I am planning on adding forum functionality to my wiki via extension. I'dd first like to get comments from those of you more knowledgeable in regards to php and MediaWiki. I would appreciate suggested modifications, or even better, signs of support, so that I know that I'm not going about this in a bassackwords way. Solutions to the problems at the bottom are especially looked for. Here is my plan (which makes extensive use of subpages):
It would be called via something like <forum><forum>. This could be on talk pages or main article pages. This will create a thread index, much like you see with your normal VBulletin or PHPbb type forums. This page and all of its subpages should then (desirably) be protected from editing.
Each thread would be a subpage of the the initial article. Each message would be a subpage of the article. Each message would be included into the thread page via template includes ( {{{{}}}} ). So using 'Gatorade' as an example, we would have these potential addresses (with Taste as a potential thread Title)...
Gatorade -The thread index Gatorade/Taste -The Taste thread, containg all of the messages in this thread Gatorade/Taste/16 -The 16th message of the Taste thread, viewed by itself
or
Talk:Gatorade -The thread index Talk:Gatorade/Taste -The Taste thread, containg all of the messages in this thread Talk:Gatorade/Taste/16 -The 16th message of the Taste thread, viewed by itself
Some benefits of this system: Requires very little modification to the main MediaWiki code. = Easy to update MediaWiki in the future
It prevents people from making multiple threads with the same title. If someone else came down a few months later and wanted to talk about 'Taste', if they managed to avoid the 'Search' function they migh Possibly use the same title as before, in whichcase they would get a warning about it and the suggestion of adding on to the previous discussion if necessary.
It is easy to link to forums instead of the conventional way with urls like : http://someforum.somesite.com/viewtopic.php?t=138 http://someforum.somesite.com/viewforum.php?f=3&sid=e48431baee22f58e0656... and http://someforum.somesite.com/index.php?s=3843d342de247afe550768eae06be2d2&a...
It Doesn't require it's own db schema and content is fully integrated with MediaWiki.
Some drawbacks: Its a bit clunky because it doesn't have its own db schema.
There were some other ones, but I forgot them now :/
Here are some problems I know I will face when implementing this: The disabling of directly editing a whole Namespace and only the namespace or, all potential article subpages for one particular Article. Preventing each edit or new message from showing up on recent changes and instead have a more Customized Recent Changes Message like 'Talk:Gatorade : Loplin posted a reply in the Taste thread.'
Again, comments are appreciated. Thanks Nathan Spaeth
-- If you have a penny and I have a penny, and we exchange pennies, we both have one penny but if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange ideas, then, we will both have two ideas.
Nathan Spaeth schrieb:
I am planning on adding forum functionality to my wiki via extension. I'dd first like to get comments from those of you more knowledgeable in regards to php and MediaWiki. I would appreciate suggested modifications, ...
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Zem/Forum_extension
Implementations:
http://wiki.wagendorf.de/index.php/Spezial:Forum http://www.giswiki.de/index.php/Spezial:Forum
I wrote a forum extension that could just show forum stuff within the wiki page. It would show a forum's threads or an individual topic. Clicking on something would take you to the forum where you could post and such.
It's still running in my wiki, but it isn't being used... because the forum isn't being used. I've found that an email group is the preferred way for people to talk about the wiki rather than use the forum.
The extension works with phpBB and essentially scrapes the forum and shows the results in a hide-able DIV. The <forum></forum> options include show and hide (if you want to start out with the forum shown). Clicking a link that the extension creates hides or shows the div with the forum.
Here's the syntax: <forum>show=1,f=1,t=1,title=Some Title</forum> where f=# some forum number, t=# some topic number, title is what to show in the hide/show link.
You can have it if you want - just drop me an email. Maybe I should post this on meta...
- MHart
----- Original Message ----- From: "Nathan Spaeth" loplin@gmail.com To: wikitech-l@wikimedia.org Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2006 9:24 PM Subject: [Wikitech-l] Writing a Forum Extension
I am planning on adding forum functionality to my wiki via extension. I'dd first like to get comments from those of you more knowledgeable in regards to php and MediaWiki. I would appreciate suggested modifications, or even better, signs of support, so that I know that I'm not going about this in a bassackwords way. Solutions to the problems at the bottom are especially looked for. Here is my plan (which makes extensive use of subpages):
It would be called via something like <forum><forum>. This could be on talk pages or main article pages. This will create a thread index, much like you see with your normal VBulletin or PHPbb type forums. This page and all of its subpages should then (desirably) be protected from editing.
Each thread would be a subpage of the the initial article. Each message would be a subpage of the article. Each message would be included into the thread page via template includes ( {{{{}}}} ). So using 'Gatorade' as an example, we would have these potential addresses (with Taste as a potential thread Title)...
Gatorade -The thread index Gatorade/Taste -The Taste thread, containg all of the messages in this thread Gatorade/Taste/16 -The 16th message of the Taste thread, viewed by itself
or
Talk:Gatorade -The thread index Talk:Gatorade/Taste -The Taste thread, containg all of the messages in this thread Talk:Gatorade/Taste/16 -The 16th message of the Taste thread, viewed by itself
Some benefits of this system: Requires very little modification to the main MediaWiki code. = Easy to update MediaWiki in the future
It prevents people from making multiple threads with the same title. If someone else came down a few months later and wanted to talk about 'Taste', if they managed to avoid the 'Search' function they migh Possibly use the same title as before, in whichcase they would get a warning about it and the suggestion of adding on to the previous discussion if necessary.
It is easy to link to forums instead of the conventional way with urls like : http://someforum.somesite.com/viewtopic.php?t=138 http://someforum.somesite.com/viewforum.php?f=3&sid=e48431baee22f58e0656... and http://someforum.somesite.com/index.php?s=3843d342de247afe550768eae06be2d2&a...
It Doesn't require it's own db schema and content is fully integrated with MediaWiki.
Some drawbacks: Its a bit clunky because it doesn't have its own db schema.
There were some other ones, but I forgot them now :/
Here are some problems I know I will face when implementing this: The disabling of directly editing a whole Namespace and only the namespace or, all potential article subpages for one particular Article. Preventing each edit or new message from showing up on recent changes and instead have a more Customized Recent Changes Message like 'Talk:Gatorade : Loplin posted a reply in the Taste thread.'
Again, comments are appreciated. Thanks Nathan Spaeth
-- If you have a penny and I have a penny, and we exchange pennies, we both have one penny but if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange ideas, then, we will both have two ideas. _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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