Wikitech-l October 2015

122 participants
124 discussions

Database dumps
by Byrial Jensen 17 Apr '25

17 Apr '25

Until some weeks ago http://dumps.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html used to show 4 dumps in progress at the same time. That meant that new database dumps normally was available within about 3 weeks for all databases except for enwiki and maybe dewiki where the dump process due to size took longer time. However the 4 dumps processes at one time become 3 some weeks ago. And after massive failures at June 4, only one dump has been in progress at the same time. So at the current speed it will take several months to come thru all dumps. Is it possible to speed up the process again using several dump processes at the same time? Thank you, Byrial

3 2

User-Agent:
by Domas Mituzas 17 Apr '25

17 Apr '25

Hi! from now on specific per-bot/per-software/per-client User-Agent header is mandatory for contacting Wikimedia sites. Domas

19 61

EBNF grammar project status?
by Steve Bennett 01 Apr '25

01 Apr '25

What's the status of the project to create a grammar for Wikitext in EBNF? There are two pages: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitext_Metasyntax http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Markup_spec Nothing seems to have happened since January this year. Also the comments on the latter page seem to indicate a lack of clear goal: is this just a fun project, is it to improve the existing parser, or is it to facilititate a new parser? It's obviously a lot of work, so it needs to be of clear benefit. Brion requested the grammar IIRC (and there's a comment to that effect at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7 ), so I'm wondering what became of it. Is there still a goal of replacing the parser? Or is there some alternative plan? Steve

26 217

Missing Section Headings
by Marc Riddell 13 Sep '24

13 Sep '24

Hello, I have been a WP editor since 2006. I hope you can help me. For some reason I no longer have Section Heading titles showing in the Articles. This is true of all Headings including the one that carries the Article subject's name. When there is a Table of Contents, it appears fine and, when I click on a particular Section, it goes to that Section, but all that is there is a straight line separating the Sections. There is also no button to edit a Section. If I edit the page and remove the "== ==" markers from the Section Titles, the Title then shows up, but not as a Section Heading. Also, I don't have any Date separators on my Want List. This started 2 days ago. Any thoughts? Thanks, Marc Riddell [[User:Michael David]]

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How to make commits from mirrored Wikimedia repos show up on your GitHub profile
by Bartosz Dziewoński 27 Jun '24

27 Jun '24

I know it has been annoying a couple of people other than me, so now that I've learned how to make it work I'll share the knowledge here. tl;dr: Star the repositories. No, seriously. (And yes, you need to star each extension repo separately.) (Is there a place on mw.org to put this tidbit on?) ------- Forwarded message ------- From: "Brian Levine" <support(a)github.com> (GitHub Staff) To: matma.rex(a)gmail.com Cc: Subject: Re: Commits in mirrored repositories not showing up on my profile Date: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 06:47:19 +0200 Hi Bartosz In order to link your commits to your GitHub account, you need to have some association with the repository other than authoring the commit. Usually, having push access gives you that connection. In this case, you don't have push permission, so we don't link you to the commit. The easy solution here is for you to star the repository. If you star it - along with the other repositories that are giving you this problem - we'll see that you're connected to the repository and you'll get contribution credit for those commits. Cheers Brian -- Matma Rex

3 3

Deploying the UrlShortener extension to Wikimedia wikis
by Legoktm 12 Nov '16

12 Nov '16

Hi, YuviPanda, prtksxna, and myself (with help from Tim and Aaron) have been working the UrlShortener extension, which is designed to implement the URL shortener RfC[1] (specifically Tim's implementation suggestion). I've filed T108557[2] to deploy the extension to Wikimedia wikis. We'd like to use the "w.wiki" short domain, which the WMF is already in control of. A test wiki has been set up mimicking what Wikimedia's configuration would be like: http://urlshortener.wmflabs.org/, and has an accompanying "short" domain at us.wmflabs.org (e.g. http://us.wmflabs.org/3). Please play with it and report any bugs you might find :) [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/URL_shortener [2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T108557 Thanks, -- Legoktm

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Saving MediaWiki:common.js
by Legault, Phillip [ITSUS] 27 Jan '16

27 Jan '16

I ran into an issue trying to save MediaWiki:Common.js I get this page not available (index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.js&action=submit) MediaWiki:Common.css save fine Any Idea what I'm doing wrong? Thank you!

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XML dumps
by Lars Aronsson 11 Jan '16

11 Jan '16

The XML database dumps are missing all through May, apparently because of a memory leak that is being worked on, as described here, https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T98585 However, that information doesn't reach the person who wants to download a fresh dump and looks here, http://dumps.wikimedia.org/backup-index.html I think it should be possible to make a regular schedule for when these dumps should be produced, e.g. once each month or once every second month, and treat any delay as a bug. The process to produce them has been halted by errors many times in the past, and even when it runs as intended the interval is unpredictable. Now when there is a bug, all dumps are halted, i.e. much delayed. For a user of the dumps, this is extremely frustrating. With proper release management, it should be possible to run the old version of the process until the new version has been tested, first on some smaller wikis, and gradually on the larger ones. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

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Re: [Wikitech-l] VisualEditor support for table copy-and-paste from Word
by Koerner, Chris L 22 Dec '15

22 Dec '15

This drag and drop from a CSV and other mentions of VE neatness would make a great blog post. I would love see a post about being productive in VisualEditor. Tips and tricks as it were. -Chris K. This electronic mail and any attached documents are intended solely for the named addressee(s) and contain confidential information. If you are not an addressee, or responsible for delivering this email to an addressee, you have received this email in error and are notified that reading, copying, or disclosing this email is prohibited. If you received this email in error, immediately reply to the sender and delete the message completely from your computer system.

2 1

Improving CAPTCHA friendliness for humans, and increasing CAPTCHA difficulty for bots
by Pine W 17 Dec '15

17 Dec '15

I see that there's an active workboard in Phabricator at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/225/ for CAPTCHA issues. Returning to a subject that has been discussed several times before: the last I heard is that our current CAPTCHAs do block some spambots, but they also present problems for humans and aren't especially difficult for more sophisticated spambots to solve. Can someone share a general update on what's happening with regard to improving usability for humans and increasing the difficulty for bots? I'm particularly concerned about the former issue, since CAPTCHAs might be filtering out some good-faith human editors. Thanks, Pine

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Wikitech-l October 2015