User blog comment:MisterWoodhouse/The first migrations to the Unified Community Platform/@comment-24466001-20200811171427/@comment-1038387-20200811202634

MediaWiki itself isn't the problem, it's the version they're running, a forked 1.19. The current is 1.34, and UCP is 1.33.

To put it in perspective, 1.19 is from 2012, 9 years after it was created. It is now practically half a lifetime out of date.

Casual users might not experience any of the downsides of that, but for more technical users... it's painful to see a showroom full of fancy new cars, and you still have to drive around in the janky old jalopy with no AC and only a casette player for audio because the spouse and kids think the seats are comfy.

Change is hard. You're used to how things are. Staff has acknowledged that. But it's not a blocker on the project. Sure, it's not a 1:1 conversion. Sure, things could be handled differently. But new insights into software and user experience require changes in attitude.