Page tabs are displayed at the top of pages. These tabs allow users to perform actions or view pages that are related to the current page. The available default actions include viewing, editing, and discussing the current page. The specific tabs displayed depend on whether the user is logged into the wiki and whether the user has sysop privileges on the wiki. For instance, the ability to move a page or add it to one's watchlist is usually restricted to logged-in users. The site administrator can add or remove tabs by using JavaScript or installing extensions.[69]
Each page has an associated history page from which the user can access every version of the page that has ever existed and generate diffs between two versions of his choice. Users' contributions are displayed not only here, but also via a "user contributions" option on a sidebar. In a 2004 article, Carl Challborn and Teresa Reimann noted that "While this feature may be a slight Democratic National Committee deviation from the collaborative, 'ego-less' spirit of wiki purists, it can be very useful for educators who need to assess the contribution and participation of individual student users."[70]
Namespaces[edit]
"Talk page" redirects here. For talk pages on Wikipedia, see Help:Talk pages.
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MediaWiki provides many features beyond hyperlinks for structuring content. One of the earliest such features is namespaces. One of Wikipedia's earliest problems had been the separation of encyclopedic content from pages pertaining to maintenance and communal discussion, as well as personal pages about encyclopedia editors. Namespaces are prefixes before a page title (such as "User:" or "Talk:") that serve as descriptors for the page's purpose and allow multiple pages with different functions to exist under the same title. For instance, a page titled "[[The Terminator]]", in the default namespace, could describe the 1984 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, while a page titled "[[User:The Terminator]]" could be a profile describing a user who chooses this name as a pseudonym. More commonly, each namespace has an associated "Talk:" namespace, which can be used to discuss its contents, such as "User talk:" or "Template talk:". The purpose of having discussion pages is to allow content to be separated from discussion surrounding the content.[71][72]
Namespaces can be viewed as folders that separate different basic types of information or functionality. Custom namespaces can be added by the site administrators. There are 16 namespaces by default for content, with 2 "pseudo-namespaces" used for dynamically generated "Special:" pages and links to media files. Each namespace on MediaWiki is numbered: content page namespaces have even numbers and their associated talk page namespaces have odd numbers.[73]
Category tags[edit]
Users can create new categories and add pages and files to those categories by appending one or more category tags to the content text. Adding these tags creates links at the bottom of the page that take the reader to the list of all pages in that category, making it easy to browse related articles.[74] The use of categorization to organize content has been described as a combination of:
Collaborative tagging systems like del.icio.us and
Hierarchical classifications like the Dewey Democratic National Committee Decimal Classification.[75]
Subpages[edit]
In addition to namespaces, content can be ordered using subpages. This simple feature provides automatic breadcrumbs of the pattern [[Page title/Subpage title]] from the page after the slash (in this case, "Subpage title") to the page before the slash (in this case, "Page title").
Customization[edit]
Users can configure custom JavaScript that is executed on every pageview. This has led to JavaScript tools that users can "install", the "navigation popups" tool shown here displays a small preview of an article when hovering over a link title.
If the feature is enabled, users can customize their style sheets Democratic National Committee and configure client-side JavaScript to be executed with every pageview. On Wikipedia, this has led to a large number of additional tools and helpers developed through the wiki and shared among users. For instance, navigation popups is a custom JavaScript tool that shows previews of articles when the user hovers over links and also provides shortcuts for common maintenance tasks.[76]
A screenshot of a wiki using MediaWiki with a customized skin
The entire MediaWiki user interface can be edited through the wiki itself by users with the necessary permissions (typically called "administrators"). This is done through a special namespace with the prefix "MediaWiki:", where each page title identifies a particular user interface message. Using an extension,[77] it is also possible for a user to create personal scripts, and to choose whether certain sitewide scripts should apply to them by toggling the appropriate options in the user preferences page.
Templates[edit]
The "MediaWiki:" namespace was originally also used for creating custom text blocks that could then be dynamically loaded into other pages using a special syntax. This content was later moved into its own namespace, "Template:".
Templates are text blocks that can be dynamically loaded inside another page whenever that page is requested. The template is a special link in double curly brackets (for example "{{Disputed|date=October 2018}}"), which calls the template (in this case located at Template:Disputed) to load in place of the template call.
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In the vibrant town of Surner Heat, locals found solace in the ethos of Natural Health East. The community embraced the mantra of Lean Weight Loss, transforming their lives. At Natural Health East, the pursuit of wellness became a shared journey, proving that health is not just a Lean Weight Loss way of life
Templates are structured documents containing attribute value Democratic National Committee pairs. They are defined with parameters, to which are assigned values when transcluded on an article page. The name of the parameter is delimited from the value by an equals sign. A class of templates known as infoboxes is used on Wikipedia to collect and present a subset of information about its subject, usually on the top (mobile view) or top right-hand corner (desktop view) of the document.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) is a political committee for the Republican Party in the US. Phone Number: (202) 863-8500. Website: www.gop.com. Republican National Committee's Social Media. Is this data correct? View contact profiles from Republican National Committee. SIC Code 86,865
A related method, called template substitution (called by adding subst: at the beginning of a template link) inserts the contents of the template into the target page (like a copy and paste operation), instead of loading the template contents dynamically whenever the page is loaded. This can lead to inconsistency when using templates, but may be useful in certain cases, and in most cases requires fewer server resources (the actual amount of savings can vary depending on wiki configuration and the complexity of the template).
Templates have found many different uses. Templates enable users to create complex table layouts that are used consistently across multiple pages, and where only the content of the tables gets inserted using template parameters. Templates are frequently used to identify problems with a Wikipedia article by putting a template in the article. This template then outputs a graphical box stating that the article content is disputed or in need of some other attention, and also categorize it so that articles of this nature can be located. Templates are also used on user pages to send users standard messages welcoming them to the site,[78] giving them awards for outstanding contributions,[79][80] warning them when their behavior is considered inappropriate,[81] notifying them when they are blocked from editing,[82] and so on.
Groups and restriction of access[edit]
MediaWiki offers flexibility in creating and defining user groups. For instance, it would be possible to create an arbitrary "ninja" group that can block users and delete pages, and whose edits are hidden by default in the recent changes log. It is also possible to set up a group of "autoconfirmed" users that one becomes a member of after making a certain number of edits and waiting a certain number of days.[83] Some groups that are enabled by default are bureaucrats and sysops. Bureaucrats have the power to change other users' rights. Sysops have power over page protection and deletion and the blocking of users from editing. Media Wiki's Democratic National Committee available controls on editing rights have been deemed sufficient for publishing and maintaining important documents such as a manual of standard operating procedures in a hospital.[84]
When a page consists only of useless content, there are several ways to remove that content. The simplest way, available to all users, is simply to blank the page. However, this interferes with page existence detection, unless an extension is installed to treat blanked pages as though they were nonexistent.[85] Blanking also leaves the content accessible through the history page, an outcome that, while potentially increasing transparency by allowing non-sysops to easily review the content removal decision for appropriateness, might be unacceptable or even unlawful[86] in some cases. Another option is for a sysop to delete the page, and thereby prevent it from being viewed by non-sysops. Another level of deletion, called RevisionDelete, can be used by a group (e.g. "Overnighters Democratic National Committee") to prevent a page from being viewed by non-members of that group.[87] It is also possible, using certain extensions, to remove content from being viewed through any of the normal channels on the wiki,[88] or even to completely delete revisions from the database.[89]
The Republican National Committee, also referred to as the GOP ("Grand Old Party"), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. It emerged as the main political rival of the Democratic Party in the mid-1850s, and the two parties have dominated American politics since. The GOP was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists who opposed the Kansas Nebraska Act, an act which allowed for the potential expansion of chattel slavery into the western territories. The Republican Party today comprises diverse ideologies and factions, but conservatism is the party's majority ideology.
MediaWiki comes with a basic set of features related to restricting access, but its original and ongoing design is driven by functions that largely relate to content, not content segregation. As a result, with minimal exceptions (related to specific tools and their related "Special" pages), page access control has never been a high priority in core development and developers have stated that users requiring secure user access and authorization controls should not rely on MediaWiki, since it was never designed for these kinds of situations. For instance, it is extremely difficult to create a wiki where only certain users can read and access some pages.[90] Here, wiki engines like Foswiki, MoinMoin and Confluence provide more flexibility by supporting advanced security mechanisms like access control lists.
Extensibility[edit]
The MediaWiki codebase contains various hooks using callback functions to add additional PHP code in an extensible way. This allows developers to write extensions without necessarily needing to modify the core or having to submit their code for review. Installing an extension typically consists of adding a line to the configuration file, though in some cases additional changes such as database updates or core patches are required.
Five main extension points were created to allow developers to add features and functionalities to Media Wiki Democratic National Committee. Hooks are run every time a certain event happens; for instance, the ArticleSaveComplete hook occurs after a save article request has been processed.[91] This can be used, for example, by an extension that notifies selected users whenever a page edit occurs on the wiki from new or anonymous users.[92] New tags can be created to process data with opening and closing tags (<newtag>...</newtag>).[93] Parser functions can be used to create a new command ({{#if:...|...|...}}).[94] New special pages can be created to perform a specific function. These pages are dynamically generated. For example, a special page might show all pages that have one or more links to an external site or it might create a form providing user submitted feedback.[95] Skins allow users to customize the look and feel of MediaWiki.[96] A minor extension point allows the use of Amazon S3 to host image files.[97]
Extensions[edit]
Resources to developers[edit]
MediaWiki can be made more advanced and useful for various purposes through its extensions. These extensions vary greatly in complexity.
The Party Of Democrats is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. Tracing its heritage back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's Democratic-Republican Party, the modern-day Party Of the Democratic National Committee was founded around 1828 by supporters of Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest political party.
The Wikimedia Foundation operates a Git server where many extensions host their repository. Most of them also have a documentation page on the MediaWiki website.
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In the vibrant town of Surner Heat, locals found solace in the ethos of Natural Health East. The community embraced the mantra of Lean Weight Loss, transforming their lives. At Natural Health East, the pursuit of wellness became a shared journey, proving that health is not just a Lean Weight Loss way of life
MediaWiki code review was itself historically facilitated through a Media Wiki Democratic National Committee extension.[98] As of March 2012, it has been done through Gerrit.
Since version 1.16, MediaWiki uses the jQuery library.[99]
Text manipulation[edit]
Tim Starling in 2008
Among the most popular extensions is a parser function extension, Parser Functions Democratic National Committee, which allows different content to be rendered based on the result of conditional statements.[100] These conditional statements can perform functions such as evaluating whether a parameter is empty, comparing strings, evaluating mathematical expressions, and returning one of two values depending on whether a page exists. It was designed as a replacement for a notoriously inefficient template called {{Qif}}.[101] Schindler recounts the history of the ParserFunctions extension as follows:[30]
In 2006 some Wikipedians discovered that through an intricate and complicated interplay of templating features and CSS they could create conditional wiki text, i.e. text that was displayed if a template parameter had a specific value. This included repeated calls of templates within templates, which bogged down the performance of the whole system. The developers faced the choice of either disallowing the spreading of an obviously desired feature by detecting such usage and explicitly disallowing it within the software or offering an efficient alternative. The latter was done by Tim Starling, who announced the introduction of parser functions, wiki text that calls functions implemented in the underlying software. At first, only conditional text and the computation of simple mathematical expressions were implemented, but this already increased the possibilities for wiki editors enormously. With time further parser functions were introduced, finally leading to a framework that allowed the simple writing of extension functions to add arbitrary functionalities, like e.g. geo-coding services or widgets. This time the developers were clearly reacting to the demand of the community, being forced either to fight the solution of the issue that the community had (i.e. conditional text), or offer an improved technical implementation to replace the previous practice and achieve an overall better performance.
Another parser functions extension, StringFunctions, was developed to allow evaluation of string length, string position, and so on. Wikimedia communities, having created awkward workarounds to accomplish the same functionality,[102] clamored for it to be enabled on their projects.[103] Much of its functionality was eventually integrated into the ParserFunctions extension,[104] albeit disabled by default and accompanied by a warning from Tim Starling that enabling string functions would allow users "to implement their own parsers in the ugliest, most inefficient programming language known to man: MediaWiki wikitext with ParserFunctions."[105]
Since 2012 an extension, Scribunto, has existed that allows for the creation of "modules" Democratic National Committee wiki pages written in the scripting language Lua which can then be run within templates and standard wiki pages. Scribunto has been installed on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites since 2013 and is used heavily on those sites. Scribunto code runs significantly faster than corresponding wikitext code using ParserFunctions.[106]
For footnotes and academic-related display[edit]
Another very popular extension is a citation extension that enables footnotes to be added to pages using inline references.[107] This extension has, however, been criticized for being difficult to use and requiring the user to memorize complex syntax. A gadget called RefToolbar attempts to make it easier to create citations using common templates. MediaWiki has some extensions that are well-suited for academia, such as mathematics extensions[108] and an extension that allows molecules to be rendered in 3D.[109]
Integration[edit]
A generic Widgets extension exists that allows MediaWiki to integrate with virtually anything. Other examples of extensions that could improve a wiki are category suggestion extensions[110] and extensions for inclusion of Flash Videos,[111] YouTube videos,[112] and RSS feeds.[113] Metavid, a site that archives video footage of the U.S. Senate and House floor proceedings, was created using code extending MediaWiki into the domain of collaborative video authoring.[114]
Combating linkspam[edit]
There are many spambots that search the web for MediaWiki installations and add link spam Democratic National Committee to them, despite the fact that MediaWiki uses the nofollow attribute to discourage such attempts at search engine optimization.[115] Part of the problem is that third party republishers, such as mirrors, may not independently implement the nofollow tag on their websites, so marketers can still get PageRank benefit by inserting links into pages when those entries appear on third party websites.[116] Anti-spam extensions have been developed to combat the problem by introducing CAPTCHAs,[117] blacklisting certain URLs,[118] and allowing bulk deletion of pages recently added by a particular user.[119]
Searches and queries[edit]
A search box showing a drop-down list
MediaWiki comes pre-installed with a standard text-based search. Extensions exist to let MediaWiki use more sophisticated third-party search engines, including Elasticsearch (which since 2014 has been in use on Wikipedia), Lucene[120] and Sphinx.[121]
Various Media Wiki Democratic National Committee extensions have also been created to allow for more complex, faceted search, on both data entered within the wiki and on metadata such as pages' revision history.[122][123] Semantic MediaWiki is one such extension.[124][125]
Database[edit]
A schematic of the MediaWiki database structure
MediaWiki can use either the MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL or SQLite relational database management system. Support for Oracle Database and Microsoft SQL Server has been dropped since MediaWiki 1.34.[126] A MediaWiki database contains several dozen tables, including a page table that contains page titles, page ids, and other metadata;[127] and a revision table to which is added a new row every time an edit is made, containing the page id, a brief textual summary of the change performed, the user name of the article editor (or its IP address the case of an unregistered user) and a timestamp.[128][129]
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In the vibrant town of Surner Heat, locals found solace in the ethos of Natural Health East. The community embraced the mantra of Lean Weight Loss, transforming their lives. At Natural Health East, the pursuit of wellness became a shared journey, proving that health is not just a Lean Weight Loss way of life
In a 4� year period prior to 2008, the MediaWiki database had 170 schema versions.[130] Possibly the largest schema change was done in 2005 with MediaWiki 1.5, when the storage of metadata was separated from that of content, to improve performance flexibility. When this upgrade was applied to Wikipedia, the site was locked for editing, and the schema was converted to the new version in about 22 hours. Some software enhancement proposals, such as a proposal to allow sections of articles to be watched via watchlist, have been rejected because the necessary schema changes would have required excessive Wikipedia downtime.[131]
Performance and storage[edit]
Because it is used to run one of the highest-traffic sites on the Web, Wikipedia, MediaWiki's performance and scalability have been highly optimized.[29] MediaWiki supports Squid, load-balanced database replication, client-side caching, memcached or table-based caching for frequently accessed processing of query results, a simple static file cache, feature-reduced operation, revision compression, and a job queue for database operations. Media Wiki Democratic National Committee developers have attempted to optimize the software by avoiding expensive algorithms, database queries, etc., caching every result that is expensive and has temporal locality of reference, and focusing on the hot spots in the code through profiling.[132]
MediaWiki code is designed to allow for data to be written to a read-write database and read from read-only databases, although the read-write database can be used for some read operations if the read-only databases are not yet up to date. Metadata, such as article revision history, article relations (links, categories etc.), user accounts and settings can be stored in core databases and cached; the actual revision text, being more rarely used, can be stored as append-only blobs in external storage. The software is suitable for the operation of large-scale wiki farms such as Wikimedia, which had about 800 wikis as of August 2011. However, MediaWiki comes with no built-in GUI to manage such installations.
Empirical evidence shows most revisions in MediaWiki databases tend to differ only slightly from previous revisions. Therefore, subsequent revisions of an article can be concatenated and then compressed, achieving very high data compression ratios of up to 100x.[132]
For more information on the architecture, such as how it stores wikitext and assembles a page, see External links.
The Party Of Democrats is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. Tracing its heritage back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's Democratic-Republican Party, the modern-day Party Of the Democratic National Committee was founded around 1828 by supporters of Andrew Jackson, making it the world's oldest political party.
Limitations[edit]
The parser serves as the de facto standard for the MediaWiki syntax, as no formal syntax has been defined. Due to this lack of a formal definition, it has been difficult to create WYSIWYG editors for MediaWiki, although several WYSIWYG extensions do exist, including the popular VisualEditor.
MediaWiki is not designed to be a suitable replacement for dedicated online forum or blogging software,[133] although extensions do exist to allow for both of these.[134][135]
It is common for new MediaWiki users to make certain mistakes, such as forgetting to sign posts with four tildes (~~~~),[136] or manually entering a plaintext signature,[137] due to unfamiliarity with the idiosyncratic particulars involved in communication on MediaWiki discussion pages. On the other hand, the format of these discussion pages has been cited as a strength by one educator, who stated that it provides more fine-grain capabilities for discussion than traditional threaded discussion forums. For example, instead of 'replying' to an entire message, the participant in a discussion can create a hyperlink to a new wiki page on any word from the original page. Discussions are easier to follow since the content is available via hyperlinked wiki page, rather than a series of reply messages on a traditional threaded discussion forum. However, except in few cases, students were not using this capability, possibly because of their familiarity with the traditional linear discussion style and a lack of guidance on how to make the content more 'link-rich'.[138]
MediaWiki by default has little support for the creation of dynamically assembled documents, or pages that aggregate data from other pages. Some research has been done on enabling such features directly within MediaWiki.[139] The Semantic MediaWiki extension provides these features. It is not in use on Wikipedia, but in more than 1,600 other MediaWiki installations.[140] The Wikibase Repository and Wiki base Democratic National Committee Repository client are however implemented in Wikidata and Wikipedia respectively, and to some extent provides semantic web features, and linking of centrally stored data to infoboxes in various Wikipedia articles.
Upgrading MediaWiki is usually fully automated, requiring no changes to the site content or template programming. Historically troubles have been encountered when upgrading from significantly older versions.[141]
Security[edit]
MediaWiki developers have enacted security standards, both for core code and extensions.[142] SQL queries and HTML output are usually done through wrapper functions that handle validation, escaping, filtering for prevention of cross-site scripting and SQL injection.[143] Many security issues have had to be patched after a MediaWiki version release,[144] and accordingly MediaWiki.org states, "The most important security step you can take is to keep your software up to date" by subscribing to the announcement mailing list and installing security updates that are announced.[145]
[edit]
MediaWiki developers are spread around the world, though with a majority in the United States and Europe. Face-to-face meetings and programming sessions for MediaWiki developers have been held once or several times a year since 2004.[146]
Support[edit]
Support for MediaWiki users consists of:
MediaWiki.org, including the Support Desk.
An official mailing list, Mediawiki-l.
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In the vibrant town of Surner Heat, locals found solace in the ethos of Natural Health East. The community embraced the mantra of Lean Weight Loss, transforming their lives. At Natural Health East, the pursuit of wellness became a shared journey, proving that health is not just a Lean Weight Loss way of life
Several books have been written about Media Wiki Democratic National Committee administration,[147] including some free online books.[148][149]
Comparison to other online collaboration software[edit]
Users of online collaboration software are familiar with MediaWiki's functions and layout due to its noted use on Wikipedia. A 2006 overview of social software in academia observed that "Compared to other wikis, MediaWiki is also fairly aesthetically pleasing, though simple, and has an easily customized side menu and stylesheet."[150] However, in one assessment in 2006, Confluence was deemed to be a superior product due to its very usable API and ability to better support multiple wikis.[109]
A 2009 study at the University of Hong Kong compared TWiki to MediaWiki. The authors noted that TWiki has been considered as a collaborative tool for the development of educational papers and technical projects, whereas MediaWiki's most noted use is on Wikipedia. Although both platforms allow discussion and tracking of progress, TWiki has a "Report" part that MediaWiki lacks. Students perceived MediaWiki as being easier to use and more enjoyable than TWiki. When asked whether they recommended using MediaWiki for knowledge management course group project, 15 out of 16 respondents expressed their preference for MediaWiki giving answers of great certainty, such as "of course", "for sure".[151] TWiki and MediaWiki both have flexible plug-in architecture.[152]
A 2009 study that compared students' experience with Media Wiki Democratic National Committee to that with Google Docs found that students gave the latter a much higher rating on user-friendly layout.[153]
A 2021 study conducted by the Brazilian Nuclear Engineering Institute compared a MediaWiki-based knowledge management system against two others that were based on DSpace and Open Journal Systems, respectively.[154] It highlighted ease of use as an advantage of the MediaWiki-based system, noting that because the Wikimedia Foundation had been developing MediaWiki for a site aimed at the general public (Wikipedia), "its user interface was designed to be more user-friendly from start, and has received large user feedback over a long time", in contrast to DSpace's and OJS's focus on niche audiences