Meta talk:Babel/Archives/2005

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The long and winding road.... to create an own skin

I tried to setup a MediaWiki as a small "knowledge-base", and of course, I want my own CI. The 'monobook'-Skin is very fine, so I just need to replace the logo, and change some menue items. I thought it would be the best way to create an own skin, and copy the CSS-files from 'monobook'. I think its "cleaner" than just changin 'monobooks'-imgfiles, and I dont know how my wiki will develop in the future. But i've got the same problems like many other Users around here: Theres no complete description how to create a new skin, which consequences this will have, etc. Or perhaps I haven't found it yet? Does anyone know a document (or better: a Tutorial!) describing how to create an new skin in detail? I know Skins, but I don't think its very useful.

Thank you, Ni5saar

unable to install

I'm running PHP 4.4.0 and MySQL 4.1, and every other time I try to install MediaWiki, the installation stops right here (1):

Initialising "MediaWiki" namespace... Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties, and cannot contact the database server.

At this point, I refresh the page, and I get the following error (2):

Trying to connect to MySQL on localhost as root...

   * MySQL error 1251: Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client

I then go into the MySQL Command Line Client and do the following:

SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = OLD_PASSWORD('...');

(I only want to run it locally for testing purposes, hence my using the root account).

I then reload the page and I get error (1). I do the SET PASSWORD thing, get error (2), get error (1) again, and... basically, I'm not making any progress and would appreciate any help that could be offered.

Article validation feature - Best approach?

There's a recently introduced new feature called "Article validation" to make wikipedia more reliable. I don't feel that "rating an article" is the correct approach. You're welcome to read my reasoning and discuss here: Talk:Article_validation_feature (scroll down a bit). Cheers! Alons 12:39, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Rename to remove confusion?

The word "Babel" is used elsewhere here, and even more in other MediaWiki sites, in reference to Meta:Babel templates. I'd like to suggest that this general discussion pair of pages be moved to something like Meta:Watercooler or Meta:Village pump with a permanent note at the top linking to Meta:Babel templates. Robin Patterson 12:10, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Oppose renaming - First, I do not confuse Babel generally with Babel templates specifically. Second, this is a multilingual page. "Watercooler" and "village pump" are both English-language metaphors. In contrast, "Babel" is also English-language, but it is proper noun. --Kernigh 22:41, 26 December 2005 (UTC)