User talk:MarkAHershberger/Archive 1

Thumbnail patch
Hey Mark,

the patch did not work with my Wiki. I noticed that some thumbnails worked, others did not, independently of their file type (jpg, gif, ...). The only effect of the patch was that links to non-existent pages where not underlined red anymore, but black with a red question mark right next to it.

Any help?

--Thorsten (talk) 09:57, 13 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Sent you an email asking you to try this 1.20 beta tarball and let me know what you find.

Question About Workflow Proposal for Problem Entry
Hello, for my OPW Project (my project page) I wanted to complete the Workflow Proposal you started. I plan to look at other open source projects to see how they handle feedback. If you could, I'd like to know your original thoughts on this to help direct me where to look and formulate questions to ask contacts in other projects. Thank you for your time! --Valeriej (talk) 18:49, 07 January 2013 (UTC)
 * My original idea was to set up a wizard of some sort to help users report problems and make sure the problem reports. Wikipedia is pretty unique -- Mozilla and Gnome don't have anywhere close to the copyright issues that Wikipedia does.  But I did find that some things Mozilla is doing on QMO looked very attractive, community-wise.  I'm not sure what else you're interested in.  Feel free to contact me on IRC (hexmode) and I'll discuss it with you further.

MW 1.19. support
Heiya Mark, there seems to be some confusion about the time span MW 1.19 will be supported. The announcement states two years. One could argue that this is counted from the initial release of 1.19. in May 2012 (= support until May 2014), or for the two years Wheezy is supported (= support until February 2015). The latter makes more sense to me, but clarification would be cool. I am sure that you will be of help in this case. Cheers --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; (talk) 23:52, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
 * My idea was more along the line of syncing up with Debian. I want to get all this nailed down with other devs.  Where have you hear talk about this? -- ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 00:04, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * It was a recent edit commentary on page Version lifecycle which made me have second thoughts. I believe that it is crucial for the community to know, either way. There is no immediate problem. However, a lot of people are relying on the info there. Besides, your thoughts on this sound reasonable to me. --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; (talk) 01:03, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Heiya Mark, I just saw your recent edit on Version lifecycle. Great to know and thank you for clarifying this. Cheers --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; (talk) 18:06, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Using Git Review with Github
When I try to commit, I get this:

$ git review -R No '.gitreview' file found in this repository. We don't know where your gerrit is. Please manually create a remote named gerrit and try again.

Do you know how I configure it to use with Github? ఠ_ఠ Inquisitor Sasha Ehrenstein des Sturmkrieg Sector (Talk) (Contr) 14:34, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
 * git review is only needed for Gerrit. If you're using github, you would use "git push".-- ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 14:46, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Can't Filter out Search Words with SpecialSearchGo/SpecialSearchNogomatch
Hi Mark,

You had replied to my question on the mw support site. Your reply is pasted below. I followed your suggestion and tried SpecialSearchGo and SpecialSearchNogomatch. I've been trying to modify code in the default search, in \includes\specials\SpecialSearch.php in order to filter out "the" and "the " from a search term such as "thearticle" or "the article" but I can't get it to work.

I tried to register this hook in Localsettings.php: $wgHooks['onSpecialSearchGo'][] = 'SpecialSearch::onSpecialSearchGo'; Then in \includes\specials\SpecialSearch.php, I added this static function in the class SpecialSearch: public static function onSpecialSearchGo( &$term ) { if (preg_match("/^'the /i", $term)) {		$term = ltrim ($term,'the '); return SearchEngine::getNearMatch( $term ); }			if (preg_match("/^'the/i", $term)) {		$term = ltrim ($term,'the'); return SearchEngine::getNearMatch( $term ); } I also did a lot of online searches and read mw documentation such as at: Manual:Hooks/SpecialSearchGo, Manual:Hooks/SpecialSearchNogomatch

But I can't get the search to filter out "the" from search terms. I don't know how to call it and incorporate it into the search results yet.

Do I have to run wfRunHooks or some sort of callback for the static function I created? Can you suggest an example? -- (above question asked by Peter321)


 * Your hook invocation uses the wrong name. It should be:
 * No, you don't have to run .  That is how hooks are created.  MediaWiki code creates an hook by calling.
 * Hooks return true or false to determine if the calling code should call any more hooks, so I don't think your return is correct.
 * Do not modify includes\specials\SpecialSearch.php. Instead, put your function in LocalSettings.php or in a file you load via require_once.
 * I don't have an example, but looking at SpecialSearch.php, you should use the  hook to modify the search terms.  This would  give you code like the following:
 * I don't have an example, but looking at SpecialSearch.php, you should use the  hook to modify the search terms.  This would  give you code like the following:

$wgHooks['SpecialSearchGo'][] = 'onSpecialSearchGo'; function onSpecialSearchGo( &$title, &$term ) { # munge $term how you want here return true; } -- ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 22:17, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

User rights vote
I applied at Project:Requests. There haven't been many votes, if you would be interested in doing so. ఠ_ఠ Inquisitor Sasha Ehrenstein des Sturmkrieg Sector (Talk) (Contr) 01:28, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Images doesn't work
Hi Mark! I did an update on my wiki yesterday but for some reason the thumbnails doesnt work anymore. I have installed version 1.20.5. For example, I'll put this image: http://www.khmaniacs.com/wiki/index.php?title=Archivo:10aniversario.jpg If I try to check its original resolution ("Resolucion original" in spanish) I cant see the picture because for some reason the link includes 2 subfolders that doesnt existe. I mean: The link is this one http://www.khmaniacs.com/wiki/images/8/81/10aniversario.jpg but the file is uploaded to http://www.khmaniacs.com/wiki/images/10aniversario.jpg

Yesterday it worked perfectly with all the images of the wiki, as you can see through Google's cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uRWJiiY2N_YJ:www.khmaniacs.com/wiki/+&cd=1&hl=es&ct=clnk&client=firefox-a Please I need to fix this, I have more than 4.000 images on the Wiki, I just cant reupload every single file again :(.

Thank you in advance! -- 83.97.234.148


 * It looks like you've upgraded from 1.15, right? What is $wgHashedUploadDirectory set to in your LocalSettings.php?  If it isn't set then does the wiki work if you set it to false?
 * By the way, I've added your wiki to WikiApiary. — ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 13:24, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
 * (Self followup, setting $wgHashedUploadDirectory to false worked.) — ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 13:56, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

createAndPromote.php
I added the functionality for adding any user group:

https://github.com/Sturmkrieg/mw-userCreate/blob/master/createAndPromote.php

ఠ_ఠ Inquisitor Sasha Ehrenstein des Sturmkrieg Sector (Talk) (Contr) 03:15, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Thread:Talk:Universal_Language_Selector/Old_English_Wikipedia
Hello. Where can I ask about this and get an answer? πr2 (t • c) 23:43, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Re: MediaWiki:Histlegend
Sorry, I didn't know it had already been disabled. Too bad Toolserver is dying so painfully. I've removed the link; action=info rarely provides the same information for non-sysops. --Nemo 16:46, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, I said "rarely" not "never". When the number of watchers is below a certain amount, it is not displayed. Hence it makes no sense to link it for everyone, especially as info action is already linked from toolbar. --Nemo 17:04, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
 * No, I was not in HK, so no occasion lost. :) --Nemo 11:58, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Need your advice? Which Scenario (Wiki Farms)?
Hi Mark

Festival thanks that you let me know about (Wiki Farms Or Wiki Family)…

I did learn about little bet…from here Manual:Wiki_family, And still do…

I'm building a website from multi Mediawikis, And I need to use wiki Farms inside it? But there were several scenario (Over 7) to do that. And I'm confusing

Here is some information's about my website:


 * It's about 5-6 Mediawikis version.
 * All wikis In one same language.
 * Each wiki should have its own articles pages.

What I hope to get through Wiki Farms are:


 * Get one extensions Directory. (To all Wikis)
 * Get One templates & talks pages through all Wikis.
 * Get One users & talks pages through all Wikis.
 * Get One helps & talks pages through all Wikis.
 * Get One projects & talks Pages through all Wikis.

Which Scenario should I do, to get these results? I hope you can help me.

Thanks in advanced
 * Someone responded to your question on the WikiFarm list.  You should see what help you can get there, since I haven't set up multiple wikis before. -- ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 18:45, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Administrator promotion
Could I please get promoted so that I can work on adding gadgets that other users might find useful? I've created gadgets for doing things such as fixing the bar of user links at the top, adding userspace links to it, sandbox links, and a few other useful things. ఠ_ఠ Inquisitor Sasha Ehrenstein des Sturmkrieg Sector (Talk) (Contr) 04:21, 12 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Three things:
 * Admin rights are given out at Project:Requests, since it's not uncontroversial, especially given point 2:
 * I'm still not convinced you have the necessary experience or maturity for an admin position here, partly because of point 3:
 * You can't just go around adding random gadgets; you need to obtain the community's consent (for this community, that's easiest to do with IRC)
 * --Jasper Deng (talk) 04:37, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
 * OK. I didn't realize there was a process for adding them.  I also didn't want to be starting a whole new discussion there, and I didn't know if there is a policy about reactivating old discussions.   ఠ_ఠ  Inquisitor Sasha Ehrenstein des Sturmkrieg Sector (Talk) (Contr) 04:45, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Image on Vector sidebar?
Hi. Do you know how of easy way to place a image / banner on my Vector Sidebar? This is possible in Monobook, but I can't find any useful information on how to do this in Vector. Thanks. JJ.Sandal @ heimskringla.no

Manual:Writing maintenance scripts
Thanks for your work on Manual:Writing maintenance scripts. As you know, those kinds of hello world scripts are quite useful for beginners who might otherwise think to themselves, "Where do I start?" Leucosticte (talk) 20:13, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

How to manage email / password acquire (Como gerenciar e-mails / adquirir senha)
Hello, I'm from Brazil, I have a problem! A person opened several accounts and email to me, and was making a page for my company. Today I can no more contact with this person, and I need to create new e-mail and cancel others, I do not know how to access and do not have the password, what should I do? ... (Olá, sou do brasil, estou com um problema! Uma pessoa abriu varias contas de e-mail para mim, e ficou de fazer uma página para minha empresa. Hoje não consigo mais contato com esta pessoa, e necessito criar novos e-mail e cancelar outros, eu não sei como acessar e não tenho a senha, o que devo fazer?) ... andre@siqueiramotta.com.br

Maintaining the Block and Nuke extension
Hi, Thanks for working and improving my extension. At the moment the code you added is showing errors and not working. Users have contacted me that they would like to use the extension. I can't figure out to de-bug your code. Are you planning on maintaining your code? If you are please fix the bugs otherwise I would like my original code to be available for users to download. I've updated it for mediawiki 1.21. How do I upload it to git (without overwriting your code), or best make it into a snapshot so users can download it easily. Perhaps it is best if you create a new extension with your additions and then I can maintain the code I wrote. Thanks. --LTech (talk) 18:05, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Replied on your talk page. -- ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 15:34, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

GSoC 2014 Talk
I have submitted my proposal for Catalogue for MediaWiki extensionsfor GSoC 2014. Need to talk to you about the project. Please tell me how can i contact you.--mecyborg (talk) 5:30, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Installed MW on XAMPP: Now what?
Hi Mark, I've installed MW on XAMPP with the hope of creating a private Semantic MediaWiki for an academic org (ASNC; $wgSitename = "ASNC";). Right now the address of the wiki is only on localhost (http://localhost/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page). How do I set make it an actual wiki page that is not part of the MW project? Do I first need to install it onto their web site using something like Softaculous? (I have yet to install Semantic Bundle because the SMW install instrux say I need a working wiki.) I am familiar with PHP code but not PHPMyAdmin, mySQL, MW procedures, etc. Not finding info I need elsewhere. Would appreciate your guidance. Many thanks, Erin --Erinbarrett (talk) 20:24, 20 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Please contact me via email so that I can deterimine you needs and we can discuss what should be done. -- ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 13:29, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Release descriptions in extension distributor
Hi Mark. Re this, you probably meant to do this instead. Thanks, This, that and the other (talk) 09:28, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Human nature
The definition appears to work like this: Any feature that I personally use is critical infrastructure, no matter how few other people use it. Any feature that I personally don't use is not critical, no matter how many other people use it.

I suspect that your perspective might be a little more nuanced than this. ;-) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

An important message about renaming users
Dear MarkAHershberger,

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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Google Code-in 2014
Hi, I've rewritten entirely. It's important to give students clear starting points. I'd approve the task now, but it must have a link to the list of wikis to check. Please make a query of defunct wikis, minus known dead farms such as wikkii, export the table as wikitext and post the list somewhere; users can then edit that list. 20-25 sites for task is plenty. It would be even better if you clarified what kind of information interests you most and specific steps to gather it (e.g. whois perhaps? what extensions the wiki had? are there backups? can the owner be found?). --Nemo 07:45, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Starting conversion of LiquidThreads to Flow at mediawiki.org
Hello. I'm sending this to you, because you've been one of the top 50 users of LQT on mediawiki.org over the last 360 days, and I wanted to make sure that you'd seen the announcement at Starting conversion of LiquidThreads to Flow at mediawiki.org. There are links in the topic-summary at the top, for other discussions (wikitech-l and Project:Current_issues), and a link to the planned process and timeline (scheduled to begin April 6, with smaller conversions at first). Please do test Flow out at Talk:Sandbox if you haven't tried it recently, and give any feedback/suggestions/requests at that main discussion location. Much thanks, Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:45, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

MP3 Media Handler
Hi Mark,

I've updated my gist at https://gist.github.com/MarkMaldaba/6d52007ffd301d818a8e to include and untested implementation of a Flash fallback (you need to supply your own player and specify the path in LocalSettings.php) and a link-only fallback if neither HTML5 nor Flash are available.

I changed the repo name in the list (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git/New_repositories/Requests) but I don't know if this is enough to effect a name change (is it a request for a new repo, or a request to activate a repo you have already named?). I thought a more general name would be better.

Let me know when repo set up - if I make further changes I will commit them directly.

- HappyDog

Extension:EmbedVideo
Heiya Mark, I just saw on GitHub that you forked the precursor of the above mentioned extension. Perhaps you would rather give this one a shot. Cheers --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; (talk) 18:27, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh, now you're creeping on me on github!?! Thanks... saved me some work. I guess I just used the README in the version I had. -- ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 19:51, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Just by accident, so do not count on this in the future. :) --&#91;&#91;kgh&#93;&#93; (talk) 21:04, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Help:Logging in/en-gb
Hey Mark. An IP address (173.19.158.66) has vandalized Help:Logging in/en-gb (replaced content by "Chukaga" among other things). I've deleted its edit by Special:Nuke. But I really don't know how to rollback those edits - the software denies me from rollbacking these edits :-( I deleted:


 * Translations:Help:Logging in/7/en-gb
 * Translations:Help:Logging in/6/en-gb
 * Translations:Help:Logging in/4/en-gb

I've been too long away and would prefer to know the 'proper' way instead of doing even more disimprovement ^^ Cheers Tim (SVG)  20:18, 16 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Looks to me like you did the right thing. Thanks for the good work! -- ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 21:02, 16 March 2016 (UTC)