Author: changeling
Description:
On http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map it says that the interwiki table has not been updated since September 2007, however a number of updates have taken place to the Interwiki map page since then. Could the database be updated to reflect the changes so the new links will be available across the Wikimedia projects? Thanks.
Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement
andrew wrote:
Really there should be a regular process to do this say every few weeks
VasilievVV has updated http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map to reflect an Interwiki last updated at February 10, 2008, but I believe that a scheduled process could be of help.
So, er, what's the problem with running an interwiki update? So far all queries on the mailing list have been met with tumbleweeds.
It's mildly annoying and IIRC we need to review the changes for security reasons. I'd really prefer to never update it again. :)
andrew wrote:
(In reply to comment #5)
It's mildly annoying and IIRC we need to review the changes for security
reasons. I'd really prefer to never update it again. :)
Then sorry for my part in the mildly annoying (if its the mailist not the process which annoys).
I think less frequent (say three or six monthly) updates might be accepted easily if this is made clear on meta. A timetable would help more too, meta admins could review the proposals just ahead of the update. At present there is an expection gap between "every month or so" and when it actually happens.
IYRC and there are security reasons for the review, could this be explained at meta so the admins there who update the list could do it?
andrew wrote:
(In reply to comment #5)
It's mildly annoying and IIRC we need to review the changes for security
reasons. I'd really prefer to never update it again. :)
I know you would prefer never but 10 Feb to 9 May is three months and the list of changes is long (see http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Interwiki_map&diff=986791&oldid=875036) including OTRS, downloads etc. I know its a real drag but I would appreciate it if you could update fairly soon. It would help to tidy up.
(In reply to comment #5)
It's mildly annoying and IIRC we need to review the changes for security
reasons. I'd really prefer to never update it again. :)
What kind of security reasons?
Just remember it's now possible to make the interwiki map shared from a single location. Depending on what the issue is and how different the interwiki maps are, it may be possible to centralize the interwiki map, and use an extension like [[Special:Interwiki]] instead of an article to give better control over who is allowed to change the Interwiki map.
Not updating it isn't really a good solution, because part of the point of using interwiki URLs is that they are canonical.
In theory old URLs should redirect to the new ones, but in practice it doesn't always work that way (e.g. Wikia is closing their copy of WikiFur but won't redirect furry.wikia.com to the new site unless we put up adverts for their wikis, so WikiFur: links will break unless updated).
Perhaps the map could be updated just before/after the main MediaWiki revision is updated? That tends to be more-or-less on three month periods.
A thought: Perhaps the table for this could actually be a view into several different tables - local and global - the latter of which is held as a single copy and thus much easier to update? This information is cached anyway, so in theory it shouldn't be too expensive . . .
I don't know enough about SQL to implement this, although the little I've suggests it might be possible to query across multiple databases using stored procedures.
Developing a technique or in-code solution for this would be useful for everyone - we have nine languages in our wiki family, and are currently adding them at the rate of one every few weeks. I'd love to just have to update one table whenever we added something, rather than (n - 1).
Bonus points if queries can be done through the API so that our remote interwiki partners could use it as well (offering them access to our database is not a reasonable option).
bugs wrote:
No, Brion has said he doesn't really trust it to run automatically. That may have changed, but either way, that would be a different bug. :-)