Allow a number of wikis to share a "content" namespace with wikitext. The namespace would:

1. look local:
   1. browsable, readable as a local namespace for all purposes,
   2. editable without leaving your wiki (either by shared DB table or remote editing via CORS);
2. live centrally:
   1. on an actual wiki or just a database without its own interface,
   2. as long as any update is immediately reflected on all consumers.

Example of possible use cases:

• Docs, like [[mw:Help:Contents]] and [[m:Help:Help]] ({T45591: Link translatable help pages on mediawiki.org from the relevant special pages, actions etc.})
• Policies and guidelines + discussions about them, e.g. [[m:Category:Wikimedia policies and guidelines]] (only a handful pages but important)

Proposal by Rd232 at https://meta.wikimedia.org/?oldid=3467184: «a Meta: namespace which is accessible across all Wikimedia projects (in the same way that Commons files are accessible everywhere in the File: namespace) [...] home on another coordinating wiki, with which it can then share templates. [...] it's like InstantCommons, so we can call it InstantMeta [...]».

Note that the requirements are very different from bug 4547, which is about a) fetching, b) wikitext c) for local parsing (typically templates).

To be clear, I don't think this is ever going to happen. :)

Cf. Tim Starling on a similar proposal for files, «I don't know what that would technically look like».

Version: master
Severity: enhancement