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.

Ask a new question or begin a new discussion by clicking here.

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.

Initial survey responses

So far, I've been amazed at the initial responses to the survey. I've been receiving some excellent feedback, which is what I'm looking for, really. Here are some initial trends I'm seeing:

1. We have an audience that's focused on the Re-imagined Series. (No surprise there, really, since that is on everyone's minds right now!)
2. People don't really look to us for merchandise information. There's a definite focus on the episodes, characters, behind-the-scenes, battles, tech, and ships.

Things we need to improve upon...

High importance

1. We need to have multiple versions of the current skin. There's no way around it. Some people have talked about the colors being too dark, so lighter colors would work.
2. Also, there's a need to allow non-contributors to submit corrections as well.
3. Unregistered (or not logged in) users also want to be able to read the talk pages again, which is an easy fix. But they want that option.
4. People also want easier navigation, which means we're going to have to retool the sidebar in order to achieve it. Fortunately, I've had this in mind for a while now, and we can probably integrate the portal links into the sidebar for greater effect and usability. (See: Battlestar Wiki:Think Tank/Sidebar Redesign for the proposed changes.)
   1. Some have also commented about the placement of the search bar. Update: This has been fixed in the new skin. The search bar is now on the side.
5. People want to know how to contribute information or use the website. We need help documentation on how to effectively use the website, since we are an immense resource... immense enough where some people tend to get lost, it seems like, and are unable to extricate themselves from that.

Important, but long term development stuff

1. There are people wanting to have more analysis on characters. Some of them have noted that many of the character articles rehash plot points, which is an issue some of us behind-the-scenes have brought up time and time again as well.
2. There are people wanting more behind-the-scenes information.

Mid-level importance

1. Also, some have commented on how bad the built-in search feature is. I've commented on this in the past as well, so we're probably going to use Google, until the MediaWiki people know how to develop a better built-in search feature. Update: We're using Google as our primary search engine. Nothing in the way of the search box has changed, so the "Go" button will still work, and all that jazz. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 16:55, 19 February 2008 (CST)

Comments

There's a lot here so far, with over 40 responses in just the last day... So digest, discuss, and maybe do a think tank or three. :) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 08:54, 19 February 2008 (CST)

You mean unregistered users can't read talk pages? Why would we want that? --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 08:58, 19 February 2008 (CST)

The mindset was that people only came here for information, and people didn't want to see the behind-the-scenes talk... Obviously, that isn't the case. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 09:03, 19 February 2008 (CST)

That one was actually bugging me too. When you came in on a talk page, there'd be no "article" link either. It's good to have the context of both available, even if you're just reading. --Steelviper 09:59, 19 February 2008 (CST)

1.) As said, the unfortunate lack of character analysis has been noted already. It's been rectified with one or two articles, but overall it's kind of a mess. Kinda sad, that with a series so heavily focused on character interaction, people felt the need to rehash the story and focus on trivial tech nonsense instead. In hindsight, this should have been different from the beginning, but now we are somewhat stuck with it. I made this page you can evaluate the character articles and note things that need to be done. While many need to improved, a few are quite good actually.

2.) I agree on the search function. It has bugged me too in that it often doesn't find what you look for unless the article already exists.

3.) Not sure on behind-the-scenes information. We aren't a news site and can't be one. We do have some behind-the-scenes information on the show and the people working on it, and it could be extended I guess, but if people expect articles on the newest going-ons that probably won't happen. -- Serenity 09:10, 19 February 2008 (CST)

For the search thing we could try the LuceneSearch extension which is also used by Wikipedia and friends. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 09:15, 19 February 2008 (CST)

Well, I'm turned off by the memory usage on the sucker... Plus it's just better for us to go Google anyway, that way we won't impact the performance of both servers. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 09:31, 19 February 2008 (CST)

As for the skin (aka my department) I take full responsibility for that. I carried the colors over from the BsgBook type and I guess massed up, it doesn't sit right. Myself and Joe already talked about using the colors from the blog, in the same design look. Navbar, no problem. Rehashing that is easy. As far as the search bar, there is only so many places for it to go. I can add a second one before the bottom bar. I think we need to really focus on BW:TUT which is pretty much established. Make it stand out and also expand the To-Do topics a bit more. Maybe we can get the Help preview filled. I've never really like merchandise information on the front page, but we should still create articles about it and use our referral links to gather some sort of income for server costs, etc. Maybe it's time to open up the flood gates to unregiested users being able to edit. we would for sure have to setup the BW:VANDL patrol and change the "trusted" group to have patrol permissions. That's about it from me. :) Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 09:42, 19 February 2008 (CST)

I'd be in favor of that. I'll get started writing a revert bot next week (too busy this week), which will be available to all patrollers (of course, the trusted group would also need the rollback right in that case) so mass edits can be reverted easier. I'll extend the bot to revert moves and page creations too (although the latter needs sysop access of course; trusted users can't delete pages). When all of this is up and running, we could also experiment with allowing autoconfirmed users to move pages (see also this discussion).

Furthermore, we should write up a patrolling 101 at BW:PATROL so patrollers know how to mark edits as patrolled, how to revert thenm and how to use the revert bot. All this sounds like a good idea for a BW:TANK proposal to me. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 10:22, 19 February 2008 (CST)

I just want to comment on the survey itself. I've been exposed to quite a few surveys of late and when I took this survey it made an impact. The concise nature is a major plus. Nobody likes to fill out lengthy surveys. It is better to run several surveys spaced out with fewer questions than one large survey. The questions were nicely worded and well thought out. There is a clear focus on each one and the answers will greatly help the direction of this project. The prize is certainly a great incentive. I want to congratulate whomever created the survey. Now the work of initiating changes can begin.--Jonathan 13:23, 4 March 2008 (CST)

"Opening the Flood Gates"

I'm not in favor of "opening the floodgates", simply because quality of the wiki would probably go down, not up. Sure, it might get a few more contributors, but quality people are hard to come by. Also, it's harder to hold accountability to anonymous users, so I would oppose that.

There are other alternatives to having people send in corrections... which I'm working on right now and will have more detail in the next few days. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 10:33, 19 February 2008 (CST)

I'm not too keen on it either. Registration probably keeps away very casual readers who see an error here and there. But if someone reads the Wiki often and has ideas for changes, I don't see why they can't take a few minutes and get an account. -- Serenity 10:56, 19 February 2008 (CST)

I'm just wary of the "RC Patrol" culture that seems to develop when you have to deal with anonymous vandalism. You end up with a class of users that spends all of their effort cleaning up vandalism, and seem to sometimes develop a paranoia regarding sockpuppets, etc. I like that our admins are generally contributors first, so you don't see those self-nom RFA's where the user is mostly wanting block powers to more effectively execute their RC patrol. --Steelviper 16:45, 19 February 2008 (CST)

I agree. "RC Patrolling" and fighting vandalism is a time waster, pure and simple. It detracts from the main purpose of working on a reference in the first place, which is what I referred to earlier. We don't come here to fight vandals, but to increase our knowledge base and improve the quality of the site... Everyone who contributes has a set amount of time for this, since we all do this in our "spare time"... And frankly, I don't like the culture that Wikipedia generates in terms "vandalism patrol" or "RC patrol"... it's very poisonous and causes more problems than its worth. It's one of the things I got sick of when I contributed to Wikipedia.

As you noted SV, where we stand out as people is that we have this unwritten motto that we're "contributors first, chiefs second". Basically, we have an efficient work ethic and I'd be really loathe to destroy that by bringing down the floodgates. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 17:10, 19 February 2008 (CST)

PHP upgrade?

While testing my API framework on Battlestar Wiki, I ran into a compatibility problem in PHP's serialze() output. The problem is that the PHP serialize output changed somewhere between versions, so my (new) version expects data in a different format than the BSWiki server outputs, causing an error. Maybe you guys could upgrade PHP when you start your upgrade spree (1.12, extensions)? --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 14:14, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Yep. I'll do that now then. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 14:18, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Running the instlal test. Once it passes, I will shut down Apache while I install the new version. 5.2.5. Shouldn't take long. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 14:41, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Done. 5.2.5 active. :) Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 14:44, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Thanks. There seems to be a different problem, though: the output is prefixed by a space. Can you grep for files that have a space before the <?php or one after the ?> (the latter shouldn't occur anywhere, though). --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 14:58, 23 February 2008 (CST)

In the skin? Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 15:11, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Maybe. All I know is that there's some PHP file with a leading or trailing newline (not a space, sorry). --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 15:22, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Would this include extensions as well? Or no? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 17:41, 23 February 2008 (CST)

While I'm on that tangent, could it be the DismissableSiteNotice that mucks things up? After all, it does generate a space in the main skin, and doubtless on others. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 17:42, 23 February 2008 (CST)

Can you run a debugger to see which file it stops at? There are over 100+ files. I am not going through all of them to remove new lines which I keep so I don't loose my mind when looking at the code. :) Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 18:33, 23 February 2008 (CST)

It could be an extension, yes. DismissableSitenotice is the most likely suspect, followed by other recently installed extensions. I unfortunately don't have a way of checking which .php file is guilty. You could use grep(1) to look for a newline followed by <?php , or you could check the most recently installed extensions first and hope it's in one of them. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 09:48, 24 February 2008 (CST)

For one thing that I lack it's using grep. Tell me what I would enter into the shell to look for it :) Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 12:30, 24 February 2008 (CST)

grep '<?php' -n *.php | grep -v ':1:'. The first grep searches for all occurrences of <?php and prints line numbers too (-n), the second grep filters the output for all matches not on the first line (-v lists only non-matching lines). --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 13:36, 24 February 2008 (CST)

Have we found the culprit yet? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 09:36, 26 February 2008 (CST)

No. Could you run the grep command I posted above in some of the extension directories? --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 09:44, 26 February 2008 (CST)

[bsgwiki@apollo extensions]$ grep '<?php' -n *.php | grep -v ':1:'
[bsgwiki@apollo extensions]$ grep '<?php' -n *.php | grep -v ':1:'
[bsgwiki@apollo extensions]$ 

Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 11:28, 26 February 2008 (CST)

Actually, I've found that you have to go to each sub directory and run the grep expression... So the culprits I found so far are AddHtml and a few others. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 11:39, 26 February 2008 (CST)

oh sob. doh. that's right :P Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 12:32, 26 February 2008 (CST)

Sidebar

As everyone might have noticed by now, I've switched up the sidebars a bit.

Basically, each user level has their own sidebar meant to be specifically tailored to their usage: senior chiefs, chiefs, contributors, and visitors.

Also, each namespace will have its own submenu... Currently, this is enabled for the "Portal" namespace only, but will be enabled for other namespaces, including "Battlestar Wiki", "Podcasts", etc. Check out what happens when you visit Portal:Overview or any of the "Portal" stuff.

Furthermore, users can add content to their own sidebars by adding a subpage to their user namespace called "/Sidebar". (i.e. User:Foo/Sidebar). So its customizable that way as well. Although I haven't tried it yet, so let us know how it works for you.

Of course, by no means am I done, but it's at a point where I feel comfortable enough to solicit your feedback. So you can do that here or (more preferrably) at Battlestar Wiki:Think Tank/Sidebar Redesign. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 20:07, 26 February 2008 (CST)

Amazon EC2 feasibility?

Just came across this suggestion from one of our respondents to our survey:

"See if you can work a way to run the wiki (but not the mysql database) on Amazon EC2 servers, or some other "elastic" server farm where, as an episode airs, you can for 1 day suddenly boost the resources with which you run it tenfold, while not paying a big bill. Amazon EC2 does this but does not have static storage for your database, which would mean a lot of bandwidth to a remote database. However, another hosting company might offer you virtual servers by the hour on a network where they also let you keep your dedicated server and sql database."

Is this feasible? Could we do this? Pros? Cons? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 22:22, 26 February 2008 (CST)

Well if there's a company out there that offers this for a reasonable price, why not? --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 03:53, 27 February 2008 (CST)

This is almost like squaid server. The only time that we do have downtime or very werid slowness is near airing, which is true. But when we goto the Battlestar Forum during those times, its as fast as a button, with no slow down. My mind tells me that is just a Mediawiki I/O program when it comes to having to reteive the database. We might have to run that connection test script again (disable stats of course) again with mem-cache enabled. Directing everyone off to an off-site database is not the problem. We do that already with Athena, which is on a different subnet than Apollo, it be almost investing in a "Load Balanceing" hardware that we can place in front of Apollo that filters traffic more directly. WWW --> Load Balancer -- double split arrow --> Apollo + Athena. However, Athena never talks with the outside world, cept on the admin port and talks with Apollo internally at ThePlanet. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 13:19, 4 March 2008 (CST)

How about we set up a third DB server as a slave? It wouldn't have to be on a separate machine, it could run on Apollo. The other way around may even be better: have Athena do the hard work (servicing reads) and be somewhat lighter on Apollo (only writes). For more information on setting up master/slave DB servers in MediaWiki, go here. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 07:49, 5 March 2008 (CST)

I'm going to second Shane's comments regarding MediaWiki... During "Razor's" premiere and the two days following, the forum was fine, with the Wiki seeming to be the slowest. Coincidentally, when Apollo became bogged down, I had to deactivate the mysql database on Athena in order to get Apollo accessible via SSH, which tells me that Apollo was being the workhorse there... and was also being a bottleneck, apparently. So it seems to be that we need to beef up the Apollo server, and not Athena, which was fine even through the entire thing. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 10:22, 5 March 2008 (CST)

Have we yet figured out a way to simulate "battle" load, outside of trial by fire yet? It seems like most of the simulations so far have been less violent than the real deal. While it is not something we ought to subject our servers to on a whim, it would be nice to be able to test configuration changes before they face combat. --Steelviper 12:54, 6 March 2008 (CST)

Someone familiar with the pywikipediabot framework (not me, I'd have to learn Python xD) could write up a bot that does lots of writes. Without it, we can really only simulate a flood of reads (I could write up something for that, though). --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 14:06, 6 March 2008 (CST)

I think I understood that it was the concurrent edits (and edit conflicts that result) that were bringing us down. --Steelviper 14:47, 6 March 2008 (CST)

Yeah, I wanted to say that (must've deleted it while rewriting): our largest problem is the edit flood, that's why we protect articles or put the wiki in read-only mode. We could maybe arrange for an edit fest, though: we all agree to submit a large number of edits more or less simultaneously (we can prepare them beforehand) at the Hangar Bay, and see what happens. IRC (Freenode?) would be useful to coordinate that. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 14:58, 6 March 2008 (CST)

Style idea

For those wanting a simpler style, I ran across this. With a little tweaking, it would probably work here for those people wanting a cleaner layout. Thoughts? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 22:48, 9 March 2008 (CDT)

As a less is more kinda person, I like it. -- FrankieG 23:32, 9 March 2008 (CDT)

I can't see it. :/ --DrWho42 01:11, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

Do you mean you can't access it, or don't see it working for us? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 10:02, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

I am one of the five people who actually love the dark red/black style, but as option for those who don't (and that's a lot of people) that would be good. It seems to have a larger font too. -- Serenity 06:35, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

Hey, I thought I was the only one who stuck with bsgbook (dark red/black), guess not then. On topic: the more choice, the better, of course. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 07:26, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

I happen to use (and love) the new style as well. The only thing I can say against it is the width issue, seeing as I have a 17" widescreen. Other than that, the style I pointed out is simple and gets rid of some of the clutter... it may work for us. It may not. Also, keep in mind that our current style (BsgBook ahem, Battlestar) will remain our default style, these will just be alternatives for people who don't like the current style.-- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 10:02, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

The current default is battlestar, right? (The "new" style) --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 10:12, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

You're right. :) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 10:20, 10 March 2008 (CDT)

*cough* Battlestar iPhone *cough* and *cough* Battlestar Light *cough* :D Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 10:46, 10 March 2008 (CDT)