Good Afternoon.
I have posted several proposals in the past month and a half. This is not a proposal.
What this is, is an invitation to discuss the merits of Project Foundation, a long standing project that has been on our horizons forever.
We are finally in a place to have the required personnel and skill sets to make some real headway on this, without dumping it all on the shoulders of 1-2 staff members.
What is Project Foundation?
Project Foundation is our initiative to move from Wikidot to our own platform, which we would have control over.
The form of that platform, any technologies used, and any fine-detail decisions have not been made.
Do not assume that there is any finality with regards to features, technologies, platforms, or otherwise. All of that is yet to be determined.
What are the overall Goals of Project Foundation?
- Create a platform which we can use, extend, and use to host the SCP Wiki under the direction of the SCP Wiki staff.
- Comply with the spirit of our license, and create this platform to be OPEN SOURCE. (In spirit, as CC-BY-SA 3.0 doesn't really apply to software.)
- Migrate all current content to the future platform.
- Sustain this future platform into the foreseeable future.
At this point, that's as defined as we have it. This is vague, on purpose. We're trying not to pin down any specific features or requirements until we have a better idea what our options are.
Why are we doing this?
Wikidot is a company of four people in Poland. It has faced multiple setbacks, and is relatively quiet when it comes to technical issues.
Beyond that, there's been instability in the past which has been worrying. We're concerned about the long-term viability of wikidot as a platform.
There have been times when major changes have affected the site, and we have no power to fix them, or work around. A recent example is when the PM system stopped working for several days.
There is also the question of toolsets. Wikidot has been extended through the use of Jarvis, Secretary_helen, and Usertools, but we're stretching what is and isn't possible for wikidot at this point.
A very specific, and concerning issue, is that the wikidot api is currently non-functional in certain cases. This prevents myself and others from querying based on certain criteria. The significant use of iframes has been partially successful, but is a stopgap solution at best.
Who is working on this?
Currently, the technical team is in the phase of gathering information about technology resources, and available personnel and skills to make this work.
There is no "active" development right now, and no "moves" have been made. A recruitment post for contributors to this project is intended to go out, when work is identified. There is no intention to prevent anyone who wishes, and has the skills, from contributing to PF. Non-technical skills may be required in future development phases as well.
Why this discussion?
It came to my attention that at least one staff member did not agree with Project Foundation. My assumption was that staff were unanimous in the desire to move to an independent platform. This is an open forum to express those concerns.
All staff are free to comment on this thread.
An important note: At this time, I don't have any specifics regarding what will, won't, or can be in the final version of whatever we develop for PF. I have no comments regarding platforms that may be used. If you'd like to discuss details, a PM would probably be more appropriate until we move to another phase of development where specifics are being discussed. This isn't to squash any ideas, this is more…to keep discussion on track here.
Thank you for reading.