Frankly, other than the article info (revision history) tool, xtools is not in terrible shape. The service goes down every so often, but a simple restart does the trick. I've talked to the labs folks about getting our nifty bash scripts back up to do that job for us, and I can try to focus on that in the near future. Sometimes I doubt we should bother with a rewrite. It's a lot of work and I get the hunch none of us really want to do it.
That being said, I'm actively having fun developing my own suite of tools, beginning with a non-automated edit counter. >From there I look forward to creating similar tools to what we already enjoy with other tools, but I'm just doing it again both for fun and to offer an additional line of services in the event the others go down. Working on xtools should be no different, in that you should be having fun doing it. Any added pressure to get things done compromises this important aspect. If you are unable to fulfill a deadline you made, oh well. The only situation where unfulfilled volunteer work should truly matter is where it was court-ordered.
Sorry, I wrote that we need article histories, but I meant page histories.On Sun, Sep 6, 2015 at 11:06 PM, Sarah (SV) <slimvirgin@gmail.com> wrote:Hi everyone,I joined this list not long ago in the hope of finding out what progress has been made. My problem is that I have no technical skills, so I can't help with this, don't know how much time is involved, and can't find out why the tools suddenly stopped working. Or why Wikimedia Labs is so often unreachable.As Chris says, we really need some of these tools, in particular article histories. Is there anyone on this list who is willing to make WikiHistory work? It currently works for articles only. Eugene said he would carry it over from the German Wikipedia, but I don't know what happened.WikiHistory looks good and is very stable on the German WP, so that seems like something worth working on.SarahOn Sun, Sep 6, 2015 at 10:22 PM, Chris <cs@edubkk.org> wrote:As we appear to be throwing around with accusaions here - or trying to feel accused, I want out that part of the dilemma is directly attributed to users who in their enthusiasm to be helpful took on more than they had time and/or knowledge to fulfil. In any volunteer community this always ends badly. The moral of the story is: Don’t say you will if there’s a likelyhood you can’t, and if later you can’t, tell us so and don’t string us along with excuses however valid they may be.The problem we are faced with right now is that time has run out and there is no time left for people to learn php or Python while they address these 2-year-old problems; what we need from among our 22 million registered accounts are two or three people who speak php and Python as fluently as I speak English, French, and German.I am not a code writer. Belive me when I say that if I were, I’d be doing it all myself. I am one of the regular users of these tools and I can assure you all that they are not some little gimmicks for the curiosity of newbies. They are essential for example, for providing statistics to back up proposals for implementing serious measures to combat some of the worst things that happen on Wikipedia. Or perhaps none of you are aware of Orangemoody, for example.We Thank you all for the effort you have put into these issues.I rest my case.KudpungOn 7Sep, 2015, at 10:18, L235 Wikipedia <l235@l235.net> wrote:_______________________________________________Respectfully, Kudpung, I agree with Cyberpower678 that your messages to this list have been less productive than they could have been. They have essentially been "the beatings will continue until morale improves"-style messages, and we all know how well those work out.
For the record, I have met all of my commitments to this project. I have continued to make one hour a week of my time available to this project, to do anything I see that I can do within the capabilities I specified by email to the list (sysadminning, making an effort to wrangle bugs, but not primary development). I have continued to study PHP a little. I made my limitations very, very clear before I was added as a maintainer of this project.
Wikipedia is not, should not be, and has never been our top priority. Each of us have our own career, our own boss (or instructor/professor/etc.), and our own social lives separate from Wikipedia. We are all volunteers. Although we should honor our commitments (to emphasize again, I did, and beyond – IRC/etc.), it is unreasonable to blame us for factors outside of our own control.
I recognize that xTools is vital to the project, and I have been making efforts (even studying PHP, basically from scratch) to try to fix it. Please feel free to send us messages describing the usage of this tool by the community, and you are more than welcome to start contributing directly (i.e. hack, code, sysadmin, etc.), but until you do, please don't try to supervise us. (Again, suggestions, reminders, etc., are appreciated regardless.)
I am trying to get in contact with Eugene to see if he can come back on the project.
Respectfully,
L235, in my role as a maintainer and sysadmin of xToolsKudpung, I honestly felt like your badgering was more like pushing me around and demanding I do work on xTools in all off my free time. I never said I had a bountiful amount of free time. I've always asserted that I was missing the time needed to fully dedicate to the project, but I was also the only one doing something code related. Now no one is. I was never being dishonest about my lack of time. If you really need someone who can truly dedicate the time, talk to Sigma. From what I gather, he's more capable anyways. Anyways, I'm now focusing my time clearing out the backlog over at bot requests, and maybe some RfC closures.Cyberpower678English Wikipedia Account Creation TeamMailing List Moderator" The first reason is that xTools requires a great deal of person's time which is something I'm lacking. “This is really the only reason. I’ve been encouraging, then badgering, then badgering some more - but not bullying. And if we had had a clear and honest answer like this months ago perhaps we would have found the people we need.Now, because of recent events, Wikipedia is in the shit, and we’re all up shit creek without a paddle and can’t do anything about it.KudpungOn 6Sep, 2015, at 19:45, Maximilian Doerr <maximilian.doerr@gmail.com> wrote:The first reason is that xTools requires a great deal of person's time which is something I'm lacking._______________________________________________
Maintainers: Cyberpower678, Technical 13, MusikAnimal, Elee, Nakon, L235
xTools mailing list
xTools@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/xtools
_______________________________________________
Maintainers: Cyberpower678, Technical 13, MusikAnimal, Elee, Nakon, L235
xTools mailing list
xTools@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/xtools
Maintainers: Cyberpower678, Technical 13, MusikAnimal, Elee, Nakon, L235
xTools mailing list
xTools@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/xtools
_______________________________________________
Maintainers: Cyberpower678, Technical 13, MusikAnimal, Elee, Nakon, L235
xTools mailing list
xTools@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/xtools
_______________________________________________
Maintainers: Cyberpower678, Technical 13, MusikAnimal, Elee, Nakon, L235
xTools mailing list
xTools@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/xtools