1

This was something I was going to bring up at the RCC but wasn’t able to because it was overcome by events. Currently wH does not allow changes to the source code. I would love to add the new features from mediaWiki to wH. While I understand not everyone will have the same experience as me, I wonder if we can do something similar to Mozilla Firefox and SeaMonkey. For those who don’t know, Firefox is an open-source browser, primarily worked on by the Mozilla Foundation. It’s goals and benchmarks are set by the Mozilla Foundation with some feedback from the community. As a result, a branch was created called SeaMonkey. SeaMonkey, while still sponsored by Mozilla, is completely community-driven. Source is worked on by volunteers and goals are set by the community at-large. I talked with Krystle a little about this but didn’t really get a chance to fully explore this. I’d like to see something similar to what Mozilla does with Firefox and instead of having two completely different sites, have something like a beta site where features can be tested and then added to production. The beta site can run for folks interested in testing the bleeding-edge stuff. While I understand anyone can just download the source, it’d be nice if the community can add to the source.

2

Well, the source code is out there, like you said. That (as far as I know) nobody has downloaded it, hacked it, and emailed a patch to the office suggests to me that nobody is really interested in doing that. (I looked at it briefly to see if there were any fun security holes, then lost interest.)

3

I’ve downloaded it and hacked parts of it. The src website clearly states that wH is not accepting any patches.

4

My recollection of previous similar discussions is that the engineering team has real concerns about accepting patches from others that they will then have to support. The ultimate responsibility for making sure that wikiHow works reliably for our millions of visitors falls upon our engineers, and even small changes in our source code can potentially affect the stability of the site. Allowing others to contribute code has the potential to create a lot of additional work for the engineers. Each patch would need to go through rigorous testing and debugging to ensure compatibility with our architecture, which differs substantially from a single-server install, etc. Even a few outside contributions would add a great deal of work for a team that is already very busy. That said, we have had community members in the past build toolbars, bots and Greasemonkey scripts that run on top of wikiHow and enhance functionality. And feature suggestions are welcome, too.