Blog:Tech report for 2022

2022 has begun for All The Tropes with a few things that have become quite apparent as issues for which we need to consider solutions.

For quite awhile now, we have used Flow (the StructuredDiscussions) extension as our standard talk page extension. It served us well for some time, but we are likely going to need to depreciate (if not remove) the extension for the following reaons.

First off, Flow is not being maintained regularly aside from periodic patching for security issues. Second, it has acquired several performance issues and limitations that have resulted in timeouts and poor performance across All The Tropes. Finally, a more lightweight option has become available which we believe would better suit our needs.

Accordingly, our prospectus is as follows:


 * Depreciate Flow for user and article talk. It will be retained for the Reviews space and all existing Flow pages will be archived to preserve history. The extension will remain active but cease to be actively used except for the areas specified.
 * Enable CommentStreams and make it the default for user and article pages. It also has built-in operability with SocialProfile which is quite desirable. Finally, it is more lightweight and performance friendly.

Another issue is that Miraheze has reconsidered how to implement an Elasticsearch cluster this year (January projected ETA). If successful, we will be able to offload search on that and enjoy finer-grained search capability than we have had prior.

If and when this happens, we may need to make further changes to categorization structure to accommodate this, but that will be determined when it occurs.

No other issues appear to be pressing, but if they are ATT staff will keep users apprised of further developments.

Finally, we would like comments on this report and users may vote on the proposal to switch from Flow to CommentStreams below.

Link to extension with technical documentation:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CommentStreams

Should Flow be depreciated for CommentStreams as outlined above? Yes No

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