3 ms·

> Adding a good GUI editor properly integrated into Mediawiki would take at least a man year of effort by skilled programmers, I would guess. It would be a huge

> Adding a good GUI editor properly integrated into Mediawiki would take at least a man year of effort by skilled programmers, I would guess. It would be a huge, extremely difficult technical step, with a large amount of resistance from the existing user base. As one of the most popular websites on the net, it's not like they don't have the resources to do it. I think there are powerful members of the community who want to keep it somewhat insular and closed off as a defense mechanism against newbies. This probably does some good, but it also definitely does a lot of bad (keeping out worthy contributors just because they don't feel like learning the markup language). I'm sure they could achieve their goal some other way without pushing away talented contributors.

jacobolus 14y ago
> it's not like they don't have the resources to do it. Have you ever looked at the Mediawiki code base? Last time I skimmed a bit, a few years ago, it was an utterly horrible mess of spaghetti PHP. Just finding developers capable of doing this would be a big challenge. The Wikimedia Foundation has a lot less resources than you might imagine, considering the reach of its projects, and there are an awful lot of other funding priorities (not to mention other code priorities). They’re doing the best they can, but making sweeping changes to the code base is a lot harder than it looks. > I think there are powerful members of the community who want to keep it somewhat insular and closed off as a defense mechanism. Do you have any evidence for that? As conspiracy theories go, this one seems pretty weak to me. I can’t think of another organization of comparable size which is as welcoming and open to involvement and contribution from ordinary community members, at all levels of decision making. Almost the entire management and operation of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation is carried out in public, nearly all of the parties involved are volunteers (with a quite small number of full time staff keeping infrastructure running, handling legal issues, and so on), and many many decisions are made collectively, by consensus. It’s easy to hate on anything, as a disinterested outsider, without making any real attempt to understand the internal processes involved, but organizing millions of people is a highly non-trivial job, and I think the Wikimedia community has done pretty admirably, all things considered.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  "Just finding developers capable of doing this would be a big challenge." I'm pretty sure one of the very highest profile websites on the entire internet could find developers capable of handling it. Actually, I'm 100% certain of it.
  - jacobolus 14y ago
    Send them over. I’m sure the Wikimedia foundation would be glad to have them: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings Edit: From the Wikimedia Foundation’s “2011–2012 Annual Plan”: > 2011-12 Risks: > 1) Editor decline is an intractable problem. Declining participation is by far the most serious problem facing the Wikimedia projects: the success of the projects is entirely dependent upon a thriving, healthy editing community. We are responding with a multi-faceted approach that blends big obvious fixes (e.g., Visual Editor) with more experimental approaches (e.g., the -1 to 100 retention projects and editor recruitment initiatives in India and Brazil). The WMF is also putting resources towards expanding community awareness and understanding of the problem, and putting in place mechanisms for decentralized community innovation so that community initiatives can help to solve it. We will be tracking progress throughout the year, and if necessary will sacrifice other activities to increase resources dedicated to this. [...] > 9) A shortage of Silicon Valley technical talent hurts our ability to recruit and retain technical staff. The Bay Area is currently facing a major shortage of talented engineers, and tech companies are finding it difficult to hire and retain good tech staff. This could impair our ability to grow our tech staff as planned from 28 to 50. Mitigation: Like the rest of the tech sector, there is not much we can do to mitigate this serious problem. However, we will dedicate more resources towards technical recruitment in 2011-12 compared with 2010-11, and we'll be very clear about our value proposition: The Wikimedia Foundation is not about monetizing eyeballs, our direction isn't set by VCs, and we're financially stable. We offer a fair, friendly, fun environment for talented engineers who want their individual contribution to result in making the world a better place for hundreds of millions of people. [...] > THE 2011-12 PLAN [...] > Key activities supporting Priority #2, Diversifying the Editor Community are: > 1) Visual Editor: A new default editing environment for Wikimedia projects which does not require markup. [...] > 2011-12 Plan Targets [...] > 5) Develop Visual Editor. First opt-in user-facing production usage by December 2011, and first small wiki default deployment by June 2012. [...] > The 2011-12 plan reflects our continued desire to grow the organization's programmatic capacity by growing its staff, with an emphasis on thoughtful recruitment and integration of new people. In 2011-12, we plan to grow staff 50% from 78 to 117.

jacobolus 14y ago

> it's not like they don't have the resources to do it. Have you ever looked at the Mediawiki code base? Last time I skimmed a bit, a few years ago, it was an utterly horrible mess of spaghetti PHP. Just finding developers capable of doing this would be a big challenge. The Wikimedia Foundation has a lot less resources than you might imagine, considering the reach of its projects, and there are an awful lot of other funding priorities (not to mention other code priorities). They’re doing the best they can, but making sweeping changes to the code base is a lot harder than it looks. > I think there are powerful members of the community who want to keep it somewhat insular and closed off as a defense mechanism. Do you have any evidence for that? As conspiracy theories go, this one seems pretty weak to me. I can’t think of another organization of comparable size which is as welcoming and open to involvement and contribution from ordinary community members, at all levels of decision making. Almost the entire management and operation of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation is carried out in public, nearly all of the parties involved are volunteers (with a quite small number of full time staff keeping infrastructure running, handling legal issues, and so on), and many many decisions are made collectively, by consensus. It’s easy to hate on anything, as a disinterested outsider, without making any real attempt to understand the internal processes involved, but organizing millions of people is a highly non-trivial job, and I think the Wikimedia community has done pretty admirably, all things considered.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
"Just finding developers capable of doing this would be a big challenge." I'm pretty sure one of the very highest profile websites on the entire internet could find developers capable of handling it. Actually, I'm 100% certain of it.
- jacobolus 14y ago
  Send them over. I’m sure the Wikimedia foundation would be glad to have them: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings Edit: From the Wikimedia Foundation’s “2011–2012 Annual Plan”: > 2011-12 Risks: > 1) Editor decline is an intractable problem. Declining participation is by far the most serious problem facing the Wikimedia projects: the success of the projects is entirely dependent upon a thriving, healthy editing community. We are responding with a multi-faceted approach that blends big obvious fixes (e.g., Visual Editor) with more experimental approaches (e.g., the -1 to 100 retention projects and editor recruitment initiatives in India and Brazil). The WMF is also putting resources towards expanding community awareness and understanding of the problem, and putting in place mechanisms for decentralized community innovation so that community initiatives can help to solve it. We will be tracking progress throughout the year, and if necessary will sacrifice other activities to increase resources dedicated to this. [...] > 9) A shortage of Silicon Valley technical talent hurts our ability to recruit and retain technical staff. The Bay Area is currently facing a major shortage of talented engineers, and tech companies are finding it difficult to hire and retain good tech staff. This could impair our ability to grow our tech staff as planned from 28 to 50. Mitigation: Like the rest of the tech sector, there is not much we can do to mitigate this serious problem. However, we will dedicate more resources towards technical recruitment in 2011-12 compared with 2010-11, and we'll be very clear about our value proposition: The Wikimedia Foundation is not about monetizing eyeballs, our direction isn't set by VCs, and we're financially stable. We offer a fair, friendly, fun environment for talented engineers who want their individual contribution to result in making the world a better place for hundreds of millions of people. [...] > THE 2011-12 PLAN [...] > Key activities supporting Priority #2, Diversifying the Editor Community are: > 1) Visual Editor: A new default editing environment for Wikimedia projects which does not require markup. [...] > 2011-12 Plan Targets [...] > 5) Develop Visual Editor. First opt-in user-facing production usage by December 2011, and first small wiki default deployment by June 2012. [...] > The 2011-12 plan reflects our continued desire to grow the organization's programmatic capacity by growing its staff, with an emphasis on thoughtful recruitment and integration of new people. In 2011-12, we plan to grow staff 50% from 78 to 117.