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.
Related
I recently discovered this very useful Netbeans tutorial for creating a simple JSF 2 CRUD application http://netbeans.org/kb/docs/web/jsf20-crud.html. The final product has somewhat limited usability as one is confronted with a myriad of web pages. I would like an example of how to consolidate the Create and Edit forms (using the same project if possible). This seems more in keeping with how a person would actually enter such information and would reduce the risk of data entry mistakes. Why enter a client and their billing address on separate screens? One should be able to add or remove addresses, if need be, on the client's edit form. Or if a new client has multiple addresses, enter them all on the client's create form. The application just seemed incomplete with no further tips on how to improve it. If one has knows of a useful book that covers this, then I would gladly read that as well. Thanks.
I didn't realize the complexity of my problem and found that I couldn't get what I needed using JSF2 with the information resources available. Through my searches, I also found that many others were asking about Master-Detail CRUD applications, which I then learned was what I needed, but in slightly different ways and not getting any solid examples. A problem properly stated is half solved and I didn't know the problem statement. Armed with more knowledge, I was shocked to find that the answers were not readily available outside of some videos on YouTube showcasing Oracle ADF. In the end, I was able to quickly build the application I desired using the Play! Framework. In a way, by not having my question answered I was able to find a solution that would prove to be a better fit for my needs; though I would have gladly bought a cookbook if someone had pointed one out.
I develop an online, Flash-based multiplayer game. It is a complex game, and requires a lot of documentation to fully explain it to our users. Ideally, I would like to find MySQL-based wiki software that can provide these editable documentation pages outside of Flash (in the HTML realm) but also within Flash for convenience, and so that players can refer to the information without interrupting their game or having to switch back-and-forth between browser tabs. I am expecting that I would need to do a lot of the work on the Flash side myself, as far as formatting, for example, but I would like to feel comfortable in querying the wiki's database to get info directly. I guess this means that I need a wiki that is structured relatively "flat" or intuitively so that I can do things like:
Run a MySQL query that returns a list of all the articles (their titles and IDs) in the wiki
For each article ID in the wiki, return the associated content
This may mean that I have to limit the kinds of formatting I put into the wiki -- things like tables would probably be omitted since they would be very difficult, if not impossible, for me to do on the Flash side. And that is fine!
Basically I am just looking for suggestions for wiki software that is pretty easy to use, but mostly is technically simple enough on the back-end that interfacing with it directly via MySQL is not difficult. When interfacing with the database directly, I only need to READ data. Any time the wiki would be edited or added to would be done via the wiki's actual front-end application.
Thanks for any suggestions!
MediaWiki is the best-known and best-supported MySQL-based Wiki, used for plenty of complex game documentation projects like MinecraftWiki. The database is not all that simple, but it's well documented and basic read operations aren't too hard. For example, here's how to fetch the current content of the page "MyPage":
SELECT old_text FROM page,revision,text WHERE page.page_title="MyPage" AND
page.page_id=revision.rev_page AND revision.rev_text_id=text.old_id;
(And yes, old_text is the current content of the page. Don't ask me why!)
Your main problem will be figuring out how to parse MediaWiki markup, there are plenty of parsers for it but I'm not aware of anything that would work in Flash.
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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 want to build a web-based knowledge base system for our call center. To save some development time, I am looking for a open source. Does anybody know any good one out there?
How about one of the many wikis?
Kenny: I've used FlexWiki & ScrewTurn (abandoned).
someone else with RepPower to edit my post added this.
Wikipedia is powered by MediaWiki.
I have used phpMyFAQ and found it to be very good.
In addition to MediaWiki that was mentioned by Kenny, you might also look at MoinMoin.
Choosing between MediaWiki and MoinMoin can be a bit tough. Here are some points to consider:
MediaWiki
Pros:
Made for wikipedia, thus is very mature and scalable.
Fairly easy to set up.
Cons:
Made soley for wikipedia. Thus it can be a bit of a pain to customize how you like it.
MoinMoin
Pros:
Very mature software.
Huge amount of plugins and third party modules available.
Cons:
Can be a pain to install.
There are a huge amount of other wikis available, but those are the main two I would consider.
Since I don't have enough reputation points to comment on Bruno Shine's answer, I'll add this note as a new answer.
KBPublisher 2.0 is still available on Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/kbpublisher/
The project hasn't been updated for years. I've been running it since v1.9 or something, and it works fine.
I believe that phpMyFAQ is the most useful KB I have seen so far ( from open-source ).
It is simple, straight-forward KB software, is it PHP => can be easily installed on any server and can be customized if you know a bit of php. In addition it is made simple enough but with correct priorities and logic. I suggest to install it and play with it, I did and I decided to stay with this KB.
Also, consider GForge.
Based on my personal experience with this knowledge base software, I would also like to join 'Julien H.' in suggesting PHPKB from http://www.knowledgebase-script.com
Personally I believe its one of the best. Many features, continously developed, excellent support & the GUI is just simple & great.
Here comes another vote in favor of PHPKB knowledge base software. We came to know about PHPKB from this post on StackOverflow and bought it as recommended by Julien and Ricardo. I am glad to inform that it was a right decision. Although we had to get certain features customized according to our needs but their support team exceeded our expectations. So, I just thought of sharing the news here. We are fully satisfied with PHPKB knowledge base software.
I heard of RTM (The RT FAQ Manager). Never used it, however.
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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