[WikiEN-l] MediaWiki is getting a new programming language

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/7/1 Brian <Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu>:
> On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 10:19 PM, stevertigo<stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:
>> You provide no context
>
> The title says it all - MediaWiki is getting a new programming language.

That doesn't even mention the word "template", which is what the whole
discussion is about.

>> (more to the point) you gave no indication that the techies actually want non-technical input.
>
> The fact that the "techies" do not actively seek out community input
> is why we ended up with ParserFunctions. Furthermore these changes are
> supposed to be 'community' decisions. The 'techies' are also not the
> people who edit Wikipedia articles the most. They write code, fix
> servers etc...

ParserFunctions were implemented because there was a demand for them.
One of the greatest strengths and also the greatest weaknesses of the
way MediaWiki is developed is that there is very little top-down
direction and people just get on and do what seems like a good idea.
That results in a lot of quick fixes, like ParserFunctions, which
means features that are high in demand get implemented quickly but it
also means that the solutions are often far from optimal. I don't see
how any of that would be fixed by community discussion. I'm not even
sure what community would discuss it - the core Mediawiki code is used
by far more than just the English Wikipedia (or even the whole of the
Wikimedia movement).