[Mediawiki-l] Any leads on a basic wiki setup-and-configure instruction manual?

[Monahon, Peter B.]

"Oh, Rob" - Laura Petri on The Dick Van Dyke Show, as played by Mary
Tyler Moore

> Peter Blaise wrote:
> ... - the difference between wikitech-l and 
> mediawiki-l (though I'm not the one to 
> accidentally confuse the two)...

> Rob snitted back: You were, however, the only 
> poster to date who has had to have it explained 
> twice and rejected both times with a rather rude 
> and presumptive message about our motives.

Oh, Rob!  You discovered that I'm not a spammer, so monitoring first
posts worked, so now let me post freely.  Otherwise, you're just
pre-arguing and pre-filtering content and preventing the members of the
lists from making up their own minds - censoring.  And you're doing that
in the context of a Wiki, come-one-come-all, censorship-free universe!
Oh, Rob!  

(Let me look up "crude and presumptive", I'll get back to you...)

> Peter Blaise wrote:
> ... - that all I need to do on my own system to 
> regain control is to do something I can't do on 
> my own system to regain control (such as "run
> php", "log in as admin", sysops, bureaucrat 
> and so on)...

> Rob sparked back: If you provide a full 
> explanation of the problem here, then you're
> likely to get a decent answer. What are you 
> trying to do?

"run php"

"log in as admin"

If I *could* report a "full" anything analyzing a MediaWiki install
according to any reference (none exist?) then I could troubleshoot and
repair it myself, thank you.  Maybe someone can write a HiJackThis-style
log reporter we can share that takes inventory of our MediaWiki setup
... 

(See http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/programs.php for v2 or later of
HiJackThis, then see 977,000 links at
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22hijackthis.log%22&btnG=Google+Se
arch showing HiJackThis.log in tech-support troubleshooting dialogs.
This is what I'm comparing MediaWiki to when I say "MediaWiki is not
mature".  I'm talking about the depth of support.  MediaWiki has neither
a HiJackThis-type tool nor 977,000 links discussing MediaWiki
diagnostics yet.  Not an insult, just an assessment.  How many Spybot
and registry cleaning tools are there?  How many MediaWiki diagnosis and
repair tools are there?  Please correct me if I'm wrong about how
"mature", product life cycle and market penetration wise, MediaWiki is.
I'd LOVE someone to point me to a MediaWiki installation repair and
report tool.)

> Peter Blaise wrote: 
> ... Note: we desperately need a neat, clean, 
> sophisticated group of accurate and 
> unambiguous instruction manuals for each part 
> of a WikiMedia's life:

> Rob sparkled back: It's not a "WikiMedia", it's 
> a "MediaWiki wiki". "Wikimedia" is an 
> organisation, "MediaWiki" is a piece of 
> software, and a "wiki" is the actual site 
> running that software. Wikimedia have no 
> affiliation whatsoever with third-party wikis.

Oh, Rob!  

You're so ... wrong!

> "MediaWiki wiki" ?!?

Where do you get "MediaWiki wiki"?  I do not see the Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc. labeling their product as "MediaWiki-brand wiki" the
way Kimberly-Clark says "Kleenex-brand facial tissues" or the way
Johnson & Johnson says "Band-Aid-brand adhesive bandages"!  I see the
product marketed as MediaWiki software.  WikiMedia says, quote,
"MediaWiki is ..." not "MediaWiki wiki is ..." nor "MediaWiki-brand wiki
is ..." Period.  No wonder no one can keep them straight, let alone
remember which list-serve we are writing to (I note other mis-sends
recently).  I try, try, try to keep WikiMedia and MediaWiki
differentiated in spite of the whimsical evolution of the marks, but
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. apparently wants it both ways: MediaWiki and
WikiMedia, hence my post the other day to commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org

========== begin quote ==========

Perhaps we should also define in what arena we're posturing.  I think
there are at least three, possibly non-interchangeable, venues:

- MediaWiki - http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki the SOFTWARE we're
all using either as participants in WikiMedia's Wikis, or building and
participating in our own on-WikiMedia Wikis, and hitchhiking on the
experiences and examples of the WikiMedia "family".

- WikiMedia - the name for that COMPANY at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home who host a collection of Wikis
at http://www.wikimedia.org/ 

- Wikipedia - http://www.wikipedia.org/ one IMPLEMENTATION of the
WikiMedia company using their own MediaWiki software