Hi all,
If you want to learn about upcoming MediaWiki events, workshops, etc, you
can watch this calendar
<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Calendar>recently
started by Guillom recently.
Mariya
(Added MW-Enterprise mailing list)
On 02/06/2013 10:00 PM, Tim Starling wrote:
> For corporate adoption, the main thing MediaWiki needs is not some
> particular feature. It needs to be supported. It needs an organisation
> with people who will care if corporate users are screwed over by a
> change. It needs community management, so that the features needed by
> corporate users will be discoverable and well-maintained, rather than
> developed privately, over and over. And it needs the smallest nudge of
> promotion, on top of what Wikipedia fans are doing for it. Say, a
> nice-looking website aimed at this user base.
Totally agreed.
I (along with a few other hardy volunteers) have been helping MW users
at [[mw:Project:Support desk]] and it seems clear that the focus most
developers have on the WMF use case has really made MW less usable for
other people.
One of my clients had an older (1.11) MediaWiki installation that they
are using to share information with their distributors world-wide.
Their first attempt to get the system to do what they wanted was a flop
since the Java developer they had working on the system really didn't
know that much about MW. I was able to get the system upgraded to 1.19
and adapt MW to their infrastructure using hooks, ResourceLoader, and
pages they could update in the "MediaWiki" namespace.
So, yes, I think MediaWiki has a lot to offer corporate users, but we
haven't really made that clear or shown them how to do a lot of things
they want to do.
Tim has it right when he says MediaWiki "needs community management, so
that the features needed by corporate users will be discoverable and
well-maintained, rather than developed privately, over and over."
We've discussed this sort of thing over and over, but I think we're
actually beginning to make some headway now thanks especially to work by
Mariya Miteva.
--
http://hexmode.com/
There is no path to peace. Peace is the path.
-- Mahatma Gandhi, "Non-Violence in Peace and War"
On 7 February 2013 17:06, Dan Andreescu <dandreescu(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I was on the other side of this, albeit a while back. We had to decide
> between MediaWiki and Confluence to power Disney's ParentPedia (which has
> since been abandoned):
> The main reasons we chose Confluence:
> * An easier to understand API. This seems to not be a problem any more:
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Client_code
> * Easier setup on Windows:
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Running_MediaWiki_on_Windows, possibly
> made easier now by Bitnami: http://bitnami.org/stack/mediawiki
yeah, I was speaking from my experience of MW vs Confluence, where the
deciders were (1) no WYSIWYG and slightly (2) none of the fancy ACL
stuff Confluence has. The ACLs were more a theoretical selling point
to the business decision maker, but WYSIWYG swung it I think. And the
users *hated* Confluence, but at least they didn't have to deal with
Wikitext.
(In my current job I'm happily spreading MediaWikis far and wide,
albeit with very little customisation. But I'm really keen to use the
Visual Editor as soon as it's in a tarball version.)
- d.
Hi Dan,
We have
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Third-party_MediaWiki_users_discussion where
we've been discussing some MW user issues, but the dicussion was not
focused on corporate per se. We can use the same page or maybe set up a
subpage if you think it will be easier. There is also
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Enterprise_hub. If anyone know of another
appropriate place, please share.
I would be glad to see such a space set up and discussion going on and
would be happy to assist with that.
Mariya
On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 7:06 PM, Dan Andreescu <dandreescu(a)wikimedia.org>wrote:
> Sorry about that - Gmail reload glitch
>
> On 02/06/2013 10:00 PM, Tim Starling wrote:
>
> > > For corporate adoption, the main thing MediaWiki needs is not some
> >> > particular feature. It needs to be supported. It needs an organisation
> >> > with people who will care if corporate users are screwed over by a
> >> > change. It needs community management, so that the features needed by
> >> > corporate users will be discoverable and well-maintained, rather than
> >> > developed privately, over and over. And it needs the smallest nudge of
> >> > promotion, on top of what Wikipedia fans are doing for it. Say, a
> >> > nice-looking website aimed at this user base.
> >
> >
> I was on the other side of this, albeit a while back. We had to decide
> between MediaWiki and Confluence to power Disney's ParentPedia (which has
> since been abandoned):
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/13/disney_eisner/
> http://family.go.com/parenting/
>
> The main reasons we chose Confluence:
>
> * An easier to understand API. This seems to not be a problem any more:
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Client_code
> * Easier setup on Windows:
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Running_MediaWiki_on_Windows,
> possibly
> made easier now by Bitnami: http://bitnami.org/stack/mediawiki
>
> Do we have a place where people can talk through problems with corporate
> adoption? I suspect Tim's correct about the general case but that focusing
> on specifics would drive adoption.
>
> Dan
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
Hi guys!
I recently found this course and I think that will be interesting to
look at: http://codelesson.com/courses/view/mediawiki-administration-and-development
"
This course covers the setup, configuration and optimization of
MediaWiki. It's specifically geared toward developers and system
administrators who want to create web sites based on the open source
MediaWiki platform.
"
-----
Yury Katkov, WikiVote
Hi all,
I recently saw this
announcement<http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/332112>on
wikitech-l aboutUser:Krenair<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/LevelUp>getting
+2 status on MW core and extensions and I wanted to send out some
more information on what +2 is and the process of becoming a core
maintainer. I think it might be useful for some of you to consider working
towards +2. Here <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/%2B2> is some more info on
what +2 status is. To be granted +2 status you need to post a request
here<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git/Gerrit_project_ownership> and
be approved.
Quoting from http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/%2B2 :
*So, you got +2 rights to MediaWiki core or a WMF-deployed extension.*
*That means you can merge changes to the software that's running on
Wikimedia Foundation sites. Your change will be automatically deployed to
the beta cluster <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Beta_cluster>, a
virtualized staging environment, as soon as it's been merged in
Gerrit<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Gerrit>.
It will also be automatically picked up in the next MediaWiki core
deployment window (see
wikitech:Deployments<http://wikitech.wikimedia.org/view/Deployments>)
unless it is reverted before the release branch is cut.*
You can get +2 on specific extensions as well if you wish, which will let
you maintain those only. This is usually much easier, especially if its a
poorly maintained extensions, than getting +2 access to core, so it might
be a good starting point.
I heard from a few of you that the third-party community is lacking code
review support, which prevents some from merging their code with MW. There
is a misconception that all or almost all +2 users are employees of WMF. In
fact there are now( with Krenair) 9 non-WMF developers with +2 status on
core and WMF is looking to expand the +2 group to minimize code review
delays. It took Krenair 1 year of MW development to get to +2 so the
process is not overwhelmingly long.
If you are interested to become a core maintainer or get ownership on some
extension, please consider joining the LevelUp mentorship
program<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/LevelUp>,
where you will be matched with a mentor to guide you in the process.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Mariya