All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XXVII

[robkelk]

Over the past several weeks I've been watching Just a 1itt1e bit further's edits carefully.  He's been making often-substantial changes to pages but in general I've more or less agreed with him (although the diplomacy of his edit reasons often leaves something to be desired).  However the largest part of this one rubs me wrong.  I am inclined to revert it, but I wanted other opinions before I go ahead.

Revert. If we can be educational, that's a good thing.

Agreed. There's no reason to remove that text.

EDIT: And reverted.

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, that saves me the effort. <grin>

[robkelk]

I was in the system anyway. (Don't ask me why I decided to make a source page for Silas Marner -- even I'm not sure why, considering how many other projects I have going -- but as long as I was editing...)

[Bob Schroeck]

I just ran into a weirdness, and hopefully the more technically adept of the wiki staff can address or explain it. We have an image -- the poster for the film Suzume -- which was recently uploaded by ilikecomputers. However, it's not appearing (at least not for me), and when I attempt to look directly at any version of the image (by clicking the various pixel sizes offered on the file page, or what should be the image itself), I get a page reading "Unauthorized This server could not verify that you are authorized to access the document you requested" instead. Even the thumbnail in the file history block is denied me. What's going on here?

UPDATE: In the minutes after I posted that, more and more images started disappearing on me, including my own uploads. It looks like we're dealing with some kind of barf on the part of the wiki, or Miraheze in general.

[robkelk]

It's not just you.

Due to a disk issue on cloud11 (where swift servers are located), files are currently not displaying properly and uploads are not possible. More information will be provided when available. Reception123 (talk) (C) 13:15, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

[Bob Schroeck]

Joy. Thanks, Rob.

[robkelk]

Status report, 9 hours later. We still can't upload images This probably isn't something that's going to be fixed relatively easily.

[Bob Schroeck]

The image issue has now spread to the menu icons and the wiki logo.

[robkelk]

There's been one update:

Adding to the above, while the servers which actually hold image files are unaffected, the server that verifies that users have the proper permissions to view files and which directs traffic is down. This means that requests for images might return errors such as "Unauthorized. You do not have permission to view this file." and such. We are working to correct the issue but have no ETA at the moment for when this will be fixed. Agent Isai Talk to me! 00:36, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Speaking as somebody who's spent a decade in Storage and Backup, this doesn't sound like a disk issue to me. This is a security issue - not "we didn't have enough security to stop a hack", but "the security that we have is malfunctioning".

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, given that the entire wiki is down now and only returning 502 Bad Gateway errors, it looks like the problem is expanding.

<sigh> When was our most recent backup? And can we get at it?

[robkelk]

I'm now getting "500 Internal Server Error" messages when trying to save changes.

This might not be related to the images. Does anyone have time to look whether a Phabricator ticket exists yet?

[robkelk]

Never mind - editing is back.

[Bob Schroeck]

Just noticed that we're starting to get an unusual number of new users with what I like to think of as "giveaway" names that wouldn't be out of place at, say, Gmail, but stand out like a sore thumb on ATT. Looks like some spammers have us on their radar again.

[robkelk]

Possibly they're expecting to slip in while Miraheze is having image issues...? If only they'd bother to read the FAQ; they'd know that they can't slip in unnoticed that way.

[Bob Schroeck]

It's been a couple of months since Coffee Lover became a troper at ATT. Is it time to give them the autopatrolled bit?

I've already been thinking along those lines, so yeah, I think so.

It's been ten days and no one has said, "Hold! Do not do this!"

So I'm doing this.

[Bob Schroeck]

Now that I know we can do this, I am tempted to go into "Manage this wiki's extensions", select the "Editors" tab, and clear the checkmark beside "VisualEditor".

If anybody needs to know why, I seem to recall that Bob has a list of complaints about VisualEditor.

But I think maybe this is something we should (1) check on the private wiki whether it does what we expect, and (2) check with the Tropers whether anybody would be seriously inconvenienced if it does what I expect it does.

We should follow up on this. I for one want to see the Visual Editor shot in the head and buried in the back yard with all due speed.

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh, and while we're in the general neighborhood of approving a user for autopatrolled, what do folks think about promoting Puterboy1? He's been a member since November, he's made a lot of good edits, and he's proven himself able to take advice and improve his contributions.

[robkelk]

Oh, and while we're in the general neighborhood of approving a user for autopatrolled, what do folks think about promoting Puterboy1?  He's been a member since November, he's made a lot of good edits, and he's proven himself able to take advice and improve his contributions.

Yes, let's do this.

[robkelk]

Now that I know we can do this, I am tempted to go into "Manage this wiki's extensions", select the "Editors" tab, and clear the checkmark beside "VisualEditor".

If anybody needs to know why, I seem to recall that Bob has a list of complaints about VisualEditor.

But I think maybe this is something we should (1) check on the private wiki whether it does what we expect, and (2) check with the Tropers whether anybody would be seriously inconvenienced if it does what I expect it does.

We should follow up on this. I for one want to see the Visual Editor shot in the head and buried in the back yard with all due speed.

Step 1 is complete. It's unchecked on the private wiki, and that did what I expected -- Visual editor is no longer available there and there is no longer any way under Preferences to bring it back. (I think I'll leave it turned off there.)

Step 2... Who wants to ask the Tropers?

[Bob Schroeck]

Step 2... Who wants to ask the Tropers?

Can we set up a poll somehow with what functionality is currently left to us? If we can, that might be the easiest way to handle it. Otherwise a topic in what passes for our forums right now, and a message in the top-of-page notice about it.

[robkelk]

There's been one update:

Adding to the above, while the servers which actually hold image files are unaffected, the server that verifies that users have the proper permissions to view files and which directs traffic is down. This means that requests for images might return errors such as "Unauthorized. You do not have permission to view this file." and such. We are working to correct the issue but have no ETA at the moment for when this will be fixed. Agent Isai Talk to me! 00:36, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Speaking as somebody who's spent a decade in Storage and Backup, this doesn't sound like a disk issue to me. This is a security issue - not "we didn't have enough security to stop a hack", but "the security that we have is malfunctioning".

Still no images. I've asked for an update.

EDIT: And that request got me the Phabricator ticket number.

From the looks of things, swiftac is going to need to be rebuilt. Some of the data can be scavenged, however much of the VM was corrupted beyond the point of usability. I also believe that proxmox will need to be reinstalled on cloud11, as the previous install is likely corrupted in a similar manner to swiftac.

Oh, joy. This is not going to have a quick fix. This is one of those "every patch reveals another issue" breaks.

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, crap.

With luck we won't have a third instance of image lossage when they're done, but I'm not willing to bet on it.

<sigh>

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh, and while we're in the general neighborhood of approving a user for autopatrolled, what do folks think about promoting Puterboy1?  He's been a member since November, he's made a lot of good edits, and he's proven himself able to take advice and improve his contributions.

Yes, let's do this.

Second call for any objections.

[GethN7]

Oh, and while we're in the general neighborhood of approving a user for autopatrolled, what do folks think about promoting Puterboy1?  He's been a member since November, he's made a lot of good edits, and he's proven himself able to take advice and improve his contributions.

Yes, let's do this.

Second call for any objections.

None from me.

On the VisualEditor front, I don't see the harm keeping it around for talk pages, but I third putting a bullet in the dome for any use on actual content adding places. Ultimately, for technical reasons, VE does more harm than good given how we add content, and thus for mainspace and all other namespaces for adding templates, content, or any client side information aside from talk pages, put it down like Old Yeller.

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, when next I hit the wiki, I'll promote Puterboy1.

EDIT: Setting him up now, which has revealed something I suppose should have been obvious in retrospect: If on the Moderation Queue with the current image issues you Approve All for someone who has an image queued up, the entire Approve will fail. You have to manually approve everything but the image.