Technology is often easier to make if people accept a mechanistic paradigm - but it may be harder to say why it does not work, if one believes in these ideas. For instance, creating diagnostic trees might be easier if one works from experience, not from an idea of how a technology should or must work.
A controversial idea is that mechanistic ideas are just an older idea called scholasticism, with more mathematics. Both tried to work from what should or must be, instead of what experiment seemed to show.
Another controversial idea is that scientism, belief in science as if it were a religion or ethical tradition, comes from this paradigm. Most scientists who are mechanistic do not say they see science as a guide to ethics, but try to keep them separate.
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is the name of the software that runs all of the Wikimedia projects. MediaWiki was released in 2003. It is free server-based software which is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The software is licensed under the GPL. This means it is free content, or open source.
MediaWiki is designed to be run on a large web server farm for a website that gets millions of hits per day. MediaWiki is a very powerful, scalable software and a feature-rich wiki implementation, that uses PHP to process and display data stored in its MySQL database. Pages use MediaWiki's Wikitext format, so that users without knowledge of XHTML or CSS can edit them easily.
When a user submits an edit to a page, MediaWiki writes it to the database, but without deleting the previous versions of the page, thus allowing easy reverts in case of vandalism or spamming. MediaWiki can manage image and multimedia files, too, which are stored in the filesystem. For large wikis with lots of users, MediaWiki supports caching and can be easily coupled with Squid proxy server software.
All Wikimedia projects run on MediaWiki version .
Because MediaWiki is flexible, many websites that want people to contribute information use MediaWiki rather than other types of wiki software. Those operated by Wikia are among them.
There are also some websites that use MediaWiki as a content management system.
In MediaWiki, a system administrator can choose to install extensions which are provided on the main MediaWiki website. Some are from the MediaWiki developers, while others are from programmers from all around the world.
Most extensions can be download from Wikimedia's Subversion repository. However, there are some other extensions that other people host themselves.
Some extensions had been added to the main software along the development of MediaWiki. For example, the extension is an extension to promote a user into an administrator or a bureaucrat.
There were a total of 2124 extensions as of October 4, 2013.
In the default installation of MediaWiki, the software has 17 namespaces(18 actually, but one does not have a namespace), namely:
Additional namespaces can be added using the from the installation of MediaWiki.
As MediaWiki is a complex software, there would always be bugs in the software, especially for new extensions. Therefore, Wikimedia has created a bugzilla website for people who see a bug to tell the developers of MediaWiki.
Some extensions of MediaWiki use the , while some just use the talk pages of the extension page.
Users can customize MediaWiki for different appearance. They may use one of the several "skins". At different times different skins have been default. For example, Wikipedia once used Monobook before adopting the new Vector skin in version 1.16.
A survey done by Wikimedia showed that more people prefer the Vector skin.
"More information about the software:"
First language
A first language (also mother tongue, native language, arterial language, or L1) often means the language that a person learns first. It helps one understand words and concepts in the style of that language.
Sometimes, "first language" means the language that a person speaks best (the second language is then spoken less well than the first language, etc.). Since "first language", "second language" and "third language" then mean how well one speaks a language, a person can have more than one first language or second language.
Mustache
The hair that grows on the upper lip of some men is called a mustache. The hair that grows on the sides of the face and the chin of some men is called a beard. Some men have a lot of hair and a big mustache, and some have very little. In the modern world, many men shave part or all of their mustaches, or cut their mustache so it does not get very long. A chin beard with no mustache is called a goatee, whilst a chin beard with a mustache is known as a Van Dyke.
Mustache in United Kingdom and Commonwealth of Nations is spelled moustache.
Some animals such as walruses also have hair like this, and people sometimes also call this hair a mustache.
Mile
A mile is a unit of length. There are many different kinds of mile but "mile" on its own usually means the "statute" mile.
In the US and the UK the word "mile" usually means the statute mile.
The nautical mile is used for sea or air travel.
The nautical mile was originally defined as one minute of arc along a line of longitude of the Earth. There are 60 minutes of arc in one degree or arc (60' = 1°). So there were 10,800 nautical miles from the North Pole to the South Pole.
Now the nautical mile is defined as 1,852 metres.
The speed of a ship that travels one nautical mile in one hour is called one knot
The mile was first used by the Romans. It comes from the Latin phrase "mille passus" (plural: "milia passuum"). This means "one thousand paces". A pace is the distance each foot moves when taking one step.
Different miles have been used throughout history in various parts of the world. In Norway and Sweden, for example, a mil is a unit of length which is equal to 10 kilometres.
Even in English-speaking countries that use the metric system (for example, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand), the mile is still used in many idioms. These include:
Margarine
Margarine is an artificial butter. It can be made from vegetable oil, or animal fat. It may also contain skimmed milk, salt and emulsifiers. Margarine is used in many baked products. It contains less fat than butter, so is often chosen instead of it. There are also "low fat" margarines, which contain even less fat. However, many types of margarine contain trans fats, which are unhealthy and can cause heart disease and also contain unstable Omega-6 levels. Other fats, like olive oil, and butter, are a better choice for cooking.
Milky Way
The Milky Way is our home galaxy. It contains over 200 billion stars, including our Sun.
The Milky Way has a diameter of about 170,000 or 200,000 light years, and is a barred spiral galaxy. The idea that the Milky Way is made of stars goes back to the Ancient Greek philosopher Democritus.
The Milky Way has three main parts: a "disk", where the Solar System is, a "bulge" at the core, and an outer "halo" all around it. Although the word "disk" suggests it is flat, the Milky Way is actually not quite flat. It is slightly warped and twisted.
This galaxy belongs to the Local Group of three large galaxies and over 50 smaller galaxies. The Milky Way is one of the largest galaxies in the group, second to the Andromeda Galaxy. Its closest neighbour is the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, which is about 25,000 light years away from the Earth. The Andromeda Galaxy is moving towards the Milky Way Galaxy, and will collide with it in about 3.75 billion years. The Andromeda Galaxy moves with a speed of about 1,800 kilometres per minute.
The stellar disk of the Milky Way Galaxy is about 200,000 light-years (9×10 km) in diameter, and is considered to be, on average, about 1000 light years thick.