Academic hub

Academic wikis are third-party wikis meant to be used in an academic context with a greater emphasis on features like access control, content approval, and research analysis.

For other third-party uses of MediaWiki, please see Sysadmin hub. ==Knowledge Sharing==

Many academic wikis are using Extension:Semantic MediaWiki and leveraging the semantic web to share data. The Mediawiki API can also be used to mine data from other sites; combined with an scheduler program like Cron this can lead to semi-automated data distribution. ==Access Control==

=== Account Creation ===

==== Vampire Model ====

The vampire model consists of two rules: This method of account-creation removes the burden of making all accounts from single user/admin, this greatly simplifies matters. Because trust of peers is relatively high in an academic setting, a single account can be made for a P.I., who then can make accounts for his/her students. Because Mediawiki logs all account activity it is (relatively) easy to track accountability for creation of spam/bot accounts. === Authentication ===
 * 1) only registered users may edit
 * 2) only registered users may create accounts


 * Extension:LDAP_Authentication
 * Leverage an existing LDAP (including Microsoft Active Directory, Kerberos) as a single sign-on
 * Alternatives:
 * Extension:Windows_NTLM_LDAP_Auto_Auth

=== Authorization ===

==Integration with Third-Party Software==
 * Manual:Preventing_access
 * Manual:Block_and_unblock
 * Extension:EditSubpages
 * Security issues with authorization extensions

==Document Management==

===Editing===


 * Extension:ParserFunctions
 * Bundled with core, required for complex templating including most WP templates.


 * Extension:WikiEditor
 * WYSIWYG editor sponsored by WikiMedia.


 * Vector
 * A Polished skin for MediaWiki that comes bundled by default. Enable Extension:Vector for advanced functionality for this skin.


 * Extension:Cite
 * Display citations to show where information originated. This is particularly useful when merging data from a single document on multiple wiki pages to indicate why the information is authoritative.


 * Extension:TableEdit
 * Forms-based editor for wiki-tables.

=== Navigation & Search ===


 * Extension:BreadCrumbs2
 * Navigation aid when traversing the wiki, usually used to display and highlight a category hierarchy.


 * Extension:CategoryTree
 * Improve category listings with counters for contained pages of sub-categories.


 * Extension:SphinxSearch
 * An alternative to the default search engine, lightweight but allowing more robust indexing of content through the third-party Sphinx engine.
 * Alternatives:
 * Extension:Lucene-search -- more complicated but more robust still, used by large wikis like Wikipedia


 * Extension:Semantic MediaWiki
 * Allows you to add meta data to content in wiki articles and providing a query language for dynamically retrieving content including properties and lists of articles.
 * Alternatives:
 * Extension:DynamicPageList

==See Also==


 * Glossary entry defining the use of the term academic wiki on the MediaWiki wiki
 * List of academic Mediawiki sites