Hi,
I'd like to know who is *currently* working on the documentation for MediaWiki, and where the intended central place for this is, if there's na. If there's need, I'd like to volunteer to help out, if I can.
I think, the intended starting point is http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide, but I found lots of relevant information scattered around somewhere else on the web (e.g. about importing database dumps), in the installation archives, and on Wikitech-L, which is not accessible (meaning linked) from the User's Guide.
Also, I found some information missing at all, e.g. "To update from one version of MediaWiki to another" just says "do these steps...", or the section about properly configuring the Rewrite Engine in Apache httpd in somehow short ;)
Last but not least, I think the naming "User's Guide" might be somehow confusing; to me, this suggests a manual directed primarily towards the (end) *user* of a running MediaWiki installation, giving help how to *use* the Wiki (e.g. conventions on how to edit, how to link, etc.).
IMHO, it'd be more clear if the documentation would start on http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docs or http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation; this would spread into four sections, targeted at different persons: (1) General Information and Overview (e.g. What is it? How does it work? Who's using it? Architecture, etc.), (2) Installation and Administration Guide (current sections "Installation" and "Configuration" [missing]), (3) User's Guide (current section "Using MediaWiki"), and (4) Developer's Guide (maybe current "http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker", but mostly missing atm).
Greetings, -asb
On Nov 20, 2003, at 08:18, Agon S. Buchholz wrote:
I'd like to know who is *currently* working on the documentation for MediaWiki, and where the intended central place for this is, if there's na. If there's need, I'd like to volunteer to help out, if I can.
I think maveric149's been working on the end-user docs in dribs and drabs, but the site-runner documentation isn't being very actively worked on at the moment; existing docs are sort of scattered in several places half-finished. It'd be great if you could help out!
If you'd like to start consolidating things under [[MediaWiki Administrator's Guide]] or such on meta, that'd be a great place to start.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Brion Vibber wrote:
I think maveric149's been working on the end-user docs in dribs and drabs, but the site-runner documentation isn't being very actively worked on at the moment; existing docs are sort of scattered in several places half-finished. It'd be great if you could help out!
If you'd like to start consolidating things under [[MediaWiki Administrator's Guide]] or such on meta, that'd be a great place to start.
I started my brainstorming and put some stuff on http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation; there it doesn't disturb the existing documentation and seems quite logical to me. However, all of this is just a proposal, of course.
The new documentation will consists of six parts:
PART 1: Introduction - General Information and Architecture. PART 2: Administrator's Guide - Installation, Configuration, Administration, Care & Feeding. PART 3: User's Guide - Usage of the MediaWiki Software. PART 4: Developer's Guide - Development, Bug Tracking, Roadmap, Known Issues, (Feature Requests). APPENDIX: Additional Information. FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions.
This is more or less brainstorming and content collection at the moment; it will take a few more days until I have a first draft. At the moment, it's just six new pages (e.g. http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation:_Introduction), but I'll restructure it somehow further on the "http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation:" stub (e.g. http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation:Installation, http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation:Administration etc.), if nobody opposes.
Part 1 is quite easy to complete, most of it exists and needs just some rewriting; the features list is from Sourceforge, I think, it's not up-to-date; e.g. there are still subpages mentioned.
Part 2 ("Administrator's Guide") needs some thought and restructuring, and factual checking, this will take some time and help by an experienced MediWiki admin.
The skeleton of Part 3 already exists in Meta and Wikipedia, so there's no problem.
With Part 4, I definitely will need some help. My idea was, at least to get a technical introduction to the architechture of the scripts (whcih file does what, which depends on what, etc.), so a new developer gets a kickstart; or maybe this should just contain some pointers how to access the CVS?
And at the very end someone with better English skills should correct my Denglish ;)
However, comments and any help is mostly appreciated, as always.
Greetings, -asb
Hi,
first of all, there's some progress in my attempt to extend and rewrite the documentation for MediaWiki (see http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation); there were some discrepancies with Mav which we have worked out, as I hope.
Currently I'm structuring the sections, collecting text and testing some instructions. Doing this, I ran into some problems.
(1) Importing a database dump - this applies to section [http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation:Administration#Getting_data:_Im...].
(1a) This applies toWhen importing the database dumps cur_ and old_ of the German Wikipedia from 20031125 (bzip2 -dc cur_* | mysql -u wikiadmin -padminpass wikidb, then calling php4 rebuildlinks.php), there appeared failures when running rebuildlinks.php. The script outputs something like
Rebuilding link tables (pass 1). 1000 of 72120 articles scanned. 2000 of 72120 articles scanned. ... 46000 of 72120 articles scanned. 47000 of 72120 articles scanned.
and then gives an error message:
"Error in the database. There was an syntax error in the database query. The last database query was: "INSERT INTO rebuildlinks (rl_f_id,rl_f_title,rl_to) VALUES " from the fuction "". MySQL reported error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax." [...]"
(This is roughly translated from German; the original says "Fehler in der Datenbank [...] Es gab einen Syntaxfehler in der Datenbankabfrage. Die letzte Datenbankabfrage lautete: "INSERT INTO rebuildlinks (rl_f_id,rl_f_title,rl_to) VALUES " aus der Funktion "". MySQL meldete den Fehler: "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 1".")
The md5 checksums of old_ and cur_ matched those given on the website.
What is recommended to deal with an error like this? Wait a few days and download a newer dump? Should the wikidb be dropped or cleared before importing another dump?
(1b) When just importing cur_, rebuildlinks.php runs fine, but when accessing the Main_Page ("Hauptseite"), it says that there are "0 articles", but the wiki pages exist, in this case, several thousend pages. Is this the wanted behaviour, or is there something else to do after running rebuildlinks.php? Also, newly created pages are not being counted.
(3) Rewrite Engine - this applies to section [http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation:Configuration].
The statement references to an external RewriteMap which I couldn't find:
RewriteMap ampescape int:ampescape RewriteRule ^/wiki/(.*)$ /wiki.phtml?title=${ampescape:$1} [L]
The ../maintenance directory contains just apache-ampersand.diff. Is the RewriteMap used by Wikipedia somewhere publicly available?
Thanks & greetings, -asb
On Nov 30, 2003, at 15:23, Agon S. Buchholz wrote:
"Error in the database. There was an syntax error in the database query. The last database query was: "INSERT INTO rebuildlinks (rl_f_id,rl_f_title,rl_to) VALUES " from the fuction "". MySQL reported error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax."
The new rebuildlinks script is heavily rewritten; you may wish to grab the current dev branch out of CVS (which we're running now on Wikipedia) or wait a few days for the new stable release.
(1b) When just importing cur_, rebuildlinks.php runs fine, but when accessing the Main_Page ("Hauptseite"), it says that there are "0 articles", but the wiki pages exist, in this case, several thousend pages. Is this the wanted behaviour, or is there something else to do after running rebuildlinks.php? Also, newly created pages are not being counted.
To rebuild the article count manually: SELECT @foo:=COUNT(*) FROM cur WHERE cur_namespace=0 AND cur_is_redirect=0 AND cur_text like '%[[%'; UPDATE site_stats SET ss_good_articles=@foo;
The statement references to an external RewriteMap which I couldn't find:
RewriteMap ampescape int:ampescape RewriteRule ^/wiki/(.*)$ /wiki.phtml?title=${ampescape:$1} [L]
The ../maintenance directory contains just apache-ampersand.diff. Is the RewriteMap used by Wikipedia somewhere publicly available?
That is a patch for Apache 1.3.x which creates a new internal rewritemap function called ampescape. The one and only thing it does is to escape the '&' character into '%26' so that titles including the ampersand won't be corrupted when rewritten (since & is a reserved character in query strings, as a field separator).
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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