Wiki cleanup (was Onioncat Deprecation)

@Patrick should we put a warning on the OnionCat page about it’s eventual deprecation. Its been reported that upstream development is dead and mail lists have disappeared. With the next gen Onion service it will no longer work.

I don’t know if I should start moving any instructions that relied on it to the old wiki stuff. What do you think?

2 Likes

Yes, please move it here:

How can I remove the onioncat page reference from the page list without messing up the translation variables?

1 Like

Good day,

According to my experience with the (rather temperamental) translation plugin, you should be able to remove the URL without causing any problems in regards to the translated versions. That what’s meant with:

This page contains changes which are not marked for translation.

The translations always have a seperate version which needs to be manually verified and addepted. So, you should (hopefully) not be able to cause any problems when removing the link. I will then look over the translations and adjust them if necessary.

Have a nice day,

Ego

1 Like

OK so the major clean up is nearly done.

Please look into the translated versions of the Docuumentation and Hidden Service pages.

I will remove the main Onioncat page when everything else is done so I can see what is still needed in the WhatLinks here page.


Lesson learned - never base a large amount of your documentation on a hack. Lots of hours wasted :frowning:

1 Like

Good day,

Done.

Have a nice day,

Ego

2 Likes

@Patrick Should I keep TorChat instructions around? Do they work in Whonix?

1 Like

HulaHoop:

Whonix Documentation

How can I remove the onioncat page reference from the page list without messing up the translation variables?

Nothing special required. Just remove that line.

HulaHoop:

@Patrick Should I keep TorChat instructions around? Do they work in Whonix?

Last time I checked, they worked. If they did not, we would probably
hear about it in the forums. Since there was no TorChat upgrade
recently, I wouldn’t know why they should break.

Seems Torchat is abandonware. Even the Torchat2 fork by prof7bit is dead - no commits since 2014. It was audited and has many major security problems that will never see a fix. Since I am removing outdated/insecure software sections I think this should be deprecated too.

2 Likes

Good catch! Please move it to deprecated. Very much justified then. But
please keep the TorChat headline so old links to not break. What should
be briefly explained there is why it’s recommended against now.

I can go through and remove every link to it to stop people being confused. Some places like the features page should not even mention it.

Must do the same with Pidgin too because I removed the section completely.

I think I will update all mentions of Pidgin -> Tor Messenger and TorChat -> Ricochet

I think its safe to remove the Pidgin apparmor profiles since its not recommended.

2 Likes

Yes, links to deprecated software should be removed.

Yes.


Anyhow. There should still be a functional link like this:

Instant Messenger Chat

Even if moved to very bottom of that page.

  • not break existing bookmarks
  • not break search engine links
  • it’s been popular for a long time, it’s been recommended for a long time, so if anyone looks for that application that does not know the latest news about any deprecation and/or insecurity, we should have a handy reference that users can find or that we throw at them, that briefly explains why it is no longer recommended

Should do. Low priority, though. Can do during Whonix 15 development. Please create a ticket.

Done for both TorChat and pidgin. Some translated pages still refer to them but otherwise everything updated/removed. Kept the Chat page sections but added warnings.

2 Likes

Good day,

Great. Will go through those “translation pages” and remove the references tomorrow.

Have a nice day,

Ego

2 Likes

Good day,

Has been removed.

Have a nice day,

Ego

1 Like