User:RubenSchade

Hi everyone, my name is Ruben Schade and I'm a happy MediaWiki user born in Australia and raised in Singapore. I mostly use the MediaWiki Wiki for reading its documentation, though as I continue to use the software on a daily basis and learn more about it, I hope to contribute to the project directly at some point.

Wikipedia
By far the most experience I have with MediaWiki software is editing Wikipedia, where I mostly focus on creating and overhauling pages and templates for jazz and public transport articles. I could have phrased that far more eloquently!

Third parties
I currently maintain two main MediaWiki installs: a private site for my university, and a corporate intranet site. Aside from their use of a slightly tweaked version of MonoBook, they're fairly standard affairs with MySQL and various PHP caching engines. I've run into minor issues with ImageMagick on the latter install dealing with PNGs, but since the latest update that problem seemed to fix itself. Not complaining :).

Personal notebook
I also maintain a single-user install on my laptop running on Lighttpd and SQLite that I use for all these wonderful things:
 * a local scrapbook
 * virtual refrigerator
 * brain dump
 * note taking system
 * university and high school work organiser
 * categorised humourous quote and joke database
 * PHP, MySQL, ImageMagick or eAccelerator testing environment
 * pleasant life distraction
 * to-do list system
 * computer parts inventory list
 * recipe archive
 * programming language notes and cheat sheets
 * knowledge accumulator
 * supplementary memory storage location (to my biological RAM!)
 * serial and product numbers for software, appliances and so on
 * probably other things

MediaWiki is perhaps overkill for this kind of use, but I thoroughly adore MediaWiki's template and category systems, and am most familiar with its wiki syntax compared to, say, DokuWiki.

Whole Wheat Radio (former)
In my opinion though, the best example of a third party using MediaWiki in the same open spirit of collaboration and sharing of knowledge was the late Whole Wheat Radio. Jim Kloss in Talkeetna, Alaska maintained a non-commercial wiki dedicated to showcasing thousands of independent musicians from around the world, and the site could be contributed to by anyone. Extenuating circumstances lead to the site's closure in 2010; I've attempted to fill the gap with more Wikipedia contributions, but the site and its people really was unique and beautiful. Se a vida é...

Interwiki links

 * Wikipedia (my primary Wikimedia account)
 * Wikimedia Commons