User talk:Brion VIBBER/Archive 1

Moin Brion, here's just, eh, for fun ... that you may enjoy. Please note especially the comment directly below the license box – I could not withhold this shot from you ;-) -- :Bdk: 09:57, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Undeletion Bug?
Hi Brion, I tried to restore some old edits of Project:Help. The log for this action says that I restored 44 edits, but they have not been restored - the page still shows its previous content, and the history has just the single item. If you look at the history, you still have the 'restore 44 deleted edits' link, but when you click on it, none of the old versions are shown. This could be something to do with the prior page moves, or with the fact that there was already content when the page was restored, or possibly that it was a redirect, but whatever the cause, something fishy is definitely going on... any ideas, and can you fix it? --HappyDog 02:12, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


 * They're all there. It's just cached. --Brion VIBBER 19:21, 12 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Cheers - was that a browser or server caching issue? If it was a server cache problem, is there any way it can be avoided/worked around.  It was very confusing and somewhat alarming to see the old edits just vanish! --HappyDog 23:50, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Changes on release
Hi Brion - do you think we should move the 'pages to upgrade on a release' section of your page to a dedicated page in the Project: namespace? I know Bdk has a similar page. Perhaps a central repository would be useful (I always feel a bit wierd editing somebody's user page...) --HappyDog 12:44, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

News pages
Hi Brion. Your change to the main page completely broke it's design, but I understand your reasons - you should not have to add the same news in several places on the same wiki. I rolled-back your change and instead transcluded the news template whilst keeping the wrapping divs (removing the divs from the news template). I also restored the old news that you deleted, but moved it to an 'older news' section. This is not included on the main page (by using an invisible div - if you can think of a better method then please let me know), but will show up on the News page.

So, in summary, you still only need to update Template:MediaWiki News, and old news should be kept (just moved down the page).

Please let me know if you have a problem with any of this. --HappyDog 10:01, 12 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Looks awesome, thanks! --Brion VIBBER 00:15, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Brion: As a chemist, I just love Greek and other characters, hence interest in your  CharInsert. But I have clearly fallen into a blind spot, since despite much searching, I cannot find out how to switch it on in edit boxes for our site. (I note for example the one I am typing into here does not display it).--Rzepa 08:39, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


 * You need to add some markup to MediaWiki:Edittools. For example, the following will produce a nice little box which allows insertion of letters of the alphabet:




 * This was documented on CharInsert last time I checked, but perhaps it's not too clear. robchurch | talk 10:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

PS In the process of shibbolizing our site, so that collaborators can enter using their local credentials. Is this something that is taking off?

CentralAuth
Hi Brion,

is there somewhere more Information about what CentralAuth is? I ask because we plan to implement an openSSO extension for the mediawiki. The intend is that the user has to sign in on only one mediawiki with this extension and can then be redirected to all openSSO Apps. The user will be signed in automatically with the User Page URL of the "Home Wiki" as UserID. So the user can follow interwiki links always being signed in on the target wiki without doing anything. Purpose is to support a network of personal mediawikis as knowledgemanagenet tools, where every user signs in on its own wiki, but can surf other wikis with this identity. If the solution would be implemented in core mediawiki a wikipedia user could just click on a link to any other mediawiki and take their identity URL of wikipedia with them. Feedback would be great.

Patrick


 * From the description, you should probably look at the OpenID stuff rather than CentralAuth for this.


 * CentralAuth is basically a big workaround for the fact that we didn't start with a shared user table on our site years ago (which has been supported for some time for new multi-wiki sites). --Brion VIBBER 22:23, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

---

Hi Brion,

is this page going to be extended: Extension:CentralAuth? --GunterS 15:11, 10 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Prolly. --24.73.86.239 15:53, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Nuke extension
Hello Brion!

There's any possibility to have the Nuke extension do mass-revert and delete only uploaded files? Also... It would be good to have that extension on all projects not just meta (after all, all wikis -should- trust their sysop!) Thank you --84.221.69.69 01:32, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Restricted Access
Hi Brion,

Could you and/or whomever compiles the new versions of MediaWiki please include the latest bug fixes w/ it? I'm having a problem trying to go through putting the bug fixes in all of the files, and then running my wiki to find out that I missed a character in such and such a file...that is preventing me to view the wiki.

Thanks and have a Happy New Year (Gracias, y tienes Feliz Año Nuevo), Qsheets 06:29, 1 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I haven't the slightest clue what that means? --Brion VIBBER 09:30, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Presumably the request is for something equivalent to a patch file, as there is already a list of bug fixes. I guess Qsheets has modified his/her version of MW and so can't just install a new version over the top.  If so, then the answer is clearly going to be no.
 * My suggestion to Qsheets would be to get hold of a good diff tool (e.g. I use WinMerge), or learn to update/diff using Subversion. --HappyDog 02:32, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't delete redirects
Please don't delete redirects; it leaves broken links on local sites, foreign sites, documentation, source code comments, etc. I've restored a bunch you deleted on December 12. --Brion VIBBER 22:51, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I wish you had mentioned this beforehand! There was a bold red notice on the front page for two weeks, plus messages on various forum/portal pages indicating that these pages would be deleted after a fortnight, including details about where and how to lodge any objections.  That was about 45 minutes of my life wasted - are there really that many external links to these pages, particularly given the brief length of time some of them have been in existence for?  The main namespace is just becoming a mess.
 * Sorry Brion - I don't mean to rant so much, when most of what you do is so brilliant, but I can't believe that you didn't see the notices (though checking your contributions, you may only have been to the site once during that time...). Anyway &lt;/rant&gt;.  --HappyDog 02:02, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * This isn't really an active community wiki so much [at least for me]; I never saw any such notices.
 * But I've always, for years, recommended against deleting redirects without a dire reason, and I did the undeletions after finding actual broken links when I followed links from source code documentation. --Brion VIBBER 10:06, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I didn't realise they were used externally. Does that mean we're stuck with them forever? :( --HappyDog 01:04, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That's the idea -- you should keep links working forever if you're a good web citizen. Cool URIs don't change! :) --Brion VIBBER 02:29, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Micro-sized, but extremely annoying bug
Hey Brion,

In every version that I have downloaded (1.6.8 to 1.9.0) there has been a one-letter error. In DefaultSettings.php, there is a section as follows...

(2083 to 2093) */ $wgTrustedMediaFormats= array(	MEDIATYPE_BITMAP, //all bitmap formats	MEDIATYPE_AUDIO, //all audio formats	MEDIATYPE_VIDEO,  //all plain video formats	"image/svg",  //svg (only needed if inline rendering of svg is not supported)	"application/pdf",  //PDF files	#"application/x-shockwafe-flash", //flash/shockwave movie );

/**

The last format should say "application/x-shockwave-flash" not shockwafe. When I saw it the first few times, I just glanced right over it and couldn't figure out why the file icon wouldn't show up on the page. It is that one spelling error that did it.

Please have the staff update this in the revisions to come. I'm 99.99% positive that it will be greatly appreciated. --Quentin Sheets 05:06, 15 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Hardly a major issue since it's in a comment anyway, so you could correct it when uncommenting, but...fixed in r19289. robchurch | talk 06:54, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Special:Makesysop
How do I get it to work like the Wikimedia wikis: e.g Testuser set rights for User:Testuser@testwiki1.

Thanks, --82.42.237.84 18:47, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Question about Main Page
I'm somewhat new to wiki's and I'm trying to emulate what you have done on the mediawiki main page. All I'm really looking for is recreating the look you have with the boxes ( divs ). For the life of me I cant figure out what } is in some of the wiki code you have. IF I simply wanted a blank page that had 2 boxes such as the News and current versions box, and in that format how would i implement that. I understand templates, but the embedded htm l and that reference to } is killin me! any help would be appreciated.


 * Wasn't me; the front page of this wiki is a horrible example -- while pretty, the code is completely illegible. I have no clue how to update it except for the couple of templates I have linked myself. --brion 00:26, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The is the language code, to call e.g. one of the templates . With a single language you don't need it.--Patrick 01:16, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

developer access to svn -- DPL extension
Hi Brion,

over the last two months I tried to improve a mediawiki extension called DynamicPageList (DPL) (http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/DynamicPageList2). I was in contact with one of the former authors (Cyril Dangerville) who has got no more time to care for that extension.

I set up a demo website for DPL and put the latest source code there. Maybe you want to have a short look at an example of what DPL can do ... Now I think it would be the point in time to check the source code in to svn.

I am an IT professional and have some experience with cvs (but not with subversion so far). I read the articles about developer access via svn but still some things are not very clear to me. As far as I understand I must get a user account and publish an rsa key. Can you help me with some information of how to proceed?

--Algorithmix 07:20, 6 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd recommend you post some of your patches on bugzilla first and get some review. --brion 13:53, 6 March 2007 (UTC)


 * See http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9203 --Algorithmix 08:43, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Spanish support in Highliht Extension
The following patch add spanish support to the Highliht Extension:

--- SyntaxHighlight.i18n.php.orig      2007-03-19 11:23:36.172531420 -0600 +++ SyntaxHighlight.i18n.php   2007-03-19 11:32:20.798853153 -0600 @@ -79,6 +79,13 @@ 'syntaxhighlight-err-loading' => '(支援語言清單載入錯誤)', ), +/* Spanish (Elias Torres) */ +'es' => array( +'syntaxhighlight-specify' => 'Ud debe especificar un lenguaje así:', +'syntaxhighlight-supported' => 'Lenguajes implementados para marcado de sintaxis:', +'syntaxhighlight-err-loading' => '(error cargando la lista de lenguajes implementados)', +), +        );  }

Thank you for that simple and great extension.

btw, this is the only way to contact you?

--EliasTorres 17:43, 19 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the translation!
 * I can also be contacted by email, my address should be in the code up at the top, usually... the best place to make sure patches don't get lost is our bug tracker at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org :) --brion 21:49, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Fancy Captcha Problems
Hey,

I have been working for days to try to get Fancy Captcha's working on my wiki. I have the php extension installed, and i think it should be working if there were any proper images in my captcha images folder. Unfortunatly my server does not have the python library needed installed, and I know almost nothing about python and so i doubt i will be able to get it to work on my own computer either. Is there any place I can go to download an already generated set of captcha images? If I knew how they were laid out in the folder and how the hash-stuff worked i would make them by hand. I am nearly ready to give up and just use simple captcha (which i have working great), but i would really like to get the images working. Please let me know if there is any pre-made set of captcha's i can get somewhere. I will keep this page up and check back for any ideas you have. Thanks! -- Thomas:128.223.169.188 10:53, 27 April 2007 (UTC)


 * That would make them trivial to defeat since they could be precalculated. --brion 23:32, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Help:CheckUser
Hi Brion. You imported this from Meta into the Help: namespace, but unfortunately the licenses are incompatible. It should either be moved to the Manual: namespace (if appropriate) or deleted and rewritten according to the PD license. Also, there is a lot of Wikimedia-specific information there which doesn't really belong on MW.org, so it will also need some reworking. Cheers. --HappyDog 01:52, 2 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Feel free! Enjoy. --brion 13:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Have deleted, with the following message:
 * This page already exists at Extension:CheckUser. If required, the current version at meta:Help:CheckUser should manually have its text merged with that version, then have its history merged by importing it to Extension:CheckUser, and finally made into a redirect.
 * If the page on meta does not need to be merged with the current version and the current version did not come from a manual copy/paste of the meta content, then it can just be replaced with a redirect to Extension:CheckUser. If either of those are not the case then it needs to be merged/imported/redirected as described above, in order to comply with the GFDL and to ensure that no information is lost. Also, any such import should include the talk page as well. --HappyDog 00:58, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

ConfirmEdit Bug Report
Hello Brion, I want to call your attention to a bug I filed on ConfirmEdit. 22664 on Mediawiki 1.6.10 throws T_BOOLEAN_AND error.

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10114

Thanks in advance.

Extension:Labeled Section Transclusion
Thanks a million!

Maybe it would be a good idea to describe performance concerns on the talk page so that people will be aware of the issues and maybe even help solve them. Dovi 21:25, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Jobs
What do you think of this? Please comment here. --HappyDog 01:30, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

redirects and SEO
Hi, I'm curious about redirects and search engine indexing -- on a (pointless) bug I opened, you noted that Redirects need to appear for proper indexing, and I was hoping you could explain why. I'm trying to improve my wiki's rankings (just like everyone else...) but don't know a ton about it, and can't think of why redirects would be necessary for indexing. Thanks -- Alxndr 01:05, 15 September 2007 (UTC)


 * So that when you search for them, they show up. --brion 16:26, 15 September 2007 (UTC)


 * The problem I see is that for a given search term, the engine's indexing a page that has no real content except a link, and will probably not rank it very high even if the redirected-to page has a high ranking. What if instead of listing redirects, each redirected-to page had a list of the titles that redirected to it, so the content you're looking for shows up in the first place? &#x2014;alxndr&#x00a0; (t) 17:40, 15 September 2007 (UTC)


 * ....? A redirect doesn't display as a page with a link on it. --brion 18:34, 17 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Hoo boy. Good point. Thanks for answering my dumb questions. &#x2014;alxndr&#x00a0; (t) 20:47, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Mediawiki Development
Is there a board where I can post projects for mediawiki extension development for pay? I am trying to build a site that requires a mediawiki expert. All code that is built will be open source and can be used in the community after.

Unused release templates
Hi Brion, there are a few release templates that are currently unused. There are the 4 'test' release templates (MW test release date, MW test release link, MW test release number and MW test release svn) and the template MW stable release number-short. This last one may have been created in error as it is not in the list on your user page. Can you please let me know whether any of these should be kept, or if they are now obsolete (in which case they will be deleted). Thanks for your time. --HappyDog 13:55, 22 November 2007 (UTC)