Re: [Libreplanet-dev] Recent and future updates to libreplanet mediawiki

[John Sullivan]

Peter <address@hidden> writes:

> On Tuesday 12 May 2009 15:27, Danny Clark wrote:

>>
>> 1. Upgrade from mediawiki 1.5.3 + difficult to port custom changes to
>> 1.14.0 + authentication as an extension (thanks to peabo) + migration of
>> username namespace to the mediawiki default (first character must be
>> upper case - many thanks to leth on #libreplanet who wrote code that
>> made the Renameuser extension usable from the command line - code will
>> be released shortly as it seems generally useful.)
>
> Excellent! The user name was bugging me when looking at recent changes. Does 
> lower case login now find the correct upper case User page?
>

Yep, it should.

>>
>> This change should make it *much* easier to upgrade in the future, as
>> well as to install additional extensions etc.
>>
>> 2. Subpages enabled in all namespaces, including Main.
>
> Good. What is the position regarding the subpage extension? I have updated it 
> and have other extensions pending approval. (more below)
>

I'm fine with including them. I wasn't sure if we needed them given the
built-in Subpage stuff. I've passed your list at the bottom on to the
sysadmins so that these further things can get done.


>>
>> 3. Semantic Mediawiki -
>> http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki
>>
>> 4. Semantic Forms - http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Semantic_Forms
>>
>> 5. Calendar - http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Calendar_(Kenyu73)
>
> Request the namespace be changed from Calendars to Event (singular) as this 
> namespace deals with events, the actual calendars can be on any page in any 
> namespace, iirc. Now we can add a calendar to current events page and 
> maintain current events automatically for all groups.
>

Agreed.


>>
>> Other than that and technical doc for that I'm planning on:
>>
>> 1. Installing a better search extension - I've used
>> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SphinxSearch and it seems nice,
>> but I'd welcome feedback/suggestions on this topic.
>
> Current searching targets the page name, but ignores any displaytitle the 
> page 
> may have. Would like the search to first match displaytitle and then page 
> name. Unlike wikipedia, we're free to use the page name as an organisation 
> tool (subpages) and create our own page title that may not change when the 
> page is moved. This also means we can use shortened page names, without 
> having a cryptic title. Searching a short page name makes little sense, while 
> searching the display title does. Other than that, any search tool will do.
>

I agree I think, but what needs to happen to fix it?

>>
>> 2. Installing OpenID support -
>> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:OpenID
>
> I see LP as a large network of websites, where many groups have their own 
> wiki/website syndicated together into a single large web space (the 
> LibrePlanet network). In this context, openid might be more practical. OpenID 
> login with third party websites, however, probably won't benefit LP. If we're 
> going to have a singe mammoth website, how would openid help?
>

OpenID means that people can more easily import their profile
information from other places, which might include their contact details
and info about what projects they work on. It's also a nice thing to do
from a freedom perspective because it puts individual users in control
of their authentication if they want to be -- they can run their own
OpenID server, for example.


> 4- Allow ordinary users to delete pages. Any deletion can be reverted, so it 
> is not catastrophic and it minimizes administration. Users will feel more 
> comfortable about creating pages if they know they can delete them, too. 
> However, this is conditional on users being authenticated, e.g. email, or by 
> an existing (authenticated) user. Or perhaps users can be given these rights 
> on request?
>

I think it's fine for any logged in user to have this ability. Anything
can be reverted, as you say.

> 7- Move the region and area pages into categories. Require groups to 
> categorize their main page (the group template can help). I am working on a 
> script to automatically populate the category namespace with regions and 
> areas because there are hundreds of identical pages. A tool that knows 
> regions and areas will simplify this process. I'd like to use continents, 
> countries, and areas (province/state) rather than just regions. Of course, if 
> I can't delete pages, there might be a big mess for someone else to clean 
> up :(
>

Let's use SMW for this -- see for example,
http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Properties_and_types.

This will help because we might, for example, want to be able to show
groups that are headquarted in different places, but also groups that
have members in other places. 

So maybe we should start with:

[[based in::Italy]]

as the way to initializing categorize group pages?

The coordinates property might be useful here as well:
http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Property:Coordinates.

Then we can use SMW's inline queries:

http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Inline_queries

to generate the groups-by-country list.

Sound good?

> 8- Please advise on what I still need to do to have my subpage extension 
> added 
> to the wiki. I have made a page at 
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MultiPages and 
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SubPageFunctions. I have no home for 
> the tarballs, they're currently on my website, but I'd like to upload them to 
> LibrePlanet, or perhaps savane?

Sure, we can host them at LP. Can you just upload them as files? They
aren't big, right?

-- 
John Sullivan
Manager of Operations
GPG Key: AE8600B6