------------------------------
Message: 9
Date: 31 Aug 2004 14:09:00 +0200
From: erik_moeller(a)gmx.de (Erik Moeller)
Subject: [Foundation-l] New MediaWiki documentation effort
To: wikitech-l(a)wikimedia.org
Cc: foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <9FwlXwlxpVB@erik_moeller>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
-> PLEASE TRANSLATE THIS MESSAGE INTO YOUR LANGUAGE AND SEND A COPY TO
YOUR LOCAL PROJECT MAILING LIST. THANK YOU!
MediaWiki is a great software package, but in one department it is
lacking: documentation. In spite of the collaborative power of wiki, so
far there exists no single user documentation. Instead, each project
maintains its own fork, and the Meta pages are one big mess (although the
English documentation has become a bit better with the introduction of the
Help: namespace).
I have just taken live some code changes which allow us to finally
systematically document MediaWiki. I have added code to allow custom
namespaces, so that any wiki can have any number of namespaces beyond the
ordinary ones. Using this, I have then created namespaces in the largest
languages (for which I had translations of "Help" and "Help talk") on
http://meta.wikimedia.org . See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents
for a list of available namespaces.
That means you can now edit Hilfe:Inhalt or Aide:Aide like the English
users have been editing Help:Contents. Why is that important? Because it
allows us to easily export all the help files in one language, and import
them into another wiki.
Any wiki may want to make custom changes to the help pages. This is best
done using custom header and footer templates. Interlanguage links should
also be passed to a template as a parameter, so that users who only import
one translation can hide them easily (by removing the parameter).
I have laid out some basic editorial guidelines for working on pages in
the Help: namespace of your language:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents
This also includes a modified Template:Hc which shows how interlanguage
links can work.
The gist of it is that we must make sure that the pages in the namespace
can be imported by *any project*, Wikimedia or not, without changes
(except to a handful of templates).
Once the pages have stabilized, we should clean out the Help: namespaces
of all Wikimedia projects and import the meta pages instead. We can then
upgrade them regularly (even daily) and automatically on all wikis.
The project namespace ("Wikipedia:", "Wikisource:" etc.) should then be
used strictly for policy.
I propose that the Help: namespace be used both for user and
administration documentation (installation guidelines etc.), so we can
move towards a single neatly integrated handbook.
I invite all interested parties to participate in consolidating our
documentation.
Regards,
Erik
------------------------------
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Alex Chan <chanmanyuen at hkbn.net>
> Date: Sun, 22 Aug 2004 16:24:11 +0800
> Subject: About Traditional Chinese Version
> To: zh.wikipedia at gmail.com
>
>
> I suggest Traditional Chinese version should use Big5,
> because UTF8 too ugly
Nope. It looks fine on my browser (Mozilla Firefox 0.8).
> and all people using Big5 Traditional Chinese.
Nope. All wikipedians use UTF8. With UTF8 we can view Traditional
Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Greek, Russian, Hebrew,
etc. all at the same time on the same page without switching the
character coding.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: CRLLT LAB ADMINISTRATOR <crllt(a)uottawa.ca>
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 13:56:34 -0400
Subject: Wikipedia
To: shizhao(a)gmail.com
Dear ShiZhao,
How are you doing today?
My name is Ketai Hu. I am a chinese student in Univeristy of Ottawa.
Currently i am taking a network administrator as my co-op job in one
lab at my school. My supervisor is very interested in the Wikipedia
and he wants to implent in our lab.
I really have no any idea about this open source software although i
read it's documents for some days. I just followed the instruction ,
but i still can't successfully put on my system. Maybe i should give
you my lab's environment's profile: We have around 20 windows box
workstations to connect one windwos enterprise server, and i put
RedHat 9.0 on each windows now.
just following the instatlllation doc, i installed the IBserver( it
intergrates Apache, Mysql and PHP packages together) on windows
worstation already. The problem is i can't put wikipedia on this
platform. I got headache because i don't have any idea bout Webserer
configuration.
Just got email from Wikipedia chinese version. so i hope i can get
help from you.
I really worry about this project, if i can't finish it, i think my
boss will let me go home......
You are truly appreiated to reply me at your early convenient.
Thank you very much in advance.
BTW, if you can give me your phone number i can call you. Really want
to get help from you. and you can write me in chinese,if you don't
like english.
Have a nice day!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Ketai Hu
Lab Administrator
Canada Research Laboratory of Law & Technology
Faculty of Law : Faculté de droit
Common Law Section : Section Common Law
University of Ottawa : Université d'Ottawa
57 rue, Louis Pasteur
Ottawa, ON, CANADA K1N 6N5
t. (613) 562-5800 x2554
e. crllt(a)uottawa.ca