On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 1:49 PM, Roan Kattouw <roan.katt...@gmail.com>wrote:
> 2009/9/25 Brian <brian.min...@colorado.edu>: > > Also, I am quite serious about my point that an entirely > > new language interface specification will be added to MediaWiki and that > it > > will be widely adopted and propagate throughout the wikisphere, much like > > parser functions, and in the end will make the job of fixing MediaWiki > much, > > much harder. > Whatever wikitext ends up becoming, it will probably still have > templates in some form. If the XML language is designed properly, it > won't make any assumptions about the current state of wikitext and > templates, other than that: > > * there are such things as templates > * they accept parameters > * parameters can, but need not, have names, types, descriptions, etc.; > types may or may not be enforced > > This very limited set of assumptions will hold in any language that > implements templates in a remotely sane way. > > > From what I have > > heard, there was a meeting about how to solve this problem among core > devs > > and a few others at wikimedia headquarters, they decided what the > solution > > would be > That's news to me; I'd very much like to hear from these people what > their proposed solution is. > > > , and now you guys are moving forward on implementing it, totally > > ignoring the strategy wiki. > You make it sound like we're just going ahead and doing this, totally > ignoring everyone else's opinions. Instead, we're proposing and > discussing it on this list to get input from other people. If you > think there's a more appropriate place to discuss this, just point us > there; don't go around blasting us because we failed to read your > mind. > > Roan Kattouw (Catrope) It appears that there is a desire for this project to fit within the scope of the Usability Initiative, which to me says that there is a strong desire to implement it starting soon. Trevor's e-mail indicates as much - let's stop talking strategy and start designing so we can implement. I believe there was a meeting at headquarters with Brion, Trevor, Yaron, and maybe others. I don't know, I wasn't there. All I know is that at this meeting they decided that they would implement this feature. The XML aspect is honestly immaterial to me - it's just an implementational detail, the decision to do this having been decided entirely off wiki. I am not here saying that it is a bad feature, not a bit. In fact I have previously advocated on this list for the ability for users to specify form-like interfaces. What I am saying is that I think it's premature. There is a tradeoff that needs to be balanced here. It's easy to add new features and hard to fix the old one. As we add new features however we diverse farther and farther from the possibility of fixing wikitext. This is especially when efforts to add new features are done entirely out of the context of a clear strategy for eventually fixing wikitext. So before a feature such as this is implemented, or any new substantial language is added to MediaWiki (such as ParserFunctions, or this interface specification language), I would like to see work done on the Strategy wiki. I don't think new work such as this should be done outside of the context of a very clear vision of how we will eventually fix the whole problem. And I'm entirely willing to help. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
