On 02/07/2013 08:17 AM, Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
(Added MW-Enterprise mailing list)
On 02/06/2013 10:00 PM, Tim Starling wrote:
For corporate adoption, the main thing MediaWiki needs is not some
particular feature. It needs to be supported. It needs an organisation
with people who will care if corporate users are screwed over by a
change. It needs community management, so that the features needed by
corporate users will be discoverable and well-maintained, rather than
developed privately, over and over. And it needs the smallest nudge of
promotion, on top of what Wikipedia fans are doing for it. Say, a
nice-looking website aimed at this user base.
Totally agreed.
I (along with a few other hardy volunteers) have been helping MW users
at [[mw:Project:Support desk]] and it seems clear that the focus most
developers have on the WMF use case has really made MW less usable for
other people.
One of my clients had an older (1.11) MediaWiki installation that they
are using to share information with their distributors world-wide.
Their first attempt to get the system to do what they wanted was a flop
since the Java developer they had working on the system really didn't
know that much about MW. I was able to get the system upgraded to 1.19
and adapt MW to their infrastructure using hooks, ResourceLoader, and
pages they could update in the "MediaWiki" namespace.
So, yes, I think MediaWiki has a lot to offer corporate users, but we
haven't really made that clear or shown them how to do a lot of things
they want to do.
Tim has it right when he says MediaWiki "needs community management, so
that the features needed by corporate users will be discoverable and
well-maintained, rather than developed privately, over and over."
We've discussed this sort of thing over and over, but I think we're
actually beginning to make some headway now thanks especially to work by
Mariya Miteva.
I'm really happy to read this! Mireya is doing this work because Sumana,
myself and other WMF employees thought it would be good to have an
internship (funded by the WMF as well) dedicated to sort out the
panorama of MediaWiki vendors.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Outreach_Program_for_Women
I have proposed the use of MediaWiki Groups as a tool for 3rd party
developers, consultants, MW users etc to get organized. Creating a group
officially recognized by the Wikimedia movement is easy, there is almost
no overhead and it would increase your chances of pushing your agenda.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Groups
If someone doesn't feel like being inside Wikimedia then s/he can jump
to these groups as a Trojan. From a tactical point of view it seems
reasonable to think that using the Wikipedia / Wikimedia inertia for
your own good is more efficient than trying to jump away or swim
against. Many 3rd parties consider MediaWiki because it is used by
Wikipedia. The Wikimedia movement at large can also understand that a
healthier MediaWiki 3rd party community helps having healthier software
for Wikimedia projects.
About the "nice-looking website aimed at this user base", what is
mediawiki.org missing? And, more broadly, what is this community
missing? Tim made very good points in the paragraph above. The next step
is to define the tasks / projects needed and find the resources for each.
I'm happy helping in all these areas, but (needless to say) they must be
driven by 3rd parties. Mariya will be working full time on "MediaWiki
vendors" 7-8 weeks more. It would be great to use as much of her time
and energies to build a minimum level of concretion and coordination. So
far many of you have done a great job helping her to help you. :)
--
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
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