The discussion to add a full-fledged programming language to MediaWiki is yet another example of this. Rather than evaluate existing tools which allow for user-interface extensibility, the developers would rather embed PHP within PHP. This allows you to do a variety of things:
* Simulate the brain * Write MediaWiki within MediaWiki * Compute any function * ... * Write an enyclopedia? Our neural simulator contains an embedded dynamic language called C^c. It is interpreted C++. I assure you that it does not aid in usability. Our software did not start to become truly usable until we tackled the issue of user-extensible interfaces. This issue has already been tackled in MediaWiki, and yet the solution to all of our problems is claimed to be a well-designed embedded scripting language. This is the largest possible hammer you could apply to the problem. I can't see how it is a reasonable next step. 2009/1/15 Brian <[email protected]> > Access to svn does not imply access to MediaWiki. Changes to MediaWiki have > been almost entirely up to core developer discretion, and as I have > demonstrated, 'consensus' has largely implied that they, and only they, > thought the changes made Wikipedia better. The ideas are rarely presented to > the community in a formal, well-designed demo format (as SMW has been, time > and time again), and they are not evaluated for their usability. When a > usability issue arises third party tools are not properly considered. > Rather, they reinvent the wheel in an inferior manner. > > > On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Denny Vrandečić < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> That's pretty much exactly what Semantic MediaWiki offers. >> >> SMW has developed a lot, since many of you saw it. By now, you may >> * switch off inline queries if you are afraid they won't work fast enough >> * get rid of the ugly syntax everyone is scared about (and simply hide >> it all in templates by using the #declare function) >> * have all that data sitting there inside the DB and export it in >> standard data formats like RDF or JSON (ok, well, the last one is >> *almost* finished) >> >> We would be very much interested in having SMW tested on a labs machine >> with a copy of a reasonably big Wikipedia (e.g. German). >> >> And, just to take note to the title of this thread -- I never thought >> and the developers never gave me the feeling that the software is out of >> reach for the community. Access to SVN was swiftly granted, and both Tim >> and Brion were always giving encouraging and valuable feedback to us. >> >> Cheers, >> denny >> >> Magnus Manske wrote: >> > On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 9:57 AM, Nikola Smolenski <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >> David Gerard wrote: >> >>> The other useful thing that can be done with templates is to >> >>> standardise the field names in them as much as possible per wiki. >> >>> >> >>> The reason? To enhance machine readability of data in them. People are >> >>> SERIOUSLY INTERESTED in this. >> >> Another useful thing: after an article is parsed, write all the >> >> templates it uses and their parameters in the database. Even if at >> first >> >> it isn't possible to read this data on Wikipedia, Toolserver could do >> >> wonders with it :) >> > >> > People (including yours truly) have been asking for this for years... >> > >> > Magnus >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > foundation-l mailing list >> > [email protected] >> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> >> _______________________________________________ >> foundation-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l >> > > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
