Investigate extensions

[SuperQ]

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Extensions_used_on_Wikimedia

We should investigate these to see if they would help.

[mcint]

I've installed quite a number, and investigated or tried still more. Currently installed extensions are visible on the Special:Version wiki page.

I will also mention Gadgets as a great feature. I'm possibly most happy with having installed support for Page Previews/Popups, and Navigation Popups, which can be enabled your wiki preferences. The Previews are the now default Wikipedia style image and paragraph preview, while the Navigation Popups gadget supports a near identical preview of intro text and image, as well as mouseover actions including viewing recent history, locking page, banning users, etc.

Gadget scripts can add a similar amount of functionality, and can be installed web-only (uploading scripts and text to ~3 pages).

[mcint]

It might deserve a different thread, but spam in edits and account creation is a moderate burden. It's why I've locked down the wiki, which makes it harder for new members to contribute, interfering with our virtuous flywheel of participation.

The next additional extension I want to try is https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SmiteSpam. I'm excited that it supports a virtuous cycle via only the web interface, as opposed to requiring updates to the LocalSettings file on the server.

From Special:Version,
"Confirm User Accounts" is doing most of the work now, we have to filter through a standing ~600 spam requests when someone makes a new account we want to approve.
"InviteSignup" is actually wonderfully permissions, and even records who invited each new user. I just need people to know it exists, or to have new users request invites from other users. I made sure that all bureaucrats can invite others.

"CheckUser" helps with these investigations somewhat. "Nuke" helps with mass page deletions. mediawiki includes maintenance php scripts in the install base directory. I used these to delete 50k spam accounts.

"ConfirmEdit" & "ReCaptchaNoCaptcha" are useless. I think both bots and paid humans make edits, but even for bots, captcha has been >1/3 solvable for over a decade.