MassAction Mediawiki extension

2019 EDIT: This extension has been archived as I didn’t actually maintain it. I still think there might be room for a more flexible version of this extension in the future. MassAction is a Mediawiki extension that allows users to perform mass actions on targets through a special page making use of the job queue. Its development … Read more

DDoS of Orain

During May of 2015 Orain was the target of a DDoS attack. The attack ended up lasting roughly 9 days and bringing the service to its knees repeatedly. The ‘official’ timeline of events and write up can be found here. Below I will discuss why the details of the DDoS as well as how it … Read more

Wikimedia Hackathon 2015 (Lyon)

By Jean-Philippe Kmiec & Sylvain Boissel (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons
This years Wikimedia Hackathon was located in Lyon, France at Valpré-Lyon between the 23rd and 25th of May.

The hotel (Valpre-Lyon) was absolutely beautiful with large grass areas, great architecture and a place for you weather you wanted to have a large or small discussion, sit quietly or sit outside. As well as Pétanque, table tennis was also available as well as plenty of people to meet!

Valpré Castel
Some of the hackathon grounds. By Alex Cella (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons
I planned on primarily hacking on my MassAction extension along with one of two others but as at any hackathon I got massively distracted talking to people and working on other projects.

Read more

Ed Miliband’s face and Wikipedia

“David Cameron’s Wikipedia page has been hacked as the nation goes to the polls on election day.” — Belfast Telegraph

Well, no, not exactly.

Edits to the UK MP Links and United Kingdom elections templates to name but a few caused a large version of Ed Miliband’s face to appear on over 660 pages relating to the 2015 UK election saying “VOTE LABOUR” today. A full list of the pages affected can be found here and here.

Read more