Wikipedia: The Missing Manual

Gerard Meijssen writes:

When you are interested in a good review on Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, I recommend reading Brianna's review. As this covers most of what I had to say, I will only comment on what I have in addition to this.

When you read a book like this and when you are involved in Wikis, you first look for the issues that are important to you. As I am particularly involved in localisation, the explicit statement that this book is about the English language Wikipedia makes this irrelevant. As I am mostly a reader in this project, the policies and vagaries of this Wikipedia are not familiar to me. I read the book with a great deal of interest because it is often said that many of the policies described show the maturity of the project. I found that the book explained the policies clearly.

Given that this is a "missing manual", I would like another book about the MediaWiki software. One of the more relevant criticisms of the software is that more and better documentation is not only welcome but needed. A missing manual for MediaWiki would be about installing and setting up a MediaWiki installation, it would discuss many of the extensions available to improve on the basic functionality and it should even explain about some of the basic issues that need to be considered for what is to become the community for a MediaWiki project.

It is interesting to compare "Wikipedia: The Missing Manual" with Wikipedia, Das Buch, Both are about one particular Wikipedia, the biggest difference is in the outlook of the book. The English book has been written in a way that ensures that the copyright of the book is with the publisher. The German book includes much material from the German Wikipedia and is consequently freely licensed. Both approaches have their merit. As my German is not as good as my English, I cannot make more of a comparison.
Thanks,
     Gerard

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