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Environment Survey/MediaWiki Extensions/Criteria

From Wikimedia Usability Initiative
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Browser Compatibility

Rationale

Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects are accessed using a wide range of platforms and browsers.

Evaluation

Full support for a specific browser on a specific platform gives 1 point, partial support gives 0.5 points and no support gives 0 points. Maximum number of points in the scope of this survey is 12.

License Compatibility

Rationale

MediaWiki is under the GPLv2 open source license and any software contributions need to be under similar or compatible license.

Evaluation

A license compatible with integration into GPLv2 software is required to pass.

Download Size

Rationale

Conserving bandwidth is important not only for our own servers but also for users who are connected to the internet via low-bandwidth connections, making less information needed to be transmitted mutually beneficial.

Evaluation

The total number of kilobytes of information including JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and images above what is already present through MediaWiki.

UI Responsiveness

Rationale

The ability of the editor to respond to user actions quickly is an important factor in usability and user adoption.

Evaluation

This category will be evaluated using a low, medium, high rating. Factors include:

  • Are there page refreshes that the user has to wait for between certain actions?
  • Is Ajax used to make the user experience more fluid, and if so, is the performance crisp and responsive?
  • Is there a lag when the editor is loading?
  • Is there a lag when edits are saved?

Completeness

Rationale

MediaWiki extensions are in various states of the development lifecycle. If an extension is in use in multiple instances or has had some releases that have allowed it to be more stabile and mature, then it will require less time and effort to make it ready for wider use.

Evaluation

This category will be evaluated using a low, medium, high rating. Factors include:

  • Is a stabile version of the extension available?
  • Has the extension been successfully deployed on one or more sites with significant traffic?
  • Is there active development on the extension?
  • Is there an active community of developers working on improving the functionality or stability?

User Features

Rationale

A MediaWiki article contains a wide range of elements, i.e. images, text, links, tables, templates, video, etc... An editor that provides a WYSIWYG interface to add as many of these element types as possible is preferred.

Evaluation

In its existing stable version, how many of the standard MediaWiki element types can a user add or modify via a graphical interface? This category will be rated based on support for handling the following elements. 1 point is given for providing a way to add and manipulate the element with a graphical user interface, 1/2 point is given for providing a read-only visualization of the element.

  • Headings
  • Internal Links
  • External Links
  • Inline formatting (bold, italic, etc.)
  • Section formatting (paragraph, preformatted, blockquote, etc.)
  • Lists and indentation
  • Tables
  • Templates
  • Images
  • Video

Extendable

Rationale

It's expected that additional features will be added in the future, making the prior existence of an expendable architecture valuable.

Evaluation

If the software has a modular architecture which lends itself to adding or removing features without having to make significant modifications to the core software.

Themable

Rationale

Integration into MediaWiki's theme system would ideally require modification of isolated user interface resources and not core software.

Evaluation

If user interface resources isolated from the core software.

Internationalization/Localization

Rationale

Given MediaWiki's use in over 250 different languages, the software needs to be compatible with different languages.

Evaluation

This category will be evaluated by the software's support for specific features.

  • Does the software provide a way to localize user-interface messages such as icon tool-tips and selective text labels?
  • Does the software support alternative text input?
  • Does the software support double-byte text?