Erik Moeller wrote:
Having all technical contributors directed to
wikitech.wikimedia.org
would address that - it would introduce them to a magical world of
dev-ops unicorns and PHP rainbows at the same time. And having
mediawiki.org more clearly dedicated to the product would allow it to
shine more brightly in its own sunflower-y colors.
:D
At the same time, the amount of wiki-ping-pong
we're playing with
technically interested users could very well increase significantly as
a result. Right now,
wikitech.wikimedia.org is relatively quiet, with
changes typically either being made by the Wikimedia ops team or by
Labs users.
It simply stands to reason that if we distribute a lot of content from
a large wiki to a much smaller one, the number of times that you'll
have to go back and forth between the two to find what you're looking
for will increase. API docs? Over here. Status update? Over there.
Extension installation docs? Over here. Specs related to the same
extension? Over there. Ping, pong. Ping, pong. The divisions may seem
logical to us, but for the confused technical contributor, things
could easily get a lot worse.
Yes, this. All of this.
If we do go forward with the migration to
wikitech.wikimedia.org, I
would argue in favor of largely depleting
mediawiki.org of content
except for clearly necessary end user documentation and support pages,
to minimize ping pong effects.
Before too much gets moved or migrated (for a second time, in some cases,
as Daniel F. points out... some of this content was already moved from
Meta-Wiki to
MediaWiki.org), I'd like to see more thought put into where
everything should end up. Moves/migrations are disruptive and the
resulting mess may be worse than keeping everything where it is for now.
MZMcBride