Sunday, May 6, 2007

Extensions that should be shipped by default

So I've been transwikiing the crap out of Meta recently. Part of that is so we can build a decent, self-contained website on MediaWiki.org. The last thing to be brought over was the MediaWiki Installation Guide. It is still in "transwiki triage", for lack of a better term, but it is more-or-less usable.

We'll see what we can do with it. But if we can do something similar to what we did with extensions, then I'm expecting to drool already. :) The latest invention (by Duesentrieb of dewiki fame) is the Extension Matrix, which includes info about every extension documented on MediaWiki.org... :)

Keeping with the extensions theme, there are a few extensions that *every* MediaWiki installation should have. These extensions are incredibly useful, and include functionality that has become expected of MediaWiki end users. Hopefully someone will decide to merge these extensions somehow into the MediaWiki core, so they don't have to be downloaded individually:

require_once( "extensions/Renameuser/SpecialRenameuser.php" );
require_once( "extensions/ParserFunctions/ParserFunctions.php" );
require_once( "extensions/Filepath/SpecialFilepath.php" );
require_once( "extensions/CheckUser/CheckUser.php");
require_once( "extensions/Makesysop/SpecialMakesysop.php" );
require_once( "extensions/Cite/Cite.php" );
require_once( "extensions/CategoryTree/CategoryTree.php" );
require_once( "extensions/Newuserlog/Newuserlog.php" );
require_once( "extensions/Contributors/Contributors.php" );

and of course...

require_once( "extensions/Poem/Poem.php" );

Heh. ;)

One notable exception is this one:

require_once( "extensions/Oversight/HideRevision.php");

Oversight should not be installed in new installations of MediaWiki. Why? Because it will collide with the current work to implement rev_deleted and cause unnecessary issues. Rev_deleted is due for deployment sometime after MediaWiki 1.10.0 is released, and is quite exciting. See the Gallery for some pretty screenshots... :)

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2 comments:

David Gerard said...

Sysops and oversighters are so looking forward to the new deletion interface.

I may start editing on mediawiki.org - expect the Solaris 9 bits to be fleshed out.

Anonymous said...

Well, they won't collide in any adverse way, but yes, it would be best to avoid that extension.