User:Mihai Alexandru

=Wiki at first sight = If you’re like me, than your first encounter with a wiki was on Wikipedia, probably searching for information related to school work or things that you just found out and wanted to learn more about. That’s just the beginning, because as I was browsing the internet on different occasions, with different purposes, I remarked that almost any site about almost anything was featuring a wiki page ( for example the wiki webpage of an online game mod for the well known video game "GTA: San Andreas", the wiki created by the Bitcoin comunity or the wiki for the "Arch" Linux distribution, all running the MediaWiki platform ).

The first wikiengine that I’ve got to work with was MediaWiki provided by the WikiMedia Foundation. As expected, I could find all the information related to installing and configuring a wiki on the MediaWiki wiki page which could help you if you're getting lost through the process, which, to be sincere, I think is pretty impossible, because the setup is really easy to complete. I remember when I first installed a wiki on a machine that I had no problems and that was maybe 2 years ago, when I was just 14 years old and my Romanian teacher asked me to create a site for the class where she could post the information related to our lessons. I had a very very basic level on knowledge related to web engineering, configuring online platforms or whatsoever, but I still didn’t find it difficult managing to setup a wiki running MediaWiki for this. The wiki itself could be used in a really large range of domains and ways, which is great, but the fact that you can get to have your own wiki(s) very easy, either by using a MediaWikia provider (Wikia, for example), that practically gives you a ready for action wiki on demand, or by setting it up all by yourself, I think that makes everything even greater.

I really like the idea that you’re provided a testing solution with sandboxes for different uses (API sandbox, for example), alongside the vast information, that may help you to better understand the way things work around. I could also find support on development, about which I was pretty impressed, mainly by the idea than anyone could become a MediaWiki developer by volunteering to make the system better, but I guess that’s one of the ideas behind the wiki concept.

I can say that the passive support is great, but I believe that the active support (direct assistance from another person) could have some improvements. I like the discussion tab above any page, but what if my problem is not one hundred percent related to the topic of the most related page? As a matter of user interface and accessibility, I think that the discussion tab should work alongside a generic forum interface ( by this I mean something like the phpBB or the vBulletin interface). I know that there are some IRC rooms related to support, but I think that a forum is a better way of getting the help you need as a long term solution, because others who get to experience the same problems or have the same questions as you could simply search and find yours, probably resolved or answered. Fortunately, as I’ve recently found, the MediaWiki developers are actually working on a solution for that. A discussion system called “Flow” that, in my opinion, combines the advantages of a forum, the discussions tabs and the IRC, as the information provided can be divided into topics and so get a more static form and the interface is simple and really fast so you can easily post a reply just like with a comment system. I just hope that the “Flow” will get a categorizing function, so topics can be easier to find.

I embrace the fact that the code is mainly written in php language, as I consider it making contributing with source code more accessible than probably it would have done being a Python written software, for example, because it seems to me that php is the most used language over the web. I find the extensions principle a necessary one, coming really handy, as it allows you to modify code without changing the “core” and gives the platform a more modular feel in my opinion resulting in making everything easier to personalize. One of my favorite features are skins, which can radically change the feel of the the wiki: from academic to personal, giving the user the best fitted experience.

From the beginning I considered the MediaWiki wikis as being the most related to what a wiki should look like, as they practically define it, but after going a little deep and learning more about its guts, it seems to me as an even more mature and stable solution to sharing information, providing great access and flexibility for development.