[Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] open positions at WMF

[James Alexander]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 1:54 PM, Isarra Yos <zhorishna at gmail.com> wrote:

> On the other hand, how hard could it be to just write an extension to
> integrate a wordpress database and interface into a mediawiki? Call it a
> new namespace on the mediawiki end, and... uh... horrible things on the
> wordpress end...
>
> I was going to say that if I had enough spare time I could probably pull
> that off, but putting this down in text it now occurs to me how utterly
> insane that is, especially considering how hard a time I had just making my
> own wordpress and mediawiki installs look the same.
>
> Even so, it definitely could be done, and it'd probably be easier to
> maintain and update than making something from scratch. I mean, they're
> both php, with somewhat similar structures...
>
>
>
I actually don't think it would be. Mediawiki is an awesome tool for many
things but we really shouldn't be using it for things it isn't good
for/meant for. Wordpress is a very good, modular, option for bogs in
particular and is, in my opinion, a perfectly acceptable thing to use for
that. In order to have any good design setup for the blog on mediawiki we
would have to be using a fair bit of rawhtml (something that mediawiki
allows but was never really meant for) and very complicated templates. We
would also need to have a much more understandable comment system then
mediawiki has right now. Liquid threads isn't meant for this type of
conversation, mediawiki itself sucks horribly for a comment type system and
while flow type stuff may be helpful it is down the road and not really in
scope currently from my understanding.

In order to make it flexible enough for those running the blog on the front
end (Staff / Volunteers etc) we  would have to make it relatively easy to
understand that rawhtml/template system at least at some level which is, in
my opinion, too much to ask of them. They should be focused on what they
are writing and other work, not trying to work around the page itself. Our
current visual editor is also unlikely to be workable with
that complicated of a template system in any near future. It would create
an enormous amount of complication for something that doesn't need it.
Dogfooding our product is great but shouldnt' be done "just because" it
should be done where the product makes sense for the task.

James


James Alexander
Manager, Merchandise
Wikimedia Foundation
(415) 839-6885 x6716 @jamesofur