Using 'publish this page' to develop WMF website content on Meta (was Re: [Foundation-l] a crazy idea...)

Fri Sep 9 23:08:02 UTC 2005

--- Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been thinking this over for a few days, and I believe the option
> of reunifying meta and the Foundation wiki makes most sense. 

In theory I'm with you all the way, but in practice meta is an ever bigger mess
than the foundation wiki. So at the very least this will require a great deal
of prep-work. There is also the issue that meta largely does not contain
official items, while the foundation wiki does. On top of this is a *major*
security concern; the foundation wiki needs to parse full HTML, while allowing
that on a generally editable wiki would be dangerous. 

But yeah - the separation is very annoying and wastes a lot of time. Perhaps
what is needed is a new MediaWiki feature that I'll call 'Publish this page.'
There would be no separate foundation wiki and all foundation webpages would be
maintained on meta yet also displayed on a separate static website. 

A new user group would be needed, but those in the group could click 'Publish
this page' and presto! A static version of that page - in full HTML - would
then exist at wikimediafoundation.org under a page name selected for that page
(different names would be needed between the foundation website and meta due to
the extensive use of subpages on meta for development purposes; alternatively,
only the name after the last / could be used for the static page name - I like
the second option better). 

This feature could also be used for WikiJunior ; development of WikiJunior
books would still happen on Wikibooks, but we could also have a static version
of published WikiJunior books at wikijunior.org. Parents and teachers would
feel much more comfortable sending kids to a static, yet often updated, website
instead of wiki that may have been vandalized a few seconds before the kids get
there.

I imagine that this will be a killer feature for many websites that are
currently static and built the bad old way. Using this feature they could have
an internal MediaWiki wiki to for multiple purposes and simply publish a
sub-set of that content to their external static website. 

> If the test wikis and help pages are moved elsewhere, I think meta can
> become useful again, and that the inclusion of all the Foundation
> pages there would be preferable to the current situation.

The current situation really is not good at all. I also agree that it is time
for the MediaWiki help pages to move. A wiki just for MediaWiki should be
set-up at mediawiki.org. The test junk should also be moved to one or more test
wikis (test.mediawiki.org could be used to test developing MediaWiki features,
while test.wikimedia.org could be used for the test wiki junk currently on
meta). 

-- mav

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