User talk:DanQ

thanks for bringing back a space for communing!

cheers, Arlo (talk) 10:26, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

woo, thanks DanQ! I have a few expeditions I made in the past months I have to report about :) --SastRe.O (talk) 13:28, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you so much, DanQ! --Fippe (talk) 10:45, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

You cannot believe how happy I am to see the wiki back up, so many thanks! -- Mampfred (talk) 08:40, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, thank you, thank you, for bringing back the wiki! - Danatar (talk) 00:11, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Uploading images

Hi DanQ! Thanks a lot for bringing back the wiki. However, I can't find the option to upload images; can you help? FelixTheCat (talk) 22:01, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Whoops! Should be back now. I've also added gpx as a permitted file type because it always bugged me that it wasn't. --DanQ (talk) 22:04, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! I just created my first new expedition report, and everything seems to be working fine! I'll start working on my backlog tomorrow :-) FelixTheCat (talk) 22:18, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

Bots and Maps

Hi Dan, thank you again for bringing the site back.

I have a request: Could you add User:FippeBot to the bot group? That way it won't spam the recent changes when making it's edits. Before the Dark Ages, it tagged expedition pages with {{location}}, but it could also take care of changing the links to wiki.xkcd.com. --Fippe (talk) 17:18, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Done! --DanQ (talk)

Thank you very much! --Fippe (talk) 06:57, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

A weird error happens when I try to access 2019-01-02 -43 172. Do you know why? --Fippe (talk) 08:05, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Looks like the <math> tag was breaking it; not yet sure why. Removing it fixed the problem for now; I'll look more-deeply later. --DanQ (talk) 09:15, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Nice, thank you! --Fippe (talk) 10:10, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

The new OSM maps are nice. It is good that we no longer have Google's "for dev purposes only" message. I haven't encountered any problems at {{meetup graticule}}, but at {{meetup global}} the map does not display anything. There was a bug pre-Dark Ages as well, it used to display wrong coordinates. Now it does not display any coordinates at all, which I find weird, as it seems to call the same function which {{meetup graticule}} is calling. --Fippe (talk) 17:18, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

I didn't get a copy of the original mapping extension with my dump of the database, so I had to reimplement by reverse-engineering; I missed globalhashes when I did so. I've now added them, aaaand... I've hopefully managed to fix them so globalhash maps work. If you're able to check a few (you might need to purge/edit-and-resave pages to refresh the maps) that'd be appreciated! --DanQ (talk)

Currently it seems that there is a mistake in the calculations. I checked 2019-12-15 global, where the map now exists, which is very good. However, even after editing and purging, it currently seems to show the coordinates for the Geohash in the graticule of the Globalhash, not the coordinates of the Globalhash.

And now as I am writing this it seems that now it changed and the correct coordinates of the Globalhash are indeed marked, even on Globalhash pages such as 1990-04-20 global which I have neither edited nor purged. Did you just change something? It is working now, thank you! --Fippe (talk) 10:10, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Cache gremlins, I guess. --DanQ (talk) 06:39, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi Dan, I found a map bug. For expeditions so far in the future that the coordinates are not yet known, for example 2020-02-29 53 -2, a marker gets displayed anyway. In those cases, the map gets error\ndata not available yet as the value for the dow, and thus the result of echo -en '2020-02-29-error\ndata not available yet' | md5sum, which is 4833c98649ca509cb315699d45792c16 as the hash. In accordance with this, a marker is drawn at the resulting coordinates, in this example at 53.282040210042204,-2.699545479675611. This should not happen. It would be better, if in cases where the Dow value is an error, that no marker is drawn. --Fippe (talk) 11:35, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Well-spotted. Fixed. -DanQ (talk)

Thank you very much! --Fippe (talk) 12:50, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

email

Hey DanQ or Fippe NEVER got an email confirmation. Also, unable get any email confirmation request codes or email or anything yet. What's the deal ? TriosLosDios850 (talk)

I can't seem to get special:confirmemail to work. Do you think this might just be on my end? Arlo (talk) 02:37, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

Me neither. Simply doesn't do anything, it seems. Rincewind (talk) 10:50, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

A few people have had trouble; I'm looking into it! Sorry! If you're among the folks inconvenienced, email geohashing-email-validation at Dan Q dot me from your email address, mentioning your username in the email, and I'll manually mark them as validated. -DanQ (talk)

Speaking of email, I just realized that the ONLY mail I ever got from the wiki was the confirmation email. My watch list doesn't seem to send emails on changes as it did on the old wiki. Is that the same issue? - Mampfred (talk) 20:53, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Looks like the issue is still there? --Crox (talk) 10:27, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Confirmation emails, or overall emails? I know I got an email about your comment (this page is in my watch list). My experience seems to suggest that it only sends emails sporadically, and/or only if the page hadn't been viewed by me for some X time after the update. Not very sure which. --January First-of-May (talk) 13:56, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback! I did some more troubleshooting, which leads me to think it's e-mail in general:

NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from xvm-108-147.dc2.ghst.net[46.226.108.147]: 504 5.5.2 <aux3>: Helo command rejected: need fully-qualified hostname; from=<no-reply@[1]> to=<[2]> proto=ESMTP helo=<aux3>

disconnect from xvm-108-147.dc2.ghst.net[46.226.108.147]

warning: hostname xvm6-dc2-fe9a-5cec.ghst.net does not resolve to address 2001:4b98:dc2:41:216:3eff:fe9a:5cec: Name or service not known

connect from unknown[2001:4b98:dc2:41:216:3eff:fe9a:5cec]

NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from unknown[2001:4b98:dc2:41:216:3eff:fe9a:5cec]: 504 5.5.2 <aux3>: Helo command rejected: need fully-qualified hostname; from=<no-reply@[1]> to=<[2]> proto=ESMTP helo=<aux3>

disconnect from unknown[2001:4b98:dc2:41:216:3eff:fe9a:5cec]

(this wiki's FQDN was replaced by [1] and my e-mail address was replaced by [2])

This means that even if DanQ would manually confirm my address, I would likely still not get any e-mail... --Crox (talk) 22:12, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the excellent analysis/diagnosis. Hopefully now fixed? --Dan Q (talk) 11:20, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes! Thanks a lot. --Crox (talk) 23:26, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Unnamed graticules

I have considered cleaning out Special:WantedPages. Currently, this special page is not very useful since it is swamped by unnamed graticules. One way to fix this would be to create those graticule pages. We have had three approaches so far.

1. My first approach, redirecting the page to unnamed graticules where the situation is explained.
2. Your approach, putting the page into Category:Unnamed graticules and leaving the page blank.
3. My second approach, giving the page a full graticule info page, just not naming it.

One issue that I see with #3 is that it will create even more Wanted Pages if the unnamed graticule has neighbours which also are unnamed. However, since the number of graticules is not infinite, it would be not impossible to do this, but it would take the bot longer to do this.

One issue that I see with #2 is that it could be confusing for a user to just see a blank page, and may not see the link to the category.

One issue you brought up with #1 is "Just being of the right category ought to be sufficient to encourage its eventual naming, and makes adding expeditions to it less-hard". I agree that a user may not know how to add expeditions to these redirect pages, and that giving the graticule a non-redirect page is better.

I am currently favouring #3, and could make FippeBot do the work if you are okay with this.

Non-related: Do you have some input here? --Fippe (talk) 12:50, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

I think #3 is best, personally, but I'm not super-fussy (despite my ninja edit!) -DanQ (talk)

Okay, it is done now. --Fippe (talk) 21:28, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Raising awareness, reactivating geohashers

As even Mampfred had given up on a wiki being set up anew, he only realised it when I had a call with him this week. I think he even has some reports he can now do up his sleeve.
He's probably not the only one- could we send a single notification mail out to all old account owners, maybe? I don't think this has been done. I am sure there's still people mourning the loss of their favourite hobby and if we don't want to "die out", we need to reactivate a couple of people so there's activity drawing new enthusiasts. And it's a shame to lose great people and take their fun. Rincewind (talk) 11:01, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I am not sure if Randall and Davean handed all the email addresses over to Dan. However, Davean surely has the email addresses since those email addresses were used for the 2019-09-03 emails notifying us that the wiki is down. --Fippe (talk) 11:36, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Correct; I don't have people's old email addresses. Some people may have mentioned their email addresses (or other ways to contact them) on their profile pages, of course, and for others it might be possible to work out who/where they are and get in touch, but that sounds like a bigger job than I (personally) have time for... but if you want to, you can! -DanQ (talk)

Session timeout

Could we raise the session timeout a bit? It's slightly annoying, I think. However, it's good this is set up in a way so you don't lose edits. Good work. Things like these used to really hurt and still do on some pages. Rincewind (talk)

Session timeout raised from 24 minutes (of inactivity) to 4 hours. Your existing session will have to timeout (or you'll need to clear cookies) before the change takes effect for you. -DanQ (talk)

Meetup 2020-03-14 51 -0

Any chance you're considering a Saturday 4pm meetup in Hook (London West) tomorrow? I thought I might do it, and it would be great to say hello in person! --Macronencer (talk) 22:17, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Amazingly, I was _supposed_ to be in West London today... but then the event I was to attend got re-arranged thanks to Covid-19 and turned into a remote-only conference, so I stayed at home and videoconferenced-in to it instead: boo! But I'd love to team up for one someday, sure! -DanQ (talk)

Ah yes, that's impacting everyone now, isn't it? At work we have a German customer, and my boss has stopped all on-site support. Don't worry, you didn't miss much yesterday, it was just a residential street. But I'm sure we'll meet at some point, we're graticule neighbours and I'm often forced north by the water! --Macronencer (talk) 08:36, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Gosford Expedition

Did you attempt 2020-02-27 51 -1, the expedition south of Gosford? --Fippe (talk) 19:16, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Expedition list compiled... strangely incorrect.

Hi DanQ. Something I wandered about was the false achievement symbols in my expedition list in the profile (bus? I don't go by bus...). Now I just saw that a successful expedition, tagged correctly, is listed as "failed". This one in Austria listed at the 3rd from the bottom here: Rincewind Are you the right one to bug about this? I am aware it's a minor thing, thanks for checking, still. Rincewind (talk) 13:58, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, that was my fault. Last year when I removed Category:New report from the expedition page, I left an HTML comment open by accident and the expedition was not in Category:Coordinates reached anymore. That is why AperfectBot (which does your list) thought that it was not successful. I changed that now, and it is now listed as successful. In the future, if there is a bug in AperfectBot, I think the person to talk to is Aperfectring, not DanQ. --Fippe (talk) 16:12, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

GPX trails not working

Hey there, the tracklog tag is a fabulous idea, just tested it on 2020-07-08_50_8 though and it doesn't work for me. I see some javascript errors in the console but I frankly don't have the time to investigate right now. Maybe you could have another look? It's an edited GPX using GPX editor from sourceforge. -- Mampfred (talk) 09:46, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Should be working now. I removed "<gpxx:TrackExtension><gpxx:DisplayColor>Cyan</gpxx:DisplayColor></gpxx:TrackExtension>". --Fippe (talk) 09:50, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Yay, works, many thanks. At least I know how to fix it then, maybe the code could ignore those tags in the future? -- Mampfred (talk) 13:08, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

References (footnotes) don't appear to work

The editing toolbar (on non-talk pages, at least) offers me to insert a reference, and even provides help for the correct format of inserting them.
However, the tag doesn't actually work, even though I'm fairly sure I did exactly what I'm supposed to do.
I checked the only other page with references that I could find with site search (Canberra, Australia), and the tag in that one didn't work either.

Is this supposed to happen, and if not, which way it's supposed to be fixed? --January First-of-May (talk) 19:34, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Fixed now. Sorry! --DanQ (talk) 09:58, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

email notifications

Picking up on my earlier comment, I still don't get any emails for changes on my watch list while the initial confirmation email came just fine. Is that something you are aware of? Or is it just me? Can we "debug" that somehow? - Mampfred (talk) 07:18, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Try again now? Hopefully fixed! --DanQ (talk) 10:17, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

I have 2020-08-17 50 8‎‎ on my watchlist and Lyrla just edited it -- no notification. Then again, maybe I'm expectign something just because I was used to it on the old wiki? I looked at the MediaWiki documentation and there should be an "Email me when a page or a file on my watchlist is changed" setting in the preferences which I can't find. Is that something you first have to enable globally maybe? Completely in the dark here but I did like the feature back when it was working ;) - Mampfred (talk) 13:58, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Okay, hopefully _now_ fixed. I just received an email to tell me that Fippe edited 2019-11-29 51 -1 so I'm hopeful that it's all sorted now! --Dan Q (talk) 06:02, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Confirmed, I just got an email that you edited your user page, nice one, thanks! - Mampfred (talk) 05:29, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Subdivision Geohash

You achieved the Subdivision Geohash!

Dan Q earned the Subdivision geohash achievement by reaching hash points in all 5 districts of Oxfordshire.

City of Oxford, South Oxfordshire, Cherwell, West Oxfordshire, Vale of White Horse

--Fippe (talk) 09:12, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

API to update the wiki

Hey DanQ, I'm building a new iPhone app as the other two don't seem to work anymore, and in version 2.0 I'd like to allow the users to post directly to the wiki from the app.

Do you think that'd be OK? And if so, should I just use the existing API and use the end-user's username and password?

thanks --BrendanTWhite (talk) 22:31, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Sure, that's fine by me!

So long as you're being ethical about it (and ideally open-sourcing the app, if possible?) I can't see any problem with authenticating by username+password.

--Dan Q (talk) 12:15, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

I wrote a bot

Hey Dan, I was informed that you're the head honcho around here. I recently wrote a bot to make geohashing announcements (for me!) because I don't like giving people my email :<
Would it be possible to get it added to the bot group, so that the (few) changes it makes aren't listed in the RC log?
Thanks, darkid {47, -122} (talk) 02:06, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Done! --Dan Q (talk) 09:42, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Hey Dan, as a follow-up -- I've been having trouble getting wiki watchlist notifications when my bot edits a page. The internet seems to think that watchlist edits for bots are pretty broken -- could you please unflag it as a bot, so that I can get notification emails? Sorry for the hassle :( darkid {47, -122} (talk) 03:37, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi Darkid, I don't think it would be a good idea to unflag the bot. I think it would be better if you change your watchlist settings to include bot edits. --Fippe (talk) 10:33, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I do have "Hide bot edits" unchecked. They show up in my watchlist when I look on wikipedia, but don't generate emails.

From past investigations, I know that I have to visit the page while logged in to continue getting emails -- as a result, I make sure to edit the page after the bot every time. It still disappears from my email notifications eventually.

If this behavior isn't something you want to support on the wiki, I'm perfectly happy to have my bot interact with SMTP. I would just prefer to not do that, because using the wiki I'm not responsible for other peoples' email addresses.

darkid {47, -122} (talk) 15:26, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Have you considered using mw:API:Emailuser to send the emails? That way you just need an username, not an email address, and you wouldn't need to interact with the SMTP. --Fippe (talk) 16:35, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I have that enabled as a fallback. It has about a 20% success rate on the (much larger) wiki that I edit, and about a 0% success rate on this one. I missed two more edit notifications, so if you don't want to unmark this user as a bot I'll just be retiring it. darkid {47, -122} (talk) 03:27, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Addendum: Here's the log from my bot's run on friday, where it edited the page and "sent" an email. You can see the response from Mediawiki:

Sent email to User:Darkid: {'warnings': {'main': {'*': 'Unrecognized parameter: lgtoken.'}}, 'emailuser': {'result': 'Success'}}

https://github.com/jbzdarkid/geohashing/actions/runs/3856210952/jobs/6572148110#logs

darkid {47, -122} (talk) 03:32, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry that this does not seem to work for you. One more suggestion I thought of is to subscribe to the page's RSS feed. --Fippe (talk) 12:16, 8 January 2023 (UTC)