Battlestar Wiki:Chiefs' noticeboard/Archive5

Review extension

We may want to add a Review extension in the near future to gain feedback from our readers. Thoughts? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 11:41, 27 December 2007 (CST)

It may be a good way to grade a quality article. --Spencerian 19:46, 27 December 2007 (CST)

Not that fond of it. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 01:23, 28 December 2007 (CST)

The only big reservation I have is that anonymous users are also allowed to vote. I'd rather restrict voting to logged-in users. --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 08:50, 29 December 2007 (CST)

Good point. @ Shane: Any particular reason why you're not fond of it? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 10:44, 29 December 2007 (CST)

I feel that we be rating users contributions and that could leave a mark if we said it was bad, they feel discouraged to contribute more. If we do find a bad revision we just go ahead and fix it and talk it out on talk pages, even if the information was legit. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 12:39, 29 December 2007 (CST)

Good point. I was thinking, though, that the results could be published privately so that only administrators can see them. Theoretically, this would give us the feedback we need to see what people actually like or dislike, without demoralizing any contributors. Also, the person voting won't be swayed by voting for or against any visible "grain", as it were, since they won't be able to see the results of the votes either. Without a doubt, it would require modifications to whatever extension we'd end up using, but it'd be another way we can get feedback from people who are otherwise too apathetic or disinterested in sending us a message. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 12:58, 29 December 2007 (CST)

SVG broken at HB

SVG rendering seems to be broken at the Hangar Bay, which is kind of ironic as its purpose is to play around with new designs :) --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 10:52, 3 January 2008 (CST)

Yeah, at this point, I think it's best if we start the Hangar Bay's MW install on that from scratch. (It has a separate MW installation than the rest of the Wikis, so this is easy to do.) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 15:28, 5 January 2008 (CST)

Incorrect interwiki binding

The rc: interwiki prefix is currently bound to "http://www.robotchicken.org/$1", but that should be "http://www.robotchicken.org/index.php?title=$1". --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 14:53, 5 January 2008 (CST)

It's now fixed. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 15:27, 5 January 2008 (CST)

Vandal

At 3:19 (CST) User:Syshiran joined the wiki. At 3:20-3:24 (CST) the user posted three ads on new pages in the site found at RF Coaxial Connector, Chinese antique furniture and Web site building. I found the edits an hour later and blanked the content, posted deletion tags. I choose not to write anything on the user's talk page, as it had been over an hour since the edits, and I did not want to alert the user to the changes.--OrionFour 05:14, 7 January 2008 (CST)

That's cool, OF. Thanks for the help. Serenity's already sent the user away...far away. --Spencerian 17:24, 7 January 2008 (CST)

No problem, just happy to help get rid of these guys.--OrionFour 18:34, 7 January 2008 (CST)

Wasn't there a previous spammer who advertised coax connectors? Might be a repeat offender, but there is nothing much we can do. Doesn't happen that often anyways. --Serenity 17:45, 7 January 2008 (CST)

Yeah, there was actually. Less than six months ago, if I recall correctly. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 17:46, 7 January 2008 (CST)

User:Centurion, User:Centurian (and User:Chicken)

After running a check user on User:Centurion and User:Centurian, I've discovered that they were created at the same IP address, which is in the checkuser log. The only reason I ran the checkuser is because the two names were created within six minutes of one another.

Upon running the check user, I've discovered that someone at the IP address also created User:Chicken on January 17th.

Anyway, I've contacted the users in question and notified them of the possible sockpuppet issue. (They may be on a shared IP for all I know.) Still, keep an eye out for anything. Just FYI. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 12:22, 21 January 2008 (CST)

Copy. Very little difference on those names. :) Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 12:55, 21 January 2008 (CST)

Problem resolved. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 13:19, 21 January 2008 (CST)

Excellent. :) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Sanctuary Wiki — New} 14:11, 21 January 2008 (CST)

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)