Help:Testing

MediaWiki Handbook: Contents, Readers, Editors, Moderators, System admins +/-

Before commiting to a change, one should test it first.

Changes to a page

There is a "Show preview" button near the submit button. One should check to make sure that the links are correct and the spelling is correct. Substitution can also be checked using "Show changes".

Spelling

linuxquestions.org appears to have a spelling checker in their modified version of MediaWiki. Also, one can use Firefox, Konqueror, Internet Explorer or Opera with a spelling check extension to check spelling within the browser window.

Testing features of existing software on one of the regular projects

This applies anyway for tests that depend on settings which are different per project, such as:

interlanguage links (software feature)
case-sensitivity of the first character
character encoding
enabling of embedding images in other projects and images outside Wikimedia
MediaWiki:Monobook.css, etc.
tests depending on other content, such as templates, images
tests depending on project-specific variables such as namespace prefixes

It can be done:

in special pages such as SacredWiki:Sandbox
on user pages and subpages
using Preview - this can not be used to test how a change in a page affects another page, such as when changing a template; to test automatic conversion of wikitext, the new wikitext can be seen pressing Show changes. Automatic conversion of special characters to their decimal numeric codes is seen in the edit box.

A test involving variable {{PAGENAME}}, e.g. a link to an image or another page with a name containing {{PAGENAME}}, can be done on the Talk page, since the value of the variable is the same on that page.

Sysops testing the available links and how things work for ordinary logged-in users can log in under another name, or in a project for which they are not a sysop.

Test wiki

http://test.wikipedia.org/.

An advantage is that is does not interfere with, or clutter, the regular projects. The project may be reset, or history may otherwise be lost, so one has to save elsewhere what one wants to keep.