User talk:SD0001

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Wikimedia Code Review - Gerrit

Hello SD! Some time ago you helped me learn the basis of contributing in Gerrit for Wikimedia and solving a localization problem I had with the special pages in my community. The commit was merged some days ago and now I'm waiting for deployment. Motivated by that, I was wondering if there were other possibilities I could get involved more, reviewing other changes and basically helping around there. Do you have any advice on "how to start" or maybe some easy tasks to review or small details where I can help around? I understand if my request might feel rather odd so don't worry much about the answer. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 02:00, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

For testing or working on most changes, you would need a local MW dev instance. In my experience, setting that up is the biggest barrier to getting started. You can take a look at mw:How to become a MediaWiki hacker#Set up your development environment. You can pick up some PHP (it's easy) and use an IDE (I hear Visual Studio Code is good) – that makes it easy to identify syntax issues before submitting patches. – SD0001 (talk) 03:33, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! Would the pages below be the starting point for what you described?

• [1];
• [2];

- Klein Muçi (talk) 08:36, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, but they're not without issue. For instance, the 2nd link includes a unix command that won't work on Windows. What OS do you have? If windows, I believe using WSL2 is recommended nowadays, though I think mediawiki can be slow if the files are on a windows partition (and if you put them on the linux partition, then the code editor would become slow instead) – not sure though as it's been a while since I used windows. If you're not using windows, you're more in luck. – SD0001 (talk) 04:09, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I have both actually, 2 laptops. You think is better if I start the whole procedure in Linux? - Klein Muçi (talk) 08:13, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes Linux is much preferable for working with mediawiki. – SD0001 (talk) 09:21, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Okay then. I'll try setting up my developing environment in Linux soon. If i get stuck somewhere, I'll come here, maybe you can help me. Thank you! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 09:31, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

After some errors I was able to install docker and docker-compose and I verified they're working properly by checking their versions and downloading some images and playing a bit around. (This is the first time I ever deal with docker though.)

Now I'm stuck at the next step: Prepare .env file.

It says create a .env file in the root of the MediaWiki core repository but I'm not really sure what that means. What should the name be (what is its exact purpose) and where exactly should it be located (what command do I use to get there)?

Also, should this line be kept unchanged: MEDIAWIKI_USER=Admin?

And finally, unrelated specifically to this but, when using sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu bionic stable", I get this error. I only started getting this after I had to delete something after some errors in the first time. Any idea what I've done wrong and how to correct it? - Klein Muçi (talk) 03:30, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

You'd need to figure out things like that via google and stackoverflow and so on – searching for .env files brings up https://docs.docker.com/compose/env-file/ as the 3rd result.
Are you using linux mint? I couldn't see any relevant search results but you'd probably get something useful with a specific search like "add-apt-repository on linux mint gives additional-repositories.list not found error" – SD0001 (talk) 04:02, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh, so it is a literal ".env" file. I thought I hade to create it with a name like: Something.env

The only question now is where do I create that? What does root of the MediaWiki core repository mean in a more simple language? In the Mediawiki directory? Or somewhere here somehow? - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:15, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

The directory to which you cloned mediawiki – the one which contains the docker-compose.yml file. This directory should be named "mediawiki", (not "core"), so that you can later install extensions under mediawiki/extensions/. (core/extensions/* would also work in theory but just sounds awkward). – SD0001 (talk) 13:47, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

@SD0001, thank you! I prepared the .env file and then created a docker-compose.override.yml file in the mediawiki directory. But, when I wanted to start the containers, I got an error. I gave the command while being in the mediawiki directory and got this error. What am I doing wrong? - Klein Muçi (talk) 21:51, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

I was able to fix that error. (Had downloaded an older version.) Things went smoothly after that (got MediaWiki on localhost8080) and I also downloaded Visual Studio Code. A bit of a silly question but what would be the next step after this?

How does one identify problems and usually goes on about solving one? I mean, I understand the whole Phabricator/Gerrit thing theoretically but I've never dealt with a situation like that before (beside the one you helped me) and any kind of practical advice would be helpful. As I said in the beginning, I do understand if this sounds odd as a question and that you might not really have an answer for it. - Klein Muçi (talk) 02:59, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Pick your favourite extensions and look at their phab workboards to see if there's anything you find interesting. Extensions work primarily via hooks – so the first place to look for understanding the code of any extension would be the file in includes/ directory having "Hooks" in the name. These are usually self-explanatory, eg. onPageSaveComplete hook allows an extension to execute code every time any page is saved. MW core itself does not use hooks, though, so its code can be generally harder to modify.

(Also make sure your code editor is set up so that it allows you to navigate to class/function definition by clicking on where its used, provides autocomplete suggestions, etc.) – SD0001 (talk) 14:18, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! I think I'll give it a try with a task from here. If I manage to solve anything maybe I add you as a reviewer in Gerrit. I'm supposing you'll have the same name. Thank you one more time! Really grateful. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 00:50, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm experimenting around with the various Mediawiki files and folders and I was trying the PHP update script. Every time I use it, I get this. Is that supposed to be normal? What are those 8 listed entries? - Klein Muçi (talk) 03:57, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

It clearly says mediawiki can't access its database. The 8 lines are the stack trace. – SD0001 (talk) 05:03, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Uhm, so no update is really happening? Why could that be happening? Something wrong by my side? - Klein Muçi (talk) 10:59, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

update.php mainly just runs the db schema upgrades - which of course can't happen if it can't connect to db. Do you have the wgDb* credentials in LocalSettings correctly configured. Are there any db errors while viewing pages? The folks in MediaWiki discord (https://discord.gg/ZrV2Ex9) may be better positioned to help with this. – SD0001 (talk) 11:14, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

I haven't touched the file beside adding the WikiLove extension just to test out how "things" (extensions/skins) can be added. I have this.- Klein Muçi (talk) 11:48, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

If it still isn't working, consider using a MySQL/MariaDB database. You can set one up using docker, and specify its credentials in LocalSettings. – SD0001 (talk) 11:42, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

I tried using docker-compose exec mediawiki php maintenance/update.php following the instructions here and I get this. It seems to be working fine, no?

Is that the same thing as running the Update PHP script? Does that tell us anything about why that doesn't work? - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:25, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes that's working fine. So you were running it earlier without using docker?

Running any maintenance script directly in a linux terminal will not work. Your sqlite database is inside the docker container and can't be accessed from outside (unless ...). You need to do it inside the container – docker-compose exec mediawiki bash gets you a shell inside the container – and then you can do php maintenance/update.php (The command you mention is the shortcut for this.)

Some commands like composer install and composer test may work when run outside – but if your local php version is different from what's there inside docker, it could result in subtle bugs. – SD0001 (talk) 13:34, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Ah... Yes, you're totally right. Thank you one more time! - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:18, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Hello back! I was working with some good first tasks at Phab and I started noticing that I started encountering conflicts. This is normal but do you have any advice on how to act in regard to that? Like, for example, in this small change, what would I need to do, if anything, in regard to the current conflicts that are listed there? Do I follow the links and solve them manually somehow? Or is that considered rude and bad manners? As usually, I'm just starting so any kind of information would be appreciated. - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:27, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

You don't have to do anything. Depending on which patch gets merged first – the conflicts will have to be fixed in the other. Also don't +1 your own patches. – SD0001 (talk) 14:43, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I don't do that but I saw that it came with an automatic comment in the lines of "it looks good to me, maybe someone else can check it" and given that it was just a simple change of characters, not code per se, I thought it would be a good and acceptable occasion to do that. Apparently it almost never is. :P Thank you! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:28, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Oh, and also, what about the "topic" content? What are some examples for good topics? I ask because I thought that would be the first line of the commit message but apparently it gets put aside and the description, which is optional, is what becomes the commit message. The topic in my task above seems strange now.

I'm referring to the web interface usage. Klein Muçi (talk) 15:39, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

It's usually just the phab ticket id or the branch name. Doesn't really matter what you put in there. – SD0001 (talk) 18:15, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Hey there! I'm back with a new question. I was using what you helped me set up months ago to test something. I'm still glad for all the help you provided on that. I've learned everything I know in regard to Gerrit from you.

I just created 2 articles in "my Wikipedia". Test and Test2. Do created articles appear as files in the mediawiki folder in my laptop? If so, where? If not, where do they exist? And how do I delete them? - Klein Muçi (talk) 04:34, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I just checked on my local wiki – I can see the text in the text table, for each revid. You can also see your local database using a tool like MySQL Workbench or https://sqlitebrowser.org/ if your db backend is sqlite. In WMF production they are of course stored differently – the text table just contains a pointer to a blob in external storage which stores the content in compressed form (see mw:Manual:External_Storage).
In any case, editing/deleting things directly from the database or filesystem would NOT be safe – for instance when you delete a page, references from pagelinks, categorylinks and many other tables would need to be cleared. For all of that to happen you have to use the UI or API or some maintenance script. – SD0001 (talk) 05:27, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

My db backend is sqlite and I have sqlitebrowser (maybe I should give the MySQL Workbench a try too) but if I'm not supposed to edit the database directly, how should the normal way of doing it be? I tried manually going to the delete link: https://local host link/w/index.php?title=Article'sTitle&action=delete but it said to me that I didn't have permissions to do that because I wasn't an admin. How do I make myself a crat? - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:40, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

The user account created during MW installation will have admin, crat and intadmin rights. You can log in to that account to add rights to other accounts. – SD0001 (talk) 15:31, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I went to Special:ListUsers and you were right. A bit of a noobish question but how do I login to that account? What's the password? - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:01, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

You would have set its password during MW installation :) If you don't remember it, you can reset its password or create a new account with rights using maintenance/createAndPromote.php script. – SD0001 (talk) 17:50, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Can you perhaps show me where is the manual page describing this step? If I read it, maybe I get remembered what I've put. Also, shouldn't I be able to locate its password somewhere in the database given that I, supposedly, have full control of everything? - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:07, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

I was able to use Manual:changePassword.php to change it. :D Still out of personal curiosity would be helpful if you could also answer the questions I've asked above if you know the answers. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:48, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

There's mw:Manual:CreateAndPromote.php, though you can also figure out what most maintenance scripts do by looking at their code (the constructor will have descriptions of params).
Passwords are stored in database after being salted and passed through one-way cryptographic hash functions. You can see hashed values in user table, but it is not possible to figure out the original password from that. – SD0001 (talk) 19:30, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the extra information. I had no information whatsoever in cryptography beside basic understanding of what SSH is and how it works. One last basic question out of curiosity:

I imported some skins and extensions, created and deleted some articles, created and promoted some users... Basically I did some stuff. I choose to have a clean start. How do I do that? All histories of everything deleted, all the imported things removed. Basically perform a "factory reset". The easiest way to achieve that? - Klein Muçi (talk) 03:29, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Deleting the database and LocalSettings.php and re-running installation should do it. – SD0001 (talk) 20:31, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

WP:AFC Helper News

Hello! I wanted to drop a quick note for all of our AFC participants; nothing huge and fancy like a newsletter, but a few points of interest.

• AFCH will now show live previews of the comment to be left on a decline.
• The template {{db-afc-move}} has been created - this template is similar to {{db-move}} when there is a redirect in the way of an acceptance, but specifically tells the patrolling admin to let you (the draft reviewer) take care of the actual move.

Short and sweet, but there's always more to discuss at WT:AFC. Stop on by, maybe review a draft on the way? Whether you're one of our top reviewers, or haven't reviewed in a while, I want to thank you for helping out in the past and in the future. Cheers, Primefac, via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:00, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Category:Draft articles on media has been nominated for merging

Category:Draft articles on media has been nominated for merging. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. ★Trekker (talk) 15:57, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

User:SDZeroBot/G13 soon

Hello, again, SD0001,

It's been a while since I visited your talk page which, I guess, is a good thing because there have been no problems with SDZeroBot! But I thought I'd check in with you because we have another calendar jump with the G13 soon report as we go from the February 28 report to the March 1 report. We can handle the extra three days of expiring drafts okay (for August 29-31) but we really can't have SDZeroBot skip ahead three days of G13 reports and miss reports for drafts expiring in early September. Both DGG (on the part of the AFC) and I review the G13 soon reports prior to the time of deletion and having 3 missing reports would negatively affect this process.

I should say that with simple 1 day mismatches (like when months are only 30 days long) seem to be handled by SDZeroBot with few problems these days so maybe you have fixed this glitch which has more to do with the calendar irregularities than with how your bot functions. Thanks again for all of the work that both you and your bot do for the project! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:31, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Liz – this was fixed quite some time back (User talk:SDZeroBot#SDZeroBot glitches). I think bot would create 3 reports on one day to account for the calendar jump – you can check that in the page history. – SD0001 (talk) 15:24, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Hello, SD0001,

I thought that calendar problem was fixed but, you know, I look at these pages every day and so I try to anticipate problems that might occur. But I will just assume from now on that this problem won't reoccur. Today's G13 soon report is for drafts that would expire February 29, 2022 but we'll just take care of them on February 28, 2022.

But you know when I said above I hadn't posted here lately so there must be no problems? LOL! Well, I spoke too soon. The G13 soon reports have been a little short lately which wasn't a surprise because the AFC did a huge July 2021 Backlog Drive so six months ago there were thousands of drafts that were reviewed in July (so they would expire in January) as AFC reviewers caught up with the draft backlog so we were expecting February would be much lighter. Today's report had just 150 expiring drafts (there are typically about 200-225) which was just fine but then, on User:SDZeroBot/G13 eligible, which is usually empty, it listed 45 drafts that were G13 eligible today but didn't show up on the G13 soon report! That's unusual...it's happened before but it doesn't occur very often as you can see in the page history. Usually the only time drafts appear on G13 eligible page is because they were missed by myself, Explicit or one of the editors who helps out with G13s. Any idea what might have happened with SDZeroBot? It's not a big deal unless it starts happening more frequently. And even then, it's not urgent, it's just that we like to delete expiring drafts over the course of the day & night rather than all at once. But it's curious. Thanks! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:55, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

@Liz
I see pages on today's eligible report had last edits on 22 August. If we look at the soon report for 22 August, the entries are there but unfortunately there was a formatting problem, phew! The raw wikitext of the links are all inside the Excerpt field of User:Rockpromo/sandbox. This happened because the generated excerpt for the sandbox page had an unclosed <nowiki> tag.

I made a change some time back to keep out unclosed <ref> tags from excerpts (which too can affect the formatting of the rest of the page) because they were more common. Will take a look whether nowikis too could be handled the same way. – SD0001 (talk) 04:00, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

You always know what to do, thanks so much! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:46, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Everything worked out perfectly, SDZeroBot issued 4 G13 soon reports today so we won't miss a day of reports. Thanks! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:31, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

A more direct ping

Recognising that you're a busy individual, just wanted to note that you've either missed or forgotten about a few pings at this BRFA, so whenever is convenient for you please respond. Primefac (talk) 14:18, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Did you know/Create new nomination

Hi! I'm sure you're busy; is there a way to include a checkbox in the QPQ section of the form, for users exempt from the QPQ requirement? theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 00:04, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Hotarticle bot related

Hey, Hope you are doing well. Can you check why Wikipedia:WikiProject Jammu and Kashmir/Hot articles is not being updated. We had requested for a change it is added to .json file. But since last two months it is not being updated. Kindly have a look at it. Thankyou. _signed, 511KeV ^(talk) 16:07, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

@511KeV - the configuration is invalid – the "Days" field should be <= 7. That's why the page is not being updated. – SD0001 (talk) 09:06, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

That means we have to fine another request to chage it to either 7 or less than 7 days. Thankyou _signed, 511KeV ^(talk) 09:10, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Concern regarding Draft:Amazon MemoryDB

Hello, SD0001. This is a bot-delivered message letting you know that Draft:Amazon MemoryDB, a page you created, has not been edited in at least 5 months. Drafts that have not been edited for six months may be deleted, so if you wish to retain the page, please edit it again or request that it be moved to your userspace.

If the page has already been deleted, you can request it be undeleted so you can continue working on it.

Thank you for your submission to Wikipedia. FireflyBot (talk) 19:26, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Hot articles on high-risk templates

Hello! I noticed that Wikipedia:WikiProject Anarchism/Hot articles (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) was not updating and went to its history to figure out why, only to discover that it has extended confirmed access protection because it is included in the project's talk page banner and is highly transcluded (high risk). Would the better route be to request the permissions for the bot or to lower the template's protection? Alternatively, if those are too complicated, I could remove it from the WikiProject banner, but I'd like to think it's helpful there, so that would be the last resort. czar 05:23, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

It's only extconf protected so the bot should be able to edit it (as the bot user group includes extendedconfirmed right). Not sure why there are no edits. I don't see anything in the output or error logs. – SD0001 (talk) 13:05, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

It does appear to be permissions-related. I removed its "high-risk" transclusion and undid the permission changes and it started right back up. czar 04:14, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:Amazon MemoryDB

Hello, SD0001. It has been over six months since you last edited the Articles for Creation submission or Draft page you started, "Amazon MemoryDB".

In accordance with our policy that Wikipedia is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been deleted. If you plan on working on it further and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:59, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, this is awkward. Let me know if you'd like this page restored. It would be no problem at all. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:06, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

User:SDZeroBot/G13 soon

Hey, SD0001,

Now, I didn't come this week and post here about the fact that September (6 months ago) only had 30 days and March has 31 days because SDZeroBot had all this stuff worked out, right? But SDZB skipped the G13 soon report tonight. I guess this is because it doesn't want to get a day ahead of itself? As long as there is a report for every day (today's report would be for October 8th), then it doesn't really matter whether it is issued today or tomorrow. But I thought I'd check in any way because I'm a creature of habit and you are so nice about all of the questions I've come to you with in the past. I hope that your life is going well! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 01:06, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Yeah you're right – it doesn't want to get a day ahead of itself. The October 8 report would be there tomorrow. Enjoy your day off :) – SD0001 (talk) 03:30, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

One year!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:04, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Thanks @Gerda Arendt. How time flies! – SD0001 (talk) 07:48, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

A beer for you!

e

Issue with Draftify Watch

Hey, Draftify Watch didn't update yesterday so I just took a look in the log page and it appears it ran into an issue regarding a spam blacklisted link. If you're already aware, sorry just ignore this. Curbon7 (talk) 01:18, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

@Curbon7 This job was missing the spam blacklist handling. I've fixed it and triggered a run, so the page has updated now. – SD0001 (talk) 17:02, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Issues with GAR script

T/p notifications about a GAR must go into a separate section, than being appended to the last section: 1 and 2 Thanks, TrangaBellam (talk) 18:43, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

setting up toolforge server

Hi! Sorry to bug with tech support questions, but I'm a bit stuck. I've made, by this point, a basically fully-operational script for DYK to implement a rule change (replacing the old QPQ checker). I have a tool account on toolforge, but I'm not sure how to implement lighttpd to host the script publicly? If you know of any resources to point me towards, that'd be appreciated. Thanks in advance! theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 18:21, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi @theleekycauldron, what programming language is the tool written in? The instructions vary by language. – SD0001 (talk) 18:23, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

this one is javascript. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 18:48, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

@Theleekycauldron Put the source code in the public_html directory. Create an index.html file which will be read by toolforge as the main page of the tool, on which you can place the <script> tag to load the javascript. If that doesn't make sense or you need further help, point me to your code and I can explain what to do. – SD0001 (talk) 19:08, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

perfect, thanks! :) theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/they) 19:14, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

Category:Pages which use score has been nominated for discussion

Category:Pages which use score has been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 16:38, 15 April 2022 (UTC)