[Mediawiki-l] Common markup syntax & ideas?

[Jeff Carr]

On 08/12/2005 02:21 PM, Rowan Collins wrote:
> On 12/08/05, Jeff Carr <jcarr at linuxmachines.com> wrote:
> 
>>The mozilla developers have put up this markup reference page:
>>http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Help:Wiki_Markup_Reference

> quick glance through it suggests more like a crib-sheet

Funny :)

> for software-specific (not site-specific) markup rules.
> As such, "MediaWiki handbook" on meta contains
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing

Great page. I might humbly request that it be added more prominently to
the common "edit" page. It isn't clear to new users where to find that
information. Where better than having that information right on the Edit
page! (If you say,well there is that small edit page link on the bottom,
yes that's not good enough and doesn't take you to the URL above (which
is a really good page! IMHO)).

> Just to be clear, any wiki that uses MediaWiki will adhere to the same
> markup syntax to do the same thing - within a fairly narrow margin of
> choice - because it is the MediaWiki software that's in charge of
> interpretting it. What *won't* be the same is how they want a page to
> look - '''this will always be how to do bold''', but it may or may not
> be how the site wants you to format the name of a page.

Right; that sounds like a very sound rule to me. I hope you also provide
a common css style sheet with the wiki that contains all the font
definitions, etc. I assume that's what you do now...

> And, of course, if a wiki is using a *different* piece of wiki
> software, it will use its own idiosyncratic markup, which may or may
> not even resemble MediaWiki's; there have been attempts to do
> something about that, but none have got very far.

I'm sure that will come in time. Just keep doing a great job and make
your markup page in a clear, consistent and as rock solid/unchanging as
possible (Don't move that URL around) and it's likely the other wiki's
will come around. Let heavy dev move to templates.(?) My guess it's
likely you've implemented 99% of the markup anyone will want by now.
Send ambassadors to the other major wiki's.

Awesome job to everyone involved. You're true revolutionaries.
Jeff