[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Communs

[Toby Bartels]

Erik Moeller wrote in part:

>Patience. This week we will formulate the Commons roadmap together. Maybe
>we can move up the creation of a wiki to a point when not all but only the
>most essential features exist; perhaps not a fully working version of
>single sign-on yet and just very basic image sharing. If the final version
>is ready in 3 months, maybe we can get a beta version up and running in 2
>or 3 weeks. How does that sound?

For me, the faster it goes, the better it sounds, I guess.
Since you are the developer that is doing the work here,
I really don't have a basis for insisting that you rush things.

I'm looking forward to a central repository for images,
so that I'll have a place to search for them when I need some.
And I'm looking forward to being able to share those images directly,
rather than having to copy them over when I decide to use one.
And I'm looking forward to a single username system
(although that is not as big a deal for me as the earlier items).
And I'm looking forward to many more things in the pipeline.

So on the one hand, I don't want to see one of these things (X) delayed
just because another of these things (Y) is not ready yet --
even if this means that X is clunky until Y comes along.
But on the other hand, you and the rest of the developers
need to programme these features in a way that works for you.

You know, in one or three years, I will be done with my PhD;
and depending on just what sort of teaching jobs I can find,
I hope to have a lot more free time in my evenings and weekends.
If so, then I plan to start doing some work on MediaWiki
(as well as, obviously, getting back to a good rate on articles).
Maybe ''then'' I will be in a position to demand that development speed up,
if I am actually doing some work to help with the development! ^_^


-- Toby