To serve as a hub for documentation pages and fragments that deal specifically with academic wikis as defined on this page and in the mw glossary. By strictly adhering to this definition, it is hoped that it will provide value-added to those clients over the more general documentation organization that deals with wider interests.
Rationales on academic uses of MediaWiki, and links to the relevant content in the general MediaWiki documentation. Academic does not have unique interests, they should all be documented fully elsewhere, and only linked and transcluded for brevity and conciseness here. Nobody wants to maintain something in multiple places.
I would highly discourage providing "example" lists of actual external wikis on-page. Better to have list pages elsewhere and link to that. Otherwise the page becomes just one big advertisement poster. If you list a few and say "more here" people will often just insert theirs anyways thinking it's "so important" and of course want the highest visibility.
This post was posted by Ofbeaton, but signed as Olivier Beaton.
Good idea -- I agree, now that you mention it. I'm not used to contributing documentation (mostly just writing code.)