[Wikia-l] [Wikia-tech-l] Extension-related questions

Tue Mar 25 07:22:41 UTC 2008

Daniel and Jack,

Thanks for the kind words.  I will talk with our folks internally and 
see how much we're able to support your generous offers.  Please be 
patient with us, as there's a ton of customer requests in our queues 
already and we need to figure out where this fits in!

gil

DanTMan wrote:
> I am...
> 
> Since jami_hari doesn't appear around much at all anymore, I'm perfectly 
> willing to become sysadmin for the Volunteer Server and help with 
> configuration, setting things up, and even setting up an maintaining a 
> setup of Subversion for the community to help out.
> 
> I've always been open for cleaning up any of Wikia's extensions and 
> turning them into something suitable for Wikimedia SVN, or even direct 
> for use from the Volunteer Wikia SVN.
> I remember an E-Mail from John Q. where we discussed a few ideas for the 
> Volunteer Server, but it looks like those ones disappeared. ^_^ Though 
> John Q. still wants to hire me every time he sees something like the 
> hooks I had commited to core to help with Wikia's Listuser's change in 
> updates.
> 
> I pop in with a lot of suggestions, feedback, and comments, largely 
> un-noticed... Dunno if I rub people the wrong way, am as invisible on 
> the net as I am in real life, or if it's just the insanely long e-mails 
> I write >.< rofl...
> 
> BTW, if you're wondering about my latest exploits... I'm heading the 
> title rewrite for core (To allow extensibility of title normalization, 
> and also allow pages to be properly saved with tittles like _main_Page 
> instead of using the DISPLAYTTILE hack), and MixesDB contracted me to 
> create a PM system, inline mp3 player extension, and wants me to create 
> an extension to put a titleicon in the upper right for jumping to a 
> google search of the article title (Probably going to hook into the 
> TitleIcon extension I wanted to create), plus I'm probably going to be 
> doing some stuff in core for better integration of external libraries, 
> and native support for js/css concatenation (ie: Combining multiple 
> js/css files like Wikia's allinone.js does) and minification.
> Oh ya... And hopefully once I'm able to get a credit card I can bring 
> Wiki-Tools back to life.
> 
> ~Daniel Friesen(Dantman) of:
> -The Gaiapedia (http://gaia.wikia.com)
> -Wikia ACG on Wikia.com (http://wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_ACG)
> -and Wiki-Tools.com (http://wiki-tools.com)
> 
> gil penchina wrote:
>> Jack,
>>
>> Glad to hear the community is excited about the tools.
>> Our policy is to focus most of our resources on supporting wikia user 
>> requests and then to submit code to the mediawiki SVN as time permits. 
>> I'll talk to the engineers about scheduling another push later in the year.
>>
>> Are you interested in helping set up and support a SVN as part of the 
>> volunteer development wiki?  I can check and see whether it's something 
>> we can help with.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Gil
>>
>>
>>
>> Jack Phoenix wrote:
>>   
>>> It's been a while since Wikia released their social tools 
>>> <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SocialProfile> and they became 
>>> a hit among the MediaWiki community, with many people praising the 
>>> tools...not to mention the i18n updates. UserProfile is currently 
>>> translated to 21 languages 
>>> <http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/SocialProfile/UserProfile/UserProfile.i18n.php?revision=32132&view=markup 
>>> <http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/SocialProfile/UserProfile/UserProfile.i18n.php?revision=32132&view=markup>> 
>>> - wow! Some of these languages are so obscure that I haven't ever heard 
>>> of them before MediaWiki...<g>
>>>  
>>> UserProfilePage.php file refers to a couple of special pages that aren't 
>>> currently included with SocialProfile:
>>>   $give_gift = Title::makeTitle(NS_SPECIAL, "GiveGift");
>>>   $friends_activity = Title::makeTitle(NS_SPECIAL, "UserActivity");
>>>   $similar_fans = Title::makeTitle(NS_SPECIAL, "SimilarFans");
>>>  
>>> For the less PHP-savvy of us, the code above refers to the special pages 
>>> Special:GiveGift, Special:UserActivity and Special:SimiliarFans. It 
>>> would be really cool to have the UserGift stuff added into 
>>> SocialProfile...and why not the points system that Halopedia, for 
>>> example is using.
>>>  
>>> Another issue I'd like to point out is avatars. Assuming a user uploads 
>>> an inappropriate avatar, the only way to remove that currently is to 
>>> delete the file - server-side. The web-based interface for avatar 
>>> deletions, Special:AvatarRemove would be an appropriate addition to 
>>> SocialProfile package - it just seems so logical.
>>>  
>>> And now, while we're at it...Wikia has some cool Ajax-based extensions, 
>>> namely AjaxLogin and the Poll extension - I'd like to suggest releasing 
>>> them to the official MediaWiki SVN. MediaWiki, while it's a great wiki 
>>> software (and the only one I'll use), is a bit behind the times when it 
>>> comes to Ajax features...MW has an Ajax-based search suggest (disabled 
>>> by default) and some Ajaxy features in Special:Upload by default - and 
>>> that's pretty much it. There aren't that many MediaWiki extensions that 
>>> make use of Ajax features, as far as I know. CategoryTree is one of the 
>>> most notable Ajax extensions.
>>>  
>>> I've also noticed that Wikia makes quite a heavy use of custom MediaWiki 
>>> hooks - that is, ones that Wikia's techs have added into Wikia's copy of 
>>> MediaWiki and that are not in the core software. I bet it'd make things 
>>> a lot easier for everyone if Wikia's techs would just go ahead and add 
>>> these hooks into the core software - I'd say that it's almost impossible 
>>> that such a change would be reverted. This would make upgrading Wikia's 
>>> copy of MediaWiki a bit smoother, wouldn't it? :-)
>>>  
>>> And yet another question related to extensions, Wikia and 
>>> MediaWiki...well, kinda. Whatever happened to the idea of having a 
>>> public SVN for volunteer developers? The development wiki is still up 
>>> and running, but there's no public SVN anywhere...it'd be something a 
>>> lot of "code junkies" would appreciate, I'd say.
>>>  
>>> P.S. UserProfile/UserProfilePage.js refers to Special:MiniAjaxUpload - 
>>> an extension that's not included with SocialProfile - and also hotlinks 
>>> http://images.wikia.com/common/wikiany/images/ajax-loader-white.gif - 
>>> nasty! You might want to change that to a local URL and add the image to 
>>> the SocialProfile package. And I'd like to *thank* Wikia's hard-working 
>>> techs for bringing us these fancy social tools - they really are great! 
>>> If you don't believe me...check MediaWiki.org and #mediawiki IRC 
>>> channel. ;-)
>>>  
>>> Regards,
>>> -- 
>>> Jack Phoenix
>>> http://www.wikia.com/wiki/User:Jack_Phoenix
>>>
>>>
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>>>
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