MediaWiki-l November 2003

10 participants
24 discussions

Status of documentation
by Agon S. Buchholz 02 Dec '03

02 Dec '03

Hi, I'd like to know who is *currently* working on the documentation for MediaWiki, and where the intended central place for this is, if there's na. If there's need, I'd like to volunteer to help out, if I can. I think, the intended starting point is http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User's_Guide, but I found lots of relevant information scattered around somewhere else on the web (e.g. about importing database dumps), in the installation archives, and on Wikitech-L, which is not accessible (meaning linked) from the User's Guide. Also, I found some information missing at all, e.g. "To update from one version of MediaWiki to another" just says "do these steps...", or the section about properly configuring the Rewrite Engine in Apache httpd in somehow short ;) Last but not least, I think the naming "User's Guide" might be somehow confusing; to me, this suggests a manual directed primarily towards the (end) *user* of a running MediaWiki installation, giving help how to *use* the Wiki (e.g. conventions on how to edit, how to link, etc.). IMHO, it'd be more clear if the documentation would start on http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docs or http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation; this would spread into four sections, targeted at different persons: (1) General Information and Overview (e.g. What is it? How does it work? Who's using it? Architecture, etc.), (2) Installation and Administration Guide (current sections "Installation" and "Configuration" [missing]), (3) User's Guide (current section "Using MediaWiki"), and (4) Developer's Guide (maybe current "http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker", but mostly missing atm). Greetings, -asb

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Mediawiki covered in c't
by Magnus Manske 30 Nov '03

30 Nov '03

The Mediawiki software has been presented in the "c't" magazine, a (the!) important German computer magazine. It was recommended for large wikis; the only drawbacks were the slightly complicated installation and the rather plain appearance. Can't imagine why, though ;-) Magnus

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Re: [Mediawiki-l] Patch for Bug #770011
by Tim Starling 22 Nov '03

22 Nov '03

Evan wrote: > >>>>> "BV" == Brion Vibber <brion(a)pobox.com> writes: > > Me> OK, so, I took my first crack at working on MediaWiki with an > Me> attempt to check for cookies when logging in (bug #770011). > > BV> Great! I'm in the middle of the SoCal Linux Expo and will look > BV> this stuff over when I get a chance... If some of the other > BV> developers could look after this that'd be great. I might have a quick look now. >Coolio! The patches I submitted are all independent -- none depends on >another, that I can see, nor should they conflict -- and made against >the HEAD for phase3. Some use global variables, so I'm going to wait >till they're applied (or rejected B-) before trying to jigger with the >$REQUEST hoohaw. > >I'm going to try and cut my teeth on the transactions stuff. I >figure I'll just try to find calls to wfQuery() with INSERT, UPDATE, >DELETE in them, and wrap something like wfBegin()/wfCommit() around >them, with wfRollback() for error conditions. > >I'll probably miss 20% of them, and screw everything up. Should be a >fun time. Missing 20% is a lot better than missing 100%, which is what we're doing at the moment. It's really making a mess of our database, we often have to clean up inconsistencies manually. So everyone will be eternally grateful. But before you start, I have to make sure you know about the dangers of transactions. These dangers were discussed by Brion and I on wikitech-l, in mid-August 2003 under the subject "Using HEAP tables": http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-August/thread.html Transactions have to be guarded against user aborts. This could be done either with a "critical section" model, where user aborts are disabled for the duration of the transaction, or alternatively a shutdown function could be used. The shutdown function would rollback any active transactions. However note that installing a shutdown function effectively disables user aborts anyway. When there is a shutdown function, PHP only checks for pending user aborts on output -- in our case, once per run. If a PHP thread dies while a transaction is active, any locked tables will remain locked indefinitely. The wiki will effectively become read-only until a developer manually flushes the lock. We've seen this happen on the English Wikipedia. AFAIK, killing threads by restarting the webserver doesn't pose a risk, because the MySQL connections will also be terminated, releasing any lock. More information about user aborts is at: http://www.php.net/manual/en/features.connection-handling.php This discussion, and patch submissions, are probably more on-topic at wikitech-l than at mediawiki-l. This post (and a couple of Brion's) have been cross-posted there. -- Tim Starling _________________________________________________________________ Hot chart ringtones and polyphonics. Go to http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilemania/default.asp

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Patch for Bug #770011
by Evan Prodromou 22 Nov '03

22 Nov '03

OK, so, I took my first crack at working on MediaWiki with an attempt to check for cookies when logging in (bug #770011). I got all flummoxed trying to upload the patch to SourceForge -- didn't you used to be able to do that? -- so I'm just sending it here. ~ESP -- Evan Prodromou <evan(a)wikitravel.org> Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/ The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide

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Database Dumps and User Privacy
by Evan Prodromou 22 Nov '03

22 Nov '03

So, I want to start making daily database dumps available on Wikitravel. However, I don't want to give out user passwords or user email addresses. Is the script used by Wikipedia available anywhere? A quick review of the MediaWiki codebase isn't coming up with anything. Ideas? ~ESP -- Evan Prodromou <evan(a)wikitravel.org> Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/ The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide

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Patch to add Go button to Cologne Blue
by Evan Prodromou 22 Nov '03

22 Nov '03

The following patch adds a Go button to Cologne Blue. It doesn't match any existing bug; just a note on the Cologne Blue skin problems (great name for a page, btw) meta page. ~ESP -- Evan Prodromou <evan(a)wikitravel.org> Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/ The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide

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Patch to reorder links on Cologne Blue sidebar (Bug #582579)
by Evan Prodromou 22 Nov '03

22 Nov '03

Attached is a patch to reorder the links on the Cologne Blue sidebar. I pretty much followed the suggestions on the bug page, with several differences: * I moved "Recent Changes" up to "Browse" * I made Move, Delete, and Protect this page part of "Edit" * I added "Post a comment" after the talk page link I figured the Post a comment link was useful enough for all skins that I added it to Skin.php as a method, commentLink(). The patch also fixes Bug #825774. Lastly, the patch removes the ugly "Error" where "Delete this page" or "Protect this page" would normally be, if the page doesn't exist yet. I don't know if that's a registered bug or not; I don't think it's much good, because it's not like the user made an error or anything. ~ESP P.S. I'm going to try to cut into some of the drudge work Brion was talking about this weekend. -- Evan Prodromou <evan(a)wikitravel.org> Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/ The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide

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Patch for Link Colors (Bug #827160)
by Evan Prodromou 22 Nov '03

22 Nov '03

OK, so, I did some CSS goofing off, so that different types of links (internal, external/interwiki, missing, stub) all have different colors, whether they've been visited or not. The colors are a little brash -- not terrible, but I think the external unvisited one is kind of limey -- anyways, this can be changed fairly easily. The mechanism is there to divide up the 8 different kinds of links, though. I did this for all the skins, since as noted on the Cologne Blue skin problems page, it'd be jarring to have different colors on different skins. That can be changed, though. The mechanism should probably remain, anyways. Patch attached. ~ESP -- Evan Prodromou <evan(a)wikitravel.org> Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/ The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide

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Gimme something to do
by Evan Prodromou 21 Nov '03

21 Nov '03

So, I've been coming up with great ideas for MediaWiki -- or, rather, great ideas for enhancements for MediaWiki for Wikitravel's needs. But I figure it's probably going to be easiest to get into the code if I start working on some bugs instead. Are there any bugs that an interested volunteer could start working on and submitting patches for? The huge list on sourceforge is a bit much. ~ESP -- Evan Prodromou <evan(a)wikitravel.org> Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/ The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide

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How can I remove PHPSESSID? How can I add a form to printable template?
by Freerk 21 Nov '03

21 Nov '03

Hello mediawiki-l, Thanks to Brion, I managed it to install a mirror of the German Wikipedia. To make it very simple, I configured the mod_rewrite with the .htacces so that everything links to the printable version. Since all the edit stuff isn't working anyway. Sometimes, when I open a link, I get the link with a ?PHPSESSID=9308d65a897e0712a32cfd or something like that in the end. How do I disable that? It makes the links longer, some search engines wont spider me and I don't want to track my visitors. My next question: I want to add a Google search form at the top of every site (http://www.google.com/intl/en/searchcode.html#both) I tried to just edit the LanguageDe.php since it contains the static text on the sites, but it didn't work out. Is the Skin.php the template? I couldn't figure it out how to add the html code there. Any help would be greatly appreciated! -- Best regards, Freerk mailto:[email protected]

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MediaWiki-l November 2003