I found that the easiest way to create a new page is type in the name of the new page after the topic= in the url. Don't forget to use the "_" charater as for any spaces in the page title. Do I win the prize for the least number of steps? ;-) John -----Original Message----- From: Rowan Collins [mailto:rowan.collins@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, January 24, 2005 10:43 AM To: dc(a)pikkle.com; MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Making it easier to add D_C <d3ntaku(a)gmail.com> wrote: I make it either 3 or 6, as explained below: --- This isn't really a seperate step in the process, it is simply the way you make a link; if you say "step 2: add a link to the new page", this just tells you how to do it. --- This isn't a step that has to be followed, it's information about what you've already done. The above 3 steps only need to be followed if nobody has already created any links to the new page. The idea of a wiki is that pages are interlinked as much as possible, and that users are encouraged to link to content that doesn't exist yet, thus encouraging other users to come along and create that content. Thus, except for on a very young site, the majority of new pages will be created by clicking existing links. --- Again, that's not an instruction, so shouldn't be counted. --- This is incorrect: since we are talking about creating a new page, the user will have clicked a red link, and be taken to an edit box labelled "Enter your new page below". --- Or, to be more precise, the text of your new page. --- Preferably previewing the page first, as with anything. Now, I'm not saying that 6 steps to create a page is ideal - although I contend that in many circumstances there are only 3, all of which seem pretty much like common sense. As I mentionned, it is possible to edit the message shown on a failed press of "Go". It is also possible for a user to manually point their browser at a non-existent article, and then click "edit" when they get a message saying "There is no text in this page" (this isn't obvious to everyone, but some may try it). More importantly, you are rather implying that you can't add content to the wiki without starting a new page, whereas in fact most content will be added by editting existing pages. And I can't imagine a much quicker way of doing that than "click edit; edit the text; click save", can you? If a page is empty, any links to it *do* go to an edit area. If they click "talk", they may want to read existing discussion, before or instead of adding to it. If there is none, the page will be empty, and they will have the chance to create it. As noted in my previous message, all discussion pages do have an "add a section" link, but it is not very obvious (you could make it say something other than "+" by editting [[MediaWiki:Addsection]], but to make it really obvious I guess you'd need a new skin) I won't deny that the discussion system in MediaWiki leaves a lot to be desired - in as much as there is much of a dedicated "system". This is largely because the emphasis is on editting the content itself, rather than just commenting on it - discussion is useful at times, but just getting people to say "this is good" or whatever isn't the aim *of the main projects for which MediaWiki is used* (i.e. Wikipedia, Wiktionary, et al). I'm afraid that if you want something that resembles a guestbook, you'll have to edit the code (or find someone with time to do so for you), or find a piece of software that is developed more with this type of site in mind. [This is the open-source world's usual response to feature requests: "so code it yourself". But I mean it in the politest possible way, as you should see from the time I've taken to respond.] -- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]

I can see the url method as a quick way under program control to generate the title pages one would need to move an existing project. Is there a way to add content under program control to pages other then a remote ODBC interface into mySQL? John -----Original Message----- From: D_C [mailto:d3ntaku@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, January 24, 2005 11:54 PM To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Making it easier to add the I think you do.. maybe I should replace the search box with a simple GET form that just does that... and maybe (checkbox) adds a link off the bottom of the current page so the page is not orphaned (don't know how i would do this...) However, this URL doesn't launch an edit box, it goes to a: (There is currently no text in this page) html page and the user still has to click the "edit page" link. Is there a clever way with templates or wiki special links to do some of the above? /dc

On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 16:25:20 -0800, John Spikowski <John(a)v360v.com> wrote: I'm not sure exactly what you're asking here, but if it's something along the lines of "how do I make a bot that can automate tasks normally done by humans using MediaWiki's interface", you might want to take a look at http://pywikipediabot.sf.net - a framework for making bots that interact with Wikipedia and, by extension, any other MediaWiki site. -- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 18:29:06 -0800, John Spikowski <John(a)v360v.com> wrote: Like I say, for [remotely] adding the data to the database, look into the pywikipediabot framework - it's the closest you'll get to a "MediaWiki API" for now. For the actual conversion from "a different format" to MediaWiki's markup ('''bold''', [[link]], etc), I don't see how anyone can help if you don't say what exactly the source format *is*. -- Rowan Collins BSc [IMSoP]