Forum:MediaWiki upgrade 2021

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Note: This topic has been unedited for 1047 days. It is considered archived - the discussion is over.

Now that I have free time again, I've upgraded Uncyclopedia to MediaWiki 1.35, with help from Snarglefoop. This is the first real upgrade we've had since 1.19 in 2012.

Why the site didn't work for four days

• I tried to back up the images to the wrong part of the file system and ran out of space, which took down the web server software for over six hours. I only noticed the problem after I got up the next morning.
• MediaWiki has changed a lot between 1.31 and 1.35, so updating the old database was very time-consuming and pages appeared broken while it was in progress.
• It was possible to make some of the changes earlier in smaller steps by running migrateActors.php and migrateComments.php. I did not do this. These migrations were the worst offenders for time use.
• The server uses HDD storage. SSD is faster but more expensive.

In the next upgrade, planned for late 2022 or early 2023, I'll do what I can to improve on this. The server will still be slow, though.

What's new

• Partial blocks: Blocks can now apply to single namespaces or pages.
• New filters for edit review: Changes to the filtering tools on Special:RecentChanges. Includes a live updates feature.
• Interface administrators: Editing sitewide CSS and JavaScript pages has been split out to a separate user group. I've added the rights for this back to the regular admin group; this can be changed if it becomes a problem.
• DynamicPageList (third-party) is incompatible with newer MediaWiki versions and has been replaced with DynamicPageList3. Existing DPL code will need to be reviewed to make sure it still works.
• MultiUpload is unmaintained and has been replaced with SimpleBatchUpload. The "Upload multiple files" form can now be found at Special:BatchUpload.
• RandomSelection now caches results by default. This can be disabled by replacing <choose> with <choose uncached>.
• These extensions are now installed:
  • AJAXPoll
  • CodeEditor
  • CodeMirror
  • EasyTimeline
  • LinkSuggest
  • TimedMediaHandler
  • VisualEditor

If you notice any problems arising from this upgrade, you can report them here or at Uncyclopedia:Report a problem. You are welcome to reopen this forum if it closes due to inactivity, as bugs are not always fixed right away.

By the way, does the site notice still need the message about Wikia? It's been over two years. Maybe it should give way to newer announcements. ❦ Llwy-ar-lawr • talk • contribs • 20:52 3 June 2021

The site notice, at MediaWiki:Sitenotice, is getting a little stale, but it's a one-shot thing, as viewers can dismiss it. You retained the old joke when you used the header to announce progress in the site upgrades. The annoying old joke might have dissuaded viewers from reading to the end and getting the news. I'll try to think of something novel, and any other Admin can too. (Remember to increment MediaWiki:Sitenotice id so it's presented again to users who dismissed it.) MediaWiki:Anonnotice, on the other hand, is not dismissable. It contains bare-bones introductory information, such as an invitation to register, though it might not need to be shown at the top of every single page that I.P. Anon views. Spıke 🎙️09:53 4-Jun-21

Thanks for the update Llwy and Snarglefoop. The top page message should be changed to mark the second anniversary of the Independent Spoon! Some of the tools when editing a page for links (as I experienced with today with Botticelli for a wikipedia link) are quite a bit different. The only error I see at the moment is that the Featured template overlays the first paragraph of a feature. --RomArtus*Imperator ITRA (Orate) ® 21:16, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

The site JavaScript broke due to using deprecated global variables, which are now disabled by default. I've set $wgLegacyJavaScriptGlobals = true; until MediaWiki:Common.js is fixed. {{featured}} works now, as it's positioned with JS. ❦ Llwy-ar-lawr • talk • contribs • 22:05 3 June 2021

User:Spike/common.js is hosed! Object Inspector sez all the element classes are as expected but wgIsArticle is not defined. (The MediaWiki documentation I found merely says it's poorly named.)

Also, I'm annoyed to find that RecentChanges, which always has a tab open on my kitchen-table setup, has been burning up kilobytes all day waiting for something to happen. Disabling JavaScript solves it but kills a lot of other useful stuff. I changed a Preference that suggested it would disable this behavior but it didn't. Spıke 🎙️02:32 4-Jun-21

PS — Am no longer so annoyed; deprecated variables came back, though not immediately after that notice, and I found another Preference to disable. Have we found all the stuff that is broken? Note below! Spıke 🎙️02:50 6-Jun-21

Featuring

I tried to feature this article Pepé Le Pew. I got this message below:-

--RomArtus*Imperator ITRA (Orate) ® 23:03, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the thought! Spıke 🎙️02:50 6-Jun-21

I don't know what causes this, but it seems to be a known problem with 1.35+. I'll keep looking. ❦ Llwy-ar-lawr • talk • contribs • 19:48 6 June 2021

Ok, thanks Llwy. Hope we can find a fix. --RomArtus*Imperator ITRA (Orate) ® 19:53, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

I just tried to feature the article myself only to find that it failed silently. I may need to fix VFHcloser. ❦ Llwy-ar-lawr • talk • contribs • 19:57 6 June 2021

Dark Web also said she'd look at it, "though not right away." Spıke 🎙️01:08 7-Jun-21

I get the T258860 bug every so often, but I find reloading the page usually works. When I tried to close Pepé Le Pew, though, the VFHcloser gadget went into a hang at "Adding article content to main page..."; I updated MediaWiki:Gadget-VFHcloser.js against mw:ResourceLoader/Migration guide (users), and closed the article as featured. (Note that this does not fix the bug in the screenshot). Dark Web, White Hat (talk) 03:16, 7 June 2021 (UTC) (edit) 03:19, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. It still wasn't adding the revision ID, as apparently {{subst:REVISIONID}} does nothing anymore, so it now gets it from the API. ❦ Llwy-ar-lawr • talk • contribs • 05:45 7 June 2021

Ah, glad you caught that. Unfortunately, it turns out it wasn't the only one; my guess is that this had been broken for some time. I created Category:Pages missing revision parameter for FA template to track how many. 10 and counting. The effect is that the link to the featured version is broken for pages in that category. Dark Web, White Hat (talk) 06:45, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Llwy-ar-lawr and Dark Web, White Hat. --RomArtus*Imperator ITRA (Orate) ® 07:59, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

I had left out the revision= string so the ID went to a nonexistent unnamed parameter. I've fixed this too. Before that, possibly with the earlier gadget, articles were often featured with the parameter but no value. ❦ Llwy-ar-lawr • talk • contribs • 08:23 7 June 2021

Hall of Shame

This version of 12-May-19 was the last version before Llwy-ar-lawr conceded that it would no longer work under the third-party DPL we had been using, and began the current regime of listing every Uncyclopedian with a Featured Article (or half a one) and dooming us to sorting them manually every time one author crept ahead of another.

This version seems to work now under DPL3. If one of our MediaWizards would confirm that it really does, without breaking anything else subtle, please revert it to this version. Spıke 🎙️21:39 8-Jun-21

This had already fixed itself under the old DPL for unclear reasons. Since it's still working, no problem,  Done

I also notice Alden/Miley is listed more than once with various sockpuppets. Maybe those can be consolidated. ❦ Llwy-ar-lawr • talk • contribs • 03:44 11 June 2021

VisualEditor

I have disabled this feature by default as on Wikipedia. It doesn't look like anyone's getting much use out of it, it's slow to load, and it doesn't work on pages with a slash in the title. The suggested workaround is in place but isn't fixing it for us. If you want it back, you can turn it on in your preferences or add ?veaction=edit to the URL. ❦ Llwy-ar-lawr • talk • contribs • 18:08 11 June 2021