User talk:Mihai Alexandru

Feedback

Also posted in Google Melange

Hello Alexandru.

This is an interesting start :) Thank you so much for choosing this task.

I have a few questions that might help you improve and expand your report a bit before final review.

• "I remarked that almost any site about almost anything was featuring a wiki page."

  Are you talking about third-party sites (not hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation) powered by MediaWiki? A couple examples could help here; it would give an idea of what external MediaWiki sites have visibility outside Wikimedia projects.

• "I could find all the information related to installing and configuring a wiki on the MediaWiki wiki page."

  That's great to hear :) It leads to the question: Have you tried installing and configuring it? Do you think you'd have a use case for installing/using a wiki? (perhaps at home, or at school, for a club, etc.?)

• I like your comments about active support and forums. I'd encourage you to look up a new discussion system that engineers are currently developing, called Flow. You could try out the prototype and provide some detailed feedback about how it solves the problems you're raising in your essay. Or perhaps it doesn't, in which case it would also be useful to know :)
• "I embrace the fact that the code is mainly in php language, as it makes contributing with source code more accessible than probably it would have done being a Python written software, for example"

  Could you give a little background on your own experience with PHP, Python or other languages? It would help frame your comment better. For example, if you have some knowledge of PHP, would you be interested in starting to contribute code to MediaWiki? If so, what area would be the most appealing to you? You mentioned user experience and forums; is that something you'd be interested in improving?

You've done a good job so far :) I think that digging a little bit into those areas would improve your essay, so I've extended the deadline by 1 day to give you a little more time to expand and polish it. You don't have to answer all the questions, of course; you could choose to dig into one area in particular (like active support forum and the Flow prototype, for example).

I hope this feedback is useful. Let me know if you have questions :) guillom 10:31, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Feedback on the second version

Also posted in Google Melange

Thanks, Alexandru. I've just read this new version of your essay, and I'm really glad with the results. Congratulations! This is really good.

I will make some minor spelling or wording improvements tomorrow (directly on the wiki page).

If you want, you can consider the task complete and submit it for final review. However, if you have a little time left, I'd love it if you would consider translating your essay into Romanian (which I understand is your native language? Let me know if I'm wrong). I would love to be able to publish your article on our blog in both English and Romanian.

The translation is not mandatory and you can submit the task for final review if you prefer not to translate the essay. I'm happy with your essay and I'll approve the task whether you translate the essay or not. It's up to you :)

Let me know if you have any questions! guillom 21:06, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

P.S.: One final question: Are you still maintaining or using the MediaWiki site you installed 2 years ago? And do you remember if your teacher and classmates used it? It could add a few interesting sentences to your second paragraph :)