Project talk:Support desk/Archive 1

Wikipedia should create a database full of business history
wikipedia is a forever growing encyclopedia. However, I was very disappointed to find that the encyclopedia does not contain any information about famous companies or at least their history. Companies like Microsoft, apple, IBM, Intel and so on have contributed so much to bring us to this point. The least we could do is put some information on these companies that changed the way we live.


 * Wrong wiki - lose 5 points. --HappyDog 02:45, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm having trouble installing a wiki on my site.
I downloaded the MediaWiki 1.7.1 files, and extracted them to a folder on my hard drive. Then I transferred all of the files to a directory on my website (My website is evaxephon.com, and the directory is evaxephon.com/babe). When I access that directory (http://evaxephon.com/babe/) I see the MediaWiki flower and the words "Please setup the wiki first", but when I click the 'setup the wiki' link, I just get a white, blank screen.

I can't figure out what I've done wrong. Can someone please help me?
 * Sorry, I don't know what happened. A developer should answer if he see your question. Else check you have PHP 5.0 and MySQL 4.0 as said on Installation, have a look also on meta:Help:Installation perhaps. I copy that in Project:Support desk, where it is more the place. ~ Seb35 00:14, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Resolved topics?
Is there an archive or something of that sort where resolved topics should be moved to? Thanks. —dto 03:09, 5 September 2006 (UTC)


 * The approach so far has been to do delete all the old items in a single edit, and add a link at the top of the page to the edit just before the material was deleted. Check the examples already in place (all from the old 'main page' - before it was moved here - but the principle is the same). Good luck! --HappyDog 03:56, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

A different way of organising questions, their answer, and this Support desk
We get a lot of useful answers on this article that are just going to get archived and useless to most users, meaning the question will be asked again. Also, lots of questions might have answers in MW.org already. I suggest that we ask users to ask the question on the talk page of the relevant article. That means that the question, and its answer will be more available to future users. Also it means they'll have to find the article and probably read it, answering their question anyway.

Second, we make a template for questions and their answers. When a user asks a question on a talk page they put it in a template (Something like User:Rick/QuestionTemplate though it needs a lot more work). The people who answer questions at the support desk can then look at WhatLinksHere for the template, and they have access to all the questions. When a question has been answered satisfactorily for the user, the template the user asked the question on is changed to a QuestionAnswered template (which has all the same field etc so only the template name needs changing). That means it stops showing up in WhatLinksHere. The results are
 * 1) Users look at the article before asking a question, causing less questions.
 * 2) Questions are placed on the talk page, meaning they're more accessible to users, causing less questions
 * 3) The answers can be integrated into the article if relevant.
 * 4) The users enter information like MW version into the template, meaning we have to ask them less.

However LiquidThreads works may effect this idea (mainly it might allow a better method - I don't know enough about LQT though).

Its only a rough idea, what do you think? --Rick 03:07, 29 September 2006 (UTC)


 * In general, I think it's a very good idea, however it could be made a little more sophisticated, I think... I have added a couple of categories and a new argument 'topic'.  Topic should be one of a set of known keywords, specified at FAQ topic areas, and will allow each question to be automatically categorised.  (Actually - the name 'topic' and the page/category names I have used are pretty bad - please make sure something better is used before this goes live...)  Also, unanswered questions are now dumped into a category for ease of retrieval/checking.  There may be other improvements that people can suggest, so I would hold off making this live for the time-being (say a week or so) to see what other suggestions turn up.  Good work though - hopefully it will make things a bit easier to manage... --HappyDog 03:22, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

For reference, the following discussion took place on IRC (irrelevant parts removed):

[04:10]  I just put a suggestion in mw:Project_talk:Support_desk to maaybe help the project in questions being asked and they're answers being useful for more people [04:23]  I have responded there... [04:35]  lol oops yeah I planned on it using categories for answered/unanswered but forgot. [04:37]  RichNumbers: I will have a think about the usability of          a template-based approach. It occurs to me that for this to be useful we          need to (a) be able to find unanswered questions and (b) be able to search answered questions in a meaningful way. [04:37]  The categories may have solved that, but maybe not... [04:37]  needs a bit of thought. [04:38]  Yeah unanswered questions via the category. Whats the purpose of needing to search answered questions in a meaningful way? [04:38]  definitely needs thought before its used [04:38]  ...and of course, it needs people to actually answer the questions. Have you seen how many unanswered questions there are at          mw:Support_desk? [04:38]  :) [04:39]  At least it _might_ be an improvement ;) [04:39]  by 'search in a meanginful way', I mean for people who want to post a question being able to find out if it's already answered. [04:39]  and also for people answering, I guess, although that's          less of an issue. [04:40]  hmm yeah, i couldn't think how to do it and you can't          with the current system, so didn't consider it much. Semantic mediawiki would help ;) [04:41]  Yeah - In an ideal world it's a definite improvement.           If we end up with Category:Unanswered_questions containing 300 items           then we're in trouble... :) [04:41]  *ack* as far as I can tell, semantic MediaWiki will solve everything, including world poverty... ! ;) [04:42] <HappyDog> Still - I think your approach is at least worth trying out. [04:45] <Rich234234> heh. Hmm, it'd be changing what the talk page is meant          to be for. It's _meant_ to be for discussing the article, not for asking for           help (which granted is what its used for at the moment) [04:46] <HappyDog> True, and the links in the categories would all go to           some fairly non-intuitive places, i.e. you wouldn't see the question when           browsing the category - just the page it was written on. [04:49] <Rich234234> yeah a solution to that would be nice [04:49] <HappyDog> As I said - leave it a week or so to see what other people           think, and to see if there are any other suggestions for improvements. [04:50] <HappyDog> I'm signing off now. [04:50] <HappyDog> I'll place a copy of this discussion on the wiki so people           can see where we're up to. --HappyDog 03:52, 29 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Improving the support desk is a great idea. I would, though, like to advocate splitting it up into (sub-?)pages rather than directing questions to the talk pages. Not all questions have obvious talk pages where they should be posted, some questions might be posted on more than one talk page and I don't see browsing through talk pages to be an enjoyable experience.
 * I'd rather suggest something along the lines of the w:Wikipedia:Reference desk, breaking it down into topics with a nice banner at the top of these, taking you between them. I've often seen support requests on talk pages and would suggest that we simply put a banner on those most prone to that, to direct those seeking help here to the Support desk. --Swift 23:15, 6 October 2006 (UTC)


 * The idea would be that unanswered questions are tagged with a category, so we can look at Category:Unanswered Questions to see the questions not answered. HappyDog pointed out we'd only see the article its in, not the question, which isn't as informative as it should be --Rick 03:22, 15 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually (I've been contemplating this for a while), might it be better to use something other than the wiki for this? How about a forum like http://www.mwusers.com/? Though versatile, the Wiki can't do everything ... and shouldn't. Every tool demands the right tool. --Swift 23:41, 6 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Well - that's my general feeling. On older pages, such as Communication and Project:Help, and indeed in the Support Desk notes at the top of the page, you will see that asking questions on the wiki is very much discouraged, as they are unlikely to be answered quickly, if at all.  However, more recently people have come along and advocated the use of the wiki as a one-stop shop, and have given the support desk greater visibility (e.g. Community portal (now a redirect), and the side bar).  I have given them a free reign on this matter, as I don't know how the community will develop in this area and, to be honest, it is not an area I participate in very much.
 * Regardless of our approach though, people DO come here asking for help, and will post questions despite the warnings. Regardless of whether other forums are quicker/better there will always be people posting here. I created Project:Support desk in order to stop these visitors from scattering their questions all over the wiki (largely successful) and to increase the likelihood that their question will be noticed and answered (slightly successful).
 * If we instigate a more formal process of asking questions, more questions will be asked. If they are going to be answered, and the process makes it easier to answer them, then this is fine.  If we are just making it harder for people to 'not get helped', then this extra process should be avoided. --HappyDog 00:21, 10 October 2006 (UTC) I am aware that there are a few people, including Swift, who are active and do a good job at the Support Desk, but currently this pool is very small.  I don't know how well we'd cope if the rate of questions increased...

... btw, we could ask for implementing DPLforum on this site. It works quite well, the usage is very intuitive and MediaWiki-like. -- :Bdk: 02:36, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I think DPLforum would be a better alternative than the category-based scheme, simply because we can't watch categories for new additions. Tito<font color="#008000">xd (?!?) 08:54, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

“In Other Languages” Side Bar
Is there a dedicated article discussing how to set up your wiki so that you can easily get that "In Other Languages" side bar (under "toolbox")? If not, let's create one, and what would you like to call it? -Davecotter 18:43, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
 * HAH! Here's the link! -Davecotter 19:21, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

DUMP text
Hello

It is possible to download dump "text" from frwiki?

thank you

MediaWiki Overview - database structure
Q: 69.87.183.220 wrote: Does anyone have any links explaining the basic structure of MediaWiki and its tables, back end overview, how is data organized and referenced, what makes media wiki better and other wikis (besides the fact that its free)?

--


 * A1: 65.31.208.246 wrote: It is open source, what is stopping you from looking yourself?

--


 * A2: Peter Blaise responds: Does http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_does_MediaWiki_work%3F help? To quote:


 * "MediaWiki is free server-based software which is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It's designed to be run on a large server farm for a website that gets millions of hits per day. MediaWiki is an extremely powerful, scalable software and a feature-rich wiki implementation, that uses PHP to process and display data stored in its MySQL database.
 * Pages use MediaWiki's wiki-text format, so that users without knowledge of XHTML or CSS can edit them easily.
 * When a user submits an edit to a page, MediaWiki writes it to the database, but without deleting the previous versions of the page, thus allowing easy reverts in case of vandalism or spamming. MediaWiki can manage image and multimedia files, too, which are stored in the file system. For large wikis with lots of users, MediaWiki supports caching and can be easily coupled with Squid proxy server software."


 * It true, as 65.31.208.246 says, that "It is open source ..." and that nothing's "... stopping you from looking yourself," but I tried searches here at http://www.MediaWiki.org/ and also http://www.Google.com/ searches, and found nothing for combinations of
 * [mediawiki database structure format overview data]
 * ... and so on. I think I saw some visuals of the operating system, sql server, web server, PHP and so on in a PDF somewhere.  I'll report back when I re-find it.


 * Perhaps someone can do a sql report of the MediaWiki database structure and upload it to a page with all those search terms also included on the page so we can find it?


 * As far as comparing MediaWiki to other wikis, that's also NOT at MediaWiki.org (why?) but at Google, try [compare mediawiki] for 1,000,000 results, the most famous:


 * *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software


 * *http://wikimatrix.org/


 * I'm not a believer that anything is "better" in and of itself, but they're all good at something or for something. The "goodness" is in the match to your needs and resources.  So, 69.87.183.220, why not read through the comparisons linked above and then report back here with your analysis of what promises to be a good match for you, and why.


 * Anyone else? Let us know. -- Peter Blaise peterblaise 01:03, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

--


 * A3: Peter Blaise says: Hey, 69.87.183.220, I FOUND IT! http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Database_layout -- Peter Blaise peterblaise 17:33, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Directory problems
Hi I've just tried to install mediawiki on two different multialised hosting accounts that run with plesk one with safe mode enabled and the other with safe mode disabled but I can not get it to work !

When I click on the news button on the main page or try to update any settings, I get a message similar to this one :

Warning: UtfNormal::loadData [function.loadData]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/UtfNormalData.inc) is not within the allowed path(s): (/home/httpd/vhosts/test.com/httpdocs:/tmp) in /home/httpd/vhosts/test.com/httpdocs/wiki/includes/normal/UtfNormal.php on line 229

Warning: UtfNormal::loadData(UtfNormalData.inc) [function.loadData]: failed to open stream: Operation not permitted in /home/httpd/vhosts/test.com/httpdocs/wiki/includes/normal/UtfNormal.php on line 229

Fatal error: UtfNormal::loadData [function.require]: Failed opening required 'UtfNormalData.inc' (include_path='/home/httpd/vhosts/test.com/httpdocs/wiki:/home/httpd/vhosts/test.com/httpdocs/wiki/includes:/home/httpd/vhosts/test.com/httpdocs/wiki/languages:.:') in /home/httpd/vhosts/test.com/httpdocs/wiki/includes/normal/UtfNormal.php on line 229

I have tried updating the $IP value manually setting it to the server install directory with the same result.

My UtfNormalData.inc file is in it's normal default place :

/home/httpd/vhosts/test.com/httpdocs/wiki/includes/normal/UtfNormalData.inc, I don't understand why it is looking for a /tmp folder, I have created two tmp folders with a 777 chmod both in /httpdocs/tmp and /httpdocs/wiki/tmp

and mediawiki is installed in /httpdocs/wiki

Any help would be greatfull !

Admins - how to change user status, permission levels, powers and rights
Q: How do u make people admins? -- 82.29.114.201, 2007-03-29 14:45:19


 * A1: Peter Blaise responds: "admins" is not an official MediaWiki inner term, so it's hard to find useful references to help you accomplish your chosen task.
 * Though "admin" is an outer term, see:
 * System Administrators = http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Sysadmin_hub
 * there, you'll also find:
 * Users = http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User_hub
 * Developers = http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_hub
 * So, we seem to have ony three classes of people on MediaWiki: "System Administrators", "Users" and "Developers", right? We ought to be able to just promote people between those three levels ... somewhere ... right?  BUT, none of those are actual inner names or findable terms, they are outer names only.  "Inside" the MediaWiki environment, there actaully are 4 or 5 effective levels of users available by default:
 * sysop
 * bureaucrat
 * bot
 * users who are logged in after registering
 * IP address users who are not logged in
 * NO ADMINS! So, we are going to run into this constant battle between inner and outer names of MediaWiki parts when we are trying to find help and ask each other, "How do I ...?" anything!  See:
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_access_levels
 * for 28 different user categories and 8 different classes of user permission levels - but don't quote any specific words here, as nomenclature around MediaWiki is a fungible thing, and using nomenclature from one page may not help you find equivalent information on other pages here. Also, see:
 * http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:User_levels
 * for 28 user levels again. Why is the apparently same or related information in 2 places?  Because the second contributor probably couldn't find the first page!  But, there still is no reference on how to promote a registered user to "admin" status, excuse me, to "sysop" or "bureaucrat" status, now that we know that there are no official inner "admin" name, really.
 * After rethinking what your inquiry really means, let's rephrase your question and search MediaWiki.org for [promote users], and then see that 7th on the search results list is:
 * http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bureaucrat
 * that includes on it's page the following:
 * Promoting users
 * If you are a bureaucrat, to give another user administrator access, go to Special:Makesysop in 1.4 and below or go to Special:Userrights on 1.5 and above on the wiki where you are a bureaucrat. There is a link to this on the list of special:specialpages ...

"Special:..." is "-1 namespace", but http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Namespace is NOT a useful place to find out what that means. Confused? All any of us can do is revisit often and try to share our learning once we have overcome and mastered these ambiguities. You'd have to know about "+4 namespace" that is "Project:..." so you could find http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Namespaces that explains the "namespace" names and numbering scheme ... somewhat, because http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Namespace doesn't actually explain namespaces, nor does it link to anything that does! Argh! .
 * Still confused? I know "namespace" is not what you asked about, but somehow, in order to learn anything about MediaWiki, we seem to have to learn everything about MediaWiki, first!  Okay so there's your answer:
 * To change user rights or permission levels,
 * first sign in as sysop or bureaucrat
 * then from "special" namespace, special:specialpages, find Special:Makesysop or Special:Userrights
 * edit users from there.
 * Thanks for your question. I hope my exploration was helpful.  Please sign and date your inquiries so others can track our dialogs.  Also, everyone, please report back with a follow up on how the responses helped or didn't.  Thanks! -- Peter Blaise peterblaise 14:23, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Register Editing Pages Only, But for Certain Pages
OK, I have my wiki set for only registered people to be able to edit pages, is there a way/extension, I can make/find that would allow certain pages to be editable by non registered user's...

An example of what I would like to do, Is post an Event for people to sign up for.. lets say 24 people total, I would like those people to say.. add their name/other into say.. A form field, which would add their info to the page of the wiki.. if the list was full, it would tell them, just that "This event is full"

Is there a way this could be possible?


 * See Extension:Lockdown and others in Category:Page Access Control Extensions -- Duesentrieb ⇌ 22:28, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Users support desk
There would be a Users support desk, a System Administrators support desk and a Developers support desk. See User_hub.
 * If there's a lesson to be learned from the English Wikipedia, is that there is such a thing as having too many desks, and not enough volume to warrant them. Having more places to look for info just causes duplicated effort or missed discussions/replies. Tito<font color="#008000">xd (?!?) 03:22, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

A suggestion about Wiki link format
But this form would also be useful and would use less text space in files (but does not seem to exist now):- That would e.g. allow ing|ed :: link to scuba diving, display scuba dived. Anthony Appleyard 08:11, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
 * If the name of an article is not the same as that name's invariant stem form, often when linking, the whole of the name (which may be long) must be repeated, e.g. scuba dived . That problem is worse in languages that have case endings, e.g. Russian. At the moment these forms are allowed:-
 * xxxx :: link to xxxx, display xxxx
 * yyyy :: link to xxxx, display yyyy
 * yyyy|zzzz :: link to xxxxyyyy, display xxxxzzzz.

What to do about this desk
Cross-posting another discussion for visibility: Project:Current issues. Please comment. Tito<font color="#008000">xd (?!?) 04:47, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Still looking for an accurate, contemporaneous "MediaWiki Installation Manual"
Peter Blaise says: I cannot seem to predictably and successfully contribute to http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Contents/To_do or other MediaWiki.org pages. So, I created one here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Peterblaise ... if I can only successfully log in more than once!

I look forward to anyone else trying to document the various roads to success implementing MediaWikis. As of 2007-05-18 there is no discussion on MediaWiki yet at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Contents/To_do ?!?

There is much fragmentation:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Installation

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Manual

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Contents

... and so on. No one has taken ownership (I know, ownership is a Wiki no-no) of structuring a comprehensive Installation manual. And since I can't seem to contribute anywhere else on MediaWiki.org except at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Peterblaise then I can't lend a hand. Even at the old http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents I quote": "For Installers ... nothing yet?"

Sadly, I was officially unwelcomed here (speaking of ownership) once before, but I'll try again.

As I experience it:

- The beauty of MediaWiki is that everyone can contribute (except me!).

- The problems with MediaWiki.org are that almost no one actually does contribute, and when they do, it so horribly disorganized that it doesn't matter much.

However, I suggest that people NOT respond to me here.

Instead, if you think you *know* some answers, then first *try to find those answers at http://www.mediawiki.org/* ... and:

- If you do find answers at MediaWiki,org, then reply here with *links*.

- If you cannot find answers on MediaWiki.org, then *create answers there*, and then reply here with links.

Thanks!

I'm trying to put everything I have to offer on MediaWiki.org - please join me.

Here goes for today, Friday, May 18, 2007 (how long has this been going on? April 6, 2007 was my first post here, and February 7, 2007 was when I "officially" started searching elsewhere for this very same help):

My Struggle #1: prototype, building an intranet-sharable Wiki that does not require admin privileges on my local primary workstation. Cornelius Herzog's "Wiki on WOS" (Webserver On a usb Stick) from http://www.chsoftware.net/ works. However, it requires that I permit each visitor access by a manually entered list of internal-IP address. This is arduous and requires that I be here for newbies to achieve their initial success. This dampens their enthusiasm to stay with the Wiki learning curve.

My struggle #2: alpha/beta, building an intranet-sharable Wiki WITH admin privileges on my remote secondary workstation. I have yet to get ANY MediaWiki system working at all. I have yet to find a resource that clearly and concisely lists the linking steps and confirmation checks between MSWinXPPro, Apache, PHP, MySQL, and MediaWiki. (The book "MediaWiki Administrators' Tutorial Guide: Install, manage, and customize your MediaWiki installation" by Mizanur Rahman, 2007 http://www.packtpub.com/ says, page 19, "Since this book is about MediaWiki, we are not going to learn about the installation of a web server, database server, or even PHP." Well, all right, then! So much for fulfilling their own title!  Thanks!)

My dream struggle #3: build multiple Wikis on one computer that share the same database, and also build multiple Wikis on one computer that do not share the same database.

If anyone has links to resources supporting resolutions to these struggles, please share! I've read most of the ones in Google's top search results and find they are missing specific linking steps and confirmation checks, and are usually out of date (MySQL 4 and PHP 4 and MediaWiki 1.3, for instance).

Here are some http://www.Google.com/ searches and results:

Search Terms:

[install mediawiki apache php mysql win xp winxp windows xp phpmyadmin] ... and so on.

http://www.Google.com/ results:

http://www.wikihow.com/Install-Apache,-MySQL,-PHP,-and-phpMyAdmin-on-a-Windows-PC

http://www.wikihow.com/Install-phpMyAdmin-on-Your-Windows-PC

http://www.wikihow.com/Install-the-Apache-Web-Server-on-a-Windows-PC

http://www.wikihow.com/Install-the-MySQL-Database-Server-on-Your-Windows-PC

http://www.bicubica.com/apache-php-mysql/index.php

http://www.wikihow.com/Install-the-PHP-Engine-on-Your-Windows-PC

http://www.devside.net/

http://oss.segetech.com/wamp.html

http://www.wampserver.com/en/index.php

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installing_MediaWiki_on_Windows_Server_2003

http://www.sematopia.com/?p=28http://www.yafla.com/dennisforbes/Many-Ways-to-Skin-a-Wiki-Hosting-a-Wiki-on-Windows/Many-Ways-to-Skin-a-Wiki-Hosting-a-Wiki-on-Windows.html

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installing_MediaWiki_on_Windows_XP_-_MediaWiki_1.9.2

http://www.php.net/manual/en/install.windows.php

... and so on for ~1,100,000 others.

... NONE of which are contemporaneous, complete, accurate, nor do they include linking steps and confirmation checks for the entire suite of OS/WS/DB/PI/WP/E&E. Don'tcha love abbreviations? Anyway, these generic terms might help structure a "manual", as there are choices at each step (too many choices is perhaps why no one has built a manual yet!):

OS = *Operating System* - Linux, Windows ...

WS = *Web Server* - Apache, MS/IIS ...

DB = *DataBase* - MySQL, PostgreSQL ...

PI = *Program Interpreter* - PHP ...

WP = *Wiki Programming* - MediaWiki ... are there others? ;-)

E&E = *Extensions and Enhancements* - FCKEditor, PHPMyAdmin ...

I'll contribute what I have, but I have scant little success because no one else seems willing to return to MediaWiki.org or anywhere with their notes while on the way to their own success, and I can't contribute to MediaWiki.org anywhere but my http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Peterblaise page (there's that ownership issue again!)!

HELP!

PS - "Thank you" to all who contacted and welcomed me off-list.

-- Peter Blaise peterblaise@yahoo.com peterblaise 13:45, 23 May 2007 (UTC)