All posts by Atvelonis
@Yaujj75 If your wiki uses talk pages, and you want to automatically leave welcome messages on those talk pages, you have to write a script that uses the MediaWiki API. Fortunately, this API is very well-documented. You just have to find an appropriate API call to gather a list of users to leave messages for (GET), and then (for each user), make a separate API call to actually leave those messages if they're new (POST).
If your wiki uses message walls and you want to automatically leave welcome messages on those message walls, you have to use the Discussions/Nirvana API. This API is not well-documented, but I've written some personal documentation which you can see here: User:Atvelonis/Bot/Discussions API. You'd probably use the same GET/POST structure as before.
If you want to run such a script fully automatically, you need to set up a recurring task with Windows Task Scheduler or Cron.
You could use the Discussions API for this if your wiki uses Message Walls, yes. I haven't tried, but it wouldn't be that difficult. Maybe I can add a use-case for that in my documentation if I have time (my list of controllers and methods is not complete).
I would also clarify that a server is just a computer that runs 24/7. If you really want, you can use your personal desktop computer for this. If you're on Windows, there is a built-in app called Task Scheduler that lets you run scripts on repeat. There are similar tools out there for Linux and other operating systems as well.
example.fandom.com under "Custom" (instead of "Wikia") in Options -> Preferences -> Site, when you tell it where to look.
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<p>What reason could you possibly have to tag file pages on /d posts when you could simply tag the corresponding article? </p>
<p>Beyond a "core" of powerusers who can really identify with a particular wiki's practices, that logic cannot really be applied to highlights. The vast majority of users do not and will never read every highlight in a list of more than one or perhaps two; that's just statistics. The powerusers who would are the kinds of people who will find these things no matter what, even if that means grouping what would otherwise be several highlights into a single announcement. </p>
<p>A newspaper has many pieces, but there is only one cover story. I think that's the purpose of announcements. When you think about it, you don't actually need to highlight that many threads. On Elder Scrolls, we have a system of weekly updates which cover pretty much everything that users need to be aware of. I was skeptical about the limit when we adopted announcements, but we actually haven't had any announcements other than the announcement <i>announcing</i> announcements, and subsequent weekly updates. I suspect most communities will be able to do something similar if they really need to highlight like five threads at once. </p>