Forum:How much longer will the 1.35 upgrade take?

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I am aware that questions like this have been asked many times before, but I'm going to ask it again: how much longer will the upgrade to 1.35 take? I know an exact time is impossible, but at least give us an estimate of how long it'll take (weeks? months? years?). I've noticed that a few wikis have already upgraded, but there are nearly 13,000 wikis on ShoutWiki at the time I'm writing this. The upgrade taking a very long time (over 2 years, if I'm correct) wouldn't be nearly as bad had it not been for the fact that ShoutWiki's wiki creator is broken and will not be fixed until after the upgrade despite being fixed, will not come back online until the upgrade is done.

A personal situation about how the excessively long wait for an upgrade has affected a wiki I run here on ShoutWiki: Tiresome Wikis Wiki. This wiki is about criticizing wikis with problems, from poorly-written pages to a bad userbase. It takes the form of a "reception wiki", a wiki that explains why something is good/bad/average/etc. through a series of numbered pointers, with its pros and cons separated into different headers. Anyway, reception wikis are usually separated into positive/negative pairs, and one day, I decided that TWW needed a positive wiki praising good wikis to complement it (discussion), but I had a problem with creating the positive wiki: there was no wiki farm that would host it. Fandom might've shut it down because it was a reception wiki (back in September 2018, Fandom had decided that negative content didn't have a place on its platform, so it started deleting wikis that are negative in nature, including all of the reception wikis, even the positive ones for some strange reason), Miraheze had declined requests for a similar wiki (on there, wikis have to be manually requested instead of being able to be created by anyone with an account), and of course, ShoutWiki's wiki creator was broken like it is now. The captcha library of EditThis.info (the wikifarm I eventually chose for the positive wiki, which I ended up naming Creative Wikis Wiki, though it's moving to a free web host soon) was broken at the time, also leaving its wiki creator broken. However, unlike ShoutWiki, EditThis.info managed to fix its wiki creator somewhat quickly (around a few months compared to over two years). The huge downside to being on EditThis.info is the sheer lack of features. On there, image uploading is disabled, external link submitting requires a bypass to what I think is a spam filter (it could also be a security guard against bad links), and many, many features from MediaWiki extensions are missing, including <ref> tags, which are important, but not required, for providing evidence for claims made in CWW's pages. This has forced me to make a workaround involving <sup> tags and the fact that external links typed [likethis.com] display a number. What is worse for EditThis.info, however, is that it's running a very old version of MediaWiki (1.15) and its admin doesn't even want to upgrade to the latest version. Thus, ShoutWiki is automatically better than EditThis.info in upgrading.

A problem of this size needs a effective and fast solution. Here are some ideas I have to fix this issue:

1. Hire more staff to help with the workload. I'm personally not interested in being a member of ShoutWiki staff, since I'm currently busy with other things in life.
2. Fix the wiki creator now so that it doesn't have to be broken until the end of time. There are three ways I see to do this:
   • I remember that a member of ShoutWiki staff said that CreateWiki (not to be confused with the extension of the same name used by Miraheze) would work better on an older version of MediaWiki, so an easy fix for the broken wiki creator would be to downgrade to an older version of MediaWiki 1.34 (ironic coming from a post about upgrading, I know). This takes no effort at all, and as far as I know, nothing would be broken.
   • Rewrite CreateWiki now and save the 1.35 upgrade for later. Debatably, this would be even worse for ShoutWiki, as now progress on the 1.35 upgrade would be slower. However, the one massive benefit is that CreateWiki would not be dependent on the 1.35 upgrade finishing, lessening the effect of the slowness of the upgrade itself. This raises the issue of if CreateWiki would need to be rewritten again after the upgrade, but this can be solved by rewriting CreateWiki in a way that ensures it'll work now and later. Staff have confirmed that the wiki creator has already been fixed but will not come back until after the upgrade to make sure that bugs don't reappear, rendering this entire section pointless.
   • Make CreateWiki open-source so that the community can fix it. There are some ShoutWiki community members that are technically inclined and could probably fix it. Staff have denied my Phabricator task about this and disabled my Phabricator account.
   • Somehow find a way to automate the 1.35 upgrade. It's not clear if there's any automation involved in the upgrade, but if there isn't, then this would make it a lot easier.

At this point, ShoutWiki's upgrade to 1.35 has taken so long that 1.35 is going to reach its EOL only 8 months from now. The fact that the upgrade is taking so long has made many question if ShoutWiki is truly alive, or if it's just a living zombie: still technically up and running, but practically dead in the sense that its growth has stalled. When I joined ShoutWiki back in November 2021, its wiki creator was broken; now, it's still broken. ShoutWiki is unique for being the only known wiki farm right now without a working wiki creator. If Fandom's wiki creator went down for even a day, a lot of users would be asking questions/complaining on their hub wiki (Community Central) about when it would be back up again. Miraheze's CreateWiki tool is currently broken after their upgrade to MediaWiki 1.39 (which for ShoutWiki, will not happen until at least 2040), and their wiki requests queue is piling up like crazy. It's only been a few days since their upgrade. If ShoutWiki wants to remain a viable option for hosting wikis, then Staff need to complete the 1.35 upgrade as soon as they possibly can. I know that they're busy with other things in their lives, but it's inexcusable for a wikifarm of ShoutWiki's size to not have a working wiki creator. Hopefully, Staff can have it running again soon. Tali64^2 (talk) 23:59, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

(Above post has been updated with new information.) Tali64^2 (talk) 15:38, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Just a few comments:

• Disclaimer: I am not staff.
• Staff here aren't "hired." They're unpaid. Despite the ShoutWiki Staff page, "staff" is Jack and Lewis.
• The problem with the wiki creator (as I understand it) is that it makes direct database changes, but WikiMedia changes the MediaWiki database schema every version. As a result of an upgrade (i.e. schema change), un-updated WikiCreator was causing database corruption. No content was destroyed (or so it seems), but the database records that contain content became unlinked. Pages lost their content. Pages lost their histories. Histories lost their comments. It didn't happen all at once. It happened progressively over time. It still hasn't been all recovered, and (at this point, I suspect) never will be. Apparently it's not possible to recover from backup. (I don't know if that's a limitation of the backup software or of Lewis. When I suggested recovery, Lewis said he would not revert the database. I pointed out that recovery and reversion were not the same thing. Discussion ended.)

I could say more, but I'll leave it there. --Saftzie (talk) 21:48, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

To respond to your points:

• Since you aren't staff, that means that your points are community comments, not official answers. I'd prefer if a Staff member would answer the question I asked in my original post (how much longer will it take to upgrade to 1.35?), which you failed to address.
• I know that Staff are unpaid, and the fact that there are only two Staff members just proves my point that ShoutWiki needs more help.
• In that case, the real solution would be to rewrite CreateWiki so that it doesn't make direct database changes in creating wikis. My point about releasing CreateWiki publicly still stands.

Overall, the point I'm trying to make is this: ShoutWiki's wiki creator has been down not because of the (possibly) upcoming 1.35 upgrade, but because of the way it was written to be version-specific in its workings. Staff's priority right now should be this:

1. Completing the 1.35 upgrade
2. Rewriting CreateWiki
3. HTTPS (something that Staff have wanted to do for a while, because no one wants their password stolen)

If I had to give one piece of advice to Staff, it'd be this: Research possible ways to automate the 1.35 upgrade, then focus your attention on rewriting CreateWiki to not make direct database changes, if possible. @Lcawte: since only you know the exact details of the 1.35 upgrade, please answer this question: How much longer will the 1.35 upgrade take? If an answer to that question is impossible, then answer this: How long will it be until the majority of ShoutWiki wikis start upgrading to 1.35? ShoutWiki's wiki creator has been broken for over two years and counting, and it being fixed depends on the upgrade being completed. Also, its social media accounts appear to be abandoned, which is not a good look for any website in general. This wiki (which is ShoutWiki's central wiki) only sees a few edits occasionally. At this point, I'm not confident that ShoutWiki will last beyond a few more years if this continues. Tali64^2 (talk) 22:38, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

UPDATE: I've made a Phabricator/Phorge task about making CreateWiki open-source. Tali64^2 (talk) 01:08, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

ANOTHER UPDATE: A staff member closed my task and left what I assume is a sarcastic comment on it. I'm starting to think that Staff don't really care about ShoutWiki anymore. Tali64^2 (talk) 18:12, 31 January 2023 (UTC) Offhand comment I made about Staff, please ignore

FINAL UPDATE: ShoutWiki has finally upgraded to 1.35! However, the wiki creator is restricted to staff only. Why is that? Tali64^2 (talk) 11:58, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Because the upgrade is still in progress, site stability will always take priority, and there's still extensive testing and review to do on CreateWiki. I'd suggest you remove any idea of using it from your plans for the near future. --Lewis Cawte (talk) 00:21, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

To add to this, there is a plan to provide a debrief blog when the site is stable, any remaining bugs are ironed out, etc, and this stuff moving forward, but, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. More important fish to fry at the moment though, both on ShoutWiki and the day job. --Lewis Cawte (talk) 00:45, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

so what to do with new ShoutWiki? :-( poste to admin? --User:list (talk)