User talk:Briess

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German wiki links

79.206.195.135 (Gerugon?) set up a German wiki and was wondering if you could add an interwiki link for it. --Lethosor (talk) 18:42, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for misleading that is't gerugons IP that mine (Kupferdrache in german wiki, i have no account here yet, may be I should add one), but the german wiki is started by gerugon. Great that your replied so quick. I have another request could we get a full list of used namespaces so we don't have to break the layout, which will help us to keep articles up to date, also ist easier to link between the different language versions if the sorting is comparable, also ther is a DF translation project in progress to help this great game to get more attention (at the moment only as mod, but may be we cann get enough support to make it choosable in init.txt wich language should be used. I hope I didn#t forgot anything important. 79.206.195.135 08:08, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

This should now be active. --Briess (talk) 18:48, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

File upload rights

Hi Briess. I'm currently trying to upload a couple of my images so I can add my new graphics set to the Graphics set repository. I'm an experienced Wikipedian (the real Wikipedia, that is, heh), so I was wondering if I should just wait for a few days for file upload permissions (like in Wikipedia) or is it exclusively granted by admins such as yourself?

Also I think the Jolly Bastion graphics set should be added there as well. --Obsidian Soul (talk) 03:00, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

I believe it's 4 days and 3 edits, although I might be wrong about the days. Briess should be able to confirm you, but it's probably easier just to make a couple more edits. In the meantime I can upload them for you, but I'd need to know which ones and where to put them. --Lethosor (talk) 20:10, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Hm, I forgot about the edit count to article space also contributing to the autoconfirmed rights. It's been so long since I had to do this in a wiki, heh. I'll just take a look around and see what I can fix in other articles, then upload them. I'll also take care of the Jolly Bastion set. If you know of any other graphics sets not in the wiki, it would be nice to add them as well for exposure. This is the primary resource when searching for graphics set and I found my first one here. Anyway, thanks. :) --Obsidian Soul (talk) 22:07, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Ok done. I've added the Jolly Bastion set as well and removed the empty sections.--Obsidian Soul (talk) 23:03, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Awesome. Sorry I've been away - just to confirm, it is 3 edits to get autoconfirmed (I removed the 4 day requirement a couple of months ago). --Briess (talk) 05:21, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Offline HTML Dump

Hi Briess. I was wondering if it was possible for an HTML dump of the wiki to be created. That way the wiki can be viewed by DwarfForters like myself with limited/no internet access. I google'd around for mediawiki ways to do this and come up with this method using the DumpHTML extension. It would be greatly appreciated if this could happen. – unsigned comment by Bsilvereagle

From what I remember, size is a major issue with this wiki (due to the multiple namespaces). There used to be a dump of the DF2012 namespace listed in the announcements box ([1]). The link was removed, but apparently it's still accessible. I just downloaded it – it's about 10 MB, and appears to contain the latest revisions of all DF2012 articles (from yesterday, July 7) that I checked (it doesn't include articles from older namespaces, however). It's an XML dump, though, so I don't know how to make it work with various wiki-viewing tools. --Lethosor (talk) 01:36, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Also: daD generated a basic HTML dump (which may be slightly outdated): [2]. --Lethosor (talk) 01:40, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't know those existed. It's looking like daD's dump is what I'm after, it's downloading now. I guess I should have used Google instead of the wiki search bar for searching for offline.... Thanks Lethosor.

Bot

I'm thinking of trying out a bot (not immediately, as it's still experimental), and was wondering if there are any policies regarding their creation here (would I be allowed to create a new account, do you need to test it first, etc.). --Lethosor (talk) 18:55, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Only policies are bots are for people I trust. I trust you. If you create a new account, I'll set it up with the appropriate flags (just poke me here as you know how wonderful the recent changes list is for new accounts >.>) --Briess (talk) 18:57, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks :) It does show up on the recent changes differently (at least the way I created it), but just to confirm it's User:LethosorBot. --Lethosor (talk) 19:32, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Done! I also made you (and the bot) an administrator. No reason not to at this point. --Briess (talk) 19:58, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! :) It'll be nice to be able to do some admin-related things when I need to. --Lethosor (talk) 20:25, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Extension update

You might want to update Extension:RegexFunctions to 1.4.3 — the current version has some type of security vulnerability, which looks like it might allow running arbitrary code. --Lethosor (talk) 21:00, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I've updated the extension. --Briess (talk) 08:49, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

A Chinese Version WIKI?

Hi Briess, I just a new player of DF. This WIKI site is awesome! It is pretty cool to do some translation when I am free. Is it a possible to make a Chinese version site of this? --Qianbb2004 (talk) 15:10, 02 August 2013 (UTC)

Polish Dwarf Fortress wiki

Hello there!

I would like to add a link to Polish Dwarf Fortress wiki, so that it will be possible to connect every article from this page with [[pl:Article name]] template.

Here is a website: http://pl.dwarffortress.wikia.com/ and here is a main page: http://pl.dwarffortress.wikia.com/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress_Wiki

Thank you in advance, --Marzecki (talk) 14:23, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Is there a chance and possibility to link Polish Dwarf Fortress Wikia on this wiki? Please, someone. Many of the players are visiting English Wiki, and some of them doesn't even know about existence of Polish Wiki! Part of them are teens, which english language level is poor - native language wiki is for them! Please someone :D --Marzecki (talk) 12:53, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I'll take a look at doing that this weekend. Sorry for the delay! --Briess (talk) 01:17, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Finally! Waiting for url update :) --Marzecki (talk) 23:00, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

This should now be active. --Briess (talk) 18:48, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, alias "pl:SiteName" is active! But, there is no "pl." at the beginning, so it redirects to non-existent wiki, showing up "This wiki was closed". Example: pl:Dwarf_Fortress_Wiki (http://dwarffortress.wikia.com/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress_Wiki) should be (http://pl.dwarffortress.wikia.com/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress_Wiki) --Marzecki (talk) 23:23, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Oops, sorry. I've fixed this. --Briess (talk) 17:42, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Finally. I hope that now some Polish players will visit Polish wiki and consider writing a few articles. Thank you. --Marzecki (talk) 00:58, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Spambot activity

Hi, I was wondering whether you could add a filter option to the "recent changes" pages so it could hide user registrations: whenever I want to review the most recent changes it seems that the only things going on are a hundred or so spambot registrations. While I know you're doing the best you can about that, it'd be cool to be able to hide these useless events from view. Thanks! 78.250.226.221 14:05, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Alternative captchas

It seems, from the ConfirmEdit page, that ReCaptcha might not be as secure as other types of captchas. This wiki seems to have solved this problem by using FancyCaptcha. While it might not be as secure (according to the page on mediawiki.org), its code is part of the extension, which means it can be easily modified to prevent automated scripts from succeeding, even if they guess the captcha correctly (check the source of the account creation page). It seems to be reasonably effective - the change was made near the end of July, and only 3 accounts have been created since then. --Lethosor (talk) 14:45, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

I'll take a look when I'm over this nasty flu. --Briess (talk) 08:28, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

I am no longer dying sick, but I do have a business trip and a bunch of work to catch up on. If I haven't gotten to this in a week or so, feel free to yell at me to look at this. Thanks :) --Briess (talk) 02:50, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Italian main

Hi, I'm an user of the italian community, I'm here for ask to you if will be possible to create a main page with italian language, and after (subpages) the others page in italian.

In this moment the wiki use this link http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Main_Page but for the italian page we can use http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Main_Page/italia or http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Main_Page/italy or http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Main_Page_Italy

I'm here only for ask and for information, if it is possible.

I'll wait answer.

Thanks a lot for your time.

NB sorry for my english

(Comment:) mediawiki.org does something similar to this - I'm not sure how well it would work for some pages on this wiki, especially for pages that check the /raw subpage (they'd have to be rewritten to use the base raw page), but it's worth looking into.

(Regarding the Italian wiki:) There's a Polish wiki set up on Wikia - maybe this could be used as an alternative, and we could link to that (like the Russian/French links on the Main Page). --Lethosor (talk) 00:43, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

(comment): i see this www.wikidot.com, is a good site? (User talk:Jostino) 19:47, 20 September 2013 (GMT+200)

Wikidot is a pretty good site, as well as Wikia (which may be better, since it uses the same software as this site). Unfortunately, this site uses a lot of extensions and modifications, which would be difficult, or even impossible, to set up on a large hosting site. I'll look more into the possibilities of hosting pages in different languages here, which would be much easier to set up. --Lethosor (talk) 21:04, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Additional languages

It may be considerably easier to set up non-English wikis on this site than on other wikis (as I mentioned above, the extensions and patches we use here would be hard to set up, even on a MediaWiki hosting site). Using this site would allow complex things (mainly templates and functions) to be used without being copied over to other wikis. Also, foreign-language wikis would tend to be a lot smaller than the main English wiki (due to fewer contributors), so size shouldn't be a problem. A few things I've found that could assist with this:

• Some templates exist that could probably be ported to this wiki: Wikipedia:mw:Template:Languages uses a lot of #ifexist checks (which could be deleted for languages we won't use at all). Wikipedia:meta:Template:Languages is similar, but adds uselang= to change the interface language for foreign-language pages (which could also be specified in the preferences, so I'm not sure how useful this is).
• Extension:Translate seems promising (it's used on some WMF wikis) - I haven't looked into it much, but I'll test it out when I get a chance.

--Lethosor (talk) 21:31, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Update: Extension:Translate is working very well - all that's required is adding <translate> tags around the page content. It lets any (logged-in) user edit translations by default, but pages need to be marked before they can be translated, which needs to be done by an admin by default (I'd recommend allowing at least autoconfirmed users to do this with something like $wgGroupPermissions['autoconfirmed']['pagetranslation'] = true;). MLEB is the bundle I'm using - it includes a few useful multilingual extensions, including Translate, Babel, and a language selector (which allows you to change the interface language without messing around with your preferences.) --Lethosor (talk) 17:26, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. I like the idea, but I can't do anything about it until I get back from my business trip. It's probably about time to update the mediawiki software too - I'll look into both at that time. Thanks for doing the research on this! --Briess (talk) 17:56, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Templates have been harder to work out than content pages - the best method I've found so far is using {{int:}} to change the displayed text based on the interface language (which I suppose is more useful to end users anyway). Unfortunately, this would require editing MediaWiki: messages, which normal users can't do... :(
Anyway, MediaWiki 1.22 should be released soon, so it may be worth waiting to upgrade (the only useful thing I've found in 1.21 is Ajax patrolling, which I've already implemented). Also, if you end up doing software upgrades, Extension:WikiEditor and Extension:CodeEditor (and maybe even Extension:Scribunto) could be useful (WikiEditor is extensible, so it would be easy to set up DFWiki-specific editing customizations - maybe adding a CP437 palette, for example). --Lethosor (talk) 01:49, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, I finally managed to get templates to work with translations (see {{msg}}). Would you be able to deploy the multilingual extensions? (I can make a PR for it, but it'll require running update.php). Once they're installed, I can do the rest of the setup on the wiki. --Lethosor (talk) 03:05, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

(They seem to be compatible with both 1.20 and 1.21.) --Lethosor (talk) 03:17, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I am slammed this week, so I won't really be able to start on them until next week. I am more than willing to set it up starting on next monday though. Only thing with update.php - we will need to make sure it's compatible with postgresql, or modify the extension SQL to be compatible with postgresql. --Briess (talk) 17:21, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

From what I can tell, the extensions use MediaWiki's database system, which is compatible with several database systems (including PostgreSQL), but I'll see if I can set up a test wiki with PostgreSQL to make sure. (I'm pretty busy this week myself, so I doubt I can get much done on this either :). I was hoping to get this set up in time for the next DF release, which gives us another couple of weeks at least.)--Lethosor (talk) 21:44, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I may be taking some time off early next week. If I do so, I'll start working on this. --Briess (talk) 17:21, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Turns out that the Translate extension SQL is not compatible with PostgreSQL. I've managed to get the tables created successfully after messing around with a bunch of SQL conversion tools (see this gist), but there are still errors in the extension files that prevent the extension from actually working. I'll see if I can fix those, although it might make it hard to update in the future. --Lethosor (talk) 22:44, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I've made a little progress (the database error on Special:Translate no longer occurs), but translation doesn't work at all for some reason (probably because update.php won't run with the SQL modifications I've made, so the installation isn't complete yet). I'm reluctant to ask, but is MySQL a possible alternative? I've found that it tends to be better-supported than other database systems on MediaWiki (SQLite is supposedly well-supported too, but I doubt it would handle a large wiki very well). There are a variety of conversion tools that look promising, such as MySQL workbench, but I haven't tested them to see if/how they work. If not, I'll continue my attempts at patching (which will hopefully work eventually). --Lethosor (talk) 17:37, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Never mind about that. :) I think I finally got the Translate extension to work with PostgreSQL (fortunately, it was the only one of the six that required any changes). I made a patch for it, and I'll let you know how that turns out. (One thing to note is that the current Translate extension requires the current UniversalLanguageSelector extension as well – that is, not the 2013.10 branch – so either waiting for a new release or using the "master" branch would be necessary for now) --Lethosor (talk) 01:59, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Go figure. I'm going to have limited availability over the thanksgiving holiday, but I'll take a look at things on the server starting when I get back. Also, do you have my skype information? it's the same as my github username. --Briess (talk) 05:57, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

I must have skipped over your response in the recent changes because I thought it was my own edit. -_- Anyway, Skype probably isn't the best way to contact me, but I'm usually available on the Bay12 forums and Gmail (and probably other places that I can't think of right now). Not that those are equivalent to Skype, but they're probably better than constantly editing talk pages.

Also, my patch still has a few bugs, one of which causes deletion jobs to fail and display an ugly error message for every user that happens to run one of those jobs when it's in the queue, so don't include that just yet. (Hopefully I can get that fixed quickly.) --Lethosor (talk) 01:01, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Database error when editing an IP talk page

A database query syntax error has occurred.

This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:

(SQL query hidden)

from within function "User::updateNewtalk". Database returned error "23502: ERROR: null value in column "user_id" violates not-null constraint

".

I'm not having this issue with 1.21, with a nearly-identical installation (except for the namespace-link patch, and I'm not sure how that could cause it). --Lethosor (talk) 20:37, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Can you make a branch for me with your code as is on the dfwiki github? --Briess (talk) 21:00, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

I meant that the error is occurring on this wiki - I haven't seen this issue on my own wiki, which uses pretty much the same extensions and settings (except it's using MW 1.21, which would make it hard to merge on GitHub). Fortunately, the problem isn't as severe as I thought - messages still get posted (see User talk:127.0.0.1), but it's still confusing to editors. I'm wondering if there are other patches you know of (besides the link patch) that have been installed on this wiki since the 1.20 upgrade, or if the database settings were recently changed. --Lethosor (talk) 21:55, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of. The code on github is what the wiki is using, minus the extensions, I believe (I may turn them into submodules at some point) --Briess (talk) 05:52, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm guessing this is a PostgreSQL problem (it looks familiar ;) ). A MediaWiki upgrade might fix the problem, but I don't think it's major enough for that to be worthwhile. --Lethosor (talk) 02:01, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

I just checked on the PostgreSQL wiki I set up to test the Translate extension and experienced the exact same problem (on 1.21). --Lethosor (talk) 02:03, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Pull requests

Do you need to do anything special to merge in changes I made on the dfwiki repo, or are changes I make to master automatically merged? --Lethosor (talk) 20:41, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

I merged them in, but deploys are manual. For some reason, I didn't get a notification of the pull request, I just fixed that so I do get them again. I'll deploy the change shortly. Also, I'm back from the business trip, yay! --Briess (talk) 05:51, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Email Contact

Hey there! I'm trying to get ahold of the administration team to talk about a partnership proposal, but I cannot find the proper channel to pursue. If you get the chance, can you drop an email at kristophermsandoval@gmail.com and let me know the proper channel to go through? Thank you so much! I look forward to hearing from you! 24.10.3.183 19:24, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Spam prevention

I found a couple interesting strategies that could prevent automated account registration entirely, while still allowing users to create accounts normally:

• Disabling the account creation API would block account registrations using api.php instead of Special:CreateAccount:

$wgAPIModules['createaccount'] = 'ApiDisabled';

• If it turns out that the spammers use Special:CreateAccount instead (which is less likely), someone at MediaWiki has suggested renaming Special:UserLogin (or CreateAccount), which would allow it to be accessible with the navigation links but not by a direct URL. I'm not sure how this would be done, but it's probably possible since changing the wiki language changes special pages' URLs.
• Cookiepedia has their config file publicly available, which contains IP's of many spammers. I'm not sure how up-to-date it is, but it appears to be working for them.
• Lastly, blocking requests with an empty User-Agent header has worked in the past. I doubt many current spambots would be blocked by this trick, however.

It may even be possible to remove captchas entirely if one of these methods works, which would be a lot less irritating for new users. --Lethosor (talk) 21:46, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, we already disable API account creation, and I block a bunch of IPs very aggressively at the nginx layer (updated via cron job daily). I haven't done anything with user-agent yet, but that may be worth looking into. --21:51, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Looks like I forgot to check the settings again. -_- I've managed to find a simple method that prevents Special:CreateAccount from working when accessed directly, which I put on Github in the test-login branch. I'm not sure how effective it is – the alternate captcha method above may be a better solution. --Lethosor (talk) 22:12, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I've also found that it's possible to change the wpRetype field in the password form, which would prevent (generic) automated submissions. I'm not sure how automated they are, though, since they can get through the captcha (occasionally – maybe they just guess?). --Lethosor (talk) 22:31, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

QuestyCaptcha could probably work too, since it can be easily customized for an individual wiki (although eventually spammers might figure them out). Maybe with DFRawFunctions we could set it up to generate random questions on DF-related things, although that would probably be complicated. (Sorry about the multiple edits/notifications, by the way :)) --Lethosor (talk) 22:38, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I found Extension:ConfirmAccount, which seemed like it required too much information to be usable on this wiki (biography, real name, an optional resume, etc.), but it turns out that's easy to disable:

$wgConfirmAccountRequestFormItems['RealName']['enabled'] = false;
$wgConfirmAccountRequestFormItems['Biography']['enabled'] = false;
$wgConfirmAccountRequestFormItems['CV']['enabled'] = false;
$wgConfirmAccountRequestFormItems['Notes']['enabled'] = false;
$wgConfirmAccountRequestFormItems['Links']['enabled'] = false;
$wgConfirmAccountRequestFormItems['TermsOfService']['enabled'] = false;
// To allow admins to confirm accounts:
$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['confirmaccount'] = true;

This would require users to enter a username and email address to create an account, which would then be confirmed by an admin and by email.
Anyway, this would almost certainly stop the spam registrations, although I'm not sure if it's worth it (for admins and users). Any thoughts on this? --Lethosor (talk) 03:31, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

It's certainly an option, but I would prefer something that doesn't require a bunch of administrator action. That would be hell. I'm wondering if renaming the signup page will be enough to combat the issue. --Briess (talk) 05:12, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Although, I'm not against requiring an email confirmation, but I would probably have to do some work on the email service to make it behave a little better with more providers. --Briess (talk) 05:13, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Announcements

Mediawiki:Siteannounce (the announcement box) has gone missing (but DF:Announcements is still intact). This causes an error with User:Briess/hideAnnouncements.js, although it doesn't appear to be causing any major problems. --Lethosor (talk) 15:59, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for catching my edit on {{rounded info box}}. Apparently a <div> tag on the same line as Mediawiki's {| table syntax breaks the table. But not the whole table. Just the start of the table. The end of the table gets parsed perfectly, which caused things that should have been inside a table to float around the page. And adding a newline before the table in the red box doesn't change anything. (Okay, that's probably because of Mediawiki's whitespace stripping, but that doesn't explain why every other box on the page worked with my change.) I would have tested it more thoroughly, except I thought that wrapping something in a <div> tag wouldn't do anything. This is why I hate Mediawiki table syntax (although HTML table syntax isn't much better. I tried {{columns}} as a replacement, but apparently it doesn't work in Firefox :( ) --Lethosor (talk) 03:24, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

No worries. I unfortunately have been very busy, or I would have tried to fix it instead of just reverting it. I'll create an issue soon on github about announcements and I'll discuss what Emily and I talked about with announcements. --Briess (talk) 04:34, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

This extension looks interesting, although it only works well for a single, temporary announcement. It might be possible to modify it, though. --Lethosor (talk) 01:38, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

I think the problem was that the relevant system message is actually Mediawiki:Sitenotice. (I thought it was a Mediawiki bug that was causing the history to vanish this whole time). —Lethosor (talk) 03:49, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Anyway, how's this for now? I'm thinking of adding it to the recent changes page (see below), although it might be a little big - I can try adjusting the old JS to work with it, or make it possible to hide them in the preferences. —Lethosor (talk) 20:17, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

Dutch wiki translation

Hi. As you probably not know, I am a very fluent Dutch speaker, and I think I could make a dutch translation of the wiki(partially, and definitely not alone). How about it?
Latias1290 (talk)

We are looking at solutions for hosting translations locally on the wiki at this time. I'm not sure how long before we're ready, but when we are I'll let you know. --Briess (talk) 20:22, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

File:FunComic.png missing

Pointed out here. It may be related to File:Roach.png's disappearance a while back, although that image (and the others) are working now. —Lethosor (talk) 21:28, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Rebuilding all images now. --Briess (talk) 21:54, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Recent changes text

The Community Portal is a helpful resource for filtering through recent changes.

Any idea where this text is coming from? Passing "uselang=qqx" (which usually displays the message names) does nothing: [3]. Searching the wiki repo also turns up nothing.

—Lethosor (talk) 22:23, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

I honestly have no idea. --Briess (talk) 04:36, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

It turns out it is, in fact, MediaWiki:Recentchangestext (see the title of this section). I found it on Special:Allmessages, but it's strange that it doesn't show up with uselang=qqx. —Lethosor (talk) 19:47, 17 February 2014 (UTC)

welp --Briess (talk) 19:56, 17 February 2014 (UTC)