User:Pulkitmehta10
MediaWiki
On 27 November, 2013, I discovered this website through a competition "GOOGLE CODE-IN 2013" Before this competition I was worried about it. Actually we were not told exactly about the stuff of competition what we thought was that it contained some tasks related to 'Coding' in which I was not that much good. But when I received the list of Tasks, I was very glad to claim this task of writing a 'Discovery Report of Mediawiki' which was actually related to 'Documentation' Category. In this Essay I have expressed my experiences and impressions regarding this Website.
The overall layout of MediaWiki is a nice one. Everything is easily accessible to the user.
The Left-pane consisting of Broad Categories with their Sub-Categories is a nice one. Since it gives the whole map of the Website. By using this it is very easy for a new user to know where the things are present (In simple words i should say 'easy to navigate').
The above Dashboard containing links for different actions like 'log out', 'preferences'........ etc. also impressed me because here also the new user can gain a good control over the website operation.
The most effective attribute of the interface is that there are shortcut keys assigned to most of actions !!
Yes, Yes, they are Just hover your mouse pointer over the actions for eg. For viewing "history" we can use alt-shift-h . This is something nice. Though afterwords I understood that it is directly only on address bar same for every page .
Only some actions were there which I was not able to find like ' i was not able to generate link for the page which i wrote '
Another was that the "View Source" command was a little bit difficult to understand well like it used different symbols for text attributes like "Bold" but it was then easily understood .
Moreover the "Tools" Category in left also proves useful for a new user .
One more thing about MediaWiki which can never be forgotten is that " THERE ARE NO ADVERTISEMENTS " which uselessly open in pop ups while operation of other websites.
Once I received task in GCI of designing title cards for some videos there the mentors asked me to upload and share drafts in wikimedia commons and also gave me some raw material by the same means . This proved useful for me in doing this task as it was very easy and instantly gave us link for the uploaded file and I then shared it.
On the main page of this website I found some links which proved to be useful for me like "about this site" ; "about MediaWiki"..... etc. because previously I was not even known to the purpose of this website but with their help I could do so.
There is direct download link for the software on the main page this is something good as a new user can easily access it unlike other websites.
MediaWiki also gives feature of making a book !! Yes, Just go to the Left Pane and click Print/export>create a book. This proves very beneficial.
Now one great feature of this website -- MediaWiki has a language translator which can translate in many languages that mean no barriers of language here.
Now as we know that everything is not 100% perfect there are some issues which I found that they are difficult to understand or somehow changed or improved:-
- The template of Media Wiki is very simple and somehow lacks in Fonts.
- MediaWiki is not that much popular so some efforts can be made to publish it more like one already made like participating in GCI from which I instead came to know about Media Wiki.
- Sometimes I earlier got confused with UI . For that a small handbook should be made such that a new user can easily access it.
- A feature for Personal messages should be made so that we are able to share to specific people which we want.
- In Wikimedia Commons I was not able to find my previously uploaded files. This was something which I was puzzled and little bit disappointed.
I hope that if these issues can mended then it is something perfect.
-Pulkit Mehta