Hm. Sounds like an opportunity. How about Mediawiki issuing a grand challenge. Create a well-documented/structured (open source) parser that produces the same results as the current parser on 98% of Wikipedia pages. The prize is bragging rights and a letter of commendation from someone or other. I suspect there are a bunch of graduate students out there that would find the challenge interesting.
Rationalizing the parser would help the development process. For the 2% of the pages that fail, challenge others to fix them. They key is not getting stuck in the "we need a formal syntax" debate. If the challengers want to create a formal syntax that is up to them. Mediawiki should only be interested in the final results. --- On Tue, 7/14/09, Aryeh Gregor <[email protected]> wrote: > They're supposed to pass, in theory, but never have. > Someone wrote > the tests and the expected output at some point as a sort > of to-do > list. I don't know why we keep them, since they just > confuse > everything and make life difficult. (Using the > --record and --compare > options helps, but they're not that convenient.) All > of them would > require monkeying around with the parser that nobody's > willing to do, > since the parser is a hideous mess that no one understands > or wants to > deal with unless absolutely necessary. > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
