[Mediawiki-l] Your thoughts on MediaWiki 2.0 / "phase IV"

[Erik Moeller]

This week, several education specialists will meet with wiki
technologists in Vancouver to discuss the future of MediaWiki as a
platform for learning & knowledge generation.

The meeting is organized by the Commonwealth of Learning, which hosts
the wikieducator.org project. You can find the agenda on:

http://wikieducator.org/Tectonic_shift_think_tank

It will take place from April 11-13. Participants include Brion Vibber
(Wikimedia Foundation CTO), Sandy Britain (lead developer of the eXe
elearning editor), Joel Thierstein (Executive Director of the
ConneXions project - cnx.org), Murugan Pal (technologist for CK-12,
ck12.org), Merrick Schaefer (technologist for UNICEF's wiki projects),
Samuel Klein (content coordinator for the One Laptop Per Child
Project, laptop.org), and others. The meeting will be facilitated by
myself and Wayne Mackintosh (founder of WikiEducator and education
specialist for COL).

We will think about issues such as:
* What are the best strategies for WYSIWYG editing, wiki
decentralization and synchronization, eLearning interfaces and
features, semantic annotation and structured data, print support,
quality heuristics?
* Should MediaWiki be rewritten from scratch to achieve these goals,
or is an evolutionary approach more sensible?
* What is a sensible model for governance, coordination, and funding
of a combined, multi-institutional MediaWiki 2.0 effort?

If you wish to participate remotely, you can still put in your request
on the above wiki page. I would also like to encourage you to draft a
"vision statement" and to link it under the section "Participants
wishlist". Such vision statements will be taken into account if they
are submitted before April 13 (ideally before April 11).

I apologize for the short notice - things have taken a rather more
ambitious shape than originally very quickly, due to recent meetings
and email exchanges. Still, I expect that this is only the first step
in opening a very serious discussion about the future of MediaWiki
that will involve all key stakeholders. I'd be happy to hear from you.
-- 
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic