Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2024 August 5
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August 5
editDownloading MediaWiki for home use
editI usually use an LG Gram 1 TB SSD laptop with 32 GB RAM. I've got about 600 MB free. I would like to be able to create articles on my own PC instead of using my personal userspace. I haven't gotten any response at Talk:MediaWiki, so I'm asking here. I have always created my articles in my userspace, but have recently experienced harassment and stalking for doing so, and I'm tired of it.
Can MediaWiki be downloaded for personal use at home, with no one else accessing it? If so, what would be the requirements to get it functioning properly? Would I need to download other software, or have a huge hard drive? I guess I'm hoping for a word processor type program that works like editing here.
If it won't work in that way, is there another software program that uses the same wikimarkup we use here? I'd like to be able to create content on my PC, move it to userspace, maybe then to draftspace, and finally to mainspace. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:22, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
- You can download MediaWiki software yourself, as per Manual:Installation requirements. You will require both a database and a way to serve the webpages to the user, however, as well as PHP. Doing this yourself would require a separate server or machine, although you can use a webhost and just have them install the required dependencies.
- Actual storage and memory requirements are quite low, so storage wouldn't be a terrible issue, but depending on how much you would use it, that can fill up relatively quickly.
- Alternatively, there are several wiki softwares that aren't all that great for public use, but are good for what you want to do (personal, internal use). Something like wikijs or dokuwiki would be better suited for this. SmittenGalaxy | talk! 06:41, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
- It sounds a bit complicated for this old man. Is there anything simpler and similar to a word processor program like Microsoft Word (and I'm old enough to have used WordPerfect and directly edited its code) that uses our wiki markup? It's okay if there are red links because I wouldn't be hosting all of Wikipedia. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 14:54, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
- There is Extension:Word2MedaWiki that can take Microsoft Word and translate it to MediaWiki markup, although it is quite old and unmaintained, and as such I don't believe works on newer 64-bit versions of Word. Microsoft did release this addon for Word 2007 and 2010 (and 2013 with registry editing).
- Aside from those, LibreOffice and OpenOffice (stated below as well) are standalone editors that can save directly as MediaWiki. See Help:WordToWiki as well. SmittenGalaxy | talk! 21:51, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
- It sounds a bit complicated for this old man. Is there anything simpler and similar to a word processor program like Microsoft Word (and I'm old enough to have used WordPerfect and directly edited its code) that uses our wiki markup? It's okay if there are red links because I wouldn't be hosting all of Wikipedia. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 14:54, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
- OpenOffice has a wiki extension so you can write articles in a word processor and save them in wiki markup. I personally do not feel that it procudes optimal markup, but it works. 75.136.148.8 (talk) 18:41, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, you can do this. I've been doing it for years: on my own servers, on my laptop (often on client sites) and also internet hosted MediaWikis, so that I can access them elsewhere. They're all fairly easy.
- One way to do this is with a hosting company (or the free tier on AWS) that offers a 'one click install' of MediaWiki. This is very simple.
- However installing complex software on a public-accessible website always needs care and competence. Even if you're just locking it down as an extranet, you still need to lock it carefully. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:18, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
- Or else you do it the classic and well-documented route of installing a Linux (or Xampp under Windows), then Apache web server, then PHP, then MediaWiki, then some MediaWiki extensions, then the Wikipedia content (mostly some templates) needed to emulate the Wikipedia experience. Because it's not so simply bundled, it's the Wikipedia templates that might take the most time to do. You can also install Lua (not all installs do this as standard) which many Wikipedia templates use instead of MediaWiki template code (which is hateful stuff anyway).
- I use this every day. It's my basic desktop organisation tool. I also used to use it for writing articles for here, back when that was still worth doing. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:32, 5 August 2024 (UTC)
- I think this highlights a key point not really discussed until now. If you're hoping to develop content for en.wikipedia and you want to be able to actually preview locally what you've developed, it's quite likely it's not just a basic wiki install you need but key templates as well. I mean even if you don't care about infoboxes and some stuff so can ignore these, you're probably using templates for referencing and maybe some other formatting things. A quick look at one example of what I guess is a sandbox [1] shows plenty of templates e.g. for referencing, block quotes, and other things. Note also that unless you have a local mirror of all content, or some other more complicated set-up, all interwiki links will generally be red so it might be difficult to notice if you've made a mistake. I'm sure there are ways to set it up to just obtain the templates from en.wikipedia but I suspect this is complicated and you might need some caching setup or API access or risk excessively downloads from the web frontend that server admins aren't happy. Possibly a better option might be to just write and store your content locally, with something capable of highlighting wikisyntax and/or providing shortcuts if that's what you want, and then preview online. This does mean you need an internet connection whenever you preview. (In theory you could make this fairly automated so you have an editing syntax and are able to save locally, except when you preview it uses en.wikipedia, but I'm not sure if there's an easy way to set that up.) Nil Einne (talk) 00:16, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
- Ideally, volunteer editors (all of us!) should be allowed to use their "personal userspace" for article creation:
- "If you would like to draft a new article, Help:Userspace draft provides a standard template and useful guidance to help you create a draft in your userspace, and the Article Wizard can walk you through all stages of creating an article with the option to save as a userspace draft too. You can use the template {{userspace draft}} to tag a userspace draft if it is not automatically done for you."(source)
- Does it come with an RfD tag already prepended so nobody else has to slap it on the moment you publish the article? 75.136.148.8 (talk) 11:52, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
- "If you would like to draft a new article, Help:Userspace draft provides a standard template and useful guidance to help you create a draft in your userspace, and the Article Wizard can walk you through all stages of creating an article with the option to save as a userspace draft too. You can use the template {{userspace draft}} to tag a userspace draft if it is not automatically done for you."(source)
- Those are the rules here, after all, but some don't approve of that practice when it's a topic they don't want to see here, as I have found out. If it's uncontroversial content, then they don't cause problems. Hmmm.... -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:40, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
- Ideally, volunteer editors (all of us!) should be allowed to use their "personal userspace" for article creation:
- I think this highlights a key point not really discussed until now. If you're hoping to develop content for en.wikipedia and you want to be able to actually preview locally what you've developed, it's quite likely it's not just a basic wiki install you need but key templates as well. I mean even if you don't care about infoboxes and some stuff so can ignore these, you're probably using templates for referencing and maybe some other formatting things. A quick look at one example of what I guess is a sandbox [1] shows plenty of templates e.g. for referencing, block quotes, and other things. Note also that unless you have a local mirror of all content, or some other more complicated set-up, all interwiki links will generally be red so it might be difficult to notice if you've made a mistake. I'm sure there are ways to set it up to just obtain the templates from en.wikipedia but I suspect this is complicated and you might need some caching setup or API access or risk excessively downloads from the web frontend that server admins aren't happy. Possibly a better option might be to just write and store your content locally, with something capable of highlighting wikisyntax and/or providing shortcuts if that's what you want, and then preview online. This does mean you need an internet connection whenever you preview. (In theory you could make this fairly automated so you have an editing syntax and are able to save locally, except when you preview it uses en.wikipedia, but I'm not sure if there's an easy way to set that up.) Nil Einne (talk) 00:16, 6 August 2024 (UTC)
- Installing a whole MediaWiki installation may be overkill if the primary use case is working on article drafts. There are a variety of plain text editors with extensions/plugins for highlighting and formatting MediaWiki markup. This also reduces the risk of losing your work if your web browser crashes or drops its cache. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · contribs · email) 12:06, 7 August 2024 (UTC)