[Update] openSUSE: new wiki, and now ...

Some updates about the new openSUSE wiki issues:

• The User:* pages are now finally protected (see bnc#409520 for history).
• Looks as if the Special:Import is now finally working also for normal users.

That are good news, but there are some other issues with the wikki: 

• As already pointed out by some other (e.g. in the 5th comment on this post): older external links to wikipages don't work anymore and there is no hint on the 'empty' page that there is a new wiki with a new structure and where you can find the old wiki. That's really annoying! But there is a info one some pages in the old wiki where to find the new pages (as e.g. here), we need something like that in the new wiki with info where the page was moved. At least as long as this page is empty.
• Also the 'google index' is destroyed. If you e.g. search at google.com for 'opensuse nvidia' you find this result on the second place, but the page doesn't exist. Sorry, but it was really a stupid idea to do this change and breaking the google index (and external links) with it.
• I know the intention was to cleanup the old wiki and give it a new structure, but the way it was done makes it really hard for the users. If a user look for the replacement of the old Nvidia page in the new wiki, there is no result with the default search, since it was moved to SDB:NVIDIA. You have to enable the search for the SDB namespace manually. IMO this should be activated by default.
• Not sure about the plans for the new structure of the wiki atm, have to search for some information about it. But there are some pages missing which are used in the URL-field of old and new (openSUSE 11.3/Factory) rpms. One example is the patterns page (e.g. from the patterns-openSUSE* rpms) and I assume there are others.

Tech Tags: SUSE

openSUSE: new wiki, and now ...

... a lot of work and some trouble. Since yesterday is the new openSUSE wiki online, as I discovered today as I checked my last week updated user page. The page was gone ... I had to create a new version of the page. Thanks!

I really appreciate the time the openSUSE wiki-team spend on the update, but unfortunately the new wiki don't always work as exprected:

• You can export any page via Special:Export (from the old wiki, which you can reach via http://old-en.opensuse.org) and you should be able to import the page via Special:Import. But the import page don't work, you get "Permission error: The action you have requested is limited to users in the group: Administrators.". No way to migrate a page from the old to the new wiki for now!
• If you 'Log out', you end in a old-style wiki page, which is oddly enough part of the new wiki:

• The User:* pages are still not protected. Any user can change the content of your userpage. That's inacceptable! If you don't monitor your page very closely other ppl. may write there whatever they want. Btw. I opened a bug ages ago (2008-07-16) for this problem, but it's still not fixed even though there is already a proposal how to fix it included (bnc#409520).
• Due to this post you should recreate to User:* page with a template. Unfortunately I couldn't find a way to load/import the template if you already created and saved the content of your page. That's why my page will stay in the old style.

So far so good about the technical part. There is another issue I don't like on the new wiki: the corporate design (CD). Except for the little lizard at the top left corner, there is not that much that differs the openSUSE wiki from other MediaWikis. I miss the distinguishing characteristics to other wikis and the associations to e.g. the design of the current openSUSE installer as you can see if you compare both side-by-side:

Even the sponsor logo is much bigger than the openSUSE lizard. There is no big recognition effect. While it's may not such an issue if you use a prosaic design for a developer service like build.opensuse.org, it's IMO important to have a design with a higher recognition effect for direct user services.

Tech Tags: SUSE

Hacking osc (3)

Here my latest changes/commits on osc:

• extended 'osc wipebinaries' to read package/project from checked out directories [1]
• fixed 'osc diff' function which left tempfiles in /tmp after finished [2]
• changed 'osc getbinaries' to work also in project dirs. If 'osc getbinaries' get called in a checked out directory all packages of the project get downloaded [3]

Tech Tags: Patches SUSE