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Is anyone aware of an already existing MediaWiki Extension that would allow users to ask questions in a similar manner to this website or yahoo answers. I've been looking for an extension to allow users to ask/answer questions referring to specific pages for my wiki and I was hoping someone might have already implemented this.
I've been having no luck while searching considering the key words I've been using to describe what I'm looking for end up returning a wide range of results.
I think there are currently these options:
The simplest is the talk page, available for every article. You could use a main page talk (see Wikipedia example - though Wikipedia uses it only for discussion about main page content, not for general discussion) or Village Pump / Community portal idea for general discussions. Not ideal but it works.
You can improve on this somewhat using the LiquidThreads extension. This enhances the talk pages but does not include gaming elements found here (e.g. up votes).
If you just want to get community views, you can use a poll like QPoll.
Finally, you can use a Chat room.
FWIW - I asked a similar question over on meta.
(You may also be interested in Wikis and Wikipedia.)
Currently there is Wikia Answers that is essentially MediaWiki based website but with excremental extensions for Q&A.
Many of its extensions are not yet available directly for download (You may get the website extensions on https://github.com/Wikia
I would be questioning why you're using Wikipedia for a project like this in the first place. It simply isn't designed for it. I think that you'd get more out of looking at a system that thinks about a website as a collection of datachunks, rather than a collection of documents (which is what wikipedia is GREAT at). Something like Drupal is going to get you where you want to be far faster that wikipedia - in fact, it's already be done: https://drupal.org/project/answers. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar exists for joomla, or even wordpress.
If you're looking at wikipedia because you're already using it for part of your site, there's no reason why you can't run another CMS alongside it.
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I have recently started working on some open source project which I found relevant to my interests.
During this initiation period I came across some terminologies/stuff that I am not acquainted with, like configure, tool chain, binutils, etc. which I agree depends upon the type of project you are working on.
Now my question is, are there some bare requirements a developer should know before starting to work on the project?
Any help/reference will be greatly appreciated.
EDIT:
I have seen the GNU configure and build system in most of the projects I have seen.
If someone bothers about it "The GNU configure and build system" is a good place to start.
If it's a pre-existing one, you'll need to read their development docs (if any), learn how to use their version control system, and have the requisite tools for building the code and running it.
If you have all that, and the knowledge of the code/language, then you just need enthusiasm and some spare time :)
I wouldn't define them as bare requirements in the sense that it appears you are looking for. If you're a programmer you already have (hopefully!) the self-learning and problem solving characteristics that probably led you to be a programmer at first.
You'll never really know 'everything', and will likely learn something new everywhere you go. Heck, I got my current job never even hearing the words "Model-View-Controller", but picked up the concept in no time.
Your examples, toolchain and binutils, are not complex concepts and a simple wiki article should suffice.
I'd suggest downloading all the source code and making sure you can build it yourself as a first step.
Try and make sure you are familiar with the overall design and documentation before attempting to make any changes to ensure you don't inadvertently break anything on your first change!
The terminologies being used will probably depend on the technologies being used, for example an open source project written in C++ and running on Linux, will likely be very different to a C#/.NET application build to run on Windows.
It depends on how much involvement you will get into. If you just want to contribute with a feature, just get the tools to build the project, an editor to change the file and enough doc reading to find injection point for your feature. If you can find someone to help you getting started it will be fairly easy.
If you are to be committed to the project I recommend learning build tools, project history and aims. Also how the current authors try to solve the problems, their perspective on the project will help.
I would say being able to understand all of the architecture, tools and technology for whatever project you're working on is a must.
However, you then tried to make this a generic question that applied to any open source project. You kind of answered that for yourself didn't you?
which I agree depends upon the type of
project you are working on
I would think that depends entirely upon the project. Most well set up software projects will specify:
What language(s) they're written in
What developer environments (if any) they're set up for
What tools you need to build/compile/run the project
Test data with which to test the software
What are you working on? Are you sure they don't provide any of this information?
It depends on what you qualify as "work" on the project.
Most of the answers here suggest that you're coding (and your question hinted in that direction), but there are things that you can do to contribute to projects -- like testing and documentation -- that can be done without knowledge of how the program's written.
Now, for the coding aspect of it -- if it's a smaller project, I'd try to figure out what the other contributor's motivation and grand plans/goals for the project are. As with any team, coming in and trying to take things in a completely different direction than the others are planning, even if you have good intentions, can cause all sorts of problems.
(and then there's the technical advice that everyone else said ... source control, build system, project architecture, toolkits used, etc.)
It depends, as you say, on the project.
You'll have to know how to work in the language, you'll have to be familiar with the source code control system they use (usually subversion). You'll have to be able to build (usually Ant, often Maven).
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I find myself wanting to develop certain projects, but most of the time I lack motivation because I develop by myself.
What I usually do is look for similar existing projects, and ask the developers if they like to collaborate, but it's rather hard.
Is there a good place (a website maybe) to find people that are interested in the same project as me, and therefore would like to collaborate?
You code by yourself?
Release the code on one of the open-source foundries. (code.google.com. sf.net. bitbucket.org , github.com ,etc...)
Pick an easy license (x11/MIT is good, GPL2/3/AGPL3 if you like, among others.)
Write simple instructions on how to deploy, run, with a one-page tutorial.
Have a website where you write about the stuff you build, and the stuff you'd like to build.
Find people who need some help and help them. Don't over-extend yourself.
It takes time to build trust. Trust takes time.
Update
You wrote:
What I usually do is look for similar existing projects, and ask the developers if they like to collaborate, but it's rather hard.
If you see an open-source project out there, odds are the developers already like to collaborate. What they might not want to do is talk about grand schemes about how to turn the software into the next fifty billion-dollar behemoth. Generally, if you join the mailing list, introduce yourself ("Hi, I'm Joe, and I like to do X, and I like this software."), get and use the software, and provide feedback and constructive criticism, and demonstrate that you are following instructions or at least attempting to, and then, then, if you provide a patch (or a branch if github) it might be looked at and considered.
Do follow the project methodology. For example, if they use tests, submit tests with your patch, that sort of thing.
I tried myself to start an open source project and failed. I had published my idea in a forum and there were about 10 or 15 people who wanted to join the project. Actually there were very little activity ...
I think the main reason for the failure was that I hadn't developed anything before going public. It would have been really useful to have at least a prototype. Another thing is defining a (simple) development process.
If I would try it again, I would:
develop a prototype
document the code and the architecture in detail
write down tasks others could do
describe the development process
design a nice website and promote my work
publish the code at google code or something like that
Check out the offerings at github.com. If you can use git, I often find some cool projects on there, and you can always fork the repository to help out.
First, you should register your project on an Open Source Forge. There is a comparison list on Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_software_hosting_facilities
On certain forges, there is a way to ask for help. I know that SourceForge does: https://sourceforge.net/people/
I recommend that you read Karl Fogel's excellent and complete book on the subject : Producing Open Source Software. It is freely available online or in print from Amazon.
If you already have some code somewhere online, you could put an ad for your project on Stack Overflow's Open Source Advertising.
Quote from the link:
It must be an advertisement soliciting the participation and
contribution of programmers writing actual source code. This is not
intended as a general purpose ad for consumer products which just
happen to be open source. It's for finding programmers who will help
contribute code or other programmery things (documentation, code
review, bug fixes, etc.).
Openhatch
is the best place I have found to look for open source projects
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I want to ask about the different techniques they used to remember various programming techniques. We go through various books and various online tips and tutorials we also get so many ideas from the code written by somebody else.
Now all these inputs are memorized or stored in some format so that it can be found easily when referred. Absence of such storage may result in rewriting the code or reinventing the wheel.
I use to create one Working folder where I keep all my trial code but sometime after few days / months since the code is not tagged or named properly its difficult to find it out again.
For Perl, I have a module I call staging.pm, and use staging; is a pragma in my code which allows me to use experimental, not fully developed code in my development. This developmental code will be placed in a branch called "staging" off of the user library directory. The main thing that the module does is put my staging directory at the head of #INC. Once my code is mature--if it ever is--it will be moved into my user lib directory.
As for scripts, they can be run from wherever they are and I use a directory named test off of the bin directory.
So that's kind of my approach. I don't know how useful that is for you.
It's like learning any other language or learning any other technique. When you read a book and you find it interesting you start associating what you are reading with real life situations and problems that you might have had before which the new learnt stuff will solve for you.
You might, after a couple of days or so forget what you have learned, untill you stumble upon the problem which you related to when reading the book or looking at the lecture. This specific type of memory is called something like association memory technique.
There are a lot of other different techniques to remember things by but a lot of them come down to relationships with other parts of what you already know.
Another example is Math which is something you force your brain to understand but once you quit using it on a daily basis you will slowly degenerate the math-genious-cells.
Programming for me at least is just another way to express myself and when i learn new features it's just a new way to express things that might not have been easy to do before.
Edit
I might have missunderstood the question.. did i?
Well, for me, when I am trying to learn, I focus on learning the approach to solve the program, rather than a technique. That is important to me. Also, with regular day to day programming some techniques become ingrained.
The other thing I do is to maintain a notebook with my notes in it, code snippets, comments, shortcuts I have learnt over the years. This helps too.
Recently I have taken to maintaining my notes in Evernote, this makes is easy to search for and tag.
For web, I use Delicious + Firefox plugin to store what I already read.
When looking for a solution to something I can't solve, I got used to ask / search here.
And for my own solutions, I try to create reusable components and remember in which project I solved what and eventually get back to it later when I need it.
Whenever you study one programming technique like java you always map the corresponding things with C++ and perl.Java and C++ remain same in more concepts.And better you store your working folder in your mails so that whenever you need you can download and have it.
You could try a program like Surfulater. I don't know how well it works with code samples, but I do know that the developer was (is still?) active on the Joel on Software forums, so I'm sure he could be contacted with any specific questions.
If you use Windows, you can use Google Desktop to index part of your harddrive, including your program snippets.
If you can recall just some of it, Google will find it.
(Spotlight does the same automatically on a Mac)
On Mac OS X, TextMate provides a near perfect solution to this problem. TextMate is a programming editor that offers support for hundreds of programming languages and is customizable via the bundle editor. Through the bundle editor, you can add any snippet of code that you may want to memorize, and appropriately categorize it under its respective language. You can also assign hot-keys or character sequences to invoke a snippet and copy it to your current editing context.
I believe that Notepad++ is a similar tool for Windows, but I am unsure if it is as customizable as TextMate.
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I've used a WordPress blog and a Screwturn Wiki (at two separate jobs) to store private, company-specific KB info, but I'm looking for something that was created to be a knowledge base. Specifically, I'd like to see:
Free/low cost
Simple method for users to subscribe to KB (or just sections) to get updates
Ability to do page versioning/audit changes
Limit access to certain pages for certain users
Very simple method of posting/editing articles
Very simple method of adding images to articles
Excellent (fast, accurate) searching abilities
Ability to rate and comment on articles
I liked using the Wordpress blog because it allowed me to use Live Writer to add/edit articles and images, but it didn't have page versioning (that I could see).
I like using Screwturn wiki because of it's ability to track article versions, and I like it's clean look, but some non-technical people balk at the input and editing.
I second Luke's answer.
I can Recommend Confluence and here is why:
I tested extensively many commercial and free Wiki based solutions. Not a single one is a winner on all accounts, including confluence. Let me try to make your quest a little shorter by summarizing what I have learned to be a pain and what is important:
WYSIWYG is a most have feature for the Enterprise. A wiki without it, skip it
Saying that, in reality, WYSIWYG doesn't work perfectly. It is more of a feature you must have to get the casual users not be afraid of the monster, and start using it. But you and anyone that wants to seriously create content, will very quickly get used to the wiki markup. it is faster and more reliable.
You need good permissions controls (who can see, edit etc' a page). confluence has good, but I have my complaints (to complicated to be put here)
You will want a good export feature. Most will give you a single page "PDF" export, but you need much more. For example, lets say you have an FAQ, you want to export the entire FAQ right? will that work?
Macros: you want a community creating macros. You asked for example about the ability to rate pages, here is a link to a Macro for Confluence that lets you do that
Structure: you want to be able to say that a page is a child of a different page, and be able to browse the data. The wikipedia model, of orphaned pages with no sturcture will not work in the Enterprise. (think FAQ, you want to have a hierarchy no?)
Ability to easily attache picture to be embedded in the body of the page/article. In confluence, you need to upload the image and then can embed it, it could be a little better (CTR+V) but I guess this is easy enough for 80% of the users.
At the end of the day, remember that a Wiki will be valuable to you the more flexible it is. It needs to be a "blank" canvas, and your imagination is then used to "build" the application. In Confluence, I found 3 different "best practices" on how to create a FAQ. That means I can implement MANY things.
Some examples (I use my Wiki for)
FAQ: any error, problem is logged. Used by PS and ENG. reduced internal support time dramatically
Track account status: I implemetned sophisticated "dashboard" that you can see at a glance which customer is at what state, the software version they have, who in the company 'owns" the custoemr etc'
Product: all documentation, installation instructions, the "what's new" etc
Technical documentation, DB structure and what the tables mean
HR: contact list, Document repository
My runner up (15 month ago) was free Deki_Wiki, time has passed, so I don't know if this would be still my runner up.
good luck!
I've also been investigating wiki software for use as a KB, but it is tricky to find something that is easy to use for non-technical people. There are many wikis that attempt to provide WYSIWYG editing, but most of the software I've found generates nasty inefficient html markup from the WYSIWYG editor.
One notable exception to this is Confluence which generates wiki syntax from a WYSIWYG editor. This still isn't perfect (show me a WYSIWYG editor that is) but is a pretty good compromise between retaining simple wiki syntax for those who like it and allowing non-technical users to contribute content. The only problem is that Confluence isn't free ($1,200 for 25 user license).
Edit: I also tried DekiWiki and while the UI is nice it doesn't seem to be quite ready for primetime (suffers terribly from the bad WYSIWYG output disease mentioned above). Also seems like they lack direction as there are so many different ways of accomplishing the same task.
Cerberus - it's more a full featured Help Desk/Issue Tracking system but it has a nice KB solution built in. It can be free but they do have a low cost pay version that is also very good.
Personally I use MediaWiki for this purpose. I've tried a number of other free and paid wikis (including Confluence) and have always been impressed with MediaWiki's simplicity and ease of use.
I have MediaWiki installed on a thumb drive (using XAMPP from PortableApps), which I use mostly as a personal knowledge base/code snippet repository. I can take it with me wherever I go, and view/edit it from any computer I'm using.
I think Drupal is a very possible choice. It has a lot of built-in support for book-type information capturing.
And there is a rich collection of user generated modules which you can use to enhance the features.
I think it has almost all the features you ask for out of the box.
Drupal CMS Benefits
We've been using a combination of
TWiki
OpenGrok for the codebase
usenet
LotusNotes based system
As long as there is a google search appliance pointed at these things I think it's ok to have any or many versions as long as people use them