Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 20

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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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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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assigning auto-patrol for non-admins

Following the discussion here: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#bot_to_auto-patrol_experienced_article_creators, there seems to be some support for identifying trusted users whose new page creations should be automatically marked as patrolled, as is currently done for admins and bots. How complex would it be to implement something like the ability of admins to give rollback privilege? Pichpich (talk) 19:10, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Since rollback is given to most trusted users, why not include that usergroup in the auto-patrol category - that might be a lot simpler. Also, Gurch's Huggle tool generates a list of "trusted" users, but that might be too broad. In any case, I don't think more bureaucracy is what anybody wants right now...there was enough debate over rollback. --Sam Chase 20:53, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

That might make sense. Yeah, nobody is happy about extra bureaucracy, but I see this more like a hack to save time for newpage patrollers. I can see how rollback might be (oddly) perceived as a privilege but most people are not even aware of the patrol feature for new articles and this may help in limiting the unpatrolled backlog which grows in part because so many are unaware of the feature. Pichpich (talk) 21:01, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I would be against adding it to the "rollback" group. They have significantly different uses. If its going to be given out individually, we might as well just create another user group for it. Then people can apply to have it and/or newpage patrollers can list people who seem to create lots of good articles. That way would work better, but I still support giving it automatically based on editcount/time-since-registration. I would suggest something like 2000 edits/3 months. The odds of such an experienced user creating a speedy-deletable article are quite low. Mr.Z-man 21:09, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with that completely. --Sam Chase 22:26, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

From a technical perspective, I think there's an extension which allows multiple autoconfirm groups. — Werdna talk 00:50, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

You are referring to Extension:Automatic Groups? Tuvok[^T@lk/_Improve] 05:14, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Yep. — Werdna talk 05:18, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I've been referring to $wgAutopromote, which is already built into the software. Mr.Z-man 05:40, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

This sort of permission should not be automatic. The point is only for people who are creating large numbers of articles for a reason. We don't want everyone to be exempt from newpages; among other things, it helps with categorization, stub tagging, vandalism detection, etc. — Carl (CBM · talk) 05:17, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Red links not purged

When I nominate an article for deletion using Twinkle, the link to "this article's entry" on the article page oftentimes does not get purged and stays red, even though the AfD entry exists. An example is at "Population 2" (please don't purge). I think this may be because the creation of the AfD entry page and the addition of the deletion tag occur virtually at the same time. Waiting doesn't help, the link stays red (and links to &action=edit) until the page is manually purged. Is this a known problem? If not, anyone care to write a bug report? -- Lea (talk) 10:11, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

It's blue for me. I didn't purge but your post is old. Are you sure you don't need to bypass your cache? Some ISP's store a cached version your browser cannot bypass. Click history and click the most recent date to get the current version (assuming the history page is not cached). Adding ? to the url may also be able to bypass a version cached by your ISP. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:37, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

No, it's definitely not a cache issue (no proxy or forced caching here); adding a question mark doesn't help either. It's currently observable on Disk Firewall, even though the permanent URL to the current revision[1] has the link in blue. -- Lea (talk) 03:22, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Try doing a null edit to the page, edit it, don't make any changes and click save. It won't add a revision to the history but it might fix it. Mr.Z-man 05:15, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I know how to purge a page, I'm just not sure whether I should file a bug report. As of now I don't feel that it's reproduceable (or complete) enough to make a good report. -- Lea (talk) 02:04, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Problems with screen resolution and spacing of options at top of screen

I use MS Windows XP SP2 on a laptop, and the options at the top of the WP screen ("Username" "my talk" "my preferences" "my watchlist" "my contributions" "log out") bleed into the Wikipedia globe on the left hand side at the "larger" and "largest" screen resolutions.

A few months ago, I could still access all my options at both "larger" and "largest" screen resolutions. Then something changed (spacing and/or text size, etc) and I could access all my options at the "larger" screen resolution but not the "largest" screen resolution. Now something has changed again, and I cannot access all my options at the of the screen under either "largest" or "larger" screen resolutions. Can something be done to correct this?--Filll (talk) 23:22, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I have noticed a similar phenomenon going on where the Latitude and Longitude bleeds into other text at the top of the Creation Museum article.--Filll (talk) 00:59, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Category membership counting

Is there a tool that can count how many pages are in a category? If not, is there any way to find out how many pages are in a large category without repeatedly clicking "next 200"? Thanks, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 21:41, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, in several situations I'd like to remove the limit too. There's one category with 4000+ articles that someone needs to periodically gather all the article names. —EncMstr 21:47, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

WP:EIW tells me you might want to talk to User:Chris G Bot 2. Algebraist 21:58, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm thinking of putting this on the category page in software. I need to make sure it's technically sound, however. — Werdna talk 00:43, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

If technically feasible, it would be a most useful addition. Thanks, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:45, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

How did people create pages in MediaWiki 1.3??

I've just tried MediaWiki 1.3 and searched for a page as both an anon and logged-in user, and can't create pages. How did people do this back when this site had MW 1.3 installed?? I've just been trying it out on my localhost WAMP server now! --Solumeiras (talk) 17:07, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

That's rather an old version of MediaWiki. I don't have a MediaWiki 1.3 installation to hand, but there should be three ways to create a page in any version:

1. Search for the page title, and in the message which says the page does not exist, there should be a redlink which you can click on to create the page. The exact message will depend on configuration and version. Eg (from a MediaWiki 1.5 site: "No page with this exact title exists, trying full text search."
2. Add a wikilink to another page, then click on it to create the page: The weather in London.
3. Edit another page, and then modify the url to the page title you want, remembering to replace spaces with underscores: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_weather_in_London&action=edit

"The weather in London" is a long-standing example of an article which is not suitable for Wikipedia. It's not actually a typical redlink.-gadfium 20:18, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

No, it's just the classic example of a redlink, because, after all, we have Climate of London. hbdragon88 (talk) 21:43, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

WP script

Hello!
I have a bit of a basic problem with the java script I have; I was trying to use addOnloadHook( function() where I append text upon clicking on a certain tool bar button, and it did not work. I have tried to look at friendly's welcome script but it had too many parameters I did not need. I am novice at java script to say the least, and I would appreciate if someone could help me with this-perhaps providing the script needed if it was short :)- I know this should be simple enough, and I am quite sure that I have nothing wrong with the procedure (bypassing cache, importing scripts from their locations, monobook.js, etc.) so the problem must be with the script I wrote. Thanks Λua∫Wise ^{(Operibus anteire)} 15:48, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Simple JS example

//<nowiki> <-- needed to prevent parsing of tildes and substs
//if edit or preview:
if(wgAction == 'edit' || wgAction == 'submit') addOnloadHook(function() {
  //add portlet buttons to trigger another JS function with one parameter
  addPortletLink('p-cactions','javascript:addSomeText("Hello there\n ~~~~")', 'greet');
  addPortletLink('p-cactions','javascript:addSomeText("{{delete}}")', 'delete');
});

function addSomeText(text) {
  //grab textarea by ID
  txtb = document.getElementById('wpTextbox1');
  //if no textarea, abort
  if(!txtb) return;
  //if the textarea is not blank, add a line return
  if(txtb.value != '') txtb.value += '\n';
  //append the text from the parameter
  txtb.value += text;
}
//</nowiki>

Here is a pretty simple one that adds control buttons to the actions (like edit/delete/watch/etc). Alternatively you can use custom edit buttons (like bold/italic/link). --Splarka (rant) 20:11, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

THANKS, I will try it now, I appreciate the help man:) Λua∫Wise ^{(Operibus anteire)} 14:37, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Section link for section 0 for all users

Please enable this feature. Having such a link would be fairer (than the current situation of not having such a link) to registered users who can't or don't use the Gadgets, as well as to users of IP Addresses.

"The section edit link can be added to MediaWiki: namespace pretty straightforwardly by an admin if any given wiki wants it." [Comment #13 From Simetrical 2006-06-09 01:28:50 UTC]

"If you (or others) believe an edit link for section 0 would generally be useful, it seems more useful to turn it on for all users on all pages (probably suggested through bugzilla or WP:VPT), rather than to rely on a page-by-page basis. – Luna Santin (talk) 13:11, 21 January 2008 (UTC)"[2]

See also: Bugzilla:156, Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2008 January 18#Template:Edit-first-section, Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2008 January 20#Template:Edit-top-section

Please find below links for expressing your opinion on my proposal that this feature be enabled. Thank you for your time and for expressing your opinions.   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 10:09, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

General comments

A section 0 edit link can be enabled on a per-account basis by checking the " Add an [edit] link for the introduction section of a page" box on the Gadgets tab at Special:Preferences Nakon 17:16, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I know that, but that Gadget is no help "to registered users who can't or don't use the Gadgets, as well as to users of IP Addresses" (the majority of the userbase).   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 20:55, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

But are they the majority of editors? Prodego ^talk 01:59, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I think they are. A developer could compare the sum of registered users with edits and IP Addresses with edits with the quantity of checkmarks to that box; I suspect the ratio would be rather large.   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 17:58, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Neutral

1. I would like to comment that Simetrical's comment #13 appears to be mistaken, unless he's talking about doing something in Mediawiki:Common.js (which won't work with javascript disabled). —Random832 06:21, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Archiver setup

Could I get a quick technical check at Wikipedia:WikiProject User Page Help/Help Desk to make sure I set up the archiver correctly? MBisanz ^talk 05:44, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Its works, I was just impatient. MBisanz ^talk 07:05, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

You may have to wait a week before getting results from your application of {{Resolved|1=~~~~}}.   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 09:59, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Yea, thats the rule I forgot, but as soon as I saw the diff of the first archive run, it all made sense. MBisanz ^talk 19:18, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Silly subpage question

A silly question probably anyone here can answer: How does one list all subpages of a given Wikipedia page? Silly rabbit (talk) 14:58, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Special:Prefixindex/Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/ Sam Korn ^(smoddy) 15:08, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Silly rabbit (talk) 15:20, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

"Edit Amount Question"

I'm trying to find out exactly how many edits I've made. According to this tool, I've made 9,792 edits, but on My Preferences it says I've made 10,024 edits. Which one is technically correct as it seems like there are 2 conflicting numbers here. D.M.N. (talk) 15:29, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

In your preferences it states all your contributions including your deleted contributions. So it seems that you have 232 deleted edits. Woody (talk) 15:33, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Why would I have a load of deleted edits? I cannot think of any articles I've contributed in that have been deleted. D.M.N. (talk) 17:12, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Most of your deleted contributions come from your userspace and images. If you want a full list, I'd be glad to give you one. Nakon 17:14, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Na, its OK, I realise now why it's like that. D.M.N. (talk) 17:18, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Watchlist loading slow due to tools.wikimedia.de

My watchlist is loading slowly due to slowness in accessing the site tools.wikimedia.de (it says "Waiting for tools.wikimedia.de" in the Firefox status bar). Why does my watchlist need to access that server? Thanks, Mike R (talk) 20:31, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Note, it looks like the file it is specifically trying to access is http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/cgi-bin/geonotice.py. Thanks, Mike R (talk) 20:35, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

To give you geo notices (for example, if you live in New York and there is a Wikipedia convention near, it will display some note about the event to you). I am not really sure how it is displayed, though, since I live in Argentina and will likely never see such announcement here ;-) Just do what I do: install NoScript for Firefox and block it. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 21:36, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Template for CATSCAN tool

I've made a basic template for http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/WikiSense/CategoryIntersect.php

Someone has probably thought of this idea before, if so feel free to bonk me on the head if a similar template already exists.

Template:Catscan

I just threw it together really quick for a deletion sorting page. It has five parameters, two categories, the depth for those categories (defaults to 1), and text for the link. Unfortunately it's a bit hard to show everyone how cool this is, since there's database problems right now, but the results look like this:

{{Catscan |Cat1= WikiProject Anime and manga |Cat1_depth=5 |Cat2= Articles for deletion |Link_text= Scan for AfDs}}

makes

{{Catscan }}

Since the tool isn't working I can't tell if underscores would work for the categoires. If they do then we can use the magic word {{urlencode|text}} to convert spaces into underscores. -- Ned Scott 21:34, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I just thought to test the underscore thing using de.wikipedia.org, and it does work. [3]. -- Ned Scott 21:38, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, seems to work with + too.. -- Ned Scott 21:41, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

monobook.js

While under my IP address a second ago, I noticed that I can't add anything to my monobook.js. Could I add things to my IP's monobook.js while under my logged-in account? And, would that be acceptable? ^F_L^c 21:40, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Only logged in users have individual settings like that. -- Ned Scott 21:42, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Category title searching

How much developer pain would be involved in making Special:Search for categories capable of searching either (1) on the contents of category pages or (2) on the titles of category pages? At present, it always searches on both, which is extremely unhelpful when you want to search category titles because the number of irrelevant matches on category contents almost always vastly exceeds the number of relevant matches on category titles. Yeah, Google doesn't suck. - Neparis (talk) 04:23, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you referring, in your last sentence, to the ability of Google searches to restrict results to page titles, via the intitle parameter? That, of course, makes this request a bit less urgent for developers. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:37, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and inurl too. I wish MediaWiki's search function had that, and more powerful pattern matching too. Are there no improvements at all in development? It would be a shame to be held back endlessly by the existence of Google. - Neparis (talk) 01:04, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that Google has huge resources (as do other search engines, relative to the Wikimedia Foundation) and we're using an open source search engine (Lucerne, I believe) anyway. Given all the other priorities of the developers here, I really don't think you're going to see anything improve significantly here anytime soon. And improvements that require significantly more server resources aren't going to be seen as improvements, I don't think - editors are told not to worry about performance issues with regards to edits (improving content), but that isn't the same as asking that searches be more difficult (resource-wise). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:18, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

What links here – redirects

Special:Whatlinkshere is admittedly an extremely useful page. However, important articles tend to be linked to by hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of other pages. And, although redirects are plainly visible in the aforementioned special page, they can be very hard (and in some cases simply impossible) to find in such massive link directories. Redirects are a somewhat distinct category of pages, and it is often important that all redirects leading to a page should be visible, so that they can be more easily managed. The redirects master list is more or less useless in this respect.

So, I am asking: Is there a way to display only the redirects leading to a specific page? And, in case there is not a way (and I am quite certain that there isn't), could a special page be created to that effect?

I have reasons to believe that this is an interesting proposal suggesting a useful feature. I am eager to see the feedback. Waltham, The Duke of 12:29, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

See WhatRedirectsHere. It already exists as a link on the Whatlinkshere page as (Show redirects only). Woody (talk) 12:34, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I admit that I had not noticed it. Still, why cannot be integrated into Wikipedia? It appears to be useful enough to justify such an action, and it will be even more well-known and easy-to-use that way. Waltham, The Duke of 12:44, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Again there is a fault tolerant search system that has been implemented on top of wikipedia data here : http://knecht.cis.uni-muenchen.de/exorbyte/wiki maybe that would help. This implentation is not based on more than a single query box but advanced search features based on multiple inputs (categories, ...) or other are available as long as the data is in structured form. The suggest layer below the query box is searching a full wikipedia index of article titles in realtime and with dynamic spell corrections. pretty cool no? - contact http://www.cis.uni-muenchen.de/people/guenthner.html for info. Danicc (Danicc) 12:43, 9 February 2008 (PST)

Ah, the complexity of cool tools... Or at least the complexity of their implementation. In any case, duly noted. I might check it out soon enough. Thanks for the feedback. Waltham, The Duke of 10:55, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

advanced search

Hello, as discussed above in several threads, there is a number of limitations to the search engine that make it hard to imagine anything else possible. But the wikipedia data is in part stuctured and real full text data. That opens many possibilities which without changing exiting search functions can be implements "on top". A good example is here: http://knecht.cis.uni-muenchen.de/exorbyte/wiki This implementation is not based on a single query box but advanced search features based on multiple inputs (categories, etc.) are possible. You can even have the suggestions appear classified by top relevant categories in the layer ; as long as the data is in structured form of course. Therefore full text indexing is then irrelevant. The index is structured and incrementally updatable. Notice also that suggestions are fault-tolerant - realtime spell corrected. What do you think? contact http://www.cis.uni-muenchen.de/people/guenthner.html for info. Danicc (Danicc) 12:43, 9 February 2008 (PST)

Given (a) that MediaWiki developers are have a lot of other high-priority projects; (b) the Wikipedia search engine is open-source, so it's not trivial to change it (because it's not "owned" by MediaWiki developers), and (c) there are a number of very, very large organizations - Google comes to mind - constantly working to improve their search engines (and probably spending, in a day, what the Wikimedia Foundation spends in a year), and editors are free to use those (better) search engines, I'd have to say that it's pretty unlikely that the search engine here is going to get better anytime soon. But you can always submit a bugzilla request. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:05, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

VariablesExtension

There is a help icon/link in a particular template that is used multiple times on many pages. I would like to change this only show only once per page. As such, I would like the template to store a variable counter in the article page to determine if help should be rendered. A viable solution to this would be to use functions defined in mw:Extension:VariablesExtension; however, it does not seem to be globally available in Wikipedia. May I request that it be added and if so, where? If not, what other options are available? (I am aware of workarounds such as an extra parameter to determine the help status, but I would like to avoid such a solution.) Bendono (talk) 00:44, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

This would have to be discussed on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), then requested at bugzilla. Very unlikely to happen, since developers are strongly against this extension, see bugzilla:7865 and bugzilla:8570 ∴ AlexSm 01:03, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

The Variables extension is insufficiently optimised for use on high-traffic Wikimedia wikis (in particular, it interacts nastily with our caching system, which takes something like 90% of the load). Also, objections have been made by a lot of the technical team on the grounds that it tends to turn wikitext into a programming language, rather than a language used for simple representation of formatted text. — Werdna talk 05:25, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. While I could have used the functionality, I can also appreciate the reasons against it. As it seems unlikely to be accepted, I will refrain from pursuing it further. Bendono (talk) 06:34, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Reverting

Is it possible to revert last several edits at once like: Reverted edits by User:SomeUser (talk) to last version by User:AnotherUser.? Like restore an older version of an article that was vandalized subsequently several times.--Lykantrop ^(Talk) 06:55, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Rollback will revert all on-top edits by the same user, and, if you select the unvandalised version and the last vandalism edit for a diff, you can click (undo) and do them all at once. — Werdna talk 07:04, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Remember, though, that Rollback is supposed to be used only for vandalism. DGG (talk) 15:39, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Lykantrop: sure. Look in page history. Pick the version you want to revert to. Go there. Click edit. Type a nice edit summary "Reverted edits by User:SomeUser (talk) to last version by User:AnotherUser.". Then hit save. --Kim Bruning (talk) 16:31, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Aha! That is what is called Rollback?--Lykantrop ^(Talk) 08:33, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

No, rollback is a faster method for your original question. See Wikipedia:Rollback feature. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:23, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. And the last question: Where can I see how many contributions I did?--Lykantrop ^(Talk) 12:49, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

In Special:Preferences. More details can be found with edit counters like [4]. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:58, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

See more at Help:Reverting. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:46, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikispecies categories

Hi, when reverting a persistent vandal on Wikispecies, I came across the pages wikispecies:Category:Pelican Shit and wikispecies:Category:Pig Fucking, which the vandal created. I was quite surprised to see that there were actually 61 pages in this category, and even more so that I could not find back the category in any of these pages (see for example wikispecies:User_talk:203.143.226.98, which shows up in both categories, but has only one edit). Does anyone have any idea what may have caused this? Thanks, Ucucha 14:41, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

A template was vandalized.[5] If a template changes which categories it adds, and a page transcludes the template, then an edit of that page is sometimes the only thing that will update the category page. A null edit works but not a purge. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:34, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I see. Thank you; fortunately the category is now empty again. Ucucha 15:37, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Image upload box

I just edited MediaWiki:Common.css to increase the height of the image upload box to 11em, like what is done on the Commons. This removes the vertical scrollbar on Firefox at least, so users won't have to scroll up and down when trying to fill in the information template. If this causes any problems then please revert it. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 20:17, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is related, or old, but at Special:Upload, I'm getting 1 pixel horizontal-scroll (at 1024 width, firefox, linux). -- Quiddity (talk) 20:34, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Huh, I'm not having that problem. Have you tried bypassing your cache? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 20:39, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I just tried it on Ubuntu and it worked fine. The problem is probably on your end... —Remember the dot ^(talk) 20:44, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Nope, it ain't. I'm getting a horizontal scrollbar, too, and I'm on Windows. The problem is that some License description in the drop-down are rather long, and FF expands the width of the drop-down to the length of the longest text. Depending on font size, this means the license drop-down and also the description box extend beyond the right margin of the window. It can be fixed by adding

select#wpLicense {width : 100%; overflow: hidden;}

to MediaWiki:Common.css. Lupo 23:32, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah. That's a different problem. I think the scrollbar is OK if any of the license options can't fit in the window. All I changed was the height of the "Summary" box. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 00:18, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

WP:BAG nominations

There are a number of nominations for membership of WP:BAG taking place at the talk page. All community members are invited to comment. Apologies from me for the time it took for this notice to be posted - I said last week that I would post one but have only just now got around to it. Please make any comments by way of response on WT:BAG. Thanks, Martinp23 00:40, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Missing deletion log entry

Can anyone explain why the deletion log entry for WPSI is missing? It was deleted by WJBscribe (who doesn't know why it's missing) after an RFD discussion, but I cannot find the log entry anywhere at Special:Undelete/WPSI, or in the deletion log, but the edit I made to the page is in my deleted contributions. Can anyone shed any light on this? (Feel free to take it to bugzilla if anyone thinks it needs to.) Thanks, mattbr 16:40, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

In fairly rare events, things don't get logged, it has to do with the action and the logging being 2 separate events. It usually happens if the deletion is made about the same time as a database lock. The developers are aware of this issue. Mr.Z-man 20:43, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Blimey, that's a bug and a half! Is that what happened here I wonder? I never got a good answer to it. • Anakin ^(talk) 01:47, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I've had this happen to me a couple of times when I've blocked someone. The block applies, but the log entry doesn't get written. Trying to block again gives a message that the user is already blocked.-gadfium 05:07, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Is that what happened here? (I was about to start a new thread, but saw this one..) -- Quiddity (talk) 22:54, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't get it.... Nothing seems to be missing there. • Anakin ^(talk) 15:04, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh! whoops, he must have copied my welcome message from the userpage. (I was wondering how come there wasnt a 5 September 2006 entry on the talkpage, but that's because I hadnt left it there originally ...) Sorry. -- Quiddity (talk) 22:14, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Conditional CSS in a table

Hello. Could you possibly tell me how to add CSS style to a table based on the page its pagename or url? Or maybe where I could learn how. I read about Wikipedia:Conditional tables (deprecated maybe and then to parser functions) and went over my head. To Portal:Minnesota/tab-header used as {{/tab-header}} on about five pages I would like to add "background:#fff; color:#000;" to the CSS for each tab. Thank you. -Susanlesch (talk) 10:28, 14 February 2008 (UTC) Longhand for example:

{| width="100%" style="margin:0;"
|- style="background:#eef; color:#000;"
! style="border:1px solid #bbc; border-bottom:white;" | [[Portal:Minnesota|Minnesota portal]]
! style="border:1px solid #bbc; border-bottom:none;" | [[Portal:Minnesota/Featured content|'''Featured articles''']]
! style="border:1px solid #bbc; border-bottom:none;" | [[Portal:Minnesota/Maps|'''Maps of Minnesota''']]
! style="border:1px solid #bbc; border-bottom:none;" | [[Portal:Minnesota/Wikinews|'''Wikinews''']]
! style="border:1px solid #bbc; border-bottom:none;" | [[Portal:Minnesota/Symbols|'''State symbols''']]
! style="border:1px solid #bbc; border-bottom:none;" | [[Portal:Minnesota/Things you can do|'''Things you can do''']]
|}

on Portal:Minnesota/Featured content would read:

{| width="100%" style="margin:0;"
|- style="background:#eef; color:#000;"
! style="border:1px solid #bbc; border-bottom:white;" | [[Portal:Minnesota|Minnesota portal]]
! style="background:#fff; color:#000; border:1px solid #bbc; border-bottom:none;" | [[Portal:Minnesota/Featured content|'''Featured articles''']]
! style="border:1px solid #bbc; border-bottom:none;" | [[Portal:Minnesota/Maps|'''Maps of Minnesota''']]
! style="border:1px solid #bbc; border-bottom:none;" | [[Portal:Minnesota/Wikinews|'''Wikinews''']]
! style="border:1px solid #bbc; border-bottom:none;" | [[Portal:Minnesota/Symbols|'''State symbols''']]
! style="border:1px solid #bbc; border-bottom:none;" | [[Portal:Minnesota/Things you can do|'''Things you can do''']]
|}

Put {{#ifeq:{{PAGENAME}}|Minnesota/Featured content|background:#fff; color:#000;}} etc. inside the style strings.--Patrick (talk) 11:38, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! You saved me days and probably more. -Susanlesch (talk) 13:14, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Modern skin questions

I've two questions about the "Modern" skin.

1. If I change skin from Monobook to Modern in Special:Preferences, will my scripts and gadgets continue to work without any other steps?
2. If the answer to (1) is no, which files do I have to edit to get scripts, gadgets and CSS working again?

Thanks! Pegasus «C¦T» 13:55, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

You'll have to move your JS/CSS from your monobook.js & your monobook.css to your modern.js & your modern.css. Gadgets are called on all skins, so there's nothing to move. The problem is, many scripts might not work on the new skin, you could try a special compatibility gadget named «

1. REDIRECT MediaWiki:Modern.js». (BTW, I think it should be simply moved into MediaWiki:Modern.js). There is no compatibility fix for CSS, you'll have to rewrite them if necessary ∴ AlexSm 15:06, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I concur with Alex. I would also note that I am currently using the modern skin, the navigation popups gadget & the UTC clock gadget and, in my experience, they all work well together. --Iamunknown 17:11, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

It's not moved into modern.js because it's a dirty hack and scripts should be fixed to work properly with modern (all gadgets are already fixed, and I will fix any script on request). Note also that most CSS code will need to be altered. —Random832 06:08, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Request to add "delete" link to Template:Afd2

Hi, this is a request for our resident template wizards to add a feature to {{afd2}} so as to facilitate the closing of WP:AFD discussions by administrators. {{afd2}} is the template for all AFD discussions.

I propose to add a "(delete)" link to the template that would load the deletion form with the wikilinked title of the AfD page preloaded as the reason for deletion. A similar feature exists for deleting expired WP:PRODs at {{dated prod}}. The relevant code there seems to be ([{{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|{{#if:{{{1|}}}{{{concern|}}}|wpReason={{urlencode:Expired [[WP:PROD|PROD]], concern was: {{{1|}}}{{{concern|}}}}}&|}}action=delete}} delete]). To see this feature in action, see any one of the oldest articles at WP:PRODSUM.

I tried to add the code to {{afd2}} myself but, being a lawyer and not a programmer, gave up in frustration because I couldn't figure out how to use the urlencode: function properly. Thanks! Sandstein (talk) 21:55, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmm... I recall Glen doing this more than a year ago but it got reverted. :>

I just changed Template:Afd2 to use {{la-admin}} instead although the extra buttons might be overkill. :> (I did try adding parameters to turn off each link if necessary, but using code like {{{nohistory|history link stuff}}} doesn't seem to work, dunno why. :S) Pegasus «C¦T» 01:17, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but what I really had in mind was a "delete" link preloaded with the deletion rationale, as noted above. This would relieve admins from having to manually copy the AfD title, paste it into the deletion reason field and add pairs of square brackets around it. It's a minor annoyance, of course, but it has to be done on the order of 150 times a day, and is suitable for automation. Sandstein (talk) 07:43, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

OK I added a "(delete)" link; when clicked it will offer the built-in reason "AfD discussion: [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Article Name]]". I see Metropolitan90 reverted my addition of {{la-admin}} so I don't really want to add anything more than that. :/ Pegasus «C¦T» 10:08, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank you! Sandstein (talk) 05:53, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Also, the new script in sysop.js will do this for the delete tab (bypass your cache). —Random832 06:06, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Error

Every time when i logged into wikipedia I cant found my user page, instead of this i found:"Error, Setup.php must be included from the file scope, after DefaultSettings.php". If i not logged in, this time it also happens.But all other pages e.g. talk page, watchlist are okay.Everytime I've to purge. Without purging page is not showing. Clearing cache (both browser and server) is not solved the problem. What should i do? Tanvir che (talk) 05:22, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

This was a site misconfiguration, which was corrected by a systems administrator. — Werdna talk 09:14, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

encoding of section links

It seems that neither Help:Section, nor Help:Link, both of which have sections on section linking, explain the scheme used for encoding special characters in section names.

At Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/HBC_Archive_Indexerbot there's a comment on this, whose author has meanwhile left Wikipedia:

What i'm assuming the anchor encoding scheme is: Urlencode everything but colon, forward slash, [[ and ]]. Encode all spaces to underscores. Replace the %(percent) from the urlencode to a .(dot), then replace all [[foo|bar]] and [[bar]] with bar, which a simple regex can take care of.

If someone knows exactly how the encoding works, I think it should be explained on one or both of those help pages, since it's something one may need to know in order to add a working section link.

Joriki (talk) 11:23, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Test: a:b/cde$fbar and bar

{{urlencode:a:b/c[[d]]e$f[[foo|bar]] and [[bar]]}} gives a%3Ab%2Fc%5B%5Bd%5D%5De%24f%5B%5Bfoo%7Cbar%5D%5D+and+%5B%5Bbar%5D%5D

{{anchorencode:a:b/c[[d]]e$f[[foo|bar]] and [[bar]]}} gives a:b/cde$fbar_and_bar.

This header has id="Test:_a:b.2Fcde.24fbar_and_bar" (links: #Test: a:b/cde$fbar and bar, #Test:_a:b.2Fcde.24fbar_and_bar, or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Test:_a:b.2Fcde.24fbar_and_bar). So the rule might become: replace all [[foo|bar]] and [[bar]] with bar, then apply anchorencode.--Patrick (talk) 13:26, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

I had a look at the source code. The relevant files are Parser.php and Sanitizer.php. It's kinda hard to follow, but I've tried to, and extracted the following rules:

1. Links are stripped out and replaced just with the text that you see. E.g., '[[foo|bar]]' becomes 'bar'.
2. HTML is stripped out with the regexp /<.*?>/.
3. Spaces are replaced with underscores.
4. HTML entities are turned into their proper characters. It's using a specialised set of functions to do this, but I bet you could get away with just using PHP's html-entity-decode.
5. urlencode is applied.
6. '%3A' (the urlencoded form of ':' (colon)) is turned back into ':'
7. All the '%' signs generated by urlencode are turned into '.' (period)
8. Extra headings of the same name are numbered by adding '_2' or '_3' etc.

Somebody else should check that, to make sure I've got it right, but the code is there. • Anakin ^(talk) 17:37, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Note also that between the old and new preprocessor there are some slight differences:

{{anchorencode:_<_&lt;_>_&gt;_}} 
{{anchorencode:_<span>_&lt;span&gt;_}} 
{{anchorencode:_<img>_&amplt;img&ampgt;_}}

Produces:

           Old_PP
_.26lt.3B_.26lt.3B_.26gt.3B_.26gt.3B_ 
_.3Cspan.3E_.26lt.3Bspan.26gt.3B_ 
_.26lt.3Bimg.26gt.3B_.26lt.3Bimg.26gt.3B_

           New_PP
_.3C_.26lt.3B_.3E_.26gt.3B_ 
_.3Cspan.3E_.26lt.3Bspan.26gt.3B_ 
_.3Cimg.3E_.26lt.3Bimg.26gt.3B_

Valid (whitelisted) html tags appear the same, but invalid < and > appear different than their entities. Odd. --Splarka (rant) 08:25, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Finding recent links to pages

Is there any way to find recent edits that link to a particular page? Or, is there any way that a technical capability for this could be developed?--Pharos (talk) 21:43, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

If I understand you right, there is "Related changes" in the toolbox to the left of the page, which finds edits on linked pages, but I don't think there's any way to do it the other way around. • Anakin ^(talk) 22:29, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Let my clarify. Imagine there's a big brouhaha on the Burma article, and it's being discussed all over the various random fora we have for such disputes. Doing 'What links here' on Burma would be totally useless (because it's an important article that's linked to in a million places), but if we had a 'What links here' that was restricted to links added in recent edits, that would be something useful. That's what I'm looking for.--Pharos (talk) 23:33, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Pharos, are you talking about finding an RFC that mentions Burma, an ANI report about edit-warring on Burma, an RFA where the candidate is being criticized for their contributions to Burma? That kind of pretty-much currently un-linked thing? Franamax (talk) 00:15, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

If it's directly about one particular article (rather than about some general trend), it's usually linked. And I'm also thinking about user-talk discussions, stuff on the Village Pump, etc, which tends to be much less organized. For example, a look at recent links to Muhammad (see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-02-11/Muhammad image) would be quite interesting currently.--Pharos (talk) 00:32, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Whatlinkshere seems to be sorted either by page creation or by when the link was added, I can't tell which. —Random832 15:57, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Date of page creation. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:23, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

enhanced recent changes

Is there a way to selectively choose when this is enabled (like with a url parameter)? I want it enabled for my watchlist, but disabled for some related changes views. —Random832 15:56, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think so. Wikia has &hideenhanced= URL parameter, but I'm pretty sure they had to modify MediaWiki to do that. The only possible way imho is to disable enhanced recent changes, and write a separate userscript to "enhance" watchlist manually. —AlexSm 17:10, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

terminal font

When I use the coding

<font face="terminal">

the font displays differently on windows and apple. Why? Or is it just how the browser interprets it? Flaminglawyer (talk · contribs) 17:56, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

You could use the teletype wiki font instead:

<tt>teletype font</tt>

How does that work for you? — Frecklefσσt | Talk 18:13, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Also see generic font families. <span style="font-family: terminal, monospace"> is the "safe" way to do it. --Splarka (rant) 19:21, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Remove "Permission" line from "own work" upload form

Currently when you go to Wikipedia:Upload and click "It is entirely my own work", the Information template skeleton includes a "Permission" line. The problem is that from looking through Special:Log/Upload, it's easy to see that most users who upload images they made themselves are confused by the Permission line and put things like "Yes" or "Granted by uploader". Since when uploading your own work, permission is implicit, and the uploader has to add a license anyway, I'd like to leave the Permission line off the "own work" form. Here's how this would look:

• It is entirely my own work

This would mean less confusion, and consequently more useful contributions. What do you think? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 01:17, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Excellent idea. I've been guilty of that many times myself not knowing what it was for. I clicked around the form to find answers futilely. Perhaps a blow-by-blow with wikilinks could be added to the Step 1 form above. For example, right now it tries to explain other_versions with:

• Other versions: Optional. List any other versions of this work that have been uploaded.

This really ought to give specifics, examples, and typical cases. For example, if I upload a photo of the Eiffel Tower, should I link it to other such photos? Maybe it should be linked to another Paris photo? What about other angles I've taken? (See what I mean?) —EncMstr 01:34, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

OK. I removed the "Permission" line and took a stab at clarifying the "Other versions" explanation. Do you have any other suggestions on how to reword the interface? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 01:45, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow! Impressive. How about:

Other versions: Optional. List other uploaded versions of this work (for example, a cropped, brightened, darkened, etc. version of a photo) so an editor can easily find all available versions. Use media links ([[:image:imagename.png]]: note leading colon).

I'm a bit of a novice in this area; maybe someone who really knows the intent of the field will chime in? —EncMstr 01:58, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Hmm...maybe we could put Template:Information#Syntax description onto its own page and then transclude it onto the instructions page. Does that sound like a good idea to you? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 02:07, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

The idea seems good, but the documentation there leaves a lot of room for improvement: It doesn't answer basic questions. Why do this? How does it help? The lone example is simple and non-illuminating. —EncMstr 02:28, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

What if we made the upload instruction pages editable so that the community as a whole could collaborate on them? Semi-protection ought to keep out most of the vandalism. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 03:00, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Fixing bug 10843 on our end

Six months ago, bug 10843 was filed, stating that the "Upload file" link does not work when using the secure proxy server. Nothing has been done about this. I suggest adding the following code to MediaWiki:Common.js to fix the problem:

//Fix "Upload file" link when using the secure proxy
//This is a workaround that can be removed when bug 10843 is fixed
addOnloadHook(function()
{
    document.getElementById("t-upload").getElementsByTagName("a")[0].href = wgArticlePath.replace("$1", "Wikipedia:Upload")
})

This will prevent users who prefer using secure connections from having to choose between security and being able to upload files easily. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 03:09, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes I noticed it was broken! I was thinking of submitting a bug report about it myself. Now I see that it wouldn't have been paid attention to anyway. Support adding this code, in the mean time. • Anakin ^(talk) 19:13, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, I implemented the JavaScript fix. Hopefully the developers will take notice and fix this properly. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 19:34, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

It would make sense to check if document.getElementById("t-upload") exists. The current if (skin == "monobook" || skin == "modern") obviously doesn't work for about Chick, Simple and MySkin skins. —AlexSm 03:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

That was just my quick fix to get it to stop breaking javascript in Classic. I wasn't sure which skins had a t-upload (and didn't feel like checking them all), I just knew the layout of monobook and modern were about the same. Feel free to replace it with something more complete Mr.Z-man 03:31, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

First section

I recently tried to edit the first section (lead) of an article. I have the "Add an [edit] link for the introduction section of a page" checked on my gadgets (and I did the control + shift + r thing), but when I click the edit link for the lead, it brings me to the next section. Charles Stewart (talk) 07:52, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I assume you're referring to Emerson College. I don't know why, but sandbox testing suggests that it's because the first header ('Origins') is level three. Changing it to a level two header fixes the problem. Algebraist 14:50, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, it works now. Charles Stewart (talk) 16:56, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Using subst with REVISIONID

Hello, I am having trouble getting this to produce anything but a null:

{{subst:REVISIONID}}

I know that in the preview, it is supposed to return null, but why does it return a null when I save? It works when you exclude the subst and just do a regular {{REVISIONID}}. But I want to save the REVISIONID of a particular version as it is being saved, and not have that number change when subsequent versions are saved.

Just so you know, this version of this page has REVISIONID = -.

Thanks, Ron Duvall (talk) 05:17, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Related bug: bugzilla:12694. MER-C 07:16, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

To quote a developer from #mediawiki, per subst:REVISIONID, "Tough". --Splarka (rant) 08:55, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

A comment was left on the bug page saying, "you will be able to make "prooflinks" such as {{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|diff=next&oldid={{subst:REVISIONID}}}} (that's possibly the main purpose of this substitution)."

That is indeed what it is intended for. See Wikipedia:Delegable proxy/Table and Wikipedia:Delegable proxy/Table/Designate, which includes this line:

{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>fullurl:{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>PAGENAMEE}}|diff={{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>REVISIONID}}}}

Is there another way to do this? We were hoping to be able to add the diffs in one edit, rather than having to go back and add them. Thanks, Ron Duvall (talk) 16:40, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

I think that the problem is that when the magic words are expanded, the system doesn't know in advance what the revision ID is going to be, so has to give a blank. --ais523 19:54, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps there could be a workaround? What if there were a magic word for the next REVISIONID in a page history after the last REVISIONID? I.e., as I'm editing (or as I'm saving, whichever the case may be), I know that the previous REVISIONID for that page was 314159265. So, I save it with this new magic word, and it knows that on a permanent basis, it is supposed to display the next REVISIONID in the page history after 314159265. A potential issue with this, I guess, is that what if someone saves another version with a different REVISIONID while you're editing? Would that be a problem? Ron Duvall (talk) 01:52, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ClueBot V

There is a BRFA for ClueBot V and Martinp23 has asked for community input. Please take the time and take a look at the BRFA and comment. Thanks. -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 21:35, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Easy access to talk

Is there an easy way to wikilink to a talk page (particularly in the project space for XFDs, RFAs, etc.). I know /subpage links to a subpage, for example. Charles Stewart (talk) 23:14, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Every namespace has a corresponding talk namespace, as in Talk:Example, User talk:Example or Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical). — Edokter • Talk • 23:39, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Ah, you actually mean linking to this page's talk page without typing the full link? Yes, there is: [[{{subst:TALKPAGENAME}}]] gives Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical). — Edokter • Talk • 23:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, if you are going to do that, subst it please. Prodego ^talk 23:47, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Edokter, that's what I was going for. And I also did a little research on my own, and found that [[{{Subst::Pagename}}]] works in reverse. Charles Stewart (talk) 03:04, 19 February 2008 (UTC)