Re: Dual-licensed wikibooks

> 
> Not to be rude, but "Duh!" Of course MediaWiki isn't the right
> software for our purpose. It's not completely inappropriate, but there
> are some serious aspects that would need to be addressed in an ideal
> world. Our technical wishlist is so long that Santa Claus won't even
> read it all, and I've been a VERY good boy so far this year :).
> 
> Technical momentum dictates that we stay with MediaWiki, however. It
> would be a gargantuan exercise to translate our database into another
> format for another software platform, and translate the wikitext in
> all our pages to be suitable for a different rendering engine. Plus,
> all the documentation we would have to rewrite, etc. Fortunately for
> us, we're able to get incremental changes made through bug reporting,
> and the WMF has been demonstrably more supportive of our needs in
> recent months, so things have been changing for the better. I've long
> advocated that we create a picture of what an "ideal" Wikibooks would
> be for us, and start approaching it in baby steps. Things like the
> FlaggedRevs extension and the new PDF extension are strong steps in
> that direction. We have a few more requests in the queue regarding the
> hierarchical structure of books and the way MediaWiki can support that
> architecture better. After that, I really think automated attribution
> needs to be high up on our list of needs.

well...I did say it was going to a fruitless suggestion right ;)
But...on the serious side...changing technology now is better than any
point in the future because it is only going to get harder as more
content is added etc...

I would say its better to change now, than bend mediawiki - which is a
great software, don't get me wrong - into a shape it doesn't want to
make...it might be a lot of work now, but the future users of wikibooks
would be grateful for it

anyways...as i said before...i understand the issues, but I'm also an
optimist of sorts and I would hope the WMF, which has made many
interesting and courageous decisions, might be a brave enough to
recognise the limitations of mediawiki in the wikibook context, and
decide in favour of the project needs by adopting a more suitable
technology


adam

> 
> --Andrew Whitworth
-- 
Adam Hyde
FLOSS Manuals

http://www.flossmanuals.net
+ 31 6 2808 7108

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