[Foundation-l] Strategy document?

[John at Darkstar]

Is there any strategy document that describes what kind of functionality
we want in Mediawiki, and why we want it? For the moment it seems like
the development are drifting in some general direction but without any
real specific goal.

It seems like there are no such document at mediawiki.org or on meta,
yet there are some rather old docs about specific hardware issues. Same
on wikimediafoundation.org, there are some references on pages about job
openings but thats all.

The closest I could get to such a document is "Update of Foundation
organization (March 07)"
(http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Update_of_Foundation_organization_(March_07))
and the document "10 wishes for 2008"
(http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/10_wishes_for_2008)

I believe that some kind of document, describing whats important to add
to Mediawiki, and why, is very important for the overall community. This
would give us an opportunity to clarify why we want to do something and
how we would like to do such a thing. It will also make it possible to
approach specific benefactors, patrons and donors, especially those that
share a common goal with us.

Where should such a document be made, and who should write it? I guess
it should clearly state why we want a specific functionality. To make an
example, the 2007-document talks about wap functionality; why do we want
it and where is it documented in full detail. The page about the
functionality should point to all relevant bugs, code and discussions,
while the overall document should clearly describe why we want it.

Note that this not a document to block all those that want to write some
kind of funny extension, it is a document to describe what we think is
important to do.

John