Upgrading MediaWiki

Folks,

I’m going to be upgrading our MediaWiki installation now. The goal being to get it on the current version of MediaWiki so we can enable a fancy Visual Editor, increasing accessibility to the wiki.

You shouldn’t notice any downtime or issues, but if anything happens please let me know :slight_smile:

Thanks!

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Thanks for all your time and effort … sounds great

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image

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Alright, I should be done now.

I upgraded us to the current MediaWiki, and installed the VisualEditor extension.

Editing the wiki should now be a breeze. It will be much like editing a Word document.

I need everyone to help me test out the new wiki version by doing things like:

  • Logging in
  • Editing an existing page using the VisualEditor (maybe adding missing content?)
  • Upload an image to an existing page (should be much easier!)

Please let me know here if you notice anything strange or anything broken!

Thanks,
Luke

cc seasoned wiki editors @jast @heyheymama

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Most excellent! Good job Luke!

Is wiki search been improved?

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Unlikely, however I’d play with it some, we jumped years into the future with this update.

There’s a couple of software solutions like elasticsearch and sphinx that I can look into integrating. MediaWiki currently just does direct word searching, you search for “beer” you get only articles with the exact word “beer”.

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@John_Marlow


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Went right to work on it. Faster editing. Thank you! So glad I didn’t have to remember wiki formatting.

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Woo! :blankspace: :blankspace:

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Still needed the wiki formatting for the outline. Can’t just bold something to get that effect. No problem. Glad to have the old way as back up.

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So I’m wiki illiterate apparently, is there any benefit to regular members not on a committee logging in because I can’t

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Absolutely. Anyone can edit, thus allowing everyone to be able to contribute. See a typo? Feel free to fix it. Think it would read better in a different format? Go for it! Missing the 4th thing “they” just mentioned in that TALK thread about that? Add it in.

What happens when you try to log in?

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I could use some pointers on embedding keywords in the meta-information, and adding sub-categories. We could probably all be a little more diligent on our use of categories (and keywords?) to make it more searchable.

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Not sure what you mean by “meta-information” or sub-categories. There are so many ways to interpret those words.
Categories are pretty straightforward: add the “internal link” to the category in question. If a category is part of another category, as in the Category:2018 Meetings, which is part of Category:Meetings, adding a page to the category’s category makes it a member of the subcategory.
Anyway. This can get hairy quickly…

As for what I suspect you mean by “meta-information”, I suspect you mean hidden keywords and phrases such that a page returns on a search even if the words used are not displayed on the page, but fit the intention of the search. Embed hidden phrases using the comments tags, as employed on the Metal Suppliers page

<!-- Please use Wiki-style mark-up, not HTML, unless there is no other way to do it. -->
<!-- See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Formatting -->

These words will be indexed and searchable, as much as Mediawiki ever is, despite not displaying in the read pane.

Of course, maybe I completely misunderstand the intent…

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I get an error message saying cannot create local account, local account creation not available when I use DMS username and login. If I use email or mediawiki username it says wrong username or password and I’ve reset password and made sure I’m not just fat fingering it on accident so I think I may have missed a step somewhere?

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Thanks for the report, I’ll work on this tomorrow!

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That’s exactly what I was looking for!! Thanks.

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I actually find the new version harder to use, but if it encourages more people to contribute to and update the wiki, then it’s a good thing. Thanks for doing this.

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I don’t know if it will help others, I do know we can easily support both the old version and the new version. I have the old version toggled off but it’s a simple on/off switch. As soon as I get my laptop charger from wherever I left it I can update it.

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I’m with you on this. But I figure it’s because I’m old and crotchety, so I’m trying to “branch out”. :wink:
If it helps any, and I’m sure you already know, but sometimes I have discovered something others have not yet, you can click “edit source” to get (something like, at any rate) the old, familiar interface


while “edit” takes you to that newfangled “friendly” thingy

This is available on MOST pages, but not all…

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