On Sep 23, 2014 8:41 AM, "Jack Phoenix" <j...@countervandalism.net> wrote: > > tl,dr: MediaWiki needs a more human-friendly interface for using videos in > wiki pages. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Video significantly > improves the video experience in MediaWiki. The extension is not > feature-complete yet, but *you* can help! > > Now for the longer version: > Basically all video player extensions for MediaWiki are parser tags, and as > such, they're not the easiest to use, and some of the less popular ones > might have security issues and whatnot, given the lack of sufficient > attention from skilled developers. It's not obvious to the layperson that > <youtube>oUCEN-XvC7g</youtube> renders the YouTube video "First hands-on > with the Nokia X family", published by Nokia [1]. Better yet, choosing > "Embed" on YouTube gives you the following code snippet, which -- obviously > -- doesn't render the video on an average MediaWiki installation: <iframe > width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/oUCEN-XvC7g" > frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> > > David Pean (of ArmchairGM/social tools fame [2]) identified this problem > back in 2007 and he wrote the Video extension to solve the problem. Despite > being enabled on ArmchairGM until AGM was migrated to the standard Wikia > codebase (in late 2010/early 2011 [3]), this great extension was > unfortunately never quite finished, and while the basic concept mostly > works, plenty of areas could use developer attention to make this *the* > best video embedding extension out there for MediaWiki. > Unlike your average parser hook for embedding videos, the Video extension > adds a new Video: namespace and two special pages for handling videos. > Videos are added via Special:AddVideo, which doesn't actually upload the > underlying .flv/.mpg/.avi/.mp4/.whatever, but rather stores some metadata > about the video and uploader with the unique, user-supplied name. Therefore > after adding the video to the wiki via Special:AddVideo, [1] could be > embedded via syntax such as [[Video:First hands-on with the Nokia X > family|300px]] on a wiki page. > > In late 2011 I published a cleaned-up version of the Video extension, and > John Du Hart signficantly improved the extension's architecture and reduced > code duplication. Despite this, the extension received basically only minor > maintenance commits until today/yesterday [4], when I got rid of some > legacy code and further improved the video undeletion workflow [5]. Certain > key elements are nevertheless missing from the extension's current > implementation and I know I'm not able to code all of these on my own, > which is precisely why I'm asking you to consider helping out with this > project. > Things such as Special:WhatLinksHere support for videos, better undeletion > code (the current implementation is a very dirty core hack that does the > job, but it's not what we want to aim for in the long run), more i18n, > support for *your* favorite video service...and of course, bug fixes such > as having the relevant caches correctly purged when a video is deleted so > that deleted videos no longer show up on pages that embed them, for example. > > Some of the related, FOSS-licensed extensions from which code could be > borrowed include: > * WikiVid [6], a similar special page based approach to video embedding, > written by profilic MediaWiki developer Daniel Friesen (Dantman); never > finished, supports embedding via wiki link syntax and has some code related > to tracking which pages use which videos (the download link doesn't appear > to be working, but I have a copy of the source code if there's ever a need > for that) > * WikiaVideo [7], Wikia's older video extension which was at some point > enabled on all Wikia wikis (before being deprecated in favor of newer video > extensions). It seemed to have been based on David's Video extension, > though it required some core hacks [8] and whatnot. I'm not sure when it > got removed from the repository and I was too lazy to dig up the precise > date and/or commit, but the linked version should give you a general idea > of how the extension worked. Unlike David's Video extension, this extension > required no custom database tables, but it instead reused core tables such > as filearchive, image or oldimage for storing information about the videos. > An interesting approach, but nevertheless not the one I'd have gone with. > Some parts of WikiaVideo have already been incorporated into Video, such as > Hulu provider code (/extensions/Video/providers/HuluVideo.php) or some of > the Special:Undelete integration code > (/extensions/Video/VideoPageArchive.php). > > Let's put the "media" back to "MediaWiki"! > > [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUCEN-XvC7g > [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Social_tools > [3] http://wikiindex.org/ArmchairGM > [4] depending on your timezone, the position of the stars, and other > factors to take into consideration when dealing with dates and times > [5] > https://git.wikimedia.org/commit/mediawiki%2Fextensions%2FVideo/68176b583de4bd57fe19891a26b4d5d1ffa97c6e > [6] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:WikiVid > [7] > https://github.com/svn2github/wikia/tree/673dadc4a2d47698589ac3294893f9163e6e5d4b/extensions/wikia/WikiaVideo > [8] > https://github.com/svn2github/wikia/tree/673dadc4a2d47698589ac3294893f9163e6e5d4b/includes/parser/Parser.php > > > Thanks and regards, > -- > Jack Phoenix > MediaWiki developer > _______________________________________________ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Hmm, the video namespace is an interesting approach. Has anyone considered trying instead of <tag>opaque string</tag>, something like <embed> url here </embed>, which than tries to use oEmbed to embed whatever is at the url? Most video sharing site support oEmbed. --bawolff _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
