Extension requests

Edit one page, read with RSS
It would be nice to have a page (example: Special:RSSList). That page is just a wiki-markup list of wiki links. Another page (or the same page with ?rss=true) will render that page as an RSS feed. My use case is that I want a page I can manually update with news and important wiki changes, but the Special:RecentPages is too much. (Too much information, too many unimportant updates)

So if I edited the page and wrote


 * Some pages has just been updated with new Widgets!


 * Finally got rid of the ugly wording on Some Other Page

If someone points the RSS reader to this page, they get a properly formatted rss feed with two items, properly hyperlinked.

Revisions thinning
It would be nice to have an extension that automatically thins revisions while edited articles are saved. For example, the thinning rule could be like that: if the last known revision is no more than 5 hours old, and the author is the same, the new revision being saved just overwrites the last known one. This is against people who save every minor change. This is common that people are frightened by the possibility to loose all the work due to random HW/SW/NW failure and do click "Save page" often. Also it will help to keep changes traceable in case when a bulk of wiki articles are being refactored in several passes by the single author. It will also help article reviewers to go through lists of articles in the "Recent changes", that were modified during last day.

Email blacklisting
While there exists an extension which can block creation of username in violation of a username policy, there doesn't seem to be one for blacklisting emails. The idea would be that a user who specifies a blacklisted email address, they are not email confirmed, and cannot do anything that requires one to specify a valid email address. Part of the reason why this might be a good idea is that some wikis require email confirmation to edit pages, and having an email address like Sneakmail enabled might, in some cases go against the intent of this restriction. MyrtonosTry liquid theads 09:46, 18 January 2011 (UTC)


 * $wgSpamRegex should be used on account registration.26808--Subfader 19:59, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I find that the spam regex extension works a lot better, plus authorized users can add new regexes from the wiki. To answer your question, you should use Extension:ConfirmAccount if there are certain email address domain names that you do not want people to use.  That way, if someone uses a troll email address, all you have to do is not create the account. Imperator Sascha 22:54, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Sign in with Twitter
While there is a facebook connect extension, why is there no twitter sign-in one? --MyrtonosTry liquid theads 08:07, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Not everyone has twitter --72.211.252.69 00:35, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Not everyone has Facebook either. With that said, there is a TwitterLogin extension now. Reach Out to the Truth 16:18, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Quizzes and FlashCards
MediaWiki is especially well suited for the purposes of education. But rather than just give people access to encyclopedic articles that don't test understanding, I think that the knowledge should be broken down into study-able pieces. To those ends, I would like to be able to include functionality like that found at Mnemosyne or Memorize.com within my site.

Connecting Google AdSense with Google Analytics
An extension that adds AdSense-Analytics connecting code to MediaWiki. --Darkhorn 04:56, 29 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Google Analytics is evil. --Subfader 02:53, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

A simple one-button "[Star] / [Fave] / [LikeThis] / [Cool!] / etc." rating extension
I've seen a lot of MediaWiki rating extensions that let the user define a "percentage like", or a number of stars, but I'm looking for something simpler. It's for a museum's wiki, where individual exhibits will have wiki pages, and where it would be nice for passing visitors to the website be able to click on a button to indicate that a particular Museum exhibit was one of their favourites. The Wiki could then show the number of likes for the item, and generate "most liked" lists, which would be useful both to visitors and to the Museum.

But it doesn't really need to bother users by asking for percentages or an exact numbers of stars - I figure that only the people who really like an exhibit will go to the trouble of rating it, so it only needs a one-button, one-click interface. I guess the obvious comparison would be with what Google are trying with their "+1" button.

So far I haven't been able to find a MediaWiki extension that does this. Is there something here that I've missed? ErkDemon 12:34, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I totaly second this request. I'm looking for something similar - a very simple "I like" button. Please post here if there is some extension. Unfortuneately I dont't know PHP to develop it myself, but I can help in the conceptualization if needed... --Wikichile (talk) 18:41, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

[RESOLVED] Hide the Namespace and colon on a link to a page in another namespace
I've been looking for this all over, it seems like an idea someone should have hit upon already.. I'd like to be able to make a link to a namespace page, like Food:Apples and have it show up in the page as just Apples, while still pointing to the namespace page.

This is already doable with regular link syntax, but it gets really time consuming, especially if I'm making heavily-linked paragraphs of text. I'd like to be able to just set it by default on specific namespaces so I don't have to mess with it. (I use a lot of custom namespaces, especially when I'm getting into content that uses common terms for titles.)--RedBlade 22:28, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Extension:HideNamespace --72.211.252.69 00:38, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Extension:HidePrefix does this both in the title and the link. (HideNamespace does not appear to change links?) It's also still working as of today's date, at least on MW 1.22 that I'm running. --Natrashafierce (talk) 19:58, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Images or frames: percentage of browser/screen width
This would be useful for anyone who wants to, for example, centre an image in a banner at the top, or display an image in the bottom - particularly of images which are of decent quality that you don't want to force down to a (horizontal) size of 640 pixels or 800 pixels on a large widescreen monitor. It would also be handy for people who want to create images or frames with images that span an article width neatly, rather than taking up only 50% or 75% of the article width.

If this idea has already been implemented, please tell me which extention facilitates it. Thanks in advance. - unsigned comment on 17:19, 20 July 2011‎ by 86.153.35.156


 * There is still interest for this capability. Thanks in advance. Sidelight12 (talk) 08:55, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Custom Profile Fields
I think it would be quite useful to have an extension to simply and quickly add new, custom, profile fields which users can fill in. I have seen some similar extensions out there, but the pages seem old at the best. -- 12:03, 27 July 2011


 * Have a look at Extension:Semantic Forms (general purpose forms that can add info also to User pages) and Extension:SocialProfile+Extension:Semantic Social Profile. --Katkov Yury 21:15, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Astrology Glyphs (rendering)
Request an extnesion for astrological glyphs, from w:Wikipedia:WikiProject Astrology/Glyphs. Similar to Extension:WikiHiero as render as here. --118.161.53.135 11:11, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Email reminder/Resubmission
I've been looking around, but unfortunately I cannot find what I'm after. I'm trying to find an extension that can remind an admin after a current time to reedit a page.

For example: I(Admin) create a page which a high priority about a technical topic which can change often. So I(Admin) want to create an Email-reminder which reminds me which page I have to reedit in 3 month/4 month/... .

It would be perfect to select, by creating the page, if this page should be viewed/reedited/controled by an admin (which admin) and in which intervals.

Does anybody have an Idea? Thx

-- 09:36, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

I've been looking for such an extension for long time as well. Unfortunately I found nothing till now. Therefore I support the idea of creating sth like this :>

-- 10:56, 5 July 2012 (CEST)

Short Abstract pop-up when hovering wiki links
I thought it would be nice to (optionally) have a small abstract pop-up of the linked article when hovering over an internal link. For example if you would hover over Einstein, there would be a small picture of him along with his Albert Einstein, (19XX-19XX), Nobel-price winning physisict blah blah. Most famous for his works on special and general relativity.

This would be rather helpful when reading a rather long article where you don't know all the people involved or all the concepts (objects, cities... ) described, unfortunately I have neither the capabilities or the time to implement such a feature myself.

-- jipewoot
 * try looking into snapshots, they have the functionality you're looking for, there's some other similar services as well like shrinktheweb

[RESOLVED] Spoiler Defined By Episode Extension
Well, I can't think of a better name right now. The standard spoiler extension isn't really very useful for me. What I'd appreciate being made is an extension that will allow visitors to select which episode (or chapter if it's a book I guess) they're up to from a drop-down box in the wiki's header area. Editors could add spoiler tags in such as This spoiler is specific to episode 23 of this show. Viewers who have either turned spoiler mode off or specified they have seen episode 23 or beyond will see the text, but it will not appear at all to those who have selected an episode that's lower than that value. Can this be done? Thank you. 86.24.135.98 19:01, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Edit: This doesn't matter anymore. I decided to migrate to Foswiki whose devs created the extension on the day of request. You may move this to the archive.

Navigation Templated Category Extension
I request an extension that shows the category on the bottom of an article as navigation templates. This extension is similar to the breadcrumbs, but it outputs the brother articles in the father category and the cousin articles in the uncle categories also. It goes up to the upper categories until the number of the brother or cousin articles becomes nearest to 30. The father category is put on the left of the list of the brother articles. The grandfather category is put on the left of the father category and the uncle categories. The upper category is put on the upper as the title of the navigation template. --Akaniji 11:46, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Functionally File and Lotus Notes Link Extension
I need an extension, with it I can make links to documents in the file-system and links to pages in the Lotus Notes programm. [[File:///....] and [[Notes://.....]] --80.149.179.2 08:43, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Modification of subpage name displaying
It would be nice to can display subpage names below the main page ones instead of the present system, where they are shown after a slash.

Ex.

Help:How to write a nice article
 * background colours

instead of:

Help:How to write a nice article/background colours

--Petrus Adamus 07:35, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

loggout-users
logging out other users if you have the userright

Private message extension
Could I get an extension created that would allow for sending private messages between users, that would have a similar setup/interface as email, Youtube messages, or forum private messages? I would like there to be a tab at the top of user and user talk pages (similar to the edit, or add section tabs) that would allow for sending that user a message (or taking them to the page where messages are sent from) and a link (probably best at the top with my preferences, my watch list, ect.) that takes users to their inbox and interface for sending messages. If possible, I would like for there to be a number next to this link indicating the number of unread messages.

I would like to have the following rights included:


 * Ability to send private messages
 * Ability to read private messages of other users
 * Ability to delete private messages of other users
 * Ability to edit private messages of other users

By default, I would like for none of the permissions to be assigned, and for it to be done manually.

I would also like there to be (if possible) a button for flagging messages, which would make the message show up on a special page accessible to users with a particular right to view that special page.

I've started a discussion here for anyone to sign there name if they are interested in this extension, and would use it if it were created:

User:Imperator Sascha/Sandbox/People who would like a private message extension

Imperator Sascha 20:59, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * AWC Forum comes with a quite acceptable PM system, but it's far from perfect. I'd like Pm messages between 2 users to be like on Facebook: A continous thread of messages between the 2 users. --Subfader 08:45, 9 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I just tried using it, except it seemed to have some glitches, was extremely slow to load, and there didn't appear to be a way of moderating private messages. I'll check some of the other forum extensions to see how their PM systems are.  It also created a ton of user groups, which I really didn't want. --Imperator Sascha 22:48, 10 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's nasty. Err, "moderating private messages" - Woot? --Subfader 23:02, 11 February 2012 (UTC)


 * It would be useful if users send harassing or illegal content. I read an administrative thread on Warseer once about an apparent problem users sending private messages to each other about websites to pirate Imperial Armor books from. --Imperator Sascha (talk) 03:53, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Build Documentation, News, Magazines for offline use (Export)
Many software production sites use wiki for Documentation (Howtos, Manuals, FAQ, Mailing lists, whole Documentation). But there is no chance to download it for offline use (for example for offline software usage, archiving purposes etc.). I found great feature on Wikipedia which can build Book and then export that book as PDF, ODF file etc. However it would be difficult for a user visiting a software wiki website to create a whole Documentation book manually.

The solution is to build a script, which can be planned to run periodically to build such "Documentation" and prepare it for Download for offline use. It has to use export extensions (already existing or new ones) in various formats including - simple HTML format (one page, multiple pages; with/without images and/or other content), TEXT format to build text Documentation (for old Operating Systems and software - MS-DOS - remember the file needs to have limited size etc.), Windows Help HTML?, Linux man pages? etc.

'''Such kind of script and extensions could be used on Wikimedia sites to create Newspapers, Magazines! (new WikiMag.org site?), Books, Dictionaries, etc. ready to download for offline use (notebooks, iPad, mobile phones etc. - PDF, HTML, etc. - remember old or historic devices capabilities)'''

2 Click Social Buttons
Heise made a jQuery plugin which includes a Facebook, Twitter and Google+ Button. It is called "socialshareprivacy" (documentation). It would be nice when you can include the buttons automatically below the articles.

EditCount with minimum size
I was wondering if it is possible to have an EdiCount that has, as an additional argumen,t a minimum contribution size (eg. 1000 bytes), either fixed or entered by the user. I know editcountitis is spread among some of the top contributors and that all contributions and contributors matter, however it is be good to recognize who the top contributors are. But, in my opinion, we shall not recognize ones that have thousand of contributions only adding lines between paragraphs, brackets in dates and adding unnecessary categories. Perhaps some filter (eg. contribution size) would help. Lgtrapp (talk) 18:44, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Easy special page maker
It would be good to have a page on the wiki where administrators can create/edit special pages, instead of creating confusing files in the website's file manager. This would be helpful because I am new to PHP and MW, so i can't create an extension myself. --Htmlguy999 (talk) 13:12, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

An infobox like extension
An extension that gives output similar to the infobox on Wikipedia for biographies and essential information. The existing Extension Template does not allow the parameters needed for biographies and special articles.Bci2 (talk) 05:03, 25 March 2012 (UTC)Bci2

Search Highlighting
When you search something, if the article you go to is large sometimes you want to see the terms you searched, highlighted on the page for easy viewing. Especially on phones, and even more especially for users who don't know how to search on the page. (Tablets ESPECIALLY!). Also, in search results, a 'jump to first occurrence' would help too, perhaps with the ability to enable it as the default action when clicking searched term links.

Edit History Editor
The extension would be useful if someone with a user account accedently anonymously edited, and doesn't want their IP to be shown, etc.

Bill9929 (talk) 23:06, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
 * There could also be a log of the changes with optional edit summaries and such (like other logs) so they don't go unnoticed if a bad admin were to abuse it. Also, have the ability to edit log history as well, so if, say, you deleted a page with the wrong summary you could go back and correct it. —BlittleMcNilsen (talk) 23:27, 4 May 2012 (UTC)


 * You can just use oversight abilities to do hide editors/ip addresses. Oversight  I do have to say though that something that could edit edit histories could be massively abused if not restricted to very specific users, and even then, still by the sysadmins.  Inquisitor Sasha Ehrenstein aus dem Sturmkrieg Sector (Talk) (Contributions) 07:45, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Extension for keeping points on user pages
I'm new here and I don't really understand the process but my wiki is universaltriumvriate.wikia.com

What we're trying to do is we have a fake currency on the wikia that we use to make transactions from each other (sort of like an RPG) and we want it to be a little (well a lot) easier. Some way that we could keep track of how much everyone had on their user page and you could give people some of your currency by visiting their page or doing something else to transfer money easily. I know it might be a steep request but can anyone help me? You can e-mail me at stavrokfinancial@gmail.com if you are interested. Thank you so much.

I'm interested in this as well. 67.59.206.130 16:58, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Special page query to find images without a copyright license
It would be useful to have a query page (akin to the maintenance reports special pages) which lists all files without a copyright license. I assume that this would be easy to create, but unfortunately I have no idea how to retrieve the data and the display the results. The copyright templates themselves could be specified within the extension itself, or possibly in a MediaWiki: message page. I would like to use it for the Tolkien Gateway wiki, but I'm sure that it would be useful elsewhere (especially considering the efforts editors of wikis put into making sure that they don't have copyrighted material uploaded). Many thanks. --KingAragorn (talk) 15:13, 15 June 2012 (UTC)


 * You could add  to your license template(s) as hidden category. Then list all pages not in that category using Extension:DynamicPageList (Wikimedia):

 namespace  = file notcategory = Pages with a license template 
 * --Subfader (talk) 10:43, 16 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Many thanks for your solution! It will definitely prove useful on my Wiki. --KingAragorn (talk) 16:04, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Extension to create namespaces that have the same notification functionality of User_talk:
I would like to see an extension that gives customized namespaces the same notification functionality of User_talk:

Ideally the notifications can be customized on a per namespace basis......maybe even based on the content added to the page. The idea behind this is a user could have pages for different "things" and every time the page gets something added the user gets a notification. This could be used for badges like wikilove but instead of filling up the Users_talk page a custom user pages could be created. If this was a modular extension and not integrated into wikilove it would be nicer for customization reasons.

67.59.206.130 16:56, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

67.59.206.130 16:56, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

UNprotected pages
It would be really nice to have a list of unprotected pages. There is already Special:ProtectedPages, it would be VERY helpful to have the same thing that list all the pages with no protection on them. An added bonus would be a way to protect a list of pages, perhaps by checking off pages on this list of "UNprotected pages".

--Zackmann08 (talk) 19:09, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Commons images
Hi guys, I want an extension when you click an image from wikimedia commons, to navigate directly to the commons description page, it happen on other wikis that ban local image uploading, and I want it on en wikipedia as well --TheChampionMan1234 (talk) 06:41, 20 Septuk ]]j njhng;/.ml,l,zsk;c,d d/b,m/fsd;'./ m l/bdxdsnl;,h/.mda;ckl/nghs';b mung

mungalparasagar@gmail.com

search result can be grouped by category
Hi, i am wondering whether the search result can be grouped by category? or allow user to filter yhe search result by category?

Now the result can only filtered by namespace. Please advice. thanks.

Family Tree Hierarchy
Make a simple, graphical, and clickable stem of relatives on a MediaWiki that links to a wiki page about that relative. Text boxes with full, maiden names may represent people, connecting lines could relate those people, and a shift in column/row can represent change in generation. The hierarchy may organize itself according to page labels such as "'Mother' of 'NAME'" or "'Spouse' of 'NAME'". That way, users creating/editing pages about themselves or others could link relatives together by adding labels -- a Free family tree wiki! Just think of the many families that actually like to keep track of their own ancestry; this extension could be for a personal "wiki stem" or for a more global one. It just needs some coding by people who know php, etc., and it's done. No more keeping old photo books that fall apart.

Two types of hierarchies: Immediate and Extended

Immediate Family View: Shows the spouse pair's generations, one gen. above and two below, including: Father, Step Fathers Mother, Step Mothers Brothers, Step Brothers Sisters, Step Sisters Children, Adopted Children Grandchildren, Step Grandchildren Spouses (and immediate family thereof)

Extended Family View: Shows the relative's generation and three generations above, including: Great Grandfather, Great Step Grandfathers Great Grandmother, Great Step Grandmothers Grandfather, Step Grandfathers Grandmother, Step Grandmothers Uncles, Step Uncles Aunts, Step Aunts Cousins, Step Cousins

Both hierarchies could display four generations either in four rows or columns (horizontally on the top of a page, or vertically as a page sidebar where space is unlimited)

The hierarchy may have clickable options next to it to: Show Extended Family for Mother Show Extended Family for Father (default view for clicks within hierarchy) Show Immediate Family for Spouse #1 Show Immediate Family for Spouse #2 etc.

These extensions could be adapted to make this happen. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CategoryTree http://code.google.com/p/phpsyntaxtree/


 * This could be done without creating an Extension by using Extension:SemanticMediawiki! --DaSch (talk) 12:28, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Cackle comment system
Extension/widget to embed Cackle comment system

Metasearch Function for Medical and other Scientific literature, PubMed, Publishers, Scirus, PMC
I have runnig php code for the following task:

1. enter boolean search term 2. truncate search term to format compatible with external search engine 3. run search on external search engine by magic link

whereas

external search engine is anything like PubMed, Publisher's sites, DOAJ, other Backfile archives, Wikiepdia, Wikipathways, Wikibooks, Physicians desk reference, ClinTrials and all like that.

I will try to up it in a couple of days.

Running system is here: example search on 'juxtaglomerular apparatus'

--Ossip Groth (talk) 22:54, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Include graphML and support for yEd
graphML is a nice way to create graphics via XML. A nice combination. There is also a nice free editor available for it, called yEd from yWorks (written in Java), so at least it would be nice if someone could build an extension that could run it as an applet, just like Freemind. The filename extension should be '.graphml'. I believe this would be really very nice and useful.

wordpress or blog extension
hi could someone create a wordpress extension so that we doint have to install wordpress onto another domain so that wordpress can be installed onto mediawiki please so we can create blogs in mediawiki please or create an blog extension please 86.176.186.77 19:59, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Extension:Wikilog.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:43, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

I need extension that shows user activity
I want to show a list of my created articles by recent added on my user page! Please make it someone!

And how about an extension that gives users warning level? --Myrtonos (talk) 23:49, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Hindustani Traditional Musical Notation as like "Extention:Score"
Hi, I am from Bengali Wikisource Team (bn.wikisource.org). We have lots of PD Hindustani Traditional Musical Notation (Swaralipi) with songs. We need to convert there. So we need Hindustani Traditional Musical Notation as like "Extension:Score". I would like to help any kind of work except coding. I have uploaded sample file of notation in Bengali language ( File:Swarabitan vol. 1.pdf works by en:Rabindranath Tagore.Jayantanth (talk) 22:26, 21 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I have found some developments at http://ragapedia.com/doremi-script-gui/index.html#/root
 * https://github.com/rothfield/doremi-script-gui
 * https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.music.indian.classical/yVDTjeXecSs

Conditional access
What does a wiki owner do if one is serious about making money off their site? One displays advertisments on that site. Another way to make money from a site is to charge an account creation fee. This may be a better alternative to displaying (as many) advertisments to logged in users. With this extension, one can charge a fee on account creation and also reduce the number of advertisments displayed to logged in users. The extension should also give the option of charging additional fees for gaining additional user rights, and the option of even fewer advertisments displayed to users with additional rights. --Myrtonos (talk) 23:29, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Adblocker Extension for Mediawiki
This may sound counter-intuitive but there should be an Adblocker Extension or a similar extension for Mediawiki, so when you post Youtube videos you can remove their ads.

An Autocomplete links and templates extension
There is already an Autocomplete script on User scripts, but I believe it would be of even more use as an extension, as it would better be able to work with API that way and if it included a user preferences toggle to turn it on and off, it would be nice addition that could be installed on wikis for those who have trouble remembering page links and templates.

Wikia already does have something similar, but it's heavily customized for their fork of MediaWiki, and a version tailored for stock MediaWiki would be a great benefit to the MediaWiki community IMO. Arcane21 (talk) 00:56, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Container divs for lead article text and sections
Common.css is a great, easy way for an average user to make big style changes: the learning curve for CSS isn't terribly steep. However, Common.css is limited by which elements MediaWiki, or a given skin, decide to assign class or ID attributes. For a few months now I have been editing Common.css, and doing hours of Google searches, but I have continually run up against one big issue: there are no container divs for many MW elements. I have also continually come across dead-end threads where, over the years, people have tried to do the same thing I am looking to do, but ran up against the same issue.

This is not something the average user can fix on their own. I have moderate programming experience (C++ and Python) but I have determined that I would not only need to learn PHP and JavaScript, but I'd have to make sense of the actual MediaWiki files necessary as well: it is difficult to merely figure out where the HTML is even generated to put a div somewhere and assign it attributes. I spent a couple days going through things like skin.php, skintemplate.php, parser.php, etc, and this is incredibly daunting to untangle. It's the sort of thing I might take on if I weren't already trying to, you know, design and write a wiki. :-) I'm sure plenty of people are in my position and have just given up on styling certain elements.

Here are the elements I have identified could benefit from containers with class/ID attributes:


 * The lead article text needs its own containing div and ID. There is often no good way to select this text in CSS.
 * Section text needs its own containing div and class, especially if one wishes to style it independently of lead article text. (Thankfully, the SectionHide extension accomplishes this for me, with its sectionblock div class.)
 * Each section, and subsection, needs its own containing div and class which includes its header along with its text; classes like "h2-section" "h3-section" etc would suffice. For example, this would allow people to style all H4 subsections differently: its text could look different, it could have a different background, it could have borders, etc.
 * The table of contents and the lead article text need to have their own container div with an ID, so that one can style the top of the article above the sections:
 * Googling has confirmed to me that lots of people do not like the default positioning of the ToC and wish to position it to the left of the lead article text. The typical solution of adding float:left to #toc can produce problems depending on the rest of the styling, plus the ToC still comes after the lead article text. This means that people need to invoke the ToC magic word before the lead article text, but doing this on every page is tedious: this is why people want skins and extensions, after all, so they don't have to do this on every page.
 * Assigning a containing div to the ToC and lead article text, along with the suggested lead article text container div, would get around the magic word problem because it allows one to make the ToC-and-lead-article div a flexbox, and then assign order:1 and order:2 to #toc and #leadtext (or whatever) respectively. This would position the ToC to the left ("before" the lead article text) without float, without the order of the source code making a difference, and without needing to invoke the magic word every page. (As it stands, I have to get around this by invoking a template at the top of every page. And then I had to deal with some weirdness where MW uses a toc tag only if there is lead article text, or something like that: I had to set it so that the toc tag is 20% width, then the ToC is 20% width if there is no toc tag around it, but 100% width if it's inside a toc tag, which... ai yai yai.)
 * Similarly, I'm sure some people would love a container div with an ID for all the sections excluding the lead article text. Off the top of my head, this would allow people to put the sections in columns, or grids, or whatever else they could think of.

There are probably other container divs people would like to see, too, these are just the obvious ones.

Ideally, these containing divs would one day become a part of MediaWiki itself. But I feel at least an extension is desperately needed, and I would be terribly grateful to anyone who could make this extension. I'm sure others would be grateful too!

--Natrashafierce (talk) 18:55, 29 August 2014 (UTC)