User talk:Kudu

Cannot create account, great service!
Hi Kudu, I cannot create an account because there is a database error, something to do with your CentralAuth instance. That's a tricky bit, eh? Instead of using CentralAuth on MyWikis, I just shut down the database from editing and merged the users into one central database. I will be sure to join the IRC later, thanks! --JeffTalk 22:37, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Recent global change
I support the checkuser log, FWIW. D u s t i *Let's talk!* 21:24, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Ditto. John (talk) 15:15, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Quick question
Is there any way to remove system messages on a wiki? I want a custom interface, please. Emilyr25 (talk) 21:37, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * You are able to overwrite them in any way you want, which can allow you have a custom interface but all messages as a whole can not be 'removed' only overwritten. John (talk) 22:03, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

My thoughts on the extension and feature requisition process
I only know the basics of how to use Git and Github (basically, I know how to download from them and that's it, same as with Subversion). Unfortunately, my attempts to make a pull request for the extension I wanted added to my wiki was an utter failure, and half of the extensions I request I would not be able to pull request to the Orain repository in any case since some are either on Subversion or as code on MediaWiki.org pages.

In short, I don't believe the process for requesting features is all that efficient. Wikia tends be reluctant to add anything they don't extensively test, but if it's available, they will install it as soon as possible. ShoutWiki will install whatever is possible to install, though they tend to be reluctant to install new or unstable extensions. In both cases, whenever they couldn't install certain features, they usually gave good reason for doing so. Also, neither service asked regular users to do pull requests to their repositories, preferring instead to simply have the users submit the names and URLs of the extensions, skins, and so on they wanted to install, then they would get back to said user within a few days at most and inform them whether or not it would be feasible, and if so, the feature would be implemented according to the user's preferences if applicable.

While I'm otherwise pleased with Orain, I consider its feature requisition process discouraging and unfriendly to prospective wiki administrators and believe it should be as user friendly, if not more, than similar service offered by the others I have mentioned. Arcane (talk) 00:13, 14 August 2013 (UTC)Arcane
 * Hi Arcane, I only suggested that you submit a pull request because you listed a lot of extensions and you wanted to be involved in the staffing aspect. If you prefer that I take care of it for you, that's possible too, but it might get delayed since I'm leaving for vacation in a few days and you requested a lot of extensions. Kudu (talk) 00:18, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It's alright, I can wait. Besides, I can understand the strain of adding so many extensions would cause, and I glad you can help me out with repository side of things (my skills in using that kind of software is terrible), and since I'm still gathering information for my wiki, I can wait for the extensions for now. Until then, thanks for hearing me out concerning my issues with the feature requisition process (and if I was impolite in voicing my concerns, you have my apologies), and while I would like to be a staff member, I'm more a "bug tester" kind of guy than anything else (most of my contributions on MediaWiki.org are me testing extensions, reporting and/or fixing bugs....testing MW stuff is kinda my hobby), but if that position is not needed, I understand. And, one last thing:
 * Have fun on your vacation. :D Arcane (talk) 01:04, 14 August 2013 (UTC)Arcane
 * We might need bug testers sometime in the future, and we'll definitely ask for your help if we do. Thanks a lot, I'll be sure to have fun! I'm only going to be back in about 2 weeks from now though. Kudu (talk) 18:02, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Monaco side bar transclusion
I just reverted your change to the Monaco sidebar back to the old version since your transclusion leaves a blank "Navigation" link that leads to nothing (I tried making it redirect to the main page, to no avail). Hope you don't mind.

Still need some extensions installed, but I think a few of my requests were made global changes, so you might want to check if that's the case first.

Also, welcome back :D Arcane (talk) 23:54, 29 August 2013 (UTC)Arcane
 * Thanks! I installed most of your extensions, except a few that were either very old, are on SVN or aren't in a VCS. They might be able to be installed, but they would require extra diligence. Are any of them essential? Kudu (talk) 00:15, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I left notes on a few extensions I need explaining the technical reasons, but the ones I left (after removing the ones I considered optional) are because they are extremely conducive to making a site where users can easily create new pages without having to do a lot of work, since most of the extensions I specified allow for the easy creation of page templates and redirects without needing Semantic MediaWiki (which I don't plan to cover on my wiki). Besides, pretty much all of the extensions I specified are quite stable and would be a great asset to Orain as well (particularly if you want to streamline page creation), so you guys might want to consider including them on the Orain repository in some way as well. Arcane (talk) 00:25, 30 August 2013 (UTC)Arcane

Elderlords.orain.org help
Hey Kudu, may you add these specific features to my wiki? If possible could the skin be changed to Monobook? But if not, then its ok. But I also have another request,http://hdwallpapercorner.com/gallery/578-old-paper-background.jpg can that be the full wiki background?
 * Hey, I changed the skin to monobook. However, I can't do the wiki background because that requires a skin change. Kudu (talk) 01:28, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I also disabled WikiEditor on Encyclopedia National and Elder Lords Wiki as requested. Kudu (talk) 01:32, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Global change I'd like to suggest
Towards the bottom of the linked section on Dusti's talk page, I included a screenshot on some errors that can be seen using the Monaco skin with and without the WikiEditor extension installed, and linked to a page on my wiki detailing how to fix these changes, which I strongly recommend be implemented globally, as at least one display error is present even when WikiEditor is not installed on all wikis using the Monaco skin. I also provide a link to a custom port I have made of Monaco with all of these fixes with some of my own custom changes with a more Vector/Monobook button and bulletpoint scheme, should that be preferred as an alternative.

I also have (and will be adding more as time goes by) some gadgets and user scripts on my wiki that I have extensively tested for compatibility with recent versions of MediaWiki, and even have a few gadgets retooled to work with Monaco that used to only work in Monobook/Vector that you may find of interest, and would be willing to attempt converting requested gadgets/user scripts to work with Monaco if need be, since many gadgets are designed with Monobook/Vector in mind.

Arcane (talk) 09:55, 30 September 2013 (UTC)Arcane

Apparent advertisement
Please do not change my comment on Forum:Would like to submit a proposed Orain logo footer button, this is censorship and Dusti has said that Orain supports freedom of speech. I was simply referring to my way; I'm not trying to advertise from Orain. I appreciate your anti-spam efforts, but please do not edit anybody's comments unless it is clearly spam that has nothing to do with the page. Thanks. --Jeff (talk) (contribs) 16:45, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Moved from User talk:Yena. Wording may like to be reconsidered. John (talk) 16:59, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Jeff. You're correct, we do support freedom of speech; however this is not wikifarms.orain.org or another impartial site, it's meta.orain.org, therefore we feel that it's fair to remove this kind of comment, which I interpreted as more of an advertisement than a recommendation. I suggest you change it to something like "I think Orain should have a footer icon on every wiki, but remove it on request." if that's what you intended. Kudu (talk) 17:39, 26 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I have removed it again, please leave it removed. I have discussed it with a few other users and it seems that it would be best to leave it removed. -- Joe G. (Talk) 23:18, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Help?
Hi Kudu. I didn't really pay much attention to the merging of Orain and TropicalWikis, so please forgive my incompetence on the issue. I was just curious to find out a few things-


 * Were all (or any) of the TropicalWikis wikis moved over yet? If so, did orain staff and/or TW staff decided to delete a few wikis?
 * Mainly i'm asking because I used to edit the pretty inactive Not So EPF Wiki, and I was curious to see if it was still here somewhere (I'm not quite sure how to find any wikis on Orain because I looked on the "list of wikis" but I don't believe that's all of the wikis considering TW probably had that many by itself). In addition, i'm also looking for the Portuguese Club Penguin Fanon Wiki that was supposedly moved from TW.


 * Also, were the user accounts from TW moved over to Orain? I am curious because (once again) I couldn't find what I was looking for, in this case my old TW user account which I thought was moved. As far as I remember it was under the name Cp kid. I figured i'd ask you first under an IP before I created a new account.

Anyways, if you could help me out with the issue i'm having, i'd appreciate it. 98.180.118.6 05:56, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi 98.x, you're correct, TropicalWikis did decide to move its wikis to Orain. However, they had some complications regarding storage and we are currently waiting for them to provide the wiki data. Once we get the data, we were planning to move over only the most active wikis, but I'll make sure to also migrate the ones you mentioned. User accounts may or may not be migrated depending on the data with which TW supplies us. Sorry for the inconvenience, Kudu (talk) 15:00, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

 * Thank you so much! Kudu (talk) 02:38, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Questions
Hello Kudu. I have experience in wikis and I'll register in Orain. I can be steward? Thank you. --190.33.67.43 22:15, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Hello, we only consider members for stewardship if they have an exceptional record of community involvement on Orain, or, in rare cases, an exceptional record in the broader wiki community. If you don't meet either of these requirements, you may still register on Orain and assist stewards with global tasks in your capacity as a member.  Kudu ~I/O~ 22:28, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Encyclopedia Muricana
Will you please create it? I requested it several days ago and it still has not been set up. I saw you create several wikis yesterday but you haven't created the one I requested. Can you please set it up now? Dondrekhan (talk) 13:12, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Recent Orain Updates
Greetings all,

A lot has happened quite recently (I mean a lot), for those not actively involved in our IRC channel (#orain on freenode), here is a brief update of what has happened recently.


 * Upgrades
 * Orain updated to the latest stable release of MediaWiki, 1.23.
 * All extensions which have updates for 1.23 have also been updated.
 * We've moved over to MediaWiki 1.23's json style for i18n.
 * Downtimes
 * We have experienced a few downtimes over the past month. These include service failures (10 minutes in total), upgrade issues (5 minutes total) and issues with our host (15 hours).
 * We have looked into all downtimes and put into place methods we can use to prevent these reoccurring again.
 * New Stuff
 * After a few downtimes, we introduced Nagios to our infrastructure. Nagios can be viewed by any user on prod1.
 * We also introduced an IRC RC bot. All RC feeds on public Orain wikis are now sent to #Orain-feed on JDNet (irc.jasperswebsite.com). Users can join the channel manually as well as introducing bots to the channel.
 * We now have a twitter account! Follow us

We know the past two months have been rough with a few matters which have been occurring internally with our staff but we are working to resolve all issues which we are aware of as soon as possible. I thank you for your patience and I hope we can continue to work together to build an awesome wiki farm! Also, Orain will be 1 year old on July 12th 2014.

Thanks, on behalf of all Orain staff, John (talk) 21:21, 12 June 2014 (BST)

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Orain Site Update #1
This can be called the official first monthly site update hence the #1 so; let's get on to what has happened during the month of July!

During July, Orain added two new servers to the cluster, there were two incidents and one long term fix.
 * Technical
 * prod5 was added as an additional webserver which we plan to use to help distribute the load of web requests and as a fail-over so if prod4 fails, we can continue to provide you all with your wikis.
 * prod6 was added and is still in the setting up stage. It is planned to take over the role of prod1, a server we are planning to decommission eventually.
 * We had a small security issue regarding ElasticSearch on our prod3 server. No unauthorized access to the data stored on the server was seen and the server has since been made more secure. As a security precaution, ElasticSearch was removed from the cluster and wikis were defaulted back to MediaWiki search.
 * From July 30th to August 1st; there were issues with out going MediaWiki mail. This has since been resolved however incoming mail to all @orain.org addresses are still not functioning as of August 3rd.
 * A long-term issue with images was resolved on July 15th.


 * New Features
 * A wikicreator group was added to metawiki so community users can handle new wiki requests which is one step into delegating new roles and responsibilities to the community. Wikicreators are chosen by system administrators using their discretion.
 * Cyberpower678's tool was given access to some database tables on public wikis. As a result the UserAnalysis tool works on all public Orain wikis.
 * UrlShortener was enabled on all Orain wikis to allow shorter URLs to be used. Currently URLs follow the form of 'https://$database.orain.org/o/$id'. If wikis want to use a shorten URL of their choice; please make a request to the system administrators.
 * Private wikis may now (on request) use image authorization for their wikis. This means images are made web-inaccessible as to preserve the security of images uploads while still being accessed by users with 'read' access to your wiki.
 * Orain now allows the use of OAuth. Please see the OAuth page on MediaWiki for more details. OAuth requests can be made on any wiki and will be approved by a system administrator on metawiki.

On behalf of the Orain staff, John 17:35, 3 August 2014 (BST)

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Orain Site Update #2
This is an update of all technical changes and issues during the month of August.


 * Technical Changes
 * prod1 was removed from active maintenance on August 6th and removed from the cluster a week later.
 * Orain migrated from RamNode to DigitalOcean. The work began on August 17th
 * We moved away from Memcached to Redis for session and general caching on all Orain servers.
 * We added prod7 to the cluster during the migration. It is responsible for Redis and static content hosting.


 * Technical Issues
 * The job queue did not run any job for 4 days as a result of permissions errors with Redis. We have rolled back to using the database for this for now.
 * All wikis experienced database issues shortly after the migration as a result of MariaDB cache taking up excessive disk space. To fix this in the long term, prod5 was recycled as a new database server.
 * For an hour on the 25th of August, users occasionally got caching errors and log in issues as a result of Redis taking up excessive disk space.

On behalf of Orain staff, John (talk) 22:02, 6 September 2014 (BST)

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