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

[Isarra Yos]

On 20/03/13 21:09, James Alexander wrote:
> 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
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MediaWiki is good for revision control and some forms of categorisation 
and has all our users. Wordpress works for blog displaying and 
organising pages and tagging stuff and generally throwing it at the 
readers. What I am suggesting would take both of those, stuff the -admin 
interface and editing and revisions into mediawiki, but have wordpress 
handle the content and displaying it to readers (just dealing with the 
current revisions on that end)... in a mediawiki skin, even, and then... 
well, explode, probably.

I dunno, if it didn't explode I know plenty of folks who would use this, 
but it probably wouldn't actually help Wikimedia that much, considering 
what they're apparently looking for specifically.

-- 
-— Isarra