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

[Gary Kirk]

Frankly I can't work out your problem. You hark on a lot about how
great things were, or are, in other software, and other little asides,
but rarely do you actually pose a specific question. The ways I learnt
about MediaWiki are a) using Wikipedia, b) experimenting - trial &
error, c) this mailing list and lastly and most recently, the book
mentioned on this list, which I was given a review copy of.

I appreciate you (seem to be) installing MediaWiki on your own Windows
server, which is clearly more complex than the shared hosting I use.

On 06/06/07, Monahon, Peter B. <Peter.Monahon at uspto.gov> wrote:
> Thanks Paul,
>
> I experience your contribution (below) as coming from a real straight
> shooter, concise, well thought out and thoughtfully presented, and based
> on your own experience.  What more can I ask?  Thank you very much.  I
> find your insights informative and very useful, perfectly said and
> presentable to my boss when asking for money, "See, I'm not the only one
> needing support for a wiki in$tallation!"  Thanks also for the
> recommendation of "Jim Wilson, can't recommend him enough!"  I now know
> better where you're coming from, and I feel better informed to take what
> you have learned and shared, and adapt and adopt it to my own situation.
>
> Me?  I use Intuit Quicken for DOS from the 1980s (fits on one floppy).
> It's an incredibly sophisticated relational database.  I see multiple
> bank accounts in the same database as I see multiple wikis on one MySQL.
> I see transfers between bank accounts as I see shared resources in
> groups of wikis.  I see Quicken's multiple levels of categories and
> classes as extremely intelligent for sorting and selecting, making
> reports, and changing them globally on the fly as I see ... wait a
> minute, media wiki's categories aren't very powerful, and there are no
> classes.  Quicken looks ahead of my typing for anything, and suggests
> matches, and offers to create anything new I type without having to exit
> from the immediate data entry task to reconfigure anything.  MediaWiki
> allows quick page building the same way, but scant little else.  In my
> Quicken, backup and restore, creating new databases and new accounts,
> and reconfiguring the whole program are simple, I even backup to an
> email attachment and save it on the web, program and all.  MediaWiki has
> none of these features for the whole program, for just your data, or
> even just your custom configurations.  Like open source programmers, the
> people who designed Quicken were paid nothing at the time (one
> difference, though, the paper stock Quicken-designers were paid with
> turned out to be worth $14,000 an hour when Intuit finally went
> public!).
>
> My point is that 20 years ago, many of the things I expect in any
> modern, sophisticated software were already well worked out and well
> established.  And I'm not even talking about Word Perfect or Lotus
> 1-2-3.  I'm sad that the folk in today's open source community are
> trying to ride two horses at once - a day job for the rent, and a night
> job trying to help their open source baby (or hold the reigns on what
> should belong to everyone).  Yet, they are not standing on the shoulders
> of those who came before them in the arena their customers are begging
> them to enter.  Is MediaWiki the new FORTRAN, only for programmers and
> support staff, or is MediaWiki the new Netscape Navigator/
> Communicator/Messenger/Composer, for everyone?
>
> I guess it's 2 cents time.  Thank you for yours.  That's mine.
>
> Anybody else?  Where are you coming from and going to with your
> MediaWiki experience?
>
> -- Peter Blaise
>
> === quotable ===
> > Paul wrote:
> >      ... I have read many of the
> > messages on the list of the last
> > few weeks and resisted jumping in
> > until I saw whether you were going
> > to find some untapped vein of
> > knowledge or, more likely, you
> > would need to do a lot of the
> > legwork yourself with hints and
> > near answers.
> >      I do find this mailing list
> > VERY useful but typically not
> > because I get the exact answer I
> > need but more usually because it
> > sends me off in the right
> > direction to find it myself.  This
> > is fine with me and I have learnt
> > a ton in the last 3+ months with
> > help from some of the regular
> > posters here.
> >      The lack of comprehensive
> > documentation, setup instructions
> > or the like whilst being somewhat
> > frustrating is something that
> > playing with MediaWiki you have to
> > learn to accept, for now.  I really
> > don't know anyone that has the time
> > to devote to building the type of
> > documentation you are looking for
> > BUT I do suspect that if
> > sponsorship were available there
> > would be candidates.  ...
> > sponsorship of an open source
> > project from ... an organization
> > would be interesting indeed.
> >      This isn't to say that people
> > are only motivated solely by money
> > but they have to pay their bills
> > which personally I find absolutely
> > fine.
> >      I myself needed some extensive
> > changes made to the Mediawiki UI
> > and after spending a few days
> > looking I realized that Mediawiki
> > is a complete beast when it comes
> > to the construction of the UI and
> > it's associated CSS.
> >      I took the admittedly easy
> > way out and simply got an expert
> > (Jim Wilson, can't recommend him
> > enough!)  to author a custom skin
> > (www.scribas.com/archives which
> > does everything we need.  The site
> > is currently in stealth mode and
> > offline but you get a feel for
> > what it will look like.
> >      The easier parts of Mediawiki,
> > for me, have always been the data
> > driven components.  Data is data is
> > data and so I have been able to
> > change pretty much whatever I want
> > by virtue of the fact that the data
> > is stored in a known and well
> > documented system, MySQL.  Actually,
> > on that note we are soon to be
> > looking to migrate the index from
> > MySQL to Lucene for fast cross-site
> > searching/indexing of Mediawiki and
> > Drupal.
> >      Anyway, the reason for my post.
> > I could be way off track here but I
> > suspect that a lot of the, admittedly
> > logical, requests you have
> > generated whilst being perfectly
> > reasonable within the black box,
> > vendor supported world are just a
> > little ahead of their time in the
> > Mediawiki/open source world.
> >      Be it Drupal, Wordpress,
> > Joomla, Mediawiki, or whatever open
> > source project I think you will
> > always hear gripes about the
> > documentation and feedback in the
> > event of bug/problem.  I don't
> > think mediawiki is any worse
> > or better in this regard and in
> > fact having tested three other
> > wikis I would say it is without
> > doubt the most solid out there.
> >      So...the solution?  I don't
> > think there is one in the short
> > term.  As much as I would love to
> > see comprehensive documentation I
> > wont be holding my breath.  Instead,
> > I research, ask questions and
> > generally make progress with help
> > from this mailing list.  Ideal?  No,
> > but you pays your money and takes
> > your choice.  I could have gone to
> > socialtext and got a fully supported
> > wiki but the cost would have been
> > significant.  Mediawiki is 'free' but
> > comes with a sometimes costly lack
> > of support framework.
> >      Oh, and the reason, in my
> > humble opinion, for the fact that
> > you see several names for the same
> > entity is possibly quite simple.
> > There are hundreds of contributors,
> > each using slightly different
> > phraseology.
> >      Regards, Paul
>
> [more on Scribas visual design at
> http://webdesign.parkertorrence.com/zfrog/portfolio/scribas/ ]
>
>
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-- 
Gary Kirk