Project:Forum

Extension help
Where should we put help content that relates to extensions? In the Help: namespace, or perhaps in another custom namespace "Extension help:"?? Happy ‑ melon 17:41, 22 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Manual: is fine. —Emufarmers(T 00:33, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
 * That doesn't strike me as very sensible: extension help content should still be licensed to PD, which won't be the case in Manual: namespace. Manual: isn't even where technical data on extensions is kept, that's Extension:... I can't think of any reason to put content like meta:Help:ParserFunctions at Manual:ParserFunctions or somesuch. Happy ‑ melon 15:29, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
 * How about subpages in the "Extension:" namespace? (e.g. Extension:ParserFunction/Installation) – rotemliss – Talk 19:41, 23 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It helps when you explain what "help content that relates to extensions" actually means. :) (Manual: holds documentation on developing extensions.)
 * Documenting lengthy usage instructions using subpages is common practice; is there a compelling reason why we would want to do it another way in this case? ParserFunctions is installed on lots and lots of wikis, to the point where it might seem like core help material, but it's still an extension.  We could document the functions from the extension in Help:Variables and mark them as "functions that may not be available depending on the wiki setup," but I think we're aiming to keep the PD help pages describing an out-of-the-box setup, to the extent that we can. —Emufarmers(T 08:06, 24 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Indeed, which is why I was hesitant to just recreate Help:ParserFunctions. The issue is, as ever, the license; wouldn't we want the extension help pages like meta:Help:ParserFunctions, en:Help:EasyTimeline syntax to be PD so they can be distributed more easily? I'm concerned that if we drop content like this into the Extension: namespace then A) it is likely to get muddled with the 'developer-level' information and be hard to find, B) be difficult to locate and extract from the set of pages in that namespace, and C) be hard to cleanly and easily port of this site. Not everyone will want to link their help documentation here. So my thoughts are that this kind of help content (that is aimed at editors of www.randomwiki.org) needs to be both PD and contained in its own little set such that admins there can come over here, export the whole of our 'standard help', plus the help pages for whichever extensions they've got installed. My immediate reaction is that it would be quickest and cleanest to create another PD namespace, say "Extension help:" so we could have Extension help:ParserFunctions, Extension help:ImageMap, Extension help:Cite, etc.  Another possible solution, either an interim measure or a permanent decision, would be what I've done by creating Help:Extension:ParserFunctions.  Upsides, no need for another namespace, downside slightly confusing page name.  As I say, however, my overriding impression is that this content needs to be public domain. Happy ‑ melon 12:20, 24 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The help namespace is aimed at being a set of basic help pages that can be installed easily on a new wiki, aimed at wiki users (no administrator info). ParserFunctions (unless I'm unaware of a change) does not ship with vanilla MediaWiki, therefore they should not be documented in the help namespace.  Extension namespace is correct for this kind of information.  --HappyDog 01:29, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * If the problem is whether the pages are PD or not, we can always create a template and abuse categories to track PD extension help pages. Titoxd (?!?) 03:31, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * But the legally-binding message is what appears underneath the edit screen. We can't change that based on categories or templates.  Happy ‑ melon 12:32, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Deferred
Hi. I would like to know the purpose of marking commits as "deferred". From what I see, the changes are still in SVN. What is the result of making then "deferred"? Thanks, Malafaya 16:22, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it just means "not reviewed yet because we don't really care, since the code isn't running on Wikimedia servers". —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 11:58, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Sidebar localization
Could sidebar link URLs be included in $wgForceUIMsgAsContentMsg in the configuration of mediawiki.org? Especially mw-download-url would be a good idea. Main page would be fine, too, but would probably need to be changed to some mainpage-url or something, so that languages without a localized MediaWiki.org homepage would work correctly. Also “Download from SVN” should be localizable. --Mormegil 12:57, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Not a help page
Currently the "this is not a help page" message is being largely ignored. Should we be more consistent in directing questions over to the Support desk and not handling them here? Happy ‑ melon 10:52, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure. I see I'm the one who is curently doing most of the ignoring... I didn't pay enough attention, my bad... Sorry. MiCkE 12:05, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * That's ok, don't worry. It's a positive feedback loop, the more answered questions there are on this page, the more likely people are to assume that the "this is not a help desk" notice is just a mistake.  Happy ‑ melon 12:44, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

The extension DynamicPageList
The Extension:DynamicPageList has been moved to another name, Extension:DynamicPageList (third-party), and Extension:Intersection has replaced the previous entry. This creates troubles as a lot of pages refers to functionality that is not part of the extension. I would prefer that the old names would be used, even if they don't seems to be completely logical in some sense or another. Thanks. Jeblad 04:13, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * This was done by Brion Vibber, our CTO, as a response to 18945. We need to update links to the pages to point to their new targets as far as possible. Happy ‑ melon 09:54, 31 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Who made the move is completely irrelevant, it is a community around Mediawiki and its extensions and this creates havoc. Jeblad 16:07, 13 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Per Project:Requests, this site is not an egalitarian community like other wikis in the WMF cluster. The hierarchy of developers (patch contributors, junior devs with commit access, senior devs, sysadmins, and ultimately Brion) spills over here.  As such, the fact that Brion made the move is not irrelevant. Happy ‑ melon 18:06, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Main page: addition of a link to corporate use

 * See discussion.