included categories slow to update

[Chris Watkins]

Has anyone come across this before?

When I've changed included categories it takes ages to change where they're displayed. A few hours I can understand.

E.g. the pages in Category:OLPC content bundle should be in Category:Offline content bundle. I changed the template a week ago and only two of the pages have started displaying in the correct category.

Even when I made the change, the job queue on Special:Statistics showed 0, so I don't see a reason for a delay.

Thanks
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Chris Watkins

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[Curt Beckmann]

I suspect that each page needs to be reprocessed, but that this reprocessing happens only when the page is viewed (that is, the change of the template does not cause each including page to be automatically reprocessed). Seems like something a bot could do pretty easily.  Perhaps we should have a bot view every page once a day, just to ensure this kind of thing gets handled?  Wonder how WP does it?

CB

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[Jason Smithson]

I haven't looked at it in a while but I believe it is worse than that as the page actually has to be edited for the new category information to update. I believe this is also true for includes though I may be mixing the two up. I'm almost certain there is a bot for this.

I believe it isn't updated on every page view because of the number of pages that would be regenerated on a large site. I'll see if I can find a good fix.

- J.
_______________________

Jason Michael Smithson
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[Jason Michael Smithson]

Chris,

I'm not certain but looking at the edit for the category page it looks
like you may have moved/renamed the page? Or is it just your comment
meaning you changed the text?
http://www.appropedia.org/index.php?title=Template:Offline_content_bundle&action=history

Here are some issues with moving categories in any case
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Category_redirect#FAQ

I poked at it a bit to no avail so I jumped on the IRC support channel
for MediaWiki to see if anyone there has any ideas. I'll let you know
if we come up with any.

- J.

On Dec 22 2009, 12:18 am, Chris Watkins <chriswater...@appropedia.org>
wrote:

> Has anyone come across this before?
>
> When I've changed included categories it takes ages to change where they're
> displayed. A few hours I can understand.
>
> E.g. the pages in Category:OLPC content

> bundle<http://www.appropedia.org/Category:OLPC_content_bundle>should
> be in Category:Offline
> content bundle <http://www.appropedia.org/Category:Offline_content_bundle>.

> I changed the template a week

> ago<http://www.appropedia.org/index.php?title=Template:Offline_content_bu...>and

[Chris Watkins]

On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 06:25, Jason Smithson <ja...@breakset.com> wrote:

I haven't looked at it in a while but I believe it is worse than that as the page actually has to be edited for the new category information to update.

you're right. I did some experimenting based on this suggestion, and then set my bot to add a blank line to each page. It seems to count as a null edit (doesn't show up in the page history) but it forced the categories to update.

So this case is fixed, but there are probably still categories and other transclusions that are affected by this... I'm guessing this is a MediaWiki bug that will be fixed in time.

Thanks Jason.

[Lonny]

Nice trouble shooting!

-Lonny
http://www.appropedia.org/