Chiming in on this a little late, but, basically:
Yeah, mediawiki isn't that easy to administer. Unfortunately, people
administering MediaWiki installs are only one type of user that we have
to worry about and resources (as always) are limited. Right now, we're
focusing a concentrated effort on making things easier for editors
(users generating content), BUT I think administrators are an important
group because I hear stories all the time about how administrators for
intranet wikis get requests from people in their company for a better
way to do X or Y, and they have to write it themselves.
I'd love it if there were some easy way to get these administrators who
have had to come up with hacks to share what their issues were, what
their solutions were, and maybe even push their changes back upstream =)
Do people here generally feel this would be a good resource to have?
And, more importantly, that it would be used?
On 3/2/10 8:30 PM, Chris Lewis wrote:
I hope I am emailing this to the right group. My
concern was about mediawiki and it's limitations, as well as it's outdated
methods. As someone wo runs a wiki, I've gone through a lot of frustrations.
If Wordpress is like Windows 7, then Mediawiki is Windows 2000. Very outdated GUI,
outdated ways of doing things,for example using ftp to edit the settings of the wiki
instead of having a direct interface like Wordpress. Mediawiki makes millions more than
Wordpress does too, why can't the money be put into making a modern product instead of
in pockets of the people who run it? I know Wordpress and Mediawiki serve two different
purposes, but that's not the point. The point is, one is modern and user friendly
(Wordpress), and the other (Mediawiki) is not. Other complaints:
-Default skins are boring
-Very limited in being able to make the wiki look nice like you could with a normal
webpage.
-A major pain to update! Wordpress upgrades are so simple.
-Better customization so people can get a wiki the way they want. It should be more like
the wikis on wikia, except without me having to learn css and php to make those types of
customizations. Give me some option, some places to put widgets. Not every wiki is going
to be as formal as the ones on wikimedia sites. And don't the people at Wikimedia
commons get tired of always having to make changes so it actually suits their site? If
they had some of the options from the get go, i'm sure they'd appreciate it too.
-I don't want to go to my ftp to download my local settings file, add a few lines
then reupload it. This is caveman-like behavior for the modern internet.
-Being able to manage extensions like wordpress does.
In short, it's time to spend some money from those millions of dollars from donations
to make this software more modern. Being stubborn in modernizing it will only make this
software less relevant in the future if other wiki software companies are willing to do
things the people at Wikimedia aren't.
Thank you
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