User blog comment:TimmyQuivy/On the Importance of Upgrading MediaWiki/@comment-168424-20200507183842

Some clarifications:
 * FANDOM largely froze the MediaWiki engine they used because they didn't want to keep updating their custom extensions for the newer versions. This is part of the "mistake" the blog alluded to. Those of us who said it was a bad idea to fork didn't really start saying it until we noticed Wikia/FANDOM seemed to have no intention of keeping up-to-date.
 * It appears the biggest motivation for the update was the Gamepedia acquisition, but if you look closely, you'll notice that Gamepedia has very few custom extensions (like CategorySelect, Forum, Comments, Message Wall, Mobile main page, Theme designer, etc.) and in some ways Gamepedia even with its newer MediaWiki engine is very primitive with many less tools for admins to use and almost no social features. This is why UCP seems so stripped. FANDOM/Wikia has built up a large backlog of customizations that have to be re-added or dropped for UCP. UCP was probably pushed by Gamepedia folks, but we'll probably never get that scoop.
 * UCP is a good idea, but let's face it... the Phase 1 was kinda crappy and the complaints about it are so numerous we made a really long page to contain them (User:Noreplyz/UCP). As a long time contributor, editor, and admin, I find the quality of UCP disrespectful and it never should have been forced on those who want to create new wikis. They're going to have to migrate existing wikis to UCP anyway, so making new wiki creators beta testers for something so bad, is not very nice.

Anyway, end of rant. I'm used to being largely ignored, but I had to get that out there.