User:Sj/retro/Incoming requests

I think it may be time to restart an open tasks and incoming requests page, for project ideas and requests of all sorts.

Developer version of this page

This page is obsoleted. Please use Bugzilla for any kind of bug reports or feature requests. Please move contents you want to preserve over to bugzilla if it's not already there. The page will be deleted in one week (on 16th September 2004) --Elian 17:20, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There is a desire by developers to have feature requests discussed in the community before they are submitted to bugzilla. A feature rquest which cannot show good community support is far less likely to be done. The developers do not routinely monitor this page but anything linked from here can be used to support requests entered in bugzilla. Jamesday 04:50, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

On this page you can place feature requests, bug reports and other things which should be done for MediaWiki. Please use the following template for your request and sign with four tildes. A request which has less than 5 votes after two weeks here may be removed. If you want to vote against a feature requests insert a "Contra" category.

==Subject==
* Description:
* Submitter: your signature
* Needed for: (which project)
* Benefits: 
* Votes:
* Developer opinion: (easy-difficult, cheap-costly, should be done/refused)
===Discussion: subject===

Single login

• Description: see Single login
• Submitter: Elian 18:35, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: all projects
• Benefits: easier moving through projects, hopefully more interaction
• Votes: User:AaronPeterson, User:Brettz9, \Mike, User:FrzzMan
• Developer opinion:

Discussion: Single login

would a single server be dedicated to this? There are many domains, meta, en, de... mediawiki wikimedia, how would a cookie be crafted to work across domains?

This is a useful idea... I think if we could get Watchlists (as well as ideally individual page histories as well) to output in RSS, a person could draw these all into one RSS reader, thereby not needing this (unless people couldn't use RSS readers for some reason) Brettz9 22:56, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm working on a distributed user authenticated, it can be done without too much problem. And the cookie need not to be crafted also. First off, the user database server will keep user information, the user database client will send authentication request to the server once the user login, if successful, the server will send back user object and temporary authentication information (so the remote authentication need not to be redone with each request). Client host can have it own user attributes (information) and permissions list. The server should be keep very basic attributes and permissions so the user object will be small for fast transmission to client.

Transmission protocol I'm using is SOAP, that mean it will be cross-platform compatible. Moreover, the SOAP messages will be compressed along the way. The idea of this distributed authentication has taken from Microsoft Passport!!! FrzzMan 17:52, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Machine friendly interface

• Description: see Machine-friendly wiki interface
• Submitter: Elian 18:35, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: external MediaWiki tools
• Benefits:
• Votes: User:AaronPeterson, User:Brettz9
• Developer opinion:

Discussion: Machine friendly interface

Are you thinking about a WYSIWYG interface? Mozilla has a built in web editor, and I would love to see seamless editing, where the user clicks edit, and a cursor appears right on the screen... with the wiki code rendered into HTML right on the end users machine, but, Microsoft is now getting into this area! with their office moving to a web service! Who'd have thought that MediaWiki like projects would be Microsoft's primary competition?-- User:AaronPeterson

Transcluding HTML and Special: Pages, Category pages, etc.

• Description: Transcluding HTML and/or at least Special: pages such as What LinksHere, etc. and Category pages...
• Submitter: Brettz9 22:56, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: Mediawiki software
• Benefits:
• Votes:
• Developer opinion:

RSS to Watchlists and Individual Page histories

• Description: Have Watchlists and Individual page histories have distinct RSS links for importing this information into RSS readers
• Submitter: Brettz9 22:56, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: Mediawiki software
• Benefits: RSS for Watchlists and Individual pages would allow for users to keep track of their favorites in convenient form, drawing together information from multiple Mediawiki sites, and also relieve the servers from having to load up as much HTML...
• Votes: ∴ here
• Developer opinion:

Discussion: RSS to Watchlists and Individual Page histories

see existing conversation and buzilla links at Syndication_feeds#Watchlist_feeds ∴ here…en:♠ 19:38, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Email notification

• Description: Allow watchlists to selectively notify users via email of their favorites (preferably allow customization of which items within the Watchlist to notify about). Would be nice for Mediawiki software even if it is not determined feasible for Wikipedia.
• Submitter: Brettz9 22:56, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: Mediawiki software
• Benefits:
• Votes:
• Developer opinion:

Chat room

• Description: Have a chatroom integrated with Mediawiki software so that users could, while viewing page histories, recent changes, etc. whether a particular user were available in a chat room so discussions could be hashed out live (and if desired, saved to discussion pages).
• Submitter: Brettz9 22:56, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: Mediawiki software
• Benefits: Allow for more dynamic collaboration.
• Votes:
• Contra: ∴ here
• Developer opinion:

Discussion: Chat room

User irc ∴ here…en:♠ 19:43, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Allowing frames

• Description: Option to allow frames to be enabled in Mediawiki software. (or let us know how to do this in the help section!)
• Submitter: Brettz9 22:56, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: Mediawiki software
• Benefits:
• Votes:
• Developer opinion:

Allowing frames for Wikipedia

• Description: Despite copyright concerns, I would think violators improperly framing Wikipedia pages could be held liable. But even if there is not a way to allow frames (maybe a web browser will allow users to do this selectively in the future anyhow), perhaps Wikipedia could somehow produce its own "frames". Users could then ideally see changes made for a particular row or column for tabular data as well.
• Submitter: Brettz9 22:56, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: Wikipedia, Wiktionary, etc.
• Benefits: One could simultaneously view a page and its code and its discussion pages, etc. Though server intensive, maybe this could be possible as server speed/bandwidth increases?
• Votes:
• Developer opinion:

Categorization of individual sections and individual sections viewable via URL

• Description: Have categories assignable to specific sections and then allow individuals sections to be summonable alone by a special URL. (i.e., to just retrieve and show one section out of the page--whether the other sections are collapsed or just not present in that URL). This could also be used in combination with allowing sections to be reused without duplicating (sort of like Templates, but have the "template" be editable when the code appears for that page). For example, if there was a page on the influence of Gandhi on Dr. Martin Luther King, this section could be referenced between both of them on their own pages without having to duplicate content. One could also reference the link to the section alone if that was the sole item of interest. This would be especially useful if this could be combined with tables (see "allowing frames" recommendation)....
• Submitter: Brettz9 22:56, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: Mediawiki software
• Benefits:
• Votes:
• Developer opinion:

Auto-Indication of Section Edits and Histories for Individual Sections

• Description: Would give the ability to see whether an edit was a section edit or a whole page edit...People could thus just monitor a section of a page. And if sections could be combined into tables (see #4), then we could add in monitoring recent changes to a particular row, column, or cell as well as the whole table. This is is somewhat of a replacement or workaround for (or complementary to) the frames idea (see the frames recommendation on the idea to try to find a workaround for enabling frames to be generated within Wikipedia).
• Submitter: Brettz9 22:56, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: Mediawiki software
• Benefits:
• Votes:
• Developer opinion:

(Hierarchical) Pop-up menus and/or category trees in a side window or frame for finding categories or templates to assign to pages or sections

• Description: In the edit window two pop-up menus (HTML or perhaps Javascript to allow for hierarchical data), one for categories and the other for templates could be used to pull up a pre-existing category or template without one having to navigate through the pages first; the choice would then be assigned to the document (or section if for a section edit). This could ideally be selected multiple times to be able to assign multiple categories or templates to a document (and then rearrange the code if necessary). An alternative would be to have visual navigation of a category tree, in sort of a side window or frame. Ideally, articles could be recategorised by renaming categories via drag-and-drop. "Think of doing 500 edits in one drag!"
• Submitter: Brettz9 22:56, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC) (category tree idea from User:Sverdrup's comments at Village Pump)
• Needed for: Mediawiki software
• Benefits:
• Votes:
• Developer opinion:

Tool-tip text of first sentences of linked articles

• Description: As at Their Richard Stallman page, wiki links in the article could have tool-tip text for the first several sentences of the linked article (without needing to visit the pages). One can get the basic info on linked subjects without leaving your main article of interest. These might be taken from cached pages if the load would be too great on the server.
• Submitter: Brettz9 22:56, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC) (taken from User:Hawstom's comments at Village Pump)
• Needed for: Mediawiki software
• Benefits:
• Votes:
• Developer opinion:

Title Search & LikePages

• Description: Other wikis allow for title searches which bring up all the articles with the search string in their title. This can be very handy, especially when a person doesn't know if the string is inside of "Wikipedia:" "Special:", etc. (ideally allowing searching of Meta-wiki, Wikipedia, etc. simultaneously as with other searches). Similarly, a "LikePages" option on each page would perform that title search without having to input the current page's title into the search box.
• Submitter: Brettz9 23:16, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: Mediawiki software
• Benefits:
• Votes:
• Developer opinion:

Diffs link on individual pages

• Description: Other wikis also have a "diff" feature right on the page, enabling the user to quickly see an individual page's differences with the previous version without needing to first go to the page history.
• Submitter: Brettz9 23:16, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: Mediawiki software
• Benefits:
• Votes:
• Developer opinion:

Wiki-editable Interwiki map

• Description: it would be easier for those who have downloaded Mediawiki software to be able to edit interwiki shortcuts in wiki style rather than adding it through SQL. This might also perhaps be useful for Wikipedia administrators as well, as the page could be locked and then be editable only by those with access, and not require use of SQL.
• Submitter: Brettz9 23:16, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: Mediawiki software
• Benefits:
• Votes:
• Developer opinion:

User-defined shortcuts and wiki-rendering

• Description: I'm not sure how difficult this would be, but it would be nice I think if users could add in their own shortcuts into their preferences (such as interwiki links, string replacement, etc.) which could then be rendered more generally for other users. One could even opt to switch between HTML, Mediawiki wiki, and other wiki standards within one's edit window (editing as, saving as, etc.).
• Submitter: Brettz9 23:16, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: Wikimedia software
• Benefits: This would allow users to edit in the syntax most comfortable to them, and allow Mediawiki users to also more easily import pages to their own wiki sites according to the code their previous wiki used.
• Votes:
• Developer opinion: (easy-difficult, cheap-costly, should be done/refused)

RecentMajorEdits & RecentChanges

• Description: One could ideally switch between viewing all edits and viewing just major edits, without needing to switch this in one's preferences...Just click a link within the RecentChanges window or on the quickbar.
• Submitter: Brettz9 23:16, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: Mediawiki software
• Benefits:
• Votes:
• Developer opinion: (easy-difficult, cheap-costly, should be done/refused)

Adds Diffs to RSS

• Description: It would be wonderful if the diffs for a file could also be added to RSS (for Watchlists, individual page histories, and RecentChanges) so that people could see the diffs at a glance in their RSS readers without having to go to the website...
• Submitter: Brettz9 23:32, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: Mediawiki software
• Benefits:
• Votes:
• Developer opinion: (easy-difficult, cheap-costly, should be done/refused)

Tracking

• Description: Certain wiki pages could ideally enable a certain tracking which allowed users to add their edits to a specific previous edit, so that a tree of edits could occur, allowing multiple versions to be accessible from the page rather than the typical current edit only. This would not be useful for Wikipedia perhaps, but for example if Mediawiki were being used for collaborative arts, people may not want to be confined to work with only one line of edits ...
• Submitter: Brettz9 23:32, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: Mediawiki software
• Benefits:
• Votes:
• Developer opinion: (easy-difficult, cheap-costly, should be done/refused)

Auto-Integration of Mediawiki Sister Projects

• Description: Each mediawiki project could search for the title of a corresponding page in the other projects (e.g., Wiktionary could automatically show all corresponding cross-reference matches in Wikipedia at the top of each definition which had a Wikipedia entry). If too server-intensive, these might be based on cached listings of titles.
• Submitter: Brettz9 12:18, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: all
• Benefits: Would highlight existing connections and content which people might not have otherwise searched for.
• Votes:
• Developer opinion: (easy-difficult, cheap-costly, should be done/refused)

Utilization of other XML languages

• Description: Might it be possible to 1) export Mediawiki as whatever the standard language is for cell phones allowing its content to be readily accessible from cell phones; 2) Try out the wiki concept for graphics (useful not only for collaborative art, but also linkable diagrams/flow-charts/genealogies, etc.); 3) If WYSIWYG becomes doable, allow editing to be added anywhere within a page (without needing to tab or space)
• Submitter: Brettz9 12:23, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)
• Needed for: (which project)
• Benefits:
• Votes:
• Developer opinion: (easy-difficult, cheap-costly, should be done/refused)

Knowledge Quiz

• Description: It would be a nice Extension, if a Knowledge Quiz could be used for training about a special Topic. I thought about a Multiple Choice Quiz.
• Submitter: --Ichbinweg 15:04, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
• Needed for: (which project)
• Benefits: Learning, studying
• Votes:
• Developer opinion: (easy-difficult, cheap-costly, should be done/refused)