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 dissapointed 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 transfered 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 happend. 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 alot 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 relevent article. That means that the question, and its answer will be more availble 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 relevent.
 * 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 catagories 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 catagory. Whats the purpose of needing to search answered questions in a meaningful way? [04:38]  definatly 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 catagory, so we can look at Catagory: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 versitile, 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)

“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?

than kyou

MediaWiki Overview
Does anyone care to explain the basic structure of MediaWiki and its tables? Can someone just provide and backend overview of meida, discussing how is data organized and referenced, what makes media wiki better and other wikis (besides the fact that its free).


 * It is open source, what is stopping you from looking yourself?

Directory problems
Hi I've just tried to install mediawiki on two different mutualised 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 !