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

[Nikola Smolenski]

On Sunday 11 January 2009 20:08:22 Brian wrote:
> pointed out, "I would bet there's at least one template that uses a
> ParserFunction on 75% or more of all the articles on enwiki." MediaWiki
> effectively has a programming language in it because of a few hours of
> developer work and a few minutes of conversation. A programming language
> that, apparantly, cannot be reverted.

That programming language was introduced solely because Wikipedia editors have 
already been using another programming language, which had the same 
capabilities, but used much more resources. If you can get Wikipedians not to 
use any programming language in their templates, you can effectively revert 
the change, and I don't see why the extension wouldn't be turned off 
afterwards.

> I have been to the developer presentations at all but one Wikimania, and
> they are dissapointing. I don't really see new ideas for features being
> presented to the community, and I do not believe that the developers ideas

Including mine? :)