Last modified: 2011-09-26 22:21:27 UTC
90% of core special pages should be made into their own extensions. With the new installer now detecting extensions and asking if you want to turn them on, there is no reason to not split out non-essential functionality (to the basic idea of wiki editing) from the core. Why would we want to maintain two different systems / places of defining messages, loading extensions, etc? Why not build the most robust and complete extension handling system we can (and eat our own dog food). This would also more easily support other bundlings of MediaWiki with their own set of extensions tailor chosen to their use case (SMW+) etc. For example on my wiki I could care less about dead end articles, I'm not in the business of wasting people's time (not a loaded statement at all!). There's already talk of moving core non-essentials into extensions: * Old Editor https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28856 * Magic links https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26207 There's some talk of bundling must-have extensions instead of core-ifing them: * ParserFunctions https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26261 * Anti-spam https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9034 And many new features have been made into extensions now instead of going into the core (WikiEditors, Vector, etc). If there is acceptance for this I'd be willing to start helping convert SpecialPages at least into their own extensions.
WikiEditor, Vector, etc... were developed in an extension because they were part of the UsabilityInitiative and were experimental in their first forms. It had nothing to do with moving new features into extensions. They are still targets for potential inclusion into core. In fact there is a bug that depends on a bug which depends on the Vector extension being merged into core.
and here I was thinking we had finally come to our senses. Whatever happened to "less is more" and "don't throw in the kitchen sink?" Nevertheless I think this enhancement request stands, IMO moving functionality OUT of core and into extensions is the way to go. Bugs derived from non-critical functionality really should be addressed by moving said buggy component out and fixing it there. If you're relying on skin enhancement extensions to fix core issues you're doing it wrong in the first place.
Started an article on this topic: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/decorify_into_extensions to compliment this feature request to try and get a wider opinion on the topic. This bug should be used for actual implementation details and to steer people towards the discussion there.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 29145 ***
