Hi All,
As a lone tinker with Mediawiki, who pays some attention to things
connected with it, I thought I would ask for a follow up to last year's
Mediawiki Stakeholders survey (see:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Stakeholders%27_Group). An
itemized wishlist of most requested features was made (see:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Stakeholders%27_Group/Tasks/Featur…)
with the top four being:
1. Easier installation and upgrade (for both core and extensions).
2. Editing and Visual Editor
3. Skinning and UI
4. Access Controls and Rights
I'm asking for this follow up because as far as I can tell little to no
process has been made on these issues. Additionally in some ways it seems
some things have gotten worse. But I'm hoping I'm wrong and someone with
more knowledge will enlighten me.
Here's some examples of things not improving, or getting worse:
1. Easier Installation and upgrade
a. Three years after the death of the Extension Matrix there still is
still no way to tell when a new extension is released.
b. Composer is an easier way to install extensions, but for those without
command line access it's a nightmare.
c. The upgrade process is still the same
2. Visual Editor
a. still a nightmare to install -- not in any sense is it an out of the box
solution.
b. On a shared host forget about the Visual Editor
3. Skinning and UI
a. same as extensions -- no easy way to find out about new skins
4. Access Controls and Rights
a. The most popular access control extension (Lockdown) only barely works
in 1.27 and causes other extensions to not work: Visual Editor, MsUpload,
and Upload Wizard (there's no doubt more).
b. Almost every other access right extension is unmaintained.
c. The two Semantic Mediawiki Access Right extensions are both
unmaintained.SemanticACL does not work at all in 1.27.
I know, or assume some of these things are being worked on, but still it
seems the stakeholders feature wishlist is not being translated into action
in anyway. So anyone know something I don't, or don't see on these issues?
(Btw, this is not a knock on the hard working developers behind Mediawiki,
and/or its extensions. But a desire to see if the desires of third-party
users have any impact on the direction of software).
Thanks
Chris