Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 54

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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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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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What happened to infoboxes?

Resolved

Not long ago, the infoboxes produced by {{infobox}} and friends used to be displayed at the right hand side of the page, with the text of the main body of the article wrapping around the box (as one would expect from use of the CSS "float: right" attribute). Today, and for at least a few days before today, such infoboxes appear on the left, with the text of the main body of the article below them. For example, see 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict, where the first line of the body of the article begins far "below the fold" due to the infobox. Almost all articles about countries and people have the same problem. What changed in the way infoboxes are defined by templates or handled by the software, and please could it be put back the old way? I don't see any obvious changes in Mediawiki:monobook.css, Template:infobox, or any of the other infobox templates which I checked (I checked only a few of the many infobox templates). —AlanBarrett (talk) 19:44, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Infoboxes look OK to me. Have you cleared your cache and done a server purge? – ukexpat (talk) 19:58, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, works for me, too. The text actually starts above the infobox due to the wikinews box. --Amalthea 19:59, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, that's funny. Clearing my browser cache fixed it. But I haven't edited any of these templates or CSS code, so I don't know how my browser cache became incorrect. Thank you. —AlanBarrett (talk) 20:05, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Bookmarklet

Resolved

Bookmarklet#History evidently is using the {{Template:Quote}} template with incorrect wikimarkup syntax; I would think fixing the problem should be fairly simple for someone more familiar with wikimarkup syntax than I. — Ti89TProgrammer (talk) 00:46, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. Cheers, Amalthea 01:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

help: ߄

It's right-to-left character. It messed up TW when I AFD'd it (notice that it's not there...). Anyway, that's just part of the problem. What I actually came here to ask about was that Firefox just randomly de-unicode-ized it. One moment I saw what it was supposed to be (a weird-looking upside down question mark). Then like 10 seconds later, it turned into the box-with-4-letters-in-it (in the tabs, the edit box, and the title bar at the top). How can I fix this? flaminglawyer^c 02:43, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Just wondering...what version of Firefox are you using? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 08:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

It's RTL in IE6 too, but appears as a pipe-like character in read mode, and a box in edit mode. Densock|Dendodge^{in public} 11:26, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the answer is this. Oda Mari (talk) 14:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I don't know what fixed it, but it's back to normal... for now... flaminglawyer^c 23:54, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Multiple section links in edit summaries

It used to be possible to link to multiple sections in edit summaries by repeating the syntax used to mark edit summaries (everything between /* and */). For example:

/* Foo */ response for Bob /* Bar */ response for Jane

Would provide two section links in the edit summary, one to #Foo and one to #Bar. When, and I guess more importantly, why, was this changed? And can it be changed back? —Locke Cole • t • c 07:24, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Possibly from rev:39373. --Splarka (rant) 08:54, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

How to add an image

Need to know how to add an image to an article, see vertigo (light), which i just created so i t could be listed on the page for disambiguation of vertigo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Addlight (talk • contribs) 08:25, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

You can use [[Image:Name.jpg]] to embed an uploaded image but in this case the image you'd like to add most likely doesn't conform to the license images need to be under to be on WP (or I suppose you could utilize fair use just for the relevant article). In any case you'd need to save the image and re-upload it here. -- Mentisock 09:26, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I think [[File:XXXXX.XXX]] is preferred now, but the Image prefix still works.

Change Width and center a collapsible template

Resolved

Blah blah blah
blah blah blah

I created the above template, using "navbox collapsible collapsed" for User:Inclusionist/Deletionopitions.

But I can't figure out how to change the width of the entire template and then center the template.

I want to make the template the same length as average talk page templates. Thanks. travb (talk) 12:15, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

• I changed the class in your example above from "navbox collapsible collapsed" to "collapsible collapsed messagebox standard-talk". Is that what you're looking for? --Amalthea 13:13, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you so much Amalthea :) I really appreciate it. travb (talk) 14:40, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Anytime. :) --Amalthea 14:46, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't that be User:Inclusionist/Deletionoptions?  – ukexpat (talk) 14:57, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

{{FAQ}} appears to already do what you need. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:08, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it is spelled wrong, thanks travb (talk) 20:22, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Search box woes

<moved from AN>

Seems trivial, but why when I go to the homepage (English) (at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) does my cursor not automatically start in the search box? There is nowhere else on the page that you would enter text, and I would say most users want to type in the subject they are looking for immediately, so it makes no sense to not have that functionality. -- BEEFCAKE74 (talk) 13:47, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

My Preferences, Gadgets tab, Focus the cursor in the search bar on loading the Main Page is in the User interface gadgets section. --Onorem♠Dil 13:53, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

It's because you might want to scroll using the arrow keys or Page Down. See T3864. Note that on http://www.wikipedia.org/ and Special:Search, the search box is focused by default. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:30, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

English Wikipedia's main page has a large amount of content, and isn't designed around being a search portal -- it doesn't even prominently place a search box! If it did, then it would make sense to focus it like on the search portal pages. But right now it would not make sense. --brion (talk) 17:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

And you can read more about this in the FAQ at the top of this page. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:06, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

History merge for images

Is it technically possible in Mediawiki to perform the equivalent of a history merge for an image? I am helping out on a small wiki where some well-meaning but ignorant users have uploaded new versions of some images under a different name. I would like to rearrange the images so that the old ones appear as older versions of the new, while retaining the attributions of whichever users uploaded each version. Is that possible without mucking around under the bonnet? TIA HAND —Phil | Talk 17:22, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Nope. --brion (talk) 17:31, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Curses and black pudding. Is it possible at all? —Phil | Talk 18:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

In theory, but it doesn't accomplish much that a link wouldn't. --brion (talk) 21:25, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

ISBN thingy

Resolved

My ISBN thingy is no longer working - I mean the thing where one clicks on an ISBN and it takes one to the Amazon listing for the book. Now it just takes me to the Book sources page on Wikipedia. Any idea what has broken? DuncanHill (talk) 01:31, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "My ISBN thingy". The normal ISBN thingy at Wikipedia:ISBN has always (as far as I know) gone to a Book sources page on Wikipedia and not to Amazon. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:53, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I've got a thing in my monobook.js which is meant to take me to Amazon.co.uk when I click on an ISBN in an article, instead it takes me to [1] instead. DuncanHill (talk) 02:09, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Seems you've found the issue already. :) --Amalthea 02:15, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I thought so too, but it doesn't seem to make any difference. DuncanHill (talk) 02:16, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

And I trust you've purged your borswer cache, with Ctrl+F5 or something? --Amalthea 02:18, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I had, twice, but a third time seems to have fixed it! DuncanHill (talk) 02:21, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Third time's a charm. Cheers, Amalthea 02:22, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Bullets and text size

Is there a way to change the bullet size in lists in such a way that it corresponds to the font size of the text? I'm using IE and the bullets always remain the same size. This is true whether I change the text size using CSS or via the browser's own menu option. Thanks. SharkD (talk) 22:31, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Get a better browser? In FF3 they scale fine. Algebraist 22:33, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

You're right, except that you're wrong. SharkD (talk) 22:37, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

The bullets are images; they do not scale, not on any browser. — Edokter • Talk • 22:40, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

What bullets are you talking about? The bullets created by * scale fine here. Algebraist 22:43, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

See User:SharkD/Sandbox/Bullet test. SharkD (talk) 23:19, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I got them to scale in FF3 *if* they belong to generic elements (DIV, SPAN, etc.) that have had their "display" style explicitely set to "list-item". Otherwise, it won't work. The fact that it works even *some of the time* might be a bug in FF3. Unfortunately, I was looking for a solution that works more reliably across browsers. SharkD (talk) 23:14, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this is possible using CSS. You'd need to use JavaScript, which is almost certainly more trouble than it's worth. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 13:55, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you'd want to use JavaScript in this case. Care to elaborate? SharkD (talk) 03:53, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, you can either do this server-side or client-side. Server-side is likely impractical: you'd have to parse all the CSS rules that could possibly apply to the element to do it properly, which is difficult at best (what are you going to do, run a web browser on the server to parse the HTML output?) and impossible at worst (technically users can define user stylesheets and such, which the server doesn't even know about). On the client side, your options are pretty much limited to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, since other things like Flash and Java can't affect the HTML part of the page as far as I know. It's not possible to achieve the effect desired with just HTML and CSS, as far as I know, so that leaves JavaScript as your only option. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:22, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

All you can accomplish with JavaScript is modify the HTML and CSS. So, if you can't do it in either of these two, then JavaScript is not going to help you. SharkD (talk) 05:29, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

HTML and CSS are capable of providing different-sized bullet images. What they can't do is decide which bullet point to display based on text size. JavaScript could, in principle, iterate through all of the list items on a page, check the size of the text, and change the HTML/CSS accordingly, if you really wanted that. Alternatively, of course, you could require the user to manually wrap the list in <div class="big-icon"> or something. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:19, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Prev vs Diff

History pages now appear to use (prev) where as user contribution pages use (diff). This should be consistent and since in the past history pages have always been (diff) I would suggest switching back to that.Geni 16:46, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Concur. "prev" isn't very intuitive. — Edokter • Talk • 16:48, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

FYI here's the relevant code change. Gary King (talk) 17:06, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

So can it be changed through MediaWiki:Last ?Geni 17:20, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

That can probably be used to override the hardcoded defaults. Also, I believe the change was made to fix this (an issue submitted over two years ago). Gary King (talk) 17:23, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

So we need to file another bugzilla request to change it back and wait two years? I really prefered "diff" as well... SoWhy 00:55, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

No, we can set it to whatever we want by changing the content of MediaWiki:Last. It's only because we haven't set a custom message (because we liked the old default) that we see this change. Happy‑melon 12:30, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

The entry in the history that now has "prev" was "last" for as long as I've been on here. I prefer "prev" to "last", personally, as it's more specific. Graham87 08:55, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

As noted above, it was never "diff", but was "last" for the last several years. Though "diff" might indeed be even better. :) --brion (talk) 17:34, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

"Prev" suggests "preview", and so is confusing. DuncanHill (talk) 17:36, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

"Prev" actually does make more sense to me, too. When I first joined, I was confused by "last" as comparing the version to the "current" version, or the "last" one to exist. Gary King (talk) 14:29, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

nstab-wp

Resolved

 – Happy‑melon 12:33, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Does MediaWiki:Nstab-wp actually do anything? It seems likely to me that it has been replaced by MediaWiki:Nstab-project, but I thought I'd ask to see if anyone knows more about it. MediaWiki talk:Nstab-wp shows that it has been a source of confusion to at least one other editor. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:46, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

It's not listed in Special:AllMessages. Algebraist 23:48, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Decrapated maybe? It was initially set by user 'MediaWiki default'. — Edokter • Talk • 00:23, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

It is redundant; I have deleted it in the interests of cleanliness :D Happy‑melon 12:33, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thank you! I was ready to delete it myself. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 07:39, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Links to disambiguation pages

Is it technically possible for links to disambiguation pages to be in a different colour to other links? DuncanHill (talk) 17:50, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

You can code a link to any web-color AFAIK, but since Disambiguation pages are tracked by a template inclusion, as opposed to a software feature like Redirects are, I do not think it is possible to code the system to color all disambiguation links a different color. MBisanz ^talk 17:55, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Depending upon your browser, you could probably diddle your personal CSS to trigger a colour-change on a URL ending with "(disambiguation)". Have fun with that… HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 18:05, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I was with you up to "diddle your personal CSS". I am not very "with it" when it comes to technical expressions. DuncanHill (talk) 18:08, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Pity. In that case, is there a gadget that would enable an editor to make dablinks appear in a different colour when logged in? DuncanHill (talk) 18:04, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Not really, since the gadget would need to open ever link on a page, see if it transcludes {{disambig}} and then change the color. I'm sure it could be done, if you really wanted 50 pages to load for every mouseclick (and forget about ever loading an FA/ANI). MBisanz ^talk 19:44, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

User:Splarka/dabfinder.js - adds a link to the toolbox to highlight disambig pages. Mr.Z-man 21:15, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

That seems rather good - many thanks! DuncanHill (talk) 21:30, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting, thanks for letting me know about it. MBisanz ^talk 21:32, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I use User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js, which also highlights redirects and pages up for deletion. Very useful. Happy‑melon 10:52, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Which to me appears both not to work, and to make everything appear in tiny tiny writing. DuncanHill (talk) 13:25, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I use custom styles (User:Happy-melon/linkclassifier.css, but it works for me. What browser are you using? Happy‑melon 15:27, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Disambiguation is tracked by template inclusion, but that just means one query per page against the templatelinks table. It should be no more expensive to implement this than it is to implement red links, in principle. But it's probably not worth it. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:23, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Images and media for deletion move

It has been proposed that Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion be renamed Wikipedia:Files for deletion. We've identified two JavaScript tools and two bots that will need updating; what else might need to be changed? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 03:23, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Deletion summary for AfD

Recently, the automated deletion summary for csd and afd tags disappeared and was required to choose from the droplist. Now most of the items are back but when I want to close some afd debates, there's no automated link to the discussion in the summary. Impractical, really. Anyone knows how to get that function back, it's really time saving. Thanks. --Tone 22:26, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

You could use User:Mr.Z-man/closeAFD to save yourself the manual work. Regards SoWhy 09:50, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

 Fixed for AfD, MfD, and the others that use a sensible method of linking to the discussion pages. Happy‑melon 20:12, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

The script is great, too bad I haven't spotted it before. However, the deletion summary is still not working (in case there are multiple articles nominated, they still have to be deleted manually). Or is the summary accessible through another link (I click delete button in the top bar). --Tone 14:34, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Table "flipping" scripts

I was wondering if anyone had written any table "flipping" scripts. What I mean is that, when showing one row/column the others automatically become hidden. Users will of course have "next" and "previous" links or some soryt of index to navigate the table. SharkD (talk) 03:52, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

This would probalby be proscribed in mainspace by MOS:SCROLL. It could be useful in other namespaces, however. Happy‑melon 12:34, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

They're for templates, so there's no proscription. SharkD (talk) 05:27, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah ok. As I said, such a thing would probably be very useful. Happy‑melon 10:55, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll start working on an example. SharkD (talk) 02:59, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Isolate and lock pages headed on their way to Wikia

Copied from here:

I was wondering if it were possible to place pages whose AfDs result in 'Move to Wikia' in some sort of a buffer where they cannot be edited, linked to, viewed by anons etc., but can still be copied to the other wikis. There could be a time limit of say 1 week after which the pages get deleted for good. Secondly, is this a real issue that has actually come up, or am I worrying over nothing? SharkD (talk) 05:31, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think its really an issue. If a page is being transwikied, it means its not so bad that we don't want people to see it, its just not quite appropriate for this site. The actual export/import process only takes a couple minutes; the main issue is just getting an admin on the wikia wiki to do the work. Mr.Z-man 05:43, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Is it easy to notify the proper people? IIRC, you have to create an account for each wiki and log in. An automated system would be pretty neat. SharkD (talk) 06:31, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Other than Uncyclopedia (which has a separate user database) all Wikia wikis have a shared login. Those that are not on the wikia.com domain (memory-alpha.org for example) have separate cookies and so you may need to log in again, but otherwise you can move between Wikia wikis with the same session.

A local admin is needed to use Special:Import (and not all wikis have active admins) but a cut and paste move can be done by anyone. Most Wikia wikis (including all made in the last year or so) have a standard template available to give proper links and accreditation to Wikipedia ({{wikipedia|name}} or {{Wikipedia-deleted|usernames}}). So it's generally better to just do the move rather than try to find someone to do it for you. After all, most Wikia wikis are primarily concerned with writing their own articles rather than transferring them from Wikipedia ;)

If it's a lot of pages, and C&P is impractical, Wikia staff can help. We can be contacted via Special:Contact on any Wikia wiki -- sannse (talk) 10:00, 9 January 2009 (UTC) (Wikia Community Team)

OK, thanks. That was helpful. SharkD (talk) 01:40, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Confusing user interface for revision history

When you open the revision history of a page, the legend says

"(cur) = difference from current version, (last) = difference from preceding version"

yet the link buttons are labelled

"(cur) (prev) ..."

Is there someone who can edit the interface and straighten this out? I imagine this must be confusing, especially to new editors who try to figure out the buttons for the first time. The help page Help:Page history also still uses (last) instead of (prev). 77.183.102.108 (talk) 12:32, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that; I've fixed the text at the top of the history page. Help:Page history would need a bit more work to fix as the screenshot is now out of date and a whole new one would need to be uploaded. Incidently, you might be interested to know that this problem is because the text 'last' changed to 'prev' quite recently. Take a look at #Prev_vs_Diff for details. Tra (Talk) 16:04, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

My browsing going wrong

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 16:56, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

For some reason my browsing seems to be mucking up. Whenever i click on Woolwich Arsenal from my Watchlist, this happens

Also, other links i go to link to the previous page\previous page i was trying to go to. Simply south not SS, sorry 13:29, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried clearing your cache, or pressing Ctrl-Shift-R? haz (talk) 14:25, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

No, just did, was fixed, thanks. Simply south not SS, sorry 14:34, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Italics do not display in Opera for MacOS

I thought I should come and note this; I usually use Camino for browsing but downloaded Opera for MacOS today because of its smaller memory footprint (I usually have other programs, e.g. audio, running in the background while browsing) and was about to add italics to an article's mention of a title (an opera title, to be specifid) only to discover that the Wikicode double-apostrophe was already there. Is this a known glitch about viewing Wikipedia in Opera, and is it also the case in other versions of the same browser? Works fine in Camino, which is my usual browser; I only downloaded and installed Opera yesterday and haven't used it in MacOS before....I'm thinking that maybe the italics thing didn't work in the Windows 2K version either, which I remember trying out and not continuing to use, also. Would prefer to stay in the smaller memory footprint but because I work with ship articles and lots of title-refs and such I need to see italics, so back to Camino it is (for now).....Skookum1 (talk) 15:40, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Cite book rendering error affecting thousands of articles

For a few weeks now there has been an editprotected request at Template talk:Cite book#editor field to fix the editor parameter. All articles using {{cite book}} with the |editor= field used are displaying a doubled period ("ed..")—probably a few thousand articles are affected. No one has yet been able to suggest a workable fix so I was hoping to get more eyes on the issue by the code savvy people here. {{Citation/core}} seems to be the culprit. A fix was suggested and implemented but it didn't work. Rather than go into the details, please see the post at the talk page I linked above. Thanks.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 17:44, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Also see Template talk:Citation/core#Editor punctuation. RossPatterson (talk) 18:53, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Proposed enhancements to table sorting

Hello all. I've been working quite a bit with tables and noticed that one of the features that has been on the table sorting todo list is "don't break on colspans/rowspans (bug 8028)". Well, with the recent problems I was having with sorting (also covered above), I grabbed a copy of the wikibits.js script and started playing with it. Well one thing let to another, and I believe I've come up with a robust implementation that supports both rowspans and column spans. To summarize, I've made the following enhancements:

1. Before sorting, rowspans will be exploded, so that rows are self contained and can be sorted without garbling the table structure.
2. During sorting, colspans are recognized and counted when retrieving column values, so that the proper sort value is retrieved from each row. Each column in a colspan range is treated as having the same value. Colspans are preserved, they are not split.
3. After sorting, some cell ranges may be recombined under certain restrictive conditions (still being refined). Also, the class="autorowspan" option can be applied to columns or the entire table to enable more aggressive rowspan combines, such as combining cells in the newly sorted column that were not originally combined.

I know I've put the cart before the horse, but I'd like to know who to contact to get the changes reviewed for possible inclusion in the official script. I realize there will be significant testing required as well as discussions regarding how some of its features should best work, and that it may be a long slow process.

If anyone is interested in taking a look, the source is in User:Tcncv/sorttables.js and I have a few test tables [[]User:Tcncv/Table Sort Demo|here]]. The only prerequisite is that you add importScript('User:Tcncv/sorttables.js'); to your monobook.js file (or whatever skin you use). You can also try it with your own tables by changing the class="wikitable sortable" attribute to class="wikitable tcncv_sortable" in the table definition, and optionally adding class="autorowspan" to one or more column header cells.

Currently it works well under Firefox 3.0.4, and most of it works under IE7. (Recombine does not work, but I expect to get this fixed shortly.) I plan to test in IE6 and an old version of Netscape, but will need help testing with other browsers and versions.

I'm looking forward to your feedback. -- Tcncv (talk) 06:16, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

It would be nice if there were a centralized location for continued discussion of modifications to this file, like there is for MediaWiki:Common.css or MediaWiki:Monobook.css. As it stands now, discussions are hidden in the inner bowels of Bugzilla. SharkD (talk) 08:54, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Well that's were changes to the mediawiki software are made, so that is where that discussion belongs. Requirements: Testing of the script on IE 5 and later, FF 2 and later, Opera 9 and later, and Safari 2 and later. A diff file between the original wikibits.js and a "new" wikibits.js, submitting the diff (aka patch) trough bugzilla with a description, testcases, and testresults. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:26, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll take a look around Bugzilla. I'm new to that arena, so any pointers would be appreciated. I'll also work on improving and formalizing my test cases. I will need some help with getting it tested in all of the browser versions.

I'm also still looking for input from the user/editor community. If anyone out there has worked on complex tables to which they'd like to add sort capabilities, but have not done so because of lack of rowspan/colspan support, please let me know and I'll take a look. -- Tcncv (talk) 15:23, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

But, the fact is that discussions on the topic are being made here. There's three discussions on this page at this very moment, one more that I know of in the most recent archive, and probably countless others if you search farther back. Bugzilla is great when you have concrete changes that are ready to go. But it's not so great for planning or (as I mentioned) coordinating efforts. Note also that the page doesn't necessarily have to exist on Wikipedia; it could just as easily exist on the WikiMedia wiki. SharkD (talk) 04:07, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Updated proposed enhancements to table sorting

I've updated my proposed sortable table enhancements to include support for multi-row headers plus rowspan ad colspan support in these headers. This appeared to be a useful feature based on my experience and a review of the Help talk:Sorting and m:Help talk:Sorting pages. To see the enhancements, you will need to add "importScript('User:Tcncv/sorttables.js'); to your monobook.js file (or whatever skin you use). You can also try it with your own tables by changing the class="wikitable sortable" attribute to class="wikitable tcncv_sortable" in the table definition, and optionally adding class="autorowspan" to one or more column header cells. (No not add this to main space tables, as this is not yet live.)

Again, I am looking for feedback. If you like what you see, if you find problems, or have some specific table layouts that you would like supported please let me know. (Also, let me know if you know of a better place for this discussion.) -- Tcncv (talk) 05:41, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Associating user id with talk page id in wiki dumps

I'm processing the most recently finished en-wiki-...-stubs-meta-history.xml dump for a research project and have run in to the following questions:

1. Is there an easy way to associate someone's user id with their talk page id (as well as their user page id)?
2. If a user changes their user name, does their associated talk page keep the same page id? How about subpages of their talk page (eg. User talk:User_Name/old)?
3. How does user name changes affect user name collisions over time? For example, the user name "0" has had several different user ids associated with it over Wikipedia's history. If an user edited "User talk:0" who were they talking to, the current (as of the dump) user id associated with "0" or the user id whose user name was "0" at that time?

Please let me know if there is a more appropriate forum for this question. Thanks for the help!

Andlarry (talk) 19:05, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not a sysadmin, but I'll take a stab at these based on what I know from doing work on page histories.

1. Not that I know of, but there is probably a weak correlation. Circumstances that can affect this include:
   1. The user and/or user talk page was created a while after the user's first edit/account creation. In my case, I created my user page three months after creating an account, and my user talk page was created one month after my account creation.
   2. The user or user talk page was deleted at some point, but not to make way for a page move (see below). When a page is deleted, it loses its old page ID, and when it is undeleted or re-created, it gets a new page ID as if it is a brand new page. This can be demonstrated on-wiki by using the whatlinkshere function, which orders pages by page ID. For example, in Special:Whatlinkshere/Fleishhacker Pool, one would expect the swimming pool article to be listed first, as it was created in March 2002. However it is listed at the end because it has been deleted and restored several times.
2. Yes, assuming the user and talk pages were moved with the page move function, which preserves the page ID, even when a deletion is required to make way for a move. For an on-wiki demonstration, see Special:Whatlinkshere/Biscayne Aquifer and note that Miami is listed near the top even though it was deleted to make way for page moves from Miami, Florida several times. You might also be interested in the effects of username changes before the advent of the user rename tool for bureaucrats. The user's settings and watchlist were transferred, but their edits were not. For example, see this diff - the second edit of that diff is ClockworkSoul's first recorded edit.
3. That depends on page moves. When my username was Pianoman87, I received messages addressed to User talk:Pianoman87, but they are now in the page history of my current user talk page. Currently, the user with the most recent user ID will probably get a message posted to their user talk page, but I'm not completely certain of this. I just tested this on my old username, and I received a new messages bar when I logged in to that account. Also see the contributions of that account, and note the earlier contribs, which were edits that were deleted when I was Pianoman87 but undeleted when my username was changed. User:0 seems to have been used as a placeholder username in the phase II software, so that's why it would have multiple IDs.

Hope this helps. Graham87 06:22, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

BTW, renaming a user now changes the username in all deleted edits by that user, so the above problem with early contributions attached to my old username, Pianoman87, isn't an issue for users who were renamed since late July 2007 (I changed my username in March 2006). Graham87 07:00, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Qui

I run Internet Explorer (newest version, i think) and use Qui- however, it seems to be broken- it always dispays "Offline" whatever I put into the /status subpage. I'm not sure what the problem is, but can anyone help me fix it? Resident Mario (talk) 20:14, 10 January 2009 (UTC) 2 minutes later: oh it came on! Why did it take so long?

Actually, that's one of many problems that for some reason keep popping up. The others:

• When I load the page, the images for the "2009" template blink on and off rapidly
• When editting, sometimes the scrollbar for the edit part is a lot smaller then the text- scrolling down reveals more code and shortens it.
• There is an archived }} on my user page, next to the Blue text at the top, tghat I cannot seem to remove.
• number 2 also sometimes happens with the userbox stack near the bottom.

Resident Mario (talk) 20:25, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Another 2 minutes later. And now I am offline again. WTF? Resident Mario (talk) 20:34, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh god, I tried to add on a new image and it's like it didn't even exist.24.185.37.213 (talk) 21:39, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried using Firefox? The problem might have to do with your browser. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 21:47, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

No, I don't have Modzilla. Since Internet Explorer is covered by about 70% of the Internet-surfing population, bugs in Wikipedia due to this browser is bad indeed. 24.185.37.213 (talk) 23:14, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

The problem could be with something specific to how Internet Explorer is configured on your machine. Or, it might be a problem with your Internet connection. Since no one else seems to be experiencing the problem, it's probably something on your end. Why not give Firefox a try just to rule out browser issues? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:20, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Other then Qui, the other issues only appear on my main page for some reason- the template displays no questions asked at User:Resident_Mario/2009 (altbiet Qui almost certainly is), so i dont think it's a Browser issue, or else this place whould have been flooded with "My Wikipedia is not working!" After all, statistically, Internet Explorer is 70% or somethingResident Mario (talk) 23:37, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Have you asked on the Qui talk page to see if other users are having the same problem? – ukexpat (talk) 01:34, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Qui does not support Internet Explorer (I don't have Windows), nor is Qui in any way part of "Wikipedia". It is just a tool that I wrote, and that some folks can CHOOSE to use. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:52, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Fixing double redirects

I'm pretty sure there are bots out there fixing double redirects, since Mediawiki no longer fixes them automatically (see WP:Double redirects and User:Redirect fixer). However, I'm curious as to which bots they are, and how often they run. This question occurred to me because of the recent merger of WP:CONTEXT and WP:BTW into MOS:LINK, and it seems that none of the resulting redirects have been fixed yet. Could someone fill me in? Thanks,--Aervanath talks like a mover, but not a shaker 16:35, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

User:RussBot fixes double redirects with manual assistance. I'm not sure which other bots fix double redirects. Graham87 04:16, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Traffic stats link needs updating

The "Traffic stats" link in the navbar to the left should now be "http://stats.grok.se/en/200901/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)", and not "http://stats.grok.se/en/200812/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)". Which system message does one edit to change this?  Sandstein  22:53, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Say again? Where is this link, exactly? Happy‑melon 23:10, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Got it. It was in User:Smith609/toolbox.js. Happy‑melon 23:11, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Stupid of me - I forgot that this is produced by a monobook.js extension, not the default skin.  Sandstein  23:24, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Bizarreness

In this diff [2] I am shewn as having inserted "British recording studios" after a pipe in the category, yet I did no such thing. I simply inserted a pipe with nithing after it to force the entry to the top of the category. Is wikipedia now falsifying edits? DuncanHill (talk) 19:39, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

That's called the Pipe trick, and I just used it in this comment when I typed [[Help:Pipe trick|]], yet the MediaWiki software will have saved it as [[Help:Pipe trick|Pipe trick]]. --Amalthea 19:50, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

... and I see you fixed it already, just as Wikipedia:Category#Priority sort keys recommends. --Amalthea 19:53, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Aaarrggh! I don't want it saving things I haven't typed! DuncanHill (talk) 19:59, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

So how did you get that fancy signature and timestamp after your comment? --Splarka (rant) 08:44, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

By typing something which I knew would, and is widely advertised as being used to, generate specific text. DuncanHill (talk) 13:17, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Pipe and a space force it to the top. Don't forget the space!~ JohnnyMrNinja 08:56, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Wow, I learn something new every day oO -- lucasbfr ^talk 16:41, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Remove fundraiser banner on all projects (not only English Wikipedia)

Some time ago, I unified my accounts for all Wikimedia projects (English Wikipedia, Commons, Wikibooks, Bosnian Wikipedia etc). Works great.

Some time after that, there was a new fund raiser action. I donated a small amount of money. However, the fund raising banner did not go away. Searching whether it can be turned off, and how if it can, I realized that every registered user can suppress it from showing. Later I realized that it only works for English Wikipedia, and not for any other Wikimedia projects (Commons, Bosnian WP etc).

In "my preferences" on English WP, tab "Gadgets", there is option called "Suppress display of the fundraiser banner". However, this option does not exist in preferences of other Wikimedia projects.

I do not know who is responsible for that, but it would be nice if equivalent option were available for projects other than English Wikipedia, or if setting in English WP would affect all other projects.

Dzenanz (talk) 13:04, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

The gadget in preferences is just a quick way to add a bit of CSS to your personal stylesheet suppressing the banner. Similar personal CSS could be used on other Wikipedia projects, but this would have to be done on each project separately. I don't know if it would be technically feasible to have a way of suppressing display on all projects at once. Algebraist 13:10, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

So, some master admin (does such a thing exist) on each project should be responsible to add such an option to preferences (and, of course, implement it)? I was not surprised much that it has not been implemented on Bosnian WP, but it is also not implemented on Commons nor German WP Dzenanz (talk) 13:31, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

You could add the appropriate CSS rule to your browser's user CSS to hide the banner on all projects, if you so desired. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 14:25, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, that does not solve the problem in general, but it will solve it for me. I am somewhat familiar with CSS, so can anyone post here this piece of style sheet that controls fundraising banner? Also, does anyone know how to apply user CSS to GoogleChrome? I recently switched from Firefox to Chrome :) Dzenanz (talk) 14:53, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

What I do it to have scripts that should run for me on all wikis in User:Happy-melon/global.js (which includes an import rule for User:Happy-melon/global.css, and then include everywhere an import rule to get that script for whichever wiki (see eg mw:User:Happy-melon/monobook.js). So I only need to make one edit to get my portable code everywhere. One of the rules in my global.css is to suppress the fundraiser banner (among other things). Works for me :D Happy‑melon 15:25, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Note that the fundraiser is now over, so there's not currently a banner to hide. --brion (talk) 23:23, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Can we persuade you to use the same CSS ids/classes next time? :D Happy‑melon 23:25, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Brion, it looks like the banner is back. Bug? -- lucasbfr ^talk 16:12, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

And someone has removed the gadget to suppress it. DuncanHill (talk) 16:15, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

And now it's restored. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:28, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Nice, I didn't dare doing it because I was not sure whether the gadget would be re enabled by default. Thanks :) -- lucasbfr ^talk 16:35, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it was a pleasant surprise for the banner to disappear just as quickly as it reappeared. Wasn't sure if it was the gadget or its actual removal until I checked out my preferences. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:41, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Why am I constantly being prompted with a Captcha requirement?

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 02:11, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Despite multiple edits, I'm still being required to enter a Captcha phrase at times when I add links or undo edits by vandals which re-add links. I've got more than 10 edits, is it a length of time with an account requirement? AnyPerson (talk) 05:12, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Only registered users whose accounts have less than ten edits and are less than four days old are required to fill out a Captcha. So you will have to wait another two days. Graham87 09:05, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I wasn't aware of the time requirement. I'll just have to wait. Sigh.  :) AnyPerson (talk) 02:05, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

No worries. A slight correction: to avoid seeing the Captcha, an account must be at least four days old and have at least 10 edits. So a seven-week-old account with one edit will still see the Captcha until their tenth edit is reached, if that ever happens. See Wikipedia:User access levels #Autoconfirmed users. Graham87 15:15, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

How to make a scrollable div scrolled down to the bottom by default

Does anyone know a way to make a box such as User:Army1987#Guestbook display the bottom of its content, instead of its top, when the page is loaded? -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 16:47, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Not sure. You can scroll a window using the scrollBy method, but it doesn't seem to work for elements of the document. SharkD (talk) 06:27, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, I found it. In pure HTML, what you need to do is change the scrollTop property of the DIV element. SharkD (talk) 06:30, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Is that settable via CSS? If so, why not add a new class to MediaWiki:Common.css, then use the class on the DIV? Also, this seems to be a Microsoft extension, is there a W3C equivalent? —Locke Cole • t • c 06:51, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I just did some tests, and I'm not at all sure how you could modify this property. Wikipedia doesn't allow users to attach events to HTML elements for security reasons. And, there's no corresponding CSS attribute. You'd need to file a report on Bugzilla to have the feature added to the site's own scripts. SharkD (talk) 06:42, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

It could be done in Common.js, but I'm not sure if it would be accepted. Its encyclopedic value is rather limited... :D Happy‑melon 11:12, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Are scrollable HTML elements used anywhere else on Wikipedia? If so, the functionality could just be tacked on there. SharkD (talk) 22:24, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Not that I'm aware of, and they're explicitly proscribed by MOS:SCROLL in article content. Can't think where they'd be useful in the encyclopedia, certainly not autoscrolled. Happy‑melon 22:57, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

First table-flipping work in progress

As discussed here, I've created an example of a table-flipping script. You can find it here. I've only tested it in IE7 and FF3, and would like it if people with different browsers would test it. SharkD (talk) 05:02, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Works for me in Safari 3.1.2. EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:39, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Nice script. Works in Opera 9.50 (I presume in latter versions as well) and Google Chrome 1.0. SoWhy 15:49, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Using IE6 here. Are whole portions of the flipped table supposed to disappear? Any cell that comes after the threshold of centering does not show. — Edokter • Talk • 21:18, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

That's the whole point of the script. :) SharkD (talk) 22:11, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Here's the project's page on Bugzilla. SharkD (talk) 06:30, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Error message in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_gearing

I get the error message *Failed to parse (Cannot write to or create math output directory): in bright red.My adopter says he doesn't have a problem in viewing the page.What gives?EaswarH (talk) 13:35, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Works for me too. Try WP:PURGE or WP:NULL, and give us your browser/OS if it still doesn't work. Happy‑melon 13:39, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Bypassing my browser cache didn't work,but WP:PURGE worked.I see math formulas now.What was the problem?EaswarH (talk) 13:53, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like it was a problem with the Wikipedia servers, thnot your computer. The only recent activity in the server admin log is about problems with the server db18. I don't know if that had anything to do with your problem though. Graham87 15:02, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

This is due to a borked setup on a couple of servers. Should be taken care of pretty soon. You can do a purge or null edit on any page you see it turn up on and it should re-render fine. --brion (talk) 19:23, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

"Crosswiki linksearch" link on Special:Linksearch

Not quite sure where to best report this so I'll try here...

On the page Special:LinkSearch there is a link to the crosswiki linksearch tool, however the link appears to be out of date. It currently goes to "http://toolserver.org/~eagle/linksearch", which is a 404. The correct link is "http://toolserver.org/~eagle/crosswiki.php". Could someone either fix this, report it to the appropriate people, or tell me where to report it.

Thanks! --ThaddeusB (talk) 15:29, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Have requested the necessary change here. Good spot! haz (talk) 15:35, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

 Done EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:42, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Can't edit pages while logged in

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 03:03, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

When I click on a red link or the "edit this page" button, a window opens up saying "You have chosen to open index.php" and the editing page doesn't load on the browser. If I log out of my account I don't have this problem. It's happening in Firefox and IE, and I haven't changed any of my settings or anything. (for some reason, if I click "new section" I can edit pages, like this one) --Ships at a Distance (talk) 02:28, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Go to your preferences under editing and check that 'use external editor by default' is turned off. I know you didn't change anything, but this setting is known to sometimes be activated by evil gremlins in a not-understood way. Algebraist 02:32, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

That fixed it, thank you so much for helping! --Ships at a Distance (talk) 02:38, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

About Template:Section template list

Resolved

In the first two lines of Template:Section template list, there seems to be an error in spacing (and grammar), the details about Template:Catmore may belong on a second line. Could someone who is knowledgeable about templates repair this for us?

{{Cat also}} is used for small sets of see also (list of other categories) for information in the end of text on category pages or talk pages, etc. Template:Catmore (edit talk links history) "The main article for this category is..." Thanks. --Funandtrvl (talk) 01:50, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Like this? --Amalthea 02:23, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing it!! --Funandtrvl (talk) 05:09, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Anytime. --Amalthea 11:39, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Special:BlockMe

Yes, there is a special page called Special:BlockMe. I stumbled upon it by chance. Currently it says "This function is disabled. ". Does anyone know what function it served? A way for administrators to give themselves a wikibreak? 140.247.249.150 (talk) 06:03, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I believe Special:Blockme was used by the open proxy detecting function of mediawiki, before it was disabled due to the increasing traffic of the site. Prodego ^talk 06:20, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

See https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l/2004-April/012058.html PrimeHunter (talk) 15:12, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

So anyone could have blocked themselves using Special:BlockMe if they knew their own IP address? weird, even if that wasn't how that feature was actually used. There's some discussion of admins blocking themselves at Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy/Archive_1, but no mention of Special:BlockMe. 140.247.240.98 (talk) 17:12, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

And somehow despite this, there are still people who think a {{CURRENTUSER}} variable would be a good idea… — CharlotteWebb 17:19, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Renaming CSS classes

Sounds like a Bad Idea, but I think we (read I) have made a huge mistake in adding the CSS classes to {{FA-Class}}, {{Category-Class}}, etc, in mixed case. Where the classes are currently assess-FA, assess-Category, assess-Disambig, etc, we'll be saving ourselves a lot of grief if we make them lowercase: assess-fa, assess-category, assess-disambig, etc. They're not very widely used; most of those appearances are assess-FA-text associated with MediaWiki:Gadget-metadata.js (which should also be updated, I'll talk to Pyrospirit separately), so this is more of a "speak now or for ever hold your peace" post. Happy‑melon 11:17, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I've made the relevant changes to the gadget. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 21:54, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Table Background

Resolved

Hi. Ive put all my Userboxes in a table, and then I've nested this table into another cell. My only problem now is, there is pieces of white between the first tables cells. I've looked in the Table Help file, but I couldn't figure it out. Ive even look at table background colour stuff. Id appreciate any help or suggestions! :) Slapsnot (talk) 13:25, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The white is gone, but it's looking weird now since you removed the width and alignment. --Amalthea 13:51, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much Amalthea! Im busy editing it a little more. Ive removed some stuff, so that the Userbox can be centred to the blue box. Slapsnot (talk) 13:54, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Anytime. --Amalthea 13:58, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Template updating

I've talked with a couple other users, so I know it's not just me, but, for example, I've updated Template:Bear Lake County, Idaho, adding communities for articles I've started, but they don't show up in the box. This has also happened to me with Template:Ted Kotcheff and, as I mentioned, I know others have had this happen as well. Is this a server problem, or something I can do something about? Thmazing (talk) 20:45, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

In short: view the article , edit the template, look at the article again, and it doesn't look like you edited the template. I've had this happen to me also. I should note that everything displays properly when I view an article that I've not seen before editing the template, or when, after looking at the first article again, I edit the article and view it after saving. Is this perhaps vaguely related to, when we have a template that places articles into a category (for example, stub templates) and we change the category, how it doesn't immediately make them move into the new category? Nyttend (talk) 23:29, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

See WP:NULL vs WP:PURGE. Happy‑melon 23:33, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

WP:PURGE it or make a WP:NULL edit and you'll see it right away, or just wait and it'll be updated eventually. Nyttend, it's related, but not the same – with transcluded categories, a cache purge won't help, but a null edit will. --Amalthea 23:36, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Edit link drop on Aarhus and other pages.

Aarhus page, with scandinavian characters, and at least two pages with asian characters on them, suffer from a 'edit this section link' drop, ie, there is a collection of 'edit' links about halfway down the page that 'came from' preceding sections. The non-english character aspect is not in itself the cause, as I have seen asian character pages that didn't have this problem. But so far, no pages that had the problem, and no non-english characters.

Aarhus page, Demographics section, second sentence, first cite

Showing this with nowiki turned on. Aarhus is also a major part of the larger [[East Jutland metropolitan area]] with 1,200,000 inhabitants that makes East Jutland the second most-populated area in Denmark, after the [[Copenhagen]] area.<ref>[http://www.dst.dk/TilSalg/Boghandel/Befolkning.aspx Danmarks Statistik] 2006a {{da icon}}</ref>
The above displays the url as the visible link, despite the space and following text with brackets in black outside of the link. Other such links on the page work correctly. It displays properly as a ref link, in the citations, not as a direct link.
Anarchangel (talk) 21:08, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

On your first point, see WP:BUNCH. The link problem was caused by linebreaks in the link. Fixed. Algebraist 21:11, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Search Engine Question

Has something changed with the Wikipedia search engine? I frequently use the pre-defined searches from the Wikipedia:Lists_of_common_misspellings. All of them are returning no results. Similarly, typing any misspelled word in the Search box on the left hand side of the page returns no results. I haven't changed any of my preferences. All these processes were working fine yesterday. Sorry if I'm missing something obvious. Thanks. JimVC3 (talk) 01:04, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay. It seems to be working now. JimVC3 (talk) 01:51, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

For some reason RMI connections across the cluster started failing producing outage in search and then came back again about a half an hour later. I'll keep an eye on it. --rainman (talk) 11:57, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Template:RMlink

Could someone with more knowledge of the subject please fix Template:RMlink? When the article to be moved is a WP: page, it doesn't understand ([[Talk:Wikipedia:Ethnic and cultural conflicts noticeboard#Requested move|Discuss]]). Its not going to set anything on fire, but it is probably very confusing to people who don't know why they can't link the discussion. ~ JohnnyMrNinja 15:11, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with the template; you can override the namespace by setting the 4th parameter to "Wikipedia talk" so that the discuss link will point to the correct location. — Edokter • Talk • 15:51, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

No, that will set the wikilink to point to "Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia:Ethnic and cultural conflicts noticeboard#Requested move". To fix this template, we either need StringFunctions (which aren't installed at the moment, go vote for bug 6455) or we need to separate the namespace into its own parameter, which is a can of worms in that changing the syntax of live templates can get ugly. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 16:00, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I see the problem now. The template is mainly designed for articles. Maybe a seperate template for other namespaces makes more sense. Hacking this one to accomodate every namespace will be quite cumbersome. — Edokter • Talk • 22:44, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

does there exist a tool to...

Does there exist a tool to see an article's What links here minus blue links that occur in the article? In other words, I want to see what links to an article that the article itself doesn't already link to. Kingturtle (talk) 18:14, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Not really, you'd have to get the two lists from the API and compare manually. Alternatively, if both of these features are available from AWB, you could get its list comparer to wrap that process nicely for you. Happy‑melon 19:58, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

this is out of my realm of skills. Is there anyone out there who can create such a tool? Kingturtle (talk) 21:50, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm actually in the process of constructing such a tool, but my Toolserver account request hasn't been handled yet. Would you like me to upload it to some other home for it in the meantime? I'd have to tweak it to use the API, but I'm sure that wouldn't be a problem. haz (talk) 22:08, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

That'd be great. It will be a very useful tool for me. Thanks, Kingturtle (talk) 03:39, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

AWB (Windows-only) will do this, and I think you can use it to generate lists without being approved for editing with it. --NE2 03:55, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Permanent link no longer includes title

Recently the Permanent link on the left side of the screen has been changed to omit the title=.

For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Louis_XV_of_France&oldid=260401947 is just http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=260401947. Including the title is convenient because you can see from the link which article it points to. I copy those so I can reference articles in the state it was when I read them, or read them in the state I noticed them.

Was this change discussed? MeekSaffron (talk) 21:04, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I would imagine that it's because it could then be thrown off by a moved page (ie: the oldid is valid, but the title is not). However, that's just me shooting in the dark and could be quite wrong. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:05, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I tested it. Eadred of England was Edred of England, moved in November 2008. I edited a link to a December revision to say Edred_of_England, which works. Even putting in a nonsense title, E1 of England, works.

It's a reasonable idea, but that wasn't the reason. MeekSaffron (talk) 21:34, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

It was changed in this revision due to bug 16659. Tra (Talk) 23:03, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I can see the reason for avoiding permalinks like http://hi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%82%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AF%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%82%E0%A4%B6%E0%A5%80_(1992_%E0%A4%AB%E0%A4%BC%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B2%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%AE)&oldid=188492 for non-ASCII languages, but having the page name can be very convenient when it displays normally or with a limited number of conversions. And if the page is deleted then you can no longer see which page it was without the name. The software actually claims it was the Main Page! For example http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=263146657 which according to Google cache was a permalink to Jeevithathil Ninnum Oru Aedu before it was deleted. Would it be practical to include page name in "ASCII language" Wikipedia's or something like that? PrimeHunter (talk) 23:27, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Excepting the long-ASCII example, removing the title makes it less useful. Shorter, but not "prettier" in my opinion. I registered there and requested a reversal, or asking if the "prettify" could be done to only if 10+ ASCII conversions. I would be fine with 2 types of permalinks in the toolbox too, but I think a conversation among more people would be preferable. MeekSaffron (talk) 00:14, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

New messages banner still there

My "You have new messages" banner hasn't gone away since someone at the DOF left me a note. There was a file move at the servers on the second but my banner keeps popping up whenever I sign in. Anyone else noticed that? I have a bugzillia account and if it's not just mee I'll file a bug.--Ipatrol (talk) 20:53, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Have you purged? – ukexpat (talk) 22:21, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I have always wondered, is the new messages banner meant to reset when you visit your talk page? For me, the banner occaisionally stays up for a few clicks longer.--Commander Keane (talk) 01:08, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

It's supposed to, but I guess you could accidentally be getting a cached version of the page. ^demon (talk)

Help Desk history

I am a member of imdb, and one of the features is a help desk history.

Going through my contribuions to find what Help desk questions I have asked is a real pain. Does the site, or can the site, have a better way to do that?

One thing I'm trying to accomplish is to see how I could have asked each question in the proper place.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:28, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Are you talking about the "help desk" service at imdb, or our own help desk here? There's nothing we can do here about services on another website. Happy‑melon 21:49, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm asking how I might find my Help Desk questions here, which on imdb just requires a single click once you are on your page.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:08, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

We can search for Vchimpanzee on the Help Desk archives. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 23:15, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

You can also filter your contributions in Wikipedia namespace [3]. As far as I know, there is no built-in way to find all edits of a user to a page (maybe there are external tools for that). It's possible for logs, but not edits. It may be useful, so I suppose it has been requested. Cenarium (Talk) 00:59, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

There is one inbuilt way, via the API: ...&rvuser=Vchimpanzee&titles=Wikipedia%3AHelp%20desk. See also bugzilla:10788. --Splarka (rant) 08:36, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 15:32, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Transclusion errors?

Recently, an article that was named Dickie Moore was renamed to Dickie Moore (ice hockey). A problem has been discovered with this move, if you take a look at Special:WhatLinksHere/Dickie_Moore, you will see a lot of articles that should NOT link there. Rather, these links should be shown on Special:WhatLinksHere/Dickie_Moore (ice hockey). I've noticed that if you click on one of the pages from the former and do a null edit, it disappears and properly moves to the correct what links here page. Is this a caching issue with Wikipedia? We've noticed the same problem exists with Claude Julien as well. Please advise --Pparazorback (talk) 23:43, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The job queue is rather long at the moment, so this sort of thing will take a while to sort itself out. In the meantime, it can be fixed immediately with a null edit, as you discovered, but since this just puts more strain on the servers, it should be avoided unless there's some pressing reason. Algebraist 23:48, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

AWB seems perfect for this... flaminglawyer^c 04:54, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Rather long? I have template edits that I made 3 1/2-4 weeks ago that are still showing at the wrong "What links here" page. Surely this can't be normal? Makes it darn hard keeping incoming links to dab pages clean when it looks like you haven't cleaned stuff that you have. Mlaffs (talk) 04:34, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Image behaviour differences Wikipedia and Commons

Resolved

I refer to the image File:Grid 99, 100 int red 50 int yellow (940).svg.

It has no, that is, a transparent, background.

When rendered via a page in Wikipedia over the top of another image it correctly reveals all of the underlying image.

When rendered via a page in Commons over the top of another image it incorrectly hides all of the underlying image, as though it has a white background.

I have raised this with examples at Commons so any comments or suggestions there please.

Peet Ern (talk) 07:05, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Left a reply. Commons has some CSS. --Splarka (rant) 08:41, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to Commons:User:Edokter. Apparently the problem is with IE6. Wikipedia runs a script to enable transparency in IE6, but Commons does not. IE7 and Firefox are okay. Peet Ern (talk) 03:21, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, that certainly isn't a bug with mediawiki or how it is set up or styled! You could have mentioned such an old crappy browser ^_^. --Splarka (rant) 08:44, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I will now know for next time! Some of us though do not always have a choice which browser we use. What it means is that Commons has not addressed accessibility quite as well as Wikipedia (a point indirectly made by a someone else at Commons in response to this). Cheers. Peet Ern (talk) 01:26, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Privacy problem: posting of IP address in 'recommended messages'

In a recent discussion here, User:Od Mishehu said that the autoblock message has recently been modified so that it doesn't reveal the IP. But he said "in other blocks the recommended message does". Does anybody know which recommended messages reveal the IP address? Lightmouse (talk) 13:33, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Can anybody suggest a better place to ask? Lightmouse (talk) 13:55, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

WP:AN? Almost everyone there is an administrator and can go to Special:Block and look around... Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 15:05, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I asked there twice and got referred here. Shall I ask there again? Lightmouse (talk) 16:41, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

You can see a list of all MediaWiki messages (and their values, default and current) here: Special:AllMessages (warning: large page). —Locke Cole • t • c 17:29, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. It is a bit complicated for me. Is there anybody out there that can investigate based on the comment by User:Od Mishehu? Lightmouse (talk) 19:20, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Why does my signiture not work?

Even though I sign with the four tildes, the bot comes and says <unsigned>. Why? More 19:20, 14 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by SlamMeMore (talk • contribs)

Because your signature links to User talk:SlamMe, not to User talk:SlamMeMore, so the bot doesn't recognize it. --Amalthea 19:26, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes. As said when you asked at Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 December 12#My name, you have to change your signature. It's changed at Special:Preferences. You didn't believe me then but we have some experience here so please take our word for it and fix it. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:43, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Now it works like this, wchich is better, it guess. 330066"><b>More</b></font>]] (talk) 05:40, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

It links to the right page so SineBot should acccept it, but it looks confusing. If you want help creating a formatted signature then say what you want it to look like. The easiest way to get a correct signature is to uncheck "Raw signature" and leave the Signature field blank. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:57, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Links within "edit this page" not showing up?

"Superscript", "Insert hidden Comment" and "Insert a table" are showing up as plain words. The symbols are not there, unlike with the rest of things along the top of the edit box when you edit a page. D.M.N. (talk) 18:56, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I see correctly working symbols for all of them. Your browser must have missed the 3 images for some reason. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:24, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

What's wrong with main.css

I'm experiencing problem with loading some pages, mainly diffs. The styling of the diff table is missing about half the time. Since that styling is defind in skins/monobook/main.css, I suspect there is a problem serving that file. Anyone else experiencing that problem? — Edokter • Talk • 19:50, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The same thing is also showing up on Finnish Wikipedia. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 20:09, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Yep, the format of diffs is completely borked for me. I have a screenshot if it is needed. Regards. Woody (talk) 20:10, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

It's not a local thing apparently, and I can't see any local MediaWiki changes. Woody (talk) 20:16, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Looks like the system administrators are having issues with the servers: Server admin log. Woody (talk) 20:20, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I was just going to suggest that. I've had issues with pages partially loading and pages loading without the styles. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:30, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Diff Layout

I have just checked a diff of an article on my watchlist and usually the new text is highlighetd a green colour but at the moment it is not, also the text at the top of the page is aligned left with the Revision as of... pushed right over to the left side. Have I done something or is there a bug I am using Opera, but saying that I tried it in IE and it was the same thanks. BigDunc^Talk 20:15, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

See above. Woody (talk) 20:17, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Proposing to add "Localize Comments" as a Gadget

Hey all, I'm proposing that we add a script I created, called "Localize Comments", as a Gadget. I think it's very useful to most users and so it can benefit a lot of editors. I've made the proposal at Wikipedia:Gadget/proposals#Add_the_.22Localize_Comments.22_script; I'd appreciate it if more people could test the script in different browsers and environments to tweak it until it's just right. At the very least, that's what I'd like to achieve, even if it doesn't get accepted as a Gadget. Also, I'm posting this here so that it gets more exposure, so that people who find it useful will know about it as I've never posted it on WP:JS or anything :) More details on the script is at the link I have given for the proposal, including how it works, what it does, etc. Gary King (talk) 22:18, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

reporting error

and supplying link https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w/index.php?title=Kgb_(company)&diff=cur&oldid=prev —Preceding unsigned comment added by Harlequence (talk • contribs) 07:10, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

There has not been a page called Kgb_(company). Where did you get the url from? Maybe the error message should ask for that. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:52, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

It probably should. The message is MediaWiki:Missing-article, FYI. Algebraist 13:35, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I added it.[4] PrimeHunter (talk) 01:31, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Please also add something to the message asking people to report the actual text of the error message ("The database did not find ..."). I expect that there would sometimes be useful information in the $1 or $2 parameters. —AlanBarrett (talk) 07:36, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Midi files

I would like to upload and embed a MIDI file in an article. I know OGG is the Wiki standard, but how am I supposed to convert a MIDI file into an OGG file? I can't find a converter. Can someone help me? --Rattlehead (talk) 20:43, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

You can upload a MIDI file just fine in Wikipedia. On the right is a sample. The only thing to note for this format is that you can't play it directly in this template. So a play=no is required to hide the broken link. Details here.
HУтaяtalk2mecontribs 21:58, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

If you still want to convert it, I'm sure Audacity can do it for you (and a lot of other things too). Dendodge Talk^Contribs 22:08, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmm... no it can't. I wonder why not. Dendodge Talk^Contribs 22:10, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

MIDI isn't a sound format in the way that Ogg Vorbis or MP3 is: it doesn't contain sound information, but rather a series of instructions for electronically-controllable musical instruments. --Carnildo (talk) 05:36, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I always wondered why midi files couldn't be played directly in the browser. Is this the case only with certain browsers, or with particular embedding methods? IIRC, I have visited sites at one point or another that had midi files playing in the background. SharkD (talk) 07:57, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I've another question. I'm trying to embed this MIDI on Zeldapedia, the Legend of Zelda wiki. Does it (Zeldapedia) use the same syntax as Wikipedia, or what? I can't seem to get it to work right. --98.180.209.248 (talk) 05:22, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

You'll need to copy quite a lot of templates and code over to Zelpedia in order to get the same syntax to work there. You need to copy the code from Template:Listen, Template:Listen/core, Template:Td and Template:Side box to the templates with the same name over there. You need to add the code below to the Zelpedia MediaWiki:Common.css:

th.mbox-text, td.mbox-text {     /* The message body cell(s) */
    border: none; 
    padding: 0.25em 0.9em;       /* 0.9em left/right */
    width: 100%;    /* Make all mboxes the same width regardless of text length */
}
td.mbox-image {                  /* The left image cell */
    border: none; 
    padding: 2px 0 2px 0.9em;    /* 0.9em left, 0px right */
    text-align: center; 
}
.mediawiki table.mbox-small {    /* For the "small=yes" option (also used elsewhere).   */
    clear: right;                /* The "mediawiki" class ensures that this declaration */
    float: right;                /* overrides styles set in "tmbox"/"ombox"/etc below   */
    margin: 4px 0 4px 1em;
    width: 238px;
    font-size: 88%;
    line-height: 1.25em;
}

You also need File:Gnome-speakernotes.svg. But if you copy all this code to the equivalent place on Zeldawiki, you could indeed reuse the template there. Happy‑melon 12:34, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Editnotice

My apologies if this is a perennial question; I try my best to avoid technical discussions. Is there a reason why User talk:JoeEditor/Editnotice shouldn't be automatically protected (and only editable by JoeEditor or admins)? A lot of harm could be done if User:JoeVandal changed User:JoeEditor's editnotice (which appears at the top whenever someone tries to leave a message on the user's talk page) to say, for instance, "While I'm on vacation, I only have time to check my alternate account. Please leave your message at User_talk:JoeVandal instead of here." JoeVandal could then pretend to be JoeEditor on JoeVandal's userpage for a while, and if he removed JoeEditor's Editnotice before JoeEditor got back from vacation, JoeEditor might never know about the deception.

If we can get automatic protection (similar to the automatic protection for monobook.js), great. If not, I'm going to propose over at WT:Protection policy that our protection policy specifically allows protection of any user's Editnotice page if the user requests it. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:19, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

You could get this same problem without using the editnotice, e.g. the vandal could put the message at the top of the talk page or in a template transcluded on the talk page. Admittedly, they'd probably be more likely to be noticed if the vandal edits that talk page directly as these pages are more likely to be watched by other users, but I don't think this problem is specific to editnotices. It's best to be careful if one user claims to be another user and check that there is confirmation from both accounts that this is the case.

To answer your question about how to protect editnotices, you could put {{User:JoeEditor/editnotice.js}} on User talk:JoeEditor/Editnotice then protect User talk:JoeEditor/Editnotice so only JoeEditor can edit his editnotice by going to User:JoeEditor/editnotice.js. Tra (Talk) 19:52, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Regarding "You could get this same problem without using the editnotice": If someone posts a message pretending to be JoeEditor on JoeEditor's talk page, the history will show that the poster wasn't the JoeEditor account, and JoeEditor will get a big banner saying "you have new messages" to alert him that someone made a post. Editnotice is a much bigger problem, because it won't show up in the talk page history (so other users can't see that it wasn't posted by JoeEditor unless they know about Editnotice), and because JoeEditor won't generally know about User talk:JoeEditor/Editnotice or have it watchlisted, and he won't even be aware of the message unless he edits his own talk page at a time when the Editnotice is in effect. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:17, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

You might want to have a look at Wikipedia talk:Editnotice and {{editnotice loader}} which is a possible method for putting a small link by the editnotice to allow people to view its history or edit it. I think this would help to reduce the problem of it being difficult to see where the notice is coming from and who put it there. Tra (Talk) 23:06, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

This is a wiki. Pages can be vandalized. Use a watchlist. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:12, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the templates and the protection information, Tra. MZM, only a small percentage of Wikipedians know the name of that page or what it does; they can't watchlist it if they don't know it's there. I'll give the discussion another couple of days here, then head over to WT:Protection policy; that's not a perfect solution, but at least putting it in policy will help to get the word out. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 00:18, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

filing error report as requested

[5] while navigating from [6]Mccready (talk) 17:59, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

User talk:Biophys has had many revisions deleted. This is presumably one of them. Algebraist 18:02, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

This is not an error, I can confirm it is a deleted revision. Regards. Woody (talk) 18:13, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Has something happened to the AFD template?

I put an afd tag on PortaWalk, Inc. and it seems like it looks different from the way it used to look. It used to include a link to preformatted debate, but it's not there any more. But I looked at the history of the template, it hasn't been edited for a couple of months. AnyPerson (talk) 01:18, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

The part that's changed is transcluded from {{AfDM}}. --Amalthea 01:39, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I've asked User:Markles why they did that. AnyPerson (talk) 02:46, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Clock gadget

I have the clock gadget enabled. I just noticed that it is now displaying two clocks in my personal toolbar, one slightly smaller than the other, the smaller one with "UTC" following it, both showing UTC, and both do a server purge when clicked. Disabling the clock removes both. Has someone been monkeying around with the gadget? Thanks. – ukexpat (talk) 17:22, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Belay that question - it appears that he second clock is a Friendly enhancement - Wikipedia talk:Friendly#friendlyclock!. – ukexpat (talk) 17:26, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I came here just to ask why a clock started showing up without any apparent reason. –Capricorn42 (talk) 19:05, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The Friendly clock is showing the wrong time, the clock is 1 hour earlier than the real local time. Mion (talk) 16:57, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

prefix search in talk namespaces

I cannot get the search option prefix: (mentioned in [7]) to work for any of the talk namespaces. For example, Village prefix:Wikipedia talk: gives no results [8] while Village prefix:Wikipedia: gives thousands.[9] Is it supposed to work? PrimeHunter (talk) 01:44, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

You have to do Village prefix:Wikipedia_talk: (see [10]). Hope this helps. - Rjd0060 (talk) 01:47, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Or you can just search for 'Village' in the Wikipedia talk: namespace only, of course. Algebraist 01:49, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Underscore was one of several things I tried and it didn't work then. It still doesn't work in some other talk spaces, for example Village prefix:User_talk: [11] and Village prefix:Talk: [12]. I have not been able to get any hits in article Talk: which has no space/underscore. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:45, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

If you want to search in a namespace, you just prefix the query with it (just like with ordinary pages), e.g. User_talk:Village. --rainman (talk) 16:38, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

WikiBreak Enforcer

How do I use it? I plan on taking a break unitl early February. --Dylan620 (Contribs) 13:48, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Documentation here. Algebraist 14:54, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Math parser error!

Error: "Failed to parse (Cannot write to or create math output directory):" in the article Multilateration. Workaround: Cut & paste page into some random name. Electron9 (talk) 02:48, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Purging fixed the problem (see Wikipedia:Purge). There is at least one bug describing this issue.--Commander Keane (talk) 03:21, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Problem with Template:SG

Somewhere in the many revisions of {{SG}}, a bracket or two got deleted. When placing the template on the talk page, for example: Talk:List of theme parks in Singapore, it gives this error: "[[Category:Unknown-importance Singapore articles", which you can see ends up in between the two project boxes. Your help is greatly appreciated, since it is beyond me! --Funandtrvl (talk) 02:55, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Image stuck in speedy deletion cat

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 20:25, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

The File:BSicon ÜWo+r.svg image has been in the Category:Candidates for speedy deletion category for several days, even though it has been deleted (and redeleted a few times). The image exists on commons, but I don't see anything obvious as to why it's still in the speedy deletion category. I have tried purging the image page and the CSD category. Any ideas on what the problem is here? I'm tired of seeing this each time I work on speedy deletions. --Aude (talk) 00:09, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Probably something to do with the filename. Notice the [article] tab is still blue, and links to "BSicon_%C3%9CWo%2Br.svg" while you link to "File:BSicon_UWo%2Br.svg". This may need to be deleted manually by a dev. — Edokter • Talk • 00:29, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I can edit it so you could blank it in the meantime. Can't it be deleted by changing the URL accordingly to action=delete? Certainly weird though. --Amalthea 00:41, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

... apparently caused by the redirect at commons. --Amalthea 00:43, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

I managed to delete it using your link and the image has disappeared from CSD (and luckely the image still works). It would be nice if there was a redirect message at the top, but appearently that does not work for remote redirects. — Edokter • Talk • 02:00, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you so much for deleting the image! If I see this sort of thing occur again, I may be able to deal with it. --Aude (talk) 03:26, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

secure login: SSL Blacklist 4.0 reports unsafe MD5 signature

For the secure login page SSL Blacklist 4.0 (Firefox plugin) reports an unsafe MD5 signature. Can someone fix this? Ringspectrum (talk) 13:30, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

See also [13]. This should be important. Ringspectrum (talk) 20:29, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Problem with {{Infobox Tea}}

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 20:24, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I just noticed that at Tieguanyin there's a giant whitespace at the top of the article...the only way I've been able to get rid of it is by removing the infobox, so I assume there's something wrong with the formatting in the infobox (although none of the other articles I've checked have this problem with the tea infobox). Could someone take a look and try to see what might be causing it? Thanks, Politizer ^talk/_contribs 15:03, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Fixed by converting to use {{infobox}}. However, a serious rethink of the colours used is needed; they're far too bold. Happy‑melon 16:37, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

I overruled that conversion for now: without the colours being changed, it effectively breaks the template on pages like the one mentioned above. I used an HTML table form that keeps the template mostly as it was (while fixing the problem), and conversion to a more standard form can follow soon. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 16:58, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Politizer ^talk/_contribs 21:23, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Transclusion not working properly on Talk:Culture?

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 04:24, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Yesterday for my first time - put a challenge against a quality rating. Tried to follow the instructions exactly, and the transclusion seemed to work. We get my original item at Talk:Culture/GA1 and it appears at bottom of Talk:Culture

But today another user has added his comment which appears at Talk:Culture/GA1 So why do his comments not appear at bottom of Talk:Culture?? Have I made a mistake? should it be /GA1 or ?GA2?? Can anyone fix the problem or explain what I should do? I'm going offline now for 12 hours. --AlotToLearn (talk) 09:08, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

No, you did everything correctly, it's just that you are still receiving the old version of the page. Whenever you view a page, it is cached and stored on a big server so that if you go to view the page again, the server can just throw the old version at you rather than expending the processing time required to create a new version. When a page itself is edited, all the caches are automatically invalidated and new ones are generated, but when a modification is made to a transcluded page, those changes are not propagated immediately, it takes a few hours or days for the changes to propagate to all dependent pages. If you make a null edit to Talk:Culture the page will be updated to show the latest comments. Happy‑melon 10:23, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining that... and so clearly, too!--AlotToLearn (talk) 21:28, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Template for category size?

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 20:22, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone know if there's a template or anything that returns the size (number of articles in) a category X? I'm thinking something along the lines of {{Category size}} or what have you (don't bother trying to find Template:Category size; it doesn't exist, that was just an example) and returns some integer that is the number of articles included in that category? And, if there's not such a template, do you know if there's a magic word, parser function, or anything, that does that, or could be used in making a template that does that?

(I'm just asking because there are categories such as Category:Wikipedia Did you know articles that are featured articles that I'm interested in organizing into a silly little table that shows how many articles there are in each, and I don't feel like updating it by hand all the time...although on second thought I guess I would have to at least null-edit it periodically to update the transcluded templates.... Anyway, it's not a huge deal, just something that was in the back of my mind.)

Thanks, Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:00, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Use the magic word {{PAGESINCATEGORY}}, I use it myself at User:Nanonic/to do/logo count. Nanonic (talk) 20:05, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! That's exactly what I was looking for. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:11, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Generating a random article from a category

Resolved

 – Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:51, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Another quick silly question...is there any magic word that can grab a random article from a specific category? (If not, it's not a big deal; I'm just being fanciful.) Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:29, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

No. This feature is disabled on Wikipedia for performance reasons. Algebraist 20:44, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

No problem. Thanks! Politizer ^talk/_contribs 20:51, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Template:Blocked user

Resolved

 – Politizer ^talk/_contribs 21:37, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I created this template yesterday as the counterpart of Template:Banned user, figuring that it may be usefull in certain situations where an established user is blocked, but where there is no consensus for a ban. See here for further explanation.

I was trying to create a template for both account and IPs, and to create it in such a way that it will add the page to Category:Indefinitely blocked IP addresses when 1) the "ip" parameter is given, and 2) no "time" parameter is given, so the period defaults to indefinite. I wrote this:

{{#ifeq:{{{1|}}}|ip|{{#if:{{{time|}}}|[[Category:Indefinitely blocked IP addresses|{{PAGENAME}}]]|}}|}}

Alas, this doesn't work: the category will be active anyway, the parser function are useless. Is there any way to make this work? If there isn't, I'll guess I have to update Template:Indefblockedip, or create Template:Blocked IP. Cheers, theFace 20:57, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

In the code there now, isn't it inserting the Category only when |time= is given? Politizer ^talk/_contribs 21:05, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I used #if incorrectly. Fixed. I tested it on my userpage, and it works now. However, for some reason, Template:Blocked user still shows up in Category:Indefinitely blocked IP addresses. Cheers, theFace 21:22, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh wait, it doesn't. Stupid cache. Ok, problem solved. - theFace 21:31, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

HTML rendering mystery

re: This section Someone was experimenting in this article earlier today, which I've reverted, but then saw this section had a closed table element as the lead section (synopsis). I then imported the boilerplate from the top of another section and adjusted the color..... but still have the closed box manifesting... can someone peek at the wikimarkup and cure the odd side effect. I can't figure out why this one section would do this, and the other fifteen sections using the same code (less custom color lines) behave properly and don't box the text. Thanks // FrankB 01:38, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Amalthea fixed it. — Edokter • Talk • 02:08, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Those are some pretty extensive plot synopses.
As far as I can tell it started with your addition of the {{main}} template to the synopsis of the first episode; it uses a wikimarkup colon which apparently breaks the surrounding table. I've substituted it into the article, and used the HTML equivalent instead, which is very ugly, but fixes the table. I'd just throw it out, and wikilink the episode title instead to the episode article. --Amalthea 02:10, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

how do i Link Wikipage with wikiquote

I do i link wiki page of a person with wikiquote page.User talk:Yousaf465

If you mean how do you put a link on, say, a person's bio linking to their quotations on Wikiquote, you add the {{Wikiquote|Pagename}} template, replacing "Pagename" with the Wikiquote page name. – ukexpat (talk) 04:23, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

TOC problem

if you see the TOC at Help:Cascading style sheets, the ninth item says "[edit]" before the name, though the section does not have this. Could someone look into this? ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 07:41, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, the section *does* have it. It's created by {{H:f Help}} since that's the only section that should be edited in this project, everything else is from meta. It's been doing that since June 2008 apparently. The span could be pulled outside the section header, but that would introduce other display issues in return. --Amalthea 09:46, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikiblame down?

Looks like wikiblame is giving permission errors? Can anyone confirm, or provide any way of notifying the maintainer? User A1 (talk) 11:06, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I've left a message at de:Benutzer Diskussion:Flominator... let's see what happens. haz (talk) 17:44, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Who can create a robot ?

Synchronization between the various language versions of the coordinates.For example，named white house page have a coordinate,and the robot find a inter wiki link:zh:白宫,but the zh Version haven't coordinate.and than ,the bot add the en's coordinate to zh.--Wmrwiki (talk) 15:52, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is quite what you're asking, but I believe that anyone can create a bot, then submit it to the WP:BAG for approval. ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 16:01, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I am planning to create such a bot (some day). Wanted to begin with software version updates. See also "Enable template inclusion from Commons" for having common templates. --- Best regards, Melancholie (talk) 16:25, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Point me towards something

I'm looking for a Mac OS X/Safari compatible application that will allow me to quickly and efficiently tag articles or sections for cleanup, and to leave automated comments on talk pages explaining what I did.

The main thing is that I want to be able to customize the edit summaries and, more important, the templates I use - I'm looking for a way, basically, to quickly tag plot summaries that are in-universe in style. I looked at Friendly, but it doesn't have the ability to customize what templates I can add (at least not that I can see.)

Is there anything that does what I'm looking for? Phil Sandifer (talk) 05:07, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I assume you mean Twinkle? I don't think that it would be to hard for a JS guru to edit a userfied copy to add some more templates. You could ask around over at WP:US if you think that the product of such an endeavour would be close to what you want. Good luck! — Jake Wartenberg 05:14, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, yes. Twinkle does appear like it would work if some more templates were added. I'll wander over to WP:US. Thanks. Phil Sandifer (talk) 05:18, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion for newer search feature

Problem: Search terms block the "Go" and "Search" buttons

I love how wikipedia now attempts to complete a search term for you, when you are typing in the search box. The problem is that these search terms block the Go and Search buttons (see photo). Where can I ask to change the go and search button to above the search box, not below? Ikip (talk) 05:45, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

You could go to the search tab under prefs, and disable the suggestions. Or you could request a script for this at WP:US ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 07:37, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll try hiding the buttons below, and putting duplicate buttons above the searchbar using the CSS ":before" psuedo-class. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 07:52, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Aah, :before doesn't work in IE. Actually, your problem is easily solved by clicking outside of the search box, (making the suggestions disappear) and then clicking on "search" or "go". ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 08:07, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

We're aware of this -- bugzilla:16327. Note that just hitting "enter" will usually do what you want. :)

At some point we'll be seeing some larger rearrangements of the UI skin and will likely be moving the search box around considerably (say, to the top where people can actually find it, and where we could do a horizontal layout which wouldn't have this problem). --brion (talk) 19:24, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Watchlist changes

I was recently editing on the Simple English Wikipedia, and noticed that they have a feature that displays watchlist changes underneath the header on the page. Would it be possible to do something like that here? ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 15:43, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

User:Ais523/watchlistnotifier.js is the same thing hosted here, and it's damn useful indeed. You can manually add it to your user scripts by following the instructions at Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts, but it would be very nice to have as a gadget. I believe I'll go poke Ais523 about that now. — Gavia immer (talk) 22:13, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't know of any reason why it wouldn't work as a gadget, offhand. Probably it should be refactored to use the centralised AJAX system rather than rolling its own, but that is unlikely to make a significant difference to anything. Wikipedia:Gadget/proposals is the page for proposing gadgets, if you want to go down that path. --ais523 09:26, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Gotcha, thanks. — Gavia immer (talk) 09:58, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Image not working

Image:Nuvola_apps_kmahjong.png seems to work at any pixel level except 48px!

• 47px:
• 48px:
• 49px:

Does anyone else get this strange error? 47 and 49 show up fine, but the image is broken on 48. This seems to be the only image that does this. Artichoker^[talk] 18:27, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes I get the same - no 48px image is visible. – ukexpat (talk) 18:33, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Same. It's a bit bizarre, but I have noticed many images recently that simply do not appear for no apparent reason. --.:Alex:. 18:54, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

All three seem to be appearing to me. DuncanHill (talk) 18:58, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Looks fixed to me now. I purged the file description page. You may have to bypass your local cache to see the change. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:59, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I bypassed my cache but the image still doesn't show up. Artichoker^[talk] 19:04, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Confirmed: cache bypass fixed it for me. – ukexpat (talk) 19:11, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

It's fine for me now too. --.:Alex:. 19:56, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Ok showed up now! Artichoker^[talk] 19:57, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

This happens fairly frequently. I don't know if it's documented anywhere. Algebraist 00:10, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

WP:purge? --NE2 06:55, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

How can I see the coding for div class coding?

I want to change the wikicoding of the template {{leavemessage}} for myself, (because it is the same color as new message, and I always think I have a new message on my talk page):

Please leave a pump (technical)/Archive 54&action=edit&section=new message.

wiki coding:

<div class="usermessage"><div class="plainlinks">Please leave a '''[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:{{PAGENAME}}&action=edit&section=new <font color="#5a3696">message</font>].'''</div></div>

How do I see the coding for: <div class="usermessage">? And any other div class?

View page source isn't helpful:

<textarea name="wpTextbox1" id="wpTextbox1" cols="80" rows="25" tabindex="1" accesskey=","><div class="usermessage"><div class="plainlinks">Please leave a '''[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:{{PAGENAME}}&action=edit&section=new <font color="#5a3696">message</font>].'''</div></div>

Thank you in advance. Ikip (talk) 04:27, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Using class="usermessage" always makes it look like the new message bar. Here is what I use on my talk page. Cheers, — Jake Wartenberg 04:57, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Click here to leave me a message

Thank you Jake. Ikip (talk) 14:48, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Try Firebug. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 04:33, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

The Web Developer Firefox extension is very handy for dissecting websites. EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:39, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I do believe the class is coded in /skins-1.5/monobook/main.css. When you view the page source, right at the top is a whole list of <link rel="stylesheet" ...>'s that load various .css files. Franamax (talk) 05:34, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Directory Tree

Hi. I just installed a copy of MediaWiki in Ubuntu. I see, though, that the directory tree looks different from Wikipedia´s. The /var/www/wiki folder contains all of the files, but I guess Wikipedia also has a /var/www/w folder? Does that contain all of the PHP files, then, and the /wiki folder has all of the entries? If so, why is it laid out that way?--K;;m5m k;;m5m (talk) 18:26, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

If you just installed your own MediaWiki, please note that it will not have Search Engine Friendly Urls as default, while en.wiki has this. If you believe there are differences out from the URLs you see, this is most likely the reason. If this is not what you mean, ignore my comment. --Eivind (t) 18:33, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Forgive me. I am completely new to administering a server like this. I thought that each of these pages were stored as individual HTML pages in the /wiki directory, but I see now that they're actually stored in the MySQL database. They must all be generated by the index.php file. We must always be looking at the index.php file, then?--K;;m5m k;;m5m (talk) 19:14, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

What you're looking for is documented at mw:Manual:Short URL. If you have any other MediaWiki-related queries, mwusers.com might be better – you'll probably find what you're looking for already there. Good luck! haz (talk) 19:26, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

The Wikipedia software is stored in the /w directory, and uses URL rewriting to make it look like each page is an HTML page in /wiki. In actual fact, there is no /wiki directory, and everything is stored in the database. --Carnildo (talk) 22:47, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Sleep and change signature

Is it possible to put code into my monobook.js that automatically changes my signature on a specific day? (If you must know, I want all the links in my signature to go to April Fools Day, on April Fools Day.) ^Tezkag₇₂ 02:45, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

No, but you could just do it manually, couldn't you? Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 02:51, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Substitution of templates in signatures is allowed. Your signature could substitute a user subpage with content depending on checking the day, for example something including {{#ifexpr:{{CURRENTMONTH}}=4 and {{CURRENTDAY}}=1|([[April Fools Day|talk]])|([[User talk:Tezkag72|talk]])}}. Template transclusion and parser functions in signatures are not allowed so if you also want signatures from former days to display differently on April Fools Day then you cannot do it. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:40, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Table alignment struggle

Resolved

Hi. In my Sandbox I want the table on the right to be aligned as seen here but I can't figure out how to do it. That is, I want the "Skip today's questions" box top left corner to be next to the top right corner of the "Welcome to the Help Desk" box. Ask if that is not clear.--Commander Keane (talk) 11:07, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

It's totally not clear, but I did a valign for you here. I doubt that's what you want though. The help desk page uses {{sidebar}} and the rendering browser displays the HTML stream as it comes in, whereas you're using table formats - I believe you would need to play around with horizontal alignments. Oh well, I tried... Franamax (talk) 13:22, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

My attempt sort of worked. Tell me how I did. HУтaяtalk2mecontribs 23:30, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Thankyou, Hytar's fix seems good to me.--Commander Keane (talk) 00:55, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Welcome. The key is in the arrangement and margins. HУтaяtalk2mecontribs 20:23, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Making null changes not show up on watchlist

Hi All. Is there a way that I can make my watchlist hide any null changes (ie when one person has made a change and then a second has changed it back so that there is no overall change)? Thanks, Chris (talk) 09:04, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Might help if you explain why you want this. The example you give might be the start of an edit / revert war over a page you're interested in. I'd wan to know about that on a page I'm interested in. --Philcha (talk) 09:30, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Presumably it's so that reverted drive-by vandalism doesn't show up, instead showing the legitimate change before that. Anyway, looking through the API, I don't think there's an efficient way to do this; only sizes of revisions seem to be recorded, not their hashes, so you could tell that a page had been made 5 bytes larger than 5 bytes smaller, but you couldn't tell (except by parsing edit summaries, which is unreliable) that the page had been changed then reverted, except by downloading all the relevant revisions (which would be too server-intensive to use on every watchlist view). --ais523 09:35, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's just to reduce the size of my recent changes list. At the moment I get 100 or so changes, but actually 50 of them aren't changes. In fact, I feel the number of null changes is increasing; vandals are being better monitored and reverted more promptly and I don't need to bother about that page. Chris (talk) 10:35, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, there currently isn't any way to do this. This has been discussed before (at least in the context of being able to hide reverted edits when looking at a history page). To implement it would require that each version of a page have a hash value, as ais523 said. (Media files already have this, to detect duplicates.) With hash values, the software accurately knows, 100% of the time, whether a version of a page is a duplicate of a prior version of that page.

Since what you're talking about is a proposal, not something currently available, you might want to post at WP:VPPR. To keep the suggestion practical - to avoid the problem that ais523 mentioned about the software needing to look at all prior versions - it probably would make sense for watchlists only to exclude paired edits that cancel each other that otherwise would be on the watchlist. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:31, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Broken table ordering, articles on GDP

Table at List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita is screwed up. This is a table showing 100 or so countries, along with their per-capita GDPs and various other data, and which can be re-sorted by the user in various ways.
- (1) Default ordering of the table is alphabetical by country. Should be by per-capita GDP (labelled in table as "Rank") from "richest" per capita to "poorest".
- (2) If I re-sort the table by "Rank": "descending" ("poorest to richest"), table displays correctly. (Starts with four non-ranked countries, then Burundi at #179, etc.) However, when I attempt to sort by Rank: "ascending" ("richest to poorest"), displays by first digit of rank (see my post to Talk, linked below). This is pretty bad.
I just posted about this to the article's Talk, and I see other complaints about this as well.
We have a number of articles in this series, at least some of which use this same (broken) table style

• List of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita
• List of countries by GDP (nominal)
• List of countries by GDP growth
• List of countries by GDP (PPP)

- and perhaps others, I don't know.
I was shocked to see a post at Talk:List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita Talk from May 2008 complaining about the same concerns. Problem has not been fixed since then.
There seems to be broad and continuing concern about this across several articles.
Folks, we need to fix this.
-- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 14:07, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that a numeric sort is used only if the first non-blank cell in a column is numeric. Otherwise text sorting is used. In tables with a mix of numerics and others (such as the dashes used in the subject table), mixed results may be observed. The first sort may work fine, but once the non-numerics appear at the top, a subsequent sort will order the column contents using text sorting (1, 10, 100, 11, 2, ....). The only solution I know of at this time is to wrap some of the values with the {{sort}} template, specifying a hidden sortable string such as "001" that provides the needed leading zeros for consistent text mode sorting. For example, in the Rank column, replace "1" – "99" with "{{sort|001|1}}" – "{{sort|099|99}}".

I wonder if it might be worth implementing a more generalized sort algorithm that gives Excel-like results. All numeric cells would sort before all non-numeric cells, with the numeric portions sorted numerically and the non-numeric portion sorted as text. It would also be an opportunity to fix negative number sorting the interpretation of the {{sort}} template (ignore the displayed-only part). I'm currently working to support rowspan/colspan in sorted tables, so I could look into this also. -- Tcncv (talk) 08:37, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

This is a very long standing bug in the software and things appear to have gotten worse rather than better. a patch that would fix the problem appears to have been rejected by the developers.

A while ago I implemented a solution on List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita which forced numeric sorting by including two hidden rows in the table: one with very high numbers and another with very low ones. One of which would always float to the top. This worked at the time but the software has been changed since then.

A natural sort algorithm (the excel like results) would be an ideal solution. The downside is that the sort function would take a performance hit. I even wrote a patch for this but I haven't bothered submitting it yet. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 14:07, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. If you do have a patch for this ready for submission, may I ask that you submit it?

People are complaining about this. I also note that these articles are quite likely to be used for general reference, including by journalists and professionals.

Again, IMHO, whatever is required, we do need to fix this. Can people who are familar with the bugfixing system around here please go rattle the bars again? Thanks to all. -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 14:24, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually it turns out there is a bug in the sorting software. At the moment even one non-numeric entry will break what should be a numeric list. I've posted a patch to bugzilla, so I guess we'll see. — Blue-Haired Lawyer 23:31, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Live RC

Hi,

I can't use correctly Live RC on the english wikipedia (it work on the french wikipedia). I have created a monobook (User:Khayman/monobook.js and User:Khayman/monobook.css) with the code lines described on the documentation page of Live RC, but nothing. Do you know what I must do ?

I asked this question on the french wikipedia, but nobody know the answer.

- Khayman ^(contact) 15:19, 20 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Khayman (talk • contribs)

You might take a look at User:Pabix/Use LiveRC!. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:20, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. - Khayman ^(contact) 17:23, 22 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Khayman (talk • contribs)

References and citations

Can anything be done about the way we use <ref> and {{cite}} for inline citations? It makes it so very hard to edit articles that have many of them. Tempshill (talk) 20:25, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

What is it that makes it hard to edit articles with lots of inline citations? Tra (Talk) 22:33, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I guess the fact that the article text gets broken up by the ref and cite text. I use wikEd (see Gadgets in your Preferences) and that helps somewhat as it colour codes different types of text and links. – ukexpat (talk) 22:40, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

IIRC, there have been several requests on Bugzilla to change the citation system so that it is more robust and interferes less with normal article editing. SharkD (talk) 03:26, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it's that the readability of the main article text goes all to hell when trying to edit. Readers get the clarity benefits of footnotes and editors don't. Thanks for the pointers to the helper apps. Tempshill (talk) 06:34, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

{{Source list}} Ruslik (talk) 06:01, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Interesting, but almost impossible, I'd guess, to educate a large number of editors that they should put the text of sources into the references section. Or even gain consensus that it's a good thing; there is a strong argument, I think, that when the supporting citation is right next to the text it supports, it makes for easier editing (particularly adding text and a citation; with the Source template, one needs to edit two sections, either in two separate edits or by editing the entire article all at once.) Neither is a preferred practice.

Hopefully the $1 million grant that the Wikimedia Foundation is starting to spend, to improve the user interface, will deal with this problem. Or we could just go ahead and implement Manus Manske's javascript solution, discussed here. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:05, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

OpenOffice spreadsheets

I like to edit tables in a spreadsheet program. However, when I copy text from the browser the text is usually formatted in odd ways. How do I paste text without all the wierd formatting (OpenOffice)? Changing all the cells to their default formatting after the fact doesn't work for me, because I typically don't use the default formatting. It also doesn't remove any hyperlinks that may have been copied. Thanks. SharkD (talk) 15:25, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Check here for some importing tools. – ukexpat (talk) 16:13, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

The OpenOffice tools all seem to deal only with exporting. The problem I am having is with importing (rather, copying and pasting). SharkD (talk) 03:14, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

There should be a "paste unformatted" or "paste as plain text" option somewhere. --Carnildo (talk) 04:58, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Do you know if there's hotkey for it, or a way to set it as the default? Selecting the option each time is tedious. SharkD (talk) 05:04, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Network funkiness

We just had a few minutes outage in Europe due to a router crash. We're re-routing most access through our Florida data enter until we've confirmed all is well. --brion (talk) 21:17, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Spaces in link

Resolved

 – — neuro^(talk) 00:18, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Hey guys, I am creating a table which lists users, and it has a link to their logs - I use a template to list the users, but some have spaces in their handles and the links have the bit after the space in the actual text of the link when it links to the logs. How should I get around this? You can see what I mean at User:Neurolysis/Stats, please feel free to fiddle around. Thanks! :) — neuro^(talk) 23:40, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Using underscores works. Algebraist 23:46, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Well yes, and so does using HTML spaces, but how on earth would I implement that in a template? — neuro^(talk) 00:11, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

urlencode seems to work. Algebraist 00:16, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Cheers. — neuro^(talk) 00:18, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

HELP, I BROKE AN ARTICLE, Re; Can't edit

I have solved my computer problems, & thought I would come & play, but... "Women in Sikhism" will not review or save page correctly. I have managed to re-load part of the article, but cannot get the rest of it back up. (I have the rest of the article saved) When I try, I get a download message saying I have "downloaded index.php", which is an empty text document. I cannot revert to the original article either. I was trying to edit the entire page as one item. Should I have done it 1 section at a time? Please help, it's bloody annoying. I've spent some time on it this evening, & would appreciate knowing if what I did bent the software, or exposed a bug.

I've restored the previous version for now (with a botched edit summary), but can't really help with you problem. :| --Amalthea 00:10, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

In Special:Preferences under the "Editing" tab, uncheck "Use external editor by default (for experts only, needs special settings on your computer)" if it's checked. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:15, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Placing images next to each other.

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 20:23, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi everyone. Iam having dificulties placing images next to each other, I dont want them above each other. Can someone please take a look at my problem here. Thank you! Regards Slapsnot (talk) 16:30, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

You have a number of options available to you to do what you require, two of them being tables or the gallery tag -

A Logo.

An Example.

• 
  A Logo.
• 
  An Example.

Have a look at the underlying code of both as well as their help pages at Help:Table and Help:Gallery. Nanonic (talk) 17:14, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks alot Nanonic! Its exatly the way I want it!

Slapsnot (talk) 17:28, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

There's also {{double image}} and friends. --NE2 06:55, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I've noticed the gallery tag is underused in technical articles with lots of diagrams. Editors seem to prefer to scatter images around everywhere. SharkD (talk) 19:55, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Facebook Connect, OpenID, Google Friend Connect

Facebook Connect (see Facebook features#Facebook Connect), OpenID, Google Friend Connect.

Is Wikipedia thinking of using any of these? Which ones? Why one over the other? Can all 3 be used? What is the current status of development at Wikipedia? Is there anything others can do, study, analyze, research, etc. that would help things along.

Quote follows (emphasis added) from this December 4, 2008 article:

• http://mashable.com/2008/12/04/facebook-connect-identity-management

For an example of how it works, the new Citysearch beta, which launched a couple weeks ago, allows users to use their Facebook login to write reviews and leave comments. Those actions are then broadcast back to the Facebook News Feed.

That’s a big win for two obvious reasons: (1) you don’t need to register for a Citysearch account, provided you’re one of the 130 million people that now has Facebook, (2) Citysearch gets a ton of free exposure, as Facebook users who leave reviews and comments have those activities broadcast back to their mini-feed. ...

It would seem that a lot of big websites already agree, as Facebook has signed on more than 100 launch partners, including CBS, CNET, CNN, Vimeo, and even My.BarackObama.com. And, according to Facebook, early testing of Connect shows a 50 percent increase in engagement on websites that have implemented it.

I think this would be good also for getting people involved with wikis of all kinds. Such as the many listed here: Comparison of wiki farms.

There are many things proposed at the various Village Pumps, but it is doubtful many of them will get done via the Wikimedia Foundation. It just doesn't have the time, money, staff, and developers to do everything. So that leaves the other wikis on the web. Their problem is lack of the registered user base at Wikipedia. Millions of registered users.

Facebook Connect, OpenID, and/or Google Friend Connect could help expand the wiki world greatly. Learning to use wiki code is a skill just like learning to email, surf the web, and typing. That Wikipedia skill base needs to stretch out across the web more. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:01, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

A fundamental tenet of development of MediaWiki in general, and the Wikimedia wikis in general, is "no external dependencies". Anything which means user X can only do action Y if other-website Z is up and running, will not be employed. Wikimedia must be entirely self-supporting. I haven't looked very closely at this actual proposal, but essentially if it's possible for these other websites to have their dependency on wikimedia, rather than the other way round, it might be possible. If it would require wikimedia to send login credentials to another website for verification, forget it. Happy‑melon 19:30, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Maybe it is possible to have our existing registration system alongside IDs from outside Wikipedia. People can then be registered here by either, or both, ID systems. We leave a note explaining that we offer the other IDs as a way for people to get involved quickly. We also explain that if there are problems with the other ID system, then people can register at Wikipedia directly, and not be dependent on outside IDs. So existing users are not dependent on outside sites.

From OpenID#Adoption: "Other services accepting OpenID as an alternative to registration include Wikitravel ..." --Timeshifter (talk) 22:27, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

If there are people logging in with IDs from outside Wikipedia, they would have to be redirected from Wikipedia, to the external site to put their password in then back to Wikipedia. If the external site goes down, it would not be possible for them to log in any more, since Wikipedia would not have their password stored. Regarding Wikitravel, they are run by a completely separate organisation which may have a different policy about external dependencies. Tra (Talk) 00:19, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

For the record, things like Facebook Connect are designed to be transparent to the user. Their perception would be that they were always at wikipedia.org, even though it still requires communication with the external server. Dragons flight (talk) 00:28, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

With WikiTravel I was just pointing out a wiki site allowing both local registration and a wider-use ID like OpenID. Just to show that it is possible to have both. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:05, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

A system that exists in addition to local registration might be acceptable, but I'm not sure how much it buys us. The advantage of things like Facebook Connect is that people import an existing account and don't have to re-register. I'm not sure that works well for us, since presumably we don't want people using their real name (i.e. from Facebook) when making edits. Hence they would still need a new username, which is the only non-trivial part of our registration anyway. Dragons flight (talk) 00:28, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Many people do not use their real name at Facebook. I don't. And people can always register at Wikipedia separately if they don't want to use their real name. The main thing is to get people started. They can change their level of anonymity at anytime by signing up at Wikipedia, or changing their name at Wikipedia.

Facebook users who edit at Wikipedia can choose to have those activities broadcast back to their mini-feed. This attracts even more people to editing Wikipedia.

Interesting. Don't all WikiMedia sites already use a common login? Anyway, all the "mini-feed" stuff seems like it would require more work than just merging the registration system. SharkD (talk) 03:17, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

The mini-feed stuff is done by Facebook, I believe. It only effects Facebook, but it acts as advertising for Wikipedia, letting millions of other Facebook users know when their friends or associates edit Wikipedia.

All wikimedia sites have a common login. That is different, though similar, to what Facebook Connect is doing. Facebook Connect is a separate common login on a huge scale. Across the web. --Timeshifter (talk) 17:55, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Template:chart problems

i was copying and editing a chart one day at Adrienne de La Fayette when these error messages kept coming up: "Template:Chart/celltTemplate:Chart/cellb". i've tried scouring out all the "|}}" code and can't find the last two. here's an earlier version [14], here's where i copied the template from: Julio-Claudian family tree. is there a utility that finds the code, rather than 'red flagging'? (yes, i will probably make new family tree article but would like to fix the errors) thanks for the help pohick (talk) 15:08, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Changed || to | |. I will document this. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:35, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

thank-you Gadget850, you are a coder prince ! pohick (talk) 15:48, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Permanent links and page titles

A while ago I noticed that clicking on Permanent link in the toolbox gives a URL with just an oldid and no page title. This is bad change in my opinion. I think the page title needs to be included so humans can read the URL, even though the page title is apparently irrelevant to the software. I often link to oldids of pages (online and offline in my text editor), and no page title removes context and valuable meaning. The title= is also irrelevant to the software when it comes to diffs, but I don't think it would benefit anyone to remove the title from (diff) hyperlinks. What page is being talked about?

I found this thread in these talk archives and Tra said it was changed here due to bug 16659 to "prettify permalinks."

I think it should be changed back, although no page title would be fine for strings of %EO%A4%B8 stuff. Alternately, could the toolbox be changed so it shows "Basic permanent link" and "Titled permanent link" or similar? If this discussion belongs on bugzilla, I guess I could go there. Thank you. --Pixelface (talk) 18:01, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Phantom subcategories?

See Category:Future-Class film articles, for example: the category is telling me that it has "8 subcategories, out of 9 total", but for the life of me I can only see 8. I'm sure I've seen this elsewhere, too. Where's it getting the extra subcategory from? PC78 (talk) 22:34, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Blank image

Can anyone see this image? To me (IE7) it is completely invisible. SharkD (talk) 22:38, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I see it - Firefox 2.0.0.20. Have you refreshed your cache and done a server purge? – ukexpat (talk) 22:39, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Weird. It works for me in Firefox as well. In IE7 I get a "404: File not found" error. Purging shouldn't make a difference since it works at least *some* of the time. I'll try clearing my cache. BTW, this is the first time this has ever happened to me. SharkD (talk) 01:27, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Image overlaps the blockquote in the article

Can someone more technical fix this, as it is beyond my skills - see Talk:Appomattox Station. My last edit on Appomattox Station apparently caused this. Thanks! --Doug Coldwell ^talk 23:11, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

It's a full-page-width template being used. I've replaced it with another one that isn't so space-hungry. — Edokter • Talk • 00:11, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Flagged protection

More comments and thoughts regarding "Flagged protection" would be appreciated. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 06:01, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Two copies of page, two copies of talk page. Can someone fix this?

I'm too new and too ignorant to fix this problem.... can anyone help. It is a bit messy....

I have somehow accesses two different versions of one topic AND two different versions of the Talk page, of which the most currently used one has very recently been archived by a bot - leaving an old one in place at the other topic!! I suspect the problem has arisen due to an attempt by someone to rename the title of the topic.

Here is what I think is the "correct" version of the topic page

Here is what I think is the "incorrect" version of the topic page, which has a slightly different name

There are also two talk pages, BUT... the most up-to-date and current talk page - which was not very long and which is associated with the "correct" version of the article - seems to have very recently been archived by a bot, whereas the older talk page (which is associated with the "wrong/renamed" version of the article) until today had a last entry last October when someone suggested converting the topic into guidelines (and possibly renamed the topic). Today I did not realise what was going on and added a message to the "wrong" talk page, meaning the one related to the "retitled" article! --AlotToLearn (talk) 06:40, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Finding redirects

Hi there, hope I've put this in the right place. I've currently got an article at FLC and have been asked to fix the 69 links that currently point to redirects. Is there a quick and easy tool I can use to find these, or do I have to go through each of the 400+ links in the article and check them all manually....? -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 08:56, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Each redirect is wrapped in a class="mw-redirect". So you can look at the page source of the article, or you can make all the redirects colored using code like .mw-redirect {color:green;} in your user CSS subpage. Cheers. --MZMcBride (talk) 09:03, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

But don't forget the visited link:

a.mw-redirect {color:#308050}
a.mw-redirect:visited {color:#3070A0}

--—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 14:51, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

You're a genius - cheers! -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 09:11, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Please point the objector to WP:R2D and don't "fix" the links. --NE2 11:54, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm... didn't that used to state that using popups to fix redirects was bad because of the server load from using popups? --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 14:51, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it links to Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups/About fixing redirects. --NE2 15:04, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Right - fix links to disambiguation pages; leave redirects alone. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:33, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

This is the discussion in question. Changing "[[Puff Daddy]]" to "[[Sean Combs|Puff Daddy]]", or "[[The Artist Formerly Known As Prince]]" to "[[Prince (musician)|The Artist Formerly Known As Prince]]" is, as far as I'm concerned, pure clutter with no foreseeable benefit. By what rationale is this justified as helpful? — CharlotteWebb 04:24, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Why am I getting email spam?

I created an email account on yahoo specifically to use for Wikipedia, it has never been used for any other purpose, and I have not released it to any other organization except for here. Why am I getting spam on that account? AnyPerson (talk) 03:08, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Can you be more specific about how you have used it around Wikipedia? Have you sent emails to other Wikipedian's? To any trolls? Posted to any of Wikimedia public mailing lists? Registered on Bugzilla? Etc. Dragons flight (talk) 03:20, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I have not used the account for any purpose except for registration confirmation. I have never emailed anybody with the account, have not received email from anybody, not registered with any mailing lists. I have not registered on Bugzilla, I haven't used the account for any purpose. AnyPerson (talk) 03:31, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Then to the best of my knowledge you should not be getting any spam at all unless either A) Yahoo sold your email to someone (I don't think they do this, but I don't know for sure), or B) someone guessed your email by brute force (i.e. trying combinations of words and numbers @yahoo to see which ones don't bounce). Simply registering for Wikipedia should not make an account vulnerable. Dragons flight (talk) 03:37, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

It's quite possible to register a Yahoo email address, give it to no one, and still get spam. EVula // talk // ☯ // 03:52, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't Yahoo recycle user names after some period of inactivity? If someone else had that name previously, they may have given it out. I have a Yahoo email that I use for Wikipedia and a handful of other websites and I have never received spam there. --B (talk) 14:20, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Because it is so inexpensive to send out mass emails (and, for spammers, essentially at no cost if they have zombie computers), it's pretty normal for spammers to try a wide range of possible addresses: AnyPerson1, AnyPerson2, ... AnyPerson9999, Any1Person, Any2Person, ... Any9999Person. If the email address was truly unusual (lengthy and quasi-random), then such spamming wouldn't work. But if it is short and/or a simple variant of FirstName_LastName, then it's not surprising that it would be found by a mass mailing. And once found (that is, email doesn't bounce), information about it will get spread around by spammers. (Want to buy, say, ten million valid email addresses? Just do a google search.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:19, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I once registered a yahoo account and within a day I had pharmaceutical advertisements which greeted me by real name. However my real name was not part of the address itself and should (theoretically) only become known to the recipient of e-mail sent from that address. B-b-b-but... I had not yet sent anything from that address, so the whole thing smacks of an inside job. I promptly removed my real name from the account and I still don't use it for e-mail, only for fun and games . — CharlotteWebb 03:40, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Category:Washington

Can anyone work out why several articles still show up in the now disfavored Category:Washington? I've looked at the individual articles, and this doesn't seem to show up in their respective category lists. - Jmabel | Talk 19:55, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Because the job queue is long at the moment. It'll get fixed automatically in due course; you can fix it immediately by making WP:null edits to the relevant pages, but this puts more strain on the servers so you shouldn't unless there's some pressing reason. Algebraist 20:45, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Nah you'd just be cutting to the front of the queue; same amount of strain but in a different order. — CharlotteWebb 03:04, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Map problem on page Vesec (Liberec)

Hello. I made a problem with the geoLocator on Vesec (Liberec). There is "Expression error: Unexpected < operator", and I don't have an idea how to correct this error. I have taken the Geographical information from the Czech page, but I dunno how to fix it. --Voletyvole (talk) 11:28, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

I fixed it; the parameter long_s had an extra space in it. Tra (Talk) 11:42, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Always minor things like this. Thanks a bunch--Voletyvole (talk) 12:06, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

If the template had any sense the long_s would default to zero if no value is correctly entered. I realize that would be less accurate in this case but at least it would avoid flooding the screen with error messages. — CharlotteWebb 02:59, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Moving an image

I went to File:Ladakh Monestary.jpg in order to hit the "move" button to correct the misspelling, moments after I did this edit. But there's NO "move" button! How does one move such a file? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:32, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

There's no direct method. You have to reupload the image under the new name. Algebraist 17:35, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

How primitive. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:04, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

There is a new feature for moving images that is Coming Real Soon. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 19:55, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Does the issue even have a Bugzilla entry? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 22:54, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Watchlist problem

Anyone else having problems with watchlist? i.e. not loading. DuncanHill (talk) 00:41, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

No, no problem Mion (talk) 00:42, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

How many pages are on your watchlist? If excessive volume is part of the problem, try using parameters like &days=1 (24 hours) or &days=.25 (6 hours), etc. to see if it will load successfully when there are fewer edits to display. — CharlotteWebb 02:53, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Bring Me the Horizon

Resolved

 – ukexpat (talk) 05:09, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

For some reason I can see "[[Image:‎|220px|]]" in the infobox on this page but there's nothing in the infobox. Any ideas? Exxolon (talk) 03:52, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Fixed - I deleted the image parameter entirely then added it back. – ukexpat (talk) 04:37, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - any idea why it did that? Exxolon (talk) 04:52, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

This issue is typically caused by an invisible whitespace character in the image field. Gimmetrow 04:59, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes that was it - showed up as a red blob when using WikED. – ukexpat (talk) 05:08, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject template on talk page

At Talk:By the Sword (film), an editor complained that the {{Film}} template automatically showed all the instructions, where other editors see that the template automatically hides the instructions. Is this an issue with the template or with the editor's settings? A review of the template's appearance on the talk page would be greatly appreciated! —Erik (talk • contrib) 04:05, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

The instructions are hidden when I view the talk page. – ukexpat (talk) 04:33, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Apparently it occurs when javascript is turned off. PC78 (talk) 04:37, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I haven't noticed anything unusual about these templates except that they increase the amount of time and bandwidth needed to determine that a talk page does not contain any actual discussion. The user you mention probably has javascript disabled. The template appears to be collapsed by default on my screen. — CharlotteWebb 04:38, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Database dump?

Anyone got an idea when the next database dump is? IIRC, they use to run every one or two months, but the last one for en.wiki was back in October... D.M.N. (talk) 12:58, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

I would second this. I don't know what it takes (but can imagine)...we just need new cleanup listings... -- IrishDragon 04:17, 21 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by IrishDragon (talk • contribs)

October is the latest dump. The dump all revisions of mainspace pages isn't done yet and should be done sometime at the end of next May. After that is done the dump of all revisions for all pages will start, and if it takes anything as long as the current one is taking my guess would that would be done sometime in the Summer of 2010, though either dump has a high chance of failing since they are so big. The devs are working on new dumping code which when implemented will make the dumps faster and less likely to fail. —Nn123645 (talk) 02:51, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

The ETA for the October 2008 dump has now arrived at end of November 2009 [15]. Even in the event that it finishes successfully at that time, it will hardly be of use to anyone, being one year out of date. While the devs are working on the new code, could the current dump not just be canceled and a new one started? (Just like it has been done for the last 10 times or so.) That would at least provide us with up-to-date dumps of everything except the page history. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:40, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Template category lag: over three weeks?

I know it sometimes takes a while to populate categories, but three weeks? Category:Temporary category, populated by {{reporting mark}}, has been slowly filling up for that long; Dallas, Garland and Northeastern Railroad just arrived today (and is now out due to my creation of a redirect at DGNO). --NE2 06:59, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I assume WP:PURGE won't work in this case and WP:NULL can, but I include both just in case. (This is a popular topic asked again and again by the way.) HУтaяtalk2mecontribs 20:35, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Sure, I can null-edit all 400 articles (and I am!), but I didn't think it took weeks otherwise. --NE2 08:45, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I've raised this issue before, and it really needs fixing, rather than a work-around for null edits. Lugnuts (talk) 09:37, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Moved pages in watclists

Is there any way that the software could automatically clear grawp pagenames from watchlists? Every time a page is moved, if you had that page on your watchlist, you get the original page name and the new page name on your watchlist. So when grawp moves a bunch of pages you have watched, you get a bunch of junk in your watchlist. Could an "autoremove" rule get created where if a page is moved, then the associated redirect is deleted within 5 minutes, the old page name is autoremoved from any watchlists it is on? Yes, it could be abused (eg, delete a page, restore a single trivial revision, move it, delete the redirect and you now have cleared that page from anyone watching it), but it would take an admin to abuse it and I would think the risk is low compared to the benefit of not adding a bunch of worthless junk. --B (talk) 14:06, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

These grawp pagenames are now redlinks, yes? So maybe a checkbox or other way to clear (or at least checkmark, for clearing, in case someone really wants to keep one or more) all red link pages in a watchlist? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:57, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Auto-selecting all red-links to be unwatched would be easy to do with javascript, assuming Special:Watchlist/edit is short enough to actually load (mine isn't). Need some way to break it into pages of 500 or so. — CharlotteWebb 22:51, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Some pages extremely slow if logged in, fast if not

I talked about this problem with some pages at the talk page of list of chess books and at the help desk. Basically, if I am logged in and I go to that page and click on one of the articles (A-L or M-Z), it takes about 35 to 40 seconds to load. It is that way in Firefox or IE. I found out that if I don't log in, the pages are fast. If I log back in, they take about 35-40 seconds. Sometimes 20-25, sometimes more than 40 and I give up. If I'm doing a diff or saving an edit it can take 2 minutes or longer (estimated).

If I am not logged in and I go to List of chess books, A-L it is fast. If I log in from that page it takes 35 seconds or more to log in before it shows me the page again.

So I discovered that the problem happens when I log in, and not otherwise. Also, it is a problem with pages with a lot of links.

I've tried a plain vanilla set of gadgets and options, but I still have the problem when logged in.

How can this be fixed? Bubba73 (talk), 16:56, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

List of chess grandmasters is the same way. Bubba73 (talk), 17:13, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Those pages work fine for me. Make sure your monobook.js is empty. --Pascal666 (talk) 17:17, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I emptied the monobook file yesterday, as someone suggested. It made no difference. If you read the talk pages, some other people are having the same problem, others are not. I have the problem if and only if I am logged in, with Firefox or IE. Bubba73 (talk), 17:23, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I created a temporary sock account. When logged into it, the problem goes away. What is going on? Bubba73 (talk), 19:49, 21 January 2009 (UTC) For example, list of chess books is fast. But clicking on list of chess books, A-L or list of chess books, M-Z from there is extremely slow, not to mention trying to do a diff or edit. Bubba73 (talk), 17:28, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

And I tried logging on to the secure server to see if that made a difference, but it still had the problem. Bubba73 (talk), 17:30, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

When I just tried List of chess grandmasters while logged out, the source code said: <!-- Served by srv163 in 17.056 secs. -->. It not a client side issue, and it doesn't seem to be connected with login status. --Amalthea 18:14, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

That page comes up for me within 3 seconds if I am not logged in, absurdly long if I am logged in. As you can see from the talk pages, some people don't have the problem but some do. I have the problem if and only if I am logged in. Bubba73 (talk), 18:43, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I've tested this on three computers (all here though) and with both Firefox and IE. I have the problem if and only if I am logged in. Bubba73 (talk), 18:50, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Probably an issue with the cache. There's one cache for logged out users, who all see the page the same way, and a few for logged in users, who get a different version depending on preferences (i.e. numbered headings, etc). Maybe the cache you're using isn't loaded, so each page has to be reparsed when you access it? -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 19:51, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I wave no idea about that, but I created user:bubba73test and it doesn't have the problem. I cleared out all of the options and gadgets in my main account and it has the problem. There isn't much difference between the accounts except that I've had my main one over 3 years and it has over 28,000 edits. But I don't see how that would matter just viewing a page. Must be some setting or something, I don't know. Bubba73 (talk), 20:34, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Bubba73, if you open the HTML source for the page, there are two lines near the end that look like:

 <!-- Saved in parser cache with key enwiki:pcache:idhash:16175585-0!1!0!mdy!!en!2
    and timestamp 20090121182321 --> 

 <!-- Served by srv179 in 0.083 secs. -->

Can you report what they say in both the case that is causing you problems and the case that is not. Dragons flight (talk) 22:43, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

• My data from before:

  <!-- Saved in parser cache with key enwiki:pcache:idhash:16175585-0!1!0!default!!en!2 and timestamp 20090121180829 -->
  <!-- Served by srv163 in 17.056 secs. -->
  

  ... and from now:

  <!-- Saved in parser cache with key enwiki:pcache:idhash:16175585-0!1!0!default!!en!2 and timestamp 20090121180829 -->
  <!-- Served by srv163 in 0.131 secs. -->
  

  Both done logged out. Amalthea 23:02, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

For the last line only, I got:

• logged off:

• • List of chess books, A-L:
    • -- Served by srv123 in 0.064 secs. --

• • List of chess grandmasters:
    • -- Served by srv179 in 0.079 secs. --

• Logged on:

• • List of chess books, A-L:
    • -- Served by srv162 in 32.215 secs. --

• • List of chess grandmasters:
    • -- Served by srv167 in 15.442 secs. --

I didn't see the line with "Saved in parser cache". Bubba73 (talk), 00:30, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Testing List of chess books, A-L:

• logged off:
  • -- Saved in parser cache with key enwiki:pcache:idhash:17699793-0!1!0!default!!en!2 and timestamp 20090121180902 --
  • -- Served by srv129 in 0.061 secs. --

• Logged on:
  • -- Served by srv162 in 32.228 secs. --
  • no "saved in parser cache" line Bubba73 (talk), 00:45, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Other articles aren't immune either, e.g. chess

• logged on -- Served by srv159 in 8.606 secs. --
• logged off -- Served by srv155 in 0.072 secs. --

Bubba73 (talk), 00:56, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Another user has the same problem, see User_talk:MrsHudson#Editing List of chess books. Bubba73 (talk), 01:57, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

It appears that something in your preferences is forcing the parser to rerender each page you see from scratch without the benefit of any parser caching. On pages with a lot of content this takes appreciable time and you are noticing the delay. I'd take a close look at your preferences and try to restore the defaults. Dragons flight (talk) 03:01, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

In your preferences, under "Date and time", make sure "No preference" is selected. --Pascal666 (talk) 03:22, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I had the first one other than "not pref" selected. I changed it to "no pref", cleared the cache, I still get:

• -- Served by srv121 in 45.071 secs. --

and no "saved in parser cache" line. I'll try other prefs. Bubba73 (talk), 03:30, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I changed all options to be exactly the same as the temp sock I created today, except my signature and email. I still have the problem: "-- Served by srv103 in 35.851 secs. --", and no "saved in parser cache" line. Bubba73 (talk), 03:57, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

In case you missed something, I'd pay special attention to the Misc tab as many of those items have parser implications. Dragons flight (talk) 18:59, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I did. I tried unchecking everything and I tried Underline links both "always" (what I normally use) and "browser default". Right now I have always underline and checked "format broken links" and "show TOC". Bubba73 (talk), 19:20, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I have stub = 0, Always underline, and checkboxes 1, 4, 5, and 7 marked. Dragons flight (talk) 19:25, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

SUCCESS!!!!! I had "Threshold for stub link formatting" set to 10 and I didn't try changing that earlier. I set it to 0, and the pages are fast! I don't want to change that back to 10 to test it because I don't want to risk starting the problem again. I changed to your Misc settings and it worked. Then I unchecked #7 (since I normally have that off), and it still worked. Thank you!! There must be others in this same boat. Bubba73 (talk), 19:36, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

And changing stub to 10 on my test account makes the problem happen with it. So I am convinced that is the problem. Bubba73test (talk), 19:47, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Odd... I have it set to 0 but still get a slow page: !-- Served by srv139 in 25.033 secs. There must be somethinng else. -- — Edokter • Talk • 20:50, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I contacted another editor who has the problem and she has it set to 0 also. Strange, that is what fixed it for me. I got the parser message and it only took about 3 seconds. Bubba73 (talk),

I still have no idea of how to fix this, I've tried everything. My new account doesn't have the problem. Can I transfer my edit history to a new account? But this does need to be fixed because other people say they have the problem. Other people probably have the problem and just don't realize it - they may think that WP is just that slow (which is what I used to think). Bubba73 (talk), 17:38, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Logged into my temporary alternate account, for list of chess books, A-L I get

• -- Saved in parser cache with key enwiki:pcache:idhash:17699793-0!1!0!default!!en!2 and timestamp 20090121180902 --
• -- Served by srv151 in 0.123 secs. -- Bubba73test (talk), 18:08, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Should I report this to Bugzilla? Bubba73 (talk), 18:50, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Tonight it has been slow, even though the parser cache is working:

• -- Saved in parser cache with key enwiki:pcache:idhash:20699466-0!4!0!default!!en!0 and timestamp 20090125071420 --
• -- Served by srv179 in 26.364 secs. --
• -- Saved in parser cache with key enwiki:pcache:idhash:17699793-0!4!0!default!!en!0 and timestamp 20090125073826 --
• -- Served by srv187 in 32.411 secs. --

Bubba73 (talk), 07:37, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I logged out and logged back in and now it is fast:

• -- Served by srv165 in 0.065 secs. --

So the setting under Misc isn't the whole story. Bubba73 (talk), 07:44, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Today I had another case where it was slow. I logged out and logged back in and it was fast. Bubba73 (talk), 17:45, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

new account?

The new account I created does not have this problem.

1. If I request a username change, does that create a new account or does it just put a new name on the old account?
2. If I create a new account or request a name change, does the old edit history go to the new account? Bubba73 (talk), 18:34, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

A username change will change your name and reattribute all your old edits to the new name, but it has no impact on the other stuff and so would not be expected to fix this. There is no way, other than a username change, to reassign edit history. Dragons flight (talk) 18:55, 22 January 2009 (UTC)