Erik, I am skeptical of the current development process. That is because it has led to the current parser, which is not a proper parser at all, and includes horrifying syntax.
The current usability issue is widespread and goes to MediaWiki's core. Developers should not have that large of a voice in usability, or you get what we have now. We do not even have a parser. I am sure you know that MediaWiki does not actually parse. It is 5000 lines worth of regexes, for the most part. In order to solve usability, even for new users, I believe that you must write a new parser from scratch. Are you prepared to do that? On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 4:05 PM, Erik Moeller <e...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > 2009/1/9 Brian <brian.min...@colorado.edu>: > > Why are so few community-developed mediawiki extensions used by the > > Foundation? > > Most of them aren't applicable (YouTube, Google Maps extensions, etc.) > or not tested to the scale of Wikipedia and would therefore require > significant investments of resources to be ready for deployment. > > > Why do developers have such priviledged access to the source code, and > the > > community such little input? > > I disagree with the underlying premises. There are more than 150 > committers to the MediaWiki SVN. Commit access is granted liberally. > Code is routinely updated and deployed in a very open fashion. > BugZilla is filled with thousands of community requests. The backlog > of requests is now more aggressively processed. > > > Why must the community 'vote' on extensions such as Semantic MediaWiki, > and > > yet the developers can implement any feature they like, any way they like > > it? > > I disagree with the underlying premises. For example, developers don't > deploy any feature we/they like. Features which are likely to be > disruptive are only deployed after community consultation. An example > of this is the FlaggedRevs extension, for which a clear community > process has been defined. > > > Why does the Foundation need 1 million for usability when amazing tools > > continue to be ignored and untested? > > In part, to stop ignoring and start testing them. > > > Why has the Foundation gone ahead and approved the hire of several > employees > > for usability design, when the community has had almost zero input into > what > > that design should be? > > In part, to be able to accommodate such input. > > > Why is this tool not being tested on Wikipedia, right now? > > > http://wiki.ontoprise.com/ontoprisewiki/index.php/Image:Advanced_ontology_browser.gif > > SMW is a hugely complex tool. Along with other approaches to handle > information architecture, it merits examination. Such examination will > happen as resources for it become available. The priority for > obtaining such resources will compete with other priorities such as > usability, internationalization support, rich media support, etc. > -- > Erik Möller > Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation > > Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > -- You have successfully failed! _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
