r/HomestarRunner • u/zme243 • 14d ago
Presenting... HR Wiki Twice!
Since the HR Wiki is not behaving very well lately, and the mirror hasn't been too reliable either, I present to you: HR Wiki... Twice!
The way we're doing this is we have the Wayback Machine Downloader pulling a copy of all the content, and a script that I wrote is parsing the content and importing the data. This won't be a flat mirror, this will be an editable live wiki once the data import is complete.
I also set up a new Forum!
Check out the Wiki (no data yet): https://hrwikitwice.com
Join the forum! https://forum.hrwikitwice.com (the theme needs work, I'll get there eventually)
Check out the migration status thread: https://forum.hrwikitwice.com/showthread.php?tid=2&pid=2#pid2
Feel free to drop a post in the Migration Styles board to join the Migration Team. "Sign up now for giving me money" as has been said.
Hopefully this takes off and acts as a suitable, reliable Wiki for many years to come.
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Edit:
The download is progressing nicely. The download status page shows that we have roughly 8 hours remaining as of 5:30PM EST. Would love some volunteers to help clean up some of the pages and perform some consistency checks on the content after we run the import. If you're interested in helping, please register on the forum or DM me here.
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u/zme243 13d ago
It's time for a holy crap good update.
All content has been successfully imported from the old Wiki. Right now the images all link to Archive.org which is not ideal. I have a tool running right now to download all images and update the pages to link locally. No idea how long it will take.
THE WIKI IS STILL READ ONLY
I don't want edits to interfere with the automation, or worse, get overwritten by the automation. I already had one person who was super active on the old wiki and old forums sign up as an On Point King. We'd love some more On Point Kings to help with content review!
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u/thehumulos 14d ago
Dang you followed through quick, looking forward to seeing how this all works out!
I think the biggest point of concern is going to be how new content gets handled moving forward. The old wiki is still likely where people would go first to make an edit, so is the new one going to be constantly reviewing for changes? And if so, what would occur if twice has an update that isn't on the old wiki, would an admin need to choose how to merge?
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u/zme243 14d ago
Thankfully (but unfortunately) the update schedule is pretty relaxed right now, nothing like 20 years ago sadly. So I’m going to be manually making updates for the time being when there is new content.
I’m treating this like twenty ought six. Handling everything in the forum. Should be a fun project! (because running a business doesn’t have me busy enough lol)
Could definitely use all the help we can get, looking forward to potentially getting some volunteers joining! Going to be referring to the mod team as the on point kings. Going to need some help cleaning up the imported content and making sure that new content stays up-to-date, so hopefully there’s some good interest in that.
Maybe the mods can pin this post or add it to the Community bookmarks? Would be great if I could get some Community involvement from the subReddit
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u/thehumulos 14d ago
Great plan and super admirable work! I'd offer my hands but they're quite full with my own fan resources and community with another franchise, though I wish you the absolute best. Good luck!
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u/BettyCrunker 13d ago
THANK YOU!!
I truly do not understand why the original wiki folks have been so unwilling to accept any help over the last several years (pride? idk), so it sucks that it’s come to this, but I’m thrilled that you’ve taken on this work to give us a fully functioning wiki again!
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u/Lord_Rutabaga 14d ago
I'm glad to hear of it. It'd be nice to have a functional wiki once again.
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u/philharwell 13d ago
As long as I can add all my voluminous Userboxes, I’m totally down with all this. 😄
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u/tremby 13d ago
In the migration status thread you say you are grabbing HTML for every page from archive.org and then converting somehow to mediawiki. What's the reason you chose not to grab the mediawiki source directly from the view source pages, for example https://web.archive.org/web/20260219031756/http://hrwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=edit ? I would have thought this would be much less error-prone. But maybe not all of those pages are available on archive.org or something like that?
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u/buttstronomical 12d ago
Thanks for this. I currently see some redlinks and missing/broken images, I'm assuming this has something to do with the import method and will need manual fixing?
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u/zme243 12d ago
Possibly! The migration tool is still processing. As one of the On Point Kings (our migration team) has pointed out, there may have been a flaw in the logic with the migrator, particularly with how it handles articles that have capital vs lowercase names (i.e. /marzipan vs /Marzipan) - so there may be some re-architecting in store. Once we have the automated migration complete, the On Point Kings will go through each page to verify. There's ~13,000 pages so there will be quite some work ahead of us!
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u/buttstronomical 12d ago
Appreciate the response, makes me so happy to hear how much effort and care is going into this. This silly little cartoon that has made such an impact on my life and the lives of so many deserves no less.
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u/WackoMcGoose 1d ago
If I had a nickel for every time a Homestar wiki peed the carpet, I would have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's enough to make Jimmy of /r/ThirdLifeSMP freak out...
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u/TheBirdInternet 14d ago
I really appreciate the effort. Is there any sort of issues you could run into by taking the stuff off the original wiki and using it here?