Wikinews:Water cooler/technical/archives/2014/September

Migrating site-wide JS to default-on gadgets
There's a heck of a lot of JavaScript on English Wikinews, and a lot of it is convoluted, esoteric, and crammed into a few massive files (e.g. Mediawiki:Common.js); and Gadgets has had the functionality to have default-on, hidden, and right-restricted gadgets for a while now. I think we should consider migrating what we can into Special:Gadgets, to ensure that things are modular (and easier to find!), allow people to turn things off, and so forth. It works well for Commons, and we all know that English Wikinews' JavaScript needs some sort of improvement (ignoring ResourceLoader entirely)…. Thoughts? Microchip08 (talk) 20:39, 13 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I've been thinking lately we need to do something about common.js. I made one small addition to it to enable my interactive tools for all users, and I hope eventually that small hook there would obviate the need for the button code, making at least one slightly-less-small reduction in the code, and eventually I'd hope the interactive tools would replace ezpr and make-lead too; but looking at English Wikibooks' common.js has made me envious]].  The biggest challenge, I've been thinking, is that to clean up the existing code one has to figure it out.  --Pi zero (talk) 22:12, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Many of the things in our common.js are helpfully commented (as far as "this is where it begins" goes), so we should be able to move the sections across fairly simply. If we separate it all into gadgets, we'd could have (as an example) code, user documentation and technical documentation split into a well established structure that's easy to find. I expect that whatever Gadgets does behind the scenes will be more efficient than what we are doing today, anyhow. Microchip08 (talk) 22:44, 13 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, this does seem desirable. Not only would it better organize things, it might also make essential elements of our infrastructure somewhat more resistant against uninformed tampering.  --Pi zero (talk) 15:27, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Grants to improve your project
Greetings! The Individual Engagement Grants program is accepting proposals for funding new experiments from September 1st to 30th. Your idea could improve Wikimedia projects with a new tool or gadget, a better process to support community-building on your wiki, research on an important issue, or something else we haven't thought of yet. Whether you need $200 or $30,000 USD, Individual Engagement Grants can cover your own project development time in addition to hiring others to help you.
 * Submit your proposal
 * Get help: In IdeaLab or an upcoming Hangout session PEarley (WMF) (talk) 15:20, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Discussion versus Collaboration
I just had to fully-protect Discussion page. I was thinking it was really weird someone would create that, until I looked at the &action=edit URL in a 'Private Browsing' session. Instead of seeing the Talk page tab labelled Discussion, it's coming up as Collaboration.

I'm sure this will just be an extra message or three in the MediaWiki: namespace, which I'm going to try and track down. I think those should be changed to Discussion since, for main namespace at least, "Collaboration" is only appropriate whilst an article is within the active news cycle. --Brian McNeil / talk 11:08, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Found messages:
 * Mediawiki:talk, has localisation to Discussion.
 * Nope, that's it. 30 minutes looking where this should be, and I can't find it.
 * Although, having MediaWiki:wikiLove.js as a system message breaks the listing when I try browsing Special:AllMessages; thus, I can't trust that I'm seeing all the messages. --Brian McNeil / talk 12:10, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Change in renaming process
''Part or all of this message may be in English. Please help translate if possible.'' Single-user login (SUL) finalisation's goal is so that every Wikimedia editor has a single, recognized global account with one username across all projects. As you may know, after a long delay, it's now underway as an effort between bureaucrats, stewards, and Wikimedia Foundation engineers. This will also allow for development of cross-wiki tools like global notifications and watchlists. There is no set date for the completion of single-user login finalization at this time.

The process involves changing all rename processes into one global renaming process. The ability for local bureaucrats to rename users on this wiki will be turned off on Monday, 15 September 2014, as one of the first steps. Global renamers are in the process of being created to make sure projects and languages are represented by the time this occurs. I sent a note to every bureaucrat about this process three weeks ago with an invitation to participate and many have begun requesting to be a part of the group. Together with the stewards, the global renamers will be empowered to help editors work through the often difficult process of getting a global name.

In parting, visit Special:MergeAccount to unify your account if you have never done so. If your local pages about renaming still need to be updated, please do so and consider pointing people to m:SRUC for future rename requests, especially if this project does not have bureaucrats that hold global renamer permissions. If you have any questions, you can read more on the help page on Meta. You can also follow the technical progress on mediawiki.org. Contact me on Meta any time with questions as well. Thank you for your time. -- User:Keegan (WMF) (talk) 9 September 2014 16.22 (UTC)

Breaking JavaScript changes
Several deprecated methods in MediaWiki's JavaScript modules will be removed in a few weeks' time. Ensure your code no longer uses these methods and update it if needed, and check and fix any gadgets or scripts you or Wikinews rely upon. These methods will be removed in the MediaWiki 1.25 release (scheduled for deployment to WMF wikis October 4th onwards, will hit Wikinews the week after): as such anything relying on them will break. The methods that need replacement are: If you identify problems but are unsure how to fix them, please ask for help! Microchip08 (talk) 12:22, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
 * (deprecated since Mediawiki 1.20 (2012)) – use  instead 111422
 * (deprecated since 1.20) – use  instead 111422
 * the  methods' " " and " " callback parameters (since 1.21 (2013)) – use the returned Promise interface instead 118733
 * the  async parameter (use Promise instead) 118733
 * the  module (use the standard   instead) 40560


 * Well, a simple string search in MediaWiki: space didn't turn up any instances of these for me; if I wasn't looking for the wrong strings, the lack of matches is perhaps a good sign. --Pi zero (talk) 15:30, 21 September 2014 (UTC)