Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Allow custom error messages in the event of outages

Proposed by Dimpizzy

Proposal summary: Allow wiki admins to set up a custom error message that appears when the wiki is down due to an outage or maintenance. Allow the message to be set beforehand and automatically become visible, or during an outage provide a mechanism to set the message, or both.

Full proposal: I think that in the event of a long term outage like in December 2022, it would be nice for wikis to be able to provide some wiki specific information on the error page, such as possible alternatives to the wiki that the user can use in the meantime, or information on where the wiki admin can be reached outside of Miraheze. Maybe there could be a setting somewhere in the wiki where the error message can be set beforehand. Although, I think the better option would be a way to set/change the message after the wiki is already down, as admins might forget/not know about the option beforehand. Either just as a verbal request on e.g. Discord to Miraheze admins, or a way to enter text somewhere like meta.miraheze.org if it's not down as well and automatically change the error message.

Support

 * 1)  Rob Kam (talk) 00:03, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

 * 1) I like the premise of the idea a lot, the proposer just doesn't seem to give a very specific idea of what it would look like? If there was more clarity on how this idea could be executed, I'd be a lot more inclined to place a vote on it. As of right now, I just don't know how to vote as there's not really an explanation on how any of it would work. Thanks - BrandonWM (talk • contributions • global • rights) 10:45, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I left it open-ended partly because I don't know what would be easy/hard to implement. Possibly an input field on the wiki's Special:ManageWiki/settings. If the wiki is already down, that's a tougher question. In terms of changing it automatically if the wiki is down, maybe a new Special page on meta.miraheze.org. And if that's down as well, I don't know how/if it could be done automatically. Manually, maybe a custom error message could be requested on Discord, IRC, or Phabricator. Dimpizzy (talk) 22:32, 1 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I think you could store a link in LocalSettings for that wiki, and then pull that with the error message, which would most likely make it a Phabricator task. But it would need to be coded in to play nice with however the outage pages are generated. But I don't know enough about the backend to tell specifically if it would be manageable, easy to code, or what the data storage cost would be to add a link to insert into the outage message. If you could refine how you'd want it to work, I'd likely support. --NeoQwerty (talk) 01:04, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I unfortunately know far too little about the inner workings of Mediawiki to know how exactly it could be done. Dimpizzy (talk) 02:45, 2 January 2023 (UTC)