Setting up the new MediaWiki

I’m currently trying to set up a MediaWiki.

The old DokuWiki is available at http://sfmeta.net/dokuwiki though some things might not work as expected, because I just renamed the wiki folder from “wiki” to “dokuwiki”. I love that simplicity when no database is involved. :smile:

So, please don’t be surprised if you see nothing or a real mess when you click on the Wiki link or visit http://sfmeta.net/wiki.

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Ok, the MediaWiki is now formally installed and named “Social Future Wiki” (this may need to be changed to Fractal Future Wiki" later on). The initial copyright is CC-0. It’s an open wiki, meaning that anyone can edit it without having to log in (this can of course be changed later on, if needed). The wiki is available at the same URL as the old one: http://sfmeta.net/wiki

It’s an empty wiki now. Please tell me how you want the wiki to be structured and filled with content.

I propose we divide the wiki in four main sections:

  • Fractal Future
  • Transhumanist party
  • Quantified Prestige
  • Others

Than we can have several subsections for each of this sections.

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Yeah, that sounds reasonable. I’ll have to look up how to subdivide the wiki that way. Don’t have much experience with MediaWiki. Do we perhaps have some people with expertise in that area? Help would be greatly appreciated! :smile:

Edit: Looks like getting the subdivision and navigation right will take some time. I really don’t like the default navigation structure of MediaWiki. So, I’ll look out for useful plugins like the one that enabled the dynamic navigation sidebar on the DokuWiki.

Edit2 (2015-05-04): I’ve tried figuring out how to best organize content of a MediaWiki. This is a complicated subject, since there seem to be at least three different methods for doing that: Namespaces, categories, and subpages. The default feature is to use categories to structure content (MediaWiki categories are basically tags for pages – each page can have arbitrarily many categories. And categories can have subcategories). In most cases this is a decent choice, but I think it’s also lacking a clear structure. The namespace feature is quite hardcore (in the sense that I have to edit the config file of the wiki manually to implement each namespace), but it allows for a lot of flexibility. Each namespace can have its own unique settings. This would be advantageous if we have different project leaders who want to use the common Social Future wiki, but want to manage their own project namespace in their own way.

I have decided to set up namespaces for each serious project within this community. For example, there should be a namespace for Fractal Future pages. Each Fractal Future page would have the name “Fractal Future: page name”, so that users know this page is part of the Fractal Future project.

Anyway, you can just start and create some content in the wiki. In any case, I can structure the content clearly afterwards. So, just go ahead and write what you want to write :smile: