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A new notice has appeared at the top of my watchlist advertising three different discussions about paid editing. It's rather unusual that the notice doesn't have a "dismiss" link or any other way of removing the notice beyond editing my CSS to suppress all such notices. Where do I inquire about this further or whose attention should I get to address this? ElKevbo (talk) 21:49, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Same here; the "Dismiss" button, which was always previously present, is now AWOL. - The BushrangerOne ping only 21:54, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I am seeing this as well. The notice needs a "dismiss" link added. Who needs to be asked to fix it? – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:54, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Same here -- and strange that this actually seems to be a two week-old notice that used to have the dismiss link, which I previously used, and now it's back with no link. None of MediaWiki:Watchlist-details, Template:Display/watchlist, or Template:Display seem to have been modified recently enough to cause it. equazcion→23:01, 7 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Looks like the same problem as above, this time with calls to "addOnloadHook" from MediaWiki:Common.js and calls to "getElementsByClassName" from somewhere not clearly indicated. To find this sort of thing, add debug=true to the URL and then look for warnings beginning with "MWDeprecationWarning" in your JavaScript console. Hopefully someone will fix these soon, otherwise I'll do it in a few hours (it's dinner time here). Anomie⚔ 23:08, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
"Dismiss" option missing from Watchlist Messages
Starting sometime yesterday, the "dismiss" option came up missing on Watchlist Messages. First it started with the "Three parallel policy proposals" message, and today on the "Editors are invited to comment on a proposal for a new Draft namespace" message.
Like most, I typically dismiss these messages as I am not that involved in discussions. Perhaps a search party should be called for the missing "dismiss" option? :) - Neutralhomer • Talk • 15:19, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Sorry for the slow reply, had to run a few errands. After seeing your message, I tried Ctrl+F5 and that fixed it. I'm glad that fixed it, cause I honestly don't know where the JavaScript error console is on Firefox. :) Take Care...Neutralhomer • Talk • 20:08, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
For future reference: WP:JSERROR describes how to do that for the major browsers. Amalthea 01:16, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
I had the same problem as described above, fortunately I had the idea to search here and your advice to use CTRL-F5 fixed it. Then I thought, for others who don't find this discussion, maybe it would be an idea to put up a watchlist message about this? --Ørjan (talk) 04:26, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
History popup link not working in Popups gadget
The "history" popup link in the Popups gadget ceased working properly a few hours ago. The popup does show the list of edits made to an article but responsible editors and the edit summaries are all "undefined." Has there been a recent change to the API or something similar that would cause this? Or is there something specific to the Popups gadget that has happened and requires attention at the Talk page specific to that gadget? ElKevbo (talk) 21:52, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
@ElKevbo:: You are importing an outdated popups version in your user scripts. That version is broken since two days ago when a number of old deprecated functions were removed. Remove those imports and activate the gadget in your preferences instead. Amalthea 08:47, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
That fixed it. Thanks so much! ElKevbo (talk) 01:01, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Page remaining 'unreviewed'
The page Preston Hill Country Park is marked as unreviewed in the Special:NewPagesFeed, when set to sort by oldest. I am assuming that unreviewed means un-patrolled as the is no [Mark this page as patrolled] 'button'on the article page to click, as on 'truly' new pages.
One point to note is that this page was started as a user draft in 2011, and has just (19:53, 7 November 2013) been moved to article space.
Sorry if this is a known bug. Or is there a workaround to get the page off the new pages list? 220ofBorg 02:53, 8 November 2013
I see that this has now been 'resolved' in that the page now shows as 'reviewed' with a green Y tick, and as reviewed by Vantine84 (talk·contribs). I am certain I was logged in at the time. Any feedback on this? 220ofBorg 13:19, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Server lag? In can take several hours for a purge/refresh of status ES&L 13:27, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Yep, I marked it as reviewed. Reviewing in this context is the same as patrolling, ya? — Mr. V (t – c) 02:56, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Toolserver replication lag
I've noticed the lag on toolserver is up to 5 days (example). I don't think I've ever seen it so high. Is this normal? Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 10:30, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Five days? I've seen it five weeks, and then some. The toolserver has been ropey for well over a year now; there's plenty in the archives for this page. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:49, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Have they already stopped maintaining it? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:03, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
I can see reports over the last year and half complaining about replication lag, to be sure, but they're all in the magnitude of seconds or hours, not days. Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 14:21, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Replag used to be fairly common. It's less common nowadays. The Toolserver is deprecated and is no longer actively maintained. It is scheduled to be fully killed at the end of 2014. Users are advised to switch to private hosting or Wikimedia Labs. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:57, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm seeing database server lag on the order of 7 1/2 days now. VanIsaacWSVexcontribs 12:27, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Since we know that Toolserver is being deprecated, it might be fair to assume that s1 replication has been turned off or broken in such a way that there is no motivation to fix it, with the expectation that anything important has migrated over to wmftools. The only regular thing I use now that (AFAIK) is still on Toolserver is Scottywong's AfD Stats tool, which is a good way of keeping track of AfDs I've contributed to, to see if there are any further developments. Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 13:09, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
I use the same tool the same way... :( As Scottywong says he's semi-retired, I somewhat doubt that he'll feel much like moving it to the Labs server... hopefully he'll pick up on the ping here... Livit⇑Eh?/What? 18:29, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
If Toolserver is being run down, can anyone point me in the direction of replacements for edit counter and article creator please? GiantSnowman 13:17, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Edit counter is now here. Article creator's main page is here, though doing an actual query seems to time out at the moment. Ritchie333(talk)(cont) 14:01, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Nice one, cheers. GiantSnowman 18:39, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Little diff issue
When showing diff, like in here, file links should contain hyperlinks to theirs pages, like templates or ordinary wikilinks. --Rezonansowy (talk • contribs) 13:58, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
This is not a native MediaWiki feature, but rather an aspect of wikEd and its baby sister wikEdDiff. You will need to report this at User talk:Cacycle/wikEd. (ping Cacycle) jcgoble3 (talk) 19:21, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia changelog
Hi,
where i can find the log of changes made on wikipedia (on the server side) by developers?
I'm asking because, since yesterday (7/11/2013, ~14:00 UTC+2), my common.js not work properly. But on Nov 7, i haven't made any changes on my script. It worked perfectly, and then suddenly stoped to work (when i click on elements, nothing happens, seems like jquery/js conflict/error). The script reproduce gadged with characters and tags below textarea (because on ro.wiki our gadget is not so advanced, i made my own).
So can i view somewhere this changelog? XXN (talk) 17:30, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
@Helder.wiki: Ugh, no, it's not that bad. addOnloadHook and appendCSS are among functions which will continue to work for now; but some others, like hookEvent and getElementsByClassName, were replaced with dummies. Matma Rextalk 18:07, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Matma Rex, oh, right! I mixed up the function names because I fixed one of these hooks today. Helder 20:25, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
I solved my problem by replacing addHandler, but after that still remain a litlle glitch. Each time i click on tags/characters below the textarea, this element is inserted, but also page is scrolling up automatically, like it′s clicked element such as #top. Paranormal activity )) XXN (talk) 21:00, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Problem with protected templates now have pink background in edit mode
See: this page for an example. My main concern is that the pink background is too dark, I'm having a bit of trouble reading it, and I don't have red-green color blindness. I can only imagine the difficulty of someone that has that problem. I think a white background would be best, the "notice" would still be pink. See: WP:ACCESS, we really shouldn't make WP harder to read for anyone out there. Thanks for your consideration. Funandtrvl (talk) 21:32, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
I was wondering about that too. Is that just standard to signify that one is editing a protected page? Ie. is that what admins see when editing sysop'd pages? While I don't personally have trouble with it, I could see other people having trouble, depending on their displays and eyes. equazcion→21:48, 8 Nov 2013 (UTC)
From my experience on other projects, yes, this is what admins see on FPP'd pages. I think it's a fairly recent change (I could be wrong about that, though), but the idea is to avoid situations where an admin doesn't realize they're editing through protection. That should go doubly for template editors, so I think this background is definitely a good idea. (The notice is the same color regardless of protection level, so you might just think the page is semi'd.) @Funandtrvl: If you really don't like the background, though, just modify the mw-textarea-protected class in your personal common.css. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 22:10, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure that semi-prot pages get a normal white edit box, except for unconfirmed users who get grey. Anyway, to change the background colour of the edit box on a template-prot page to a paler pink, put this in Special:MyPage/common.css:
- the , .ns-8 textarea is not necessary if you're not an admin, since it's to apply the same colour to the edit box of pages in the MediaWiki: namespace. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:03, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
It was introduced almost at the same time as Wikipedia:Template editor (an editors privilege to edit protected templates, but not with full adminship). It is a dark tone indeed. Not that much. -DePiep (talk) 22:22, 8 November 2013 (UTC) -DePiep (talk) 01:08, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm fairly certain it wasn't. I've been getting that on Wikidata for months on fully protected pages. The only reason you're just noticing it here is that you're a template editor now, and you don't see the pink background unless you have the ability to edit the page in the first place. — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 22:38, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
The pink background for the edit box of a template-protected page is exactly the same as that which admins have had for years when editing a full-prot page. Personally I would favour a different colour (yellow?) for template-prot pages, since the pink is a warning to admins that the page is full-prot and that they should exercise greater caution. The unusual colour is in-your-face, and if a different colour were used you wouldn't need to carefully check whether the message at the top states "... only users with administrative rights can make edits ..." or "... only users with administrative or template-editor rights can make edits ...". --Redrose64 (talk) 23:49, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
A fair point. Shall we take a quick straw poll and file a bug? (Until recently it wasn't possible to set things like this for protection levels other than autoconfirmed and sysop, but I think the necessary core updates have been made.) — PinkAmpers&(Je vous invite à me parler) 01:44, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
If anything, protected templates need the most caution, because a mistake could potentially screw up tens of thousands of pages. I don't think a distinction is really necessary. Mr.Z-man 02:30, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree, there's no good reason that editors should use a different level of caution when editing a template-protected page versus a fully-protected page. The only reason I can think of is that there's a somewhat larger pool of editors with the ability to revert the former. Anomie⚔ 13:49, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
The term "template-protected" is perhaps misleading. When an admin goes for the "protect" or "change protection" tab, they get some selection lists. Two of these are titled "Edit" and "Move", and they each offer exactly the same four options for all pages: "Allow all users"/"Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access"/"Require template editor access"/"Require administrator access". This means that any page where it is possible to set the protection level may be set as template-protected, even if it's not a template. Templates may still be set as full-prot, and these are surely the ones requiring greatest caution, otherwise the prot level wouldn't be set so high. An admin may still screw up almost three million pages by making an ill-advised edit to {{reflist}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:59, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
That's only because it's not technically possible to limit protection levels to certain namespaces in MediaWiki. If we really wanted to, we could hide the option on non-template pages with Javascript. There's really no reason not to reduce the level on {{reflist}}; I assume it hasn't been done only because no one has asked yet. The template editor group was specifically made for templates that are protected only due to transclusion count. {{Navbar}} has been changed to templateeditor and is used on over 7 million pages. Strictly speaking, I don't think anything in the current protection policy would justify fully-protecting a template solely for visibility reasons (except things on the Main Page). Mr.Z-man 16:28, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
This is a local CSS override that enwiki made. It only shows up for admins and users in the templateeditor group, since both have custom group CSS. Legoktm (talk) 02:04, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Correct. It is however a very very old customization. It's been in place since early 2008 at least. I suspect it was changed to align it a bit with other edit notices in the the visual styles of talk page, documentation and mbox (specifically) deletion templates. Since it is mostly to warn about fully protected situations, I have little problem with us removing that highlight from template protected rights. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:54, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
If we remove the pink from MediaWiki:group-templateeditor.css but leave it in MediaWiki:group-sysop.css, this means that if a user with templateeditor rights edits a template-prot page, they will get a white background; but if a user with sysop rights edits the same page they will still get a pink background. That to me is the wrong way around: if admins are to get a warning which is different from that shown to templateeditors, the admin's warning should be weaker, not stronger. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:29, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Disappearing edit
I'm afraid that my edit (response) on Talk:Internet_Archive has disappear, I remember I've responded to him. I've checked my browser history, I've visited this page around 12. Is it possible that something like this to happen? --Rezonansowy (talk • contribs) 21:40, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
I do see a comment by you on that page. If you can do a page search, look for "dilemma", should point you to your comment. equazcion→21:51, 8 Nov 2013 (UTC)
That was yesterday, but there is no comment today. Perhaps you forgot to press "save page"? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:54, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
I hope that's my memory holemy brain bug???, but is it possible that edit may disappear? --Rezonansowy (talk • contribs) 22:51, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Nope, it isn't. Graham87 09:04, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Err, of course it is. We intentionally "disappear" edits regularly (using oversight, suppression, super-suppression, or selective undeletion). It's also possible (for example) for slave servers to become out of sync with master servers or other server-side strangeness to occur (cf. bugzilla:56589 and bugzilla:56577). While it's most likely human error (e.g., forgetting to press "save page"), we cannot and should not definitively say that edits can't disappear. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:00, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Serif font-family specification in user CSS now does nothing
I'm not sure how long this has been the case; maybe a week or so? My CSS consists of
body {font-family: serif; font-size: 88%;}
and yet Firefox displays Wikipedia text in its sans-serif font. (Of course I can set the serif font to be the default, but I don't want to do that.) Archelon (talk) 21:52, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Also, when I "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above" (in Firefox's preferences) Wikipedia displays in some other sans-serif font. Archelon (talk) 23:22, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Does a span-tag work, when the body text remains sans-serif font, as in:
<span style="font-family: serif; font-size: 88%;">This is serif text</span>
As showing "This is serif text" and what font appears for the span-tag? -Wikid77 (talk) 09:36, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Well, that's strange. The text between the tags there appears in a different (narrower) sans-serif font from all the other text, both with and without allowing pages to choose their own fonts (but it's a different skinnier sans-serif font in each case). ...No, to be precise I think it's the same font as the surrounding text when I don't allow pages to choose their own fonts, but reduced in size; the 88% is being applied twice. (How does it look to you?) Archelon (talk) 19:13, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
I think the font I'm seeing between the serif tags is the same as the one it's using for the menu items along the top and edge of the page. Also, italicized text is appearing in (the italic version of) my serif font, but only when I "allow pages to choose their own fonts"; otherwise, it's just the italic version of my default sans-serif font. Where does Wikipedia's font specification come from, anyway? It must be demanding that a sans-serif font be used. Although Firefox may also be doing something weird. Archelon (talk) 19:13, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
You should check Firefox's font setting; it probably has a sans-serif font set for your default serif. — Edokter (talk) — 22:17, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Nope; my Default font is "Droid Sans", and then on the Advanced menu I've got Proportional set to "Sans Serif", Serif set to "CMU Classical Serif", Sans-serif set to "Droid Sans", and Monospace set to "Droid Sans Mono". Oh, and of course with these same settings I used to have Wikipedia displaying in my serif font. I have now discovered your essay here; perhaps it will prove helpful. It confirms my suspicion that Wikipedia specifies sans-serif (I wonder why it is not considered best to let the user decide...?); it has also caused me to realize that I was missing the mscorefonts package (I'm on Ubuntu), but that of course was not the problem. Archelon (talk) 00:07, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Have you checked that the CMU Classical Serif font is not corrupt or not properly installed? Does it work in another application? Also try setting a different serif font, ie. Droid Serif. — Edokter (talk) — 11:01, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
It appears you are correct; I thought I had already tested that, but apparently I hadn't. So everything works as expected as long as I don't try to use the specific font "CMU Classical Serif". Now all I need to do is figure out what has gone wrong with that font. Thank you. Archelon (talk) 19:47, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Syntax highlight problem on common.js
Syntax highlight doesn't work when I preview my common.js. And code editor feature doesn't work as well, the edit box is empty. --Rezonansowy (talk • contribs) 22:45, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
In talking namespaces the words like "talkpage" and "talk namespaces" are well-understood and independent. The opposite is often described as "non-talkpage" or "non-talk namespaces" - clumsy and relative. Wikipedia:Namespace uses "Basic namespace(s)" for the non-talkies -- a wording I am not familiar with am do not associate with its apparent meaning.
Now at last I found a word that describes these namespaces clear, once and for all : Subject space(s). It is exactly and exclusively the opposite of "Talk space(s)" (as to be used in: "Take the subject page of this page"; "A page has its subject space and talk space"). And brilliantly this is the complete pair of magic words: {{SUBJECTSPACE}}, {{TALKSPACE}}.
My question now is: why is this word not commonly used in talks &tc.? Let me put it this way: I suggest to use Subjectspace instead of anything else as the complementary of "Talkspace" (and don't mention the alternative magic word ever). Am I missing something? -DePiep (talk) 16:40, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Adding: writing "Talkspace" is OK. But is "Non-talkspace" a namespace at all? -DePiep (talk) 16:44, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Usually it's clearer to just specify what kind of page it is - "article", "project page", "user page", etc. "Article talk page" or "Project talk page" is just a little clunky and redundant, so it's usually just shortened to "talk page." I suppose if you're referring to all of the non-talk namespaces it might be better, but that's not as common of a scenario. Mr.Z-man 17:18, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
A bit around the point. I needed a word to say "The AQ assessment template is placed on the talk page, but refers to the subject page". -DePiep (talk) 09:22, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, there are certainly situations where one needs to refer to a non-specific non-talk page. I had this dilemma when writing the script and documentation for CatListMainTalkLinks. I dealt with it by making my own word. equazcion→09:27, 10 Nov 2013 (UTC)
ToC and vertical margin increase?
On the majority of articles, table of contents box is positioned too close to the lead section, making that specific part of articles layout looking not so nice. How about having about 10 pixels of spacing there, something like adding style="margin-top: 10px;" to the outer <div> element? It would make positioning of the content box much, much better... Thoughts? -- Dsimic (talk) 18:37, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
However, I'd suggest using measurements in em (e.g. 0.5em) rather than px. Measurements in px will be a different physical size depending on screen resolution. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 21:25, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
That's great, but it would probably be beneficial to make this change system-wide. Maybe it's just me, :) but the layout looks so much more consistent with that additional spacing. -- Dsimic (talk) 21:33, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Just tried it out, and 0.9em fits almost perfectly. -- Dsimic (talk) 21:42, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Hello
I'm trying to export 800 .xml files to the mediawiki localhost using the software 'MWdumper', and I was wondering if I can upload more than 1 file at a time since uploading 800 articles individually will take a lot of time. Please let me know what to do or if there is a software that I could use that can perform this function. Thanks alot!
Kclalwani (talk) 22:39, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Convert all outgoing links from http:// to https:// ?
What does the team think? It will make us all more Secure and in these terrorism-filled times, we can all use a bit more Security. See contextAndy Dingley (talk) 01:53, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
If you want a concrete example of what this breaks, look at translate.google.co.uk – which won't process a https:// link Andy Dingley (talk) 02:24, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Would some kind JavaScript coder be willing to fix User:Ale jrb/Scripts/csdhelper.js? It has stopped working since the last time I tried it (last week maybe?), and I presume that it is using some of the deprecated JavaScript that the developers recently removed. — Mr. Stradivarius♪ talk ♪ 02:57, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
What are you supposed to see when it's working? equazcion→03:07, 11 Nov 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) hookEvent is depreciated. Change the last line from
hookEvent ( 'load', function () {
wa_window.prototype = new wa_document;
wa_element.prototype = new wa_document;
});
to
$(document).ready( function( $ ) {
wa_window.prototype = new wa_document;
wa_element.prototype = new wa_document;
} );
Let me know if for some reason this doesn't work. Thanks, Theopolisme(talk) 03:13, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
I tried that, but it still doesn't seem to be working. I hadn't done it for waLib but did after your post, and it still doesn't appear to be working. I'm using copies in my userspace, User:Equazcion/csdhelper.js and User:Equazcion/waLib.js. I'm still not not sure what I'm supposed to be seeing if it works, but these seem to be breaking other js, so I'm pretty sure there is still something wrong. equazcion→03:20, 11 Nov 2013 (UTC)
I think you're mistaken, it works -- read the docs and then test it on a page in CAT:CSD. :) Theopolisme(talk) 03:23, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Alrighty, long as it works for those who need it :) equazcion→03:25, 11 Nov 2013 (UTC)
I've updated Ale jrb's scripts,[2][3] but the CSD helper still isn't working. You're supposed to see an extra tab at the top of pages that have been tagged for speedy deletion, immediately to the right of the "Talk" tab. When you click on it, it pops up a menu of actions, e.g. delete the page, decline this speedy deletion, send a note to the tagger, etc. I tried Equazcion's version too, but that doesn't seem to be working either. — Mr. Stradivarius♪ talk ♪ 05:16, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Mr. Stradivarius, could you try my version again? It appears to be working for me now. The major difference was that I copied the entire waLib.js into the parent script, in place of the importScript line that used to bring it in. There's been some talk of importScript lately, not sure if there have been changes that could explain this. equazcion→06:18, 11 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Yep, your version is working for me now. Thanks! — Mr. Stradivarius♪ talk ♪ 06:24, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
No problem :) Still kind of a mystery why that worked, but I'm glad it did anyway :) equazcion→06:29, 11 Nov 2013 (UTC)
User:Armbrust has reported that my edit to the CSD helper script broke Hotcat and Twinkle for him. Has anyone else noticed any problems with either of these? — Mr. Stradivarius♪ talk ♪ 14:26, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes, that's what I was referring to above about javascript breaking. I don't think it was your edit in particular, but whatever caused the script to break originally. If you replace it with my version it should clear up. equazcion→14:28, 11 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Error, unable to save edit at meta.
Tried several times to save an edit, in Preview it says, "Your edit has been rejected because your client mangled the punctuation characters in the edit token. The edit has been rejected to prevent corruption of the page text. This sometimes happens when you are using a buggy web-based anonymous proxy service." What does it mean? What's the solution to this? --Ansuman (talk) 10:14, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Well...are you using a web-based anonymous proxy service? If so: stop using a web-based anonymous proxy service ;p Ironholds (talk) 12:26, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Not that i know of, been using the same data connection since a year. It worked once, then again same issue. 2 days back faced the same issue, but it worked after a while. Today it's been a long while. Is this how we get to know that we are on "anonymous proxy"? Could it be some other technical issue? How come I face this on Meta, but not here on enwiki? Please help! -- ɑηsuмaη« ৳ᶏ ɭϞ » 14:25, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
New features
You can now use the "Autonym" font of the Universal Language Selector (ULS) to display the name of languages (for example in navigation templates) in their correct script. To do this, add the CSS class "autonym" to the elements that include language names. Note that this font only works for the name of languages, not for any other text. [4]
Problems
There was a problem with Parsoid (the program used by VisualEditor to convert wikitext to annotated HTML) on November 4, between 19:40 and 20:40 (UTC). Encoding issues caused non-ASCII characters (including those with diacritics, like "é") to be broken when converted to wikitext and saved to the page. [5]
Future
The Beta Features tool is now available on Commons and Meta-Wiki. With it, you can test new features before they're added for everyone. The plan is to add this tool to all wikis on November 21. [6]
MediaWiki 1.23wmf3 was added to test wikis on November 7. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on November 12 and all Wikipedia wikis on November 14 (calendar). [7]
The MassMessage tool will be added to all wikis on November 14. It will make it simpler to send messages across wikis. [8]
The button of the Search page will soon be changed to be blue and bigger (see the difference). [9]
You will soon be able to add a page name as parameter for {{REVISIONID}}, {{REVISIONUSER}} and {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} and similar functions, by writing for example {{REVISIONID:Apple}}. [10]
In the future, when you hide a CentralNotice banner on a wiki, it will also be hidden on other Wikimedia sites. [11]
I found this informative. Thank you. Killiondude (talk) 18:21, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
European slowdown
European users might have noticed a bit of a slowdown on sunday evening and monday morning. (I personally had bits requests of over 12 seconds). It looks like there was an issue with an overloaded link between Europe and America. Some traffic was moved to another link and operations will be working on resolving the root problem. In case anyone was wondering what was going on :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:49, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
I did notice, but thought it was just the usual talk page slow save that I get... 8-( Peridon (talk) 17:11, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Adding links to other Wikipedias
I just went to add a frwiki link to an article here. I clicked on the little cog wheel. It told me I must be logged in. Yes, I was logged in here. OK, I went to the WikiData link and logged in there. No, the cog wheel and its pop-up wouldn't accept that I was logged in. So I did it the old way with [[fr:title]], and it's put the link in in the sidebar. But it's added a second line with a bullet point but no text as well as the Français line. Am I doing something wrong, or is it the way the thing's supposed to work? Or should I just ignore the cog wheel and stick to the old way? If so, what it the little wheel for? The article in question is Passage du milieu. Peridon (talk) 17:07, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Link now removed by someone who spotted I'd linked the wrong thing...) <8-( Peridon (talk) 19:13, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Side bar font
On the side bar, I can read 'Changes' and 'here' clearly. But in the languages bit on the main page, I can see what looks like 'Doutsch' and 'Esporanto' (and more too). Possibly like Dcutsch and Espcranto. Why is the languages bit in a different font that (for me at least) has issues with the monitor display? I don't remember it being like this until recently. I use Monobook and en-gb on (for this machine) a 17" CRT monitor. Peridon (talk) 17:21, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Are you using Windows? They recently changed the font, and it has issues on Windows (I've seen it on my home WinXP machine). Chris857 (talk) 17:37, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
XP Pro set to classic view (I detest big bright buttons for kids...). Who decided to use something that has issues with Windows? I mean, Linux might be better but some of us are tied to Windows by software compatibility. I've got loads of stuff in formats that won't even work on Vista upwards, let alone Linux, and progs that are Windows only (most versions). And then there are all the people that have Windows because it came with the machine. Probably only a few million here and there... Thanks to Matma Rex, by the way. I missed that thread., but have now joined it. Peridon (talk) 17:58, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Wikimedia Foundation Error notice
Since yesterday there has been a problem with saving edits to User:RoslynSKP/Southern Palestine Offensive. When the edit is saved, instead of going back to the article, the Wikimedia foundation error notice appears. Then by backtracking and hitting reload the edit finally appears. Is there any way of fixing this problem? --Rskp (talk) 04:46, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
The page is too complicated to finish rendering before the connection times out. After a next visit, parts of the page have been cached, and rendering will be faster, so that's why it works on other pageviews. This is a common problem with overly complex pages. The advise is to simplify the page using fewer and less complex templates (which include references). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:51, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
TheDJ. You mean a number of references is still an issue in this with Lua, and that it is more so when refs are used in a template? -DePiep (talk) 07:54, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for that. Yes, it is very long, but it only has one template plus the refrences. I'm in the process of cutting it down. --Rskp (talk) 01:04, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
The article has been shortened down to 169,000 bytes but its still showing the error every save. The Information for "User:RoslynSKP/Southern Palestine Offensive" page shows 109 transcluded templates. Is there any way of getting rid of some of these? --Rskp (talk) 01:46, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
That page has 84 calls to {{convert}} which is a complex template. If you want to give it a try, you could do a "search and replace" to change each "convert|" to "convert/sandboxlua|" which would cause the converts to use Module:Convert that is still under development (groan). However, it should be fine for temporary use and chances are that {{convert}} will use the module in a couple of weeks (although I've been saying that for a while). Using the module reduces the CPU time usage from 8.369 to 4.308 seconds when previewing the current page. Johnuniq (talk) 04:02, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
I suppose theother alternative is just to cut the article? --Rskp (talk) 01:15, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
A first step would be to try my suggestion, so I edited User:RoslynSKP/Southern Palestine Offensive to replace the convert templates, although I used {{convert/q}} ("quick") which was created recently for use on an article where {{convert}} was apparently causing the page to time out (the "/q" and "/sandboxlua" templates currently do the same thing). I checked the displayed text before and after the change, and there is only a single difference, namely where the new template has reported that one of the converts is invalid. To see that, search the page for "convert" (the displayed page, not the wikitext). You possibly want to change the output "g" (grams) to "impgal" (imperial gallons), or omit "|g" for the default which is imperial and US gallons. Johnuniq (talk) 05:50, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Your replacing convert with convert/q seems to have fixed it. Thanks very much. --Rskp (talk) 00:19, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Notification bug?
So I saw somewhere where someone tried to notify me with a lowercase u. In other words, they used {{u|Biosthmors}} instead of {{U|Biosthmors}} but I didn't get a notification, I don't think. Is this a bug? Is it tracked? Can someone test it and see if it notifies me or not? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 12:25, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
It works it works! Thanks all. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:16, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Actually this ended up being a bug: [12]. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:08, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Introducing Beta Features and Media Viewer
Screenshot of the new Beta Features preferences page.Media Viewer shows images in large and full size.
We're pleased to announce the first release of Beta Features, a new program that lets you try out new features before they are released widely. Beta Features is intended as a digital laboratory where community members can preview upcoming software and give feedback to help improve them. This special preference page lets designers and engineers experiment with new features on a broad scale, but in a way that's not disruptive.
One of the first beta features we will be testing together is Media Viewer, which aims to improve your viewing experience by displaying images in larger size and with less clutter than the current file info page. This first version 0.1 is still in early stages of development, but we invite community feedback right away on this discussion page, so we can improve it together in coming months. For a sneak peek at the next version 0.2 of the Media Viewer, check out these first mockups.
Beta Features and Media Viewer are now ready for early testing by logged-in users on MediaWiki.org, on Wikimedia Commons and on Meta.Wikimedia.org. Based on test results, we aim to release these beta features on all wikis worldwide on 21 November, 2013.
Here are some of the other beta features in our pipeline:
VisualEditor Formulæ — edit algebra or equations on your pages (only on MediaWiki.org)
Typography Refresh — make text more readable (scheduled for release Thursday, 14 November)
Would you like to try out Beta Features and Media Viewer now? After you log in on MediaWiki.org, Commons or Meta, a small 'Beta' link will appear next to your 'Preferences'. Click on it to see features you can test, check the ones you want, then click 'Save'. Learn more on the Beta Features page.
Beta Features and Media Viewer were developed by the Wikimedia Foundation's Multimedia team, in collaboration with the Design, Mobile and VisualEditor teams. Along with other developers, we will be adding new features to this experimental program every few weeks. We are very grateful to all the community members who advised these projects — and look forward to many more productive collaborations in the future. :)
Enjoy, and don't forget to let us know what you think! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 02:03, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
With all due respect (and not being sarky there...), if I saw that under a G11 tag, I'd delete it on sight... I'll look in, but you might not really be including me in the invite (bearing in mind my frequent underpoliteness at times on this page. Peridon (talk) 18:56, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
To clarify in case the above isn't clear, VisualEditor like other parts of the Wikimedia software will be using Beta Features to introduce new features, for testing and feedback before they are made available to everyone. For the English Wikipedia, and other wikis where VisualEditor is available but not yet by default, VisualEditor itself will be a "Beta Feature", as well as the new features coming along (initially, formula editing and maybe in-line language editing). Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 00:44, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your comment, Peridon. We welcome clear feedback on how to improve these Beta Features :) We are passing on specific recommendations to our development team, so they can evaluate them for future releases. For now, we are fixing the most urgent bugs, and will be rolling out more tweaks and new features in coming weeks, with our next release due on 21 November, and more updates in December. If you have any more suggestions or questions, you are welcome to post them here, and/or on this discussion page. I am out of office until 19 November, but you can contact our community liaison Keegan (WMF) or lead developer Mark Homquist with any urgent requests. Thanks again for helping us improve this tool! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 03:04, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Image in infobox rendering incorrectly after it has been updated in commons
I am working on the page Hat Works. On 8th November, the image File:Hat Works.jpg in the infobox showed a lot of tarmac and little of the supject. I went to Commons, downloaded, cropped and replaced the image. Simply it went from a portrait to a landscape. Back to Hatworks, and the new image was there but stretched to occupy original portrait format in the infobox. Ouch. Re loaded the page still the same. Loaded the page on a different computer- the stretch image was there too.
Edit the page to see if there was some fixed parameter in the infobox. In the edit mode- the image was rectified. I did a dummy edit and saved. The page came up correctly this time. Tested the same on the other computer and it was fixed there too. Not a serious problem- I am just reporting it to assist.
For what it is worth the browser is 24.0 Firefox for Linux Mint on the main machine and on the second 24.0 Firefox for Ubunt canonical. Skin monobook. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 10:41, 9 November 2013 (UTC)b
New twist. I clicked on an open tab on the browser to get en:wp Hat Works again. (Trying to get the Google Map of the area- through a known geotagged image). Page looked normal- clicked on said image to get to commons- the 'old image opened" but squashed to fit the new format. (that was from en:wp). I did a browser page reload- and it rectified 'new image- new format'. Clicked icon for Commons- and again I got the correct b'new image- new format'. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 00:27, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Date dependent template?
Is it possible to have date dependent templates? For example, I just added a new announcement to Wikipedia:WikiProject Basketball/Women's basketball. I added the new item template to mark it, but would like that to go away after, say two weeks. Is there a way to display one things before a specified day and other thing (in this case blank) after that date? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sphilbrick (talk • contribs) 14:42, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Template:Expiry can do this. However, the announcement might still show after the expiry date you set, because MediaWiki caches page content. The announcement would disappear next time someone did something to invalidate the cache, such as editing the page, purging the page, or editing a template used on the page. (There might be a delay for the latter case; it can take a while for template changes to work through the job queue.) – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 21:58, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll try it.--S Philbrick(Talk) 23:13, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
References
Is there a gadget or script that would notify / stop the user from adding a reference if it is already linked to on that page. Its easy to spot if the article only has a few refs, but if there is say a 100 its not so easy.BletheringScot 19:19, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Something as simple as manually searching for the URL in the whole article source should work. Maybe that's lame, but at least that's what I usually do. :) -- Dsimic (talk) 19:45, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Again though not so easy on a larger article, the instances I'm looking at are articles with a higher than average ref count. Just thought a warning of some kind through a script or gadget would be extremely useful to stop unnecessary duplication of refs and although negligible a wee bit of server space.BletheringScot 19:54, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
There is a script - it's present by default in AWB - but I don't know what that script is I'm afraid. GiantSnowman 20:08, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Yeah looked at AWB before, not that i knew it had that option but don't think it runs on a mac, which all of my tech fleet is. Wonder what the script is, might take a look through and see if i can find it.BletheringScot 20:11, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
@Blethering Scot: Please don't get me wrong, I'd also like if the default editor had such a feature. Regarding AWB, this article seems to be describing the way it deduplicates references. -- Dsimic (talk) 20:17, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
If you come across an article with a lot of duplicate references, drop me a note, I have a few tricks to make it easier. Werieth (talk) 20:25, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Would you mind sharing some of the tricks? :) -- Dsimic (talk) 20:43, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Slowdowns, style/js failures
I'm getting slowness and intermittent failure to load CSS and javascript features. Reporting from NYC now. Back to you. equazcion→19:50, 11 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Same here, in western Washington (state):Jay8g [V•T•E] 19:53, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
From the wikitech IRC and twitter feed: "Switching 588 wikis to 1.23wmf3 in one go seems to have upset the bits app server pool". So it is known and being worked on. The deploy process has changed slightly this time round and it seems a performance bottleneck has been reached because of this. As always, recovering might require bypassing your browser cache. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:55, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
fwiw, enwiki (and any other wikipedia i sampled) is still on wmf2. maybe some non-wikipedia projects (wikivoyage?) were switched, though... peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 21:54, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Indeed, but if bits.wikimedia.org (and its related servers) get overloaded, it'll affect all Wikimedia wikis. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:40, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
The MiszaBot settings at the BLP noticeboard seem OK. I checked the FAQ and verified there are no blacklisted links, etc. But it seems to be stuck, a lot of threads are way overdue for archiving and the page is getting big. Not being very acquainted with how the bot works, I thought I'd see if there's anyone more experienced here that can help. §FreeRangeFrogcroak 22:57, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Hm, the archiving was performed about 30 minutes ago? -- Dsimic (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:01, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
@Dsimic: I think you saw SineBot, which is not an archiving bot. FRF, right now there is a bit of a kerfuffle about archiving -- MiszaBot hasn't been running for a month and, while a replacement has apparently been coded, it's still not approved. Legoktm was running a version of the archival script that MiszaBot used for a while, but it appears that he's disabled it -- Lego, could you chime in here? Theopolisme(talk) 23:10, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm not running the bot anymore, and we're just waiting for Sigma's to be done, he's doing some stress testing of the bot in weird situations right now IIRC. Legoktm (talk) 23:12, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Ah, thanks for the information. Will it pick up the previous bot's setting automagically, or do we need to make changes? §FreeRangeFrogcroak 23:34, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Awesome, then we'll just wait I guess. Thanks!! §FreeRangeFrogcroak 00:38, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Manual archiving is also always an option, tedious as it may be ;) Theopolisme(talk) 00:56, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
I've been adding ClueBot configs to a bunch of noticeboards as it's showing signs of life lately. It looks like it's not running quite as often as it used to, but it's been keeping the Village Pumps pretty well maintained. I just added a config at BLPN. equazcion→01:30, 12 Nov 2013 (UTC)
@Theopolisme: Thank you for the clarification! -- Dsimic (talk) 15:02, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
@Theopolisme: On second thought, please have a look at this edit. It was performed by ClueBot III on 11 November 2013, and it removed (archived?) 23 discussions (around 67 KB of text) from this talk page, according to the diff. Hm, thoughts? It seems to be some kind of an archiving process. -- Dsimic (talk) 15:21, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
I added a ClueBot configuration to BLPN, so the same thing should happen there in the next day or so. Yes, that was an automatic archiving edit. ClueBot is the only archiving bot that's currently up and running, though it's running a little slower than archivers normally run. It's been doing a fairly good job at this page and the other Village Pumps though. equazcion→15:27, 12 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for the explanation! -- Dsimic (talk) 15:54, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Java update not working
I clicked on the java update icon in the bottom right corner of the computer screen to try and update java but it said the lastest version of java was already installed on my computer, and yet video files in Wikipedia in internet explorer 9 will still refuse to play. Perhaps it might be better for Wikipedia to evolve to have video files be youtube videos displayed directly on wikipedia with a link at the bottom right corner of the video screen for watching on youtube. If a youtube video that was used as a video file on wikipedia gets deleted, the entire link to that video file in the article should get deleted by itself without any human action causing its deletion, not have it so that once you click play on the video, the video screen shows a sad face with text saying that it was deleted. Blackbombchu (talk) 05:39, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
YouTube videos are an issue; They often do not meet our licensing requirements (I am aware of severalMany videos on YouTube that are copyvios), therefore it would not be appropriate. What does this page say is your Java version, and what operating system do you use? --Mdann52talk to me! 13:36, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Starting new section at WP:NFCR no longer leaves a 'new section' edit summary
When I start a new section at WP:NFCR, there is no longer an edit summary saying new section. The wikilink in the section heading in the edit summary is also new. The wikilink might even be useful, but why is the default summary omitted now? Also, wikilinks in the section header are no longer visible as blue links in preview, but instead display as This is a header with a [[wikilink]]. I would prefer if the preview displayed the wikilink as it would appear as if the edit were saved. -- ToshioYamaguchi 12:20, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
I cannot reproduce what you describe. How do you start the new section? Do you use editing tools? Does the same happen when you are logged out? PrimeHunter (talk) 12:32, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
It's because of that script of mine that you installed, Toshio. You need to enter a summary yourself now :) My bad. I'll work on getting the default back in there for blank summaries. equazcion→12:41, 12 Nov 2013 (UTC)
That would be really cool. Thanks. -- ToshioYamaguchi 12:47, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
I think I did it, and addressed the issue of header links not showing up in previews. Let me know if you see any issues, but since this is confined to a user script it should probably go on my talk page or to the script doc talk page. equazcion→13:25, 12 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Odd notification
Is there a reason this edit should have triggered a notification for me that "Mr.Z-man mentioned you on..."? I'm not listed in that diff at all. Or am i misunderstanding how notifications work? It's not a thing i pay much attention to, but if i'm going to start getting entirely irrelevant notifications i'll have to develop a purposeful blind spot to that little number. Cheers, LindsayHello 15:20, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
If mention notifications bother you, you can turn them off in Preferences → Notifications. That's probably a better solution than ignoring the red number altogether. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 22:56, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Vandalism obvious on page but not in edit section
On the page Utrecht an anonymous IP inserted remarks that obviously shouldn't be there, notably about people called Lewys, Damian and Sara, but when I clicked "edit" to remove these remarks, the remarks didn't show. Which in my view was very odd. The IP that added the remarks, was blocked already. ClueBot NG appears to have tried to revert it, but that wasn't enough. Strangely enough. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง resolved this for now but suggested I'd post a message here, as he suspected the page might be hacked. What's happening here? Who can help us? Mark in wiki (talk) 09:27, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
The vandalism could not be removed by normal editing. I removed it by restoring to the last unvandalised version. Very odd. But the page history appears to be working correctly now. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:32, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
I doubt it was anything more than a caching issue. You were seeing a more recent version during editing than you were during viewing. There was server stuff going on yesterday and the database got locked a few times, might have something to do with it. I doubt it was a hack, but I could be wrong. equazcion→09:35, 13 Nov 2013 (UTC)
This caching issue crops up frequently (there was a spate of reports last month). It is particularly common with vandalism and ClueBot NG reverts, probably because the bot is so fast to revert. Somehow the cache ends up holding the wrong version. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 22:10, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Quick way to get a list of all entries in a category
Hi. Is there a way to get a list produced from all the entries in a single category? For example, from this category on the German Wikipedia, is it possible to do a straight export/list? If there was only a couple of pages, I could do a copy & paste, but this has 5,000+ entries. Happy for it to be put in a sub-page of my sandbox. Thanks. LugnutsDick Laurent is dead 12:51, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Go to de:Spezial:Exportieren, and in the first box "Seiten aus folgender Kategorie hinzufügen" (which may be titled "Add pages from category" depending on your language setting), paste in the full category name (with or without the namespace), and then click Hinzufügen (or Add). The larger box will then fill with all the page names in that category, which you may mark and copy if you just need the page names. Click Seiten exportieren (or Export) to export the content of all those pages as an XML file. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:28, 13 November 2013 (UTC) amended Redrose64 (talk) 10:34, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Greetings. I process the pagecount and projectcount statistics made available by the WMF. Whoever amasses these files and members of the analytics team might be interested to know of an anamoly I spotted recently. The projectcounts-20131111-190001 file has this bizarre "r0w 4r0wonly@en 1 156" line (snip below). It has never appeared before, but it was enough to break my parsing engine.
I know this isn't the place to ask, but I'm not sure whatever graphics lab we have would be responsive, but I was wondering if somebody could do me a favour and make me a montage based on something like User:Dr. Blofeld/Copenhagen montage?, ideally two rows of 4 underneath to main panorama?♦ Dr. Blofeld 08:06, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
I have seen this problem posted by someone else on one or another help page but now I can't find it. For the past few days (since around the end of October) I've been unable to do any meaningful editing of wikipedia pages on a computer I regularly use that runs IE8 (it's not mine and I don't have the option to change browser). If I scroll down, the text runs all over the place. If I enter anything in the search box, it doesn't show up. I can't use any drop-down menu. I daresay the answer to this is that IE8 is old and has stopped working (I've already changed to Chrome on my home PC), but I just wanted to check.Deb (talk) 19:02, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
Firefox doesn't work either. Funandtrvl (talk) 18:04, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Re: Funandtrvl, what version of Firefox? Re both, what operating system? - Jarry1250[Vacationneeded] 18:07, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Firefox 25.0 doesn't work, it doesn't show the links at the top right of page. I can get IE10 and Chrome to work right now with WP. Funandtrvl (talk) 18:11, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
I've got FF25 and it's been working fine for me since the upgrade a couple days ago. Have you both tried rebooting your PCs yet? equazcion→18:13, 5 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Ok, the rebooting worked... thanks for the reminder when all else fails...reboot (or hit) the computer. Funandtrvl (talk) 18:24, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Unfortunately it doesn't help me. I reboot every evening. Deb (talk) 18:28, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
In your case, it is probably the IE8 browser. Is there a compatibility mode that you can turn on? Or anyway to get someone to upgrade the browser on that PC/laptop? Funandtrvl (talk) 18:32, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Would you be able to provide a screen capture of the problem in action? We should probably still be support IE8. - Jarry1250[Vacationneeded] 18:33, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Please delete the word "probably" in the above post - you should be supporting IE8. The above posts exemplify WP's arrogance towards IE - the original post is about IE, but immediately switches to concern about Firefox. Arjayay (talk) 19:27, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm guessing Jarry1250 was referring more to IE8 being a few years old, rather than it merely being IE. equazcion→19:37, 5 Nov 2013 (UTC)
As the original poster states "a computer I regularly use that runs IE8 (it's not mine and I don't have the option to change browser)". Many editors are still using XP, so cannot use IE9 or IE10. The current versions of IE are not supported either - I use IE10 and haven't been able to use the cite templates on the Ref Toolbar for months, whilst the search and replace hasn't worked on IE for years. Wikipedia wonders why so many experienced editors are leaving - I'm not claiming any great contributions, 44K edits over 6 years, but if anything is likely to cause me to quit it is the combination of implementing half tested software (I'm being very generous with the half) and the arrogance towards users of IE Arjayay (talk) 20:03, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
If you just assume that people are aware problems exist, they will never get fixed, especially when it comes to IE problems, as few tech-y people use it. I just tested Reftoolbar in IE10 and it worked fine, so the problem may be specific to your browser configuration, or a conflict with a user script or gadget (try it logged-out).
There are at least 5 major non-mobile browsers, each of which has a slightly different implementation of HTML, JS, and CSS, and they also vary between versions of the same browser. According to [13] there are currently 13 different browser/version combinations with more than 1% usage share. Compare this to traditional application development where it's generally only necessary to get things to work on a handful of platforms and where the implementation of programming languages are generally held to common standards and you can see some of the challenges of web design.
Keep in mind that things like Reftoolbar, Popups, and wikEd are not WMF projects, they were and are fully developed by community volunteers, often only 1 or 2 people. Mr.Z-man 20:26, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
I just logged in to the Wikipedia on a WinXP PC running IE 8 and could not replicate any of the above issues. Let's try to move away from that "what browser you should/should not use" and get to what exactly is happening on the original user's PC. Tarc (talk) 20:10, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't think anyone's actually focusing on which browser to use, other than Arjayay, who is just assuming others are. I'm thinking Deb has some local PC issue. You could try following the cache clearing instructions. When I get wonky browser behavior and none of the usual methods seem to work, I use CCleaner to perform a nice scrubbing, which works a large percentage of the time. It's a free program, though you do need to install it generally -- not sure if you have the ability to do that. equazcion→20:36, 5 Nov 2013 (UTC)
I'll try and get a screen print tomorrow. I did do the cache clearing thing but it didn't make any difference. Unfortunately, of all the websites I access regularly, this problem is only occurring with wikipedia. Deb (talk) 20:40, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
I've got a screen print now - should I e-mail it to someone? Deb (talk) 17:39, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
There's more people with this problem. Seems to me like every fifth (or even every third) IE8 user is unable to use the site. I'm currently editing with Chrome tho. I can't use IE8 on XP or Windows 7. There's nothing all that odd about the way it looks, so I don't see how a screenshot is going to help you.
When loading any page, it loads a blank page. Sometimes the previous page stays on screen until I minimize and maximize again, which makes the page blank.
In compatibility mode, the page does seem to get loaded, but none of the links work; it's impossible to highlight text (it's sort of like a picture, instead of text) and scrolling completely messes up the page, creating vertical lines all over the window.
This has been hapening sinse about the 2'nt november. GMRE (talk) 18:23, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Can't provide a screenshot, but on looking at my watchlist, everything is fine for the first 2-3 entries, and then from that point everything else on the screen is long vertical streaks leading from characters. IE8 on WinXP. Only resolution is to close the window; more than once it's frozen the browser entirely. Risker (talk) 19:00, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
When I look at a page, it appears normal until I try to scroll down - then it goes berserk, much as you describe. Deb (talk) 19:37, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Posting via IE8 here now. I've been trying to reproduce these errors but so far no dice. Deb, if you could, can you list the gadgets you have enabled -- or just try disabling all of them, bypass your chache, and see if stuff clears up? equazcion→20:04, 6 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Not trying to be difficult, but I don't know what you mean by "gadgets". Deb (talk) 20:37, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
I guess that answers that, then :) Gadgets are in your Preferences, they're extra tools and tweaks you can enable. If you don't know what they are then it's safe to assume you have the defaults only. equazcion→20:49, 6 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Gadgets are the settings listed at Preferences → Gadgets. A big problem with that list - not just the fact that there are so many (over 50) - is that several of them are opt-out, so will have been enabled without you being aware of the fact. So if you make a list of enabled gadgets, you may actually be listing several that the majority of people also have (probably without realising it). The Gadgets enabled by default (i.e. opt-out gadgets) are:
(D)Reference Tooltips: hover over inline citations to see reference information without moving away from the article text (does not work if "Navigation popups" is enabled above)
(D)CharInsert: add a toolbar under the edit window for quickly inserting wiki markup and special characters (troubles?)
Add a "Sandbox" link to the personal toolbar area.
The ones that Equazcion is interested in are most likely anything other than those five. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:48, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Not to be rude, but why would anyone use IE anymore? KonveyorBelt 20:40, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Deb explains that in her original post, Konveyor Belt. equazcion→20:49, 6 Nov 2013 (UTC)
IE 8 is the default browser on the corporate machine I use at work. (I work as a contractor at a very well-known technology company. I can't say which, but their products are doubtlessly in the computers everyone here is using. Unless you are using exotic hardware.) I could use another browser with the work computer & take my chances with with IT, but I don't use most of the gadgets or fancy add-ons available for Wikipedia, & another browser would fix certain problems while introducing another set. No browser software is completely free of gotchas of some shape or flavor. -- llywrch (talk) 17:59, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
i do not think the problem described have anything to do with IE. to the original poster: please try to see if same problems exist when you are logged out. once you see they do not happen in this case, you probably want to go over Special:MyPage/common.js and Special:MyPage/vector.js (or monobook, if this is the skin you use), and eliminate stuff, until the behavior disappear. you can then bring stuff back in until the behavior returns - at this point you found the culprit. clearly wikipedia is compatible with IE8, with some limitations (i.e., some things do not work with ie8, such as displaying references in columns, some features related to "universal language", visual editor and such), but the basic functionality works with IE8 and even with IE7 (probably once you go to 6 and below, things stop working, and the same is probably true for ancient versions of netscape.... peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 21:10, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
I already checked Deb's .js files, they're empty. equazcion→21:18, 6 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Same behaviour when logged out. Risker (talk) 22:55, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps it's a geo located central or geonotice or something that is causing the breakage... That would explain why only some people are seeing this. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:33, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Hmm maybe the new big ugly donation thing is doing it? equazcion→12:57, 7 Nov 2013 (UTC)
I'm trying to get the donation thing to come up again for me but I'm not sure how. I think I hid it when it initially came up. I logged out and cleared cache and cookies, but it still won't show up. Ironic, that. equazcion→13:05, 7 Nov 2013 (UTC)
deb, risker, stfg, could you post your general locations so we can check for geo notices that might be causing this? equazcion→13:28, 7 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Belfast201311: "Interested in having a chat with fellow Wikipedians? There is a forthcoming meetup in: Belfast, 23 November!"
All three display fine for me in Firefox 24; I live in Didcot. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:09, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
South Wales. Deb (talk) 17:36, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
South Wales should get the same geonotices as Berkshire except for the WikiTakesTube13 one. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:20, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Even though all the current geonotices appear to be simple lines of text with nothing more complex than wikilinks, it is interesting that you're both in the UK. My next step would generally be to see what happens when these users disable javascript altogether. It may be a teensy bit involved for those not accustomed to technical settings but this shows how to do it, if any of the sufferers feel like giving it a try. equazcion→17:42, 7 Nov 2013 (UTC)
I see all three geonotices just fine. Disabling javascript is interesting. Diffs accessed through https work fine when it's disabled and the problem reappears when it's re-enabled. OTOH, my problem with the misplaced tabs (item 3 in the #Diff and other problems (probably IE8) section) reappears when javascript is disabled, and goes away again on re-enabling. --Stfg (talk) 19:32, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Southern Ontario, Canada. I did try to take screenshots when the "striping" occurred, but the screenshots show a blank page, and not what I see on the screen. However, after taking the screenshot and trying to download it, when I returned to the Wikipedia screen, it was completely blank, and I had to close the browser to get back on. Risker (talk) 17:41, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Southern Ontario shouldn't be getting any current geonotices. The nearest active one is CHFNov13: "Wikipedians are invited to the GLAM Café at the Chemical Heritage Foundation to meet, talk, and edit. We provide the space, the coffee, and the snacks: you provide ideas and enthusiasm! On the second Tuesday of each month, starting November 12, 2013. " --Redrose64 (talk) 18:52, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I did succeed in taking a screenshot although it doesn't look quite like it did on screen. But no one seems interested in looking at it. Actually, I'm not so concerned about my own position because I can still edit at home - what worries me is that there could be a lot of potential users out there who wouldn't dream of trying to edit but can't now access wikipedia to look at articles.Deb (talk) 18:07, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
You could upload it via Special:Upload. Click the "Browse" button to locate the screenshot file, enter something like "Screenshot of IE8 glitch" for the "Destination filename", and enter anything for the description -- I can take care of that afterwards. I'd be interested in seeing it just in case it could tell us something. equazcion→18:13, 7 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Okay, I've done what you suggested - it's called Screenshot_of_IE8_glitch.jpeg Deb (talk) 19:41, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for doing that Deb :) I placed it at the top of the this discussion for future reference. It looks like the display isn't updating properly as you scroll down, and is rather just cascading shadows of the same screen. Is this similar to what's happening to Stfg and Risker? equazcion→21:10, 7 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Stfg, you seem to have a few things in your common.js and vector.js files. I would try removing them and bypassing your cache to see if any of those are causing the diff problem. equazcion→21:23, 7 Nov 2013 (UTC)
I've sometimes seen the same sort of thing on IE8. Have you tried toggling the browser's "compatibility mode" button (the torn-page icon at the right end of the address bar, beside the reload button)? LeadSongDogcome howl! 22:25, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I'll try this next week. Deb (talk) 18:03, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
I've tried completely emptying my common.js and vector.js (and didn't forget to bypass the cache :), but even with them completely empty, the situation is the same. In compatibility mode, it's slightly different: the top screenful displays, but scrolling and page movement keys have no effect at all (in normal mode, I get the same as shown in deb's screenshot). Has anyone any thoughts about the fact that this only happens with htpps diffs, while normal http diffs behave fine? (And is this the case for deb too? The screenshot doesn't show the title bar.)
(BTW, sorry I didn't do anything yesterday -- it was a panic day. And tomorrow I'll be out all day.) --Stfg (talk) 11:17, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Same experience here with the compatibility mode! I didn't notice the htpps thing though. Deb (talk) 18:04, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
I've had the problem ever since trying to play an OGG file on 2 November 2013. Got a "Do you want to run this application" security warning. Does anyone know what was installed & how to get rid of it. When I go use IE 8 on a different user name on the same PC, Wikipedia works fine. --Chaswmsday (talk) 10:01, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Something has been fixed! I haven't been able to test it on XP yet, but I can now use IE8 on Windows 7 again. GMRE (talk) 13:08, 9 November 2013 (UTC) No change on XP. :( GMRE (talk) 23:55, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
Ugh. Still doesn't work for me. But I created a user, then answered "yes" to the same prompt from the OGG file with no problem. Has anyone had any luck eliminating IE problems with what appears to be the preferred fix: turning the IE "Window feature" OFF, then back ON? --Chaswmsday (talk) 11:53, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
What is this "Window feature", and how do you turn it off and on again? As far as I can see, nothing has been fixed. Wikipedia pages accessed through https still have the scrolling problem. I haven't accessed any OGG files for ages, and I don't believe that's related. --Stfg (talk) 16:51, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm running IE 8 under Windows 7. Since IE 8 isn't directly able to be uninstalled, one recommended fix for IE problems is to go into Control Panel: Programs and Features, then choose "Turn Windows features on or off". Inside that, you're supposed to de-select IE 8. Those giving this advice recommend having some alternate browser in place just in case you can't get IE back. You next reboot, then go back into "Windows features" and RE-select IE 8. This supposedly causes your PC to find a fresh install... I'm wondering if this process works in a general sense, not just limited to the particular Wikipedia problem(s) at issue.
RE the points made below, I've disabled Javascript with no better outcome. I also just now tried to scroll a very short Wikipedia article with the same poor result.
The reason I've been suspicious about the OGG file is that the failures began immediately after my attempt to play the OGG. The executable/Wiki markup or whatever was generated didn't work right, as the OGG never played, so maybe something else ran or some setting was inadvertently FUBARed. (That's what I don't like about Microsoft's supposed "Recovery" process. Errors I've encountered in the past seem to have more to do with some mis-set parameter under User/AppData, and thus not corrected by Recovery, not with the programs themselves.) And my own UserName (the PC's administrator) is the only one that messed up. --Chaswmsday (talk) 00:35, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Today I installed a copy of IE8 on XP in my VirtualBox in hopes of finding what might be causing this. Unfortunately i was unable to reproduce. I don't know how to help any further, if a problem is this localized to certain users it becomes very hard to figure out what the problem might be. If i look at the screenshot that Deb is providing though, then that issue very much looks like a screen buffer problem. Do you see this problem more often on very large pages compared to smaller pages ? There can be many causes for such a problem. A bug in the application itself, mouse (scroll) drivers and graphics drivers are all often to blame. If i google a bit I also see some indications of that a bug like this was introduced in XP Service Pack 3 for some people (and never fixed). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:42, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
I did the same thing, vmware, and was unable to reproduce -- although I did get some slight buffer-type glitches. On initial setup of IE8 where it asks you about default search engines and whatnot, when the window disappeared and I was at Wikipedia, a big blank white box was left in its place, with Wikipedia around it. It cleared up instantly on refresh though. equazcion→21:49, 11 Nov 2013 (UTC)
PS. Stfg reported one major issue cleared up by disabling Javascript. Deb didn't try that but her issue sounds about the same, and I have feeling that would do it for her. Both users report this began somewhat recently. I'm wondering if there's maybe simply more javascript around right now and is making the browser work too hard? Or something. equazcion→21:53, 11 Nov 2013 (UTC)
That does indeed seem possible. I'm on XP SP3, so what TheDJ mentioned above rings a bell. I don't think this particular problem depends on page size, but IE8 is very slow indeed on large pages in any case (WP:FAC takes forever). I agree with TheDJ that it's tough when it affects so few users, and you can't be expected to spend the rest of your lives on this. Perhaps the time has come for me to bite the bullet and use another browser for Wikipedia access. Thank you both very much, TheDJ and Equazcion, for the time and effort you've put into tackling this. Regards, --Stfg (talk) 09:24, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
I mentioned pagesize, because it might relate to required memory usage (both to make the page [CPU] and to update it's drawing [GPU]). And higher memory usage on either might be a trigger for this specific problem to become visible to the user. Just a thought. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:58, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
I guess I will just have to wait for Windows 7. Shucks. Deb (talk) 18:42, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Well, what do you know? I turned off Active scripting and it seems to have done the trick! Thanks, guys! Deb (talk) 08:20, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Woohoo! 'Bout time something did :) I'm not sure what at Wikipedia would've been triggering active scripting, but who cares, as long as it worked :) equazcion→08:44, 14 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Well found, Deb. There's a horrible price to pay, though. Turning off active scripting disables navigation popups, Ucucha's duplinks tool, Dr pda's prosesize tool, ... I can't work without those. Actually, why is there so much https around anyway? For example, inter-language links from articles are ordinary http links, but when you click on one, the target page loads as https. What ever for? --Stfg (talk) 09:42, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
I didn't realize "Active Scripting" is how IE8 refers to Javascript. I posted the instructions for disabling Javascript more for trying to find the problem, rather than as a fix -- Stfg is correct that there may be some features you've relied on at Wikipedia that could be gone with Javascript disabled. But obviously if it's a choice between this and not being able to use Wikipedia at all (from work), then it might be a good solution until someone figures out something better... equazcion→10:20, 14 Nov 2013 (UTC)
If you have turned off "Always use a secure connection while logged in" at Preferences, that only affects that particular Wiki, and so the interlanguage links going out from it become http:. Once you click one of them, you're then served pages according to your prefs (and site settings) on the Wikipedia that you are now viewing. If you want to use http: on all of the Wikipedia languages and Wikimedia projects, you need to switch that off individually on all the languages/projects that you are likely to visit. Some do not have this setting and are permanently https: --Redrose64 (talk) 16:37, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes, it's true, I'm going to have to keep switching it on and off in order to use other websites properly (gmail for example), but it's better than not being able to use wikipedia at all! Deb (talk) 11:12, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
I haven't changed any settings and as of today it works for me in XP again. :D GMRE (talk) 18:56, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Well waddya know -- and for me. Yay! --Stfg (talk) 22:25, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
And it suddenly works for me in Windows 7. I just LOVE :( inexplicable behavior! --Chaswmsday (talk) 13:38, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Is it possible to use this picture [14] as it is used in Photosphere, or in a similar way? -- Cherubino (talk) 20:49, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Second class citizens
If I edit as an IP address and receive messages, I get a detailed notification: "you have new messages from 5 users (last changes)". If I am logged in, I simply get "you have new messages". Can we please stop treating registered users as second class citizens and provide with them with the same information that IP addresses receive? — RHaworth (talk·contribs) 10:47, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Actually, if you click on the red "1" beside the message (added by echo, you can see more information than you got from the OBOD. The only thing it doesn't give you is the link to the diff, but it tells you who left the message and where, so you have just as much information as before. --Mdann52talk to me! 11:07, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
I didn't really understand this answer. I haven't tested whether RHaworth's claim is correct, but if it's true that IPs get to see their number of new messages right away and registered users don't, then I think that should be corrected. It's time we registered users got to feel just as important is anonymous ones. equazcion→11:18, 12 Nov 2013 (UTC)
A screenshot of the Notification view This is what I see; I can't see why registered users are feeling like "Second class citizens" when they can see who left them messages even after they click through on the OBOD, and have the rest of the functions registered users get with Echo.... --Mdann52talk to me! 13:30, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Not sure why you put "the only thing it doesn't give you is the link to the diff", since there is a "View changes" link against all of the notifications show in your screenshot. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:03, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
I got treated as a second class citizen too. Back in those days when I used to edit wikipedia articles without an account, I used to be able to see a list of all edits I ever made on a talk page, but now I can't see a list of all signed edits to a talk page I made when I was signed in. That problem should get fixed. I should also get notified in the notification box when ever anybody makes an edit to a section that contains the link Blackbombchu. Blackbombchu (talk) 17:12, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
People who picked a username that starts with a small letter are also treated like second class citizens because I picked the username blackbombchu but was instead given the username Blackbombchu. Blackbombchu (talk) 17:18, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
The first letter of a username is always uppercased, just as the first letter of an article name is always uppercased. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:32, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Except on Wiktionaries, where mw:Manual:$wgCapitalLinks is set to false. Though pages in the MediaWiki namespace and usernames effectively ignore this variable. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:42, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
The new talk notifications are a real problem for me: I don't get them. When someone edits my talk page I get the red "1" at the top of the page (which I can miss), but nothing else. The orange bar seen by many registered editors relies on JavaScript, but since I browse without JavaScript I don't see it. The classic "Orange Bar Of Doom" (OBOD) for IP address users, on the other hand, works in any browser (it does not use JavaScript). I very much understand the "second class citizen" feeling – it seems ridiculous that something that works for me logged out doesn't work when logged in.
For some of the background behind this, see Wikipedia:Notifications/New message indicator#Background. Short form: The WMF deployed Echo as a new-and-improved notification system for registered users (IP address users were unaffected). As part of this, they removed the orange bar notification without giving a replacement. Understandably, this caused a bit of a stink. Despite pressure from the community, the WMF refused to restore this feature, but eventually agreed to develop a new orange bar for registered users, which is what we have today. Since registered users were not getting talk notifications, there was pressure to develop the replacement quickly. I believe one of the reasons it was written using JavaScript was to get it done quickly.
Ideally, I'd like to see the new orange bar implemented without JavaScript (I'm not sure if that's technically difficult). My next preference would be to have the option to switch back to the classic OBOD, so I could at least get talk notifications! (But that won't happen due to WMF politics.) – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 22:51, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
And you have filed a bug report about this, so that the people who should deal with this actually are aware of the problem ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:21, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Now now, let's not get sarcastic. This is the technical page, our last refuge from the drama of all other places. I would post a bug myself, but I don't feel familiar enough with the situation. PartTimeGnome, you seem to have a pretty firm handle on it, so you may want to do the honors. Seems like our best bet for getting it fixed. No big deal if you don't want to though. equazcion→23:27, 12 Nov 2013 (UTC)
@PartTimeGnome: Hmm, there is a gadget at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets (bottom of Appearance section - "Display a floating alert when I have new talk page messages"), which might help. It looks kinda broken in my firefox/opera tests just now, but it does function without javascript. Could you maybe start a thread at Wikipedia talk:Notifications once you've given that gadget a test, and describe what works well, and what is broken? (screenshot of my test) –Quiddity (talk) 23:44, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
I think the original complaint in this thread is referring to bugzilla:56475 - If so, it's #10 in the list of bugs at Wikipedia talk:Notifications#Echo - selected open bugs and feature requests. There is one staff dev still working through critical Echo bugs, but I'm not sure if this one is on his list of priorities (I shall prod the people who demand his time), or perhaps another dev will come to the rescue. Fwiw, there are a lot of potential improvements that could be made to Echo (hence I tried to collate that list), some big and some small. Letting each other know which ones we want (so that the devs can prioritize), and what exact specifications they should have (so that the devs don't spend time implementing something that then gets rejected by the previously silent part of the community), is the fastest route to consensus and action. –Quiddity (talk) 23:44, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Dark blue over the word "wikicode" to the point where I can hardly see it
Looks ok to me (on IE); What browser/OS are you using? --Mdann52talk to me! 13:33, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Confirming with Firefox 25, CSS code is "background-color: rgb(0, 0, 136);". --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:47, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Ah, those links should probably be buttons... However automatic loading of "jQuery UI" was disabled in the last MediaWiki Update, therefore the necessary CSS is missing. --Patrick87 (talk) 13:55, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
This affects all Buttons that were styled using "jQuery UI". The best workaround is probably to add
/** * Load jquery.ui.button if used in content * for backward-compatibilty * Should potentially be removed/replaced with mediawiki.ui, when that is loaded on each page */mw.hook('wikipage.content').add(function($content){if($content.find('.ui-button').length){mw.loader.load('jquery.ui.button');}});
I don't know whether another color was intended but it's easily readable for me and works as it should. The dark blue is the page you are on so it doesn't have a link like the others. I constructed a similar example below. We are on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) so Technical is dark blue and not linked. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:10, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Now I see readable buttons sometimes and other times see no buttons and unreadable dark blue for the page I'm on. Maybe it depends on caching. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:18, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Styles and javascript are acting totally wonky right now. I mentioned this in a section above. It's been happening since earlier today. Sometimes they fail to load and other times old versions are being used. Someone said it's likely being caused by some mass MediaWiki version migration across dozens or hundreds of wikis. I'd wait til later and try testing this again. equazcion→14:31, 12 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Yes, Commons is already using a variant of this solution (added by User:Rillke). See commons:MediaWiki:Common.js. I agree with PrimeHunter (below) that the styling should look acceptable (generally a plain link) without jquery.ui.button, since not everyone runs JS. Superm401 - Talk 08:53, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
I think you meant me rather than PrimeHunter. PrimeHunter hasn't posted below. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 23:12, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
The dark blue is because {{Help pages header}} (which creates the About Welcome Help menu (etc.) links at the top of H:Cheatsheet) uses {{clickable button 2}}, and that is designed to "grey out" a link if it points back to the page that you're currently viewing. It does that by setting style="background-color:#008". It is however a violation of WCAG if the text colour is not readable against the background, even if a "greyed out" effect is intended. But I don't see why the normal Wikipedia method was not used - if I put a link pointing right back to this page, the background is unchanged but the foreground becomes boldface black, and most people are used to that. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:08, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
As for {{clickable button 2}}, I think this should not inject an inline style that looks wrong without the rest of the jQuery button styling. It makes the links look ugly and unreadable when JavaScript is disabled (or fails to run for any reason). Since the jQuery styling is added by JavaScript, the dark blue background should be added the same way. (Or alternatively, just get rid of it. I don't know what the buttons should look like, so I'm not sure if they look better with or without it.) – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 23:26, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
Wikipedia broken
Everywhere? Accessing from NZ. Nurg (talk) 09:50, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
It doesn't seem to be broken for me, at least not technically (USA). equazcion→10:11, 13 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Seems ok now but for about half an hour I couldn't retrieve anything, or occasionally got a page that looked like it was missing the style sheet. Most frustrating. Nurg (talk) 10:28, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Happens to me every so often in Canada. I always wait a bit before panicking ES&L 10:30, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
According to the doom-merchants it's been broken for years... GiantSnowman 10:48, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
You're thinking about Toolserver. — Huntster (t@c) 12:23, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
No, he's thinking about Commons ;-) ES&L 12:26, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm thinking about puppies. Though that may be getting away from the point. equazcion→13:00, 13 Nov 2013 (UTC)
In the US and this seems to have been happening rather consistently for me in the Special and File namespaces at least (and the edit page as well) for the day. - Purplewowies (talk) 20:08, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
And of course, as soon as I mention it, it appears to stop! Durn Murphy's law! - Purplewowies (talk) 20:12, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Been happening to me in the US for the last 2-3 hours, off and on, back and forth. First noticed when I tried to open Commons and got that message you get when servers are down. Same with Wikisource. English Wikipedia. Now, it's sporadically slow in bringing up pages, Special and File namespaces look like no style sheet and no skin. Right now, the edit window looks like it does not connect with style sheet, skin, preferences, all gone. Then it goes back to normal. Back and forth, back and forth.— Maile (talk) 20:24, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Been running extremely slow for the past hour or so and the formatting is screwing up when it does eventually load.BletheringScot 20:46, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes, (in US) experiencing all of the above for the last few hours. North8000 (talk) 20:48, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Problems in the UK as well - apparently intermittent (that is, it wasn't working a few minutes ago, but now seems to be OK). Ghmyrtle (talk) 20:54, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Ditto for U.S. for last couple of hours. Looks like an overload problem — page gets rendered without the full formatting, perhaps because something has timed out. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:17, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
See also the reports below about Twinkle and js. not working Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:42, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Option to render a SVG images as PNG disappeared
Clicking on an image thumbnail will show the image page. If the image is a SVG, the image page used to have the option to render the SVG as a PNG of various sizes (2000px, 1000px, and a couple of others). That option seems to have disappeared within the last week or two. Is it a browser feature (it happens to me on IE10 and Chrome), a mediawiki change or some other factor? Astronaut (talk) 21:33, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
That is an extra feature used on Commons, not here. — Edokter (talk) — 23:09, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
You can still get different sizes of the SVG pre-rendered by the MediaWiki software as PNG by
Simply embedding a thumbnail and explicitly specifying the size you want. Then simply save the thumbnail.
(edit conflict) If you want to see the links on enwiki, you can add the following javascript code to your common.js:
Extended content
/** * SVG images: adds links to rendered PNG images in different resolutions * * @author Krinkle, 2012-2013 * @deprecated in 1.18 */functionSVGThumbs(){varfile=document.getElementById('file');// might fail if MediaWiki can't render the SVGif(file&&mw.config.get('wgIsArticle')&&mw.config.get('wgTitle').match(/\.svg$/i)){varthumbu=jQuery(file).find('img:first').attr('src');if(!thumbu){return;}functionsvgAltSize(w,title){varpath,a;// Example:// - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Example.png// - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Example.png/116px-Example.png// - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Gerrit_patchset_25838_test.svg/200px-Gerrit_patchset_25838_test.svg.png// - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Gerrit_patchset_25838_test.svg/langde-200px-Gerrit_patchset_25838_test.svg.pngpath=thumbu.replace(/\/(lang[a-z-]+-)?\d+(px-[^\/]+$)/,'/$1'+w+'$2');a=document.createElement('A');a.setAttribute('href',path);a.appendChild(document.createTextNode(title));returna;}varp=document.createElement('p');p.className='SVGThumbs';vari18n={'be-tarask':'Гэтая выява ў фармаце PNG у іншых памерах: ','be-x-old':'Гэтая выява ў фармаце PNG у іншых памерах: ',bn:'এই চিত্রটি অন্যান্য প্রস্থের মধ্যে PNG হিসেবে রূপান্তরিত: ',en:'This image rendered as PNG in other widths: ',de:'Dieses Bild im PNG-Format in folgenden Breiten: ',cs:'Tento obrázek jako PNG v jiné velikosti: ',cy:'Caiff y ddelwedd hon ei chynhyrchu mewn PNG yn y lled canlynol: ',fa:'رندر پی\u200cان\u200cجی این تصویر در اندازه\u200cهای دیگر: ',fr:'Cette image restituée en PNG dans d’autres tailles : ',hy:'Այս պատկերը մատուցված որպես ՓիԷնՋի այլ լայնքերով՝ ',id:'Gambar ini dijadikan PNG dengan lebar berbeda: ',min:'Gambar ko dijadian PNG jo leba babedo: ',ml:'ഈ ചിത്രം PNG ആയി ലഭ്യമാകുന്ന മറ്റ് വലിപ്പങ്ങൾ: ',mk:'Сликава како PNG во други големини: ',nl:'Deze PNG-afbeelding in andere groottes: ',pt:'Esta imagem renderizada como PNG em outros tamanhos: ','pt-br':'Esta imagem renderizada como PNG em outros tamanhos: ',sl:'Prikaži to sliko v PNG-zapisu v drugih velikostih: ',sv:'Denna bild i PNG-format i olika storlekar: ',tr:'PNG olarak işlenen bu görüntünün diğer genişlikleri: ','zh-hans':'该图像转换为PNG格式的其他尺寸：','zh-hant':'該圖像轉換為PNG格式的其他尺寸：',};varptext=i18n[mw.config.get('wgUserLanguage')]||i18n.en;p.appendChild(document.createTextNode(ptext));varl=[200,500,1000,2000];for(vari=0;i<l.length;i++){p.appendChild(svgAltSize(l[i],l[i]+'px'));if(i<l.length-1){p.appendChild(document.createTextNode(', '));}}p.appendChild(document.createTextNode('.'));varinfo=$(file.parentNode).find('div.fullMedia').get(0);if(info){info.appendChild(p);}}}$(SVGThumbs);
Alternatively, if you aren't too picky about widths, MediaWiki links to a few png renders by default sometimes (see below). For example, at File:Test.svg, there is a line that reads
Size of this preview: 321 × 599 pixels. Other resolutions: 128 × 240 pixels | 257 × 480 pixels.
These links can be clicked for pngs rendered in the listed sizes. You can then just modify the url with your desired width...for example, clicking on the 257 x 480 px link takes me to https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/Test.svg/257px-Test.svg.png -- you can just change the width in the url to https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/Test.svg/1000px-Test.svg.png (or whatever size you desire). Theopolisme(talk) 23:30, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
The "Size of this preview: 321 × 599 pixels. Other resolutions: 128 × 240 pixels | 257 × 480 pixels." feature is not present for all SVG images, see for example File:Speed skating current event.svg --Redrose64 (talk) 00:28, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm not an SVG expert -- do you know why this is? I assume it's based on the "nominal size" (set in one's vector graphics editor?) already being "thumbnail-sized". So in that case right-clicking on the image preview, choosing "Open image in new tab", and then changing the width in the url works just as well. Theopolisme(talk) 02:09, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
There are various ways of editing a SVG file, some people use a graphics editor like Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator, other (like me) use a plain text editor to create and edit the SVG file, and a web browser to view the result (not Internet Explorer 9 or earlier, not sure about IE 10). SVG has no concept of thumbnails, nor of thumbnail sizes. The various "thumbnails" that you see on file description pages are actually PNG files converted from SVG by the Wikimedia "RSVG" software. RSVG isn't 100% exact: for example, at File:Third angle projection symbol.svg#filehistory you will see three attempts to get a particular image uploaded - each attempt was compliant with the SVG standards, but RSVG didn't recognise certain features and so the first two attempts were unsatisfactory. The first one failed (look at how the lines cross at the centre of the circles) because the SVG standard specifies that a dashed line be described as a list of values, and also allows those values to be separated with either spaces or commas, but RSVG doesn't like having the values separated by spaces. The second one failed (it has a transparent background) because RSVG doesn't recognise a style= attribute on the <svg> tag, although it is explicitly permitted by the standard.
SVG files that do not incorporate a bitmap are fully scalable (those that incorporate a bitmap are also scalable, but the results for the bitmapped portions can be disappointing - see the older of the two attempts at File:BSicon UKLC.svg#filehistory). All SVG files have dimensions - primarily because SVG uses an infinite canvas, so we need to specify just which portion of that canvas actually constitutes the drawing that is to be shown. For example, File:BSicon STRrg.svg looks like a 90° circular arc, but it is in fact a complete circular ring - the dimensions have been carefully chosen so that three-quarters of the ring lie outside the visible area. Specifically, the ring is of radius 250 and is centred at 500,500; but since the visible area of the drawing is defined as 500x500 with an origin at 0,0 only the upper left quarter of the ring lies inside the visible area. Notice that this is 500 unspecified units of length, and not 500 pixels, 500 em, or 500 inches - but it could be any of these. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:27, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
So, is this a change to mediawiki software or browser related? @Edokter and Theopolisme: Why do I now need to put a bit of script in common.js when the png links were there on both Commons and en.wikipedia until quite recently? Astronaut (talk) 18:37, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Here's another trick which is probably simpler than anything above. Assuming that your operating system is Microsoft Windows:
visit any page where the image is displayed at any size
amend the size within the URL. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:10, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Redrose, I'm not asking for various ways to get a svg rendered as a png, nor am I interested in various tricks or javascript solutions. I'm asking what happened to the png rendering options that were already there for all svg images until quite recently. Did some mediawiki software change remove the options or maybe my recent upgrade to IE 10 took that option away? I really shouldn't have to ask the same question three times. Astronaut (talk) 13:59, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
They were never here; you are confused with Commons. They have a script that adds those links. You may have visited a Commons image page unknowingly when you clicked an image in an article. — Edokter (talk) — 21:21, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
logged-out way too often
I don't know if ayone else has noticed this, but, at least for me, I seem to get logged out automatically several times a day. I'm not clearing cookies or anything, but still, one minute i'm posting on a user talk page, do something else for 10 minutes, come back, and i'm already logged out. it gets rather annoying, having to log in several times a day, to say the least. -- Aunva6talk - contribs 21:34, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Started today. Using IE10 on Win7. Logs out every few edits.LeadSongDogcome howl! 00:36, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Seems to have spontaneously cleared up for me following patch Tuesday, whatever the problem was. Is it still happening to others? LeadSongDogcome howl! 16:48, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Hi folks, how long has this been a problem for you? -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 00:55, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
idk if logging in on my other computer logs me out here, but it's been going on for a couple weeks now. both chrome on win7 64, and firefox on win8 pro 64... -- Aunva6talk - contribs 04:36, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
IE by itself is not a great sample size. Note that there was a Windows Update on both Tuesday and today - the first one may have toughened up IE in some not-widely-reported way: idle sessions or some such. In the meantime, do try any one of Firefox, Chrome or Opera. I only use these, and I get logged out about once every 30 days, right on schedule. Addendum: You may wish to ask on IRC #wikipedia-tech if there have been problems in any particular geographic area. --Lexein (talk) 04:53, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
A Windows update? Might that explain why since early (UTC) on 13 November, svchost.exe has been using up 50% of the CPU time, even if I reboot? I'm on Windows XP SP3. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:20, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Yep, consider yourself lucky at 50%. See Infoworld. --Lexein (talk) 15:55, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
I couldn't find any clear indication on our end that something is wrong, so I'm a bit stumped. Do you continue to get logged out? I made some logs more verbose, so if you report back specific times in which this problem appears we'll be able to investigate it further. --Ori.livneh (talk) 06:40, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
well, I'mlogged in on my laptop, but i'm pretty sure that it's never logged me out like this before. we'll see if i'm logged out when I get back to my desktop, but it happened yesterday, between 2pm and 4pm central, without any external logon... -- Aunva6talk - contribs 16:20, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Logging out on one device will log you out on all devices. But that hasn't changed recently, so if the occurrence is suddenly higher, then that's probably not the case. Last week we also had some memcache issues, which may caused some sessions to be dropped. AFAIK, those have been fixed though, so if this is continuing, we can rule that out as well. I'll check and see if IE10 has made in changes in the last release that could have affected how it handles our login. CSteipp (talk) 16:44, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
that appears to have been the issue. i didn't log out on my laptop, and i'm still logged on, using my desktop... -- Aunva6talk - contribs 17:51, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Unresponsive script
Dear tech people: Each time today when I have been on the WP:Teahouse/Questions page, I keep getting an error messasge "A script is unresponsive". This happens even when I am just typing in the search box, as well as when I try to respond to a question. Firefox (25.0) also reports that it is not responding for a few seconds before recovering. If I close the dialogue box by clicking on the "X", then I can continue with my editing, but the error message appears again with the next edit or other operation. It doesn't happen on any other page, and restarting the browser has no effect. —Anne Delong (talk) 04:07, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Cannot reproduce the problem with the same browser and same version (on Fedora Linux). Do you have any special Gadgets installed? Does the problem also happen in Firefox safe mode and/or with a fresh profile? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:08, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I have gadgets. Here is my setup:
Browsing: *Navigation popups *Open external links in a new tab/window *Twinkle *Suppress display of the fundraiser banner *"Ask a question" feature for the Wikimedia Foundation's "Teahouse" project *Reference Tooltips
Watchlist: *Display pages on your watchlist that have changed since your last visit in bold.
Editing: *Add two new dropdown boxes below the edit summary box with some useful default summaries *Citation expander *Dot's syntax highlighter, *HotCat *Yet Another AFC Helper Script *Form for filing disputes at the dispute resolution noticeboard *CharInsert
Appearance: *Add a "Sandbox" link to the personal toolbar area. *Add page and user options to drop-down menus on the toolbar. *Change the "new section" tab text to instead display the much narrower "+". * Display an assessment of an article's quality as part of the page header for each article. *Widen the search box in the Vector skin.
Advanced: *Allow /16, /24 and /27 – /32 CIDR ranges on Special:Contributions forms (uses API), as well as wildcard prefix searches
Or, if you meant Firefox gadgets, the only things that I have specifically added are Greasemonkey and AVG SiteSafety.
Very strange error message on article Interstate 10 in Texas, which occurs only while logged in
Suddenly today while viewing a fairly random article, Interstate 10 in Texas, I've been getting an error message that I've never seen before in 7+ years of heavy Wikipedia use and editing (I've been an admin since 2007). The page takes a very long time to load (around a minute) and the only content below the title is this (cut & pasted from the page source):
Sorry, the servers are overloaded at the moment.
Too many users are trying to view this page.
Please wait a while before you try to access this page again.
Timeout waiting for the lock
The entire text of the article is missing completely. I can view its talk page and history just fine, but trying to view an older version from the history does not work properly either.
All of the dozens of other WP articles and pages that I've been viewing today are loading properly, except this one article Interstate 10 in Texas. And the problem only occurs if I am logged in, not if I log out and view the same page as an anon IP, in which case it loads normally and completely. Just for testing, I tried logging in using my alternate account User:Seattle_Skier2, and the same error still occurs using that account. I've also tested using two different browsers (Safari and Chrome, both on Mac OS X), and the problem is the same in both browsers.
Are other users getting the same error message right now on Interstate 10 in Texas when viewing that page while logged in? Is this a common problem that I somehow have never seen and don't know about?
Thanks for any help or insight on this issue.--Seattle Skier(talk) 08:59, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
There are a lot of templates on that page, which is probably what is causing the issues. We are working on a Lua replacement for the most complicated of the templates, and we hope to have it done soon; it's hit a few snags, but we're actively working on it. --Rschen7754 09:11, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm seeing a problem with US highway articles in general in the last 24–48 hours, but I can't pinpoint a specific cause. I have Interstate 196 at WP:FAC, and I'm currently working on U.S. Route 31 in Michigan. I-196 does not use a lot of the templates, yet editing other sections unrelated to {{jct}} or the {{jctint}} series triggers the server timeout when I save an edit. I can edit the References section to make the article display in multiple columns, something that doesn't involve the templates at all, and the error appears. As far as I can tell, none of the road-specific templates have been edited, so whatever has changed is not with the template code, leading me to believe it is something with the server configurations not the templates.
I just loaded I-10 in TX, and I didn't get that error message. Yes, the page takes a while, but it's not a short page since that's the longest state segment of any Interstate in the country. Imzadi 1979→ 09:17, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Imzadi1979, which section you edit doesn't make much of a difference to timeouts. After saving an edit, MediaWiki re-parses the whole page, not just the section you've edited. Which section you were editing often has nothing to do with which section was most to blame for the timeout. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 23:23, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
@PartTimeGnome: that might be, but the point is this. When the templates haven't been changed, why would articles that never timed out suddenly start? Also, why would the servers re-parse untouched sections of the article? Imzadi 1979→ 04:38, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
I have no answer for your first question. I don't know what has changed to trigger this issue. Sorry.
As for the second question, this is the way MediaWiki is designed. The parser cache does not cache sections independently, only whole pages, so the whole page must be re-parsed even if just a small part changes. Also, the parser needs information from previous sections that might affect the section you are editing (the most obvious example is <references/>, which uses earlier <ref> tags). Furthermore, changes in one section can affect subsequent sections (often accidental, though I have seen some creative uses of this). Updating the table of contents also requires a full page parse. A wiki system could be designed to treat sections as separate objects that can be cached independently, but that's not the wiki system we have. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 21:40, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
@Rschen7754: Where's the module that you're working on? You have made me curious, and I'd like to take a peek. :) — Mr. Stradivarius♪ talk ♪ 14:55, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Wikilinks look different when I am logged-in versus logged-out
When I am logged-in, wikilinks are underlined and distinct from other text, whereas when I am logged-out, wikilinks are not underlined and are quite faded, unless I move the mouse to the word -- in which case the underline appears. Is this an intentional feature? --Ben Best 19:51, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Probably. When you are logged in, the display is governed by your preferences settings. When you are logged out, you will get your browser's default behavior. RudolfRed (talk) 20:07, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
The relevant setting is Preferences->Appearance->Advanced options->Underline links. Mr.Z-man 20:12, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
While you are in preferences, please check your Preferences → User profile → Signature settings. Either disable the "Treat the above as wiki markup" option or edit your signature to link to your user, user talk or contributions page. (At least one of these links is required by WP:SIGLINK. Disabling "Treat the above as wiki markup" allows MediaWiki to add the links for you.) I've fixed your signature above to link to your user page. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 23:42, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestions and help, although the setting Mr.Z-man suggested was already in my preferences. --Ben Best 11:57, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Twinkle and js. scripts not working
Twinkle and and js. scripts (in vector.js) are no longer working/loading. Using MacOS 10.8.5, Firefox 25.0). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:47, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Back just now for me. Windows 7 - FireFox 26.0 Dave Dial (talk) 20:50, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Still not working. Tried also in Safari, so this does not appear to be a browser issue. None of my Wikipedia prefs, browser settings, or computer settings have been changed recently. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 21:10, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
My world got a lot happier when I disabled WikiTrust. Josh Parris 22:42, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
JS and CSS have been acting weird for a couple days now. They said originally it was caused by something they were doing with the servers. I don't know if that's still what's going on, but I'm still getting intermittent style and js losses. equazcion→23:04, 14 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Status of #wikipedia-tech is "Status: JS/CSS loading issues" - it's on the radar, although not being discussed at this very second ;).(Not now.--12:15, 15 November 2013 (UTC)) --Lexein (talk) 03:24, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
It would be good if this could be fixed as soon as possible. Many busy users, especially admins and other maintenance users, such as vadalism, new page patrollers, and SPI and COPYVIO detectives have become accustomed to using these scripts and gadgets and rely heavily on them. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:48, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Javascript problem
User:Pyrospirit/metadata/assesslinks.js never works. When I click the link on the toolbox, nothing happens. I'm using Google Chrome 30.0.1599.101. PORTALandPORTAL2rocks 13:57, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
PortalandPortal2Rocks, I gave this a shot but wasn't successful. It's a big script, as it also uses functions from User:Pyrospirit/metadata.js, and there's a lot of spaghetti going on. I had trouble parsing through it all to find the possible issue(s), but I believe I did at least combine the relevant bits into one script and simplified some things. My draft copy is User:Equazcion/assesslinks.js, in case anyone else wants to give it a shot with my work as a head start. equazcion→15:24, 16 Nov 2013 (UTC)
This proposal is not for me, but for everyone. A lot of people had issues on this, and posted on village pump. Well, only 3, in fact. But still, thanks for the effort. PORTALandPORTAL2rocks 15:32, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Rendering issue
rendering problem IE vs Chrome in Win XP
I am seeing a consistent rendering problem with all family tree templates. I tried converting one to chart, but this didn't help. See example. Jane (talk) 15:34, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
For me, it displays like the upper diagram in Chrome 31.0.1650.57 m, also in Firefox 25.0 --Redrose64 (talk) 18:15, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Hmm. Thanks for testing! I guess this is a pretty old computer. I am running Chrome 32.0.1700.6 and seeing the problem on all pages using either the template Familytree or Chart. Jane (talk) 21:53, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
The interlanguage links have changed their font-family. They used to be in the same font-family as the rest of the page (Arial), but now they are something called "Autonym" which is apparently pulled from
It appears to be a result of <div id="p-lang" class="portlet" role="navigation">...</div>. The trouble with that font is that it's indistinct (Windows XP, Firefox 24, MonoBook) - it's blurred, with blue and red fringing, particularly on tall thin letters like lowercase i and l - see screenshot at right. Arial, by contrast, is sharp-edged without fringing. This isn't just English Wikipedia; it's others too e.g. French. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:13, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
Gag, this looks horrible, especially as letters have "gaps" in them. Hopefully this can be quickly fixed... - The BushrangerOne ping only 21:20, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
#p-lang ul { font-family: inherit; } should reset the font its original value. I agree the font does not render well at all on Windows. — Edokter (talk) — 22:48, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
...I find it hard to believe that there are very many computers out there that don't have Arial... thanks Redrose64 for the fix script (and btw, it works if you have it all on a single line in the skin.css as well). - The BushrangerOne ping only 23:56, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
It's not a script, it's a CSS rule. CSS is very tolerant of whitespace - generally speaking, if a newline is permitted, a space is permitted instead - and most spaces may be removed. In fact, in that particular CSS rule, only one of the spaces is mandatory - the one before ul - so you can put
#p-langul{font-family:'Arial',sans-serif;}
and it works equally well. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:03, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
"inherit" is better because you don't need to specify any font; it resolves to the parent elements font, which is whatever the rest of the page uses. — Edokter (talk) — 14:54, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
I know; but I was replying to The Bushranger, who was replying to me, so I repeated my example changing only the whitespace. I could have used
#p-langul{font-family:inherit;}
but this would not have illustrated the whitespace elimination quite so well, because there were other changes not related to whitespace. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:20, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
I was also replying to The Bushranger :) — Edokter (talk) — 19:26, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
I liked the idea of using the native-language name, but in practice it made things so much harder for me to find (as a monolingual reader who occasionally wants to check out various other language examples) - I'd often have to mouse-over each of the links, looking for the 2letter prefix that looked familiar or correct. –Quiddity (talk) 20:08, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
It's spread to Main Page#Wikipedia languages. Not that I look down there very often: I wouldn't have noticed for weeks, except I got this edit on my watchlist. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:58, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Using some zooming, I just realized Autonym is based on FreeSans, possibly the worst rendering open source font out there. I realize FreeSans has extensive unicode support, but if possible, Autonym should source its glyphs from Nimbus Sans L (which is what FreeSans is based on). — Edokter (talk) — 10:41, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
It is ironic that a change specifically intended to make this list more readable has gone and made it less legible. I'm surprised that there isn't more of a fuss about this. Presumably the more vocal techies have larger screen resolutions and are unaffected. SFB 11:57, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
I missed this thread and posted down below. It's a ghastly choice of font. I'm working on a 17" CRT monitor, and I'd hate to think what it looks like on anything smaller. It may look better on LCD, but I doubt it. Peridon (talk) 17:43, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
It looks awful everywhere. I've got a nice big flat widescreen and it still hurts to look. Luckily I have SidebarTranslate, so I don't ever need to see it (shameless plug). equazcion→18:01, 11 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Bugzilla bug report here. Do we have reason to believe the developers are addressing this problem? Erictalk 23:04, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Bug already posted on top of section. See also bug report on Autonym page. — Edokter (talk) — 23:42, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Oops, looked in text first, but didn't see the bugbox up there... Erictalk 23:50, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
I just wanted to voice my concern as well. The new font is nearly unreadable for me in Firefox 25 on Windows 8 on a 1080p 24 inch LCD monitor. I've resorted to user CSS to change it back. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kimsey0 (talk • contribs) 22:39, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
-- YES - WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FONT OF LANGUAGES ? ? ? - the font has changed to something that requires "font smoothing" -- I thought that the previous use of Arial was just fine, now the list is almost unreadable!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.6.95.77 (talk) 06:02, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
Technical problem
I have encountered problems in some recent edits on a couple of pages. Tried to make routine additions to Wayfarer (dinghy) of the following text: "An optional [[Asymetrical spinnaker]] and [[spinnaker chute]] is available; also available is a "sail patch" which provides flotation for the mast in the vent of a capsize (and particularly to prevent mast inversion {{ndash}}turtling." I did not intentionally touch anything in the footnotes. When I save it all of the footnotes were eliminated, which certainly was not my intention. I can't figure this out. Not sure if it is unique to me, a browser problem (I use Firefox, or if there is an issue on Wikipedia. I will also report this to the Village Pump technical people. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 13:40, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
I just encountered similar loss of data when I edited User talk:Mdann52. I added 300 bytes, and did not subtract 24K like the edit summary said. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 15:10, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Your edits seem to be removing all HTML tags. I've had this happen to me before on rare occasions, but never quite figured out what did it. Out on a limb, I'm assuming one of our many malfunctioning scripts must be to blame. I see you have a DYK script in your monobook.js, which you may want to try removing just to rule that out. There could be a gadget that's malfunctioning too, so you may want to try disabling those. equazcion→15:43, 15 Nov 2013 (UTC)
The edits remove all tags (anything in <...>) and some words. [15] removed the words travel, Airport, makeup, silver, Pitt, Boxing, Gold. What is your skin and browser? Do you have any browser extensions? Please stop editing articles until this is resolved. Your edits have to be reverted. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:07, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
This edit also changed {{Use dmy dates|date=November 2011}} (which is valid) to {{Use dmy |date=November 2011}} (which is not). Are you using Visual Editor? If not, do you have "(U)wikEd: alternative full-featured integrated text editor for Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome (documentation)" enabled at Preferences → Gadgets? --Redrose64 (talk) 17:34, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't use a text editor. I do this all by hand. I uninstalled Firefox and reinstalled it, but the problem persists. I feel very badly about any damage I have caused to our project, although I can assure you it was entirely not anything I knowingly did. So far as I know, I don't have any Wikipedia gadgets.
So I guess I'm out of the editing business. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 19:47, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Don't feel bad. Your contributions show it has only happened for a few days and I have cleaned up the remaining cases. Which Firefox version? Any Firefox addons? See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-or-remove-add-ons for how to check it. If you click "Show changes" before saving then accidental removals may be displayed but it's not guaranteed. If you check the page history each time and selfrevert in case of problems then you can continue editing articles and hope the problem goes away. It's harder to revert when others have edited the article since. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:36, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
I turned off every "gadget" (there was only one) and now seem to be editing without (as yet) discernible problems. That may have been the problem. Sadly, my new Firefox version is letting through all kinds of pop-ups, but that is another story. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 20:47, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
Which gadget was it? equazcion→21:09, 15 Nov 2013 (UTC)
I don't remember. Sorry. It would be whatever the default selection would be, I think. It went away, briefly. Then it returned.
My computer was infected with some very persistent malware which was highjacking firefox. Now that I got that removed, it seems to be working better. I used malwarebytes antimalware, which uncovered bugs that my Norton Systemsworks was missing. This seems to have helped. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 18:38, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
Clearly a developer with a sense of humour. The pool is the total # of resources of available set aside for a task. The queue is - obviously - the line of tasks waiting to access those resources (using FIFO, LIFO, whatever). Apparently, the lineup for resources was either overly-full, or had an error ES&L 12:10, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
We use ⟨angle brackets⟩ on a lot of language pages, enough to include them under 'symbols' in the edit window (between the guillemets and the currency signs). However, it seems that WinXP and maybe Vista does not support them. These are the characters generated with <math>\langle ... \rangle</math> There are two other Unicode entries for angle brackets, one pair in the Miscellaneous Technical block, and one in Chinese punctuation. The problem is that if you enter the Western ones directly, WP changes them to the Chinese ones, which screws up the character spacing. You can get around this by substituting &#...; codes, but if anyone copies and pastes those, they get converted to the Chinese block. To illustrate:
Code
Code display
Direct display
Unicode font
Misc. Tech.
〈 〉
...〈...〉...
...〈...〉...
...〈...〉...
⟨ ⟩
...⟨...⟩...
...⟨...⟩...
...⟨...⟩...
Chinese
〈 〉
...〈...〉...
...〈...〉...
...〈...〉...
HTML entities
⟨ ⟩
...⟨...⟩...
n/a
...⟨...⟩...
As you can probably see, only the top left cell has Western spacing.
Is this a bug in WP, and can we fix it so that we have angle brackets to use in our articles that hopefully are supported by XP & Vista? — kwami (talk) 16:05, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Interesrting. It seems to be somewhat intentional (even the spaces are added). You can also use the ⟨ and ⟩ entities: ... ⟨...⟩ ... They are not converted. — Edokter (talk) — 16:34, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks!
I don't think those are spaces. It's just the character width is the same as Chinese characters. — kwami (talk) 16:42, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
In HTML5 ⟨ and ⟩ are supposed to correspond to U+27E8 and U+27E9 (mathematical angle brackets), which are distinct from U+2329/U+232A/U+3008/U+3009. If/when browsers will implement this, though, I don't know. Anomie⚔ 17:25, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict × 2) This is the behavior defined as part of Unicode normalization. You can look up these characters in the charts here (for the open angle bracket, search for "2329") and here (for the close angle bracket, search for "232A"). Anomie⚔ 16:50, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
I also note that the latest Unicode standard specifically says U+2329 and U+232A are deprecated (see http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2300.pdf), and that the math tag version you mention above () should actually be using U+27E8 and U+27E9 (⟨ ... ⟩) (and with the MathJax math render, this does in fact seem to be the case). Anomie⚔ 17:03, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. So as long as we don't allow them to be decomposed, or have just the right fonts installed, we're fine, otherwise they become CJK. — kwami (talk) 17:10, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure what exactly you're saying there, but it sounds wrong. You can try to use 〈 and 〉 all over the place, but if people change them to the literal characters 〈 and 〉 I'd recommend not edit warring over it. Anomie⚔ 17:25, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
It messes up the formatting when that happens, so I'd prefer a way of displaying the brackets that doesn't produce that result. Looks like we're out of luck. — kwami (talk) 17:34, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
The entities work just fine. I'll suspect they'll soon be remapped to U+27E8 and U+27E9 in the near future. — Edokter (talk) — 19:11, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
We've started a template {{angle bracket}} to keep all the articles in line. Some computers do not support the math-A symbols, but do support the math code (last and first items listed on the talk page). It seems this might be a problem w WinXP, but not everyone w XP seems to have a problem. Does anyone here know what the issue is? It would be best not to use the math code, cuz that slows down page loading. — kwami (talk) 13:53, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
It depends on the browser; some substitute the old brackets, some don't. But the character entities are never substituted. — Edokter (talk) — 14:01, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. We've got a user insisting that it's the OS, not the browser, and that we reformat our articles so that he can read them. — kwami (talk) 15:43, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Not knowing/showing the character is one thing. But with me, the pair ⟨ ⟩ shows ⟨ ... ⟩ in a grey (or transparent?) color, inline. It is the only two characters that I see doing this. (In other fonts, they even are invisible; test). I use FF 25 atop WinXP SP2,3. No fonts installed manually AFAIK. -DePiep (talk) 16:23, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Again, depends on browser/OS combination. For me (XP/Chrome), those on the Help:IPA page use MATHEMATICAL LEFT ANGLE BRACKET and MATHEMATICAL RIGHT ANGLE BRACKET, which show quite clear for me, but the ⟨ and ⟩ display as LEFT-POINTING ANGLE BRACKET and RIGHT-POINTING ANGLE BRACKET, which are quite faded, probably as a result of font-smooting without proper hinting for those characters. — Edokter (talk) — 17:09, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Pages inaccessible using IE8
I reported a problem a few weeks ago regrading trying to access River Usk using IE8 as a browser but didn't get a solution to the problem back then. I now find that I can't access Bristol Channel either using IE8. I can get them both using Chrome and no other pages that I've tried to access give this problem - just these two. have done the usual clearing of caches, and have also tried to access them on different machines - same negative result - I get thrown off the site and then end up with a message page saying that 'we were unable to return you to Wikipedia'. Any ideas? Any solutions, other than the obvious one of 'change your browser'? Given that all other WP pages work fine in IE8, I feel these two should also. cheers Geopersona (talk) 22:12, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm using Windows XP (home version) if that's relevant though the other machine which had the same problem was using Windows 7 using IE8 too. Geopersona (talk) 22:23, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
I use XP Pro. Usk works fine in Firefox 20, but IE8 crashed trying to load it. I'll try loading something else now. Peridon (talk) 11:42, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Rover Scarab loaded fine in IE8, but Bristol Channel crashed it, but it loads fine in Firefox. When trying to load the Usk in IE8, I noticed it connecting briefly to 91.?.?.? (too quick to see any more). Is this normal? I've not noticed it on anything else connected with Wikipedia. I tried to load from a URL not a search engine link. Peridon (talk) 12:02, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
I've got to say it - get Firefox... But there is still a problem that needs sorting. Peridon (talk) 12:04, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Some JavaScript is crashing IE8 (loads fine with JS disabled), can't figure out which script; it even crashes when debugging. — Edokter (talk) — 12:26, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Haha, it really does. Lol. I'll try to pinpoint the perpetrator. Matma Rextalk 12:30, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
I've got it. I investigated with a web debugger (Fiddler2), blocking loading of scripts and loading them one-by-one: IE 8 crashes on Bristol Channel as soon as MediaWiki:Common.js/IEFixes.js is loaded. I'll leave it to you to find out why :) Matma Rextalk 12:44, 17 November 2013 (UTC) (Also, for whoever else digs into this – you can't reliably use the debug mode (?debug=1) because of another IE8 issue, tracked as T49277. That is only relevant in debug mode, though, and most likely does not cause this particular issue here. Matma Rextalk 12:46, 17 November 2013 (UTC))
Well, it's not hlist, so it must be some other ancient snippet of code that triggers an unrecoverable error, probably fixIEScroll . How to find out? — Edokter (talk) — 13:03, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Transcluding {{River Severn}} causes the crash (on any page). Investigating... — Edokter (talk) — 13:08, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Actually, it may be hlist after all, the latest warp fix has unintended side effects with ordered lists. — Edokter (talk) — 13:23, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Fixed. I decided to remove the core reason from hlist (non-wrapping list items), and all its associated IE fixes that caused more trouble than I am willing to accept at this time. A horizontal list item wraps over two lines? Tough! — Edokter (talk) — 13:45, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks to all involved. I don't use IE myself, but I know that a lot of people do. (Firefox for me, with Chrome on one phone and something called Browser on the other.) Peridon (talk) 15:42, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks Guys! Not being at all techie, I don't pretend to understand what caused the problem was, nor how you fixed it but am grateful that you have. cheers Geopersona (talk) 16:06, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Clerk user script
I have been pointed here by bugzilla #57047. {{HelpDeskTBLinks}} Would be a welcome tool for clerks and the pages they patrol. My first note is here. Note: I have email the script author, no response. Mlpearc (powwow) 22:16, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Writ Keeper has a general purpose script that adds a talkback link (|TB|) after all links to user talk pages which can be installed by adding {{subst:js|User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/talkbackLink.js}} to your Special:MyPage/common.js. Alternatively, it would be trivial to fork the code of HelpDeskTBLinks and create a version that runs only on the CHU page. Would that be beneficial? Theopolisme(talk) 23:25, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanx for the response, I was going to see if I (a self-taught dev.) could adapt HelpDeskTBLinks for use at WP:CHU/S, but I put that off until I could see what level of response I got here. I will load {{subst:js|User:Writ Keeper/Scripts/talkbackLink.js}} and check it out, I'm thinking a gadget would be best, I've helped at other pages where this function would also be helpful ie. WP:PERM, WP:FFU and I'm sure there's others. Mlpearc (powwow) 00:15, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Writ Keeper's script seems to have the same functionality and looks to do fine. Thanx for the help it is much appreciated. Mlpearc (powwow) 01:53, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Maybe I'll try and tweak the HelpDesk version, having the script active throughout all namespaces and pages is not as desirable. Mlpearc (open channel) 04:04, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Making a script activate only in certain namespaces/pages is pretty easy. I could tweak the generic talkbackLink script to do that, but I'd just need to know which namespaces/pages you need it to activate on. equazcion→04:30, 17 Nov 2013 (UTC)
WP:CHU I believe. Mlpearc, if you'd like the learning experience, you can just make a copy of the HelpDeskTBLinks script in your userspace and then modify the first line, changing the page titles as necessary. Let us know if you need additional help! Theopolisme(talk) 04:35, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanx :), you just verified my idea of going through and changing the page titles. I'll give you a poke if I have trouble, Cheers Mlpearc (open channel) 04:56, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Aaaaah, I love it when other people do my work for me. Writ Keeper⚇♔ 14:29, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Don't be too glad yet, I'll prolly screw it all up :P Mlpearc (open channel) 17:25, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Seems to be working :). {{subst:js|User:Mlpearc/ClerkingTBLinks.js}} if anyone want to check it out. Thank you Theopolisme, Equazcion & Writ Keeper for your input. Mlpearc (open channel) 18:20, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
Problems
There was a problem caused by too many requests to the database on November 14. [16]
Future
MediaWiki 1.23wmf4 was added to test wikis on November 14. It will arrive to non-Wikipedia wikis on November 19 and all Wikipedia wikis on November 21 (calendar).
The new Search tool (CirrusSearch) will be added to *.wikimedia.org, Wikimania and Wikisource wikis on November 19, and Wiktionary wikis on November 21 (except where it's already available). Once it is added, you can test it by adding &srbackend=CirrusSearch to the address of the search results page. It will become the main search engine on Wikivoyage wikis on November 21. [17]
The MassMessage tool will be added to all wikis on November 19 instead of November 14. It will make it simpler to send messages across wikis. [18]
For a while, I'm getting a 504 error when trying to access to my bot's talkcontributions page on the Malagasy Wiktionary, is that related to a limit in viewing user's conntributions for users/bots with a high edit count (over 10 million)? If so, should I report that to Bugzilla or is that a hard limit? --Jagwar - (( talk )) 20:33, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
I think I've seen a Bugzilla ticket before, but cannot find it, and bugzilla:45619 does not seem to be "related enough". --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 15:27, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
Secure site default
Suddenly, half way through an editing session, all my links to http://en.wikipedia are automatically connecting me to https://en.wikipedia. I'm using W7 IE10 & Vector.
My preferences are still set not to connect to the secure site. I trust this isn't the same "accidental" side effect we had about 10 weeks ago, which took about 4 weeks to fix, after someone loaded some half-tested software. (Could you please avoid the usual caustic comments about why would anyone still use IE, or use an unsecure site, it has all been explained before.) Thanks - Arjayay (talk) 10:17, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
28 hours later, and everything is still connecting to the secure site, despite the URL in the link being to the standard site. When is this likely to be addressed? - Arjayay (talk) 14:28, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Some Firefox users needed to delete certain cookies, as described at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 116#Help Needed: Problems due to Secure site change; this may be the case for IE as well. I don't know how to delete individual cookies in IE, but if there is such a function, you could try doing that. There may be cookies at more than one domain, not just for obvious ones like en.wikipedia.org and commons.wikimedia.org, but also for domains such as login.wikimedia.org Be warned, that if IE only permits deletion on a per-domain basis, deletion of all cookies for any one of these domains may cause you to become logged out, so be prepared to log in again. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:50, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
But why would IE's cookies change half way through an editing session? The last time this happened, on 27 September (please see archive here), it was due to some problem introduced by software changes, (Bugzilla Bug 54626) which had to wait 2 weeks to be corrected. I don't pretend to understand Bugzilla reports, but is this not a repeat of the same problem? Arjayay (talk) 17:33, 16 November 2013 (UTC)
Everything is still secure site only. Could someone please explain the purpose of the "Always use a secure connection" option box in "Preferences" as it doesn't do anything? - Arjayay (talk) 10:45, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Here is what I believe is happening. The setting is ignored if you are currently at a Wikimedia page whose URL begins https: or you visit a link beginning https://en.wikipedia.org/ (whether from inside or outside the site). However, if you are
currently at a Wikimedia page whose URL begins http: and you visit a protocol-relative link beginning //en.wikipedia.org/
currently at a Wikimedia page whose URL begins http: and you visit a link beginning http://en.wikipedia.org/
the setting of "Always use a secure connection while logged in" is tested just before the page being visited is sent back to you. If it is disabled, you are sent a page whose protocol matches the link that you clicked; if it is enabled, you're sent the https: page. Please note:
if you change "Always use a secure connection while logged in" you must log out before it takes effect
if you disable it, it is necessary to clear all Wikimedia cookies
you need to set it the same in all Wikimedia sites that you might visit.
To amplify the last point: let's say that at English Wikipedia, your "Always use a secure connection while logged in" setting is disabled; but at Commons it is enabled. You start at a http: page on English Wikipedia, and then find a link to a page on Commons. This will initially begin http://commons.wikimedia.org/ but once you click it, you're sent a page beginning https: - you may be sent cookies which tell your browser to use https: If while at that commons page, you click a link back to English Wikipedia, you will be sent a https: page. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:10, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
And then suddenly, at 09.17 UTC it solves itself, without me changing anything whatsoever, so it seems it was a WP problem, as it was on 27 September (see link above).
I have hundreds of "favorites" (mostly searches for misspellings) all prefixed http, which I click down, find a mistake, correct it and use the auto-complete to fill the edit summaries. However, suddenly WP started adding the s, although the favorites are all stored as http - as can be easily seen by hovering over them before selecting them. Autocomplete does not work in https (IE 10) so I have had to type them out, using copypaste if there are several. I started such a session this morning, and they were all changing to https, until suddenly, the autocomplete worked again - and looking up it was the "correct" http address, without an additional s having been automatically added. - Arjayay (talk) 09:39, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Arjayay, this is a side-question, since the answer (whether yes or no) does not really solve your problem... but are you sure that IE10 auto-complete does *not* work when the protocol is HTTPS, whereas auto-complete *does* work only for HTTP connections? In other words, while I understand that if you connect to httpFooDotCom, that auto-completed entries there will not magically also work on httpsFooDotCom, once you have typed in some stuff on httpsFooDotCom are you saying that IE10 discards that stuff, and refuses to offer auto-complete at all, for any HTTPS website? Or are you just saying, all your work creating faves uses HTTP, and all your work creating auto-complete-stuff also uses HTTP, and that the switch to HTTPS therefore loses that work. Thanks. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:42, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Call for comments on draft trademark policy
Hi all,
The Wikimedia legal team invites you to participate in the development of the new Wikimedia trademark policy.
The current trademark policy was introduced in 2009 to protect the Wikimedia marks. We are now updating this policy to better balance permissive use of the marks with the legal requirements for preserving them for the community. The new draft trademark policy is ready for your review here, and we encourage you to discuss it here.
We would appreciate if someone would translate this message into your language so more members of your community can contribute to the conversation.
Thanks, Yana & Geoff 23:16, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
I will take your invitation quite literally, and hereby provide a translation of your request, into a language more suited for the specific purpose of inciting requesting members of my particular community to "contribute to the conversation". Hope this helps. :-)
Freedom is on the line! To arms, to arms! The lawyers at WMF are trying to pervert the core value of free as in freedom. This has been going on forever, but now it must be stopped. They dare to say, that if you want to make a birthday cake, which says "WikipediA" on it in big letters, that the only thing you can do is eat it, by yourself, alone in your own house, cowering. That is not freedom! Should you be so WP:BOLD as to go to the *store* and ask for the friendly helpful *bakery* to make you a birthday cake, which says "WikipediA" on it in big letters, and have the insulting gall to PAY them for the value of their work... you just broke trademark law in over two hundred countries, and the mediawiki lawyers will perma-ban your ass! They demand you first grovel before User:Jimbo_Wales, for a 'license' to utilize HIS trademark on YOUR cake. Grovel for our inherent freedom? Beg for our self-evident liberty? Nay!
Love this. Should save everyone a lot of back and forth. Now we can get right into the actual discussion ! :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:33, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
<3 love Jalexander--WMF 21:27, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
Gracias, compadres, your appreciation is appreciated. And truth be told, as you can see from the comparison-table linked above (and here[20] for those too slothful to look back above ;-) the WMF lawyers are doing a great job loosening up the restrictions imposed in 2009. But they are, quite literally, preventing anybody from making a birthday-cake, unless *zero* fiat-money changes hands. That makes a lot of sense, truth be told: we don't want Microsoft reviving encarta, or Google reviving gknoll, filled with mediawiki-goodness and GFDL-CCBYSA-goodness ... but only sold in locked-down hardware devices which prevent cut-n-paste from working unless you've paid Ballmer the monthly fee (or in Google's case entered the SSN of all your neighbors).
So this is a balancing act: I *want* people to be able to charge for wikipedia content, just like people can charge for GPL'd software. That includes selling (for a profit) t-shirts that advertise wikipedia, selling (for a profit) copies of wikipedia on dead-tree-pulp / BluRayROM / flashdrive / whatever, and going to the local bakery to buy a cake that celebrates WikipediA's birthday. ALL those things will help wikipedia. None of those things harm wikipedia, or the WMF even. But it is tricky to formulate a trademark-policy which prevents tivoization by hypercorp-multinational-conglomerates, while at the same time permitting fans to produce cakes/shirts/etc as part of their small business. It can be done, though: look at all the GPL-based software startups. Please help me come up with the freedom-to-sell-wikipedia-trademark-policy language, and then we can "convince" the WMF lawyers to do our bidding, RMS-style. :-) — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 12:50, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
If you haven't already, please share your thoughts there. Lots of interested people pitching in, and they would probably be happy to help you. :) Whether they are convinced or not, the lawyers want to hear from you. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:02, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
As I understand it (I'm not a lawyer, I don't play one on television, and I don't want to, either), Microsoft and Google are already free to revive their products and fill them up with mediawiki-goodness and GFDL-CCBYSA-goodness, and even to sell them in locked-down hardware devices that prevent cut and paste from working until you've paid up. The only thing that they currently aren't allowed to do is to take that encyclopedia content and slap the Wikipedia name and logo on them.
The trademark policy is specifically about whether Microsoft and Google are allowed to stick the Wikipedia globe on their (hypothetical) locked-down copies, not about whether they're allowed to make and sell locked-down copies of our articles in the first place. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:14, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
After graduating from theologian-school with EssJay, we parted ways, and after continuing my studies in another direction, I now hold law-degrees from *six* of the top ten law-schools. ;-) But yes, you are dead on the money: the next android phone or msftNokia phone (or iPhone or whatnot) *can* have a copy of wikipedia inside -- ignoring the exception of some enWiki fair use imagefiles -- with effectively-proprietary locked-down tivoization preventing anybody from using the content therein as intended. The only thing that stops them is trademark law. Consumers trust wikipedia, more than the trust those folks. No more; no less. Thus, the trademark policy is incredibly important. We cannot screw it up (that's legal jargon for making a big mistake).
And, if push comes to shove, and the only way to sell cakes and shirts for a profit sans an explicit licensing-contract, leaves even a tiny risk that some hypercorp can get around trademark protection somehow, and misuse the wikipedia name... well then, I'll back away from the freedom-to-sell scheme, for this year anyways. Stakes are very high here. But look at Red Hat Linux; they are trusted, Oracle tries to copy them, but not many people trust *Oracle's* commitment to freedom. You can sell a cake that says "Linux" on it, despite the trademark; Torvalds considers it fair use. Maybe we can do something similar. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 03:43, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Just to comment about this, one of the questions about cakes/t-shirts etc was brought up and commented on by Yana (the lawyer heading up their part of the trademark discussion) about how you are obviously fine ordering your cake from a baker or t-shirts from a professional maker (whether for yourself/friends or for a meetup etc). You can see that in the aptly named the cake is not a lie section of the talk page. This doesn't answer your question about trying to find a good way to sell stuff using the trademarks for profit though and you're right that's really tough. I would definitely encourage you to chime in on the conversation though about it so that your thoughts can get down where they see it (and where others can respond). Jalexander--WMF 20:30, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
I'll go out on a limb here, and submit that Yana will be absolutely against putting this language into section 3.7 -- "if you are a baker then you can sell a cake which says WikipediA on it to your customers" -- whereas putting the same language into the FAQ is non-legally-binding, and therefore effectively harmless, because WMF lawyers can always say exactly that in court. The problem is not whether *you* the birthday-girl-or-birthday-boy violate the trademark, by asking the baker to make you a cake, and then paying them money. The baker is the one violating the trademark, by producing and selling the cake. Trademark law puts shackles on producers, not on consumers. I'm suggesting that we partially loosen the restrictions on producers, as long as those produces are acting as Good Eggs. Section 6.2 gives the WMF all the power they need to revoke production-rights on any Bad Eggs, as needed, after all. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 03:43, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Looking for technical mentors and tasks for Google Code-in
Hi, I'm one of the Wikimedia org admins at mw:Google Code-in. We are looking for technical tasks that can be completed by students e.g. rewrite a wikitext template in Lua, update a gadget, document the functionality of a bot... We also need mentors for these tasks. You can start simple with one mentor proposing one task, or you can use this program to organize a taskforce of mentors with the objective of getting dozens of small technical tasks completed. You can check the current Wikimedia tasks here. The program started today, but there is still time to jump in. Give Google Code-in students a chance!--Qgil (talk) 01:22, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
@Qgil: It's not clear how to add a new task to the page you linked to, so here's a suggestion: the Firefox add-on Cite4Wiki, which is open source, could become the way that a webcite url is converted into a citation/reference in Wikipedia articles. But before that can happen, it needs improvement - it seems incapable of correctly determining author or publishing date, and it doesn't do page titles correctly, either. It could also, potentially, be rewritten to run as a Chrome extension. (Hint: Zotero also creates Wikipedia citations from urls; if it does it more successfully, that could be a source of information on how to improve Cite4Wiki.)
More generally, there are a number of bots that performed valuable services but no longer run because the author is no longer active on Wikipedia. Some of these bots are open source, I believe. I recommend your posting a note at WP:BOTREQ if this is something that you think students might do. (That's also a good place to ask/identify those who might want their documentation for their bot(s) created or improved.) -- John Broughton(♫♫) 01:08, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Hi John Broughton. Only GCI mentors can add GCI tasks, and only tasks with a mentor assigned can be created. This way the program avoids sending students to tasks that nobody will be committed to assess. Thank you for your recommendations. I have left a message at Bot requests and Cite4wiki (I had already posted at Lua requests). Since Monday, 9 tasks have been completed, and 10 are currently waiting for the review of a mentor. It seems to be working! We hope to welcome mentors and tasks from the Wikipedia technical community.--Qgil (talk) 16:19, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Hey Qgil. I think you have an old email from me. Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:21, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Style load problems continue
I'm getting intermittent style load failures again today. equazcion→20:12, 19 Nov 2013 (UTC)
I've been trying to save edits to English Braille for 12 hrs. Evidently the server's overloaded? Small articles take a long time but eventually go through, large ones don't. — kwami (talk) 09:42, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
And then you save the same edit to template talk:braille cell 11 times... ;Þ VanIsaacWSVexcontribs 10:16, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I was able to make changes to the shorter sections of the article, since saving the entire article repeatedly failed. There are two longer sections to go, however, and I've probably tried saving them close to a thousand times.
When I back out of an error, I hit 'see changes' to see if the save went through. Nearly every time I save a longer article, I get an error, but most of the time when I check it did go through. And if it doesn't go through the first time, it usually does the second. This article is an exception, however. It's actually an AWB edit, but I've broken it up to try and implement it manually in sections. According to the page history, it's now been 35 hours since I've been able to get one of them to go through.
I haven't even been able to save the edits on the talk page for when the servers are working again. — kwami (talk) 13:45, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Lost Password
I've lost my password for my alternative account User:DUCKISPEANUTBUTTER which I can't retrieve as my email address is only connected to my main account. I know generally when you lose your password & you don't have the email connected you will have to create a new account under a different username but given I have access to my main account is there anyway it can be retrieved? ★☆ DUCKISJAMMMY☆★ 19:37, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
If you've lost the password and it hasn't got an email address associated with it, then there's no way of getting it back, unfortunately. You might be able to have the username usurped if you can prove it is yours, though. — Mr. Stradivarius♪ talk ♪ 14:46, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
I can prove it's mine but what does usurping entail. ★☆ DUCKISJAMMMY☆★ 15:31, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Something that people might be interested in and that was linked as usual in the monthly blogpost, officially called the monthly metrics meeting. That name hasn't really covered the content of these meetings for a while now, it's increasingly a movement update with a slight focus on foundation staff. It touches on a lot of topics: Metrics, Editor engagement, Education program, Multimedia beta team, Visual Editor, Trademark policy changes, WikiPR thing etc, etc, etc. It's rather accessible. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:07, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
@TheDJ: They're called metrics and activities meetings, though we usually shortcut to "metrics" ;-). Rename suggestions welcome!--Eloquence* 02:29, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Twinkle broken again?
Resolved
I tried to request protection by Twinkle, but it won't load properly to another page. --George Ho (talk) 00:20, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Give me the page and reason for protection and I'll test it. KonveyorBelt 00:27, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
I've already requested the page manually. What about Lindsay Lohan? The page was vandalized during PC. --George Ho (talk) 04:29, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Once again, I am getting a newline for data with a lead-colon, such as passing ":en:pagename" from a template, and I wonder if there is any hope of turning the colon crap off, similar to "_NOTOC_" as "_NOCRAP_". The most obvious hope had been to return the colon using pure Lua, put even the Lua Scribunto interface also generates a newline and destroys the lead colon, as when extracting the substring ":234" as follows:
"{{#invoke:String|sub|s=:23456|1|4}}" → "
234"
Also, I found using : colon in a interwiki link does work, as "[[:en:hyperlink]]" which correctly links ":en:hyperlink".
Fortunately, an interwiki link to enwiki as ":en:page" could also be recoded with just "w:page" (and no leading colon), but long term, we need to fix Wikipedia to pass data without bizarre pre-formatting for colon, semicolon, asterisk, and hashmark '#' characters. Let a user pass any data in a template parameter. -Wikid77 (talk) 10:46, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
You can break the MediaWiki parsing of these characters by preceding them with <nowiki />; see Help:Nowiki. --Gadget850talk 14:09, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
If it goes through the parser, then this behaviour occurs. It doesn't happen when passing output between Lua modules, as the parser is not involved in that. But the output has to be returned to a wiki page at some point, and when that happens Gadget850's nowiki trick is the only way of getting it to work. There is history behind this - see bug 12974. — Mr. Stradivarius♪ talk ♪ 14:44, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Nowiki fails before Lua and kills a wikilink: The colon-data newline problem is generated by the Lua Scribunto interface, and "<nowiki/>" does not stop it. So perhaps the nowiki tag could be used inside a Lua module, to prevent the warping of the lead colon when data is returned, for cases where the data could be preceded by "<nowiki/>" without ruining the operation. Compare:
Hence, using a string prefix as "<nowiki/>" would kill operation inside a wikilink (as could be expected), and cannot be used as a general-purpose prefix for substring results. We need a "_NOCRAP_" feature or "#invoke_no_crap" to stop Lua Scribunto from preformatting a colon as a newline. This is what I mean by making important changes to the MediaWiki software, as if arithmetic with "42" generated a newline and no one fixed it. I understand people want to rewrite the NewPP preprocessor parser, but just fix it for major problems instead. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:54, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
The html source is full of warnings: "WARNING: template omitted, post-expand include size too large". I don't know what to do about that. Johnuniq (talk) 10:39, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
This could be fixed by rewriting the heavier templates in Lua (depending on the specifics), or alternatively you could split the archive up into multiple pages. The Lua part will take some work, so you might want to try the multiple-page thing as a stopgap measure. You can also fix it by simply removing templates, but that's probably not ideal in this situation. — Mr. Stradivarius♪ talk ♪ 14:55, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Somebody broke the SPI pages a few weeks ago by making some changes to one of the templates that are used extensively there - either {{checkuser}}{{checkip}} or one of their subtemplates. I'm just wondering whether the change was fully reverted, or perhaps somebody's pulled a similar trick again without understanding the quincequonces. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:27, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm working on this. I've reduce the include size of {{La}} (used on the page) by 160 characters and undid a couple of revisions to {{Reply to}} which were about 272 characters. Apparently the include size is still too high, but I'm not sure where it is coming from yet. I've gone through all of the templates (and modified the ones with changes more than 20 character increases) and see nothing of significance since November 1st. Going back further now... Will update when found and fixed. Technical 13 (talk) 16:10, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
It appears that the mass rollback script I was using is no longer functioning (User:John254/mass rollback.js). Is there an alternative, monobook friendly script available? --Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 17:43, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
@Ponyo: That script would be very easy to fix: I think you just need to replace getElementsByClassName(document,"span","mw-rollback-link") with $("span.mw-rollback-link"). (You need to get John254 himself or any sysop to do this.) Matma Rextalk 17:51, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Hmmm...John254 is banned, and I'm technically inept when it comes to scripts. Perhaps another kind admin perusing this board could assist?--Jezebel'sPonyobons mots 19:00, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Out of curiosity, why is the pure DOM function not working anymore? equazcion→19:33, 21 Nov 2013 (UTC)
It's not a pure DOM function, it was part of mediawiki.legacy.wikibits. See [21]. Legoktm (talk) 19:36, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm sure you know something I don't here, but aside from past experience, this seems to indicate that getElementsByClassName doesn't need to be added via a library. I'm not sure what I'm missing here, but I know it must be something :) equazcion→19:48, 21 Nov 2013 (UTC)
document.getElementsByClassName / HTMLElement.prototype.getElementsByClassName function is a regular JavaScript DOM method which is always present (assuming the browser supports it). The window.getElementsByClassName, or just getElementsByClassName for short, was a non-standard function defined in MediaWiki back in 2006 or so when the DOM function was not supported by any browsers. I'd still suggest using the jQuery was instead of the DOM method for compatibility with older browsers. Matma Rextalk 20:03, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Ah, I missed that there was no document. here. Thanks for the explanation :) equazcion→20:10, 21 Nov 2013 (UTC)
nitpicking: the jquery $(selector) returns a jQuery object, which, for 92.47% of the cases behaves similar enough to the old "getElementsByClassName()", but is not 100% identical. to get exactly the thing the old call returned, use toArray(). in the example above, this would be
Good afternoon, I was wondering if it is possible to get the number of total visits to one or more specific pages, instead of the three months that can be consulted at will now. Greetings.--Paritto(talk) 22:55, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, it works fine!--Paritto(talk) 01:30, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Beta
I just got a new button called "beta". Have others experienced the same? It is a bit distracting to me, but there doesn't seem to be a way to remove the button (?) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iselilja (talk • contribs) 23:37, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Hi. If you click it, it gives you more information about why it is there. See mw:About Beta Features. Someone might be able to write you some code to hide it if you would like. I'm not sure why it's distracting, however. Killiondude (talk) 23:44, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
I think an official announcement update/post, with all the links and details, is coming any second now. –Quiddity (talk) 23:50, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Thank you, Lego! But this left me with another question: Where/what is my common.css? I have seen it sometimes, but it is not among my subpages, so maybe I have messed it up? (Not a big deal to get rid of the button; just an extra button I don't need; leaving the other buttons slightly out of place.) Regards, Iselilja (talk) 00:03, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Hi Iselilja: If you would like to hide the 'Beta' link in your personal menu, you can easily remove it by going to your personal style page ('Special:MyPage/common.css') and pasting in this CSS rule on a line by itself: "#pt-betafeatures { display: none; }" (do not include the quotes). Hope this helps -- but you'll be missing out on a lot of fun features and a chance to help improve them :) Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 00:07, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Thank you, Fabrice. I'll think about it. Btw.; I do sometimes edit a bit with the VisualEditor as I also a bit on the Norwegian Wikipedia where it is not turned off(and I haven't turned it off there). Regards, Iselilja (talk) 00:12, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
For future ref, you can find your common.css in at least three different ways: (i) at Special:MyPage/common.css; (ii) by going to Preferences → Appearance and looking for the Custom CSS link on the "⧼prefs-common-css-js⧽" row; (iii) by going to your user page, clicking Page information in the sidebar, clicking "Number of subpages of this page" and then looking through the list.
As regards what the page is for: there are many uses, and Help:User style#CSS covers just some of them. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:30, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Beta Features live on English Wikipedia
Screenshot of the new Beta Features preferences page.Media Viewer shows larger images to improve your viewing experience.
Hi folks, we're happy to let you know that the first version of Beta Features has now been deployed on the English Wikipedia and on all wikis worldwide.
Beta Features is a new program that lets you test new features on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites before they are released widely. Think of it as a digital laboratory where community members can preview upcoming changes and help designers and engineers make improvements based on their feedback.
This first worldwide release includes these features:
(Note that Visual Editor Opt-in is only on a couple hundred sites where it was already available, but not enabled by default.)
We invite you to test these new features on your sites and let us know what you think. You can share your feedback about this Beta Features program on this discussion page -- or about individual features on their respective discussion pages (see links above). And if you find any technical bugs, please report them report them here on Bugzilla.
We also invite you to join tomorrow's IRC office hours chat, this Friday, 22 November, 2013 at 18:00 UTC. (10)
Many thanks to all the community and team members who made this program possible! We hope it can help us improve Wikipedia together and provide a better experience for all our users around the world.
Enjoy, Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:58, 21 November 2013 (UTC) -- on behalf of the Multimedia, Visual Editor and Design teams
This looks great. I don't have to get annoyed about the new features because I can just bring them to life and kill them at will. Presumably, I can also, if I choose, take part in rational discussions where no-one needs to be accusatory or defensive and which will result in features being adopted, modified or junked purely according to what makes most sense. That's not meant sardonically, BTW. Here's hoping I am not speaking too soon... Formerip (talk) 00:35, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Agreed, but without the hesitation! ;)
I've been following this for a while, and I like the slow&steady nature of this new system. I've got lots of suggestions to improve some of them [cf. my comments at the typography page], but I'm not in urgent/panic mode whilst doing so. Huzzah for a calmer future! –Quiddity (talk) 01:07, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Good addition. And thank you for giving us a little more control over when and how we receive these features while they are in beta. Resolute 01:39, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your thoughtful feedback, Formerip and Reso! You make some good points about how this program can give us all more control over our experience, as well as encouraging more reasoned conversations during feature development, while reducing the stress for everyone. We're also very hopeful about the potential of this tool for enabling more effective collaborations between foundation and community members.
Already, we're getting invaluable feedback on discussion pages like this one for Media Viewer. On that note, a newer version of Media Viewer is now ready for testing on MediaWiki.org, which displays larger images for a more immersive experience, as shown in the thumbnail above. It will automatically be deployed on English Wikipedia's Beta Features section in early December, but we would love to get early feedback, if anyone is interested. You can test it on this demo page (don't forget to enable Media Viewer in your Beta Features preferences page on that site). To learn more, check out this overview of that new Media Viewer version.
Last but not least, kudos to all the folks who contributed to this skunkworks program, across many different teams: Jared Zimmerman, Mark Holmquist, James Forrester, Jon Robson, May Galloway, Keegan Peterzell, and Erik Moeller, to name but a few :) While no particular team had a mandate to start this program, we all felt it was the right thing to do -- and just got it done. Sometimes the best projects come from these kinds of serendipitous collaborations. Onward! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 03:04, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Template testing
I want to experiment to see if I can make a change to a template.
If I were interested in changing {{Infobox NCAA team season}}, I think I would proceed as follows:
Does this mean I need a sandbox versions of x/link, x/team and x/name to test?--S Philbrick(Talk) 03:02, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Generally that would be the best practice. Your general procedure also seems "okay". Note that some (most) testcases pages aren't all inclusive, and you may have to create new testcases to verify that your change is indeed doing what you want and not breaking other things. Technical 13 (talk) 03:43, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm smiling about your testcases comment, because my day job project today is to design a series of testcases for a software system, and they need to be complete enough that I can sign off that the software can be released.--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:34, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Rfc: Wikipedia referencing and citations, avanues for more help
Hi,
Seasons Greetings to users on this forum.
We are currently discussing lack of referencing and citations in wikipedia articles and proposals for restriction for content without referencing at WP:Village_pump_(policy). One of the reaction/comment is "...that making referencing easier needs to happen long before you start even contemplating (any new restrictions)..."
Some suggessions given were:
A) a link on top of the edit window that will open up a new browser tab with a google search of the article title.
B) a bot that copies no less than a dozen refs from the most unique pages that an article links to (fewest other what links here) and puts them on the talk page.
My question is like new VE can guide on likely categories, Whether it would be possible to guide for references automatically from existent references in other related articles
C)Whether it would be possible to provide shortcut keys for opening up Reference help menu bar in VE and Help tool bar of vector skin.For an example if Control+vv (i.e.press 'v' two times) reference help window will open automatically.
I've been thinking about (C) in VisualEditor for a while, and it's now requested at T59452. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:04, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Section edit links are appearing on diffs
Until yesterday, a diff would show section edit links, but only if the right-hand version was the current version. Overnight it has changed so that section edit links appear on all diffs. The main problem with this is that if sections have been moved since (such as talk page archiving), clicking a section edit may bring back an edit window containing a section that is not the one that you thought you had (try editing the "Secure site default" section here) - or it may throw an error (try editing the last section here) I'm pretty certain that this has happened before, some time in the last four years, discovered to have been an unintended bug and then reverted again. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:35, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Appears to be an unintentional side effect of gerrit:94150. Anomie⚔ 13:46, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
OK, any idea how long before the fix is deployed? --Redrose64 (talk) 17:38, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
@Redrose64: Should be very soon (a few hours tops), Anomie is backporting a revert. There were some unforeseen issues which were first thought to be related, but turned out to most likely not be, and it was delayed. Matma Rextalk 19:26, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Actually, it looks fixed already. Matma Rextalk 19:30, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes it does, Thank you --Redrose64 (talk) 20:10, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Permalink on talk pages
Linking to talk page or discussion page sections is a pain because they get archived and then the link is broken. Proposal - on a talk or discussion page next to the edit link for sections, have a link "Permalink" - this will link to that section no matter where it gets moved. This will require a possibly significant change in talk pages and might end up needing to be delayed till new talk page technology gets rolled out (is Flow for talk pages or just user pages or not for user pages, I'm not sure). In particular, every talk section will need a permanent identifier of some sort (or every talk page could have an archive-id which will be updated when a talk page gets archived). Still I think the investment will be worthwhile as it will make it easier to refer to active discussions that are going to be archived, and therefore help discussions be generally more informed. Jztinfinity (talk) 19:39, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I don't think that the devs are going to do this when they have more pressing matters, and it's already possible with one or two extra clicks. On the talk page, click on "Permanent link" in the sidebar, then right-click (assuming a Windows-based browser) on the section link in the TOC. Select "copy link location" (or whatever your browser offers). Your cutpaste buffer now holds a permalink to a section.
The problem with permalinks, is if someone adds a useful comment to the thread, subsequent to the diff I've selected to bookmark/paste somewhere...
@Jztinfinity: Yup, this is one of the issues that WP:Flow intends to solve. The roadmap/timeline is very slow (many months), and very gradual (starting with opt-in testing at pages that request it, and that's starting with just 2-4 wikiprojects sometime soon), but will eventually grow out to cover all discussion areas, once it, and we, are ready.
In Flow, the way they've currently got it working, is with permalinks for each post. So instead of saving a static diff and #topicname, I get sent to the correct thread(topic), and also scrolled down to the post itself, so that I can see it in context, and if there are replies. –Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 23:53, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Articles created
Anyone know what's going on with the Articles Created tool? Many of the links from contribs pages return 502 errors (example), although others work fine. And/or does anyone know of an alternate tool to use in the meantime? Nikkimaria (talk) 07:09, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Now 48 hrs that I haven't been able to save edits to English Braille
As noted above. I'm just attempting to format the article properly. I was able to make changes to some of the shorter sections 48 hrs ago, but despite maybe a thousand attempts, I've been unable to make any changes to the longer sections. I can't even break them up with temporary headers to do it a bit at a time. I know our servers are a bit screwy, but this seems extreme. Any idea what's going on? — kwami (talk) 02:00, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Could you tell us exactly what happens when you click save? Someguy1221 (talk) 02:14, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I get the error message shown in the previous section ("Our servers are currently experiencing a technical problem. This is probably temporary and should be fixed soon. Please try again in a few minutes."). Specifically, the latest error message says,
Error: 503, Service Unavailable at Fri, 22 Nov 2013 02:19:10 GMT
I've tried FF, Opera, Chrome, and IE. I'm on Win7.
BTW, I posted the changes to one of the sections on the Talk page (minus a couple paragraphs at the end with no formatting). — kwami (talk) 02:21, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I get the same error when i try to make the edit for you. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:05, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Same thing's happening to me. I tried to add the stuff from the talk page and encountered the error. VanIsaacWSVexcontribs 03:13, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I've used AWB to make this formatting change to other articles, so that in itself is not the problem. They don't have as many changes, though. But again, I get the same error even if I don't add the template, but only try to insert sub-section headers in sections which do not yet have any instances of the template. I was actually surprised today that I was able to post one of the sections on the talk page; I tried and failed to do that two days ago, thinking that someone else might be able to do it for me. This particular page also has many instances of the {{angle bracket}} template, so maybe the two of them together is too much? — kwami (talk) 03:29, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm convinced this has something to do with {{braille cell}}. I was able to blank the article and then add sections one by one, til those braille tables started. At User:Equazcion/sandbox11, I tried just adding the braille glyph tables from the article -- saving got slower and slower, then I got the Wikimedia error BUT still successfully saved -- although the save only showed up after something like 10 minutes of delay. Another table later got the error and no save. User:Vanisaac recently (Nov 12 2013) changed {{braille cell}} and its sub-pages to use many safesubsts; since these problems are more apparent on save than on load, it makes sense that the server is having trouble expanding all the substs, maybe. I reverted all the safesubst edits to that template and its sub-pages, and was able to at least get edits including all tables through at English Braille -- as of right now, I still do see the Wikimedia error, though the saves go through for me. It's possible the job queue isn't done reverting the template completely, perhaps.
This is all sort of conjecture so maybe someone who knows more can look into it. equazcion→05:38, 22 Nov 2013 (UTC)
PS. I just tried duplicating the article at User:Equazcion/sandbox12 and got the Wikimedia error but again the save went through, although there was a delay of several minutes before the save showed up. equazcion→05:47, 22 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Damn. I thought that adding a safesubst was transparent to the handling unless you actually substituted the template. Shoot. Maybe I'll make an alternate template that bypasses all the handling, and just does a down-and-dirty call of the /dot-id2character. VanIsaacWSVexcontribs 06:22, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Equazcion, could you put the changes through, then? It still times out for me. It's a simple formatting change: Just enclose any braille cells it the 'bc' template, separating them with a pipe. — kwami (talk) 06:44, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I tried but got the error too, and the edit hasn't shown up for a while. Maybe the safesubst's weren't the issue, and removing them merely woke things up temporarily? equazcion→07:24, 22 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. — kwami (talk) 07:27, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Recently (Oct/Nov) all {Braille cell} (sub)templates were changed adding {safesubst:}. -DePiep (talk) 20:03, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
English Braille reformats 3 seconds with null Template:Braille_cell
A run-preview, when editing Template:Braille_cell as an empty template, to show page "English Braille" will reformat the entire article within 3 seconds, and so {Braille_cell} is using over 57 seconds in that page to hit the 60-second timeout of wp:Wikimedia Foundation error. Perhaps Template:Braille_cell can be streamlined to run 10x faster, as only 5.7 seconds or such in that page. More later. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:22, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Template:Braille cell is definitely not running with any practical efficiency, I'm just not sure why this is happening suddenly now. The template page itself even has intermittent loading problems. The safesubst's seemed likely due to the timing of the issues, but that doesn't appear to have been the primary issue. The template could contain some parser function or magic word whose workings were changed recently in MediaWiki, but I don't keep informed of those things much. Maybe someone who does could take a browse through the code. equazcion→13:31, 22 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Rewrite Braille_cell 5x faster and test: I have created a test page, as User:Wikid77/Template:Test_Braille, which contains 64 calls to Template:Braille_cell, and ran 6 seconds with original version markup. A typical streamlined template can run 5x-11x times faster, but 10x faster is difficult to achieve with complex templates, so let's try to streamline {Braille_cell} as 5x faster to reduce 60-second timeout to 12-second reformatting. -Wikid77 (talk) 16:06, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
New Template:Braille_box runs 7x faster: After some analysis, I wrote a co-template intended to handle the same parameters, but 7x times faster than Template:Braille_cell, as new Template:Braille_box, to be used in large pages. More later. Update: I have edited page "English Braille" to reformat by using {braille_box} and new {bc2} (35x faster), where the reformat time drops from 70-90 to below 22 seconds, but further expansion of {braille_box} could reduce the page-reformat time below 15 seconds. I apologize I did not streamline the {braille_cell} templates months ago, when the slow operation was already known, but this is a busy time of the year for many people, and progress will take days rather than hours this month. If Template:Braille_cell is converted to use Lua script, then the speed should improve, from 3 or 12 per-second to over 170-per-second with {bc} using Lua. -Wikid77 (talk) 01:26/15:54, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Nice work Wikid -- The page appears to editable again. equazcion→16:12, 23 Nov 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I was just able to save all my formatting edits. Thanks! — kwami (talk) 16:28, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
I received the Wikimedia Errors too, but then confirmed that my edits were actually saved. Note that the Wikimedia Error suggests that you can report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, but then states "Your cache administrator is nobody." GoingBatty (talk) 02:28, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
The word "nobody" links to bugzilla:18903, where Tim Starling says: The message [...] is literally a joke. It was added to Varnish by Mark Bergsma as a nostalgic reference to the bug in Squid, which was the original subject of this bug report. (comment 14). From the remaining comments on that bug, this message will be disappearing soon. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 22:31, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Log to text
Does anyone know of a tool that can turn a page of log results into normal wiki markup? I want to produce an edited list of some move log results keeping the links intact. SpinningSpark 19:08, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
@Spinningspark: You might be able to do this as a two-step: a screen scrape to Excel (see here, for example), and then an Excel to wikitext conversion. -- John Broughton(♫♫) 01:16, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
rotating type
Is there a template to rotate print by 90°, the way the Latin alphabet is embedded in vertical Chinese? I'd like to expand the New York Point article without using images. I can do it if I can display braille on its side. (I can also do it if I can find the equivalent to the top dot of a colon; a middot doesn't line up properly.) — kwami (talk) 03:27, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
• or · don't work? Technical 13 (talk) 03:39, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Middot is half-way between the two dots of the colon (:·:) in most fonts. The bullet's too large. I can use the period to align with the bottom, but I need something that aligns with the top. — kwami (talk) 03:57, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
:·:.: --- :•:.::•:.: --- Hrmm... looks like it would take a little css tinkering or messing with font sizes to get it lined up... Technical 13 (talk) 04:07, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Or I can just use braille and instruct the reader to rotate the page. — kwami (talk) 04:15, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Or you could just use images. Hold on a bit, I'll program up a template for you, ala {{bc}} and make super small SVGs of the three dot patterns. VanIsaacWSVexcontribs 04:29, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
{{rotate}} already exists and uses CSS to rotate text if this is what you want. It doesn't work with very old browsers, though. --Patrick87 (talk) 04:35, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I think I've got something that should render consistently (tell me if it doesn't), but it's a bit of a hack:
A •• ••
B ••• • •
C •• • •
D •••• •
I'm using the physics particle template since it gives me convenient sub/superscripting, and the monospace font make stuff line up well. What do you think? Chris857 (talk) 04:36, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, everyone! I wasn't expecting to get help so fast.
@ VanIsaac, that will be good for the images we often use. However, I doubt we'll have any use for them for more than this one article, and if we're going to make images to really display this article properly, we'll want the 1-, 2-, and 4-dot-wide characters as well, which starts getting to be a lot of work for little reward. (Though if you make the 2-dot-wide blocks, we could also use them for braille shorthand.)
@ Patrick, thanks, I'll play around with that in a bit. It looks like it should work well; we could then use Chris's or VanIsaac's remedies for readers with old browsers.
@ Chris, that should come in handy in the future, but for this case, the vertical separation is too great. Th should be a square of dots, like this: ::, not a rectangle like braille ⠭. Can it be shortened?
Kwami, it goes up to ten dots wide. I just used the three to demonstrate. so {{NYP|10|10|01|01}} → and {{NYP|10|11|01|11|10|11|01|11|10|11}} → . VanIsaacWSVexcontribs 05:55, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Perfect! Could you maybe add a blank glyph of the same width for an entry of 0 / space / blank?
I've tested the rotation, and it works great. I just need to remember how to align top in wikitables. — kwami (talk) 06:02, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
I've put in one with "00" and "0" inputs, but feel free to fiddle with it. VanIsaacWSVexcontribs 06:16, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks! — kwami (talk) 06:38, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
@Patrick, valign=top doesn't seem to work with rotated text. Do you know if there's a fix for this? — kwami (talk) 06:38, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
How about valign=text-top --Redrose64 (talk) 11:09, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
With that one minor problem, the article looks good. Thanks! — kwami (talk) 08:37, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Toolserver
The toolserver has not been working properly lately. I miss being able to check the latest edits to various project articles. Checking edit counts, it says "toolserver is shutting down on 1/6/14." Will it be replaced by something? Regards, Iselilja (talk) 12:22, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
College basketball standings templates need to be updated every day. On the men's side, it appears that various editors have "adopted" conferences, and take care of it each day. On the women's side, there aren't as many editors, and updating 33 templates daily is boring and tedious, which means it is a task for a computer.
I semi-automated the task by creating User:Sphilbrick/wbb standings sandbox, which I can update from an Excel spreadsheet. The contents still have to be transferred manually, one template at a time.
Two possible solutions occur to me:
Use section transclusion to update the templates
Wite a bot to do the updating.
Section transclusion isn't ideal. There's the detail of figuring out how to generate the section transclusion coding in the Excel spreadsheet which I can figure out, but isn't obvious. The bigger concern is that is makes thew process dependent on updating the sandbox. If this approach is used, others cannot manually update the results, so I either have to update the sandbox every day, or get the spreadsheets to others so they can do if I do not.
I've never written a bot, so there's a learning curve if that's the best option. It seems like overkill to write a bot for 33 edits. One advantage to a bot is that it could more easily update the as of date.
I'm looking for feedback on which option is best, or if there is something else I am missing. I feel like this could be done by the Excel counterpart of a macro, but I'm not aware of any such thing, short of a bot.
You could also write a lua template to populate those fields from a single lua module, I know a german population template does the same thing for all the separate subdivisions. Werieth (talk) 15:06, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Let's ping my favorite bot guys(Hasteur—Theopolisme—Cyberpower678) and perhaps one of them can attest to the technical aspect of creating a bot to do it which seems the ideal scenario... Technical 13 (talk) 15:57, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
I guess I could also write a template which contains all conferences, then use inlcudeonly, but wouldn't that be an inefficient call on resources? --S Philbrick(Talk) 16:02, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Bot has a pre-configured set of Mens/Womens team templates that the run will work over
At the start of a run, the bot goes to the centralized repository of stats for the teams
For each result record the bot will go to the appropriate team template and update the stats and put the bot's run date as the "As of" date
(optional) The bot puts a "Bot Processed as of" date-timestamp on the central stat repository so that editors know what the last time the bot ran was.
I know this is a lot of restating, but I'm trying to make sure I understand the requirements. A thought, because the stats is really designed to be prioritized to computer readable over human readable, it might be nice to have the stats repository be JSON encoded so that it makes parsing the data out of the stats easier.
Also, I could see this type of "SportsStatsBot" being useful for updates besides Basketball, so we may want to charter a new bot that only handles these kinds of updates. Hasteur (talk) 16:14, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes, that process sounds correct. I don't (yet) know what JSON is, so I'll go look.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:37, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Sphilbrick: JSON is a compromise between the needs of a human reader and the structure a program needs. Hasteur (talk) 20:23, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Isn't this something that could or should be done via Wikidata? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:29, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
That sounds very intriguing, as this obviously has implication way beyond women's basketball.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:39, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Despite my interest in data, my knowledge of Wikidata is deficient. What's a good way to get up to speed?--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:39, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
For example {{CBB Standings Start}} is transcluded on 2135 pages. While most of those no longer need to be updated, every one of them was updated regularly at some time. {{CFB Standings Start}} is transcluded on 5110 pages. I assume there are some football/soccer templates as well--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:48, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
I was pinged, but I can't figure out where. I'll have a look at this later tonight.—cyberpowerChatOnline 20:58, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
C678 You were pinged by Technical 13 as "ping my favorite bot guys". Hasteur (talk) 21:29, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
I see. Well it looks like, you have a better understanding of what's being asked for here than I do. So I'll let you take this one on.—cyberpowerChatOnline 14:44, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
From the help received here, it turns out this can be done, but I have no idea what any of the advice for doing it means. This is a very foreign language to me. The first suggestion was to contact real people, however none of them look to be active right now.
There is an RfC about the videos at Edward Snowden, and the consensus thus far is to merge them. But if left to me, it's not going to happen.
If this is the wrong place to ask, where would be the right place?
Doing... I am attempting to concatenate the files with ffmpeg now. I will upload the result to Commons if it is of satisfactory quality. --NYKevin 21:30, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
My thanks as well. Much appreciated! Jusdafax 22:40, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Done, see File:Edward Snowden speaks about everything.webm (on Commons). There was a slight loss of quality, but the resulting video is quite reasonable to watch, although the jumps between segments are pretty obvious. If anyone wants to try and make a better version, feel free. This one was created using the "raw" audio and video procedure described at [22] (using avconv instead of ffmpeg as I'd originally planned), and pretty much exactly the same command line flags as shown there. --NYKevin 00:05, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
Most excellent. Jumps are just fine. Thank you!! petrarchan47tc 00:40, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
Get system messages/translations from a user script?
Hi all,
is there a possibility to get a system message (or even a translation thereof) from a user script? I found mediaWiki.message but it seems to work only on messages loaded by the resource loader before. Can I somehow load further message strings on request or is there some other possibility?
Regards, --Patrick87 (talk) 17:44, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
You can use the meta=allmessages API to get information about messages: [23]. Matma Rextalk 17:52, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Should we disable MathJax on mobile browsers?
At least, android versions of both Chrome and Firefox don't support MathJax. Therefore I have to log out on my phone to show the equations correctly.--fireattack (talk) 08:46, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
I edit in both Opera 12.16 and Firefox 25.0.1 There are times when I'll be logged out on Opera and logged in on Firefox. Logins don't automatically sync from one to the other. And that's fine. But it's usually the Opera that logs out, because I use that browser less. My computer had been down for a couple of hours, and when I booted back up, Opera was logged in to Wikipedia. But Firefox was not, and it has that really huge ugly yellowish orange fund raising banner slapped across the top. I've never seen that fund raising banner being logged out. My first thought was that the banner was malware. My second thought was that something happened in the system to log us out, just so we'd be forced to notice the fund raiser. Other than that paranoid thought, I know of no reason why the system would have logged me off on Firefox. — Maile (talk) 22:47, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
@Maile66: I think that you can only be logged in from one browser/computer combination at once (and if that's not true, then I am certain that at least logging out from one (by clicking the "Log out" link) will also log you out from all other ones). Matma Rextalk 23:18, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
In my experience, I am usually logged in with both browsers, and the login remains that way for weeks or months. Often I have both browsers open in a given period. Right now, I am logged in with both browsers. Opera will eventually log out when I go through a long stretch of not using that browser. You are correct in that if I deliberately log out under Firefox, it also logs me out of Opera. I have never deliberately logged out on Opera to see if it would log me out on Firefox. But what happened with Firefox this afternoon is a puzzle, considering Opera still had me logged in. — Maile (talk) 23:25, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
Did you get a Firefox update? That usually causes Firefox to restart automatically and may well have logged you out. SpinningSpark 00:26, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Not today. I got a Firefox update two or three days ago. Just one of those flukey things, I guess. — Maile (talk) 00:46, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
In my experience, a login on one browser will be valid for 30 days (or until you log out from any browser), unless you're messing with the cookies somehow. So if it has been 30 days or more since you last logged in with Firefox and less with Opera, being logged out in Firefox but not in Opera would be expected. The idea that you were logged out so you would see the fundraiser seems extremely unlikely to me; if that were desired, they could more easily just show the fundraiser to logged-in users. Anomie⚔ 04:01, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
I had logged in 2 hours earlier, and had not manually logged out. And I had not messed with the cookies. It was just one of those things. — Maile (talk) 12:53, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Can someone extract GPS coordinates from an article
I want to add GPS coordinates to article Jewelry Museum from Google map at [24]. How can I do it? --Db9023 (talk) 01:50, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
There are probably many ways of doing this, but what I usually do is click on the map, zoom in, right-click on the map location I'm interested in, then click on "Directions from here". The coordinates will be displayed on the left panel, in the filed marked A.--Strainu (talk) 10:34, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
As a local photographer I have added coordinates to thousands of images, and hundreds of articles, in the past five years. Wikipedia:Obtaining geographic coordinates and Commons:Commons:Geocoding list several methods. I tried a few that didn't work for me, and more that worked but I didn't like them. A few years ago I simply memorized Template:Coord and Commons:Template:Location so I can type them manually. I get the numbers from Google Earth for Windows, a very powerful program for the experienced. There are methods for pasting from GE and from other sources, but I merely copy the numbers by sight and eventually correct the resulting typographical errors. I wish WP could get a good connection with OpenStreetMap or Wikimapia or some other affiliated project to make a very simple, direct method that newbies could learn in a few minutes without instruction. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:57, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please inform other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.
New features
The Beta Features announced before are now available on all Wikimedia wikis. You can test new features easily by changing your Beta preferences. VisualEditor is one of those features on sites where it works and isn't automatically enabled. There is also a new media viewer and changes in the article text style. [25]
Tools developers can now create tools that use the OAuth protocol to connect to accounts on Wikimedia sites. As a user, you can use those tools to make edits and other changes with your account without giving the tool your password. [26]
At the page on Calamity Jane, the moues-over pop-up for the Pan-American Exposition shows nonsense caused by some text being left out. What I see is "... The fair [line break] occupied of land...." Going to the Exhibition's actual site on Wikipedia, I found that the "The fair occupied 350 acres (1.4 km2) of land...." My guess is that there is something about the script ("350 acres (1.4 km2) ") that causes it to be omitted. I am using the most recent full version of Firefox on ME7. Kdammers (talk) 10:37, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
If true, templates referred to in an article are simply deleted from previews; otherwise, they're shown as raw wikitext.
Thank You for the explanation. This condition is not acceptable since, e.g., in the case I cited, a meaningless sentence resulted. I thought the original needed cleaning up, so I went to it, wasting my time. Hopefully, a procedure can be developed that prevents this.Kdammers (talk) 13:29, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
"not acceptable" is a bit hard. popups is a very useful script installed at some Wikimedia wikis by the editors. It's not part of MediaWiki. I imagine it would be very difficult and expensive to parse templates for the popups preview. You could suggest an indication like "…" to indicate that a template was skipped, but I think it would just be annoying most of the time. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:00, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I intentionally used "not acceptable" because nonsense sentences have no place in Wikipedia. Using "..." would at least be far better than nothing. Kdammers (talk) 00:26, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
It's a bit rude to call something "not acceptable" when it's a service (script) provided (written) by volunteers. Did clicking on the page and loading it cause you to "waste" more time than this thread? You can always learn JavaScript and fix things yourself. Be bold! Killiondude (talk) 05:47, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Popups is disabled by default. It's a service registered users can choose to enable. We use a lot of templates in leads: Hatnotes, infoboxes, pronunciation, tags, citations, etc. Most of them don't produce text you want in a preview. "..." would usually give a false impression that you are missing article text. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:50, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Killiondude: I don't see any-thing rude about saying that unintelligible text is unacceptable in an encyclopedia. You seem to have missed my point by talking about "my" time: I made my comment here in the spirit of good faith trying to fix up Wikipedia. "The fair occupied of land" makes no sense what-so-ever and should not be shown to users (as opposed to editors, who can expect certain quirks). If a particular optional function produced sentences like "I room sweep" (which could at least be understood), would You consider it acceptable (the opposite of unacceptable)? Kdammers (talk) 01:19, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
i do not wish to weigh in on the question "what's rude", but your description above is not precise. you are talking about "unintelligible text in the encyclopedia". the point some people are trying to make is that this text is not "in the encyclopedia"- it appears in a tool designed to assist editors, and is not active for the readers (except some logged-in users who activated it themselves). the encyclopedia's text is still whole. if i can be blunt here - if this is unacceptable to you, you should probably disable this gadget. now, i can understand that you want this problem fixed. in theory, the right place to discuss it would be the talk page of the gadget (i.e., MediaWiki talk:Gadget-popups.js), but in this case, i am not sure it will do any good - i can't think of a good fix for this problem, at least not one that will require significant rewrite of the gadget. קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 19:06, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
Thank You for the comment about it not being "in the encyclopedia." To the extent that it is only an editing tool, the problem, though still present, is not so serious. How-ever, what about the readers who are logged-in and activate it? I would guess that we have a large number of such people. (As an editor, now that I know about the bug - yes, I consider it such -- I can easily live with i; but as a reader, I will feel I am being given a failed product.Kdammers (talk) 05:58, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
My Twinkle is not working properly today. I updated my login to Beta version 3 or 4 hours ago. From that, my twinkle is showing error message. I don't know what was the problem with that! Could anybody help me on this?
The error is like...
User talk page modification: parsererror "OK" occurred while contacting the API.
Grabbing data of earlier revisions: parsererror "OK" occurred while contacting the API.
Error I've been getting trying to rollback stuff as AGF is related? Testing beta feature possibility and if so which feature revealed for me, that I get no error with all beta features turned off and having either "near me" or "media viewer" on (only ones I tested) on resulted in the specified error. Fabrice Florin (WMF), do you have any idea what in beta features may be causing this? Technical 13 (talk) 00:29, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Amalthea, you didn't read or I didn't make clear. I get the same thing with any of the beta features. Even with Nearby pages unchecked, I get same error. Technical 13 (talk) 18:13, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Root cause is in a mw:Extension:MobileFrontend script so it could well manifest with some other features that require the problematic script; I have not tried to find out where else it is used, I only know of the one beta feature. Amalthea 20:36, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Note: merged the content below up from section titled "Twinkle" previous below Technical 13 (talk) 12:44, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
I've been having a problem with twinkle the last few days. Whenever I try to post a warning on a user's talk page, I get this error messafe -- "User talk page modification: parsererror "OK" occurred while contacting the API." I've tried refreshing my cache, and even installing it on my .js page, but nothing has worked. Hot Stoptalk-contribs 03:28, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Do you have any of the Beta features enabled? I hear there is an issue. Chris857 (talk) 03:37, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. I tried turning them off, and now twinkle works again. Hot Stoptalk-contribs 03:44, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Note: merged the content above up from section titled "Twinkle" previous below Technical 13 (talk) 12:44, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Transwiki to Commons
Does anyone know if it's possible to transwiki a file (not just the page) to Commons? There's a really messy history going on between the two projects, and a transwiki would be the easiest solution. Namely, a file was uploaded to Commons, then someone used the original file to make a derivative, then the uploader at Commons liked the derivative more, and decided to overwrite the original with the derivative. File in question: File:Micro SATA pin-out on a 1.8-inch Toshiba hard drive.png. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 00:22, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
It seems that the file was deleted without anyone adding an original upload log. Doesn't this mean that everything is in a big mess now? It may be better to add an original upload log to Commons and combine it with some detailed comment about the matter. --Stefan2 (talk) 23:13, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Not sure it's the most appropriate thing to do here, but in the past I've gotten templates to Commons by first using m:Special:Import then commons:Special:Import. Of course, you have to be an admin on both Meta and Commons (or ask one). It does require you to delete the file from meta after, too. Killiondude (talk) 23:48, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Special:Import can only be used for text (such as the text revisions of the file information page) and can't be used for image revisions. Also, if the textual revisions are imported to Commons, they would be mixed with the original Commons text revisions, which would make everything very confusing. According to Commons:Special:Log/import, textual revisions have been imported directly from various Wikipedias recently, so going via Meta shouldn't be necessary. --Stefan2 (talk) 23:57, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. It's been a while (years?) since I've used Special:Import. Commons formerly didn't have a direct path from enwiki. Killiondude (talk) 05:19, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
It seem that the {{Navbox}} will be hidden in the Web Mobile Version on small screen.This setting comes from(//bits.wikimedia.org/<langcode>.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=true&modules=mobile.styles&only=styles&skin=mobile&target=mobile&*).
I want to know is it a Foundation order?Or Is it just make a good visuality?But Because it's userful for the navigation between articles,Can I suggest that Add a option for show the Navbox as a beta option in Web Mobile Version?--Cwek (talk) 05:19, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
It is intentional, and the reason is that there hasn't been found a satisfactory way to present them yet. These elements are extremely complex tables, and if you have used the mobile website, you might have noticed that it is quite difficult to present tables in a nice way, especially if they are as wide as navbox tables usually are. I'm sure the mobile team is still looking at it but have decided that for now, it's less confusing for people to not have the navbox than to have a badly functioning navbox. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:10, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Slightly related, I know that the mobile team is looking at a 'related article' feature. This would basically use categories, incoming and outgoing links etc to suggest articles. I think they see this as an alternative of adding a stack of navboxes and categories at the bottom of a page, possibly moving those into a 'drill down' page or something. But that is at least several weeks out still. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:23, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
My question is, why is the source page itself not listed in the view? (the Napoleon page with the outgoing links). Not even when it is self-linked on the page. I can understand it can be a complication for the software, but as an omission it unexpected - a complication to explain. Any support for a feature request? -DePiep (talk) 10:09, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Help writing a plug-in for the VisualEditor
Hi. I'm the maintainer of a JS snippet at ro.wp that converts incorrect diacritics into correct ones when a page is saved (basically replacing some letters with others and skipping certain parts of the wikitext). I now have to implement it for the Visual Editor. I asked for documentation about how to interact with VE on IRC and was pointed to mw:VisualEditor/API. Having read that, it looks to me that it's way over my head (my knowledge of JavaScript is scarce and outdated).
I know that the VE isn't much appreciated around here, but I'm hoping somebody could lend me a hand writing that plug-in (even a demo one that does something when the page is saved would be good, I can probably take it from there). I would prefer to work with wikitext, in order to reuse the code I already have, but if I understand correctly Parsoid runs on the server, so it might or might not be practical to obtain the wikitext - can't really tell. Thanks in advance.--Strainu (talk) 22:48, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
How often would diacritic correction be used in VE: To sort out priorities of requests, we need to know the critical need of the feature. I cannot count the number of times people have requested writing some complex template, and after completion, the new template was used only once years ago. Currently, VE text can be scanned by an edit-filter for improper contents. When VE was forced here, for JavaScript browsers, then perhaps only 5% of edits used VE and 98% of all new articles were written using the wikitext source editor, not VE. So, when would diacritic correction be needed by VE users? -Wikid77 (talk) 06:37, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Wikid77: Diacritic correction needs to work 100% of the time for all input methods (we're talking about ro.wp, not en.wp). This is mainly for "political" reasons, not technical. If I am to roughly estimate the number of people still using operating systems that don't have support for the new diacritics, I would say around 25% of the time, so still a significant percentage.--Strainu (talk) 09:49, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Salix alba: aren't hooks a PHP thing? I'm looking for a JS solution...--Strainu (talk) 09:49, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Well, It gives me a possible solution: after the page is saved, make another api-edit that replaces the diacritics. This seems quite convoluted, but thanks for the idea, it made me more aware of what I should look for in the code. I've opened an enhancement request on the VisualEditor to have an event fired before the page is saved, but considering the size of the backlog on that product, I'm doubtful this will happen anytime soon.--Strainu (talk) 13:43, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Hi Strainu, I'll ask around and see if I can find someone to help you. I know they've made progress on making it possible, but I have the impression that the documentation is seriously incomplete. You might also ask directly at mw:Talk:VisualEditor if I can't find anyone for you. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:08, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
The word is that this kind of script is especially complicated. They would like to talk to you and see if they can help, because getting these diacritics right is obviously important. James F will be able to tell you more about what to try first. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:20, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
@Strainu: Hey, spoke earlier in IRC (which is probably best) but there's the VisualEditor documentation that may help too. I'm curious as to why you don't just have users use an IME (like ULS provides) instead of this gadget, though? Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 19:59, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
@Jdforrester (WMF):: I'm not sure what IME stands for or what the ULS is exactly (I know what that stands for, though). I'll try to be on #mediawiki-visualeditorconnect at about 19:00 UTC to see if we can talk about it.--Strainu (talk) 10:40, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Error message
I've done a lot of editing on WP, and have had no problems. In the last few days, after making an edit or placing a comment on a Talk page, I have gotten an error message several times. The edit usually goes through, but it is annoying. The latest one had the following details:
Request: POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sri_Lanka&action=submit, from 208.80.154.51 via cp1055 frontend ([10.2.2.25]:80), Varnish XID 950015639
Forwarded for: 50.164.201.162, 208.80.154.51 Error: 503, Service Unavailable at Mon, 25 Nov 2013 18:30:52 GMT
Here is another one:
Request: POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sri_Lanka&action=submit, from 208.80.154.51 via cp1066 frontend ([10.2.2.25]:80), Varnish XID 672702158
Forwarded for: 50.164.201.162, 208.80.154.51 Error: 503, Service Unavailable at Mon, 25 Nov 2013 18:42:22 GMT
Could someone look into this for me and see if it can be fixed? Thank you. CorinneSD (talk) 19:16, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
According to the Operations team, yesterday there were some serious network issues on the eqiad-esams link (including packet loss), due to a third party. This produced site-wide outages in Europe. I am sorry for the inconvenience. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 13:03, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Thank you. I haven't seen the error message today.CorinneSD (talk) 00:41, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Twinkle problem?
When I attempt to leave a "warn message" I get the message: "User talk page modification: parsererror "OK" occurred while contacting the API." and when attempting to rollback edits or restore an earlier version I get: "Grabbing data of the earlier revision: parsererror "OK" occurred while contacting the API." I cleared the cache to no avail. Any suggestions gratefully received. BenMacDui 19:04, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
This is a known issue with the "Near this page" beta feature. The only workaround for now is to turn it off. Jackmcbarn (talk) 19:05, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Ah - many thanks. BenMacDui 19:11, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Hello, the issue has been solved just before on the top of the page. -- L o gX 19:07, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
I appreciate that now, but the page is so long I didn't see it and the first Twinkle issue was about something else. BenMacDui 19:11, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
I am trying to make a twinkle alt.Finally An Account (talk) 17:44, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Talk page problems (ongoing)
I'm still often getting a very long lapse in getting the page view after saving (enough to open another page, read it or do something, and save it). Occasionally I'm getting the turquoise (and blue) Wikiscreen of doom - but the thing's saved and listed on my contribs. I'm also getting repeat posts on my talk page - even the bots are bouncing. Some of the repeats appear to be people panicking and resaving - but what about the bots? There's probably something going on to fix this, but I'm posting just in case... Peridon (talk) 19:45, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Please give specific pagenames: Although the slowness might be system-wide, it can help to give some particular pagenames, in case there is an unusual slow template in those talk-pages. Recently, page "Talk:English Braille" would hit the 60-second timeout with "wp:Wikimedia Foundation error" and some of the slow reformat was traced to using Template:bc, but other slow templates could contribute to the overall timeout problems. Hence, name some specific pagenames, and there might be some sluggish templates in them to streamline to be faster. -Wikid77 (talk) 21:47, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
My talk page in particular (possibly because I'm talking there more than any other specific page...). Otherwise, talk pages of users fairly generally. It's an overall thing, but worse at some times. The only things on my page other than talk are the Mizabot template and an archive access thing that I don't understand (someone set it up and then told me, which I was quite happy with). I just leave them to it. They've not caused any problems in the past. Peridon (talk) 10:41, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Compare versions?
Is there a way to compare two different pages? Obviously, if there are different versions of the same page, the diff option will highlight differences, but I spent some time tracking down difference between a main version and a sandbox version to find a single blank space. Is there an easier way to find the difference than manual scrutiny?--S Philbrick(Talk) 20:19, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
LogX has provided the answer, but I'll mention that I have half of a method to automate that. If you look at Module:Convert/tester#Comparing a module with its sandbox you will see that the following generates a nice set of links for the four convert modules:
Several people have mentioned a need for that, and they might forget to use "Special:ComparePages" but would remember "{diffsandbox}". -Wikid77 (talk) 22:19, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Also, for all the templates that follow the conventions for /sandbox subpages etc, there are diff links in the standard {{documentation}} templates for Template namespace. At the bottom you find: "Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (edit | diff)" and the diff link uses Special:ComparePages to compare the main template with the sandbox version. I'm not sure if it works for Module namespace, I at some point started working on adapting the documentation templates to do similar stuff in Module space, but I never really finished it and I'm not sure if anyone finished it up after me. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:17, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Ooooh, hadn't noticed that. Yes, there is a "Editors can experiment in this module sandbox (edit | diff)" message at the bottom of the docs at Module:Convert, and the links work. Johnuniq (talk) 02:47, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Quick edit-preview with copy/paste of other page: Because getting the version ids of pages can be tedious, for Special:ComparePages, it is often faster to run a (no-save) edit-preview of one page, then replace the edit-buffer contents from the other page, and do "Show changes" (carefully with no Save), to compare the one page against the contents of another page revision as if being the intended new revision. -Wikid77 (talk) 22:19, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
image size
I am not sure if its just me but the images all over the site have gotten much smaller for me.
- i.e.
new size?
This user has made over 65,000 edits to Wikipedia.
old size?
This user is not an administrator and has no desire to be one.
Do these two look different as in there sizes to anyone else? Font size and image in the first one has gotten much smaller..as has all images for me. -- Moxy (talk) 21:58, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
I see no difference - have you zoomed out your browser by accident, for instance by rolling the mouse wheel while the Ctrl key was pressed? You can also adjust the zoom level in all major browsers using ctrl++ctrl+-, and restore the zoom level on most browsers (not IE) with ctrl+0. In IE, you need to find the "Zoom" menu (in IE7 it's extreme bottom right) and select 100% from that. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:11, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
I see the difference as described, just fyi, though I haven't looked into any possible causes. equazcion→22:14, 26 Nov 2013 (UTC)
I am using firefox and its only here on Wikipedia ..used the ctrl++ option but still have the same problem. Just odd even the font size in the edit box has gotten mini for me. :-( -- Moxy (talk) 22:23, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
The difference in text size between your two examples is caused by a bug in the the second template: it uses "black" as a font size. Different browsers may react differently to the invalid value. Regarding the image size, it is explicitly specified in each template – the first uses 43px, the second uses 50px. The standard image size for userboxes is between these, at 45px.
I don't have any issue with font size in the edit box (yet). – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 22:30, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Images
Just today, most images appear as a blue-and-white checkerboard. The actual picture usually appears superimposed on it, and sometimes (especially if I drag hover over it) the checkerboard disappears. I'm using Firefox, FWIW. -- Ypnypn (talk) 02:19, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
That's because you did this and this. Anomie⚔ 03:34, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Well that's an interesting bug/feature ;-) Ypnypn (talk) 03:40, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
The actual picture shouldn't have been being superimposed, you should have just seen the blue-and-white checkerboard until you clicked it. But replacing all images with blue-and-white checkerboards is what that script is intended to do. Anomie⚔ 14:31, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Is it possible to make a category "hidden" on only select pages and not hidden on others?
For example, I want to make Category:Wikipedia proposals a WP:HIDDENCAT but ONLY on one certain page, such as Wikipedia:Gadget/proposals for example, while having it still remain a regular visible category on every other page. Not that this is something that I particularly want done here, I'm just curious if it's possible. -- Ϫ 12:27, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Just add [[Category:Whatever{{#ifeq:{{PAGENAME}}|target page name|{{!}}hidden{{=}}yes|}}]]. You can also use a #switch, if you have multiple pages you want to exclude it from, or use {{NAMESPACE}} to keep it out of a namespace, etc.VanIsaacWSVexcontribs 12:53, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Err, category syntax doesn't include a "hidden=yes". The hiddenness of a category applies to the category as a whole, not to any specific membership of a page in the category. Anomie⚔ 14:35, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Oops. I should have realized I was writing while still half asleep. VanIsaacWSVexcontribs 14:49, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
New idea: make [[Category:Whatever hidden]], mark it with the hidden cat template, and make it a sub-category of the regular maintenance cat. VanIsaacWSVexcontribs 14:54, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Wiktionary at hand
Why is there no wiktionary link alike the iw language links? -DePiep (talk) 10:17, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Because it's not a language? Interwiki links are intended to get you to the equivalent article on another language wiki, not link you to a dicdef ES&L 12:57, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes, that is how it is. Then I wrote my question. -DePiep (talk) 14:17, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Look up village or pump in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
It would be inappropriate to list Wiktionary in the "languages" box, since it isn't another language. However, we do use {{Wiktionary}} in articles to produce another box that links to Wiktionary (example to the right). See Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects for more information. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 21:50, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
I do not suggest to treat it as a language, do not add it to languages. I say alike. I am asking why a wiktionary link is not in the lefthand menu list somehow. There also is "Print" (not a language either). -DePiep (talk) 11:42, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Come up with a mock example and propose its addition. As it stands, a link in the left menu bar is likely to be less visible than the {{wiktionary}} template in use. Killiondude (talk) 18:01, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
How can I mock up the wiki menu bar? "As it stands", the box may be out of the visible page part. Also, wiktionary is just one of more wikiprojects we could link to this way (of course I do not mean the language wikis). Let me try:
There's an RFC on modifying the sidebar just closed, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Sidebar update, with no consensus but it closedwith a suggestion that there be more discussion - that might be you opportunity to develop your proposal. NtheP (talk) 20:12, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Template edit failure
I tried to edit a template, but failed.
(The goal of the template is to take certain team names, such as "Central Arkansas Sugar Bears", where the name already implies the sex of the team, and suppress the word "women's" in the header of the standings.)
The template I want to use is {{Infobox NCAA team season/team}} but the edit has to be in a called template. I created sandboxes as follows:
See third to last example where "2013–14 Central Arkansas Sugar Bears women's basketball team" becomes
"2013–14 Central Arkansas Sugar Bears basketball team"
I don't think that was intended to fix the issue above though, but correct me if I'm wrong though. equazcion→15:39, 26 Nov 2013 (UTC)
No, but it was a preliminary. The *real* fixes are here, here and here. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:47, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Looks like it worked. I have no idea why, but nice going :) equazcion→15:51, 26 Nov 2013 (UTC)
OK thanks much. I haven't looked at the fixes, but will. I didn't like my choice of sandbox name, not sure why subpage didn't occur to me.--S Philbrick(Talk) 16:22, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
OK, I get it I think. My main edit was OK, but I wasn't calling the right templates. Of course, one of those things that are obvious, as soon as someone with a clue points them out. :) --S Philbrick(Talk) 16:25, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Umm.. Maybe I'm just not seeing it correctly or am missing an important factor, but it doesn't appear (according to the /doc on the template page itself) that {{Infobox NCAA team season/name}} is working properly. It appears to be removing "women's" and "men's" even when there is no related word in the team name ("Ladies" or "Cowboys" or whatever). Is that intended? I'll take a closer look at this Thursday night if no-one has fixed it by then... Been super busy with real life and trying to not be homeless, so been busy but have not forgotten your request Sphilbrick. ;) Technical 13 (talk) 18:19, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Well as one of the doc example shows, when the team is Texas Tech, it generates Texas Tech Red Raiders men's basketball team. Are you looking at Southern Utah? In that case, because the women do not use Thunderbirds (or a variation such as Lady Thunderbirds), the term "Thunderbirds" means men, so it is omitted. The women iniquely use "T–Birds" so that term drops "women". --S Philbrick(Talk) 18:34, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
I expect it to be a redlink, as there is no overall article about the team, even though there is about the specific season 2013–14 Central Arkansas Sugar Bears basketball team. Not sure why it works in the sandbox, but not in the main version, will look further.--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:05, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
I figured it out, although that leaves me doubly puzzled
I removed a space
-->|(.* Central Arkansas Sugar Bears.*) women's|%1|plain=false}}<!-- replace 5
to produce
-->|(.*Central Arkansas Sugar Bears.*) women's|%1|plain=false}}<!-- replace 5
I haven't yet figured out why it fails with a space, as all the others have it, nor do I understand why the space was there, as I though I copied the entire sandbox version, which has the space omitted. Off to pour over diffs.--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:21, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
(I've been off having some dinner) You might not have noticed than just before my post of 18:40, 26 November 2013 above, I made this edit which you faithfully copied just before making your post of 19:21. The reason that the space must not be present is that the string fed in is because the value fed from {{Infobox NCAA team season/team}} via |name=Central Arkansas Sugar Bears women's basketball into {{Infobox NCAA team season/name}} has no space before the word "Chicago". The search string "(.*Central Arkansas Sugar Bears.*) women's" means 'any characters, then a space, then the word "Chicago" ...'; whereas the search string "(.*Central Arkansas Sugar Bears.*) women's" means 'any characters, then the word "Chicago" ...' - so the revised version no longer has a mandatory space before "Chicago". The others work with a space because the others always have at least one word and a space before the words "Lady", "Cowgirl" etc. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:53, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
I actually thought about that, but rejected it, because I saw the Utah T–Birds example. But I just now realized it isn't the Utah T–Birds, but the Southern Utah T–Birds, so now I see why that one works.--S Philbrick(Talk) 18:42, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Question regarding possibly adding a "toggle option" to rollback
I'm hoping I'm asking this in the right forum, as I think this might require a Bugzilla bug filed. I have access to Rollback; when I at my personal computer, I use it to remove vandalism that I find on my watchlist. However, when I also do edits to Wikipedia on a internet browser on my phone when I am abroad. For mobile user, I would imagine that I am not alone when I say that I have accidentally reverted good edits with rollback when I am trying to "click" something else with my phone.
In a nutshell, I want to propose an option that would appear in the "Preferences" page when logged in for users with the "rollback" right that would allow the user to toggle one of the following two options:
Toggle confirmation page on/off
Toggle the entire rollback function on/off
Having the option to either have a confirmation page (or toggle rollback) could prevent mobile editors from doing accidental rollbacks; beats doing it by accident, not realizing that it was done, and then not reverting the accidental revert of the previous editor's edit. Is it possible to get this option added technically? Steel1943 (talk) 08:30, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
Would it be technically possible to have a preference which turns it off when using the mobile version? Then one wouldn't have to toggle.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:26, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
Hiding the rollback link for all devices is quite easy -
would suppress it for handheld devices only, but have not tested it because I don't have a mobile device. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:21, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
Note: I'm actually looking for a way to toggle it on the desktop version, as I edit using the desktop version on my mobile. Thanks for the information Redrose64; I'm going to keep that code handy in the future if I should need it. Steel1943 (talk) 18:23, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
OK, I misunderstood, my suggestion won't help you.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:29, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Does the mw css use the Browser Specific CSS plugin so that browsers or specifc devices are separate classes then
.ios{.mw-rollback-link{display:none;}}
would toggle the option off on an iPhone (I'm an absolute duffer at css coding so apologies if the syntax is complete bull)? NtheP (talk) 10:33, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Not sure what you're trying to do there but it's invalid CSS. CSS is a list of statements; a statement is either a ruleset or an at-rule; a ruleset consists of a selector, the '{' character, a semicolon-separated list of declarations and a '}' character; a declaration consists of a property, a colon, and a value (e.g. display: none is a valid declaration). You've put a statement (<code.mw-rollback-link { display: none; } in a place where a list of declarations is expected. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:46, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Ignore the syntax, I admit to being rubbish at that, but the question remains does the wiki css use the browser specific plugin? In which case is it possible to create a statement that is specific to the browser or OS being used? NtheP (talk) 20:55, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
I believe that we append !ie to certain declaration lists, such as in the catlinks class. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:19, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
New Firefox 25.01 Wikipedia cached content behavior - fix?
For years, I've used a bookmark, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Watchlist&hideBots=1 to get to my watchlist instantly while logged in. Sometime in the last month, this started displaying the last watchlist seen, instead of the current one. I have to hit ctrl-R to reload to get the most current watchlist. I've cleared the FF cache, but no joy. Is there a setting I can change in FF, or something I can add to this link to always force loading the freshest possible watchlist? Thanks. --Lexein (talk) 14:28, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
Hm. Thanks for checking. I get the cached watchlist, using the query or non-query link version. A puzzler... Same behavior doesn't happen with Opera or Chrome. --Lexein (talk) 21:26, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The Lua version of Convert lacks features for system-wide use (see censored details in collapsed section below), but the Module:Convert could be used in limited areas, such as inside Template:Height to convert metres with feet/inches.
Currently, over 553,000 pages use Template:Convert for conversions of measurements, dates or times. However, the Lua version of Convert only handles measurements and will drop support for times or dates. -Wikid77 10:08, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Currently, the Lua script version of Template:Convert (as Module:Convert) has been treated as a sandbox version, with Template:Convert/sandboxlua, but installation for wider usage is being discussed. However, despite fears of forking the template, the Lua version has diverged as a fork with different features, incompatible with the markup-based Convert. Originally, {convert} was a simple gateway template to hundreds of subtemplates, which each could convert more than just measurements, but also dates and times which the Lua fork does not handle. Examples of non-numeric conversions:
{{convert|25 November|date|day}} → 25 November (day 329)
The divergence of the Lua version, as a fork, began reasonably as an attempt to "improve" some glitches in the protected Convert subtemplates (now being fixed by the authorized wp:template editors), where the rewrite in Lua would make results consistent. Hence, the forking was a natural follow-on to also add new features, such as 3-part combinations in Lua:
Similarly, the Lua version has other new features, but they come at a high price: as a gargantuan Lua module which would trigger the reformatting of all articles (552,000) using Convert (if any feature were altered except new units in Module:Convert/extra), whereas the original markup-based Template:Convert has allowed numerous feature changes to affect only a few dozen or hundred pages at a time. Efforts to keep the 2 versions synchronized have been delayed for weeks or months, and I think we will need to release the Lua version, as a beneficial fork, but under separate template name(s). Also, there have been calls for a "feature freeze" to transition entirely to Lua, but that implies the old features will be dropped (as incompatible), while a better plan would be to accept new features until a 3-month period of no new requests, allowing the efficient markup-based Convert to reformat only the few articles using a new feature each day (not reformat 552,000 pages for each Lua edit). Meanwhile, I have created Template:Convert/q, to run the rapid Lua version, for rare cases beyond the typical 3-7 conversions, in pages which would contain hundreds of {convert/q}. New features could be added, to either version, and the need for identical features could be assessed in each case, as there are no "consistency police" forcing similar templates to function with lock-step operation. Forks are needed at times: some prefer vanilla and some prefer chocolate, but "chocnilla" is unlikely to satisfy everyone. I think we could carefully expand the use of the Lua version, such as inside Template:Height (using ft/m units), but keep both versions and not force a VE-style upset where "edit" suddenly ran a different interface putting "<nowiki>" tags around "[__]". Because the markup-based Convert is relatively fast (over 40 per second), there is no critical need to use Lua for 7-conversions-per-page. Perhaps discuss these issues at: Module_talk:Convert, for use of Lua in {Height} or other templates. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:28, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Copyposted from [28]. Discussion is elsewhere, as the hatnote says. Looks like forumshopping. -DePiep (talk) 08:47, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Module:Convert is unsuitable to replace markup Convert: Hence, the next step is to discuss at Module_talk:Convert for use with other templates, such as inside Template:Height, not as an attempt to shut down improvements to the markup-based Convert. Users need to know the Lua fork is an incompatible fork which lacks numerous features, but could be used in limited areas. Note the following comparison between Lua Convert and markup Convert:
The amount "8.26 hands" (above) is a nonsense value and should be 8.212 hands, as in the markup-based Convert. Continuing to claim a smooth transition to the Lua-based Convert is misleading, and users need to know the truth, where there is no critical performance improvement with Lua Convert, but the Lua version drops support for several features and risks massive reformatting of 552,000 articles for each Lua edit. Discuss all the various problems with Lua Convert at Module_talk:Convert. -Wikid77 (talk) 21:25, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
@PartTimeGnome, providing background details about a proposed, massive system-wide change to Template:Convert, versus a limited use, is not forum shopping, which is an extremely rude term to use when tainting a major announcement in a derogatory manner, so please act more wp:CIVIL in the future. -Wikid77 10:08, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Even if not forum shopping, this is a clear case of WP:MULTI. Once Johnuniq had notified this page (at 22:25, 24 November 2013) of a discussion that was taking place elsewhere (with a link to that discussion), there should have been no further comment on the matter here. Posting identical responses in two different places is redundant, and thus pointless. Posting different responses, whether intentionally different or not will cause the various parties to form differing collective opinions, and since one of those collective opinions is likely to be closer to your own beliefs than another, it can be considered forum shopping to consciously contribute to two ongoing discussions. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:32, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Uncategorized article tag
I don't know what's going on with users these days, but more and more of them (even autopatrolled) are publishing unsourced, uncategorized material, and only making more job for other users. I propose we add a tag that warns the user when creating completely uncategorized article, and adds Uncategorized new article note on its edit. Seriously, what's so hard with finding and providing few categories? Alexdiscussion★ 02:24, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
If it's not so hard for the article creator, then it's not so hard for someone else, either. Two minutes of an article creator's time is not less valuable than two minutes of someone else's time. We even have people who like doing that kind of thing, and a lot of our experienced editors started off by helping out with gnoming work like this. Also, since the "backlog" for uncatted pages is just a couple of weeks, I don't think this is one of our more pressing problems.
That said, I believe that there's been a bot around for years that tags uncatted articles; I don't know if it's still running. If it is, then half of your proposal is already being fulfilled. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:38, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Dear tech editors: Here's an article that has been sitting in Afc for a long time. Is it still needed? —Anne Delong (talk) 16:17, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Page is unnecessary (and creator has been blocked for almost a year, too). Tagged under G13. Theopolisme(talk) 07:36, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Reviewing pending changes on mobile
I've been having issues quite recently in reviewing pending changes on my Blackberry. Upon accepting/rejecting a pending revision, the tool returns a "problem with logon session; action has been cancelled" error. What gives? hmssolent\You rang?ship's log 16:01, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
@HMSSolent: In the non-mobile version of the website ? What link (placed where), do you click ? What model of BB and what version of the BB OS ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:23, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
This error only occurs when reviewing through the mobile site. I am currently running BB OS v7.1.0 on the 9320 Curve. hmssolent\You rang?ship's log 13:03, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
These watchlists are really useful for selecting articles to improve. Will they be fixed soon? Djembayz (talk) 12:40, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
The problem here is that it is on Toolserver. Try getting User:Legoktm, who appears to run the tool, to migrate it to WPLabs. --Mdann52talk to me! 13:59, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
External links search
Dear tech editors: At Wikiproject Canada there is a small crisis because the online Canadian Encyclopedia has reorganized its articles (insert appropriate epithet here), causing all links to these articles to need an update (see this discussion). To facilitate this, one of the Wikiproject Canada members performed an external links search ([29]), which found only a little over 500 links. This is far from the total, and indeed the first two articles that I looked for weren't on this list. Is there a reason that the external link search isn't picking up all of the links, and is there a way to expand the search to include all instances of http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com ? —Anne Delong (talk) 04:05, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
It's better to use the wildcard "*" at the start of an external links search. A search for http://*.thecanadianencyclopedia.com comes up with 5,550 results. Graham87 05:28, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
No, I was just trying to figure out why the search didn't work as expected. Looks like Graham's suggestion has found a lot more. Thanks! I think fixing 5,000 dead links should keep the Canadians distracted for some time...no sneaking over the border, now...no, wait, that was 1813. Seriously, though, Mr. Stradivarius on tour, what could a bot do that is different from/better than the external link search? —Anne Delong (talk) 14:45, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
He might be thinking that a bot could fix the links on these 5,000-odd pages. This would be possible if there is some way to figure out the new URL from the old one, or if uniquely-identifying information from the old URL can be used in a site search. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 21:35, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes, PartTimeGnome has read my mind correctly. I should have been more clear about that, sorry. :) I'm not a fan of making humans do something if a computer can do it instead. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour♪ talk ♪ 23:10, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Login with the HTTP version of wikipedia, NOT THE HTTPS VERSION
How to login with the HTTP version? not the goddamn HTTPS version? I can view pages in HTTP and HTTPS but whenever i login it go straight to HTTPS EVERY FREAKING GODDAMN TIME AND I CAN'T CHANGE IT BACK 2607:FCD0:100:C21:0:0:4E05:A9B7 (talk) 06:03, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
You shouldn't be logging into the http version. Why is this a problem? --Jorm (WMF) (talk) 07:08, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
If you can register a user, you can set your preferences to say use http and not https. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:11, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
If you have 0 access to https, then that doesn't help him much, because all login actions are ALWAYS https for password security reasons. He would have to do it on a laptop outside of the network, login (with the 30 days option set), setup the user correctly to allow http, then take the laptop on this stupid network with block https, and he could use it for 30 days if he is lucky to browse the http version. Out of curiosity, I wonder what place blocks https traffic these days ? School/Library/work/country ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:34, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Um I'm editing from HTTP as we speak. I always do on this computer - and use HTTPS on my other. GiantSnowman 09:44, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Why do editors keep making statements like "You shouldn't be logging into the http version"? There are other good reasons for using http e.g. you can't use stored edit summaries in https in IE10, and can we please avoid the usual arrogant statements about users of IE? Thank you - Arjayay (talk) 09:46, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
No, storing edit summaries is definitely NOT a good reason to use insecure HTTP for login, as long as convenience is not more important to you than your own safety. Did you contact Microsoft to fix that in IE? --Malyacko (talk) 10:16, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure what "as long as convenience is not more important to you" means. However, edit summaries are a very good reason to use HTTP - Perhaps, as you are clearly an "expert", and work for WMF. you would like to contact Microsoft, and sort this out BEFORE enforcing it upon all editors? - I look forward to receiving your report in 2015 - if you are very lucky. I understand WMF is wondering why so many experienced editors are leaving? I'm not claiming any great contribution to the encyclopedia - 45K edits - but this sort of arrogance and "we know best" attitude is most likely to cause me to leave. Arjayay (talk) 20:22, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
(e/c) Because you shouldn't (and you are no longer allowed actually), because you are endangering your password in that way. Using wikipedia over http (which is what the option in the preferences allows you to do) is something other than logging in. Using only potentially exposes your login session (people might be able to impersonate you) and your reading behavior. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:30, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
I would appreciate knowing where it states that http "Is no longer allowed" - if that is really so - why is there still an "opt-in" for HTTPS? Unfortunately, I don't understand the rest of your comment "Using only potentially exposes" - could you please explain. -Arjayay (talk) 20:22, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Using HTTP to transmit your password is no longer allowed, nor possible (unless you are in one of the excluded countries). Using HTTP to read and write pages is possible by selecting the option in the preferences, and you will get none of the protections listed in the first paragraph of this page, which is still dangerous. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:34, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
i already posted above ragarding this issue, tho i think its my fault that i didn't make it clear, so i apologise. Basically, yes, it is possible to force the http and not the https version AFTER LOGGING IN, the problem IS, Special:userLogin is ALWAYS a HTTPS page regard les of the settings. in the People's Republic Of China, the http version of the site is allowed but the https version is block. but as special:userLogin is A HTTPS PAGE youve bascally block all chinese User From Edit Wikipedia. nice job guys. so my question is : how to userLogin as HTTP and NOT THE HTTPS VERSION????? Damnnnnnnnnnnnn 2607:FCD0:100:C21:0:0:4E05:A9B7 (talk) 10:04, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
I suspect that the software isn't aware yet that you are located inside China. For that reason, you don't fall in the exception group where people are allowed to login using http. The majority of editors from china should be able to login using http. You are editing over IPv6 and I suspect that the GeoIP databases that we rely upon to guess if someone is located in China don't have the information yet that pinpoints your IP address as belonging somewhere in China. This might still take some time, but once it is known the option to login over http should be available to you. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:36, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Your IP address resolves to something in the LA, United States area btw.. Are you using TOR for these posts ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:51, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
They can't be. TOR is blocked across the board.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 22:13, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Request: POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php, from 208.80.154.76 via cp1065 frontend ([10.2.2.25]:80), Varnish XID 3892616765 Forwarded for: myip, 208.80.154.76 Error: 503, Service Unavailable at Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:08:11 GMT
But despite this, the edit went through. Does anyone have an idea of what's going on with this? →Σσς. (Sigma) 02:16, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Sounds like a timeout while saving. Note that some changes coming with 1.23wmf5 should improve the timeout-while-saving situation, see T59026 for details and mw:MediaWiki 1.23/Roadmap for the deployment schedule. Anomie⚔ 03:52, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
And I get a similar error every time I transclude a new template on Template talk:Did you know. There are already hundreds of transclusions there, so it will be complex and slow to render too. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:33, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Interesting. I would expect the edit to actually fail, though. →Σσς. (Sigma) 09:50, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
The varnish (and previously, the squid) caches have a shorter timeout than the apache backends do. So it's easily possible for an edit to exceed the cache's timeout (returning an error to the client) while the apache continues processing the edit and eventually saves it. The effect of T59026 is to make MediaWiki have to parse the page three times during the saving process; after the two changes linked in that bug are deployed here, MediaWiki should only be having to parse it once. Anomie⚔ 13:08, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
I made four edits to 2013 global surveillance disclosures, an exceptionally long article. My changes were completed every time, but I received at least three 503 errors (my browser crashed one time as it often does when I make an edit, so there may have been a fourth error I didn't see). Here's one of them:
This should no longer be happening now. Matma Rextalk 08:57, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
What makes you say that? →Σσς. (Sigma) 09:42, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Having had that fixed. :) See the bug linked above. Are you saying it is still happening? Matma Rextalk 09:58, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Oh, now I see comment 19 on the bug. Well, this news is certainly better than the prospect of waiting a week and some. I'll see if I get these errors again tomorrow afternoon. Thank you for fixing this! →Σσς. (Sigma) 10:43, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
I can confirm - StatisticianBot was unable to update since November 8th, but now is functioning again - thanks! —Daniel Vandersluis(talk) 18:21, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Although the situation is much better than it was before, I've just caught threemorenon-errors today. Is there any reason why Squid/Varnish has a shorter timeout at all? →Σσς. (Sigma) 23:30, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
I have started to see this quite reproducibly as of a few minutes ago; some code in my common.js that queries the API about the database lag status (and disables autostart of some other scripts if so) has been failing. (I used the Live HTTP Headers extension for Firefox to confirm that there are indeed 503 errors occurring.) --SoledadKabocha (talk) 03:46, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Never mind, it might have cleared up during the few minutes it took to write that edit. --SoledadKabocha (talk) 03:47, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Translating and enabling scripts Twinkle and Huggle on sr.wiki
Hello. I'm willing to contribute and translate vandalism fighting script Huggle and Twinkle on Serbian and enable them on the Serbian Wikipedia. I'm looking for additional information how to do so? Thanks. Alexdiscussion★ 23:36, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Hi Alex. As for Twinkle, you might want to see this old thread on the topic. Twinkle would be difficult because it's very specific to the English Wikipedia's pages/practices. You are free to try and/or contact the developer(s). Killiondude (talk) 04:25, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Wikimedia error, site very slow, looks like when Internet first developed
I just got a Wikimedia error when I tried to go to any page on the site. I forgot to make a note of the number. Then I got a Gateway Time-Out error. Eventually, I got to the page I wanted. I was getting from one page to another just fine for the most part, then the site was very slow. On both the Technical Village Pump and on the page where I am now, fonts and blue links look like they did when the Internet was new, before anyone tried making pages appear more interesting.— Vchimpanzee· talk·contributions· 18:35, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Pages look normal now. All other sites have come up normally.— Vchimpanzee· talk·contributions· 18:39, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
I suspect it was a temporary server problem that prevented style sheets from loading properly.--ukexpat (talk) 18:44, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
So no major problem to report that caused the Wikimedia errors?— Vchimpanzee· talk·contributions· 18:50, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Every Wikipedia page is built from many more than one computer file: besides the file which shows the layout and text of the actual page, the other files mainly comprise images, style sheets and scripts. When certain servers are slow, the files that are requested from them may fail to be sent back before your browser gives up. If one of those files is a CSS file (a style sheet that describes the normal page styling for Wikipedia), your browser cannot format the page using that styling and so falls back on its defaults. These look like 20th century internet because style sheets were not generally used until HTML 4 was released in late 1997. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:33, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Redrose gives the correct analysis of the reported difficulty; however, I never saw this no-CSS-loaded problem, though I did see other problems like the ones below, where my just-saved-edit gives a faux error. Are you seeing CSS-rendering problems, Ottawahitech, like Vchimpanzee, every time? And Vchimpanzee, were you getting the error-messages below, and were you always saving an edit? 74.192.84.101 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:35, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I have been getting sporadic "Wikimedia Foundation Error"s for a few days. I thought it meant my edit had to be repeated -- but so far that is not the case. Here is a message I got a few minutes ago:
Wikimedia Foundation Error
Our servers are currently experiencing a technical problem. This is probably temporary and should be fixed soon. Please try again in a few minutes... XOttawahitech (talk) 15:49, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I've been getting those too, at odd intervals, on pages of various sizes. The first thing to do is to check your contributions - try to do this in another browser tab or window, if your browser provides such features; this saves disturbing the tab where the error occurred. If the edit that you attempted appears at the top of your contribs, all well and good; if it doesn't, return to the tab with the error, back out and try to save again. A second attempt is usually sufficient; if that doesn't work, or if it happens on more than one smallish page, it's a sign that the servers are busy. Go have some coffeee and try later. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:24, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
@Redrose64:I have been getting those with increasing intensity, or at least so it seems. Coupled with the general slowness (?) of the site, it is definitely reducing my ability to contribute. Just wondering if this is effecting others' contributions as well. Are there pertinent statistics anywhere? Thanks in advance, XOttawahitech (talk) 15:37, 15 November 2013 (UTC)
@Redrose64: I just got the same Wikimedia error, but this time as soon as I clicked the Edit. It looks like the service is deteriorating -- is anyone doing anything ahout it? Just curious. XOttawahitech (talk) 15:16, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
I have no cure, nor do I know if anybody is working on it. All I can do is observe and point people to existing discussions. If it helps, I got it when clicking [edit] for this section; also when going to Talk:East Coast Joint Stock - before I made this edit. When my Norah Jones CD finishes, I'm off down the shops. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:22, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Can definitely confirm that the first couple weeks of November were giving me more generic errors than usual. "Our servers are currently experiencing a technical problem. This is probably temporary and should be fixed soon." Every time, from what I can tell, it was after I clicked save, and after my edit *had* been saved... so the error was happening when the freshly-modified-page was trying to load itself, with the little your-edit-was-saved message at the top. I have also seen a notable uptick in the revisions to editFilter and abuseFilter things, at least anecdotally. Are myself and Ottawahitech the only ones who saw these problems? Maybe they are browser-version-and-OS-version-specific... or maybe we two are just especially picky about five-nines uptime. :-) I've noticed less problems recently; do not remember seeing any generic-errors in the past several days. But I too would like to know if there is an http://uptime.wikimedia.org website, or somesuch, which gives overall successful-page-load-percentages, and such. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:31, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I'm on Firefox 25.0.1, Windows XP SP3. My two edits to Central line today both threw the error, but both went through on first attempt. I get quite a lot of this, but I've not been moaning about it: partly because it clogs up this page, partly because it adds more server load, but mostly because I know how to handle it. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:56, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
But... but... but moaning is so fun! :-) Agree this is not really the page where it will help, though. If you know some wizard that resides in a dark cave, back behind the server-farm, perhaps you can send them a ping? Because although you and I and Ottawahitech may know how to work around the problem, if the three of us are getting the intermittent error, prolly lots of beginning editors are also seeing some begging "for CA$H to buy better servers" as their first impression of the wikiverse (or second impression or tenth or whatever... hard to say without running a count-script on the raw webserver logfiles). That cannot be good, eh?
Plus, there does not seem to be any peak-time-specificity to my experiences, they happened around the clock. That said, I have been over a week without seeing anything, so p'raps a wizard already waved their wand. But if you're still seeing the trouble now, strongly suggest pinging somebody; it strikes me as a caching-config-thing, which is repair-able on the cheap, as more likely than a brute-force-overload-thing. Anyways, I have business doing some clog-dancing elsewhere, so I leave it up to you. Thanks either way, and see you around. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:51, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Last time I saw a Wikimedia Foundation Error was 06:59, 26 November 2013. XOttawahitech (talk) 14:45, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
URL trouble
Hi, at Otjikoto Lake there is a (for me) non-functioning link to:
I have tried some simple things such as changing %2F to /, but no dice, and I don't really understand %2520. Is there any way to fix this? 86.160.87.81 (talk) 02:44, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
OK, well, thanks for trying. 86.160.87.81 (talk) 04:08, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
I have replaced the dead link.[31]PrimeHunter (talk) 14:14, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Looking at the "&ei=" in the original URL, it was copied from a Google cache URL. Google cache URLs use double-% encoding too. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 16:17, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Can't log in
I'm going round in circles. I have my username and password (and my history of edits is on Wikipedia still). I put in my username and password, and it says that I have the wrong password. I've tried it capitalized and not capitalized, and it keeps saying it's the wrong password. Apparently I made an account without giving my e-mail address, so when I tried to get my password by e-mail, it says it doesn't have an e-mail address for that account.
What do I do when my account is THERE, but Wikipedia keeps rejecting my password and I can't reset it via e-mail?
I tried making a new account using my same username, and it said that user already existed. Do i just have to make a whole new account? I don't want my IP address on the Internet.
That doesn't show us any messages that were generated on the fly for you when you tried to log in. It's just a generic screen, which for me shows "Log in From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search You are already logged in as Redrose64. Use the form below to log in as another user. Username Password Forgot your password? Keep me logged in (for up to 30 days) Log in Help with logging in Create another account". If I log out, and follow the link again, the message changes, but there's no way that I can get it to always show me any messages that were sent to you. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:11, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Deleting revisions problem
I have been ask to look at deleting 2 revisions of William Roache article by IP 81.155.34.51 (talk·contribs) but find that it thinks that these 2 revisions are already deleted. Yet I can still see both revisions even when logged out. Any thoughts as to what the problem is? Keith D (talk) 19:05, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Can you take a screenshot of where it's saying the revisions are already deleted, or if it's just text, copy and paste it? Jackmcbarn (talk) 19:07, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
This is what it is saying -
Action failed
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
View logs for this page | Page history | Deleted history
Jump to: navigation, search
Revision visibility could not be updated:
Warning: The item dated 10:10, 30 November 2013 already had the requested visibility settings.
Warning: The item dated 10:09, 30 November 2013 already had the requested visibility settings.
Selected revisions of William Roache:
(diff) 10:10, 30 November 2013 81.155.34.51
(diff) 10:09, 30 November 2013 81.155.34.51
Deleted revisions and events will still appear in the page history and logs, but parts of their content will be inaccessible to the public. Other administrators on Wikipedia will still be able to access the hidden content and can undelete it again through this same interface, unless additional restrictions are set.
Please confirm that you intend to do this, that you understand the consequences, and that you are doing this in accordance with the policy.
Weird. I can confirm what you've said here. Just remember that RevDel isn't the only tool we have; complete deletion is still possible, and nothing's wrong with using it when RevDel isn't working. I've removed the two edits, along with the reversion; it would look too weird if I left an edit saying "Reverted edits by..." when the edits in question don't appear to exist. Nyttend (talk) 19:57, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the full deletion of revisions in question. Keith D (talk) 20:17, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Would you happen to have your language set to en-gb or the like rather than plain en? Gerrit change 93163 accidentally switched the labels of the checkbox columns when using RevDel on multiple revisions, the column for hiding data was set to be labeled "Visible" and the column for showing the data was set to be labeled "Hidden". Most admins here on enwiki wouldn't notice this, though, because we've locally overridden those messages to say "Set" and "Unset" (with the row messages clarified along the lines of "Delete revision text"). But en-gb and other language codes probably haven't been overridden in this manner.
Note those default messages are already fixed in MediaWiki with Gerrit change 95537, which will be deployed here with 1.23wmf5 (see mw:MediaWiki 1.23/Roadmap for the schedule). Anomie⚔ 21:45, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Yes set to British English. Keith D (talk) 22:20, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Problem logging in
I received an email telling me that my account had been compromised etc. but I didn't pay any attention to it as I was under a three month ban then, now as my ban is well over and as i tried to log in I couldn't, I saw a screen with a hidden password already there, am asked to type new passwords but then I got an error message to the effect that I didn't have the permission to edit the page etc. I tried forgot password too, i received a password in my email but couldn't log in, tried forgot password one more time without success. I think I deleted the email I received. I could of-course create a new account but I am a little attached with my username. Please help. 103.29.99.176 (talk) 17:10, 18 November 2013 (UTC)
The email might have been the one refering to bugzilla:54847? Would love to know what exactly is the error message, and which page it refers to. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 15:25, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
"Change password: you must be logged in to access this page directly", since I've tried logging in using 3 times using "forgot password" which sent a password to my email ID, however, on entering the new password, another page is evoked on which I'm asked to reset my password, and then get the same message:
"Change password: you must be logged in to access this page directly".
If could send screen shots if I am given an address where they are to be sent. 117.195.66.201 (talk) 01:31, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
I've emailed screen shots to your email address, the one on your user page aklapper(at)wikipedia.org, and thanks for looking into this. 117.195.66.201 (talk) 01:38, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
Hello! Anyone there! 117.195.86.146 (talk) 13:21, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for the error message. As I wrote earlier, the page address would also be welcome. No need to send any screenshots to any addresses, text can be written as text and does not need to be in pictures. :) --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 12:53, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
That's mildly annoying. In the future, try pinging Mr. AKlapper. You could also just post directly to his talk page. Killiondude (talk) 00:16, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
Code enhancements, not a Bot, a Userscript!
Hi, I made the following script (and no I am not trying to make a bot)
But the problem I it puts 50 “wikify” rather than editing 10 times with 5 ‘wikify’s. I want it to put 5 wikify and new section 10 times over, no I am not making a bot. I am aware of bot policy, I just need it for some userscripts I have planned.Finally An Account (talk) 17:46, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Your description of what you are trying to do is poor at best to me to understand, but I "think" this is what you are trying to do. Technical 13 (talk) 17:58, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
That code does not make 10 edits automatically! I want a code that automatically makes 10 edits. All you did was change the while loop to a if loop.Finally An Account (talk) 18:02, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Oh, so you want a script that pads your edit count needlessly? I'm afraid I can't won't help you with this. Good luck! Technical 13 (talk) 18:20, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
For the last fucking time, NO! I just want a script that edits 10 times automatically, for a script I want to make (that makes editing more friendly). What happened to AGF and why is every-one so suspicious?It's just a damn user-script.Finally An Account (talk) 19:32, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Not sure what you want your script to do, but you know that {{wikify}} has been deprecated, right? Happy coding! GoingBatty (talk) 19:55, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
That's just a test. What I really want to do is create a 'wiki-intelligence' userscript that can make multiple edits for you (by responding to certain strings).Finally An Account (talk) 19:59, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Why would you want to do this as a string of multiple edits to one article rather than a single edit? And aren't you just proposing replicating WP:AWB without its safeguards? Mogism (talk) 20:03, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
A single huge edit would be slow, a bot converting it to multiple edits will be much faster than the user adding info bit by bit. It would benefit all those with mobile broadband.Finally An Account (talk) 20:06, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
There's a bit of disparity between your first post and your most recent post to this discussion. You said you were not trying to write a bot, but then write about "a bot converting it to multiple edits". To resolve this ambiguity: the script you quoted makes edits without human intervention, therefore it is a bot. From the bot policy: bots are "generally programs or scripts that make automated edits without the necessity of human decision-making". If you wanted to use something like this outside your own userspace you'd need approval.
As for problems with the script: Each edit page can only be submitted once. If using the edit form to make edits (there are other ways), a new form must be loaded for each edit. Note that submitting the form loads a new page, which would interrupt execution of the script.
Your final comment is also incorrect: multiple edits are slower than one huge edit. Each edit requires at least two requests to the server, and includes the full text of the section being edited (including parts you didn't change). Though a bot could do multiple edits faster than a human, it could do a single edit even faster. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 23:35, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Assuming good faith: Maybe the original poster could explain, in prose, the intended goal of the script. I always find, especially with technical problems, that it helps to explain the desired goal or outcome. Sometimes you even figure out the answer yourself while you are explaining the desired outcome in detail. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:17, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Note: The below was originally posted to a new section, "Basic bot on my userspace using javascript". I've merged it here since it is clearly a continuation of this discussion. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 16:28, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Ok, so I want to aid in contributing to wikipedia Bots. First though, I want to make a basic bot that edits only my userspace using javascript (I thought this was allowed without permission). I want to make a simple bot that edits my userspace (possibly a sub-page) and makes 10 edits automatically (with whatever content). If ever want to even dream of contributing to a bot, I at least have to make this first.Finally An Account (talk) 10:41, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Creating a bot. Javascript is generally not used for bots. Since it executes in the browser, it has to be able to finish in ~30 seconds or run asyncronously, which can add a lot of complication to a program. You can get a javascript interpreter that runs out of a browser, but, as a programming language on its own, it doesn't really have many benefits. And once you start trying to do anything seriously complex, you're probably going to start running into its limitations. Most bots on Wikipedia are written in Perl, Python, or PHP. Libraries for those languages are all available (and linked on that page I mentioned), so you don't have to reinvent the wheel in terms of just editing a page. Mr.Z-man 15:13, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Why the fuck am I getting "Action throttled
As an anti-spam measure, you are limited from performing this action too many times in a short space of time, and you have exceeded this limit. Please try again in a few minutes." When trying to edit my own userspace?Finally An Account (talk) 16:03, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
To reduce the potential for abuse, MediaWiki limits the speed of editing for regular users. These limits apply to all namespaces, including userspace. Approved bots can be flagged to be excluded from the rate limits (if there is good reason for them to edit rapidly). Since you are just testing, I suggest you write your bot to delay a few seconds between edits.
Also, given that you accidentally ran your bot on this page a little while ago, please add code to check that the bot is on the right page before submitting an edit. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 16:38, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
I have finally achieved full automation, with a little help from AutoHotKey!Finally An Account (talk) 17:10, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Change it to a 10,000 kilobyte limit. Storage is quite cheap.Finally An Account (talk) 17:28, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
But downloading a 10MB page is still somewhat problematic for a lot of people. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:33, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Do we have a 2MB maximum for the size of uploaded files? Remember that with very few exceptions, we shouldn't upload anything here except nonfree images, and they absolutely must be as small as possible. Nyttend (talk) 20:00, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
The size limit for the Mediawiki software is 100MB . If its video and its free and its bigger than 100MB you can upload it to YouTube and then link to it. This has been done quite about with NARA, DOD and government provided video. 108.45.104.69 (talk) 01:13, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
What do you want to write that is so large? Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a web host. I can think of no good reason for an encyclopaedia to have 10 megabyte pages. (As TheDJ mentioned, such large pages can be problematic for some readers to download.) If an article is growing large, split it into smaller sub-topics. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 15:28, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
How Do I edit wikipedia using javascript on monobook.js
I want to make a javascript (user script) that automatically edits a page (without needing to press any buttons). This will be very helpful for tagging. I one day wish to make something similar to twinkle. But I need to start somewhere...Finally An Account (talk) 17:31, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Have you ever programmed in javascript? Ruslik_Zero 02:28, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
If you are planning to make a series of edits automatically, you need to read the Wikipedia:Bot policy. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:30, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
Twinkle puts requests in wrong sections of WP:RFPP
I figured that Twinkle puts move-protected pages into a section of protection-downgrade requests, but I merely ask extra protection, not removal of protection or reduction. --George Ho (talk) 07:24, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
The CodeEditor extension here displays four-column-wide tabs, instead of the default eight, and now binds the Tab key to the tab character. I propose displaying four-column-wide tabs when viewing pages such as MediaWiki:Common.css and Module:Convert/data, to make them more readable, especially on smaller screens. At the Vietnamese Wikipedia, we added the following CSS rule:
It currently works with recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Opera, as well as WebKit nightly builds. Does anyone have any objections to adding this rule to MediaWiki:Geshi.css?
I support this change, as it will fix the appearance of modules that have a mixture of indenting with four spaces and tabs. CodeEditor previously used four spaces for indenting, and then it switched to using tabs, so it is possible for editors to use two styles of indenting in the same module without being aware of it. At present, CodeEditor uses tabs that appear four characters wide, but when you save the page and the code is displayed in GeSHi, the tabs are displayed eight characters wide. This makes the indentation seem wrong and can be confusing. Switching to this CSS would fix that for browsers that support it. From Anomie's comment at the Lua style guide discussion that Minh Nguyễn linked above, I gather that this fix won't work with "IE, older Safari, Android browser, and maybe others", but that still seems better than what we have at the moment. — Mr. Stradivarius♪ talk ♪ 10:44, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Browser compatibility chart: http://caniuse.com/#feat=css3-tabsize (I see the next version of Android browser is now listed as having support for this). Anomie⚔ 13:12, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
Since the selectors are already present in Common.css, it'd make better sense to put it there. — Edokter (talk) — 19:08, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
I suggested Geshi.css because Meta's Geshi.css imports it, and I figured that other wikis do that too. But I'd be happy to make the change separately at Meta. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 14:42, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
I could also move the font fix to GeSHI.css. — Edokter (talk) — 19:49, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be better to integrate this with the GeSHi extension, or with MediaWiki altogether? I don't think anyone would ever want a tab size equivalent to 8 spaces; it'd make sense to make the default tab size 4 for all <pre>...</pre> elements (or even non-pre elements) in MediaWiki, which would fix this problem and others at the same time, and make it apply to other projects (both Wikimedia and non-Wikimedia projects). --Rastus Vernon (talk) 03:04, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Good idea: I opened Bug 57,824. In the process of filing that bug, I discovered that the SyntaxHighlight GeSHi extension is actually converting tabs to eight literal spaces when parsing and rendering a page: I opened Bug 57,826 for that. And Lua modules will be addressed by the fix for '824 once Bug 57,825 is fixed. Thanks for your feedback, everyone! – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 04:09, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Adding link to wiki articles in other languages: HOW? Information too hard to find
It used to be easy to add a link to an article on the same person/place etc. in another language. Now, it's not. Apparently you have to do something with Wiki Data which I have spent half an hour trying to understand in vain. I don't have time to look further now and therefore could not add the links.
I don't understand the rationale for making it so much harder to do things on Wikipedia, especially things as basic as links to wikis in other languages. It feels as if Wikipedia is becoming harder and harder to edit for people like me who just want to be able to add an article or useful information without spending dozens of hours (finding and) learning markup. At the very least, when major changes to the editing process are made (Wiki Data), the changes should be clearly indicated in all the help articles at the same time.
HELP on this particular issue, or a link to somewhere it is explained clearly, would be much appreciated. Thanks! Evangeline (talk) 06:11, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
@Evangeline: You can just add the link as before, and a bot comes along and does it all for you. --Mdann52talk to me! 10:03, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, that helps! Evangeline (talk) 11:06, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
POTD request
Hi there, I have a request regarding WP:POTD. Is there a chance anyone could set up a system so that the POTD displayed is random out of a fixed set (only for a certain day, though), similar to what was done when middle ages was on the MP. Thing is, we have a 20-image set from Puck of Pook's Hill, which would be quite nice to run (at least part of it). I'm thinking for 30 December or 18 January. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:24, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Crisco 1492,do you have an approximate date of when the Middle ages FP was there? Wikipedia:Picture_of_the_day/Archive makes it easy to locate the picture(s) and you could use the code used there (say at {{POTD/2013-12-01}}) once the date of the FP is known.
It appears that adding a simple {{Random subpage|page=Template:POTD/2013-12-30|start=1|end=20}} would be able to easily get a random image of the list, where the images would have to be located at Template:POTD/2013-12-30/1 to Template:POTD/2013-12-30/20. I expect the blurb to remain the same for all pictures.
@Hue: Right. Sorry for not making that explicit (if it had been POTD, we'd have something all set up).
@TheOriginalSoni, would this carry over onto the main page automatically? We'd have to have the protected versions as well, and the formatting there is a bit iffy... — Crisco 1492 (talk) 03:36, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Crisco 1492, I am not the expert for it, but assuming you use the random pages function, I expect you create the subpages which contain only the respective images to be rotated. And then use the code above as a substitute for the image (File:ImageName) wherever necessary in the required templates. I expect this to be working perfectly well in all but one scenarios.
For the sake of completion, the only place where I know the above scenario would break would be where the POTD images themselves are invoked using another Random subpage template. I do not expect such a usage of the template, but one can never tell.
You could use the Random module as detailed by Mr Stradivarius below too, but I personally do not prefer it because it is slightly messier to look as a code, and would not store all the 20 images in a definite location under the POTD namespace, which I think ought to be done in a multiple-image scenario like this.
TheOriginalSoni, I would also need some different text (as there are several different stories represented). I think I could throw something together. If it doesn't work we'll just choose one of the selections. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:47, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Ah. I was under the impression it was a single blurb. It might require some more adjustments but I think it is possible to still get the job done, albeit with some extra hacking. Let me look into what can be used. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 05:53, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
If you want to have all the images and blurbs on one page, that would also be easy to do with Module:Random. I can set up a demo if you need - just let me know. — Mr. Stradivarius♪ talk ♪ 06:12, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Crisco 1492, I have created a hack at User:TheOriginalSoni/sandbox2 where using {{Random subpage|page=Template:POTD/2013-12-30|start=1|end=20}} or {{Random subpage|page=Template:POTD/2013-12-30/blurb|start=1|end=20}} gets you the desired template that you'll use along with the subpage. Use the latter in place of blurbs and the former in place of pictures. To get the next chosen image and caption, you just purge the cache.
Mr. Stradivarius I am still not sure if your module will be able to do what's required. Will it be too hard to set up a quick sample case? If not, can you show how your code will function? TheOriginalSoni (talk) 06:27, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Actually, I did have to tweak the module to do it, but I've set up an example in my sandbox. — Mr. Stradivarius♪ talk ♪ 07:42, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I think the module works. I've tried it here (if I were using the proper pages I wouldn't have lost the title). Okay, I'll get those scheduled. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:21, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Of course it works - what do you think they pay me for? ;) On a more serious note, if you're dealing with random dates, you can use the date function of the module - see my sandbox for an updated example. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour♪ talk ♪ 09:09, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Saw that. I ended up using subpages though. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:15, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
As luck would have it, I made Module:Random a couple of weeks ago, which should make this request easy. Just use {{#invoke:random|item|POTD 1|POTD 2|POTD 3|...}} to randomly select one of the POTD image titles. That should save you having to create a load of different subpages. (If the subpages already exist, using {{random subpage}} is probably easier though.) — Mr. Stradivarius♪ talk ♪ 04:39, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
Could someone help identify where there's an unnecessary line-break in {{Year in Norway}}. The line-break is transcluded, which makes the articles that use the template look a bit awkward.
I removed some line breaks between categories that seemed extraneous, which fixes the issue in tests, but the whitespace is still showing up when this template is used just after {{Use dmy dates}} (as seems to be the case with most of its uses). equazcion→11:59, 3 Nov 2013 (UTC)
This seems to be caused by the line break in the code before the wikitable begins. Since that wikitable code needs to be at the beginning of its own line, I can't find a way to get rid of the whitespace, aside from chopping off everything that comes before it (which does effectively remove the whitespace in these articles, FYI). This seems like it might be a common issue for templates so maybe someone knows of a solution I'm unaware of. equazcion→12:07, 3 Nov 2013 (UTC)
I think there is at least some improvement. Thanks for trying. HandsomeFella (talk) 14:29, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
I've managed to fix it. That was a tricky one. A single line break before the table is fine, the problem was caused by having two consecutive line breaks before the table. The first line break is not in the template itself, but in the articles that use it (between the {{Use dmy dates}} and {{Year in Norway}} templates). The fix was to put something between those line breaks to stop them being consecutive, but that doesn't cause a visible gap itself. An empty <nowiki/> tag did the trick. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 16:33, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
The real problem was the text before the beginning of the table, which introduces a whiteline before the {| class=. See the warning about whitelines on WP:NOINCLUDE. I moved the text to the beginning of the template, and removed the <includeonly> tag. The obvious minus being that the page Template:Year in Norway itself now looks ugly. Debresser (talk) 09:08, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
I think you've misunderstood the warning at WP:NOINCLUDE. It refers to white space before <noinclude>, after </noinclude>, after <includeonly> or before </includeonly>, warning that said white space will be included in the template's output. There wasn't any white space on either side of the <includeonly> tags you removed. I tested re-adding them without making any other change, and the template still displayed correctly in the article 1972 in Norway (I didn't save this test).
Also, your changes moved text inside the table, but before the first table row, which is neither valid nor logical. The error text is intended to be shown outside the infobox, so should not be inside the table. Your changed worked in articles thanks to HTML Tidy fixing the invalid markup by moving it outside the table. If you'd tried this at Special:ExpandTemplates (where HTML Tidy does not run), invalid HTML is generated due to a <span> tag between <table> and the first <tr>. W3C's validator reports "Start tag span seen in table. Cannot recover after last error. Any further errors will be ignored.". (There are two other errors reported by the validator, but those are down to HTML generated by MediaWiki itself, unrelated to the template.)
Since your changes generated invalid HTML and messed up the appearance of the template page itself, I have undone them. (I completed your move of the category to the doc page. The doc page is the right place for categories.)
PS: I see you made several attempts before you found something you liked. Please don't make test edits on a live template. You can see what effect your changes will have on another page without saving by using the "Preview page with this template" options beneath the edit box. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 23:57, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
<includeonly>...</includeonly> is bad template engineering to begin with. You should just have a dummy default variable value in <noinclude>...</noinclude> tags in the #if conditional, like {{{1|<noinclude>dummy year</noinclude>}}}. Then you can include a default value for {{{1|}}} so that the template displays on its own page. VanIsaacWSVexcontribs 00:37, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree with you completely that one template per line is the standard, and looks good. I was surprised you didn't see the whiteline: it is the break between the end of the remark about the red warning text and the beginning of the table with {|. That is why I moved the warning inside the template. Even conceptually, I think the warning is not out of place inside the template proper, as you claim above. The biggest minus I see is that the template page became real ugly. Debresser (talk) 01:17, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Er... I did see that. See my first post in this section: "A single line break before the table...". As I think you realised, a line break is required before a table unless it is the first thing in the template. This is not normally a problem since a single line break does not create a gap; it is only when combined with another line break from the transcluding page that a gap appears. Since it is clearly no-one's intent that these two line breaks should combine to make a gap, I added the <nowiki/> to stop them combining. (Perhaps in a more logical markup language, code from inside and outside a template would not be allowed to combine like this.)
I think there might be an argument for showing the error message inside the table, but it would have to be done properly so it actually displayed inside the table rather than being moved out again by HTML Tidy. Another idea would be to replace the table with the error message, since nothing else in the template makes sense if the parameter was omitted.
The template page becoming ugly was more down to removing the <includeonly> tags (see my next reply). – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 23:23, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I know that the template becoming ugly was because the <includeonly> tags were removed. But that in its turn was done to remove the whiteline before the beginning of the template. You really don't need to speak with me as though I am making my first edit on intricate templates, and then perhaps you will also understand me better. Debresser (talk) 02:12, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
My apologies. I tend to be rather verbose, and I understand how I might seem like that. I'm not very good at adjusting my tone for the person I'm talking to. I do not consider you to be a beginner at template editing.
I guess you didn't see my other reply below? I already addressed your claim that removing the <includeonly> tags eliminated whitespace. (Sorry if I confused matters by making multiple replies in a single edit last night.) – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 21:39, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
@PartTimeGnome See below (now above—PTG) for my response. Just wanted to mention here that I did not err in my reference to WP:NOINCLUDE, and it is precisely that whiteline issue I was referring to. Just that often people don't recognize the whiteline. Debresser (talk) 01:24, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
(I have moved your response above, to be immediately after the post to which you were responding.) One of us is misunderstanding that WP:NOINCLUDE bit, we both understand it but don't understand each other, or we're both thoroughly confused . I did test that taking your latest version of {{Year in Norway}} and re-adding the <includeonly> tags did not cause any gaps to appear. For example, see how that appears in "1972 in Norway", one of the articles that displayed a gap before either of us edited the template. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 23:23, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
The unnatural extra code can be avoided by moving the code generating the warning after the table. There will obviously not be a whiteline, while the warning will still be displayed in the same position. Debresser (talk) 01:53, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Fixing the problem in other templates
That's interesting. This trick could fix the common problem that occurs whenever two "invisible" templates are placed at the top of an article. See the white space at the top of User:John of Reading/Sandbox. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:56, 3 November 2013 (UTC)
I would strongly oppose the addition of stray code to template. First of all because another user will surely remove it sooner or later, not knowing why it is there. Secondly, because it is ugly. It is against all rules of coding to do such things. But the main reason is that there is a simpler solution to the problem: put all the invisible templates right after each other without any spaces between them. See User:John of Reading/Sandbox where I did so and the whitespaces are gone. We could add a warning about this to the documentation of certain templates like {{Use dmy dates}} and others, but even if there would be an extra space, this is not a big problem. Debresser (talk) 11:42, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
Alternatively, since templates like {{use dmy dates}} or {{use British English}} do nothing except categorise, put them with the other cats - at the bottom. Any spurious blank lines which may be generated will be much less obtrusive in such a position. There is precedent for this, since templates like {{coord|display=title}} which place their output somewhere other than the actual position of the template, are typically placed at the bottom as well. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:52, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
Another thing that might artificially reduce the problem is adding the problematic templates to {{Multiple issues}}. Debresser (talk) 07:27, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
There are problems with that. {{multiple issues}} is for enclosing cleanup message boxes: requests to fix the article, to be removed when the fix has been done; when all have been done, and when there are none left to fix, {{multiple issues}} gets removed as well. By contrast, {{use dmy dates}} and similar are not requests to fix the article - they are permanent indicators of the article's writing style. If the article has no cleanup issues, and you add
it looks kind of odd, see User:Redrose64/Sandbox5, it's got a blank area within the {{multiple issues}} box with the implication that there should be some message or other. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:41, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
You are right. Thanks. Debresser (talk) 21:07, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
Regarding someone possibly removing the code because it is not clear what it does, an <!-- editor comment --> will fix that. (I'd hope administrators would show more care editing a fully protected template, but maybe I hope for too much... )
On the point about ugliness, I agree, but I couldn't think of a better way to do it. There is much that is ugly about MediaWiki's markup language, so we often have to do ugly things to get the job done.
As for the "simpler" solution: good luck getting editors to use the templates all on one line. Many editors find placing each template on a separate line to be more intuitive, as evidenced by the many pages where this is the case. Generally, templates should be designed to be easy for editors to use, rather than expecting editors to adapt to their quirks. Templates should try to hide the complexities of wiki markup from the people that use them. One template per line is certainly easier to read. Keep the ugly stuff in a template so other editors don't need to worry about it.
One template per line is consistent with how categories are normally used (given the main purpose of the templates is categorisation): categories are typically one-per-line too. Also note that the current behaviour is inconsistent: where the template outputs a category, it is safe to use one per line. Where it outputs nothing, it will cause a gap. Code that looks fine in article space will show with gaps when copied to a user sandbox (because the categories are suppressed in userspace). – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 23:00, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree that templates are best placed on consecutive lines. I still strongly oppose the addition of code for the purpose of avoiding whitelines. It is a counter-intuitive non-solution. If the problem, i.e. a whiteline, should arise in any given article, it should be taken care of on an ad hoc basis, just like we did with the Year in Norway template. Debresser (talk) 17:07, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
It is counter-intuitive, but I don't think an intuitive solution exists. I don't think "non-solution" is the right word, since it does solve the blank line issue. Why should this be solved over and over on a case-by-case basis when it can be solved once for all cases? The editors using the templates might not know how to fix the unwanted blank lines. If we fix it in the template, they would never be troubled by the problem in the first place.
I don't know if you'll like this any better, but here's an alternative proposed edit for {{Dated maintenance category}}. (Here's John's sandbox example using the new version.) I've added comments explaining why the nowiki tags are there. Furthermore, because no blank line occurs when a category is output, the nowiki tag is only used if the template won't output any category. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 23:33, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
I called it a "non-solution" because it is only a workaround. The real problem is the existence of whitelines, in the code of the other templates or simply in the articles if the templates are placed on different lines. The alternative proposal is the same as the first, with an added explanation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Debresser (talk • contribs) 08:00, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
It is a workaround, but it's better than nothing. I didn't think you'd like my tweaks any better, but figured I'd give it a try anyway.
I think it's too late for the ideal solution of modifying the wiki mark-up language to be more sensible. The real problem is the inconsistent behaviour: when the template outputs a category or a <nowiki/>, it can be used one-per-line without a gap (even though there is no visible output). When the template outputs nothing, the line it is on is treated as blank so causes a gap. My workaround resolves this inconsistency. I think the behaviour many editors expect is that a line with a template should not leave a gap unless the template contains a gap. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 22:57, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
Question: instead of outputting a non-intuitive <nowiki />, what would happen if it output a soft space? This should be possible using the HTML entity   --Redrose64 (talk) 00:31, 12 November 2013 (UTC)
I agree that this is better than a closing tag without an opening tag, which was, as Redrose64 put it mildly, non-intuitive. Adding an explanatory remark also helps. Even though I prefer to keep the problem in some cases, when it can be removed by good coding of templates like we did with Years in Norway, I do see the advantages of removing the problem, even with a workaround. Debresser (talk) 00:38, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
That's not what I said. The post to which you refer states "a non-intuitive <nowiki />" - <nowiki /> is not a closing tag (which would be </nowiki>); it is an empty-element tag, one that opens and immediately closes - it is an element that has no content. The syntactic difference is that a closing tag has the slash first; an empty-element tag has the slash last.
I meant that by using <nowiki /> it is not clear what is intended. The normal use of nowiki is in a construct like <nowiki>[[link]]</nowiki> so that Wiki markup is not processed but displayed as plain text, so when somebody sees <nowiki /> which is exactly equivalent to <nowiki></nowiki> they might think "what's the point of preventing wiki markup from being processed when there's none actually there?" But by using   it's (I hope) clearer that something is intended, even if it's not obvious why a normal keyboard space has not been used. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:59, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for the explanation. I indeed had not noticed the difference. Your explanation made me agree with your point no less. Debresser (talk) 11:07, 14 November 2013 (UTC)
New information
I have reposted this section from the archive, in view of new information.
Please see this edit, that the two template Use dmy dates and Use Australian English in front of an infobox result in a whiteline only if there are no protection templates in the middle. Can anyone explain that?? Debresser (talk) 14:25, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
You commented out the protection templates, but did not comment out the line breaks on either side of them. Comments are discarded early in parsing, so what was left after removing the comment was a blank line. You would not have gotten a blank line had you started the comment at the end of the previous line, and finished it at the start of the next line. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 21:26, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
I understand. It is rather the other side of this that interests me. How come that the protection templates stop the whiteline from appearing? Debresser (talk) 00:45, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
Those templates do not expand to be empty. Their expansion shows that they add several categories to the page. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 22:41, 29 November 2013 (UTC)
That was my guess. I thought it would have to be actual text, but I see that not. Thanks. This perhaps opens a new solution to the problem above: do we have anything non-empty that does not do anything? I tried {{Void}}, but that didn't help. Any other ideas? Debresser (talk) 17:48, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Well, my original suggestion of <nowiki /> fits the bill, and Redrose64's suggestion of   works too. Some empty XHTML tags such as <span /> also work. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 15:18, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
Then I say, let's do it, just that we need to add a remark with some explanation, to avoid other editors removing it, as discussed above. I still think it an ugly ad-hoc solution, but I see no better way. Debresser (talk) 19:03, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
Can anyone help in creating a list of all pages that contain Wikipedia articles in ref tags? Most probably a list of all pages that contain <ref>[[Foo]]</ref> and <ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/w/Foo</ref>. Wikilinks are accepted in references as part of footnotes. My aim is to clean pages that use wikipedia articles as references. I think if I do it by myself I'll get a lot of false positives. -- Magioladitis (talk) 14:37, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
I've posted a report at User:Magioladitis/wikiel that attempts to list what your after. - TB (talk) 23:32, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
I have made several edits to various pages, all without incident. Now, over the past 2 days, every time I try to comment on this talk page, I get the following message screen popping up;
Wikimedia Foundation
Error
Our servers are currently experiencing a technical problem. This is probably temporary and should be fixed soon. Please try again in a few minutes.
If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below.
Error: 503, Service Unavailable at Mon, 02 Dec 2013 19:34:53 GMT
Initially, I had though that meant the edit was not saved (and I re-posted), but now it seems the edit is saved, immediately, but instead of showing you the page with the new content (and that little pop-up that says "Your edit was saved"), you instead get this message screen, and manually have to go to the page again.
Like I said, it only happens with the one account. Is this normal? - theWOLFchild 19:47, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I see that error on a recurring basis. It seems that certain pages, and pages containing certain templates, are more likely to have this guy show up. My SOP is to just hit the back button, where my edit loads up just like I saved it, then I go up to the article tab, and left click - open in a new tab, to see if the edit went through. Probably 3/4 of the time, it did, so I just shut down the edit window tab, and continue on like the article tab was just the normal post-save view. VanIsaacWSVexcontribs 19:59, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
That page is quite large. Though wiki markup is fast to save, parsing it to create a HTML page can be slow for large and/or complex pages. If it takes too long to parse, you get this error. I've left a message for Shirt58 drawing this discussion to their attention and requesting that they archive the page. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 22:41, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
How can I see deleted edits?
Obviously I can't since I am not an administrator. So the question is how to get someone to do it?
I posted on a talk page asking for a source, and I have reason to believe said talk page, along with its article, has been deleted. It had very detailed unsourced information about the TV character Rumplestiltskin. This spelling does not match the usual one but I wanted to find the response on that talk page which gave a reference for that spelling.— Vchimpanzee· talk·contributions· 21:56, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
I think that the page was Talk:Rumplestiltskin (Once Upon a Time) and it had three edits, all to a section titled "How do you spell it?". I don't see why the final text of the page shouldn't be disclosed:
Why is it "le" only on the show and not anywhere else? Where is the proof?— Vchimpanzee· talk·contributions· 19:43, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
Is there a way to include a colon in an article name?
Yesterday I created an article about a controversial 1978 novel, entitled: "S: Portrait of a Spy". Articles that start with "S:" become interwiki links.
Hey, I have not been able to log in to my account "NahidSultan" for a while. Even though I enter the correct password, the page always returns "Incorrect password". I tried resetting the password through email several times, but right after I logged in with the email code and set my new password it returns to Special:UserLogin with the message "Incorrect password". I've opened a bug here --180.234.190.98 (talk) 08:22, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
No Pending Changes protection recorded on List of Nelvana programs
If a page is moved, the logs are not moved too - they stay on the old name. It's a pain in the ass. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:52, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
That makes discovering the reason for protection... challenging... and thus doing appropriate review equally challenging. Josh Parris 21:06, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
This particular trick needs writing down somewhere. Josh Parris 01:46, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
Pending changes logs should behave the way the regular protection logs do when a page is moved. I've filed this as bug 57912. Graham87 08:05, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
Cats
A few minutes ago, I opened up my /links page that has the admin dashboard and other stuff on it. In between AIV and UAA was a load of cats. On reloading the page, they'd disappeared. I can't find any sign in the History of my page, the admin dashboard page or AIV of anyone reverting cats. Has anyone else had this happen? And, no, I'm not drunk and haven't been smoking funny stuff. Peridon (talk) 17:14, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
Found it in the History at AIV now. Don't know why I didn't before. Peridon (talk) 17:21, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
"Inventory pages" to keep track of every cleanup template for each WikiProject on Wikipedia
Hello all. I have outlined an idea at m:Grants:IEG/Automated inventory pages for all WikiProjects. The gist of the idea is this: a nice page, inspired off of the wikiHow model, should exist for each WikiProject, in order to keep track of all cleanup templates. In hindsight, I shouldn't have applied for the grant without already having technical expertise lined up, but I've been convinced this is a good idea for all WikiProjects for almost 18 months now. Does anyone with technical expertise think they might like to be hired to work on this project? I need to find technical assistance for the idea to succeed. I will likely re-submit the grant in the beginning of 2014. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:19, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Biosthmors Like what I was trying to do at Template:Page reports? If I had better on wiki support there wouldn't be a need for the grant and I could have it operational within 14 days. Werieth (talk) 15:25, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for working towards this Werieth. I'm OK with whatever it takes to get the job done. =) Is this tracked in Bugzilla? I know User:Ragesoss is good with templates. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:32, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
It has nothing to do with bugzilla. It would be a bot. Getting that functionality into Mediawiki and wikipedia wont happen, those types of requests are too resource intensive. Werieth (talk) 15:35, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Werieth, the WP:Teahouse happened, and I heard it used some Java. What about that route? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:07, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
User:Jtmorgan mentioned that to me, if I remember correctly. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:12, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Teahouse uses JavaScript for the most part. Don't worry about the technical aspects, I can implement the features you want and more. Take a look at what I was trying to do at Template talk:Page reports. If you can develop and implement the on wiki part, getting the backend is easy. Werieth (talk) 16:19, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
@Werieth: Can you give me a brief summary of what on-wiki work needs doing? I'm getting information overload from that talk page. — Mr. Stradivarius on tour♪ talk ♪ 08:49, 28 November 2013 (UTC)
@Mr. Stradivarius on tour: basically we need to define a template, and the associated parameters that go with it in order to get the data that you want. Take User:Werieth/Request as an example. There is a non-visible template at the top, which basically creates a list of all articles in WP:MED and Category:All articles lacking sources (AKA all unsourced articles within the wikiproject) Given the flexibility that I envisioned we could create reports that enabled us to filter a list of pages on basically any of a multiple set of criteria. I can easily handle the parsing/generating the datasets, However getting it setup on wiki, defining what reports should be created and where those reports should be saved to, along with any other associated information that might be needed. Werieth (talk) 03:01, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Holy smokes that's useful. Thank you for pointing it. The fact that the data is also downloadable as CSV and the source code is available makes the prospect of building an automated dashboard of some kind much easier. FWIW, I don't think anyone working at WMF is going to jump on developing this immediately, but we're supportive of providing better data to editors about which articles need help in certain topic areas. From our perspective, it's not just about helping WikiProjects. Having good data available about which articles need what, segmented by WikiProjects/topics, might help us build a system that directs newbies to help out in an area they're interested in. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 06:02, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree. I've had to argue pretty loudly in the past about the value of project-specific lists such as this. The unsourced BLP gongshow in 2010 was a prime example of just how well it works. Resolute 20:53, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Print template, print file
I can not print a (content) template from template space. How come, given that similar file and category pages I can print? -DePiep (talk) 11:32, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
Please give an example. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:55, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
If you look at a page like Template:Diseases of poverty, it appears that the entire Print/Export section is missing from the sidebar. This is also true for your watchlist, pages that you're currently editing with the wikitext editor (but not VisualEditor), and more. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:18, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
And the "but not VisualEditor" part is now reported at T59940. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
57940 is about Print/Export showing when editing with VE.
You can print {{Diseases of poverty}} by using your browser's File > Print. I can't see why you would want a book or PDF version. It appears that template and special namespaces don't show Print/Export, although MediaWiki namespaces do.
And Printable Version doesn't really do anything special. See Help:Printable. There is also a Bugzilla ticket discussing removing Printable version. --Gadget850talk 19:56, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
As WhatamIdoing 19:18 writes: in template space I do not see/have the options (in main lefthand vertical menu bar) "Print/export": "Create a book", "Download as PDF", "Printable version". This submenu does appear when in article space, category space, my userspace. (A file I can print from commons).
I have not noticed an interaction with VisualEditor (I don't use).
I wrote this question expecting that it was based on a philosophy, about publishing WP. The browser's print function is not in discussion, it is about printing from WP. Any more questions? -DePiep (talk) 20:41, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
Adding, the actual pages: not available in {{Periodic table}}, did got my print of page User:DePiep/Print (having the template transcluded). -DePiep (talk) 20:44, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
I looked up some old template page snapshots at http://archive.org and didn't find signs of any Print/export options since Vector became the default skin in 2010. People rarely have reason to print template pages and your browser's print function should work fine so I don't see a need for a "printable version" link on template pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:20, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
The browser print option is there for articles too. The rarely argument could apply to other spaces too. But I understand there is no feature reasoning behind it, just forgotten back then. -DePiep (talk) 14:04, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Why cant I view all pages in Safari Reader
Hi, I'm a consumer more then a user and I have the following concern:
What human does, should be human conform. Wikipedia treats information and should be in this way brain conform.
The best way to read without any distractions - excluded these of the place your working at – is to use Safari Reader. This is not publicity, but just my personal opinion upon what is good informatics function: It let me do what I want to do: To read without distraction.
This is thus not possible with any other reader. If I make browser window smaller, I get bothered by the windows surface; if I apply full screen mode on browser, the text its spread on my 27 inch screen an becomes heavily to read.
Nevertheless, I experience tranquilly readying by using Safari Reader, not all Wikipedia pages can be read by this browser function.
I know, that this problem is discussed outside of Wikipedia, but my opinion is, that this excellent experience of reading is the best and should be possible on any Wikipedia site, hence it should be discussed on Wikipedia.
Please let me know, if you have any good ideas, to access Reader the content of all Wikipedia sites, or you have maybe any suggestions of how to create Wikipedia’s proper function which give access to its content to a more brain conform way.
If not – I will be forced to buy a „higher-than-wide“-screen (3:1) and to install it in place of my 27 inch screen.
Thanks for any comments on that.
Did Apple release any documentation about how this thing works, even at a basic level? According to this, it depends on a number of factors, such as the page size. Is it possible that the pages it does not allow using the Reader on are just shorter? I don't see this as a problem with Wikipedia or the MediaWiki software per se, but feel free to file some sort of bug on our issue tracking system. πr2 (t • c) 04:58, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
Custom edittools disappeared
Sometime in the past few days the custom edittools in my modern.js have disappeared from the Insert menu (from the character subset drop-down menu in the page-editing interface) when I'm using Firefox 25 or Chrome 31. The menu is intact in IE 11. Does anyone know if there has been a recent change in how JavaScript is implemented? I have verified that the current version of Java is installed on my machine, and, I believe, that it is functioning properly.
Problem occurs in Firefox 25.0.1 and Chrome 31.0.1650.57 m
Problem does not occur in IE 11.0.9600.16428
System is Windows 7 64-bit
screenshot of menu as it appears in IE. Tools circled in orange are standard; the rest are my custom ones.
Thanks in advance for any info, and please let me know if I should be reporting this at the MediaWiki support desk as well or instead. Erictalk 13:55, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Try adding the line if(window.updateEditTools)window.updateEditTools(); after the assignment to window.charinsertCustom. It's possible that something changed with the JS loading that is making your modern.js be processed after the main edittools script is run where it used to be run before it. Anomie⚔ 14:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Hey, that worked like a charm! Thanks a bunch! Erictalk 14:31, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
I get the following during my last few attempts at doing a Rollback: "Grabbing data of earlier revisions: parsererror "OK" occurred while contacting the API." I then have to hit the back button to get off that screen.
Using Firefox 25.0.01 on Windows 8.1. (Windows updated recently and may have something to do with it.) Any thoughts or info? GenQuest"Talk to Me" 17:38, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Do you have either twinkle or one the Beta features enabled? I remember there have been some similarish error messages. Chris857 (talk) 17:42, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
According to bug 57556, the issue has been fixed. Hopefully we'll get the fix on the next deployment. – PartTimeGnome(talk | contribs) 21:18, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
Practically none of the scripts in my User:Kudpung/vector.js have been working for a while. Some of these are quite important such as semi automated tools for admins for closing AfD and blocking/unblocking, etc. An admin working through backlogs gets used to these tools. The Bugzilla report states RESOLVED FIXED but it hasn't been fixed. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:58, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
It has been fixed, the fix just hasn't been deployed to Wikipedia yet. See mw:MediaWiki 1.23/Roadmap. (Because the fix was made after 21 November, it won't reach us with 1.23wmf5 - but it did occur before 5 December, so we'll hopefully get it with 1.23wmf6.) — This, that and the other (talk) 00:25, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
@Kudpung: you can just disable the BetaFeature which is causing problems you know. Legoktm (talk) 02:16, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Forgive my stupidity, but where do I do that disablement? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:33, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Ah, but I never had those enabled. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 16:46, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. I'll just wait for the new deployment and see what happens. Worse case scenario, I'll get off the beta-test. GenQuest"Talk to Me" 17:54, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
Unable to view all past proposals
On the main proposal page, the archives only go up to 105 but once I go to archive 105, the archives go up to 107. My peoposal Pending changes in archive 106 is no longer in the main proposal page. I assumed the main proposal page was archive 106 because the archives on that pagw went up to 105 but instead there's no way to go from the main proposal page which doesn't have the Pending changes proposal to archive 106 which does have that proposal in only 1 click instead of 2. The main proposal page should list all archives that contain a proposal not appearing in that page. Blackbombchu (talk) 18:23, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
This had been hanging at the end of the "before posting" page for a month (does no-one ever read that? :-), apparently misplaced there and presumably intended for here:
IE8, W7, AATTV, paragraph 'Unit Badge'. In an endeavour to comply with Wikipedia verification criteria I edited the page to provide what I considered to be two verifiable sources. As these have been removed,(presumably by an administrator or similar), could you please explain my error[s]). Laurencenic (talk) 01:22, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
The edit didn't actually add references, but added a link to the "see also" section. The link was to an article that doesn't exist. As it says in the subsequent revert, "see also" is just for linking related Wikipedia articles. See Wikipedia:Citing sources for information on adding sources. equazcion→08:22, 6 Dec 2013 (UTC)
Failed to render property signature: Property not found for label 'en' and language 'signature'
The line that specifies the signature using the signature property hasn't been changed for half a year, and the corresponding Wikidata item does seem to have a signature property that specifies a proper signature image file. The fact that it says "language 'signature'" when that should be the property label and not the language seems to indicate that something rather fundamental has gone amiss?
I did a quick test, and it appears that the code {{#property:label}} is broken on every page it is used on. The code {{#property:pnnn}} still works. From the error message it looks like the language and label codes are swapped around somewhere between the #property invocation and Wikidata. If the label doesn't exist on Wikidata, no error is returned - #property just returns nothing. I assume that this must have been broken in this week's software updates, but that is just a hunch. In your case you could use {{#property:p109}} and it should work, but that doesn't help for the other pages that are returning errors. I'm not sure who best to ask about fixing it, but filing a bug in bugzilla ought to get it to the right person soon enough. — Mr. Stradivarius♪ talk ♪ 09:13, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
We are urgently investigating the issue. Thanks for reporting it. Katie Filbert (WMDE) (talk) 15:32, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
DISPLAYTITLE issue
The article Thunderbirds merchandise contains {{DISPLAYTITLE:''Thunderbirds'' merchandise}}. So I would expect the word "Thunderbirds" in the title to be italicized and the word "merchandise" not to be italicized. But using IE11 (or Chrome 31.0.1650.63 m) on Windows 7, I see both words italicized. Is that what everyone else sees? And if so, does anyone know how to fix it? Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 13:52, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
RfC closed early. -Wikid77 09:00, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
{{hidden archive top|reason=More forum shopping. Anybody who cares definitely already knows about that RFC already. There are reasons why we don't discuss everything remotely related to templates here. Matma Rextalk 14:37, 9 December 2013 (UTC) Re-hatted by PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 22:00, 9 December 2013 (UTC)}}
@PartTimeGnome, cut the wp:NPA insults about "forum shopping" and leave this notice in place. -Wikid77 09:00, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
@User:Matma_Rex, cut the wp:NPA insults about "forum shopping" and leave this notice in place. -Wikid77 17:58, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
The prior request-for-comments at Template_talk:Convert#RfC, to switch {convert} immediately to Lua systemwide, has been strongly opposed, but rushed to occur 9-days earlier (on 11 December 2013), while an alternative sub-proposal was offered on 8 December 2013:
Unlike the markup-based Convert, with thousands of tiny optimized subtemplates which reformat only subsets of pages, the proposed Lua Module:Convert is designed to reformat all pages which use "{{convert}}" (~554,000 pages), for any tiny edit to that Lua module, while known bugs are not yet fixed. A recent test (/numdisp) showed how a reformat of 510,000 pages, with {convert}, exceeded an 8-day reformat period perhaps stretching into 2 weeks. The alternative proposal would introduce Lua Convert in a hybrid template to affect only ~60,000 of 554,000 pages, allowing a mix of both versions (Lua and markup-based Convert) to allow bugfixes or updates to either, and Lua-triggered reformats for just those 60,000 pages (3-day reformat?) until more problems are fixed or detected. For brevity here, please post opinions or questions (within 34 hours) under: Template_talk:Convert#RfC. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:59, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
Wikid, perhaps I've missed something, but what strong opposition? I only see opposition from you in that RFC. — Huntster (t@c) 14:11, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
There's no need to discuss there what was said here. You said here there was strong opposition. If the only strong opposition was from you, then it's fair to point that out. And looking at the discussion, I have to agree with Huntster that you're the main one opposed. (There was one other person who opposed who didn't seem to understand that well and another who was neutral.) I'm not going to participate in that discussion because I don't think I understand the technical issues well enough and although I may be able to understand them if I tried, I'm not going to bother. But I think it's fair to say you didn't help your case by coming here saying there was strong opposition without making it clear you were the only one strongly opposed. If there's something I'm missing, by all meants point it out here. (I would note none of this means your opposition is wrong or should be completely ignored and I don't think me or anyone else is suggesting that.) Nil Einne (talk) 20:28, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
Well, strong opposition by me is still "strong opposition" (detailed in RfC) and leads to tangent discussion as why no others, so just noted opposition, the force to snow-close, and noted alternative proposal. -Wikid77 09:00, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
{{hat|Please stop your forum shopping crusade. →AzaToth 14:25, 11 December 2013 (UTC)}}
Problems with Lua Convert
The RfC for {convert} was closed early, and the Lua form of Template:Convert was installed at 02:15, 11 December 2013, and there are already many problems, beginning with the documentation and talk-page still referring to the markup-based Convert as {convert}, where {{convert/old}} should be used to show a contrast, when comparing against the Lua version of Convert, or discussing markup "subtemplates". Missing unit-codes can be added to Module:Convert/extra or use {convert/old}, as follows:
Old: {{convert/old|34|lbf/sqin}} –
This userpage has been blanked. If this is your userpage, you can retrieve the contents of this page in the page history. Alternatively, if you would like it deleted, simply replace the content of this page with {{db-u1}}.
This userpage has been blanked. If this is your userpage, you can retrieve the contents of this page in the page history. Alternatively, if you would like it deleted, simply replace the content of this page with {{db-u1}}.
The Lua Convert was installed without a formal transition plan, nor a list of known problems or missing unit-codes. I have updated Template:Convert/FAQ, for frequent questions, but beware illogical documentation in other areas. Currently, {convert} is used thousands inside many wp:wrapper templates, such as {{height}}, {{convinfobox}}, {{convert/3}} (etc.), which were pre-tested to handle Lua, but the prior documentation might not match or some options altered. Discuss at Template_talk:Convert, or Lua issues at Module_talk:Convert. -Wikid77 (talk) 09:00, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
Done Bug 56974. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 00:17, 13 November 2013 (UTC)
Fixed. I decided to remove the core reason from hlist (non-wrapping list items), and all its associated IE fixes that caused more trouble than I am willing to accept at this time. A horizontal list item wraps over two lines? Tough! — Edokter (talk) — 13:45, 17 November 2013 (UTC)
Resolved
Doing... I am attempting to concatenate the files with ffmpeg now. I will upload the result to Commons if it is of satisfactory quality. --NYKevin 21:30, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
Note: merged the content below up from section titled "Twinkle" previous below Technical 13 (talk) 12:44, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
. I did test that taking your latest version of {{Year in Norway}} and re-adding the <includeonly> tags did not cause any gaps to appear. For example, see how that appears in "1972 in Norway", one of the articles that displayed a gap before either of us edited the template. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 23:23, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
