andrew fabbro wrote: Not really; there's just the code. In brief, to add a new page: * Insert a complete record into the cur table. (cur_id is auto_increment, do not assign a value to it!) * Insert a summary record into the recentchanges table. * Update links, brokenlinks, imagelinks, and categorylinks with the pages that your new page links to. * Move links from brokenlinks to links if there are existing broken links to this page. * Update the cur_touched field of any pages affected by the last step. * Insert an appropriate record into the searchindex table. * Update the article count in site_stats if and only if the new article passes the article count criteria (is in namespace 0, is not a redirect, and contains at least one instance of the string "[[") To delete a page: * Copy the cur and old records into the archive table so it can be restored if need be * Delete the records from cur and old. * Delete the searchindex row. * Delete summary rows from recentchanges. * Remove outgoing links from links, brokenlinks, imagelinks, and categorylinks. * Move any incoming links from links to brokenlinks. * Update cur_touched field of any page affected by the last step. * Add a note to the deletion log page (creating it if necessary) * Add a recentchanges summary row for the deletion log update * Update site_stats as for new page, decrementing rather than incrementing. Updating all these things correctly might be a bit tricky, and you'll have to update your scripts when the database format changes. You might consider using a client-side bot to avoid duplicating the whole of MediaWiki's backend. ;) There's an actively maintained python-based bot family at http://pywikipediabot.sf.net -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Jakob- Yes, that would be one option. A single login does not get you a single watchlist. There is currently code for single signon in CVS (don't get too excited - we have no migration code yet), but that will "only" allow you to re-use your user data and session across all Wikimedia projects. A combined watchlist is a project of its own. Meta *is* our cross-project wiki. If we keep working around its deficiencies we have less of an incentive to fix them. The more we use it the larger the pressure will be to have things like single sign-on and a proper internationalized interface. With the developer funding trial starting soon, this could be not too far in the future. What is Wikipedia documentation and what is MediaWiki documentation? To me, Wikipedia "documentation" is mostly policies, community pages and the like. These really belong uniformly in the Wikipedia: namespace and not on Meta. (We may at some point try to develop a set of importable policies on meta as well, but to me this is a project for a later stage.) None of this belongs in Help:. How do we get people involved in working on the Meta documentation? E.g. on Wikipedia: 1) Remove all MediaWiki documentation from the Wikipedia: namespace 2) Redirect and link to local Help: pages where needed. 3) Add a [[Template:Obsolete]] to all local Help: pages: "The documentation is currently being consolidated on http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myhelpnamespace:Contents - please do not edit these pages anymore and edit directly on meta instead." 4) Protect all Help: pages. So, essentially, by locking people out from doing it locally ;-). It will be a bit ugly in the transition phase but it's certainly workable. The Help: namespace of individual projects should not be used for editing but for importing only (maybe some custom Help: pages and some header/ footer changes, but that's it). The Project: namespace is for project- specific information. Wikimedia is more than just Wikipedia. That's the whole point of putting it on meta - not giving preference to any individual project in maintaining the documentation. For a Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote or Wikisource user, editing pages on Wikipedia is no easier than editing them on Meta. Wikipedia is a bad foundation to build cross-project documentation on. As projects like Wikibooks grow and new ones like Wikinews are started, its prominence in the Wikimedia world will decline. To a Wikinews editor of 2005, Wikipedia may be what Wikisource is to most Wikipedians - an interesting project but not their primary point of interest. Furthermore, the best way to educate our editors that this is a cross- project documentation is to put it on Meta:. As long as editors have a feeling that they are editing on Wikipedia, they will write specifically *about* Wikipedia. Regards, Erik