Talk:Main page
Instructions on checking the user name
The issue with Special:ListUsers is that it displays results even when the name in question is not available. For example, foobarthisnamedoesnotexist still lists all user names starting with foo. -- Alad (talk) 21:36, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
- You can go to User:Foobarthisnamedoesnotexist instead, but no idea how to describe the 4 possible cases (account does not exist, account exists but the page doesn't, the page exists but account doesn't, both things exist). -- Lahwaacz (talk) 21:49, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
- There's also Special:PrefixIndex, e.g. foobarthisnamedoesnotexist, but the downside is that it also shows subpages. — Kynikos (talk) 09:39, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
- Well, it's a little like letting new users play dice to find a free name first, but still useful to work around the issue, e.g.
- "In order to create an account, check if your desired user name or a suitable alternative is available."
- Actually, what should be the primary place to inform about how to register? The main page? Then, we should crosslink it from ArchWiki:Contributing#Improving and maybe even add a redirect for "account registration". --Indigo (talk) 12:14, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
- Well, it's a little like letting new users play dice to find a free name first, but still useful to work around the issue, e.g.
Interlanguage links need to be sorted alphabetically
See Help:Style#Interlanguage links. -- Blackteahamburger (talk) 15:14, 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)
- 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)
- 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)