On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 2:52 PM, Robert Rohde <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 11:04 AM, Thomas Dalton <[email protected]> > wrote: > > 2009/2/19 Nathan <[email protected]>: > >> So the question really should be, what of this would be to our > disadvantage? > > > > It's very difficult to set up technically, for a start. Live mirroring > > of existing content isn't too hard, but sorting out editing would be a > > nightmare. We presumably wouldn't want everyone editing under the same > > account (we are generally opposed to role accounts, so I would imagine > > we would be opposed to this kind of group account as well), which > > means we need some way for the mirror site to authenticate accounts > > with the Wikimedia servers, which is a security nightmare (I expect it > > can be done, but it would require some effort). We would need to deal > > with edit conflicts caused by delays in the mirroring (which would be > > sure to happen from time to time), again, not impossible, but it > > requires effort. > > > > There needs to be a significant advantage for it to be worth all that > > effort, and I don't see one. If people want easy access to references, > > etc. they can use custom skins and scripts - they are far easier to > > write than live mirroring software. You could even make a skin that > > looks just like the other site if you really wanted to. > > I think you are significantly overestimating the difficulty. We > already have an API [1] and similar tools that allow one to accomplish > many similar tasks. For example, calling ?action=render will give you > a llive HTML version of any current page that could be wrapped in a > external site's own framing and stylesheets (though one would need to > rewrite the url roots in most cases). The API already has tools for > logging in and out while authenticating against WMF servers. And > there is even a write API, though I believe that is currently disabled > on the main sites. > > The API isn't really designed for what we are talking about, but in my > opinion the changes that one would want to make to support live > mirroring would all be straight-forward. > > -Robert Rohde > > [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API Just to clarify on one point here: the write API is enabled on all sites. -Chad _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
