A lot of the replies were helpful, in particular Ryan Lane and Yaron's replies. Also
made a quick reply to Domas.
First to Ryan:
This is likely the right list.
Are you aware of the Wikipedia usability initiative?
Have you seen the
new skin they are creating (Vector), or the awesome new features they
are adding? If not, please see the usability wiki:
While vector is a step in the right direction, it's still pretty dry and plain.
As a default skin it is perfectly fine, but i'd be nice to get some fancier skins out
the box and be able to change the default skin for ALL users through the admin's
preferences rather than editing a file.
The skin system is also likely to have a major update
in a very future
version of MediaWiki. Look through this list's archives, the
discussion was fairly recent.
Great news!
-A major pain to update! Wordpress upgrades are so
simple.
I don't really find updates to be terribly
difficult. You mostly just
check out (or download) the newest version, and run update.php. This
is probably more difficult without shell access.
I have shell access, but it's
not something I or a lot of people like doing. Most people don't want to do command
lines except very technical people. Not everyone who runs a wiki is technical.
Shouldn't the user of the software be kept in mind? I mean I know it's technically
for wikimedia sites, but they can't pretend to be unaware that thousands of people are
using it for their own personal wiki projects. I don't demand change, but isn't
acknowledging your users a basic programing practice?
I don't
want to go to my ftp to download my local settings file, add a few lines then reupload it.
This is caveman-like behavior for the modern internet.
Get a host that supports SSH.
Use VI, Emacs, nano, pico, etc.
I do have SSH, again, it's not the way I want to
do it. Old school style. On the modern internet, it'd be nice to have a more modern
way to editing my local settings. But it's good to hear someone is developing this.
You are more than welcome to submit patches, and/or
help develop the
features you want. I maintain a number of extensions, and have worked
with the MediaWiki code base for a number of years. I've found the
Wikimedia foundation, and the core developers to be very welcoming of
improvements to the software.
I wish I could! I have experience in java and c++, but
not php except modifying a few basic changes of an already written php file. Also just
jumping into a project without knowing the structure and how to write an extension is also
no easy task and would take a long time. If time is money, i'd rather pay a developer
to develop it, but chances are the features i would need would be useful to other folks
and those features would be nice if it came in the package by default.
Thanks again for your reply, it was really helpful and insightful Ryan.
________________________________
From: Yaron Koren <yaron57(a)gmail.com>
Finally, on the more general subject of Wikimedia's
relationship to
MediaWiki: I do think it would be nice if Wikimedia, and outside MediaWiki
developers, were more aware of, and more positive about, MediaWiki's
popularity in the outside world. It's used very heavily as an enterprise
wiki around the world, and I think for good reason: it's robust, stable,
very feature-rich, heavily translated, and when used with the set of
extensions around Semantic MediaWiki I think it's in a class of its own. I
just think a better answer when people ask about problems with MediaWiki is
to say "I don't know", or "I think someone's working on that",
rather than
"MediaWiki is intended for use by Wikimedia projects, and if you have a
problem using it, you should switch to another wiki application." First, for
many uses there is no better wiki software, especially not for the cost; and
second, there are a lot of people, especially among extension developers but
also in general, who are trying to improve MediaWiki as a
corporate/organizational application. I just think it would be nice if more
people celebrated MediaWiki's popularity, instead of ignoring or trying to
discourage it. :)
-Yaron
I agree 100%, especially the part I bolded. Also god bless the developers and extension
writers for doing this out of their own free time, I guess I misunderstood the process and
thought wikimedia had a code team that was paid.
Also I saw on a news site:
"The foundation has snared an $890,000 grant from the Stanton Foundation for the
project and plans to assemble a five-person team to identify what exactly is turning some
users off."
$890,000 for only a 5 man team? It would be great if this money went into some of the
common changes people need.
Full View
_______________________________________________________________________
MediaWiki is very modern product, just not on the visible side (though maybe usability
initiative will change that). It has lots of fascinating modern things internally :)
Overall it's awesome no doubt (otherwise I
wouldn't have used it in the first place), but a few of the practices (i.e. editing
localsettings file through shell or ftp) and gui/aesthetics should definitely be more
'modern.'
>-Default skins are boring
They were not back in 2005 =)
In case you
haven't heard, it's 2010 lol. A lot has changed since then.
>
-A major pain to update! Wordpress upgrades are so
simple.
'svn up' -> done! ;-) Same for Wordpress...
:)
The average person who wants to start a wik is gonna have no idea how to do that,
much less even understand what svn up means. While I don't expect to be dumbed down a
huge degree, a little bit more simplicity wouldn't hurt would it?
> -Better customization so people can get a wiki the
way they want.
Feel free to develop it that way.
Easier said
than done.
> It should be more like the wikis on wikia,
Wikia is mediawiki with extensions. So it is modern,
again?
Wikia is heavily modified to give the gui a much more modern feel. Again
i'm mostly focusing on the aesthetics. Unfortunately I don't think wikia
distributes their skins.
> except without me having to learn css and php to
make those types of customizations.
Why should we be facilitating _your_ needs?
It's not just not my needs. It's about user friendliness for anyone who is
using wikimedia to work on their wiki project. While the developers have no obligation to
do it, it would be nice if they realized who their users are other than wikimedia.
> Give me some option, some places to put widgets.
Not every wiki is going to be as formal as the ones on wikimedia sites.
You can put 'widgets' via extensions. If you
need something more, feel free to develop that.
> I don't want to go to my ftp to download my local settings file, add a few lines
then reupload it. This is caveman-like behavior for the modern internet.
> -Being able to manage extensions like wordpress
does.
Feel free to develop it :)
These types of
replies are hilarious. It's like
Iphone user: "Dear Apple, if your iphone had the following features it would be great
(A) (B) (C) ... "
Apple: "Oh if you want those features, go ahead and develop them on your own."
If I knew how to I would have done it already. What kind of advice is that? Seriously lol