All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XX

[GethN7]

Ah, youth... A relatively-new user with eighteen edits total, two of which were replies to mod questions, asked not-quite-demanded confirmed user status.

I'm on vacation this week., Bob's on vacation this week. Geth's on sabbatical.

Who wants to reply?

Since I'm here already, I'll handle it.

Also, since this seems like something that should be done ASAP, I'm going to contact Libera via their instructions here:

https://libera.chat/chanreg#the-projects...unity-team

Anyone actually willing to have a presence on Libera IRC, please give me suggestions for what the below should be penciled in with:

Code:

# About your community
Your community name(s):
Your community description:
Can we list your community publicly, such as on the libera.chat website:
Libera Chat staff member you have discussed this registration with:

# About you and your staff
Your NickServ account:
Your relationship / affiliation with the community:
NickServ of group contacts and if their status is hidden/public:

# Channels and cloaks (see below)
Channels you'd like to claim:
(typically #communityname and #communityname-*)
Would you like ONLY group contacts to be able to register these channels with
ChanServ?:
(The cloaks will be formatted like this:
about/YourCommunityNameHere/name or about/YourCommunityNameHere/role/name)

Once all this is figured out, I'll do the needful.

I'm still looking into some technical stuff and when I resume regular duties (the end of this month at the latest is my projected return), I plan to streamline a few things. Been looking through the MW documentation and think I can save us a few frustrations and further optimize our page loads in a few areas.

[robkelk]

Ah, youth... A relatively-new user with eighteen edits total, two of which were replies to mod questions, asked not-quite-demanded confirmed user status.

I'm on vacation this week., Bob's on vacation this week. Geth's on sabbatical.

Who wants to reply?

Since I'm here already, I'll handle it.

Thanks, Geth.

Also, since this seems like something that should be done ASAP, I'm going to contact Libera via their instructions here:

https://libera.chat/chanreg#the-projects...unity-team

Anyone actually willing to have a presence on Libera IRC, please give me suggestions for what the below should be penciled in with:

Code:

# About your community
Your community name(s):
Your community description:
Can we list your community publicly, such as on the libera.chat website:
Libera Chat staff member you have discussed this registration with:

# About you and your staff
Your NickServ account:
Your relationship / affiliation with the community:
NickServ of group contacts and if their status is hidden/public:

# Channels and cloaks (see below)
Channels you'd like to claim:
(typically #communityname and #communityname-*)
Would you like ONLY group contacts to be able to register these channels with
ChanServ?:
(The cloaks will be formatted like this:
about/YourCommunityNameHere/name or about/YourCommunityNameHere/role/name)

Once all this is figured out, I'll do the needful.

I'm still looking into some technical stuff and when I resume regular duties (the end of this month at the latest is my projected return), I plan to streamline a few things. Been looking through the MW documentation and think I can save us a few frustrations and further optimize our page loads in a few areas.

I can help with the easy ones under # About your community:
Your community name(s): All The Tropes
Your community description: Talking about tropes, the works they're used in, and how to use them in your own works
Can we list your community publicly, such as on the libera.chat website: Yes


As for # Channels and cloaks ... do we want to claim the channels #ATT and #ATT-* ? That is our abbreviation on Miraheze and MediaWiki, after all. (We definitely want #allthetropes and #allthetropes-* )

[robkelk]

How did "vacation" become "work on something you've let sit for a year"? <sigh> Anyway...

One page copied from Wikiquote now no longer has its Wikiquote formatting. Other pages that need the same treatment have been identified.

[GethN7]

Ah, youth... A relatively-new user with eighteen edits total, two of which were replies to mod questions, asked not-quite-demanded confirmed user status.

I'm on vacation this week., Bob's on vacation this week. Geth's on sabbatical.

Who wants to reply?

Since I'm here already, I'll handle it.

Thanks, Geth.

Also, since this seems like something that should be done ASAP, I'm going to contact Libera via their instructions here:

https://libera.chat/chanreg#the-projects...unity-team

Anyone actually willing to have a presence on Libera IRC, please give me suggestions for what the below should be penciled in with:

Code:

# About your community
Your community name(s):
Your community description:
Can we list your community publicly, such as on the libera.chat website:
Libera Chat staff member you have discussed this registration with:

# About you and your staff
Your NickServ account:
Your relationship / affiliation with the community:
NickServ of group contacts and if their status is hidden/public:

# Channels and cloaks (see below)
Channels you'd like to claim:
(typically #communityname and #communityname-*)
Would you like ONLY group contacts to be able to register these channels with
ChanServ?:
(The cloaks will be formatted like this:
about/YourCommunityNameHere/name or about/YourCommunityNameHere/role/name)

Once all this is figured out, I'll do the needful.

I'm still looking into some technical stuff and when I resume regular duties (the end of this month at the latest is my projected return), I plan to streamline a few things. Been looking through the MW documentation and think I can save us a few frustrations and further optimize our page loads in a few areas.

I can help with the easy ones under # About your community:
Your community name(s): All The Tropes
Your community description: Talking about tropes, the works they're used in, and how to use them in your own works
Can we list your community publicly, such as on the libera.chat website: Yes


As for # Channels and cloaks ... do we want to claim the channels #ATT and #ATT-* ? That is our abbreviation on Miraheze and MediaWiki, after all. (We definitely want #allthetropes and #allthetropes-* )

I agree with all your above suggestions. All I need now is have the IRC nicknames of those willing to have a presence there if required and I'll submit the paperwork via email ASAP.

[robkelk]

I'm halfway through a new book and have already started an ATT page for it. Anybody want to help me with it? ISBN 978-0-06-304038-0

EDIT: Finished the book today - it was that or go out in the pouring rain. Thanks for the added Trope, Bob. (I remember Epsilon always caught me by surprise with that one...)

[GethN7]

Bob and Rob (hey, that rhymes!), I bring you tidings of great joy.

The settings for SocialProfile, just tell me which one you want disabled and I'll send a request to Miraheze to make the appropriate backend changes

$wgUserProfileDisplay['board'] = true;
$wgUserProfileDisplay['foes'] = true;
$wgUserProfileDisplay['friends'] = true;
$wgUserProfileDisplay['avatar'] = true; // If set to false, disables both avatar display and upload
$wgUserBoard = true;
$wgFriendingEnabled = true;
$wgAvatarKey = $wgDBname;

$wgUserPageChoice = true;
$wgUserProfileAvatarsInDiffs = true;
$wgUserProfileDisplay = true;


Notes:

The first option is fine, we need that.

Second and third I'm sure you two want disabled.

Four and five we need to keep.

Six is another disable I'm sure.

Seven is tech feature we shouldn't meddle with.

Eight, nine, and ten we should keep. These control using a regular wikipage or the SP user profile as default, choice is good. the second one controls where avatar changes are logged, transparency is good. The last makes the User Profile public if that is the chosen page for the first choice, makes no sense to disable this.

[robkelk]

I don't mind if the third is left enabled. Definitely disable the second.

I concur with the rest of your suggestions.

[Bob Schroeck]

Likewise. Nuke "foes", everything else is fine.

And Geth? Thank you.

[GethN7]

Likewise.  Nuke "foes", everything else is fine.

And Geth?  Thank you.

You're quite welcome, Bob, request has been filed here:

https://phabricator.miraheze.org/T7610

I will be handling the Libera IRC matter in the next day or two and will keep all other staff apprised of my progress. I will be the registered party representing us by default, but please do not hesitate to provide valid registered IRC account names that you wish to see represented as well (ATT staff are the only ones allowed for now).

[Bob Schroeck]

Although I haven't used IRC in literally decades, go ahead and register my wiki handle in case I need to make an appearance.

[GethN7]

Although I haven't used IRC in literally decades, go ahead and register my wiki handle in case I need to make an appearance.

You'll need to do so per their instructions for their own servers, the original IRC information was not retained from Freenode:

https://libera.chat/guides/registration

Once I have that, I'll add it to the request.

Also, I got confirmation the Foe feature has been removed from SocialProfile, though apparently it still is functional to some degree. I asked Miraheze staff if need be, to completely disable both the friend and foe features and flush all records of both if that is the only way to remove the feature in question, as the friend/foe information appears linked.

I plan to audit our other extensions once I return to regular duties to make sure we have no other similar undesirable issues and to request changes where needed.

Update: Back on regular duty. Some tech stuff I wanted to check requires certain rights anyway. So far just made some needed edits to the Main Page to reflect how Tropedia is no longer our branded ATT branch on FANDOM.

[Bob Schroeck]

I'll need to register after I get back from vacation tomorrow; I don't appear to be able to do so on the tablet I'm using.

[GethN7]

I'll need to register after I get back from vacation tomorrow; I don't appear to be able to do so on the tablet I'm using.

Feel free to take your time, Bob, this isn't super high priority.

Also, back on the Lua topic, I did a bit of checking, and frankly, it worries me just how much we are dependent on it.

That said, they are remarkably efficient, and our current Tropes, Works, and Creator templates are miles above what we had prior in terms of function. Regardless, I believe we might wish to replace our dependence on Lua or at the very least have non-Lua backups for as much as possible since if Lua ever fails us, ATT would be absolutely crippled if we have no alternatives.

If we ever have traffic on par with Wikipedia (so far we don't have but a mere fraction at best), then Lua-only seems sane enough, given it was designed to scale for wikis of their size admirably, but for our needs, I'd prefer we not lean on it so much where we don't have to in case Lua dies for some reason due to a server/extension/configuration issue.

Since Brent was instrumental in making the templates I mentioned we use the most that rely on Lua to be as efficient as they are, I'd like to invite him to comment, I could be wrong on this topic, he knows more than I do in some regards and I'll defer to his views on this. That said, Lua (especially paired with the Variables extension) are not IMMEDIATE problems, but I'm concerned they could break down the road and a sizable portion of our entire content base would be crippled if we have no fallback plan. I hope I don't sound like a worrywart, but after watching the years of TV Tropes using hacks and fixes to one problem that caused five more elsewhere, I want our wiki to have as much uptime as possible outside of server issues beyond our control.

[Bob Schroeck]

On a different topic, Cwf1997's 2-week tempban ends tomorrow. We need to be prepared for the inevitable flood of subpar attempts at contribution. And remember, he's on final warning -- one misused trope and he's out on his ass.

[GethN7]

While I wait for Bob's IRC info, good news and bad.

Good news: The Monaco skin works again, thanks to someone who improved on mine and Dantman's forks and made a fork for MediaWiki 1.35+ The gadgets I wrote for the old version are partially functionally, the skin change gagdets work, but a few need adjustments for page width and color alterations for readability, the rest do nothing or are not needed (like the Admin Links Monaco enabler, supported by default now). Filed a few issue reports with the maintainer (who is also Miraheze Staff), should you wish use that skin, mostly suggestions to better integrate ManageWiki features for admins.

Bad news: Social Profile's Friend/Foe stuff is still unable to be excised via the backend (the settings don't work well apparently to disable things due to the way the extension was written), so I'm planning to thumb through the code and try disabling it via some CSS hacks. It's a ghetto solution, but the best I can do on my end. I also asked them to tweak a few other things to deter spammers from trying to sneak past Moderation using SocialProfile (Moderation only works for certain namespaces and the User Profiles of SP are not covered by its remit), which is theoretically possible. Enabled the User boards to be public for transparency reasons and to de-clog the sidebar, private ones will remain private (only you will see those and who you communicated with), tried to defang the friend/foe feature as much as is possible in the meantime to remove hassles, turns out the Miraheze guys got requests from other wikis to remove that feature too, so they are making it a priority to get that change pushed through. In the meantime, let me know if anything breaks.

Note: You can delete messages from User Boards if you do not wish to have them around for any reason, either public or private.

Brent, I added Capiunto and Variables Lua. The former provides infoboxes with Lua support, the latter future proofs Variables extension use with Scribunto support, which should be useful if you need to do further tweaks at a later date.

[robkelk]

... Bad news: Social Profile's Friend/Foe stuff is still unable to be excised via the backend (the settings don't work well apparently to disable things due to the way the extension was written), so I'm planning to thumb through the code and try disabling it via some CSS hacks. It's a ghetto solution, but the best I can do on my end. I also asked them to tweak a few other things to deter spammers from trying to sneak past Moderation using SocialProfile (Moderation only works for certain namespaces and the User Profiles of SP are not covered by its remit), which is theoretically possible. ...

I know I've asked this before, but considering it's now becoming a time sink, I'm going to ask again:

Why do we even use Social Profile?

I don't see anything in it that contributes to our core mission.

[Bob Schroeck]

Why do we even have that lever?

[GethN7]

... Bad news: Social Profile's Friend/Foe stuff is still unable to be excised via the backend (the settings don't work well apparently to disable things due to the way the extension was written), so I'm planning to thumb through the code and try disabling it via some CSS hacks. It's a ghetto solution, but the best I can do on my end. I also asked them to tweak a few other things to deter spammers from trying to sneak past Moderation using SocialProfile (Moderation only works for certain namespaces and the User Profiles of SP are not covered by its remit), which is theoretically possible. ...

I know I've asked this before, but considering it's now becoming a time sink, I'm going to ask again:

Why do we even use Social Profile?

I don't see anything in it that contributes to our core mission.

Package deal. Things we DO use or do find useful require aspects of SocialProfile (like user avatars). It also allows us to provide some user features on par with FANDOM and TV Tropes, especially the latter. Some parts of it are a pain, admittedly, but the Userboard allows for on wiki private messaging, which is TVT default feature, only ours is more secure.

The good news is that the SP extension is now receiving high level attention and as soon as they can excise the parts we don't want, it is a priority to provide that.

Also, Gethbot is back to work. If you guys need a bot job for something, let me know.

[robkelk]

From the "I'll take my victories where I can" department:

The number of images imported from TV Tropes without an identified license is now below 14,000... and the list now fits onto three subpages. (It was only a year ago that the list was too large to fit on less than ten subpages.)

[GethN7]

From the "I'll take my victories where I can" department:

The number of images imported from TV Tropes without an identified license is now below 14,000... and the list now fits onto three subpages. (It was only a year ago that the list was too large to fit on less than ten subpages.)

Congrats. I was going to request an updated current revision and image dump in a few months since our old one has a lot busted and unused images (out of the 60,000 in the archive, over 22,000+ were broken, duplicates, unlicensed, or otherwise taking up space, tested this when I made a localhost clone of the old wiki dump, hopefully your efforts will help us trim that down further to just what we need.

I made a few more changes. The front page has the Tabs markup used where we were using Tabber. Tabber still may look better on some pages depending on the content, but I used the Tabs functionality since it uses pure CSS, should load much faster, and unless you still have an ancient Internet Explorer version, CSS runs on every browser I'm aware with no issues.

[Bob Schroeck]

Tables of Contents are now collapsible (and collapsed) for me, and i can't seem to turn it off. I presume this is a side effect of your changes, Geth?

[Bob Schroeck]

And Cwf1997 has returned as expected, with a new page that is (currently) lacking his trademark trope misuse.

EDIT: And the page review tool has popped up on it for me for the first time in years... I presume that this, too, is a side effect of Geth's changes.

[GethN7]

And Cwf1997 has returned as expected, with a new page that is (currently) lacking his trademark trope misuse.

EDIT:  And the page review tool has popped up on it for me for the first time in years... I presume that this, too, is a side effect of Geth's changes.

Yeah, I restored the PageTriage feature. Given it gives us another way to keep track of pages that are in need of possible reviewing, I figured it would be useful. Moderation screens out unapproved poster edits, but Page Triage lets us double check approved posters to make sure their edits don't need further cleanup.

Thanks for the bug report on the TOC, I'll fix that. Been seeing if some features would be useful or clash with our current setup so I could audit what features are going to be long-term helpful.

[Umbire]

Hi, Umbire here. Finally catching up to behind-the-scenes events and other things I seem to have missed completely - including the actual reason behind the sabbatical I've heard about, which I will not comment on (EDIT: Not as of YET, anyway.) to save myself and Lynn aspirins down the line - and chiming in regarding the following.

Re this Forum thread on ATT

The gist is that the person registering it needs to represent it in an official capacity, e.g. someone with access to the domain registration and such.

I, for one, would be willing to offer Umbire the Phantom a seat on the moderation team, and not just for setting up the new IRC channel. Thoughts?

It was something I was considering during the process of informing people - but I maintain that I do not feel it an appropriate position for myself, and I am unlikely to ever accept such a position here for the foreseeable future.

Furthermore, as to finding a place for this peer-directed project, it seems you are looking to take the wheel from there, and so I'll leave that to you.

[GethN7]

Hi, Umbire here. Finally catching up to behind-the-scenes events and other things I seem to have missed completely - including the actual reason behind the sabbatical I've heard about, which I will not comment on (EDIT: Not as of YET, anyway.) to save myself and Lynn aspirins down the line - and chiming in regarding the following.

Re this Forum thread on ATT

The gist is that the person registering it needs to represent it in an official capacity, e.g. someone with access to the domain registration and such.

I, for one, would be willing to offer Umbire the Phantom a seat on the moderation team, and not just for setting up the new IRC channel. Thoughts?

It was something I was considering during the process of informing people - but I maintain that I do not feel it an appropriate position for myself, and I am unlikely to ever accept such a position here for the foreseeable future.

Furthermore, as to finding a place for this peer-directed project, it seems you are looking to take the wheel from there, and so I'll leave that to you.

For the record, and I want to make this clear one last time. I do not hold any hatred against anyone here, so whatever you and Lynn believe, please disabuse yourselves of any notions otherwise. There are certain ideologies I believe noxious, certain beliefs I consider poison, and certain creeds I consider anathema, but I do not hate the people who may or may not believe them. Both on a personal note and speaking for my role on ATT, I remain firmly committed to keeping my personal values as divorced from my official duties for the good of the project insofar as is possible, the FANDOM situation was simply a case where despite professing loyalty to their wishes despite my personal values, they saw fit to expel me from running what is now Tropedia because I hurt someone's feelings and never gave me a chance to explain myself before assuming I was unregenerate and unworthy of their continued sufferance.

I accept that with grace and will not trouble them again, and when I aired why I considered why they slammed the door in my face to be the result of asking me to betray beliefs I considered closely held as the price of continuing to put up with it, I never once said I hated a single person, and I still don't, so for the final time, I want it on record neither you nor Lynn have any reason to feel hatred, fear, or disgust for me, you two are human beings deserving of dignity, compassion, and respect regardless of my PERSONAL opinions of what political, social, or moral values you may hold, and I apologize if I crossed any lines in that regard, and you have my word it will not happen again, and so does everyone else here, they may hold me to that if you wish to make an archive of this post to keep a record.

That said, I have graciously been allowed to continue working with All The Tropes, which I promise to dedicate myself to dealing with as nonpartisan as possible, which I, unfortunately, was not able to do on FANDOM due to their imposition of enforcing certain values for which they would tolerate no dissent, no matter how respectful or reasoned. That said, if you two wish to think of me as of unregenerate bigoted scum, then that is your choice, and I mourn the misunderstanding if you do. If the two of you would like to see if my word is indeed bond, then I respectfully ask you please judge my actions as opposed to perceptions of my intent.