User:Mcint/WikiMaxxing

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I'm on-boarding myself to more extensive wiki use. I've come across some features on Wikipedia that make it more a of delight to use and navigate. I'd like to document those features here (separated, or tagged by reader vs. editor benefitting), and encourage others to try them out.

It begins, I've created a category: Category:Wiki/Project/Maxxing, to track and proselytize approaches to wiki structuring I've found.

Note well[edit | edit source]

Wanted: links to mediawiki syntax, tables syntax inline, inline external image.

Recommendations[edit | edit source]

Hello other users of the wiki!

Preferences[edit | edit source]

Gadgets[edit | edit source]

I recommend, in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, the Navigation popups and section link (URL fragment) gadgets, to help you get around more easily and link more precisely for others.

If you're going to edit the wiki frequently, there's a "double-click to edit" preference as well, and an EditTop gadget for editing just the lead section, the introductory section rendered above the table of contents any headers, and appearing before the first = header #1 = in the [Help:WikiText wikitext].

Talk pages[edit | edit source]

AKA "Discussion" linked in the on-page header tabs. Use the "Add Topic" link that appears in the upper left to add a new topic, otherwise edit and reply within a section so other commenters, watching can get replies. IDK exactly how it works, not checking right now.

Markdown Conversion[edit | edit source]

https://pandoc.org/try/ convert markdown to mediawiki, or from one of the markdown variants.

Differences[edit | edit source]

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Differences_between_Wikipedia,_Wikimedia,_MediaWiki,_and_wiki

Preferences[edit | edit source]

  • Auto-number sections
  • (TODO: links to section head from self, not just from page's table of contents).

Trying out[edit | edit source]

Shortcuts[edit | edit source]

  • When editing, with editor open: ctrl-opt-p - preview, ctrl-opt-s - save, (ctrl-opt-v - show changes/diff)
  • When browsing, go to your own userpage: Special:Mypage with ctrl-opt-..
  • In editing or browsing context: Toggle watchlist with ctrl-opt-w.

Links[edit | edit source]

Help:Links

Interwiki[edit | edit source]

Special:Interwiki. Allowing short links to other wikis, for example (mouseover or click) mw:, wp:, mw:Interwiki, arxiv:2306.03423, wp:Noisebridge

Idioms[edit | edit source]

Code - not quite quoting[edit | edit source]

  • For code, literal or copyable text, or config files, useful variants include:
<tt> <code> 
<pre>

Collapsible[edit | edit source]

Collapsing, or folding away, content can be done with these idioms.

  • Collapsible: <div class="mw-collapsible">...</div>
  • Collapsed, i.e. default closed: <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">...</div>
  • Collapsed, subsection visible: <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">[visible]<span class="mw-collapsible-content">[hidden]</span></div>. (In my opinion, div/span > div/div. Flashes on load, but placeholds 1 line).
  • Collapsed (default closed), with blockquote: <div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"> <blockquote> ... </blockquote> </div><br>

Example & sources, default collapsed:

Linking to sources:


Quoting: Quote template & Blockquote html[edit | edit source]

mw:Template:Quote

nowiki (quoting)[edit | edit source]

<nowiki>something in [[Wiki|wiki]], [external-link title], or {{template}} syntax</nowiki>

Particularly nice in combination with <code> tags for content ready to copy into an edit area: <code><nowiki>something in wiki or template syntax< /nowiki></code>

Transclusion & Templates[edit | edit source]

Partial transclusion[edit | edit source]

By using "noinclude", "onlyinclude" and "includeonly" markup, it is possible to transclude part of a page rather than all of it. Such partial transclusions can also be achieved by transcluding from other pages such as subpages. It is often desirable not to transclude some information, such as template documentation and categories.

Examples of when to use full versus partial transclusion[edit | edit source]

Use full transclusion when you want to include the full content of a source page in a target page. For example, you could include the full content of a page about apples in a page about tree fruits. Use partial transclusion when you only want to include part of a source page in a target page. For example, you could include only information about Granny Smith apples from a page about apples in a page about ingredients commonly used in baking.

Partial transclusion markup[edit | edit source]
  • noinclude - The markup ‎<noinclude>...‎</noinclude> means that the text between the tags is visible exclusively on the source page and cannot be transcluded onto another page. This is useful for template documentation and categories.
  • includeonly - The markup ‎<includeonly>...‎</includeonly> means that the text between the tags will be hidden on the source page and visible only when transcluded onto a different page. This can be useful, for example, for adding categories to pages transcluding a template, without adding the template itself to these categories.
  • onlyinclude - The markup ‎<onlyinclude>...‎</onlyinclude> means that the text between the tags will be visible on the source page and visible when transcluded onto a different page. This is the most subtle of the partial transclusion tags because it often overrules the others. If there is at least one pair of "onlyinclude" tags on a page, then whenever this page is transcluded, it is only the material within the "onlyinclude" tags that is transcluded. There can be several such "onlyinclude" sections on a page. This can be useful, for example, to repeat a small part of one page on a second one: just surround the small part by onlyinclude tags, and transclude it onto the second page.

‎<noinclude>, ‎<includeonly>, and ‎<onlyinclude> behave differently inside ‎<nowiki> tags. nowiki tags enable escaping special markup, and does this for ‎<noinclude> and ‎<includeonly> tags. However, ‎<onlyinclude> tags within ‎<nowiki> tags produces only the content inside the ‎<onlyinclude> tag.


Useful Special: links[edit | edit source]

Link to page for the logged-in, viewing user, themself:

Gadgets[edit | edit source]

Pages for testing, viewing, & changing your experience:

Try yourself[edit | edit source]

You can add your own, via your Special:Mypage/common.js (or Special:Mypage/global.js). JS was enabled for the wiki per MW Manual with $wgAllowUserJs = true;

Enable for all[edit | edit source]

...

Relevant links, open these first. Note Namespaces / Prefixes and Gadget(s). In order least-to-most sensitive:

Constituents of Gadget-vector-headanchor, as an example:

Instructions:

  • Find Gadget worth trying on another wiki. MediaWiki & Wikipedia have numerous and well-used samples.
  • (Try it via the person route above User:Mcint/WikiMaxxing#Try_yourself. If you like it, and think it should be shared, talk it over in Slack#wiki or Discord# ? metaguild?, and continue.)
  • Open Special:Gadgets
    • Copy definition string from other wiki's Special:Gadgets into this one, Special:Gadgets.
    • Follow the new linked definition files and create the pages, copying over the contents.
    • Check all are loaded.
  • Open your Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. Enable. Hard refresh an appropriate page to test it.
    • Confirm it works & nothing else is obviously broken.
  • Congrats!

Video Embed[edit | edit source]

You can now embed video! See mw:Extension:EmbedVideo#Tags for how to invoke it, with {{templates...}} or custom tags <youtube>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYQY5-UepEk</youtube>

In wikitext, use #ev / #evu / #evt templates: {{#evu:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYQY5-UepEk}}

Features[edit | edit source]

Wants[edit | edit source]

  • Fix the favicon.

Explore / Categorize (wip)[edit | edit source]

Feature[edit | edit source]

Graphical Category Browser[edit | edit source]

References[edit | edit source]

  • References section - extract all URLs (or external links) into references footer section

Editors[edit | edit source]

  • Better editors
    • Visual Editor (maybe via/after an upgrade. IDK if requires some mw version), as available at least on Wikipedia, Mediawiki.
    • Side by side editing, no scrolling to find edit textbox, nor preview (or live preview).

Spam Handling[edit | edit source]

Username (Many spam, not all, have FirstLast123, fit in elsewhere) ( talk (good, rare if present) contribs (** major determinant of spam/ban-worthy. Navigation popups allow at-a-glance mouseover viewing block ) (is action-link) (groups,...) if part of any, good sign of real/approved. confirmed/autoconfirmed just mean 3+ day old account, clicked emailed link - low signal groups. (Created [datetime]) :shrug:

Activity indicators[edit | edit source]

Authoritative DB - eg membership[edit | edit source]

External Images - Consider Allowing[edit | edit source]

mw:Manual:$wgAllowExternalImages, and possibly limiting it by: mw:Manual:$wgAllowExternalImagesFrom, however it would be nice to update by an admin user via the wiki

Extensions: to install[edit | edit source]

The Diagrams extension displays GraphViz, Mscgen, PlantUML, and Mermaid diagrams in a wiki. It can be configured to use a small web service to render the images.

It replaces the GraphViz, PlantUML, and Mermaid extensions in some ways, but does not (yet) support all features of all of them. The original reason for creating a new extension was to not store the rendered images as wiki files (as the GraphViz extension did), but it has changed to become a general diagramming extension.


Sources & Inspiration[edit | edit source]

Make (or find)[edit | edit source]

  • Gadget to toggle numbering of sections, on-page. Pref?
  • ...
  • (Gadget - easy-append todo list / TIL / notes / inbox. JS/AJAX on page, append / sections to personal page.)
  • (Gadget to import gadgets? - prb perms issues MediaWiki: ns, Special: ns)

Done![edit | edit source]

16:00, 2 May 2024 (PDT)[edit | edit source]

Before[edit | edit source]

...at least a little

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