Based on the issues raised during a meeting we had at the Architecture Summit a couple of weeks ago, those of us involved in MediaWiki release management have decided to introduce a monthly point-release cycle. On the last Thursday of every month we'll collect fixes that have been made and release them for download.
We plan to continue to use the "Known Issues" subpage[1] to drive the issues that are incorporated into the release. This means that if you have an issue that you think should be addressed before the next major release, you can add it to the "Known Issues" page. We'll review it and, if we agree that it is an appropriate issue for a point release, then we'll try to get it resolved.
Of course, this is a community-driven effort, so issues that have working code attached are more likely to be resolved in a point release than requests without code. If you cannot provide patches, that doesn't mean that your issue won't be fixed. Instead, you can help us find someone to fix it and further help by testing any fixes provided.
We hope that this will mean a more usable MediaWiki.
Thanks,
Mark.
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.22/Known_issues