[Mediawiki-l] Knowledge Management and MediaWiki

Sun Jun 11 00:48:13 UTC 2006

James,

This is a topic which interests me as well. I don't know of any forum other 
than this list, in fact I find it a perfect spot for this kind of 
discussion. Only if we know better what kind of directions we want wikis and 
MediaWiki in particular to take - the better will the developers know which 
kind of code solutions and architectures to pursue. So I welcome this sort 
of discussion.

I will have a go at some points which I feel need to be adressed (and some, 
which are currently being adressed).

Our wiki is used as a combination of knowledge repository, collaborative 
works, articles, images and notes storage room, networking tool, news site 
(sort of) and as an index of websites and projects, companies, organizations 
and individuals - all related to the culture and media landscape in the 
broadest sense.

It is currently only available in Danish - and one of the next big 
challenges will be to introduce new languages, english in an international 
version in particular. I am following with great interest the project of 
working-in an multi-lingual architecture into MediaWiki, using just one 
database - as I feel this has the promise of simplyfying a great many 
things. We don't want users to spread their activities over several wikis - 
we want one user base to maintain the complete wiki over several languages, 
across languages. The proposed solution with a single page being available 
in several top language-namespaces sounds very promising. I wonder how far 
off this project is?

One other thing on our wishlist, is better control over categories and 
namespaces. Adding categories to a page could be a lot easier. The same goes 
for changing a page's namespace, and defining how category content is 
displayed and sorted on category pages, other than the alphabetical order 
(pages sorted after namespace, content, beginning paragraph, most popular 
etc). An easier upload procedure, as has been suggested on the list 
previously also would be nice.

But this is just a wishlist. MediaWiki has only just started and I am 
confident that the software will only just improve and be even more flexible 
and powerful in time. It already is a pretty potent piece of software.

I have had a great time introducing the use of categories for real on our 
site, and we're only just beginning. I've made the Special:Categories page 
into a sitemap, which is linked to from all categorized pages. Only problem 
is that our top-level categories doesn't link to the new sitemap, since they 
do not belong in any category. Of course, I could (and probably will) simply 
solve this by creating a category of 'top-level categories' ;-)

I would like to hear other experiences with and about the architecture of 
MediaWiki.

Best wishes,
Morten :-)

--
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Morten Blaabjerg
Danmarksgade 97 - DK-5000 Odense C
Tlf. 65 90 60 88 / 51 80 91 55
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morten at crewscut.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Mohr" <mediawiki at jimmo.com>
To: <mediawiki-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 2:52 PM
Subject: [Mediawiki-l] Knowledge Management and MediaWiki

> Hi All!
>
> There is a lot of discussion both here and the MWUsers forum about how to
> perform specific tasks, code to change, etc. However, I have been looking 
> for
> a discussion of the more theorectical aspects of MediaWiki and Wikis in
> general. For example, when to use Namespaces or Prefixes on article names,
> what limits to set on using categories, how to use categories, etc, etc.
>
> If there is a discussion of this type somewhere I would appreaciate it if
> someone could point me in the right direction. If not, are there people 
> who
> would be interested in participating in such a discussion?
>
> Regards,
>
> jimmo
>
> -- 
> ---------------------------------------
> "Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your
> character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what 
> others
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