Talk:Wiki Maintenance

information about mediawiki and wiki installation

This is a suggestions for another category for the group. Does this fall under the purview of the group? Skm (talk) 09:52, 2 October 2016 (CDT)

MediaWiki and MediaWiki Extensions

Information about how we use MediaWiki, how our wiki is configured and maintained, and what extensions we use can go here.

• Special:Version has information on our installation, libraries, extensions
• Where/how is our wiki deployed?
• When and how should we upgrade?
• What are candidate extensions to help with curation and maintenance?
  • MediaWiki has an editor that is live editing? with visual feedback? maybe look in to this to see if it is in a released version or is experimental. One problem is that it might only be used in Wikipedia and they're on a forked branch of MediaWiki iirc. Anyway, having a better editor means people need less help with markup. Some people like it, some don't. Skm (talk) 11:41, 4 October 2016 (CDT)
  • I like being able to check out a repo for a wiki to edit files locally and then use git to check in changes. I can't remember if that was an extension, but maybe? It might be crappy, in which case forget it. I'm the only person who would like it, I bet. Skm (talk) 11:41, 4 October 2016 (CDT)

ideas for topics for introduction to wiki editing and maintenance

• Tracking changes. I like to keep track of what's changed on the wiki by subscribing to the RSS feed of recent changes. People can also visit the Recent changes url. When introducing people to working on the wiki, maybe let them know that they can track recent changes, and how to do so. This is particularly good for WikiGnomes who want to catch typos and things. The RSS feed is really good because it shows you diffs!

• Leaving a comment about a page edit. Teach people about the comment field when editing a page, and encourage them to describe non-trivial changes.

• Trivial vs. Non-trivial changes. Encourage people to use the trivial tick-mark if they are making a change like a typo or something.

• Talk pages. If we use talk pages, explain some of the talk features to people. The ones I like are:
  • Signing comments with 4 tildes.
  • Using the "Add topic" heading to separate topics.
  • Using nested comments with multiple colons.

Skm (talk) whoops I forgot to sign this.