Talk:WikiApiary

Possible improvements

"For MediaWiki sites on WikiIndex it would be really cool to be able to feed a live infobox from WikiApiary with data on usage. Some sort of Widget or something." So, should WikiApiary push the data to WikiIndex, or should WikiIndex pull the data from WikiApiary? Leucosticte (talk) 12:33, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Push: bots? Pull: mw:Extension:Scribunto? Or Special:Gadgets? --YiFei | talk 14:02, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't know how you would implement it using either of those. The backend would need to be figured out too; what database table would this data be stored in? Leucosticte (talk) 14:03, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Bots: as 'text' on WikiIndex directly; Scribunto: page cache on WikiIndex; Gadgets: Client cache (the viewers ourselves get the data; probably not a good idea). --YiFei | talk 14:11, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Bots could also push to a different API module that allows access to a database table(s) just for this data. Pushing to wikitext could be kinda brittle theoretically, although I think in practice the pages are standardized enough that it might work. Another advantage of using a separate table is that it could make data retrieval by API easier and less brittle too.

A disadvantage is that it could get pretty complex if we want to save a history of all the changes made to that data. We already have a system in place that saves old revisions of pages. This is pretty much the conondrum any time it's proposed to store more data in a wiki (see, e.g., bug 59665). Sometimes you can do a mix of both; e.g. mw:Extension:BedellPenDragon enables the saving of a new revision to change data in the page props table. Leucosticte (talk) 11:09, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Before going down the Scribunto route, you guys need to get User:DennouNeko to weigh in on this conversation (for his Lua experience). And I would specifically ask what implications this would have on server loading. Don't forget that WikiIndex is basically personally funded by RayKing – whereas many of the MediaWiki extensions are designed for mega-bucks server infrastructure of Wikimedia Foundation and/or Wikia.

Graphics question

Also, are either of you proficient with graphics? Sean, aka Hoof Hearted • _{Admin / 'Crat} • talk2HH 22:26, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

No, I'm more of a backend person. Leucosticte (talk) 00:34, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Graphics can be generated by svg. And I can make a script do that with the help of mw:Extension:Scribunto/Lua reference manual (why do we have to ping others?). But the only thing I'm worried about is the server load (I've seen WikiIndex down twice recently) & probably Scribunto cannot access external sources (needs either luacurl or luasocket installed). --YiFei | talk 09:19, 7 January 2014 (UTC) Wait --YiFei | talk 10:40, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

First, what graphs do we need? Pages, edits? --YiFei | talk 10:49, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

YiFei - sorry, I don't need graphs! I was wondering who could create a new link exchange banner for us here on WikiIndex. It would be similar to the 'Monitored by WikiApiary' — but we would need it to be something like 'Indexed on WikiIndex'. Can you do that, with embedded html please? Best Sean, aka Hoof Hearted • _{Admin / 'Crat} • talk2HH 17:14, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I think it would be best to post these requests to wikiapiary-l; the more people we make aware, the higher the odds that we'll get the best result in the end (assuming we don't run into triple-M problems). Leucosticte (talk) 17:17, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

You mean 'Monitored by WikiApiary' & 'Indexed on WikiIndex' banner? Why does it needs data pushing/pulling? It can be done directly on php. --YiFei | talk 23:23, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

No, he said an infobox, not a banner. Leucosticte (talk) 23:30, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Not an infobox - I said we want a small banner. Look at the top right of Category:Monitored by WikiApiary - we need something similar for ourselves, such as 'Indexed on WikiIndex', hard-coded with our url - so we can get other wikis to display our banner. Sean, aka Hoof Hearted • _{Admin / 'Crat} • talk2HH 21:22, 8 January 2014 (UTC)