[Mediawiki-l] Combo box for listing users

[Paul Grinberg]

Jack Eapen C <jackec at ...> writes: 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> in our wiki, no. of users are very limited- 300 or so. Is anyone
> developed some function to show a combobox in MW forms which will list
> all the usernames from which one can be selected? i would like to have
> this in user right forms, task extension, etc. otherwise, how can one
> remember the exact usernames and type in correctly?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jack Eapen C
> SunTec Knowledge Centre

Hello, 

If I am understanding correctly, you would like to see the combo box with user 
names of all valid users. As far as I know there is no such capability in 
either the rights form nor the task extension. I think the reason it is not in 
the rights form is because it is only available to sysops and they are expected 
to know/figure out who the valid users are (if nothing else use 
[[Special:Listusers]]).

As for the task extension, if you referring to my 
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Todo_Tasks extension, then I think I 
understand where you are coming from. I had the same concern when writing the 
extension. Basically, what I came up with is that a combo box approach is not 
realistic during editing because all editing is done in plain text. However, to 
make task assignment easier, the task assigner can just type in any of the 
following to assign a task (in order of preference:
1. wiki username 
2. user full name (first space last) 
3. last name of the user 
4. partial match of any part of user name

This has worked very well on our wiki where we have roughly the same number of 
users as you. Most assigners know at least part of the assignee's name. And if 
they don't, then perhaps they should not be assigning tasks ? :-)

Paul.