I've installed MW 1.6.7 (yes, I'll upgrade to 1.6.8 ASAP) and have been happily configuring and customizing it up to this point: I need to construct a good, solid system of Help pages. Additionally, the Help needs to be sensitive to our user base, which includes a large number of persons with visual impairments, so standard help that talks about things like color or direction (up/down/left/right) on a page needs to be reviewed and edited. Here's what I've done, so far, and the questions I have:

- imported all of the Public Domain Help pages from mediawiki.org < http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:PD_Help%3E, and associated templates - weeded out the pages that won't really be necessary, modified the templates and pages with updated content, re-did some of the links - am still in the process of grabbing images from mediawiki.org for the help pages

Q1: Is there an extension or easy hack to finding "wanted images"? The PD Help pages have several images in them that I need to import, and I'd like to be able to easily find a list of the images missing. FYI, I know that a simple solution to this would be to export all of my Help pages and grep the XML file for images, but I'd like something that can do this within the MW software, too. I was able to create my own Special:WantedHelpPages page (based on Special:WantedPages) that works within the Help namespace, but I'd really like something like a Special:WantedImages page... This solution might just lie in SQL, but I thought I'd ask before I jump further into that.

Q2: To flesh out the PD Help (which has many gaps) I will be reviewing the Help at Meta and paraphrasing (NOT copying) some of that content for my site. Is that others are doing? Are you pointing people to help pages on Wikipedia, Meta, or MW? How do you solve the Help issue?

Q3: If I re-write many of the Help pages for our wiki installation should I try to apply my changes (when appropriate) to the Help project at MW? Would this be helpful to others, or would anyone care?

Q4: Is anyone else with a personal or professional interest in accessibility in MW going to Wikimania, or interested in talking to me via other means? I would like to connect with others about my work, and maybe get some input on accessibility issues on our wiki and MW in general. FWIW, I've been looking through MediaZilla at open issues related to accessibility, reading talk pages all over the place, and pestering folks at #mediawiki on IRC (where I appear as "hyla").

Thanks in advance for your help (and for reading this far down!) --

cbc

-- Callie B. Carroll MS-HCI Student Georgia Tech | College of Computing http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~callie