Engine room

Welcome to the engine roomThis is a place to ask about and discuss the inner workings of the charity. To discuss our external projects and activities, see how you can get involved or suggest ideas that could help our charitable mission, head over to the water cooler.

2013 2014 2015

Suggestions of potential events to attend

Project grants/Photographs covering African cultural events in London asks for suggestions of potential events to attend. My suggestion would be classic car rallies. A lot of wikipedia's car photos are taken of parked cars which tends to result in wide angle shots with messy backgrounds which tend not to look that great. Rallies where cars are driven allow you to get shots at longer focal lengths with cleaner backgrounds. A specific recommendation would be Great Dorset Steam Fair. As well as steam they have a lot of cars and bikes. I went there last year and was able to get stuff like this

Confirmation emails not arriving

Special:ConfirmEmail does not seem to be working for me. How long is the lag, typically? Please notify me in your reply. Thanks! Zazpot (talk) 20:18, 28 June 2017 (BST)

Hi @Zazpot:, thanks for letting us know. I've asked our developers to take a look. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 10:27, 29 June 2017 (BST)

@Richard Nevell (WMUK): thanks for this. Confirmation email still not received. Other emails to the same address seems to be reaching me fine. Zazpot (talk) 11:32, 29 June 2017 (BST)

It hasn't ended up in spam by any chance? It sounds likely that something's broken. Special:PasswordReset is working so the wiki is able to send out some emails, so it might just be an issue with Special:ConfirmEmail. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 12:14, 29 June 2017 (BST)

@Richard Nevell (WMUK): no, sadly not. I checked the spam folder before posting here (and have checked it again just now). Pressed the "Mail a confirmation code" button again today, just in case it had started working again, but still no joy. Will try signing up to the Bugzilla instance, so that I can follow up there. Zazpot (talk) 21:48, 4 July 2017 (BST)

Meta: Spam

Hi all, heck of a lot of spam which could do with deleting. Whilst I'm here, could someone rename my account to User:There'sNoTime? Samtar (talk) 14:36, 4 December 2017 (GMT)

Oh, and an edit filter would be good eh? Samtar (talk) 14:37, 4 December 2017 (GMT)

I've renamed your account as requested, and am taking a look at some of the spam. An edit filter would definitely be worthwhile, but I don't know how to set one up. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 17:05, 4 December 2017 (GMT)

@Richard Nevell (WMUK): I'm +sysop/EFM on enwp, happy to set something up if you'd like? There'sNoTime (talk) 17:52, 4 December 2017 (GMT)

@There'sNoTime: Yes please, do you need admin access here to set it up? Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 14:20, 5 December 2017 (GMT)

@Richard Nevell (WMUK): I will do, if that's alright? -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 14:22, 5 December 2017 (GMT)

@There'sNoTime: Absolutely, you're now an admin. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 10:44, 12 December 2017 (GMT)

Cheers, just testing something now -- There'sNoTime ^{(to explain)} 11:09, 12 December 2017 (GMT)

Staff group photo

I've just spotted that the staff group photo is rather out of date - it still features Richard S who hasn't been staff for a couple of years now for example. I suggest someone puts this in the diary for a day when you have a full house in the office and it isn't snowing! Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 17:29, 2 March 2018 (GMT)

Agreed. 2015 is a long time ago and there have been several staff changes since then. MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:48, 8 July 2018 (BST)

I will try to take one at the Christmas lunch. It's not been easy to get everyone in the same place at the same time! John Lubbock (WMUK) (talk) 14:44, 5 December 2018 (GMT)

Wikimedia VLE

Is the Wikimedia VLE dead? If so, information about it should be updated.

Recent changes

Is the wiki going to be updated with the new recent changes interface? Leutha (talk) 11:03, 29 November 2018 (GMT)

Hi Leutha, we would love to update lots of things on the wiki. I hope that once we sort out other things with the site we can get around to this, but we probably need assistance fom people who are expert at MediaWiki. John Lubbock (WMUK) (talk) 12:31, 2 April 2019 (BST)

Watchlist broken

Nothing is showing on my watchlist. In the box, there is the text:

Below are the last 0 changes in the last 720 hours, as of 30 November 2018, 12:26.

Under the box, it says

No changes during the given period match these criteria.

At Preferences, I have the following relevant settings:

• Days to show in watchlist: 30
• Maximum number of changes to show in watchlist: 250
• Y Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent
• N Hide minor edits from the watchlist
• N Hide bot edits from the watchlist
• N Hide my edits from the watchlist
• N Hide edits by anonymous users from the watchlist
• N Hide edits by logged in users from the watchlist

One of my watched pages is Events, which normally attracts at least one edit each week. But not even the last edit (which was at 12:23, 22 November 2018) is showing. Has there been a MediaWiki config change that would affect this? --Redrose64 (talk; at English Wikipedia) 12:28, 30 November 2018 (GMT)

Supplemental: I also have the setting

Y Add pages and files I edit to my watchlist

and I made sure that the "Watch this page" checkbox was ticked before I saved; but despite both of those, this page (Engine room) was not added to Special:EditWatchlist after I saved the above post. Nor was Water cooler added after I made this edit. This suggests that there seems to be a wider problem. The "watch" star works, but it's an extra step that I don't need to make on other wikis. --Redrose64 (talk; at English Wikipedia) 12:44, 30 November 2018 (GMT)

I think this relates to the Recent Changes not working, which led to my query aboce. Leutha (talk) 12:48, 30 November 2018 (GMT)

I'm seeing exactly the same issue with both watchlists and recent changes. I'll ping the mailing list as that gets a bit more traffic these days. Thryduulf (talk: local | en.wp | en.wikt) 12:51, 30 November 2018 (GMT)

Hi Chris, I'll try to forward this issue on, but it is possible that it is part of the same problem we are having with a lot of our sites at the moment. I'll try to keep you informed when i hear what the problem is.John Lubbock (WMUK) (talk) 16:14, 30 November 2018 (GMT)

Any progress to report on this? TheOverflow (talk) 06:21, 22 July 2019 (BST)

I thought I would check recent changes by adding this edit . . . Leutha (talk) 07:34, 19 October 2019 (BST)

. . . and then seeing if the edit comes up – which it does not, so I think we are left with the old adage of Good Editor Schweik] "beg to report there is noting to report". Leutha (talk) 07:47, 19 October 2019 (BST)

That this has been outstanding for more than a year doesn't reflect well on the charity: most people would expect Wikimedia UK to be able to make its own wiki work... but I suppose that's not a priority any more. TheOverflow (talk) 09:05, 29 December 2019 (GMT)

Recent changes to MediaWiki namespace files

Hi all - just a courtesy message letting you know I've made some changes to a couple of MediaWiki namespace files (namely MediaWiki:Common.js). These changes affect all users, and were implemented solely due to function depreciation. Please let me know (preferably on my English Wikipedia talk page) if there are any issues ~TNT (she/her • talk) 14:58, 5 October 2021 (BST)

Installed versions of MediaWiki and PHP are end-of-life

The currently installed version of MediaWiki (1.31) went EOL on the 30th September 2021 - we should urgently upgrade to the latest LTS version (1.35), and ideally to the latest stable version (1.36).

We will also need to upgrade to PHP version 7.3.19 or higher, as our currently installed version (7.2.30) is not supported (and is also EOL).

Have we previously reached out to the Wikimedia Foundation, as I am certain they would happily host this MediaWiki installation? ~TheresNoTime ^{(to explain!)} 14:40, 1 November 2021 (GMT)

Spam

Hi, yesterday I stumbled upon a site (off-wiki) that had a spam link pointing to a page of this wiki. Having had a closer look I fell off my chair and added wikimedia.org.uk to my list of spam servers as it is highly contaminated. The account creating rate by spambots has increased here to about 1000 per day. The rate of spam page creations (or edits) is the same. I happen to be the one who is holding the high score of blocks on the Commons and thought about offering some help cleaning up this crap but it's impossible. Deleting or at least tagging tens of thousands of pages and accounts while continuously new ones are created is a joke. One could seriously consider to shut down this wiki. If not, following had to be done ASAP

1. Restrict the account generation either by adding a captcha on creation or even by using a closed user group (acc creation disabled by default)
2. Get the SBLs running. As I just checked on my tp neither the local nor the global SBL are in effect. And I didn't find a SBL log.
3. A publicly accessible wiki like this one should not be run without any abuse filter, there seems to be no Special:AbuseLog.

Pinging Sam, Richard and Mike. Regards, Achim55 (talk) 11:59, 12 August 2022 (BST)

Good suggestions, recently raised on https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/EZSPL7QGSVFUCPTBFKRPR4DVZAW3WYDM/ ~TheresNoTime ^{(to explain!)} 20:46, 13 August 2022 (BST)

Just noting I've created Spam TheresNoTime (talk) 19:13, 15 August 2022 (BST)

Sysop action wanted → User:Achim55/Spam. Cheers, Achim55 (talk) 09:44, 10 August 2023 (BST)