[Foundation-l] Strategy document?

[John at Darkstar]

Chad skrev:
> On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 9:58 AM, Bryan Tong Minh
> <bryan.tongminh at gmail.com>wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 7:06 AM, John at Darkstar <vacuum at jeb.no> wrote:
>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>> Just as a clarification, things that are important but may seem to be
>> neglected are not neglected because the developers think it is a bad
>> idea, but usually because there is no developer available who has the
>> time for it, especially if it concerns large projects.
>>
> Agreed. We've got an excellent team of mostly volunteers who develop
> MediaWiki. As volunteers, we get a bit of freedom to decide for ourselves
> what we want to work on. Mostly its things that are interesting or
> particularly
> useful.
> 

Just to clarify the others clarifications, I think the current codebase
is great, and the developers does a great job! But, this is the peoblem,
they are developers and thinks about the problems in an other way than
writers. Most of the time this works out quite well, but sometimes the
solutions are to difficult to use for must writers. A lot of our readers
don't know how the system works at all, they have enough problems
figuring out how to find the correct article...

I believe a starting point would be to open a discussion about what the
writers believe are difficult and the how the developers think those
aspects can be simplified.

John