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Archive 1

Name

Since when is Wikipedia's engine named MediaWiki? The article is confusing, saying that MediaWiki was written, and then it was renamed to MediaWiki...--Chealer 08:43, 2004 Nov 17 (UTC)

100% speedup?!

So something that took a finite amount of time before is now done instantly?

WikianJim 00:00, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

100% speedup means that it runs twice as fast. Speed is increased by 100%. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:37, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Mathematics. Where x is the original speed, and P is the speedup in decimals (99% = .99, 23% = .23, 100% = 1, 500% = 5), x + Px = the current speed. Ambush Commander 23:43, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

Correct, but the original quote was '100% speedup, hence x+P

No, it's x + xP. x is the speed, in units of time, and P is a value between 0.00 and 1.00 that scales x. You can't add together units of time and a scaler value as in x+P. So if it took 2 seconds before, at 50% speedup: 2 + (0.5) * 2 = 2 + 1 = 3 seconds. It has increased in speed ("sped up"), by a value that is 50% of the original time. Using 100% as P effectively doubles the new time using this wording. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.94.0.149 (talk) 09:01, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

What is MediaWiki?

I read the article and still don't get a clear definition of what is MediaWiki and how it is related to the Wiki project. What is it? Is it the software behind Wikipedia and other Wikis? Is it a special type of program for special types of Wikis? I think the article lacks a clear summary definition on its first paragraph. Evallejr (talk • contribs) —Preceding undated comment added 19:03, 7 March 2005

Yes, MediaWiki is the software the is behind all of the Wikimedia Organization's projects. This includes Wikipedia, Wikisource, Commons, everything. It is also available to anyone who wishes to use it for their own personal website. Jediarchives11 03:02, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
I too was confused about what, exactly, MediaWiki was until I read this discussion page. IMHO Jediarchives11's above comment or something very similar should be one of the first sentences of the article— Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.21.152.108 (talk • contribs) 02:19, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Section editing: MediaWiki or Wikipedia?

A feature of Wikipedia is the ability to edit a section of an article, without having to open the entire article for editing.

Is this a feature of MediaWiki, or is it specific for Wikipedia?

Its a feature of MediaWiki. 83.100.168.41 13:14, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

why are all the links to users and wikipedia: space external links? something about avoiding self-references? i was going to change them, but maybe not... - Omegatron 18:41, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

They are external links so they will still link to the actual pages when people reuse the content. Your user page is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Omegatron. Your user page is not at http://lamemirror.example.com/encyclopedia/User:Omegatron. The content may be there, but it is only a copy and not your Wikipedia user page. Likewise, our policy pages are on en.wikipedia.org, not whatever random mirror hasn't bothered to remove the project namespace. -- Cyrius|✎ 28 June 2005 12:24 (UTC)

Ramifications of English Wikipedia switching to UTF-8?

Now that Wikipedia has upgraded to MediaWiki 1.5 β1 and the English site's character encoding has switched from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8, do numeric character references have a place in English Wikipedia articles anymore? What is or will be the policy on this? —Tokek 28 June 2005 06:09 (UTC)

Use them if you like, don't if you don't. The software doesn't enforce "policies" like this. :)
Note that the vast majority of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites have been running on UTF-8 for years, this one was one of the few laggards. --Brion July 5, 2005 05:10 (UTC)

MonoBook

Should this article say something about when the MonoBook skin was introduced? Or is that unrelated?

Acegikmo1 22:50, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree there should be some information about Monobook. I suspect most users don't know about the added features this provides and even fewer about who wrote the skin and when. Antonrojo 15:13, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

ETA?

Does anyone know how close we are to a stable version of MediaWiki 1.5 and when it will be released for public use? A week? Less? I bought a website to start a wiki and I thought that 1.5 was close enough that it wouldn't be worth it to start with 1.4 then upgrade. So if someone could give me an estimated date when 1.5 stable is released I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks. Jediarchives11 02:50, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Article now says it was released 5 Oct 05 Tedernst 21:59, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

History?

Was the first media wiki software based on usemod? The markup here is more or less the same as what cliff wrote and is still using. I know the language is different, but shouldn't the article mention the history if it's true? Tedernst 21:59, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Of course, User:Magnus Manske's MediaWiki is derived from Clifford Adams's UseModWiki (for his 1991-1999 Usenet Moderation Project = Usemod), which in turn is derived from AtisWiki, which is derived from CVWiki and finally from the WikiEngine of the WikiWikiWeb (WardsOriginalWikiEngine). It should be mentioned.

MediaWiki as named refers to what we call "phase3" of the software, which was the original SQL-backed script from Magnus Manske, rewritten by Lee Daniel Crocker some time later, and then extensively modified following on from that. Before MediaWiki, Wikipedia used UseMod, then an altered version, before this software was written for it. It's fair to state that some initial markup was borrowed from other wikis, although not all of the current markup is, and that some ideas were taken too. Rob Church (talk) 03:39, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Just for the record, that's not quite the way I remember it. Magnus's code was usually just called "the PHP script" for most of its use. When I did the rewrite, I basically used nearly all of Magnus's interface design but none of his internal code structure and almost none of his code (plus I added some major features like the image system, email, and such)--this was just called "the new codebase". Magnus was, of course, among the many contributors to my codebase as well. It was only well after my codebase was installed that the "phaseII" and "phaseIII" names came into use, and "phaseIII" was never used to refer to Magnus's code, only mine. The name "Mediawiki" came even later. I know, for example, that I created the "phase3" directory in CVS long after my codebase was the one in use. Magnus, Brion, and some others may have better memories than I on some of these issues--it's been a long time. --LDC 21:08, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

1.5 Performance

Does 1.5 actually deliver the expected performance benefits? How about a future 1.6? GreenReaper 05:02, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Which version does Wikipedia use?

Do MediaWiki Wikimedia sites always use the latest release? So, 1.6.4 as of now? ··gracefool |☺ 02:37, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikimedia web sites use a version of the software which is not too far (between 12 and 48 hours, for the most part, although some changes go live with immediate effect) from the current version in SVN trunk. Special:Version lists the exact repo. revision number which is live. Rob Church (talk) 01:09, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

No discussion of pros / cons ?

That's unusual.flux.books 13:38, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I must agree. I took one look at this (and I once took a colledge course in computer programming) and was completly boggled. And I thought COBOL was over complicated simplification! -- Jason Palpatine 22:33, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

A gentle introduction to wiki markup and the community etc?

I was able to find general markup helps w/o much fuss in the past, so I didn't care to think this article would need it. would someone mind adding a "lifecycle in the eyes of a wikipedian" type section? (and choose a better title if you can). Oh, and after that's all started yank this discussion topic :)

thanks! Supaplex 05:45, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Rather agree. Williamborg (Bill) 06:37, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Version run by WikiMedia

Shouldn't it be documented that WikiMedia is running version 1.7 of MediaWiki? FPL 17:53, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Irrelevant to MediaWiki itself. 86.134.91.73 03:02, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
Besides, the particular version information will change frequently on all the Wikimedia Foundation wikis. However, it is a feature of MediaWiki that every MediaWiki wiki has a Special:Version page which shows the version running on that wiki. Rather than try to record what version was running on every MediaWiki wiki on some particular date, we could tell the reader how to find out what version is running on the wiki of his or her interest. It might not hurt to mention that, perhaps at the bottom of, or in a subsection under, MediaWiki/Archive 1#Release history. --Teratornis 19:01, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
So I mentioned it. --Teratornis 20:43, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Editing interface picture

The picture of the editing interface of v.1.7 is unsuitable because it shows the interface of an administrator, and most users are not administrators. --Schzmo 23:46, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


article has a significant gap

There's no mention of how WM is set up and runs administratively. Is there a board and/or a manager? Are there employees, or is it entirely voluntary labour that maintains it? How has its relationship with WP evolved?

The section might be entitled "Administration". Tony 05:17, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

If you're looking for information about the Wikimedia Foundation, check its article. MediaWiki/Archive 1 is about the software, rather than the organization which publishes it. I think Wikimedia Foundation addresses your questions, or at least points the way to finding the answers. The MediaWiki/Archive 1 article says: The name (MediaWiki) has frequently caused confusion due to its intentional similarity to the "Wikimedia" name (which itself is similar to "Wikipedia"). --Teratornis 19:08, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Version 1.9

Version 1.9's release date was 2007-01-10. I added an entry to the table for it in MediaWiki/Archive 1#Release history. However, I am not aware of all the key features in the new release. I mentioned one I know about. I can revisit the table as I learn more, but hopefully, other knowledgeable users will contribute. --Teratornis 20:25, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Added some details there. Titoxd(?!?) 22:28, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Need for semi-protection?

MediaWiki/Archive 1 recently had minor vandalism by 81.77.181.250 and 59.144.70.54. Is it time to semi-protect this page? --Teratornis 20:49, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

No. The rate of vandalism is quite low, and semi-protection is not warranted. Titoxd(?!?) 22:29, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Titoxd. Semi-protection is rather drastic and although this is a fairly high visibility article, minor vandalism which is quickly reverted (since it is so visible it will be even more quickly reverted than usual with some many people having this article on their watchlist and in general looking out for it) isn't enough justification to do such. --Frank Lofaro Jr. 22:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

"free software"

The term is not ambiguous. The general name for software of no cost in English is freeware. The term "free software" has been in use for well over a decade now, and is the preferred term for GPL-licensed software.

In particular, MediaWiki's own website currently uses the term "free software". I've changed this back. Chris Cunningham 10:38, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Unambiguous for you and for me? True. For some less technical than us, no. Open source, if they don't know what it means, they could just click a link and be informed. The term is preferred by the Free Software Foundation, but not by business. Free can mean gratis (zero cost) or liberated (libre). English unfortunately uses the same term. If I give a computer user an executable, non-pirated, with use and redistribution restrictions, but don't charge him or her for it, 99% of the time he or she will say it is "free software". Open source gets around the ambiguity of the word "free" (a shortcoming of English). Even "open source" might not be a perfect term (could be interpreted as open to viewing but not change), but it is the best we've got. --Frank Lofaro Jr. 22:17, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Another alternative might be FOSS. It's quite widely used and unambigious in my opinion, though Wikipedia currently just redirects the term. CiaranG 22:26, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Some merging of that article and reorganization is likely called for. Merge "free software" and "open source" and that article into one and use redirects perhaps? Perhaps all the different licenses should all be merged into the article on software licensing. --Frank Lofaro Jr. 22:39, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not intended to cater to the lowest common denominator. Free software and open source have separate articles because they represent different things. Both terms are meaningless to uninformed parties, making the ambiguity point irrelevant. Chris Cunningham 00:37, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia version

Wikipedia is currently running "1.10alpha (r19669)", surprising to see alpha code in production. A mention of this perhaps should be in the article, since any version running Wikipedia is certainly notable. --Frank Lofaro Jr. 23:55, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Because MediaWiki is essentially developed in response to demands from Wikimedia projects, Wikipedia (and the other projects) always run the alpha code. Changes go live a few days after they're committed. "Release" versions of MediaWiki are released every quarter (1.7, 1.8, 1.9 etc.), with bugfix updates (1.8.1, 1.8.2 etc.) following on from those; non-Wikimedia sites use these versions. This, among other things, means that Wikipedia doesn't have to wait for anything up to three months for new features to be implemented, they can be rushed in in a couple of weeks if necessary (e.g. the cascading protection that was recently added) – Qxz 14:09, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Can mere mortals get that code and run it? If so, it should be mentioned. If I want to run a wiki, especially a small or a test one, I am quite likely to say "if it is good enough for Wikipedia it is good enough for me". Any showstopper bugs will go away fast, since any bug that crashes or seriously degrades Wikipedia will result in a new version or Wikipedia rolling back ASAP. Plus having users that are willing run the alpha code helps testing and can possibly find a bug before Wikipedia is badly hurt. I'd run it if/when I have a wiki. --Frank Lofaro Jr. 19:10, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download_from_SVN - You can grab the files yourself from the SVN Server Reedy Boy 20:29, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, you can get and run the latest code yourself. Note also that there is a test wiki – http://test.wikipedia.org/. This is updated to the latest version before it's applied across all Wikimedia project, so the developers can test things there; I imagine most of them have their own private MediaWiki installations too. (So don't worry, new code doesn't 'go live' without testing!) – Qxz 20:14, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Features list subheadings

Far too many of these, they're uglifying TOC. We should remove most sub-headings, short paragraphs don't necessarily need headers to be distinguished.

The namespaces section is huge? Must we list all of Mediawiki's namespaces? Are these even fixed? Chris Cunningham 13:32, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

The namespaces listed there are fixed, though extra custom namespaces can be added (Wikipedia has the Portal namespace, for example, which is a custom one). I agree the table isn't really necessary. I recommend renaming "Key features" to "Features", stripping out all those sub-headers and possibly re-organizing it into two or three larger sub-sections if there's too much to fit in one sub-section – Qxz 06:50, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

On Portal:Free software, MediaWiki is currently the selected article

(2007-04-03) Just to let you know. The purpose of selecting an article is both to point readers to the article and to highlight it to potential contributors. It will remain on the portal for a week or so. The previous selected article was OpenSolaris. Gronky 18:54, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

The selected article box has been updated again, MediaWiki has been superceded by WorldWideWeb (the first web-browser). Gronky 07:37, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

The article mentions "free links" instead of CamelCase. But when I click on "free links", I come to the article CamelCase, which doesn't mention Free links at all! OlavN 08:41, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I've posted a remark on the talk page of that article. Shinobu 10:37, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

WTF? MediaWiki is not a rapper...

Someone (check the history for the IP) is changing this article to... hell, I don't even know. If there's a way I can revert this, I have no idea how, so could someone else deal with it? Personally I suggest warning/banning the IP, but that goes without saying I would think.

I've reverted it. Reedy Boy 14:09, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

What is meant by "language family" here?

the Wikimedia project and language family

Does this bit of the article mean "Wikipedia in all its languages" or something similar? If so, it should be rephrased, because it's really unclear like this. Shinobu 10:29, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Version histories

I don't know that a Wikipedia article is the place to have the details of version histories (this). I don't want to just flat out remove it, but I believe that an external link to MediaWiki's release history page would be more suitable.-Ljlego 23:33, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't the link to download MediaWiki should be one from the official site? It just seems safer and more conveniant that way.. --WhereIsTheCite? 05:02, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree; I've changed the link. Korg (talk) 17:35, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Add section?

Maybe someone can add a section with popular wikis that run MediaWiki, if there isn't already one.

CalD (talk) 09:28, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

There's a list of thousands of them on http://wikiindex.org/Category:MediaWiki if you're feeling really bored some day. :) --66.102.83.61 (talk) 01:07, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Request for expansion

Hiya, could someone who knows the subject, please expand the lead to indicate when the software was created? I saw that there's a "2002" category on the article, but there doesn't seem to be any other information in the article that indicates date of origin. Thanks, Elonka 09:32, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I first put my codebase into CVS in May of 2002. That was after working on it privately for a few weeks, so it's safe to say I started coding sometime around April 2002. --LDC (talk) 03:30, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

From other wikis

Is there any page about how to change from a wiki engine to MediaWiki (preserving the database)?. If not, one would create a wiki page about this How-To. Thanks in advance. --Nopetro (talk) 10:29, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

italia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.49.215.180 (talk) 11:06, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

There Are Manuals for MediaWiki now

There is a book on MediaWiki now:

"MediaWiki Administrator's Guide: Tutorial Guide", by Mizanur Rahman, ISBN: 9781904811-59-6

There is also a book on Wikipedia.org that is very applicable to MediaWiki in general:

"Wikipedia: The Missing Manual", by John Broughton, ISBN-10: 0-596-51516-2 ISBN-13: 978-0-596-51516-4

I would like to make a motion to include these two books on the article's page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.70.40.128 (talk) 04:24, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Brion Vibber page

I know it got merged, but is it really that hard to find references to support separate article page for the developer of one of the world's most visited websites?

Lakinekaki (talk) 00:53, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

API

Wikimedia projects have recently switched on the write capability in the API at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php. I am not sure this is the best article in which to mention this but it could be put somewhere. There seems to be no mention of the API in Wikipedia:Bot policy either--Zven (talk) 23:26, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

No, it should not be mentioned here, as it has nothing to do with MediaWiki. Of course, one could mention that MediaWiki also provides an API intended for machine-use. --JensMueller (talk) 23:56, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
Well I think the API layer is eligible to be in the article as is part of the mediaWiki core code in SubVersion, and not a third party application. What your effectively saying is that human user interactivity functionality is all that is eligible for the article, not functionality that makes more efficient client side bots --Zven (talk) 00:48, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Move Release history section to a new page

"It has been suggested that the Release history section be split into a new article entitled MediaWiki release history." [1]

WikiText

MediaWiki WikiText is actually a document format (let's say: MWWT in the Age of TLA:S (ATLAS or AoTLAS)), which is presumably intuitively understandable by literate humans that know of keyboards. This should be in the article (not the abbrevs, at least not yet!) some way, but I cannot see how, now. Said: Rursus (☻) 10:08, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Requests

Request #1: Navigatability

I think that in articles where we have comparisons there should be an interface to filter items that meet certain criteria that the user chooses. It's not the same as sorting the features lists by these criteria. It's a lot more useful than that.

512upload (talk) 09:14, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Is this notable?

Currently I don't see any sources showing that this software is notable. If it is, shouldn't such be justified be justified by citations? Seems a lot of the article may be self-published or non-notable, though I may not understand these issues well.

I think it should be notable, just as several deleted/unrefrenced wikipedia topics should be, but I'm not sure without the citations beyond the self-published. Has this software had signifigant coverage?

What do you guys think? --Δζ (talk) 06:05, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd imagine these books would serve as useful sources, if any extra were needed. The article seems fine as it is, though. Evaluating software for notability isn't the same thing as evaluating, say, a person, and the threshold is in practice a bit lower. GracenotesT § 18:27, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your input. Could you identify what you think establishes this article's notability, please? The refrences seem almost entirely self published or of questionable support for the subject's notability. As I said I'm not the most knowledgable on these things, but it seems like it may not be notable to me. Could you or anyone else identify the policy on notability in regards to software? And can anyone given their opinion on if this article meets notability guidelines presently? --Δζ (talk) 00:58, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
Don't take my word for it, but I think that the fact that MediaWiki is used on all of the Wikimedia projects in addition to a lot of other sites is enough to make it notable enough to put on Wikipedia. JackSliceTalk Adds 04:42, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Software architecture

I think there should be some high-level coverage of the software architecture. --JensMueller (talk) 00:44, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Redirect from Tim Starling

Why does Tim Starling redirect here? Doesn't make sense. -- 94.194.60.19 (talk) 20:38, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Because he's one of the primary MW developers but isn't deemed notable enough for a separate article. -- Mentifisto 09:10, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Could anyone please create a wiki template which enables ......

wikipedia writers to upload images in the wiki article discussion sections--222.67.210.32 (talk) 09:34, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

You can use the usual Special:Upload (logged in) and then embed the images like is usually done. -- Mentifisto 09:10, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

PhoneNews

PhoneNews claims to be "pioneer of self-run MediaWiki technology". What does this mean, and does this statement have credence? The articles was written by PhoneNews' founder, appears bias, and seems to be subtlety attacking Wikipedia. The author of the article, Christopher Price (who also happens to be PhoneNews' founder), also said the following in the comments section:

We were one of the first news organizations to deploy MediaWiki as a core part of our site. We accelerated growth by backing the development of content on the Phone Encyclopedia. We developed the Phone Encyclopedia long before sites like Wikia emerged.

— Christopher Price

Chris is also claiming that Wikipedia steals ideas from PhoneNews:

Of course, we disagree, much of Wikipedia’s hierarchy in the mobile phone categories is modeled after the Phone Encyclopedia; not the other way around.

— Christopher Price

Is any of this true, or are they lies? --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 13:58, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

License and development

MediaWiki is free and open source software and distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or any later version while its documentation is released under the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license and partly in the public domain,[1], it has an active volunteer community for development and maintenance and at the core we have a small group of paid programmers for daily maintenance (bug fixing) and development for the projects of the Wikimedia foundation, the salaries of this small group are paid from your donations[2] (see our fundraiser) and is the open source software model that we use for the MediaWiki Software free to download AND free in use, a Not For Profit model, which is different from other commercial open source software models like MySQL[3] or Ubuntu[4] where the download is free, but where you have to pay to get the latest version of the software or assistance.

I made small improvements to the text, i hope this is better. The mention of the donations is needed to show how we as a non profit organization cover the costs of the software, and to make that more clear how ubuntu covers its costs the paid support is added. Mion (talk) 14:30, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
I've readded the comparison with MySQL and Ubuntu's model, but isn't the source of WMF developers' salaries obvious? The use of second person-i.e. 'you' and 'we' isn't really appropriate in encyclopaedias (see WP:YOU). --Zvn (talk) 15:09, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
Maybe I should also make more clear the commercial covering of the costs by Mark Shuttleworth, aldo thats difficult as it is a commercial and closed organization, next to paid support, the firefox browser is hooked into the desktop distribution (dont try to remove it), firefox has 90% of its income from Google and in return if you fire up firefox, within 5 minutes your browser will contact the Google servers to tell the servers your IP is alive, as Google is the standard browser in Firefox the browser delivers surfers to the Google search engine, as Mark joins the trick we can safely assume he shares in the financial contributions of Google, the same with branding of names, some of the first drivers noted in the Ubuntu desktops are the Canon and HP drivers, the commercial drivers, a sort of cobranding/advertizing. As the MediaWiki software is a support framework from the Non Profit Wikimedia Foundation and essential for Wikipedia a commercial model like Ubuntu is not allowed. Mion (talk) 15:24, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Sunflower

Does the sunflower, apart from the brackets surrounding it, have any special symbolism pertaining to MediaWiki? Tisane (talk) 11:19, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

IIRC, it was a runner-up in a contest for Wikipedia's logo, ages ago. Before my time, though. —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 17:14, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
I created symbolism for it after the fact. Tisane (talk) 18:55, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Major contributors to the MediaWiki codebase

Who would you say are the several people who made the most important/major contributions to the MediaWiki codebase? Tisane (talk) 23:47, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

A list of important contributors is given in Special:Version. -- Tim Starling (talk) 02:44, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Where "important" means "decided to add themselves at some point, or was randomly added by someone else".  :) —Aryeh Gregor (talk • contribs) 19:30, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Recent changes to "Limitations"

From reading the paper, the "online upgrades" part only applies to sites using multiple database servers, like Wikipedia, but not like the majority of users. For other sites, it doesn't matter nearly as much if there are incompatible schema changes. There are complaints about the upgrade process, but that isn't really it (complaints are mainly about the lack of an easy web-based upgrade tool).

As for "difficulties in integrating with Ruby on Rails" ... What? 1) Why only Ruby? Why not ASP.NET, JSP, Perl, INTERCAL, or any language that isn't PHP? 2) This is an issue with almost anything. Saying that a web application written in PHP can't easily integrate with one written in Ruby is a limitation of that specific application is like saying that one of the limitations of Barack Obama is that he doesn't glow in the dark. From reading the source used, it looks more like a "this looked like too much work and we couldn't be bothered" note than a conclusion of the project. Mr.Z-man 02:48, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Barack Obama's not being able to glow in the dark is a limitation, isn't it? Similarly, the inability of MediaWiki to convert its own codebase into Ruby on Rails at the touch of a button is a limitation of MediaWiki. Granted, we don't mention the aforementioned limitation of Obama in the Barack Obama article because a list of such limitations could go on forever, and it's common to humans, so we probably shouldn't include that particular MediaWiki limitation either, since it's common to PHP applications in general. Tisane (talk) 02:58, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Talk:MediaWiki/Archive 1/GA1

I tried to install mediawiki, once, but it failed.

Can it be possible to install mediawiki on 000webhost.com, or x10hosting.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lolpicture (talk • contribs) 16:19, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

How's that again?

The article says: 

 MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application developed by,
 used by and powers all projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, such as Wikipedia ...

Unless I am missing something, it seems we have a grammatical glitch here. Toddcs (talk) 19:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

You're right, that was hard to read. I've tried to break it up and make it easier to parse. It now reads as follows; there may be more tweaks to get it just right, but I hope this is better.

MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. It is developed by, is used by, and it runs all the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. These include Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and Wikinews as well as many other wiki websites worldwide. It is written in the PHP programming language and uses a backend database.

--Nigelj (talk) 20:32, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
On re-reading it, I've had a second go. The only oddity left is the statement that "MediaWiki ... is developed by ... all the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and Wikinews". Is that strictly true? Is it developed by the projects? Or the Foundation, or by some other identifiable group? --Nigelj (talk) 22:29, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
One must watch out for dangling modifiers here. --Teratornis (talk) 04:06, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Translation

We could use {{source-targetLanguages}} for translations in Mediawiki / Wikipedia. --Diamondland (talk) 10:32, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

1.17 in 2010?

1.17 started as of February 2010? 1.18 started as of December 2010?

2010? not 2011?? Kintaro (talk) 02:19, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

yeah... it was started a year ago, and this month it's almost done, they branched it in december to stabilize for a release (1.17) while the trunk got bumped up to 1.18, i don't get what's confusing, december 2011 hasn't even happened yet Mark (talk) 03:40, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
The date shown for 1.17 is earlier than the date shown for 1.16. I can see how that can be confusing, because all the dates prior to that are release dates and it's never explained what "started" means in this context. Do we need to provide dates for unreleased versions at all? The project doesn't seem to think this is important information, so why should Wikipedia's readers? Reach Out to the Truth 04:28, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Section headings do not all follow WP:MOSHEAD

Resolved
 – Section headings comply with WP:MOSHEAD as of 17:05, 28 March 2011 (UTC).

The MediaWiki article has some section headings that do not follow the guidelines in WP:MOSHEAD, WP:CAPS, and WP:LOWERCASE. Namely, second and following words in an article title should begin with lowercase letters unless the words would normally be capitalized (e.g., proper nouns), and section headings should follow the same convention as article titles. Some examples of section headings in the article that do not:

  • "Groups and Restriction of Access" should be: "Groups and restriction of access"
  • "Resources to Developers" should be: "Resources to developers"

Since this article gets a lot of views, I thought I would ask on the talk page before applying the guidelines, in case there has been some consensus to violate them. --Teratornis (talk) 04:15, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Fixed. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 02:07, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

WikiMaps

Wikimaps redirects here but is not mentioned. Might want to add it? —Pengo 15:43, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Quotes about MediaWiki

I'm doing research for Wikiquote, if anyone knows of interesting or pithy quotes about q:MediaWiki, please let me know at q:Talk:MediaWiki, it would be most appreciated! Thank you, — Cirt (talk) 17:19, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

This article currently has a large number of references consisting of interwiki or inter-namespace links. [This is a follow-up to this discussion on my user page.] It's generally a good idea to avoid both types of links in articles but this is clearly a special case because of the article's "meta" nature. All bona-fide references in the article should be to the usual third-party reliable sources. Most if not all of the interwiki or inter-namespace "references" should be converted to wikilinks in the article. If some are to be keep "footnote style", then a new footnotes group and section should be created to cleanly separate them from the references proper. Why should we avoid using references for these? A) because it gives the reader a false sense of reliability. They see the reference superscripts and assume the material is referenced by reliable sources when it isn't. B) it's just a clunky, inefficient way of using wiki-markup. It causes an extra, unneeded step to get the reader to information they might want. I propose all these be changed. Jason Quinn (talk) 16:01, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

I disagree with A and I agree with B, but I don't have sufficient knowledge of en.wiki style guidelines to have an opinion. I note, however, that: 1) separating footnotes might be a good idea; 2) footnotes allow to specify the access date, which is sometimes very old; 3) converting everything to inline wikilinks could cause excessive linking compared to the standards for internal links, which can be quite harmful especially if clueless readers are sent to obscure project pages or technical manuals.
As for the root problem of acceptable content for this article, I agree that some parts are not very well justified, for instance the link you changed is about an en.wiki gadget[2] and I'm not sure if that specific gadget among hundreds is really so relevant, ideally we'd have more sources (perhaps some more have been published in the last few years). It's also possible that some of the information contained here would be best served if moved/merged to mw: pages: for instance, the history section is very lacking here and decent there, some parts are superseded by mw:Manual:MediaWiki architecture (which is also a third-party source as it was reviewed by the editors of the book of which it's a chapter). --Nemo 22:02, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Edit for clarity?

I don't know exactly what this means: "Only on Wikipedia, more than 1000 automated and semi-automated bots and other tools have been developed to assist in editing MediaWiki sites."

If you drop the first clause ("only on Wikipedia"), then the statement is clear (I don't know if it is true).

I guess it means that 1000 bots exist that work on Wikipedia and that some or all also work on standard MediaWiki installations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.172.75.121 (talk) 22:51, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

CMS

MediaWiki is a content management system (CMS). Anyone who feels otherwise with conviction, please explain how MediaWiki is not a CMS. Thanks. --Roger Chrisman 00:52, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Merger proposal

Main page: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/VisualEditor

Merge content in VisualEditor to this article. These two articles both provide significant coverage about VisualEditor: The Economist, PC World. However, WP:NOTNEWS is generally applicable, in which the VisualEditor topic may not merit having its own article. Per WP:PRESERVE, the information should be retained in the encyclopedia in some form. Northamerica1000(talk) 04:19, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Comment For procedural reasons, starting a separate merger proposal during this AfD may confuse. I suggest participating at the AfD, and holding off/withdrawing this separate discussion. Widefox; talk 19:43, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Reader feedback: I still don't know what is M...

114.79.53.43 posted this comment on 10 June 2013 (view all feedback).

I still don't know what is Media Wiki and what is the differences between Media Wiki and Wikipedia. The pictures needs more.

I'm not sure how this could be made more clear; the intro says that MediaWiki is the software that runs the Wikipedia project, among others. -- Beland (talk) 15:29, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Though to be honest, I can understand that it's confusing. The first sentence reads
"MediaWiki is a free wiki software application",
which I imagine most people would think that also Wikipedia is. In addition, what is a "software application"? The fact that it powers Wikipedia is mentioned like this:
"Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation and others, it is used to run all of the main projects hosted by the Foundation, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Commons".
I rephrased this to
"MediaWiki is a free and open source wiki software, used to power wiki websites such as Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Commons, developed by the Wikimedia Foundation and others".
Is it any clearer? (I also rewrote other parts of the lead) Skalman (talk) 09:21, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I think Skalman's changes made this as clear as it can be, so I marked the comment Resolved. -- Skarkkai (talk) 09:00, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Proposed merge with VisualEditor

I propose this article be merged into MediaWiki and WP:VisualEditor. Per the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/VisualEditor, it seems most people agree that this content belongs on Wikipedia but it is not notable enough to deserve its own article. Beerest355 Talk 21:34, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Disagree (creator) article size, overlapping scopes and growing number of sources. This is a big multi-year, $M, high-profile independent software sub-project with sources indicating importance to WP (and presumably Wikia and other sites using the MW extension). We have extension articles for other software (see AfD comments). The proposed merge target isn't obvious either - this is a split WP/MW/Wikia topic, but I take the point of lack of notability from WP (more than MW). Widefox; talk 14:55, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
Don't merge I agree with what Widefox is saying. For further comparison, check articles in Category:MediaWiki extensions; and in addition to the split to WP/MW/Wikia, it's a WMF effort. Skalman (talk) 20:15, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
Agree Merge VisualEditor into MediaWiki and WP:VisualEditor. The topic is not independently notable and the sources are generally not independent of the topic. I note that the article is already long; some of the (un-sourced or poorly sourced) content can be moved to WP:VisualEditor, especially that which cannot be merged into Mediawiki. I agree with Jasper Deng's comment above, that extensions almost never merit separate articles — this is not an exception. The discussion closer should also note the merge comments above and at this AfD for consensus. - tucoxn\talk 10:54, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
Summary style is fine for this subtopic of WP/MW/WMF/Wikia. We have whole categories of software extensions somewhat invalidating that argument (examples in AfD) - not a policy based argument. Article size and importance, and split over several other topics is not ideal for merge. WP:VisualEditor in particular is project space so has different requirements - they'd be no space for reception which is quite notable. Care to say which is the poorly sourced content, or lacking independent? Widefox; talk 11:50, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
Well, my rationale for merging is that this is fundamentally an extension of MediaWiki, and I think you really have to make a strong case for having a separate article on a mere extension.--Jasper Deng (talk) 16:25, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
Based on what? See Category:MediaWiki extensions, Category:Firefox add-ons, Category:Mozilla add-ons and one I created Category:Google Chrome extensions. Similarly, official extension articles exist like Venkman, DOM Inspector & ChatZilla (SeaMonkey). As for the AfD comments, the article has been improved so a fresh discussion was suggested due to the comments there being for previous revisions. If you want to encourage new users to edit the #6 most popular website with the most significant change to it, then why scatter the only article on it? Widefox; talk 10:56, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
Quite a few software extensions have separate articles: scope, article size, and use in different contexts (especially for open source extensions), like with Wikia for this. Widefox; talk 15:06, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
Emphasis on IRL. Brycehughes (talk) 20:12, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
WP:Summary style in any case covers a technical reason why it may be a good idea to breakout larger articles even if one did conclude lack of independent notability (which I have sympathy for, although the it's more useful for new editors to have a separate shorter article than the info be lost/scattered in bigger ones). Widefox; talk 13:23, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
No it doesn't. Brycehughes (talk) 14:10, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
Care to say why? Widefox; talk 15:37, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
Are you asking me to explain why WP:SUMMARY STYLE doesn't contain what you say it contains? Brycehughes (talk) 17:44, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
yes. Widefox; talk 23:39, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
What an odd thing to ask! I would assume that no editor ever added a notability exception on technical grounds. Or perhaps an editor added it once upon a time and then it was subsequently removed. That's generally how these things go. Let me know if you think of any other possible explanations. Brycehughes (talk) 00:20, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
I was hoping contradiction would be followed by a counterargument rather than by responding to tone. "Sections of long articles should be spun off into their own articles leaving summaries in their place.". yes WP:AVOIDSPLIT details how must meet WP:GNG which the sourcing does. The example Yosemite National Park, History of the Yosemite area - are history and list articles really independent topics or should they be merged due to lack of independent notability? A closer example Firefox, History of Firefox , Firefox 3.6 etc. They're all Firefox so size (in my opinion) determines the reality of these articles rather than truly 100% independent topics. Size and utility based arguments do come in, rather than pure independent topic arguments. This technical reason is for not merging due to size (rather than a technical reason for notability), an argument someone else said in the AfD. WP:DETAIL covers different audiences needs, which I think common sense would swing this to be sensible to have as an unmerged article for the new editor audience which interact with the edit interface but not the rest of MediaWiki. Important to note that technically a summary style should grow inside the main article and be spun out later, but this article started around a sensible cross-wikispace redirect. Widefox; talk 14:15, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
The Yahoo! logo redesign, being covered by numerous media sources, would also qualify under WP:GNG by your same logic. But that doesn't mean it gets a standalone page. Yes, WP:AVOIDSPLIT. Brycehughes (talk) 16:03, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
Agree with you in theory (not sure if my logic, certainly my interpretation of WP:Summary style and the reality of some articles I've seen), although in practice it may naturally grow and if enough content to make a substantial article only then a breakout would be sensible. We're not there yet though are we, so it's logically similar....although in practice.. (I'm not up to date with Yahoo, so cannot comment on how important it is described in sources) ... the weighting may be the crucial difference. VE - "the most important WP change" but I suspect logo redesign may be a lesser weighted issue (so purely size argument above), so never reaches its own article. It's quite ironic that the article is a controversial merge, feels like a thankless task for single handedly creating it. I repeat..the article location was first a cross-wikispace redirect already. For anyone considering merging, what's the plan for that? We're talking about new editors too, so I don't think I have to invoke IAR, I consider the different audiences in summary style cover it. We got a question from an editor about why it vanished, and so we're helping IMHO. Looking forward to the technical details being fleshed out, as I suspect it's not a simple project for the developers. Widefox; talk 10:39, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
If VE is too long, then perform a selective merger, instead of a full merger. Shorten it. Summarize. VE is simply not notable enough to qualify for its own article, nor is it important enough to dominate the MW article. Brycehughes (talk) 15:43, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Who's to say it's too long. There's (currently) no consensus to merge, in fact several of us want to expand the technical side as this is currently lacking. What's the plan? redirect or create a DAB? does anyone have an answer to: 1. so redirect to a section right? 2. which target (with possible reasoning): a) MW (technical), b) WP (notability), c) WMF (project), d) Wikia (minor partner), e) WP project space (bulk of info)? 3. what about that last one - the original WP project space redirect? The notability comes from WP, but we're discussing on MW. How does any of that help new editors per WP:DETAIL? Doable yes, desirable? (new editors being a rationale of the VE project). Widefox; talk 17:14, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

You're making this too complicated. Merge with MW. Redirect to section. Edit for brevity. This is an encyclopedia, not a how-to for new editors. Brycehughes (talk) 21:05, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
Provide no link at all for 3.? You'd need consensus for that, same as removing the current hatnotes! It is standard to provide help, let alone for new users. Widefox; talk 02:04, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
Link to WP:VisualEditor. Brycehughes (talk) 06:15, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
two hatnotes in the section? This page is a more common style, will grow still, is easier for new editors, and simple. Widefox; talk 10:49, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
Yes, two hatnotes. Brycehughes (talk) 15:37, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
We clearly differ on what's simple, easy and useful for the target audience of the article and hatnotes. Widefox; talk 20:32, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
No, we differ on whether article length and article audience predicate exceptions to WP:GNG. They do not. Brycehughes (talk) 20:54, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
Does it meet GNG as a notable WP (or MW) topic? yes (although some aspects are WP:NOTNEWS). No exception needed. That may be a false dichotomy? WP:NOPAGE has WP:NNC - this is due weight and the size doesn't fit in the parent article. "When creating new content about a notable topic, editors should consider how best to help readers understand it. Sometimes, understanding is best achieved by presenting the material on a dedicated standalone page, but it is not required that we do so." We differ in consideration of that. The only exception asked for is in chronology of AVOIDSPLIT - it already existed as an important cross-project redirect. Should that editor have created a redirect to a section, then a section hatnote? I'd say no. You've made a very strong guideline based case, yes, but IMHO at the expense of the helpfulness - pull back - these are guidelines. What's useful for readers? Summary style covers audiences and GNG is not violated IMHO. The guidelines are just that - they detail our best practice, not rule what we do like policies. The usefulness of the cross-projectspace and an article at that location is I consider good practice, covered by the guidelines, and certainly by the policies. Widefox; talk 00:35, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose merge. For one, the VisualEditor article is already larger than any other individual section in the MediaWiki article. Secondly, though the VisualEditor is being written by the Wikimedia Foundation and integrated first with MediaWiki, it is designed as a general-purpose WYSIWYG editor that can be integrated into other software. In other words, though it might not look like it right now, it's a separate project altogether, and accordingly deserves its own page. DavidPKendal (talk) 20:13, 28 September 2013 (UTC)
Agree, (also by Wikia). The re-use/forking of open source projects naturally leads to a separate sub-article having a different scope to the main. As an ambitious undertaking of the WMF, the effect on WP is also notable. The idea of shoehorning it all into a large mature article, especially when considering an audience of beginner editors is somewhat counterproductive to the project IMHO. Widefox; talk 20:32, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Don't merge. There is already a request for expansion on that page (for technical details), so it seems odd to want to shrink it down so that it becomes a section of another page. -Thunderforge (talk) 01:49, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Don't merge, for reasons above, plus this new one: the WMF VisualEditor may not end up being the default MediaWiki editor, or may have competition. WP:CRYSTAL says it should stay separate. Of course, it certainly satisfies WP:NOTEWORTHY, and should be mentioned in this article, without giving it WP:UNDUE compared to the classic wikitext way of editing (aka "mainstream science"), nor relative to any as-yet-hypothetical competitors. HTH. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 12:26, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I need the template codes so i can use them in other wikis

I been ask to remove my wiki and trasfer it to wikia can you please email me the template codes so that i can use the code i made for my wiki.

Jose Luis Zambrano De Santiago (talk) Jose Luis Zambrano De Santiago (talk) 01:28, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

You may download the code for any Wikipedia template by simply clicking on the "Edit this page" or "View source" tabs on the top of the relevant template page. (For example, if you want the source code for the {{Infobox peerage title}} template, just visit that page, click on the "Edit this page" link, and then copy the source code to your local machine.) You can then recreate the template at Wikia. For the most part, the process will not be so simple though, as the templates largely rely on other coding present at Wikipedia that may not be present at Wikia. For example, the infobox template creates a table with the HTML code 
<table class="infobox" ...> ... </table>
This only works because Wikipedia has an infobox class defined within its CSS files. If Wikia does not have this class defined, the infobox won't render properly. You are better off using the templates that are already available at Wikia to reproduce the formatting you desire. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 16:39, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

"MediaWiki provides many features beyond hyperlinks for structuring content." The article hardly mentions hyperlinks, not to mention "hyperlinks for structuring content". What's that all about. --Marshall "Unfree" Price 172.56.27.144 (talk) 20:42, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject for Wikimedia Foundation

FYI, see a proposal at WT:WikiProject Wikipedia -- 67.70.32.190 (talk) 06:51, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

SS Calgaric

SS Calgaric page needs more history than what has been provided. I would personly like to fix the problem. Thank You for your time User: Dallas S12345 Dallas G. Spencer (talk) 16:18, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Presenting

Hello everyone I'm new here ...!!! Archimed2503 (talk) 20:36, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello and welcome, Archimed2503, do you have a concern you would like to share about the article? Me, Myself & I (talk) 20:38, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

February 2016

Hi ... Archimed2503 (talk) 20:33, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Is anyone here? Archimed2503 (talk) 20:34, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Do you have a question? - theWOLFchild 14:58, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

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Working PDF, date/title/author match. Be..anyone (talk) 04:41, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

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Is there still some "HOPE" for ... (this certain idea about improving "What links here") -- ? --

The answer at this place seems to have been "<< No, it's not possible." >> (at least, "as of" << 03:36, 21 December 2017 (UTC) >> ... according to the first reply).

But it really means that, having a certain feature work (or not work) a certain way, is not possible, given the current state of the MediaWiki [software] design and implementation. But that [current state] is not a principle of the universe! So ... it could become possible, in the future! (right?)

But ...should it become possible, in the future -- ? --

If not, then is this: "well, it would be very difficult" ... the only reason? (to dismiss the idea) -- ? --

Just an idea; ... from: --Mike Schwartz (talk) 15:39, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

As stated at the top of this page, "This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the MediaWiki article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject."
Questions like this are better asked at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)
Sure, it is technically possible to do that. Your problem is finding a developer willing to put the time into developing the tool, which would probably run as an appendage to the MediaWiki software.
See Wikipedia:Bug reports and feature requests.
You could suggest the idea in the next round of the Community Wishlist Survey. I wouldn't want to raise your hopes too high for success there, though. wbm1058 (talk) 18:49, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
OK, thank you, wbm1058, for that "speedy" (well, "faster than I expected") reply; and for [making "some" progress towards] answering my question, even though (apparently), that question probably should have been asked ... somewhere else.
I do not know much about moving (or, -- perhaps better? -- inserting a link to) a section (or question) like this.
Would it be OK to insert a link to this section, some place? If so, then should I do it? ... or, -- perhaps better -- someone else, who might know better how (/how "much") to explain things there, and (how to decide) where to put it, and how [and whether!] to guide the follow-up comments ("if any") to be there instead of here, etc. -- ? --
THANKS for your patience, if (in my ignorance) I am ["also"] asking these questions wrongly (e.g., in the wrong place).
Perhaps there are even some other questions [that I should be asking now, but] that I do not even know I should ask. (Please feel free to answer those questions, too ... either here or somewhere else [if the "super amazing" faster-than-light "answer-it-before-they-even-ask" setting of your "crystal ball" goes up that high...] << smiley / "magician-slash-comedian" emoticon typed in as text >>). --Mike Schwartz (talk) 17:01, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
@Mike Schwartz: Hi, I replied on the same day, but I guess you weren't watching the page. So I'll ping you with this reply, to make sure you read my reply sooner this time. Since this page doesn't get a lot of traffic, and you previously did ask the question at a better venue, but didn't get response(s) to your satisfaction, I suppose a little more "off-topic" discussion will be tolerated here. I understand you are asking questions about "what links here" generally, and more specifically, section-linking. But, to me your questions are lacking some focus which makes it harder give a specific, well-focused answer. But first, generally speaking I find it easier to work within the constraints of the existing MediaWiki software to find creative solutions to editing problems, rather than to request, and hold out in hope for, improved MediaWiki versions that implement new solutions. I believe you expressed concern about section links that were broken because the section heading was subsequently changed, thus breaking the section link. More on that below.
This article does give an answer to your question, since April 2010. See MediaWiki § Database: Some software enhancement proposals, such as a proposal to allow sections of articles to be watched via watchlist, have been rejected because the necessary schema changes would have required excessive Wikipedia downtime. (T Dumitras; P Narasimhan (2009), No downtime for data conversions: Rethinking hot upgrades (PDF))
Broken section links are a common problem. A bot generates a weekly report listing them: Wikipedia:Database reports/Broken section anchors. The report is huge: Over 61 thousand broken section anchors. Obviously we have a gargantuan imbalance between editors who mindlessly break section links without checking "what links here", and gnomes who actively work this report to manually fix the broken links. An imbalance that will likely only be overcome by a more sophisticated bot that actually works to repair the broken links that it detects. Would be nice if someone could be paid to develop such a bot, but don't hold your breath.
The best way to prevent section links from breaking is to follow the advice at MOS:SECTLINK: add a hidden comment to the target section such as <!-- The article ArticleName links here. --> so that if another user edits the title of that section, they can fix the incoming links (alternatively, use {{Anchor}} in cases where a section has a large number of incoming links).
And use {{R to section}} to mark section-link redirects. So, if there are a dozen redirects to the page, you might check which of those dozen transclude {{R to section}} to find say, the three of them that are section links.
Does this help? You can follow up with a more specific problem you're having, and maybe we can figure out a way to solve it. wbm1058 (talk) 18:38, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Wow! Those are some very helpful answers! (and they also appeared pretty quickly). Thanks! for taking the time to write that additional response.

> You can follow up with a more specific problem you're having, [...]

I think it is less a case of, there there is some "specific problem" that is plaguing me any more than ... it is bothering anyone else. It is maybe ["more like"] a case of, that: when there happens to be a section link that (probably used to work correctly, but) is broken now, then ... maybe I am a little bit more likely (than the average [bipolar?] bear) to notice that it probably got broken due to [an event such as] a section being moved or re-named ... along with the weaknesses that have already been discussed (or at least mentioned) ... that I see as "shortcomings" in the current system of offering features to support those editors who might prefer to (at least) have a way to try to avoid causing those situations.

> Broken section links are a common problem.

It sounds like you are more familiar than I am with that issue (...even though 'perhaps' that is "not saying much"... I am not an expert "at all" on this stuff).

> The best way to prevent section links from breaking is to follow the advice at MOS:SECTLINK: add a hidden comment to the target section such as <!-- The article ArticleName links here. --> so that if another user edits the title of that section, they can fix the incoming links (alternatively, use {{Anchor}} in cases where a section has a large number of incoming links).

That sounds like a great idea. ...even though the reading of such hidden comments might still occur only on those occasions when it is out of the goodness of someone's heart (e.g., either [a] while changing the title of some section, OR [b] while trying to "clean up" after some editor who "was in a hurry" has already changed it "without benefit of" taking the time to read the hidden comments "if any", and taking the time to follow up "as appropriate").
Besides the reliance [there] upon the kindness of [a] editors who [ever] change section names, (or [b] those who might come along after them, and try to "clean up" once the damage has been done) ... there is ALSO the issue of ... relying on the kindness of those editors who create section links, to kindly insert the right kind of hidden comments, as appropriate. ...and IMHO, that is one place where (perhaps) the use of an automatic "bot" might go a long way towards:
  • economizing upon the amount of drudgery (work that may be tedious and/or "less fun") for those editors (when they are creating section links), and
  • ensuring that it gets done right (or else, a "bug report" will be submitted to the authors/maintainers of the "bot") and
  • ensuring that it gets done (without having to worry, that the editor would perhaps be too busy, [or too lazy] ... even some of the time.)
I may not know (and might not have the time / the skills to learn) much about the mechanical details of all this, [e.g., the software changes, or "BOT" coding ... etc.] nor about the "politics" of it [the "Talk:" page discussions needed, etc.] but it does sound like, to me (now, much more than before!) that this problem can almost certainly be addressed by some methods that do not (necessarily) require making changes to the user interface [nor the implementation] of the Mediawiki software. The existence of those methods (maybe because they might be more 'agile' in some sense) is a breath of fresh air ... and it gives me [more] hope, that the problem will addressed (in the appropriate way) some time "soon"... i.e., before the [amazing "AI future"] day, when Wikimedia [and/or Mediawiki!] will perhaps already have some bots that write bots that write bots, ... and we humans can just sit back and oversee the end results, and "keep an eye on the ball" as far as the long-term goals.
Thanks again. --Mike Schwartz (talk) 21:19, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Mike, I might be able to write such a bot to fix many of them. The logic seems straightforward. Read backwards through the page history of the article with the missing section link, searching for the last edit which included this section. See whether the edit that removed the section simply changed the name of the section to something else; if so then update the broken section link with the new title of that section. This is how I sometimes manually fix some of these, which can be time consuming. The bigger problem is that my time is oversubscribed and thus need to prioritize tasks; if I elevate this to the point I start work on it soon, that means that some other task was bumped lower and though it may have already been waiting years to get finished, it will need to wait for more months at the least. Another new task screaming for attention is clearing Multiple unclosed formatting tags... just the ones in the project talk archives is quite a list. The manual fix is easy, but writing a bot to do it is harder... see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 167#Remex: My page is recently broken and I can't figure out why. wbm1058 (talk) 16:04, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
OK, Great!
I am not here to discuss the relative "priorities", of one "worthy cause" over another. I am aware that some things are more urgent than others, and that the knowledge needed to make a judgment call on "priorities", may well include some factors that I am not familiar with.
Eventually there will probably be some kind of automated way, (maybe even involving a bot or two) to "notice" patterns (e.g., patterns of instances of inefficiency in the way things get done, during editing on Wikipedia... especially for things that get done quite often!), and (when that day comes), then maybe some of these ["Talk:" page] discussions might even get 'suggested' by some bot, instead of by a human person. [Whatever!]
...and, the phrase "instances of inefficiency" there, might be interpreted broadly, to include not only [e1] examples such as, a person having to spend a lot of time, to "figure out" how to fix a certain 'broken' section link, -- perhaps partly because the tools to help that person do so, are lacking in some way (or do not exist at all) ... but also [e2] examples such as, situations like 'broken' section links, arising more often than they should, -- perhaps partly because of the absence of (or, some shortcomings of) the tools to help automate the editing tricks that could have helped to avoid the creation of such problems in the first place. (...and, maybe those editing tricks should include some that were discussed recently ... such as: inserting a hidden comment in certain situations, [like, when creating a section link]; and, "checking for" the existence of such a hidden comment in certain other situations [like, re-naming a section] ... and doing something appropriate, if/when such a "hidden comment" is found).
Rock on ... --Mike Schwartz (talk) 17:44, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

WYSIWYG editor / obsolete information

There’s currently an obsolete information tag on this section - am I right in thinking that VisualEditor is not a native tool but is an extension? Any clarity on this would be useful. Thanks. Cardiffbear88 (talk) 13:07, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Docker image available - may be useful for installation and configuration section

In section 5.2 on Installation & configuration, it may be useful to mention that an image is available on Docker Hub for people wanting to easily install and configure a MediaWiki instance - https://hub.docker.com/_/mediawiki According to the stats there, the docker image has been downloaded over 10 million times and is under active development. There is also instructions for how to use docker-compose to set up MediaWiki with a database such as MySQL. I would add this mention directly myself, but don't at the moment have time to search for reliable sources. (But I may come back and do this if no one else does.) - Dyork (talk) 08:03, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

An unresolved ambiguity

Article has "the launch on the English Wikipedia being delayed". But, to the naive reader, the meaning of that is liable to be misunderstood. Does "English" mean "belonging to the part of Great Britain which is neither Scotland nor Wales", or is it an uneducated Americanism (and possibly Germanism) referring to either GB or UK, or does it mean "those offshore parts of NW Europe having allegiance to the person who is the monarch of the UK (some of which parts are not in the UK), ... ; or does it refer to the language originated in England but now the mother tongue of many who are certainly not English? If it means what I think it means, it should be "... English-language" ...". 94.30.84.71 (talk) 21:02, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

I've change it to "English-language" -- John of Reading (talk) 03:37, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Web host Requirements

This article mentions PHP and SQL servers in separate areas, but there is no listing of what options or services a web host needs to have in order to run the MediaWiki software. MinionDeBougie (talk) 17:46, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

  1. ^ "MediaWiki.org Project:Copyrights". Retrieved 2009-08-17.
  2. ^ Donations
  3. ^ Mysql Support
  4. ^ Canonical-Ubuntu Support
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