Legion Wiki talk:Community Portal/Admin

"Retiring" community portal topics

It's been pretty useful being able to quickly access current conversations through the Community Portal. However, as the current topics move further down the page, it's been becoming more cumbersome. I'd like to discuss setting a time limit, after which we could move topics to sub-pages categorized by category. I'm thinking that if a topic has no activity after two weeks, it's fair game to be moved. We could also included links on the top page to the sub-page categories. I'd prefer if items on the new pages had the most recently added topics at the top. How does this idea strike you? In general it would be nice if the community portal could be used as a tool to foster a greater sense of community and interest in the wiki. Gopher 22:47, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Permissions

Also, one nice point about restart to a degree is that all of the spammers we have banned in the past will no longer be part of our user list. Given that we don't have a huge number of people beating a path to actually edit the site, should we consider granting edit rights by permission only? We could add a page that explains the reasons why and link it from the main page. Just a thought. - Gopher 02:51, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I'll let you guys decide about limiting permissions. I've restored the features Gerard asked for previously.--Nightcrawler 03:48, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

My basic thought is "We need more contributors" - especially with the damage done by the partial db loss - and anything that discourages genuine contributors Is Bad (...and if anyone's got any ideas to get additional people working here, speak up...). OTOH, I can see CG's point, but I think revoking edit rights explicit permission is a step too far, especially since NC's installed a CAPTCHA for registration.

Looking at Special:ListGroupRights, I think one possible balance might be to move the ability to create & move pages and upload files (createpage, move and upload respectively) to the Autoconfirmed group (what are the current limits on that? It's "must have been a member for X days *and* have made Y edits" as I recall, but I don't know what the defaults on X and Y are. They wouldn't need to be that high - something like 1 day and 3 edits would weed out 99% of spammers if that's all we're aiming at). Restricting editing in general to invite-only would only make sense to me with a far larger, active, existing base.

Incidentally, on spammers/vandals, there appears to be no-one with either the checkuser (check IP addresses) or lock database (which came up in the dying days of the "old" wiki) permission as far as I can see. Do you have those, NC? - Reboot (SoM) talk page 22:41, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

All points well taken. My intent is to stop spammers, not discourage contributors. I think an X days Y edits rule would do the trick. If I am a spammer and wait two days and then spam three edits, will that give me the ability to create a page? Do edits need to be approved to grant the rights? Gopher 01:14, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I think it may be possible (there's a "patrolled" flag which I have, frankly, never bothered with), but it's spambots which are the problem, not human spammers, and if they can't create a "BUY WOW GOLD" page, they'll probably give up and go away rather than waiting. If human vandals were a repeated problem, I'd look at things a bit differently. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 15:11, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

"Do you have those, NC?" - I'm not sure I understand. Can you dumb that down for me? --Nightcrawler 04:35, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah, didn't realise checkuser was an extension: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CheckUser

The rest, see here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CheckUser (lockdb doesn't matter much, as I say, it just came up in the last days of the "old" wiki, and I just wondered if anyone had it to lock the wiki through the interface).

And while I'm asking - "upload from URL" is meant to be available to administrators per Special:ListGroupRights, but it isn't on the upload page. Do you know what's wrong? - Reboot (SoM) talk page 23:20, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Move files

I was just getting used to being able to move image files and now I believe the functionality is turned off. However, I also received a weird error just before when uploading an image, which said the file didn't upload but it actually had. Have we intentionally turned off move files? Gopher 12:27, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I just looked at the error message and it wasn't about the upload. Here's what it said:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:

(SQL query hidden)

from within function "efUpdateCheckUserData". Database returned error "1146: Table 'legionwo_wikidb.cu_changes' doesn't exist (localhost)".

Looks like it might be an error checking our permissions? Gopher 12:30, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I got that too repeatedly when making the skin-related changes - in each case, when I refreshed/resubmitted, it worked fine second time around. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 14:36, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

And just now when I posted that. Interestingly, it seems to have saved the first time even with the error... - Reboot (SoM) talk page 14:38, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Regardless of the error messages, I am not able to move image files. I uploaded a file with a typo, and now can't move it to the correct name. Gopher 22:44, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

I moved File:LSHv5-49Solicita.jpg to File:LSHv5-49Solicit.jpg - the problem was that, while the *file* uploaded, an associated *page* wasn't created for some reason (another error?). I had to create the page before I could move it.

[And yes, it threw an error message while moving ("File "%1" already exists", IIRC). At first I thought it hadn't moved, and the move still isn't showing up in recent changes, but it clearly has.] - Reboot (SoM) talk page 00:28, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I added the checkuser extension and the logo last night. It sounds like checkuser is the issue? However, there are multiple ways to add an extension in LocalSettings apparently. So, I've added it not in the way the page discribed it, but in the way the other features were added. Let me know if the issue still exists. --Nightcrawler 02:59, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Nevermind, I'm just removing it. I'll research the problem later. --Nightcrawler 03:03, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

The status quo - Discussion thread when wiki was restarted after downtime and database loss

Okay, probably best to start with "where things stand right now":

1. All pages/revisions from 2008-2010 that anyone reading this can't restore should be considered "Lost for good"
2. The images uploaded in that time exist on the server, but the out-of-date database doesn't know they're there.
3. The temporary database files are incompatible with the old database files, for the cherry on top. NC's trying to make them fit, but I don't think there was much there anyway.

Summation: over - Reboot (SoM) talk page 23:38, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Is it possible to copy over pages from the old database to a newer version of MediaWiki, basically create everything again in a new database? If possible, would images be recognized by the new arrangement, and is it worth the effort? I'm resigned to the fact that we will have to recreate everything from the last couple of years. I think I have quite a bit of the research, just will take take to remember what was there and then rebuild it. My current questions are:

1. What can we do to insure against anything like this happening again? I know that I will be saving copies of large important pages that I work on, but we can't save backup copies of every page we work on.
2. How much of a pain is it to make backup copies of the database on the regular basis? If this were a company, I would suggest we store backups with Iron Mountain, but I don't think that's a path we will be going down. However, we could burn a copy to DVD and send to a couple of people or upload a copy of the file to a commonly accessible location. I'd be willing to pick up the tab for any incidental costs in doing this, as long as they don't get out of hand.
3. How do we handle the image files that exist but are not recognized? Should we re-upload or is there a way that we can get them recognized again by changing the wiki code or pointing the main settings file to a different folder?

Gopher 01:31, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

1 and 2 are really for NC to answer.

On 3, image uploads aren't enabled yet - but once they are, there's no way to fully automate it since the image descriptions (i.e., the pages associated with the files) are lost and will need to be retyped like any other lost page - the server can't tell that this is a cartoon screencap, nor what episode its' from, nor what characters appear in it. Given the URLs to the images, we could tell the server to download the files from itself, but otherwise it's all manual. - Reboot (SoM) talk page 02:18, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Wiki logo - I would prefer the new Wikipedia style logo to the old Time Trapper one. Any chance we could point to that instead?

Also, one nice point about restart to a degree is that all of the spammers we have banned in the past will no longer be part of our user list. Given that we don't have a huge number of people beating a path to actually edit the site, should we consider granting edit rights by permission only? We could add a page that explains the reasons why and link it from the main page. Just a thought.

Gopher 02:51, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Here's the deal - The original Legion Wiki was Scott's idea and he did all of the set up using his "Legion Clubhouse" website/server/domain etc. all separate to "Legion World." Legion World was set up and "owned" by me but with plenty of other people including Scott who have been given access to contribute to and maintain. Until this past weekend, I didn't have access to either the Wiki's server or database to either back up or maintain. So, whatever issues that existed before have no bearing on what happens from now on. I have no intentions of abandoning the Wiki or letting it slip off the web.

With that said -

1. I back up Legion World as regularly as I can and have had to restore a topic or two in the past for various reasons...sometimes several days of posts wound up missing, but there's only so often you can back things up. I do suggest and encourage copying any significant work to your local computer. I have Word doc files of stuff I've worked on and created on Legion World, even though I also backup the actual MB files.

2. Our host has phpMyAdmin which allows you to download/upload a database as a .sql file. It's a relatively fast and easy process, which I plan to do at least once a week from here on out. With that file (now using the established format), I can always upload and restore any catastrophes that may occur.

3. This is more about that fact that the database we have is from 2008ish, but the images & folders that Scott saved were from 2010. The database isn't going to recognize them as it's not as up-to-date as the files. There's nothing we can do about it. The more updated database wasn't preserved and we do not have access to it to upload, unfortunately. You can see what images we have in the folders here - http://www.legionwiki.com/wiki/images/

Image uploads are re-enabled. Sorry. Apparently that's the default setting and to "fix" stuff I needed to have the wiki rebuild it's Settings file.

Part of the issue this weekend was simply because there are various ways to set up a wiki and Scott and I had differed on some of the variables. This same reason is why I can't simply add in the wiki database we started the last few weeks into the wiki database that Scott had created years ago and has now been set up here. The naming conventions are different.

Another quirk was that I had given Scott the sub-folder location info on where this all is within LegionWorld.NET's file structure and forgot to mention that this was actually LegionWorld.COM. So, he was setting us up as a sub-folder in the .NET rather than it's own entity. I was able to figure it all out with Scott's help and here we are. I'm more than willing to help with what I can, please let me know if there's an MediaWiki feature we're missing (we're currently using the latest, even newer than I started version 1.15.4).

Nightcrawler 03:13, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the logo - Scott mentioned what Gerard said at Legion World about it -

"It may or may not qualify as okay legally - I'm not sure - but I prefer the Trapper logo, TBH. The only thing I would change is to move the LW a bit so it looks less tacked on (probably to the left of Legion Wiki rather than the right) - otherwise, it's a very good logo as-is."

I'll let you guys decide about limiting permissions. I've restored the features Gerard asked for previously.

--Nightcrawler 03:48, 7 June 2010 (UTC)