Interview with Mizanur Rahman, author of MediaWiki Administrators' Tutorial Guide
While waiting for the publication of the first book fully dedicated to MediaWiki, I came up with the idea of asking the author of the book, Mizanur Rahman, for an interview over e-mail. Not being able to find his e-mail address, I posted the question to his weblog to which he promptly reacted as being very happy to cooperate.
So here we are, only two weeks later, proud to present some more insight into the author’s background and of course the upcoming book MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide, to be published by the end of this month.
<interview>
Who is Mizanur Rahman? Can you please share us something about your age, where you live, how you were educated and your current profession?
I am Mizanur Rahman, a software engineer living in Bangladesh. I am 26 years old. I have completed my graduation in Computer Science from North South University. For last 7 years I have been working with different web technologies and it has been my core focus area since then. Currently I am working as a Senior Software Engineer at ReliSource Technologies (www.relisource.com), a USA based software outsourcing company.
Is “MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide” your first book or did you write others? Any other notable publications like in magazines? Also on the subject of MediaWiki?
“MediaWiki administrators’ tutorial guide” is my first book. I have been working with Packt Publishing as Technical reviewer for almost a year and half. I have reviewed two of their previous books and the books are vBulletin and Smarty. I am also a moderator of PHPXperts, largest PHP user group in Bangladesh. Other than Packt work I don’t have any other publication available at this moment.
How did you come up with the idea of writing this book on Mediawiki?
I was planning to write a book on different open source projects and during that time the idea of a book on MediaWiki came up. I have wiki experience for more than 2 years and David Barnes, Packt development editor was aware of it. So we started working on the book proposal. After that I wrote a detail outline of the content of the book and the target audience. Packt Publishing approved the outline and we started working on the MediaWiki book.
I personally think this book will fill an important void in the MediaWiki documentation, that a lot of people have been looking for quite some time. Good structured information is actually quite fragmented on the Internet. Considering that we are dealing with a wiki platform, meant in part to do documentation, this appears a bit contradictory. What are your thoughts about this?
Yes you are right. I tried to fill the gaps that we have in MediaWiki documentation and lack of structured resources online. When I started using MediaWiki I felt the necessity of a good tutorial or even a book to learn more about the wiki technology and MediaWiki detail. It is true that there is not a very well structured documentation or tutorial. But it is not that far yet. Wikimedia has already taken the steps to produce a more structured manual for MediaWiki. I believe it will be more structured this time.
Why a book about MediaWiki and not another wiki platform?
MediaWiki is the best wiki engine available. I have evaluated a few but so far MediaWiki looked best to me. If the world’s largest online resource (Wikipedia) runs on the same piece of software, it gives you the idea of stability of the software. Also MediaWiki is used by most wiki users, which other wiki’s do not have.
Was it hard to find a publisher?
Not really. Packt publishing loves to work with young and promising people. They publish books on new technologies especially open source projects and target a particular audience group. I am lucky that I got the opportunity to work with Packt and to write for them. They are all great people with unending enthusiasm for new technology.
How much experience do you have with MediaWiki? In terms of years of use, wiki implementations and dept of usage (like real development)?
I have more than 2 years of experience to work with wiki. I have used almost every available feature of wiki from simple editing to use of templates and writing hacks and extensions for myself.
Do you currently manage public or closed wiki’s?
No. Right now I don’t manage any public wiki. But I would like to start a public wiki very soon.
Do you use wiki’s in your work? Can you please explain for what kind of tasks?
I use wiki at my work to keep things together and structured. I am trying to promote wiki to people in my workplace so that they can have interest of using wiki as a media to communicate with others and content management system. My first target is to build a knowledgebase for our company using MediaWiki.
Are you or have you been involved in the development of MediaWiki software?
I have not been involved in official development of MediaWiki software. But I have built different extensions and hacks as freelancer developer. If opportunity arises I would love to get involved in the core development of MediaWiki.
Can you share some of your experiences with writing the book, in terms of duration of the project, choosing the concept (tutorial based on fun example) and the level of difficulty? Where there any though decisions to make on the content?
The total project took 9 months to finish. As I was very busy with my job, it took a little bit more time to finish the book than anticipated. The example wiki site we built on the book was a really fun to work with. The concept and the ideas to work around the examples were really enjoying. We built a “haunted wiki site” for ghost hunters and enthusiast all around the world. We showed how to publish new content and manage it and how to communicate with other users. The book is written for very beginners to advance level users. We kept the flow of the book such a way that a non wiki user can read the book and start working on the wiki site in no time at all. For advance level users we have kept hacking, customizing and maintenance wiki features. So it’s a complete book for all.
What were your main sources of information?
Wikipedia, official MediaWiki site and also searching different forums, blogs.
Did you use a wiki for writing the book, for example in cooperation with the technical editor?
No, I did not. Every one has their own working principle. Packt Publishing also has a defined format to write a book and all the communication such as comments, remarks, change requests, discussion are done according to their way. So I actually followed the standard procedure of Packt rather than having a new way of doing things.
Who reviewed or proof-read the book? Did you ask any of the current MediaWiki developers to review the book?
There were 2 technical reviewers for this book. Nikhil and Peter De Decker. Both of them supported me very well and I must thank them for their excellent work. I am not sure about the review request of the current MediaWiki developers for the book. I think we didn’t ask anyone of them.
Can we expect a special foreword/intro from Mr. Wikipedia Jimmy Wales or the prominent developer Brion Vibber?
No, we don’t have any special forward/intro from them for this version of the book.
Reading from the publisher’s introduction, the book appears to be offering quite a complete solution for the average MediaWiki administrator. Still, were there pieces of content you would have liked to add but, for some practical reason, could not? Do you feel you could write Part II?
Yes there is always a scope for part II but I don’t think it will be happening very soon. MediaWiki is coming with new features in every release and if we feel that the changes are getting really big then we might come up with the second version of the book. Let’s see how it goes in future. The missing bits and pieces in the book will be published on my blog and I will try to keep readers updated about the changes.
What is the concept / style of the book (is it a glossary/dictionary style or different, please explain)?
The book is narrative and example oriented. We tried to maintain the flow of the learning smooth as well as interesting so that readers are always on the content of the book.
Will the book describe a bunch of the extensions that are available today?
We have a separate chapter at the end of the book to discuss a few cool extensions available online.
And will it also teach the basics of writing a custom extension?
Yes it does. It also teaches how to write new skins.
Does the book come with some programming code? Is there a CD included?
Yes, the hacks and extensions of this book can be downloaded from the Packt site. We do not have any CD included with the book.
Will there be a complementary website, weblog or … a wiki?
Yes. Packt has the facility to download all the codes from their support site. Beside that my blog will be kept to help any wiki user. I will try to publish my wiki very soon.
Will you answer readers’ questions on your weblog?
I always welcome questions from everyone on my blog. I will definitely try to answer reader’s questions but I can not provide any assurance.
On what MediaWiki-version is the book based on?
We tried to keep it up-to-date and the book is focused on 1.9.0.
How many MediaWiki administrators are out there do you think?
This one is a very tricky question. There are thousands of public and private wiki site. I will not be surprised if there are few thousands MediaWiki administrators.
When will the book be published?
I think it’s around 25th March, 2007.
At the end I would like to thank you Marcel for this interview and also hope to hear readers about the book and about wiki technology. I would love to hear your comments about the book.
</interview>
Mizan, it has been a pleasure to work with you on this interview and I very much look forward to reading and reviewing your book and implementing the contents in my next wiki projects. I hope the book will be well received!
Technorati tag(s): MediaWiki, Book, Wikipedia, Mizanur Rahman, Wiki, Packt Publishing, Enterprise 2.0
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posted Mar 15, 10:07 pm on Mar 15, 2007 |
category: Wiki
/ Books