Wikipedia

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 27

< Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)
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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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.

< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU, AV, AW, AX · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212

Space between paragraphs please (Refereces)

The CSS seems to put very little space between paragraphs. Hardly visible. This makes some articles very hard to read. Suggest at least 1/2 extra line. The HTML default is not too bad.

(On IE7, most common browser. Also on ancient Netscape.)

(A secondary issue, it would be very interesting to be able to find page hits per page. Probably not on the page itself but accessible. A bot could scan the access logs from time to time and do a simple sort/merg.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tuntable (talk • contribs) 23:30, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

See [1] for the hit counter.-gadfium 00:29, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
You can override the default spacing by editing your monobook.css. These formatting issues have been debated at length for a long while and consensus at present supports the current layout. You're welcome to add your commentary on the matter to MediaWiki talk:Common.css. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:26, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I've added the following to the css page. The problem with paragraphs is worst when you have references. That is because the references slightly increase the line height. In this paragraph I have added some dummy references to demonstrate this point here[1] and here[2]. When you have lots of references in an article (as you should) it becomes very hard to see where paragraphs start.

Fiddling with my preferences is not the start, I care about what the huge number of other readers will see. I would therefor urge that the default CSS be changed to increase the height slightly. Note how the previous paragraph has been split apart.

Thanks for the pointer to stats.grock.se. 04:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)Tuntable

Seems like setting line-height: 1 for sub/sup elements is still the way to solve this. With the exception of IE of course which is a pain as usual. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:16, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

user/chick.css?

WP:CLASS shows user/chick.css occupies the ninth and final position in the stylesheet cascade order. Is that advice correct? Do settings in chick.css always override settings from earlier stylesheets? I didn't notice any effects from chick.css. BTW, is the warning on WP:CLASS, "This article or section needs to be updated", stale? - Neparis (talk) 03:46, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

In the monobook-derived skins, the user css is the last to load. However, load order is not the only hierarchy determinator. Specificity dictates it, (#bodyContent a {} will override a {} for example), as well as !important (can ever override hard-coded style="" attributes). Please note, chick.css only affects you if you're using the chick skin.
Also, I was the last to rewrite that section of WP:CLASS earlier this month (since I was sick of the satelness). However, most of the rest of the page could stand to be updated, so the notice probably still applies. --Splarka (rant) 07:24, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. I was using ?skin=chick instead of ?useskin=chick. - Neparis (talk) 20:57, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Porting the Italian Wikipedia CSS

For some reason, I think the Italian Wikipedia (complete with it's rounded corners and stuff) is actually quite nice, and pasting it into the user monobook.css actually works quite nicely. Though, I do get an error in the corner if I visit a page with semi-protection in the iconified mode (Cause I think that's a en.wikipedia exclusive feature). Think someone could fix this up to support the Iconified protection correctly? ViperSnake151 20:29, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Rounded corners are nice, but I think we should look more closely at other differences to see if they're desirable for en.wikipedia.org. For example, I really like having the "edit" link immediately to the right of a section title (see, for example, it:Storia di Verona), rather than all the way to the right. Placing it right next to the title (subtly) encourages people to edit a section, I'd guess. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:06, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Database error when clicking "Related changes"

I am not sure if this is the proper places for this, but I read /Before posting and decided this was a good place to start. For about the last 40 minutes, I have not been able to use the "Related changes" link on the toolbox links. I have reset my cache, reset my internet connect, reset FireFox, to no avail. I get this error message:

Database error
A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:
(SQL query hidden)
from within function "wfSpecialRecentchangeslinked". MySQL returned error "1064: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '<<<<<<< .mine rc_new_len ======= rc_new_len, rc_log_ty (10.0.0.2)".

Is anyone else experiencing this, or could there be something wrong on my end? --Tombstone (talk) 00:25, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

An SVN merge conflict occured and left that junk in the live codebase. It has been fixed now. Voice-of-All 02:25, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Thank you, Rgrds. --Tombstone (talk) 02:34, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

3RR formatting question

I just submitted a 3RR complaint on User:Redthoreau on the article Che Guevara. I have never been successful in these requests, as they have always been "malformed". Could someone check my 3RR complaint to see if I did it correctly? I submitted it just a few minutes or so ago. Thanks, Mattisse (Talk) 00:49, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

  Resolved
Sbowers3 (talk) 01:18, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Formatting question

I often come across articles where the line of the section division overlaps the photos or other things in the way example: ragweed, photo under taxobox on right. I know they're not supposed to look like that, and I've tried to fix them, but I don't really know why it's doing that to fix it other than looking over the code and hoping something jumps out. I know it's nit-picky, but it bothers me and I'm willing to fix it. Can anyone tell me how? Also, is there a good way to finding the formatting error with things like this? Thanks Garnet avi (talk) 08:33, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Another formatting question: when to and when not to add a TOCbox tag. Some pages seem to generate the TOC fine on their own, others not so much. What's up with that? Garnet avi (talk) 08:35, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
See WP:TOC. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:52, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I figured that out after I posted. It was merely a hasty addition to my original query, which still stands. Garnet avi (talk) 03:33, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
I couldn't figure out what you were talking about until I resized my browser. I use IE7 and it looks as though some widths display correctly and some widths show the line across the image. If you (or others) have the same experience, that would point to an IE bug. Of course, the solution for ragweed is to tear it out and destroy it before it starts pollinating. Even the article is making my eyes puffy. :) Franamax (talk) 07:23, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Ag! Resizing the window does it! Evil upon evil. That really drives me up the wall. I'm amazed you even thought of resizing. I didn't even think to associate that formatting error to window size. Thanks for braving the ragweed to answer my question. Garnet avi (talk) 00:26, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Tabs At The Top

There should be tabs saying, for example, this page:

  • project page
  • discussion
  • edit project page
  • edit discussion page
  • history project page
  • history dicussion
  • +

Right now, the functionality is a bit lost. I mean the tabs can be moved around and organized, but right now, it's happened and possible and will happen that if the functionality is not there, those few precious seconds can cost a great idea from being exchanged, either on the dicussion page, or written down on the project page, let's say.

I know the developers might not see this, would someone please put this post on BugZilla? Thanks so much in advance.68.148.164.166 (talk) 10:03, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Slightly incoherent but if I interpret it correctly, you would like:
  1. To have two edit links, one for the "project page" and one for the "discussion page" regardless of which page you are viewing, and:
  2. To be able to change the order in which these links appear.
Javascript could do both very easily, unless also you want these features to exist in mediawiki by default. By the way there is no "history discussion" page. — CharlotteWebb 14:59, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
Oh, no, I just mean, yes, your 1st point. At the very least. 68.148.164.166 (talk) 10:12, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I think a very similar question was posted on another VP page (at least I seem to remember answering it). As CharlotteWebb has indicated, an individual editor can tailor the tabs using Javascript (what is often referred to here as a "user script"). That way, everyone else doesn't have to deal with a change in tabs (assuming you could get consensus for a change, which you can't).
See Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts as a starting place. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 13:01, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
How couldn't I get consensus?68.148.164.166 (talk) 10:12, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Global counter variables

Hi, I'm writing on behalf of some of our best humanities editors, Awadewit, Qp10qp and I daresay several others, who would like two automatically numbered reference systems that could operate in parallel, one for the actual bibliographic references and one for scholarly footnotes. Examples of this style may be seen at William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, where the Cite.php approach was used for the references and {{Ref label}}/{{Note label}} used for the scholarly footnotes. The problem with the latter, of course, is that it's not automatically incremented; if a new footnote is introduced in the middle, all the subsequent footnotes have to be re-lettered, which costs time and opens the door to regrettable human errors. I mentioned the {{explain}} template, but that seems sub-optimal.

I've done some preliminary research and this problem seems to have been considered obliquely at a few Bugzilla pages, e.g., bugs 5997, 6271, 6272, and 12796, but I can't make out whether a solution has been worked out?

As an experiment, I was going to try to make my own template solution, an updated version of the Ref/Note templates, but clearly I need a global HTML page variable that I can increment and induce to format, similar to the HTML tag 

<ol type=A\>

. In fact, I tried to subvert the "ordered list" tag for this purpose, but I couldn't figure out how to override its tab formatting. So: what I'd like is a mechanism for setting up, incrementing, displaying and resetting an internal counter on a page, something like the "ol" tag but without the formatting, e.g., <counterdef name="footnotes" type=A start=1>, <incrementcounter name="footnotes">, <displaycounter name="footnotes"> and maybe <setcounter name="footnotes" start=23>, or their equivalents done in templates. From those elements, I could make a good Ref/Note template system, I think.

If anyone has any good suggestions, I'd be very grateful — thanks muchly! :) Willow (talk) 10:04, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I think we'd be better off with just adding a parallel system with <note> tags, that behaves exactly like the current system using <ref> tags. That way, if the cite.php system is changed (I think there are strong arguments for doing so, to make it more intuitive), the change would happen immediately to the parallel system. Plus it would be much easier for editors if there were simply two systems, one for footnotes, and the other for notes, that behaved virtually identically. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:15, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree completely, that does seem like a better idea! I'd just assumed that such a basic addition in the Mediawiki software would take a long time to implement and to be adopted here at the English Wikipedia. On the other hand, I don't know much about the software itself, so perhaps it would be easy for a Supreme Software Guru to code? I think it's a very important extension to make, to give our best editors free rein in their artistry and to make it easy for scholars new to WP to contribute in a format they're used to. :) Does anyone have any suggestions on how to move John's idea forward? Willow (talk) 15:37, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I've actually been working off and on on something like that. Once I get all the numbering to work out right, this would allow something like <ref group=note/> to display like [note1]. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 16:04, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi Steve,

I think your solution is more elegant and better in the long run, being more general and powerful, but I think I agree with John that, for this purpose, we should keep it as simple as possible, and as similar to the <ref></ref> system as possible. Accordingly, I dashed off a new PHP extension based very closely on Cite.php, which may be found here, with internationalization here. The new tags are <note>, </note> and <footnotes />, just like <ref>, </ref> and <references />. I tried to be as scrupulous as I could, but I don't know how to debug or test the new code; could you do that for me, Steve, and make any necessary changes/improvements to make it work correctly? I really hope it won't be much work for you, since I made such minor changes in Ævar's code. Thank you very, very much! :) Willow (talk) 21:41, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I apologize if this sounds like nitpicking, but <notes/> is probably much less problematical than <footnotes/>. WP:Footnotes says not only Footnotes add material that explains a point in greater detail, but that would be distracting if included in the main text (that's notes) but also Footnotes are also used to cite sources. In other words, I think we should continue to use the generic "footnotes" to cover both the existing "ref" system and the proposed "note" system, with the ref system being for citations and the notes system for elaborations. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
Technically, your solution seems simple enough. But it's not easy to get a new extension installed, and the people who decide what extensions to install tend to be very averse to duplicated code. So my hope is that once I get the last few kinks worked out (which at this point are basically just getting the linkages right with a mix of named/unnamed refs in different groups) it will just drop into the current system. I'm sorry I can't be more optimistic about that, but if we were to come up with a simpler solution it would need to work by reusing/extending the existing code. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 23:24, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
But it's not easy to get a new extension installed, and the people who decide what extensions to install tend to be very averse to duplicated code - Since "notes" and "citations" are now two roughly parallel functions, it really makes sense to have two roughly parallel extensions (the notes system would use a,b,c,d, etc., not 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., as the numbering). I'm sorry if such duplication seems inelegant or otherwise wrong to developers, but I hope that they are also willing to take into account that existing wikicode is complicated now; making it even more complicated for the sake of adding features is an inferior solution - from the user viewpoint - to cloning existing functionality, which requires minimal new learning by editors. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm perfectly willing to changes <footnotes /> to <notes />; I do see the difficulty with WP:Footnotes! My only worry was that newbie editors might accidentally substitute <notes> for <note>, being so similar and all. I realized another mistake I made yesterday: I forgot to change the superscript to letters! I'll try to fix both mistakes today, when I have a free moment. I think there's room for both solutions, <note> and <ref group=notes>, although I suppose that the functionality of the latter and the simplicity of the former could be combined by wrapping the latter in a template. Anyway, I'm going to get my feet wet with trying to have the <notes> code adopted here at the English Wikipedia; we can always change back when the <ref group=notes> code is finished, if that's the consensus. I daresay <notes> won't be used very often, so converting the few over won't be hard. Willow (talk) 12:58, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry if I was unclear earlier; there was consensus in an earlier discussion that it should be done this way, and <note> should just be implemented as an alias for <ref group=note>; I mostly haven't been thinking as much about that since it's pretty trivial to add. Two parallel extensions would work, as long as one simply called the other without too much replicated code, but I think it's more likely to wind up as one enhanced extension. That's really just a maintenance issue, since they don't like to have to maintain the same piece of code in two places. Anyway, I think I got all of the linking issues resolved last night, so I hope I can move this along a little more quickly now. However, I haven't added support for using letters yet (currently it's still the [note 1] style labels) although it shouldn't be too difficult to do that. BTW, if you wanted to work on that, it would probably be easier to pass it along as a diff from the current code, to make it easier to see what was changed. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 16:00, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Hey Steve, I wish that I'd read your message before fixing those mistakes! :P Oh well, it wasn't so bad; the changes I made were pretty minor and didn't take too much time. The new versions of the PHP and internationalization files are still here and here. I was still concerned about developers getting confused between, e.g., noteKey and notesKey, so I left the Footnotes in the code itself. Thus, the general scheme was to map Cite to Footnote, Ref to Note, and Refs/References to Footnotes. However, I made <notes /> the user command (instead of <footnotes />) by changing the parserhook 

$wgParser->setHook( 'notes' , array( &$this, 'footnotes' ) );

thus, <notes /> invokes the callback function "footnotes" defined earlier in the Footnotes.php file. To change the labels to letters in the references themselves, I changed "++$this->mOutCnt" in the function linkNote (formerly linkRef) into the full-blown 

$this->footnotesFormatEntryAlternateBacklinkLabel( ++$this->mOutCnt )

taking advantage of that nifty array; the only drawback is that, given its present definition, we could only have ~26 different explanatory footnotes. If we were going to use this code, I'd lengthen it using double letters such as "aa", "ab", ... giving us 26*26=676 new possibilities. To do the converse in the <notes /> section, i.e., to use pure integers (instead of letters) to link multiple references to the same footnote, I changed the function footnotesFormatEntryNumericBacklinkLabel (formerly referencesFormatEntryNumericBacklinkLabel) to use "$ret = $wgContLang->formatNum( $offset );" and kept the'cite_references_link_many_format' as its default in Cite.i18n.php. Perhaps these solutions might be helpful in your own adaptations?

It was fun learning about how Wikipedia actually works and learning a little PHP at the same time. :) It doesn't seem so scary now, which it did only yesterday. I've no regrets about working on it and my only worry now is that we get your new system adopted as quickly as possible. I know that the humanities editors are super-eager to start on their next project, and I wouldn't want their enthusiasm thwarted by a long delay! :) Willow (talk) 18:17, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Throttling of user account creation

What do people think of the idea of limiting the rate at which new user accounts can be created by a single IP address? I was thinking that a rate of something like one per 15-30 minutes wouldn't inconvenience normal users, but would make it significantly harder for persistent vandals to create huge sockfarms such as Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Peter zhou or Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Tile join Tim Vickers (talk) 23:05, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

This is currently throttled with a daily maximum. --brion (talk) 23:32, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
...and the limit is a pain - I keep hitting it fulfilling WP:ACC requests. Stwalkerster [ talk ] 00:54, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Little m's

Am I hallucinating or have the lowercase m's on my watchlist (used to denote minor revisions) gotten tiny, unbold, and possibly in a new font? They used to be decently large and bold, which allowed a poor squinty-eyed editor to see them at a glance. If this isn't just a sudden browser quirk but a policy change, was it discussed and where? It's awful. Rivertorch (talk) 01:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

You're not hallucinating, and the "b" for bot-edit has also become unreadable (I use Safari on WinXP). Maybe it is a new policy to make Wikipedia inaccessible to the vast majority of the world's population who have less than superlative eyesight. Or maybe it's a balls-up. DuncanHill (talk) 01:08, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
  • mNb
This change has already been reverted, just have to wait for the next scap. --Splarka (rant) 07:54, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Great! Issue resolved, happy ending, and it's not even Friday yet. Rivertorch (talk) 18:32, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, all recent changes list pages should show correctly now. The only visual difference is that items don't bleed over to the far left out of their block, which was intended. Voice-of-All 21:47, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Watchlist

 
Screendump of my watchlist
 
Ditto, showing borders of tables

Why does my watchlist suddenly look like a mess ? - Erik Baas (talk) 01:06, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Who's bright idea was it to use non-breakable spaces for formatting ? :-( - Erik Baas (talk) 01:08, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Should be fixed now. Voice-of-All 02:18, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
It is, thank you. I'll fix the blue background in my mnobook.css. - Erik Baas (talk) 14:19, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

3RR question again

Please, would some teach me how to pace 3RR warnings. I do not understand the direction so I am never able to fine one when harassed. I filled one today and it was rejected because I had done something wrong. Please, I need to under stand this. I have been at wikipedia 2 years and have never managed to file one that was not malformed. So I am defenseless against 3RR editors.

Please, please help. Sincerely, Mattisse (Talk) 05:31, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

The problematic report is at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR#User:Redthoreau reported by User:Mattisse (Result: page protected). Is there something specific in the reply by Coppertwig you don't understand or don't know how to fix? Also, the "1st revert" and "3rd revert" is the same edit. List reverts in order of time, and don't list more than one among consecutive edits by the reported editor. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:42, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes. I am not clear what you are saying above. When you say list in order, do you mean up or down? Besides two edits being the same, was there anything else I did wrong? I did eventually enter 8 edits and had another 5 or so to go. If one is a duplicate, does that throw out the whole 3RR complaint, the 7 other examples?
I had to copy someone else's entry as I do not understand the template -- after trying to use if for a long time, having edit conflicts etc. My complaint kept being removed so I had to repeatedly do it over. Why were my 3RR complaints removed before I had finished compiling them. (I learned that you cannot file them all at once because of edit conflicts.) There were a good 20 more edits, but my entry kept being removing, I had to retrieve it and do the whole thing over again several times, meanwhile trying to complile the ever growing list of subsequent 3RR examples as the editor continued to edit. Do you have suggestions for this situation?
Coppertwig did not address the question of how do complete a 3RR question correctly. I said do not know how to make a 3RR report that is not "malformed". Coppertwig said he did not know what that word meant so he could not help me there. The rest of his post was the standard stuff directed toward newbies. (I have +44,00 unique edits). I still do not know how to file 3RR complains. He also said using TW for warnings was not a good way. That is the only way I know to template. He did not explain how to give warnings correctly. Please give me information on how to template correctly. I would be very grateful. Thanks! Mattisse (Talk) 17:06, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
The 1st revert is listed first and should be the one which was performed first among the reported reverts. Use the preview button and only save after the report is completed. If that gives an edit conflict then it should usually be possible to save a new edit with the same report so quickly that it doesn't give a new conflict. "malformed" means it doesn't follow the requirements, for example because some of the names and diffs have not been inserted correctly in Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR#Example. There is no software check for malformed reports. As Coppertwig said, you reported consecutive edits (meaning nobody else edited the page between) by the same editor. Wikipedia:Three-revert rule#What is a revert? says "Consecutive reverts by one editor are generally treated as one revert for the purposes of this rule." The idea is that it shouldn't matter whether an editor reverts two things in the same edit or spreads it in two edits right after each other. "1st revert" [2] and "2nd revert" [3] in your report [4] are consecutive and can therefore only count as one revert. Another time you can pick one of them in the report and ignore the other. "3rd revert" is the same edit as the 1st. "4th revert" was made before the others, causing confusion and maybe leading to being ignored. 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th revert were all consecutive [5] so they can only count as one. Even with the out-of-order 4th revert included, there can only be 3 counted reverts in your report. (1-3), 4, (5-9). Note: I haven't examined the article history enough to see which edits were reverts. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:05, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Oh well. It is hopeless then. What you are describing is above my ability. I also do not know how to template someone except by TW, which I have been told is wrong. I cannot find out another way. Well, I will just keep to myself, write my own articles and stay away from others. That is mostly what I have been doing for most of my 40,000 edits, so I can learn for myself and keep away from the ugliness here. Thanks anyway. Mattisse (Talk) 01:57, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Changes not appearing in watchlist

The watchlist is not showing some changes made to articles I'm tracking. Can you help me understand what's up?

Here's an example. Gerriet42 has been editing the articles Red Hair and Sunscreen. Looking at my watchlist, none of his changes are showing up. Changes by other users are appearing, but not those from Gerriet42.

Please let me know if there is anything else you need to help diagnose what's going on.

Thanks! Wshallwshall (talk) 13:13, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Red Hair redirects to Red hair and has not been edited since December.[6] If only Red Hair is on a watchlist then edits to the redirect target will not be listed. If "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes" under the Watchlist tab at Special:Preferences is not checked then you only see the latest edit to a page on your watchlist. My watchlist is too large to see whether the Gerriet42 edits from yesterday appear if it's checked. The edits are not marked as minor or bot so there shouldn't be an option to hide them from watchlists. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:27, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Diff from the History of my talk page is not consistent with actual output

Hi, a friend left me a message on my talk page. The talk page is fine as far as I can tell. But the diff tells another story. According to the diff my friend changed some section headings and moved others. Yet the talk page shows no signs of this. On top of that I looked into his edits in edit mode and could not find any trace of the changes as they appear on this mysterious diff. Any help into this baffling case would be greatly appreciated, as always. Dr.K. (talk) 17:39, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Looks like some sort of bug in the diff code; if you save the wikicode of the two revisions into files and run a diff by hand, the only change is the addition of the new section at the bottom. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:38, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
That's exactly what I thought but you proved it and you also gave me the technical description. Thank you very much Carl. Take care. Tasos, (Dr.K. (talk) 18:47, 20 March 2008 (UTC))
I also saw the bad diff. Bad diffs are occasionally reported here. The error disappeared after I purged the diff page by adding &action=purge to the url: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Tasoskessaris&diff=199616238&oldid=199030851&action=purge. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:54, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Awesome. Thank you very much PrimeHunter for your kind follow up. Your technical skill is great and I really appreciate your help in clearing up this gremlin. All in a day's work for you I guess. Take care for now. Dr.K. (talk) 20:21, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia watchlist software change?

I am, as of yesterday, getting a Wikipedia generated error message every time I go to my watchlist: "You seem to be using the javascript-enhanced watchlist, which is incompatible with the category watchlist script at present; please uninstall it." What changed that this is happening, is there anything I can do to stop getting the error message short of uninstalling and what happens if I keep both, i.e., one or both won't function? Something else? --Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:33, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I had that also, but it appears just to have stopped :S Tiddly-Tom 19:09, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
This was triggered by the same software change (now reverted) as #Little m's section above. This diff in User:Ais523/catwatch.js was made in response to this change. Note that original poster seems to be using a personal copy of this script. —AlexSm 19:26, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the info and yes, it has stopped.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:25, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Watchlist background

I'm sure that the last time I looked, the entries on my watchlist didn't have a white background. It currently looks awful against the pale blue page background. I understand there was a substantial revision to the watchlist display code recently - is this the cause? Or am I only just noticing something that's been there all along? Happy‑melon 20:38, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Tables were only recently added to enhanced RC/Watchlist. To fix this background issue, please either support or simply fulfil this request yourself: MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css#Light BG fix. —AlexSm 21:29, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
In future, please report such regressions so we can fix them at the roots! https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ --brion (talk) 22:52, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Light blue bg is a site specific thing, so I thought it should be fixed locally. —AlexSm 23:46, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Gadget and List-class

The gadget in the preference that allows you to "display an article's grade/rating/assessment on the article page by parsing the grade stored on the talk page" marks List-Class articles as unassessed. Now that WP:1.0 allows List-Class in their parameters, many more articles will use this tag, so can the gadget be changed to show it? (And by the way, who would make such a change? Is there some group of editors who can edit the script in which wikipedia is written or would it have to go through a Mediawiki patch?) --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 20:39, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

This particular gadget is MediaWiki:Gadget-metadata.js, which can be edited by all administrators. I believe there are one or two editors who are active developers of this script - perhaps try posting to MediaWiki talk:Gadget-metadata.js. Happy‑melon 20:50, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
I've added list and disambiguation page detection to the script at User:Pyrospirit/metadata.js, which is basically the development version of the script. Unfortunately, the script is refusing to work for some reason. Still trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 04:09, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Special external link

I'm confused by an external link in the MTASC article. The following wikitex produces a link to http://www.organicdesign.co.nz/Extension:Flashlets.php: 

[[OrganicDesign:Extension:Flashlets.php]]

What's the deal? ~MDD4696 04:43, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

See meta:Interwiki map. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:56, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Strong numbers in watchlist

I noticed that when removing a lot of text, the watchlist shows the number in a strong span like <strong class="mw-plusminus-neg">(-14,939)</strong>. However, when adding a lot of text it doesn't use the same (as in <span class="mw-plusminus-pos">(+120,002)</span>). Shouldn't both be bolded via strong (note that I have disabled color and size increase via CSS). Just wondering. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 20:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Looks like no:
if( $szdiff < $wgRCChangedSizeThreshold ) {
	return '<strong class=\'mw-plusminus-neg\'>(' . $formatedSize . ')</strong>';
} elseif( $szdiff === 0 ) {
	return '<span class=\'mw-plusminus-null\'>(' . $formatedSize . ')</span>';
} elseif( $szdiff > 0 ) {
	return '<span class=\'mw-plusminus-pos\'>(+' . $formatedSize . ')</span>';
} else {
	return '<span class=\'mw-plusminus-neg\'>(' . $formatedSize . ')</span>';
}
--Splarka (rant) 07:22, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Category box issue

What's causing the category box in this article to be so large and to cover part of the infobox? Black Falcon (Talk) 05:39, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think I'm seeing that in Firefox 2.0 or IE 6.0; anybody else? – Luna Santin (talk) 09:02, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Neither clearing the browser's cache nor editing the page fixed it for me (I use IE 7.0). Black Falcon (Talk) 17:25, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Also appears for me (IE7), looks like this. Happy‑melon 17:36, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Seems to be an issue with how IE handles the clearing of the floated infobox, if your window is wide enough for the article body to be shorter than the box. It should push the entire category box down until it's out of the way of the floated box (as Firefox and Safari do quite correctly), but instead is pushing down its content while maintaining the same top point for the border and background. You can work around this by inserting a <br clear="all"/> at the bottom of the page, for now... I'm not sure if there's a clean style fix for it. --brion (talk) 18:10, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Embedded font support now live

The latest version of Safari includes support for embedded fonts, opening up new possibilities for font support on Wikipedia. To demonstrate the concept, I added the DejaVu Sans font as a gadget. If you are using Safari 3.1 or later, just checking the box will enable you to use this font even if you can't install it directly onto your computer.

Please try this out and let me know how it works. DejaVu Sans is not the most useful font, and I'd be interested in hearing about other fonts that might be useful to have as gadgets. —Remember the dot (talk) 07:34, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

OnloadHook not working

Can anyone tell me why the bottom five lines of my .css is having absolutely no effect whatsoever? I've cleared/purged/deleted everything I can get my hands on, and I know the cached version is current (I disabled and then re-enabled the 'page logs' bit, and that works ok). Happy‑melon 12:08, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

1) It's your .js, not "css"; 2) Please use Firefox or Opera and open Tools->Error console; 3) This would show you the error with undefined wgPageTitle which was supposed to be wgTitle (look at any page HTML source); 4) You might want to make it wgTitle.split('/')[0] so it works on user subpages as well. —AlexSm 15:18, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Thank you!! I should have guessed it would be something really stupid like that. I keep meaning to switch from IE7, but it's too much hassle (three computers of my own to change, plus the inevitable battle with the network admins when I try to use it anywhere other than home :D. Happy‑melon 15:25, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Little 'W' not appearing on IE7 tabs

Until very recently (not more than a couple of hours ago) tabs in IE7 open on a wikipedia page had a little white 'W' image on the left-hand edge - that's now just showing the IE 'e' logo. Pages open at meta/wikisource/wiktionary still display their relevant images, so is it just wikipedia? Or is it just me? Happy‑melon 12:11, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

You are right on both counts. IE7 does it for me as well. The Wiktionary tabs have the W but Wikipedia tabs show only the IE7 logo. Dr.K. (talk) 14:36, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Now the W came back for both Wiktionary and Wikipedia tags. Dr.K. (talk) 14:41, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Fixed for me too now. Happy‑melon 15:25, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Watchlist preferences

Could the watchlist preference "Add pages I create to my watchlist" be modified so that only article pages are watched? Most of the time I "create" a user talk page when I leave a comment for a new user, and I don't want to watch them. Thanks. Imagine Reason (talk) 23:09, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

This option merely checks the "Watch this page" box under the edit window by default; if you don't want a page watched, you can simply uncheck the box as you write your comment. Waltham, The Duke of 00:29, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think devs are going to make make a separate preference checkbox for you, so below is a simple userscript (goes into your monobook.js if you use default Monobook skin). —AlexSm 01:51, 22 March 2008 (UTC) 

//automatically "unwatch" created pages that are not articles
if (wgAction=='edit' && wgArticleId==0 && wgNamespaceNumber>0)
addOnloadHook(function(){
 var t = document.getElementById('wpWatchthis')
 if (t) t.checked = false
})
I see. Thank you, all. Imagine Reason (talk) 02:23, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Purging an image

Whoa, hold your horses, everyone! I did read the FAQ, I did what it said, but it hasn't worked for me. The image in question for me is Image:Utah SR 171.svg. It won't show up on Utah State Route 171. I purged the image repeatedly, and it hasn't shown yet. CountyLemonade (talk) 02:55, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Works for me. See direct link to image thumbnail used in article for verification. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:58, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Initially it was blank for me but I bypassed the server cache and it's showing up now. Thank you - CountyLemonade (talk) 03:03, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Template programming help

I have a template that I'm trying to create, but not being very sucessful. Can anyone help me out here? Full documentation of what it is supposed to do is included below. Thanks, --Ajl772 (talk) 18:27, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

View documentation
Huh? Are you trying to use a template to execute javascript? I'm not aware that's possible, though I'd love to be told different. As far as wiki is concerned, I think you've commented out the code anyway, when you use <!-- .. -->. (I put a hat over your documentation to keep this page clean :) Franamax (talk) 21:28, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm almost certain that the way the Wikipedia parser handles raw page text means that all methods of external linking apart from the usual []-based wikicode are prohibited - they simply won't render as html tags, or the tags won't be acted upon by the browser. This is primarily to prevent spam- and redirect-vandalism, IIRC. Executing javascript from templates is similarly prohibited - what do you think the big warning across the top of all .css and .js pages is for? Allowing anyone to add javascript to wikipages to be executed on the browsers of all viewers is a recipe for disaster. In summary, I don't think there is a method for doing what you want, certainly not via html in a template. Happy‑melon 21:43, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Mediawiki is a php-based implementation. The only place I'm aware we run javascript is over at Wikipedia:Upload's interface, and even then I don't know if its end-user editable. MBisanz talk 21:43, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
What would a page like Template:Twinkle.monobook.jss do if created? Would it still be admin-only editable? Could it be referenced in user's monobooks as a code? MBisanz talk 21:48, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
1) Nothing 2) Administrator and you-editable 3) Yes, see how one installs User:Lupin's popups at User:Lupin/popups.js. x42bn6 Talk Mess 03:31, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
But since you can only edit code pages in your own userspace, wouldn't a non-admin be able to create it and then not edit it? MBisanz talk 05:45, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
It's only possible to create .css and .js pages in userspace (and your own userspace at that, unless you're an admin) or the MediaWiki namespace - creating, for instance, Template:Foo.js or Talk:Foo/skin.css will produce a normal page. Any page can be imported into users' .css and .js files - most of the scripts at WP:US are imported from project pages. Happy‑melon 19:45, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Edit saving issue

Several times in the past week, after I've edited and saved a page, my changes do not appear, even after I refresh my cache. I have to go into the article history, open the most recent version (which includes my edit) for editing, and save it again without making any changes. After that, my changes become visible in the article, and the second (no change) edit does not appear in the article history. Has this been happening to other people? Could it be a legit bug, or am I the only one having this issue? — Swpbtalk.edits 19:56, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I haven't experienced it. Try purging the cache. Some ISPs cache pages beyond the customers control. The second edit you describe is a null edit (not the same as a dummy edit) and it's normal it doesn't show in the page history. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:34, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
I've been clicking F5 in firefox. This purges the cache, right? When the problem occurs, F5 doesn't solve it. — Swpbtalk.edits 15:04, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
No, that just refreshes the page. ctrl-F5 clears the cache. See also Wikipedia:Bypass your cache. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:14, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Reference tags

Is it just me, or have some of the reference tags, i.e. the numbers in square brackets, changed? I've found those in wikitables are now subscript rather than superscript. As are some which carry over onto the next line, which then runs into the name of the next section for those at the end of a section. Peanut4 (talk) 20:10, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Was just going to post this. Although all of the ones found at the list of best-selling video games are superscript, many are broken: they either take you to the wrong reference, or don't take you anywhere. I have posted a few examples here, in case anyone needs to check them. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 21:56, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm looking at it now. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 22:20, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Ref. Problem with refs at University of California, Riverside The principle editor posted this at the help desk, but I think it might get more attention here.[7] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:05, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

It looks like it's fixed now, but any cached pages may need to be purged (add ?action=purge to the URL). -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 22:46, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, it works (at least in my case). -- ReyBrujo (talk) 23:21, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Ref. Reference problems - superscript numbers: I wonder if one of you tech gurus could help with a reference problem in the page Huddersfield Town F.C., please? If I click on the superscript for reference 7 nothing happens, it doesn't take you to the reference. But if I click on the superscript for reference 10 it takes me to reference 7. What have I done wrong, please? BlueValour (talk) 23:01, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Already solved, see just above. Try purging the cache. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 23:20, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
My own problems with references still aren't working. Has no-one else got a problem with this or are the changes intended? Peanut4 (talk) 22:48, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Do you have an example? The ones at list of best-selling game consoles work fine. -- ReyBrujo (talk) 23:05, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
It'll be difficult to find an example for the end of a section, because obviously it depends on screen size, but List of Aston Villa F.C. managers shows what I mean in a table. I think perhaps it's because the notes column doesn't have any text in. Peanut4 (talk) 23:19, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

This was due to a recent change in MediaWiki:Common.css which had some unexpected side-effects on IE. The issue is hopefully fixed now, try viewing the page again after clearing your browser cache. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 02:45, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

can't get an image that i uploaded to link to the main content page

hi, i uploaded an image of the USS Jonas Ingram but i cannot get it to link to the main USS jonas ingram content page. It's not a copyright protected image, so should be OK. I don't know what to do now. Help! thanks, Jim —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.226.231.25 (talk)

Which image are you referring to or which account did you use to upload it, and exactly what do you want to do with it? You were not logged in when you made this post and the IP address has no other edits. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:51, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

hi, sorry i missed you. thx for the reply. i did upload the pic as a logged in user, as airforcefalcon05. i can see the image when i go to "My Contributions". but i can't figure out how to get the image from there to the main USS JONAS INGRAM wiki page. if you go to the main USS JONAS INGRAM page, you'll see an area on the top right where i want my ship photo to go. does that give u more info? Jim

Oh, one other thing. here's the file name of the image that i created, and can see when i go to the "My Contributions" page. USS_Jonas_Ingram-DD938.jpg. It is a public domain photo, as i noted in the area where the image is now. My goal is to have this image display on the main Jonas Ingram page, where it says something like "no photo available." thx again, Jim, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA PS: I served on this ship as a sailor in the mid-1970s. It was sunk as a target vessel in the early 1980s.

Thank you for contributing. I made this change in order to get the image in what is commonly called the "Infobox" or "Taxobox". You can see the result here: USS Jonas Ingram (DD-938). I can advise you to read our manual on using images. Hopefully that will help you do similar edits yourself in the future. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:04, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Awesome! i checked and the pic is now there, on the main Jonas Ingram page. Thank you so much, to both of you for your help and advice. I will read up on all the cool things a contributor can do in Wiki; i'm still a neophyte at this. Best regards, Jim C.

Another software change?

First we have the m's and b's now this:

See this <sup> text:


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 500 501 502 503 504 505 5006 5007 5008 5009 5010 50001 50002 50002 50003 50004 50005 0006 35406 5406 5406 5650465046 5065 465403503046 30 630 46503545606540654 654063 5406103046 3041635435463032.0 654635654 365463546506354654 65065321035465530 203546504651304650130161301331 35130201635135165130165013 63513510316551 65046 506 4635465465 06540 654065465406 656 530 046540654065 60465 05406540654065465


The text wasn't over lapping until I cleared my cache today. Weird, I hope this can be fixed. If you view my user page you can see.-- penubag  (talk) 01:37, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

This was changed in MediaWiki:Common.css, see discussions on its talk page. I might be wrong, but I don't think you're supposed to use <sup> like this, as a "replacement" for <small>. —AlexSm 01:46, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't use <small> because it puts unusual breaks between lines,
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 500 501 502 503 504 505 5006 5007 5008 5009 5010 50001 50002 50002 50003 50004 50005 0006 35406 5406 5406 5650465046 5065 465403503046 30 630 46503545606540654 654063 5406103046 3041635435463032.0 654635654 365463546506354654 65065321035465530 203546504651304650130161301331 35130201635135165130165013 63513510316551 65046 506 4635465465 06540 654065465406 656 530 046540654065 60465 05406540654065465
-- penubag  (talk) 01:52, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Question: Is it possible to reduce the spacing between lines in a paragraph? -- penubag  (talk) 19:15, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, using CSS, like this piece of long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long text.
But I don't see anything unusual about the spacing of the small text. <sup> is reserved for superscripts like e7 and shouldn't be "abused" for small text. x42bn6 Talk Mess 19:37, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
x42bn6, I owe you one. Thank you very very much! -- penubag  (talk) 19:53, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
  1. ^ x
  2. ^ y
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_27&oldid=1136428004"