[Mediawiki-l] Custom per user navigation portlet?

[Roger Chrisman]

Custom per user navigation portlet
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Anyone done this?

Any ideas how to simply do it?

_Purpose
To allow users to bookmark site pages they often visit. So they can 
create quick and deep navigation for their specific topic of interest 
within a wide but deep focus wiki such as Wikiversity.org.

_Description
* Custom nav to appear in left sidebar below the Search box
   but above the Toolbox.
* Customized per logged-in user, such as how only user 
   Foo can edit User:Foo/monobook.css, maybe at User:Foo/nav.
* Parsed like a normal wiki page instead of like MediaWiki:Sidebar
   because normal users don't want to learn non-standard markup.
* Other users could use Foo's custom nav portlet by 
   transcluding it into their own User:Name/nav by typing there
   {{User:Foo/nav}}.
* Interest groups could collaboratively create and maintain group
   specific custom nav portlets, eg
   Template:nav_English_as_a_second_language, to transclude into 
   their interest group pages and or individual User:Name/nav
   with {{nav_English_as_a_second_language}}.

_Current alternatives
Currently in standard MediaWiki a user Foo can put "bookmarks" in
1. browser bookmarks
2. Links in User:Foo page or subpages thereof
3. Links in page Whatever for benefit of everyone
4. Category:Whatever page by labeling the page [[Category:Whatever]]
5. Links in Template:Whatever

However, standard browser bookmarks are too messy as we all know and 2, 
3, 4 and 5 are not as convenient to click as left sidebar would be.

Deep wide wiki's such as Wikiversity.org and other deep wide Open 
Educational Resources wiki's are a nuisance to navigate.

A *custom per user navigation portlet* could be an enormous practical 
benefit to wiki's that have not just wide but also *deep* topics, such 
as Wikiversity. Wikipedia only goes wide, not deep, and is manageable 
because each encyclopedia page has a unique, language defined, term or 
phrase that defines it as encyclopedic -- going deeper is not an 
encyclopedia's mission but is the mission of many other wikis.

Has anyone tried this?

Ideas how to simply write it in PHP as a MediaWiki extension?


Thanks!
Happy New Year!

-- 
Roger Chrisman  :-)          http://Wikigogy.org    -     free resources
                 for teachers of English as a second or foreign language