Re: quality.wikimedia.org and wikiquality-l launched

On 9/21/07, Monahon, Peter B. <Peter.Monahon-PVb/[email protected] > 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?


From a casual glance at the block log I can't find the particular incident
you're referring to, but the site certainly has a much smaller scope than
Wikipedia.

MediaWiki.org has strict policies about namespace usage
(see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Namespaces), and there is
virtually nothing in the article namespace; because the search function's
"Go" button only auto-detects articles in the main namespace that
information will often be covered in great detail in another page, so I
guess newbies coming in and making "inferior" stubs about these topics gets
very annoying. Without a huge amount of redirects or a major overhaul of the
search engine there's only so much that can be done to avoid these unwanted
pages.

Hence my chagrin and befuddlement trying very, very hard to be an
> evangelist for MediaWiki out here in the real world, yet turning around
> and finding such hardened unwillingness from the Foundation's own wikis
> to permit us to participate in free and open encyclopedic wikis to
> support us all.


It seems to me that MediaWiki.org only houses three "books"; the Manual, the
Help, and the Extensions; while the extensions are largely sorted by
categories, the Manual and Help have straightforward structures of
namespaces and navigation (not unlike works at Wikibooks) rather than mere
interlinking as with Wikipedia. Any pages that fall outside these seem to be
focussed on defining and improving the scope and content of these
collections, so general encyclopedia-style information has no place there
under the current policy.

One thing to consider is contributing to a "fan" wiki instead, and building
the sort of information you want there. If the MediaWiki.org residents like
how it turns out that information could perhaps be merged back in, or even
just linked to from the appropriate pages. Certainly there are things people
like to know that don't necessarily fall into the way these three volumes
are currently presented.

http://www.mwusers.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page is a possible location;
while it's relatively empty at the moment it has a wider scope than just the
software. Perhaps someone could start a drive to get more information there.
As an added bonus the site has its own forums for less structured
discussion.

Garrett