[Foundation-l] Analysis of lists statistics: community in decline

[Milos Rancic]

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 9:13 AM, Brianna Laugher
> <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Is it too much to say we need our own Facebook? If only Ning was open source.
>
> I've done some a little research on this issue, and this appears to be
> the most promising option:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgg_(software)
>
> It's open source, relatively popular, and is used in academic communities.

I think that it should be solved differently. Wikia already has some
kind of extended profile which includes some basic social networking
abilities.

It is expensive (in the sense of contributors' attention) to run two
different models. Even keeping blogs at Planet Wikimedia (officially)
and at Open Wiki Blog Planet (unofficially), as well as at some other
places (unofficially in different languages; I know, at least, for
French version) -- is expensive.

At the other hand, MediaWiki is able to be extended in that direction
(which Wikia used extension shows). Also, contributors would be able
to ask for new features more dynamically, as well as it would be a
significant development path for MediaWiki itself.

In other words, I would like to see a very rudimentary extension (like
Wikia's) with solved inter-project issues for the beginning. When we
have that, we would be able to think about improvements.