Problem: Wiki projects presently depend upon users and their client-side tools for checking language use. An unknown percentage of edits are users correcting one another’s language use.
Proposed solution: MediaWiki software could support and interoperate with an extensible set of server-side document-processing tools.
There are two flavors of server-side document-processing tools:
Firstly, server-side document-processing tools can be of use for computer programming languages. Tools, in these regards, include parsers and compilers which can output annotations such as informational, warning, and error messages about portions of source code.
The outputs of document-processing tools can be represented as annotations. Annotations are data structures which reference selections of, or portions of, documents. Annotations from multiple document-processing tools can be merged, aggregated, and presented to editors and readers as they edit, view, or view more information about wiki documents.
Were MediaWiki software to support server-side document-processing tools, this might result in a new type of extension.
Some projects which would be benefited by computer-aided document authoring include:
Wikifunctions. This project would be benefitted by the first flavor of server-side document-processing tools, wrappers for various server-side parsers and compilers, e.g., Python.
Wikipedia and Wikinews. These projects would be benefitted by the second flavor of server-side document-processing tools, natural-language document-processing tools.
Downstream projects. Users of MediaWiki software would be able to create new solutions were MediaWiki to support computer-aided document authoring and server-side document-processing tools.
