689310 - Switch to mediawiki-parser

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(support.mozilla.org :: Code Quality, task)

Description

[James Socol [:jsocol, :james]]

Over the summer, Erik worked with a GSoC student on a new MediaWiki markup parser. We should drive in the runner and switch to it.

This is probably a tracker.

https://github.com/erikrose/mediawiki-parser

Comment 1

[Ilhan Yumer]

Why we don't migrate completely to MediaWiki? It has extensions and huge user base.

Comment 2

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

Ilhan, Mediawiki has no support for localization at all. But there are many other reasons as well.

Comment 3

[Ilhan Yumer]

As far as I know it has the best support for localization. http://i.imgur.com/jXvrl.png

Comment 4

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

Unless they are using a special extension there is no localization support. What you see in most cases are separate media wiki instances. Even with that special extension you don't get the review system/ready for l10n flags and the kind of tracking for localizers that we have. I've talked to the media wiki developers and the product managers of the localization extension numerous times. While their platform is evolving it's a far cry from what we can offer here.

Comment 5

[Ilhan Yumer]

It works very well in Wikipedia and other MediaWikis such MinecraftWiki. It doesn't hurt you to install extensions and separate wikis where users can login globally. I'm sure there will be more editors in Support Mozilla if it is switched to MediaWiki, since there are millions of editors in Wikipedia. On the other hand there are very small number of editors who know how to use this system. My Turkish Support Mozilla wiki has more articles than the one that is here. Guess why.

Comment 6

[Tanner Filip [:tanner]]

Personally, I like MediaWiki, but because much of what Kitsune has such as PM capabilities, and (I can't think of the name, but the MediaWiki extension is Flagged Revisions) are extensions, it'd be pretty hard to keep everything up to date. The l10n support for MW is pretty bad, and CentralAuth (SSO) is... gah. It took us hours upon hours of hacking to get it working, and it's still just barely working.

Comment 7

[Kadir Topal [:atopal]]

Ilhan, the difference between most of those and our system is that we are really striving to localize articles, not creating separate KBs for each language. We spent a lot of effort in the English version to come up with necessary articles, getting a good structure and keeping everything updated. As a localizer you only need to follow those changes to have first class support system. In the Wikipedia there is no support for synchronizing your localization with the English version. Anyway, I'm happy to have this discussion and even talk about alternatives to both systems, but please let's do that in the contributor forum, not in this bug. This bug is just about getting a better MediaWiki parser in python.