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Weird issue with Sega Retro wiki's navigation bar

Discussion in 'Technical Discussion' started by Zeether, Dec 10, 2016.

  1. Zeether

    Zeether

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    This just came up recently, but on Sega Retro I can't seem to navigate using the top bar anymore. The drop down arrows don't do anything when I click on them/hover over them and the search box won't give suggestions. I'm on Chrome and have tried disabling adblock (using uBlock) as well as browsing incognito but it hasn't done anything. Is it just broken on Chrome entirely?
     
  2. Billy

    Billy

    RIP Oderus Urungus Member
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    Working fine for me in Chrome 54.
    Scratch that. Not working for me either in Chrome 54. It doesn't seem to work in any browsers, at least on Windows.
     
  3. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

    no reverse gear Wiki Sysop
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    It's broken on everything - a software update went wrong and it took down all the javascript bits with it.


    Unfortunately my superiors have not answered the pleas I made about this months ago, and only they have the keys. It is an horrendously tragic shame and deeply embarassing that we can't maintain our greatest asset.


    About the best I could do was hack in the page menu bit on the top-right. There's not a particularly clean way of doing something similar to the top menu, and I'm not quite at the stage where I'm ready to start stalking Scarred Sun across the internet.

    (but feel free to jump the gun on that - the more voices, the better)
     
  4. nineko

    nineko

    I am the Holy Cat Tech Member
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    And this is why using javascript in something which is supposed to be easily accessible is a bad idea. At least provide a fallback menu in the <noscript> section or something.
     
  5. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

    no reverse gear Wiki Sysop
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    There's a pretty strong design argument for keeping the clutter of 3490324 menus out of the way (unlike the last skin where they were all listed on the left), however when it comes to page controls I have always thought the drop-downs were overkill, and some of the design choices (such as the "what links here" page) are positioned and organised as such thanks to decisions Wikipedia made years ago. There are many, many ways to impove accessibility... but then again we are talking Mediawiki here so I suppose that's a given regardless.


    We actually know exactly why the javascript is failing. It's more that the permissions to change files on the server aren't set correctly, so we're relying entirely on Scarred Sun who hasn't logged in since October. Alternatively we'd have to hack our way in or do something exceedingly clever.



    I filed a request months ago for a technical bod or two just to keep things ticking along and address the bugs - I'm powerless to touch things myself, and I'm not getting much of a response from anyone who can. It's not so much to drag people from real life problems and get them to dick around with a bit of software - it's this lack of a contingency that's really starting to irk me. We could be attacked tommorrow and there'd be no-one to clean up the mess.

    In fact, given that Hivebrain's given up on this continued ordeal, I'm the only pink badge on Sega Retro, NEC Retro and Retro CDN now. Somehow I've ended up in charge of everything?
     
  6. Zeether

    Zeether

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    So basically this is never going to be fixed any time soon? I'm poking around on social media/IRC to see if anybody can assist. I'd really hate to lose the Sega Retro wiki especially since it has all that content.
     
  7. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    It's not going anywhere (I've invested nearly 7 years of my life into Sega Retro so I certainly don't have plans to let it completely implode), it's just in a nasty state of flux.

    It still mostly works. You just have to take the long way round.
     
  8. Zeether

    Zeether

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    Oh yeah, I know it's not gonna be trashed. I guess I'm a little paranoid. :v:/>

    Kinda wish I could contribute to NEC Retro though.

    Edit: It's fixed now! Yay!
     
  9. PicklePower

    PicklePower

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    As I'm still a pink badge and I rarely contribute anymore I will chime in that the overall broken nature of the wiki has discouraged me from contributing to it any more. I feel like something happened around early 2013 and it's been broken in various ways ever since.

    I understand what it's like the be on the receiving end of complaints like this -- so if the powers that be would like help fixing issues (top menus don't work on pages sometimes, many assets don't load when viewing the site securely, insecure version of the site doesn't automatically redirect to the secure version and Google prefers the secure version, some kind of persistent account/login issue between the forum and wiki) -- I can help.
     
  10. Digifiend

    Digifiend

    Member
    I suppose this javascript problem explains why infobox and navbox tabbers don't work? Just noticed it on a zone article. And also why {{#css: h1 {display:none;} #bodyContent {padding-top:1em;} }} is appearing all over the place?
     
  11. The main problem is that the Retro family of sites as a whole are slowly breaking down from age (Or I guess in this case hastily put together coding), and the higher ups with the means and knowledge of fixing things are either too busy or too disinterested in fixing said breaking things.
     
  12. TimmiT

    TimmiT

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Member
    They've definitely been working on fixing things. Navigation bars and such work again for me.
     
  13. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

    no reverse gear Wiki Sysop
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    The wikis should be stable now - there's a few issues still affecting pink badges, but they're very much usable.

    All four of the Retro wikis are using reasonably up-to-date software. None are more than two versions behind the latest MediaWiki build.

    The unfortunate thing is that MediaWiki is notoriously terrible at "not being Wikipedia". If it's a feature not being used as part of the Wikimedia family, there's a very high chance it'll break at some point.


    So if anything, things are broken because they're "too new" :eng101: