I have a proposal, to see what you think about it.
Now that the extension system is more and more robust, I think it would make sense to lighten the core by externalizing quite some features into official? extensions.
That way, the core would be kept slim, easier to manage, and with much clearer interfaces and integration points. Besides, in moving whatever functionality is chosen to an extension, there will be lots of integration points (events, or core classes, or javascript, or templates, or... you name it) that will be identified, or improved, with a real use case. For devs, that will be good, as the core focus should be just that: the core!. For extension developers, more integration points, clearer, and easier ways to complement "core" functionality. For admins, they would be able to "pick and choose" what "official" extensions they would want to install, and they won't be bothered or distracted by features that they do not care about.
Some things that I can envision as extensions could be (note this is JUST a first attempt and discussion point!):
- Friends/foes
- Banning
- Bot management
- Profile fields
- Polls
- Attachments
- Feeds
- Ranks
- Reporting
- Birthdays
What do you think? Makes sense?
Remember that I do NOT want to KILL any of these functions. I just want to move them OUT of the core, into an OFFICIAL extension, that could even be included in the released package... Each admin would enable/disable any of these at will...
-javiexin