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/Improve_dumps  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