I don't think the editor community has much reason to participate. The template creator community does. They are more than technical to understand things on wikitech-l.
AIUI the Lua idea was explicitly run past the few people who write the insanely horrible brainfuck-like ParserFunctions templates. (Is this correct?) They would be the relevant part of the editor community - most of the editor community just want the template itself to work, they neither know nor care about the details of the plumbing.
Fair enough. That satisfies my threshold for consulting the community.
If the people who would be most affected had a chance to give their input I would say that this project is good to go then.
From what I understand lua was not chosen just randomly by throwing a bunch of languages in a hat, there were many requirements, such as sandbox-ability, performance concerns, and ease of implementing resource limits, etc. If I recall lua came out the clear winner.
This also seems perfectly fair. My points have been refuted and I humbly accept defeat.
That said, I do agree that we should plan the roll-out rather than just tossing it over the wall -- preparing some initial documentation and tutorials to show HOW and WHY it's easier/faster than the old system would go a long way (imho) to assuage complaints of disconnect from what the community wants.
+1 million. This is a must. No one likes change, but anything we can do to make that change easier on people will make things better. The old templating system will still be functional correct?
Thank you, Derric Atzrott