I don't want to nag, but I mailed a patch (modification to the colonge blue stylesheet) to this list a while ago and it hasn't been comitted to CVS. Was I right to send it to this list or should it have gone elsewhere? Do I have to do something special to get it comitted?
Chris Seaton wrote:
I don't want to nag, but I mailed a patch (modification to the colonge blue stylesheet) to this list a while ago and it hasn't been comitted to CVS. Was I right to send it to this list or should it have gone elsewhere? Do I have to do something special to get it comitted?
There are two methods of getting things done around here:
a) nagging b) doing it yourself
(b) is usually easier than (a), so I suggest you do some of (a) to Brion and get yourself CVS write access.
Long, long ago, Chris Seaton wrote:
Hello,
I have some extra time on my hands so I'm looking to do some development on Wikipedia, as people always seem to be complaining about a lack of developers.
I'm just getting the hang of things, browsing the source. I'm a good PHP developer, but databases aren't my strong point (I can use them, but can't really administer them).
I didn't know how to do either 6 months ago. I guess it depends on how much time you've got to spend.
This is just a little patch to modify the fonts of the stats section of the colonge skin. This section is currently in serif, but the rest of the page is in a sans font, so it looks out of
I was just planning to go through bugs and feature requests looking for things that I can manage, is there something more pressing that you would like to direct me to?
The sourceforge tracker is okay, but IMHO the best place to start is:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_tasks
If you don't want to get into the DB side at this stage, perhaps you should look at the UI. For example, at the moment users cannot access the wikitext source of a protected page, and they can't get it if they're blocked either. This is a GFDL violation.
The "code quality" section of the above page might also be up your alley. If you're the violent type, there's plenty to be done maiming and killing global variables.
Also, how frequently is the English wikipedia updated to use the CVS code?
See http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_policy. In theory unstable->stable takes 3-10 days, then stable->live is "regularly". In practice the unstable->stable step requires testing and debugging, and until that's done, features just sit in unstable.
If you add a feature, you should always include the ability to switch it on and off, using a global defined in DefaultSettings.php. This smooths over the unstable->stable transition, and lessens "political" problems involving controversial features.
-- Tim Starling.
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