User blog comment:DaNASCAT/Introducing Service-Oriented Architecture, A New Approach to Software Development/@comment-24473195-20160829222708

"One primary reason for this is that MediaWiki is considered a monolithic piece of software. That means that MediaWiki's coding, design, and more control everything."

Err. While this is still mostly true. Mediawiki is also moving towards a service oriented architecture, see:


 * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T113210
 * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T114803
 * Wikimedia_Developer_Summit_2016/Software_engineering#Goals

In fact, there are quite a few relatively popular services running right now "over there":


 * Citoid
 * Mathoid
 * Parsoid - Wikia uses this too with visualeditor
 * Mapoid
 * Graphoid
 * ORES
 * CXserver
 * Authoid (eventually)

So in the end you're heading to towards the same destination while  taking different paths.

In my opinion, beyond a kitchen sink problem, mediawiki also attempts to consolidate two conflicting use-cases, readers vs editors, resulting in considerable problems for both.

Anyway, it was an interesting read, good to know that wikia is embracing the future.