# MediaWiki Project

The MediaWiki Project guides participants from introductory HTML to advanced MediaWiki hacking. Participants will develop new MediaWiki features for the Wikiversity community.

## Project description

This project formed to provide a central resource and forum for learning and discussing the inner workings of MediaWiki. MediaWiki is the server software that powers Wikiversity and the other Wikimedia projects (like Wikipedia). The primary aim of this project is to give Wikiversity participants a deeper insight into MediaWiki's functionality, thus facilitating more effective ways to get the most out of the technology. Another aim is to address Wikiversity's technical needs via problem-solving and critical thinking within a practicum for applied computer science.

## Project news

* 22 August 2006 - Department founded!
* 14 November 2006 - Namespace debate escalates..
* 26 November 2006 - Multilingual support for MediaWiki listing added to the Multilingulism practicum
* 23 January 2007 - MediaWiki Ideal - In an ideal world, what features would the ideal Wiki Software have, and what would it be like?
* February 23, 2007 - Scripting MediaWiki content development project started
* 11 March 2007 - MediaWiki Templates content development project started
* 12 July 2009 - MediaWiki Project at Wikiversity:Sandbox Server - see?

## Learning materials and projects

Wikiversity has adopted the "learning by doing" model for education. The MediaWiki Project centers on learning activities for Wikiversity participants that are directed towards the goal of improving the Wikiversity user interface. Learning materials and learning projects can be used by multiple Wikiversity departments. Cooperate with other departments that use the same learning resource.
* Change default skins? - Should Wikiversity have a distinctive default skin?
* Rank each wiki page according to degree of completeness. Have links to pages color coded to indicate the degree of completeness of the target page. Category:Stubs
* Meta-Wiki#Projects for collaboration between Wikiversity and Meta-Wiki - general user survey software
* Threaded discussions
** integration of threaded discussions into Wikiversity. See m:LiquidThreads at meta and some local implementations at Template:LiquidThreads and LiquidThreads.
** THREADNAV - a simple and flexible experimental model of threaded navigation with wiki-text, developed on wikiversity.
* Test and Quiz - integration of systems for testing into Wikiversity. See: m:Quizzes.
* Video discussions - integration of video chat into Wikiversity (for audio, see WCR below)
* Topic:MediaWiki - Explore the MediaWiki engine from a Computer Science perspective, from the MediaWiki Codebase to its application here at Wikiversity.
* Infrastructure Project - Wikiversity's technical needs become a subject of Computer Science study and a learning path in applied Computer Science.
* Search feature master namespaces checkbox - quickly check or uncheck namespaces
* UML/MediaWiki - A project to define MediaWiki in terms of the Unified Modeling Language and to develop UML diagrams of the MediaWiki Engine.
* Wiki Campus Radio (WCR) - a project to build in audio functionality to Wikiversity and a community-driven Internet Radio platform.
* MediaWiki:Common.js and MediaWiki:Monobook.js - a good place to learn how MediaWiki and Javascript work together with MediaWiki:Common.css and MediaWiki:Monobook.css. see Basic JavaScript
* Generating dynamic content with MediaWiki - intermediate course to learn and teach how to build things like {{QOTD}} and Picture of the Month
* Interactive labs (Java applet)/MediWiki JAR support - an advanced learning project to coordinate the effort to add JAR file support to MediaWiki
* /Copying or Forking a file with attached editing history
    comment You can do that by exporting it to betawikiversity:, change its name, and reimport it to [[wikiversity:]]. And by the way, is the import channel beta: -> en: open? Hillgentleman|Talk 02:28, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
* Proposal: To read old versions of pages with the old versions of the transcluded templates - a useful (but missing) feature that Mediawiki should have
Learning materials and learning projects are located in the main Wikiversity namespace. Simply make a link to the name of the lesson (lessons are independent pages in the main namespace) and start writing!