All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part VI

[GethN7]

...And tonight my first major set of bot changes is complete. I have more to come, but I'd like to shut off my PC for the first time in a few weeks. The vast majority of trope pages should have examples templates and most of the works pages should have tropelists. I know not everything got found and changed, but I want to rewrite my bot code to be a bit smarter and more efficient before go after the rest of my wishlist.

I've also been restoring images, but since that's been manual it's been piecemeal and as the mood took me. I've got an idea on how to automate that, as well...

Say, Geth, when was the last time we did a backup of the wiki? Between the bots and the new users, we're probably due one.

 

I've been in contact with SPF about that very issue, and we have a problem that means we WILL have wait a month before doing so, but the reason makes perfect sense;

Several attempts to make XML/SQL dumps have gone down in flames due to database errors. While the errors are not entirely fatal and could be ignored, the dumps would retain them and any subsequent restorations would have the same issues.

Thankfully, it's not permanent.

One, SPF has cobbled together a script to revise half of the problem. The other half is due to the fact we use the LQT extension, which, once MW 1.26 comes out (in a month), will be upgraded to Flow, then the LQT table (which has the issues, and has our discussions in LQT format) will be dropped, leaving us the Flow table, which won't have the issues, and we won't lose our discussions. We will have our backups done when this happens, since the issues preventing smoothly done backups will cease at this point.

(I did ask if they could just ignore the busted LQT tables and make quick and dirty backups, which are possible, but SPF really doesn't want to do that since restoring from one could lead to an even messier restore than last time, which he understandably counseled against and which I concur on his judgment with)

Also, no need to worry about our servers in the meantime. DDoSes haven't happened in a while, they are ever vigilant against that, and we have a caching service on at the moment as a further shield against sudden data loss.

P.S. - These errors were also partially responsible for our image restore issues, which is also being resolved as time permits.