Jamie, thank you for your answer. Of course I'm running mediawiki 1.5 (I wrote this in the subject of the mail), and - of course - I've read the help page. But this didn't help me, remember that wiki help pages change, and for example, now there is no advice for how to change subtitles.

I understand that mediawiki has a very different logic - for example - from a CMS but, may I tell that I'm surprised to how counterintuitive is to make simple changes in navigation links or other elementary parameters like title, subtitle and header of page?

I'm doing this work in order to validate (for the Education Italian Ministry) this Wiki as a pedagogical tool for Italian students, but if neither I (knowing English and technologically trained) can understand how to use it, how non-expert people could?

For example, now I have re-installed everything, and I have a default LocalSettings.php but: 1) the title is: "WIKIPEDIA", and not: "LESWIKI" as I want 2) the subtitle is: "L'Enciclopedia libera", but what I want: "L'enciclopedia mia" 3) under the title of every single page there is: "Da Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera", that I want to change in: "Da Leswiki, l'enciclopedia mia"

How many changes I've I to do to achieve what I want?

Thank you again, N.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Jamie Bliss" astronouth7303@gmail.com To: mediawiki-l@Wikimedia.org Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2005 8:12 PM Subject: [Mediawiki-l] Re: mediawiki 1.5: navigation is so difficult?

You must be using MediaWiki 1.5

Also, if are fully unaware of MediaWiki's page structuring, you should read about it before running a wiki based on MW. (Look at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Help to get started.)

-- Jamie

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On 11/28/2005, "Rob Church" robchur@gmail.com wrote:

The site name is set in $wgSitename, which is in LocalSettings.php. The "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia..." bit is done by MediaWiki:Tagline.

I would agree that altering navigation items is a little more complicated than it need be, but it tends to be a one-off or infrequent process.

Yes, but it is infrequent-by-many- i.e., I'd guess virtually everyone tries to do it once, and it is an early task that forms a key first impression of the quality of the software for admins. It really is something that should be fixed if mediawiki wants to become more than just the wiki that powers wikipedia.

Luis

Rob Church

On 28/11/05, NM n.milletti@indire.it wrote:

...

Jamie, thank you for your answer. Of course I'm running mediawiki 1.5 (I wrote this in the subject of the mail), and - of course - I've read the help page. But this didn't help me, remember that wiki help pages change, and for example, now there is no advice for how to change subtitles.

I understand that mediawiki has a very different logic - for example - from a CMS but, may I tell that I'm surprised to how counterintuitive is to make simple changes in navigation links or other elementary parameters like title, subtitle and header of page?

I'm doing this work in order to validate (for the Education Italian Ministry) this Wiki as a pedagogical tool for Italian students, but if neither I (knowing English and technologically trained) can understand how to use it, how non-expert people could?

For example, now I have re-installed everything, and I have a default LocalSettings.php but:

1. the title is: "WIKIPEDIA", and not: "LESWIKI" as I want
2. the subtitle is: "L'Enciclopedia libera", but what I want:

"L'enciclopedia mia" 3) under the title of every single page there is: "Da Wikipedia, l'enciclopedia libera", that I want to change in: "Da Leswiki, l'enciclopedia mia"

How many changes I've I to do to achieve what I want?

Thank you again, N.

----- Original Message ----- From: "Jamie Bliss" astronouth7303@gmail.com To: mediawiki-l@Wikimedia.org Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2005 8:12 PM Subject: [Mediawiki-l] Re: mediawiki 1.5: navigation is so difficult?

...

You must be using MediaWiki 1.5

Also, if are fully unaware of MediaWiki's page structuring, you should read about it before running a wiki based on MW. (Look at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Help to get started.)

-- Jamie

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---

MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

---

MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Rowan Collins wrote:

2. Can you clarify what you think makes the current customisation

process difficult, and - even more usefully - can you suggest how it might be improved?

I think, what most people installing MediaWiki find confusing, is the absence of any centralized administrative interface; some parameters are configured in a script (LocalSettings.php), others directly in the database (e.g. Interwiki links), and again others in the MediaWiki-namespace etc.; additionally, there are some configurations seen on the Wikimedia sites which are completely undocumented, e.g. based on extensions, or MonoBook.{js|css} hacking, or templating etc., and a lot is changing between the releases (e.g. location of the translations for interface elements). Even if one was involved for some time in a Wikimedia project, one won't know exactly how all of this is tied together. Beyond that, what makes running your own MediaWiki site a real challenge is the current state of the documentation (e.g. explaining the Trackback functionality someone asked a few days ago, which somehow exists, but without any traces of documentation). A quite easy approach could be to create *one* single page explaining the concepts behind this ("why which feature is managed where and how"). Another, but probably unrealistic approach would be to write an administrative interfacee which should be task (and not technically) oriented.

Because of this, IMHO the documentation is crucial; a friendly usability (whith a task-oriented interface) would be better, of course, but the world isn't perfect anyway; with an accourate manual and working examples one can at least *try* to make things work; but if the documentation is out of date or incomplete, you have to understand the code to use the beast. And that's something beyond the scope of most people trying to set up a MediaWiki installation.

Since MediaWiki is Open Source and anyone could at least try to update the documentation, or draft some kind of administrative interface, there is not much to criticize but ourselves. However, having tried to start a complete and systematic rewrite of the documentation a few months ago myself, I learned that this can't be done in a convenient amount of time, not if the manual is supposed to be well-written, easy to understand, and should contain tested examples, and go deeply into discussion of important administrative aspects like security, replication, and high availability . Even if I'd write this im my native tongue (which would hopefully sound clearer than this mail), it would take approximately 9 to 12 months for a small group of people (1-2 writers, 1 techy, 1 spell checker/editor), and require a considerable amount of research, and result in a 900-pages-book to be printed most favourably by O'Reilly ;)

The bottomline: The Wiki collaborative authoring priciple seems to work well for information which can be segmented in distinct particles (like Wikipedia articles). It seems to work less for information with some degree of required linearity (like a manual, or a textbook, which starts with the basics, finishes with advanved stuff, and has to be consistent, coherent, and cohesive in itself). Since it's improbable that one single person will do the task, the real challenge I see is how to utilize the Wiki priciple for the creation of a considerable larger and more complex document like the MediaWiki manual...

Just my thoughts, Regards from Berlin, -asb

Let's take your "looking for docs on changing the logo" as an example, then:

1. I browse to http://www.mediawiki.org 2. I click Help 3. Under "for System Administrators", I choose "Layout customization" - the text next to it informs me that that includes information on changing the logo 4. Under, "How do I change the logo...", I find that the logo is set via the $wgLogo variable in LocalSettings.php. That section also explains to me how I could edit the CSS to tweak the appearance, positioning or even boolean display of the logo.

Searching in the main and Help namespaces of http://www.mediawiki.org for "logo" returns several results, the first of which is relevant.

Rob Church

On 28/11/05, Luis Villa luis@cyber.law.harvard.edu wrote:

On Mon, 2005-11-28 at 16:30 +0000, Rowan Collins wrote:

...

On 28/11/05, luis@cyber.law.harvard.edu luis@cyber.law.harvard.edu wrote:

...

Yes, but it is infrequent-by-many- i.e., I'd guess virtually everyone tries to do it once, and it is an early task that forms a key first impression of the quality of the software for admins. It really is something that should be fixed if mediawiki wants to become more than just the wiki that powers wikipedia.

Well, 2 obvious answers that somebody is bound to make:

:)

...

1. MediaWiki doesn't exactly "want" to become more than the wiki that

powers Wikipedia - development of the core codebase is very much driven by the needs of the Wikimedia Foundation, and there is no intention among the core developers to change that emphasis.

If that is the only goal of the core developers, that's fine- their choice, of course :) I don't follow the project closely enough to know one way or the other- that is why I said 'if mediawiki wants'... instead of 'dammit, mediawiki needs to do this or else you are all losers' :)

...

2. Can you clarify what you think makes the current customisation

process difficult, and - even more usefully - can you suggest how it might be improved? Is it just that the existing method isn't clearly documented (or that the documentation itself is too hidden)?

That's been my primary problem. I have some fairly basic needs:

• change logos to match our project's
• change default theme colors/headers/footers to match our other

webtools

• (not as immediate a need) write a full theme to match other webtools I

offer

I'd imagine these are very basic and common needs for many mediawiki deployments but I wasn't able to find decent coherent docs on any of these. Ironically the last point was the best documented, but that was still fairly poor.

So... yeah. If the admin guide had those first couple points covered (instead of choosing a default theme, which really is basically useless to me) it would go a long way towards resolving my needs and I think the needs of others.

Luis

---

MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

It would also help if there was a page in the documentation listing all the meta pages that are user interface pages.

There's a big long list of them if you go to Special:Allpages and change to namespace 8. However, there are more that are NOT listed here in the default installation, but are redlinks.

For example, Community Portal, Searching, Searchresulttext, Protected page guidelines, just to list a few. All of these are empty or non-existant in the default installation.

A map of meta pages and the pages they link to that are hardcoded and burried in the user interface would be quite helpful. (Hmm, I wonder how hard it would be to make a graphvis of that automatically.)

On 29/11/05, Steven Dick kg4ydw@gmail.com wrote:

It would also help if there was a page in the documentation listing all the meta pages that are user interface pages.

Um, you mean Special:Allmessages ? Clearly, the documentation doesn't mention that enough times yet...

-- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]

On 30/11/05, Steven Dick kg4ydw@gmail.com wrote:

Clearly, you didn't read what I said, and you didn't check Special:Allmessages either. Yes, I know about that page, yes I find it helpful, but it is not enough.

OK, no need for accusations - I read what you said, and I know what Special:Allmessages is and does, but I misunderstood what you were asking for.

I *thought* you were talking about pages which were literally *part of* the interface; these should all be in the MediaWiki: namespace, be listed in Special:Allmessages, and have defaults built into the PHP files and entered into the database on install. Any exceptions to this are, AFAIK, bugs - there may be some due to things which predate that system, for instance, but they can and should be fixed.

I now realise that what you were actually talking about is pages which are *linked to* from various places in the default interface messages, and you are quite right that there is no way of automatically listing those.

It does NOT list [[Protected_page_guidelines]] which is linked from [[protectedpagewarning]]. This is one example only.

You mean [[Project:Protected page guidelines]], linked from the default [[MediaWiki:protectedpagewarning]]; kinda pedantic, but important were you/someone to actually write up the kind of list you're suggesting.

Also, there are a large number of messages in that page, most of which are OK and do not need much tweaking for me. My complaint is that I'd like a list of pages that DO need tweaking, mostly because they don't yet exist.

Well, like I say, actual UI messages should all have defaults - even if there is no MediaWiki:... page for something, the software will fall back to the version in the PHP source, so there is no real need for an extra list of those. The point about pages linked to *from* those defaults is a separate one, and any list of those that "need tweaking" will be somewhat subjective - though that doesn't rule out it being useful.

On 30/11/05, Arthur Guy Arthur@assys.net wrote:

I certainly agree that a list of pages with links but no content that have yet to be created would be useful; this needs someone who is familiar with the system to write them all down or someone to setup a new site and just go through everything.

This sounds like a rather good idea - and as you say, one which anyone with a fresh install could do. In fact, it would probably be as simple as copying the list from [[Special:Wantedpages]] on a new install and editting it around a little; if that doesn't work, searching the source of Special:Allmessages to spot redlinks ought to be pretty easy too. If anyone fancies doing this, and putting the result on meta.wikimedia.org (and/or www.mediawiki.org ?) I'm sure it will be appreciated by others.

-- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]

On 30/11/05, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:

...bear in mind to tweak the code for Special:Wantedpages first, otherwise it'll miss out some which aren't linked to more than once.

Ah, I didn't realise that. Thought there might be a catch. :(

-- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]

Here's a starting list if pages that need site appropriate content, most in MediaWiki namespace of course. I apologize in advance for any typos, since I"m not using cut and paste on this. I don't pretend this list is complete, just a start. Some of these are already well documented in the MediaWiki documentation.

sidebar (and items linked from it such as...) mainpage Community portal Current events

Protected page Protected page guidelines Image use policy Copyrights Searching (from Searchresulttext) nogomatch (I replaced the default with a version of what is on wikipedia)

On 11/30/05, Rowan Collins rowan.collins@gmail.com wrote:

OK, no need for accusations

Sorry to snap at you, and thanks for correcting the errors, pedanticly or not. That's what I get for writing to maling lists when I really should be sleeping. :)

Part of your confusion is that I meant both things, probably because I'm confused about what I want. It's been a while since I set up the wiki, so weak memory on this stuff does not help.

I *thought* you were talking about pages which were literally *part

of* the interface;

I'm not sure that this isn't the case. As another poster pointed out, there are pages that need to be site appropriate. I think I've listed most of them in my posting to the list, but I'm sure I missed a few.

The key here is prioritizing what needs changing -- things that are critical to a site's layout and purpose, vs. all messages in the system.

But most of the pages that bother me I think are linked to from the system messages, which is why they got missed.

...and it's only really decent to point out here that if you can (if you have shell access to the server), you could set that back to true and run the rebuildMessages.php maintenance script to update the MediaWiki namespace from your language file.

Rob Church

On 30/11/05, Rowan Collins rowan.collins@gmail.com wrote:

On 27/11/05, n.milletti@indire.it n.milletti@indire.it wrote:

...

Maybe is because I've changed some settings? (those indicated below)

Yes, you've disabled customising your interface.

...

$wgUseDatabaseMessages = false; (otherwise I could not edit my language file)

The idea of the MediaWiki: namespace is to make it *easier* to customise the interface, without the need to edit your language file. If you set this variable back to true, you will find that visitting the page [[Special:Allmessages]] displays all the interface elements you can edit, and lets any user with "sysop" access edit them as though they were wiki pages.

With this variable set to false, the software will ignore all pages in the MediaWiki: namespace, and rely instead on the content of the PHP files. Consequently, your sidebar will be constructed from a line in LanguageIt.php beginning "'sidebar' =>" (I think). You can change it there if you want to, but beware that if you ever upgrade, your changes will probably be overwritten, since those files aren't really designed to be customised in that way.

-- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP] _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l