Project:MediaWiki documentation on Meta-Wiki

This page lists pages on Meta-Wiki that contain MediaWiki technical documentation and proposes ways to reduce duplication.

Background

For help understanding the terms used on this page, see Differences between Wikipedia, Wikimedia, MediaWiki, and wiki.

Before mediawiki.org existed, MediaWiki documentation was stored on Meta-Wiki (Meta). Since mediawiki.org was established as the official wiki for MediaWiki documentation, over 1,000 pages have been moved from Meta to mediawiki.org.

However, there are still some pages on Meta that contain MediaWiki documentation. In most cases, these pages cannot be imported directly to mediawiki.org because of licensing restrictions or because a corresponding page already exists on mediawiki.org.

This page lists pages on Meta that contain MediaWiki technical documentation so that, where possible, we can reduce duplication and make it easier to maintain the docs.

Goals

• mediawiki.org contains complete documentation for MediaWiki.
• Existing MediaWiki documentation specific to Wikimedia remains on Meta.
• As much as possible, reduce duplication of documentation between mediawiki.org and Meta.

Here is an example of pages that show the correct separation of content between the two wikis: Extension:MassMessage and Help:Extension:MassMessage on mediawiki.org contain documentation that can be applied to any MediaWiki instance, while meta:MassMessage on Meta contains information about using MassMessage on Wikimedia wikis. Other examples include:

• Extension:FlaggedRevs, Help:Extension:FlaggedRevs, and meta:Flagged Revisions
• Extension:UrlShortener, Help:Extension:UrlShortener, and meta:Wikimedia URL Shortener

Process

Help is welcome from anyone who wants to contribute!

1. Identify a page on Meta that contains MediaWiki documentation that is not specific to Wikimedia. See this list for ideas.
2. Determine if there is an existing page on mediawiki.org for that information.
3. Determine whether the mediawiki.org page is missing any information that can be copied from the Meta page.
   If you are copying content into a Help page on mediawiki.org (if the title starts with "Help:"), you cannot copy the content from the Meta page directly because of licensing restrictions. Instead, you must re-write the content using different phrasing.
4. If the Meta page contains no Wikimedia-specific content, deprecate or redirect the Meta page to the mediawiki.org page. If the Meta page does contain Wikimedia-specific content, you can try to reduce duplication between the pages as much as possible, without asking readers to jump frequently between the two pages. If you're unsure, feel free to post to the talk page.

The main task of this project (cleaning m:Special:AllPages/Help:) has been completed as of September 2024, but various ancillary tasks remain to be done.

Pages to migrate

Main page: Project:MediaWiki documentation on Meta-Wiki/List