Hi Mark! I propose to split the topic and discuss the creation of ACL for MW in this thread.
I see three sub-tasks here: 0) Writing a good proposal of how ACL should work. Will it be based on namespaces? or maybe categories (although it's hard to imagine)? or maybe per-page access? I can help to describe this vision document. 1) coordination with WMF and including ACL into Roadmap. First we need to be sure that the possible patches to the core: - will not be rejected just because of philosofy of openness - will not be removed after several versions I've got no ideas how that can be done. Probably via RFC with signatures of interested companies. 2) Searching for the developers and tester. There are many possible developers that may be interested in this task: HalloWelt, Custis, DIQA-PM, maybe even Wikia. Besides there are a lot of independent developers here 3) Fundraising. For independent developer it's possible to ask for individual engagement grant [1] but mostly it should be a crowdfunding from MediaWiki-related companies. For that task we need a person who has personal contact with many MediaWiki-related companies and is ready to contact each of them asking to take part in funding. I'm not sure who that can be (maybe me, maybe someone from organizing comittee of Wikimania or Wikisym, maybe someone from WMF) but it's going to be a god damn lot of dirty work that needs funding. [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Individual_Engagement_Grants Cheers, ----- Yury Katkov, WikiVote On Sat, Aug 24, 2013 at 4:38 AM, Mark A. Hershberger <m...@nichework.com> wrote: > On 08/23/2013 06:31 PM, Yury Katkov wrote: >> Of course, after some time the extension will stop working because of >> ugly hacks that will definetely appear in the code. >> >> Another and more proper solution is not so fast, that is: to lobby the >> proper ACL support in MediaWiki core before starting development. > > +1 > > Markus Glaser and I have discussed precisely this as one of the biggest > hurdles for Corporate adoption of MediaWiki. There are a lot of things > to do in the MediaWiki space but, as you point out, this is one that we > need developers outside the WMF for. > >> MediaWiki is used as an enterprise wiki and the impossibility of good >> ACL should not be considered as not some kind of philosophy of the >> software (as some people claims) but as a bug that needs fixing. > > +1 (again. That makes 2 points for Yury, so far.) > > So if -- as many of us on the -enterprise mailing list agree, I think -- > this is a bug that needs fixing, how are we going to fix it? > > That is, where is the money to pay for developer time going to come from? > > The release manager contractor[1] that the WMF is funding this year is > meant to be finding funds outside of the Foundation to sustain release > management long term. One way to do that is to begin extending > MediaWiki in ways that enterprises would be willing to fund -- say, for > example. through developing ACLs. > > If we can find some MW developers interested in working on adding this > to core, and the money to fund those developer's work, the problem then > becomes coordinating their work and making sure it has real momentum. > > Thoughts? > > -- > Mark A. Hershberger > NicheWork LLC > 717-271-1084 _______________________________________________ Mediawiki-enterprise mailing list Mediawiki-enterprise@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-enterprise
