On 07/01/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
When the Wikimedia Foundation wants to make MediaWiki
an official project,
it has the potential to make this change happen. With this change, the WMF
however assumes responsibilities that it currently does not have. It
currently does not take responsibility for the way Brion has too much on his
plate to finish the many things he did not finish. It can at this moment
selfishly urge Brion to do whatever because of WMF priorities.
I agree that it is unfair that Brion's stack gets piled high (I should
point out that Tim isn't exactly stuck for things to do most of the
time, either) with projects that someone "official" promises at
Wikimania, but then bitches about when their arbitrary deadline is not
met.
When the WMF takes responsibility for MediaWiki, it
should take much more
notice of all the other organisations that use MediaWiki and have developed
their own changes to accommodate needs that the WMF does not feel for its
projects. Doing this will bring the power of all the people who also
developing MW, and it will bring the need for integration and support that
has not really been addressed up to now.
Agreed; if Wikimedia is really serious about pushing wiki, then it
should continue to support MediaWiki in other environments, not just
its own. It is reasonable for us to keep the focus of the software, of
course - MediaWiki is a wiki engine - but it would be unreasonable to
turn around and deprive existing third parties of much of the support
and general community that's sprung up around MediaWiki itself.
I don't think, however, there's any danger of this not happening.
If this move is intended to bring more volunteer
developers to MediaWiki I
am afraid that it is just window dressing. It will not make much of a
difference because people come and stay as they like. If you TRULY want more
developers, having someone dedicated to coaching the people who are new to
the MediaWiki code would make much more of a difference. Having someone
coach people who are doing projects and stuff in Universities would really
help.
Absolutely! New developers come in all very excited about the thing -
they've submitted a few patches, we've generally used those to help
mould them into shape, and we've got a feel for them - but they're
still very "green" - I certainly was. It would make excellent sense if
a more experienced developer was assigned to "mentor" newbies, and I
don't mean that in the sense of being up their noses - I mean that in
a sense of giving their changes a quick eyeball, and being available
to answer the odd email about how something should be done.
Of course, we don't want to abandon eyeballing everyone else's work, either...
Rob Church