Feature Summary (what you would like to be able to do and where):

Add a new alfa.wikipedia.org (or alfa.wmflabs.org) installation for staging/testing/early prototypes.

• Would have all the same extensions as on Wikipedia (or almost all, not sure).
• Would include selected patches.
• Updated nightly?
• To make things easier, it might be only for things that don't require database updates.

Use Case(s) (list the steps that you performed to discover that problem, and describe the actual underlying problem which you want to solve. Do not describe only a solution):

To be honest, I've failed to install the UploadWizard extension, and I wanted to add a patch for that but failed. I know it is doable; I just don't really have time to sit on it and figure out what docs forgot to mention 😉. Also, I sometimes work on my laptop, which won't handle additional services required for a Wikipedia-like MediaWiki to work. Also, an effort to later keep that up to date when I want to patch something once a month... That just doesn't seem like something I want to do in my spare time. Sorry.

Benefits (why should this be implemented?):

• It would help testers test more than one feature together before release.
• It would enable more developers to contribute to MediaWiki extensions used on Wikipedia. From work and other contacts I know many young developers don't even know how to setup Apache+PHP. They expect someone else to do it. And MediaWiki-Wikipedia installation is sooooo much more.
• It could help the community to test things a bit earlier than now.
• It would be less resource-heavy than PatchDemo. Though PatchDemo can better isolate a feature, so I see alfa wiki as a complementary service, not a PD replacement.