User talk:Jack Phoenix/archive 3

Staying
Hi. Sorry to bother you. I read on the Facebook page that you would have to request for your wiki to be brought back online. I would like to inform you I will be sticking with ShoutWiki for the time being. Does it look like the Hub will be back within a week? --Hockeyben 23:04, 3 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi Hockeyben, you're not bothering me. I'm glad to hear that you'll be staying with ShoutWiki! Could you list the names (subdomains) of the wikis you want to keep here or on the Facebook page so that we can add them to our list? As for Hub (and the wikis in general), I can't say for sure right now, but we're doing our best with whatever time and resources we have and we aren't going to give up! --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 19:44, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I'll be keeping the icehockey and nhl subdomains, so if you could add those to the list, that would be great. Hopefully things recover soon, and the site returns better than ever. :) --Hockeyben 19:52, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I've added them to the list. I certainly hope that we'll get the site back up really soon, I have a lot of cool stuff that I'd want to show to the users. ;-) --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 20:13, 7 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Okay, thanks. I gotta say, I'm quite nervous about the reliability of ShoutWiki. There have been two major outages in the last six months. Will there be some extra precautions put in place to make sure that something as severe as these outages doesn't happen again? I mean, this has been just awful, 4 and-a-half out of 6 months down. --Hockeyben 15:27, 9 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I understand your concern. We'll definitely do everything in our power to make sure that outages of this scale will never happen again. Like the old saying goes, "when it rains, it pours" &mdash; we got unbelievably unlucky and the people with the skills to fix the site were unable to be around and we even had to take our older server, which was hosting our blog and IRC server, down. I'm not trying to justify what happened, for there's no justification to that, I'm just explaining what happened. Needless to say that this outage was a major setback for us, but we believe in ShoutWiki and we're confident that there's a demand for the service. It's been painful for each and every of us, staff and users alike, which is why we want to ensure it'll never happen again. I don't know how we'll do it, but I'm sure that our tech guys can come up with something. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 18:34, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply! I'm glad that precaution will be put in place. Hopefully the hub and some of the wikis come back within a week or two.Hockeyben 19:20, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi again, and sorry to bother you. I've heard that the hub and some wikis are in the process of being moved over to the new server. Can you confirm this? Thanks! Hockeyben 02:28, 12 October 2011 (UTC)


 * This is true, but we haven't announced it anywhere yet, because only some preliminary work has been done so far. We want to test things throughoutly and announce the end results to the world when we have something to announce and we can be sure that things are working as expected. :) --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 20:35, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Hello. The file transfer has been going on for nearly a week now... Is there any timetable for when this might be completed and we can return to full editing? --Hockeyben 23:36, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Again, this is more of an initial guess than a schedule set on stone; this might change, depending on how people are/aren't available. I just want you and other ShoutWiki users to know that we're working on the site and we certainly have not forgotten about you and we're not going to close down the site. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 21:46, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The files have been transferred by now to the new server, but no databases have been moved yet (thankfully that should be relatively straightforward for most wikis). We're trying to get our own IRC server back up by the weekend, followed by our own version control system and bugtracker, and a few wikis for testing, to make sure that everything went well and that we haven't broken anything.


 * Good to hear that progress is being made.:) I hope it doesn't take too long testing the site out, as it has been such a long time already, and this all gets resolved very soon.Hockeyben 23:28, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Ok.. So what's the latest? I read on the ShoutWiki Facebook page that there was likely going to be an update over the weekend, but no such update was posted. I still can't log on to ShoutWiki's IRC server, so I take it is still down. Also, how are the wiki transfers coming, and what is the eta for editing to return? Thanks. --Hockeyben 14:17, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I've asked the person working on this what the holdup is and I've asked him to provide an update ASAP. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 20:54, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Question about Extensions BlogPage/Comments/VoteNY
Hi Jack

I have installed the latest MW 1.18.0 (PHP 5.2.6-1, MySQL 5.0.51a-24) and I want to use the BlogPage/Comments/VoteNY extensions. All extensions have been installed without any errors (I used update.php), the tags and are displayed, but do not seem to work (JavaScript does not seem to work, unfortunately I did not found any information about this issue), see http://www.wikirating.com/wiki/Wikirating:Sandbox as an example. Do you have an idea?

Thank you very much! --Mrnett1974 16:31, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Apparently ResourceLoader just totally messes up the JS in production mode (strangely enough, in ResourceLoader's debug mode the JS works just fine, but that's relatively useless, as there's no way to force debug mode for all users or turn RL off altogether), even with the so-called "top-load queue" (which most, if not all, social tools use when loading CSS and JS via RL), contrary to what some pages over here may state.


 * I've tried to troubleshoot this issue with some devs who have an in-depth knowledge of ResourceLoader's internals (see #mediawiki log for 21 December 2011), but so far nothing; unfortunately the suggested approach "rewrite the code" isn't very feasible for me right now, as I have various other things in my life, and I believe that what worked in a previous release of MediaWiki should also work on the current release, at least when using a backwards-compatibility mode (and that's exactly what ResourceLoader's top-load queue is supposed to be).


 * You can file a bug on our Bugzilla, but I cannot guarantee that it gets the attention it deserves; despite that the code is open source, there are very few, if any, developers interested in social tools, besides me. I understand that the issue is a showstopper since those extensions rely on JavaScript in order to function. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 18:50, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I've fixed these three extensions (BlogPage, Comments, VoteNY) so that they will now work under ResourceLoader and thus they require at least version 1.18 of MediaWiki.


 * There are still some other social tools that require fixing (namely, FanBoxes, PictureGame, PollNY and QuizGame). I've prepared a patch for FanBoxes, I just need to test it some more. The "gaming" extensions are going to be pretty difficult to fix, though... --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 16:09, 7 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Jack, that's great! Thank you, I will check them today! --Mrnett1974 07:44, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

 * Why thank you! I'm happy to hear that you like WikiForum. :-) --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 19:09, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Monaco with the SocialProfile extension.
Hi,

I've recently created a wiki which i use Monaco on, now I noticed that the SocialProfile extension doesn't work together as you can see here: http://laddauppbilder.se/?di=1132733117015. Do you know any way to fix it? Thanks! --79.136.77.180 15:10, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I've created an account now. --Big Bear 16:32, 24 January 2012 (UTC)


 * You should contact the author of that skin. SocialProfile works well enough with the version of Monaco that I created. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 08:53, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Quiz Game
I am trying to run Quiz Game on my wiki. Everything is installed fine including db's, however once I try and create a question the create and play button to submit the question is unresponsive. Is this a js issue or what? Any help would be greatly appreciated. --Randy Francisco 02:36, 5 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Right now FanBoxes, PictureGame, PollNY and QuizGame are broken on MediaWiki 1.17+, "thanks" to ResourceLoader and the big architectural changes it introduced. I'm aware of this, but my time is limited and the changes needed are non-trivial; as such, a lot of testing is needed. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 08:53, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Comments extension
Hi!

I cant delete comments with, there is just a redlink and when i press it, it refresh the page: http://www.box.com/s/kybfa4f889f995dmoent. Big Bear 12:59, 6 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I also got this: http://www.box.com/s/vo3li6n39drsm94ptttr when I sent a private message with the board (SocialProfile). Big Bear 16:01, 6 February 2012 (UTC)


 * What version of MediaWiki, PHP, MySQL, SocialProfile and Comments? Are there any error messages in your browser's JS console? And as for the second problem, has $wgUserLevels been defined (properly)? You could also fix that by editing the code &mdash; you don't need to care about that message. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 19:18, 6 February 2012 (UTC)


 * This is what I have: MediaWiki 1.18.1, PHP 5.2.17 (cgi-fcgi), MySQL 5.1.41-3ubuntu12.10-log Comments 2.6 and I think my SocialProfile is 1.5.

Sorry but I don't know how to look in my browser's JS console. I don't use UserLevels, how can I fix it iin the code, I think it is annoying. Also could I get your monaco skin? Big Bear 20:53, 7 February 2012 (UTC)


 * SocialProfile pretty much assumes that $wgUserLevels is always set (correctly).


 * As for looking in your browser's JS console, try searching for the info via Google or a similar search engine (i.e. use "your browser + console" or somesuch as the search keywords). Internet Explorer (since version 8, IIRC) and Opera have a built-in set of web developer tools, whereas for the Firefox browser there's the Firebug add-on, which adds plenty of useful things.


 * I do want to release my version of Monaco, but that unfortunately isn't possible right now. Maybe later on in the future. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 15:35, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

The socialprofile does now work for me, but the comments doesn't. I deleted the sql files and the files in /extension/comments and downloaded them again. But when i tried to import comment.js i got this error: Error There seems to be an error in your SQL query. The MySQL server error output below, if there is any, may also help you in diagnosing the problem

ERROR: Unknown Punctuation String @ 234 STR: // SQL: /** * JavaScript for the Comments extension. * Rewritten by Jack Phoenix  to be more * object-oriented. * * @file * @date 7 January 2012 */ var Comment = { submitted: 0, isBusy: false, timer: '', // has to have an initial value... updateDelay: 7000, LatestCommentID: '', CurLatestCommentID: '', pause: 0,

/**	 * When a comment's author is ignored, "Show Comment" link will be * presented to the user. * If the user clicks on it, this function is called to show the hidden * comment. */	show: function( id ) { jQuery( '#ignore-' + id ).hide( 100 );

SQL query:

/** * JavaScript for the Comments extension. * Rewritten by Jack Phoenix  to be more * object-oriented. * * @file * @date 7 January 2012 */ var Comment = { submitted: 0, isBusy: false, timer: , // has to have an initial value... updateDelay: 7000, LatestCommentID: , CurLatestCommentID: '', pause: 0, /** * When a comment's author is ignored, "Show Comment" link will be * presented to the user. * If the user clicks on it, this function is called to show the hidden * comment. */ show: function( id ) { jQuery( '#ignore-' + id ).hide( 100 );

MySQL said:

submitted: 0, isBusy: false, timer: '', // has to have an ini' at line 9
 * 1) 1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'var Comment = {

What should I do? Big Bear (talk) 12:11, 19 February 2012 (UTC)


 * You tried to paste JS as SQL...try pasting the SQL code from the .sql files instead. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 10:57, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Wikiforum
I was just curious on how to add emoticons to the WikiForum Extension. I have added $wgWikiForumSmilies = array; to local settings, but not quite sure what to place there. I'm having a dumb moment. I know you are planning on changing this, but wanted something to get by till then. Thanks for your help.--Randyf78 22:36, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Nevermind, figured it out--Randyf78 23:14, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

DPLforum
I was wondering why you hard-coded a namespace #110 in extension:DPLforum here. Operators of individual wiki sites have been encouraged to use 100+ as site-specific namespaces since at least MediaWiki 1.4 (back in the days of single-byte namespace numbering, with 0-15 as built-in MW namespaces and 16+ reserved for expansion of core code, 100-254 was traditionally user-allocatable space). The low 100's are therefore likely already in use on most existing wikis if custom namespaces are deployed at all, making conflicts with hard-coded namespaces in extensions inevitable. --Carlb (talk) 02:07, 21 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I picked the number 110 because many wikis &mdash; including, but not limited to, Wikia wikis and various third-party wikis &mdash; were using that number. If it bothers you that much, change it locally or migrate your #110 to one of the various unused namespaces above 100. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 10:57, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Many were using numbers in the low-100's because those are the original site-specific user namespaces, 100 and up (16-99 being reserved in documentation as for future expansion of core MediaWiki code). The list of extension default namespaces is a neologism (2008) as the convention of 100+ as site-specific dates back to the last core namespace (14/15 Category) being added in 2003.

There was no hard-coding of namespaces in DPLforum before July 2011. All previous DPLforum versions had the operator manually select any custom namespace not already in use, avoiding this issue.

DPLforum was created by user:algorithm, at the time (2005?) a user of the English-language Uncyclopedia. On that wiki, this landed at 110 because 100, 102, 104, 106, 108 were in use; 110 was just the next sequential site-specific namespace. Wikia would've just re-used the en.uncyclopedia configurations on their Central Wiki and eventually on their other wikis.

Even within the Uncyclopedia set, languages hosted on non-Wikia servers (such as this one, Desciclopédia) often used some other number as DPLforum. With no hard-coding of namespaces in the PHP source, the sysadmins were free to select any vacant namespace and deploy there.

Fixing this now doesn't help me, that cost has already been incurred (more than 4000 posts moved in Desciclopédia, plus some lesser number in ten others in the set, such as hikipedia.info, where a forum already existed on some other namespace). Keeping extensions out of hard-coded namespaces in the traditionally site-specific 100+ area may, however, be of benefit to the administrator of the next wiki which ends up with all new Forum: posts misfiled into some other site-specific namespace which just happened to already use 110: --Carlb (talk) 16:28, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Documentation for gadget authors
We're trying to start a library for gadget authors to use. Please check it out and post any questions or comments there. -- ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 01:45, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Social profile extension
Hi,

I think that this is great extension. I wanna use it in wikifarm and need to know which tables I shall share. To this moment I have set up shared accounts and works great, but problem is with reward points. Ecery wiki counts its own points.--Tut2222 (talk) 01:07, 20 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Points are calculated from the  database table, which contains information about the wiki's pages; thus it cannot be shared (and having points global across all the wikis in the farm seems somewhat silly to me). --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 14:02, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Automatic Board Welcome
Hello Jack. First of all congratulations for all your excelent work and help to the community :) I've been trying to install the Automatic Board Welcome extension, but it seems I cannot make it work properly in my Wiki. I followed exactly your instructions, but when new users are created they don't get the welcome message.

My system configuration is: MediaWiki 1.17.0 PHP	5.3.10 MySQL	5.5.20-log SocialProfile 1.3

Is there something I have missing? Many thanks in advance! --Fladei (talk) 23:28, 28 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Try upgrading your MediaWiki and SocialProfile to the newest stable; the most recent version of SocialProfile is 1.5, which has been out for like two years now, receiving bug fixes and new features every now and then, and MediaWiki's newest version is currently 1.18.1, with 1.19.0 in the beta stage (after which a release candidate or two will be released, and then the final product will be released). --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 14:02, 29 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I've upgraded SocialProfile to the 1.5 version and it still isn't working. I've created a function to save to a TXT file some parameters when the 'wfSendUserBoardMessageOnRegistration' function is executed, but the file is not created, so I guess it has something to do with the 'AddNewAccount' hook not being triggered. However, I see that 1.17 versions of Mediawiki have that hook enabled. Any hints? Many thanks! --Fladei (talk) 14:53, 29 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Never mind, it had something to do user e-mail authentication. If in LocalSettings it is established that users must be validated through email, but the users never validate, then the 'AddNewAccount' hook is not triggered, thus, the extension will never run. I still see a couple of bugs on "UserStatsClass.php" file - Invalid argument supplied for foreach in line 611. Many thanks! --Fladei (talk) 15:01, 29 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Is $wgUserLevels properly configured? Then again, you could probably just suppress the warnings if they bother you too much. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 18:41, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Comments Extension
I have the comments extension installed and working properly with the exception of the voting option. When a user clicks the thumbs up or down area, nothing happens. I have the most recent versions of everything. Thanks for all your help. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.0.138.94 (talk • contribs)


 * This sounds like bug #33986 (see also the somewhat-related bug #34345), a bug that I haven't had the time to investigate nor fix yet. (And in true open source spirit, all the burden is on the extension's maintainer &mdash; me &mdash; and no-one else even bothers looking at the bugs...) --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 18:41, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Monaco skin
Hi, now when shoutwiki is down, could I get the Monaco skin? Big Bear (talk) 12:00, 6 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm planning to release most of my work eventually, but right now I have plenty of other priorities. And let's not even mention the recent move to git (and gerrit, a code review tool that won't even load in my favorite browser) and how much it complicates my once-simple work of committing code to a public repository.


 * I'll probably have to set up a Google Code SVN repository or something like that one day when I have enough time... --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 18:41, 6 April 2012 (UTC)


 * How much money do you want to release it now? GrandisUrsus (talk) 16:08, 7 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Please contact me via e-mail with your offer to discuss this further (you can find my e-mail on my user page). --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 19:41, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Delete
Hi. Can i have my 2 wikis at shoutwiki (icehockey and nhl) re-deleted? These had been deleted back in January, but seem to have come back. Good luck to ShoutWiki in the future. --Hockeyben (talk) 14:44, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Bump. In case you missed the above message.--Hockeyben (talk) 17:02, 25 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Hockeyben, sorry to hear that you want your wikis deleted. :-( I've been quite busy for the past couple days, but I'll have those two wikis deleted soon enough; hopefully by the next week. (The site is currently read-only, so not only editing, but plenty of other things that do writes against the database, are disabled.) --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 19:53, 26 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Jack. Thanks for your reply. Really wanting the wikis deleted had nothing to do with downtime; just a change in circumstances for my wiki needs. I still think ShoutWiki is a great wiki host. I would like to help out with things at the hub when ShoutWiki comes back. :-) --Hockeyben (talk) 00:40, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Jack. Its been over a week now. Do you have an eta for when you'll be able to get those two wikis deleted? Just making sure you haven't forgotten. --Hockeyben (talk) 16:05, 9 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi again Hockeyben! I haven't certainly forgotten about your request, I've just been busy &mdash; both online and offline. Online I've been helping the new ShoutWiki staff members to get started and I've also been working with them to get the site stabilized and fully functional. As Lewis writes on that blog post, we've made pretty good progress, but there are still a few things that we need to work on before we can reopen the site for good. Once we've sorted out all the remaining things, updated the site to the newest version of MediaWiki and tested everything throughoutly, we'll reopen the site and that's when I'll be able to delete those wikis. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 15:01, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi Jack. Now that staff editing is open, will you be able to get those wikis deleted?--Hockeyben (talk) 14:13, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Hockeyben. Editing on the hub may be open but all our databases aren't set up yet and we can't delete wikis/move wikis/do anything with wikis at the moment. Like Jack said, if you keep bothering him about this, it won't make things go any quicker. They'll get deleted eventually. You can't even read anything on your wikis due to database errors. Just be patient, stop bothering Jack and we'll contact you once the wikis are deleted. Thanks, Solar Dragon (talk) 11:31, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
 * As per Solar Dragon, the editing is staff-only for testing purposes. Expect the wikis to be deleted very soon. Nicmavr (talk) 11:34, 20 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I've deleted the wikis now, because I figured we should test DeleteWiki, too. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 18:06, 20 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks everyone. :)--Hockeyben (talk) 01:49, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

Phalanx
Hi, I heard that you are involved in the Phalanx extension. I am in the process of running a WikiFarm, and i tried to install Phalanx, but i get an error that says . Is there a way to fix this? Bill9929 (talk) 22:29, 22 May 2012 (UTC)


 * If you haven't read Manual:How to debug, that's always a good place to start. Phalanx is, however, a rather complicated extension, and as such, I can't really help you without knowing more about your setup, including the very basics, such as MediaWiki, PHP and MySQL versions... --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 13:56, 23 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I am using MediaWiki Version: 1.18.2 and PHP Version:5.2.17 (cgi-fcgi) and MySQL Version: 5.1.52-cll. Bill9929 (talk) 19:23, 27 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I'd recommend upgrading your MediaWiki to 1.19.0 (latest stable) and PHP to the 5.3 series, because PHP 5.3 provides awesome new features, such as late static bindings, etc.


 * Now, where do you see the &lt;phalanx-title&gt; "message"? What do you do to get it to appear? --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 17:56, 28 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi, i have upgraded my MediaWiki and my PHP version. And i also added  to my LocalSettings.php along with   like i had before. The  message is gone, however it is replaced with "Phalanx - Integrated Spam Defense Mechanism", still with nothing else on the screen. I have provided a screencap here. Bill9929 (talk) 17:42, 9 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Phalanx is not usable out-of-the-box because Wikia wrote it originally for their setup, which is somewhat different from a standard MediaWiki. If you want to make it work, I'd say you would have to be pretty familiar with MediaWiki and how its internals work.
 * I hope that one day I'll be able to clean up the version of Phalanx we use at ShoutWiki and release it, but it's not an easy task not a high-priority one on my to-do list.
 * For an alternative solution, you may want to look into AbuseFilter if you haven't already &mdash; it's used on Wikimedia wikis and therefore it's quite stable, although it's not the easiest thing to use. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 14:55, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

SocialProfile localized?
I've been looking at this extension and would really like to use it. Does it support other languages than English? How many messages would need to be translated? Maybe it could be put up at the translatewiki.net? Can it support left-right scripts? :-) Matsbla (talk) 07:08, 27 May 2012 (UTC)


 * 1) Obviously!
 * 2) Around 561 messages
 * 3) It's already there! (Some other social tools aren't, due to the creative differences between me and translatewiki.net staff regarding the format of message documentation and where it should be put.)
 * 4) Most likely, although I haven't tested it with LTR languages; even greater LTR support could be achieved once SocialProfile has been ported to use ResourceLoader (bug #29984)

--Jack Phoenix (Contact) 17:56, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Talkback
I've replied on my talk page; I can't be on IRC for a few hours. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jasper Deng (talk • contribs) 22:36, 31 May 2012


 * I was under the impression that LQT would email him when you replied to his message there. -- Krenair (talk &bull; contribs) 22:40, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I didn't know that, and it never happened to me.--Jasper Deng (talk) 22:40, 31 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Jasper, thank you for swift reply! --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 20:56, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

I shouldve stated my reason before but here it is:
It is your extension, so you probably are right but... I don't get why I cannot upload avatars. I would love to use the extension if the avatars worked and (sorry, I haven't used it in a month or so) there are a few special pages that don't seem to work or give me error 500s, maybe it's my server's fault but I changed my server and I still got similar errors. Thanks in advance for your support!(mw1.18.3)--Muqman 52 (talk) 07:54, 10 June 2012 (UTC)


 * I haven't supported SocialProfile on 1.18.X series for a while; you should upgrade your MediaWiki to 1.19.0 and your SocialProfile to SVN HEAD (you can get it via Special:ExtensionDistributor if you don't have a SVN client &mdash; assuming ExtensionDistributor actually works, that is...).


 * I've tested SocialProfile (SVN HEAD) and MediaWiki 1.19.0 on various setups, including my devel setup (Windows 7 + XAMPP stack) and many *NIX-based production servers and so far everything's looked good. The most common problem is permissions &mdash; i.e. the webserver user (apache/www-data/nobody...) doesn't have write permissions to the $IP/images/avatars directory. Double-check that the permissions are correct and let me know if that still doesn't work.


 * As for error 500, check your PHP/Apache error log to see just what is going on there. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 14:55, 10 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you Jack, I would love to try out your extension but I cannot seem to install mw1.19, 1.20 works but it's an alpha, will you offer support for 1.20 when it comes out? I will certainly check it out then!--Muqman 52 (talk) 19:32, 12 June 2012 (UTC)


 * PS: will it work on IIS 7.5?


 * I very much hope that I don't need to do anything or need to do very little to support 1.20, but only time will tell us for sure. Obviously I have to support 1.20 at some point; hopefully right after its release, but it also depends on what we at ShoutWiki are going to do.


 * SocialProfile, like 99% of MediaWiki extensions, should be webserver-agnostic, but I haven't tested it under IIS nor I have any plans to do so; using Windows 7 as my main OS and IE9 as my main browser is more than enough of Microsoft for me. ;-) It's probably worth noting that MediaWiki itself has had some problems under IIS in the past; I don't know if they've been fixed or not, though. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 11:43, 13 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I will look into moving to linux and hopefully will be able to use your extension. I love the concept :D!--Muqman 52 (talk) 02:40, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Personally, I'd use VirtualBox if I ever needed Linux or Apache.--Jasper Deng (talk) 02:49, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Incident on Darthipedia
supergeeky1 has posted a pic of my dead dog on darthipedia, do you realise how violently offensive that is! I demand you remove it, as it is my own photo and belongs to me! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 121.218.106.119 (talk • contribs)


 * This is not something anyone on this particular wiki can help you with. You'll have to contact that wiki's community.--Jasper Deng (talk) 04:35, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Only way to get in contact with. If i did so on the site, I would get trolled by the sociopath who uploaded my images. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 121.218.106.119 (talk • contribs)

Please stop harrassing me and involving totally unrelated websites into what is nothing more than a petty dispute between yourself and supergeeky1. You should be talking to him if you have a problem with him; I cannot overturn another admin's decisions. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 09:06, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I think you've done more than enough for one day; you've publicly spread very questionable material about ShoutWiki in Wikkii's name, you've violated ShoutWiki's terms of use (once again) and now you are violating Wikimedia's Terms of Use.

Allowing only registered users
Hi Jack,

I wanna know if theres anyway to allowing only registered users to comment on my pages. Also, i would like to know if i can set a limit on the count of comments (like 30 comments max).

And also, i would like to know if i cant disable the vote feature.

Tahnks in advance, Marcelo. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 190.191.187.149 (talk • contribs)


 * Hi Marcelo,


 * Yes, this can be done with $wgGroupPermissions. By default the  "group", in other words, everyone, has the   permission. You'll want to take it away from   and grant it to   group only.
 * What exactly do you mean by a limit? Would you like to set it so that only 30 comments are shown at once or that only 30 comments can be posted overall? In the former case, it would be a matter of pagination, which is yet to be implemented. Either way, this is something that isn't yet supported. You might want to a file a feature request ticket on the MediaWiki Bugzilla.
 * As of now, the voting feature cannot be disabled entirely. It's possible to turn off the negative votes (see Extension:Comments for more info). As with the previous request, you are encouraged to submit a ticket about it and maybe I'll get to it one day or someone is able to come up with a patch before I do. :-)


 * --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 11:05, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Response on Talk:Admin tools development
Hi Jack, I responded on Talk:Admin tools development (belatedly). We weren't expecting a response so soon (I was expecting to have to do active recruiting, and was gearing up for that), so we're a little surprised by needing to respond to anyone so soon. :) -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 22:05, 30 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Replied there! --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 22:46, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Monaco
Is it possible to get your version of Monaco? There's a Monaco port, but it doesn't look the right way. I would like the one you guys have minus the hubs/user activity/Shoutwiki messages. I have, like, no intelligence for PHP. I have basic skills, like adding the require_once to LocalSettings, and putting extensions and skins in their directories. 17morgm (talk) 19:17, 7 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Please refer to our page on open source.


 * Cleaning up, fixing, tweaking, beautifying (etc.) Monaco was not a quick and easy task and it took a lot of blood, toil, tears, and sweat. However, I personally believe that everyone can learn, if only they're willing to. If you want to learn PHP and become a (better) programmer, take a look at php.net, the official home page of the PHP programming language and how to become a MediaWiki hacker on this wiki. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 21:13, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Git, gerrit, and windows
Hi Jack,

Maybe this will help because I had similar problems with gerrit, git, and windows. I figured that all the hocus pocus on the git/workflow page is quite confusing therefore here the steps I'm using to get along with gerrit and windows.
 * 1) git clone ... (of whatever resource you start working on, if you start a new project someone from the gerrit crew has the create the project)
 * 2) Add commit-msg file -> copy into hooks/commit-msg (see the git/workflow page to get the file)
 * 3) Update master -> git pull --rebase gerrit master (just to ensure that the master is up-to-date)
 * 4) Create a local branch -> git checkout -b BRANCHNAME master (this just helps to organize different development streams, has nothing to do with gerrit)
 * 5) Commit -> git commit -a -m "(bug 123) ..." (just a local code freeze, can be done as often as you like)
 * 6) Push to gerrit -> git push gerrit HEAD:refs/for/master/bug/123 (/bug/123 is just a string which gerrit will use to assign it to the bug/123 topic branch; if you have registered "gerrit" as remote location use gerrit, if you haven't use origin)

Of course if you need to do some cheery picking then looking at the git/workflow will help to clarify available options. Another advice is to use the git gui because it really helps a lot to create comments, do commits and/or switching local branches.

If you amend a patchset that has already been pushed to gerrit, either use a special commit command (see git/workflow) or just use the git gui because as long as you work with the same local branch you are able to select the last commit and amend it. If you have finish just push it to gerrit because as long as the Change-Id is the same, gerrit knows to update the same commit with the new patchset.

Hope this helps --MWJames (talk) 10:36, 8 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi MWJames, thank you so much for this message! This looks like pretty much what I've been looking for &mdash; a quick and easy to understand guide to git, gerrit (which I greatly dislike, because it won't even load in IE9's default rendering mode) and committing to MediaWiki. Maybe I'll ask Chad or someone else to create me a project so that I could finally get Phalanx open-sourced... --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 21:13, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Dead link
Jack, the download link (WhitelistPages.php) is dead.--BertvanderHooft (talk) 08:24, 13 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Like many other extensions written by me, that extension is still in Subversion (SVN). For now, you can download it from there. I will look into migrating it to git in the near future, because that's pretty much the only option nowadays... --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 15:18, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Thoughts on TWN
Just dumping this here because it's long, and such.

So from what I can figure, it appears to be a fundamental problem with TWN's implementation, particularly of Extension:Translate or whatever it is they're using to actually pull in the documentation. Because it needs to support diverse projects, either the documentation needs to somehow be consistent between all of it, or handlers would have to be added for each new specific project; while the latter could potentially be done in an efficient manner as well, it could get pretty complicated.

The only truly consistent ways to include documentation would be to put it directly in the code, which they currently do, which precludes use of anything like images or general formatting, or to put it in a centralised database somewhere else, say the TWN wiki itself, which would require developers to both go somewhere strange to them as well as to potentially duplicate any documentation they may have on their own sites.

But it's also not like the extension couldn't be told to pull the documentation from somewhere else. Since it is MediaWiki, for MediaWiki-hosted stuff at very least it should be relatively trivial to pull off, and consistent hooks and forms for other projects could also be devised... unfortunately the fact that they apparently consider developers beneath them would probably complicate matters, since developers would be required to... well, develop something to do that.

So I got nothing. You? -— Isarra ༆ 20:58, 20 August 2012 (UTC)


 * The  implementation is, IMHO, problematic and hacky to say the least. Often a bunch of screenshots like this are far more helpful than developers' attempts at writing some sorta docs. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 08:23, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Allowing CheckUser to reveal e-mail addresses
It does not make that much sense to allow e-mail address filtering if we're unable to find the bad email addresses in the first place using CheckUser. Also, since I think many sockpuppeteers might use the same e-mail address repeatedly, allowing CheckUser to find them out can definitely confirm such sockpuppets.Jasper Deng (talk) 16:55, 2 September 2012 (UTC)


 * As we discussed on IRC, there are already extensions like LookupUser which allow retrieving the e-mail address of a user. It's probably still a good idea to implement this for CheckUser and it shouldn't be too hard to do.

I've tried myself contacting various spammed wikis' owners and administrators and the task has sometimes proven impossible for the admin or admins no longer visit the wiki actively and whois records are useless. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 08:23, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Personally, I think it's horribly silly that now, in the era of free e-mail providers (such as Gmail, Hotmail, etc.), an e-mail address is still considered very private. I feel that there should be an alternate way (besides on-wiki talk pages) to contact every user; or if not every user, then at least the "ones in charge".

A problem about Nimbus skin
Hi, I've downloaded the Nimbus skin from this page and install it on my wiki site. It's a really amazing skin, however I've noticed an error about the redirect page. For example, page A redirects to page B, when I go to page A, it takes me to page B, but there's no "Redirected from A" link like in the default skin of mediawiki. Also, when I click on Disscussion or Edit, it takes me to Disscussion/Edit of page A instead of page B (although the content displayed is from page B). I hope you'll look into this and send me a reply soon. I really enjoy using your Nimbus skin, so I wish for it to have as few errors as possible.

My versions are

MediaWiki 	1.18.0

PHP 	5.2.17 (apache2handler)

MySQL 	5.0.77

Thank you for your time. Thucproa1 (talk) 20:09, 1 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Although my reply is very much overdue (sorry!), I think I know what you're talking about. Please open a new bug on Bugzilla about this so that the issue can be properly tracked. Thanks! --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 13:46, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Comments extension
Hi, is there a way to put a field befores comment textarea in order to anonymous user insert a name ? Thank you very much for this extension we really apreciate your work. --200.8.101.42 15:12, 11 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Nope, there isn't such a feature &mdash; yet anyway! Please feel free to open a new bug on Bugzilla about this so that this feature request can be properly tracked. Thanks! --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 13:46, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

mobile fronted extension
i have mediawikiwmf9 installed. The problem is in configure mobile url template. suppose i filled m.%h0%h1. it takes to url but with error that page does not exists.or sometimes when i visit the homepage it is of mobile version. the main page is at http://punjabworks.org/w/index.php/Main_Page could you help me the mobileurl template. please solve it for god sake or else i will be fired. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 124.253.137.93 (talk • contribs) 11:37, 14 February 2013‎


 * There are just so many things wrong with this request that I don't know where to begin...


 * Firstly, you shouldn't have a Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) version of MediaWiki installed; you should rather have a normal, standard edition of MediaWiki installed.


 * Secondly, I know nothing about MobileFrontend; you're better asking on the MobileFrontend extension talk page, on Project:Support desk, on the many mailing lists, etc.


 * Thirdly, if you are concerned about being fired...well, maybe you should ask someone who knows the extension to help you and consider paid contractors and whatnot instead of asking a volunteer who barely has heard of that extension. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 13:46, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Silly question
Have you any idea what this is talking about?

Unrelatedly you are now tasked with making the extension not stupid. Please. I'm too swamped to look into it currently and you've already worked with it and you're the sexy one anyway. I'll explain later. -— Isarra ༆ 04:05, 24 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Seems like someone is talking for the sake of talking, despite having no clue whatsoever regarding what's going on. Or then they are really bad at expressing their thoughts. Either way, real security issue reports should go to the Bugzilla so that the appropriate people can investigate them and if a security issue is found, they can patch it and announce the availability of the patch via the proper channels. If there is a security issue in there &mdash; which, by the way, I highly doubt &mdash; posting on the talk page is highly irrensponsible and serves no good.


 * As for MultiUpload...I'm not even going to bother. The upload stuff is complicated and the fact that someone tends to break it between each and every damn major release of MediaWiki isn't exactly helping either. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 13:46, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Butbutbut you're supposed to clean up after everyone else! It's the entire point of your existence, clearly. -— Isarra ༆ 05:33, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Need help installing SocialProfile, may have discovered sql file error
I'm Arcane (same one from ShoutWiki), and I tried to install the latest version of SocialProfile to my localhost wiki (MW 1.20.3) (the latest trunk version of the extension), and I encountered an error with the sql file apparently trying to create the sql table but for some reason it refused to work properly.

I am uncertain why this is so, perhaps you may wish to look into this.

I left the specifics on the SocialProfile extension talk page.

If you can help me figure out what I did wrong or if there is an error in the sql file (I checked, it looks fine to me), I hope this message proves helpful.

P.S. - You've been very helpful on ShoutWiki, and from what I've seen you've been very helpful here as well. :)

Arcane21 (talk) 01:46, 9 April 2013 (UTC)Arcane

SocialProfile error when I upgrade to a major version of mediawiki
I upgraded my wiki from 1.20.3 to 1.20.6 with no problems on SocialProfile extension but when I upgrade to a major version like 1.20.0 or 1.20.1 I get this error when I access to a profile user:

Notice Innaccessible property via _get: user_id in home/tsr/public_html/wiki/includes/Article.php on line 1918

I haven't got ssh access. I upgrade overwritng files and running update.php

I read this:

It is no different from using other maintenance scripts, such as update.php, for example. After all, whenever you upgrade your MediaWiki from a major version to a newer major version, you need to run update.php from the command line in order to ensure that all schema changes will be applied properly. If you don't run update.php whenever upgrading your MediaWiki, you will likely get errors. But anyway, see my post above for links to the SQL files. Copy the required SQL queries from the four files, paste them into the "SQL" prompt in phpMyAdmin and execute the queries. --Sayuri 14:02, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

But I don't know what to do. I think that is an error with your extension becasue it's relationed with user profiles. Thanks. Your extension is great!

Tonigellida (talk) 11 June 2013


 * It's a known bug, see 49280. Also, in the future, it's better to post reports like this on the extension's talk page so that more people will see it and maybe someone might be able to help you out sooner than I. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 10:56, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Global editinterface
Hi Jack Phoenix, just a reminder that the global edit interface rights which were granted to you last year are scheduled to expire on 13 July. So if you still have a need and/or willingness to hold these rights, please make a request for renewal on m:Steward requests/Global permissions. Best regards, --MF-Warburg (talk) 15:03, 5 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the notice, I've left a request on that Meta page. :) --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 21:59, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank You Now What?
Thank you for removing Orangemike attack. Now what? Please advise. Kiwanis2015 (talk) 13:03, 30 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about but it doesn't sound related to MediaWiki.org. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 13:28, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Skin themes
If these are generally just changing the colours of existing skins and such, rewriting the skins to use variables for the pieces that are specific colours (LESS should support that, though I dunno that mediawiki would be smart enough to actually send it the variables without dying of horror at doing something actually useful for a change, but whatever the case you get the idea) would make it really easy to quickly make different colour schemes that both look good and don't bug out. There'd also potentially be room to create a UI for local admins to modify the default ones (say it comes with 'black', 'white', 'dusk', 'dawn') or make their own 'bloody horror' one or whatever without having to know or touch any css. Just a colourpicker and whatnot like nautilus2 had...

And then have some random options for things like shadows and rounding or crap on the side.

Mind I have no idea what I'm talking about; your explanation the other day of that other extension went way over my head and I was just wondering if there were an actually useful uses for LESS (that aren't rendered redundant by a good site architecture) and this was what my half-asleep brain came up with. -— Isarra ༆ 07:47, 4 October 2013 (UTC)


 * You're somewhat describing what Wikia did with SASS and their ThemeDesigner extension (and the Oasis skin).


 * Less maintenance always sounds cool from a developer perspective, but years of experience with MW has taught me at least one thing: expect it to break (where "it" is just about any MW-related thing, be it a core component, a custom skin, an upstream extension or anything inbetween).


 * Mind you, LESS/SASS/all CSS preprocessors generally feel like a horribly tacky idea and the syntax gives me a headache &mdash; I prefer my CSS readable and understanable, thank you very much. (And we all know just how much people listen to me in matters such at these...)


 * As for how Extension:Theme works...try reading the code. If and when it's still unclear, maybe a flowchar would be somewhat more useful? --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 12:52, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Localization
Why SocialProfile extension doesn't use translatewiki.net? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 91.98.122.229 (talk • contribs)


 * You'd have to ask them about that. It was removed well over a year ago with no explanation and I added it back in 82393, which I submitted over a month ago, but it hasn't gotten any attention whatsoever. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 12:52, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

I thought you are developer of this extensions, I'll ask them in extension's discussion page —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 91.98.122.229 (talk • contribs)


 * I am the maintainer and a prominent deveoper of SocialProfile and the related social tools, but I have zero control over translatewiki.net and their decisions, unfortunately. Also, please remember to sign your comments with four tildes ( ~ ) so that I'll know who wrote what and when without having to check the page history. Thanks! --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 19:57, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi! I heard that you deleted Manual:Configuration settings/zh-hans page...
So... I;ll translate it offline, and then upload it to this wiki. Is that OK?--Kexy2013 (talk) 08:45, 19 October 2013 (UTC)


 * You're free to translate it on this wiki, too, of course! I just happened to delete the page in question because it had no translated content whatsoever. Unfortunately it's not unusual for people to create pages like Manual:Foo/fr without actually translating the content. I mistakenly assumed that that was the case with the page you created, too. Please feel free to translate it to Chinese! --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 11:18, 19 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I know it's bad to see a 'Chinese' page to be full of English, so I'll translate it in my user page first, then I'll move it into the right page. Thank you very much for noticing me that!And please forgive me for my terrible English...--Kexy2013 (talk) 10:34, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Need help reverting some vandalism
This page was vandalized with some spam, but I was unable to revert the vandalism due to the spam filter. Arcane21 (talk) 18:03, 13 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for reporting this, I've rolled back the spam edit. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 20:02, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Adding MediaWikiChat to TWN
Fairly simple, how do I? :)

(Another case of I-can't-find-the-docs :/ )

Cheers! UltrasonicNXT (talk)


 * I'd argue that it's somewhat difficult to find something that doesn't exist. ;-) I was able to find a mammoth page on the general functionality as well as a more specialized page on TWN, but neither of them address this question, which is of particular importance to developers.


 * translatewiki:Translating:MediaWiki has some more info, but it doesn't clearly address this question either (that page implies that support is somehow automagic, which it obviously isn't; however, your extension can apparently get removed without any advance notice, which can confuse the hell out of you as a developer and the users of your software, and readding it is nowhere near as simple as it should be).


 * Long story short, you'll need to ask TWN staff, either or Support or on the #mediawiki-i18n IRC channel.


 * Also, it should be noted that if you commit "directly" to git, your changes won't show up on gerrit. At least the TWN people aren't very fond of that practise (the last time I checked), but as a developer, it means you'll need to first make your code changes, then  the file(s) you want to commit, then ,   (or   if you're on a *NIX-like system), then go to gerrit, find your commit (or just click on the link that the bot posts on #wikimedia-dev ;), press the "Review" button and manually give the commit C+2 and V+2 (Code review and Verified, respectively) to get it actually merged to the repository.


 * I hope this helps, but if you have any questions, don't hesitate to poke me on IRC (or via e-mail, but it's usually easier to leave me a PM). --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 22:40, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Cool, thanks. Re the commit workflow, have I been doing something wrong? How you describe is how I've been doing it for MediaWikiChat for the last few days :) UltrasonicNXT (talk)


 * Sorry, my bad &mdash; I must've missed the commits or then the commit bot's been malfunctioning or something; you've been doing the commits completely correctly! --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 19:58, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

A kitten for you!
As thanks for being a helpful wiki administrator.

I also wanted to wish you some very happy holidays.

Arcane21 (talk) 01:59, 18 December 2013 (UTC) 


 * Aww, that's such a cute kitten! Thank you and happy holidays to you too! Let's hope that 2014 will be an even better year. :-) --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 14:56, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Re: Flow Portal
I can't answer your post at Talk:Flow Portal because Flow doesn't work on my browser (can't actually save any edits…), so I'm taking the liberty of responding here.

In all seriousness, I don't think I should have brought this topic on any equivalent of a village pump. I made a good-faith edit which was consistent with how other pages on this wiki look like: I fixed text I couldn't read on a documentation page for a project I have nothing to do with (I also filed #58683), and the only thing I received in return—hint: instead of a "thank you"—was a revert with a message claiming there's some design to making it impossible for people to read that text, and then an ownership- and god-like behaviour from a WMF employee, which is so un-wiki and plain rude I don't even know where to start.

And FYI, I did try to be nice and bring this up on IRC; here's the response I got there (starts at 20:08).

To end on a more positive note: since Flow doesn't work for me (I don't even get pinged by mentions left there), and since my involvement in anything Flow-related is obviously unwelcome, I'm removing that page from my watchlist, and will no longer care what happens. You can continue discussing the issue, but I won't be involved. Happy holidays. odder (talk) 11:21, 24 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree with you in that your edit removed what was clearly an inconsistency between the Flow Portal page and the rest of MediaWiki.org.


 * I admit not checking -tech logs, so I didn't know you had tried to negotiate about the issue in IRC. My apologies!


 * Finally, I can't obviously speak for the Wikimedia Foundation and/or its employees, but personally I think that making people feel unwelcome is the exact opposite of the Foundation's goals. Especially with a major technical project such as Flow, I see no reason not to listen to all feedback. In fact, I see criticism as a way to improve things &mdash; and I truly feel sorry for those who do not see it as such.


 * There's been no definitive answers to my questions on the Flow talk page, but maybe that's due to the holiday season and all, and maybe some of these important questions I asked will be answered in January &mdash; at least I hope so. If we have pages that have some kind of "ownership constraints", it'd be helpful for all MediaWiki.org editors to be aware of the situation so that we don't get accused of stepping on someone's toes when we were under the impression that all pages are freely editable (save the protected ones, such as the main page) and mistakes should be correctable by anyone... --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 23:18, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

offer of assistance
Thank you for your work on the mediawiki extensions and especially for your help in responding to my issue at diywik. I write for a living--for some larger companies and some smaller ones. If you'd like a hand with some of the documentation, let me know. As a new user, I see some parts that are markedly frustrating in some of the extension documentation and I'd be happy to address that or to work with you to write yours to pay you back for what you do for the community. RobbiDrake (talk) 05:38, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Robbi, thank you for the kind offer. :-) SocialProfile's end-user documentation is in a rather poor shape and plenty of things are documented only on the talk page and/or talk page archives, so any and all assistance with improving the docs is more than welcome! --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 13:53, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I certainly meant that not as a --complaint or a negative statement--and I hope that it was taken in the spirit in which it was offered. It's quite frustrating as a new user to try to work out some of the extensions and having talked to some folks who really aren't very technical, the main complaint that I have heard is that in many extensions, the directions, which would be better served wiki-style, sort of step by step, skip critical components that make them very difficult for new users to decipher the methodology to implement them. Not specifically yours. I myself have built sites for years and found one extension so lacking in information that in the end it was easier to just not use it. Point me in any direction that you like or tell me what you need specifically and I'll be happy to write it for you. RobbiDrake (talk) 16:08, 1 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Apologies if my reply came across as somewhat blunt &mdash; it certainly wasn't my intention!


 * If you look at the main page of MediaWiki.org, you'll notice that there are three "hubs": for users, system administrators and developers. SocialProfile's documentation &mdash; whatever there is &mdash; focuses largely on the latter two groups (and the developer documentation isn't too good either, but it's a start), which leads to questions like Extension talk:SocialProfile. Yes, those are perfectly valid questions, but the end-users shouldn't need to ask such questions &mdash; the docs should cover the very basic usage of the extension, such as how to perform these two tasks, but currently they don't.


 * Given that this is a wiki and that you have plenty of writing experience, please be bold and don't hesitate to edit! Even better, if you're willing to give up the copyright on your contributions, you could create a page/pages similar to Help:Extension:ParserFunctions to document SocialProfile; because the pages in the Help: namespace are in the public domain, every MediaWiki user can freely do whatever they want with them, irregardless of their wiki's content license. Of course this is not a mandatory requirement and there's plenty of copyrighted documentation on this wiki, such as the extensive help page for Extension:ProofreadPage at Proofreadhelp. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 05:16, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Whitelist_Pages
Hello,

Are you planning on adding $wgWhitelistReadRegexp support to Extension:Whitelist_Pages? I'm hoping you do. --85.253.85.158 20:01, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hmm.. are you not active or is the above suggestion just completely out of question? --194.150.65.84 15:46, 9 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Interesting conclusion there. I don't respond within a couple days and therefore I must be inactive?


 * Anyway, Extension:Whitelist Pages was put together in 2011, whereas MediaWiki 1.21 &mdash; which introduced the $wgWhitelistReadRegexp configuration variable &mdash; was released in 2013. I most certainly am not opposed to adding support for it into Whitelist Pages, but it's not something I'm planning on doing myself, at least anytime soon. But hey, the code is open source and entirely license-free, so have at it. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 21:03, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The reply may have sounded dickish, but it certainly wasn't meant to be that. It's really unfortunate that you're not planning on updating the extension :(, would have made it even more useful, but it's your choice. Best of luck! --62.65.230.239 07:04, 11 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Whitelist Pages is a relatively terrible "expose configuration variable as an end-user-editable MediaWiki: page" hack, one that would never have existed in the first place in an ideal world. The underlying issue is that MediaWiki didn't have and still doesn't have a half-decent configuration management system in core; Extension:Configure exists, but I'm not sure when it was last updated, and nevertheless, it's still an extension. Thankfully now there's a plan to add database-based configuration management system to core MediaWiki; let's hope it gets implemented soon! --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 20:23, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Join the GSoC & OPW IRC meeting
Hi! The community bonding period is over, and you should have started working on your project. In addition to the strict work, you are required to report frequently, see the details at the GSoC or OPW pages.

The Engineering Community team is organizing a Q&A session for all participants (mentors included) tomorrow Tuesday at, see Engineering Community Team/Meetings/2014-05-20. See you there!--Qgil (talk) 21:57, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

As your mentor, I command you...
Do some stuff. This stuff, to be precise. Please.

Basically, I need you to create a LESS file with definitions for a bunch of variables for the common colours which will then be called throughout the skin.

To do this, you'll probably first want to compile a list of all the colours present in the entire thing and what they're used for, then include that information (default colour and places used) in comments with the variable that will then replace all instances of that colour.

I need you to do this so the thing is easily themeable. Namely so I can come up with some colours for some themes that aren't completely random. Colours that come with a money back if you're not completely alive guarantee: that they should work with the skin. As a theme. Colours that I will give you. And then you make those colours into the themes themselves. Easily. Yes.

Unless I already told you all of this. I don't think I did. Did I? -— Isarra ༆ 02:17, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Wiki I made
I made a wiki with my own domain, AllWiki I would need help making a wiki farm. --50.151.101.179 21:04, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Displaying Overall/Average votes?
Hey, is there a way to display overall/average votes/rating on a page using the VoteNY extension?--78.0.80.15 20:51, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

An important message about renaming users
Dear Jack Phoenix,

I am cross-posting this message to many places to make sure everyone who is a Wikimedia Foundation project bureaucrat receives a copy. If you are a bureaucrat on more than one wiki, you will receive this message on each wiki where you are a bureaucrat.

As you may have seen, work to perform the Wikimedia cluster-wide single-user login finalisation (SUL finalisation) is taking place. This may potentially effect your work as a local bureaucrat, so please read this message carefully.

Why is this happening? As currently stated at the global rename policy, a global account is a name linked to a single user across all Wikimedia wikis, with local accounts unified into a global collection. Previously, the only way to rename a unified user was to individually rename every local account. This was an extremely difficult and time-consuming task, both for stewards and for the users who had to initiate discussions with local bureaucrats (who perform local renames to date) on every wiki with available bureaucrats. The process took a very long time, since it's difficult to coordinate crosswiki renames among the projects and bureaucrats involved in individual projects.

The SUL finalisation will be taking place in stages, and one of the first stages will be to turn off Special:RenameUser locally. This needs to be done as soon as possible, on advice and input from Stewards and engineers for the project, so that no more accounts that are unified globally are broken by a local rename to usurp the global account name. Once this is done, the process of global name unification can begin. The date that has been chosen to turn off local renaming and shift over to entirely global renaming is 15 September 2014, or three weeks time from now. In place of local renames is a new tool, hosted on Meta, that allows for global renames on all wikis where the name is not registered will be deployed.

Your help is greatly needed during this process and going forward in the future if, as a bureaucrat, renaming users is something that you do or have an interest in participating in. The Wikimedia Stewards have set up, and are in charge of, a new community usergroup on Meta in order to share knowledge and work together on renaming accounts globally, called Global renamers. Stewards are in the process of creating documentation to help global renamers to get used to and learn more about global accounts and tools and Meta in general as well as the application format. As transparency is a valuable thing in our movement, the Stewards would like to have at least a brief public application period. If you are an experienced renamer as a local bureaucrat, the process of becoming a part of this group could take as little as 24 hours to complete. You, as a bureaucrat, should be able to apply for the global renamer right on Meta by the requests for global permissions page on 1 September, a week from now.

In the meantime please update your local page where users request renames to reflect this move to global renaming, and if there is a rename request and the user has edited more than one wiki with the name, please send them to the request page for a global rename.

Stewards greatly appreciate the trust local communities have in you and want to make this transition as easy as possible so that the two groups can start working together to ensure everyone has a unique login identity across Wikimedia projects. Completing this project will allow for long-desired universal tools like a global watchlist, global notifications and many, many more features to make work easier.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns about the SUL finalisation, read over the Help:Unified login page on Meta and leave a note on the talk page there, or on the talk page for global renamers. You can also contact me on my talk page on meta if you would like. I'm working as a bridge between Wikimedia Foundation Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Stewards, and you to assure that SUL finalisation goes as smoothly as possible; this is a community-driven process and I encourage you to work with the Stewards for our communities.

Thank you for your time. -- Keegan (WMF) talk 18:24, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

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The future of skins
Hi.

An RfC on the future of skins is open here:
 * Requests for comment/HTML templating library

I am notifying you as you're maintaining (at least) this skin:
 * Skin:Aurora

Please consider participating. Thanks. :-)

--Gryllida 04:39, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

P.S. You're wonderful, you appear to be maintaining and porting lots. Thanks! --Gryllida 23:13, 28 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for pinging me about this! Far too often major breaking changes just "slip" into releases and you, as a developer, are left to wonder "just why is this thing breaking?", and tracking down the change(s) and fixing your code is an annoying and time-consuming process. When new and major things are designed and implemented &mdash; nowadays usually via the RfC process &mdash; I feel that it's important to have proper documentation and a clear migration path for older code; backwards compatibility isn't exactly something we're terribly good at.

That being said, the skin system obviously needs lots and lots of love, but from the perspective of a third-party user, one big breaking change is a lot better than multiple smaller, but equally breaking changes. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 14:50, 31 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I've indeed written or contributed to several skins, of which most are listed on my MediaWiki contributions page. Given the overall state of our skinning system and the fact that most third-party users &mdash; sadly &mdash; generally speaking don't open-source their custom skins, I'd argue this makes me the most profilic MediaWiki skin developer to date.
 * Thanks for leaving a verbose response at the RfC. I would like to translate the RfC itself, but was told that its content page may be out of date and someone should check it first. Would you be able to do that or find someone who can do that?
 * I've read Manual:QuickTemplate a little. A new concept to me, which I haven't yet fully grasped. Does it involve bits of PHP code inside of skins? I think that the current RfC is perhaps not about removing it - but adding a templating thing as an alternative means of skinning (via only HTML, CSS, and JS). Or they could possibly move QuickTemplate into an extension and have all folks get a massive warning when upgrading. Dunno.
 * --Gryllida 04:41, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

As for checking the RfC and its fact, perhaps it'd be the best to ask the RfC's author(s) to do that?
 * I'm not sure how useful it's to translate the various requests for comment, as many of them are highly technical in nature and likely relevant only to us MediaWiki geeks developing MediaWiki and its various extensions and skins and whatnot. Translating actual content pages, like the various help pages, and writing new ones, is more productive and useful in the long run, IMHO.


 * The concept that QuickTemplate and the various other templating mechanisms presented in the RfC allow is called the separation of presentation and content, or even more accurately, separation of the front-end and back-end. Many parts of MediaWiki &mdash; pure PHP classes, like the various special page files in the  directory &mdash; contain both back-end logic ("fetch X entries from the database where foo_bar is 5 or greater") and front-end logic ("wrap the fetched entries in a nice table and output that to the user"). QuickTemplate and friends, when properly used, can make the code more readable and easier to maintain. Some examples of relatively ugly HTML generation in core are:


 * ...and many, many other places
 * ...and many, many other places
 * ...and many, many other places


 * A major deal is security: using the various  and   functions generates uglier code, but it's guaranteed to be secure (well, if you're not messing around with functions like   without knowing how to sanitize your input), whereas with templated HTML (such as QuickTemplate) you need to remember to make good use of   with   as the second parameter to that function.

Removing QuickTemplate from core in favor of whatever obscure templating library is chosen to replace it would constitute as a breaking change, and not a well-justified one (at least at this point). People need plenty of time to change older code to conform to new "standards", and let's face it, I'd rather be doing something else than porting code for the sake of porting because someone just had to ditch the older but perfectly functional API. The only so-called disadvantage of QuickTemplate would be that it doesn't support JS templating, but I've yet to find a good reason for templates in JS myself, so it's not a huge concern for me, but maybe it is for someone else. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 22:28, 6 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Sir Tim Berners-Lee once said that "cool URIs don't change". It's a statement that I value, although sometimes there's a reason to rename a page (but luckily MW handles renaming well!). Likewise, I'd like for cool MediaWiki APIs &mdash; I don't mean api.php &mdash; to not change in a breaking manner between every damn major release, but it still happens and will likely to continue happening. MediaWiki's backwards-compatibility is far from great and you can't ever expect code that's more than 6-12 months old to run smoothly, if it even runs.

WikiForum Enhancements and Fixes
Jack, we have been using the SocialProfile extension and updating related extensions as we integrate them into our needs.

For the WikiForum Extension we added or modified the following:
 * Lock down the Special:WikiForum page to moderators
 * The ability to split out the categories (added a WikiForumCategory hook)
 * Follow and unfollow to generate notifications
 * Found broken code in the WikiForumThread hook and corrected
 * Force Enhanced toolbar to show if user has opted for that toolbar in the comment area
 * Separate the search results by the category page
 * Created vanity url to not show breadcrumb in url on pages containing a wikiforumcategory tag
 * Improved the "move thread" functionality
 * Added updated pagination to be consistent with current wiki theme
 * Add "confirm delete" for any delete function

I realize not all of the enhancements would be wanted by all users, but I thought I would at least offer. If it is something you would be interested in looking at, I can send the updated code.

--Lemley7678 (talk) 17:03, 14 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Openness is what makes open source awesome, so please do share your improvements and tweaks with the community! I'm guessing that posting a patch file is the easiest way, since we're not talking about a few random tweaks, but substantial new functionality, which means lots and lots of changes. --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 17:14, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Comments extension modification
Hi Jack, I'm trying to contact you because I need to do some custom modifications in Comments extension. I sent you an email but didn't receive any answer. Do you have any other contact?

Thanks

Rhcastilhos (talk) 01:00, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

With all that being said, I think you might want to talk to UltrasonicNXT about the modifications you're interested in. He rewrote significant parts of the Comments extension recently, and as such he might be able to help you out. Best of luck! --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 22:17, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Rhcastilhos, apologies for the delayed reply, I've been busy. This talk page, along with the associated extension-specific talk pages (such as Extension talk:Comments) are the best and recommended ways to get in touch with me; I do read my email, too, but I get lots of mail, and as such, I've chosen (back in late 2012, actually) not to provide extension support via e-mail. All extension-specific questions should be posted on the respective extension's talk page so that other people will see the question, possibly answer it before I can, and benefit from the answer(s).

Table doesn't exist
Hi, I recently installed the ImageTagging extension on MW 1.24 but when I try to view an image page I get Error: 1146 Table 'dbname.imagetags' doesn't exist. I installed the extension as per your instructions, seems that update.php didn't add the needed tables. Could you shed some light?

Thanks, --LuisCasGT


 * Hi LuisCasGT, firstly I'm going to assume that you've read the warning on the extension page and that you're either a JavaScript developer or you know someone who is and thus is able to fix the extension. The extension's JavaScript part has major issues, as noted on the extension page, and thus ImageTagging isn't production-ready yet (and fixing it isn't on my roadmap currently).


 * Now, that being said, I was unable to reproduce your issue with MediaWiki 1.24.1 and the latest version (git master/2.0). What DBMS (MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, PostgreSQL, etc.) are you using? Only the aforementioned DBMSes are supported, though PostgreSQL support hasn't been tested lately, so it may or may not work. So while the update.php method should definitely work, you can "manually" create the table by using the sql.php maintenance script, like this:  (assuming you use MySQL/MariaDB/SQLite). --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 11:44, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Automatic Welcoming Tool
Hi Jack Phoinex,

I'm glad to see a fellow wikiHow editor! I thought I reco your name from somewhere. :)

I'm starting a new wiki, and I'd like a tool that automatically welcomes new users from a selection of admins that have recently been active. I also wanted to be able to allow admins to create a personal (not too crazy ;) ) welcoming template. (Sort of like wikiHow) However, Mediawiki doesn't seem to have this. Do you have any idea where I could find an extension like this?

~Nicolas. Thanks Jack! :D


 * Hi Nicolas, nice to see other wikiHow people here! :)


 * It sounds like the extension you're looking for is HAWelcome a.k.a Highly Automated Welcome Tool, originally written by Krzysztof Krzyżaniak (eloy) and Maciej Błaszkowski (Marooned) for Wikia. Depending on how it's configured, it does one or more of these actions:


 * welcomes the new user after their first edit
 * creates the new user's user page after their first edit
 * welcomes an anonymous user (=IP address) after their first edit (the welcome message by default encourages anons to sign up for an account)

There are three main versions/forks of the HAWelcome extension:


 * The Wikia version — the original version. The source code is available on GitHub, but it's highly tied in with the whole Wikia infrastructure and as such, it won't run as-is on a vanilla MediaWiki.
 * The ShoutWiki version — ShoutWiki uses a relatively vanilla version of MediaWiki, and years ago we wanted a version of HAWelcome that would work on our setup, so I forked the then-current Wikia version. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that that was years ago and we haven't incorporated latest functional changes from Wikia; that being said, the extension has worked as intended all these years. The source code isn't currently available, though I've been meaning to publish it for ages (and your request just might be the perfect "excuse" for doing that ;-).
 * The wikiHow version — much like ShoutWiki back in the day, wikiHow also forked Wikia's version of HAWelcome. The wikiHow version was forked earlier than the ShoutWiki version, and certain functions have been rewritten and/or added to better support the wikiHow infrastructure.


 * Wikia has a help page about using and customizing this extension on their Community Central site. All in all, HAWelcome is a pretty nifty extension and it's very easy to set it up, too. None of the three versions listed above allow the sent message to vary on a per-sender basis, though I'd imagine implementing that wouldn't be too difficult. When configured so, HAWelcome will pick a random admin who has made an edit during the past two months (=60 days) and use their name when signing the welcome message(s).


 * Let me know if this sounds like what you were looking for and I'll be glad to publish the ShoutWiki version of HAWelcome for you! --Jack Phoenix (Contact) 20:17, 17 May 2015 (UTC)