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Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 105

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Village pump (technical) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Missing log entry

What's happened with Bgwhite's log? Check the two entries from 20 October — the first is a normal hiding of feedback, but the second shows absolutely nothing at all. I've asked his opinion, but he doesn't know what's going on, either. Nyttend (talk) 00:10, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

It wasn't suppressed. MBisanz talk 00:14, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm told the log entry actually is:
 | log_id   | log_type            | log_action | log_timestamp  | log_user | log_namespace | log_deleted | log_user_text | log_title                               | log_comment | log_params                                                                             | log_page |
 | 45363917 | articlefeedbackv5   | flag       | 20121020063044 |   264323 |            -1 |           0 | Bgwhite       | ArticleFeedbackv5/Allen_Martinez/142715 |             | a:3:{s:6:"source";s:9:"watchlist";s:10:"feedbackId";i:142715;s:6:"pageId";i:25276364;} |        0 |
But I don't know what that exactly means. MBisanz talk 00:18, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Mildly confused by this response; were you told by someone off-wiki, or can I ask the teller for more details? Nyttend (talk) 03:31, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I'd guess that MBisanz got the data from the toolserver. (I was able to look it up as well). I'm not exactly sure why it's not showing either though. Legoktm (talk) 10:31, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Someone told me off-wiki; I have no idea how to query toolserver. You might try poking into the Wikitech IRC channel or filing a Bugzilla. MBisanz talk 14:44, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Could this be related to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 103#Bizarre edit history (39062 on Bugzilla)? – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:25, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Search box bug

Hi, I don't know if this is any use to anyone, but here is a screenshot of the bug whereby the search dropdown list sometimes displays (apparently) random entries unrelated to what is typed in.

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/8114/wpsearch.png

This is IE9 on Windows 7, not logged in to WP, no customisations of any sort. 86.146.108.178 (talk) 04:03, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I've just realised, of course, that far from being random, these are the entries that come up when you just type "m". 86.146.108.178 (talk) 04:35, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Agree that it would make more sense for autosuggest to wait until three or more characters are typed. LittleBen (talk) 05:05, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I think you misunderstand. Look at the screenshot. 86.146.108.247 (talk) 11:58, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, look at the bottom — "mahab" was typed, not just "m". Nyttend (talk) 12:24, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Sounds like the results don't get updated after the first character that was entered. I couldn't find a bug report in Wikimedia's bug tracker (bugzilla.wikimedia.org) under "MediaWiki > Search", "MediaWiki extensions > Lucene Search" or "MediaWiki extensions > MWSearch". Could you file a bug report in Bugzilla with good steps to reproduce, in case you are familiar with it? See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_report_a_bug for some help. --Malyacko (talk) 14:15, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
No, it's not that the results weren't updated. They got updated as I started typing, several times as I added more characters, and then at some point they reverted back to what I now see is the original "m" list. I see this behaviour occasionally, but it never seems to be reproducible. When I do exactly the same thing again, it seems to work OK. 86.146.108.247 (talk) 14:28, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

API query issues

I don't know if this is related to the recent general slowness mentioned above, but I've noticed that in the last few days API queries to Wikimedia wikis have become very slow and fail quite often. I have a script that serially queries all Wikimedia wikis each day, and I noticed last night (2nd or 3rd day of low reliability) that if I "throttled" it to insert 1-second pauses between queries (instead of immediately sending the next query once the previous one is finished), the queries still failed intermittently (12 out of c. 800 wikis), but a higher percentage seemed to succeed (although, granted, I never let it get through all 800 wikis "unthrottled", for an accurate comparison). Is this just a coincidence (assuming I'm not mistaken about the success rate), or is there some sort of new rate limit on API queries? (Note that under normal conditions, unthrottled queries typically proceed at about 2 to 3 per second.) - dcljr (talk) 19:01, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I haven't noticed anything yet, and my bot is normally running all day. Have you been setting a maxlag parameter for when there is higher lag? You also might want to try asking in #wikimedia-tech connect. Legoktm (talk) 19:35, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Hmm. Hadn't noticed that parameter. I don't think that would actually improve the query success rate, but it can certainly make my (homemade) script more "nice", and possibly shorten overall execution time. I can also try changing "timeout" and "retry" values on my end to see if I can improve things. If you haven't noticed anything odd, it probably isn't an intentional change that has been made recently, but just an intermittent problem that will clear up eventually. Thanks for the info. - dcljr (talk) 20:28, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
OK, nevermind. It's back to normal tonight. (But I will look into the other things, as well. Thanks again.) - dcljr (talk) 06:03, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Signature timestamp

No matter what I do, the timestamp always seems to display below my signature. Even the   tag does nothing. How do I prevent this line break? --

  23:59, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

You seem to use a div container. Have you tried using a span container? --Malyacko (talk) 00:23, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank you, it worked :) --Free Wales Now! what did I screw up?  00:43, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Final A/B test of new account creation

 
Screenshot

Hey, this is just a quick note that today we've enabled our third and final A/B test of a new account creation page, before we move to make any changes that test well permanent.

It looks like the screenshot to the right, and the major update is that it adds live updates to the validation of the page, so that you don't need to submit the entire form before you know your credentials are okay.

Feel free to test this out by logging out or using a private browsing session, but please be sure to tag any alternative accounts correctly so we can filter them out of the results. We'll keep updating folks when it comes time to implement permanent changes. Thanks, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 01:30, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Having to login to Wikipedia again and again

I have had to log in three times just in the last half hour. I have only been able to make three contributions to Wikipedia in that time frame, I was prepared to make many more.

This only started happening recently. Anyone else? Ottawahitech (talk) 20:25, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Have you tried with a different internet connection, or a different browser? Could be a problem with cookies in the browser, or dropping connections. (Or of course also server problems, but it's easier to check on the client side first). --Malyacko (talk) 10:49, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
  • @Malyacko, thanks for responding. yes, it could be one of the problems you described above. However, I noticed today that this happens almost every time I leave the Wikipedia website (to chase a ref for example), and it only started happening very recently, maybe within a week or so. It is also inconsistent - the problem disappeared after I posted here last time - but today it is back. Ottawahitech (talk) 16:52, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
What URL did you go from to get from Wikipedia to Toolserver? Please include the initial http: or https:. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:11, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
OK so you're going from https://en.wikipedia.org/ to http://toolserver.org/ and then to http://en.wikipedia.org/ - this confirms one of my suspicions - that you're starting off on a secure server and ending up at a normal one. It doesn't confirm my second suspicion, that you might have started off at the old secure server https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki - that would certainly have explained the apparent loss of login - the new secure server uses the same cookie as the normal server, whereas the old secure server did not. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:11, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Though the new secure server can use cookies set by the insecure server, the opposite is not true. If you log in on the secure server, the cookie that is set cannot be used on the insecure server. When you log in on the secure server, the centralauth_Token cookie is created with the secure attribute, which stops browsers sending the cookie over an insecure connection. I find this useful for checking how a page looks to someone who is not logged in – just change the "https" in the URL to "http".
This also explains why you lost your login – you logged in on the secure server, so got a secure-only cookie. When the toolserver sends you to a insecure page, your browser refuses to send the login cookie over an insecure connection, so you appear logged out. When this happens, just change the "http" in the URL to "https", and you should be logged in again. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:13, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
  • @Redrose64, Can someone please explain when and why the old (secure server) was replaced with the new? Thanks again. Ottawahitech (talk) 20:07, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
When? October 2011, as shown at WP:SEC. Why? To make a lot of things (not just cookies) easier - for example, it's a simple case to make URLs self-adjusting (or "protocol-neutral") - you code external links as e.g. [//www.example.com/ Example] and it adds the relevant protocol automatically: Example. Even if you're given a full URL including protocol, you can just alter the http: to https: or vice versa, rather than having to convert e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical) to https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical) . I'm sure all this was dealt with here at VPT, also on the Signpost, way back in Aug/Sept/Oct 2011. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:19, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
I think, in addition, that the new setup is much better from an operations perspective; IIRC the old secure server went through one special machine, while the new secure setup is properly load balanced and everything. Anomie⚔ 00:27, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

False links in Search Results

Not sure where to ask this, so I am starting here. Please tell me if there is a better place to ask the question.
As a WP:WikiGnome who corrects spelling mistakes, I use Wikipedia's search a lot. Certain entries in the search results are "false" in that the searched word does not appear on the page, even in edit mode, but the page turns up every time, and I have been doing these searches for over 15 months. I have tracked some of these down, and it appears that a spelling mistake in a "What links here" page generates a match in the search results.
As an example in this search for recieve, List of awards and nominations received by Def Leppard, List of awards and nominations received by The Black Eyed Peas, Detroit Receiving Hospital and The Receiving End of Sirens will all appear near the top. None of them includes recieve, but they all have a redirect page including recieve, or recieving.
Is it possible to have the search reconfigured so these false matches do not occur?
Arjayay (talk) 15:30, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

They appear because there is a page with a link text containing the search term pointing to the article, and at the moment there is no way of removing them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rainman (talk • contribs) 00:03, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
Yup. and such a thing also has great benefits. The words that cause this might be annoying to you, but that is no good reason to kill a perfectly useful feature. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:43, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Redirect to article "Misspelling of word 'received' " as fix: As with other misspelled words, I have wondered whether to just redirect many to a common article about such misspellings. Using that tactic, then a redirect with misspelled word "...Recieving.." (or "recieved") would no longer match numerous articles, just the one article, perhaps named "Misspelling of word 'received'" which I certainly see as a notable topic, worthy of a separate article, or article section, with a history of well over 50 years. Look, we have many thousands of articles about asteroids, or dinosaur fossils, so a few articles about some major misspelled words could handle the redirects, then once a person realized it was misspelled then they should re-type the word. This idea to redirect every misspelling to the target article makes it too easy to reinforce bad spellings, and instead I prefer to make the user re-type the misspelled word, or else read the article about their misspelled word. Otherwise, it reinforces a precedent how every misspelled word should be an excuse to generate thousands of misspelled redirect titles. Similarly, a misspelling such as "asteriod" (-iod) could redirect to an article named "Misspelling with '-oid'" or similar notable cases of misspellings. Also note how alternative titles are redirected for search-engine results as well, and so it is a large-scale technical problem. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:11, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
Mmmm - seems like yet another reason to totally delete ALL misspelled articles, rather than recreate ANY as redirects.
The fact that numerous misspelled words lead to a blue link, leads to thousands of repeat uses of these words, by editors who think they are spelling them correctly. This gives Wikipedia an extremely shoddy, amateurish appearance.
I have previously cited "Rythm" and "Rythm and Blues" as examples. An editor may not know how to spell rhythm, but uses Rythm, or Rythm and Blues, finds it creates a blue link, and so repeats the misspelling throughout the article.
The argument that this helps readers with poor spelling find an article is erroneous - if the article "Rythm" did not exist as a redirect, readers would see the search results for Rythm the first line of which is "Did you mean: rhythm". Readers are already used to this occurring in Google and other search engines, so would re-search under the correct spelling. This would avoid thousands of redirects and even more misspellings, and so would make Wikipedia look far more professional. Arjayay (talk) 17:03, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
Redirects should not be deleted solely on the grounds that they are misspellings. Place a {{R from misspelling}} on the redirect - this will categorise it into Category:Redirects from misspellings, and optionally into either Category:Printworthy redirects or Category:Unprintworthy redirects (but not both) as well. There are tools which will update articles using these as outward links, permitted by WP:NOTBROKEN. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:21, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Perhaps have respell-pages like dab-pages for major cases: I agree that the blue-link misspelled redirects have fostered incorrect spellings, and I have been misled to use wrong spellings due to blue-link confirmation. This is major technical problem, in the sense that we want readers to know their intended article does exist, but not blue-link to it, and hence instead, just link to a small brown-link page that would handle troublesome spellings. Another option is to create a form of cross-link page called a "respell-page" in the manner of a disambiguation page, where the misspelling is close to standard words, as shown in some dictionary look-up pages. By using these (new) respell-pages, then major misspellings could redirect to the tiny respell page (notability not needed), which would either list major intended articles or just explain to re-type the words. So, with "Rhythm" then misspelled "Rythm" would redirect to the respell page which might also list "Rhythm and Blues" to handle redirect of "~and Blues" and any other common cases of "Rythm" and similar words, but overall kept short so the page shows as brown-link or have a wiki-option to force a page to only show as brown-link regardless of size. A respell-page could be kept short by having search-links to related articles, rather than expanding the page with all major titles. Extending the concept, a respell page would be a type of "cross-link page" which focuses on words with unusual spellings, rather than dab-pages which focus on identical words in titles, but other types of crosslink pages could focus on other aspects for why articles were related. Anyway, I am thinking start with page "Rhythm (respell)" to handle "Rythm" or "Rythem" by noting how the word "rhythm" is often misspelled (by comparison, a wp:dab page would not mention misspelled forms), then list perhaps 10 major articles which might apply. Some other words might be misspellings of multiple words which are very similar. There would likely be hundreds of respell pages, but we want to avoid redlinks, and also deter creating a redirect for every misspelled word in a title. Let's redirect only major misspellings to respell pages, but leave special misspellings (such as a name) to redirect to the target article. I guess this topic should go to the wp:VPIL idea lab. -Wikid77 (talk) 00:04, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
I think that is an interesting proposal, and probably worth a trial with a specific set of misspellings, like "rhythm", to see what problems and benefits arise. FYI the "normal" misspellings of rhythm are:- rhythem, rhythim, rhythym, rhytm, rythem, rythim, rythm & rythym. - Arjayay (talk) 09:55, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Done, as a WP:Respell page (or repage): I think the plan seems workable, and we can refer to those pages as wp:Respell pages (or "repages"); plus, in the case of the misspelling "Rythm" (91 matches) then the redirect to new page "Rhythm (respell)" has allowed a sublink to the 1990s rock band "Rythm Syndicate" (purposely misspelled). This approach solves several problems:
  • it allows multi-spelling disambiguation (where articles with 2 spellings can be listed, "Rhythm" and "Rythm")
  • broadens Wikipedia's ability to catch respelled words, similar to a dictionary website listing close matches
  • reduces redirects which have made articles seem to contain the misspelled words
  • clearly notifies the reader when a "misspelling" rather than an alternate British variant spelling or such.
  • reinforces the notion to correctly spell the word, otherwise will get the respell page (no longer is a misspelling "close 'nuf for Wikipedia").
  • reduces the need for redirects of every misspelled form, as a consequence of noting the wrong spelling as "misspelled".
  • catches all related redirects by Special:WhatLinksHere, rather than separate, scattered redirects to different articles.
Although this issue began as a method to reduce redirects for misspellings, also note that the wp:Respell pages could be used to handle some slang or archaic spellings (such as "olde") in cases where the archaic spelling might have no associated article. Meanwhile, redirects for special terms would still be unchanged, such as "Micorsoft Vista" could be "Microsoft Vista" with no repage. However, by avoiding numerous future redirect titles with "~rythm~", then when a desperate user re-types just "rythm" → hey mystery solved, as the page explains there is a spelling error, offers some related pages, and shows search-links which can quickly inform readers whether Wikipedia has pages about their correctly spelled topic. Admittedly, these issues require some deeper thought to sort out the various advantages, as being "multi-spelled disambiguation" pages, but the more they are used, then the clearer, and easier the system will seem. Online dictionary users are well aware how a search for "repealt" might list: "No exact match, try: repeal, repeat, repealed, or repell" etc. For years, Wikipedia has had a systemic bias that article titles should only allow a choice (disambiguation) when using identical words, not choose among similar spellings. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:42, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia Error editing fairly large article

Hi. I've been editing an article section by section for the past week or so, and every time I save a section, I get the Wikimedia Error page, with details like the following:

Request: POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hyderabad,_India&action=submit, from XX.XX.XX.XX via amssq37.esams.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE9) to 91.198.174.50 (91.198.174.50) Error: ERR_READ_TIMEOUT, errno [No Error] at Wed, 07 Nov 2012 17:47:06 GMT

(where XX.XX.XX.XX is an IP associated with my ISP). On each occasion, the submitted edit has actually been accepted, as proved by reloading the article. Yet loading the article from cold, without having submitted an edit, never gets this error.

The article in question, Hyderabad, India, loads extremely slowly in any case, and I had a similar problem with the article Pakistan some months ago. One thing these two articles have in common is that they use a #switch on the CURRENTSECOND to select between alternative images.

IE8, Vector, broadband currently downloading at around 13 Mbps, uploading around 0.8 Mbps. Any idea what might be happening? --Stfg (talk) 18:12, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

I was able to reproduce this consistently and reported it at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=41863. Thank you for the nice description of the issue! Cmcmahon(WMF) (talk) 20:32, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for taking it up so quickly, Chris :) The banner at the top of the page won't be anything to do with it. It's created by the {{GOCEinuse}} template, which I and others use a great deal, and have used on pages much larger than the Hyderabad and Pakistan ones. --Stfg (talk) 21:18, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Wikimedia Foundation error. The large number of citation templates is probably what's slowing things down. jcgoble3 (talk) 23:05, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes. I have been running into this (see above); it seems to occur when the rendering of an article with a lot of templates coincides with heavy server load, and the rendering exceeds a time limit. Would be nice if the message wasn't dropped on us with the finesse of a two-ton safe. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:29, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Articles without talk pages

Is there a list somewhere of articles without talk pages? Ryan Vesey 22:50, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

You could ask for someone to generate it by making a request at Wikipedia talk:Database reports. I think the list would be quite long.
Database reports are generated by making SQL queries against the Toolserver; the SQL code for the report you are asking for would be something like "SELECT article.page_title FROM page article LEFT JOIN page talk ON talk.page_namespace = 1 AND article.page_title = talk.page_title WHERE article.page_namespace = 0 AND talk.page_id IS NULL;". I don't have a Toolserver account, so I can't run it for you. PleaseStand (talk) 03:35, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank you, I've requested one. Ryan Vesey 03:39, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Template:Talkback

Our {{Talkback}} template has a feature that guesses out what kind of namespace is indicated by the coding: for example, {{Talkback|Nyttend}} goes to User talk:Nyttend, while {{Talkback|Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)}} comes here. Unfortunately, this feature isn't on the comparable template at Commons; {{Talkback|Commons:Deletion requests/Commons:Deletion requests/File:Adams County Ohio Courthouse.jpg}} links to a subpage of User talk:Commons:Deletion requests. Looking at the code of our template, can someone please copy here (or otherwise indicate it) all of the code that does this, so that I can easily request that it be copied into the Commons template? I see the "Prefix the given page with User talk:, if it has no namespace given" comment, but I'm not sure precisely where it starts and ends. Nyttend (talk) 13:42, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Everything between // Prefix the given page with User talk:, if no namespace given and // Timestamp, notice is dedicated to namespace detection. The core for the Commons template seems to be commons:Template:Talkback/layout, which is not protected. — Edokter (talk) — 15:24, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
Hmm, I did something wrong, so I've self-reverted. My revision caused Commons:User talk:Sreejithk2000 to go from the typical Talkback message with a further comment below the template to being utter chaos; see a screenshot. Any idea what I did wrongly? Nyttend (talk) 05:12, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
Take a look at the code at commons:Template:Talkback/en and the instructions at the bottom of commons:Template:Talkback/doc. The use of the autotranslate function makes things difficult. You can't just copy code from en.wikipedia, you have to figure out how it gets called through the various subpages and how it interacts with the autotranslate template. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 05:53, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
I didn't realise that. Aside from templates that don't exist on other wikis, I figured that code would always work equally well on any site that was using the same version of MediaWiki. What do I need to do to get it to translate properly? Nyttend (talk) 11:35, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
Yup, this is basically the "templates that don't exist on other wikis" problem. commons:Template:Autotranslate pulls input and code through several different pages before displaying, so code intended to run on it has to take quite a few things into account that "plain" code doesn't. If you wanted to make an English-only talkback template on Commons, it would be trivial - just copy the code from en.wikipedia. To make the same template work with Autotranslate is something else entirely. That thing is user-friendly for template users, but user-unfriendly for template creators. If you want, I can take a look at the code in a few days - I've fought with that thing before, so I should be able to figure it out again. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 17:31, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
This is harder to figure out than I'd expected. I'd suggest asking at the Commons Village Pump. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 12:58, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Watch page to watch section

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T2738

There are numerous times when I add a section to a talk page perhaps with a question or statement and then have to watch the page due to obvious reasons. But watching the page watches the whole page and then I get replies on everything, even sections I am not apart of. There needs to be a watch this section link if not for all edits then at least for talk pages... I'm watching this page Airbender3 (Talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:27, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

This has been proposed before, but it's not technically possible in MediaWiki yet. Though mw:Flow aims to make it easier to follow discussions. Legoktm (talk) 17:31, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
See also bugzilla:738 and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 93#Support or oppose a test Village Pump based on Portuguese VP. Helder 02:39, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Upload by URL

Does anyone know exactly what the upload_by_url userright is? Ryan Vesey 19:30, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I do. Reedy (talk) 19:46, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Seriously, though, as you actually want an answer - it's to do image import from other webservers. So to move images from flickr/wikipedias to commons, you can just give it a URL for it to fetch, and it'll do it serverside, rather than you downloading it locally and uploading it back again to the server. See also mw:Manual:$wgAllowCopyUploads Reedy (talk) 19:48, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Why is this a tool given only to administrators? This seems like a purely content tool. Ryan Vesey 19:57, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
It requires extra infrastructure to run it, so load is limited. That and it's not well tested - though, it should work... That is, however, more of a "policy" type question than a technical one. Reedy (talk) 20:00, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
And it's not enabled right now on WMF servers, but if it were enabled, then by default all administrators would have the right to use the tool. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:16, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

post comments

Some articles have the option of rating an article; others have a question about whether one has found what one was looking for. It appears the former is generally at larger articles. In any case, for the latter, The 'post comments' box is invisible on my screen. Only when I mouse over it does it appear. Is this a wide-spread problem? (I run wikipedia on Firefox/Windows 7.) Kdammers (talk) 01:00, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Could you please provide a testcase (link to an article)? Makes it easier to check. :) --Malyacko (talk) 12:00, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Im assuning you mean Wikipedia:Article Feedback Tool. Most still have Version 4, and some have been included in the test roll out of Wikipedia:Article Feedback Tool/Version 5 which will be upped to a 100% hopefully in the next few months. In the regards to the latter i take it you mean once you have selected yes or no to the question. If thats the case it works for me just now.Blethering Scot 20:24, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Diptera navbox

See Braulidae - the navbox seems to have issues. Could someone with expertise have a look? Thanks Paul venter (talk) 09:15, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

  Fixed ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 10:10, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Should I ignore this email about someone trying to access my account?

"MediaWiki Mail <wiki@wikimedia.org> wrote: Someone (probably you, from IP address [not my IP], requested a reminder of your account details for Wikipedia (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page>). The following user account is associated with this e-mail address: Username: Dank, Temporary password: ... This temporary password will expire in 7 days. You should log in and choose a new password now. If someone else made this request, or if you have remembered your original password, and you no longer wish to change it, you may ignore this message and continue using your old password." - Dank (push to talk) 12:43, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Well anyone can do this. As long as your email account is secure, there is no issue and you can ignore it. Just keep an eye out for suspicious activity on your email and wiki account. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:54, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
I got a whole load, Common, wikitionary etc just after I'd had dealings with a fairly unpleasant sock so I guessed it was the sock trying to create mischief.. Like DJ says as long as your email and wiki account are secure, nothing to worry about. NtheP (talk) 12:59, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. - Dank (push to talk) 13:35, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

bits.wikimedia.org very slow

Is anyone else having problems with bits.wikimedia.org loading on Wikipedia pages; it has been loading very slow over the past week or so? It often seems to take forever, finally loading unformatted Wikipedia pages and limiting the tools available. I've been using on 3 different computers and I've tried 4 different browsers, all the same. It seemed to clear up for a bit yesterday but is back to a crawl today - very frustrating and is currently limiting my editing. Simon Burchell (talk) 12:50, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

These problems are often quite regional. It helps if you could specify your location, and even better your IP addresses. But if you want to safeguard your identity, then be careful with that data of course. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:56, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm in southern England, and have been using a couple of different connections so the IP addresses will be varying. Simon Burchell (talk) 13:00, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Changing domain on 100+ links

Say you wanted to change all instances of http://www.domain.com/folder to http://www.otherdomain.com/folder. Is there an efficient way to do this? It would be easy to write a bot, but it would still need to go through BRFA. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 18:55, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

You can use AWB. Ruslik_Zero 19:15, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
AWB or replace.py would do it. Depending on how many links there are I would recommend filing a BRFA so in the future if a domain changes, you can easily do it without having to request approval again. Legoktm (talk) 19:24, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Last time I needed to do this, it was prompted by this edit which came a few weeks after these four edits: I realised that the change would affect nearly 70 pages. I first set up a template {{Merseyrail info lnk}} to hold the base URL for the new format - I did it as a template just in case the website changes its structure again in future. Then I used Special:LinkSearch to search for the old-pattern URLs, and changed the pages to use the template instead - most of them are in this batch of edits. I did it entirely manually - it's a great way to stay up really late into the morning (I live in the UK). --Redrose64 (talk) 20:39, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Javascript screwing up tables

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T43886

In the last few days the release tables with rowspans at 2012_in_film#January–March have become mixed up i.e. data appearing in the wrong columns, such as the date in the title column and vice versa. I looked back through the history and earlier versions of the article have become corrupted too (which were fine at the time), meaning this isn't down to a recent editor error. I have isolated it to Javascript, and if you turn it off the table renders correctly. The same problem occurs across IE, Firefox, Opera and Chrome, and turning off Javascript fixes it in IE, Firefox, and Opera (don't have Chrome to test it). It is affecting other editors too, so would appreciate it if someone can look into it. Betty Logan (talk) 06:56, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

The table formatting was fixed by replacing ! with | in non-header rows.[1] The wrong row syntax messed up the table sorter. But sorting doesn't work correctly anyway for tables with rowspans so sortable should probably be removed from the table. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:20, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for that, but something still isn't right. The data is properly alligned, but the rowspans still aren't working i.e. you have "January" in every single cell, whereas before it was just rowspanned once across the whole month. If you view the page with your javascript turned off you will see how it looked before the recent technical problems. Betty Logan (talk) 12:25, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
That last issue you mention is unintentional indeed. Problem due to a recent change we made in the logic of the sorter. I have reported the problem. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:11, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
I have removed sortable from the tables so the JavaScript table sorter isn't activated. It didn't sort correctly when there were rowspans, except for the first column and that was the month where alphabetical sorting was meaningless. The former version with sortable is [2]. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:51, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
It appears that clicking the nth column header actually did sort the nth column, but the first header has colspan="3". For all subsequent headers this means that the column being sorted is two columns to the left of the clicked header. Any chance the table sorter could be modified to handle this? Here it would mean the second and third column cannot be sorted but that would be OK. I assume it could be fixed in the wikicode by avoiding colspan="3" and adding two more column headers, but the first 3 columns are narrow on purpose and would be widened by adding headers. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:14, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, that is sort of the problem. What is the logic about a colspan="3" on a header, and then saying that the column should be sortable, while that column actually contains 3 columns per row.. There are so many 'implied' assumptions being made by authors in such a process, it's difficult to explain that to a JS. Also probably not that 'accessible' to screenreaders btw. Perhaps we should just avoid such constructs on tables. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:27, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm not really in a position to explain the design decisions, but in many cases I think editors still make a table fully sortable even if it doesn't make sense to sort some of the columns. People who aren't familiar with the code just copy it in and adapt it to their needs, so sometimes there isn't rationale. I suppose you may want to sort the films alphabetically, or by genre so they just make the whole thing sortable without making the spanned columns unsortable. I doubt it's limited to just this article though, so will it be fixed at the source level or will all tables with the same problem have to have their spanned columns made unsortable? Betty Logan (talk) 14:43, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
To echo Betty, most people seem to copy table syntax. Look at Help:Table and see if you can spot why that's the easiest mechanism ;p. Given how many things this impacts on, I'm upping the priority of this bug and will kick one of my platform compadres. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:55, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
We have two issues here. First the table sorting issue that breaks rowspans. This is being worked on in bug 41886 (see link above). The second issue is that ! was used instead of |, which made content appear in the wrong cells. Does anybody know what proportion of tables in English Wikipedia use ! instead of | and are also affected by this? If it is a higher number we will need to create another separate bug report about this in order to make parsing/rendering more lenient/forgiving. --Malyacko (talk) 15:17, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T43889
Plenty and rightfully so. Those rows are row headers, which is perfectly allowed. Unfortunately the exploding of rowspans (which due to bug 41886 now happens automatically) does not seem to know how to handle these properly. This is already filed as bugzilla:41889. It's not a recent regression, just more visible now due to bug 41886. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:43, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

User creation log

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T43793

Why are all users on the user creation log now shown with a blue link for contributions? 76Strat String da Broke da (talk) 07:37, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

See #Bad change to the user creation log, above -- John of Reading (talk) 07:57, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank you. 76Strat String da Broke da (talk) 08:00, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Fair use uploader not working

I tried to upload a fair-use historical photo, but even when I filled all the required fields (twice) the upload button did not work at all (stayed greyed out). Anyone else having this problem?--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 16:08, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Anon edit warning is broken

With this edit, Reaper Eternal changed the Anoneditwarning in response to a request on the talk page. However, the edit notice is now broken. For example, if I try to edit VPT logged out, it displays as You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. Please pump (technical)&returntoquery=action%3Dedit log in or pump (technical)&returntoquery=action%3Dedit sign up to have your IP address hidden behind a user name, among other benefits. David1217 What I've done 18:09, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I left a note on the talk page of the MediaWiki message. I think it may have something to do with spaces in the page title. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:19, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
I fixed it. Reaper Eternal (talk) 18:39, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks Reaper Eternal, it works now. There's just one other request on the MediaWiki talk page: could you check that out if you have a chance? David1217 What I've done 18:57, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
  Done that too. Reaper Eternal (talk) 19:11, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Bug in Wikipedia Search?

Hello folks. I was logged in, and on this Wikipedia Talk page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Antibacterial

I wanted to find the Citation Templates, so I put "wiki:citation" in the _Wikipedia_ search box, and clicked the search icon. When the new page loaded, I found it to be this URL:

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?citation

I have double-checked, and I am putting the search term into the Wikipedia search box, and _not_ into any text box of my browser. Surely, a Wikipedia search shouldn't link to an off-site page, should it?Clark42 (talk) 18:45, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

The "wiki:" prefix is an interwiki link. You should try WP:citation in the search box next time, but what you're looking for is Wikipedia:Citation templates. Legoktm (talk) 19:12, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
The interwiki link goes to WikiWikiWeb. Ryan Vesey 19:19, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
I feel like this is a bug. Interwiki links should not affect the search box. Ryan Vesey 19:21, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
WikiWikiWeb was added to the interwiki list in August 2005. So yes, it's quite deliberate. There is a process at that page to request removal of an interwiki prefix. Someguy1221 (talk) 19:24, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Interwiki links should affect the search box. It allows users to search stuff like "m:SRP" straight from the search box. It's especially helpful if you have a keyword enabled search in your browser which uses Special:Search. Legoktm (talk) 19:29, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Someguy1221, thanks, I get it now; there is a Wiki at c2.com, but it doesn't have an entry for my search-term "citation", so I just got a blank page. c2.com's Wiki front-page is here: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki Maybe someone who knows how should modify the Interwiki link so it submits the search term to c2.com's Wiki search page. Clark42 (talk) 04:56, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Legoktm, thanks for your directions to the template. Clark42 (talk) 04:43, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

This is actually how all interwiki linking occurs. Where readers inbound to non-existent URLs are sent is controlled by the target website. It so happens that c2.com just returns a blank page. If you were to attempt to go to a non-existent WMF page, you'd get some variation of the "there is no page with that title" message. See wikt:lkjlkjlkjlkjsdfsdf, for instance. Whether c2's situation is changed is up to them. Someguy1221 (talk) 05:31, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Adding images from other language wikis using [[Image:]] or [[File:]]

Is it possible to include hosted images from other language wikis in English WP articles. If yes, how? I've tried all permutations of namespace prefixes, to no avail. If no, why? --Winnietpooh (talk) 17:06, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

No you can't (outside of Commons which are, via software, assumed to be in en.wiki's File: space). If the image on a different wiki isn't hosted on commons, that likely means it has certain restrictions based on where the wiki's hosted that restricts copyright on the image in some manner, making it not automatically appropriate for us on en.wiki to have the image, particularly for non-free content since each wiki has its own rules regarding this. If you think an image from another wiki can be hosted on en.wiki under NFC or other image policies you can always re-upload it here, but we can't link-include it from the other wiki. --MASEM (t) 17:10, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
This is why I have proposed, verbally, an "Uncommons" project that manages license restrictions in a more granular manner. I suppose I should make it a formal proposal somewhere. Rich Farmbrough, 13:47, 3 November 2012 (UTC).
Thanks for the information, MASEM (t), though I'd have thought that copyright laws of the country, where the image hosts are located, would apply. The idea of distinct copyright rules, per wiki, based on language seems a bit odd to me. Interesting idea Rich Farmbrough, it's unfortunate that interwiki sharing of images/media is not possible at the moment, rare commodities as they are. A "per file" usage rights system sounds promising. --Winnietpooh (talk) 16:15, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
Rich, I think you should definitely do that. — Hex (❝?!❞) 17:03, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Back button sometimes blanks edit summary

I am re-posting and updating this continuing issue, which has gone to archive.

Edit an article, leave the page for any reason, including pressing Show preview or Show changes, use the browser's back button (or Alt+left arrow or equivalent) and on returning to the editing page, the edits are still there, but the edit summary is sometimes blanked. This is a new bug since approximately October 1, 2012.

My preferences
  • Skin: MonoBook
  • Disable browser page caching: not checked
  • Enable collapsing of items in the sidebar in Vector skin: checked
  • Exclude me from feature experiments: not checked
I use the back button a lot because I edit and inspect, edit and inspect, and I like to get back to where I was before editing, keeping the edit history "tight". It's also convenient because the back button returns me to the same state of editing window. Also, when Show changes reveals several editing errors, it's useful to go repeatedly back and forward, correcting mistakes and finding the next one.

I am not the only Wikipedian who temporarily leaves the edit page comes back to it, as evidenced by a discussion a year ago here when a similar bug, in addition to blanking the edit summary, was sometimes removing all editing changes, on going back to the editing page from any other page.

I realize that many if not most Wikipedians who go to Show preview or Show changes and wish to continue editing do so by editing in the edit box of those pages rather than by going back to the edit page. However, I believe that many Wikipedians who go to Show preview test internal and external links on that page. When they go back from testing a link, they should not lose the edit summary. Yet, sporadically, the edit summary is sometimes lost. Therefore, this is a matter of concern to all Wikipedians. —Anomalocaris (talk) 21:18, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

From memory, I believe this is a browser issue - many browsers will lose unsubmitted form content on going back to a page. I'm not sure there's anything MediaWiki can do about it, and indeed trying to work around this is one of the reasons that the preview/changes page keeps the edit window. Andrew Gray (talk) 13:55, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

User id in a ref spoils the page

See [3]. The old version code [4]:[[User:Teika kazura|Teika kazura]] ([[User talk:Teika kazura|talk]]) produced an article page with a {{clean}} effect. (me Ff on top of WinXP). Without the user tempate, it is [5] .-DePiep (talk) 02:53, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

If you pop the offending {{citation needed}} into Special:ExpandTemplates you'll see
<sup class="Template-Fact" style="white-space:nowrap;">[<i>[[Wikipedia:Citation needed|<span title="I([[User:Teika kazura|Teika kazura]] ([[User talk:Teika kazura|talk]])) don't see relation between # of points and serif-ness for some 20 installed fonts. Even if references are shown, it may not apply to today's norm.<nowiki/> from October 2012">citation needed</span>]]</i>]</sup>
You therefore have a wikilink (two in fact) inside another, which won't work - you're trying to nest two HTML <a>...</a> elements. This has never been permitted in any version of HTML or XHTML, and it is difficult to imagine a situation where it may be necessary. The {{citation needed}} template uses the |reason= parameter to create a tooltip for the wikilink. My suggestion: just delink it (and drop the "(talk)" too) to leave |reason=I (Teika kazura) don't see relation between # of points and serif-ness for some 20 installed fonts. Even if references are shown, it may not apply to today's norm.[citation needed] --Redrose64 (talk) 11:09, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanx. (it was not me who nested it btw). -DePiep (talk) 22:02, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Asking nicely: cannot a nested <a> then be detected & notified as a sort of error? -DePiep (talk) 22:05, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Most errors in wiki markup (except for some stuff with <ref>) are "reported" by making the page look wrong, as you saw. I think the idea is that prominent error messages might scare away new contributors who make trivial mistakes.
In this case, I'm not sure how any error message would have helped, since that reason= worked fine at the time it was added. It only became a problem with this edit to the {{citation needed}} template. I've raised the issue on the template's talk page. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 23:12, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Bug in "Undo" on this talk page?

Hello again, I came back to this page to look for replies to my "search box" bug above, but found that all talk since Nov 6th had been deleted. I looked at this page's history, and used "Undo" on the edit that seemed to be responsible (02:55, 10 November 2012‎ by LeadSongDog). When the system showed me the changes for me to confirm, the deletion I was undoing was shown, but it was only the section on popups, not everything from Nov 6th to Nov 10th. I proceeded anyway, and the four days of talk was restored.

So I don't have a problem with this, I can do what I came here to do. But it looks as though LeadSongDog tried to remove a section about popups, but a bug caused the rest of the page to be deleted. Clark42 (talk) 04:11, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

There are two unrelated events here. The page is archived daily by MiszaBot II (talk · contribs), and any thread with no posts for seven days is moved to an archive - the current one is Archive 104; see e.g. this edit. struck by Redrose64 (talk) 11:36, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
The edit by LeadSongDog (talk · contribs) removed one section. That may have been an accident, but if it was a bug, it sounds like the inverse of Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 104#Apparent bug causing massive text loss when saving - instead of the whole page (except for one section) being zapped, leaving one section alone, LeadSongDog's edit left the whole page (except for one section) alone, one section being zapped. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:21, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

action=edit&section=new&preload gives internal error when tried on JS pages

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T43706

When I open such an address, I get "Fatal exception of type MWException". I have been relying on this trick to allow easy installation of user scripts. Wikipedia:Teahouse/Host lounge/User scripts also makes use of it. I also noticed that editing a single existing section within a script no longer works (I have been relying on it to edit large scripts). Can anything be done with this? Keφr (talk) 12:38, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Both of these are due to ContentHandler. Your first issue seems to be the same as in T43706; a workaround is to use a .js page in the preload=.
The second is similar, in that Javascript pages don't actually have wikitext sections. I can't find an existing bug for this issue, although the similar T43709 was closed as "working as designed". Anomie⚔ 15:36, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

bizzare diff

  Resolved
 – OP is a doofus

I created this diff [6] yesterday and it worked correctly. As of this writing, it's not showing me a diff between "Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rationales to impeach George W. Bush (3rd nomination) and User talk:Jimbo Wales: Difference between pages" Recreating the diff from the history today gives me a correctly working [7]. The diff id's are the same by the old id's are different. Nobody Ent 14:12, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Looks to me you just missed a 8 when copy/pasting or something. 522245608 (correct) versus 52224560 (incorrect). Legoktm (talk) 14:15, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Do'h!. Thanks Nobody Ent 15:10, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Clearing category of depth-exceeded

This is just a reminder that I am in the process of clearing the remaining 600 pages in the tracking category for expansion-depth exceeded:

Technically, although the talk has been about "40 levels" there can be valid levels 1 to 41, without triggering the depth error. The remaining articles have mostly train-route templates (which need to round {Convert|..|mi|km|0} ) or about 400(?) animal taxonomy templates which display a single taxon's upper hierarchy branch, and seem to hit the depth limit after Template:Taxonomy_key. As I edit each page, I also copy-edit for typos or phrasing, to reduce future edits.

Temporary clearance of category: Although the category now has been emptied of most of the prior 16,000 pages, there are still several thousand pages (no longer listed) which are nearly 39-41 levels deep. Currently, the first step has been to slide under the 42-depth limit, to clear the category of clutter, and thus see to fix all the other pages which had gone unfixed for years, buried among the thousands of villages, taxoboxes, and train-route articles. Because many template editors seem to want to use 50-60 levels of nested logic, it has been a challenge to reduce some templates down to 39-41 levels deep. Many other templates have also grown a few levels deeper over the years, such as {{documentation}} now 13 levels deep. Hence, expect some more depth-exceeded problems as editors naturally try to nest future logic as if-then-else-then-else-else-else.... Meanwhile, I wrote Help:Switch to give examples of using {#switch:1} to switch on one "1" to stack pre-conditions without nesting so many if-else-else-else clauses. Also see essay: "wp:Avoiding MediaWiki expansion depth limit". -Wikid77 (talk) 20:00, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Simulating depth error in archives

This is just a notice that I have been editing talk-page archives with the special exception to simulate the depth-exceeded error messages, as hard-coded red text, such as message "Expression error" in rare topics about depth-exceeded cases. Although we almost never edit archive files, in this case, I am trying to capture the results during these years when the depth limit was 41 deep and hideous error messages occurred. If the depth limit is increased to 45 levels (or 50 or 55) in coming years, then the hard-coded red text will still reflect the old error messages as they appeared in prior years. Otherwise, as the limits are improved, then old topics about depth-limit error messages would appear as nonsense (as no longer showing those old error messages when displayed with new parser parameters). I hope everyone sees the rationale for simulating the depth-error messages in archives, and removing those archive pages from the live category of depth problems. Any questions? -Wikid77 (talk) 20:00, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

watching star is out of order for an article

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T43736

On Tommy, when clicking on the watchlist star, it starts turning round on an on, for minutes... and hours and this problem has been starting exactly 24 hours ago (no problems at all regarding other articles). I gave up trying to get this article in my watchlist, but it would be better if u could settle it up... thanks ;-) --Bibliorock (talk) 04:29, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm seeing this too, using Firefox 13. I have no idea how to debug this, but a workaround is to add "?action=watch" to the URL. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:08, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
Seems we have another JS bug in MediaWiki. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:04, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
It happens if I preview any page with an ogg file, for example File:Alessandro Moreschi.ogg in Tommy. If I view (not preview) an existing article with an ogg file then sometimes it only happens after I purge the article. This is for example what happened for me at Castrato. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:46, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
Confirmed using Firefox 16.0.2 and Monobook. Perhaps it's something to do with the new Timed Text feature? See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-10-29/Technology report --Redrose64 (talk) 16:53, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
Both problems are now solved, but one of the fixes is not yet deployed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:31, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks.--Craigboy (talk) 00:22, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks a lot... from Paris w/love ;-)--Bibliorock (talk) 17:22, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Odd glitch with populating a maint category

I am trying to clear the backlog at Category:Articles with missing files. Some of the articles listed in the category (generally album articles) don't actually have a missing file and don't have the missing files category listed (it is a hidden file but my prefs are set to view them). Doing an edit to the articles clears it from the maint category. The problem seems to occur when album cover art is added to the infobox. Seems to be an infobox problem? Here are some examples:

Doing an edit clears out of missing files category. In recent days an editor has been adding lots of images to the album articles bumping up the article count in the maint category. I had virtually cleared all the articles up to those starting with the letter H. And look at it now! Help!!! -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:06, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

From the category page: "If there is no hidden category listed in the article [...] or it is a glitch where a previously redlinked image has been created (?). Doing an edit to the article clears this glitch." One look at Special:Contributions/J04n shows that this editor is adding a redlink image to the article, then using said redlink to upload the file, thereby triggering this glitch. I think we can probably safely kill the question mark in that quote. As for a solution that doesn't require tons of manual null edits, it's possible that the job queue could take care of these eventually, but being that it's a conditional inclusion, we may need Joe's Null Bot (BRFA · contribs · actions log · block log · flag log · user rights) to expand its scope a bit. jcgoble3 (talk) 05:46, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
I just used the API to clear all the 0–9 articles out of the category except for two that actually have missing files. I'd do more but I need to go to bed. If you want to give it a shot yourself (it's a bit quicker than manual null edits), use the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=purge&forcelinkupdate&titles=XXXXX where XXXXX is the titles of all articles you want to purge at once separated by pipes ("|"), up to fifty at a time. I just copied and pasted six to eight titles at once from the category list directly into the address bar, inserted the pipes, and hit enter. jcgoble3 (talk) 06:03, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for that. I saw a bunch of stuff disappear out of the category. You go off to bed. I am just starting my shift! -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:15, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
If you want, I can set up a bot to do that (I think with a bot flag I can do up to 500 at once) daily/weekly. I'm already doing it for another category, so it would be extremely easy. Legoktm (talk) 06:22, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes please! That would save a lot of hassle. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:45, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
So it's running right now but a bit slowly as to not overload the server. Once it finishes a full run through I'll take a look and figure out whether it should be running daily or weekly. Legoktm (talk) 14:06, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Well the bot finished running through the entire category and I'm not seeing much of a dent made... Legoktm (talk) 18:51, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Hmmm. Can you try again? There are lot of articles that have now cropped up in the "B" section and two in the "2" section that may need a bit of a tickle by the bot. Cheers. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 01:11, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

ActiveX control with no control name

Hello.

When I access some pages, including the main page, the ActiveX control is activated, but the "Control name is unavailable". I refuse accepting ActiveX control that I can't identify. Can anyone see to it that it is identifiable?

Thanks

HandsomeFella (talk) 21:40, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Can't help with your question, but does Wikipedia really use ActiveX controls? What for? 81.159.105.214 (talk) 03:20, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
It doesn't. HandsomeFella, it might be a good idea to check for spyware on your computer. Graham87 09:29, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Does this happen on pages that contain videos? This might be IE's attempt to locate a compatible control for the new Media Handler. — Edokter (talk) — 10:44, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
It was indeed on a day when there was a link to a video on the main page. HandsomeFella (talk) 18:40, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

No more bullets

For some time now, the trend in Navbars has been toward using either listclass=hlist or bodyclass=hlist. This hasn't presented a problem to me until now. I have no idea what has caused this, but the bullets are missing from these new and improved Navbars. When the transfer to hlist began, there was no loss of bullets. One expects to see the bullets between linked items. If the bullets are missing, then all the links run together, and this makes the Navbar much harder to read. Here are examples that I recently found:

I normally use Internet Explorer v.9 browser and Win 7 Ultimate os. I note that the bullets are not missing in Firefox 16. – Paine (Climax!)  00:28, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

It's because you've accidentally enabled "compatibility" mode (the torn page icon to the right of the address bar). Turn it off and you should be right. — This, that, and the other (talk) 00:43, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank you very much! That fixed a few other problems I've been having as well. See Bug 41792 – Paine (Climax!)  17:51, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Edit count reversal

For some reason my edit count has just been been reduced by about 40 or 50 to where it is now at [27,009+]. Last time I peeked at the count it was over 27,030 and I've since made many more edits. We just got over a back-log problem with X's edit counter so I'm wondering if this has anything to do with it. There is no back-log now, at the time of this entry, yet the count is still low. My main concern is that this may happen again if not looked into. Any and all help greatly appreciated. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 21:43, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

I did a separate query on the toolserver and I got the same figure as the edit counter. There is some ongoing maintenance of the toolserver database replica, which had been corrupted. So after that is over, please remind me in a week or so and I will check again. What does the edit count on your user preferences look like? — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:44, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Insert : Thanks, Carl. I forgot to mention also that my contributions and edit history seem to be complete so evidently there is a problem in the 'counting' process. -- i.e. Currently X!'s edit counter is including/counting my latest edits but for some reason has overlooked my edits from early yesterday which I estimate to be around 40-50. Again, this began to happen when the edit-counter was back-logged yesterday. Also, the edit count on 'My preferences' reads '26,957', while X!'s edit-counter currently reads '27,015' -- which are both low readings.Gwillhickers (talk) 17:33, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Detecting localized name of Special:Contributions from user script

What is the proper/best way to detect the localized name of Special:Contributions from within an user script?

Specifically, this concerns User:SoledadKabocha/markBlockedPlus.js which is a modification of the original mark-blocked script.

I ended up doing this for the name of the Special namespace. (Is it possible for the special namespace to have multiple aliases, that is, "Special" as well as a word in another language?) That doesn't check for the word "Contributions" though.

It looks like the original script used to have this feature, but it was dropped in favor of hardcoding the English and Russian names. Can someone literate in Russian explain why? I'm not very literate in any language other than English (which is also why I haven't tested my script on a WMF project of another language). --SoledadKabocha (talk) 04:37, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Hold: After some investigation, it looks like I might be able to query the API for this information (specifically, specialpagealiases). I will work on this myself, and I will post back here if I need any further help. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 04:54, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
Alex Smotrov seems to have made the change you asked about. You might leave a question for him at his Russian talk page. He has been recently active on the Russian wiki and he knows English. EdJohnston (talk) 05:05, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
Ok... I had been contacting him on his enwiki talk page before (about other scripts); I should have realized earlier to go to ruwiki. Anyway, I think I'll wait to contact him until after I've made my attempt at implementing this. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 05:30, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

If you use the english alias, it will work on every MediaWiki ever. ^demon[omg plz] 23:23, 11 November 2012 (UTC) 23:23, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Yeah. You don't need to jump through hoops. Compare ru:Служебная:Вклад/Redrose64, ru:Служебная:Contributions/Redrose64 and ru:Special:Contributions/Redrose64 - they should all behave the same. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:50, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Toolbar missing

For the last couple of days, I've noticed that the toolbar above the edit box has disappeared. Is anyone else having the same problem or know what's wrong? The C of E. God Save The Queen! (talk) 17:35, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Lots of us are experiencing this, and other problems as well - please see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#No popups above Arjayay (talk) 17:44, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Small new feature coming on Thursday

TL;DR: this is to announce a small new addition to the editing experience, based on previous testing.

What it is, and when it's going live:

 
The post-edit confirmation message on the Sandbox. View full resolution to get a sense of the right scale.

This is a confirmation message that will tell all editors, anonymous or registered, that "Your edit was saved". It only appears for two seconds and then fades out, and is also dismissable via close button.

It looks like the screenshot to the right, and will work in most skins and browsers. Since it is supposed to consistently tell editors that their contribution was saved, it will appear on all edits, except page creations (since the message refers to an edit, which could be confusing use of the term when referring to page creation).

We're going to deploy this on Thursday, pending any last minute bug fixes, and it should go live shortly after.

Why we're launching it:

Confirming to someone that the contribution they just made was successful is a very common usability enhancement. It is used by most major Google products (Gmail, Maps, YouTube, etc.), Twitter, and innumerable other sites, like Dropbox. It is not used by sites like Facebook or Google Docs, where contributing is visually obvious 100% of the time, though clearly that's not the case when editing Wikipedia.

As part of editor engagement experiments, we tested this change with several thousand new registered editors, and comparing them to a control group, we found a significant increase in the volume of their edits — 23% in the short term — without an associated increase in how often they were reverted or deleted. (There's more about the results in our recent blog post.)

This data backs up the experience you see if you teach someone to edit. I've personally heard first time editors ask things like, "So what happens now?" and "When does it go live?" after saving. This message answers that question.

Please give it a try:

I realize that this may seem unnecessary for everyone is a very active editor already, and has thus learned that a successful save just means the page reloads in read mode. But since we've designed this feature to have as minimal an impact as possible, and because it has made a very measurable difference for people who are less experienced, I am asking everyone to give it a try for a week or two before making a final judgement about it. It's pretty easy to have a small, fast notification like this disappear from your attention after going about normal editing for a bit.

We've not immediately added a preference or gadget to remove this, for three reasons:

  1. No other website allows you to permanently disable small notifications that confirm a contribution. This includes existing Wikipedia notifications like the watch/unwatch bubble message. They only exist on screen for a few seconds, and are dismissable in case they obscure any content. We're not making this dissappear after something like 100 edits, because once you start to expect it, not seeing it might look like the system is broken. For new people especially, who will be expecting to see this from their first edit on, consistency is extremely important.
  2. The preferences tabs are totally bloated with checkboxes for single features, and there is already discussion about how to remove cruft. If in a while, the feature continues to be extremely distracting, then we can talk about adding a preference to opt out.
  3. Personal CSS or JS can't hide this, because of the speed at which it appears and the order in which personal styles are loaded compared to the rest of the site. Update: It looks like we missed this, because the test environment we use didn't have personal styles enabled. Thanks to Yair rand below, the following CSS might work to hide the feature...
.postedit {
   display: none;
}

Thanks for reading all that, and of course please speak if you have questions/comments. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 09:55, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Good feature! I'm the sort of experienced user who will not benefit, but I'm glad that the inexperienced user is being considered. Binksternet (talk) 19:46, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I second that. This will (probably) not bother me too much (I'll just have to remember that the box fades out in a few seconds), and I think it's going to be a very effective feature to tell first-time/new editors in a quick and clear way that they have actually edited a page. I know how lots of people wonder: so did it save my changes or not? Jsayre64 (talk) 22:48, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Please give it a try: Interesting wording. Unless I'm misunderstanding something, since we can't turn it off, if we still want to edit we will be forced to try it. So why say please? I'm not saying the "feature" is bad, I'm just saying you probably could have chose better wording.--Rockfang (talk) 20:12, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I used that language in the context of Jimbo's request at Wikimania in 2011 [8] to give the WMF some more room to deploy things, give them a try, and then give us feedback. The assumption is that this will be permanent because we previously tested it, but that definitely doesn't mean we're not open to feedback and changes in the future, including an opt-out. I just didn't want to start the conversation with an assumption that we don't want to ever change things for existing community members, and instead want to request an open mind about it. I realize that's not as simple as it sounds, but I watch VPT and other forums pretty closely, so we're not just going to dump new software on the site and run. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 20:54, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
"...so we're not just going to dump new software on the site and run". From my observations, from big projects to small things, decisions made top-down by WMF fiat seem to be get implemented, "discussed" for a while until opposing users lose interest, and then forgotten about. Jason Quinn (talk) 00:17, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Question Will there be a way to turn it off? I don't want this kind of confirmation. I am not saying it is a bad idea, but I prefer to have it the way it is right now. Also I am sure if I wouldn't ask, someone else will do later. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 20:18, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
    Question seconded. It really needs a "disable permanently" option. Deryck C. 20:30, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
    See the section above about a preference to disable. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 20:38, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
    I asked that question after reading the section above. I take it that WMF is not willing to implement a disable option then. Thanks Yair's CSS suggestion above; the confirmation message also isn't as intrusive as I thought so it doesn't bother me too much. Deryck C. 22:03, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Another question: is it deployed on Vector only? Deryck C. 20:30, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
    • No, not Vector only. I've tested in on Monobook and older skins except Classic. It works with those skins, and is smart enough to scale to the correct text size, etc. I'm not opposed to suppressing it for older, non-Vector skins if people want to propose it or submit a patch though. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 20:38, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
  • "Personal CSS or JS can't hide this, because of the speed at which it appears and the order in which personal styles are loaded compared to the rest of the site." What? User CSS is loaded before the visible content even starts. I doubt that the box is going to be done with entirely inline styles, so there must be a class or id attached to it, so users will be able to do a simple display:none; to hide it easily. --Yair rand (talk) 21:00, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
    • My understanding is that because the feature is presented dynamically with JavaScript, you can't use personal CSS to hide it, regardless of the speed issue. Yair, you're a developer right? I can show you the Labs instance where we're testing this. We tried to think of a userscript or style that wasn't an extremely nasty hack, but were unable to find one. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:14, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
      Being presented dynamically with javascript doesn't at all stop elements from being hidden by user CSS. (Am I a "developer"? I thought that generally referred to WMF employees, which I am not. I just fiddle with JS and CSS here and on Wiktionary...) A link to a Labs instance where I could test it would be great, thanks. --Yair rand (talk) 22:47, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
      Just butting in here to absolutely 100% argue against the idea that only Wikimedia Foundation employees could be developers. When we talk about developers in the Wikimedia movement, we mean EVERYONE who suggests changes to MediaWiki code, gadgets, bots, user scripts, and so on. So you're included. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community Manager (talk) 21:39, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
      CSS code is #postedit-container{display:none;}. Works fine. --Yair rand (talk) 22:55, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
      Hmm. Doesn't seem to work for me on Labs, when applied to my Vector or Common CSS. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:08, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
      MediaWiki has $wgAllowUserJs by default set to false. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:59, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
      Yair rand's CSS works for me. Double sharp (talk) 05:30, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
      • AdBlock Plus is your friend. They (talk) 22:12, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
      • en.wikipedia.org##DIV#postedit-container They (talk) 23:28, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Interesting. I suppose all questions will be answered in a few hours when it goes live. SilkTork ✔Tea time 21:36, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Alternative suggestion - This required the reloading of the page twice, which is impractical. All the sites you mentioned also make use of AJAX and javascript functions to display temporary messages on loaded pages. A bar that appears then disappears is much more practical to a whole page. - Floydian τ ¢ 21:46, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
    • Where did you test it? This does not require users to reload the page, and does in fact use JavaScript to display it as a temporary message for a couple seconds. As for adding the notification after complete page load... I'm not sure that's less annoying than having the message appear along with page reload post-edit. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:02, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Question – What time (exactly?) are you going to release this change? It's already Thursday in UTC and in my time zone. –– Anonymouse321 (talk • contribs) 05:06, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
    • Sorry, I mean Thursday afternoon PST. There is no exact predetermined time, because deployment is a process that's not immediate. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 06:45, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
      • Live! – It looks like the change just went live (for me at least). –– Anonymouse321 (talk • contribs) 00:18, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
        • OK, so "Thursday afternoon PST" meant Thursday, 23:59 UTC. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:22, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
  • What is the effect, if any, on high-speed editing like bots or (in my case) AWB edits? Does it in any way slow down or obstruct such editing? Fram (talk) 07:57, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
    • None, if the edits are made via the API like I assume AWB and most bots do. If there is a bot or other tool that makes an edit in a semi-automated fashion but doesn't use the API, it's possible but unlikely. This a very small feature, and we've already put some performance hacks in place to make it snappy, so we don't anticipate problems. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 08:07, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
      • Thanks. Fram (talk) 08:13, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
  • nagware I kind of like keeping browser scripting turned on, on sites like this, where presumably the scripting is non-harmful (actually, it's not, every year or so I have to create a new browser profile to fix various "bugs" that seem to come from "somewhere"). While I can't think of the wikipedia name offhand, the editor which color codes the editing window separating text from code is kind of nice to use, but I guess I can turn it off, it just is slightly more tiring to use, and takes a little longer to make edits. That's the side effect of stopping these popups. Maybe someday the foundation will decide that encyclopedia content shouldn't be visible unless scripting is turned on, like some sites do now. It's almost humorous, follow a link to read something and find a Blank Page unless scripting is allowed. Can't serve a page until ID is shown. Show us your papers! Gzuufy (talk) 15:28, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
    • "Maybe someday the foundation will decide that encyclopedia content shouldn't be visible unless scripting is turned on, like some sites do now." Doubtful. Unlike some participatory sites, many of which require login and other stupid requirements to just read content, job number one for us is to give away the encyclopedia to as many people as possible. For readers, we are actually are moving in the opposite route of what you describe, enabling features such as optionally disabling images on the mobile site to speed up page load times for those on slow connections. Reading != editing when it comes to browser requirements. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:48, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks Steven. Gzuufy (talk) 19:27, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
So, if I have Javascript disabled in my browser, can I still edit? And will I see this message? InedibleHulk (talk) 19:13, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
InedibleHulk, I just submitted this message with scripting off. I don't know if it is limited to disabling only javascript, I'm using Noscript. The editor appears slightly different. It opens quicker, probably due to the limited speed of my connection. I haven't seen those messages yet, once they appear, we'll know what, if anything, works to block them. Gzuufy (talk) 19:27, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
Yes, you can edit without JS. And no, you won't see this message if you have JS disabled. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 19:40, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
Cool, thanks. No objections here, then. InedibleHulk (talk) 20:09, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
  • If the purpose of this is to let users know when their edits were saved, shouldn't userrights (with the exception of, say, "confirmed") disable this? I can't imagine this affecting users who already have rollback, etc. on their accounts. That said, this is only minimally intrusive. Several userrights have their own .css Special: pages, so perhaps the disabling script mentioned above could just be added to those pages? --Philosopher Let us reason together. 05:08, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
    • That would make perfect sense if you consider everyone who already has these userrights, but think about it from the perspective a brand new person. Say you start editing today, make a few thousand edits. You've learned that a successful edit = seeing that two second flash. You get rollback, and suddenly you don't see the confirmation anymore, on your edits or on rollback. That would probably seem like an error, if you've grown accustomed to it. The feature is configured like it is not because we really want you to read the message every time, but because a consistent display like this, with the green checkmark you can easily scan, is an extra assurance. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 05:15, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
      • That's a fair point. What page does the code come from, btw? Given your point about the accustomed user being surprised, perhaps it'd be better to just put the "disable" code on the talk page of whatever MediaWiki: page the code comes in from (for easy reference) but leave it active for everyone? I'll admit I was surprised at how minimal the intrusiveness was, but I'm going to turn it off for myself anyway. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 05:48, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Has the change been deployed yet? On the older rig I use (IE7, Windows XP but with JS enabled) I'm not seeing the change enabled yet or on Safari on iPhone. Haven't checked on anything else. if it has been deployed can the wtachnotice be removed. NtheP (talk) 08:06, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

  • I don't understand why we can't turn this off? It's annoying. GiantSnowman 10:31, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
    • You can turn it off - just take the .css code above and put it into your Special:MyPage/common.css. You could always propose a gadget or a preference if you want, though Steven Walling does have a point about those pages becoming crowded. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 10:41, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I have a concern that will come into effect with the reintroduction of pending changes this December. Suppose a new editor makes a change to a page, gets this message telling them their edit was saved. Yet, it hasn't appeared until a reviewer has checked the edit and passed it. This will cause confusion with all the newbies wondering why their edit hasn't showed up. I am opposed to pending changes anyway. Rcsprinter (post) @ 16:37, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
    • The use of Pending Changes or Flagged Revisions is part of why we went with the very specific language of "Your edit was saved", as opposed to "Your edit is live" or similar. (This feature is also deployed on German Wikipedia currently as well, btw.) Even if PC or FR is used at 100% it is accurate to say that the edit was saved. Remember that new editors don't all have a mental model of editing like we do, where saved == visible. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:59, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I like this a lot. However two seconds seems a bit fast; you could easily miss it, especially if you were looking at somewhere else on the screen (where the save button was?) and then looked up. Not everybody is super quick off the mark. I'd suggest extending the duration to four seconds. I also think a slightly slower fadeout would look nicer, but that might just be me; the visible duration is more important. — Hex (❝?!❞) 19:01, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
    • Oh - and I've found a bug. If I hit back in my browser (Chrome, Windows) and land on a page that had displayed the notification, it displays it again. — Hex (❝?!❞) 19:05, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
      • Yep, myself and others have got this bug too. We've got a fix ready and waiting for deployment in the coming week. As for the speed: we tried five seconds, and that was way too long. The original comparative test on the site was at three seconds, which I would be happy to return it to later. For initial deployment, I just wanted to minimize the impact on regular editors. Thanks for reporting, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:06, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
      • Should be   Fixed now. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:15, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Not to second-guess those working on technical improvements for the encyclopedia—but I generally feel that we should avoid most bells & whistles unless there's a really good reason to add them. Creeping complication, load times, clutter, etc. ... groupuscule (talk) 22:28, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
    • I agree 100%. It's one of the maxims of good design that more features all the time generally don't always help, and in fact often hurt usability. That's why the team explicitly takes an experimental approach to new things, where we test them out before committing to enabling them forever/for everyone. For this feature, the demonstrated positive impact it had for new editors, plus the fact that this design pattern is very common on the modern Web, is why we decided to add it. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:37, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Can't say I have read everything above but I'm guessing some of our long-term users are complaining about it in there somewhere, so for the record this long term user thinks it is just fine and can easily see that new users would find this helpful and reassuring. FYI it works fine on my iPad (not everything here does) and does not seem to be affecting page reload times at all. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:09, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Bug report - If I edit an article, then save that edit, I get the popup. So far, so good. Then I click edit a second time, and decide not to save but to click "Article" (or whatever is at top left to return to the same page) the unedited article is displayed with the popup on top. Very misleading. Elizium23 (talk) 15:32, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

This shows just long enough to be annoying (like something flickering in your peripheral vision annoying), and barely long enough to be useful. Bonus: can transient JavaScript dialogs be trusted? Why no, no they can't. :p ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:38, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

  • I'm getting the same bug as some others here. Telling editors their edit was saved when no edit was saved is very misleading. If it can't be fixed it should be turned off. Ryan Vesey 20:07, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
Me too. Right now I am getting the message every time I use the browser Back function to return to a page I saved 15 minutes ago. (IE8 on XP). Nurg (talk) 20:38, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
That's a bug we're going to deploy a fix for in the coming week. Sorry for the annoyance. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:35, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
Should be   Fixed now. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:15, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

I am still seeing this in Chrome (Mac OS) every time I go to to a new page without editing, even if I am logged out. Firefox and Safari seem fine. Jokestress (talk) 13:08, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Did you try clearing your cookies and cache? The issue appears to be fixed for me. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 01:45, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
The issue still happens in Chrome. I have some additional details. I cleared cache and cookies, logged back in and visited several pages. Everything was fine - no notification. Then I did a small edit to a bio, and the notice came up. After that, every new page I visited had the notice come up. Even when I opened this page to add this comment, it said "your edit was saved" after it loaded, before I even made a change. Hope this helps. Jokestress (talk) 17:36, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
I get this same issue on FF 16.0.2 on Mac. Every link I click.. "Your edit has been saved" 24.123.186.227 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:26, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Please allow a preference to disable this
  • No matter how much one editor thinks this is a really good idea, there will ALWAYS be a whole bunch of people who do not. Imposing preferences on everyone is like the Henry Ford style operating philosophy: you can have any car you like so long as it's black. That's a really outdated way of thinking, and it's a real pity people think that's acceptable now. Wikidea 10:02, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, I see there's some discussion above about how to switch it off, but can you explain the steps for people like me who aren't developers? I'd be grateful. Wikidea 10:09, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
You add ".postedit { display: none; }" (without the quotes) to Special:MyPage/skin.css :) - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 11:34, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
Many thanks for your help. Wikidea 17:31, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
I do think it's a good idea for newcomers, as I've seen questions asked on the Help Desk many times relating to this issue, but I can't add the above text to anything because "Wikipedia does not have a user page with this exact name."— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:56, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
No, you don't; but that's not a problem. You merely need to create it: go to Special:MyPage/common.css (which should give you a heading "Creating User:Vchimpanzee/common.css" and an edit box; paste the single line
.postedit { display: none; }
into that edit box; and click Save page. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:18, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. — Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:34, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Another bug?

In Firefox (16.0.2), while editing a section in a long page, after the edit is saved I'm not redirected to the relevant section. Repeating the same process with JavaScript disabled works. ¦ Reisio (talk) 16:12, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

Is it only long pages, or any pages with sections? Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:38, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

I can't reproduce it on the long page I was noticing it on now, so perhaps it's a bug on Firefox's end (in fact I noticed an entirely different strange bug only in Firefox 16.0.2 [on another OS, on sites not to do with Wikipedia] which only lasted until restarting the browser... which also makes it more suspect :p). Sorry for the bother, I will of course give a yell again if I can reproduce it reliably. ¦ Reisio (talk) 03:36, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

No worries. I'll keep an eye for it. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 08:02, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Are you sure it wasn't just because there were two identically named sections on the same page? That confused me the first time I encountered it. (After editing any such section, you will always be returned to the first one on the page [unless this issue has been fixed, but I don't think it has].) If so, this wouldn't have anything to do with the pop-up — and maybe someone renamed one of the sections before you got back to the page to try to reproduce the bug. Alternatively, it could be because there's a "collapsed" table (or other content) on the page. Collapsed tables seem to be rendered fully before they collapse, which sometimes causes one's browser to become confused as to what portion of the page to display (in my experience). - dcljr (talk) 23:22, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Not the former, but I suppose it could potentially be the latter... although I've been editing such pages (both long and with collapsed content) for a long time, and don't recall this happening before. If it is due to the other content on the page, you could check [9] if you're really interested. I won't get back to it myself for a while. ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:37, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
It does seem to be due to JS collapsed sections (and therefore not likely related to this popup), although I suspect something has changed in Firefox 16 to make me notice it. ¦ Reisio (talk) 23:47, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Location of message

I wonder if the message could be made to appear slightly lower on the page. It's not a huge bother since it disappears quickly, but it does temporarily obscure the history tab, which I often reach for after saving an edit (especially after reverting vandalism). A minor annoyance. Rivertorch (talk) 19:49, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Is this in Monobook or Vector? We're considering alternate ways to position the message offset from the top, but haven't deployed any changes yet. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 20:01, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Monobook. Rivertorch (talk) 16:32, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
And it occurs to me that a good place for the message might be at the extreme top left, where all it would obscure would be the WP logo. Just a thought. Rivertorch (talk) 07:01, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Image sizes

Has anything changed centrally that would have caused fixed image sizes to appear reduced? Several images in articles I've worked on look quite a bit smaller today. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:12, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, something has changed, and not only with images. I fixed the Bradley Manning infobox at a width of 260px, which was a good width. But today this is what it looked like -- too thin with all the words squished together. I removed the fixed size and it went back to normal. It's the same on multiple articles I've looked at - tiny images, shrunken boxes. Does anyone know what has happened? SlimVirgin (talk) 21:18, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Correction, it's only with Firefox. I've just tried another browser and they look the same as before. Something has changed about the way Firefox (at least for me) is interpreting the fixed image sizes. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:26, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Ff is displaying OK for me.--ukexpat (talk) 21:29, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Did you accidentally change the zoom level of your browser perhaps ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:31, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
No, that would change the text too. This is just image and infobox sizes, where they are fixed. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:40, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Is this still an issue SV? - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 15:59, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, it is, Harry, thanks for asking. I've been fiddling around with my fonts -- in browser preferences and in WP preferences -- trying various combinations, but nothing makes a difference. I can't see how fonts would be related to image sizes anyway. The things that are affected are where sizes are fixed, so images and infobox width. I am seeing tiny images and very thin infoboxes. And it's happening only in Firefox. I recently updated it, so it may have started then, but I don't recall whether it started directly after that. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:17, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Slow saving

Recently Wikipedia has been painfully slow for me when saving pages, especially longer ones. Is it just me? Are there any known problems? 81.159.105.214 (talk) 03:13, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

I think this is a known issue if a page contains many templates. --Malyacko (talk) 13:06, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Bug with formatting using single quotes

  Resolved

Look at the following sentence: The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog. The formatting uses single quotes, precisely as you'd expect.

Now look at: The quick brown 'fox jumps' over a lazy dog. This is identical, except that a new line has replaced the space after fox, which would ordinarily be ignored (treated as a space). A bug? Or, should I say: A bug!

Another question: How to format "('⁠Hello⁠')" without the Unicode U+2060 WORD JOINER character? — Quondum 11:30, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

As to the second, use <nowiki /> instead; see WP:NOWIKI. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 11:35, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for this answer on the second, clumsy but I guess there aint no better way... — Quondum 11:43, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Regarding the first, it's because the single-quote markup only works within a single line of wikitext.
Regarding the second, you can also use {{'}}, or use &#39; directly. Anomie⚔ 15:18, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
I have not been able to find what you mention where the single-quote markup is described in Help:Wiki_markup#Text_formatting. Have I missed something, or is this an omission in the documentation? — Quondum 16:37, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
I added a note about it to the help page you linked. jcgoble3 (talk) 17:04, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Cool. The world is perceptually in balance once more. — Quondum 18:50, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Extend Recentchangeslinked for (WikiProjects) categories

Hi All, I'm looking for a way to see recent changes on articles part of a WikiProject. The most close I found is using Recentchangeslinked for example for WikiProject Engineering: Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:WikiProject Engineering articles. But this list only the recent changes of talk pages, because WikiProjects typical group articles based on project templates placed in the talk page of the article.

If there is no other way to get this result, is it possible to expand this special page "Recentchangeslinked" when using a (WikiProject) category as parameter, to include the associated article namespace? This would be a great way to create a kind of "my watchlist" linked to a specific WikiProject. Thanks, SchreyP (messages) 21:19, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

You want Tim1357's WikiProject watchlist tool: tools:~legoktm/cgi-bin/wikiproject_watchlist.py. Legoktm (talk) 21:45, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Cool! This is indeed what I was looking for :) Thanks Legoktm, SchreyP (messages) 21:58, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
How many pages are in that wikiproject? We could have a list of them on the wiki if it is only a couple thousand. But if it is more than that, the page will be too big. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:45, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi CBM, for WP:WikiProject Engineering this is close to 2900, for WP:WikiProject Electrical engineering this is 260. Is this within specs to have it "on the wiki"? SchreyP (messages) 22:23, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
I think that about 3,500 articles is probably about the page limit, but you can translude the pages together to cover larger projects. I have a project with about 13,000 tagged pages (so 26,000 pages, article + talk) in it with an on-wiki list transluded from 7 pages that can be used with Special:RecentChangesLinked. Keith D (talk) 00:39, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
@CBM, how can this be done "on the wiki"? Or is first some development needed?
@Keith D, can you specify in which WikiProject you have used this technique, so we can learn for it? Thanks, SchreyP (messages) 19:47, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
The big one is WP:YORKS with the transluded page at Wikipedia:WikiProject Yorkshire/WatchAll. Keith D (talk) 20:14, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

problem linking in .pdf document to article with parenthesis or # in name

Hi-

I'm trying to link to South Pacific (musical), and the link works fine in a .doc file, but when I convert to .pdf, I get South_Pacific_, not accepting the opening paren or what follows, so I'm taken just to the disambig page. Is this a known problem, or is there a workaround? Thanks for any help. Milkunderwood (talk) 04:43, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Now I have exactly the same problem with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroquois_(horse). In a .doc file it takes me to the horse, but in .pdf it takes me to the Native American peoples - not even a disambig, which is worse than useless. Milkunderwood (talk) 06:22, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

And here's a third one, but this time with a section hatch mark #. My link is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gershwin_Publishing_Corp._v._Columbia_Artists_Management #CAMI.27s_.22Community_Concert_Associations.22, but .pdf cuts off the "#CAMI...[etc]". Sheesh. All of these work perfectly in .doc format. Milkunderwood (talk) 07:05, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

And the same thing again, with Seven Sisters (colleges). Milkunderwood (talk) 09:52, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Try rewriting the links using percent-encoding. In my experience that fixes virtually every problem. Someguy1221 (talk) 10:15, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
If I understand correctly: You are creating a Microsoft Word document on your PC that contains links to Wikipedia articles that work properly. You then convert the DOC file to PDF (with what application?), then the links are truncated at a parenthesis or hash. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 10:22, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I am using MS Word with XP, and converting to .pdf with a freebie download from Cnet called PDFCreator. The hyperlinks convert in full from .doc to .pdf, in blue and underlined, but hovering the pointer in .pdf shows truncation at either the "(" or the "#". And clicking takes me to the truncated name in Wikipedia.
Perhaps also in response to Someguy1221, what I don't understand (besides the "percent-encoding" discussion you pointed me to) is that I have a link to Max Delbrück copied as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Delbr%C3%BCck into my .doc file, and identically with these percent signs converted into .pdf - but not only does the link work correctly from .doc but also from the .pdf file. I didn't insert the %'s - they translated automatically. Milkunderwood (talk) 11:51, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Have you tried http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pacific_%28musical%29? It has percent-encoding of '(' and ')'. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:03, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, that does work - thank you very much!!! Now I see the distinction between reserved and unreserved characters. I was looking at the "ü" with "%C3%BC", and assumed you needed a second code to return to normal. Milkunderwood (talk) 12:16, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Interestingly, %28 and %29 do work for open and close parens, but I can't get %23 to interpret as a # hatch mark; the link still truncates at that point. I can live without this one, but it's a little frustrating. This was the Gershwin v Columbia #CAMI problem, shown above in full. Again, either the # or %23 work perfectly in a .doc file, just not in .pdf. Milkunderwood (talk) 19:39, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

You have a space before # in the above example. Without the space it is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gershwin_Publishing_Corp._v._Columbia_Artists_Management#CAMI.27s_.22Community_Concert_Associations.22. This works for me when I save as a pdf file with Word 2010. I don't have the pdf converter you use but maybe it has a limitation. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:53, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for trying that. I checked for a space and there isn't one in mine; the line just wraps at the #. The bolded copy I put in my initial posts was nowiki'd. So I guess it must be my freebie converter. Milkunderwood (talk) 00:43, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Some lang-* templates do not implement links=no

According to {{Lang-x/doc}}, which is transcluded as documentation in many {{lang-*}} templates, the parameter links=no can be used to prevent linking of the language. However, this is not implemented in many of the templates (e.g. {{lang-ka}}, {{lang-pt}}, {{lang-ur}}, etc.). The templates are fully protected and I cannot edit them. See {{lang-ru}} for an example of correct implementation. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 10:20, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Edit box misplaces text when containing mixed Arabic and Latin script

Trying to edit the lead sentence of Sheikh Anwarul Haq to insert the dates of birth and death results in the date getting mixed in with the name in Arabic script. The lead contains the text:

([[Urdu]]: '''{{Nastaliq|شیخ انوار الحق}}''')

If you place the cursor to the left of the closing parenthesis and then attempt to insert:

;11 May 1917 – 3 March 1995

the whole thing gets jumbled:

([[Urdu]]: '''{{Nastaliq|شیخ انوار الحق}}'''11 May 1917 – 3 March 1995)

Note that it only happens when the first non-punctuation character being inserted is a digit; inserting ";May 11, 1917 – March 3, 1995" works fine.

I've tried this with Firefox 7 on WinXP as well as Firefox 15 on Win7-x64, with the same results. I've had the problem in other articles and it seems like I must have found a way around it, though I can't this time. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 10:46, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

It also happens for me when the text is copied to Notepad (software). It's a problem with Help:Arabic#Text bidirectionality. Numerals are the same in Arabic and Latin so if numerals come right after Arabic text then software doesn't know whether the numerals are part of the Arabic text and should be displayed where they would be in right-to-left Arabic. As you note, a solution is to place something containing a Latin letter so software knows the Arabic has stopped. Here you can for example use &lrm; (left-to-right mark). PrimeHunter (talk) 11:47, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Excellent! That solves the problem. There's some inconsistency in the way the editor works, though – inserting ";&lrm;11 May..." works correctly, even though the ';' comes before the "&lrm;" (I'd expect it to either move the ';' to the left of the first Arabic character or for it to be sufficient to switch back to LTR mode, neither of which it does). I'll add a usage note about this issue to the relevant template docs for the next guy that stumbles on it. Thanks.   —[AlanM1(talk)]— 23:29, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Paste symbols/diacritics from WP:PASTE

FYI: In recent days, the copy/paste characters have been disappearing from Monobook skin during edit-preview of pages. I have created essay "WP:Copy and paste" (WP:Paste) which shows the old typical copy/paste for markup and symbols. The essay preserves the old, familiar table:


Copy and paste: – — ° ″ ′ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − × ÷ ← → · § Sign your posts on talk pages: ~~~~

{{}}    {{{}}}    |    []    [[]]    [[Category:]]    #REDIRECT    [[]]    &nbsp;    <s></s>    <sup></sup>    <sub></sub>    <code></code>    <pre></pre>    <blockquote></blockquote>    <ref></ref>   <ref name=""/>    {{Reflist}}    <references/>    <includeonly></includeonly>    <noinclude></noinclude>    {{DEFAULTSORT:}}    <nowiki></nowiki>    <!-- -->    <span class="plainlinks"></span>

Symbols: ~ | ¡ ¿ † ‡ ↔ ↑ ↓ • ¶ # ∞ ‘ ’ “ ” «» ¤ ₳ ฿ ₵ ¢ ₡ ₢ $ ₫ ₯ € ₠ ₣ ƒ ₴ ₭ ₤ ℳ ₥ ₦ № ₧ ₰ £ ៛ ₨ ₪ ৳ ₮ ₩ ¥ ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦ ♭ ♯ ♮ © ® ™
Latin: A a Á á À à Â â Ä ä Ǎ ǎ Ă ă Ā ā Ã ã Å å Ą ą Æ æ Ǣ ǣ B b

( ...and all the other characters...)

By remembering to use WP:PASTE, then there will be less fear of all the radical changes to the edit-interface for pages. We want the edit-interface to be improved when possible, so WP:Paste provides access, forever, to the old style of copy/paste symbols. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:40, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Image size problem at Wikipedia:Today's featured list

  Resolved
 – Edokter spoke to the servers in a code that they understand, and the problem vanished like the morning dew. BencherliteTalk 20:52, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

The two images in the blurbs displayed at Wikipedia:Today's featured list are massively oversized, as noted at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured list#Images. However, the blurbs (which are at Wikipedia:Today's featured list/November 12, 2012 and Wikipedia:Today's featured list/November 19, 2012) do not have problematic image sizes there or at other places where they are transcluded, such as Wikipedia:Today's featured list/November 2012. I can't see any edits in the page history of Wikipedia:Today's featured list or {{TFLcontent}} that might account for this. Can anyone find and fix the problem? Thanks, BencherliteTalk 15:51, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I've determined the critical factor: simply, it's whether it's inside a table or not. Compare this
Extended content
 
Skyline of Boston's Back Bay neighborhood

There are 27 buildings in Boston that stand at least 400 feet (122 m) in height. Boston (skyline pictured), the capital of the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the largest city in New England, is home to 251 completed high-rises overall; the majority of the city's skyscrapers are clustered in the Financial District and Back Bay neighborhoods. The tallest structure in Boston is the 60-story Hancock Place, more commonly known as the John Hancock Tower, which rises 790 feet (241 m) in the Back Bay district. Hancock Place is also the tallest building in New England and the 50th-tallest building in the United States. The second-tallest building in Boston is the Prudential Tower, which rises 52 floors and 749 feet (228 m). At the time of the Prudential Tower's completion in 1964, it stood as the tallest building in North America outside of New York City. Overall, with 46 skyscrapers rising at least 330 feet (100 m) in height, Boston's skyline is ranked 11th in the United States and 40th in the world. (Full list...)

Recently featured: Counties of Croatia – International cricket centuries by Mohammad Yousuf – Sultans of Zanzibar
with this
Extended content
 
Skyline of Boston's Back Bay neighborhood

There are 27 buildings in Boston that stand at least 400 feet (122 m) in height. Boston (skyline pictured), the capital of the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the largest city in New England, is home to 251 completed high-rises overall; the majority of the city's skyscrapers are clustered in the Financial District and Back Bay neighborhoods. The tallest structure in Boston is the 60-story Hancock Place, more commonly known as the John Hancock Tower, which rises 790 feet (241 m) in the Back Bay district. Hancock Place is also the tallest building in New England and the 50th-tallest building in the United States. The second-tallest building in Boston is the Prudential Tower, which rises 52 floors and 749 feet (228 m). At the time of the Prudential Tower's completion in 1964, it stood as the tallest building in North America outside of New York City. Overall, with 46 skyscrapers rising at least 330 feet (100 m) in height, Boston's skyline is ranked 11th in the United States and 40th in the world. (Full list...)

Recently featured: Counties of Croatia – International cricket centuries by Mohammad Yousuf – Sultans of Zanzibar
I collapsed them both so that they're not in-your-face. The same thing happens with the Nov 19 one. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:46, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
OK, i'm baffled ... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:44, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
I've examined the emitted HTML. The main (the only?) differences are in the attributes to the <a><img /></a> elements:
<a href="/wiki/File:Bostonstraight.jpg" class="image" title="Skyline of Boston's Back Bay neighborhood"><img alt="Skyline of a city on a river. Two buildings are much taller and more prominent than the rest; one of the large buildings is a skyscraper with a blue-tinted, all-glass facade, and the second is a large rectangular tower with a steel latticework facade and a tall antenna mast on its roof." src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/Bostonstraight.jpg/125px-Bostonstraight.jpg" width="125" height="80" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/Bostonstraight.jpg/188px-Bostonstraight.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/Bostonstraight.jpg/250px-Bostonstraight.jpg 2x" /></a>
<a href="/wiki/File:Bostonstraight.jpg" class="image" title="125x125px Skyline of Boston's Back Bay neighborhood"><img alt="125x125px Skyline of Boston's Back Bay neighborhood" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/Bostonstraight.jpg" width="2904" height="1848" /></a>
Significantly different, as you will agree. The crucial thing to spot is that the width= and height= attributes differ, and that the desired size 125x125px has somehow ended up in the title of the <a> and also in the alt= of the <img />. We need to identify what is processing the image size. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:16, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Baffled as well... Why does it not happen on the main page, where it uses the exact same table structure? (Becuase it uses raw HTML.) Looking at the served HTML, I do suspect a parser problem, dropping a pipe in the {{TFLcontent}} logic, making it ignore or misinterpret the size parameter. — Edokter (talk) — 20:22, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
A pipe is certainly a factor. Compare this:
Extended content
 
with this
Extended content
 
Both are in tables. The only difference in the wikimarkup is the number of pipes immediately before the alt=. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:33, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Well surely this tag meta-soup at Wikipedia:Today's featured list is asking for trouble:
|-
| style="color:#000;"><div id="mp-tfl" style="padding:2px 5px;" | ...
(Previewing this VPT reply, <source>...</source> and <pre>...</pre> don't seem to be nesting multiline raw text within indents as normal right now. Maybe there's a bigger parser bug. Hmmm. Is Tidy working as normal?)
— Richardguk (talk) 20:39, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
That was just bad wikitable coding (on my part BTW, though fixing that does not seem to solve the problem). Wikitables and parser code don't mix well anyway. Using HTML did fix the problem, so I do not see any reason to investigate this further. — Edokter (talk) — 20:51, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
The extra pipe creates an empty parameter that probably cuases the image size to be reset. Will investigate the TFL logic more closely. In the mean time, I fixed Wikipedia:Today's featured list by using HTML tables. — Edokter (talk) — 20:42, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
The problem was that this edit to {{TFLcontent}} caused the output to contain "||" immediately after the size specification (unless |border=yes was given), which was somehow or other interacting with the interpretation of "||" in table markup and causing the size specification to not be recognized as valid. This edit appears to have fixed it. Anomie⚔ 21:20, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Good catch! Now it's fixed on two levels, it should never happen again. I should have paid more attention to edits made to {TFLcontent}... that was a poor edit which I should have caught. — Edokter (talk) — 21:34, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, I didn't understand a bloody word of that conversation, but it's fixed now! Thanks to everyone for your input. BencherliteTalk 20:52, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Glad to be of help. — Edokter (talk) — 21:34, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

#expr does not round correctly

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T8529

The code #expr does not round properly: if the final digit is a zero, it is dropped. For example,

5940/6615 rounded to two digits ({{#expr: 5940/6615 round 2}}) gives 0.9 rather than 0.90.

— kwami (talk) 20:38, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes. Try {{rnd}} (a complex template used by {{convert}}): {{rnd|{{#expr: 5940/6615}}|2}} → 0.90. I believe it uses {{rnd/-}} to zero-pad the fraction. Johnuniq (talk) 03:03, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
That's pretty inefficient. Shouldn't we just fix #expr ? — kwami (talk) 07:20, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Is tracked. -DePiep (talk) 07:51, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Precise rounding is likely to become a Lua module: After the successful preliminary tests with Lua script on test2.wiki, it seems reasonable to write a precise rounding module, to allow trailing zeroes, and support the minus-sign with &minus ("−"). Such a lightning-fast template interface could also support special options, such as "near" to round "3.874" to 4 as near-enough, or option "up/down 50%" to randomly round "2.5" as up/down to 2 or 3, for use in calculations with numerous values which might suffer round-upward bias. Although Lua coding is tedious, running similar to "compiled source code" rather than interactive edit-previewed markup, we should be able to explain tactics to add "debug switches" to allow users to create interactive debugging sessions (with dynamic input/output values) to write complex Lua modules faster. There are some editors who have far more computer expertise than the people who designed the MediaWiki software, such as for numerical analysis or A.I., so I think the Lua modules will enable having improvements, sooner, for complex operations. This ain't bug-report and wait a few years... Meanwhile, use the slow {rnd} or {rndpad} templates as an interim fix. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:22, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Who rounds upward? Isn't it conventional to round xx.5 to an even number? — kwami (talk) 20:23, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
According to Rounding#Tie-breaking, "round half up", "round half away from zero", and "round half to even" are all common. It probably depends on what field you're in, and where/when you learned basic mathematics in school. Anomie⚔ 20:45, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
My father (with his BSc (Hons) in Metallurgy from Manchester Univ.) taught me to round exact halves away from zero; and my schoolteachers (most of which also had university degrees) were of the same opinion. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:01, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Here in the Midwestern US, I was taught to "round half up" and never heard of these other ways. Interesting. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 22:45, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
The rule: "round 2.5 upward and 3.5 downward because 2=even and 3=uneven": that is a bankers rule, for when dealing with descrete numbers (i.e. cents). (It assures that say over 1000 money numbers in cents, the "x.50"'s doesn't move the total&average upwards). However, when non descrete numbers (e.g. with logarithmic outcomes; R numbers), this is not needed. And even wrong: one may not state that a logarithmic outcome is exactly/descrete "x.5". So, only bankers may round that way. And we know where the bankers have brought us. Concluding: There is no single rule for rounding. Any "round" operator is a choice, or must give an option wrt floor/ceiling &tc situations. Now back to the topic: when rounding to "2 numbers", zeros must stay because of precision claims. Glad to make things clear. -DePiep (talk) 22:13, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Tables in various screen sizes

Per discussion here and here

Using a percent mode in a table makes the table looks less than ideal on a wide monitor:20 inch monitor view

But making it fixed width makes it problematic on a mobile device.

Is there a way to have the best of both worlds? So the table would act as if it had a percent width below some threshold, but revert to a fixed size when viewed on a larger resolution?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 15:18, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

This isn't supported in all browsers (these days it should be enough to not be an issue), but one can set a min- or max-width in the css along with a width percent. So setting max-width: whatever; should solve that problem. -— Isarra ༆ 15:41, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Dennis Brown had reported that he tried that and it failed, but it now seems to be working. Thanks.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 17:49, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Oops, maybe agreed too quickly. The max-width seems to be ignored in Chrome. Any thoughts?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 14:58, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Yep, needs to be a "display:block" in there; max-width only works for blocks. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 15:07, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Heh, I just tried that, and it worked. Thanks.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 15:10, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Well, that does break some features of a table though. Table captions for instance will then be inside the table, instead of on top and border collapse will stop working. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:23, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
MF came up with a better solution of removing the margins that I somehow didn't notice, so it worked out. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 16:51, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
It does, but so does making the table sortable, which breaks "rowspan" and "colspan". The caption issue is easily dealt with by setting the table border to the background colour, as in class = "wikitable sortable" ... style="border:1px solid #ffffff;". Malleus Fatuorum 20:03, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Import/Export Files from Wiki

I'd like to complete commons:Commons:Batch_uploading/ECGPedia. Is there a way to import/export files and their history from one mediawiki to the wiki?Smallman12q (talk) 23:25, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your interest - did you know there is also a commons:Commons:Village pump? You should probably ask there to see if there's a simpler way that what I'm thinking of. As far as I know, the answer is a definite "maybe". First, I don't know if this right copies the file as well or if it just copies the page and page history, but you could ask to become an "Importer" on Commons and then use ECGPedia's Special:Export in conjunction with Commons' Special:Import. See meta:Help:Importers. Getting such a userright would require a community discussion at commons:Commons:Requests and votes; the right itself would be granted by a Steward if the discussion approved the right. The bad news is that that userright hasn't been used on Commons since January 2011, so I don't know how willing the community would be to give it out. (Note: The "Importer" userright is different than the "Transwiki importer" userright.) --Philosopher Let us reason together. 17:03, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Template:Coord/dec2dms/dms1

Hello. Template:Coord/dec2dms/dms1 displays an (old) error when I click on it.

Text on wiki:fr is 

<includeonly>{{#expr:{{{1}}} mod 360}}° {{padleft:{{#expr:{{{1}}} * 60 mod 60}}|2|0}}′ {{padleft:{{#expr:({{{1}}} * 36000 round 0) mod 600 / 10}}|2|0}}″ </includeonly><noinclude>Modèle utilisé par {{m|Coord}}, voir cette page.

[[Catégorie:Modèle de coordonnées|Coord/dec2dms/dms1]]
[[en:Template:Coord/dec2dms/dms1]]
</noinclude>

(Another error, more insidious, occurs on wiki:fr : there is a round-up error at some values, giving wrong minutes value - see fr:Discussion modèle:Coord#Bug format dms1. We're trying to correct it on wiki:fr). Regards, Jack ma (talk) 07:34, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

It's not an error as such - the template is expecting a numeric value, but when you view the template directly, this number hasn't been supplied. So, the calculation isn't being performed on a number like 51.6063 but on the wiki markup {{{1}}} - this is the place where the first positional parameter will be inserted when the template is used. So, if I put {{Coord/dec2dms/dms1}} without parameters, which is not the intended use, I get the error condition {{Coord/dec2dms/dms1}}, but if I supply a value {{Coord/dec2dms/dms1|51.6063}} I get {{Coord/dec2dms/dms1|51.6063}} which is working as designed. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:10, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
The French version uses the <noinclude> tag to suppress the template on the template page. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 12:21, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
actually it's "<includeonly>". i've edit en:Template:Coord/dec2dms/dms1 a bit to display more polite message when viewing the temaplate page itself. קיפודנחש (talk) 15:29, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
  Facepalm ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 16:28, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Search and replace function in edit window

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T44073

Originally asked at the WP:HD#Search and replace function in edit window.


I am pretty sure in edit mode there used to be a function called something like Search and replace where you could search for a specific string of characters and replace them with something else. Where exactly in the edit window is this again, somehow I can't find it anymore. I could swear it was located in the top right corner of the edit window. However it's gone now, at least for me, I have no idea why though.... -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 07:41, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

It is under the "Advanced" section. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:04, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
  Facepalm Thank you =P -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 08:16, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

But it isn't working properly, when using the "Replace all" button - It inserts the "replace" word in front of the "search" word, without removing the "search" word. It sometimes over-writes the text in front of the "search" word and sometimes opens up a gap. (XP IE8 Vector)
Arjayay (talk) 17:20, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Yikes, another IE bug. If only we had IE developers ;( Well you know where to file them: bugzilla:. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:28, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
(added after collision) good news/bad news department: you are absolutely correct that the Search/replace tool is broken in latest version. the "good news" is that it's only broken in IE.... reported it here: bugzilla:42073.
peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 18:35, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Way to include additional info in mouseover wikilink

Hi all, first off really appreciate the help, I am attempting to allow a mouseover display of this: $7¤ to include the base dollar amount being adjusted (converted) to show on mouseover (not just the adjusted for inflation wikilink which redirects), so a functional redirect link to the wiki article on "adjusted for inflation" that has such a display as this on mouseover: $7¤. Thanks again! Marketdiamond (talk) 08:26, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

  • Simulate FYI-link text as #section: A link to show FYI-text can be simulated as a #section header link, such as "[[Adjusted_for_inflation# originally 2.00 US dollars|¤]]" which will appear as: ¤, where the phrase "originally 2.00 US dollars" will be shown but ignored by the "bug/feature" which simply ignores an invalid #section name and links to the top of the article (if clicked). Your use of wikilinks as mouse-over FYI-links seems to be way ahead of the state of the art, and so perhaps we should propose a standard for using wikilinks with FYI-text appended. Ideally, the wiki world would rise to have a high-level feature to show an FYI-mouseover with a non-url-encoded "originally $2" rather than encode "$2" as ".242", but others here might have some more suggestions. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:01, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the insight Wikid77, although impractical and even undesirable for most of wikipedia my use for this will be a subsection inside a portal where for spacing concerns brevity would be desirable and linking to more expansive wikipedia articles would be encouraged by the use of somewhat truncated descriptions. No portal would hope to be definitive on all the various and diverse topics it hits so why not be brief is my thinking.
I have noticed though the article title is shown and then below it the article URL, and I do see such a suggestion would fix the URL portion, but anyway to replace both with a simple one line of what you wish to display on rollover? I will keep your suggestion in mind as a fallback and appreciation for the insight! Marketdiamond (talk) 12:15, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't quite understand what you are trying to do, but check out {{abbr}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 12:19, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank You Gadget850! You may not understand my reasons but you got the question right and that ABBR seems to really solve it. Thanks again all! Marketdiamond (talk) 12:28, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

How many times has a certain deletion summary been used

Would it possible (presumably by use of the Toolserver or similar) to find how many times a certain deletion summary has been used in the past, say, three months (I'm felxible on time length, though, if another – either longer or shorter – is easier)? The summary in question is "G6: Talk page is a redirect created by move of associated article". Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) 09:58, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia IRC channel a query to do this is under development. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 12:55, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Per IRC - there are 16186 results that mention G6 Sfan00 IMG (talk) 19:35, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Avoiding IP address blocks

While delivering a training sesison today, I was caught up in an IP address block. I undertsnad that it's possible for established accounts in good standing to be exempted from such blocks. Is that so, and if it is, how do I go about requesting such a flag, please? I deliver a lot of training, on large networks (universities, councils, libraries, etc.). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:20, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:IP block exemption —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:26, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank you, but that seems to apply to IP blocks affecting an editor's usual IP, rather than a case like mine, where I regularly work, on a one-off basis, on other people's sites. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:47, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
If editing from various blocked locations is your usual situation, then it applies to you as well. Never hurts to apply, I'm sure someone will grant you exemption. — Edokter (talk) — 19:33, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Not to be nosy, and with the knowledge that you may very well decline but I am curious as to the geography on this, might we know what city or political subdivision (state, province etc.) this occurred in? Just curious no extrapolations will be made against that locale. Thanks! Marketdiamond (talk) 20:24, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
This happened in Staffordshire, England, but I've delivered training all over the United Kingdom and in Germany. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:03, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank you; I'll try WP:ANI. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:03, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Teahouse question out of order

This question was not signed, but the bot came along and signed it later. I thought questions were in order according to when they were asked, but even the time of the bot signature is inconsistent with the questions above and below.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:45, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

*sigh* this again. It's really just like any other Wikipedia page: the sections are in whatever order they're put in. Our JS gadget puts questions at the top, rather than the bottom as usual, but not everyone uses that gadget; sometimes questions go to the bottom, which causes things to be out of order. We try to shift 'em around to be in the correct place, but sometimes things slip through the cracks. It's not automatically sorted by date or anything like that, so that might just be a question out of order, rather than something malfunctioning. and yeah, i know that bottom-posting is standard for wikipedia. don't ask me; i just work here. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 21:52, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Okay, thanks.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:00, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
The post was placed at the bottom. Since there is no heading, and the edit summary is blank, the "New section" tab was not used: the poster most probably edited the whole page. They might have edited the last section, if so they also blanked the edit summary. We often get both of those right here on WP:VPT even from logged-in users with years of experience. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:27, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Wild thought

While reverting an -ize- mispelling back to the -ise- demanded on an european-english article and quickly putting back the -u- into habour- two thoughts came to mind- one is unprintable but the other has probably already been considered. But Here goes:

I want a template {{tr-en-us}} which will be used {{tr-en-us|habour}} or {{tr-en-us|parlour|parlor}}/{{tr-en-us|parlour|best sitting room}}. This template will examine the readers keyboard or OS dialogue settings to see whether they use UK, AUS, or US international settings, and print out either the original or the US translation. Common problems could use one parameter, while the user could give a suggested translation.I would see this working by the server including a little javascript in the page head, and a tagged dictionary array in-line, which would render only the desired word. This should be extended to ==H0== to ==h6== tags, to embrace the problem word fibre. Any takers?

Go-on the first idea is to write a bot that searches each page written in am-en and changes the number four to for to achieve logical consistency. --ClemRutter (talk) 11:30, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Is this whole proposal a joke, or just your final sentence? Nyttend (talk) 11:39, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
Have you any thoughts on the rest? We do have a big problem with articles such Fibreglass etc, and headings in multiple articles on seaports. Then there are the plethora of -ise-/-ize- reversions that probably don't appear to be vandalism to the ip-editor. So is there a technical solution? --ClemRutter (talk) 12:47, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
the media wiki parser can't take user preferences or settings into account when expanding templates. doing so will practically mean no cache can be used, which will mean, in turn, that the current servers will sufice to serve the population of Lichtenstein. קיפודנחש (talk) 13:29, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
See that- it can't be done server-side. Is it possible client side, or easy to implement!, string of javascript; onRefresh= (if language.thisbrowser=="en-US ( write ("harbor")) else (( write ("harbour")) ) which the browser will render. (pseudocode JS not my forté).A page like that should not blow the server cache. It is up to the user to refresh the page its browser has cache. As I say, just a wild thought but BE BOLD. If it is feasible- then could we politely ask Wikimedia to give us a Christmas present. --ClemRutter (talk) 15:08, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
For pages which are frequent targets for good-faith but improper spelling "corrections" we have editnotices, such as Template:Editnotices/Page/Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film). --Redrose64 (talk) 17:47, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure this is possible; I think the relevant JS variable is "window.navigator.language". But is this a good idea? First of all, I don't know how efficiently it can be done, and second of all, it would require changes to people's edits as well as the text they read. I personally wouldn't be super-comfortable with a script that changes my edits surreptitiously as I submit them. (Is there any precedent for something like that?) If we don't change edits as well as reading text, then our articles will become a confusing hodgepodge of different spellings that might not be visible to readers, but still there in the raw article. Am I not reading this correctly or something? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 18:09, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
This is a perennial proposal. Never gets anywhere; most people are willing to accept that some articles are written in British English and some in American English. (And just a few in some other varieties, usually barely distinguishable from British English, except for Canadian which is a mix.) See WP:ENGVAR for the accepted compromise — it isn't perfect but it mostly works, and to my mind it's better than insulting our readers by implying they can't handle an extra (or missing) u or two. --Trovatore (talk) 09:13, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Perennial- OK, I thought it would be. I do think you underestimate its importance in attracting a wider readership and institutional acceptance. For example, in a college setting a lecturer in the US could not quote or use most of the textile articles I write- due to the use of the term fibre. Spelling has to be perfect if you are be hassled by management. UK educational agencies decry WP for it lack of academic rigour and the number of errors it contains. (POV:These consultants all share the same single brain cell). They are not looking to a clever compromise. I don't think it insults our editors to use a little bit of markup. In the commercial world- you give the customer what he wants not what you think is good for him.
Alternatively, the lecture notes of the college lecturers would often make good WP articles- so getting them on board would initiate a two way traffic in steadily improving articles.
Next we have the problem of continually reverting ip-editors who -ize- a -ise-. Every time I do it, I feel guilty as it could be their first good-faith edit. I strongly believe that valuable editor start with a little bit of trial vandalism, then a few good faith edits then get a user name and start being productive. Reverting a couple of their first edits will just turn them away. A facility to copyedit it into a tr-template where it does no damage gives them a strong welcome message.
Yes, I can see that you could be uncomfortable in having articles with hidden content- I don't see this as an absolute problem. I am happy that anything I have created is 'loaded with translations' and editor so minded could place the page in a hidden category, or dissenting article creators could place theirs in a opposing category. I already switch between 4 keyboard settings while editing- could this be used to check 4 different renderings of the same markup.
If it is technical feasible could someone code it up so we could do a limited trial. I am just asking. WP needs to continually improve, this may be a useful way forward or not. Be BOLD and see it has any mileage. Any takers? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ClemRutter (talk • contribs) 12:28, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Any RFC to implement something of this sort would fail for the same reason that automatic date formatting was turned off on WP. See Wikipedia:Date formatting and linking poll. --Izno (talk) 13:46, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I agree the date autoformatting is good precedent here - much the same arguments apply. Very limited benefits (there is almost no EN-GB/EN-US difference that isn't easily readable and understandable) as a reward for an increased level of complexity.
The costs are nontrivial. I can't speak to the technical side (though that does feel costly), but it would instantly mean that the edit window was substantially more complex to use, through lots of templates being implanted into the text. I suspect this mess would scare off more new contributors than the alternative of a few reverted spelling "corrections"!
It would also impose a large burden on the community; we can't simply automatically tag words, as we don't want to change titles, direct quotes, etc. Articles would have to be marked up semi-automatedly or by hand, consuming a lot of volunteer time. It would also simply shift a lot of the ongoing disputes about article style to different venues, rather than stopping them - which words should be tagged, which are the "correct" forms for each variant, etc. (I would object to the assumption above that -ize is always wrong in EN-GB, for example). Again, I believe these costs substantially outweigh the benefits.
As to educational agencies challenging Wikipedia over quality, I spend a substantial proportion of my working time talking to these organisations about Wikipedia (they're surprisingly positive). While I usually mention the language variation issue as part of my general introduction, I don't think anyone's ever found it disconcerting or problematic. They tend to focus on the bigger issues ;-) Andrew Gray (talk) 13:58, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
This is one point on a wider spectrum, with totally non-mutually-comprehensible languages on the other end, where we face a choice of whether it's better to handle the translation manually, eg. http://fr.wikipedia.org , not at all, eg. current EN-GB/EN-US ize/ise treatment, or some automated/semi-automated way (client-side, server-side, etc.). These imply some sort of trade-off among end-reader readability (writ large enough to include educational agencies' quality needs), ease of editing (and trust that the template and edit behavior will perform as desired), and server efficiency. MHO is that current edit/revert technology makes the optimum choice for the ize/ise issue the current scheme: the variants in spelling aren't a problem for most readers and I doubt many editors are put off by reversion of a single ize/ise change. That opinion is, however, pretty narrow to this context and the current edit/revert scheme. I would like to see some kind of projection editor that would allow editing at the template-expanded level, then save the server-side version. I think that would ease the burden on inexperienced editors to understand how templates work and hence allow greater use of templates in contexts where the burden would be too great under the current edit-server-side scheme. Wcoole (talk) 19:32, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

str sub long don't work properly

Does any one know why {{Str sub long|Fusão/Central de fusões/Anexo:Página a ser fundida 2; Anexo:Página a ser fundida|24|29}} don't return "Anexo:Página a ser fundida 2" and ommits ":" ? Thank you very much!OTAVIO1981 (talk) 17:37, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I think it's because the colon in "Anexo:Página" and the semicolon after "fundida 2" are being taken as Wiki markup. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:05, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes. What's happening is that {{Str sub long}} puts the string through {{str index any}} 29 times, to extract one character at a time beginning at position 24; it then joins the characters together - but in the meantime, Wiki markup processing occurs, and that colon is processed exactly as if it were the colon at the start of this reply. Here are characters 28-32:

{{str index any|nocategory=|Fusão/Central de fusões/Anexo:Página a ser fundida 2; Anexo:Página a ser fundida|28}}{{str index any|nocategory=|Fusão/Central de fusões/Anexo:Página a ser fundida 2; Anexo:Página a ser fundida|29}}{{str index any|nocategory=|Fusão/Central de fusões/Anexo:Página a ser fundida 2; Anexo:Página a ser fundida|30}}{{str index any|nocategory=|Fusão/Central de fusões/Anexo:Página a ser fundida 2; Anexo:Página a ser fundida|31}}{{str index any|nocategory=|Fusão/Central de fusões/Anexo:Página a ser fundida 2; Anexo:Página a ser fundida|32}}

--Redrose64 (talk) 21:33, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Could change Str_sub_long to insert &#58/&#59 for colon/semicolon: The markup in Template:Str_sub_long invokes Template:Str_index/getchar to extract each character by using a {#switch} parser function, which treats semicolons as bold-headers and colon ":" as colon-indent. Note in the following example, how a #switch function already warps the colon character, before any other processing can occur, and so the #switch totally hoses the colon ":" to become a newline-indent, in the middle of string "xx:zz" as follows:
  • xx{{#switch:colon| colon = : }}zz
  • Result: xx
zz
However, {Str_index/getchar} could be changed to return the 5-character encoded form "&#58;" for a colon (":") and similar &#59 for a semicolon (";"). However, the resultant substring would be further expanded in length to fit the 5-long "&#58;" where each colon would have been. Does that seem acceptable? -Wikid77 (talk) 23:48, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
  • New Str_sub/any to handle colons/semicolons: I have created an entirely new substring template, as Template:Str_sub/any, to handle any character in the string by encoding/decoding special characters. It has the same format as {Str_sub_long} but also handles colons, semicolons, asterisks ('*') and hashmarks ('#'). For the above example:
  • Markup: "{{Str sub/any|Fusão/Central de fusões/Anexo:Página a ser fundida 2; Anexo:Página a ser fundida|24|29}}"
  • Result:  "Anexo:Página a ser fundida 2;"
The template handles the colons/semicolons and other special characters with a null-nowiki tag (such as "<nowiki/>:") because it is impossible to treat a leading colon as literal text when every template is forced to process markup for newline tokens. However, when the result is formatted into a page, then all the characters will appear in the exact locations, as expected. Long term, I am also thinking of a method to retain the pure character sequences by parsing the text with a one-character look-ahead algorithm, likely 10x times more difficult, so I hope the null-nowiki tags will work for now. I am sorry that I did not write the new Template:Str_sub/any years ago, when I first suspected the need to encode/decode the special characters. I guess many of us thought that the parser functions would be improved to provide simple substrings, or that a literal colon ":" could be inserted one day without embedding nowiki tags inside strings. -Wikid77 (talk) 04:58, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Wow! Thank you all for helping. I really appreciate. OTAVIO1981 (talk) 12:51, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Help finding/editing a MediaWiki interface

Sister projects When one searches for a redlink term (e.g. ldskjfoi4j0239fj), there is a box of sister projects that comes up, suggesting you search Wiktionary, Wikiquote, etc. It's in a div id'ed "mw-content-text", a table id'ed "noarticletext", a td id'ed "mbox-text", and a further div id'ed "sisterproject". I figured that one of those HTML tags would translate into a MediaWiki interface named something like MediaWiki:Sisterproject or somesuch, but I was completely wrong. Anyway, where in the interface is this sisterprojects box located? I want to post an {{protected edit}} to add Wikivoyage when it's out of beta. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:41, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Hey, Koavf! This is actually in template space, found at Template:No article text. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:50, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
In fact I suspect it may be MediaWiki:Nocreatetext that produces this. This is what is shown to logged out users. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:58, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Ah, probably. I stand corrected! Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 20:08, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Are you sure? With the uselang=qqx interface-debugging parameter, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ldskjfoi4j0239fj?uselang=qqx shows (when not logged in) that it is using MediaWiki:noarticletext-nopermission, which in turn does indeed contain "{{No article text|nopermission=yes}}", as indicated by Writ Keeper. (Logged in readers get MediaWiki:noarticletext.) — Richardguk (talk) 22:01, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks all! —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:17, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Customised "General Fixes"

I can't compile this module. It says, "Line 26, col 9 [CS1501] InitialiseLogListener ...". What's wrong with it? --MakecatTalk 09:52, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

History ahead of the page

This page's history shows an edit at 09.59 "Search list not updating", which I can read using the diff, and wished to add to.
However, this thread does not appear on the page, nor if I try to edit the page. The most up to date entry on the page and the edit screen is 09.52 Customizing general fixes
I have purged, but still can't get the page to catch up to the history
This comment looks fine on the preview screen but I don't know if it will appear on the actual page, or when ? - Arjayay (talk) 10:21, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Wierd - this diff [10] at 09.59 has still not appeared although I started this thread at 10.21 - Arjayay (talk) 10:26, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
And it won't appear because it has inadvertently been removed in the next edit. Looks like an edit conflict resolution gone wrong. Lupo 11:04, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

VisualEditor/Parsoid fortnightly update - 2012-11-12 (MW 1.21wmf4)

Hey all,

Below are copies of the regular (every fortnight) updates for the past two periods on the VisualEditor project and its cousin the Parsoid so that you all know what is happening (and make sure you have as much opportunity to tell us when we're wrong, as well as help guide the priorities for development and improvement). (Sorry these are late; I forgot to send them as they coincided with the monthly reports.)

VisualEditor

The VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.21wmf3 branch deployment on Monday 29 October.

In two weeks since 1.21wmf2, the team have continued to devote most of their time working on re-designing how the code integrates together and providing clean interfaces between them so new developers can re-use and extend VisualEditor in the future.

Beyond the API work, we have worked to fix a number of serious bugs in the new code from the last release such as not being able to enter text in blank paragraphs in Firefox 41120, as well as copy-and-paste (41055) and cutting (41092) both breaking, a JavaScript error being caused when editing a blank page (37843), and not being able to change the formatting on two lists at once (41434).

A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.21/wmf3 changelog, and all Bugzilla bugs closed in this period on Bugzilla's list.

The VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.21wmf4 branch deployment on Monday 12 November.

In two weeks since 1.21wmf3, the team have spent their time mostly working on finalising the code in preparation for its deployment in December as a test for users. One of the major changes to the integration code is how the VisualEditor can be used; it now can work on other pages than just those in the VisualEditor: namespace. (This is configurable on a per-wiki basis, rather than defined in the code itself.) Amongst other things, this now means that editing the wikitext of VisualEditor: namespace pages can be done by anyone, and is no longer restricted to just sysops (as will be needed for the December deployment). The related bugs surrounding permission checks, filter checks, conflicts, etc. remain, and will be fixed in the next release.

Part of the preparations involved entirely re-writing the user interface code including the way in which commands operate (40896). Another aspect was the addition of "Change Markers" to the data sent to the mw:Parsoid system to reduce any accidental changes that should not happen when users save. Finally, a bug with how the "save page" button worked on old revisions was fixed (41865).

A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.21/wmf4 changelog, and all Bugzilla bugs closed in this period on Bugzilla's list.

Parsoid

The mw:Parsoid team focused on testing the JavaScript prototype parser against a corpus of 100,000 randomly-selected articles from the English Wikipedia. A distributed MapReduce-like system, which uses several virtual machines on mw:Wikimedia Labs, constantly converts articles to HTML DOM and back again to wikitext using the latest version of the Parsoid. For a little over 75% of these articles, this results in exactly the same wikitext, as we intend. For another 18% of these articles, there are some differences in the wikitext, but these are so minor that they don't result in any differences in the produced HTML structure when it is re-parsed. In the production version of Parsoid which will attempt to retain original wikitext as far as possible, these minor differences will only show up, if at all, around content that the user edited. Finally, just under 7% of articles still contain errors that change the produced HTML structure. These issues are the focus of the current work in preparation for the December release.

Most of the work has been on the JavaScript implementation, in preparation for the December release. The automated testing of wikitext->HTML->wikitext now has 75.81% of articles returning exactly the same, and 94.26% with changes that do not change the nature of the page (but still makes changes to the wikitext).

The full list of Parsoid commits is available in Gerrit.

Hope this is helpful! As always, feedback gratefully received, either here or on the centralised feedback page.

Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 19:47, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Video player links to http://corp.kaltura.com/

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T25965

The new video player (for example visible at Dr. No (film)#The introduction of James Bond) contains a small "Kaltura" logo, visible in full screen after the movie stop playing or after clicking the "Menu" button. This logo links to http://corp.kaltura.com/, which rather prominently displays a "Sales" link. This link should either be removed or at least be pointed to the more reasonable http://www.kaltura.org/. —Ruud 21:02, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

It's Bug 23965. --Yair rand (talk) 22:28, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Change in delete screen

Today, when I went to delete a page, I noticed that something is different on the deletion page. The main effect is that I am unable to select a "blank" reason from the top dropdown box. So even though I entered a descriptive reason in the "other reason" box, it still used the reason in the top box, and I didn't see any way to get that to select a blank reason. Does anyone else have this problem? — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:17, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

I worked around it by just deleting the entire dropdown from the delete form with javascript. Everything seems to work properly without it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:31, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Did you try selecting "Other reason", the top option? --Philosopher Let us reason together. 21:59, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
In the latest Chrome for Mac (23.0.1271.64), it is not possible to select anything above the G1 line. Perhaps that is what has changed. — Carl (CBM · talk) 22:50, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Weird, it still works fine for me (Chrome 22.0.1229.94 m 23.0.1271.64 m just updated on Windows 7). At any rate, what you're seeing comes from MediaWiki:Deletereason-dropdown, I don't know where the "other reason" option that I see comes from, but we could always create a temporary "patch" by adding "Other reason" to that page. Have you tested this with your user scripts disabled in case one of them was updated recently? --Philosopher Let us reason together. 18:12, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
I've added an "other reason" option to the General section, per Philosopher's suggestion. I doubt we'll use it much, but better to have it in the way often than to force someone to pick an inapplicable reason. Nyttend (talk) 02:07, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Bold with Windows 8

Ever since I got my new Windows 8 computer, bold links (as on the Main Page) look the same as normal links, and bold titles (on normal articles like Ustya River) look the same as the rest of the text. Is it just me, or is it everyone with Windows 8? It happens on both Firefox 16.0.2 and Explorer 10. Art LaPella (talk) 15:07, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I fixed it by changing my default Ariel font. Of course most Windows 8 users won't bother or won't know. Art LaPella (talk) 21:47, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Can you be more specific? Is the default font in your browser (which?) different in Windows 8 and does it not support bold (pretty rare)? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 22:45, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Bolding didn't work on my Windows 8 computer. I clicked "Firefox", then "Options", then "Advanced" in the "Fonts & Colors" section. It said "Proportional Serif", "Serif Times New Roman", "Sans-serif Arial", "Monospace Courier New". I changed the "Sans-serif" to "Times New Roman", and Wikipedia changed its appearance, including bolding, which started working. On each of two old Windows XP machines (not my own old one, which would crash repeatedly if I tried to start it now) I found the same four choices, including "Sans-serif Arial", but Wikipedia bolding worked there. So the default "Sans-serif" font, Arial, does not support bolding on my Windows 8 machine. If that is rare, no biggie. If that happens to everyone who gets Windows 8, that is a biggie. Art LaPella (talk) 02:27, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
I just found out that I can also make bolding work with Explorer, by checking the "Accessibility" box labeled "Ignore font styles specified on webpages", so it changes to Times New Roman. Art LaPella (talk) 21:33, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Alphabetize Special:ListGroupRights

Is there a way to alphabetize Special:ListGroupRights by the "plain English" names of the rights instead of by their "group"? As an example, "Administrator" is alphabetized by its group name, "sysop", which puts it in a quite unexpected place - and buried - on the list, especially since almost no one calls an admin a "sysop". --Philosopher Let us reason together. 19:01, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Only by changing the code; right now it explicitly sorts by the group name. Anomie⚔ 04:12, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Where is this code? Do you know why it explicitly sorts by group name? --Philosopher Let us reason together. 01:36, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
The code is in includes/specials/SpecialListgrouprights.php. Presumably it sorts by the group name so that the order of things on the page doesn't change depending on the order things are set up in the configuration files. Anomie⚔ 04:51, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

TedderBot down and user Tedder MIA for some weeks

I don't know where else I'd ask this, but does anyone know what happened to Tedder? He seems to have just disappeared. I don't know what WP circles he edits in, so I'm at a loss. Nothing on his talk page indicates he was not coming back. I have emailed him, but have no idea if he's checking his email. — Maile (talk) 02:19, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Which specific tasks do you want restarted? It looks like the code was all open source, so if you try posting at WP:BON you might be able to find a maintainer. Legoktm (talk) 04:41, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Check his talk page. Looks like he's on vacation. It's only been 3 weeks or so. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 11:18, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Oh, my. I had read his talk page and totally missed where he'd said he was headed on vacation. Disregard this post. Everything will resume normally when he returns. — Maile (talk) 13:37, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Peer Review Template Bug

  Resolved
 – Know what to do now technically, thank you. PrimeHunter, Redrose64, Doctree are all righteous.

So a couple users and I are trying to breathe life into the Wikipedia:Africa-related regional notice board/Peer review space. Energy is so far going good, but there is a problem with the template in terms of recommending articles. It says: add peer-review=yes to the Africa noticeboard template, but doing that does nothing. Any help on a workaround, a redesign, or anything that can get that working easily. I looked at other peer review pages but didn't find any help. Thank you in advance for your time! AbstractIllusions (talk) 01:10, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

The instruction "Add peer-review=yes to the {{Africa noticeboard}} banner" was written before {{Africa noticeboard}} was redirected to {{AfricaProject}} in [11] (and later moved to {{WikiProject Africa}}). See the previous code in the diff for how the parameter worked. The parameter is not present in the current template code so it's completely ignored when the template is called. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:29, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
So, if I understand correctly (alas, code is not something I'm good at), I need an Admin to reenter that code at [12], is that the right solution? AbstractIllusions (talk) 16:41, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
You need an admin to edit that template, but the code is different now when {{WikiProject Africa}} uses {{WPBannerMeta}}. Template:WPBannerMeta/hooks/peerreview may help to achieve similar functionality. If you restrict Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:WPBannerMeta/hooks/peerreview to the Template namespace then you can see what other WikiProjects do. Tests can be made at {{WikiProject Africa/sandbox}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:54, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure I got this, could you check Template:WikiProject Africa/sandbox just to make sure that is what I want to suggest at the template page for addition. Borrowed from the films template and novels template, but just want to make sure that this works. Let me know if I am missing anything important. Thanks for all the help. AbstractIllusions (talk) 17:28, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
The normal method is to put your proposed version at the template's sandbox page, which as noted above is {{WikiProject Africa/sandbox}}. This allows direct comparisons to be made using the links which are created automatically. See WP:TESTCASES. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:54, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Cool, fixed above and Template:WikiProject Africa/sandbox here. AbstractIllusions (talk) 18:50, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
The idea of using a template sandbox is to test the code before it goes live. My test [13] failed. If you want to keep the peer review at Wikipedia:Africa-related regional notice board/Peer review#Company rule in Rhodesia then you must change the sandbox parameters. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:00, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Looks like it works if you change the link back to Wikipedia:Africa-related regional notice board/Peer review. Creates a subpage for the review. Try it now in a test page. DocTree (ʞlɐʇ·cont) Join WER 00:53, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

We need to add "archive1" and so on to the links, but other than that this looks like it works now. —Cliftonian (talk) 04:51, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

how open Reference Tooltips?

how open Reference Tooltips?--Qa003qa003 (talk) 03:02, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Special:Preferences - Gadgets. If missing, see the discussion above. --MakecatTalk 03:07, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
消失了怎么回事。。。--Qa003qa003 (talk) 03:10, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

No popups

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T43937
Resolved

Anyone else loose popups within the last hour or so? Or am I the only unfortunate one? --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 21:08, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Are you using the preferences version? If so, try turning that off and adding the following to Special:MyPage/common.js Ryan Vesey 21:12, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
importScript('User:Lupin/popups.js');
The preferences version works just fine for me. Clear your cache? Legoktm (talk) 21:13, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Hmmmm, and My Preferences are no longer tabbed - they just show as one long page (editing in Monobook). --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 21:14, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
And just like that <snaps fingers> all is good again! --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 21:15, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Oh no it's not. Popups have disappeared, as has clock/purge in top RH corner and all the editing toolbars above the edit box.

I tried turning popups off and adding the script, but no change - and yes I have purged, I've even rebooted. - Arjayay (talk) 11:07, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Which browser (and version) is this about, and what are steps to reproduce this? --Malyacko (talk) 11:51, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
XP IE8 Vector skin - I don't understand the question about steps to reproduce it, I'm not trying to reproduce it, it just happened. As explained above I have tried code on js page, cleared cache and rebooted but still no pop-ups, no clock, no editing toolbars. It seems to be ignoring most of the "my preferences" settings. Have tried changing skin, which does work, but doesn't solve the other problems. Arjayay (talk) 15:16, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Not working for me with XP Pro/IE7/Vector. Went so far as a complete reboot, but no dice. Will experiment on Safari and see if that's any different. Who is supporting popups these days, post-Lupin? LeadSongDog come howl! 21:25, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Pop-ups are ok for me, but I can't get the cite tool in the editing toolbar to work. IE9 on Win7, monobook. DuncanHill (talk) 21:30, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
to experience the problem on IE9 (or 8), switch to compatibility mode. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 23:19, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm still "experiencing" the problems without any such switching. Is there an option for not experiencing the problems?

Over 48 hours after my original complaint and Wikipedia is still almost impossible to use - to repeat the known problems:-

There may well be more problems, but as editing is very difficult I haven't come across these

I appreciate that most people on Wikipedia are volunteers, and designing new gadgets, and so called "improvements", is far more interesting than resolving old problems. However, most of my previous problems, such as loosing "My preferences" (and, I suspect, the current problems) have arisen because of so called "improvements".

Clearly, such "improvements" are being introduced without full and proper testing, and are subsequently being allowed to remain, despite the problems they have created.

  • Where can I report these in detail?
  • Where can I object to the introduction of, and require the removal of, poorly tested "improvements" which prevent me, and numerous other Wikipedia editors, contributing to Wikipedia?

Arjayay (talk) 16:37, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

To add to the list of known problems, the script causing minor edit to be checked by default has defaulted. Arjayay (talk) 17:49, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
you reported using IE-8. are you 100% sure you are not in "compatibility mode"? this is the little icon that looks like a broken Matzah in the address line of the browser. if it has a bluish tint, you *are* in compatibility mode. try to press it and see if it solves the problem.
your complaint is understandable, but demanding that all software will only be deployed when it has 0 bugs is not realistic, and will probably never be realized. the best we can do is to report problems - in this case, the report is here: BugZilla:41937. i can't give you timetable for the deployment of the fix, but it seems that the bug was found, identified, fixed, and the patch was (at least prartially) reviewed, so one can hope that the fix will be deployed in the near future.
peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 18:29, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
I've eaten matzos, but never seen one in an address line - nor is my address line blue, bluish or any colour other than black/grey - I tried pressing it anyway, but it made no difference.
Unfortunately, a lot of editors seem to think that submitting a bugzilla report "solves" a problem - e.g. how is the one relating to "my preferences" progressing? Arjayay (talk) 18:54, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
do not be confused. reporting the problem to bugzilla does not "solves the problem". reporting is "the first step to the solution". i did describe exactly what status this problem is at present:
  • problem reported
  • actual bug found
  • patch to solve the bug written
  • patch partially reviewed.
  • no deployment date yet.
as to the broken matzah: i hope the next two pictures will help some:
 
 
if you do not see these icons, try to play with the "Compatibility" entries under the tools menu.
peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 19:36, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

@Arjayjay: If the above compatibility-mode suggestion does not work, try removing the line @import url('http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=raw&ctype=text/css&title=User:Lupin/navpopdev.css'); from your custom CSS at User:Arjayay/common.css. Just a wild guess, but possibly the import is confusing IE into thinking there's a cross-site resource request that it needs to block. Also, have you tried disabling any ad-blockers and checked for malware that could interfere with your javascript functionality? As I say, just throwing out some wild guesses. — Richardguk (talk) 02:00, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions - No, compatability mode does nothing on XP IE8, but my understanding of this mode is that it is designed to help newer browsers deal with older web-formats, not older browsers deal with newer.
However, when tried on a friends machine running W7 IE9, compatability view reproduces the problems exactly:-
  • No popups
  • No clock/purge in top RH corner
  • No editing toolbars whatsoever
  • "My preferences" tabs not working
  • Failure of script causing minor edit to be checked by default
So, as it appears very easy to reproduce, it should be easy to work out when it is resolved, and should have been checked for before implementing whatever change brought this about.
Removing the line of code from User:Arjayay/common.css doesn't work either, but thanks for the suggestion.
Unlike the editor below, I do have a tilde, but fully understand his frustration. My editing has also slowed to a snails pace, as I can't check diffs without loading them, and can't do any complex editing without any toolbars Arjayay (talk) 11:57, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
And to add another problem to the list:-
  • Double click to edit doesn't work
Arjayay (talk) 13:41, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
If one thing breaks in IE, almost everything breaks indeed, you don't need to report each case :) The change will be deployed as soon as can be, which at no time was gonna be any sooner than monday morning San Francisco time. (There are only deploys in weekends if there are issues that very critical, this is a clear annoyance, but basic functionality [read,edit] is still working). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:27, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm old, fa Chrissake, into Shakespeare's lean and slippered pantaloon stage, not mentally but in terms of flexibility to take on board technical digital discussions. Do the people who tinker ever think that there are probably a lot of editors who (a) cannot follow a technical discussion and (b) find from day to day their pop-ups, tilde, markups disappearing so that any edit now has to be done mechanically, and (b) when reading technical advice are hopelessly lost. Since these innovations came in, I never know what options, if any, will meet me on a page I wish to edit, which means I am doing about 5% of the edits I formally did, and probably, since manual copying of brackets etc triples the time consumed, will have to leave the project, unless something like the superbly simple regimen that existed before is restored? Nishidani (no tilde on my keyboard, and no way of signing)

Of course they know this, and that this is not acceptable. Soon there will be new technology in the infrastructure to detect these problems more easily before deploy. It's a huge problem that things like this break all the time, but unfortunately writing this kind of software is very susceptible to making these kinds of mistakes (because there is not enough consistency between the browsers). This new test framework is currently in development. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:27, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Hurrah - I hesitate to say this, as it usually goes wrong, but currently all the above problems have disappeared (except the tabs in My preferences, which goes back to July) - Thanks Arjayay (talk) 15:09, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, it seems to be working even on IE7/XP Pro now (just started this hour).LeadSongDog come howl! 18:33, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Well it was for a few minutes. Now stopped again. ARGHH!!

LeadSongDog come howl! 19:06, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

And it's back. Is this some kind of peekaboo show, or are we supposed to simply hope that things will work? How about a little communication when changing these things?LeadSongDog come howl! 19:12, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
How about a lot of communication, and testing, before changing these things? - Arjayay (talk) 15:34, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
you are correct about testing. "communication" in this case is irrelevant: developers should not communicate "next release has a new bug" - they should never release a version with known regression, and, ttbomk, they do not. the key word here is "known"" it is pretty common that a new release comes with some regressions, but none of them is known at the time of release, and hence nothing to communicate.
as to testing: you are 100% correct here. part of the problem is that many (most?) of the developers do not use windows as their OS, and this causes inadequate testing with IE. i guess one can volunteer to help with testing - look in mw:Volunteer coordination and outreach for details.
peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 19:05, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Category puzzle

I was looking at Category:Canadian disbarred lawyers which I thought was emptied recently, and to my surprise I saw that a recently deleted article shows up as an entry. When I click on the entry it leads to a page that tells me that the article has been deleted. Thanks for any clues on how this can happen (especially to those who can explain without using wiki/techie jargon :-) Ottawahitech (talk) 15:49, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

When a page is deleted, the link tables (which are what the list in the category page is based upon) are not necessarily updated immediately. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:38, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
  • @Redrose64 (who has answered many of my questions over the years), the article in question was deleted on Nov 9. How long does it usually take to have the entry removed? thanks in advance. Ottawahitech (talk) 15:30, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
That I couldn't say. Three days is a bit long though. What I do know would have fixed this (although it's too late now) goes something like this. Immediately prior to deleting a page, the deleting admin blanks out the whole of the page, saves, and then goes for the "delete" button. Saving a page which contains no outward links (whether these be wikilinks, categories or templates) forces all the outward links to be removed from the link tables. Then, the action of deleting does not have to worry about outward links - only inward links (which get changed from blue to red). --Redrose64 (talk) 17:08, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Caching issue? The linked category is showing empty when I check it, as it did for me yesterday. Anomie⚔ 20:36, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Yes, it is showing empty for me as well, today. Ottawahitech (talk) 20:15, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Please log in to view items on your watchlist

Lately I am encountering a lot of occasions where all of a sudden, when I click on a wikilink or try to access my watchlist I get logged out. Has anyone else experienced this or knows, why this is happening? -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 20:33, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

  • @Toshio Yamaguchi, yes - I have experienced similar phenomena on and off for a few days (it is much better today). See some discussi about it. Hope this helps? Ottawahitech (talk) 21:24, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
Well, just happened again, even from another location. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 13:13, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
I have the impression that this especially happens when I use the back button in my browser. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 13:18, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm presently using Safari, instead of Firefox, because it's the only way to get any javascript (see below); and this has logged me out once already. It happened just after returning to the watchlist after viewing a diff, when an error box popped up with a message about an error in the application which needed to terminate, and did I want to tell Microsoft about this problem? Clicking Send error report didn't close Safari as I expected, but returned me to Special:Watchlist - which showed the message "You are not logged in". --Redrose64 (talk) 12:09, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

COinS removed

{cite_web} 35% faster w/o COinS; see below. -Wikid77 17:41, 16 November 2012

WMF/System administrators/developers, specifically Tim Starling, have cut down the citation template by removing COinS from the citation templates, due to continued performance problems with pages. Apparently this was the point where Don't worry about performance, kicks in, specifically If the sysadmins identify a performance problem, they will fix it. For more information see Template_talk:Citation/core#Removing_COINS_metadata. Hopefully soon we will have Scribunto to tackle this problem in a better way. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:19, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I disagree with their removal, at least in the short term, but see Proposal: citation microformat for an alternative, with no such overhead. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:24, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Actually when Tim does such things, we usually have reached the point where we are no longer really 'allowed' to disagree anymore. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:29, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Well editors' right to disagree is inviolate, but their ability to take action on the basis of that disagreement is what's severely curtailed. Scribunto/Lua is indeed the upcoming solution to this issue, and others. Happy‑melon 19:44, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Good point :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:59, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Cite_web/sandbox4 has been the proposed next step

Created as {Cite_web/smart}, but renamed (after 3 weeks of pending-TfD deletion), Template:Cite_web/sandbox4 is proposed as the next step to streamline {cite_web} to run 4x times faster, with a lower post-expand include size (reduced by using fewer subtemplates). Meanwhile, {cite_quick}, which runs 8x-10x times faster, has been used as a safer alternative to only affect a specified article page, rather than all 1.2 million pages using {cite_web} of the 1.6 million using {Citation/core}, and then it was beset with a pending-TfD deletion, which was stopped after only 10 days. Meanwhile meanwhile, {cite_web/sandbox4} can be updated from lessons learned when improving {cite_quick}, such as to support Harvard referencing, all because {cite_web/sandbox4} is a hybrid which combines {cite_web} with {cite_quick}. Meanwhile at test2.wiki, I modified the Lua script version, Module:Citation, to closely mimic the {cite_web} format (and {cite_journal}, etc.). However, because those templates have over 230 parameters, then complete testing is mathematically impossible (as a combinatorics problem, from 230!), and so people should accept a certain level of slightly different formatting, because it is basically impossible to exactly mirror the 24-25 {cite_*} forks' template logic with the one Lua module. Hence, as a caution, I have advised to change the "big 4 cites" (cite_web, cite_news, cite_book, cite_journal) to Lua, at first, and then later upgrade the other 20-21 forks ({cite_video}, {cite_press_release}, etc.). Meanwhile, {cite_web/sandbox4} is still the markup-based path to better performance, to not rely on using Lua quite yet to reformat 1.2 million pages currently using {cite_web}. Hence, there are still 2 better futures: with streamlined markup or with Lua. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:28, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

  • Cite_web or Cite_journal 35% faster without COinS: I forgot to note, earlier, that the removal of the COinS metadata also increases the citation speed by not re-checking the parameter values to format the metadata, beyond also using a smaller post-expand include size which benefits by omitting the metadata (formerly passed between subtemplates). In a recent test of 432 full citations for {cite_book} and {cite_journal}, those 432 entries were processed within 23 seconds, or 19 per second, when formerly, some similar full citations (with publisher, URL and Harvard referencing) would run at slower than 12 per second (now 50% 35% faster). So now, {cite_web} or {cite_news} or {cite_book} (etc.) can format 100 citations in 5.3 seconds, or almost 3 seconds faster (per 100) than before. A major pop-culture article with 200 citations would reformat (or preview) now 6 seconds faster, such as 24 seconds reduced to 18-second edit-preview. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:41/23:33, 16 November 2012 (UTC), 16 November 2012 (UTC)
    Revised: I had inverted the ratio of new/old reformat times, where omitting the COinS data is about 35% faster, but re-adding the COinS would be over 50% slower for {cite_web}. -Wikid77 23:33, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Search list not updating

Hi, I created a new article Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colloidal_probe_technique

but its content does not show up in the search bar. No idea how to fix this. Bubblerock2 (talk) 09:59, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

I have reinstated this thread, accidentally removed by either another editor, or an edit conflict
I initially wondered if Bubblerock2 was just being impatient, as many editors do not realise the search is only normally updated every 24 hours. However, I see that spelling corrections I made on 10 Nov are still appearing in a search for the misspelled word, so the search hasn't been updated since at least then. The search results are also changing sequence, which makes checking a search difficult and is usually indicative of "stale slices" (whatever they are) Arjayay (talk) 11:21, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Created redirect but Google Search also out-of-date: To help users find the new article from 11 November 2012, I created a redirect as the popular scientific term "colloidal probe" to transfer to "Colloidal probe technique" (Google hits=22,700 for "colloidal probe" in many science websites). Fortunately, the wikisearch will match those 2 exact titles, until re-indexed to search inside the article text. However, Google Search is also out-of-date as indexing the userfied version under User:Bubblerock2/~, but that Google-index delay could be an attempt to slow the use of new-article spamming. I will update the article, in case Google checks the number of various editors to determine the speed of re-indexing. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:30, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
We're looking into this.--Eloquence* 07:06, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
It seems to have re-started, but still lists things which were removed on 12 November, so has a lot of catching up to do. Arjayay (talk) 11:45, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for your feedback, this page is now indexed in Wikipedia search as well as by Google correctly. Bubblerock2 (talk) 16:26, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Maintenance reports not updating

I'm used to watching links on Special:SpecialPages, especially Special:BrokenRedirects, where I tag or repair. These normally update every three of four days. I've noticed that none of the working updates seem to have updated since 11/4. I'd post this at WT:Maintenance, but thought I'd get more eyes here (nobody has edited there since mid-year). Mistakenly put this on AN. Is this a bot function, or is there human activity required? BusterD (talk) 23:47, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

For the time being, you might want to use the reports on WP:DBR. I'm not sure why they aren't updating though. I though they were just cronjobs that ran every so often. Legoktm (talk) 23:49, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Will do. Many of the links at SpecialPages never update anymore, but I often use the ones that do. BusterD (talk) 04:40, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
If this doesn't improve please consider filing a new bug report in bugzilla.wikimedia.org under product "Wikimedia" and component "Site requests", and mark it as blocking bug 29782 if possible. Thanks! --Malyacko (talk) 09:36, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Apparently this was happening across the platform in multiple language wikis. Has been repaired. Thanks for the help! BusterD (talk) 04:19, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia in Firefox Mozilla

Wikipedia is looking weird in in Firefox Mozilla — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.183.15.122 (talk) 11:00, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

It looks normal to me in Firefox. Try to clear your entire cache and if it still looks weird then please describe what you see at which page. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:11, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
What, specifically, seems out of the ordinary? TortoiseWrath (talk) 04:46, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Style sheet changes

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T44193

Somebody's altering the style sheet for diffs in Monobook. The font has got larger, and previously-centred text is now left-justified. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:17, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Monobook.css hasn't been touched in a while. Neither has MediaWiki:Common.css. And I'm on monobook, and I don't see anything different... Legoktm (talk) 20:21, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Well unread pages on my watchlist suddenly went bold. (I was clicking it a couple times in a row). So someone changed something... - jc37 20:26, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Beginning at 20:16 the style has been variable. Font is now normal again but the shape and size of the boxes is varying. At one point the two main areas weren't equal-width but as wide as necessary; this meant that if a short line had been significantly extended, the right-hand "half" would be much wider than the left. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:27, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Have you tried viewing a diff between page versions? Completely useless at the moment. Working fine in Vector, but broken in Monobook. Not browser-specific -- tried in both Firefox (16.0.2) and IE (8.0). WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 20:28, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, it had zero formatting. It started (at least) several minutes before the watchlist bolding. - jc37 20:31, 15 November 2012 (UTC)


(EC) Something is wrong. My diffs are definitely screwed up in Monobook, and I had to reload my watchlist three times before the css kicked in. Rivertorch (talk) 20:30, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Yup I'm having errors too now. Legoktm (talk) 20:32, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

oooooo I just edited User talk:Jimbo Wales and after hitting suubmit, the page has no formatting. And same with the edit page/screen when I try to edit this page. apparently not all formatting is gone, since the save page etc buttons, and the scrollbar along the edit window both are still there. - jc37 20:41, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Ok when I hit save page, the formatting came back, and when I clicked edit to note that here, I'm now looking at no formatting again... - jc37 20:42, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Different bits of formatting are randomly appearing and disappearing in monobook with every refresh of a page. For example all collapsed sections are now expanded with no option to hide them and hatnotes have no formatting, previously hatnotes and indentation were the only bits of formatting working. Thryduulf (talk) 20:51, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Just came here to add that something strange is happening with Monobook. It started at exactly 20:10 UTC for me if that helps. First, the watchlist appearance changed; then it went back to normal except that changes are now in bold; now I'm seeing infoboxes on the left of articles instead of the right, and they look different. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:57, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Useless diffs

Am I the only one who is getting unintelligible diffs? Toccata quarta (talk) 20:28, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

See above. Legoktm (talk) 20:32, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Coincidental with the appearance of the first fundraising banner I've seen this year, diffs have gone weird: strange formatting; no highlighting. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 20:33, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

I just had a diff in Vector show up without CSS; bypassing my cache brought it up properly. Windows Vista/Firefox 16.0.2. jcgoble3 (talk) 20:36, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Other pages are changing their styling too. Infoboxes are randomly losing their borders and going hard left; and the watchlist has lost all styling. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:37, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Previously-collapsed tables and boxes and whatever are now defaulting to uncollapsed, making pages like AIV a bit harder to navigate. Who do we tar and feather for this? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 20:41, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Seems to be fine now. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 20:44, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
It's not fixed for me. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 20:48, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Me either. I've temporarily gone over to the Dark Side. It's clearly a plot to assimilate us Monobook holdouts! Rivertorch (talk) 20:53, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, I think I jinxed it. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 20:56, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
My diffs are OK now in Vector and Monobook. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 20:57, 15 November 2012 (UTC) Spoke too soon. 20:59, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Oh, this is fun. The edit conflict screen now has large-type before-and-after diffs, but all diffs are indeed completely useless—no highlighting or anything. Thank goodness for pop-ups. (I dread the day that an interface "improvement" renders pop-ups permanently unusable, since evidently no one is maintaining them.) Rivertorch (talk) 20:44, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
And I spoke too soon. Now pop-ups aren't working, and my watchlist items are bolded. Yuck. Rivertorch (talk) 21:02, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Vector; and the diffs are screwed for me too. 20 minutes ago my toolbar went missing, then came back. Now it's gone again, and presented with the gibberish diff appearance. Jared Preston (talk) 21:05, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
To heck with this. I'm off to watch TV, then I might go to bed. See you all tomorrow. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:08, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Same problem here: No highlighting or formatting on diffs. It's like playing "find the differences between these two pictures". I think Redrose has the right idea. Kafziel Complaint Department: Please take a number 22:28, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, diffs don't show up properly in Google Chrome either. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 01:10, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Also the bars on the page view stats have become invisible. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 01:12, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Scripts not functioning

Not sure if this is related to the above, but all of my user scripts have stopped functioning. I'm using Vector, not Monobook. --auburnpilot talk 21:02, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Same here; pretty sure it is related. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 21:03, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Mine stopped working 5 minutes, (including collapse), but it's all back to normal now. Edgepedia (talk) 21:05, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
I also noticed that when clicking on "show preview" takes you back to the top of the page in the edit box, even if you were editing half-way down the article. Never experienced this before. Jared Preston (talk) 21:08, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Define the problem

It affects (intermittently):

  • English Wikipedia
  • Vector and Monobook, and Modern and all skins
  • diffs
  • article space, Wikipedia: space
  • watchlists
  • scripts
  • Editing interface
  • Gadgets

Please add to or edit this list. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 21:13, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Added a couple. Thryduulf (talk) 21:19, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Added more. It's only English Wikipedia, as far as I can tell. But all skins are whacked. Commons is fine. Wikisource is fine. German Wikipedia is fine. Just the English Wikipedia. — Maile (talk) 21:23, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Mine corrected. I'm in Modern skin, and everything else seems to be OK. — Maile (talk) 21:37, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Seems OK now. This is usually some sort of connection issue where the site CSS is not served. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 21:40, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm currently getting a problem with diffs (no markup) using chrome, but not Explorer 9. Edgepedia (talk) 21:56, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Purged the cache on chrome and it's now working fine. Edgepedia (talk) 22:11, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm getting it still on Chrome, but not Firefox. Purging the cache doesn't seem to help. Adding here in case it helps, since doing anything about the problem is totally beyond my skills. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:01, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Same as Moonriddengirl, problem still exists on Chrome, but not firefox. CMD (talk) 16:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I had this problem with Chrome yesterday. I had to close all pages, clear the entire cache (from the "beginning of time"), then close the browser and restart it before loading any Wikipedia pages. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 18:21, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I cleared my cache for the past week, which is from before the problem, and it fixed it. CMD (talk) 23:35, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I had this problem two days ago (using Safari 5 point something) and Monobook - that was the only skin affected. I had to clear my cache, then do a complete shut-down (not a reboot). After that it was fine. Truthkeeper (talk) 00:32, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
I cleared the Chrome cache as suggested by R'n'B and CMD and now it's working. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 20:56, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
  • I've tried all the recent problems in Firefox 16, Chrome, Opera, Safari and IE 7, and believe that it's working as normal now (or as "normal" as IE 7 can be). Thanks. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:55, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Identify the problem

Seems there have been a lot of people going "me too", and not many people looking at what is causing the problem. I looked into this a few hours ago when I first saw it happening. Since diff colours seemed to be the worst affected, I checked the HTML source to find the CSS for diff colours. For me, they come from bits.wikimedia.org. I loaded that page in my browser, and found it contained errors like "Can't connect to local MySQL server" followed by PHP stack traces, but no CSS. The error message was repeated several times, with a slightly different stack trace each time. Unfortunately, I didn't make a note of the exact error text at the time and I can't get the problem to happen again now... I'll post back if it happens again. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 23:34, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Propose a solution

Multiple urls in a citation?

Hopefully this is the best place to ask this question. I have a citation to an article originally in Newsweek from 1996. I found all the details for the article at a pay site, and added them to the reference. However, I've also found a link to the full article that is free, but has none of the original publication details like author, date, etc. Is there a way to link more than one url to provide the full set of information? My current solution was to include the second url with details as a hidden comment in the citation. —Torchiest talkedits 20:42, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

The publication details of the article do not include a URL (the document was originally published in print). The fact that you happened to find the publication details online is somewhat irrelevant. I would simply list the URL of the full text that is freely available. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 20:52, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Or, if you really need to give two URLs, give two references. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:57, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
WP:Citing sources is the proper venue for this, but as long as we're here: If the print and on-line versions differ then they should have separate citations. If they are essentially the same I generally use |url= for the free or more convenient link, relying on |doi= (if there is one) to indicate the authoritative source. If a secondary url (or isbn or a comment) is needed it can be added following the template. E.g.: {{cite ... }} ([http:... free copy]). Which is pretty much like the following example. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:38, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

I've been using something like

  • Hidden, Anthony (1989). Investigation of the Clapham Junction Railway Accident. Department of Transport. ISBN 978-0-10-108202-0. Available on line at railwaysarchive.co.uk. Retrieved 7 September 2012.

on a number of articles recently. Edgepedia (talk) 22:06, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone for all the good ideas and suggestions. I'd been thinking about trying something like J. Johnson or Edgepedia's ideas, just having an extra link at the end. —Torchiest talkedits 23:14, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
There's no apparent reason why Edgepedia's example can't be given as
this links the title to the URL. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:37, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Missing Gadgets Tab

None of the gadgets I had enable (wikEd, TW, etc.) are working right now and in My preferences I no longer have a Gadgets tab. Is anyone else experiencing this? --Odie5533 (talk) 02:35, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm experiencing this as well. --Webclient101talk 02:40, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I came here to report the same thing. IE 8.0.7601.17154/Monobook/Windows 7. Nyttend (talk) 02:42, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Me too. The gadgets panel in "my preferences" is also missing. Windows 7/Chrome 22.0.1229.94.--MakecatTalk 02:44, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Same here. I noticed earlier that one of the gadgets wasn't working but I thought it was an isolated case; nothing I've added is working right now and the tab is missing for me too. GRAPPLE X 02:46, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Same here. The stuff in my vector.js file is working, though, so it's a gadget issue. Almost like someone accidentally disabled the gadget extension. Windows Vista/Firefox 16.0.2/Vector. jcgoble3 (talk) 02:49, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Actually, Special:Version still lists the Gadgets extension. So it's not disabled, just not working. jcgoble3 (talk) 02:54, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
<me too>Me too. I assume it was a gadget was the keeping the old green diffs, and they are gone. </me too>♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 02:49, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I am also missing the gadgets tab with Safari 6.0.2 on OS X 10.8.2. I believe I noticed something weird going on earlier today, maybe 8-10 hours ago (17-19 UTC). For now, we will have to manually install the gadgets in our skin.js file as Legoktm said. The Anonymouse (talk • contribs) 03:01, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm having this problem as well. Twinkle, HotCat, WikEd, Popups, and other more minor gadgets are all gone. I've asked this question at the hep desk as well. BTW, about the Europe comment below, I'm having problems in the U.S. as well. I have the newest version of Chrome. StringTheory11 (t • c) 03:03, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I've asked in #wikimedia-tech with no response. For the time being, if you install them manually into your skin.js they will work. Legoktm (talk) 02:52, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Based on a discussion with another user earlier, servers in Europe (or maybe users in Europe) experienced this starting about 2-3 hours ago. Don't know what this means. gwickwire | Leave a message 02:55, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Firefox 16.0.2/Vector/Gentoo here, Gadgets not showing up for me from Canada. ⁓ Hello71 02:57, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Same here. TBrandley 03:01, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Same issue for me here in Australia - using Firefox 16.0.2 - Hotcat and gadgets have all stopped working in the last hour.--Chaleyer61 (talk) 03:04, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
The only gadget that's working for me is popups. Otherwise, I'm on the same boat as everyone. Elockid (Talk) 03:05, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
The reason that one is working is because your browser still has it cached. It you hit CTRL R it will no longer work either. --Odie5533 (talk) 03:06, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Making a null edit to the MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition file might cause Gadgets extension to reload. I'm not sure though. I did find this bug, which might be related: [14] --Odie5533 (talk) 03:09, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm having the same problem on my iPad, there's not even a Gadgets bar in my preferences.--Astros4477 (talk) 03:10, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
i need my Reference Tooltips! Gadgets Tab where are you going!--Qa003qa003 (talk) 03:12, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

And it's fixed. Special:Gadgets now has all the gadgets available. --Odie5533 (talk) 03:11, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Tim Starling deleted a corrupt memcached value which has fixed it. Legoktm (talk) 03:13, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

The only gadgets enabled for me are the default ones. All of the ones I had explicitly turned on are now off. jcgoble3 (talk) 03:14, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

  Orz...yes i see .....--Qa003qa003 (talk) 03:16, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Same for me. --Lexein (talk) 03:17, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I am not having that problem. All the gadgets I had enabled previously are still enabled. --Odie5533 (talk) 03:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Gadgets tab, and in-browser gadgets are working. All the Gadgets prefs fine. --Lexein (talk) 03:29, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Did you save your preferences while Gadgets were missing? That might have reset your gadget preferences to defaults. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 00:26, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Not that I remember. jcgoble3 (talk) 01:46, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Well, I got up early in order to check, and I find that: diff styling seems OK again, as does watchlist styling; but other problems have shown up. There is no javascript, so MediaWiki:Edittools shows only the "Copy and paste" version; and the "Search" box offers no suggestions against a partially-entered page title. At Preferences there are no tabs - all the settings are there, but you need to scroll down the page for most of them. Special:Gadgets displays everything listed at MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition, but if you click a section edit link in Special:Gadgets, there is only the section header, no list entries. Some (all?) gadgets shown at Preferences as enabled are ineffective. Special:MyPage/skin.css is sometimes processed, but often is not. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:53, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I've tried five browsers, and found that it varies. Firefox 16, IE 7, Chrome - no javascript. Opera - limited javascript (the MediaWiki:Geonotice.js displays correctly, but the search box does not offer suggestions; there are no gadgets, nothing from Special:MyPage/common.js; and MediaWiki:Edittools shows the "Copy and paste" version). Safari seems to be OK. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:53, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I sometimes can reproduce this, too. May be related to or caused by bugzilla:42192. I notice that when I get that error on a page and then click on "my preferences", there will be no tabs on the preference page. Lupo 12:47, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Has someone asked the foundation for help? What about Bugzilla? I don't know who to ask at the foundation, or how report a problem to Bugzilla. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:35, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

It is mentioned in https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42192 , however above comment by Legoktm states that "Tim Starling deleted a corrupt memcached value which has fixed it". --Malyacko (talk) 14:52, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Working for me on Firefox, still out on Chrome. Or maybe it is working on Chrome, and I just have no idea which boxes I used to have checked on my settings. This is super awesome. Kafziel Complaint Department: Please take a number 15:09, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Not working again for me. One of my tools are missing some features as well. Elockid (Talk) 15:13, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. It doesn't work on Monobook but works on Vector. Sigh. Elockid (Talk) 15:16, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Everything seems normal for me now. Monobook, Firefox, Vista. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:53, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Pleased to report that, with XP, IE8, Vector, there is a Gadgets tab.
It doesn't work of course, because it hasn't worked since 21 July, as reported in this diff [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_%28technical%29&diff=503442043&oldid=503440558} but at least I can admire the, totally useless, tab. - Arjayay (talk) 16:10, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T43792
Arjayay, i succeeded in reproducing, but only in "compatibility mode". there is a bug report about this problem (bugzilla:41792) that was erroneously closed. i reopened it, and linked to your report from July. there is no excuse for this, and the problem *should* be fixed, but for your own use, you can overcome the issue by switching your browser out of compatibility mode. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 19:55, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
One of us misunderstands compatability mode. As explained under #No popups above, my understanding is that it is allows newer browsers deal with older web-formats, not older browsers deal with newer. On a machine running W7 IE9 I can reproduce the problem by turning on compatability mode, as it back-grades the machine, and overcome the problem by coming out of compatability mode. However, there is no change whatsoever, whether using, or not using, compatability on XP IE8. - Arjayay (talk) 13:24, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

HotCat gadget enabled by default

Following the discussion at VP (proposals) I have globally enabled the HotCat gadget for all logged-in users. See also the request at the gadget's talk page.

If this causes any serious problems, feel free to roll back this edit of mine. If you notice non-critical problems, please report them at Wikipedia talk:HotCat. Lupo 09:01, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I predict a lot of categories deleted unintentionally by logged-in users who think the functions might be some sort of expand/collapse function, not an editing function. I've just done it and so did someone else on the same article. Hopefully users will realise their mistake and undo it, as the two of us did. Nurg (talk) 10:35, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
It used to be off by default, and I was glad of it. When I felt like wading into category setting, I turned it on. I sorta think it should be off by default. I'm thinking of minimum surprise and minimum unintended side effects, I guess. --Lexein (talk) 10:49, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I see no "+" or "-" next to categories, so I guess that it's still off for me. I expect that's because I have lost all javascript, as noted above. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:15, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
It should be off by default, and a banner should be provided informing all users of the change. GiantSnowman 13:18, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I noticed that this morning when I logged in. Not a great idea to have it switched on by default IMO. I wondered what it did, so I clicked a minus on a category on this very page, only to find it removed it. If it's not broke, it doesn't need fixing... Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 14:25, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Having HotCat enabled by default can only cause detriment to Wikipedia. It is a great gadget, but leave it to people who know how it works to turn it on. Like Lexein above, I too turn it on from time-to-time – but leaving it off would be a whole deal better to prevent accidents from happening by unexperienced editors. Jared Preston (talk) 15:39, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
  • There were 4 users who "supported" this (see this). I don't think thats big enough consensus to enable something like hotcat for all users. Legoktm (talk) 17:18, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
  • I'm against this. It appears that there's not even a confirmation button; it just automatically saves your edit when you click on the minus sign. Too easy to do by accident — don't throw it at users who don't know it's there (like I didn't). --Trovatore (talk) 05:48, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
    Yeah, that was a problem. It's been fixed, though the fix may be active right now only if you reload your browser's cache. (If you don't, it may take some time. The next time your browser decides to refresh on its own, you'll get the fix anyway.) Lupo 14:41, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
    If one knows what it does, though, not having a confirmation can be fine. It's more when the thing is thrown at everyone that that becomes an issue... -— Isarra ༆ 16:04, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
turning it on by default for all registered users seems to me like an exceptionally bad idea. doing so based on 4 (!) "support" votes in the proposal page seems excessive - one does not do something so radical (adding a single-click editing option that does not go through the editing screen and does not require a "save" button to every registered user, without so much as some "what does it mean" message to first-time users *is* radical) based on 4 "support" votes in a not-extremely-visible page.
however, the reason i write here is because i noticed that the proposal, that was approved by these 4 "support" votes, claimed that this gadget is enabled by default on pl wiki. i peeked in pl wiki, both with my account and as anon, as well as looked in the history or pl:mediawiki:gadgets-definition, and as far as i can tell, this claim is 100% false. this is not, and never was, enabled on pl wiki by default. i have no idea whether or not having a false claim part of the proposal has any implication on the validity of the "vote", but i wanted to note the fact that this false claim was there. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 16:57, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
"HotCat [ResourceLoader] | HotCat.js" is clearly present there. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 17:13, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
But the [default] keyword is not, meaning it is not enabled by default for all editors. — Edokter (talk) — 17:19, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Ah, I see. My bad then, apologies for jumping to conclusion about the use there. I was sure I read that it was default there before, but I must have been wrong. Anyway, it was just something I mentioned in one of my vote comments, not the proposal itself. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 17:22, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
then i am probably a complete idiot. i absolutely see it mentioned in the proposal itself. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 03:54, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Mhm. Ok, I am blind those days. I guess I did. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:39, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

To all people who complain about the woe of people using it - the discussion was announced in numerous places; IIRC it was an RfC and was mentioned in the Signpost report for ongoing discussions. Few people participated. But the few who cared voted to try it out. So unless you have data to show mass abuse have begun, the Cassandra option was not the one predicted nor chosen by the community. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 17:13, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Announcing my POV, I am a registered editor who suddenly discovered I had this tool and wondered where it came from. I am definitely a content person, not a technical person, when it comes to Wikipedia. Lately, I have been doing quite a bit of editing of pages with various categories associated with US military aviation.

I find the tool very handy (better for removing than adding categories). I would hate to lose it now that I've got it. Since I'm not technical, I wouldn't have gone looking for this tool. On that basis alone I Disagree with those who suggest that the addition be reversed.
As to the complaints that not enough editors commented to reach a consensus, It seems to me that the proposal was posted at the most appropriate place (although it might have been posted elsewhere and linked here -- I didn't even know there was a Village Pump (Technical) until a couple of weeks ago. There was an opportunity to comment.
I Agree that the early version made available, which made the edits automatically, was problematical. I was surprised that the result (deleting a category) occurred immediately when I first used it. The fact that this gave no opportunity to not add a page to my watchlist, mark the edit as minor, or enter a reason for the edit (for example deleting because WP:CAT More specific category in article). This no longer occurs, so I Disagree that it remains a reason to reverse the decision.
I did not have a problem with mistakenly deleting categories, although I Ageee this was a problem initially. When I saw the new little plusses and minuses appearing, I hovered over them, so I had an idea what would happen when I clicked on them, so things worked for me. Now that the bot takes you to an edit page, there is an opportunity to cancel, so I Disagree that it remains a problem.
I Agree that adding the bot with an inadequate announcement was not the best way to implement it. Is it possible to put an announcement concerning what is done on each Wikipedia Project's Talk Page? That would reduce the surprise and possibly attract more comments to determine what the consensus really is.
Apologies to all for bloviating.--Lineagegeek (talk) 18:03, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Re your comment "I would hate to lose it now that I've got it" - if the addition were reversed, HotCat would still be available to you, at Preferences → Gadgets (it's under "Editing", described as "(S) HotCat: easily add, remove, and change categories on a page, with name suggestions (example)") - it's been there since 21 March 2008. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:43, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

As a user who is not constantly editing categories and does not want to see the ugliness of a bunch of +/-s all over the category line when reading articles, is there a way to turn this off at least on a user-level? —Mr. Matté (Talk/Contrib) 19:23, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, at Preferences → Gadgets, deselect "(S) HotCat: easily add, remove, and change categories on a page, with name suggestions (example)" and click Save. Sorry, I should have responded to this post when I responded to the one immediately above. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:48, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Monobook changes might be trouble

I created new essay WP:PASTE to preserve the Monobook copy/paste symbols, but now I am concerned that removing those from the Monobook skin and using the drop-down Insert menu (with Javascript?) might be very disruptive to users who depend on the current format of the edit-mode screen. For instance, when the check-box "minor edit" was removed from the create-screen, then the tabbing between buttons changed from 5 to an annoying 4. Also, someone else complained that the "minor-edit" checkbox was being correctly used to create minor redirect titles, not possible to mark as "minor" any longer. Any thoughts about restoring the "minor-edit" checkbox to Monobook skin? Or stop other proposed changes? -Wikid77 (talk) 15:55, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Sorry what? The minor checkbox works fine for me in monobook. In fact, I'm marking this edit as minor. Legoktm (talk) 16:31, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
And of course I would forget to actually check the box. Worked fine on the Sandbox (diff) Legoktm (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:35, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
He means the checkbox is gone when a new page is created. It is still available when editing existing pages.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); November 16, 2012; 16:52 (UTC)
That was removed from all skins in MW1.19. If you disagree with that change, you can search bugzilla for anything relevant or perhaps add a new bug.
And nobody should be depending on a current format; if you are using some sort of automation, that is what the API is for. -— Isarra ༆ 17:10, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Two thoughts.
  1. Gnome and KDE went off the rails when they put a pretty UI ahead of utility- can we remember that the editor is primarily there to generate and edit content- the ribbons and bows and tight CSS are secondary to that.
  2. Editors who have poor eyesight do use the keyboard and rely on muscle memory; a change in tabbing order slows destroys an otherwise perfect edit
My personal bugbear is that over on Commons I have a totally different set of edit tools and tabs in Vector and Monobook- and for different tasks I have to change skin to get relevant work done. Can we please go back to good programming practice- soak test the changes and repair everything that has been freshly broken before doing a release. --ClemRutter (talk) 17:37, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
creating a new page should never be considered a "minor edit". leaving the checkbox there allows people to do the wrong thing, so removing it can't be *all* bad.
you are correct that every change to the UI such as tabbing order can be disruptive, but if the corollary is that nothing can ever change in the UI, the end result is complete stagnation, which is (IMO) inferior to progress with occasional disruption.
of course, it is also very easy to go in the other direction and in the name of progress remove all stability and change the !@#$% thing so frequently, that users will never be able to rely on anything to be where they expect it to be.
so there is a balancing act here, between stability and progress. within this balancing act, my personal opinion is that eliminating the ability to mark as "minor" an edit that creates a new page is reasonable.
peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 19:21, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Divhide

It appears that {{Divhide}} has stopped working (at least for me in Monobook). It used to generate a show/hide tag for collapsible boxes, but doesn't do that any longer. I'm not seeing any changes to the template, could changes elsewhere be impacting it? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:39, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Note: I went to Special:Preferences to try other skins. In Monobook, that page now appears as a single large page, no longer tabbed sections as it once had. When I tried the Vector skin, the Divhide tag still worked and the Special:Preferences screen was back to having tabbed sections. So, it appears these are further symptoms from the changes to the Monobook skin mentioned in other sections above. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:46, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
...and now all is working again. Although not sure if it's an intermittent issue, or someone changed a setting back somewhere. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 17:51, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
There have been lots of problems in Monobook skin, many of them affecting javascript-reliant features, see #Style sheet changes et seq. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:16, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Courses extension now up and running

The Education Program extension for structured course pages for classes is now live. (It's actually been deployed for a few weeks, but unrelated platform updates introduced a critical bug that it took us a little while to fix.) Per the RfC on using the extension, it's now available for use by US and Canada Education Program, as well as whatever other courses the community chooses to use it for. See Special:SpecialPages#Education for the various features and lists of courses.

Admins now have the ability to create (and delete) institutions and courses, and to assign the user rights for "course coordinators" (non-admins who will be able to create and remove courses, mark people as instructors or volunteers, and use the rest of the extension features), "online volunteers" or "campus volunteers" (people helping out with courses, such as Online and Campus Ambassadors), and "course instructors".

I'll be beta testing it with one of the current Education Program classes, Education Program:University of Guelph-Humber/Currents in Twentieth Century World History (2012 Q4), as well as building up the documentation for course pages.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 17:55, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Hotcat not working

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T44192
Resolved

Hotcat has stopped working for me; XP - IE8 - Compatability View off, I can see various discussions above but am still none the wiser...Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 20:33, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

IE on Win 7 gives me a warning that the page had errors. From the location given, which is in the site startup scripts (line 0, col 529, which is on a call to mw.getConfig()), I conclude that this must be the same cause as in bugzilla:42192. Nothing to do with HotCat, although it does have the effect that, since script startup in general fails, HotCat amongst other things doesn't work. Lupo 21:13, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I'll be patient and wait for a fix then, Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 21:17, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Right now, I am in Chrome on Linux, and HotCat has appeared for me without my choice. Is it checked in your gadgets list? Chris857 (talk) 21:19, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
It appearing is something else, see #HotCat gadget enabled by default above. But I guess if your browser reloads its cache, it'll be gone again due to this bug 42192. Lupo 21:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
In fact, it has stopped working for me, too, in Firefox. Firebug indicates in the console indeed "TypeError: mw.getConfig is not a function", so it's definitely bugzilla:42192. I'll go mark it as high priority. Lupo 21:22, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

A fix for this issue has been deployed - please let us know if the problem persists. Max Semenik (talk) 23:09, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Special:Statistics interwiki links

Special:Statistics (and its sister pages in other languages) have no interwiki links. Would it technically be possible to add those? Navigating to the individual language versions of Special:Statistics via e.g. Wikipedia:Statistics is imho clumsy for an at-a-glance comparison of the raw statistics tables. --87.79.111.52 (talk) 04:18, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

English special page names, including Special:Statistics, work if you type them into any language version of any Wikimedia Foundation project (and probably just about any other site running MediaWiki). For example, de:Special:Statistics takes you to the statistics page in German, even though the German title is Spezial:Statistik. Graham87 09:51, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
"Complete list of Wikipedias" at the bottom of Special:Statistics is a link to meta:List of Wikipedias. The "Edits" column there is a link to Special:Statistics for that language. You can view the page in English by manually adding ?uselang=en to the end of the url. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:42, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
mediawiki:statistics-footer does not propogate parsing metadata to the special page - so no, not currently. The special page in theory could be changed, one would have to file a bug (and convince a dev) to make sure a change. Bawolff (talk) 20:40, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Ah, ok. Thanks for all the replies. I don't think I'm going to file a bug report since there is no pressing need or anything. But at least this question is now on the record in the VPT archive. --78.35.255.194 (talk) 04:43, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Search now broken

There have been problems with the search index lagging behind for about a week, as reported above #Search_list_not_updating
Search within articles has now totally broken (XP IE8 Vector) The pop ups of article titles including the term still appear, and still work, but a search for articles containing the search term produces no matches - even when I know there are dozens. Arjayay (talk) 13:03, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Appears to be working again - albeit still out of date - Arjayay (talk) 14:15, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Not working here (Firefox 16.0.2 Xubuntu Monobook). A search for "Sarah" notes that there is a page named "Sarah" but there were no results matching the query. Thryduulf (talk) 15:41, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Concur, it's disappeared again (XP IE8 Vector) - Arjayay (talk) 15:45, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
IE7 and IE8 users: Could you please describe the exact steps for this? On which exact page (I assume en.wikipedia.org)? Do you press the Enter key, or do you click the magnifier symbol with a mouse? Does clicking the suggested text that appears below the search box work to complete the search? This might be https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=42082 which is already fixed in the codebase, but not yet available (deployed) on the Wikimedia servers. This still doesn't explain why Thryduulf sees that with FF16.0.2 though... --Malyacko (talk) 17:14, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) That's strange. A search for "Sarah" takes me directly to Sarah. (Windows 7; Firefox 16.0.2; Vector)  Hazard-SJ  ✈  17:16, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Looking at the Server Admin Log, "restarting lsearchd on all eqiad hosts" and seeing messages like "PROBLEM - Lucene on search1016 is CRITICAL: Connection refused" on the wikimedia-operations IRC channel I assume that this is the reason for these current problems. --Malyacko (talk) 17:43, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Currently working again - but to answer User:Malyacko's earlier questions - yes en.wikipedia.org
As explained above, the pop up links worked, both in the box with a magnifying glass and the alternative options below. However every search for articles containing the search term produced no matches. The same search [15] during the brief re-appearance this afternoon prduced 106 or 107 matches, and it now produces 90. Arjayay (talk) 21:26, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Wikisearch working again, multiple times: Seems to be fixed, and updated for current articles, as a wikisearch for "colloidal probe" reports "Results 1–20 of 46 for colloidal probe" which includes new science article "Colloidal probe technique" from 11 November 2012. Searching for "Sarah" (click "[Search]") reports 54,718 for Sarah. -Wikid77 (talk) 23:44, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Why Can't I Edit This Section

When I click the edit button for "Origin of the Wisdom of the Golden Rule" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rule I get taken to the edit page for the section underneath "Antiquity". Why is this happening? The section I'm trying to edit also disappears when I'm logged in or use a proxy. I had no problem editing it yesterday. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADNTfJ6vStM&feature=youtu.be — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.176.135.86 (talk) 19:28, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

You can't edit that section because it doesn't exist, having been removed from the article yesterday. That you are still seeing it at all means the old version is still showing in Wikipedia's server cache. Editors and readers look at different caches IIRC, which is why this only happens when you are logged out. Someguy1221 (talk) 19:43, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Note, i referenced this comment on bugzilla:38879 as it seemed relevant [There is a good chance they are separate issues though. Honestly intermittent issues with squid purging aren't that uncommon]. Bawolff (talk) 20:27, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Nanoscale printing of Wikipedia

I had a request today from someone who works in hard-copy nanoscale printing on metal. He works on projects in the spirit of the Long Now Foundation which tries to approach humanity on a 10,000 year scale. He wants to print ALL of English Wikipedia onto a small nickel plate using a chemical process that his company developed. A hard-copy backup. In order to do this he wants a .pdf file with every article on English Wikipedia. I pointed him towards data dumps and he said .xml files didn't work for his process as he needs to convert images of article pages to a bitmap format. Print to .pdf is not available for all of English Wikipedia (capped at 500 articles per book); also .pdf files would include images, not all of which are cc licensed. I'm not sure exactly where to point him, but as this project seems to be of particular cultural, historical, and technological interest I wanted to pass along his information. I'm in touch with him directly and can contact him if anyone has ideas. Ocaasi t | c 03:32, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

That sounds like a really cool project. On the technical side, is he aware how large a .pdf file would be (even if it just included articles, no images)? The raw text of just articles is 8.8GB compressed (I'm looking at enwiki-20121101-pages-articles.xml.bz2), which would be much much larger as a .pdf. Is there another way we can give the text? Legoktm (talk) 03:41, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
He is aware of the size of such a .pdf and he's willing to purchase hardware specifically for this project if necessary. Ocaasi t | c 05:38, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Exporting something like that would need to be done from the backend; however, one could potentially generate an automated process to download information as PDF, either utilizing the 500-page book generator, or by converting the printable versions of each article individually. Of course, working with over four megapages tends to cause problems. TortoiseWrath (talk) 04:56, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Trying to export Wikipedia 500 pages as a time is a horrible idea. It also doesn't need to be done via the backend. You could easily take a database dump, strip all the xml, add nice page headers, and export as a pdf. Legoktm (talk) 05:04, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Sure, but where are the images going to come from in that scenario? The need for images breaks all sane ways of attempting something like this. TortoiseWrath (talk) 05:08, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
  • A couple notes.
    • This has already been discussed a few years ago. Main thread: [Foundation-l] Long-term archiving of Wikimedia content (I see that it was the Long Now foundation even then).
    • I don't understand, do they really want to print images as well? I'd suggest to start with text only, it would already be quite a big achievement (it's something like ten billions characters). In any case, I suppose they have some specifications on how many images they could include and at what resolution?
    • Why is copyright of the images a problem? Do they want to distribute this thing?
    • Why PDF? If raster images are needed, isn't some other format possible/better?
    • If they also want infoboxes and so on, the best approach would probably to ask/hire the Kiwix developer Kelson to produce an HTML backup as they want it, and then use some software (which must exist) to convert HTML to raster format.
    • wikitech:Offsite Backups needs editing.
Nemo 13:21, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

What would the point of this even be? This isn't like working on stable versions for a reliable CD-ROM version; this would just be a data dump of whatever crap happens to be out there at some moment in time. At any given moment in time there are dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands, of instances of blatant vandalism and glaring inaccuracies in some articles, somewhere out there. Why would we want to preserve that? Sounds like everyone is too focused on whether we can do it, rather than whether we should. Kafziel Complaint Department: Please take a number 05:37, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

It's proof of concept with regards to his company's technology, for one. I believe the thinking about our increasingly digital civilization is that much of our data might be unrecoverable thousands of years from now. So, this is a thought-piece, at the least, and potentially a useful intentional artifact that would be durable on timescales we rarely consider. Anyway, he's invested in making this happen, so I think the why is settled for him. Ocaasi t | c 05:44, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
The why may be settled for him, but I'm saying helping him with his proof of concept isn't our problem. Let on that something like this is going on, and there will be a flood of sneaky vandals trying to get their name into the most obscure articles out there. And we'll be rewarding them for it. Brilliant. Kafziel Complaint Department: Please take a number 05:52, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
What I'm saying is, printing something like this would make a hell of a lot more sense. Kafziel Complaint Department: Please take a number 05:58, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
It's a proof of concept. There's no reason it needs to be practical. Having a copy of the CD selection that can only be read with a scanning electron microscope doesn't really make that much more sense than having a copy of the entire Wikipedia, anyway. It probably makes less sense, since it would be, like, one square centimetre, which would make it easy to lose. ;)  — TORTOISEWRATH 17:22, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Ocaasi, thanks for opening up this discussion. I am the guy that is looking into printing all of Wikipedia onto metal discs. Even though the articles are not all perfect, we believe they should be documented in an analog system that is not dependent on relatively arbitrary, proprietary software. Imagine how many people thought that the stone cutter of the Rosetta Stone was wasting his time (this is a blatent simplification, of course). Without him, we would not have a lens through which to view the later Ancient Egyptian history. And because of the monumental effort of everyone that contributes to Wikipedia, a physical copy to cement its contents in metal for the next several thousand years is not much to ask. These contents are far more interesting than the actual contents of the Rosetta Stone. At an average of two pages per article, we are estimating the final product to total 270 discs, each about 1mm thick. The purpose is in part to contribute a permanent record for the Wikimedia Foundation and in part to show the world what we can do. There is no other financially practical and efficient way to achieve this other than with our technology. A previous technology of ours would take 10,000 times longer. We are not looking to have the Wikipedia staff do all the work in providing us with the database in PDF format. I only asked because of the current feature that allows for a PDF to be created out of a single or multiple articles. We are not wedded to any particular format and it may be that the images do not have to be included if it is impractical. In the end, what we need is TIFF images or BMP images, and we can get that from a PDF. What we do not have access to is a way to organize the English database in some sort of arbitrary method such as alphabetical. Kafziel, you bring up several interesting points. What exactly is the Wikipedia Version 1.0 Torrent Project? (this) jakubsvec001 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jakubsvec001 (talk • contribs) 17:09, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia 1.0 was a project to collect stable versions of good articles that could be put on DVD and used in schools. I think they were first distributed in 2007. You can learn more about the contents at http://schools-wikipedia.org/ and you can download the current 2.9GB torrent here. Plenty impressive enough for a proof of concept, and the content is actually reasonably reliable. Kafziel Complaint Department: Please take a number 19:53, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
First, there's no such thing as a "Wikipedia staff".
What do you mean that you don't have a way to sort the English database alphabetically?
If you need raster images, then your problem is parsing the pages, which is what MediaWiki does: producing a good HTML dump is not trivial. On the contrary, there's plenty of tools to produce images from the HTML. There's already an HTML dump. Without images, compressed, it's 10 GiB.[16]
I doubt the PDF export is quick or practical enough for such an amount of content (it's too slow, as you can try yourself; it includes print optimizations which are probably useless to you; it includes things you're not interested in; it prints images in a resolution which is surely pointless for you, making the PDF horribly huge)... but you can ask the PediaPress guys if you want to try.
Finally, your guesstimate of the size of Wikipedia seems extremely rough, so you could at least try Wikipedia:Size in volumes if you don't want to read the links I added above. Regards, Nemo 18:17, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Some time ago, we conducted a few experiments to evaluate how much effort it would be to create a printed version of the whole english Wikipedia. There are quite a few technical issues that still have to be solved, but a rough guess would be about 3 months of rendering time. Of course, rendering could be parallelized to a certain extend, but creating the pdfs for complete en.wp is still an enormous effort. It's a very nice problem from a technical perspective, but it requires a lot more thinking when you want to make this usable (and useful) for a human being. Ckepper (talk) 19:18, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

I can do that and everything is already there. I used to deal with whole dumps of Wikipedia to generate ZIM files for Kiwix. Here, as example, a demo file of the "Wikipedia" article in Korean. Unfortunately, I do not own the hardware necessary to do it for the whole Wikipiedia in English (but no problem for the others). Kelson (talk) 20:02, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

I am not a technical person and I do not know exactly what questions to ask. For this reason, I am looking for a better perspective on this problem.
Kelson, I think that this is what we are looking for. Ultimately, we need something that can be converted into a TIFF file. A png file may work but I'll have to check. What would you propose would be the next step to first organize all the data alphabetically, then convert each article into an image file in batches of 10,000 or 50,000? From there, we can feed them into the printer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JakubSvec001 (talk • contribs) 20:49, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
It's perfectly possible to get files in TIFF format, although this really needs more mass storage than PNG. I suggest a meeting on IRC or a phone-call to discuss about the details. Kelson (talk) 12:54, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Did you see my reply to your question, above? Kafziel Complaint Department: Please take a number 18:46, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, Kafziel, I did. Sorry for not replying directly to it. I like the idea of using a verified Wikipedia. That kind of effort is monumental in its own right, but it is just not big enough. In analog images, this would not even cover half a disc. Personally, I enjoy the fact that Wikipedia is not necessarily 100% accurate. I particularly like your quote from a previous article about Stephen Hawking being a "dirty lying cripple" or something like that. Jakubsvec001 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jakubsvec001 (talk • contribs) 19:27, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

This is a great and important project; I'm glad you and your team are pursuing it, Jakubsvec. Working with a kiwix dump and with Kelson sounds like an excellent idea. I would recommend including images if you can, including any 'warning templates' at the top of articles to provide context, and adding an index and page numbers for finding things within the collection. This is only a bit more post-processing and makes the result vastly more usable. – SJ + 20:43, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, SJ. Jakubsvec001 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jakubsvec001 (talk • contribs) 20:45, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Coordinates display

Moving the coordinates display to the upper right-hand corner of the window was a bad move. Please move it back where it was previously. In the Modern skin, the coordinates display is illegible because it is displayed on a dark-blue background. •••Life of Riley (T–C) 18:12, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Weren't they always in the upper right-hand corner? That's where I have always seen them. Someguy1221 (talk) 19:46, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
The coordinates were not previously at the very top; they about an inch down—on the gray bar of the Modern skin. Someone moved the display to the very top of the page. •••Life of Riley (T–C) 20:04, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Weird... I changed the top from 5em to 0.1em because it was to low, now it is to high. I think some banner CSS is interfering with coordinates positioning. Changing to 6.1em now. — Edokter (talk) — 10:56, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Now it is good again. Thanks for the fix! •••Life of Riley (T–C) 17:17, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Reflinks in the user Toolbox

This is not new, nor related to any recent changes or other issues. For at least the last year, I've been trying to get Reflinks to show up in my Toolbox. The User Script looks like it should. My preferred skin is Modern, but, one at a time, I've tried it in Monobook, Vector and Modern. I've also tried loading it on the common.js But I never see it in the Toolbox. Right now, I've got the User Script in all four of those .js I'm on Windows XP, Firefox 16.0.2 - what am I missing? Is Reflinks not supposed to be in the Toolbox? — Maile (talk) 23:44, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

You have spaces instead of newlines in all your .js files. Copy-paste the code from User:Dispenser/Reflinks#User script to User:Maile66/common.js if you want it to work in all skins. There should be 8 lines and not one long line. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:36, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
More specifically, any instance of // causes the rest of that line to be treated as a comment (indicated by the syntax highlighter as green italic text) and thus ignored. Since the line begins with //, the whole thing is treated as a comment; you must insert a newline to end the comment and return to code. jcgoble3 (talk) 00:45, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Ta! Da! What you all were looking at WAS a copy and paste of the code from the above Reflinks page. For some reason, when I clicked on Save Page, it made it all one line. (Same thing happens if I insert an infobox into a page) I inserted manual carriage returns to break it into separate lines, and it works now. Thanks for the help. — Maile (talk) 00:52, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
It sounds like your browser has a problem. Does it happen when you are logged out? Does it happen when you preview a copy-paste, or only when you save? Do you insert infoboxes by copy-pasting code from the documentation page? PrimeHunter (talk) 01:10, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm never logged out of Wikipedia. My browser has multiple issues with Wikipedia, since the changes that happened sometime last Spring. 2012 This is but one of the issues. And my Firefox has undergone multiple upgrades since the first occurrence, so it doesn't matter which version of Firefox I've used. This happens on the Preview. If I save without a Preview, it still happens. Have a look at User:Maile66/Person in the Edit screen. I did that as a copy and paste from Template:Infobox person - the version under the "Blank template with basic parameters". Copied. Pasted. Saved. Conversely, if I copy an infobox from an existing article, replacing the info therein to suit my article, this collapsing never happens. It's when I copy from a Wikipedia Template page.
PrimeHunter, I think you hit on something. I logged off and did this copy and paste on a different blank page. It pasted exactly like it was supposed to and did not collapse the infobox. — Maile (talk) 02:00, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
And since I know the next question is "What gadgets do you have checked?", I unchecked wikEd. The infobox pastes and saves perfectly without that checked. So, that gadget is the culprit. — Maile (talk) 02:04, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
I have tried to enable WikEd and now it also happens for me when I copy-paste something from a rendered page with pre tags, for example the below two-line example. In my tests it only happens for pre tags. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:18, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
This is line 1.
This is line 2.
Yep. It's probably the pre tags. I've only experienced this with infoboxes and with the Reflinks user script. When I looked at that User Script in the Reflinks Edit window, it has pre tags. If I copy the script without the pre tags, and paste it, then it looks exactly like it should. — Maile (talk) 02:35, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Then this should be reported at User talk:Cacycle/wikEd. Note that Cacycle can sometimes take a while to respond to bug reports, so don't expect a quick fix. jcgoble3 (talk) 04:46, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Bit belated, but I sleep by the British clock. Anyway, it's not crucial that there be eight lines - only three of the newlines are critical, and as noted above, they are the ones at the ends of the lines containing the end-of-line comment marker //. If a line does not contain the // marker, the following line may be joined to it, so you could lay it out as follows:
// Add [[WP:Reflinks]] launcher in the toolbox on left
addOnloadHook(function () {addPortletLink( "p-tb",     // toolbox portlet
 "http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/webreflinks.py/" + wgPageName + "?client=script&citeweb=on&overwrite=&limit=30&lang=" + wgContentLanguage, "Reflinks"  // link label
 )});
which is four lines. The presence or absence of the leading spaces is also stylistic. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:08, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, but as noted by Jcgoble3, this probably should be reported as a wikEd bug. I've unchecked wikEd as a gadget for the time being, to do some other testing of my own. I've been having some funky issues the last six months or so, and I'm thinking they might also be wikEd. I've posted about them before here on the Pump, and got no response. I need to do some citation editing and multiple other things before I can prove or disprove the connection to wikEd. Off the top of my head, the most annoying issues are:
  • Spacing (inconsistent) - either one too many, or one not enough - seems to trigger malfunctions on insertions. To correct that, I either have to delete an extra space and put it up against the word to the left of it, or add an extra space. If one of those methods works, the other doesn't. And there's no consistency on the why of it.
  • Inserting a link from the icon on the Toolbar - sometimes it works, sometimes it's the Spacing issue
  • Inserting a citation from the drop-down Template menu in the Toolbar (Provelt is not affected by this).
  • Sometimes it works - sometimes it's the the Spacing issue
  • Sometimes it jumps and inserts the citation to the left of the "==" at the section heading
  • Paste - sporadic issues with Spacing, one too many or one not enough
  • Template:DYKproblem - This template has pre-tags. Spacing issue and consistent. This is put on a user's page to refer back to a nomination that has questions. Ideally, it automatically adds the section header and puts a message below that. In reality, it erroneously adds a space or two to the left of the section header. The work-around is to insert the template. Then insert my cursor in front of the template, even though I see no space there, and hit the Backspace twice.
  • Deleting characters/text (consistent issue) by tapping the keyboard "Delete" key . The first one or two deletions happen where they should - then it jumps to elsewhere on the page and deletes in another place.
There are possibly more, but these are the ones that have been irritating and happening on everything I've been editing for months.— Maile (talk) 16:55, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I have just posted this entire thread at User talk:Cacycle/wikEd to get the dialogue started on the bug. — Maile (talk) 17:10, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

You can read the results for yourself on the above wikEd link. There will not be a bug ticket on this one. It's easier to just walk away from wikEd and not look back. — Maile (talk) 21:17, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Just to be clear, I don't want you to think that wikEd isn't going to get fixed here. The user who responded there is just a talk page stalker; Cacycle (talk · contribs) is the creator/maintainer. He will respond eventually. jcgoble3 (talk) 00:00, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank you. I thought it was some kind of an odd reply, considering I was reporting a bug. Especially the part about them complaining it was hard to read everything. I've posted on Cacycle's talk page, and alerted Cacycle to that post via email. Wikipedia holds new adventures at every turn. — Maile (talk) 00:54, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Toolserver

Status: the database server was restarted, tools should be working. Please report again if they are still down. Please update this line as needed.

Is there a problem with the toolserver? A number of tools I use that reference this do not appear to be working at the moment.--Traveler100 (talk) 13:01, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Same here. All of my favorite tools don't work. Was just about to start a section like this. Hope it isn't those severe server problems or replication lag like last time. 13:13, 18 November 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Narutolovehinata5 (talk • contribs)
UTRS is down too - database problem. Secretlondon (talk) 13:25, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

No idea yet what the problem is, but it has been announced to toolserver-l [17] which is where it needs to go. I can confirm there is some issue. We'll have to wait for the toolserver admins to diagnose it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:42, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

The database server was restarted around 14:30UTC. This has restored some tools, at least. Please comment again if other tools are still down. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:46, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Steam turbine

What is the hardness of thrust collar and for integral shaft with collar,how it is made ie specially hardened or not ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aakkan (talk • contribs) 19:01, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

  Have you tried the Science section of Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialise in answering knowledge questions there; the page you are on is only for technical discussion of Wikipedia. I hope this helps. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:22, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

What's going on with links to categories?

Today I noticed that the links to categories at the bottom of article pages now show parenthesized "+", "-", and "±" symbols. Puzzled as to what they might be for, I clicked on one, thinking that it might change the way the categories are displayed to me on the page. To my surprise, I found that I had just deleted the link to a category on that page, in a way that actually edited the page, which everyone would now see. I immediately reverted the edit.

So it looks like a new feature has been rolled out. Has anybody really tested it? Or are we millions of Wikipedians all guinea pigs in some unannounced trial run? This seems to me a dangerous feature that can cause serious problems. First, and most obvious to me, it is too easy for casual readers to end up deleting category links all over the place. You are not even asked to confirm the deletion. The page just reloads automatically with the change, which you might not even notice (and casual readers might not even know how to revert the change). There is not, to my knowledge, any other editing link that works this way.

Also, since there is no explanation of those symbols, readers are just going to be confused. It may have been thought that use of the symbols as links to edit the page would be intuitive, but I do not find it to be so at all. And I have been editing here for a long time.

Can anyone give me a clue as to what is going on here? I tried to find on some talk page a discussion of some project that this new editing feature might be part of, but couldn't find anything.

Thanks for any insight anyone might be able to provide. --Alan W (talk) 00:16, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

It sounds like you have turned on "Hot Cat" in your preferences. I don't think it's become standard. Risker (talk) 00:20, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick response, Risker. This is odd, though, since I haven't changed my preferences in months, except for, I think, certain search defaults. I will now try to find that preference and disable it. --Alan W (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:25, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
It in fact has been turned on by default. I don't think there is a way to disable it though. See the section above #HotCat_gadget_enabled_by_default. Legoktm (talk) 00:34, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
I just did disable it for myself, in my preferences. Seems like a dangerous feature to have turned on by default, though. Thanks for pointing me to the section on this page where it is discussed, Legoktm. I'll take a look over there now. --Alan W (talk) 00:44, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Bad change to the user creation log

RESOLVED
The problem has been fixed. Users with no contributions will have their "contribs" link display red. Michaelzeng7 (talk) 02:51, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T43793

Today, I noticed that the user creation log ([18]) now shows the "contribs" link for newly created users in blue. It used to remain red until the editor had actually edited. I find this really disruptive in terms of vandal fighting as you can no longer instantly see which new accounts have actually edited. Is there someway to undo this change on an account level? Does anyone know why this change was done? Or, is it a bug? If it's not a bug, I sure wish the developers would discuss upcoming changes here before fielding the software. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:23, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Looking at Special:ListUsers, it looks like this changed everywhere. Legoktm (talk) 19:35, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Indeed. So how do we go about getting it undone? --Hammersoft (talk) 19:36, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
It's not a change to thoses lists, but a change to how Special:Contributions works - see for example Special:Contributions/Totallymadeupuser_whichIdontthink_existsatall, which is presently a bluelink. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:24, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
  • I join in asking that this change correct to the previous manner. 76Strat String da Broke da (talk) 08:03, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Indeed. I used to fight vandalism this way as well. Those new users that edit constructively though their contributions are welcomed, and those than vandalize are warned. Those without contributions are red, so that the users who have edited are highlighted. Michaelzeng7 (talk) 01:51, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

At this point, bugzilla:41793 has been fixed. Thanks to User:Hoo man for writing the patch. It hasn't been pushed to enwp yet, hopefully that will happen soon. Legoktm (talk) 02:09, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

  Michaelzeng7 likes this. Michaelzeng7 (talk) 21:48, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

New interwiki prefixes coming

The new interwiki prefixes 'y:' for Wikivoyage and 'd:' for Wikidata will soon be enabled. All articles and redirects with titles starting with "Y:" and "D:" will have to be moved or deleted, ideally before the interwiki prefix becomes enabled. See:

— This, that, and the other (talk) 01:22, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Not sure what we can do with the redirects (I guess we'll just lose them?), but I've moved the D: articles, and I'm about to start with the Y: articles. Nyttend (talk) 03:37, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Should someone make a bot to update all of the wikilinks that will soon cease to function? Someguy1221 (talk) 04:21, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
This is a reminder that there has not been similar accommodation for a namespace prefix "U:" representing "User:". The June 2012 discussion is archived at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 38#U:.
—Wavelength (talk) 04:10, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I might point out that your proposal has nothing to do with this discussion, which is about interwiki links. — This, that, and the other (talk) 09:02, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Good point. We didn't delete Project:Mersh just because it's in WP: space; we keep it as a redirect to the article. The thing is that we can easily navigate around from WP: space to mainspace, but we can't easily navigate around from en:wp to Wikidata and back. Nyttend (talk) 12:23, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
When species: became an interwiki prefix for Wikispecies, the article "Species: The Awakening" first disappeared completely and was then moved around and ended at Species – The Awakening. A link at Species: The Awakening has been deleted twice.[19] The link was apparently not explained so the Wikispecies editors may not have known the purpose. I have recreated it with an explanation. We could try the same for the few D: and Y: titles when those wikis open. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:02, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps soft redirect? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:12, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Wonder what will happen to this diff? Saving here so that I'll perhaps remember to check it. I'd agree with the idea of soft redirects. Nyttend (talk) 20:18, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Eventually, someone might wish to update these.
—Wavelength (talk) 01:49, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
True, but the new interwiki prefixes are not enabled just yet... — This, that, and the other (talk) 07:00, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Turns out that, for unknown reasons, the interwiki prefix for Wikivoyage is actually voy: not "y:". This was changed after I made the request. So in that respect it was a false alarm. However, d: is now working. — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:38, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Now that the d: prefix is live, I've been trying to work out how to clear up the incoming links to Wikipedia pages that formerly started with D:. I've worked it out and will fix these links over the next few days. If anyone wants to help, here's how:
  • Start at Special:PrefixIndex/w:D:, which lists the redirects that used to be valid before the new prefix went live. (The w: stops the D: being treated as an interwiki prefix.)
  • For each redirect listed, go to Special:WhatLinksHere/w: followed by the redirect title. E.g. Special:WhatLinksHere/w:D:tour 1997 Live at Southampton.
  • For each page listed, edit the page and change any links using the D: prefix.
  • If you are unsure to what the link should now point, the move log should give you a hint. Go to Special:Log/move and type w: followed by the redirect name in the Target box.
  • I have not been able to find a way to view the redirects themselves or their history. Attempts to use the w: trick here give me the "Bad title" error. It may be possible to view the latest revision of the redirect if you know its revision ID, but I don't know how to find that without the history of the redirects. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 00:50, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
The redirects have now been deleted, so the Special:PrefixIndex link above will no longer find anything. It looks like all the incoming links have now been fixed anyway. Thank you to whoever did this! – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:57, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Toolbox upload link

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T44263

Hola,

How come the "Upload file" link in the toolbox still points to Wikipedia:Upload, which is a redirect to Wikipedia:File Upload Wizard? Kinda messy. Can we get $wgUploadNavigationUrl changed, or is there something holding us back from that?

Thanks, — Hex (❝?!❞) 14:57, 15 November 2012 (UTC).

Yes please file a bugreport in the Wikimedia site configuration section. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:33, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Done. — Hex (❝?!❞) 14:00, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

{{IPAc-en}} does not support HTML entities

{{IPAc-en}}, unlike {{IPA-en}}, can produce mouseover texts, but its disadvantage is that it does not support HTML entities. When HTML entities are used in the template it returns "unsupported input". For example, {{IPAc-en|1=&#x00E6;}} returns /[unsupported input]/ but without entities: {{IPAc-en|1=æ}} returns /æ/. Please make any necessary changes to this and any other related template so that entities can be matched. jfd34 (talk) 07:07, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

They can be added to {{H:IPA}}. If you don't want to do it yourself, you might want to make the request on the IPAc-en template talk page, since they're not likely to see it here. — kwami (talk) 19:03, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

User:Jfd34/filterlog.js

This is a script which I made per a request by Sole Soul. It adds a page history link after the page name and a filter lgo link after the user name, but please find out why it does not redlink the user's "contribs" link if they have not made any edits (I have tested it on [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:AbuseLog?wpSearchUser=Hahalol1010 this log] of a user who has zero editsand it did not work). jfd34 (talk) 07:18, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

This is probably related to #Bad change to the user creation log, above. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:08, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Way too slow

Attempting to post this from secure server, since that's the only way I can open a page: normal server is taking several minutes to load even the simplest pages, and attempted saves are just timing out after about 5 min. Is it a Europe problem, or Miami? It's certainly not my internet connection, since I can get to other sites just fine. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:56, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

no noticeable performance problems here. suggestion: disable JS on your browser and try again. if speed is acceptable without JS and unacceptable with, then you'll know where to look for the culprit... peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 20:01, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
later addition: saving the page *does* seem a bit slow, but no problem with opening, even large pages. peace. קיפודנחש (talk) 20:03, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
We're experiencing issues with our bits (static resources) cluster in Europe right now. We've temporarily routed all requests for these resources to the US which should help alleviate the issue for now.--Eloquence* 20:05, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Ah, that would be it, I did get several messages like "Waiting for bits.wikimedia.org" (or something like that). Load times are returning to normal, not sure about save times yet though. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:12, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

SVG rendering problem

As reported on Talk:Shellsort#Graph of number of operations, thumbnails generated for File:Shell sort average number of comparisons (English).svg suffer from a weird error: the label in the upper left corner, which reads “log2N!” in the original svg, is rendered as “log!2N”.—Emil J. 16:18, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

There was a bug in rsvg that caused this, but we upgraded to a fixed version a couple of weeks ago. Are you still seeing it? On what thumbnail sizes? - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 23:40, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
As mentioned on the talk page, the problem is gone. If it was fixed by the rsvg update, it might have been an old thumbnail lurking in the cache (I purged the cache before reporting the problem, but apparently this takes quite a while to propagate).—Emil J. 14:45, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Could shorten preview-notice

  Resolved
 – Enacted at MediaWiki:Previewnote per consensus. King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:32, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

During a typical edit-preview, the preview-notice has become so wordy that it can wrap and look sloppy, or unprofessional, for a typeset encyclopedia. I am thinking the preview-notice should be shortened, but do any automated programs or bots depend on the current wording? I propose the following change to a shorter message:

  • Currently:
    Remember that this is only a preview; your changes have not yet been saved! → Go to editing area
  • Proposed:
    Note this is only a preview; your changes have not been saved! → Go to editing area

The shorter form drops 3 words (omits: Remember, that, yet), but I am unsure if some automated software looks for those words when parsing an edit-preview HTML page. Anyway, whenever the preview-notice wraps onto 2 lines, it looks very sloppy (or unkempt) within the clean boxlines of the Monobook or Vector skins. The wrapping might be related to a user's window being set a few pixels more narrow than usual, so the wrap margin should also be set to align under the first word of the preview-notice message. Any thoughts? -Wikid77 (talk) 15:55, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Looks good to me, and if anyone is screen-scraping the preview message instead of the API, they should have their software broken. Legoktm (talk) 16:39, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Support change. Don't see why this minor thing for more clarity shouldn't be done. Rcsprinter (state the obvious) @ 17:41, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

"Yet" does mean something, whereas "Note" is unnecessary. I'd go for:

This is only a preview; your changes have not yet been saved! → Go to editing area - Nurg (talk) 21:00, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

  • Support Nurg's version.  Hazard-SJ  ✈  04:03, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Support Nurg's more gramatically-correct version. I have to ask, though: what percentage of Wikipedia editors would actually keep their browser window small enough for the message as it is now to wrap? Mine's about a third the width of my screen... Just curious; less clumsy is more betterer. TortoiseWrath (talk) 05:03, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Support Nurg's version; crisper text is always better. Graham87 10:03, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Support more terse is better. Not sure that only is required and I think that two sentences is better:
This is a preview. Your changes have not yet been saved! → Go to editing area
I might even suggest:
This is a preview.
Your changes have not yet been saved! → Go to editing area
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:52, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

Correct department name in "Template:Infobox French commune"?

I recently had the following page moves done:

  1. Loire --> Loire (department)
  2. Loire (river) --> Loire

In other words, the Loire article is now about the river, not the department (reasoning at Talk:Loire (department)).

So far, so good, and I was simply plodding through many articles that linked to [[Loire]], updating links to [[Loire (department)|Loire]].

However, articles on Loire department communes (example: Aboën) contain "Template:Infobox French commune", which uses "Template:INSEE". Unfortunately, this pulls the department name from the INSEE, an agency of French government. This means the department name shown for communes in France cannot be edited. Thus in the case of articles on communes in the Loire department, the infobox shows the department as [[Loire]] which is about the river, not the department.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to get the infoboxes to have [[Loire (department)|Loire]] for these communes?

--A bit iffy (talk) 12:57, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Templates cannot pull data from external sources. Department names can be edited. Fixed with a piped link.[20] PrimeHunter (talk) 13:11, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
Yup, that's fixed it — many thanks! It was doing my head in trying to track it down! You know, I had been puzzled by the statement "This template links to the English language version of the website of INSEE (www.insee.fr/en)" on Template:INSEE which implied to me that Wikipedia was reliant on this external source. Should the statement be amended, or am I misreading it? --A bit iffy (talk) 13:43, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
"links to" is the correct and common term. I don't see any reason for a change. And {{Infobox French commune}} doesn't even use Template:INSEE. Template:Infobox French commune#region and department says: "The region and the department to which the location belongs are retrieved using the (required!) INSEE code and a subtemplate." I edited the subtemplate: Template:Infobox French commune/regdept. "the (required!) INSEE code" refers to the number given in the INSEE parameter to {{Infobox French commune}}, for example INSEE = 42001 for Aboën. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:06, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
OK, thanks.--A bit iffy (talk) 14:36, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Links at the top for logged in users

I just noticed that the naming of the links at the top (to my own talkpage, preferences etc) have changed. Now I don't really want to complain about this, as I don't think it's worth the energy, but out of curiosity, why does it it list Preferences and when hovering over the link it says Your preferences, but for the sandbox it uses the first person possessive determiner instead of the 2nd person. Why this inconsistency?

PS: If you think I should find something else to worry about, I agree. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 13:04, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

The code for the sandbox gadget at MediaWiki:Gadget-mySandbox.js says 'Go to your sandbox', but you say 'Go to my sandbox' in User:Toshio Yamaguchi/common.js. You are free to change it. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:18, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, I didn't remember that I am using that code in common.js. I changed it to have the link named Sandbox and the hover text Go to your sandbox. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 13:28, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Please can you unblock me on Wiktionary

wikt:User:Coin945

I don't go on Wiktionary very often. Lately I've used my talents solely on Wikipedia. However, 3 years ago I worked on a few articles (and one Wikisaurus articles). I also got rather carried away, and seeing how many interesting words there were out there, I started adding loads of words to the wikt:Wiktionary:Word of the day/Nominations page. Unbeknownst to me, this was seen as "Intimidating behaviour/harassment", and also as copyvio because the list of words was apparently nicked from a "list of interesting words"-type site. Honestly, it was so long ago I can't even remember. The main point is that after hopping back onto Wiktionary after all this time, and finding that I had actually been blocked, I was rather shocked and confused, and as i can no longer edit on that project, I came here, to ask to be unblocked.--Coin945 (talk) 18:00, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately Wikipedia admins are not necessarily Wiktionary admins, and vice versa. According to the box at the top of your contribs, you were blocked by wikt:User:SemperBlotto. It appears that your block prevents you from contacting them by email from Wiktionary; but have you tried contacting the same user SemperBlotto (talk · contribs) at their Wikipedia talk page - or even emailing them from Wikipedia? --Redrose64 (talk) 18:28, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Link in history says user does not exist

I recently noticed a comment here by an editor who does not have a link to his user or talk pages in his signature. I intended to go post a note on his talk page inquiring about it. However, when I click on the talk link in the page history, I arrive at User_talk:Ɱ, which informs me that "User account "Ɱ" is not registered." I get the same result when copying his username into the search bar. Obviously since the user in question is editing and showing up in the page history with a username, he has a registered account - but I can't figure out how to contact him. I also can't see his contributions list. However, both user talk and contribs show up normally in pop-ups when I hover over his username. Any ideas? Nikkimaria (talk) 12:59, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

The user concerned is ɱ (talk · contribs) (see Unicode Character 'LATIN SMALL LETTER M WITH HOOK' (U+0271)), which is not the same character as Ɱ (talk · contribs) (see Unicode Character 'LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M WITH HOOK' (U+2C6E)). --Redrose64 (talk) 13:10, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Hm, when I UTF8-encode the ɱ letter to %C9%B1 on my Chrome browser and I hit enter it first displays the correctly decoded letter but then just sporadically seems to turn it into its upper-case counterpart, failing to load the user page. I do not see this behavior with Firefox so it might be a Chrome bug. Nageh (talk) 13:37, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
It's apparently an inconsistency in the system to automatically capitalize the first letter in usernames. Some servers capitalize ɱ (LATIN SMALL LETTER M WITH HOOK) to become Ɱ (LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M WITH HOOK). Other servers don't capitalize. It only works without capitalization. The valid talk page url is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:%C9%B1 (small letter). Some servers keep that url. Other servers redirect it to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:%E2%B1%AE (capital letter) which gives 'User account "Ɱ" is not registered.' For example, I get the error message on mw44, but mw47 works for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:07, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Interesting, thanks. The user name is quite a problem. I clicked the diff given in Nikkimaria's first sentence above, and it showed an edit by the user. Clicking the user's talk link in the diff happened to work, but clicking the user's contribs link failed (because it was provided by a different server which was confused about "Ɱ"). The user has already been politely asked to provide a link in their signature (per WP:SIGLINK), in a comment dated 14 September 2012 on an old revision of the user's talk, which can be seen using a URL with PrimeHunter's trick of percent encoding the UTF-8 bytes: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:%C9%B1&oldid=521774934 (also on 30 August 2012, as can be seen here). Johnuniq (talk) 01:46, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

LOL! I just left the user a message about their signature, with a link to this discussion. I previewed the edit, and it was good (it must have been the correct page because I saw a custom edit notice for the user). When I clicked 'save', my message ended up on the wrong page (at User talk:Ɱ which is at this URL). I have to go now, and would be glad if someone could delete my page and try putting the notice on the correct page. The current situation (where editors cannot communicate with the user) needs to be fixed. Johnuniq (talk) 01:56, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I have redirected User talk:Ɱ to User talk:ɱ but even if this helps (not sure about that), it only solves a part of the problem. At least it's the only account at Special:ListUsers/ɱ (bad servers show wrong accounts for that link), except for a blocked account with no edits. Other wikis and namespaces may have the same problem. For article space, ɱ and Ɱ are different pages (but may be treated as the same page on bad servers). They both redirect to M with hook so the confusion means less here. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:09, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Well, I can see the user talk page now - still can't see contribs, and hitting "edit" on talk goes make to the other character (ie. the redirect page). Nikkimaria (talk) 03:35, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
The redirect seems to have helped some, as I was able to leave a message there pointing the user to this discussion. We'll see how he/she responds. Also note that it breaks email as well, as Special:EmailUser/ɱ gave me the error message "Non-existent or invalid username for recipient." jcgoble3 (talk) 05:08, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
The redirect sometimes works, sometimes not, it seems to depend upon the server; when it doesn't work it goes right back to itself, just as if WP:VPT consisted of #REDIRECT [[WP:VPT]]. The solution as I see it is that ɱ (talk · contribs) should be renamed to something beginning with a letter universally recognised as uppercase; this might even be Ɱ (talk · contribs). I don't know the details of WP:CHU - for instance, does it need to be filed by the person whose name is to be changed? Can we force somebody to change their name if they don't want to? --Redrose64 (talk) 10:50, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for notifying me of this discussion, jcgoble3. I am aware of all of your problems, as I myself have all of them and more, especially because I primarily use an unstable version of Chrome called 'Canary', which refuses to accept certain characters occasionally. When working on my userpages, I more often than not end up on the corresponding userpage of this - Ɱ (talk · contribs) and occasionally have created userpages for Ɱ (talk · contribs) as an editor mentioned in an above comment. I sincerely apologise for inadvertently causing much confusion. The only foreseeable solution would be for me to change my username, a switch that I am willing yet not ready to undergo, having not yet thought of alternatives.--ɱ (talk) 15:02, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

On MediaWiki, usernames should not start with a lowercase letter; an initial lowercase letter should automatically change to uppercase. Hence, changing ɱ to Ɱ is correct; when this doesn't happen, it's a bug. Because of this bug, User:ɱ was able to create their account with a lowercase initial letter. When MediaWiki does the "right" thing, it is impossible to communicate with User:ɱ or see their contributions. User:ɱ will need to rename their account before MediaWiki can be fixed to consistently change ɱ to uppercase. The bureaucrat that renames User:ɱ might need to try several times, depending on which server handles each attempt to rename. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:10, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I have been unable to communicate with this user; Now i see why. I think a user name change is essential, now. DGG ( talk ) 16:42, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, it's just as bad for you as it is for me. I can't seem to access my talk at all.--ɱ (talk) 17:04, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Portal "on this day" to immediately update edits/additions

Hi all. I edit the Portal:Pittsburgh/On_this_day a lot and noticed that for non-logged-in viewers the "On this day" page updated edits or corrections lag by a number of days/weeks (also possibly for even logged in viewers the page also lags but the specific days and within the portal doesn't). I edit the individual date pages but is there a certain edit or code I should be placing on the master article (the link I listed above) to ensure that both logged in and non-logged in users can see immediate updates? I ask because I have discovered Wikipedia is being cited with this data now sometimes very soon after any additions. Thanks! Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 22:41, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

The page needs to be purged using the forcelinkupdate=1 option. Legoktm (talk) 22:48, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks much! Not familiar at all about that, there is a button or dropdown option or is there a code I could add to the main page? Please be a bit more specific. Thanks. Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 01:46, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
The forcelinkupdate option is mentioned in the automatically generated documentation] for the API. It might be easier just to do a null edit on the "on this day" page after you've finished updating the page for each day. Graham87 09:55, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks all I think this solved it! Market St.⧏ ⧐ Diamond Way 05:46, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Transcluding two templates within a template that expects one

Is there a template that takes two (or more) templates as parameters, and outputs the transclusion of them, one after another? For example: {{Foo|Bar|Baz}} = {{Bar}}{{Baz}}. That way, any template which normally takes one template name (without curly brackets) as a parameter, could instead be made to conveniently accept two, without modifying its normal behaviour. If none exists, are there any obstacles to me making one (along the lines of {{{1|}}}{{{2|}}}{{{3|}}} etc.)? TheFeds 21:11, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Is User:Toshio Yamaguchi/Template with 2 parameters what you have in mind? For example, placing {{User:Toshio Yamaguchi/Template with 2 parameters|{{Citation needed}}|{{Better source}} }} on a page produces the result you can see in my sandbox here. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 21:52, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, that's essentially what I was looking for. However, what's the purpose of the second colon in {{#if: {{{1|}}} |: {{{1}}}}}? Isn't that just indenting the templates (as opposed to invoking a main namespace transclusion)? And if you take it out, doesn't it reduce to {{{1|}}} (if not null, transclude parameter 1; else do nothing)? TheFeds 08:52, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, these colons aren't needed I think. I used the code of another template as the basis and that one included the colons, that's why they ended up in this template. I removed the colons. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 08:59, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Btw., if you want to have the template be placed in template namespace, just let me know and I can move it for you. You can also move it out of my userspace to wherever you like yourself. If you do, remember to move the documentation as well, as I think only administrators have the ability to automatically move the subpages of a page if the parent page gets moved. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 09:09, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Err... Where and how is this supposed to be used, exactly? Anomie⚔ 00:26, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.)

I'm getting a lot of these lately. Can someone who knows the proper channels alert the WMF blokes who handle the servers? Quite a few nodes appear misconfigured. Yes reloading the page a few times using preview fixes it, but it's quite annoying when writing any wp:math formulas. Tijfo098 (talk) 23:32, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Please give an example with a saved edit. That error message can be caused by a misformatted formula. In [21] I see one of two error messages depending on which server I hit:
"Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \textrm{sinc}(x)=\frac{\sin⁡(\pi x)}{\pi x}"
"Failed to parse (lexing error): \textrm{sinc}(x)=\frac{\sin⁡(\pi x)}{\pi x}"
A copy of the bad formula:
Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle \textrm{sinc}(x)=\frac{\sin⁡(\pi x)}{\pi x}}
The fix [22] was to remove a non-displayed character:
 
The editor who added the character said "I was verifying the Math Tex syntax on an online Tex editor which messed it up."[23] Are you using a tool like that? PrimeHunter (talk) 23:55, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
No, I'm not using any tools. Next time I see a missing texvc error in preview I'll save it like that for debugging purposes. And the formulas are not misformmatted because simply hitting preview again makes the error go away. Tijfo098 (talk) 00:04, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
It didn't take long. I succeed on my first attempt. See User:Tijfo098/sandbox7; image.Tijfo098 (talk) 00:05, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. Yes, this isn't the bad character issue. I see the problem in your saved page but never when I previewed it dozens of times. I'm in Denmark, Europe. There were cases where I got "Served by mw58" for both the saved page and a preview, but the error was only there for the saved page. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:35, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Possibly related bugzilla:41188 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:25, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
See Surjunctive group for an example in article space.
 
parses, but
 
 
don't parse at first in preview - but then they are fine once the edit is saved (and then still fine in subsequent edit previews).
 
takes at least two saves before it will parse, but
 
parses first time. I don't see how any of this can be due to a problem in the formulae. Gandalf61 (talk) 10:26, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
And again at Socle_(mathematics). For what its worth it was Served by srv285 in 0.135 secs.--Salix (talk): 17:46, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Confusing deletion rationale

See the deletion rationale here; what can this mean? I don't have a clue what's meant. Nyttend (talk) 04:21, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Somebody's annoyed at being warned about something that somebody else did five years ago. The thing to do is not to delete the page, but wrap old messages in {{Old IP warnings top}} and {{Old IP warnings bottom}} as described at Wikipedia:WikiProject user warnings/Usage and layout#Archiving warnings for anonymous users. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:48, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Maybe something went wrong with the logic behind the "new messages" banner in this case, and the banner didn't cancel itself as you'd expect? -- John of Reading (talk) 07:51, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Popular articles

1)Is there a way to find the most popular articles of the wiki, with toolserver?

2)Is there a way to find the most popular articles of a specific category? Xaris333 (talk) 14:50, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Not exactly what you were asking for, but see my WP:5000. The intro paragraphs describe the data source. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 16:11, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Thxs for the answer. I would like to find the most popular articles of the greek wikipaideia :) But thxs. Xaris333 (talk) 16:37, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
The dataset I use has information for all projects; I just parse only the en.wp portions. If you or a project peer knows Java/SQL, I'd be happy to provide the source code I use in order to store and query the statistics. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 18:08, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Quicker ways to resync diff listing

I know this is not the venue to change the way the "diff" function operates, but the more we talk about it, then the clearer the ideas can become. Currently, after an inserted line is detected, diff looks ahead for the next entire line which matches the old revision, otherwise a line is considered yet another inserted line. To keep diff on-track, a user should avoid changing the line following a new insertion; otherwise, diff gets confused and thinks the changed line is also new. Instead, if diff would just look at the first 12 characters of the line ahead, then it could re-synchronize the differences, in detecting that an inserted line was followed by an old-but-changed line.

  • Currently: The diff algorithm resyncs to entire old lines:
  • This is old line 1.
  • This line is new.
  • This is old line 2 but changed to seem new.
  • This is old line 3.
  • Instead: The diff algorithm could resync the start of old lines:
  • This is old line 1.
  • This line is new.
  • This is old line 2 but changed to seem new. ← Here, only the extra is noted.
  • This is old line 3.
  • Resync bracket: The diff algorithm could have a "bracket" (such as 12 characters) to check for a re-match with older lines:
  • This is old line 1.
  • This is old line 2 but changed to seem new.
  • This is old line 2. ← The first 12 characters match, to resync.
  • This is old line 3.

Once a line differs in the first 12-15 characters, then it could be considered a potential insertion line, to further inspect the rest of the line. Does anyone know if such a bracket-style resync has been tried here before, as a resync to the prefix 12-characters of an old line, rather than demanding that the entire next line match (after an inserted line) to the old revision of a page? I think the resync of a diff could be made better. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:03, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Special:WhatLinksHere

Hi has there been some change to the Special:WhatLinksHere function? Previously you could use the following link "Special:WhatLinksHere/<article>?namespace=0" to get a list of those article pages that linked to <article> now it does not select the appropriate namespace but adds the ?namespace=0 into the article name box. Keith D (talk) 19:01, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

When written as an internal link it goes to "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Main_Page%3Fnamespace%3D0" which should be "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Main_Page?namespace=0", it's the same for other special pages and if it's a change then probably to the way internal links are processed. It may be intentionally like this as it makes it easier to use with pages containing symbols such as "?" in the title - the link with the namespace option can be created (although it appears as an external link) with the fullurl function. Peter James (talk) 20:52, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

I am using from lefthand menu via User:Jsimlo/shortcuts.js with an entry in monobook.js of
shortcutsAddLink ( 'Hull links', 'Special:WhatLinksHere/Hull?namespace=0');
that is what I am trying to get working again. Keith D (talk) 21:13, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
The difference in behaviour is apparently caused in [24] by replacing
function shortcutsMakeLink (name, url)
..
na.setAttribute ('href', '/wiki/' + url);
with
function shortcutsMakeLink (name, pageName)
..
na.setAttribute ('href', mw.util.wikiGetlink( pageName ) );
The former version kept a query string like ?namespace=0 unchanged in the url parameter. The latter version renames the parameter to pageName and encodes it so it doesn't work with a query string. Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation shortcuts doesn't mention whether query strings are supposed to work. The documentation apparently assumes the function is only called with page names. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:42, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Is there a reason for the change and can it be reverted without causing problems? Keith D (talk) 13:21, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
The change means for example that pageName can contain '?' as in Who is to Blame? That would fail in the url version (unless the caller encodes it with 'Who is to Blame%3F'). A proper solution would be a function with two separate parameters for pagename and querystring like in {{Querylink}}. Then pagename could be encoded and querystring left alone. At User:PrimeHunter/shortcuts.js I have made a test version with the old url parameter instead of pageName, but incorporating the other recent changes to the script.[25] It should currently work for you but I have no plans to maintain it. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:20, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
Many thanks for that, it works OK. Keith D (talk) 19:39, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Assistance requested for TedderBot

For two weeks now, TedderBot (talk · contribs) has been not carrying out certain tasks (User_talk:TedderBot#TedderBot_broken.3F), but its creator, Tedder (talk · contribs), seems inactive. Is there any way somebody can look into what's going on with the bot (particularly as it is clearly running some tasks. My main concern is that the bot stopped reporting new article feed to SearchResult pages (all such pages stopped being updated on Nov 9, and we are now approaching a two-week backlog). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 20:15, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Categorymembers generator continue not working for API on wts.wikivoyage-old

OK, so I'm trying to generate the members of a category on wts.wikivoyage-old. So I get the first 500 results here: [26]. Everything is good so far, right? Now I take the "gcmcontinue" variable of the query-continue.categorymembers subsection, and add it in, but the API returns only a single file: [27]. Am I doing something wrong, or is this an old version of Mediawiki software which is borked? It is version 1.19.1. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 00:09, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, to begin with, your query doesn't make sense (members of the category in namespace 6 are not going to have any category info to show). However, this is not the general MW support forum, and the pub over at WTS has some technically-minded people :) — This, that, and the other (talk) 00:16, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
Why are you using the continuation value as the value for gcmstartsortkey in your second query? You need to add an additional parameter gcmcontinue to your original query with that value: [28] Anomie⚔ 00:35, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank you, Anomie, that answered my question. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 05:52, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Template code

Hi, I need some help at the {{barnstar documentation}} with {{The Barnstar of Good Humor}}: The alt parameter (of the documentation!) isn't working correctly since the parameter title was added. Can somebody help me and fix this? mabdul 09:34, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

The documentation for {{barnstar documentation}} shows
  • |usage= Used to replace the standard Usage-section with a user defined.
The text for |alt=yes is part of the standard Usage-section, therefore it's suppressed if you supply your own |usage=. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:00, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Requesting a report of Polish articles with at least one (non-English) interwiki

Hi. This sounds like a technical query, so apologies if it's in the wrong place. Does anyone know how to produce a report from the Polish Wiki of articles in either this category or this category that have at least one other interwiki link (excluding .en wiki)? IE, all the Polish actor articles that exist on .pl and a-other-wiki, but not the English-language one? If this is possible, can the results be posted as a new section of my sandbox? Thanks. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 09:44, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

If you don't get an answer to your question here, try the Toolserver query service, which is a better place for this type of request. Graham87 08:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
I'd like to learn how to obtain such reports, too. Please ping me with the link to the answer - thanks. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 17:28, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
take a look at User:Lugnuts/Sandbox --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 18:28, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
Many thanks! Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 20:04, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
-- 2> /dev/null; echo '
SELECT page_title, GROUP_CONCAT(ll_lang) AS Languages
FROM categorylinks
JOIN page      ON page_id=cl_from
JOIN langlinks ON ll_from=page_id
WHERE cl_to     IN ("Polskie_aktorki_filmowe", "Polscy_aktorzy_filmowi")
AND page_namespace=0 /* Articles only */
AND ll_lang NOT IN ("en")
GROUP BY page_id
;-- ' | sql -r plwiki;

mysql> SELECT ll_lang, COUNT(*)
    -> FROM categorylinks
    -> LEFT JOIN langlinks ON ll_from=cl_from
    -> WHERE cl_to IN ("Polskie_aktorki_filmowe", "Polscy_aktorzy_filmowi")
    -> GROUP BY ll_lang
    -> ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC
    -> LIMIT 10;
+---------+----------+
| ll_lang | COUNT(*) |
+---------+----------+
| NULL    |     2112 | <- No interwikis at all
| en      |      407 |
| ru      |      261 |
| de      |      200 |
| fr      |      104 |
| nl      |       70 |
| it      |       42 |
| uk      |       39 |
| es      |       34 |
| pt      |       33 |
+---------+----------+
10 rows in set (0.02 sec)

— Dispenser 22:21, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Article history deletion question

Re Prairie View A & M history page, I'm curious about the seeming deletion of history from 1 June, 2011 thru 16 August, 2011, and 17 September 2011 through 5 December 2011 and again 28 December 2011 thru 4 September 2012. Whatever editing happened during those dates seems just deleted, not accessible. It's not all one editor, or apparently serial vandalism because some of the editors are names I recognize to be good editors. It's tagged (over-tagged IMO) for clean-up. One of the tags goes back to 2010 and may (or may not) be outdated - but it's hard to tell since so much editing history is no longer available. Can anybody explain this phenomenon of why such a large chunk of this article's history is gone? — Maile (talk) 14:39, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

I suggest that you look at the logs for the page; if you can't see them, pop a note on The Bushranger (talk · contribs), directing them here. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:44, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
Ohhhh. Thank you. — Maile (talk) 14:47, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Plain links in {{Non-free Microsoft screenshot}}

Why are the links rendering without the external arrow in {{Non-free Microsoft screenshot}} and could someone please fix it per this request.Smallman12q (talk) 22:48, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

The links are in an {{Imbox}} which uses plainlinks. I don't know whether there is a nice way to get the icon anyway (manually adding File:Icon External Link.svg wouldn't be nice). PrimeHunter (talk) 23:21, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Toolserver message

When I use Reflinks, there is this message at the top of the results:

"Wikimedia-DE plans to defund the Toolserver fearing takeover by the feeble in-house Wikimedia labs (update 24 Oct)"

It's a clickable link, which takes the user to This message — Maile (talk) 03:08, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Apparently, it's not going to die any time soon. —[AlanM1(talk)]— 05:12, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
Well, good to know. That message was posted two days after the other one. — Maile (talk) 12:19, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Spaces across (name)spaces

A little background to my question:

In the past, some pages across the wikipedia namespace would have spaces at the end of the page. Has this been fixed? Has there been some software implemenation to fix this? For example, I used to see

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard&diff=next&oldid=487270716
at Wikipedia:Dispute Resolution Noticeboard, the space at the end of the page is removed, cf. the previous edit. Could the bot (User:MiszaBot II) be creating the space?

Just something I'd thought I note.Curb Chain (talk) 05:24, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

HotCat now goes through preview stage

Today HotCat has started going to a preview stage, instead of just performing the change. This is totally unnecessary as the categories don't show in preview anyway. It slows up editing massively. Can it be put back as before? Johnbod (talk) 15:47, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

I think you only get the preview when removing a cat, not when adding. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:41, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
That seems correct, but you never used to get it at all. Johnbod (talk) 22:08, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
Categories do show in preview, in the same place as they would normally show when an article is being viewed. Graham87 05:07, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
They do when you make a normal edit and preview that; but they don't in HotCat. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:50, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps HotCat should go to the "Show changes" screen instead of a preview? It would make it clearer what changes HotCat was about to make. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 17:00, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
No, it should just do it, like it used to. Johnbod (talk) 23:03, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Problem with subpage transclusion

I just transcluded my tabs subpage onto my guestbook and for reasons unknown to man (or to me anyway), the link to my awards page and to my guestbook are captioned as a link to my To Do page, which actually doesn't even exist. I also have the tabs transcluded onto my user page and my user talk page and the problem has not shown up there. Do any of the technical geniuses here know what might be the trouble? AutomaticStrikeout 02:35, 24 November 2012 (UTC) I originally asked at the Teahouse, where I was advised to bring it here.

These are the structures at fault:
{{#ifeq:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|User:AutomaticStrikeout/Guestbook|'''To Do'''|[[User:AutomaticStrikeout/Guestbook|Guestbook]]}}
{{#ifeq:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|User:AutomaticStrikeout/Guestbook|'''To Do'''|[[User:AutomaticStrikeout/Awards|Awards]]}}
for the first, the To Do should be Guestbook, and the second should be User:AutomaticStrikeout/Awards|'''Awards'''. Chris857 (talk) 02:42, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank you. I'm not very good with coding (obviously). AutomaticStrikeout 02:48, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
You're not so bad, as you noticed an issue with the Hall of Fame line that I didn't catch. Anyway, glad to help. Chris857 (talk) 02:55, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Lol, thanks again. AutomaticStrikeout 02:58, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
MediaWiki will automatically make links to the current page bold (see Help:Self link). For example, here's a link to the current page: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 105 (see how it appears bold rather than as a link). Hence, the above code could be simplified to:
[[User:AutomaticStrikeout/Guestbook|Guestbook]]
[[User:AutomaticStrikeout/Awards|Awards]]
– PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 16:55, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT

Is there a way to find the articles of a category that have not the DEFAULTSORT; Xaris333 (talk) 15:36, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

You can use the API to look through the category and see which pages don't have DEFAULTSORT, something like this. See mw:API for more documentation. Anomie⚔ 15:55, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

WikiTrust

Has anyone had issues with WikiTrust? I've tried to use it on deep vein thrombosis for example and I get the error "TEXT_NOT_FOUND at /home/wikitrust/perl/WikiTrust.pm line 451." I've emailed them about this twice, and I've gotten no reply. Might there be a work-around? Or something with my Firefox version (16.0.2)? I noticed in the archive there was some issue with the length of an article.[29] I can verify something of that nature. I tried WikiTrust on the short article Jess Doyle and it worked. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 00:18, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm extremely familiar with WikiTrust, used it in my research, and co-authored with its creators. To the best of my knowledge, it is not being currently maintained. When I recently used their source code to apply the same analysis over edits in source code repositories, I had issues. Some had to do with PHP version differences. In the end, I was never able to get the "live" version to work completely (its written primarily in OCAML with PHP hooks). I did hack it to get the dump processing to work, but that is not really of concern here. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 00:34, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

page wont open

Could someone take a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Agriculture and see if there is a bad template or script or something there. the page does not open for me in firfox - the browser just wheels around with "connecting". but it does open for me in Chrome.-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:18, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Worked for me. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 18:38, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
after the archiving it works for me on firefox now too, it may have just been too big? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 22:19, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Scripts and gadgets not loading consistently

Sometimes, when I load an article, Twinkle and Hotcat fail to appear. The Curation Toolbar loads rarely. I'm using Google Chrome on a WinXP netbook. Any ideas what's up? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:52, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

I've also experienced the problem of JavaScript failing to load. The way I've been dealing with it is refreshing my cache. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:15, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Me too, but sometimes it takes eight or ten refreshes; and often even that doesn't work, for the Curation Toolbar. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 00:12, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
A possible cause would be that you have some tool that is trying to load something from the toolserver, which has been down for most of the past couple of days. The tool would be waiting and waiting and waiting for the ts to load, hence indefinitively delaying the loading of other tools. Snowolf How can I help? 00:18, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Future post?

On Thursday I saw a post which was answered. However I thought I read a thank-you reply by the original poster in the past 24 hours. Has data been lost in the database? The good thing is that all the current posts are self-consistent; and I hope the next post will get caught up to my foreknowledge. ;-) --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 23:04, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

My mystery solved: it was a different talk page]. Sorry for my mixup. --10:18, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

_Number of watchers_ analysis broken?

Is the "Number of watchers" analysis linked from the History listing of pages broken? Example link: http://toolserver.org/~mzmcbride/cgi-bin/watcher.py?db=enwiki_p&titles=Friction (associated with article Friction). --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 15:52, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

That link works for me. The answer is 146, if you're interested. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:22, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks -- it is back now and I can get to the page. Must have been a transient problem. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 16:45, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Probably an issue with the Toolserver being up and down over the past few days. Things should be stable now. Legoktm (talk) 00:35, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Rate this page, displayed as text (pt.2)

Following up on a previous report, where I have noted that the "Rate this page" panel is displayed as text (e.g., any page at en:WP), I note that the equivalent panel at the Portuguese language WP displays just fine for me (e.g., pt:5155_Denisyuk). Hinting that there is something wrong over here (or eventually something wrong at pt:WP which just happens to make it right for me - it is possible for two wrongs to make a right!) - Nabla (talk) 22:11, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Broken link on Special:Book

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T44369
Resolved

After using Special:Book to export a PDF, the return link is broken, e.g.:

Return to <a href="//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki">Wiki</a>

Prouder Mary 09:50, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

That's rather embarrassing. I've filed bugzilla:42369. (As a temporary measure, an admin can modify mediawiki:coll-return_to_collection to use wikitext external link syntax instead of the <a>). Bawolff (talk) 00:13, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
I also just reported this bug (bug in rendering page as PDF, below), and only saw this report afterward. --Thnidu (talk) 09:44, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

bug in rendering page as PDF

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T44369
Resolved

When I "download page as PDF", my browser goes to a page reporting the progress of rendering the page as a PDF. When the rendering is finished, the link to return to the Wikipedia article is shown as raw HTML, not as a link:

Rendering finished
Return to <a href="//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Love_sculptures">List of Love sculptures</a>

This also happened with Love (sculpture).

I am running Firefox 16.0.2 under Mac OS X 10.7.4. --Thnidu (talk) 09:33, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

I see now that Prouder Mary reported this (above) 4 days ago, and User:Bawolff filed a bugzilla ticket less than 24 hours later. --Thnidu (talk) 09:41, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Curious result when comparing the SUBJECTPAGENAME variable with the actual page name

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T37628

I'm stumped. Please look at Talk:R33 World's Fair (New York City Subway car), the "just testing" section. Why is the #ifeq: comparison generating a "not equal result"? Thanks, Wbm1058 (talk) 20:51, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

It's T37628 (which is probably a duplicate of some older bug). The output of the various pagename variables encodes apostrophes and a few other characters for some reason. Anomie⚔ 21:12, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Force a :hover CSS rule to trigger in javascript

Can it be done? I'm trying to trigger a hidden element that has an associated :hover rule that shows the element, to show using only mouse events, because I can not add inline CSS (like using .show()) which destroys the other logic in the script. The script in question is User:Edokter/MenuTabsToggle.js, and the objective is to make it touch-compatible. I tried using .mousemove() and the like, but that does not seem to trigger the :hover CSS rule. — Edokter (talk) — 11:58, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

I don't know anything about that, but you could also add a class with the js stuff that is grouped with the hover in the stylesheet with the same style. That might be easier to trigger adding and removing. -— Isarra ༆ 18:02, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Some sort of improvement to user talk pages is needed

In the past few days, I've seen new editors leave Wikilove messages when they clearly meant to leave regular messages. They couldn't figure out that you edit a page to leave a new message, and that editing a user's talk page is not some taboo feature. I checked with my mother (who insists she's still computer savvy despite mounting evidence to the contrary, but is otherwise still on her rocker), and she could not figure out that "edit" or "new section" were the means by which one would leave a new message. Her impression, even after the buttons were pointed out by her son who she knows edits Wikipedia, was that editing a user's talk page would be as taboo as editing a user page. She did not say so explicitly, but I gather she thought that the "new section" button would create a subpage that the message recipient would somehow not be notified of.

Fortunately, the only people I've seen with this trouble (aside from my mother) have generally been useless to the site for some other reason (spammers, POV-pushers, whatever). However, this may still be an issue for good users who could help the site more. Since the wikilove button only show up in userspace, I know it's possible to add buttons there, but I don't know if it's possible to change "edit" and "new section" for only pages starting with the name "User" or more specifically "User talk:".

I do not think that changing the "edit" or "new section" buttons on talk pages to "post message" (my mother's suggestion) would really help, because then we'd either have to explain to new users that they have to leave a new blank message to remove material from their pages (though that might be useful), or we'll have new users starting new sections every time they edit a page.

Allowing only autoconfirmed users to have the wikilove button might help, but then there's still the issue that people who somehow can figure out how to edit articles cannot figure out that the same "edit" button could be used to edit a page.

Changing "new section" to "new thread" might help, along with making the edit buttons next to each thread larger and changing them to "new post."

How can we idiot-proof this?

Maybe replacing the wikilove button with a big envelope (or even text saying "new message"), that when clicked brings up a prompt asking if they want to add a message to an existing thread (effectively clicking "edit" for that section), start a new thread (effectively clicking "new section"), or leave a Wikilove message? That would leave "edit" and "new section" alone for the people who know what they're doing, but help people who can't figure out how to leave messages. If there's space, this prompt could also remind the user to sign their post with four tildes, assume good faith, not make personal attacks, and not use Wikipedia as a forum. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:31, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Those of us who particularly want to encourage newbies to squawk to us can add {{Talk header}} as I did a few minutes ago. But yes, there ought to be a more general solution. Jim.henderson (talk) 01:41, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
I can't remember what the name is, but there's a Mediawiki page that sets the text that will display on the main tab for pages: "article", "project page", etc., and there's another one that forces all talk pages to appear as "talk". Presumably there's another that controls the Wikilove feature; if so, changing it would be a good way to resolve the problem that you note. Nyttend (talk) 02:45, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
The "Talk header" template is a bit verbose with admonitions not to be bad, which might deter the ignorant without calming the angry. A button with a simpler message like, "Click here if you have something for me" would seem better. Jim.henderson (talk) 03:37, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
{{Talk header}} is intended for article talk pages where there have been issues such as forum type discussions, edit warring, and the like. It wasn't designed for user talk. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 10:46, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Note that {{Talk header}} is in Category:User talk header templates, and Template:User talk header redirects to it. For something a bit less verbose, I use {{usercomment}}. For more alternatives, look through some of the other members of the category. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:12, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

I've found Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 94#Page top tabs which is a related previous discussion. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:24, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Small change to the top right menu

 
Mockup of the new personal tools links (sandbox link will be added when enabled in preferences)

Hi everyone, I wanted to let people know about a small design change.

What is changing and when

The "personal tools" links in the upper right corner will drop the possessive voice for logged in users. This means a switch from "My preferences", "My watchlist", and "My contributions" to "Preferences", "Watchlist", and "Contributions". You can see what it looks like in Vector in the screenshot to the right.

For Vector users only, there will also be a change from (what would have become) "Username Talk" to "Username (talk)" to match the default signature. For other skins (such as Monobook), it will simply be "Username Talk" because advanced users who specify skins other than the default skin likely won't confuse the personal tools' "Talk" link (that takes you to your personal talk page) with the Talk namespace tab (that takes you to the current page's talk page).

This should go live on Monday, November 19 (PST), after the weekly deployment of the latest version of MediaWiki, unless there are delays.

Why

This change has been waiting in the wings for a long time, actually since Vector was created, but it was recently brought up again by MZMcBride, Isarra and our team (Ori in particular) proposed it. After discussion with designers and developers, see bug 41672 and the Wikitech-l thread, there was agreement that MediaWiki should not use possessive language to refer to these links. If you like I can give a list of bullet points from the discussion, but this is pretty small, and I just wanted to post some explanation here, in case anyone notices and was wondering.

Thanks, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:52, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

I'm not sure why you believe this change will only affect the Vector skin. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:46, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm also not sure your screenshot is accurate. Was the "(talk)" code ever reviewed and merged? Looking at https://translatewiki.net/?useskin=monobook while logged in seems to indicate that it was not. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:03, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
re: the Vector issue, I might have gotten confused (I was writing two announcements at the same time), but let me double check. The (talk) change was merged this morning. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 19:34, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
The "(talk)" code is Vector-only, for now. The rationale was this: having two dangling "Talk" links on each page would only be confusing for n00bs, and n00bs don't use Monobook. Generating the personal tools section is currently handled by each skin, so there was no particularly easy way to make this change globally. But no reason it couldn't be backported to older skins if the teeming millions^H^H^H^Hdozens want it. --ori (talk) 19:45, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Okay, so dropping the "my" will apply to all skins, as I thought. The "Username (talk)" change will only affect users of the Vector skin. Got it.
And over two million users use Monobook, by my count. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:51, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
P.S. It seems some extensions and user scripts will need adjustment as well. Commons adds a "My uploads" link and the LiquidThreads extension adds "My new messages".
Announcement edited accordingly. Also, My sandbox is another that we will need to edit to match the new copy. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:14, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
scripts should not use the link text, but rather the element ID ('pt-userpage', 'pt-watchlist' etc.), which should not change. any script that uses the link text should probably be eliminated on the ground of poor design. as to "My Sandbox": IMO, this one should not be changed, to distinguish personal sandbox from WP:SB and reduce confusion. the sandbox link is mainly for noobs, and many experienced editors uncheck this gadget in their preferences anyway. noobs can easily get confused between WP:SB and their personal sandbox, so it's best, IMO, to keep it in possessive form (i.e., leave the "My" in place). peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 00:02, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
The reasoning behind the change was that the "my" is redundant for all links, because it is either apparent from the appearance or the destination that all links are personal rather than generic. In addition, inconsistency is a very bad for usability. It needs to be all or nothing. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 00:24, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Were I a newbie seeing the new layout for the first time, I might deduce that, because of the spacing and proximity, the "user" icon only applied to the username and talk page link. I might believe (wrongly, of course) that "contributions" and "watchlist" were not specific to me, but rather "global". I think it would be much clearer if the personal toolbar was visually "quarantined" (different background colour, border, shadow, etc.) to make it super-obvious that these links are all personal in nature. — This, that, and the other (talk) 00:40, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
I share that concern. I agree with the general premise of dropping My, but I think the problem is that there is not enough. 'coherence' in the usertools as they are now, to properly communicate that the contributions link belongs to your account. In a dropdown menu or something similar you would easily convey this context, but not it's missing a bit. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:28, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
This is something of a solved problem already: new users do not expect that items which pertain to them are marked with possessive copy. I would definitely read the related links in mw:Personal tools for lots of discussion. Also, note examples such as the top toolbar on Google products ("Search", "Mail", "Images", "Drive", "Calendar"), Facebook, and more. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:43, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't see how any of that addresses the concern. Google doesn't have: "Search", "Mail", "Images", "Drive", "Calendar", "account", "privacy", "profile", "logout" all next together on the same UI level. You have to click "account" to drilldown and find the level of "privacy", "profile", "logout" etc. This is about logical grouping implying coherence between the elements. Using My consistently there, while not anywhere else also creates a strong 'grouping', but if you remove it, for my mother there will be little difference between that link and any other on the page. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:00, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Let me be more direct about what I was trying to say above: it's not a concern because users generally don't expect that possessive language is used, based on their experience with the naming schemes of other popular products where they spend most of their time other than Wikipedia. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:32, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Update: Because today was a holiday for WMF (Veteran's Day) this deployment got pushed back. It will change on Monday the 19th (PST) with the 1.21wmf4 deployment. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 04:56, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Okay, looks like this has been deployed and is live. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:23, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Sorry to put a downer on the whole thing, but yet again I need to ask is there a way to add the "my" back in? I'm used to it as it was and this is an unwelcome change. Rcsprinter (articulate) @ 19:12, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
    • Yes, just like almost anything I'm sure there's a way in personal CSS or JS. I don't have code handy, but perhaps someone can supply the necessaries. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 19:39, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
      • I would also like to know how. I really don't like it (no offense). Go Phightins! 20:19, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Voilà. Put the following in your common.css or monobook.css file:
#p-personal li a:before { content: "My "; }
#p-personal li#pt-userpage a:before { content: none; }
#p-personal li#pt-logout a:before { content: none; }
This works fine for the Monobook skin, and possibly other skins too. It doesn't work on Vector, though. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:17, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Put the following into Special:MyPage/common.css: 

/* Insert "My " before some links ([[Special:MyPage]] and [[Special:UserLogout]] excepted) */
li#pt-mytalk a:before,
li#pt-mysandbox a:before,
li#pt-preferences a:before,
li#pt-watchlist a:before,
li#pt-mycontris a:before { content: "My " }

I've left it off Special:MyPage and Special:UserLogout. The word "My" is not part of the link, because I don't know how to do it! --Redrose64 (talk) 21:23, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Redrose64, we need to stop meeting like this...   Thanks for mentioning linking; my example above had the same problem with the "My" not being linked; I've now fixed it. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:32, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
Fixed mine too. Now people have a choice of two: yours adds "My " to all seven and then switches two off again; whereas mine just switches on the five where we want the "My ". --Redrose64 (talk) 21:41, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
The code works fine, but now it says "My Go Phightins!" which is kind of weird. I tried removing the userpage parameter from the code, but that didn't seem to work. Any suggestions? Go Phightins! 22:33, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
You seem to have combined the suggestion of PartTimeGnome with mine. Pick one or the other, but don't try to mix them. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:50, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
I removed one of the two, but now it's back to the old new way...Go Phightins! 02:54, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
Is there any way to drop the capitals? It used to be, for example, "My preferences". The new way is "Preferences", and the workaround is "My Preferences". Is there any way to get it all the way back? Or even just drop the capital so it becomes "preferences"? -Rrius (talk) 05:13, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
Building off of Redrose's code:
/* Insert "My " before some links ([[Special:MyPage]] and [[Special:UserLogout]] excepted) */
li#pt-mytalk a,
li#pt-mysandbox a,
li#pt-preferences a,
li#pt-watchlist a,
li#pt-mycontris a {text-transform:lowercase;}

li#pt-mytalk a:before,
li#pt-mysandbox a:before,
li#pt-preferences a:before,
li#pt-watchlist a:before,
li#pt-mycontris a:before {content:"My "; text-transform:capitalize;}
Tested only in Vector; no guarantee that it will work in Monobook or other skins. jcgoble3 (talk) 06:20, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
To be honest I don't see why another five lines are necessary, nor the need for a text-transform property. My five lines (six if you count the initial comment line) produce
Redrose64  my talk  my sandbox  my preferences  my watchlist  my contributions  log out
in Monobook, and
Redrose64  My Talk  My Sandbox  My Preferences  My Watchlist  My Contributions  Log out
in Vector. However, I suspect that the reason that Go Phightins! (talk · contribs) is having trouble is because of the presence of non-CSS code in User:Go Phightins!/common.css. Some is wikicode, and some javascript, but both are totally unsuitable for a CSS file, and some browsers will refuse to process the file. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:05, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
Well, that code works for me. (in monobook) Rcsprinter (converse) @ 16:52, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
I wasn't trying to solve Go Phightins!'s problem (and indeed never investigated it), only Rrius's complaint. jcgoble3 (talk) 22:00, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
And thanks. I just tried it, and the top line is no longer distracting. -Rrius (talk) 04:07, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Changed again?

I now have (in Vector)

Jcgoble3  Talk  Preferences  Watchlist  Contributions  Log out

Emphasis on the second item. Why was this changed back from "Jcgoble3 (talk)"? "Jcgoble3  My talk" was fine, as was "Jcgoble3 (talk)", since both associate "talk" with the user (albeit in different ways). However, the new "Jcgoble3  Talk" doesn't; if I were a new user seeing this as soon as I created an account, I might wonder, "Talk about what?" IMHO today's change was not a good one. jcgoble3 (talk) 01:42, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

  • Can someone please explain how we're going to teach newbies to differentiate between Wikipedia:Sandbox and the "Sandbox" tab at the top of their page now? They will logically expect to wind up at the former, and suddenly find themselves wandering around their userspace at the latter. Risker (talk) 02:31, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
    • I'm not sure why a newbie would expected to end up at Wikipedia:Sandbox...? - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 11:40, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
      • The sandbox link in the header sends people to a page clearly associated with their userpage, via the title. Lots of new users do get directed to the general sandbox via links such as Wikipedia:Introduction, but in general, it's not a huge problem. New users don't understand the conceptual ownership differences between namespaces very well regardless of the link text in the personal tools menu. They will, however, come to clearly understand that sandbox means a free editing space, which is generally the goal. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 01:03, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
  • See bug #42337. The parentheses didn't work properly in RTL. I've asked there whether anyone has plans to actually fix the display e.g. for LTR users. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 11:40, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Inserting an item into the top right menu

Can anyone suggest a snippet of JavaScript for inserting an additional item into the top right menu? Thanks. — Hex (❝?!❞) 13:40, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Have a look at MediaWiki:Gadget-mySandbox.js. To see the effect, go to Preferences → Gadgets and turn on (or turn off, as the case may be) "Add a "Sandbox" link to the personal toolbar area.". --Redrose64 (talk) 14:33, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
See my draft at User:Gadget850/Help:Customizing toolbars. If anyone wants to help get this up to standard, please do so. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:37, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks guys. Am I doing something wrong here? I'm loading the script in my common.js but not seeing any result. Feel free to make a fix! — Hex (❝?!❞) 15:34, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
The first parameter to "mw.util.addPortletLink" needs to be the id of the <div> for the pre-existing toolbar you want to add the link to. See Gadget850's help draft above for valid values. jcgoble3 (talk) 17:22, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
throw "ERROR: insufficient coffee intake detected"; // D'oh
It works! Yay, thanks. — Hex (❝?!❞) 18:27, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
I am wondering if it is possible simply to change the appearance of the links currently there e.g. to both shorten and lowercase "Preferences" to "prefs". Is there a way to do this? --Izno (talk) 03:23, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Below is code for Special:MyPage/common.js adapted from MediaWiki:Gadget-addsection-plus.js. The if's should be unnecessary but don't harm. tab may be a misleading variable name when the link is not a tab but never mind. "pt-preferences" and the id for other links can be found in the html source of a rendered page with the link. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:49, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
$(document).ready( function () {
    var tab, tablink;
 
    tab = document.getElementById('pt-preferences');
    if ( !tab ) {
        return;
    }
 
    tablink = tab.getElementsByTagName('a')[0];
    if ( !tablink ) {
        return;
    }
 
    tablink.firstChild.nodeValue = 'prefs';
});
Looks much cleaner than what I have currently, I think. Probably don't need the if statements, since each ID should exist fairly stably, and even if it doesn't, I don't see that anything will break. Though I wonder if I need to declare the variables. --Izno (talk) 04:04, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
In general terms, not specific to Javascript, it's always best to explicitly declare all variables, since if you don't (and the compiler/interpreter permits non-declaration), the compiler/interpreter will make guesses regarding both type and scope of the variables - and it might guess wrongly. For a weakly typed language like Javascript, not setting an explicit type may not actually be a problem. Somebody brought up on Pascal (like me) would declare all variables, possibly out of habit, possibly because it's the Right Thing to do; but mainly because it might not work as intended unless you set explicit boundaries. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:33, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Noted. Out of curiosity, what would be the way to do it without declaring the variables? --Izno (talk) 13:45, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Unprintworthy cross-namespace redirects are not being excluded from the search dropdown as expected

It has just been brought to my attention that cross-namespace redirects tagged as unprintworthy are not being excluded from the search drop-down as they should be. This is a bug somewhere, but as I don't know how the exclusion works I don't know where to file the bug. {{R unprintworthy}} and Category:Unprintworthy redirects are possible places but I'm not seeing anything obvious in either location. Thryduulf (talk) 22:52, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

I see no reason why it should do that. Just naming something "unprintworthy" does not special case it in the software (Nor should it if you ask me). Either you want the redirect or you don't. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:18, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
It did do that and should again do that, either by same method or a different one. The redirects exist for people who search for them, but are not useful for people browsing (e.g. they are spelling errors and project pages) - Category:Unprintworthy redirects explains this more fully. Thryduulf (talk) 20:58, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Even the template itself says: "This is a redirect that would not belong in print. However, it may be a valid navigational aid for computer searches.". —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:49, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
If we didn't already, I would think it a good idea to exclude any redirect tagged as a misspelling from search suggestions. — Hex (❝?!❞) 10:54, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
@TheDJ - exactly, they're useful as a target for searches. They aren't useful as targets for browsing - e.g. Acadamy Award exists to direct people who type that into their preferred search utility to the right article, it isn't a useful suggestion for someone looking for an article starting Acada... Thryduulf (talk) 14:07, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

My Talk Page

Hi! I am having a technical problem on my talk page. Whenever another user using Twinkle puts a talkback message on my talk page, it displays it at the top of the page! Could someone figure out what is going on, and tell me how to fix it? Thanks, Jakob 17:14, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

The usual Wikipedia “new section” edit puts a new section at the end of the page, and therefore after the </div> into which you enclosed your user page. This looks like the proper way to fix it (the <div> will be closed automatically by the software). Doesn’t it work now?—Emil J. 17:42, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Your talk page begins with an opening <div> tag and some code to begin a table:
__NOTOC__
<div style="padding: 10px; background: #f1f5fc; border: 2px solid #abd5f5;">
{| style="background-color: transparent; width:100%"
|-
|
However, there is no code to properly close that table, although there is a closing </div> just below the stuff about
<!--
###################### edits above this line, please ###########################
################################################################################## -->
Anything placed after that closing </div> will be forced above the table in most browsers; if it's not properly-formatted table rows and cells, it's either pushed out of the way or rejected outright. There's a lot of other bad HTML on that page, I spotted several elements closed in the wrong order. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:47, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Thank you, I didn't know that the software would close it automatically. Thanks, Jakob 17:58, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

https "couldn't parse page name from url"

I get a popup on every page load if someone links me to the https site that says "Wikipage: couldn't parse page name from url". Does anyone know what's causing that? Gigs (talk) 18:44, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

It's caused by the way User:Quarl/wikipage.js validates URLs (imported into your custom javascript by via User:Gigs/monobook.js). — Richardguk (talk) 18:59, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Section nesting

Is there a limit to the degree of section nesting? On Wikipedia:Book sources the level 7 headings show as "=" signs in the TOC and in the headings. Note that the contents of the page is also used in the Book sources special page. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 19:12, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it's 6 equals signs: this is because HTML has heading elements <h1>...</h1> to <h6>...</h6> but there is no such thing as a <h7>...</h7> element. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:31, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for that. I will figure out a way to fix the page in question without loosing functionality. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 19:35, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Office hours about signup and login redesign

As you might have noticed, especially if you're an English Wikipedian, the Editor Engagement Experiments team has been working on redesigning the user experience of account creation, A/B testing new designs and functionality for the past couple months.

We finished our final A/B test last week, and we're now moving on to make the features which tested well permanent. In order to make sure that the experience of signup and login are consistent, we also plan to make some changes to the design of login.

In order to answer any questions people might have and gather feedback, we're holding the first office hours about our redesign work. We also plan to enable the test version of the new account creation experience at 100% (rather than 50/50, as previously) so that people can give it a try.

  • When: Saturday December 1, 2012. 19:00-20:00 UTC. Time conversion links etc. are on Meta.
  • Where: #wikimedia-office

Regards, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 04:54, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Invitation to Thursday tech chats, including one today

I invite you to watch and participate in our weekly live tech chat, which include video streaming and live participation via IRC. The next one is in at 20:30UTC/12:30PT -- less than a day. Today you'll be able to watch, live, via screensharing, as I fix a bug, including investigation, a git commit, getting it reviewed and merged, and closing the Bugzilla ticket. If you're interested in the process of becoming a MediaWiki developer, this'll give you a glimpse! Looking forward to seeing you, if you can make it. If you can't, we do post the videos on Commons afterwards (example). Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community Manager (talk) 05:19, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

New feature needs testing

mw:Extension:TemplateSandbox is a new extension that should come in handy for users editing templates (and Lua modules, once that is enabled here); I know I've wished for it several times already. It has now been enabled on test2 and mediawiki.org for testing. The extension has two modes:

  • Special:TemplateSandbox allows you to place sandbox templates and Scribunto modules as subpages of some other page, and then view arbitrary pages or wikitext using those sandboxed templates/modules in place of the live versions.
  • At the bottom of the edit form in the Template and Module namespaces, a new box will appear that allows you to preview other pages as they would appear if you saved the template/module you are currently editing. For example, you could open Template:Asbox and make some changes in the edit form, then enter "Sharpsville Area School District" in the preview box to see how Sharpsville Area School District would look with your changes.

Please report any bugs, either here or in Bugzilla (convenience link). Thanks. Anomie⚔ 21:58, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

I hope more people try this tool because it's pretty useful for anyone who has to edit templates. Go ahead and try it on mediawiki.org: hit Edit on the sample "thank-you" template. On the edit form, under the Save button, you'll see "Preview page with this template" -- try User_talk:Example_user to see how your changes would look. Or, go to mw:Special:TemplateSandbox and give it the "sandbox prefix" User:Sharihareswara (WMF)/sandbox and tell it to "render page" User_talk:Example_user . You'll see the ugly changes I made to the template in my sandbox. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community Manager (talk) 05:25, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Update: It's now available on most of the non-Wikipedia WMF wikis (any that are on 1.21wmf5). Barring any last-minute changes of plan, it will be available here on Monday when 1.21wmf5 is deployed here. Anomie⚔ 20:04, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool needs sorting out

Can we do something about the ugly, imposing Article Feedback Tool? It clutters up the body of articles making pages less useful for readers. Given how little it is is used, even in such a prominent position, it should be relegated to a link in the toolbox section of pages - if it is to be retained at all. It seems to be a bit of a waste of time IMHO. Note that logged in editors may not see it since it can be turned of in user preferences. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 19:26, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

The point of the tool is to be used to provide feedback, and it is primarily aimed at users whom are either unwilling or unknowledgable about how to edit. Putting it in the sidebar hence risks not targeting those users and instead targeting experienced editors... who already know how to turn it off on top of that. Also, your "given how little it is used" needs a [citation needed]. --Izno (talk) 22:15, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Your comments might be better heard by posting them at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Article_feedback --Malyacko (talk) 11:54, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Portrait of Père Tanguy#Julien Tanguy and Talk:Portrait of Père Tanguy

Hello,

I am mainly working on fr:Le père Tanguy. And I try to add an information on wp:en. Could you replace that in order ? Sorry for the disagreement. Many thanks Mike Coppolano (talk) 09:21, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

I have fixed the cite error on the page. Does that fix your problem? Keith D (talk) 14:14, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Many thanks, Keith D. One more : could you a the end of Julien Tanguy bio, insert that text : Octave Mibeau writed a notice [with the ref I've given >>> on Gallica/ see Julien Tanguy talk page] ? Thanks. Mike Coppolano (talk) 17:15, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
I have made this change for you to add the information you requested. Keith D (talk) 19:17, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks Mike Coppolano (talk) 03:41, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Search list not updating

Yet again, the search index has failed to update, this time since 22 November.
Help:Searching#Delay_in_updating_the_search_index says this should be reported here. These backlogs frustrate us WikiGnomes in our tidying up, and we get a huge backlog of spelling, grammar and other mistakes to correct when it is eventually updated. Any idea when it might be updated?
Arjayay (talk) 13:58, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Two days later, and no change - It still hasn't been updated since 22 November.
Some sort of feedback and indication that something is being done would be appreciated.Arjayay (talk) 09:26, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Providing an example of an article that doesn't show up would be helpful as a first step. --Malyacko (talk) 08:01, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure what help "an example" is, when the thing is clearly stuck, however:-
My usual check search is this search for recieve (sic). There are about 50 "allowable" misspellings, which cannot be corrected (use of the word in web-site titles, quotations etc.) and there are usually 10-15 new misspellings every day. There are currently (see timestamp) 61 matches, and there have been 61 for the last 5 days. The latest date of any of these matches is 22 November. Unless every editor has suddenly learnt to spell correctly, there should be matches after 22 November - probably 50-75 new ones by now, giving a real total of over 100.
I can also demonstrate the lack of removals, as well as lack of additions. Search results do not always appear in the same order, but somewhere near the top you will currently find Baker Boys (2011 TV series), where I corrected the 3 misspellings of received on 23 November, in this diff [[30]]. However, despite being removed on 23 November, these still appear in the "current" (actually the 22 November) search.
Arjayay (talk) 11:47, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
As another example, a search for 'Yan Tan Tethera' on the Reference Desk [31] finds Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language. The discussion in question has not appeared on RD/L since the transcluded archive page was removed on 26 November 2012 [32]. What it does not find is the transcluded archive page itself which has existed since 24 November [33]. You can see an example where it is finding both for older content e.g. [34] where the transcluded page was created on 21 November [35] and would have been removed from the main RD/L about 24 November.
Or to give another example from the reference desk, it finds the first two questions from November 23 on the science desk [36] [37] but not the next two [38] [39]. You can see Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2012 November 23 for all the questions from November 23. (The transcluded page was created more recently but I'm pretty sure the questions are from when the signed posts are dated [40].)
Based on the above, it seems in case of the science desk the last index was sometimes between 00:36, 23 November 2012 (UTC) and 06:35, 23 November 2012 (UTC). (This is a wider timeframe then I hoped, it should be easy to further narrow if necessary using the reference desk or highly active discussion pages like ANI.)
Nil Einne (talk) 12:48, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
My timings would agree with these, albeit mine are less precise - the Search Index usually updates early hours UTC, thus recording the edits (mistakes) made on 22 Nov, but not the edits (corrections) I made from 12.52 UTC on 23 November. Arjayay (talk) 16:32, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Just to note that the search list has still not updated. - Arjayay (talk) 08:48, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
A thought. Does the problematic search use data which is held not in the main en.wp data storage, but on a different set of hardware? Toolserver is presently reporting a thirteen-day replag for data from meta:. Separate tests demonstrate that this replag is longer than ten days, because I have 21 edits on meta:, of which the four made on or since 19 November are not being reported by X!'s edit counter. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:57, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Never mind the possible different set of hardware, which I very much doubt has anything to do with the search index problem. The index was updated after updates I made on 22 November, but not after changes I made on 23 November, and this matches Arjaya's observations, so a ten-day delay in some other process seems unlikely to have caused a 6-day problem with the index. But why, after four days, hasn't anyone provided any kind of answer to Arjayay's question? Arjayay is not the only editor who is being stymied by this, and the quality of WP articles is suffering. Is there a better place than this to report the problem? Chris the speller yack 04:19, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the best place to report it is WP:bugzilla. MBisanz talk 04:34, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
The index has finally been updated, so I will not pursue further. Chris the speller yack 13:43, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Stub article template bug

I found a deficiency in Template:Asbox resulting in a recurring grammatical error. The formatting of the template has led to a rather humorous error on, for instance, Template:US-poet-1900s-stub: This American poet-related article born between 1900-1909 is a stub should read as This article on an American poet born between 1900-1909 is a stub, unless of course the article was born between 1900-1909! elvenscout742 (talk) 08:34, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

The documentation at Template:Asbox is clear enough. I have edited Template:US-poet-1900s-stub to improve the wording. How many others need this fix? -- John of Reading (talk) 09:36, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
All US poet stub templates had the same problem. I have fixed them all but not examined other stub templates. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:22, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Inherited protection template?

Where is {{bug}} getting {{pp-template}} from? I thought it would be the /doc subpage, but it's not. — Hex (❝?!❞) 13:35, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

It is in the documentation, but is coded into {{Documentation/start box}}, which is one of the templates used for building the green box. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:43, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Oh, of course. Can't believe I missed that. Also, why didn't I just read the Documentation documentation? Nice one, thanks. — Hex (❝?!❞) 13:59, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Special:WhatLinksHere/Too_Close

There are still more than 30 links to Too Close, now a disambiguation. However, I have changed links in Template namespaces, so I wonder when it will upload a number of links. --George Ho (talk) 15:13, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Special:WhatLinksHere is likely to remain lagged for a period of days; if you want to force it to update, you can purge the pages that are shown as linking to Too Close but do not, though there is no particular need to. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 16:00, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Actually, purge only updates the purged page itself. It requires a null edit to also update link tables. All the articles I examined at Special:WhatLinksHere/Too Close had already updated the article page, but being in WhatLinksHere means that the link table had not been updated. Help:Job queue#Updating links tables when a template changes gives me the impression that the automatic updating made by the job queue will update the article page and link tables at the same time. Is this false? The link in the navigation templates on the articles were updated by George Ho around 14 hours ago.[41] PrimeHunter (talk) 16:19, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
The job queue is currently showing 88663 so it could be a few hours. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:31, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Usually fixing the template links will fix the majority of incoming links. I might advise watching the page and returning to it tomorrow or the day after to confirm that there are not extraordinary numbers of links remaining. --Izno (talk) 18:58, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
I was bored, so I null-edited every page on the list. That should have taken care of template links. Those left will need to be checked individually. jcgoble3 (talk) 20:21, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

VisualEditor fortnightly update - 2012-11-26 (MW 1.21wmf5)

Hey all,

Below is a copy of the regular update for the past fortnight on the VisualEditor project so that you all know what is happening (and make sure you have as much opportunity to tell us when we're wrong, as well as help guide the priorities for development and improvement).

The VisualEditor was updated as part of the wider MediaWiki 1.21wmf5 branch deployment on Monday 26 November.

In two weeks since 1.21wmf4, the team have spent their time mostly working on finalising the code and preparing for its deployment in December as a test for users.

A lot of work went into the 'Data Model' component that converts between the information that mw:Parsoid gives us and a structure that the code can edit. This now supports HTML entities (so "&ocirc;", "&#xf4;", and "ô" do not get switched when users don't expect it - 42118), HTML comments (so they don't get accidentally removed - 42124; viewing and editing them is not yet supported), better handling for content that we don't yet recognise (42119), fixing a bug with our integration with Parsoid (42121), and supporting in production the "Change Markers" code that was worked on last iteration (41947).

In the integration work, we removed the "Feedback" link as this would not work well with the code being deployed to multiple wikis (41722) and unfortunately had to add Internet Explorer temporarily to the "blacklist" of browsers that the VisualEditor will not support for December, due to a number of critical issues that the team does not have time to fix (42335) - post-December, the team will work to find a way around the various bugs and inconsistencies in Internet Explorer.

We fixed bugs on handling "alien nodes" (items of content that we don't have a specific handler for yet, like templates), such as the floated alien-covering "phantoms" for selection purposes appearing wrongly in Firefox (42177) and them not appearing at all for items that floated due to a class in Chrome 42134). There was also some nasty bugs that we fixed, including when editing around inline (mid-paragraph) alien nodes (42212) and the data model and the display getting out of sync sometimes when cutting-and-pasting (42219).

Finally, a great deal of work was done to overhaul the link inspector's code and quash a large number of minor bugs with it, such as wrongly replacing links's spaces with underscores (42140).

A complete list of individual code commits is available in the 1.21/wmf5 changelog, and all Bugzilla bugs closed in this period on Bugzilla's list.

Hope this is helpful! As always, feedback gratefully received, either here or on the centralised feedback page.

Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 20:37, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Changes needed to protection interface

Pending changes went back into use a few hours ago. One of the things those of us who have been working on it forgot to do was to figure out how to remove the two warnings on the protection interface which advise admins not to use it. Anyone here willing/able to look into that? I don't know a thing about mediawiki pages or even how to find them in the first place. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:23, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Can you tell me what I need to do to see the text that you want changed? Like "click this page and then try to..." MBisanz talk 02:32, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
(ec) Oh, I found MediaWiki:Flaggedrevs-protect-legend. Don't know if that's what you're looking for. And the horrible grey box at the top is controlled by MediaWiki:Protect-text. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 02:34, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
I think Steel did this a few minutes ago [42]. --Bongwarrior (talk) 02:36, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
Yep, it is   Fixed now. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:39, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Looking up deleted pages by articleid

The usual way to look up pages by articleid is e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37733142. However, this does not work for pages which have been deleted. Is there a way for admins to find out what page an articleid maps to, if the page has been deleted? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:13, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Nope. In fact, if the page is re-created or undeleted, it gets a new page ID. Graham87 14:18, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
That manual was out of date - article ids should be kept if the page was deleted in mw1.11 or later, but to my knowledge there's no way to access them using that without undeleting them. Anything deleted prior to 1.11 will wind up with a new id, though. -— Isarra ༆ 18:16, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Nope, unfortunately that's not the case. I've just tested this at User:Graham87/sandbox, which used to have a page ID of 11316888. Now its page ID is 37781837. Graham87 12:04, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T28123
Graham87 12:34, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Ach, I should have known better than to expect mediawiki to do what would have made sense based on the schemas... -— Isarra ༆ 23:09, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Still have location map problem

Per HTML 5 snafu - pushpin points moved south, there was a problem, and it reads as if there has been a solution, at least form those using the template Location Map. I see suggestions is may take some time for fixes to propagate, but that was in September. Some of the locations on this map are clearly wrong. Spokane and Bridgeport look OK, but the other three are wrong. Am I missing something, or is this supposed to be fine now? (FireFox) --SPhilbrick(Talk) 18:08, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Nothing to do with that. The linebreaks were adding extra height to the thumbnail frame, causing the relative dimensions between image size and image frame not to match. The pogs are positioned relative in the image frame, so if they don't match, the pogs are in the wrong place. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:13, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. That looks better.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 21:47, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Fixes needed to support MSIE browsers: Although the map markers are fine with the Firefox browser, there are still severe dot-dislocation problems (off 3%-7%), in the placement of many markers, for the Internet Explorer browsers, but I think other people gave up trying while thinking the problem would get fixed by "expert" editors. For example, College Station (TX) marks as south of Galveston (i.e., underwater), and Baton Rouge floated down the Mississippi, alongside cruiseships in the Gulf of Mexico. If it were a map of Britain, I suspect London would mark in Dunkirk. For the fix, I got as far as creating Template:Location_map/simple, which works for only 1 marker. However, while the old versions of Template:Location_map_many still map correctly, that template was also trashed to use {Location_map+}, likely with the same peculiar, complicated div-section shift, so I will work to fix that as well. Meanwhile, I have always wanted to add better map features, so rather than just fix the "dislocated dots", I will add some new features to make the map markers shorter to write. There are just so many other problems, and new templates, and so it has been difficult to update all of them in a few months. However, the fixes have been made at a rapid pace, so we can solve the dislocated-dot problem soon. -Wikid77 (talk) 16:35, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Ah IE, quelle surprise... Some version info might be useful... Not that I own Windows, so it's up to someone else, but logging information like that is good practice. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:05, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
  • Firefox (etc.) needs "line-height:0" to match IE: Maps can be displayed to fit any browser, but the div-section attribute "line-height:0" is needed because Firefox or related browsers allow line-height to override <div> "height:0;" and have placed a map marker in the middle of a tall character box, which lowers the marker by 5-9 pixels. This is a very obscure incompatibility between browsers (as well as only a few pixels lower), and so that is why it has gone unfixed for years. However, newer Template:Location_map~ is way off in IE alignment. I think the alignment problems occur in IE 6, IE 7, IE 8 and IE 9, but I am not sure of the exact version numbers for each one. Anyway, I have created Template:Location_map_all to work on all browsers, but also provide new mapping features to expand our mapping technology, and simplify alignment of map labels for better legibility in thumbnail maps/graphs. More later. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:47, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Infobox not showing references in edit mode

I have a query relating to the difference between view and edit for an infobox. Please see thread at [43]. Eldumpo (talk) 19:48, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Can't go directly to feedback pages

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T44479

Windows 7, IE 8, Monobook. Ever since the "View reader feedback" button began appearing on talk pages, I've had a problem with it. If I leftclick it while holding down Ctrl, it opens in a new tab just like any other link would, and I can read the feedback just like I should. However, if I leftclick it while not holding down anything, the page just sits there as if I'd not done anything, rather than going to the feedback page. Any idea what's going on, and what (if anything) can be done? Nyttend (talk) 02:48, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Most pages don't have the link so here is an example: Talk:Google. For me in IE9, the first left click doesn't work but a second left click works. I don't mean a double-click. The two clicks can be long apart. It's the same logged out and logged in with Vector. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:28, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
The first single-left-click works fine for me on Firefox 17.0/Vista/Vector. Switching to IE9 produces the same behavior as what PrimeHunter reported. Sounds like an IE problem. jcgoble3 (talk) 05:01, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Opera has the same problem as IE9. The first click works in Firefox, Safari and Chrome. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:10, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Do you use Internet Explorer's "Compatibility Mode"? --Malyacko (talk) 12:27, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
In IE9 the feedback link behaves the same with and without compatibility mode. However, I noticed that with compatibility mode enabled I cannot change tab in preferences (MonoBook and Vector tested) unless I open the preferences tab in a new browser tab or window. Two clicks don't work there. Without compatibility mode a single click on the tab works fine. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:11, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Your bug in IE "compatibility" mode with the preferences is already fixed in 1.21wmf5, which is scheduled to be deployed here Monday. You can test it now on test.wikipedia.org or mediawiki.org if you'd like. The AFT bug is now in bugzilla as T44479. Anomie⚔ 16:56, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
(added after collision) your 2nd concern (preferences) is reported in Bugzilla:41792. is fixed in 1.21wmf5, which, according to the roadmap, will be deployed to enwiki on December 3rd. you can test the fix now on mw:Main page - mediawiki is already on wmf5.
as to the problem with the feedback: can you please turn on the "Display notification about every script error" settings in IE9 (under Tools => Internet Options => Advanced") and see if you can get a more specific error report? it also may help if you add to the tail of the address line of the browser either "?debug=1" or "&debug=1" (depending whether or not a question mark already appears earlier on the address line). as to Bugzilla:42479: this may or may not be related to the issue you see - i could not decipher this bug report. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 17:07, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Neither of those ("Display notification about every script error" or "?debug=1") produced any errors at all. jcgoble3 (talk) 19:14, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
after some troubles, i was able to reproduce. at least for me, the behavior is more interesting: when pressing the control for the 1st time it does not respond, and then on a 2nd click (you have to take enough times between the 2 clicks as to not make it a double-click), it goes to the feedback page. this behavior is not exactly what the other 2 editors reported, but for me, at least, it is 100% consistent, at least in Talk:Google. i did not fully understand Bugzilla:42479, but the little i did, it looks like the right diagnosis. קיפודנחש (talk) 22:28, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
I have flagged this report to Oliver and Fabrice from that team. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 08:45, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, PB :). Nyttend et al, thanks for flagging this for us: I'm glad to see that the devs are on top of it already. If you encounter further bugs with the Article Feedback Tool, the AFT talkpage or my talkpage are always open :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:50, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Embed SVG

I have created an Interactive SVG linkmap of New York where you can hover over a county and click on it to bring you to that county's Wikipedia article. Is there any way I can embed the SVG(not a bitmap of the SVG, the SVG itself) in a page or template? I have tested it on Firefox and Chrome and it works in both.—Kelvinsong (talk) 20:28, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Ah, but have you tried it in Internet Explorer? If it doesn't work there, it's not really viable. I have tried viewing self-created SVG files directly - four (Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari) display it just fine; one (IE7) refuses. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:37, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Must we always support ancient browsers? Adding these maps to articles doesn't hurt IE 7/8 users, and benefits users of other browsers. It also helps encourage people to switch to free browsers. —Kelvinsong (talk) 22:53, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
I know it is frustrating, but if the reader is using Wikipedia in a public library with computers installed in 2009, they might still have "ancient" Windows 7 with IE 7, and not aware they need to feed corporate planned obsolescence by installing new computers every 4 months. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:35, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
As I noted on the Help Desk: Browser support for SVG is spotty, so the MediaWiki software renders them on a page as PNG. You would have to click through to the image description page then to the actual SVG to get the linking. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 12:58, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
The image description page can be bypassed with Media: which links directly to the uploaded file, for example Media:Tokyo subway map en jp.svg versus File:Tokyo subway map en jp.svg. But the svg itself cannot be embedded in a wiki page, and Media: without a File: link doesn't provide attribution as usually required by the image license. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:33, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Attribution isn't a problem—I made the file. Image maps sound like a big compromise here—they give no hover indication, and can be very crude—see the map on this page, where you can be hovering over Connecticut and be taken to the Massachusetts page, and small states like Rhode Island are unclickable, whereas interactive svgs are highly precise because the vector map and the link map are exactly the same. I'd also like to add that IE explorer 8 is only used by ~11% of users.
Also, the Commons won't let me upload the interactive SVG—it says the file is corrupt.—Kelvinsong (talk) 21:03, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Writing for Wikipedia is harder than writing a trivial iPhone app, and must consider the reach to billions of people, not just a few million here or there. Those people using IE 8 are part of the "anyone who can edit" the free encyclopedia. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:35, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
As a workaround, the <imagemap> extension tag can be used to add overlay links to images. — Richardguk (talk) 13:32, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, the <imagemap> tag works well with Internet Explorer browsers, and detailed maps can be kept accurate to the exact pixel by setting a <div> "line-height:0" (for Firefox, etc.) when overlaying div-section data onto an image. When a reader can click your map in a hospital, hotel computer room, Internet cafe, public library, or other third-world browser, then that is an exciting accomplishment. Consider the reading of articles with ancient 2009 computers as part of Wikipedia's mission. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:35, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
Note: You can use {{xtag}} to auto-link parser and extension tags. {{xtag|imagemap}} → <imagemap> --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 11:25, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Statistics

How often and when this page update [44]? Xaris333 (talk) 14:23, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

  • Edit-count stats updated mid-month: The statistics are typically updated near, or after, the middle of each month for the English Wikipedia counts:
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm - tables of article edits, talk-page and article counts
The delay in processing data from the prior month has been attributed to a 10-day span to tally the counts; however, there were plans to change to an incremental-count algorithm, which would allow the prior month to be tallied much faster than a 10-day delay. -Wikid77 (talk) 07:04, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

How do I code this URL?

For the winners of the European Film Academy awards, how do I code http://www.europeanfilmacademy.org/News-detail.155.0.html?&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=88&cHash=b859c57aafcfa00d80f829301a1e03ec this URL so it doesn't break in the references section? It has those pesky brackets around the tt_news part of the link. The example is cite #22 in the article for Amour. Thanks. Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 11:00, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

See Help:URL#Fixing links with unsupported characters for encoding. Also documented at Template:Cite web#URL. --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 11:20, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
Brilliant - that's fixed it. Thanks! Lugnuts Dick Laurent is dead 11:23, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

How do search for my new pages?

Is there a way that I can search for new pages that I have created? I don't really want to plough through zillions of items in my contributions to find those that start with N, and I can't help thinking there should be a simple fix, thanks Jimfbleak - talk to me? 13:27, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, at the bottom of your contribs page you should find a box containing the link Articles created. By default, that is for articles only and also excludes redirects, but you can adjust it for other namespaces by altering the number in &namespace=0 to any one of these. An interactive version is here. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:00, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
Many thanks Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:11, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

ΒΟΤ

Is it easy to create a BOT? If yes, how can i create one? Xaris333 (talk) 20:10, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Creating a bot is a good place to start for information regarding how to create a bot. --J36miles (talk) 20:43, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
I have read ti before but i didn't understand. Xaris333 (talk) 20:57, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
It can be easy to create a bot, and it can also be very difficult. It mainly depends on the task, then on which tool you choose, and of course your technical and programming experience. First step is deciding what task you wish to do though. WP:CREATEBOT is as good of a guide as it gets, and you need to give us some specifics of what exactly it is that you want to do for more concrete suggestions. —  HELLKNOWZ  ▎TALK 21:07, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

WikiLove customization

Hi, I'm working on a WP:Teahouse pilot program with badges for recognition. We're using WikiLove as a delivery mechanism. I'm not sure if it's just a caching issue, but I'm not seeing our preloaded badges show up in WikiLove. The install script we're using is: importScript("User:Ocaasi/WikiLoveinstallscript.js"); ...which imports User:Ocaasi/WikiLoveinstallscript.js to a user's common.js page. It would be awesome if someone could take a peek at the code and see if I'm missing something. Thanks! Ocaasi t | c 21:07, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

  FixedMust have been a caching issue. It's showing up fine now. Ocaasi t | c 22:56, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Help

Is there a way to find with articles than are in Category:Football in Spain are not in the Category:Football in Spain task force articles (the Template:WikiProject Football don't have the parameter Spain). (Sorry about my english. I am trying to try this in greek wikipedeia). Xaris333 (talk) 21:43, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes— see Wikipedia:CatScan --— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 22:22, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
Doen't work. The first category has articles and the second talk pages of articles. That's the problem. Xaris333 (talk) 23:49, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Size of breaks / Source display problem

Hi. Some month ago something with the size of breaks was changed across Wikimedia projects, that makes a lot of my Wikiversity articles unusable. (I did not get any answer in the Wikiversity, so I ask here.) When I created my pages it was possible to make square matrices using graphics of the single rows. It looked like this. Now it looks like this:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

See this page as an example. Is there any way to fix this problem? Greetings, Lipedia (talk) 11:04, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Here is your code in <p style="line-height:0px;">...</p>:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

It looks fine to me in Firefox. I don't know whether there is a risk of images on top of each other in other browsers or circumstances. The images have height 5px, but line-height:5px; gives space between them for me:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

PrimeHunter (talk) 13:01, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

That worked, thank you! By the way: There is another strange problem. In the "Demonstration in Matlab" box at the end of this page is only a part of what I wrote between the source tags. Do you know any solution? Lipedia (talk) 17:06, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Experimentation indicates it happens when there are more than ten consecutive lines of numbers in the assignments. If the 11th line only has a few numbers then the display works. Maybe there is a 1024-character limit for assigment operations in source tags, or something like that (just guessing). PrimeHunter (talk) 17:39, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Something definitely has a limit around 1000. 994 characters witn no newlines works here:
x =
1      010       020       030       040       050       060       070       080       090       100       110       120       130       140       150       160       170       180       190       200       210       220       230       240       250       260       270       280       290       300       310       320       330       340       350       360       370       380       390       400       410       420       430       440       450       460       470       480       490       500       510       520       530       540       550       560       570       580       590       600       610       620       630       640       650       660       670       680       690       700       710       720       730       740       750       760       770       780       790       800       810       820       830       840       850       860       870       880       890       900       910       920       930       940       950       960       970       980       9901234
995 characters fails:
x =
1      010       020       030       040       050       060       070       080       090       100       110       120       130       140       150       160       170       180       190       200       210       220       230       240       250       260       270       280       290       300       310       320       330       340       350       360       370       380       390       400       410       420       430       440       450       460       470       480       490       500       510       520       530       540       550       560       570       580       590       600       610       620       630       640       650       660       670       680       690       700       710       720       730       740       750       760       770       780       790       800       810       820       830       840       850       860       870       880       890       900       910       920       930       940       950       960       970       980       99012345
bugzilla:41719 is "Code display fails if more than 986 characters of comma-separated values are between curly brackets". The example is User:Camusensei/sandbox. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:36, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Ya dun' broke the page boy.--The Devil's Advocate (talk) 23:27, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

LaTeX packages

 
The LaTeX code for this should compile in math mode. The PNG is blurry, especially in Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Mediawiki software apparently allows LaTeX packages to be used. I want to be able to write something like this and have it compile:

LaTeX code for chord progression


\usepackage{gchords}
\usepackage{geometry}
\chords{
\def\numfrets{8}
\chord{t}{
t{G$^\sharp$} f{C}p4,
t{C} fEp4,
t{E} fGp3,
t{G$^\sharp$} n,
t{C} n,
t{E} n
}{\textit{C}~major}
\chord{t}{
t{G$^\sharp$} n,
t{C} fFp5,
t{E} fAp5,
t{G$^\sharp$} fCp4,
t{C} n,
t{E} n
}{\textit{F}~major}
\chord{t}{
t{G$^\sharp$} n,
t{C} fGp7,
t{E} fBp7,
t{G$^\sharp$} fDp6,
t{C} fFp5,
t{E} n
}{\textit{G}~7}

} %{\textit{I--IV--V} chord progression}

Kiefer.Wolfowitz 13:15, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Off topic
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
First example of LaTeX using a package
 
This picture should compile in math mode, but it does not. Instead, it was LaTeX2PDFed, snapshot, and then converted to PNG with GIMP.
\usepackage{gchords}
\usepackage{geometry}
\def\chordsize{5mm}  % distance between two frets (and two strings)
\def\numfrets{17}
\chord{t}{
t{G$^\sharp$} f{C}p{16},
t{C} f{C}p{12} f{E}p{16},
t{E} f{C}p8 f{E}p{12} f{G}p{15},
t{G$^\sharp$} f{C}p4 fEp8 fGp{11},
t{C} f{E}p4 f{G}p7,
t{E} f{G}p{3}
}{Diagonal shift of \textit{C}-major}
Who tuned your guitar, and how many fingers do you have? --Redrose64 (talk) 13:43, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
The guitar has major-thirds tuning. The diagram shows that the same two-fret pattern is used everywhere on the fretboard; the corresponding diagram for standard tuning requires a span of four-frets for three patterns. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 14:14, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
The software loads the packages; we as editors have no control over it. You can file a bugzilla request to see if they could implement this. (I don't see it as likely as this is a rather limited functional group and because the devs are either volunteers who probably wouldn't care enough to implement this or paid and have other higher priority assignments.) An image of the output of a local file seems to work plausibly, and if you cite the packages and code used in the image, people can recreate it as necessary. --Izno (talk) 15:51, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikimedia software has the ability to run LaTeX packages, which ship with e.g. Ubuntu.
MediaWiki's example of a LaTeX package fails to compile on English Wikipedia:

Failed to parse (unknown function "\setlength"): {\displaystyle \setlength{\unitlength}{1cm} \begin{picture}(4,2) \put(1,1){\circle{3}} \put(3,1){\circle*{5}} \end{picture} }

English Wikipedia has not flipped the switch that would allow us to use LaTeX packages. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 17:17, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Then you need to pursue that via Bugzilla, as I already indicated, if it is indeed only to turn the switch on. --Izno (talk) 22:17, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
"Wikimedia > Extension setup" in bugzilla.wikimedia.org, to be exact. :) --Malyacko (talk) 11:55, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Off topic
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I'm a bit lost. You are requesting a package that the MediaWiki backend would render into an even more blurry and jaggy PNG image rather than uploading the image by yourself and better yet choose the SVG vector graphics format? Nageh (talk) 18:32, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Your response is relevant to a question about my guitar diagrams. I asked about LaTeX packages.
LaTeX users would like to be able to use CTAN packages that are shipped with Ubuntu, and so presumably present no security risk. WikiMedia software supports LaTeX packages. Thus English Wikipedia software-managers should flip the switch that allows us to use LaTeX packages.
Since I cannot compile code using packages on Wikipedia, I cannot assess your claim that it would be blurry. Were your claim true, then the Wikipedia software or Wikimedia software would need improvement, per standard software-development procedures.
It seems to be a pain to convert my dvi or pdf documents into svg files, and this is a very ad-hoc path that cannot be recommended to other users. Unless LaTeX packages are enabled, I shall redo the diagrams using Gnu Lilypond, which allows svg exporting.
I uploaded the PDF source document for this set of images. You are welcome to convert them to svg and upload them.
Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:34, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
MediaWiki does not allow latex, it allows Math written in a subset of latex. In theory we could squash more into the math tag, but realistically that is not going to happen for the vanilla version of MediaWiki. The tip to add more packages to the rendering can be seen as a 'hack'. But of course we could create yet something else that would allow it. Someone is free to develop a .tex file renderer, it wouldn't be too hard I think if you put some time in it. The biggest problem with any renders is getting it reviewed for security and strengthening it against DoS use. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:59, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi TheDJ!
Thanks for your comment. I would love to have the AMS packages, geometry, and gchords. Otherwise, I shall use GNU Lilypond to create SVG images. Sincerely, Kiefer.Wolfowitz 13:23, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks to whomever reformatted my example! Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:38, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

My JS broke

It now gives me an error "undefined reference: addOnloadHook". Any idea how to fix this? -- Liliana-60 (talk) 21:20, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

We need a bit more information, like what browser you use and on what page this happens. — Edokter (talk) — 13:25, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
Well I use Opera, and it seems to happen on every page, as all JS-specific features like sortable tables and such are gone. -- Liliana-60 (talk) 20:01, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
The error seems to be caused by the script you load from wikt:User:Liliana-60/monobook.js. — Edokter (talk) — 21:59, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
I figured as much. But how can it be fixed? -- Liliana-60 (talk) 08:10, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Okay. This doesn't seem to be because of my JS, that is just one symptom. It happens on Commons as well, where I don't actually use my JS. The error message is: 

[03.12.2012 14:28:52] JavaScript - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/2012/12/03
Inline script thread
Uncaught exception: TypeError: Cannot convert 'mw.util' to object
Error thrown at line 1, column 0 in http://bits.wikimedia.org/commons.wikimedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=site&only=scripts&skin=monobook&*:
    window.addPortletLink=mw.util.addPortletLink;

So it seems that the MediaWiki JS broke. -- Liliana-60 (talk) 13:32, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Cannot reproduce on http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/2012/12/03 or http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page with Firefox's Web Console - I get two JS warnings about getAttributeNode() but that's all. --Malyacko (talk) 20:58, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Finding URL used directly in article

Is there a way to find a part URL in an article that is not supplied via a template. The "External links search" finds both direct instances and those supplied via a template. The reason is to find articles in which a template can be used for the link rather than direct coding in the page. Keith D (talk) 23:24, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

You can create a bot that searches wikitext directly. Ruslik_Zero 10:08, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Sandbox edit mode

I use Chrome and Firefox with Vector skin. I want my sandbox to open in edit mode, which "Preferences" suggests is default, but for me it opens in read mode. Is there a simple way to either force edit mode, or add a button to the top right menu to give this option? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:21, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Disable my sandbox and add this to your JS:
mw.util.addPortletLink(
 'p-personal',
 '/w/index.php?title=Special:MyPage/sandbox&action=edit',
 'My sandbox',
 'pt-mysandbox',
 'Go to your sandbox',
 null,
 '#pt-preferences'
 );
--— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:20, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the script. Unfortunately, when I installed it in my common.js nothing appeared in the top right, and all my other scripts stopped working. Have I missed something? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:06, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Try it now - it appears it was missing a bit of punctuation, which I think I added above. -— Isarra ༆ 16:12, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Spot on, I tweaked the text to read just "Sandbox" for consistency with the new layout — even I could work out that bit, the rest is like a magic incantation to me ): Thanks again to both of you! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:34, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

finding/fixing links to a particular site

Hi. I couldn't find this in the archive or FAQs and I'm sorry if it's a perennial question. A magazine's web site I use a lot for both references and external links has changed its structure breaking every link. Is there a way of identifying all the broken links/references so they can be flagged as deadlink, and ideally fixed? (some may still be on their site, some we'd have to work out the magazine issue and article which hopefully would have the same text). The magazine is Novosti Kosmonavtiki and the broken links are structured like http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/mag/339/04.shtml and http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/foto/gallery_184/index.htm#25

To try and avoid this happening again I've started to webarchive references to good websites. Is there a bot or something that can see that a reference is webarchived and copy across the archived link to other articles with the same reference? Doing it manually is laborious! Thanks in advance for any help. Secretlondon (talk) 15:48, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

To answer the first (simplest) part of your question:
There are currently only 126 links to novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru on enwiki, including the links in your post here and multiple links from some pages, so you might be able to fix these manually. But Wikipedia:Bot requests may be able to help if you need a bot to carry out more extensive work.
— Richardguk (talk) 19:54, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Thanks - checklinks seems to be good at finding archived versions so together with your link above this is easier to fix than I'd feared! Secretlondon (talk) 22:40, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Traffic increase statistics

About three months ago I collected the number of monthly pageviews from about 150 health articles. I am just checking monthly pageviews again for the same articles and am surprised to see that fairly consistently, all of the articles are getting 20% more traffic. Some articles are getting more, and few are not getting more traffic. Does anyone know the expected projection for traffic growth on Wikipedia or know where I can get reports containing broad commentary on Wikipedia article traffic? I am especially interested if anyone has said that Wikipedia traffic is increasing and if so, what is the rate of increase and to what extent is that rate consistent. There exists Wikipedia:Statistics but that seems like ways of viewing things at any point in time, and I wanted to know about changes over time. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:54, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

See WikiStats. It is known that English Wikipedia traffic declines during the summer months (Students on summer holiday, more outside activities, etc.), which might explain your particular situation with the health articles. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 16:01, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Fantastic, brilliant, thanks. I saw your name on Wikipedia:Statistics - thanks for watching this page and fielding questions. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:01, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Filter log gets cleared when changing username?

In November, I changed my username from Anonymouse321 to The Anonymouse. I happened to check my current filter log and realized that only entries from after the username change exist (wikilove are the only logs). I also tried checking my old account name's filter log and nothing shows up (it no longer has any contributions, of course). Is this intentional? The Anonymouse (talk • contribs) 17:17, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

bugzilla:25377: "AbuseFilter should use Renameuser hooks (filter history/filter logs need to be updated when a user is renamed)". PrimeHunter (talk) 18:51, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
OK, so there is already a bug report for it. I'll check it out, thanks. The Anonymouse (talk • contribs) 20:29, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Edit Filter Question

I've come across a situation where the edit filter has caught a constructive edit and disallowed it. The edit is substantial enough that it clearly needs to be attributed for copyright purposes. What needs to be done to push the edit through so that the attribution for the edit is not broken? Log of disallow [45] Monty845 22:07, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

There is no technical way to reinstate a filtered edit AFAIK, so maybe include their username/IP in your edit summary? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:31, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Personalized Edittools

Hi all.

There are quite a few personalized "Edittools" scripts floating around, but i think this one is a bit different, and maybe can be more useful to some users.

The main difference is that this tool uses a very simple script that does not contain the edit tools themselves: rather, each user who wishes to personalize their edit tools, creates a specific page in their userpspace (surprisingly, this page is called "Edit tools", or more precisely, Special:Mypage/Edit tools), where they define their own personalized Edit tools.

The tools appear in a box, between the public "Edit tools" and the edit box (aka "textarea"). The script itself is in User:קיפודנחש/personalEdittools.js, and a rudimentary documentation, including installation instructions are in User:קיפודנחש/personalEdittools.

peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 23:48, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

edit filter problem

I've had a recurring problem with the edit filter flagging posts of mine as spam and not letting me save them. When I report the false positive, people tell me that I'm supposed to be able to press "save" a second time (example) and the message from the filter says something similar. But multiple save attempts don't seem to make a difference, and minor and major adjustments to the wording usually don't help either. Can somebody fix that issue (i.e. back the response level off to "warning" since I think it must now be set to "disallow")? The filter is just too aggressive and makes editing intolerable when it triggers. Thanks. 66.127.54.40 (talk) 01:50, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Special:BlockList is broken

I can't access Special:Blocklist - the message I get is a heading of "Internal error" followed by a red box with "[2dfb96b1] 2012-12-03 23:32:22: Fatal exception of type MWException". Fun!--Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 23:33, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I have the same problem. Yikes. WikiPuppies bark dig 23:35, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T44662
King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 23:38, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Works for me. Peridon (talk) 10:48, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Where are my admin tabs?

The layout problems above did not affect Firefox, but persisted in Chrome. I therefore did a complete "clear all browsing data", "empty cache" and logged back in. All my stuff (watchlist, scripts etc) are working, so it knows it's me, but the admin tabs (delete/move/protect) have disappeared. Everything is fine on FF still, so why won't Chrome accept me as a sysop?Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:41, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm so stooopid, tabs had reverted to dropdown, hadn't noticed. I must get out... Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:50, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Wanted: Page purge tool

Is there a script or gadget that will add a "purge page" link to the toolbox? If not, could someone with the sills needed make one, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:35, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

There's two filed under "Gadgets > Appearance" in preferences. Andrew Gray (talk) 11:04, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
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