On 11/14/2013 12:53 PM, Nathan Larson wrote:
Is there reason to think that a decentralized system would be likely to evolve, or that it would be optimal?
Yes. Wikimedians are motivated to maintain Wikimedia sitess. I don't think it is likely that they'll have an interest in maintaining a list of non-spammy, non-Wikimedia sites. Using Meta to host the list implies that there is an interest in the wiki-world outside of Wikimedia.
It seems to me that most stuff in the wikisphere is centered around WMF; e.g. people usually borrow templates, the spam blacklist, MediaWiki extensions, and so on, from WMF sites.
Right. But here you have people re-using the work that the Wikimedia community has made available -- work they are already doing. It happens to work elsewhere, but it is focused on the Wikimedia sites.
It's just usually more efficient to have a centralized repository and widely-applied standards so that people aren't duplicating their labor too much.
True, but I don't think centralizing on Meta gives you the efficiency benefits you want. You're not re-using work that already happens on Meta. Instead, you're asking them to do work that they haven't (yet) shown an interest in.
And, while MediaWiki extensions are available from MediaWiki.org, a good number of those extensions have nothing to do with the WMF -- they're just hosted here. Several extensions are just hosted on github. Some don't even have a reference on MW.o.
This is a problem of community-building, really, and the work of WikiApiary is good step in that direction. I have discussed plans for MW 1.23 (https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/54425, https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Opt-in_site_registration...) for a way to really get this community-building effort going.
Thanks,
Mark.