Upgrading the wiki to 1.25.3

[tjoneslo]

There are two items to put on the discussion list for the wiki.

First:

Via Don McKinney, the strong request has come through to add page numbers to the various references in the wiki articles. In thinking this through, I am of the opinion we should be using a correct citation format. There are several, each with their own subtle differences:

• APA
• MLA
• Chicago Style

I've not decided which, but I'm leaning toward the Chicago style for reasons of ease in creating templates with pages.

Second:
It has been in the back of my mind for quite some time that the wiki is maintaining a large chuck of data as text which would be better managed as data. For example, the details of the books required to create the citations above. The data for the citation is (mostly) kept as a blob of semi-formatted text. There are wiki tools for extracting it, but they tend to be difficult to use and persnickety.

There is an extension to the MediaWiki software called "Semantic MediaWiki". This allows storing formatted data in real relational database tables, and be queried out on command. This should let the wiki manage the data used in many of the articles much better and allow for other, cool, tools to happen.

Parsing blocks of text: Old and tired, Querying database tables: New hottness.

To install this requires upgrading the wiki to the latest version (1.25.3), which in turn requires a set of maintenance work on the wiki section of the COTI site. This will cause a period of disruption (hopefully minor) to the wiki, and may (hopefully not) disrupt the CotI boards briefly.

I am currently testing the upgrade on a local VM with a backup of the database, and everything went smoothly. I'm going to do it again just to make sure. I also want to have a better understanding of how the Sematic Mediawiki software works so I can have a working example(s) and descriptions for everyone.

The exact date of the upgrade is not scheduled, but I will let everyone know far in advance.

 

[Redcap]

Agreed, Chicago Style looks good to go. Be interesting to see how the upgrade goes

 

[Nathan Brazil]

On citaations, would you consider the style used by the Battletech wiki over at sarna.net which uses the article or book (not the author) then page number? I, as a gamer am more concerned as to which book the information came from rather than the author.

 

[tjoneslo]

On citaations, would you consider the style used by the Battletech wiki over at sarna.net which uses the article or book (not the author) then page number? I, as a gamer am more concerned as to which book the information came from rather than the author.

I read through their Help: References section. Battletech has a three advantages: There was, broadly, only a few publishers, fewer books, and a much more limited time span of publication.

And because we've been even sloppier than sarna.net has been, anything we choose will require updating all of the articles. So I wanted to start with the correct (most verbost) methods and work back from there. Rather than trying to create something new from scratch.

 

[aramis]

Given the choice of only the three, I'd prefer Chicago style using endnote notation. (Remembering that Chicago allows in-text in some cases.)

APA is often hard to use properly despite its simplicity - especially since it's so author centric - the in-text citations seldom tell you which of their works; a major problem when most of the works have the same authorship. It has provisions for this, but few use them properly.

 

[ovka]

I'm looking forward to the changes. I think page references are a great thing!

If you had a db table with sources/authors that could be selected to auto-format the citation (e.g. a template that allows you to enter something like SOURCE:CT-A01;PAGE:12-13 which then creates the proper citation in the chosen format) that might make life much easier in the long run.

Good luck with the upgrade. I have undergone two software upgrades to major systems at work in the last three weeks. Upgrades can be ... challenging. :coffeegulp:

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

 

[tjoneslo]

I've done the upgrade on my local machine from a database backup and everything looks great. The live database is, of course, a little larger and may take longer to process.

My current plan is to do this on Saturday November 28th (next weekend). This will probably take a few hours to do all the parts (move files, update database, take backups, etc).

I will put the Wiki into read-only mode at the start of the process, and post a note here. And update here when done. This should be pretty straight forward, but odd things are known to happen.

I now know of one important (to me) bug in the current system which is fixed in the new version. So an incentive to move forward.

 

[aramis]

I've done the upgrade on my local machine from a database backup and everything looks great. The live database is, of course, a little larger and may take longer to process.

My current plan is to do this on Saturday November 28th (next weekend). This will probably take a few hours to do all the parts (move files, update database, take backups, etc).

I will put the Wiki into read-only mode at the start of the process, and post a note here. And update here when done. This should be pretty straight forward, but odd things are known to happen.

I now know of one important (to me) bug in the current system which is fixed in the new version. So an incentive to move forward.

Outage announcement on COTI made.

 

[tjoneslo]

Outage announcement on COTI made.

Thanks. I'll try and keep the disruptions to a minimum.

 

[tjoneslo]

The wiki upgrade process has begun. The wiki is currently in read-only mode. The first step of a database backup is currently running and I hope not causing too much disruption.

 

[tjoneslo]

And we are done. The wiki is upgraded and everything seems to be working correctly. I'm just downloading the last of the backups now.

If you see any problems or unexpected behaviors, please let me know.

 

[Redcap]

Can't see any changes visibly at the front end, so presumably everything was done to the back end instead (Trying to keep a straight face on that one ); seems a little faster, too. Nice work

 

[tjoneslo]

All of the visible things are in the skin you select, so you shouldn't see much difference. There are many bugs fixed, most of which I've never encountered. There are two new extensions for doing data management. We'll see how things proceed from here.

 

[Redcap]

Cool And thanks for all your hard work

 

[maksimsmelchak]

All of the visible things are in the skin you select, so you shouldn't see much difference. There are many bugs fixed, most of which I've never encountered. There are two new extensions for doing data management. We'll see how things proceed from here.

Thanks for your hard work, Thomas!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.