Wikinews:Water cooler/technical/archives/2009/October

Miszabot - auto-archiver
Is this bot dead now? I last see it editing my talk page in July and it was really, really useful. I was also pretty sure we had it running on the water cooler to keep it under control and save the bother of archiving manually. --Brian McNeil / talk 18:00, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Nevermind, I see it editing Tris' page, and mine was misconfigured following my user name change. But, should we set it up on the various Water Cooler sections? --Brian McNeil / talk 18:03, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That'd be nice. Bawolff ☺☻ 18:28, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes. Please. For the love of god let's set it up on the WC, and anywhere else we have lots of discussions. It's silly to have this much... junk... on these pages. -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 18:29, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I've got one vote though. Can we make it archive by month? Rather than just numbered archives?  That way we can find stuff easier if we know when about it was. -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 18:34, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It seems very dodgy-it stopped archiving mine for a period so I went back & recopied the code over, which worked. Second the monthly archives.     Tris   18:39, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * You'd have to ask the bot maintainer to implement some form of archive number incrementing, unless they're disillusioned with wiki I'd expect them to be happy to do that. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:02, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * They already have archive number incrementing... and month support. So... I'm going with "lets do it" -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 20:05, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ Though I've requested magical keys so we can migrate the rest of the archives. -- Shakata Ga Nai ^_^ 20:13, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

improved RSS feed
The Latest News RSS feed now includes the first bit of the article in the feed. As of right now it includes the first three  tag enclosed areas of the page in action=render mode (basically the date, the first two paragraphs or an image (unfortunately excluding ones done with the thumb option) and a paragraph of text). Infoboxes create a bit of a mess for trying to determine what content it should include, hence the somewhat odd way of determining what to show. If any one is good with regexs, a PHP compatible solution for removing infoboxes would be wonderful. Let me know if you find any bugs with the new feed. --Cspurrier (talk) 19:40, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Cool. Infoxboxes can be extracted by looking for a div with a class of 'infobox'. Bawolff ☺☻ 13:21, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Automated lead generation
As some of you know, I'm experimenting with js tools to assist in changing the leads. You can play with it at User:Bawolff/sandbox/makeLead. (Also after a succesful review, you should see a button, make this article a lead article, that also gets you to it). Anyways, I'd appreciate ay comments/feedback/thoughts. Cheers. Bawolff ☺☻ 17:22, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
 * It is useful-only thing is when I tried it, came up with this at the top-A local JS function experianed an error on an API request. Please leave a note at the Wikinews:Water_cooler. Details: [object Error]  however it still worked.    Tris   07:14, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
 * There was a bug that caused Internet explorer to say the details of any error was [object Error]. I've now fixed that. Could you perhaps try using it again (but do a hard refresh of that page first). And see if the error message still pops up. IF it does hopefully it will give more useful details. Bawolff ☺☻ 22:23, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

It now doesn't seem to show articles published today, even after a hard refresh?   Tris   15:23, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
 * My date is very odd atm-the watchlist doesn't know the correct date for me? Just tried it again & it works, but gave this error-A local JS function experianed an error on an API request. Please leave a note at the Wikinews:Water_cooler. Details: [object Error]      Tris   19:38, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * For the watchlist problem - check your timezone in special:preferences - I've heard reports that some people had their timezone randomly change. As for the error on makeLead, I'm really not sure what is causing it. Bawolff ☺☻ 00:27, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Bug: Doesn't work with articles that have a single tick in their title. IE: Suspect arrested for murder of Iraq's entire taekwondo team. -- Shakata Ga Nai ^_^ 05:00, 29 September 2009 (UTC) Also, when I just clicked make lead after reviewing, it had input "make this a lead story" or something similar instead of the article title. Overall, though it's awesome & very useful!   Tris   11:54, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Shak's bug i can't reproduce, Tris's bug i need to spend some quality time with internet explorer (*shudder*). Bawolff ☺☻ 18:27, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep, IE7 is a pile of shit with regard to alot of this stuff; but it's on the intranet & so can't change it. I like going home to nice little Chromey!     Tris   18:40, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The big problem for businesses is that someone would actually have to do some work to integrate something like Firefox or Chrome into their managed update environment (Basically Active Directory and a bunch of scummy other crap). The true horror is when you're stuck with IE6 because some point-haired boss bought some buzzword-compliant portal piece of shit that only works with it, and the costing decisions are such that you're stuck with it for about 10 years.
 * Web-enabled applications are a great idea, until you forget the main idea is to decouple the application from desktop-dependence and code for a crap browser that only runs on one platform. But, never fear! The Microsoft and Sap salesdroids will be along any minute to arrange some hookers and blow for the same pointy-haired boss - just so he locks you into their crap... again. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:00, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Bug Oct. 13, 2009
"A local JS function experianed an error on an API request. Please leave a note at the Wikinews:Water_cooler. Details: Error: Could not retrieve page "Post-mortem examination reveals Stephen Gately" as it does not exist. <286:http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=User%3ABawolff%2Fmwapilib.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&scrver=1>" URL was: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Make_lead?use-page=Post-mortem+examination+reveals+Stephen+Gately+#leadForm

Calebrw (talk) 15:51, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅. This was an extremly serious error on my part (could be a slight security risk. Its slight since in order for someone to exploit, they'd have to trick someone into reviewing an article with a very obviously malformed title (aka something that'd be deleted on sight, actually something that mediawiki would give you a bad title error for, so really not exploitable at all, but still - big error on my part, I apologize). Anyways, fixed now. (p.s. Shaks issue reported above is also now fixed) Bawolff ☺☻ 23:43, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Nice. Thanks. Calebrw (talk) 00:53, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Develop template updated
I've made significant changes to develop. First, to add the ability for Millosh's bots to add a source parameter. The template will take "VOA" or "setimes" at the moment. It will, as before, take an additional free-form parameter to detail what needs done (basically, not being as harsh as using cleanup).

The other changes are to actively encourage people to fill in original reporting notes. Which links and text you get depend on whether or not the associated talk page exists. Have a play with it, comment on the text given when either "VOA" or "setimes" are used. --Brian McNeil / talk 20:10, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The develop template is now fully documented. Please look at what it offers to do for original reporting!
 * The edit introduction for an original reporting section is at Template:Develop/Original reporting/introduction.
 * The pre-loaded wikitext for the original reporting section is at Template:Develop/Original reporting.
 * The edit introduction could be nicer looking. There does not seem to be any way to avoid multiple OR sections. It does not appear possible to detect an existing OR section and edit that.
 * One thing to think about, is the ability to use this template instead of cleanup. It should be a more gentle way to take something out of review. --Brian McNeil / talk 09:25, 5 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Well i agree that develop is nicer than tasks or cleanup, it suffers from the problem, if you don't read the fine print, you probably won't realize that there is something wrong with the article. I think we perhaps need some sort of happy medium between the two templates. Bawolff ☺☻ 13:23, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * How about I change the colour if there's an additional parameter passed in? --Brian McNeil / talk 15:22, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * One of these days I'll dig up which template would need changed to make develop red if there's any parameters given to it. --Brian McNeil / talk 01:55, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Searching doesn't work?
Is there a technical problem with searching on Wikinews? I search for Colorado balloon and Falcon Heene, either one of which I would expect to lead me to this article, but both turn up zero hits.

In contrast, the equivalent searches via Google find the article here. TJRC (talk) 00:53, 16 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Takes a few days for the search to catch up. Try your links again now, they both resolve to the one result you were looking for.  -- Shakata Ga Nai  ^_^ 21:26, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

User notify gadget
Just a heads up, I've made some changes to the usernotify gadget. In paticular: var useFancyVectorDropdown = false;
 * Its now only enabled on user talk namespace. This is for security reasons (In paticular, before this change an admin could potentially be tricked to make arbitrary edits (read vandalize) a protected page such as the main page rather easily). This should not affect anybody
 * I've enabled improved vector drop down menu. (This could be changed to disable by default if people hate it). Basically in vector, instead of the links appearing below the toolbox, they appear by the add comment tab. On pages yet to be created the links still appear below the toolbox. This applies only to vector. To disable this change, add the following to special:mypage/vector.js:

Cheers. Bawolff ☺☻ 03:37, 25 October 2009 (UTC)