Adding a theatre stage to the wiki, for Votorola users

[Michael Allan]

The theatre stage is now installed in the Metagov wiki.  Its purpose
is to deliver cross-site consensus-making tools (props) into web pages
(scenes).  The latest bit of work enables us to "stage" any MediaWiki
site.  Staging ordinarily affects only formal draft pages, such as
this one: http://metagovernment.org/wiki/User:Michael_Allan/draft/m00

If it works in your browser, you'll see a black toolbar under the wiki
tabs (our only stage prop at present).  That same toolbar appears on
other sites.  For instance, imagine C and I are discussing our
differences here in the list.  I post a link to one of them:
http://zelea.com:8080/v/w/D?a=4203&aR=2886&b=4314&bR=2899&s
That takes you to the difference bridge.  The difference bridge is
staged, so the same toolbar appears there.  Click on the draft link
(third from right) and you land back on my draft page.  This time (if
it works correctly) you see the difference highlighted there.

This is technically challenging (browsers aren't designed for it), but
a lot rides on pulling it off.  It's a good fit with democracy if we
can deliver the tools everywhere, because everywhere is where the
people are.  Ultimately the tools need to be placed in their hands.
(The alternative strategy of attracting people to central sites places
them in technical hands, so to speak, where the opportunity is more
one of manipulating *them*.)  Ideally we'd leave the browsers behind
and code mobile apps (literally hand held), but we're tied to
collaborative drafting and that's currently tied to the web.

Customizing the stage
---------------------

Users may customize the stage to activate on every page.  In this
case, the toolbar moves to the top like in a pollwiki.  You might do
this if you use the Metagov wiki primarily for drafting and want the
toolbar to be aligned consistently across sites.  For instructions,
see: http://metagovernment.org/wiki/Category:Remote_draft

Bugs
----
Only tested under Chrome and Firefox.  It will probably work with
other WebKit and Gecko browsers.  IE is not supported, yet.

Alignment of bridge footings under the Vector skin is slightly off in
the Metagov wiki.  Most users will still be using the Monobook skin.

The mailish username of the logged in user is not currently detectable
in MediaWiki pages external to the pollwiki.  This means that user-
-oriented links such as "my draft" will not be properly disabled when
they are redundant, e.g. when "my draft" is already being shown.

Please let me know if you see any other bugs.

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
http://zelea.com/


Michael Allan said:
> To users of the wiki,
> 
> I'll do some administrative work in the next few days.  My aim is to
> install a Crossforum Theatre stage for Votorola users, similar to the
> one described here:
> http://mail.zelea.com/list/votorola/2012-March/001323.html
> 
> Other users should be unaffected (no change in appearance or function
> of the wiki).  I'll post an update when I'm finished.
> 
> -- 
> Michael Allan
> 
> Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
> http://zelea.com/