Forum:MW 1.16 + SMW update

Hey all, as you may or may not yet have seen over here on Community Central, Wikia is currently switching over our wikis to MediaWiki 1.16. Most of the changes that will be coming are stuff that you will not see, back end changes that optimize preferences and tweaks that should help pages load a tick quicker.

As this is one of the biggest wikis on Wikia, if there are any weird bugs or issues with the switch, there is a bigger chance for you all to notice them here.

We don't anticipate any major issues with Yu-Gi-Oh Wiki other than what I will detail below, but if you do notice anything weird, please do not hesitate to contact me via the talk page or, of course, Special:Contact.

There is one major issue with the upgrade thus far and that is Semantic MediaWiki. Both the new MW upgrade and the SMW upgrade mean that a lot of database magic has changed and its taking a lot of digging to figure out where some SMW data is leaking and really hogging up the memory. Thus, we may sporadically have to turn SMW off Wikia-wide over the new few days as we diagnose and patch. The great news is that when this is finally done, SMW will be at 1.5.5, which is about 15 releases further along than the version we were previously using. This should add some extra functionality and performance to the site.

Please let me know if you have any questions. --DaNASCAT (talk • contribs) 19:57, January 18, 2011 (UTC)

We've set up a few fallbacks using {{IfSemantics}} and {{SMWF}} so things don't get as messy when SMW gets disabled. Would it be worth suggesting something similar to other wikis? -- Deltaneos (talk) 21:18, January 18, 2011 (UTC)

That's actually a really good idea Deltaneos. I'll suggest it to any wiki who needs it. --DaNASCAT (talk • contribs) 16:13, January 19, 2011 (UTC)

We've also got {{SMW notice}} to tell people what's going on when they view templates or pages that rely on SMW and everything's broken, and {{SMW banner}}/{{SMW status}} for simply showing whether SMW is currently enabled or not. ;) 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 17:12, January 19, 2011 (UTC)

Have you guys decided on a particular time to try switching us over to 1.16, or will it basically be when you finally get the SMW problems ironed out? It would be good to have an idea of when to expect the upgrade so we know when to really start watching for problems. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 02:21, January 19, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, it's "when we figure this out" as the current timeframe. We've definitely made progress on it the last few days, but for wikis such as this one that use a lot of SMW (not that it's your fault of course), the problem is still bad. --DaNASCAT (talk • contribs) 16:13, January 19, 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's not like it's not my fault, either - or, at least, the fact that the amount of SMW across the wiki has increased somewhat since I started playing with it isn't entirely coincidental... =D 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 17:12, January 19, 2011 (UTC)

I meant "your fault" as in the community's ;). Hooray for the ambiguities of English! --DaNASCAT (talk • contribs) 02:13, January 20, 2011 (UTC)

Aah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense too... That particular reading didn't cross my mind at the time. =) 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 03:09, January 20, 2011 (UTC)

Update done

It looks like the update is finally done, and there are already a couple of issues which have appeared - {{ArchetypeNavbox}} seems to have the same block of cards listed for animanga-only support monsters on every transclusion, and mw:Extension:Negref looks to be borked now. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 17:54, January 25, 2011 (UTC)

Dinoguy can you link me to where/how Negref is borked? SMW, make sure the concepts are still there. They might need to be rebuilt. Let me know if it looks like concepts are missing stuff. --daNASCAT (talk) 18:59, January 25, 2011 (UTC)

Clicking on "further results" from the list on {{ArchetypeNavbox}} brings up [1] - note in the Query box, where it says [[Archetypes Support::ArchetypeNavbox]]; this is almost certainly the source of the problem, but I don't know how to fix it (the relevant query in {{ArchetypeNavbox}}, {{#ask: [[Class 1::AniEx||ManEx||AniManEx]] [[Archetypes Support::{{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}}]] [[Card Category::Monster Cards]] |?English Name |format=list |template=NavboxList |link=none |sep = ●_}}, appears to be normal and worked before the upgrade).

For Negref, have a look at the "Personal" section of the infobox on Joey Wheeler. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 19:34, January 25, 2011 (UTC)

The maximum #ask query size seems to have been reduced to two. The problem query in the ArcheTypeNavBox is five, so everything after [[Class 1::AniEx||ManEx]] is being ignored.

Five items in an #ask query probably is too much of a strain on servers anyway. I'm guessing that's what was causing the problems a while back that was resulting in SMW being disabled here. Now that we know where this problem is, we can easily replace most of the items in that query with a single concept. If we do fix-up the heavy queries, now that they should stand out more, will the maximum size still be at two? -- Deltaneos (talk) 22:39, January 25, 2011 (UTC)

Deltaneos, I'll follow up on this one in a few minutes. I should be able to tweak that size regardless but if you can do anything to reduce DB stress, I strongly encourage you to do it. --DaNASCAT (talk • contribs) 22:49, January 25, 2011 (UTC)

Actually, my mistake. It hasn't been reduced to two items. There are queries with more than two items that work, but queries using || seem to be ignoring everything after the ||. -- Deltaneos (talk) 23:59, January 25, 2011 (UTC)

If you put logical ORs inside a set of <q></q> and list them at the end of the query, it prevents this problem. You can see the change to the ArchetypeNavbox for example. -- Deltaneos (talk) 19:31, January 26, 2011 (UTC)

That has fixed the issue, but now it seems that some cards that are supposed to be listed in a given navboxs now being listed twice. All of them are once again anime/manga only cards. See "Spice" for a very clear example. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 23:57, January 26, 2011 (UTC)

That part of the ArchetypeNavbox has two lists. One for anime/manga only members that are monsters and one for anime/manga only members that are Spell or Trap cards. The absence of <q></q> on Concept:Anime and manga spells and traps and Concept:Anime and manga spells and traps was causing monsters to be listed in what's supposed to be a Spell/Trap only section and Spell/Trap Cards to appear in what's supposed to be a monster-only section. As a result, we were getting the same list twice.

I've updated the query on the concepts now and the lists updated way sooner than I thought they would. -- Deltaneos (talk) 00:24, January 27, 2011 (UTC)

Another issue I've noticed is that the "new messages" bar now says "You have new messages on WikiName", even when you're on the wiki you have messages on (this is specifically in Monobook, I don't know if the same thing happens in the Wikia skin). 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 20:18, January 25, 2011 (UTC)

Dinoguy1000, just so I'm clear you're seeing "You have new messages on Yu-Gi-Oh Wiki" when browsing Yu-Gi-Oh Wiki in Monobook (just as an example). Or does it actually say "wikiname" --DaNASCAT (talk • contribs) 22:49, January 25, 2011 (UTC)

The first one has the right idea. It says "You have new messages on Yu-Gi-Oh!". -- Deltaneos (talk) 23:59, January 25, 2011 (UTC)

I disliked this idea... I like old one better (waaaaay back when it was before the whole changes) --FredCat ^{Ta.P. • F.P. • J.R. • W.S. • Th.P. • S.C.} 00:49, January 26, 2011 (UTC)

I meant he had the right idea of what was going wrong. i.e. He understands what the problem is. I didn't mean the change itself is the right idea. The version with the link to the newest message is indeed better. -- Deltaneos (talk) 01:01, January 26, 2011 (UTC)

If I might go beyond the realm of bug reports somewhat, into feature requests, I probably wouldn't be the only person who would find history links for each wiki useful in the new messages bar (e.g. "You have new messages on Wiki 1 (history) and Wiki 2 (history)."). When receiving the new messages bar on one wiki for messages on a different wiki, being able to click directly through to my talk page history on the other wiki is much more useful for me than only being able to click directly to my talk page there. 「ダイノガイ千？！」^{? · ☎ Dinoguy1000} 01:08, January 26, 2011 (UTC)

We've had a few bugs with messaging lately and I think those are to be fixed this week. That might include the tweak you requested, DinoGuy, but I'm not sure yet. It should definitely fix the odd messages in Monobook trouble. --daNASCAT (help forum | blog) 04:14, February 2, 2011 (UTC)