[Mediawiki-l] [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki version statistics

[Edward Z. Yang]

Excerpts from Platonides's message of Sun Aug 01 17:39:19 -0400 2010:
> I'm not sure that's comparable. If WordPress complains for being an old
> version, unsavy users will want it to be upgraded for them. Whereas if
> they watched the relevant mailing list they probably have the required
> skills to manually update.
> (Since they chose a 'managed' mediawiki, it's not that they would be
> required to do it anyway)

Right, so it's an interesting combination of factors.

    * Does the application tell the user that their version is out of date?
    * Does the application let an unsavvy user upgrade the application with
      a single click?

Our experience suggests that if the answers to these questions are yes,
unsavvy users will definitely exercise the feature.

> Does that mean that they chose that version despite being outdated?
> I wonder if all those 1.5.8 installs are due to thinking 1.5 is greater
> than 1.15

No, that just means they installed 1.5.8 back when it was still the default,
and then we didn't manage to upgrade them.

> There's probably some interesting knowledge on looking how they patched
> it, but I don't know how to easily extract it.

A good starting point would probablyb e "most edited files".

Cheers,
Edward