Battlestar Wiki:Chiefs' noticeboard

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This noticeboard is a location to discuss and coordinate administrative tasks for the Battlestar Wiki.

It is our hope that this place can serve as a location for administrators to coordinate their efforts on the maintenance tasks of the Wiki (it's not ALL fun and games), as well as a spot for our contributors to be able to bring things to the attention of the admins if something needs to be done. Need a protected page edited? An article or picture deleted? Admins will watchlist this page so that your request won't get lost in the shuffle.

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Current Administrators

Senior Chiefs

Senior chiefs are, in Wikipedia's terminology, bureaucrats who have the ability to make other users into chiefs. They also have the ability to check user and other advance functions not under the purview of the chiefs. Currently senior chiefs are:

• Joe Beaudoin
• Shane
• Spencerian

Chiefs

Chiefs are administrators who have access to move, delete and restore pages as well as blocking malicious users. The current chiefs are:

• Active
  • Catrope
  • Gougef
  • Peter Farago
  • Serenity
  • Steelviper
• Inactive
  • CalculatinAvatar
  • Day
  • Mercifull
  • Talos
  • JubalHarshaw (Primary Wiki Frakr! Contact)

See list of all chiefs on Battlestar Wiki

Javascript Reported Vandals

No recent reports.

Extension updates

We may want to go through and update the MediaWiki extensions soon. In the meantime, I was thinking of seeing what other extensions people thought might be useful... -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 21:54, 10 January 2008 (CST)

Upgrading extensions is a good idea. You should probably hold off on it for another week or so, though, as lots of extensions are currently being fixed to load messages only when necessary, which is anticipated to cause a noticeable performance gain. An extensive list of extensions can be found here. Extensions that are used on Wikimedia wikis are listed here. I'm listing a bunch of extensions in the next section, replies about specific extensions should go there. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 05:40, 11 January 2008 (CST)

Good to hear! I wasn't planning on undertaking the task immediately anyway, but I'll definitely hold off now, more than likely until the BSP.com beta on the 18th... and speaking of, it would benefit from the updates as well.

A bit off topic, any idea when MW 1.12 will be released? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 15:56, 11 January 2008 (CST)

Brion said he'd do his usual code review party (him reviewing all recent revisions and fixing or reverting those he doesn't like) next week. This probably means 1.12-rc1 will be released around the end of next week, and 1.12.0 a couple of days later. Disclaimer: these dates are estimates, provided not by Brion but by me. The only thing I know is that Brion said he'd start reviewing stuff next week. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 03:32, 19 January 2008 (CST)

Cool. On that same issue, anything new regarding the new bot API? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 12:32, 21 January 2008 (CST)

Lots of new stuff. The API can now move, (un)delete, protect and rollback pages, and (un)block users, and pretty much all of that is my code. These features are disabled by default, but will need to be enabled in order for my move-revert bot to work. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 14:58, 21 January 2008 (CST)

Nice. Will these be functional in 1.12? Also, any word on that whole extension optimization project? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 11:40, 22 January 2008 (CST)

Pretty much everything the UI can do will also be possible though the API as of 1.12, with the exceptions of editing/creating pages and uploading images. The extension optimization project is pretty much complete, but I don't know whether it depends on code new to 1.12. To be sure (and for efficiency reasons), you might wanna hold off on upgrading extensions until you upgrade to 1.12. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 12:56, 22 January 2008 (CST)

Proposed extensions

• CheckUser allows privileged users to get a list of all IPs a user has used, and the other way around. This makes it easy to check for sockpuppetry (multiple users on one IP). We could adopt a protocol similar to Wikipedia's in which only a few users (Senior Chiefs in our case) can perform CheckUser checks, and others can request them through BW:CHECKUSER. Already installed, albeit an ancient version that doesn't list itself.
• Oversight allows privileged users to hide old revisions that may contain copyrighted or otherwise illegal content, so they're invisible to everyone save other privileged users. There is a branch implementing this natively, but I don't know whether it will be merged before the 1.12 release (I'm asking around, though).
• EasyTimeline can create graphical timelines from wikitext. This could be a nice addition to the timeline articles.
• Countdown could replace Template:Countdown's functionality.
• AntiSpoof prevents malicious users from registering as, say, "Ƈatrope", and impersonating me.
• SpamBlacklist and Username Blacklist could be used for fighting spam, but we don't really have much of a spam problem (yet?).
• EditWarning displays a notice on top of the edit page if someone else is also editing that page.
• FireStats generates all kinds of statistics information.

We've already got CheckUser. We don't use it much, though. Still, it can stand to be upgraded, no doubt. The others will probably help... and I would really like it if the EditWarning extension would lock out other edits as well, so we can get rid of the need to lock down articles before new episodes air. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 16:00, 11 January 2008 (CST)

EditWarning, Countdown and maybe EasyTimeline would be useful. --Serenity 16:12, 11 January 2008 (CST)

EditWarning doesn't lock out other edits. Imagine someone opening an edit tab and closing it again (dunno if EditWarning detects that, don't think so) and EditWarning blocking the article for another hour or so. Still, there's always the edit conflict detection stuff, so someone stubbornly editing despite a message screaming "SOMEONE ELSE IS EDITING THIS PAGE" isn't screwed immediately. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 15:21, 13 January 2008 (CST)

I was also thinking of this Select Category extension, which shall permit people to choose categories, so people can easily categorize articles. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 01:11, 12 January 2008 (CST)

Nice ideas, but I don't like to introduce extensions that make modifications to the databases since it would have to be done on every one. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 01:24, 12 January 2008 (CST)

SelectCategory would also be nice. And why is adding a DB table so bad? You can combine all those CREATE TABLE statements into one .sql file and import them from the command line (or through PHPMyAdmin). Shouldn't take too much time. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 15:21, 13 January 2008 (CST)

Shane's concern, if I'm reading him correctly, is more to how such extensions would react to our set up, since we're not running one instance per language version, but rather one instance for all the wikis. On the other hand, we can back up everything (which we do anyway) and, should something get screwed up, just uninstall the extension and restore from the backups. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 22:26, 13 January 2008 (CST)

We're running one set of PHP files for all languages, then? Wikipedia does that too. Although screwing up stuff with CREATE TABLE statements is unlikely, you probably wanna do it just to be safe. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 08:53, 14 January 2008 (CST)

Still different databases. The only wiki that has it's own set of files of the Hanger Bay, but I am about to trash that since we don't do anymore work over there, unless it's a serious change. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 16:53, 15 January 2008 (CST)

Yeah, different databases, so that means running seven identical queries on seven different databases. Shouldn't cause too much trouble. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 07:55, 16 January 2008 (CST)

Maybe we should vote on this matter some time in the near future? --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 12:57, 22 January 2008 (CST)

Absence of Mercifull

Guys, I've tried to contact Mercifull but have not received a response to my e-mails. In my talks with Shane, he tells that he hasn't talked to him either, so I am going to put him on leave, unless anyone has any objection or new information. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 05:49, 27 January 2008 (CST)

Yeah, I wondered what's up with him :s -- Serenity 05:51, 27 January 2008 (CST)

Concur. --Spencerian 13:37, 27 January 2008 (CST)

Update. Shane's heard from him. He's been very busy and was recently promoted at his job. :) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 23:37, 29 January 2008 (CST)

Given how busy I've been while at a lack of work since October, I can understand... --Spencerian 16:20, 30 January 2008 (CST)

Memcached, APC, and performance optimization in general

We discussed this a while ago, and it was more or less concluded that we should try APC. I also mentioned memcached, which caches various stuff, and is also required for the SpamRegex and RegexBlock extensions, rate limiting and account creation throttling. What's the current status on this? Has anyone tried either of these yet? --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 09:13, 1 February 2008 (CST)

APC can't be used with our current configuration, since we only use one instance of MW and it somehow fraks it up. We haven't tried memcached, though. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 10:49, 1 February 2008 (CST)

Ok, that was easy... I loaded memcached and configured it. Right now, it only runs locally, with 2GB for virtual memory. Now, my dumb question of the centon is this... is there any way to track the health of memcached, either via MW or another software? I tried finding a piece of software that would integrate into Webmin, or web server management software, but all I found was a four-year-old extension which I'm very leery of trying, simply due to the age and the fact that it's not mentioned on Webmin's site. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 11:45, 1 February 2008 (CST)

I don't really know, I'll ask on IRC. Watch out though that you firewall memcached properly: don't allow the outside world to connect to memcached's port, or they'll have unlimited read+write access to the cache, which is a huge security leak. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 13:00, 1 February 2008 (CST)

The port is already blocked from the outside world. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 13:07, 1 February 2008 (CST)

Good. I haven't gotten much response on your question at IRC, maybe you should ask on wikitech-l. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 13:31, 1 February 2008 (CST)

Will do. Thanks again, Catrope. :) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 13:35, 1 February 2008 (CST)

Sheppard in the Miniseries

I received an e-mail from Kevin Grazier today, noting a few corrections and observations on the Wiki. One of those corrections was regarding Sheppard, particularly noting that he appears (somewhere) in the Miniseries. So if any of you guys get the chance and want to watch the Miniseries again, could you please be on the lookout for any references to Shep? Thanks! -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 14:31, 5 February 2008 (CST)

Interesting. He might be one of the background pilots or mentioned somewhere in the wireless chatter. That will be hard to pinpoint though. -- Serenity 14:58, 5 February 2008 (CST)

Hmm, somehow that seems familiar but I can't place how I know that. What else did he say?-- OrionFour 16:22, 5 February 2008 (CST)

He noted that the name "Stepchild" in Kara's speech was written as "Steptoe" in the script. Other than that, he mentioned to me that he was writing up an article for his tech blog and was using the Wiki to do some research, which is what prompted him to send me corrections and his few notes in the first place. :) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 16:31, 5 February 2008 (CST)