Mediawiki

Draft

Definition

MediaWiki is a free software wiki package written in PHP, originally for use on Wikipedia. It is now used by several other projects of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and by many other wikis, including this website.

We use MediaWikis in several other projects, including writing-to-learn wikis in high schools. Since MediaWikis are complex systems and somewhat difficult to use, you may consider another wiki technology for populations that are technically a bit challenged (most people, including the so-called digital natives). Consider using a Mediawiki in education, if you (a) plan to create a real hypertext and (b) have your students work on it for many many hours (not just 2-3 lessons). Another good reason for using a Mediawiki is the fact that its survival is guaranteed because it's the Wikipedia's engine.

Extensions

Must-have MediaWiki extensions for educational wikis

Here is a list of useful extensions that may want to install according to your needs (basically a sub-set of extensions we use for Edutech Wiki). You also should consider, that each additional extension will slow down the wiki somewhat...

Crucial extensions

• Collection - An extension for creating wiki books. See Help:Books for this wiki.

• Wikilog - A blogging modules. As of June 2009 this is still in Beta, but it does work. E.g. see the transcluded blog entries, i.e. the News in our main/home page or the Wikilog central page, or the blog of Daniel K. Schneider

• SyntaxHighlight to display various kinds of computer code. A must have for technical wikis, also useful to get better rendering for the Collection extension.

• PageBy. An extension that inserts authors on top of the page if you add a tag. Useful if you believe that writing should be attributed. This actually should not be an extension tag, but a standard Mediawiki option to be configured.

• DiscussionThreading. Transform the discussion pages into threaded forums (else you quickly will get a mess. Useful if you plan to have students comment and ask questions.

• EditWarning shows a warning message if the user edits a page that is being edited by other users at the same time.

• FCKeditor enables a more intuitive WYSIWYG editor when editing pages on a MediaWiki-based site. This extension can create bad wiki code and doesn't work with all outdated browser versions. Therefore, I didn't install it yet in this wiki since I really care about having clean code and pages. But we do use in the french version and in other wikis for which I care less. I expect a better version for MW 1.6 (fall 2009). - Daniel K. Schneider 16:53, 2 July 2009 (UTC).

• CategoryTree allows to include trees of categories either in a page or in the sidebar. Helps navigation if you use some sort of controlled vocabulary. At least you should put all categories in some super categories and the super categories into a root category. It is ok to include a category in multiple super categories.

Anti-spam extensions

Read Combating spam (Mediawiki) and our own little Spam article.

• Set the $wgSpamRegex variable for LocalSetting to include "stop words".
• Know about mass deletion and other scripts that you can find in the maintenance directory.
• Install the ReCaptcha extension that we currently use in this wiki. It will prohibit scripts from creating user accounts.

Administration and helper extensions

• ParserFunctions (needed by some other extensions)

• MassEditRegex is an experimental extension as of June 2009 and that allows to change expressions in multiple pages. Very useful for instance, if you plan to add/remove or rename categories.

• Dynamic page lists are useful for many purposes. There exist two versions DynamicPageList and DynamicPageList (third-party)

• Instead of using dynamic page list extensions, you also can retrieve information about your wiki by simply using the external API, i.e. by typing URLs. Read API documentation at Mediawiki. Most queries also allow for various kinds of formating,

Example: http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/mediawiki/api.php?action=query&list=allpages&aplimit=1000&apfilterredir=nonredirects will list all pages

Other extensions

There exist dozens of more or less useful and well working extensions and hundreds in total. Look at our Version page to see what we currently use or wade your way through MediaWiki.org, where most extensions are listed and categorized.

Import, export and editing

See also ManageMediaWiki (our internal messy maintenance hints pages)

Editing tools and strategies

• Install the WySiWyg FCKeditorOfficial extension (I didn't because it may create bad code)
• Use WikiEd (in Firefox)

For people who like to use programming editors

• Install the direct Emacs interface (installation of this Perl-based reference implementation is difficult):
• Use the It's all text extension that will let you edit any form with most any editor.

Export filters

• To export for wordprocessing, the currently best strategy is probably to use the Collection extension and configure it to export Open Office format

Import filters

From HTML

Several solutions exit

• David Iberri's HTML-WikiConverter. Several online services exist, e.g. David's own

From Word

• Extension:Word2MediaWikiPlus
• I rather suggest using the OO filter (easier to install)

From Open Office (OO)

• Just "save as".

Latex import

• Latex to Wiki

Links

General

• MediaWiki.org. Official Home Page
• Sites using MediaWiki

Other edutechwiki pages

• Mediawiki SvGViz extension, an extension that graphically shows links in a page. Developped by Romain Sauvain and Urs Richle for EduTech wiki for MediaWiki 1.10 and more recent versions (still runs in MW 1.15).
• Mediawiki collection extension installation. Our own installation notes.

Other Edutechwiki links

• ManageMediaWiki