Wikitech-l September 2011

wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org

111 participants
132 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

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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

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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

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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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MediaWiki to Latex Converter
by Hugo Vincent 18 Jun '12

18 Jun '12

Hi everyone, I recently set up a MediaWiki (http://server.bluewatersys.com/w90n740/) and I need to extra the content from it and convert it into LaTeX syntax for printed documentation. I have googled for a suitable OSS solution but nothing was apparent. I would prefer a script written in Python, but any recommendations would be very welcome. Do you know of anything suitable? Kind Regards, Hugo Vincent, Bluewater Systems.

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About to commit improved DB2 database support
by Leons Petrazickis 20 Dec '11

20 Dec '11

I've been informally mentoring André, Tiago, Diego, and César. They are four students at Minho University who are currently working on a project to improve DB2 database support in MediaWiki. So far, they've: - Fixed several outstanding issues with DB2 support involving character encoding, Windows vs Linux, etc - Added DB2 support to the new MediaWiki 1.17 Installer and Updater - Put in the appropriate Updater sql patches to reflect database schema changes since 1.14 MediaWiki already had some DB2 support, but it's been broken since 1.15 and never complete. As a result of their work, it's now possible to successfully install MediaWiki on DB2 out of the box and to use the core wiki features. I'll shortly commit their first patch using my SVN account (leonsp). I've taken some care to look over the code and make sure it abides by the MediaWiki code guidelines. Regards, Leons Petrazickis http://lpetr.org/blog/

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RFC: Should we drop the rendering preferences for math?
by Brion Vibber 28 Nov '11

28 Nov '11

Bug 24207 requests switching the math rendering preference default from its current setting (which usually produces a nice PNG and occasionally produces some kinda ugly HTML) to the "always render PNG" setting. I'd actually propose dropping the rendering options entirely... * "HTML if simple" and "if possible" produce *horrible* ugly output that nobody likes, so people use hacks to force PNG rendering. Why not just render to PNG? * "MathML" mode is even *MORE* limited than "HTML if simple", making it entirely useless. * nobody even knows what "Recommended for modern browsers" means, but it seems to be somewhere in that "occasionally crappy HTML, usually PNG" continuum. So we're left with only two sane choices: * Always render PNG * Leave it as TeX (for text browsers) Text browsers will show the alt text on the images, which is... the TeX code. So even this isn't actually needed for its stated purpose. (Hi Jidanni! :) lynx should show the tex source when using the PNG mode.) It's conceivable that a few folks really honestly prefer to see the latex source in their graphical browsers (should at least do a quick stat check to see if anybody uses it on purpose), but I wouldn't mind removing that either. Fancier rendering like MathJax etc should be considered as a separate thing (and implemented a bit differently to avoid parser cache fragmentation!), so don't let future mode concerns worry y'all. Any thoughts on whether this makes sense to do for 1.18 or 1.19? https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24207#c9 -- brion

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Adding MD5 / SHA1 column to revision table (discussing r94289)
by Diederik van Liere 27 Nov '11

27 Nov '11

Hi! I am starting this thread because Brion's revision r94289 reverted r94289 [0] stating "core schema change with no discussion" [1]. Bugs 21860 [2] and 25312 [3] advocate for the inclusion of a hash column (either md5 or sha1) in the revision table. The primary use case of this column will be to assist detecting reverts. I don't think that data integrity is the primary reason for adding this column. The huge advantage of having such a column is that it will not be longer necessary to analyze full dumps to detect reverts, instead you can look for reverts in the stub dump file by looking for the same hash within a single page. The fact that there is a theoretical chance of a collision is not very important IMHO, it would just mean that in very rare cases in our research we would flag an edit being reverted while it's not. The two bug reports contain quite long discussions and this feature has also been discussed internally quite extensively but oddly enough it hasn't happened yet on the mailinglist. So let's have a discussion! [0] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/94289 [1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/94541 [2] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21860 [3] https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25312 Best, Diederik

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page view stats redux
by Ariel T. Glenn 16 Nov '11

16 Nov '11

I think we finally have a complete copy from December 2007 through August 2011 of the pageview stats scrounged from various sources, now available on our dumps server. See http://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/pagecounts-raw/ Ariel

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Git migration planning
by Rob Lanphier 25 Oct '11

25 Oct '11

Hi everyone, For a long time, we've been talking about migrating from Subversion to Git. It's time to start getting more serious about it. First: the need to do this. There is pretty broad acceptance that we should move to a distributed version control system (DVCS). Our current Subversion-based version control system has served us well, but we're in need of a more suitable version control system for our development effort. Our community is very distributed, with many parallel efforts and needs to integrate many different feature efforts. While we've developed lots of coping mechanisms, we sure could use a system that's well suited to more fluid branching and merging. There has been resistance to this in the past, and there still may be some resistance. However, I think we've worn everyone down. :) Next: the selection of Git over other DVCSs. Over the past couple of years, other systems have been mentioned (Bzr, Hg), but there hasn't been any evidence (at least on this mailing list) for anything other than mild support for the alternatives. As you might have seen, our Ops folks have already moved to Git[1], and while they're right in the middle of the tough part of the learning curve, they seem to be adjusting just fine. The complaints seem to be of the "I really need to get used to that" variety rather than the "why are we doing this again?" variety. So, given the momentum that Git has, the ample discussion we've had on the subject, and the fact that Ops is already planning to support Git, this seems to be a settled question. So now, the questions shift from "if?" to "when?" and "how?". When? After some amount of arm twisting by Erik and Brion (*hugz*), I've agreed to float a plan that has us making the migration by the end of the year. This is completely contingent on our ability to get 1.19 deployed in a rapid fashion (which, if we can get through the code review queue at our current rate, could be done in November). Until we have a more fleshed out plan, though, "end of the year" purely a guess, and subject to change (partly based on any ensuing conversation after this mail). However, assuming we can clear the technical hurdles, there's not any procedural issues I can see getting in the way of a rapid transition. How? Lots of unsorted pieces. There are still decisions we need to make: * Code review tool: barring unforeseen complications, we're planning to use Gerrit. We need to make sure it'll be a suitable replacement for our existing tool * How do we break up the repository? One big repo? Extensions each get their own? We need to sort all of that out. A draft plan is available here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git_conversion Rob [1] ...or so I've read on Slashdot, so it must be true: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/09/21/0531246/wikimedia-foundation-re…

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Wikitech-l September 2011