User:Fiv5.ya

I choose this task because I want to explore the MediaWIki technical world and to learn new useful things. I am really glad that I can express my opinion on this free software open source wiki. At first, I learned how to navigate and edit a page, and I am very pleased with the information because now I understand the meaning of the sidebar, page tabs and user links.

I was interested in installing MediaWiki and the manual installation guide was very helpful providing the necessary information. Although you could do a video tutorial on how to install it and you could explain each step. That would be more helpful for me (and probably for many others students) because I prefer to watch and listen rather than reading a long text.

As I was reading the Manual it was difficult to understand because I didn’t learned the PHP language, although it looks like C++ in some parts. I think you could introduce the reader at first to the PHP language by presenting the main instructions, or the ones that are often used by MediaWiki so that one can have a clue about the commands. I am happy that now I know what the MediaWiki API stands for and also surprised seeing the video that helped me understanding how API works.

I have to mention that wiki pages are very organized, but the design is kind of sketchy. It would be more pleasant to the eye if it had a certain design that urges you to read more and more. Anyhow the information is very well provided. I was also confused about the site logo because is vague and I didn’t knew what the sun flower stands for. This image aroused my interest in searching the meaning of the sun flower and the double square brackets which is good because I learned about the logos for Wikipedia and Wikimedia Foundation, but you could make it more symbolic for the community.

I was also disappointed to see that most of the information provided was available only in English. As I am not a native English speaker it takes more time to understand the sentences and sometimes I had to read twice some paragraphs. It would be more useful if you could translate in different languages because it is possible that certain students want to explore the community and is very difficult for them to learn in another language.

I am interested in promoting the MediaWiki in my local area because I think one can learn a lot from this site without any problem. And in general the MediaWiki community is not very popular I didn’t know about this site either until I saw this task. So it would be useful for students to learn about this software.