Talk:Main page

Interlanguage links need to be sorted alphabetically

See Help:Style#Interlanguage links. -- Blackteahamburger (talk) 15:14, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Solved. -- Kynikos (talk) 23:19, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

@Kynikos Can you give me the Bots user group? I want to automatically update interlanguage links in the translated version of the Main page. -- Blackteahamburger (talk) 02:45, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

That'd be for a separate bot account, if you meant to save several dozens or hundreds of edits; there's no problem if you sync the interlanguage links in Main-page translations with your main account. -- Kynikos (talk) 23:00, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

I mean this, please give my main user Bots user group, otherwise 30 seconds is too slow. -- Blackteahamburger (talk) 01:10, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Ooh, ok, the 30-second delay is a deliberate limitation built into Wiki Monkey for non-bot users to discourage using it for extensive undiscussed changes.

If you don't want or can't have continuous access to internet to leave the bot perform the edits while you do something else (which is how Wiki Monkey's bot was intended to be used by regular users), I guess I can put your User in the Bots group temporarily, if you give me a time window when you intend to run the bot.

I think Lahwaacz also periodically runs wiki-script's interlanguage.py script, but I'm not sure if it can be restricted to only a particular title.

We can also discuss supporting a User:Blackteahamburger.bot with bot rights, if you're interested in running automated maintenance jobs more regularly.

-- Kynikos (talk) 23:43, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Lahwaacz said that the bot cannot parse the magic word at the top of the page [1], so the bot cannot work. I can use SimpleReplace plugin to update interlanguage links.

I am really interested in running automatic maintenance tasks, but I don’t know how to do it :(

-- Blackteahamburger (talk) 01:29, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Did you like any of the options that I proposed above? -- Kynikos (talk) 17:43, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't really like using SimpleReplace extensively, because it is too error-prone (parsing the MediaWiki markup properly with regular expressions is extremely hard or even impossible). But I think the SynchronizeInterlanguageLinks plugin would actually work here, I'm only not sure if it would give the same results as wiki-scripts for any page. interlanguage.py from wiki-scripts does not work here because of mwparserfromhell's issue so the ultimate solution would be fixing that. -- Lahwaacz (talk) 20:02, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

The SynchronizeInterlanguageLinks plugin sometimes does not completely update the interlanguage links [2], so it is better to fix the problem. (SimpleReplace plugin does make mistakes sometimes...) -- Blackteahamburger (talk) 01:09, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

After so many years, it would be easier to rewrite SynchronizeInterlanguageLinks from scratch than fixing it... -- Kynikos (talk) 06:29, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

Idea: Tip of the day

Some other wikis, e.g the NetHack wiki have a tip of the day on their main page. In their case, it is fetched via the random true rumor template, which bases on common.js I think we could benefit from something like that, too. Sample tips (pls no bikeshed yet on them), which are not strictly all tips but hints:

• Did you know that /usr/bin/ip supports color with -c? $ ip -c -br a is quite pretty.
• Pacman sure loves candy…
• .pacnew files are sometimes a ticking time bomb. Take care of them on a regular basis to prevent issues.
• Common readline keybinds are well worth learning. Since readline is so commonly used in applications, you will be able to apply the newfound efficiency aplenty.

Once determined that this is a feature we want, we could start working on a longer list of tips, editable by autoconfirmed users (since it is displayed on the main page I recommend to put at least some slight protection on it).

Another small "issue" would be that the arch-wiki-docs package will probably only display one per month. NetSysFire (talk) 08:03, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

To me it sounds like a nice feature to have, although I would have reduced the frequency to a "Tip of the week" unless we manage to have a sizeable backlog of tips.

The fact that it's going to be added to arch-wiki-docs is not an issue IMO, as the package already has other "non-content" pages like ArchWiki:News.

Here's a few tips (the first of which I shamelessly stole from nl6720):

• There is a hidden vi available from /usr/lib/initcpio/busybox vi.
• When constrained on space, remember you can avoid installing all translations provided by packages.
• Rarely used services can often be socket-activated instead of keeping them idle all the time.

I had a few more ideas, but they kinda duplicate General recommendations. This is probably an instance where it would be OK, but I'd like to hear what y'all think (I had in mind clearing pacman's cache, sorting mirrors, enabling TRIM on SSDs).

Do we want to avoid external links? If not, there are some fun reads like https://www.ee.torontomu.ca/~elf/hack/recovery.html.

-- Erus Iluvatar (talk) 09:27, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Regarding "although I would have reduced the frequency to a "Tip of the week" unless we manage to have a sizeable backlog of tips.":

I'd make this a "fake" tip of the day just as nethackwiki does. If you refresh their main page, you'll get a new rumor.

This does need javascript though. NetSysFire (talk) 16:31, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

So just a "Random tip" then :P

Sounds fine to me too.

-- Erus Iluvatar (talk) 17:45, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good, can you come up with an implementation plan? 😸

It would also be nice to make the title configurable, so sometimes it would be e.g. Tip of the day, sometimes Tip of the year to overemphasize its importance, or Quote of the day to use the system for something slightly different.

— Lahwaacz (talk) 12:32, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I really like this idea. It would be easy to have these tips in fortune-mod-archtips and Archers would love scripting them. Vim fans are already having fun with fortune-mod-vimtips^AUR. Thanks for suggesting this. --AvidSeeker (talk) 13:58, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

I added User:NetSysFire/Tip of the Day to start gathering tips. NetSysFire (talk) 07:22, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure we should allow Easter eggs at all, IMO they lose their charm when they're more than just hinted at.

I've added the ones from my previous message there :)

-- Erus Iluvatar (talk) 11:39, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

That is a fair point but vaguely hinting that e.g "Pacman sure loves candy…" makes that entry kind of useless as the reader is probably going to go "Eh, whatever" and stop thinking about it. It must be somewhat intriguing, which means its easier straight to the point like right now or worded differently, which is pretty hard to do. NetSysFire (talk) 18:29, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

How about "Bored of -Syu'ing? Tell pacman that you love candy and see if anything changes." Erus Iluvatar (talk) 19:29, 14 November 2024 (UTC)