Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 18

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Village pump (technical) archive

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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Please see the talk page

In general, when a template points to a discussion presumed to exist on an article's talk page, I think it would be highly desirable if it could point at the specific section discussing the subject. This applies to a number of templates such as NPOV and contradict. There is already at least one template, mergemulti, that takes a "discuss=" parameter. I think this parameter or something like it should be provided in other templates as appropriate, and people should use it to point at a specific talk section, not just a talk page.

Thus in my example in the previous item, people would use {{contradict-other|B|discuss=Talk:A#Chocolate or vanilla?}} on A, and {{contradict-other|A|discuss=Talk:A#Chocolate or vanilla?}} on B.

This would imply that people using these tags should create the talk section first... but that's a reasonable requirement anyway. However, I don't know if there's any way to tell people who have used the template before that it's been improved in this way, in order to promote this clearer use.

--208.76.104.133 (talk) 08:42, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

My tabs

The new features have messed up the tabs on my userpage. See them for yourself. And new code that I can use? —Coastergeekperson 04^{'s talk}@01/28/2008 04:13

Fixed. –Pomte 04:19, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Number of users watching a page

Is there any way to find out how many users are watching a particular page? I ask because sometimes I go to add comments to the talk page of a template or (especially) a category, and I wonder to myself "Will anyone see this?" Note that I don't necessarily want to identify the users watching the page, just to find out if there are any. Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 00:02, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

The rationale for not having this function is that it would be an invitation for spamming and other forms of vandalism. However, I think that an admin-restricted version of this is long overdue. I do not know if a feature request has been filed. Сасусlе 00:30, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Admins do have Special:Unwatchedpages. I agree it would be useful to see how many people are watching a page. Woody (talk) 00:33, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem with Special:Unwatchedpages is it only shows the first 1000 pages and currently appears not to be working. Keith D (talk) 00:59, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:PEREN#Create a counter of people watching a page. It would be nice if someone fixed Special:Unwatchedpages so it actually worked though. Hut 8.5 18:56, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

The original poster asked how to get a response on a Talk page that may get little attention. Usually it's possible to figure out a 'parent' project that is somewhere in the vicinity, even if none has been formally assigned. Few people mind if you post on a related, but more centralized page to try to get a response. I'd suggest asking a question at WP:VPP or WP:EAR if all else fails. EdJohnston (talk) 18:11, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

That's what I normally do: If I don't get any response on the dedicated talk page after a couple of days, I usually transfer the question/comment to the relevant WikiProject (or sometimes I just go straight to the WikiProject). Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 01:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

robots.txt / browsershots

Out of curiosity, would it be okay if I politely asked one of the techs/developers if we could whitelist browsershots.org? I've frequently wanted to run tests from there on various templates and interfaces to make sure they'll be accessible across all platforms but since we disallow several different pages on our robots.txt it doesn't necessarily work correctly.

I'd propose adding the following to explicitly allow their crawls:

User-agent: Browsershots
Disallow:

They, themselves, have a robots.txt to prevent search engine caching of results. Cheers. =) --slakr^\ talk / 20:12, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm. Maybe you should move this topic to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). It might get more responses there. SharkD (talk) 19:33, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I found a missing entry in the logs

I was looking over the user rights change log since 9 January (when rollback was introduced) and seem to have found an entry that's missing. I've checked it and I'm absolutely certain - it's just not there - somebody received rollback without leaving a line in the rights change log. It was then removed about ten minutes later following more discussion at WP:RFR (that line is in the log), then that person got it back again about an hour after that (also in the log). But the first change is missing. I'm just wondering is it a sign of anything serious?

It sounds very trivial and it could be a fluke, but what if there was, I dunno, some funny character in the change summary, and that didn't get escaped properly before being sent to the database, so the database skipped the insert query. If some administrator could discover the trick they could make changes without leaving any record of it. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 12:41, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

You might want to check the user rights log on Meta; if the rollback permission was granted by a steward it would be recorded there rather than in our user rights log. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:30, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

That's interesting, but nope, not listed there either. The user is Santa on Sleigh, when he requested rollback on January 14. There was a short discussion at Wikipedia:Requests for rollback?oldid=18436555, where a couple of admins were disagreed on whether to grant it. Viridae posted a Done at 21:43. Mr.Z-man posted a Not done at 21:52. Misza13 posted a final Done, and settled, at 22:44.

But look at Special:Log?type=rights&limit=1000, or even the logs for just Santa on Sleigh. Only the last two changes by Mr.Z-man and Misza13 are there. Viridae's change, somehow, is missing. It should be at about 21:41 to 21:43. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 14:58, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Yup, I can't see it either. Could it of been a minor glitch in the system or something? He was definitely granted rollback, then had it removed, because it clearly states here: 22:51, 14 January 2008 Mr.Z-man (Talk | contribs) changed rights for User:Santa on Sleigh from rollbacker to (none) ‎ (user has no reverting expereince and only 2 minor article edits). So he was granted rollbacker, but its not in the log. Weird. D.M.N. (talk) 15:23, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

There was a bug, where if a lowercased name (santa on Sleigh) was blocked, it would not be logged in that users log, only in the user who did the blocking's log. That could be what happened here, except on the rights log. The bug has been fixed. Prodego ^talk 00:27, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

This doesn't seem to be visible in any log though, Santa on Sleigh's or Viridae's, or even without specifying a name. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 17:05, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Bad diffs?

For me, the diff [1] shows a difference between the two versions ("{{Expand|date=December 2007}}" is replaced with "December"), but there is no actual difference. Is it just me, or is there something wrong with Wikipedia? I don't want to go around reverting phantom vandalism. --Carnildo (talk) 10:47, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I see the same false diff. I don't know what causes the problem. A diff to an earlier identical version [2] is right. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:21, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Could it have something to do with the new preprocessor? Arthena^(talk) 16:07, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

All morning and afternoon I have been seeing things like this, which is supposedly showing the creation of the section below this one, but is empty. MilesAgain (talk) 22:43, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I swear it was an empty diff that I got from my (enhanced mode) watchlist, but it now shows my own edit with it. How weird is that? MilesAgain (talk) 22:46, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Substituting #switch

I have been asked to clarify the dates on my sig, so I made this. It uses the #switch function, so I can't find a way to substitute the month without substituting the whole thing. Any ideas? —Coastergeekperson 04^{'s talk}@01/28/2008 22:14

{{subst:#time: M d Y|}} -> Jan 28 2008 ? Gimmetrow 22:48, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

That certainly save a whole lot of time. —Coastergeekperson 04^{'s talk}@Jan/28/08 23:56

Note, however, that some anti-vandalism software, such as ClueBot, does check for the "MM:HH day month year (UTC)" format; you might want to include that somewhere if you go vandal-fighting (e.g., in ). Gracenotes^T § 00:11, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

It's generally requested to use the correct time format when signing, there are many bots and stuff that relies on that. _→AzaToth 00:41, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Second that. Threads left on a Talk page archived by MiszaBot may never be archived if the bot doesn't see the expected time stamp on the signature. EdJohnston (talk) 01:24, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Special:Export Parameters... Not working? Resumed with answers

The original discussion is now archived Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 15#Special:Export Parameters... Not working?.

Special:Export does not appear to work correctly with GET requests, but does work as expected with POSTs. I'm not sure if this is intentional, but it was discovered and is now documented here and here on the MediaWiki Manuel. --Falcorian ^(talk) 23:42, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Huggle?

I know that Gurch is gone, so I don't know who runs Huggle or if it's just him. On the page there is no download link. How can I download Huggle? —Coastergeekperson 04^{'s talk}@Jan/29/08 00:10

Gurch is still here. :) See Special:Contributions/Gurch and feel free to ask him at User talk:Gurch. --Iamunknown 01:35, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

New parser function

<imagemap> and other tags can now accept m:Help:Magic words and other fun things using the new parser function #tag. Example below.

{{#tag:imagemap|
Image:Foo.jpg{{!}}200px{{!}}picture of a foo
default [{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}}}]
desc none
}}

produces:

picture of a foo

Enjoy! --MZMcBride (talk) 06:09, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Should also note that this is (hopefully) only going to be a temporary fix. The long-term goal is to get things like <ref>{{ #ifexists: Bob | [[Bob]] | Bob }}</ref> to work on their own. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:51, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank goodness for that, too. I wish I could help develop that capability, too, but I have a lot to learn before I'll be able to do it. Good luck to the devs, though! Tuvok[^T@lk/_Improve] 06:00, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Though this is only a temporary fix, I just used it to convert {{WikimediaForPortals}} to ImageMap format from the deprecated {{click}} format ({{click}} can cause usability problems). This is great! Free hugs for willing devs, because this made my day. :D Nihiltres^{t.l} 00:08, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Template contradict-other

As I understand it, if article A contradicts article B, the right way to report this is to add the template {{contradict-other|B}} to A and {{contradict-other|A}} to B.

However, when these templates are expanded, the first one asks people to see the discussion at [[Talk:A]] while the second one says to look at [[Talk:B]]. For any particular alleged contradiction it seems obvious to me that there should be only one talk page where it is to be discussed. Is it be possible for the template to choose one arbitrarily, for example, whichever of the two articles has the first title alphabetically?

Or if not, could there be two different templates so you would add something like {{contradict-other|B}} to A and {{contradicted-by-other|A}} to B, and discussion would be directed to [[Talk:A]] in both cases?

Still another possible solution: have a parameter where one value means "discuss on this article's talk page" and another value means "discuss on the other article's talk page". (One of these values could be null.) For example, {{contradict-other|B|here}} could go on A and {{contradict-other|A|}} on B.

I have another idea, which is prompted by the fact that the template apparently no longer provides any way to tell people what the contradiction is; but I'll put it in a separate section, below, because it pertains to other templates too.

--208.76.104.133 (talk) 08:42, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

See the documentation for {{Contradict-other}}. There is already a parameter to say "discuss on this article's talk page" or "discuss on the other article's talk page". PrimeHunter (talk) 11:35, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Dang, how'd I miss that? I did read that page. Sorry about that, folks. --208.76.104.133 (talk) 23:05, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Template:User transcluded a lot

When I was looking at a request to edit Template:User, I looked at the backlinks. It seems there are 33187 pages that transclude this template. Is there any reason not to go through and substitute a bunch of these, particularly ones on archived pages? — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:58, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't think substituting them would be effective. One of Wikipedia's guidelines is don't worry about performance. Besides which, editing and saving a new revision of a page requires *far* more work on the part of the server than having a transcluded template on an old page. There are lots of templates used on hundreds of thousands of articles. I think it's essentially fairly harmless to leave them. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 19:45, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

My main concern is whether this is the type of template (like unsigned) that should always be substituted. — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:01, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

It's not like unsigned. When a particular template should always be substituted, it's often because it contains a message directed at a specific editor who may be confused if the message changes. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:18, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Like unsigned, there's no reason that the use of this template on old pages needs to be kept in sync with use on new pages (compare the fact tag, which should look the same on all pages). — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:35, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

But there's no reason for it NOT to, whereas, as PrimeHunter said, there's a reason not to do so with unsigned. —Random832 15:37, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

What reason is there for unsigned to change on newer pages? I think it's somewhat shortsighted to accumulate these massively-used templates. We should transclude templates that will need to be updated, and substitute the rest. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:22, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Modern skin

I was trying to update Wikipedia:Customisation, and noticed that MediaWiki:Modern.css is empty. Is there any reason it is only stored at http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/modern/main.css ?

Also, where is the main discussion/development history for this new skin? I couldn't see anything in the various mailing list archives, at meta, or via google searches. Thanks. -- Quiddity (talk) 06:07, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Although MediaWiki:Modern.css doesn't exist by default, you can create it and it'll work the same as MediaWiki:Monobook.css. Most of the discussion (of which there was actually very little) took place on IRC. mediawiki-l is probably the best place to discuss it. kate. —Preceding comment was added at 08:48, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not an admin, so can't edit that page. Someone else has created it though, and seems to be bugfixing it. Hopefully people who know about skins will watchlist it, and continue to bugfix and improve it. Thanks. -- Quiddity (talk) 07:19, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Question on redirection templates

I've been writing a few redirection templates to help with fictional characters and tv episodes (eg {{ER to list entry}}, and a user noticed that, when using the template, the text that is in the template that is not within the "noinclude" markup but also not contained in the "includeonly" markup does not show up on the page with the redirection; it is present when you preview it, but it is also very obvious there is a difference in how the preview is shown, and then how the actual resulting page looks (which contains the down/right 90deg arrow and large text with the redirect page name).

Is this by design, or a possible bug in rendering of such pages? I note I spot checked a few other redirection templates that seemed to have the same effect. --MASEM 16:34, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Move the template inclusion to a newline and it will start working. Not really sure what the exact desired/expected behaviour is --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:29, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

That's not the issue. The template doesn't need to be on a newline. –Pomte 20:36, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Rollback link in watchlists

Is it possible to add a rollback link to each edit seen on Special:Watchlist? This would be especially useful given the existence of tabs and popups. John Reaves 22:43, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

~~When I was granted the rollback privilege, it began appearing exactly like that. See Wikipedia:Rollback feature. —EncMstr 22:55, 29 January 2008 (UTC~~ Never mind. I confused it with page history. —EncMstr 22:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm 99% sure there is a bugzilla request for this already. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 01:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

bugzilla:9305 --MZMcBride (talk) 02:33, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Please help our wp

I want apply toclimit class to our Korean Wikipedia. For test, I copied English Wikipedia's class (in MediaWiki:Common.css) into my own css ko:User:피첼/monobook.css, and I tested in Sandbox.[3] But it doesn't work! What should I do? --Ficell (talk) 13:16, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Did you purge your cache? --Splarka (rant) 08:47, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, sorry. This problem is solved now. Thank you for reply, Splarka. --Ficell (talk) 14:07, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Error on Page, according to IE6

Resolved

– Platform error, will not be fixed.Franamax (talk) 22:29, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Pretty much all Wikipedia pages I pull up in IE6 (at work, grrr) report an error on page (bottom left of the app), the details of which are specified as Line 74 Character 5: expected identifier, string or number. By my count, that would be the following markup: <h3 id="siteSub">From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</h3>. Is this just IE being crap, or what? --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:17, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

It was doing it to me when I pulled up Wikipedia in IE a few days ago too. Every page. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 17:36, 29 January 2008 (UTC). Correction: It's only happening when I'm logged in. Fine otherwise. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 17:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

IE7 reports the same issue. --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:12, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Can you provoke any errors or warnings in an HTML validator? I can't with this one, but I may not be trying the same pages as you. Bovlb (talk) 19:34, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Any Internet Explorer error you encounter almost never lists the correct line number. I believe it expands <script> tags first then uses line numbers there. Firefox does not cite any problems, so it's probably one of the Internet Explorer fix scripts. x42bn6 Talk Mess 20:21, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it gets something like the right line number (plus or minus a few), but it always reports the error as being in the main page instead of in whatever included js file. In debugging other things, I've sometimes resorted to adding blank lines to the beginning of various files until I find the one that changes the line number in the error message. Anomie ⚔ 01:37, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I have the same issue in IE7 except line 16. Check the source of your page when it loads for MediaWiki:Gadget-edittop.js, looking at that file on-wiki, I strongly suspect there is an error setting var localtitles, one too many commas. When I modify it on a local version, it seems to work just fine. Franamax (talk) 23:53, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I got my problem resolved as above. If anyone else is still getting error messages (after purging your browser cache), post again, I'm on a roll... :) Franamax (talk) 01:14, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Still getting an error, but the line number has changed (to 1265). I'm not sure how to "Check the source of your page when it loads for MediaWiki:Gadget-edittop.js", but happy to co-operate if you can give me a steer; thanks. Oh. now moved to line 574: "Twinklefluff is undefined". I suspect we might know in which neck of the woods that is... --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

And indeed all errors I'm seeing are Twinkle errors; and as Twinkle is not IE complaint, mystery solved. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:12, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Maybe this could have been resolved much more quickly: editing Wikipedia at work eh, why don't you just go tell your boss about the problem? :) Franamax (talk) 22:36, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Algerian district maps

- - Dear Sir/Madame, - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%C3%AFn_Abid_District - and - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zighoud_Youcef_District - Should colour different areas? - Although named differently, it shows the same area under different names. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.202.75.120 (talk) 18:34, 29 January 2008 (UTC) (restored question by Pete St.John (talk) 20:25, 29 January 2008 (UTC))

So, yes, both maps show the same region, but by different names. I'd ask at the talk pages; but I'm not familiar at all with Algerian geography, perhaps these names are of the same place over different periods. I'd guess though that one of the maps is mislabelled. Pete St.John (talk) 20:28, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Special:Movepage $1 issue

Perhaps this has been reported elsewhere, but I just went to go move a page over a multiple edit redirect. The resulting page that notes deletion is required (with sysop tools) links to the page about to be deleted, but appears to be a piped link to $1. Such as:

"Caution: The destination article "Foobar" already exists. Do you want to delete it to make way for the move? (Check the edit history.)"

Not a big problem, but I hadn't noticed it before. Rkitko ^(talk) 20:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I noticed it a couple of days ago. Just means a little bit more work. You have to delete it manually. Does someone know how to fix it? Woody (talk) 20:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Be sure to mention any other broken messages. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

custom rollback summary

Following the announcement, on this BRION edition, of the creation of some useful parameters for rollback summaries, I'd like to ask how to actually use these parameters. I just tried using the "$1" form directly in the edit summary here, but as you can see it didn't work. Probably a dumb mistake, but I want to know what is the right way to do it. Waldir ^talk 08:40, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

It will have to be set project-wide at MediaWiki:Revertpage. Probably best to start discussion somewhere about it. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:56, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Here? in the talk page? somewhere else? Waldir ^talk 09:24, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, I ended up noting that what I did was an undo, not a revert. But the edit summaries for both would be greatly improved if included the extra info. The suggestion Roan Kattouw made in the bug page was:

Reverted revision $5 ($6) and earlier revisions by $2, reverted to revision $3 ($4) by $1

Waldir ^talk 09:31, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I tried a custom-summary rollback (setting 'summary' in the URL), and got this. It seems $variables aren't expanded in custom rollback summaries, only in the sitewide default. --ais523 10:05, 30 January 2008 (U T C)

Would developers consider adding $variable replacement for the custom summaries as well as the site-wide one? Such a feature would be very useful. (In addition, perhaps have another rule, e.g. $$ → $, so that one can have dollar signs followed by numbers.) Gracenotes^T § 20:57, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Mediawiki:Readonlywarning

This message was (until I changed it, see [4]) very easy to miss. I'd also never (to my knowledge) seen it before, what determines when this is shown and when Mediawiki:Readonlytext is shown? It looks like when this is shown the text box is editable, but what's the difference between the actual database lock states that cause these two behaviors? —Random832 20:48, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Password email issue

Good evening, morning, or whatever state of being. I am DantheCowMan, and I am attempting to return following a long time exclusively in the "real" world. However, the "Email New Password" link has, it seems, failed to generate the hopeful document. My email address hasn't changed in, say, 5 physical years, so I know that that's not the issue....

Thoughts? Ideas? Musings? 151.213.92.107 (talk) 19:10, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Try checking any spam folders and/or spam filters on your email account, to see if it's in there. If you're certain it's the right email address, then there's no reason why it shouldn't turn up. Wait a while, in case there are some email servers being slow today or something. Try the Email New Password link again also, but if it eventually doesn't turn up, then I'm very sorry to say afraid you will have to create a new account. There isn't any way to reclaim a lost password without the email. If you create a new account you can put a note on your user page linking to your old account, and/or copy the user page content across, letting people know you used to edit as DantheCowMan. Hope this helps. And hopefully the email will turn up. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 19:22, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Did you confirm your email address? You started contributing before email confirmation was enabled. Unfortunately you need to log in before confirming your email address. However that might be the reason you aren't getting the password email. Graham87 02:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Couldn't tell you that specifically, as I've been in and out so much, but we can test it. Someone please hit the email link if exists. In any event documentation seems to suggest that that feature is only for human-human email interaction. Heres what I can tell you.

No email whatsoever from WikiMedia has appeared in my inbox or spam folders. I have no further content filtrers to check.
I have left and returned several times, presumably using the email new pwd' link, including I think twice in 2007.
Before sleeping I created an alternate account for the express purpose of testing the system. Thus far (6+ hours later) no email has appeared from the "Confirm this account" link, or the "Change Password" link after I logged out.
This happened once before, to me actually. The incident was recorded here as "1.4 Email issue", though again, this incident was before confirmation was a mainstream feature. Perhaps the evidence points to something similar?

151.213.92.107 (talk) 15:22, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I checked Special:Emailuser/DantheCowMan and it reported that "This user has not specified a valid e-mail address, or has chosen not to receive e-mail from other users." • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 15:26, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Email confirmation shouldn't be an issue; it's supposed to send a password regardless, and I believe automatically confirm you email if you use that password. Anyway, the email option should either send an email of give an error message. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 18:03, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

The avalibility to watch Special Pages

It would be nice if we could watchlist specialpages, such as:

User contributions

Good for tracking the edits of problematic users

whatlinkshere

Tracking pages created regarding a template

and etc. The benefits would be huge-- penubag 01:00, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Special pages are essentially one-time, "snapshot" reports. There is no way to track changes in such reports.

For a watchlist of edits by specific editors, see User:Tra#User watchlist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by John Broughton (talk • contribs) 15:13, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Not to mention that it's not clear what would happen if a user decided to watch Special:Watchlist itself. --ais523 15:44, 31 January 2008 (U T C)

:head explodes: ↔NMajdan•talk 15:49, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki redirects

Currently, these don't work. Why? It is quite a good idea. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 08:07, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Soft redirect. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:21, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I know of them. They just provide links. I am requesting proper redirection. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 14:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I really don't think we want vandals to be able to redirect readers into a foreign language page, particularly one with a graphic image. And, as noted on the page cited by PrimeHunter, there would be no "Redirected from [foo]" message on the page when you get to the destination, if the redirect was automatic. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:11, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

There's also a lot of obscure non-Wikimedia web sites on the interwiki list. I don't think we should have automatic redirects to those. I think it's more sensible if people get told when they're leaving the site. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 16:40, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

There are two flavors of interwiki redirects listed, those that are iw_local [5] and those that are not [6]. The major difference between the two is the URL redirect trick only works for iw_local. Interwiki links only resolve one depth level. So for example, the meta.wikimedia.org interwiki m: is local, but the mediawiki.org interwiki mw: is not. So m:mw:foo works but mw:m:foo does not. This is to prevent malicious "bouncing" to non-local sites. I believe even with interwiki redirecting enabled, the non-local ones do not redirect. Perhaps a user preference could be initiated to allow automatic local interwiki redirecting? This could also be done as a gadget or userscript. --Splarka (rant) 08:27, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd support such a user script, or even a preference that is auto-opt-out. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 06:56, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Template parameter giving me no output...scratching my head...

Hi! I've been doing a slight re-tool on Template:WPFILMS Announcements in order to be able to transclude just the peer review list from the table w/o having the listing housed elsewhere. I've added a "peerreviewonly" parameter which should only display that part of the page when it "=yes", but right now it's just showing me nothing. Am I making some really obvious mistake? I basically set each of the other sides of the template on an #ifeq conditional that renders nothing if equal to yes, but the rest of the page if not equal. Help?! Many thanks in advance, Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 02:24, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Did this edit by Geometry guy fix the problem? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:17, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Artist

I wonder if someone could have a look at this, as the blue colour of the bar at the top does not appear automatically when the template is pasted as shown in the documentation. Tyrenius (talk) 04:30, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

To get the default blue bar, omit the "| bgcolour = " line. DH85868993 (talk) 07:19, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Most vandalized pages problems

Firefox freezes when I access the "most vandalized pages" page. I'm using FasterFox. Is it related to the new preprocesser? Dalekusa (talk) 16:20, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Running a parser diff test shows no difference, but it is a very long page with lots of links. To display it Firefox is going to have to check every one of those links to see if it's in the history and should be displayed in a different colour. That could slow it down if you have a long browser history. Perhaps as a first thing to check, try clearing the history and see if the problem persists. • Anakin ^{(contribs • complaints)} 17:58, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Several new proposals for Template:Episode list and other notes

I've made a bunch of proposals for the episode templates {{Episode list}} and {{Japanese episode list}} (such as dedicated "Director" and "Writer" fields), as well as a method of translcuding season pages onto main LOE pages, plus other notes. Input from anyone interested would be greatly appreciated. See Template talk:Episode list#Revamp -- Ned Scott 06:35, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I <3 modern skin, except for three things

I tried the new Modern skin (Prefs/Skins/Modern) and I like it a lot, I really like it, except for three things:

All the links are underlined by default. That looks terrible on link-rich content like a wiki. I had to go to Prefs/Misc to turn off underlining. How to I change my modern.css and/or .js to underline links on mouse-hover only, like monobook?

Visited links don't turn color. This disrupts my watchlist behavior. Surely there is a simple change to modern.css which can make visited links a different color, right?

The left-hand nav bar is about 100px too wide at my font size. How do I put it on a diet?

Thanks to whoever made this skin. MilesAgain (talk) 13:13, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

The output from the anti-vandal tool also appears in the upper-left corner (rather than in the centre of the page), therefore being garbled by the sidebar. NF24^{(radio me!)} 14:11, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

~~The yellow highlighting on Special:Newpages also doesn't work. NF24^{(radio me!)} 14:18, 27 January 2008 (UTC)~~

Try enabling the "modern compatibility" gadget (in the library gadgets section) in your preferences, does this fix the anti-vandal tool output? —Random832 14:58, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

links underlined by default: i think this was fixed yesterday. can you try a force-reload?
visited link colour: this is fixed as of about 5 minutes ago
to make the nav bar narrower, put something like this in your modern.css:

#mw_portlets { width: 12em; }
#mw_content { margin-left: 12em; }

kate. —Preceding comment was added at 08:57, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

THANK YOU KATE!!! 11em is the perfect width at my font size. MilesAgain (talk) 19:08, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:MODERN skin

Per above, I've been putting Modern skin bugs at WT:MODERN which points to MediaWiki talk:Modern.css. If that isn't the right place, please tell us here, move my comments, and re-redirect W[PT]:MODERN. Thanks. MilesAgain (talk) 22:50, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

for bugs in the skin itself (as opposed to problems with Wikipedia-specific CSS/JS), please file a bug at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org and assign it to me (river@wikimedia.org). if you really don't want to use bugzilla, you can write it on my talk page, but i don't check that very often. kate. —Preceding comment was added at 09:24, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Strange diff

SineBot signed a comment at my talk page, but the diff is rather perplexing. I am sure this is not a problem with the bot because editing the version before the bot signed and pressing the "Show changes" button show that the only difference is the signature, however editing the previous version and clicking the "diff" to the current version, it shows many differences that do not exist. Any idea? -- ReyBrujo (talk) 00:04, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

This is faster: click here, pressing the "current version diff" shows something different than pressing the "Show changes" button, although both should do the same (this would likely work until my talk page is edited). -- ReyBrujo (talk) 00:06, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. Prodego ^talk 02:11, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Any news here? ~~I noticed you removed the transclusion in your sandbox, yet my talk page is still protected via cascading through it.~~ Never mind, it is free now (apparently there was a delay between releasing the page and actually freeing it). -- ReyBrujo (talk) 01:12, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

quickUnwatch -- please evaluate

Please evaluate User:Gutza/quickUnwatch.js – at some point in the future I'd like to propose it as a gadget, but for now only a few people have tested it, and I'd like to hear from more of you. The script allows you to quickly unwatch pages directly from Special:Watchlist by showing a "(-w)" link besides each of the article/talk pages in the list. It should work under any skin, under any modern JS-enabled browser, with any watchlist preferences.

Known issue: because of server-side caches, you occasionally click on a "-w" link, the watchlist is refreshed, but the page is still visible in the list. Upon manually reloading the watchlist (without any further action), the page is shown to have been removed from the list. I doubt this can be fixed client-side, but I'm very much open for suggestions. --Gutza ^{T T+} 10:06, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Nice idea, although already implemented in wlUnwatch :) By the way, escape() doesn't work very well with non-ASCII pagenames, use encodeURIComponent() instead ∴ AlexSm 20:53, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

/me makes superhuman efforts to refrain from wielding a huge trout against self.

Nah, escape() is there just to escape single and double quotes because I'm passing the article name as a parameter in onClick() via HTML. But then again, who cares? :-) Thanks for pointing me in the right direction! --Gutza ^{T T+} 21:08, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Linking to section headings

I'm working on creating a customized TOC and can't figure out how to do something (or if it's possible).

Can you link to a section heading without knowing it's name? Let's say I had:

== Heading 1 ==

text-text-text

===Foo===
text-text-text

===Bar===
text-text-text

===Cheese===
text-text-text

I know I could link to the particular sections with [[#Foo]], but is there a way I could link to, say, section 1.2 (Bar) without knowing it's name? Thanks in advance! --omtay 38 02:59, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

There's nothing in the generated html that would correspond. Unless, of course, you modified the page to have additional anchors.... —EncMstr 03:02, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Cool cool, thanks! --omtay 38 03:03, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Template substitution not working correctly

I came back to Wikipedia today after a week off only to find that the preformatted code on User:TwinsMetsFan/citeny no longer works. When I paste the code onto a page with a reference tag ({{reflist}} or <references />) and preview/save, the resulting code is borked, as the "template" isn't accepting any parameters nor is it subst'ing the parsers correctly. More information available on request; TIA. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 00:02, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Probably due to the new Parser that the servers are running now. See m:Migration to the new preprocessor. I have not looked at the code yet, because i really need to stop editing for today, but if no one else has fixed it by tomorrow, I will definitely take a look at it for you. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 03:20, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

It looks like something's messed up with the <ref> tags. I know it used to be that pipe tricks didn't work in references, but now it looks like the problem has gone one step further and parameters in templates within references no longer work either (as the much simpler User:TwinsMetsFan/citeny2 doesn't work anymore, whether I subst or not). This is a real PITA since the point of having these pages was to use them to quickly generate references that I use multiple times in one day. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 18:18, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I have made the basic change that uses the new parserfunction #tag, but i'm unsure how to specify name= for a ref with that technique. I'm hoping someone will be able to tell us. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:02, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, everything works great now except for the issue with the ref name you mentioned. Hopefully someone will have the answer for that. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 21:00, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I did some messing around in a sandbox, and to me it seems that the third usage example shown on [7] doesn't work, at least not here. Not even the default example worked - when I previewed it, it spit out an "invalid language" error, which tells me that it's not reading the "attribute" parameter. So that explains why the ref name= isn't working ATM. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 21:56, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

{{#tag:ref|<refcontetns>|<name="", etc.>}} should do it. Test below.

^[1] ^[1]

^ ^a ^b zomg a ref!

--MZMcBride (talk) 02:20, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

That worked perfectly! Thanks! Now all that's left is for someone to correct the parameter order on the extension's MediaWiki page. =) --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 02:28, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem is one of slight misunderstanding. The instructions you are referring to are for an extension, while the #tag being used on Wikimedia is a core parser function of slightly different operation (for example: the #tag here cannot generate html tags, only xml-style parser hooks). However, the instructions for the #tag we have are not 100% correct either. These help pages probably need updating: m:Help:Magic_words#Formatting, m:Help:Parser_function -- --Splarka (rant) 08:15, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Login Password security

When I login or, even worse, when I create an account, I do so in an unsecure environment. There's no automatic encryption; the site reads "http" not "https". It's all well and good to urge people to make a secure password, but I, for one, am unwilling to trust a secure password to vagaries of an unencrypted web.

JohnGHissong (talk) 23:59, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Even entering the site using https:, bits and pieces use http:, and by the time login is complete, it is completely http:. Is this an intentional feature? —EncMstr 00:02, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

You can use the secure server at https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Main_Page Harryboyles 01:29, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Note that if you log in over HTTPS, even though parts go over HTTP, none of your login details are transmitted in the clear. The only things that use HTTP are images mostly, Wikimedia-wide notices like the fundraiser banner that was up, and the page stats counter that triggers once every 6,000th page view or something. But the login cookies don't get sent on the HTTP requests. Only trouble is people have a habit of pasting en.wikipedia.org diffs because it's simpler, so you find yourself logged out (I always use {{fullurl}} for them). But it is secure. • Anakin ^(talk) 16:14, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Fatal database error

Click on "What links here" and then "show redirects only".

I would enter this into the bug tracker, but frankly, I would prefer someone more experienced with the bug tracker do it because I have had bad experiences with bugzillas in the past. Also I am pressed for time and wish to contribute encyclopedic content with the time I have left. Thank you. MilesAgain (talk) 06:53, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

The "redirects only" tool is on the toolserver. The toolsever is down, and has been that way for some time. Graham87 11:28, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

It's a nuisance actually, because the WP:Help desk tells people to search the FAQ first so we don't get asked "how do I post a new article?" five times a day, and now we are, because the FAQ is on Nubio, and that needs the toolserver. • Anakin ^(talk) 11:33, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Query.php extension?

I'm starting to get errors in pictures. They will load sometimes but other times they will not. When they don't load, I get the tooltip message Image preview failed :( Is the query.php extension installed?

Anyone know what might cause this? Gatoclass (talk) 13:55, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I assume you're using popups because I got the same error. XENON54 | talk | who? | 02 Feb 2008 17:01_GMT

Yeah, I am using popups. Gatoclass (talk) 17:44, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

query.php is obsolete and should not be used. Use api.php instead. query.php will be removed at any time. _→AzaToth 17:13, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure about that? query.php is not entirely obselete. For example, api.php does not (as far as I am aware) give a way to request the contributions for multiple users at once. If query.php will be 'removed at any time' then this would need to be publicised since there are likely to be applications using it both internal and external to Wikipedia. Tra (Talk) 01:09, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

How do I use "api.php"? Gatoclass (talk) 17:44, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

You'd have to modify popups.js. The image page preview has been broken for a while now, though, and Lupin hasn't fixed it. Tuvok[^T@lk/_Improve] 18:05, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Performance improvement

I've made a request at MediaWiki talk:Common.js#Big performance improvement that we serve the scripts that fix bugs in Internet Explorer only to users of Internet Explorer. This would significantly boost page load times for users of other browsers. Comments would be welcome. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 21:57, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[foobar-1] zomg a ref!

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