We should reword documentation about required MySQL/PHP versions to suggest to use newer versions of PHP, not make the "minimum versions" quite so prominent
Rather than the current
MediaWiki requires PHP 5.5.9+ and either MySQL 5.5.8+, MariaDB
We go for something like (suggestion, not definite wording)
MediaWiki suggests PHP 7.0+ and either MySQL 5.6+, MariaDB 10
Idea coming from https://wordpress.org/about/requirements/
Location: I think the page(s) you're talking about are
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download#System_Requirements and to a lesser extent
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installation_requirements
Is there anywhere else?
Wording: Sounds similar to computer game meta-data, where they typically have both "minimum requirements" and "recommended specifications" sections. It would be longer, but just to continue brainstorming ideas...
MediaWiki 1.31 recommends PHP 7.0+ (minimum PHP 5.5.9+) and either MySQL 5.6+ (minimum MySQL 5.5.8+) or MariaDB 10 (minimum MariaDB 5.1+)
or with contractions
MediaWiki 1.31 recommends PHP 7.0+ (min. 5.5.9+) and either MySQL 5.6+ (min. 5.5.8+) or MariaDB 10 (min. 5.1+)
INSTALL and RELEASE-NOTES inside MediaWiki would make sense too. Similar changes as to the mw.org pages
It may be that with our bump to PHP 7 in 1.31, we don't have any specific requirements to suggest a newer PHP version, but it'd be nice to have something setup for future when ew get newer still versions of PHP
I'd be surprised if there's not more places on mediawiki.org that would benefit too