Developing our wikis

[Anne Wilson]

For a long time I've wanted to make some improvements to UserBase, but been 
unable to because no sysop was available to help me.  After my recent blog on 
the subject, the forum team set up a sandbox wiki where I can try out 
improvements, test them for stability, etc..  Now I would like to move ahead.  
Some of the things I want to implement are small, others larger.  Starting 
with some of the smaller things, then -

If you read UserBase in Konqueror it looks quite pleasant.  Read it in Firefox 
and it is, frankly, downright unpleasant.  The same applies to TechBase - not 
surprising, I guess, as they share a skin.  I'm told that it would be quite 
easy to fix this so that the smaller, neater font is used.

There is a discrepancy in font between body text and table text which makes 
pages with tables quite unpleasant.  For a good example, see 
http://userbase.kde.org/Amarok and scroll down the page.  Again, I'm told it 
is easy to fix.

Then there are some small additions to the skin that I'd like to make.

The Toolbox can hold a Printable Version link - I think that would be 
valuable.

I'd like to see every page showing a Last Updated on ...... entry.  Yes, it 
would show where we are lacking, but it would, more importantly, allow a quick 
assessment of how likely an entry is to be relevant to current releases.

It would, I think, be a politeness, as the very least, to show a small 
'Powered by Mediawiki' icon.  It doesn't need to be big, or prominent, but it 
should be there.

Now for bigger things.

We are running Mediawiki 1.14.0, despite there being a known vulnerability.  
This is release 50428, and the current release is 59487.  There has been a 
full stable release as well as the security fix since then, and 1.16 is almost 
ready for release.  Our sandbox is running a version of 1.16, and we are 
finding it totally stable.  More importantly, some high-profile sites such as 
Wikipedia are already running 1.16 - and the version they use is available to 
us.  We definitely shouldn't be as far behind as this - and at the very least 
should have 1.15 plus the security fix.

We are also looking at extensions that would make the wikis more productive.  
The current system for translations leaves much to be desired.  There is an 
extension that can be set up to allow both in-situ translations and also 
export to .po files for external translation.  This is installed on the 
sandbox, and is being explored by some of our translators.  There are some 
issues to consider, most of which seem easy to fix.  The biggest problem is 
how to control the possibility of in-situ and external translations 
concurrently.

Another extension, or set of extensions, under review concern adding 
breadcrumb navigation.  There are several possibilities here, but there are 
issues with all of them.  However, work on assessment continues and I'm 
confident we'll find a solution.

Then there is http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:LiquidThreads - a system 
for controlled discussion of topics.  And I'm sure we will find others that 
fill specific needs.

So - we have the ideas.  We have the sandbox for testing.  We even have a 
sysop, neverendingo, willing and able to do the work.  The question now is 
whether any of this is likely to have an unforeseen adverse effect on any of 
our wikis.

Comments, please.

Anne
-- 
KDE Community Working Group
New to KDE4? - get help from http://userbase.kde.org
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