One aspect of the first MediaWiki architecture summit
that I really
liked but has been mostly lost, was inviting non-Wikimedia mediawiki
users. They're a group that has use-cases that we don't often hear
about, and provide a unique perspectives. Although I suppose its not
surprising that their involvement has kind of been lost. I would love
to see them come back, although I'm not exactly holding my breath for
that.
As a non-wikimedia mediawiki developer, who attended this year's summit
for the first time, I thought there was a reasonable amount of
discussion that would be interesting for users/editors.
There was a lot of discussion about how developers decide what to
implement. Community tech wishlist most prominently, but also for other
features. I remember a pretty great discussion on the first day around
the various ways to support lower-bandwidth and mobile users. There was
also a great discussion about the future of mediawiki core as a
standalone product. Maybe that was only interesting to me :)
I'd like to see this event keep its developer focus. But I think
users/editors can benefit from meeting developers as much as developers
can benefit from meeting developers.
Even though many talks are implementation focused, I think users can
help make sure the initial use cases and requirements don't get lost in
those discussions, and can help with usability and acceptance testing
for new features.
--
russell uman
firebus
((((d-_-b))))