mediawiki-customization: Difference between revisions
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
(drafted) |
m (some cleanup and additional reasoning) |
||
| Line 11: | Line 11: | ||
* enabled hyphenated phrases for page names | * enabled hyphenated phrases for page names | ||
* hide MediaWiki "Talk" links | * hide MediaWiki "Talk" links | ||
* ... more that I'm sure I'm forgetting at the moment. | |||
== Goals and motivations == | == Goals and motivations == | ||
I'm responsible for pushing for nearly all of the specific MediaWiki customizations on the microformats wiki and thus I figured I should capture at least some of the reasoning in the hopes that perhaps others may find it useful. | I'm responsible for pushing for nearly all of the specific MediaWiki customizations on the microformats wiki and thus I figured I should capture at least some of the reasoning in the hopes that perhaps others may find it useful. [[User:Tantek|Tantek]] | ||
* '''lowercase URLs are better'''. MediaWiki has an annoying tendency of capitalizing article titles, which, though may be stylistically proper (in the English writing style meaning of stylistic) for proper nouns, is incorrect for common terms (which a lot of microformats pages are). Oh and the whole "The initial capital letter is due to technical restrictions." nonsense on Wikipedia is ridiculous. It's software. Just fix it. More: | * '''lowercase URLs are better'''. MediaWiki has an annoying tendency of capitalizing article titles, which, though may be stylistically proper (in the English writing style meaning of stylistic) for proper nouns, is incorrect for common terms (which a lot of microformats pages are). Oh and the whole [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_%28technical_restrictions%29#Lower_case_first_letter "The initial capital letter is due to technical restrictions."] nonsense on Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(technical_restrictions)#Summary_of_lower_case_first_letter_issue is ridiculous]. It's software. Just fix it. More: | ||
** all same case is easier to read (citation required) | ** all same case is easier to read (citation required) | ||
** all lowercase is easier to read than all uppercase (citation required) | ** all lowercase is easier to read than all uppercase (citation required) | ||
** all lowercase is easier to type | ** all lowercase is easier to type (citation required) | ||
* '''hyphenated phrases are better | * '''hyphenated phrases are better than CamelCased phrases''' | ||
** | ** hyphenated phrases are easier to read (for humans, duh) than CamelCased phrases. CamelCasing is a programmer convention that should have NEVER made its way into the textual user-interface (which URLs are a part of). Others have made this deliberate fix as well, i.e. CSS property/value names like "border-left" in contrast to DOM property names like "onClick". I know this was a deliberate decision by either Bert Bos or Håkon Wium Lie or perhaps both (citation needed). | ||
** hyphenated phrases are better indexed (SEO) than CamelCased phrases. | |||
* '''Talk pages are lame and "one more inbox to check".''' Talk pages are lame (e.g. the structure/threading is poor) and we don't need yet another discussion area (in addition to IRC, [[mailing-lists]]) Eliminating them from the default user interface was the simplest way to effectively eliminate their usage. Invisible talk pages = nearly no one uses them. And one fewer link cluttering the default UI is always nice. . | * '''Talk pages are lame and "one more inbox to check".''' Talk pages are lame (e.g. the structure/threading is poor) and we don't need yet another discussion area (in addition to IRC, [[mailing-lists]]) Eliminating them from the default user interface was the simplest way to effectively eliminate their usage. Invisible talk pages = nearly no one uses them. And one fewer link cluttering the default UI is always nice. . | ||
== How to == | == How to == | ||
Documentation on how to modify a MediaWiki install to get these customizations. | Documentation on how to modify a MediaWiki install to get these customizations. | ||
[[to-do]]: To be filled in. ;) | [[to-do]]: To be filled in. ;) | ||
== Related == | |||
The microformats MediaWiki customizations enable [[how-to-play]] and better [[naming-conventions]]. | |||
Revision as of 23:18, 9 July 2007
MediaWiki customization
by Tantek
The MediaWiki installation at microformats.org/wiki has been customized in a number of ways.
This page documents some of these customizations for informative purposes. This is not thorough nor comprehensive documentation.
Customizations
- enable lowercase page names
- enabled hyphenated phrases for page names
- hide MediaWiki "Talk" links
- ... more that I'm sure I'm forgetting at the moment.
Goals and motivations
I'm responsible for pushing for nearly all of the specific MediaWiki customizations on the microformats wiki and thus I figured I should capture at least some of the reasoning in the hopes that perhaps others may find it useful. Tantek
- lowercase URLs are better. MediaWiki has an annoying tendency of capitalizing article titles, which, though may be stylistically proper (in the English writing style meaning of stylistic) for proper nouns, is incorrect for common terms (which a lot of microformats pages are). Oh and the whole "The initial capital letter is due to technical restrictions." nonsense on Wikipedia is ridiculous. It's software. Just fix it. More:
- all same case is easier to read (citation required)
- all lowercase is easier to read than all uppercase (citation required)
- all lowercase is easier to type (citation required)
- hyphenated phrases are better than CamelCased phrases
- hyphenated phrases are easier to read (for humans, duh) than CamelCased phrases. CamelCasing is a programmer convention that should have NEVER made its way into the textual user-interface (which URLs are a part of). Others have made this deliberate fix as well, i.e. CSS property/value names like "border-left" in contrast to DOM property names like "onClick". I know this was a deliberate decision by either Bert Bos or Håkon Wium Lie or perhaps both (citation needed).
- hyphenated phrases are better indexed (SEO) than CamelCased phrases.
- Talk pages are lame and "one more inbox to check". Talk pages are lame (e.g. the structure/threading is poor) and we don't need yet another discussion area (in addition to IRC, mailing-lists) Eliminating them from the default user interface was the simplest way to effectively eliminate their usage. Invisible talk pages = nearly no one uses them. And one fewer link cluttering the default UI is always nice. .
How to
Documentation on how to modify a MediaWiki install to get these customizations.
to-do: To be filled in. ;)
Related
The microformats MediaWiki customizations enable how-to-play and better naming-conventions.