I'm not comfortable doing that, but I will share with individuals who want to work on the files themselves and contact me directly (Sourceforge messages reach me fine).
If I remember correctly, we decided against MediaWiki because we wanted a solution that would host the documentation (Dimitry didn't want to host it himself or have to update the platform and the current server was an old version of MediaWiki), Dimitry had specific requirements for spam protection etc., we wanted something where people could easily sign-up to contribute. AND, I strongly pushed for Markdown syntax rather than MediaWiki because it was what I was used to writing in and it was the most...
Just FYI, other mindmapping programs have lots of layout options, whereas FP has only two. Dimitry told me this was mostly because of lack of user demand for alternative layouts. If I remember correctly (feel free to correct me) Dimitry also said, I think, that it would be a challenge to add other layouts as the programming is complicated and that he did it a long time ago so the logic is not fresh in his mind, although I'm sure he would be open to the possibility.
Can someone clarify the reasons that the FP conference group prioritized discussion about moving the forum? Is it just a general agreement that this forum is old-fashioned and feature-limited, or was there some specific issue that was important to people?
I also agree on having new functionality be put into add-ons in cases where integration with current UI is not essential. There is a lot of improvement that could be made in making add-ons work more easily with FP, with a goal of having them install/update/etc. more like browser extensions. I'll mention that there is actually a lot of information in the FP documentation (across all of its locations) about APIs. I don't know enough about APIs to help much with it, but that might be a good project...
I assume you are familiar with @edo_f 's Tutorial Add-On, in development? https://sourceforge.net/p/freeplane/discussion/docwriters/thread/d7816ef55b/#39d3
I find this possibility exciting. Can you explain more about the possible benefits of integrating Freeplane and Semantic MediaWiki? Is it more about import/export between FP and MediaWiki-formatted content? Or do the query functions allow things not currently possible in FP's query/filter functions?
I am not sure if I will be able to join due to the scheduled time, which is late for me—but I will try. I think the face-to-face can help the forum maintain a positive feeling. I use Freeplane for writing academic papers. I support the idea of a roadmap.