User talk:Asb

What the heck? We already have a MediaWiki User's Guide, please add to that. No reason to fork. --Maveric149

The Documentation is not intended to be a fork. It is a proposal for a complete and systematic rewrite which was discussed and announced on MediaWiki-L. The general idea is, that a pretty complex software application needs a real documentation, or even better a Software documentation, not just guides, handouts, and splattered fragments. This intention could be very well indicated by the term Documentation and the associated URL on Meta.

I think a rewrite is necessary, because the existing documentation is

neither complete nor up -to-date (→ leaves too many questions open which need to be asked on the mailing lists or somewhere else),
not systematic as a manual should be (→ lots of relevant information is not included which is available somwhere else, and — more important — a lot of relevant aspects like Security are almost not mentioned),
uses unusual terminology (→ nobody understands that an Wiki Administrator is regarded as an User; imho, a sysop or an administrator are very different roles; why is an Administrator supposed to be a user, but not a Developer? Who is supposed to understand this? If someone has an account on Wikipedia and is editing a page, she is a User; if she has administrative right but edits a page, she's a user in this moment; for this role, there should be a User's Guide. If she's doing stuff an "ordinary" User can't do, she's an Administratrator, so the Administrator's Guide does apply. The same goes for a Developer, which also can be a User, if she's doing stuff a "normal" User can do — to me, it sounds pretty straight forward this way);
pretty stateless (→ there is no indication if or who currently does what, there is no status, and no workplan);
actively worked on (→ there is not much discussion respectively exchange about documentation on the Talk page or the mailing lists.

I also think, that a rewrite is best to be written parallel to the existing documentation, since it will take some time to complete; this approach has some advantages:

It doesn't interfer with the existing parts that still are accurate;
it doesn't break (back-)links;
it does no harm if it's heavily refactored or even deleted since no one is supposed to link to it as long it's being drafted;
it can be cannibalized if it's not being approved in complete, but parts of it should be used somewhere else, e.g. in the MediaWiki User's Guide;
it can't be incorporated in the structure of the current MediaWiki User's Guide since this is no Software documentation;
it was suggested to consolidate it somewhere else.

Bottomline: If we want the MediaWiki software to be used not only by the Wikipedias, we need a better documentation. Otherways, the mailing lists will be flooded with questions which will absorb energy from the developers when answering; if nobody answers, nobody will use the software; if nobody uses the software, we will get no more developers. Example: MediaWiki has currently something around 30 registered developers on Sourceforge, TikiWiki has more than 130 and was started just a year ago.

However, if we don't join forces, all this makes no sense since I can't do everything by myself. I don't want to cause trouble or dissonance; if there are objections to my doing, you are free to remove the fragments. Until I get some feedback from you I will stop working on it. Best wishes --Asb

If it isn't complete or up-to-date then work on it! The current user guide is the result of over two years worth of work on en.wikipedia before I recently moved it to meta. No wonder not many people have done anything with MediaWiki because it has been completely Wikipedia-centric until very recently! It also did not have a real name until I suggested it be called MediaWiki a few months ago. Before then it was known as "Wikipedia Software Phase II" - hardly a title that is going to attract outside users and coders in droves. So it is way too early to pass judgment on the current user's guide. Given its origin it is also not at all surprising that it is end-user-centric. To fix that just add to the more Admin/developer-oriented areas.

The terms that are used in the user's guide are the ones used on the wikis and in the software. Sorry, but that is the reality. So it is best to document and explain that ("Administrator" seems fine to me; think UNIX permissions or even Windows; an "Admin" can do many things a regular user cannot, like delete or edit certain files). And you keep on saying what the documentation is not - well then add to it! No need to rewrite it. If there is a fork in the documentation then that will not help matters. --Maveric149 06:14, 25 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Again, I'm not planning to fork, and this discussion is fruitless, since we seem to talk about different things. I'm simply not going to add anything to the current official documentation as long as I'm not 100% sure that it's factual correct and the right way to do it. If someone not-knowing-better follows an unclear or factual incorrect instruction and kills his Wiki, I won't be the one to blame. If you think it's better this way, then I prefer to collect a few months of experience administering MediaWiki, and then — hopefully — I'll still have time to write my experiences down. -- asb 00:30, 26 Nov 2003 (CET)

If you find out that something 'kills the wiki' in the current documentation then please fix that part of the documentation for everybody's sake!. How is having two sets of MediaWiki documentation not a fork? No Wikimedia content has a 100% guarantee so why do you think that your version of the documentation will be better than the one that has already been worked on by many different users for over two years? Yes, it does need much more, but that doesn't seem to be reason enough to divide labor between two different documentation projects. I for one will continue work on the MediaWiki User's Guide. If you choose to continue the fork, I'll check-in every so often to incorporate the best of your work into the official user's guide. But really - it would be much better IMO if you added your work directly. It just seems like needlessly duplicated effort to me. --mav

As I mentioned above, it's perfectly fine with me if you cannibalize {parts|whatever} of the rewrite.

And again, I don't want to create an alternative version of the current User's Guide; I want to try restructure and rewrite the whole thing in a "safe" environment, annoying nobody during the process, check it and let it check, and then integrate it in the current documentation, or vice versa.

I think, there need to be commonly understandable entry-points like <stub>/Documentation, <stub>/Docs, <stub>/Administration, <stub>/Installation, etc.; that's why I want to restructure. If we can't solve ambigous expressions like the terminology "User := Administrator" in a Wiki, where could this be possible?

If I'd start editing the current User's Guide applying this idea, some people would be mad at me rightfully. Let's see in a "safe" environment if this idea works out, and then judge if it might be helpful/useful. --Asb 18:18, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Importing_the_database_dump in windows

[edit]

it says to use bunzip2 and ' run "bzunip2 xxx" where xxx is the compressed file. ' but how do you put into the mysql database? --Jimmy 12:39, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)