Chiming in on this a little late, but, basically: Yeah, mediawiki isn't that easy to administer. Unfortunately, people administering MediaWiki installs are only one type of user that we have to worry about and resources (as always) are limited. Right now, we're focusing a concentrated effort on making things easier for editors (users generating content), BUT I think administrators are an important group because I hear stories all the time about how administrators for intranet wikis get requests from people in their company for a better way to do X or Y, and they have to write it themselves.
I'd love it if there were some easy way to get these administrators who have had to come up with hacks to share what their issues were, what their solutions were, and maybe even push their changes back upstream =) Do people here generally feel this would be a good resource to have? And, more importantly, that it would be used? On 3/2/10 8:30 PM, Chris Lewis wrote: > I hope I am emailing this to the right group. My concern was about mediawiki > and it's limitations, as well as it's outdated methods. As someone wo runs a > wiki, I've gone through a lot of frustrations. > > If Wordpress is like Windows 7, then Mediawiki is Windows 2000. Very outdated > GUI, outdated ways of doing things,for example using ftp to edit the settings > of the wiki instead of having a direct interface like Wordpress. Mediawiki > makes millions more than Wordpress does too, why can't the money be put into > making a modern product instead of in pockets of the people who run it? I > know Wordpress and Mediawiki serve two different purposes, but that's not the > point. The point is, one is modern and user friendly (Wordpress), and the > other (Mediawiki) is not. Other complaints: > -Default skins are boring > -Very limited in being able to make the wiki look nice like you could with a > normal webpage. > -A major pain to update! Wordpress upgrades are so simple. > -Better customization so people can get a wiki the way they want. It should > be more like the wikis on wikia, except without me having to learn css and > php to make those types of customizations. Give me some option, some places > to put widgets. Not every wiki is going to be as formal as the ones on > wikimedia sites. And don't the people at Wikimedia commons get tired of > always having to make changes so it actually suits their site? If they had > some of the options from the get go, i'm sure they'd appreciate it too. > -I don't want to go to my ftp to download my local settings file, add a few > lines then reupload it. This is caveman-like behavior for the modern internet. > -Being able to manage extensions like wordpress does. > > In short, it's time to spend some money from those millions of dollars from > donations to make this software more modern. Being stubborn in modernizing it > will only make this software less relevant in the future if other wiki > software companies are willing to do things the people at Wikimedia aren't. > > Thank you > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
