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    Forum:Update MediaWiki version on Нециклопедија

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    Forum: Update MediaWiki version on Нециклопедија
    Note: This topic has been unedited for 1838 days. It is considered archived - the discussion is over. Do not add to unless it really needs a response.

    Update current MediaWiki version (1.25.2) on Нециклопедија to version 1.30.0 or earlier version (if possible). -Acamicamacaraca (talk) 23:02, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

    I wonder if there is a valid reason for opening a forum topic and not asking the webmaster directly for this to be done. Please, if this question is too pertinent for other communities to be interested in this, I will give you 48 hours of response even though I am already informing the webmaster. I hope it compares that there are pages where this request can be realized otherwise this forum of discursão will only be for requests which makes it lose its practicality. Rhubella selo-02.pngRhubella Marie, the rat sockpreppie 3,585 preppieditsRhubella selo-01.png 20:05, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
    Blaaa, blaaa... Just say that this forum is closed. I will ask webmaster. Thanks anyways for fast respose. Acamicamacaraca (talk) 11:31, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
    Sorry, the forum is not closed but the choice to report a problem can be redirected to a page that serves this purpose. Another thing, he had already communicated his request to the webmaster yesterday. Rhubella selo-02.pngRhubella Marie, the rat sockpreppie 3,585 preppieditsRhubella selo-01.png 20:12, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

    I've reopened this as the issue extends quite a bit beyond Нециклопедија. Most of the wikis on this server are currently on MediaWiki 1.25, which is badly outdated as the current version is MediaWiki 1.31. I've been using https://nonciclopedia.org and https://m.nonciclopedia.org as a testbed for a possible upgrade but am seeing some issues, mostly with unmaintained extensions which are breaking:

    • MW 1.31 won't run at all without changing the servers to PHP7. That can break a few minor sites which are dependent on outdated code, such as http://mechelen.mapt.be which uses an old MW version and an old, unmaintained Google Maps extension
    • mw:extension:KeyCAPTCHA was written for "MediWiki 1.16-1.18" (sic) and never updated. That required patching the code or adding compatibility "stub" functions to even get it to work on MW 1.27 - I have little confidence of it working on current MW versions without modification and will likely need to go to another CAPTCHA, maybe Google?
    • mw:extension:SpecialNamespaces is a "kludged" version of the Special:Interwiki code; no one outside Uncyclopedia seems to be using it and, while it is still available from mediawiki.org's extension downloader, no one seems to be maintaining it. Unless I try to fix it myself, it isn't going to work after a MediaWiki version upgrade.
    • Autodetection of a "mobile" browser likely isn't going to work, as my upstream provider either suggested or demanded the sites be put behind CloudFlare after a 2014 DDoS attempt. As a kludge, I've changed the MW1.31 code to hard-code "m."-whatever subdomains onto the mobile version and the rest onto desktop mode.
    • There have been complaints from it: that Special:Import is adding "imported>" to the usernames on XML import if the users don't exist locally. That's likely fixable.

    That said, the continued use of outdated software has been drawing complaints for some time now:

    • Brazil (pt:) has wanted Lua for ages; at the time it was first suggested, the PHP on the servers wasn't new enough to support this. That will likely be addressed if the servers are upgraded to PHP7.
    • Desciclopédia (pt:) and Ansaikuropedia (ja:) had wanted a mobile version; perhaps that should be examined now that the tests of using mw:extension:MobileFrontend behind mw:Cloudflare have been done and the obstacles are known. Mobile is doable, auto-detection of mobile is not.
    • There are extensions (such as mw:extension:AbuseFilter) which are needed due to increasing vandalism. Japan, in particular, has a problem with admins issuing absurdly-broad rangeblocks in an attempt to control abuse and those rangeblocks are driving away human users - which is possibly one of the factors behind the recent fork.

    Not all of the issues are fixable by merely upgrading MediaWiki, for instance:

    • Many of the issues with Japan may be personal conflicts between individual admins or users; my ability to intervene there is badly limited as I don't speak Japanese.
    • Cloudflare caching and serving outdated content has been a problem for as long as we've been on Cloudflare. Only the creation of a new MediaWiki extension or programme would fix that, as MW only knows to send HTTP PURGE to reverse proxy servers like Squid and Varnish which are locally controlled. Cloudflare (and other CDN's) have their own non-standard API, of which MediaWiki is blissfully unaware. In Descicloédia's case (pt:) this is aggravated by the same site being on multiple domains - all would need to be purged as the content is updated.
    • The e-mail problems seem to be independent of MW version; I suspect that the "Barracuda intent list" is flagging mail with nonciclopedia.org links for no good reason, causing ISP's to block them as spam. This issue will have to be addressed separately.
    • Any attempt to launch a clone of Wikidata or similar "common" repositories will be limited in utility as various Uncyclopedias (American, Russian) and vaguely-related projects (Kamelopedia, Stupidedia, en.Illogicopedia) are hosted independently elsewhere. A common data repository, were one ever created, would only be common to projects hosted here.
    • The https: version looks rather broken in most places as the static content is still being served as http: - I tried changing this last December and the server bandwidth consumption inexplicably doubled. I shall need to know why this was happening before looking into https: again.
    • Many of the individual projects are simply abandoned. In some cases, I've been paying to renew domains for wikis with no users and no content. These should probably be moved to xx.uncyclopedia.info (for language xx:) but that still leaves the issues with spam and vandalism. No, an extension which breaks the wiki so no one can edit at all is not a proper solution - but, left unattended, these projects will only gather dust. No easy answer there.

    Certainly, MW upgrades of individual wikis (if they're not dependent on the few extensions which are breaking or broken) are an option. I likely shall be looking at this once I address the CAPTCHA issue, removing Special:Namespaces and hard-coding the existing namespace list into LocalSettings.php until the extension can be fixed. Comments? Carlb (talk) 15:13, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

    Comment: Forked Ansaikuropedia run on the latest mediawiki. Can use a test environment (under the condition that you agree to make it official). Todaiin (talk) 03:04, 4 August 2018 (UTC)
    Comment Hmmmm, it seem like too much to work. CAPTCHA and namespaces. When you are going to approximately finish that work? Will that be hard to finish? Acamicamacaraca (talk) 09:39, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

    Any updates there? And why there aren't localisation updates just like on Wikimedia wikis? Acamicamacaraca (talk) 20:12, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

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