem domain.

But if the complexity is real, and not absolutely necessary, the work put into a code refactoring effort (MW 2.0?) might pay off in having a more accessible codebase that more people can contribute to. It would be a _ton_ of work, though, and I wouldn't presume to impose that task on anyone (see point 0 above B-).

~ESP