On 4/12/2012 12:04 AM, rupert THURNER wrote:
I am not to deep into this, so please bear with me if it already was mentioned before: what are the main issues you face with the current setting?
As with any diverse community different individuals will have different opinions, but some of the issues that led to the current discussion on forking are:
- The WT community does not have any control over the technical administration of the site. Simple Mediawiki configuration changes can take months to get implemented (see for example http://wikitravel.org/shared/Tech:Enable_range_blocks), the current site is running Mediawiki 1.1.2 and in the midst of a promised upgrade to 1.1.7 (note: NOT 1.1.8) that began in July 2011 and still has no clear completion date, and any enhancements to the site that would involve use of plugins or other technical enhancements must generally be dismissed as impractical given the current support situation.
- The existing community is no longer growing. After many years of neglect from the site's owners several of the language versions lack active communities, while the active language versions are mostly treading water. Most of this stagnation can be traced to frustration with current site management (performance problems, lack of responsiveness to technical requests, etc).
- The current site owners are intent on monetizing the site in ways that are expected to be detrimental to the site. See http://wikitravel.org/shared/Talk:Advertising_policy for some of their advertising proposals, and http://wikitravel.org/shared/Tech:Add_booking_tool_to_WT for an upcoming change that has not received the support of any existing contributors, but that will be arriving soon nonetheless.
There are other issues, but this provides some insight. The WT community has attempted to work with the existing owners for many years to address concerns, but at this point it seems pretty clear that they are either unable or unwilling to do more than the bare minimum required to keep the site viable, and that's not a scenario under which the site can come close to realizing its full potential.
It is believed that a move to WMF would immediately resolve all of these issues. Given the WMF's established ability to competently managed large Mediawiki sites technical concerns should be greatly reduced. Similarly, the visibility of being a WMF project would enlarge the community, and the additional tools available (newer Mediawiki tools, access to plugins, ability to integrate with commons, etc) would free up the existing community to focus on the site rather than on simply fighting spam and dealing with technical issues. Finally, concerns over misguided monetization efforts are unlikely to be a problem given the existing advertising policies of WMF.
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