[Wikimediauk-l] Wikimedia UK website help

[John Lubbock]

Hi all, this is an email to ask for help and advice on improving the
Wikimedia UK websiite. Speaking to RexX recently at an event, I was
discussing some of the issues we are having with the UK website recently as
a result of it not being updated much. Some other chapters have recently
gone down the path of moving away from MediaWiki to make their sites more
user friendly, but I don't think we want to do that and I feel sure that
with a bit of effort we could make our MediaWiki site look a lot nicer.

If you look at the Special:Version
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Special:Version> page on the WMUK site, you
can see all the extensions that are installed currently. It appears we are
lacking many that would be useful, and not being a huge MediaWiki person I
wonder if anybody could lend a hand with helping to install some. In
particular, we cannot display video on the site, because there is no Timed
Media Handler extension. We probably also need Template Styles for reactive
tables, and there's probably more that would be useful. I would really
appreciate if anybody could offer help in installing these and/or advising
what other extensions we should install.

The website really needs quite a lot of work, but one thing I would really
like to be able to do is to automate scraping the image and lead paragraph
off blog posts and having it go onto the WMUK main Wiki page. At the moment
this needs to be done manually and this is quite annoying. The same goes
for the events list on the main Wiki page, which constantly has to be
updated and duplicated from the Events page. Again, if anybody knows how
this could be achieved, we would be very grateful.

One idea I'd like to suggest for doing this is to have a WMUK one day
workshop with anybody who is interested to meet up and work with us on
improving the site. I would be happy to organise this and arrange it if
people would like to attend help us improve the site. If you would be
willing to willing to come to London for this kind of event, please let me
know so I can get an idea of how many people might come and help out.

I hope that Wikimedia UK can also be here to support your Wikimedia work
and projects, so please bear in mind that there are always small grants
available for expenses to cover members' projects, so please let us know
what interesting things you have been doing and if there is any way we can
support you.

All the best,

John Lubbock

Communications Coordinator

Wikimedia UK

[phone]



Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.

Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open knowledge
movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our work to make
knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting Wikimedia UK? Donate
here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.

The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*

[Lewis Cawte]

In place of a more useful researched answer (as I'm in a lecture) but does
the chapter not employ/contract people to manage the websites and IT?

I'm a bit out of touch with chapter things these days, but I'm sure this
was a thing that the contractors used to handle for staff?

-- Lewis Cawte

Post by John Lubbock
Hi all, this is an email to ask for help and advice on improving the
Wikimedia UK websiite. Speaking to RexX recently at an event, I was
discussing some of the issues we are having with the UK website recently as
a result of it not being updated much. Some other chapters have recently
gone down the path of moving away from MediaWiki to make their sites more
user friendly, but I don't think we want to do that and I feel sure that
with a bit of effort we could make our MediaWiki site look a lot nicer.
If you look at the Special:Version
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Special:Version> page on the WMUK site,
you can see all the extensions that are installed currently. It appears we
are lacking many that would be useful, and not being a huge MediaWiki
person I wonder if anybody could lend a hand with helping to install some.
In particular, we cannot display video on the site, because there is no
Timed Media Handler extension. We probably also need Template Styles for
reactive tables, and there's probably more that would be useful. I would
really appreciate if anybody could offer help in installing these and/or
advising what other extensions we should install.
The website really needs quite a lot of work, but one thing I would really
like to be able to do is to automate scraping the image and lead paragraph
off blog posts and having it go onto the WMUK main Wiki page. At the moment
this needs to be done manually and this is quite annoying. The same goes
for the events list on the main Wiki page, which constantly has to be
updated and duplicated from the Events page. Again, if anybody knows how
this could be achieved, we would be very grateful.
One idea I'd like to suggest for doing this is to have a WMUK one day
workshop with anybody who is interested to meet up and work with us on
improving the site. I would be happy to organise this and arrange it if
people would like to attend help us improve the site. If you would be
willing to willing to come to London for this kind of event, please let me
know so I can get an idea of how many people might come and help out.
I hope that Wikimedia UK can also be here to support your Wikimedia work
and projects, so please bear in mind that there are always small grants
available for expenses to cover members' projects, so please let us know
what interesting things you have been doing and if there is any way we can
support you.
All the best,
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia UK? Donate here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

[John Lubbock]

We don't have any technologists on staff. We contract work to someone, but
I believe they are pretty fully occupied with some back end issues at the
moment.

John Lubbock

Communications Coordinator

Wikimedia UK

[phone]



Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.

Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open knowledge
movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our work to make
knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting Wikimedia UK? Donate
here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.

The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*

Post by Lewis Cawte
In place of a more useful researched answer (as I'm in a lecture) but does
the chapter not employ/contract people to manage the websites and IT?
I'm a bit out of touch with chapter things these days, but I'm sure this
was a thing that the contractors used to handle for staff?
-- Lewis Cawte

Post by John Lubbock
Hi all, this is an email to ask for help and advice on improving the
Wikimedia UK websiite. Speaking to RexX recently at an event, I was
discussing some of the issues we are having with the UK website recently as
a result of it not being updated much. Some other chapters have recently
gone down the path of moving away from MediaWiki to make their sites more
user friendly, but I don't think we want to do that and I feel sure that
with a bit of effort we could make our MediaWiki site look a lot nicer.
If you look at the Special:Version
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Special:Version> page on the WMUK site,
you can see all the extensions that are installed currently. It appears we
are lacking many that would be useful, and not being a huge MediaWiki
person I wonder if anybody could lend a hand with helping to install some.
In particular, we cannot display video on the site, because there is no
Timed Media Handler extension. We probably also need Template Styles for
reactive tables, and there's probably more that would be useful. I would
really appreciate if anybody could offer help in installing these and/or
advising what other extensions we should install.
The website really needs quite a lot of work, but one thing I would
really like to be able to do is to automate scraping the image and lead
paragraph off blog posts and having it go onto the WMUK main Wiki page. At
the moment this needs to be done manually and this is quite annoying. The
same goes for the events list on the main Wiki page, which constantly has
to be updated and duplicated from the Events page. Again, if anybody knows
how this could be achieved, we would be very grateful.
One idea I'd like to suggest for doing this is to have a WMUK one day
workshop with anybody who is interested to meet up and work with us on
improving the site. I would be happy to organise this and arrange it if
people would like to attend help us improve the site. If you would be
willing to willing to come to London for this kind of event, please let me
know so I can get an idea of how many people might come and help out.
I hope that Wikimedia UK can also be here to support your Wikimedia work
and projects, so please bear in mind that there are always small grants
available for expenses to cover members' projects, so please let us know
what interesting things you have been doing and if there is any way we can
support you.
All the best,
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia UK? Donate here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

[Anthony (AGK)]

Hi John

If there is an existing instance of MediaWiki, I would be happy to volunteer a few hours to install the extensions you are missing, update to the latest version, and make any other changes I think are within my abilities.

I’m not a professional techie but I’ve installed MediaWiki on several occasions and maintain a couple of instances for work.

I will pull together a brief of the updates/changes for your approval, if you still need the help.

Best regards,
Anthony

We don't have any technologists on staff. We contract work to someone, but I believe they are pretty fully occupied with some back end issues at the moment.
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1, Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting Wikimedia UK? Donate here.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.

In place of a more useful researched answer (as I'm in a lecture) but does the chapter not employ/contract people to manage the websites and IT?
I'm a bit out of touch with chapter things these days, but I'm sure this was a thing that the contractors used to handle for staff?
-- Lewis Cawte

Hi all, this is an email to ask for help and advice on improving the Wikimedia UK websiite. Speaking to RexX recently at an event, I was discussing some of the issues we are having with the UK website recently as a result of it not being updated much. Some other chapters have recently gone down the path of moving away from MediaWiki to make their sites more user friendly, but I don't think we want to do that and I feel sure that with a bit of effort we could make our MediaWiki site look a lot nicer.
If you look at the Special:Version page on the WMUK site, you can see all the extensions that are installed currently. It appears we are lacking many that would be useful, and not being a huge MediaWiki person I wonder if anybody could lend a hand with helping to install some. In particular, we cannot display video on the site, because there is no Timed Media Handler extension. We probably also need Template Styles for reactive tables, and there's probably more that would be useful. I would really appreciate if anybody could offer help in installing these and/or advising what other extensions we should install.
The website really needs quite a lot of work, but one thing I would really like to be able to do is to automate scraping the image and lead paragraph off blog posts and having it go onto the WMUK main Wiki page. At the moment this needs to be done manually and this is quite annoying. The same goes for the events list on the main Wiki page, which constantly has to be updated and duplicated from the Events page. Again, if anybody knows how this could be achieved, we would be very grateful.
One idea I'd like to suggest for doing this is to have a WMUK one day workshop with anybody who is interested to meet up and work with us on improving the site. I would be happy to organise this and arrange it if people would like to attend help us improve the site. If you would be willing to willing to come to London for this kind of event, please let me know so I can get an idea of how many people might come and help out.
I hope that Wikimedia UK can also be here to support your Wikimedia work and projects, so please bear in mind that there are always small grants available for expenses to cover members' projects, so please let us know what interesting things you have been doing and if there is any way we can support you.
All the best,
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1, Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting Wikimedia UK? Donate here.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). Wikimedia UK is an independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

[Thomas Morton]

There might be some plugins missing post update; a lot of the plugins dont
worl with the new version.

If you get a list together I can look to get them reinstalled.

T

Post by John Lubbock
We don't have any technologists on staff. We contract work to someone, but
I believe they are pretty fully occupied with some back end issues at the
moment.
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia UK? Donate here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*

Post by Lewis Cawte
In place of a more useful researched answer (as I'm in a lecture) but
does the chapter not employ/contract people to manage the websites and IT?
I'm a bit out of touch with chapter things these days, but I'm sure this
was a thing that the contractors used to handle for staff?
-- Lewis Cawte

Post by John Lubbock
Hi all, this is an email to ask for help and advice on improving the
Wikimedia UK websiite. Speaking to RexX recently at an event, I was
discussing some of the issues we are having with the UK website recently as
a result of it not being updated much. Some other chapters have recently
gone down the path of moving away from MediaWiki to make their sites more
user friendly, but I don't think we want to do that and I feel sure that
with a bit of effort we could make our MediaWiki site look a lot nicer.
If you look at the Special:Version
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Special:Version> page on the WMUK site,
you can see all the extensions that are installed currently. It appears we
are lacking many that would be useful, and not being a huge MediaWiki
person I wonder if anybody could lend a hand with helping to install some.
In particular, we cannot display video on the site, because there is no
Timed Media Handler extension. We probably also need Template Styles for
reactive tables, and there's probably more that would be useful. I would
really appreciate if anybody could offer help in installing these and/or
advising what other extensions we should install.
The website really needs quite a lot of work, but one thing I would
really like to be able to do is to automate scraping the image and lead
paragraph off blog posts and having it go onto the WMUK main Wiki page. At
the moment this needs to be done manually and this is quite annoying. The
same goes for the events list on the main Wiki page, which constantly has
to be updated and duplicated from the Events page. Again, if anybody knows
how this could be achieved, we would be very grateful.
One idea I'd like to suggest for doing this is to have a WMUK one day
workshop with anybody who is interested to meet up and work with us on
improving the site. I would be happy to organise this and arrange it if
people would like to attend help us improve the site. If you would be
willing to willing to come to London for this kind of event, please let me
know so I can get an idea of how many people might come and help out.
I hope that Wikimedia UK can also be here to support your Wikimedia work
and projects, so please bear in mind that there are always small grants
available for expenses to cover members' projects, so please let us know
what interesting things you have been doing and if there is any way we can
support you.
All the best,
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia UK? Donate here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

[Thomas Morton]

(help also welcomed!)

Post by Thomas Morton
There might be some plugins missing post update; a lot of the plugins dont
worl with the new version.
If you get a list together I can look to get them reinstalled.
T

Post by John Lubbock
We don't have any technologists on staff. We contract work to someone,
but I believe they are pretty fully occupied with some back end issues at
the moment.
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia UK? Donate here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*

Post by Lewis Cawte
In place of a more useful researched answer (as I'm in a lecture) but
does the chapter not employ/contract people to manage the websites and IT?
I'm a bit out of touch with chapter things these days, but I'm sure this
was a thing that the contractors used to handle for staff?
-- Lewis Cawte

Post by John Lubbock
Hi all, this is an email to ask for help and advice on improving the
Wikimedia UK websiite. Speaking to RexX recently at an event, I was
discussing some of the issues we are having with the UK website recently as
a result of it not being updated much. Some other chapters have recently
gone down the path of moving away from MediaWiki to make their sites more
user friendly, but I don't think we want to do that and I feel sure that
with a bit of effort we could make our MediaWiki site look a lot nicer.
If you look at the Special:Version
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Special:Version> page on the WMUK site,
you can see all the extensions that are installed currently. It appears we
are lacking many that would be useful, and not being a huge MediaWiki
person I wonder if anybody could lend a hand with helping to install some.
In particular, we cannot display video on the site, because there is no
Timed Media Handler extension. We probably also need Template Styles for
reactive tables, and there's probably more that would be useful. I would
really appreciate if anybody could offer help in installing these and/or
advising what other extensions we should install.
The website really needs quite a lot of work, but one thing I would
really like to be able to do is to automate scraping the image and lead
paragraph off blog posts and having it go onto the WMUK main Wiki page. At
the moment this needs to be done manually and this is quite annoying. The
same goes for the events list on the main Wiki page, which constantly has
to be updated and duplicated from the Events page. Again, if anybody knows
how this could be achieved, we would be very grateful.
One idea I'd like to suggest for doing this is to have a WMUK one day
workshop with anybody who is interested to meet up and work with us on
improving the site. I would be happy to organise this and arrange it if
people would like to attend help us improve the site. If you would be
willing to willing to come to London for this kind of event, please let me
know so I can get an idea of how many people might come and help out.
I hope that Wikimedia UK can also be here to support your Wikimedia
work and projects, so please bear in mind that there are always small
grants available for expenses to cover members' projects, so please let us
know what interesting things you have been doing and if there is any way we
can support you.
All the best,
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England
and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia UK? Donate here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

[Lewis Cawte]

I'd get the contractors to install TMH - while the install itself is
relatively simple, configuring it so the Transcode jobs don't kill all the
other services is probably something best left to the people with an
understanding of all the chapters infrastructure.

Looking at the server list, I'd be hesitant to dive straight in it - which
is coming from someone who's been running a commercial wiki farm for a
number of years.

Things like Template Styles are a lot easier...

-- Lewis Cawte

Post by Thomas Morton
There might be some plugins missing post update; a lot of the plugins dont
worl with the new version.
If you get a list together I can look to get them reinstalled.
T

Post by John Lubbock
We don't have any technologists on staff. We contract work to someone,
but I believe they are pretty fully occupied with some back end issues at
the moment.
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia UK? Donate here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*

Post by Lewis Cawte
In place of a more useful researched answer (as I'm in a lecture) but
does the chapter not employ/contract people to manage the websites and IT?
I'm a bit out of touch with chapter things these days, but I'm sure this
was a thing that the contractors used to handle for staff?
-- Lewis Cawte

Post by John Lubbock
Hi all, this is an email to ask for help and advice on improving the
Wikimedia UK websiite. Speaking to RexX recently at an event, I was
discussing some of the issues we are having with the UK website recently as
a result of it not being updated much. Some other chapters have recently
gone down the path of moving away from MediaWiki to make their sites more
user friendly, but I don't think we want to do that and I feel sure that
with a bit of effort we could make our MediaWiki site look a lot nicer.
If you look at the Special:Version
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Special:Version> page on the WMUK site,
you can see all the extensions that are installed currently. It appears we
are lacking many that would be useful, and not being a huge MediaWiki
person I wonder if anybody could lend a hand with helping to install some.
In particular, we cannot display video on the site, because there is no
Timed Media Handler extension. We probably also need Template Styles for
reactive tables, and there's probably more that would be useful. I would
really appreciate if anybody could offer help in installing these and/or
advising what other extensions we should install.
The website really needs quite a lot of work, but one thing I would
really like to be able to do is to automate scraping the image and lead
paragraph off blog posts and having it go onto the WMUK main Wiki page. At
the moment this needs to be done manually and this is quite annoying. The
same goes for the events list on the main Wiki page, which constantly has
to be updated and duplicated from the Events page. Again, if anybody knows
how this could be achieved, we would be very grateful.
One idea I'd like to suggest for doing this is to have a WMUK one day
workshop with anybody who is interested to meet up and work with us on
improving the site. I would be happy to organise this and arrange it if
people would like to attend help us improve the site. If you would be
willing to willing to come to London for this kind of event, please let me
know so I can get an idea of how many people might come and help out.
I hope that Wikimedia UK can also be here to support your Wikimedia
work and projects, so please bear in mind that there are always small
grants available for expenses to cover members' projects, so please let us
know what interesting things you have been doing and if there is any way we
can support you.
All the best,
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England
and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia UK? Donate here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

[John Lubbock]

So I'm not quite sure what TMH is Lewis, but I think that we will get Tom
Morton to do the installs of the extensions, because he's already been
working on the website.

Perhaps other Wikimedians could suggest what extensions Tom should install?
The two i mentioned were the Timed Media Handler and Template Styles. I'm
sure there are others that would be useful though.

John Lubbock

Communications Coordinator

Wikimedia UK

[phone]



Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.

Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open knowledge
movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our work to make
knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting Wikimedia UK? Donate
here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.

The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*

Post by Lewis Cawte
I'd get the contractors to install TMH - while the install itself is
relatively simple, configuring it so the Transcode jobs don't kill all the
other services is probably something best left to the people with an
understanding of all the chapters infrastructure.
Looking at the server list, I'd be hesitant to dive straight in it - which
is coming from someone who's been running a commercial wiki farm for a
number of years.
Things like Template Styles are a lot easier...
-- Lewis Cawte

Post by Thomas Morton
There might be some plugins missing post update; a lot of the plugins
dont worl with the new version.
If you get a list together I can look to get them reinstalled.
T

Post by John Lubbock
We don't have any technologists on staff. We contract work to someone,
but I believe they are pretty fully occupied with some back end issues at
the moment.
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia UK? Donate here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*

Post by Lewis Cawte
In place of a more useful researched answer (as I'm in a lecture) but
does the chapter not employ/contract people to manage the websites and IT?
I'm a bit out of touch with chapter things these days, but I'm sure
this was a thing that the contractors used to handle for staff?
-- Lewis Cawte

Post by John Lubbock
Hi all, this is an email to ask for help and advice on improving the
Wikimedia UK websiite. Speaking to RexX recently at an event, I was
discussing some of the issues we are having with the UK website recently as
a result of it not being updated much. Some other chapters have recently
gone down the path of moving away from MediaWiki to make their sites more
user friendly, but I don't think we want to do that and I feel sure that
with a bit of effort we could make our MediaWiki site look a lot nicer.
If you look at the Special:Version
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Special:Version> page on the WMUK
site, you can see all the extensions that are installed currently. It
appears we are lacking many that would be useful, and not being a huge
MediaWiki person I wonder if anybody could lend a hand with helping to
install some. In particular, we cannot display video on the site, because
there is no Timed Media Handler extension. We probably also need Template
Styles for reactive tables, and there's probably more that would be useful.
I would really appreciate if anybody could offer help in installing these
and/or advising what other extensions we should install.
The website really needs quite a lot of work, but one thing I would
really like to be able to do is to automate scraping the image and lead
paragraph off blog posts and having it go onto the WMUK main Wiki page. At
the moment this needs to be done manually and this is quite annoying. The
same goes for the events list on the main Wiki page, which constantly has
to be updated and duplicated from the Events page. Again, if anybody knows
how this could be achieved, we would be very grateful.
One idea I'd like to suggest for doing this is to have a WMUK one day
workshop with anybody who is interested to meet up and work with us on
improving the site. I would be happy to organise this and arrange it if
people would like to attend help us improve the site. If you would be
willing to willing to come to London for this kind of event, please let me
know so I can get an idea of how many people might come and help out.
I hope that Wikimedia UK can also be here to support your Wikimedia
work and projects, so please bear in mind that there are always small
grants available for expenses to cover members' projects, so please let us
know what interesting things you have been doing and if there is any way we
can support you.
All the best,
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England
and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia UK? Donate here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who
operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an
independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor
responsibility for its contents.*
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

[Lewis Cawte]

TMH = Timed Media Handler.

Sorry, I forgot not everyone is in the same MW Dev circles...

-- Lewis Cawte

Post by John Lubbock
So I'm not quite sure what TMH is Lewis, but I think that we will get Tom
Morton to do the installs of the extensions, because he's already been
working on the website.
Perhaps other Wikimedians could suggest what extensions Tom should
install? The two i mentioned were the Timed Media Handler and Template
Styles. I'm sure there are others that would be useful though.
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia UK? Donate here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*

Post by Lewis Cawte
I'd get the contractors to install TMH - while the install itself is
relatively simple, configuring it so the Transcode jobs don't kill all the
other services is probably something best left to the people with an
understanding of all the chapters infrastructure.
Looking at the server list, I'd be hesitant to dive straight in it -
which is coming from someone who's been running a commercial wiki farm for
a number of years.
Things like Template Styles are a lot easier...
-- Lewis Cawte

Post by Thomas Morton
There might be some plugins missing post update; a lot of the plugins
dont worl with the new version.
If you get a list together I can look to get them reinstalled.
T

Post by John Lubbock
We don't have any technologists on staff. We contract work to someone,
but I believe they are pretty fully occupied with some back end issues at
the moment.
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England
and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia UK? Donate here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*

Post by Lewis Cawte
In place of a more useful researched answer (as I'm in a lecture) but
does the chapter not employ/contract people to manage the websites and IT?
I'm a bit out of touch with chapter things these days, but I'm sure
this was a thing that the contractors used to handle for staff?
-- Lewis Cawte

Post by John Lubbock
Hi all, this is an email to ask for help and advice on improving the
Wikimedia UK websiite. Speaking to RexX recently at an event, I was
discussing some of the issues we are having with the UK website recently as
a result of it not being updated much. Some other chapters have recently
gone down the path of moving away from MediaWiki to make their sites more
user friendly, but I don't think we want to do that and I feel sure that
with a bit of effort we could make our MediaWiki site look a lot nicer.
If you look at the Special:Version
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Special:Version> page on the WMUK
site, you can see all the extensions that are installed currently. It
appears we are lacking many that would be useful, and not being a huge
MediaWiki person I wonder if anybody could lend a hand with helping to
install some. In particular, we cannot display video on the site, because
there is no Timed Media Handler extension. We probably also need Template
Styles for reactive tables, and there's probably more that would be useful.
I would really appreciate if anybody could offer help in installing these
and/or advising what other extensions we should install.
The website really needs quite a lot of work, but one thing I would
really like to be able to do is to automate scraping the image and lead
paragraph off blog posts and having it go onto the WMUK main Wiki page. At
the moment this needs to be done manually and this is quite annoying. The
same goes for the events list on the main Wiki page, which constantly has
to be updated and duplicated from the Events page. Again, if anybody knows
how this could be achieved, we would be very grateful.
One idea I'd like to suggest for doing this is to have a WMUK one day
workshop with anybody who is interested to meet up and work with us on
improving the site. I would be happy to organise this and arrange it if
people would like to attend help us improve the site. If you would be
willing to willing to come to London for this kind of event, please let me
know so I can get an idea of how many people might come and help out.
I hope that Wikimedia UK can also be here to support your Wikimedia
work and projects, so please bear in mind that there are always small
grants available for expenses to cover members' projects, so please let us
know what interesting things you have been doing and if there is any way we
can support you.
All the best,
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England
and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia UK? Donate here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who
operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an
independent non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor
responsibility for its contents.*
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

[Richard Nevell]

I wouldn't rule out moving away from MediaWiki. There are alternatives out
there which are easier to maintain, have compatibility with other services,
and should require less developer support. It also depends on which
audience we're trying to serve. MediaWiki is familiar to Wikimedians and
easy for them to navigate, making it easier for them to get involved. For
external partners, new volunteers, or inexperienced editors an alternative
would be preferable. That's why we have a WordPress landing page for the
website. Trying to accommodate those audiences who have different
expectations is rather difficult.

Post by John Lubbock
Hi all, this is an email to ask for help and advice on improving the
Wikimedia UK websiite. Speaking to RexX recently at an event, I was
discussing some of the issues we are having with the UK website recently as
a result of it not being updated much. Some other chapters have recently
gone down the path of moving away from MediaWiki to make their sites more
user friendly, but I don't think we want to do that and I feel sure that
with a bit of effort we could make our MediaWiki site look a lot nicer.
If you look at the Special:Version
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Special:Version> page on the WMUK site,
you can see all the extensions that are installed currently. It appears we
are lacking many that would be useful, and not being a huge MediaWiki
person I wonder if anybody could lend a hand with helping to install some.
In particular, we cannot display video on the site, because there is no
Timed Media Handler extension. We probably also need Template Styles for
reactive tables, and there's probably more that would be useful. I would
really appreciate if anybody could offer help in installing these and/or
advising what other extensions we should install.
The website really needs quite a lot of work, but one thing I would really
like to be able to do is to automate scraping the image and lead paragraph
off blog posts and having it go onto the WMUK main Wiki page. At the moment
this needs to be done manually and this is quite annoying. The same goes
for the events list on the main Wiki page, which constantly has to be
updated and duplicated from the Events page. Again, if anybody knows how
this could be achieved, we would be very grateful.
One idea I'd like to suggest for doing this is to have a WMUK one day
workshop with anybody who is interested to meet up and work with us on
improving the site. I would be happy to organise this and arrange it if
people would like to attend help us improve the site. If you would be
willing to willing to come to London for this kind of event, please let me
know so I can get an idea of how many people might come and help out.
I hope that Wikimedia UK can also be here to support your Wikimedia work
and projects, so please bear in mind that there are always small grants
available for expenses to cover members' projects, so please let us know
what interesting things you have been doing and if there is any way we can
support you.
All the best,
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia UK? Donate here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

[John Lubbock]

I agree Richard, it's hard to keep a foot in both camps, but my feeling is
that we probably won't make any great headway on this stuff while we have
no developers on staff. Until then, I think it would be good to improve how
MediaWiki works as much as possible.

John Lubbock

Communications Coordinator

Wikimedia UK

[phone]



Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.

Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open knowledge
movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our work to make
knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting Wikimedia UK? Donate
here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.

The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*

Post by Richard Nevell
I wouldn't rule out moving away from MediaWiki. There are alternatives out
there which are easier to maintain, have compatibility with other services,
and should require less developer support. It also depends on which
audience we're trying to serve. MediaWiki is familiar to Wikimedians and
easy for them to navigate, making it easier for them to get involved. For
external partners, new volunteers, or inexperienced editors an alternative
would be preferable. That's why we have a WordPress landing page for the
website. Trying to accommodate those audiences who have different
expectations is rather difficult.

Post by John Lubbock
Hi all, this is an email to ask for help and advice on improving the
Wikimedia UK websiite. Speaking to RexX recently at an event, I was
discussing some of the issues we are having with the UK website recently as
a result of it not being updated much. Some other chapters have recently
gone down the path of moving away from MediaWiki to make their sites more
user friendly, but I don't think we want to do that and I feel sure that
with a bit of effort we could make our MediaWiki site look a lot nicer.
If you look at the Special:Version
<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Special:Version> page on the WMUK site,
you can see all the extensions that are installed currently. It appears we
are lacking many that would be useful, and not being a huge MediaWiki
person I wonder if anybody could lend a hand with helping to install some.
In particular, we cannot display video on the site, because there is no
Timed Media Handler extension. We probably also need Template Styles for
reactive tables, and there's probably more that would be useful. I would
really appreciate if anybody could offer help in installing these and/or
advising what other extensions we should install.
The website really needs quite a lot of work, but one thing I would
really like to be able to do is to automate scraping the image and lead
paragraph off blog posts and having it go onto the WMUK main Wiki page. At
the moment this needs to be done manually and this is quite annoying. The
same goes for the events list on the main Wiki page, which constantly has
to be updated and duplicated from the Events page. Again, if anybody knows
how this could be achieved, we would be very grateful.
One idea I'd like to suggest for doing this is to have a WMUK one day
workshop with anybody who is interested to meet up and work with us on
improving the site. I would be happy to organise this and arrange it if
people would like to attend help us improve the site. If you would be
willing to willing to come to London for this kind of event, please let me
know so I can get an idea of how many people might come and help out.
I hope that Wikimedia UK can also be here to support your Wikimedia work
and projects, so please bear in mind that there are always small grants
available for expenses to cover members' projects, so please let us know
what interesting things you have been doing and if there is any way we can
support you.
All the best,
John Lubbock
Communications Coordinator
Wikimedia UK
[phone]
Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and
Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513. Office 1,
Ground Floor, Europoint, 5 - 11 Lavington Street, London SE1 0NZ.
Wikimedia UK is the national chapter of the global Wikimedia open
knowledge movement. We rely on donations from individuals to support our
work to make knowledge open for all. Have you considered supporting
Wikimedia UK? Donate here <https://donate.wikimedia.org.uk>.
The Wikimedia projects are run by the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate
Wikipedia, amongst other projects). *Wikimedia UK is an independent
non-profit charity with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility
for its contents.*
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk

_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: https://wikimedia.org.uk