gmane.org.wikimedia.toolserver

Re: Toolserver user phe account expired

Danny B. — 2012-05-26T07:47:37

CategoryTree was/is sort of that...

Re: Toolserver user phe account expired

Platonides — 2012-05-25T21:58:49

Perhaps we may be able to make it a cross-tool, which can either be
embedded in MediaWiki or standalone (I'm not aware of any  extension
doing that, but it's something I have considered several times myself).

Re: Toolserver user phe account expired

Marcin Cieslak — 2012-05-25T21:12:03

. o O (only not to be allowed to run it on toolserver later?:)


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Re: Rename "MMP"

OQ — 2012-05-23T22:56:27

$ ldapsearch -h ldap -b ou=people,o=unix,o=toolserver uid=UIDHERE
tsDefaultLicense

Re: Rename "MMP"

Ryan Kaldari — 2012-05-23T22:53:27

How do I find out what a particular account's default license is?

Ryan Kaldari

On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 1:51 PM, Krinkle <krinklemail< at >gmail.com> wrote:

Re: Rename "MMP"

Krinkle — 2012-05-23T20:51:50


Do note, however, that:
* since a while now every account is required to set a default license for
  scripts in their home directory
* in most cases (always?) ts-users can read files in other user's public_html
  directory. And some users open up "read" for the root of their home dir as well
  (I do), of course invidual files that are sensitive can (and should) be chmod'ed
  differently.

Re: Rename MMPs to "public tools" [was: Toolserver user phe account expired]

Ilmari Karonen — 2012-05-23T19:25:52

My point in suggesting "public" and "private" was to emphasize that the
latter kind (which, indeed, currently make up the overwhelming majority,
even if we'd like that to change) really do reside on the owner's
private account, are maintained only by the owner and only survive as
long as the owner keeps maintaining them (or at least keeps renewing
their account).  If the owner is run over by a bus, bye bye tool.

Ideally, I (and I assume others here) would like to see the "public" /
"shared" / "multi-maintainer" tools to gradually become the default,
unmarked case when someone speaks of a "Toolserver tool", with private
tools becoming the ones that need a special qualifier.  But this won't
happen immediately, so for some time we're going to have to keep using
qualifiers for both types of tools.

In this ideal world, most private tools would indeed be only private
one-off tasks and development prototypes.  Ultimately, I'd like to see
tool authors routinely move any of their tools that seem useful to more
tha

Re: Rename MMPs to "public tools" [was: Toolserveruser phe account expired]

Danny B. — 2012-05-23T18:58:23

I advocate for "Shared" (or something even better, if we'll find), since "Public" are most of tools that are on Toolserver...

Danny B.


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Re: Rename MMPs to "public tools" [was: Toolserver user phe account expired]

Krinkle — 2012-05-23T18:49:02

I agree with Ilmari.

Except I don't see the problem with the word "project" and "Public Tool
Account" is asking for more scary abbreviations.

I'd recommend the name "Public projects" or "Shared projects" (instead of
"Public tools"). Most accounts contain multiple tools. Since an MMP is just
a shared account, it can perfectly contain multiple (related) scripts, or a
framework, or collection of interconnected tools.

"Creating a public tool" (where one would previously say "Creating a MMP")
sounds a bit off to me. "Creating a public project" or "Creating a shared
project" sounds more natural to me.

Anyway, that's just terminology. I agree with Ilmari's reasoning.

Rename MMPs to "public tools" [was: Toolserver user phe account expired]

Ilmari Karonen — 2012-05-23T16:09:52

This.  IMO, ideally it _should_ be as easy as running a script to create
the project (the admins can always close disused or mistakenly created
projects later) and copying the code (and any associated databases, cron
jobs, etc.) over.  No bureaucratic pre-approval, no code changes, no
fuss.

As Marcin Cieslak notes, it doesn't work quite that smoothly yet.  If
nothing else, I think it really would help if we could at least make the
execution environment as identical as possible for both MMPs and private
tools.

Also, I think the name "multi-maintainer project" is discouraging on two
counts: the "multi-maintainer" part makes it sound like you need to find
a second maintainer to create one (which, as DaB notes, is not true),
and the "project" part makes them sound like some complicated thing
that's overkill for just one simple script (which is what most tools
are).

Also, the whole practice of using such a complicated-sounding term (or,
worse yet, an acronym) for MMPs makes them seem like a special case, as
o

Re: Toolserver user phe account expired

Platonides — 2012-05-22T22:04:16

If some of you needs help moving a php tool into a MediaWiki extension,
drop me a line. :)

Re: Toolserver user phe account expired

Platonides — 2012-05-22T21:59:26

Note you can use __DIR__ in the php version installed in the toolserver.

Re: Toolserver user phe account expired

Marcin Cieslak — 2012-05-22T19:54:44

I recently switched to an MMP for some project we depend on heavily
(http://toolserver.org/~citegen/ - citation template generator)
and I found out not everything works like on a normal account.

For example, our webserver interface does not set $HOME in
the environment, so for each project I might need to hardcode
its base directory:

https://jira.toolserver.org/browse/TS-1341
Webserver FastCGI interface does not set $HOME

Probably something like __FILE__ from PHP should be used
but the point was to migrate a working tool and work
on refactoring together later.

//Saper

Re: Toolserver user phe account expired

Magnus Manske — 2012-05-22T18:15:35


Just like Wikipedia was to Nupedia. Symmetry! :-)

Re: Toolserver user phe account expired

DaB. — 2012-05-22T17:16:51

Hello,
At Tuesday 22 May 2012 19:00:14 DaB. wrote:

that's the reason why there is a toolserver: Because the WMF (and the 
mediawiki-develeopers/techs) can not do everything themself and there are 
several people with good ideas outside the WMF.
So the idea was "we give them a (yes 1 ;-)) server and they can hosts their 
stuff there (in opposite to host it somewhere external)" – that part worked 
quite well; there was also a second part "and than their stuff can move into 
mediawiki when it is done and the code is good enough (and it has to be 
php…)." – that part never worked (at least I do not know an example).
In my eyes the toolserver developed behind this original idea and is now a 
good place to host stuff even when it is done, because the toolserver-cluster 
is now way more stable and complete than a single server could be (yes, there 
IS much more to improve, I know). If you (the ts-users) would start to move 
more stuff into MMPs it would be even more stable – BTW: You do not have to find 
a

Re: Toolserver user phe account expired

Lars Aronsson — 2012-05-22T16:14:15

This would be an improvement over the current status, but it
is not sufficient. It's terrible that we depend on a single user,
but not much better if we depend on a small group of them.
We have got the WMF and its staff to keep things running, and
that's where this kind of statistics belongs. The WMF are
carefully considering whether new projects should be started,
they have agreed that Wikisource should be started (in 2003)
and as a consequence, vital statistics and support should be
funded and operated by them.


But you have no way to communicate this message.
It's an impossible task.

Re: Toolserver user phe account expired

Magnus Manske — 2012-05-22T15:17:53

An other idea, albeit one requiring more planning, coding, and
cooperation (and we are notoriously bad at two of these) would be to
separate front-end and back-end. If we could set up a MMP that
presents an API for the queries and data storage of several tools,
anyone (at the very least, anyone on the toolserver) could write a
front-end; also, taking over a front-end from someone else might be
more maintenance-friendly.

We could even offer consistent stylesheets for toolserver tools (hey,
one can dream?)

Cheers,
Magnus

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Re: Toolserver user phe account expired

Platonides — 2012-05-22T12:30:18

It's relatively hard to create a MMP. Compare that with the complexity
of doing a mkdir for creating a project in your account.
Add to that the relatively low interest of other people for maintaining
external projects (as shown by Magnus mail). There's little reason to
create a MMP in advance.
Plus, each of is coding using different languages, conventions and
"frameworks" (helper functions).

Maybe we should use a model where stable tools are available in a
repository where all users can commit. The code can only be updated
through that.
As an alternative, each project could be in either open-gate or
closed-gate model. In the first one, anyone can commit there. In the
second one, there's just a subset of users which can directly commit
(commits by others must be approved by a project member).
If the accounts for all the project members expire (it gets orphan), the
tool automatically changes to open-gate mode.

Re: Toolserver user phe account expired

Magnus Manske — 2012-05-22T09:43:35

I don't think that's realistic. There is barely enough of us
(volunteer programmers) as it is; co-maintaining someone else's code
would add a significant workload.

I have repeatedly offered all my tools for MMPs - so far, only
CommonsHelper2 and geohack are MMPs.

Magnus

Re: Toolserver user phe account expired

Merlijn van Deen — 2012-05-22T09:22:21

This madness has to stop. Wikis should stop depending on services that
are not hosted in multi-maintainer projects!

Okay, I can understand that wikis do not care about Toolserver
internal procedures. I think there are several improvements we can
make - I've listed my thoughts below.

The main problem: tools are disappearing and users of the tools get
annoyed by that. There are two directions of improvement on that:
a) make sure the tools do not disappear
b) make sure users know tools can disappear suddenly

How do we make sure tools do not disappear? By making multi-maintainer
projects for them. However, we see that this doesn't happen enough -
see also the thread about the expiration of soxred93's account.

Options for improvement:
  - better communication with wikis - which tools are used a lot and
*thus* should be moved to mmp's?
  - easier creation of mmp's? I can imaging people don't move their
tools because it takes time to organise everything.
  - 'barnstars' - mmp's are awesome, because you're impr

Re: [Wikisource-l] Toolserver user phe accountexpired

DaB. — 2012-05-21T22:12:26

Hello,
At Tuesday 22 May 2012 00:11:49 DaB. wrote:

I extended the account until July, please extend it further yourself.

Sincerely,
DaB.