LotS/SMWMigration

This article is aimed at ZoyWiki editors who edit pages in the LotS prefix.

Semantic MediaWiki (henceforth referred to as SMW) is a plugin for MediaWiki that allows us to treat each page as a first level data source. Essentially, this means we can create large complicated list pages without blowing up ZoyWiki.

The Problem

First, and most importantly we need to stop creating new pages with manually maintained lists. A manually maintained list might look like:

{| class="lotstable sortable" width="100%"
! width=10% | Type
! width=40px | Icon
! width="23%" | Name
! width="46%" | Ability
! width="23%" | Obtained
|-
{{LotS/HealingRow|Daikaiju Destroyer Rifle}}
{{LotS/HealingRow|Sian Dragons Right Knuckles}}
{{LotS/HealingRow|Sludge Scavenger Pistol}}
{{LotS/HealingRow|Smythe Laboratories Inc. Injector}}
... This might go on for dozens or even hundreds of items ...
|}

The problem with this approach is two-fold. First, we have a significant number of these pages, and manually maintained means that someone has to know the page exists and has the desire to maintain it indefinitely into the future. Anything outside of the main pages linked in the standard item page header are likely to be forgotten and become useless when their main editor eventually stops. Second, the templates these lists use are necessarily very heavy. The amount of computation time it has started to take generate the Officers page crashed or severely lagged up ZoyWiki on more than one occasion. For these reasons, we need to start migrating all manual lists to use SMW formatting and replace the manual lists.

The Solution

Parser Profile before: (Off Hand)

CPU time usage	24.632 seconds
Real time usage	25.788 seconds
Preprocessor visited node count	59078/1000000
Preprocessor generated node count	20933/1000000
Post-expand include size	433505/2097152 bytes
Template argument size	119503/2097152 bytes
Highest expansion depth	13/40
Expensive parser function count	295/792

After:

CPU time usage	7.109 seconds
Real time usage	7.326 seconds
Preprocessor visited node count	13711/1000000
Preprocessor generated node count	27667/1000000
Post-expand include size	561146/2097152 bytes
Template argument size	121335/2097152 bytes
Highest expansion depth	6/40
Expensive parser function count	0/792

TODO: Write about how to create new SMW pages

Conversion Progress

Known Converted

• LotS/Equipment Sets
• LotS/items/Main Hand
• LotS/items/Off Hand
• LotS/items/Helmet
• LotS/items/Chest
• LotS/items/Gloves
• LotS/items/Pants
• LotS/items/Boots
• LotS/items/Trinkets
• LotS/items/Utilities
• LotS/items/Ships
• LotS/items/Officers
• LotS/items/Crew
• LotS/raids/type

Known Needs Conversion

• LotS/items/Engineering
• LotS/Survival_of_the_Fittest
• LotS/Leveling_Guide
• LotS/Mobile

TODO: Add more pages to the lists as they're known.