Forum:Wikia Status Update

Hey everyone! Frequently we hear that you would like us to talk more about the effects of changes that we have made in the past year, as well as what we have planned for the future. Today, I just posted a new release here that hopefully you will find interesting. I have transcluded it below for your convenience:



I hope that will provide you with some information about what we have been doing lately, and what we are working on over the next few months. If you have any suggestions for new features, please post them on the talk page for the article. If you have any questions about the article itself, please post them here and I'll be happy to discuss them.

Thanks! --KyleH (talk) 18:47, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

search suggestions
About search suggestions: That's not an exclusive Wikia feature. The search suggestions are part of the core MediaWiki installation (see mw:Manual:$wgEnableMWSuggest). What is more: wikia search suggestion is buggy, because it can't handle non-ASCII characters, while MediaWiki suggestions can handle them perfectly. --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 20:12, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * And as a french user, i really really really really hate that word containing é è î... close the search suggest and link suggest as soon as we type one of thoses.
 * Otherwise i use search suggest a real lot and would be really glad the day that bug will be History. — TulipVorlax 01:04, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * LinkSuggest has the same issues, but at least I could fix this using per-wiki JavaScript code (among other useful improvements like template-suggest, handling also non-english namespace names.) But the way search suggest is done don't allow me to fix it in the same manner :( --Ciencia Al Poder (talk) -WikiDex 19:16, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Template suggest now seems enable wikia wide. But with a bug in wich the local template namespace name is included before de names of templates. Example : of fr.guildwars. — TulipVorlax 01:10, 8 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I'll pass these issues on. 11:54, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Bug Concerns
Blogs are being released site-wide in a manner of weeks, when there are bugs I've been asking the status of for months that haven't been fixed? Not to mention the bugs within the Video Embed tool that are still out there... -- LordTBT Talk! 23:01, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Heya! I know that there are some discussions on the video embed tool pages and a few others, but could you list the bugs that you are talking about?  I'll see if I can push those issues through to get them taken care of ASAP ... or at least let you know why they aren't being worked on right now.  In addition to that, we have some extra time set aside over the next few months dedicated specifically towards improving site speed by improving server response times, reducing page size, and refactoring some of the javascript that runs on every page load. --KyleH (talk) 23:18, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Video Embed bugs:
 * Text wrap around the video
 * We will be releasing a fix for this soon. It will either go out Wednesday or a week from Wednesday. --KyleH (talk) 17:25, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * If a video is deleted, then one with the same name is uploaded, a file history is still displayed.
 * Working on this one; I'll get back to you. --KyleH (talk) 17:25, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Deleted videos still appear in the "new files" gallery (and if it helps I've noticed they don't have "Video:" in the file title)
 * For now, we will be removing videos from the new files gallery. We are going to be developing a new special page specifically for videos. --KyleH (talk) 17:25, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Videos appear in the "new files" gallery as "Missing"
 * Same as above. --KyleH (talk) 17:25, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Blog bugs:
 * Administrators cannot edit blog posts (I would think this should definitely be fixed before a site-wide release)
 * This should be fixed now. Let me know if you still have trouble. --KyleH (talk) 23:24, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Not sure if this is a bug, but we discussed a "category-chooser" to eliminate certain categories from appearing for blog posts.
 * Can you give me more information on this? I'm looking for the blog article forum post, but I'm not really seeing anything, so I'm not really sure what you're referring to. --KyleH (talk) 23:24, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * See here -- LordTBT Talk! 07:42, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
 * When blog articles are in categories, they don't seem to be counted.
 * The patch for this is done and should be released on Wednesday. --KyleH (talk) 23:24, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * It's working, however I am getting this error:
 * "PHP fatal error in /usr/wikia/source/releases_200903.4/extensions/wikia/Blogs/BlogArticle.php line 432:
 * Using $this when not in object context"
 * here -- LordTBT  Talk! 07:42, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not seeing that. Are you still seeing it?  If not, it may have just been a temporary glitch. --KyleH (talk) 17:26, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * It's gone now. I appreciate the work yourself and the team are putting in to clear up these bugs! -- LordTBT Talk! 18:47, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Share on Facebook icon is not appearing on blog posts.
 * The patch for this is done and should be released on Wednesday. --KyleH (talk) 23:24, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

-- LordTBT Talk! 23:39, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I'll look in to those and get back to you. --KyleH (talk) 01:07, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Still broken. Affecting multiple Wikia. Was told should be fixed RSN 8 days ago. -- Darth Culator  (Talk) 04:27, 28 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm looking in to this and will get back to you once I find out more. --KyleH (talk) 17:25, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Still looking in to this. I think I understand why it's happening; I'm just trying to figure out what changed to cause it. --KyleH (talk) 23:21, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I believe that this is fixed now. Let me know if you are still having difficulty.  (A purge may be necessary on affected pages). --KyleH (talk) 23:08, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Seems to be fixed on Wookieepedia and Stargate. Fantastic. Thanks! -- Darth Culator  (Talk) 02:55, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Semantic MediaWiki extensions
When will extensions associated with Semantic MediaWiki be available to all wikis? I would like to have Semantic Forms and Semantic Drilldown enabled on some wikis. --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 13:02, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * last time i recall the semantic forms where already available and being used by various wikis. I'm curious to know, where the forms extension not included when they activate the semantic on those wikis? where you want to test it --
 * All three extensions are available upon request. If there is consensus to enable them on your wiki, please contact a Wikia staff member and ask to have them enabled. --KyleH (talk) 17:44, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikia Search
Is Wikia really closing Wikia Search. --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 01:45, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes. You can read more about the decision to do so on Jimmy's blog. --KyleH (talk) 22:35, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Suggestions
You said that you want to hear new ideas, so here's some...


 * New forum - a new forum layout, more like SMF or vBulletin. I think I say something about this on Wikia Help. It's in development or something?


 * Who's online - WikiIndex has a neat feature that shows who's currently online. It could even be a widget.


 * Last wikis widget - it doesn't work any more.

WHLfan (talk to me!) 03:40, 4 April 2009 (UTC)


 * What issue are you seeing with the last wikis widget? It appears to be working here - when I click on a link that takes me to the help wiki, it links back to this one. Who's online is something we have supported in the past, but is currently not enabled due to the load issues it can cause. We want to enable it again, but only when we know it won't cause problems with the rest of the site. Regarding forums, this is something we're always thinking about, but we've no current plans to create/support more advanced forums (mainly due to it not being a central wiki function). 12:15, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Blog Error
The Recent Posts page is giving me an error:

"A database error has occurred Query: SELECT page_id,page_namespace,page_title,page_touched,unix_timestamp(page_touched) as timestamp,page_latest as rev_id FROM `page`,`revision` WHERE page_namespace = '500' AND page_is_redirect = '0' AND (page_title like '%/%') AND (rev_page = page_id) AND (rev_timestamp >= '20081101000000') Function: Error: 1053 Server shutdown in progress (10.8.2.15)"

-- LordTBT Talk! 21:47, 13 April 2009 (UTC)


 * It looks to be fine at the moment: are you still seeing this issue? 13:04, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Not any more, no. However that error was recurring when I pressed refresh many times around the time of that post. -- LordTBT Talk! 22:06, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * "Function: Error: 1053 Server shutdown in progress (10.8.2.15)" ... looks like it was a temporary error while a server was being rebooted, rather than a problem with the blogs themselves. The changes I discussed here should help prevent that from happening in the future (once they are complete). --KyleH (talk) 00:11, 15 April 2009 (UTC)