[Mediawiki-l] questions about setting up Help for a new wiki, importing PD Help, and accessibility

Callie B. Carroll callie at cc.gatech.edu
Fri Jul 21 20:04:54 UTC 2006


I've installed MW 1.6.7 (yes, I'll upgrade to 1.6.8 ASAP) and have been
happily configuring and customizing it up to this point: I need to construct
a good, solid system of Help pages.  Additionally, the Help needs to be
sensitive to our user base, which includes a large number of persons with
visual impairments, so standard help that talks about things like color or
direction (up/down/left/right) on a page needs to be reviewed and edited.
Here's what I've done, so far, and the questions I have:

- imported all of the Public Domain Help pages from mediawiki.org <
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:PD_Help>, and associated templates
- weeded out the pages that won't really be necessary, modified the
templates and pages with updated content, re-did some of the links
- am still in the process of grabbing images from mediawiki.org for the help
pages

  Q1: Is there an extension or easy hack to finding "wanted images"?  The PD
Help pages have several images in them that I need to import, and I'd like
to be able to easily find a list of the images missing.  FYI, I know that a
simple solution to this would be to export all of my Help pages and grep the
XML file for images, but I'd like something that can do this within the MW
software, too.  I was able to create my own Special:WantedHelpPages page
(based on Special:WantedPages) that works within the Help namespace, but I'd
really like something like a Special:WantedImages page...  This solution
might just lie in SQL, but I thought I'd ask before I jump further into
that.

  Q2: To flesh out the PD Help (which has many gaps) I will be reviewing the
Help at Meta and paraphrasing (NOT copying) some of that content for my
site.  Is that others are doing?  Are you pointing people to help pages on
Wikipedia, Meta, or MW?  How do you solve the Help issue?

  Q3: If I re-write many of the Help pages for our wiki installation should
I try to apply my changes (when appropriate) to the Help project at MW?
Would this be helpful to others, or would anyone care?

  Q4: Is anyone else with a personal or professional interest in
accessibility in MW going to Wikimania, or interested in talking to me via
other means?  I would like to connect with others about my work, and maybe
get some input on accessibility issues on our wiki and MW in general.  FWIW,
I've been looking through MediaZilla at open issues related to
accessibility, reading talk pages all over the place, and pestering folks at
#mediawiki on IRC (where I appear as "hyla").

Thanks in advance for your help (and for reading this far down!) --

cbc

--
Callie B. Carroll
MS-HCI Student
Georgia Tech | College of Computing
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~callie



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