Valve Developer Community:Necessary Features
Below is a list of requests for the wiki.
Update the wiki software
Fairly simple request. All we ask is that the wiki is updated from MediaWiki 1.31.10 (outdated and unsupported from security updates) to the current latest version, or the long-term support (LTS) version (currently it is 1.39.x as of 2023).
Administration
Appoint active or trusted users as administrators or moderators so that the wiki can be moderated on a regular basis.
Security
Add two-factor authentication to VDC.
New file formats to upload
Images
Add SVG, which is the default in any wiki. SVG have better scaling than PNG as it's vector-based, which improves quality and benefits both lower-DPI displays and any High-DPI displays (very common on 4K-8K displays aswell as some Android phones and Apple devices with Retina displays).
Optionally, allow support for WebP and AVIF (AV1) image, if possible, for better bandwidth usage compared to PNG and JPG. Some file formats are only supported by using MediaWiki extensions or by upgrading to latest version of MediaWiki.
Sound
Just add OGG, which is the default in any wiki. Also allows users to upload audio files to the wiki.
Videos
Add the WebM format, aswell as allowing users to upload video files to the wiki. This will reduce the size of files for demonstrating entities, and will also allow embedding tutorials, game trailers, and much more. Also, add unofficial support for Steam Videos / Steam Media, and additionally, adding support for embedding YouTube videos by using Extension:YouTube.
New Skin
A slightly modified Vector sucks: blurry stretched images in categories, unreadable text in some places and much more annoying stuff.
Not so long ago, the development of a Monobook-based skin (at an early stage of development and requires wiki version 1.38.0 and higher) began, which would repeat the current wiki, but fix everything that was not fixed by its owners.
Sidenote on formatting
Also, Wikipedia ([[Wikipedia:Page_name]]
or [[w:Page_name]]
) and MediaWiki ([[mw:Page_name]]
) links that have been visited are currently rendered in default purple, unlike visited local and external links, which use a different shade of blue. This can be difficult to read on the dark backgrounds, as it can result in links that look like this: Wikipedia:Gabe Newell. Such links are frequently used to refer to further information on topics that aren't covered by the scope of this wiki.
JavaScript
- Allow our JavaScript userspace files to work.
- If userspace JavaScript files work, then add jQuery.
Extensions
- Extension:Cite - Allows proper in-text citations for stuff that needs it; this is currently handled manually (and often clumsily) via the {{cite}} template.
- Extension:TemplateStyles - Would make template styling less restrictive, easier to do and easier to categorize.
- Extension:UserFunctions - We can use this to hide content for unregistered users (for example, we could hide information for editors) or something else (We also need to have access to
{{#username:}}
, which is provided by this extension). - Extension:WhosOnline - Nice little quality of life extension that would allow users to see who is online.
- Extension:YouTube - See above (#Videos). This would be also useful to show various bugs without GIF compression.
- Extension:Scribunto - Allows for Lua modules (comes with MediaWiki 1.34+). Please, let (at least some) users create them, it would make so many of this wiki's templates so much easier to work with (take a look at the page sources for {{MultiPage}} or {{this is a}} for examples of why). Additionally, some templates are becoming complex enough for MediaWiki to not render them due to too many transclusions.
Other
- Add Wikimedia Commons as a interwiki prefix in Special:Interwiki.
- Allow our userspace CSS files to work
- Changes the favicon (the icon that was displayed on the browser) to higher-res version, which would scale and look better on most 4K displays and Apple's retina displays.
- Change <syntaxhighlight> to enable us to change things such as background color by removing it from a <pre> element (porting from Wikipedia, optionally with a dark background, would be enough)
- add Draft as a namespace
- Let us edit Common.css. Even if you don't do any of the things suggested above, Common.css is enough to make us happy for the rest of our lives.
Bugs needed to fix
- Remove the
height
property from.catlinks
in order to prevent overflow. - Show previews without reloading the page in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing is not working.