Hi.
There was a time when the software being run on Wikimedia wikis was updated about weekly. Nowadays, I honestly can't remember the last time it was fully SVN upped and scapped, and the branching has made it nearly impossible for me to figure out where the progress stands. A few "critical" revisions get merged into the 1.16wmf4 branch as necessary, but most revisions are left untouched, as far as I can tell.
I'd like to see if there are ways to get back to more regular site software updates. Should the branching be undone so that trunk has to be usable? Is it a matter of developer man-power? Is it a matter of code review? I'm not trying to be critical, but the current situation seems far less than ideal. I'm willing to help if I can, as I'm sure others are, but it seems like nobody's quite sure what or where the exact problem is.
It's also possible that not everyone views the lack of software updates to be a problem. That itself might be an issue that needs to be addressed.
MZMcBride