MediaWiki talk:Community Portal

This is the place for discussion of topics that affect the entire wiki. Some topics that would ordinarily be here have merited their own pages:

The move away from Wikia:

• Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Arriving
• Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving
• Transformers Wiki:Community Portal/Complaints

Our policy on having ads in the wiki:

• Transformers Wiki:Ads

The Bookworm database-crash:

• Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Damage Control Central
• Project:Bookworm Crash
• Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/Leaving2

So what now?

I brought this general line of questioning up over at the Allspark too, but that was really only because TFWiki.net was down at the time. Basically, in the wake of the Bookworm disaster, I'd like to know three things:

1. How did this happen? All I know is that Bookworm updated the MediaWiki software, which caused... something... to happen to our data. The wiki was, what? Deleted? Corrupted? I don't know. But apparently this required a reversion to a backup, and the only available one was from June 2008. Why did that one even exist? Why not September? And, honestly, the "routine backups" made after September had all failed, with no one ever noticing? How did that happen?
2. Has the backup process been fixed? This is pretty much the most important question of the moment. Every bit of our herculean recovery effort could vanish again if the June backup is still the only one on the server.
3. Where are we going from here? Walky has said that he's looking for a new host, and he has asked for advice. I haven't seen much advice appear (maybe people have been communicating with him in private?), but if anyone has any suggestions, please air them. I wouldn't even know where to start, so I'm of little help.

- Jackpot 18:03, 23 March 2009 (EDT)

Bookworm has explained to me what he thinks happened to the backups, but I couldn't begin to regurgitate that information. This stuff is not English for me. (Some would say English is not English for me.) It involves complicated server moves and DNS stuff, I think, and the bottom line is none of the backups were confirmed to have resulted in working backups; they were merely scheduled to be made, automatic-like, and resulted in, from what I understand, data being thrown into the ether, never sticking to anything. WHOOPS --ItsWalky 01:23, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

All right, so does he have it working NOW? - Jackpot 02:02, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

Scout, according to a post on the Allspark, has been doing database downloads every afternoon. I don't know about Bookworm. If I asked him, he'd probably say yes, but he would have said yes before, too! --ItsWalky 09:46, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

Is there any way we can be sure we're getting ANY service out of Bookworm?--Apcog 10:00, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

I really have no concept of what to look for in a host. While I've managed to find decent hosting for my own site in the past, it's a static, relatively low-traffic site, nothing like here. A quick search reveals that there are plenty of hosts offering unlimited space and bandwidth for about $5/month, which sure seems like something we could afford. But I have no intuitive sense of how to identify a quality host for our kind of needs. Like, are these $5 guys the first level of low-grade vendors who have Google-statted their way up the search results, and you have to dig deeper to find the more heavy-duty kind of host we'd need? Are the recommended hosts on that page just there 'cause they paid for it? Or is $5 just the going rate for quality hosting these days? How do we distinguish a reseller from an actual host? How much software and setup support do we need?

I mean, I guess I'd expect a serious host not to have cheap tarts on their front page, but anybody can make a serious, grey-toned, business-like web page... even guys who provide crappy service. -- Repowers 18:36, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

They may say they offer unlimited space or bandwidth, but I'm betting that there's a clause in the T&C which limits it to "for some meanings of unlimited". The big Doctor Who fiction archive site I help run got bumped from the cheaper account it was on to a more expensive one because it was using too many "resources" (the software it runs on is not the most efficient), though it was using less than the maximum bandwidth/disk space. --abates 19:26, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

That's exactly the kind of thing I'm wary of with these cheap places. The front-line search result hosts really don't seem like they're marketing to processor-intensive clients like ourselves. -- Repowers 20:06, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

What is our price limit, anyway? I mean, the account which the aforemented fanfiction site is on is extremely reliable, you get access to everything up to and including rebooting the server if you want. However drawback is that it costs $40 a month. Now it could be we could share costs by having several sites hosted on the same server (I'd have to check with the web host about that), but I don't know what our price range is. --abates 21:34, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

I would be very interested in hearing our budgetary constraints as well. The last time this was asked, Walky said that Bookworm was handling it and that the dude would let him know if what we were doing was costing more than the Project Wonderful ads were pulling in. At the time that was cool as school but in retrospect it seems... really skeevy. It also possibly says that Bookworm already has our ad revenue, and can effectively hold us hostage. I know that sounds paranoid, but I don't know what to think right now and would love some reassurance at the least.--Rosicrucian^Talk 00:24, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

Bookworm absolutely cannot hold our ad revenue hostage. WE have our ad revenue. It is gathering in our Project Wonderful account, where it will remain until we can point it to a paypal account at some point in the future. Bookworm may have fucked over the wiki this past week, but he's not a jerky guy. He just loves webcomics, and basically hosts BLC at low-cost because it allows his favorite things to continue. Hosting the TF Wiki was an extension of that, and he did it because I asked him. Let's not demonify the guy any more than we have to. He's not going to screw us over, and I really doubt he has any bad intentions in mind. --ItsWalky 00:34, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

Consider me reassured, then. Likely me just taking the earlier statement too far. Understandably, the concept of how the wiki is financed and how much it is costing us has been pretty black box up to now.--Rosicrucian^Talk 00:36, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

My input:

I used ePerfect as my first webhost. I found them to be reliable and easy to administer, but we would have to negotiate our own package with them, as their standard plans are obviously way too small. (I do know a fellow who did such a negotiation for his website, so I know it was possible at least in the past, however I am not privy to what his costs ended up being.) I also have no idea how their tech support is, as I never had to talk with them for any reason.

My current webhost is Dreamhost. For $10/month you get gobs of space, bandwidth, and options (and full control over your space), and they also have private virtual server options. They also will host one domain name for free if you have webspace with them. I find their tech support people have been quick on the response the few times I've needed to talk to them.

However, they have had some hardware goofs in the past, and I've never had personal experience with how they'd handle a no doubt high-bandwidth, high-CPU-usage site like this one. They are, however, very quick and open with any and all issues they have: Dreamhost Status Blog

So, there you have it, the only two webhosts I'm personally familiar with, and I admit I can't 100% recommend either, but they might be worth looking into. (And I shamelessly request that if you do end up with Dreamhost, you use my referrer code while signing up. :3 ) --Jeysie 18:59, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

One of #wiigii!'s resident tech dudes recommends Slicehost. He immediately followed this up with a string of caveats -- it won't be perfect, we'd need someone to install Wikimedia, restoring from a backup would basically mean rolling back one day, etc etc -- but it sounds far better equipped to handle our needs than Bookworm, and it looks like exactly the kind of heavy-duty host which, as I said up above, I don't know how to search for. Some of it, I mean... no host is perfect, and we have to accept some compromise to keep things within our budget -- but reliable uptime and actual working backups would be a fantastic step up from our current situation. -- Repowers 00:17, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

I am that tech dude. Here's the deal, from what has been gathered and occasionally specified. The platform on which this wiki runs seems to need a half-gig of RAM, and under 10 gigs of diskspace, but it does apparently need dual CPUs at a decent clock speed. Fundamentally, it could be hosted on a mid-range desktop based on those specs, but the hardware, and even the bandwidth, is cheap. You either need a sysadmin to maintain everything, which is not a full-time job until something breaks, or you need a managed hosting option that knows how to run MediaWiki properly. The former gives you complete control over everything, though you may not get cPanel support and the like unless you build it yourself. The latter is what you had when Wikia didn't suck, which I'm sure had a lot less headaches in terms of the guts of the system, although it was obviously NOT a good solution based on how they presented your content. Personally, I think you're more likely to find a pool of competent techies within the fandom to handle the nuts and bolts on a volunteer basis, though you would be handing over ALL the keys to the castle to that person. -- McFly 22:23, 26 March 2009 (EDT)

I've dealt with this crap so far up until now. I have no qualms with continuing to do so. --Suki Brits 10:53, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

I thought I'd weigh in with HostForWeb, who I've hosted my personal site with since January '04. Their tech support is pretty good, and even moved my site to a different server for me when the one it was on started having persistent problems running out of disk space. The only thing I can flaw them on is that they don't announce downtime in advance, so a few times I've found the site down, emailed them, and they've told me that the server was being rebooted or something.

The larger site which I help run which is hosted with them is A Teaspoon and an Open Mind. It's been hosted there since September '06. Last month, it got an average 3,755 pageviews per day, and from user reports, it has very little in the way of downtime, but, as I mention, it's running on their $40-a-month VPS plan (you get a two-month discount if you pay for a year at a time). We started on one of the shared plans, but the site was using too many resources (The software we're using is not particularly efficient...) and we ended up being bumped to the VPS option. --abates 07:04, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

Image aspect ratios

I notice a lot of Animated screencaps, like Image:SariLayingDown1.jpg, are out-of-aspect ratio, which is kinda annoying - neither NTSC (480i, typically 720x480, US/Japan) nor PAL (576i, typically 720x576, UK/Europe/Australia) use square pixels, while computers do. A screencap from a 4:3 NTSC source should really be resized to 640px wide for uploading here, while a screencap from a 4:3 PAL source should be resized to 768px wide. - SanityOrMadness 21:39, 26 March 2009 (EDT)

News from Wookieepedia

A while back, one of the users here suggested a partnership between Wookieepedia and this wiki. In case you're wondering what happened with that, the ongoing nomination process is here. Silly Dan 22:44, 26 March 2009 (EDT)

Awesome! Now, settle this argument - could Death Star transformed as Darth Vader beat Unicron? --FFN 07:13, 27 March 2009 (EDT)

Cool. I think I made a vague overture there at one point specifically about the coverage of Attacktix and that weird Star Wars vs. TF packaging - I understand there have been some direct and less-direct TF references in SW (which I imagine will only continue to crop up, given that the current and incoming generations of SW official content creators are likely to be of the age where they're at least casually aware of TF, if not fans in their own right), so this is probably a pretty reasonable networking opportunity. We can explain to you guys why the Optimus Prime that fought Darth Vader doesn't look like the one you had as a kid, and you can explain to us how the entire thing was totally non-canonical anyway. Heh heh. Hooper_X 07:54, 27 March 2009 (EDT)