<div dir="ltr">Many thanks for taking time to give good answers. Lots of useful stuff in there I'll have to process.<div><br></div><div>Regards,</div><div>GoldenRing</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 6 April 2015 at 17:11, Ricordisamoa <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org" target="_blank">ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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Il 06/04/2015 08:27, Golden Ring ha scritto:<br>
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<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_quote">On 6 April 2015 at 14:03,
Ricordisamoa <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org" target="_blank">ricordisamoa@openmailbox.org</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><span> Il
06/04/2015 02:18, Golden Ring ha scritto:<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>I've been thinking recently about how to do recent changes patrol
better. I've prototyped a tool, which you can see at
<a href="http://recent-changes.appspot.com/" target="_blank">http://recent-changes.appspot.com/</a>.</pre>
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<br>
</span> Nice. It reminds me of <a href="https://tools.wmflabs.org/pltools/rech/" target="_blank">rech</a>...<span><br>
<br>
</span></div>
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</div>
<div>Yes, very similar concept. Is there a reason that
rech is wikidata only?</div>
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I guess that is because its author, <a href="https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/User:Pasleim" target="_blank">Pasleim</a>, is
mainly active there and didn't think it may have been useful to
other projects. Or maybe it's supposed to implement some
Wikidata-specific features in the future.<span class=""><br>
<br>
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<pre>This is currently implemented on Google AppEngine, basically
becausethat's what I had to hand when I set out and already knew
something about using. It uses the MediaWiki API to retrieve diffs.
This is not ideal for a few reasons, not least because it wouldn't
take very heavy use of the tool before I'd have to start paying for
it, which would probably mean putting ads on it. I can't be dealing
with all that.</pre>
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<br>
</span> I suppose the cost is related to Google charging
for bandwidth use beyond a threshold?<br>
Since the app needs JavaScript anyway, you could simply
retrieve recent changes on the client, thus avoiding
much of the server-side traffic.<span><br>
<br>
</span></div>
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<div><br>
</div>
<div>Yes, Google charges for both CPU time and bandwidth use
beyond the free quota (1GB bandwidth either way + 28
instance-hours per day).<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Retrieving changes from the client side was what I
attempted first, but of course it has to be hosted
somewhere, and unless that's on the wiki concerned, then
you have to deal with the cross-site nature of the API
requests. My impression is that this requires the wiki to
be configured to explicitly allow requests from the domain
serving the page.</div>
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Just pass dataType: "jsonp" to $.ajax(), it will magically work! (<a href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Ajax#Limitations" target="_blank">background</a>)<span class=""><br>
<br>
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<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div><br>
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<div>[snip] </div>
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Labs is precisely for external tools, and I'd say Tool
Labs best fits your needs.<br>
To enhance MediaWiki's built-in patrolling
functionality, you should read <a href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker" target="_blank">this</a> instead.<br>
<a href="https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-October/075137.html" target="_blank">Use your judgement and common sense</a>
to decide whether it's better to develop your tool on
Tool Labs or as part of MediaWiki (either core or an
extension).<span><br>
<br>
</span></div>
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<div><br>
</div>
<div>I'm not absolutely clear on the best choice here. On
one hand, I'd like the tool to end up something like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:NewPagesFeed" target="_blank">Special:NewPagesFeed</a>.
I guess this points towards developing it as built-in
mediawiki functionality, rather than an external tool. On
the other hand, I've developed it because I actually want
to use it; my impression is that getting changes into
mediawiki, and then deployed onto en wikipedia, is not
easy. Probably for pretty good reasons, but still not
easy.</div>
</div>
</div>
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Only you know how your tool will look like :-)<br>
Special:NewPagesFeed is provided by the <a href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PageTriage" target="_blank">PageTriage
extension</a>, so if your goal is to improve it or build upon it
tightly, here you go.<br>
If you're still undecided, I advise you to install
MediaWiki+PageTriage on your device and have a look at the code
while experimenting with Tool Labs.<span class=""><br>
<br>
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<div class="gmail_quote">
<div><br>
</div>
<div>If I go down the external tool route, then I guess the
tool gets hosted at eg. <a href="http://tools.wmflabs.org" target="_blank">tools.wmflabs.org</a>;
is that right? On the other hand, an external tool hosted
there doesn't have access to the production wikipedia
databases and would have to continue getting data through
the mediawiki API; is that right?</div>
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</div>
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<br></span>
#1: yes. Follow the links at <a href="https://tools.wmflabs.org" target="_blank">tools.wmflabs.org</a>
to create a Labs account (if you don't have one yet), request access
to the Tools project and create a new tool. It will be hosted at
<a href="http://tools.wmflabs.org/" target="_blank">tools.wmflabs.org/</a><yourtoolname>.<br>
#2: no. Tools accounts have access to replicas of the production
databases with private data redacted: read <a href="https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Tool_Labs/Database#Connecting_to_the_database_replicas" target="_blank">Connecting
to the database replicas</a> for access. However, some data are
only exposed via the API, and (my understanding is that) databases
are generally only used directly in performance-critical
applications which benefit from the power of SQL.<span class=""><br>
<br>
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<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div><br>
</div>
<div>TBH I'm not sure I've got a lot of clue about the
architecture of MediaWiki; is it described anywhere,
beyond, "It uses PHP, MySQL and jQuery"?</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
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<br></span>
It seems you're asking for the <a href="https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developer_hub" target="_blank">Developer hub</a>,
though it may be hard to grasp for a 'newb' ;-)<span class=""><br>
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<div><br>
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<div>Sorry for having so many questions!</div>
</div>
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<br></span>
You're welcome!<span class=""><br>
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<div dir="ltr">
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<div class="gmail_quote">
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Regards,</div>
<div>GoldenRing</div>
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