MediaWiki in Depth

Background

Why Wiki?

• Purpose of wiki in the workplace
• Ideals, culture
  • Collaboration as a practice
• Wiki vs Web, vs traditional documentation

A Quick Look at Wiki in Action

• What wiki can do in just minutes

A Look at MediaWiki

What MediaWiki is	What MediaWiki is not
Solid	A Content Management System
Actively developed	Easy to theme
Handles massive data w/ease	Easy to extend
Tunable	Easy to debug
Excellent revision control	Easy to configure
Excellent moderator tools	Easy

Why

• How it was developed; core design goals of the MediaWiki project
• A little thought, A lot less trouble

Restrictions and MediaWiki

• The fallacy of false security
  • Issues of fighting the core design of a product
  • Where investment went

• Collaborative culture and restriction
  • The purpose and usage model of a wiki

Other Wikis

• Advantages, disadvantages
  • Picking your battles

Your Resources

These are the resources that you are going to be using again and again. Let's learn how to use them!

• MediaWiki's help section

Setup

MediaWiki in Depth/Setup

Configuration

LocalSettings.php

• Why is it weird? It's a php file!
  • Associated gotchas

Directives you should be aware of

• All Configuration Directives
• LocalSettings Configuration (main directives)

User permissions

• User Rights
• Preventing Access

Image Uploading

Configuring File Uploads

Installing Extensions

Finding extensions

• MediaWiki Extensions Category
• Reviewing extensions; when to be wary

Installing your first extension: Breadcrumbs!

• The MediaWiki directory layout
• LocalSettings config

Extensions you may find useful

• Mediawiki In Depth/Useful Extensions
• Extensions used/supported by WikiMedia

Creation and Editing

Creating a Page

• MediaWiki doc starting a page
• MediaWiki doc editing a page
• Saving a page, and being sure to state what you did!

Page structure

• Basic Formatting
  • What we're trying to do
  • Headers, Table of Contents
  • Lists
    • MediaWiki lists doc
  • Tables
    • MediaWiki tables doc
    • Wikipedia tables help

• Links
  • MediWiki Links doc
• Images
  • MediaWiki Images doc

Templates

• Magic words
  • Transclusion and Substitution
    • A template of templates

Navigation

• The main page
• Searching
  • The future of MediaWiki search, CirrusSearch

Organization

• Categories
• Namespaces
• Customizing the sidebar
  • MediaWiki:Sidebar
  • Different syntax-- links are not surrounded by brackets

Tracking, Maintenance and Moderation

• Watching
  • Marking patrolled

• Protecting

• Revisions and Diffs

• Users, Groups, and Permissions

• Special Pages
  • Extensive MediaWiki doc on Special Pages

• Protecting against spam

• Deleting
  • Wiki culture and deleting
• Undeleting

• Moving, Renaming and Redirecting

Backing up and Restoring

• Backing it up
  • sudo mysqldump -h hostname -u userid --password dbname | gzip > backup.sql.gz

• Restoring
  • sudo mysql -u wikidb_user -p wikidb < dump_of_wikidb.sql

Bots

• The reason for Wikipedia's continued success: bots
• What they can do
• A bit of history on bots (I can't resist)
• Pywikibot

User Pages, Talk Pages, And Community on Your Wiki

• User Pages
  • My user page: User:Andrew Kahn

• Talk Pages
  • Our talk page: Talk:MediaWiki in Depth
  • Discussion and debate: wiki style

• Flagging

The Future

• Platform changes
• Flow, VisualEditor
• The future of wiki itself