[Textbook-l] quality.wikimedia.org and wikiquality-l launched

[Garrett]

On 9/21/07, Monahon, Peter B. <Peter.Monahon at uspto.gov > wrote:

> I find the wiki at http://www.mediawiki.org/ to be missing
> basic, essential information - not encyclopedic in scope.
> ...

For example, go to http://www.mediawiki.org/ and search for almost ANY
> basic wiki word related to MediaWiki software, and you'll get a RED
> response, meaning there's no page for what you're lookin' for.
>
...

The list of missing entries, the lack of encyclopedic
> support of MediaWiki software on MediaWiki.org is huge!


One of the enduring flaws of MediaWiki (the software, not the site) is that
its search feature is surprisingly unintuitive. In the case of
MediaWiki.org, things are made even worse by some of the information
still being on Meta
waiting to be transwikied. It's often easier to find what you want by
Googling site:mediawiki.org Some Keyword (although bear in mind that very
new pages won't be indexed yet).

Then, as with any wiki, go ahead and do it yourself.  Go ahead and build
> a page to support that missing word, even a "stub", or starter page, or
> disambiguation page, to get things going.  It's a wiki, after all - edit
> every page!
>
> And then watch.
>
> Admins there will delete that page and tell you to keep your hands off
> the site.
>
> OUCH!
>
> Then try to dialog on the discussion / talk pages with them, and suggest
> that you have a need for help with the info you tried to record there.
> Suggest that there's a whole new wave of MediaWiki implementers out here
> that are not at all like the initial coders currently managing the site.
> Suggest that we all can get along, and each have different but
> non-competitive contributions to offer - "hey, let's build a MediaWiki
> support encyclopedia wiki" - ... and they'll ban you.
>
> So, what then do we think the wikis surrounding the Foundation,
> especially MediaWiki.org, are for?