The MediaWiki Core team has opened a discussion about getting more involved
in and maybe redoing the dumps infrastructure. A good starting point is to
understand how folks use the dumps already or want to use them but can't,
and some questions about that are listed here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_MediaWiki_Core_Team/Backlog/Improv…
I've added some notes but please go weigh in. Don't be shy about what you
do/what you need, this is the time to get it all on the table.
Ariel