OESF:Administrators' noticeboard

From OESF

Current revision

This is a message board for coordinating and discussing administrative issues on OESF wiki. Anyone may post comments on this page they wish to bring to the attention of the wiki administrators in general.

(Add new issues at the bottom of the page starting with a level-2 header (== … ==). Sign and date your posts with ~~~~.)

Forums unreachable

http://www.oesf.org/forums is generating a PHP error. -- Meyer 22:08, 26 September 2007 (EDT)

RESOLVED: Up and running as of now. -- Meyer (talk) 02:49, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

• The forums are still working, but they seem to be switching back-and-forth between www.oesf.org/forum and www.oesf.org/forums over the last few hours. I've fixed the links on the main page to reflect the lastest working URI. -- Meyer (talk) 05:51, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

Image galleries broken

See Special:Newimages, Special:Mostimages. Pages display with a slew of PHP error messages at top, "Warning: mkdir() [function.mkdir]: Permission denied in /public/vhost/o/oesf/html/includes/GlobalFunctions.php on line 1670". Most thumbnails all blank or show only text "Error creating thumbnail: Unable to create destination directory". -- Meyer 22:32, 26 September 2007 (EDT)

Hmm, that's interesting. I'll have to look into it this weekend. -- dz 0902, 27 September 2007 (CST)

Page header OESF logo

...was in the upper-left corner of all pages. I'm sure I can find instructions for how to set it, but I can't find the four-square OESF logo image among currently uploaded files. Anyone know where it is? -- Meyer 22:39, 26 September 2007 (EDT)

The how is easy: Upload an image and name it "Wiki.png". Recommended size is maximum of 135x155 pixels. The question remains, where is our logo? -- Meyer (talk) 02:49, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

Ya, I'd like to skin this to look like the forums. I just haven't gotten a chance to do it yet. -- dz

Sysop's bookshelf

General references on MediaWiki administration. Add to the list freely. -- Meyer (talk) 03:10, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

• Administration help
• MediaWiki Administrators' Handbook

The Robot Wars

OESF Wiki's quest to banish the bots who have blighted our bodacious borough. First, some references:

1. Blocking Spam in MediaWiki
2. Wikipedia AntiSpamBot FAQ
3. Wikipedia Spam

The first is the most interesting because it gives specifics on a number of technical measures that can be taken to block spambots. The author claims dramatically effective results on a very open wiki. Off hand, I don't see any reason not to adopt all the measures suggested on the page, though I think all of them require a developer to implement (ahem, Dz). The two most promising measures are the ConfirmEdit extension (which adds captcha functionality to user registration or page editing; I think it will be adequate to apply a text-based captcha (math problem) to user registration) and the SpamBlacklist extension (which automatically screens edits based on a list of disallowed text patterns).

-- Meyer (talk) 03:25, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

Note that the bulletin board-wiki account linkage doesn't seem to prevent standard wiki-only user registration. -- Spambot 03:40, 27 September 2007 (EDT) (spirit summoned by Meyer)

I shouldn't have a problem implementing any of them. I'll shoot for at least the captcha functionality sometime this weekend. -- dz

Beginning implementation of measures recommended in "Blocking Spam in MediaWiki". See OESF:Antispam configuration work list. -- Meyer (talk) 14:43, 20 October 2007 (EDT)

Wiki Forum

This is fine and all, but the primary contact point for the Wiki is going to be on the forums at http://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showforum=156. While I will do my best to stay up to date here, I can't guarantee I'll be checking this page all the time. -- dz

Anonymous editing and captcha modification

Hi dz, I'm back to deleting rogue pages and removing gibberish on a regular basis. It is accelerating. Please can we block anonymous editing for a while? Especially if the captcha for editing anonymously is not working. Also the suggested captcha on registration is not yet in place. I know because I registered as Bogus earlier this evening. I hope the task is not proving more difficult than you thought? Cheers--Tux 18:20, 1 October 2007 (EDT)

Login Timeout

User complaint of wiki login timeout in middle of editing session and requests timer be lengthened to about 15 minutes. http://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=26029 -- Meyer (talk) 08:33, 22 September 2008 (EDT)

Can't Create New Pages

User unable to save or preview new wiki page. http://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=26150 -- Meyer (talk) 08:33, 22 September 2008 (EDT)

Unable to recreate problem. Can preview and save pages using either admin user or new user. -- Meyer (talk) 08:48, 22 September 2008 (EDT)

I was trying to edit SendingQCop please see the thread for details as I can't post the text here. Koan 23:03, 23 September 2008 (EDT)

Page Header Logo Image

Restored OESF logo to wiki page header that disappeared around the time of our MediaWiki version upgrade. Problem was logo image was in file ~/html/stylesheets/images/oesf_logo2_small.png while configuration pointed to ~/public_html/skins/common/images/oesf_logo2_small.png. Fixed by copying image file to ~/public_html/skins/common/images. -- Meyer (talk) 09:07, 22 September 2008 (EDT)

I've uploaded all the OESF logo files I found on the server to the wiki: http://www.oesf.org/index.php?title=Special:Newimages -- Meyer (talk) 21:27, 22 September 2008 (EDT)

Forum broken?

Since a few days, the forum takes very long to load after the top banner is shown. Firefox says "Connecting to 192.168.1.26" in the status bar, I guess that request needs to time out before the rest loads. Makes the forum practically unusable, so I've posted this here. -- 84.162.49.72 22:19, 19 December 2009 (EST)