Submissions/Quo Vadis MediaWiki? or Is MediaWiki Part of our Mission for Free Knowledge?

After careful consideration, the Programme Committee has decided not to accept the below submission at this time. Thank you to the author(s) for participating in the Wikimania 2015 programme submission, we hope to still see you at Wikimania this July.

Submission no.
3006
Title of the submission
Quo Vadis MediaWiki? or Is MediaWiki Part of our Mission for Free Knowledge?
Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop)
panel
Author of the submission
Markus Glaser
E-mail address
glaser@hallowelt.biz
Username
mw:User:Mglaser
Country of origin
Germany
Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)
MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group
Personal homepage or blog
Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

The future of MediaWiki as a software for the masses is uncertain. With a focus on Wikipedia and its sister projects and the need to provide an up-to-date user experience, the technological complexity has increased drastically. It takes a lot of effort to continue to provide a simple and easy installable version, either by finding a way to easily install complex setups or by maintaining some simple implementations of the more complex parts of the software.

Currently, there seems to be an indecisiveness and a lack of leadership when it comes to questions regarding these issues. This is simply due to the fact that we as a movement do not have positions with respect to our relation to MediaWiki. All we have are opinions of individuals. We have not made up our common mind!

Yet, there are fundamental questions underlying: Can the provision of MediaWiki be considered as part of our mission to free knowledge? Do we want MediaWiki to be widely known and used? What is the price and effort we are willing to invest for this? Who will be driving this? Who will be responsible?

The panel strives to find answers to these questions. Or at least ways to find answers in a finite amount of time. The panelists will be coming from various areas dealing with these questions, e.g. development, movement governance, 3rd party user, product manager.

Track
Technology, Interface & Infrastructure
Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long)
30 minutes
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?
probably
Slides or further information (optional)
Special requests


Interested attendees

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  1. MarkAHershberger (talk) 15:33, 16 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Ckoerner (talk) 21:08, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Add your username here.
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