Using 'publish this page' to develop WMF website content on Meta (was Re: [Foundation-l] a crazy idea...)

[Robert Scott Horning]

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>I've been thinking this over for a few days, and I believe the option
>>of reunifying meta and the Foundation wiki makes most sense.
>>
>
>But yeah - the separation is very annoying and wastes a lot of time. Perhaps
>what is needed is a new MediaWiki feature that I'll call 'Publish this page.'
>There would be no separate foundation wiki and all foundation webpages would be
>maintained on meta yet also displayed on a separate static website. 
>
>A new user group would be needed, but those in the group could click 'Publish
>this page' and presto! A static version of that page - in full HTML - would
>then exist at wikimediafoundation.org under a page name selected for that page
>(different names would be needed between the foundation website and meta due to
>the extensive use of subpages on meta for development purposes; alternatively,
>only the name after the last / could be used for the static page name - I like
>the second option better). 
>
>This feature could also be used for WikiJunior ; development of WikiJunior
>books would still happen on Wikibooks, but we could also have a static version
>of published WikiJunior books at wikijunior.org. Parents and teachers would
>feel much more comfortable sending kids to a static, yet often updated, website
>instead of wiki that may have been vandalized a few seconds before the kids get
>there.
>  
>
I would imagine that this would also be a useful feature for Wikiversity 
(publishing a sylibus from a "teacher"), Wikibooks (making a 1.0 
"version" of the book as a static version), and even Wikipedia (for 
"vetted" articles that have been through the wringer, have citations, 
and are of a more professional caliber that the typical Wikipedia 
article).  In short, a very useful feature for just about any current 
project.

I'm not sure if this should become a new user group permission or simply 
something new for admins to play with.  Certainly if there was anything 
that was brought up by community concensus that should be "published", 
it could be then done technically by an admin.  The question would then 
become if the existing admins on most projects are overwhelmed with 
other issues and a new group of users with slightly more privileges than 
a regular registered user should get this power or if this should simply 
be with a community member that has the trust to become an admin anyway. 
 In some ways it would be nice to add another "level" to the heirarchy 
of super-user privileges, so the jump from registered user to admin 
isn't quite as drastic, or could be done in a couple of steps rather 
than one.

The answer to this question would discuss both the technical issues 
having to impliment this sort of feature and the social issues creating 
a new class of users.  Both I think are rather trivial, but I'm not 
totally sure.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning