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

[Alex]

Brian wrote:
> I believe it is possible to expand the parser functions in place in a
> non-destructive way. There are always edge cases of course.
> But if it is not possible, it is a clear violation of a core wiki principle
> - that all changes be easily revertible.
> 

ParserFunctions was checked into SVN in April 2006, presumably enabled
around the same time. Its had nearly 3 years for ParserFunctions to
integrate themselves into wikitext. By expanding them in place, you're
going to be replacing the infobox syntax in articles with table syntax,
hardly an improvement. To use a real example:
{{Infobox Mountain
| Name = Mount Blackmore
| Elevation = 10,154 feet (3,094 m)
| Location = [[Montana]], [[United States|USA]]
| Range = [[Gallatin Range]]
| Coordinates = {{coord|45|26|40|N|111|00|10|W|type:mountain_region:US}}
| Topographic map = [[United States Geological Survey|USGS]] Mount Blackmore
| Easiest route= Hike
}}

would be replaced by something like:

{| cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" class="infobox geography vcard"
style="border:1px solid #999966; float:right; clear:right;
margin-left:0.75em; margin-top:0.75em; margin-bottom:0.75em;
background:#ffffff; width:305px; font-size:95%;"
|- class="fn org"
! style="text-align:center; background:#e7dcc3; font-size:110%;"
colspan="2"| Mount Blackmore
|-
|- class="note"
| style="border-top:1px solid #999966; border-right:1px solid #999966;
background:#e7dcc3; width:85px;" | [[Summit (topography)|Elevation]]
| style="border-top:1px solid #999966; width:220px;" | 10,154 feet (3,094 m)
|-
| style="border-top:1px solid #999966; border-right:1px solid #999966;
background:#e7dcc3;" | Location
| class="label" style="border-top:1px solid #999966;" | [[Montana]],
[[United States|USA]]
|-
| class="note" style="border-top:1px solid #999966; border-right:1px
solid #999966; background:#e7dcc3;" | [[Mountain range|Range]]
| style="border-top:1px solid #999966;" | [[Gallatin Range]]
|-
| style="border-top:1px solid #999966; border-right:1px solid #999966;
background:#e7dcc3;" | [[Geographic coordinate system|Coordinates]]
| style="border-top:1px solid #999966;" |
{{coord|45|26|40|N|111|00|10|W|type:mountain_region:US}}
|-
| style="border-top:1px solid #999966; border-right:1px solid #999966;
background:#e7dcc3;" | [[Topographic map|Topo map]]
| style="border-top:1px solid #999966;" | [[United States Geological
Survey|USGS]] Mount Blackmore
|-
| style="border-top:1px solid #999966; border-right:1px solid #999966;
background:#e7dcc3;" | Easiest [[Climbing route|route]]
| style="border-top:1px solid #999966;" | Hike
|-
|}

I'm not making this up. I picked a random, small infobox from an article
on Special:Random, and expanded it with Special:ExpandTemplates. Like
them or not, ParserFunctions do a pretty good job of hiding complex
wikitext from the average user, by putting it all in the templates.
Without them, you have to A) put the tables directly into articles,
which is a lot worse looking than using an infobox, B) Use the infoboxes
and show all the unused fields as blank (which is ugly to the readers as
well), C) Go back to using the pre-ParserFunctions template hacks, or D)
Replace all the infoboxes with SMW.

Of course, infoboxes aren't the only use of ParserFunctions in
templates. They're used in all of the "maintenance templates" like
{{cleanup}} on enwiki, I would bet there's at least one template that
uses a ParserFunction on 75% or more of all the articles on enwiki. Most
could be substituted a lot easier than the infoboxes, but the question
is, why? Why make the wikitext in articles harder to edit by forcing
templates to be replaced by tables? Why make the job of template-coders
harder by making it so templates can't be as useful? Rather than 1
infobox that works for all types of settlements, we'd have to have
thousands, an infobox that works for a major Chinese city wouldn't work
for a small town in America.

Are you saying that we should be able to revert the software to any
given revision and expect it to work fine? If we made sure every single
software change was fully backwards compatible, you could bet MediaWiki
would have far fewer features and a lot more bugs than it does now.

All changes are easily revertible in the short term. When changes exist
for years, causing thousands of other changes as a result, how to revert
them gets rather difficult (the same is somewhat true of edits to
articles as well). You're proposing we install Semantic MediaWiki and
rewrite the Parser in a way that will likely not be fully backwards
compatible. Neither of these changes will be easily revertible once
deployed, especially after 2+ years.

-- 
Alex (wikipedia:en:User:Mr.Z-man)