Template talk:Mediawiki

What’s the point of this template?

I don’t understand the point of this template – why write {{mediawiki|Foo}} rather than [[Foo]], particularly as this creates an external link? Nbarth 18:58, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Some investigation (Project:PD help) reveals that it’s for automatically creating external links when the pages are included in a different project. I’ve written that up above. Nbarth 19:12, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Internal links

I’ve modified this so that on Mediawiki itself, it creates internal links, which is less disconcerting. Nbarth 19:26, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Good idea, thanks. I've moved your rationale notes to the main template and borrowed your parser logic for same; this avoids the creation of yet another red link (to this talk page) on wikis which use the Help pages. Cheers. --kingboyk 20:50, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Handy Examples

Examples:

• {{Mediawiki|Page_Title}}
• {{Mediawiki|Page_Title|text}}

This took two of us a significant amount of time to puzzle out on Lunarpedia.

-- Miros1 19:49, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Removal of 'mediawikiwiki'

Regarding this edition, if the "mw" prefix is only in the default interwiki prefixes since MediaWiki 1.16, changing "mediawikiwiki" to "mw" effectively breaks backward compatibility on all wikis running previous versions of MediaWiki. Not changing it, however, would maintain backward compatibility, since "mediawikiwiki" continues to be an interwiki link. What is the racionale for changing? Hamilton Abreu 10:08, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Salve!

You might be right, if this (new) sourcecode is transfered 1:1 to an installation prior version 1.16. But the shortcut "mw" should work on this older versions too.

My reason to change it were a bunch of red links not on other wikisites but here on mediawiki.org. I stumbled into this issue, because I use the secure server for access to WikiMedia Foundation Projects. The name of this server is not adressed by the Mediawiki-Template, so it is treated like an external, which causes the script to fail, because of the no more featured keyword "mediawikiwiki".

During this edit - which took with all readings and checks two days - I looked at the Interwiki map too. Even there I found related to "mediawiki.org" only

1. "MW" as prefix ponting to [[|"[[]]$1"]],
2. "rev" ponting to [[[]]Special:Code/MediaWiki/ "[[]]Special:Code/MediaWiki/$1] and
3. "svn" ponting to "http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/$1?view=log"

($1 is a placeholder which I removed here in the links to have them working properly). On the other hand shows this list, that "any Wiki supporting the Meta interwiki map, not only [...] MediaWiki wikis", should be able to handle the "mw"-prefix.

As a strong proponent of downward compatibility I understand your concerns. But I think, that in the first place something has to work in the environment where it belongs. How about leaving a comment directly in the sourcecode, just in case someone really wants to use this template somewhere else?

I hope I could answer your question. Don't hesitate to ask for further info. Vale, Oculus Spectatoris ^disputio_e-mail 14:05, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Yep, a comment in the source code seems appropriate. Hamilton Abreu 02:37, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Done. -- Oculus Spectatoris ^disputio_e-mail 10:02, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Oculus, thanks for this. On a MediaWiki 1.11 installation, [[mw:Documentation]] doesn't work, so hopefully it will be useful. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hamilton Abreu 14:55, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

You're welcomed. Did you consider to edit the configuration file(s) in order to make "mw:" available? Off course, this applies only, if you have access to the Mediawiki configuration. Just in case you haven't seen it, may be Manual on MediaWiki is helpful to you. Have fun. -- Oculus Spectatoris ^disputio_e-mail 19:19, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, sure. The concern was for possible pre 1.16 wikis out there that may import the PD help. So, they will be affected but that's taken care of. Thanks for your patience regarding this. Hamilton Abreu 21:37, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Special pages

What about special pages? Documentation often linked to special pages when mentioning them: this is not very helpful if the special page is not auto-explanatory, but it's completely pointless if it doesn't exist on this wiki, which happens frequently in extensions' documentation. Still, this wiki has way more extensions installed than the default. It would perhaps make sense to change it so that you can link a special page to another wiki, but it defaults to the local if existing (also on other wikis, perhaps going through this wiki for possibly missing interwiki links). Nemo 10:03, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

You could make a template that uses ifexist, and wrap every mention of a special page with it. Template would be this sort of logic:

{{#ifexist:Special:Log|Special:Log exists here, show [[Special:Log]]|let's show [[:m:Special:Log]]}}

But then you have to copy the template along with the page when copying the page to another wiki.

Rd232 (talk) 02:15, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes. My idea was to use this template by adapting it, as the scope is the same and it's supposed to be copied with the help documentation (although its usage is not very consistent). Nemo 15:42, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

OK. I've added a |special parameter, to provide for this special logic for special pages. Rd232 (talk) 01:00, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll try to implement the additional interwiki fallback as well. Nemo 07:15, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

The special pages addition appears to have broken PD help if nothing else, I had to revert back to get my imported PD Help to function. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.174.58.60 (talk • contribs) 2 April 2012

Sorry. The template was broken, and obviously so (oops). I've fixed it now. Rd232 (talk) 21:51, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Help:Extension:FlaggedRevs extensively uses {{#ifexist:Special:UnreviewedPages|[[Special:UnreviewedPages]]|Special:UnreviewedPages}} and the like. --Nemo 09:32, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Updates

The "canonical" (older) hardwired mediawikiwiki: default apparently uses https or http at the moment, while the newer (now also hardwired) mw: default uses only http, or I missed a clue. I've changed it to the "canonical" interwiki (expected to work also on ancient MediaWiki installations).

I've added the "special" parameter to the template data on the /doc subpage, and added an example for this feature for a special page only working here. However, I don't get why folks would not simply use mediawikiwiki:Special:MyPage instead of this construct, or why it is not determined automatically. Please check this, and document exactly what this does, and when or why it might be used at all. Is this cruft, or feature creep? Where are the (external) test pages to explain this? –Be..anyone (talk) 23:40, 26 December 2014 (UTC)