Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
See Special:Export and Special:Import. I'd like to transition our public backups to this format at some point.
A non-standardized undocumented XML format is not really much better than the database; the purpose of the exercise is standardization, for now and the long term.
Well in the meantime, we've got actual work to do, data to move, and a format already in use for it. It's even got an XML schema definition. ;) http://www.mediawiki.org/xml/export-0.1.xsd
(Semantic web my ass! XML is meaningless; just a container format. :P)
Also, It needs to deal with such issues as properly recording the context of the data, the user database (with its attendant privacy issues),
That might be needed in addition, perhaps, but does not supercede the existing requirements to shuffle page and revision data around.
standardization of the wiki syntax itself, and other issues.
Now, that's a whole nother issue...
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)