Uses designated text or the first paragraph of MediaWiki article as a "summary" and adds it to the API and parser.
This extension was a solution to the problem that MediaWiki doesn't offer any kind of article abstract. However, based on the way articles are written on The Unified Republic of Stars and Stats For Sharks it seemed pretty clear that first paragraph could be used for this purpose as they were generally written to summarize what was to follow.
Thus, this plugin was born.
It's extremely easy to use. When the parse API is used, it just adds the first paragraph or any text marked between <summary> tags to the returned data.
Additionally, it adds a summaries API to the MediaWiki API set.
api.php?action=summaries&pages=Main_Page|Example will return the "summaries" for every page included (separated by a "|") as a result set that can feed... whatever. It's fast too, as it takes advantage of a few internal MediaWiki APIs to cut out some bullshit. It even utilizes the $wgArticlePath configuration variable to include a fully resolved URL as well.
Text designated with a <summary> tag can take one option show="[default:true|false]". Leaving it out or marking it as true will have the summary text display as any other text in a wiki entry might. Marking it as false means that it will not appear in the standard wiki article display but it will appear in the APIs above as the summary.
Not much else to say about it. It's pretty much just a tool to help build other things.