MediaWiki, Wiki News

Cite this UBC Wiki page

We’ve added a new extension on the UBC Wiki which creates citations in a variety of different formats for any page.

To use it, look for a new link called “Cite this page” under the toolbox in the left-side column.  Clicking on the link will take you to a Special:Cite page which automatically generates citations for the page in a variety of formats.  You can then copy a formatted citation and paste it where ever you like (into a paper, report, citation management software, etc).

Here’s an example of it in action for the UBC Twitter Accounts Page.  One interesting thing to note is that the hyperlinks in the citations do not go directly to the live page, but instead point to the “current revision” from the page history.  Thus, when people follow the link in your citation, they’ll see same version of the article as you saw it when you cited it.

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MediaWiki, Wiki News

Adding Widgets to the Wiki

The MediaWiki Widgets extension was recently installed on the UBC Wiki. Widgets allow users to embed content and applications from other web services directly into their wiki pages.

For example, Wolfram|Alpha allows users to build complex data calculators based on Wolfram|Alpha queries. These calculators can then be embedded as widgets into a UBC Wiki Page. Likewise, a slide presentation hosted on Google Presentations or a pdf document hosted on SlideShare can be embedded into the Wiki.

Please visit the the UBC Wiki Widget Help page for more information on how to use widgets and to see which widgets have been installed on the wiki. If you are interested in having a specific widget installed on the wiki (or have developed one yourself), please let us know.

More information on MediaWiki Widgets can be found at www.mediawikiwidgets.org.

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