Hi, I am running MediaWiki on an isolated intranet, I would like to have documentation for the users&adimistrators available on the same network.
I searched the net(google) for downloadable documentation, All I found was a reference on this list: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2004-December/002584.html A person with a similar problem a year ago, which did not get any replies.
I tried downloading all the documentation using wget, but even after solving some technical limitations(setting a friendly wait, and altering the user agent string) I still found I was downloading a lot of junk(as far as I am concerned) and that after downloading, the files I get are not very clear, as they have very different style to them.
Is there a downloadable user's manual of some sort? Is there a simple way of mirroring the online documentation?
thanx in advance, Meir.
MediaWiki, alas, "ships" with a blank Help namespace. I'm hoping, myself, that we can at some point start shipping with content; alas, most of it needs to be rewritten and released under the GPL or a compatible license, so that it can be included with the software.
I'm working on that, when I have time - which is not a lot. You might have noticed the newer, cleaner FAQ at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:FAQ.
Anyone else want to give a hand sorting out some documentation? Ought we to get a few people from the main projects involved writing it, perhaps?
Rob Church
On 01/01/06, Meir Maor meirmaor@gmail.com wrote:
Hi, I am running MediaWiki on an isolated intranet, I would like to have documentation for the users&adimistrators available on the same network.
I searched the net(google) for downloadable documentation, All I found was a reference on this list: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2004-December/002584.html A person with a similar problem a year ago, which did not get any replies.
I tried downloading all the documentation using wget, but even after solving some technical limitations(setting a friendly wait, and altering the user agent string) I still found I was downloading a lot of junk(as far as I am concerned) and that after downloading, the files I get are not very clear, as they have very different style to them.
Is there a downloadable user's manual of some sort? Is there a simple way of mirroring the online documentation?
thanx in advance, Meir. _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
On 1/3/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
MediaWiki, alas, "ships" with a blank Help namespace. I'm hoping, myself, that we can at some point start shipping with content; alas, most of it needs to be rewritten and released under the GPL or a compatible license, so that it can be included with the software.
<snip>
Anyone else want to give a hand sorting out some documentation? Ought we to get a few people from the main projects involved writing it, perhaps?
I noticed that mediawiki ships with a lot of holes in it. I would have expected the excellent online docs to either be scattered throughout a default installation or available as something that's importable.
This is the first I've heard of a licensing problem with the existing documentation.
Yes, others should be contacted on this and a general plan should be made (i.e. what are the topic goals and what is the "win situation")
I want to help. Where do I begin?
On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 11:57:18AM -0500, Sy Ali wrote:
I noticed that mediawiki ships with a lot of holes in it. I would have expected the excellent online docs to either be scattered throughout a default installation or available as something that's importable.
In which language, then, would it be the best? In other words: how bloated do you prefer the package?
That, of course is another issue. We'd have to populate the Help namespace based on the language selected during installation, assuming a set of pages existed for it. I don't see a technical problem, with that, however.
Rob Church
On 03/01/06, Yaroslav Fedevych jaroslaw@linux.org.ua wrote:
On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 11:57:18AM -0500, Sy Ali wrote:
I noticed that mediawiki ships with a lot of holes in it. I would have expected the excellent online docs to either be scattered throughout a default installation or available as something that's importable.
In which language, then, would it be the best? In other words: how bloated do you prefer the package?
-- * Have you considered the option of getting the joke? If not, try it now and redeem your soul.
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
On 1/3/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
MediaWiki, alas, "ships" with a blank Help namespace. I'm hoping, myself, that we can at some point start shipping with content; alas, most of it needs to be rewritten and released under the GPL or a compatible license, so that it can be included with the software.
When I look at wikipedia, meta etc, they all seem to claim that the content is licensed under the GFDL. Is this really an issue?
I'm working on that, when I have time - which is not a lot. You might have noticed the newer, cleaner FAQ at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:FAQ.
Anyone else want to give a hand sorting out some documentation? Ought we to get a few people from the main projects involved writing it, perhaps?
Good stuff, but I think that the stuff on meta is targetted to those of us who install and customize mediawiki. What I and a lot of others who are running mediawiki based wiki servers would like is the level of user documentation available to users of wikipedia, which has a lot of help and tutorial info in the help and project namespaces.
All of that material claims to be available under the GFDL. The problem is that there isn't a good way to 'port' it to another wiki. One problem is how to copy it without a lot of effort; another is that it needs to be editted to change references to wikipedia in the text which need changing, while (probably) keeping page links to most wikipedia articles in the main namespace as inter-wiki links.
Then there's the problem of separating out and dealing with the policy articles which need to be adapted and/or replaced on other wikis.
Some time ago I went through considerable effort to manually adapt quite a bit of the wikipedia tutorial/help material for my own wiki. Unfortunately even after that effort, I don't have anything which is easily shared with others.
-- Rick DeNatale
Visit the Project Mercury Wiki Site http://www.mercuryspacecraft.com/
Rick DeNatale wrote:
On 1/3/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
MediaWiki, alas, "ships" with a blank Help namespace. I'm hoping, myself, that we can at some point start shipping with content; alas, most of it needs to be rewritten and released under the GPL or a compatible license, so that it can be included with the software.
When I look at wikipedia, meta etc, they all seem to claim that the content is licensed under the GFDL. Is this really an issue?
GFDL isn't a problem for distributing a documentation package along with the software. (It's not *part of* the software. It would just be shipped with it, like a manual.)
It may be a problem for people wanting to *import and use* that documentation on their non-GFDL wikis. This is why there's been talk about making some doc pages that are explicitly public domain, so nobody has to worry about the basic help pages having a confusing license that mixes with their other content.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Hi everyone,
* Can I, by any chance, have a wiki where part of the content belongs to GFDL like wikipedia; and the other part belongs to copyrighted licensed?
My wiki is going to carry both copyrighted documents by third parties, and documents under GFDL.
So I don't considerer my wiki a non-GFDL wiki. It is natural have a mixed copyright. And in certain point wikipedia will face that.
* Is there some way to link each page to its correspondent license? I was thinking in creating a namespace for copyrighted documents so that all pages under that namespace would carry a different license at the bottom. In this case, actually, I could use all http://creativecommons.org/license/ on my wiki in a per page basis!!! I will be happy.
I am not a lawyer, so excuse me if I am completely out of track:)
Thanks a lot, mauro.
-----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Brion Vibber Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 4:43 PM To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Downloadable MediaWiki documentation
Rick DeNatale wrote:
On 1/3/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
MediaWiki, alas, "ships" with a blank Help namespace. I'm hoping, myself, that we can at some point start shipping with content; alas, most of it needs to be rewritten and released under the GPL or a compatible license, so that it can be included with the software.
When I look at wikipedia, meta etc, they all seem to claim that the content is licensed under the GFDL. Is this really an issue?
GFDL isn't a problem for distributing a documentation package along with the software. (It's not *part of* the software. It would just be shipped with it, like a manual.)
It may be a problem for people wanting to *import and use* that documentation on their non-GFDL wikis. This is why there's been talk about making some doc pages that are explicitly public domain, so nobody has to worry about the basic help pages having a confusing license that mixes with their other content.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Mauro do Carmo wrote:
- Can I, by any chance, have a wiki where part of the content belongs to
GFDL like wikipedia; and the other part belongs to copyrighted licensed?
Sure, but it may be confusing.
- Is there some way to link each page to its correspondent license?
Not at this time, other than explicitly doing so in the page. This would not tie into the CC copyright metadata, if included.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Rick: Yes, end-user stuff (editing, etc.) is what I was thinking. The administration guides don't need to go into the Help namespace at all.
Brion: Couldn't we adapt the script that populates the MediaWiki namespace to do the actual adding to the wiki upon installation, if the administrator opts for this? Or at least, duplicate it, rename it, and tweak it for this particular purpose.
Rob Church
On 04/01/06, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
Rick DeNatale wrote:
On 1/3/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
MediaWiki, alas, "ships" with a blank Help namespace. I'm hoping, myself, that we can at some point start shipping with content; alas, most of it needs to be rewritten and released under the GPL or a compatible license, so that it can be included with the software.
When I look at wikipedia, meta etc, they all seem to claim that the content is licensed under the GFDL. Is this really an issue?
GFDL isn't a problem for distributing a documentation package along with the software. (It's not *part of* the software. It would just be shipped with it, like a manual.)
It may be a problem for people wanting to *import and use* that documentation on their non-GFDL wikis. This is why there's been talk about making some doc pages that are explicitly public domain, so nobody has to worry about the basic help pages having a confusing license that mixes with their other content.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Rob Church wrote:
Brion: Couldn't we adapt the script that populates the MediaWiki namespace to do the actual adding to the wiki upon installation, if the administrator opts for this? Or at least, duplicate it, rename it, and tweak it for this particular purpose.
Sure, if there were something to fill it with.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On 1/4/06, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
Rob Church wrote:
Brion: Couldn't we adapt the script that populates the MediaWiki namespace to do the actual adding to the wiki upon installation, if the administrator opts for this? Or at least, duplicate it, rename it, and tweak it for this particular purpose.
Sure, if there were something to fill it with.
So basically what would need to happen is a separate space would need to be carved out somewhere, and then documents would have to be hand-migrated to that documentation-wiki. This project would have to then appropriately label the licenses and then volunteers would have to rewrite the non-pd documentation into the public domain.
This wiki's help data would then need to be bundled up as a documentation package either included with or separately downloadable.. and it would be either inserted by the installer or installed by the administrator (i.e. some sort of importable thing, or mysql dump or the like).
This wiki would be the "master" and various wikimedia projects would import it or link to it. The hope would be to have people go to the one reference wiki to make changes.
It all seems really messy to me, unless there is a way to have this documentation data automatically synced between multiple wikis. And while you're there, it would be nice if edits on any of those wikis automatically propagated to every other wiki.. but that's blue-sky. =/
Even if that documentation bundle was ready right now, there is no way for another wiki to import it all and then to mark every page in their help section to indicate that what is seen locally is just a copy of the official documentation-wiki version. This would be necessary to warn people to go to the source wiki to make changes and that any local changes could be overwritten without warning by a future import. I recently posted a feature request which would cover this use (per-section announcements)
As an aside, maybe such documentation would be better in its own private namespace, to not conflict with Help?
Just brainstorming..
I was thinking of having it far more optional, right down to a check box on the installer page - "Install Help namespace content". While we'd perhaps provide a script to update it as altered forms of the documentation were made available, we'd prevent said script from overwriting existing pages in the wiki.
I'm not sure about all the linking to/from Meta, however, aside from for the Wikimedia wikis, and some of those will want to use customised documentation.
Of course, the simpler option again is to provide an XML dump of some help namespace content, e.g. from MediaWiki.org. Administrators on the destination wikis could import that with few difficulties, after all.
Rob Church
On 05/01/06, Sy Ali sy1234@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/4/06, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
Rob Church wrote:
Brion: Couldn't we adapt the script that populates the MediaWiki namespace to do the actual adding to the wiki upon installation, if the administrator opts for this? Or at least, duplicate it, rename it, and tweak it for this particular purpose.
Sure, if there were something to fill it with.
So basically what would need to happen is a separate space would need to be carved out somewhere, and then documents would have to be hand-migrated to that documentation-wiki. This project would have to then appropriately label the licenses and then volunteers would have to rewrite the non-pd documentation into the public domain.
This wiki's help data would then need to be bundled up as a documentation package either included with or separately downloadable.. and it would be either inserted by the installer or installed by the administrator (i.e. some sort of importable thing, or mysql dump or the like).
This wiki would be the "master" and various wikimedia projects would import it or link to it. The hope would be to have people go to the one reference wiki to make changes.
It all seems really messy to me, unless there is a way to have this documentation data automatically synced between multiple wikis. And while you're there, it would be nice if edits on any of those wikis automatically propagated to every other wiki.. but that's blue-sky. =/
Even if that documentation bundle was ready right now, there is no way for another wiki to import it all and then to mark every page in their help section to indicate that what is seen locally is just a copy of the official documentation-wiki version. This would be necessary to warn people to go to the source wiki to make changes and that any local changes could be overwritten without warning by a future import. I recently posted a feature request which would cover this use (per-section announcements)
As an aside, maybe such documentation would be better in its own private namespace, to not conflict with Help?
Just brainstorming.. _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
That would be good enough to get most admins started. Then they (and their users) should have sufficient documentation locally to make all the necessary changes to make the documentation fit the local situation.
I know I would have loved to have that when I started as I have my wiki on my personal laptop which is not always connected to the internet.
On 1/5/06, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
I was thinking of having it far more optional, right down to a check box on the installer page - "Install Help namespace content". While we'd perhaps provide a script to update it as altered forms of the documentation were made available, we'd prevent said script from overwriting existing pages in the wiki.
I'm not sure about all the linking to/from Meta, however, aside from for the Wikimedia wikis, and some of those will want to use customised documentation.
Of course, the simpler option again is to provide an XML dump of some help namespace content, e.g. from MediaWiki.org. Administrators on the destination wikis could import that with few difficulties, after all.
Rob Church
On 05/01/06, Sy Ali sy1234@gmail.com wrote:
On 1/4/06, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
Rob Church wrote:
Brion: Couldn't we adapt the script that populates the MediaWiki namespace to do the actual adding to the wiki upon installation, if the administrator opts for this? Or at least, duplicate it, rename it, and tweak it for this particular purpose.
Sure, if there were something to fill it with.
So basically what would need to happen is a separate space would need to be carved out somewhere, and then documents would have to be hand-migrated to that documentation-wiki. This project would have to then appropriately label the licenses and then volunteers would have to rewrite the non-pd documentation into the public domain.
This wiki's help data would then need to be bundled up as a documentation package either included with or separately downloadable.. and it would be either inserted by the installer or installed by the administrator (i.e. some sort of importable thing, or mysql dump or the like).
This wiki would be the "master" and various wikimedia projects would import it or link to it. The hope would be to have people go to the one reference wiki to make changes.
It all seems really messy to me, unless there is a way to have this documentation data automatically synced between multiple wikis. And while you're there, it would be nice if edits on any of those wikis automatically propagated to every other wiki.. but that's blue-sky. =/
Even if that documentation bundle was ready right now, there is no way for another wiki to import it all and then to mark every page in their help section to indicate that what is seen locally is just a copy of the official documentation-wiki version. This would be necessary to warn people to go to the source wiki to make changes and that any local changes could be overwritten without warning by a future import. I recently posted a feature request which would cover this use (per-section announcements)
As an aside, maybe such documentation would be better in its own private namespace, to not conflict with Help?
Just brainstorming.. _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
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