Sources of information

Finding the information you need to solve your MediaWiki technical issue or complete your MediaWiki programming project can require a bit of skill. Some sources of information, listed roughly in order of increasing obscurity/desperation:

• If your issue is administration-related, check out the sysadmin hub. If your issue is development-related, check the pages linked from developer hub, such as Bugzilla and the code documentation.
• Search not only MediaWiki.org but also Wikipedia, Meta Wiki, Wikibooks, and Wikiversity. A lot of code for MediaWiki gadgets, bots, etc. for instance, is on Wikipedia. Much MediaWiki documentation has yet to be transwikied from Meta Wiki. Some material on operating and developing MediaWiki is on Wikibooks and Wikiversity.
• Whatever wiki you go to, when you find a useful page that nonetheless doesn't have all the information you need, make full use of categories and Special:WhatLinksHere to find other pages that elaborate on its content.
• Check out whole codebases, such as all the MediaWiki extensions, and run text searches on those folders to find files containing what you're looking for.
• Search the irc logs and mailing lists archives to see if others have discussed the same subject you are researching.
• Try Google. Even though sources like mwusers.com aren't affiliated with Wikimedia, they can still be useful.
• When all else fails, submit a question via one of the communication methods. If you've tried all the above, no one can say that you failed to RTFM.

When you find useful information in one of the more "obscure" locations, please consider editing the wiki to put the information where it will be easier for others to find.

See also

• Manual:FAQ
• Manual:Contents
• Help:Contents