[Foundation-l] Big problem to solve: good WYSIWYG on WMF wikis

[MZMcBride]

David Gerard wrote:
> On 29 December 2010 05:13, MZMcBride <z at mzmcbride.com> wrote:
>> You inexplicably posted this to foundation-l, so let's look at this from an
>> organizational/political standpoint.
> 
> I deliberately posted it there because what I'm asking for is broad
> and difficult organisational commitment. And almost didn't post it to
> wikitech-l, fearing that doing the latter would result in what it did,
> i.e, more of the same from the past five years, where the necessity is
> buried under more off-the-cuff ideas that won't get it through.
> 
> And a pointer here from internal-l and wikien-l.
> 
> Sorry, was it not entirely clear that was what I was doing? It is. My
> dream is that more than me will consider this worth the serious
> pushing it will take.

I was aware that you'd posted to four separate mailing lists about this. The
underlying motive wasn't as clear to me. Thank you for clarifying.

You seem to have snipped out the reasons laid out in my previous post for
why I think your dream (broad and difficult organisational commitment) is
just a dream, though. ;-)

>> I think this is an important problem that deserves thoughtful consideration
>> and attention. Which of course begs the question of why you think Wikimedia
>> will be the one to solve it. This is the prime target for a competitor
>> coming in and making something better. Why stand in the way?
> 
> Unfortunately, Wikia seems to treat its codebase with nearly the
> hygiene WMF does at times, so using their work would be comparable
> effort to reimplementing it ...

The way I read this, you're almost suggesting that Wikia is a competitor to
Wikipedia. Of all the sites on the Web, I think it's reasonable to say that
Wikia is one of the few that inherently was not designed to be a competitor
to Wikipedia, given its founders.

As for Wikia's codebase, the idea of Wikimedia's code improving Wikia and
Wikia's code improving Wikimedia is certainly a nice one. However, I can't
say the reality has really matched the ideal. I think we agree here.

MZMcBride