[Foundation-l] Why is the software out of reach of the community?

[Brian]

Not sure why I said "English Wikipedia" - but I mean all Foundation sites of
course :)

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 10:43 PM, Brian <Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu> wrote:

> Mark,
> Keep in mind regarding my Semantic drum beating that I am not a developer
> of Semantic Mediawiki or Semantic Forms. I am just a user, and as Erik put
> it, an advocate.
>
> That said, I believe these two extensions together solve the problem you
> are talking about. And for whatever reason, the developers of MediaWiki are
> willing to create new complicated syntax, but not new interfaces.
>
> In your assessment, do these extensions solve the interface extensibility
> problem you describe?
>
> To the list,
>
> Regarding development process, why weren't a variety of sophisticated
> solutions, in addition to ParserFunctions, thoroughly considered before they
> were enabled on the English Wikipedia?
>
> Should ParserFunctions be reverted (a simple procedure by my estimate,
> which is a good thing) based solely on the fact that they are the most clear
> violation of Jimbo's principle that I am aware of?
>
> The fundamental issue is that in complex domains (like "writing an
>> encyclopedia"), you can't fully analyze and understand the domain ahead
>> of time, use that understanding to provide an easy-to-use
>> domain-specific language or interface, and then be done. So for
>> Wikipedia, it's virtually impossible to provide a built-in set of simple
>> formatting features (a person infobox, a map-dot-placement feature,
>> etc.) that are both easy to use and cover all situations. Domains
>> change, understanding of domains changes, new issues come up, and *users
>> need some way to develop their structures and representations as they're
>> being used.* If you *don't* allow that, what ends up happening is that
>> people keep using the simple features you've provided, but in more and
>> more convoluted ways to try to force the system to do what they want.
>>
>
>


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