User talk:Leucosticte

 Dear, Welcome to MediaWiki.org !

Yes, welcome! This site is dedicated to documenting the MediaWiki software, the software behind many wikis, including that of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation projects.

Please, take a look at the following pages. They might prove useful to you as a newcomer here:
 * Project:About
 * How does MediaWiki work?
 * Help:Editing pages
 * Help:Navigation
 * Manual:FAQ

If you have any questions, please ask me on my talk page. Once again, welcome, and I hope you quickly feel comfortable here, and find this site useful documentation of the MediaWiki software. Thanks, and regards, — billinghurst  sDrewth  05:12, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Editor user right
You seem to be making quite some good edits. If you get the editor right, you won't need to be checked by existing editors like me. I think that'd fit you well.Jasper Deng (talk) 03:30, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Why thank you. Sure, if someone wants to grant that right, that'll be fine. Leucosticte (talk) 03:35, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Granted. Happy editing!Jasper Deng (talk) 03:47, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

PWD for version 1.19
I'd like to use Pure Wiki Deletion on my wiki (well, the 1.19 upgrade of it), but the person trying to install it says it's throwing SQL errors on that version. Is there any chance you could look into updating it to support 1.19? PDW seems like a much more appropriate system of deletion for a wiki, much more open, and with very few exceptions (legal things, spambot pages) letting users view deleted pages is not a problem at all.
 * That's unfortunate, despite the minor issues like lack of cache invalidation on blank and showing up as blue on special pages it seemed like a pretty good solution. The link coloring even seemed more like a feature to me, it's handy to know whether there is some available history on a link or whether there really is nothing you can access there. Even if Wikipedia is not currently keen on it, having this setup available for other wikis seems very positive. Would you be able to at least point us at the parts of code which need updating?


 * And as for Inclupedia, yea. I've read huge amounts of wikipedia policy and debates in preparation for setting up my wiki, and.. the way deletion imposes massive risks of wasted effort and limits the scope of WP is by far the largest thing which has prevented me from getting involved. I'm not in a position to help much with that kind of project, but I do hope that either WP's restrictiveness (especially on web/game content, weee classic forms of media not finding much notable, despite huge numbers using them, wanting information on them, and being willing to write it) is reduced or something like that comes along.--Esp261 (talk) 16:13, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Thread:Project:Current issues/ Project:Translate extension
I'd like to hear your opinion. --Nemo 09:26, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Template:MW version
I think this is usally not called directly. Does [//www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Manual%3AInterwiki_table&diff=600769&oldid=587402 this] mean that it's no longer so in 1.21? --Nemo 11:23, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Is there another template that is supposed to call it? I haven't checked 1.21; would you rather I just put an "and after" rather than a range? If that's the proper convention, then I'll note it as such in Template:MW version/doc. The downside of using an "and after" is that it can go out of date, and readers might not realize it. E.g., suppose I put "1.19 and after" and it changes in 1.22 but no one updates the page. People might be unaware that it's outdated info. I don't think that putting 1.19-1.20 indicates that the schema is different in 1.20; it just means that no one has checked yet to see whether the schema is different in 1.21. Leucosticte (talk) 11:29, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * 1.19-1.20 has the same problems as 1.19+: when we're at 1.21, one doesn't know if 1.21 is not mentioned because the page is outdated or because 1.21 is actually different. --Nemo 13:08, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Given that (a) putting 1.19+ with a note that says "current as of 1.20" or (b) putting 1.19-1.20 express the same message, is there any particular reason to pick one convention over the other? As you point out, either way it leaves ambiguity as to what is going on with v1.21. We could take out the "current as of 1.20" note, but to the extent that removed ambiguity, it would also make it potentially misleading. Leucosticte (talk) 18:57, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Me again Re:Extension:InterwikiMap
Sorry to bother again but I have a question, how do you configure the polling wiki ? Install the interwikimap extension on the polling wiki and configure it the same as a dependent wiki ? Install the extension and just use the blacklist ? I'm sure it's obvious but I just can not figure out the best way to configure the polling wiki, maybe not install the extension at all :P IDK. Thanx again. Mlpearc ( powwow ) 19:31, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

P.S. The extension is working fine on my six wiki farm. :) Mlpearc Phone (talk) 21:00, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * By "polling wiki", you mean the wiki from which your wiki retrieves the interwiki map data? Unless it uses an ancient version of MediaWiki, it doesn't need to have the extension installed; its core functionality already includes the api module that will provide the data to your dependent wiki upon request. If you're still using v1.0.3, by the way, you may want to upgrade to v1.0.4; there were a few glitches in the old version. Of course, the new version may have introduced a few more glitches that I haven't discovered yet; if so, I'll fix them and release v1.0.5. :) Leucosticte (talk) 01:06, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, to "polling wiki" The whole farm is running v1.19.1 & 2 I wonder if installing InterwikiMap on the "polling wiki" just to be able to use the MediaWiki:Interwiki-blacklist to better control entries on that wiki.  Mlpearc  ( powwow ) 02:23, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Control entries against what? Are you having the polling wiki poll from some other wiki that isn't under your control? If not, then you already have control by means of limiting the write access of users of Special:Interwiki to sysops (or whatever group you've specified in $wgGroupPermissions for "interwiki".) Leucosticte (talk) 03:03, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Help pages
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User_talk:HappyDog#Help_pages

Re: Wikidata
They are still busy expanding to other Wikimedia projects, hopefully Wikiquote and Wiktionary (only interwikis) will be next. It's not trivial to handle the various data needs for each project, so I expect it would take some effort for this wiki too. I have no idea how much. --Nemo 19:26, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Requests for comment/Configuration database
Hi, Requests for comment/Configuration database is being considered as one of the RFCs to be discussed at the RFC review on 2013-11-06 via IRC. You are receiving this notification because you edited or discussed this RFC. We hope to see you there.--Qgil (talk) 00:33, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Designated as author for Page Metadata RFC
Hi Nathan,

I've added the RFC template to Page Metadata RFC (see https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Page_metadata&diff=825950&oldid=816567) and I inferred that you are the shepherd of this RFC. Is that correct? Also, should I move this page to /Requests_for_comment/Page_metadata ? Best, Drdee (talk) 16:47, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

GitHub
Heiya, you do a lot of programming and in quite some cases you add the code directly into the wikipage. Have you thought of creating repositories for them at GitHub.com. I guess this makes them trustworthier for inexperienced people since this code warning may thus be avoided. Cheers --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; (talk) 18:31, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I hadn't thought much about it; I figured it might be a hassle and if people had trouble getting set up with Git, it might hinder them from making changes to the code. I personally find Git kinda confusing and have only attained the level of mastery needed to do the stuff (committing and reviewing changes) mentioned at download from Git and Git TLDR, except in an unnecessarily inefficient way. Of course, it's also inefficient to post code to wiki pages. I kinda miss SVN, but I never had commit access to the core when SVN was around so Git is better in that respect. Leucosticte (talk) 18:50, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * That's true. I am not much better with Git, however you can accustom yourself to it better if you start there. I guess that code changes are nicer to follow and grasp over there than here in wiki. There are not many code changes here in wiki anyway so you will not loose many changes. Downloading and installing extensions is much easier too if extensions are in some kind of repo. Cheers --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; (talk) 19:00, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * This is true. I'll give it a try, maybe, the next time I write an extension, and if it works out well then I may migrate the rest of them over there. Leucosticte (talk) 19:20, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I guess this will not be far in the future judging from you programming activity. :) Cheers --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; (talk)
 * The other thing is that some of my extensions are not actually all that useful. Sometimes they're done with the intent of being useful but the concept turns out to have unexpected flaws/shortcomings (as in the case of Extension:InterwikiMap). Other times, the extension is more created for fun or to provide examples (including to myself) of how certain stuff can be done in MediaWiki. E.g. Extension:ExtensionCheck shows how you can use this code to get around the problem that Article::newFromTitle requires an IContextSource object as an argument, which I couldn't figure out how to get otherwise with only a Parser object at my disposal:

Cheers --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; (talk) 10:13, 8 December 2013 (UTC) PS The source tag is considered depreciated and may be removed, though I guess this will not happen in the near future. The syntaxhighlight tag is the recommended tag.
 * Also, according to WikiApiary, hardly anyone uses my extensions (although that might be partly because they're not in Git; however, even the ones that are don't get much use). By the way, what's the advantage of putting "syntaxhighlight" instead of "source"? Thanks, Leucosticte (talk) 21:01, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I believe that there are several reasons why extensions do not spread:
 * Scary warnings (e.g. extension code in wiki)
 * Unknown support status (generally extensions stored in wiki convey this feeling)
 * Special interest
 * Extra "trouble" installing them (copying code into several files, moving them over. etc.)
 * Missing I18n support (also in a sense that there are no translations for my language)
 * Bad documentation as well as untidy extension's pages
 * This is about in the order I would put these reasons. Depends on the extension to some extend. You cannot do anything about No. 3, No. 6 is something I try to improve and the rest may be overcome more or less by using a repo (for No. 5 you will probably need to use the WMF repo; to be as good as in wiki code one could ask to drop translations on the talk page).

That deprecation seems kinda lame; "source" is six characters, compared to "syntaxhighlight"'s 11. Anyway, yeah I guess it's a pain to copy that stuff over from the wiki pages, but I hate dealing with version control. I had a terrible experience with 51675, in which I was working with more than a dozen files for a database schema change (ugh!) and got the sequence of steps wrong in checking out code, changing it, committing it, rebasing, sending it for review, etc. This required me to do a bunch of stuff over again. Just dealing with git and the resulting problems took a lot of my time. I haven't figured out how to use Git the right way; I use a lot of workarounds.

A moment ago, I took a look at https://help.github.com/articles/create-a-repo and then said "Nah". It's true, though, that there are severe drawbacks to what I've been doing, e.g. that I can't take advantage of TranslateWiki. The "special interest" aspect is what usually deters me, though. I figure, why translate it into 50 different languages so that I can use it on three wikis with one user apiece? If someone ever comes up with an easier-to-use tool for working with version control, maybe I'll use it. Leucosticte (talk) 09:16, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, the bottom line is and was that you are the programmer and must feel comfortable. :) Cheers --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; (talk) 09:36, 9 December 2013 (UTC) PS Yeah, I can very well understand your frustration with gerrit and it can be not fun at all.
 * Just out of masochism and self-hate, I might put the next extension in GitHub anyway, if it's one I'm not looking to have WMF deploy (which would require putting it in the WMF repo). I like to inflict pain on myself sometimes, as a means of turning my anger inward and taking out my frustrations on a living being without harming anyone else, and this sounds like a pretty good way. On the other hand, it could lead to more frustration, producing a vicious cycle that feeds on itself. Leucosticte (talk) 10:04, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You cannot see the jolly good smile I just had. :) --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; (talk) 10:11, 9 December 2013 (UTC)