On Fri, Jun 9, 2017 at 8:25 AM, James HK <jamesin.hongkong.1(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
This sounds like a lot of sublayers that can
potentially disrupt a
simple editing process and I wonder from the many non-WMF MediaWiki
installations and administrators, who will be able and capable to
debug those once an issue arise.
This is a familiar pattern in the history of computers. Early computers
were programmed in assembly, until complexity was added with compilers.
Early wikis were simple Perl CGI scripts backed by files, until Wikipedia's
scale (traffic and organizational), security and feature requirements made
it necessary to add caching layers, isolated services, and distributed
storage systems.
Each of these steps added layers of abstraction and complexity, and
concerns about understanding all those layers was (rightfully) brought up
at each step along the way. And yet the move towards higher levels of
abstraction has been highly successful. Complex systems like web browsers
or even entire distributed system clusters can now be deployed with a
single click, on largely commoditized platforms.
We are not yet at the point where we can offer you this degree of
automation for MediaWiki, but we are working on it.
--
Gabriel Wicke
Principal Engineer, Wikimedia Foundation