Wikitech-l July 2012

128 participants
116 discussions

Missing Section Headings
by Marc Riddell 13 Sep '24

13 Sep '24

Hello, I have been a WP editor since 2006. I hope you can help me. For some reason I no longer have Section Heading titles showing in the Articles. This is true of all Headings including the one that carries the Article subject's name. When there is a Table of Contents, it appears fine and, when I click on a particular Section, it goes to that Section, but all that is there is a straight line separating the Sections. There is also no button to edit a Section. If I edit the page and remove the "== ==" markers from the Section Titles, the Title then shows up, but not as a Section Heading. Also, I don't have any Date separators on my Want List. This started 2 days ago. Any thoughts? Thanks, Marc Riddell [[User:Michael David]]

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MediaWiki 1.19.0beta2
by Sam Reed 09 May '14

09 May '14

I'm happy to announce the availability of the second beta release of the new MediaWiki 1.19 release series. Please try it out and let us know what you think. Don't run it on any wikis that you really care about, unless you are both very brave and very confident in your MediaWiki administration skills. MediaWiki 1.19 is a large release that contains many new features and bug fixes. This is a summary of the major changes of interest to users. You can consult the RELEASE-NOTES-1.19 file for the full list of changes in this version. Five security issues were discovered. It was discovered that the api had a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in the block/unblock modules. It was possible for a user account with the block privileges to block or unblock another user without providing a token. For more details, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34212 It was discovered that the resource loader can leak certain kinds of private data across domain origin boundaries, by providing the data as an executable JavaScript file. In MediaWiki 1.18 and later, this includes the leaking of CSRF protection tokens. This allows compromise of the wiki's user accounts, say by changing the user's email address and then requesting a password reset. For more details, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34907 Jan Schejbal of Hatforce.com discovered a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in Special:Upload. Modern browsers (since at least as early as December 2010) are able to post file uploads without user interaction, violating previous security assumptions within MediaWiki. Depending on the wiki's configuration, this vulnerability could lead to further compromise, especially on private wikis where the set of allowed file types is broader than on public wikis. Note that CSRF allows compromise of a wiki from an external website even if the wiki is behind a firewall. For more details, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35317 George Argyros and Aggelos Kiayias reported that the method used to generate password reset tokens is not sufficiently secure. Instead we use various more secure random number generators, depending on what is available on the platform. Windows users are strongly advised to install either the openssl extension or the mcrypt extension for PHP so that MediaWiki can take advantage of the cryptographic random number facility provided by Windows. Any extension developers using mt_rand() to generate random numbers in contexts where security is required are encouraged to instead make use of the MWCryptRand class introduced with this release. For more details, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35078 A long-standing bug in the wikitext parser (bug 22555) was discovered to have security implications. In the presence of the popular CharInsert extension, it leads to cross-site scripting (XSS). XSS may be possible with other extensions or perhaps even the MediaWiki core alone, although this is not confirmed at this time. A denial-of-service attack (infinite loop) is also possible regardless of configuration. For more details, see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35315 ********************************************************************* What's new? ********************************************************************* MediaWiki 1.19 brings the usual host of various bugfixes and new features. Comprehensive list of what's new is in the release notes. * Bumped MySQL version requirement to 5.0.2. * Disable the partial HTML and MathML rendering options for Math, and render as PNG by default. * MathML mode was so incomplete most people thought it simply didn't work. * New skins/common/*.css files usable by skins instead of having to copy piles of generic styles from MonoBook or Vector's css. * The default user signature now contains a talk link in addition to the user link. * Searching blocked usernames in block log is now clearer. * Better timezone recognition in user preferences. * Extensions can now participate in the extraction of titles from URL paths. * The command-line installer supports various RDBMSes better. * The interwiki links table can now be accessed also when the interwiki cache is used (used in the API and the Interwiki extension). Internationalization - -------------------- * More gender support (for instance in user lists). * Add languages: Canadian English. * Language converter improved, e.g. it now works depending on the page content language. * Time and number-formatting magic words also now depend on the page content language. * Bidirectional support further improved after 1.18. Release notes - ------------- Full release notes: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/gitweb?p=mediawiki/core.git;a=blob_plain;f=RE LEASE-NOTES-1.19;hb=1.19.0beta2 https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Release_notes/1.19 Co-inciding with these security releases, the MediaWiki source code repository has moved from SVN (at https://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3) to Git (https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/gitweb/mediawiki/core.git). So the relevant commits for these releases will not be appearing in our SVN repository. If you use SVN checkouts of MediaWiki for version control, you need to migrate these to Git. If you up are using tarballs, there should be no change in the process for you. Please note that any WMF-deployed extensions have also been migrated to Git also, along with some other non WMF-maintained ones. Please bear with us, some of the Git related links for this release may not work instantly, but should later on. To do a simple Git clone, the command is: git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/p/mediawiki/core.git More information is available at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git For more help, please visit the #mediawiki IRC channel on freenode.net irc://irc.freenode.net/mediawiki or email The MediaWiki-l mailing list at mediawiki-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org. ********************************************************************** Download: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-1.19.0beta2.tar.gz Patch to previous version (1.19.0beta1), without interface text: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-1.19.0beta2.patch.gz Interface text changes: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-i18n-1.19.0beta2.patc h.gz GPG signatures: http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-1.19.0beta2.tar.gz.si g http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-1.19.0beta2.patch.gz. sig http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.19/mediawiki-i18n-1.19.0beta2.patc h.gz.sig Public keys: https://secure.wikimedia.org/keys.html

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bot activity in #mediawiki on freenode
by btb 14 May '13

14 May '13

hi- i'm hopeful this is the appropriate venue for this topic - i recently had occasion to visit #mediawiki on freenode, looking for help. i found myself a bit frustrated by the amount of bot activity there and wondered if there might be value in some consideration for this. it seems to frequently drown out/dilute those asking for help, which can be a bit discouraging/frustrating. additionally, from the perspective of those who might help [based on my experience in this role in other channels], constant activity can sometimes engender disinterest [e.g. the irc client shows activity in the channel, but i'm less inclined to look as it's probably just a bot]. to offer one possibility - i know there are a number of mediawiki and/or wikimedia related channels - might there be one in which bot activity might be better suited, in the context of less contention between the two audiences [those seeking help vs. those interested in development, etc]? one nomenclature convention that seems to be at least somewhat of a defacto standard is #project for general help, and #project-dev[el] for development topics. a few examples of this i've seen are android, libreoffice, python, and asterisk. adding yet another channel to this list might not be terribly welcome, but maybe the distinction would be worth the addition? as i'm writing this, i see another thread has begun wrt freenode, and i also see a bug filed that relates at least to some degree [https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=35427], so i may just be repeating an existing sentiment, but i wanted to at least offer a brief perspective. regards -ben

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Revoking +2 (Re: who can merge into core/master?)
by Rob Lanphier 26 Feb '13

26 Feb '13

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 8:48 AM, Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: > If you merge into mediawiki/core.git, your change is considered safe for > inclusion in a wmf branch. The wmf branch is just branched out of > master and then deployed. We don't review it again. Because we're > deploying more frequently to WMF sites, the code review for merging into > MediaWiki's core.git needs to be more like deployment/shell-level > review, and so we gave merge access to people who already had deployment > access. We have since added some more people. The current list: > https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/admin/groups/11,members Let me elaborate on this. As unclear as our process is for giving access, it's even less clear what our policy is for taking it away. If we can settle on a policy for taking access away/suspending access, it'll make it much easier to loosen up about giving access. Here's the situation we want to avoid: we give access to someone who probably shouldn't have it. They continually introduce deployment blockers into the code, making us need to slow down our frequent deployment process. Two hour deploy windows become six hour deploy windows as we need time to fix up breakage introduced during the window. Even with the group we have, there are times where things that really shouldn't slip through do. It's manageable now, but adding more people is going to multiply this problem as we get back into a situation where poorly conceived changes become core dependencies. We haven't had a culture of making a big deal about the case when someone introduces a breaking change or does something that brings the db to its knees or introduces a massive security hole or whatever. That means that if the situation were to arise that we needed to revoke someones access, we have to wait until it gets egregious and awful, and even then the person is likely to be shocked that their rights are being revoked (if we even do it then). To be less conservative about giving access, we also need to figure out how to be less conservative about taking it away. We also want to be as reasonably objective about it. It's always going to be somewhat subjective, and we don't want to completely eliminate the role of common sense. It would also be nice if we didn't have to resort to the nuclear option to get the point across. One low-stakes way we can use to make sure people are more careful is to have some sort of rotating "oops" award. At one former job I had, we had a Ghostbusters Stay Puft doll named "Buster" that was handed out when someone broke the build that they had to prominently display in their office. At another job, it was a pair of Shrek ears that people had to wear when they messed something up in production. In both cases, it was something you had to wear until someone else came along. Perhaps we should institute something similar (maybe as simple as asking people to append "OOPS" to their IRC nicks when they botch something). Rob

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Improving Documentation on Handling Bug Reports
by Andre Klapper 29 Oct '12

29 Oct '12

Hi everybody, at last weekend's Hackathon I investigated how to get into bug management/triaging in Wikimedia. I'd like to propose some changes in order to streamline, harmonize and centralize documentation in order to make it easier to get involved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Improv… Feedback, comments, criticism on this draft are very welcome. andre -- Andre Klapper (maemo.org bugmaster & GNOME Bugsquad) http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/

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Gerrit question: pushing to another branch
by Jeroen De Dauw 24 Oct '12

24 Oct '12

Hey, Is it possible to push to a branch other then the default one on gerrit using git review? This is needed when you want to have more then one branch on which you have reviewed code, or if you want different levels of review. For example if you want a novice committer play around with an extension a bit and push new functionality that gets reviewed but is not ready to go onto master until it really has stabilized and finalized. Cheers -- Jeroen De Dauw http://www.bn2vs.com Don't panic. Don't be evil. --

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Re: [Wikitech-l] HTMLMultiSelectField as <select multiple="multiple"/>
by Daniel Werner 01 Oct '12

01 Oct '12

> Message: 8 > Date: Wed, 23 May 2012 21:49:57 +0200 > From: Platonides <Platonides(a)gmail.com> > To: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] HTMLMultiSelectField as <select > multiple="multiple"/> > Message-ID: <jpjf1s$b23$1(a)dough.gmane.org> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > On 23/05/12 19:16, Daniel Werner wrote: > > Right now I am implementing a new option (as part of > > https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36425) for which I'd like to > > use a <select multiple="multiple"/> html element with options. Right now > > MediaWiki always generates a list of selectboxes instead of that when using > > the HTMLMultiSelectField class. We are talking about 280+ selectable items > > here, so for now we came to the conclusion that a real multi <select/> > > would be nicer and less space consuming for now > > I have already managed to implement this multiple select, > > modifying HTMLMultiSelectField adding a new option 'usecheckboxes' which > > can be set to false to disable the known behavior and use a select element > > instead. > > > > This would mainly be for the JavaScript-less ui. If javascript were > > enabled, we could still do something nicer, for example with something like > > jQuery chosen plugin here. > > > > My question would just be, how I should implement these changes preferably. > > Is it ok with the new option for HTMLMultiSelectField or should this be a > > new class inheriting from HTMLMultiSelectField? I think > > HTMLMultiSelectField sounds more like describing what I just implemented > > rather than a bunch of select boxes, but of course renaming the existing > > one could "break" extensions (even though both are fully compatible and > > interchangeable). So one option would be simply naming the new one > > HTMLMultiSelectField2 if we don't want to stick with an additional option > > here. > > No. You shouldn't need to know that HTMLMultiSelectField2 is a > MultiSelect but HTMLMultiSelectField uses checkboxes. > Your useCheckboxes looks good. > I recommend you to make it a tri-state value, so you could force > checkboxes, select or let it decide (eg. checkboxes for < 100 elements, > select for more) Alright, just submitted this for review to gerrit: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/8924/ I implemented it as tri-state now. By default 'usecheckboxes' will be true, not set to a number. This could be changed (would make sense imo) but for now I didn't want to do this since it could for example affect the default search namespace user preference in wikis with many search namespaces. I think the plain multiple select HTML element is not that nice because it is not very obvious that you can do multiple selects by holding the control key. There should be some JavaScript ui element replacing this for users having JS enabled I think before using this as default for huge multiselect options. I think if all of that were implemented, 15 or 20 would be a good default value for the option. Cheers Daniel

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about bots
by Fabian Kaelin 29 Sep '12

29 Sep '12

Hi, Sorry about the length of this mail, it reads faster than it looks. I am working with the recentchanges and the cu_changes (checkuser) mediawiki SQL tables. I would like to be able to filter bot activity, unfortunately I am increasingly confused. Things that I think I know: - In the recentchanges<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Recentchanges_table> table there is a `rc_bot` flag that should indicate whether the edit comes from a bot. - The checkuser table cu_changes<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CheckUser> (which is not documented on the mediawiki database layout page<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Database_layout>) contains mostly the same information as the recentchanges table but for a longer period of time. However, there is no bot flag as there is on the recentchanges table - I don't know why not. - There is a `bot` entry in the user_groups.ug_group<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:User_groups_table> field. A revision/recentchanges/cu_changes entry can be identified as bot by joining the original table with user_groups on the user_id and by setting ug_group=`bot`. - The user_groups method way of identifying bots is inefficient and the data seems incomplete. For some other projects we have used various other bot tables created by hand (on db1047: halfak.bot used during WSOR 2011 or declerambaul.erik_bots containing the bots identified by Erik Zachte). I would like to know the answers to the following questions: 1. *What is the meaning/purpose of the rc_bot flag on recentchanges? *There are entries in the recentchanges table from editors that are flagged as bots in the user_groups and the other bot tables but still have the rc_bot flag set to 0. mysql> select rc.rc_user_text from recentchanges rc join user_groups ug ON (rc.rc_user=ug.ug_user) WHERE ug.ug_group = 'bot' and rc.rc_bot=0 limit 1; +--------------+ | rc_user_text | +--------------+ | ClueBot NG | +--------------+ 2. *Why is there no bot flag in the checkuser table? *A lot of the other fields seem to be copied from the recentchanges table, why not the rc_bot field? The check user table contains both entries that are flagged as bots in the recentchanges table and entries that are flagged as bots in the user_groups. mysql> select cuc.cuc_user_text from recentchanges rc join cu_changes cuc ON (rc.rc_user=cuc.cuc_user) WHERE rc.rc_bot=1 limit 1; +---------------+ | cuc_user_text | +---------------+ | MiszaBot III | +---------------+ mysql> select cuc.cuc_user_text from cu_changes cuc join user_groups ug ON (cuc.cuc_user=ug.ug_user) WHERE ug.ug_group = 'bot' limit 1; +---------------+ | cuc_user_text | +---------------+ | Robbot | +---------------+ 3. *Am I missing some fundamental information about how bots are handled?* This is a frequently recurring request for data analytics and it seems the data is inconsistent. What is the most convenient, sane way to classify bot activity as such? Are there any projects underway that aim to improve the situation? Any input, pointers and recommendations are much appreciated. Thanks a lot! Regards, Fabian

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Test error
by Jeroen De Dauw 24 Aug '12

24 Aug '12

Hey, I got a unit test (added here: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/14870/) causing some error which I can't figure out the cause of. The error is "Error: 1137 Can't reopen table: 'unittest_smw_ids'", full message here: http://dpaste.org/B2npZ/ Anyone an idea what might be going on? Cheers -- Jeroen De Dauw http://www.bn2vs.com Don't panic. Don't be evil. --

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Engineering community contacts for the next few weeks
by Sumana Harihareswara 22 Aug '12

22 Aug '12

Starting sometime Friday (today), I am vacationing and will be offline till August 16th. In my absence, here's whom to contact about: * 20% time help[0]: Rob Lanphier * Developer Access queue[1]: Varnent and JeremyB * Gerrit project ownership requests[2]: Chad Horohoe and Antoine Musso * SVN commit access queue[3]: Tim Starling * review queue of extensions to deploy[4]: need volunteers to check in on this and nudge progress along * checking Bugzilla for new patches, to encourage developers to use Git instead: please feel free to help with this! * Engineering Community Team stuff in general: Rob Lanphier If in doubt, ask via IRC or mailing lists[5] and you will be helped! @MediaWikiMeet will be silent. :-) [0] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_engineering_20%25_policy [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_access [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Git/Gerrit_project_ownership [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_access/Subversion [4] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Review_queue [5] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Communication -- Sumana Harihareswara Engineering Community Manager Wikimedia Foundation

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Wikitech-l July 2012