Comments Evaluation
This document outlines the different comment plugins with regard to the requirements for the Lever for Change project. Each section will have the following subsections
- General thoughts
- Features
- Installation
- Basic Usage
- Permissions model
Based on the evaluations below, we eventually chose to modify the "Comments" plugin to do what we need. Our fork will be called "TeamComments"; see the meeting notes for 2019-09-19 for details.
This plugin is located at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Comments
It is very easy to install and use, but the page gets a bit bulky. If there were even ten to twenty comments, the page will feel more like a comments page than a wiki page. It seems to be updated regularly, with usage around the web (see https://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Extension:Comments)
Very straightforward, and the instructions the comment page are correct. It requires and was tested on mediawiki version 1.33+
The normal three steps for wiki plugin additions are used:
- Untar into the extensions directory
- Run the update script to add db tables
- Add a
wfLoadExtensioninto the LocalSettings
To use, insert <comments /> somewhere on the page, and that's where the comment
section appears. If you place it in multiple points, it only appears in the first
one.
Comments only support one level of replies, and by default supports voting and anonymous posting. Comments are attached to the page level, and so removing, then later re-adding the comments block will keep them around. These do survive past moves, and do survive past regeneration of wiki from csv2wiki, at least on a first pass.
There's very little customization, with no ability to change how voting works (or disabling it) at the system level. Even at the page level, you can only turn voting into upvote only.
Permissions is handled through the wikimedia groups. For each group, you can add to the LocalSettings.php permissions for:
- Adding comments
- Whether you can include links for comments
- Who can delete other's comments
Those permissions have to be hand added per group into LocalSettings.php and do not seem to have a way to edit from the wiki website.
This plugin is located at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CommentStreams
It is used only on a few websites, and updates are happening, though not very frequently.
At this time, couldn't get it to work. The area to add comments appeared, but it just hang when adding a comment. Installed it as directed, and nothing jumped out in the debug logs, and there was no logging in the error logs for apache.
Also tried inserting the <comment-streams /> tag into a page, which just ended
up removing the page.
The rest of this is based on the documentation and hasn't been confirmed to work.
It's on by default, but you can configure which pages have it enabled. Then you can override it on a page by page instance with a special tag. That also allows you to put the comments somewhere on the page, instead of at the bottom.
This also supports automatic emailing, and turning voting on and off for the whole plugin. These, and other settings, are only available through LocalSettings.php
Commenting is enabled/disabled by group on a total instance. The only granularity is permissions around moderating comments.
These plugins are out of development and target mediawiki versions from five or more years ago. The only attempt of install was of DiscussionThreading, at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:DiscussionThreading
This plugin is located at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:LiquidThreads
This is a diversion from the previous way of thinking about it, in that this uses the talk pages, and turns them from free form wiki pages into a nice UI.
It hasn't been developed for five years, but still works. There was a 3.x plan but was discontinued (for unknown reasons). It is also the extension that Talk Page enhancements point to to use.
It requires a second plugin to be installed, WikiEditor at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikiEditor, and then after that's installed, you use the old style require in LocalSettings.php. After that, you need to run the update script.
For any page, go to the talk page, and instead of a normal wiki page, you get a LiquidThreads talk page which gives more controls and sorting. See:
You then can add new discussions, reply to threads, add new comments, and it's all collated at the top.
You can configure which pages LiquidThreads shows up on, theoretically, via the configuration at the LocalSettings.php level. By default, it shows up for Talk pages, but there should be nothing preventing "talk" pages for a select group of people.
It also exposes the threads through the mediawiki api, but that wasn't researched heavily.
The permissions model for the page is going to be whatever the wikimedia permissions model is. Admins can also enable/disable discussion on a per thread basis, basically locking a discussion thread.
Alternatively, we could enable LiquidThreads on pages that aren't the default Talk pages by some kind of convention (AdminTalk?), and then manage those permissions via the normal mediawiki controls.
On a system level, LiquidThreads appears to support permission for certain things at the group level, such as reacting to threads, but they are all particularly undocumented.