Extension:Contest

MediaWiki extensions manual - list

Contest Release status: stable
Implementation	Special page, API, User interface, Ajax
Description	Contest extension that allows users to participate in admin defined contest challenges.
Author(s)	Jeroen De Dauw
Last version	0.1 (2011-10-20)
MediaWiki	1.18.0 or higher
PHP	5.2 or above
Database changes	yes
License	GNU GPL v3+
Download	current version all versions snapshots
Hooks used LoadExtensionSchemaUpdates UnitTestsList UserSetEmail PersonalUrls GetPreferences LinkEnd
Check usage and version matrix; stats
Bugs: list open list all report

Contest is an extension that allows users to participate in contest challenges created by administrators. With a judging interface, judges can discuss and vote on submissions.

Feature overview

• Admin interface for managing contests and their challenges.
• Landing and signup pages for each contest.
• Personal contest list and submission interface for each user.
• Summary pages per contest listing contestants, which can be filtered and sorted.
• Judging interface that allows for rating and commenting on each participant.
• All contests, challenges, contestants, comments and votes can be queried and exported via the API.
• Signup and reminder emails.

Requirements

Contest requires:

• MediaWiki 1.18 or above
• PHP 5.2 or above
• MySQL

Download

You can find the current version of Contest on the Google Code download page, as well as a list of legacy downloads.

You can download the extension directly from the MediaWiki source code repository (browse code). You can get:

One of the extensions tags

Not all extensions have tags. Some extensions have tags for each release, in which case those tags have the same stability as the release. To download a tag

• Go to the tags list
• Click the name of the tag you want to download
• Click "snapshot"

The latest version of one of the extensions branches

Each extension has a master branch containing the latest code (might be unstable). Extensions can have further branches as well.

• Go to the branches list
• Click the branch name
• Click "snapshot"

A snapshot made during the release of a MediaWiki version.

This might be unstable and is not guaranteed to work with the associated MediaWiki version.

• Download snapshot

After you've got the code, save it into the extensions/Contest directory of your wiki.

If you are familiar with git and have shell access to your server, you can obtain the extension, with all its tags and branches, as follows:

cd extensions
git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/p/mediawiki/extensions/Contest.git

Installation

Once you have downloaded the code, place the Contest directory within your MediaWiki 'extensions' directory. Then add the following code to your LocalSettings.php file:

# Contest
require_once( "$IP/extensions/Contest/Contest.php" );

The final step is running the MediaWiki setup script update.php, which can be found in the maintenance directory of your MediaWiki install. Via the command line, this is typically done with:

php update.php

Configuration

Configuration of Survey is done by assigning to $egContestSettings in your LocalSettings.php file. The options are listed below and their default is set in the Contest settings file. You should NOT modify the settings file, but can have a look at it to get an idea of how to use the settings, in case the below descriptions do not suffice.

Example of how to change a setting:

$egContestSettings['enableTopLink'] = false;

Available settings:

Name	Type	Default	Description
votevalues	array of integer	range( 0, 5 )	Values that can be voted by judges on a participant
enableTopLink	boolean	True	Enable display of the top link to Special:MyContests
submissionDomains	array of string	array( 'github.com', 'gitorious.org' )	Domains on which submissions can be placed
reminderJobSize	integer	50	Max size of the reminder email jobs (in emails to send)
mailSender	string	$GLOBALS['wgPasswordSender']	Email address used as sender in signup and reminder emails.
mailSenderName	string	$GLOBALS['wgPasswordSenderName']	Sender name used for signup and reminder emails.
contestDeletionEnabled	boolean	true	Allow deleting of contests and challenges.

Usage

Administrators

Admins are people with the contestadmin right, and only they can create, modify and delete contests.

The main entry point for judges is Special:Contests, which is a page that lists all contests. On this page, each contest has edit and deletion links, and on the top of the page, there is a control to add a new contest. Contests are created and modified on Special:EditContest/$name, where $name is the name of the contest. On this page there first are the contest fields, followed by a list of the challenges associated to the contest, together with their fields.

Judges

Judges are people with the contestjudge right, and only they can view submission details and rate and comment on them.

The main entry point for judges is Special:Contests, which is a page that lists all contests. From here they can navigate to the contest overview and participants list by clicking the "summary and participants" link for the contest they are interested in. Here they can get an overview of all participants and click on the id of a participant to go to Special:Participant/$id, which shows specific data for that participant, and has rating and commenting controls.

Contestants

The flow for contestants, including signup, should be clear just by looking at the interface and following directions there.

Relevant special pages are:

• Special:ContestWelcome/$name contest overview with challenges, where $name is the contest name.
• Special:ContestSignup/$name contest signup page, where $name is the contest name. You end up here after picking a challenge on the welcome page.
• Special:MyContests shows a list of contests you have signed up for, or immediately the details of one if you signed up for only one.

After signup, a link "My contests" will appear in the top menu before the "My watchlist" link. You can disable this link by going to your preferences, and uncheck the "Show a link to My Contests in the user menu." in the "Contests" tab.

Version

This is a copy of the release notes file on SVN, which might be more up to date then this page.

Version 0.1

2011-10-20

Initial release with these features:

• Admin interface for managing contests and their challenges.
• Landing and signup pages for each contest.
• Personal contest list and submission interface for each user.
• Summary pages per contest listing contestants, which can be filtered and sorted.
• Judging interface that allows for rating and commenting on each participant.
• All contests, challenges, contestants, comments and votes can be queried and exported via the API.
• Signup and reminder emails.

Internationalization

Contest is fully internationalized. Localisation support at translatewiki.net was dropped because it is unlikely this extension will be used again.

Authors

Contest has been written by Jeroen De Dauw as Wikimedia Foundation contractor for the Weekend of Code project.

Screenshots

• 

  Welcome page listing the challenges for a single contest

• 

  Welcome page showing the description for a challenge after it was clicked

• 

  Signup interface

• 

  Personal contest page where users can modify their submission

• 

  Contest list for admins and judges

• 

  Contest summary page with contestants list

• 

  Contest editing and insertion interface

• 

  Reminder email interface

• 

  Judging interface for a single contestants

External links

• Contest on Ohloh
• Coding Challenges/Design