Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

On 08/03/2016 10:48 PM, Subramanya Sastry wrote: On 08/03/2016 07:17 PM, Rob Lanphier wrote: On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 10:15 PM, Subramanya Sastry wrote: ... I think it is feasible to get there. But, whether we want a spec for wikitext and should work towards that is a

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Specs/wikitext/1.0.0 ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

On Wed, Aug 3, 2016 at 8:48 PM, Subramanya Sastry wrote: > On 08/03/2016 07:17 PM, Rob Lanphier wrote: >> In our planning meeting (E250), we discussed this issue as a >> possibility for next week's ArchCom office hour (E259). We don't >> (yet) have a specific RFC we can

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

On 08/03/2016 07:17 PM, Rob Lanphier wrote: On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 10:15 PM, Subramanya Sastry wrote: When [a detailed list of stuff is] done, it become far more feasible to think of defining a spec for wikitext parsing that is not tied to the internals of mediawiki or

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 10:15 PM, Subramanya Sastry wrote: > When [a detailed list of stuff is] done, it become far more feasible to think > of defining > a spec for wikitext parsing that is not tied to the internals of mediawiki > or its extensions. At that point, you

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

Subramanya Sastry wrote: >Some user pages seem to exploit this as a feature even (unclosed div >tags). Not just some and not just seem. :-) Thank you for this detailed e-mail. John Mark Vandenberg wrote: >The main reason for a spec should be the sanity of the Wikimedia >technical user base,

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

TL:DR; You get to a spec by paying down technical debt that untangles wikitext parsing from being intricately tied to the internals of mediawiki implementation and state. In discussions, there is far too much focus on the fact that you cannot write a BNF grammar or yacc / lex / bison /

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

On Tue, Aug 2, 2016 at 8:34 AM, Gergo Tisza wrote: > On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 5:27 PM, Rob Lanphier wrote: > >> Do you believe that declaring "the implementation is the spec" is a >> sustainable way of encouraging contribution to our projects? > > >

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 5:27 PM, Rob Lanphier wrote: > Do you believe that declaring "the implementation is the spec" is a > sustainable way of encouraging contribution to our projects? Reimplementing Wikipedia's parser (complete with template inclusions, Wikidata fetches,

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

There is a slow moving discussion about this at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Requests_for_comment/Markdown The bigger risk is that the rest of the world settles on using CommonMark Markdown once it is properly specified. That will mean in the short term that MediaWiki will need to support

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 1:56 PM, Gergo Tisza wrote: > On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 1:01 PM, Rob Lanphier wrote: >> On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 12:19 PM, Gergo Tisza wrote: >> > Specifying wikitext-html conversion sounds like a MediaWiki 2.0

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

> One possibility is considering storing rendered HTML for old revisions. It > lets wikitext (and hence parser) evolve without breaking old revisions. Plus > rendered HTML will use the template revision at the time it was rendered vs. > the latest revision (this is the problem Memento tries to

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

On 1 August 2016 at 17:37, Marc-Andre wrote: > We need to find a long-term view to a solution. I don't mean just keeping > old versions of the software around - that would be of limited help. It's > be an interesting nightmare to try to run early versions of phase3 nowadays,

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 1:01 PM, Rob Lanphier wrote: > On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 12:19 PM, Gergo Tisza wrote: > > Specifying wikitext-html conversion sounds like a MediaWiki 2.0 type of > > project (ie. wouldn't expect it to happen in this decade), and

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 12:19 PM, Gergo Tisza wrote: > Specifying wikitext-html conversion sounds like a MediaWiki 2.0 type of > project (ie. wouldn't expect it to happen in this decade), and even then it > would not fully solve the problem[...] You seem to be suggesting

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 11:47 AM, Rob Lanphier wrote: > > HTML storage comes with its own can of worms, but it seems like a > solution > > worth thinking about in some form. > > > > 1. storage costs (fully rendered HTML would be 5-10 times bigger than > > wikitext for that

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

On Mon, Aug 1, 2016 at 9:51 AM, Subramanya Sastry wrote: > On 08/01/2016 11:37 AM, Marc-Andre wrote: >> Is there something we can do to make the passage of years hurt less? >> Should we be laying groundwork now to prevent issues decades away? > > > One possibility is

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

"Should we be laying groundwork now to prevent issues decades away?" I'll answer that with "Yes". I could provide some interesting stories about technological and budgetary headaches that result from repeatedly delaying efforts to make legacy software be forwards-compatible. The technical details

Re: [Wikitech-l] Loosing the history of our projects to bitrot. Was: Acquiring list of templates including external links

On 08/01/2016 11:37 AM, Marc-Andre wrote: ... Is there something we can do to make the passage of years hurt less? Should we be laying groundwork now to prevent issues decades away? One possibility is considering storing rendered HTML for old revisions. It lets wikitext (and hence parser)