MediaWiki should have better defaults

[geofft]

In particular, we should default to

• not letting spammers take over, somehow (prompt about account creation?)

• using short URLs (this is really easy to enable, and $addrend/w/Main_page is perfectly acceptable)

• enabling TeX support (we just need precompiled binaries by running "make", and to set $wgUseTeX on)

• not having a "Donations" link in the sidebar (preferably, replace the main page with something scripts-specific and more helpful)

[ezyang]

See also #80

[adehnert]

• not letting spammers take over, somehow (prompt about account creation?)

I'd be tempted to (once #1 gets fixed) let any logged-in user create accounts, and do autocreation of accounts using certificates. Also, disable anonymous edits.

I think that should keep spam mostly out while simultaneously (hopefully) not being too painful for most uses of scripts-hosted wikis.

[adehnert]

It looks like we won't be doing account auto-creation for various reasons, including privacy (see the zlogs for trac-#1 for more).

Quentin suggests requiring confirmation of email address instead.

[adehnert]

I've mostly implemented these in the demo wiki at ​https://scripts-demo.scripts.mit.edu:444/mediawiki/w/Main_Page.

Replying to geofft:

In particular, we should default to

• not letting spammers take over, somehow (prompt about account creation?)

In commit 8337ccbe7b9ace96e4842daec2890efbd85e45e1, I limit writing to the wiki (ie, edit, upload, writeapi permissions, which are prerequisites to most other relevant permissions) to emailconfirmed users. People who create their account with certs automatically get their email address confirmed, so for cert-based wikis, this should be painless. It may be wise to add this to more groups. *shrug*

• using short URLs (this is really easy to enable, and $addrend/w/Main_page is perfectly acceptable)

Commit b70f046d38067fc0e609f3906c0dacc225123a0d in that repo.

• enabling TeX support (we just need precompiled binaries by running "make", and to set $wgUseTeX on)

The setting is commit 7cb1e95229e91cd4be969a7cf88cd4985acadb6f in that repo, but somebody else (Edward?) will need to make Wizard run make (in the math subdirectory of the install, to be clear).

• not having a "Donations" link in the sidebar (preferably, replace the main page with something scripts-specific and more helpful)

So far as I can tell, the "Donations" link is gone. I haven't touched the main page at all. (I have this fear it'll involve touching the database, and that presumably requires learning how Wizard works.)

[ezyang]

The setting is commit 7cb1e95229e91cd4be969a7cf88cd4985acadb6f in that repo, but somebody else (Edward?) will need to make Wizard run make (in the math subdirectory of the install, to be clear).

Wizard runs make, we just need to update the config file to enable TeX by default. (This might involve also fixing the installer?)

[ezyang]

​http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Math notes that MediaWiki? 1.18.0 (presently unreleased) moved TeX rendering to an extension, so we'd have to install that. Something to think about when writing the upgrade script.

[ezyang]

MediaWiki? 1.18.0 is coming out soon.

[andersk]

Replying to adehnert:

In commit 8337ccbe7b9ace96e4842daec2890efbd85e45e1, I limit writing to the wiki (ie, edit, upload, writeapi permissions, which are prerequisites to most other relevant permissions) to emailconfirmed users.

​$wgEmailConfirmToEdit = true seems to be an easier way to do that.