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Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 71

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Harvnb , cite templates citation template and the default editor.

See:Harvnb discussion

There is a known anomaly whereby {{cite family}} don't automatically add the ref=harv parameter that is needed to correctly write {{harvnb}} referencing. The {{citation}} template automatically provides this. The easyCiteMain button above the editor only provides templates for the former cite family templates. This meaning that any Wiki-editor adding to an existing References/Bibliography article, who presses the obvious button will introduce faulty code.

Additionally the forms that the easyCiteMain button provides- use the field date not the field year which Harvnb requires. (It is a bit more complex than this- but in effect that is what happens.)

There are several easy solutions that come to mind.

  • Add ref=harv by default, and switch the date for a year parameter are probably the quickest, though clever parsing could handling the 0.1% of twiddly bits as well.
  • An extra field- year and date.
  • A YN box 'Make Harv compatible Y/N'
  • Providing a {{Citation}} option on the easyCiteMain button.

What I don't want is to be told of a clever fix that I personally can do to my settings. The problem is cleaning up the litter left by good faith editors- the solution needs to be universal. Can this be discussed and passed on to ´The Powers that be.....--ClemRutter (talk) 19:33, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Should probably wait until the discussions at User talk:SlimVirgin/templates and Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Wikipedia Citation Style are finished. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 20:16, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Link color customization in preferences

I've added customized link colors to my CSS quite a while ago, and I'm perfectly happy with them like that, but I was thinking: If I could, I'd like to get them out of my (currently vector) .css page. Since customizing link colors is a somewhat popular thing to do, wouldn't it make sense to add a setting (I imagine to the Appearance tab) to Special:Preferences?
— V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 20:21, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

As I understand it, that would have to be added to the MediaWiki software— gadgets allow you to enable or disable something, but don't allow you to change a setting. We could use a lot more user customization that we now do in CSS and JS. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 23:13, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Iframe issues status update

Some bugs with the software update for Beta users have been fixed. I posted a status update on the tech blog, which we will keep updating when fixes are pushed out. --Catrope 20:59, 9 February 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Catrope (talk • contribs)

Scrolling code

  Resolved
 –  – ukexpat (talk) 02:59, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Folks, I spend a little time over at Template talk:Did you know. When I view that page, the left hand side stuff is scrollable. Can this be implemented by css or user script so that it scrolls on all pages that I view? Thanks. – ukexpat (talk) 22:29, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

That is the result of using User:Shubinator/DYKcheck, it uses the following code to "freeze" your sidebar:
//the function
function fixSidebar() { // part of the code to fix the sidebar; the rest is below the addOnloadHook function
	// this function is only necessary for the monobook skin
	var content = document.getElementById("column-content");    // Find the main content column
 
	var footer = document.getElementById("footer");  // Find the footer
	footer.parentNode.removeChild(footer);    // Remove the footer from the global wrapper
	content.appendChild(footer);    // Place footer at the end of the content column;
 
	var tabs = document.getElementById("p-cactions");   // Find the top tab list
	tabs.parentNode.removeChild(tabs);    // Remove the tab list from the side column
	content.insertBefore(tabs, content.lastChild);    // Place tab list in the content column
 
	var personal = document.getElementById("p-personal");   // Find the personal links list
	personal.parentNode.removeChild(personal);    // Remove the personal links list from the side column
	content.insertBefore(personal, content.lastChild);    // Place personal links list in the content column
}

//the stylesheet

// Include style sheet inline so that script is self-contained:
if (wgUserName != null && (fixedSidebar == "always" || (fixedSidebar == "onttydk" 
		&& wgPageName == 'Template_talk:Did_you_know'))) {
	var head = document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0];
	var style = document.createElement('style');
	style.type = 'text/css';
	var sidebarDivHidden;
	var sidebarDiv;
	var langBody;
	if (skin == 'vector') { // beta skin  (as of Nov. 2009)
		sidebarDivHidden = '#panel';
		sidebarDiv = '#panel';
		langBody = '#p-lang .body';
	} else { // monobook, modern, and simple skins
		if (skin == 'modern') {
			sidebarDivHidden = 'div[id=mw_portlets]';
		} else if (skin == 'simple') {
			sidebarDivHidden = '#column-one';
		} else { // monobook skin
			sidebarDivHidden = 'div[id=column-one]'; /* Using the attribute selector hides this from IE */
		}
		sidebarDiv = '#column-one';
		langBody = '#p-lang .pBody';
	}
	var cssText = "   /* Fix the sidebar's position while you scroll */             "+
	    sidebarDivHidden + ' {                                                      '+
	'       position: fixed;                                                        ';
	if (skin == 'vector') { // force the sidebar to the upper left; only necessary in vector skin
	    cssText += 'left: 0px ;                                                     '+
	    '   top: 0px ;                                                              ';
	}
	cssText += 'height: 100%;   /* If you shrink the browser too small, the     */  '+
	'       overflow: auto;     /* side column will become scrollable, so stuff */  '+
	'       z-index: 2;         /* is always accessible, albeit ugly            */  '+
	'   }                                                                           '+
	'                                                                               '+
	'   #p-logo {               /* Make logo inline with other divs             */  '+
	'       position:static;                                                        '+
	'   }                                                                           '+
	'                                                                               '+
	    sidebarDiv       + ' {  /* Sidebar column start at the top screen edge  */  '+
	'       padding-top: 0;                                                         '+
	'   }                                                                           '+
	'                                                                               '+
	    langBody + 	  ' ul{      /* Sets the language box to a fixed height and  */ '+
	'       height: 6em;        /* scrollable if too long to fit on screen      */  '+
	'       overflow: auto;                                                         '+
	'   }                                                                           '+
	'                                                                               '+
	'   /* Fix the background image, too, so it looks nice as you scroll */         '+
	'   body {                                                                      '+
	'       background-attachment: fixed;                                           '+
	'   }                                                                           '+
	'                                                                               '+
	"   /* Fix the footer so it looks nice and doesn't overlap the sidebar */       "+
	'   #footer {                                                                   '+
	'       margin-left: 13.6em;                                                    '+
	'       border-left: solid 1px rgb(250, 189, 35);                               '+
	'       -moz-border-radius-topleft: 1em;                                        '+
	'       -moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 1em;                                     '+
	'   }                                                                           ';
	if (skin == 'monobook') {
	    cssText += 	'   /* Keep personal links at the top right */                  '+
	'   #p-personal {                                                               '+
	'       width:100%;                                                             '+
	'       white-space:nowrap;                                                     '+
	'       padding:0 0 0 0;                                                        '+
	'       margin:0;                                                               '+
	'       position:absolute;                                                      '+
	'       left:0px;                                                               '+
	'       top:0px;                                                                '+
	'       z-index: 0;                                                             '+
	'       border: none;                                                           '+
	'       background: none;                                                       '+
	'       overflow: visible;                                                      '+
	'       line-height: 1.2em;                                                     '+
	'   }                                                                           '+
	'                                                                               '+
	'   #p-personal h5 {                                                            '+
	'       display:none;                                                           '+
	'   }                                                                           '+
	'   #p-personal .portlet,                                                       '+
	'   #p-personal .pBody {                                                        '+
	'       padding:0;                                                              '+
	'       margin:0;                                                               '+
	'       border: none;                                                           '+
	'       z-index:0;                                                              '+
	'       overflow: visible;                                                      '+
	'       background: none;                                                       '+
	'   }                                                                           '+
	'   /* this is the ul contained in the portlet */                               '+
	'   #p-personal ul {                                                            '+
	'       border: none;                                                           '+
	'       line-height: 1.4em;                                                     '+
	'       color: #2f6fab;                                                         '+
	'       padding: 0em 2em 0 3em;                                                 '+
	'       margin: 0;                                                              '+
	'       text-align: right;                                                      '+
	'       text-transform: lowercase;                                              '+
	'       list-style: none;                                                       '+
	'       z-index:0;                                                              '+
	'       background: none;                                                       '+
	'   }                                                                           '+
	'   #p-personal li {                                                            '+
	'       z-index:0;                                                              '+
	'       border:none;                                                            '+
	'       padding:0;                                                              '+
	'       display: inline;                                                        '+
	'       color: #2f6fab;                                                         '+
	'       margin-left: 1em;                                                       '+
	'       line-height: 1.2em;                                                     '+
	'       background: none;                                                       '+
	'   }                                                                           '+
	'   #p-personal li a {                                                          '+
	'       text-decoration: none;                                                  '+
	'       color: #005896;                                                         '+
	'       padding-bottom: 0.2em;                                                  '+
	'       background: none;                                                       '+
	'   }                                                                           '+
	'   #p-personal li a:hover {                                                    '+
	'       background-color: White;                                                '+
	'       padding-bottom: 0.2em;                                                  '+
	'       text-decoration: none;                                                  '+
	'   }                                                                           '+
	'   /* Keep the small user figure left of your user name */                     '+
	'   li#pt-userpage,                                                             '+
	'   li#pt-anonuserpage,                                                         '+
	'   li#pt-login {                                                               '+
	'       background: url(/skins-1.5/monobook/user.gif) top left no-repeat;       '+
	'       padding-left: 20px;                                                     '+
	'       text-transform: none;                                                   '+
	'   }                                                                           '+
	'                                                                               ';
	}
	rules = document.createTextNode(cssText);
	if (style.styleSheet) {
		style.styleSheet.cssText = rules.nodeValue;
	} else {
		style.appendChild(rules);
	}
	head.appendChild(style);
}
Try asking User:Shubinator, he'll be able to get it "fixed" for you. Hope this helps!Smallman12q (talk) 02:28, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
(ec) The left-hand scroll on DYK comes from DYKcheck. There's an option to activate it for all pages: add the line fixedSidebar = "always"; to your monobook below the line for DYKcheck and it should work. Let me know if it doesn't. Shubinator (talk) 02:31, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Brilliant, it worked! Thanks so much! – ukexpat (talk) 02:59, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Excellent :) Shubinator (talk) 03:16, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
I don't notice anything unusual at Template talk:Did you know. The left sidebar scrolls away like always. --Apoc2400 (talk) 10:56, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
You don't have Shubinator's script in your monobook.js. Ucucha 13:58, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

You should really only need about this much CSS to make the left side fixed: 

#column-one { position: fixed; width: 100%; z-index: 0; }

If you want the top fixed, too, it's a little more work: 

#column-one {
	position: fixed;
	width: 100%;
}
#p-cactions, #p-personal {
	z-index: 777 !important;
}
#p-cactions {
	left: 0 !important;
	top: 0 !important;
	padding: 15px 131px 0 151px !important;
	background: #f9f9f9 url(headbg.jpg) no-repeat 0 0 !important;
	border-bottom: 1px solid silver;
}
#p-logo {
	background: #f9f9f9 url(headbg.jpg) no-repeat 0 0 !important;
	padding: 0 3px 0 0;
	z-index: 888 !important;
}

¦ Reisio (talk) 05:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

That does fix the sidebar, but it's odd...the sidebar doesn't scroll (so if you have a lot of links in the toolbox, you might not be able to reach them), and the background image scrolls away as you move down. Shubinator (talk) 03:38, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, the background image is an easy fix, but not really the scrolling you're after. If you switch to the beta code, though, you could do it with this: 

#p-logo {
	position: fixed;
	top: 0 !important;
}
#panel {
	position: fixed;
	top: 158px;
	bottom: 0;
	overflow: auto;
	border-top: 2px solid #ccddee;
}

¦ Reisio (talk) 06:52, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Redirects to Wikipedia:Naming conventions

While cleaning up after the recent move from Wikipedia:Naming conventions to Wikipedia:Article titles, I noticed that the former has a lot of redirects listed in Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikipedia:Naming conventions that are not actually redirects: [1]. It appears to be caused by {{R from incomplete disambiguation}}. Anyone know what exactly causes this and what can be done about it? Ucucha 13:51, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

They are pages that are redirects, they just don't redirect to Wikipedia:Naming conventions. There is a link in {{R from incomplete disambiguation}} to Wikipedia:Naming conventions which is why they are showing up in the list. mattbr 14:01, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
I see. So the software just lists anything linked on a redirect as a redirect on the whatlinkshere of that page? Seems rather inconvenient. Ucucha 14:05, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
So it would seem. Probably one of those bugs that never gets fixed because it doesn't come up often enough. I've removed the offending link from the "R from" template (personally I don't see any point in these redirect templates, but someone must have some use for them), but it will take some time for the change to filter down to WhatLinksHere.--Kotniski (talk) 14:18, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Note that the same problem happens with other such pages: Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikipedia:Redirect for example. I'm not sure whether deleting the links is such a good idea; I think the benefit from people seeing the redirect pages and using the links may outweigh the cost of whatlinkshere being swamped. Ucucha 14:41, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
But people never see the content of these templates on redirect pages, so the links are practically useless (except for editors viewing the template page directly, and people doing that presumably know what a redirect or a disambiguation page is). --Kotniski (talk) 15:04, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Once upon a time I think that text did appear on the redirect pages where the template was used. If I recall correctly, that functionality (of displaying extra text on redirect pages) was not by design and was removed/disabled at some point. In any case, there is no longer any reason whatsoever for that text to be on the template -- if anything, it should be within noinclude tags or placed on a documentation subpage. older ≠ wiser 15:18, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
This could be changed back at any time, and personally I'd rather have the "pointless" text on the template page then, say, on a /doc subpage. It takes less space that way, if nothing else. The main utility of those templates has always been the categorization, regardless.
— V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 15:55, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps we should just <noinclude> it in that case. I agree that the categorization is the most useful feature of the templates. Ucucha 16:00, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Ohms law, no I don't think this could just be changed back at any time. As I recall, displaying the extra text on redirects was entirely unintentional and possibly exposed some more serious bug in the redirect functionality. To change it back would require making a case for devs to revisit this issue, which appears unlikely. It appears that text containing links in the template cause pages containing the template to very confusingly appear in What links here for those linked pages even though there is not any link on the redirect. The text as currently written is quite confusing, since it is not displayed in the context for the perspective it is written. It would be better to re-write the text as documentation for the template. older ≠ wiser 16:07, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
← It's just that changing them all so that the the text is on /doc pages would take up tons of space for no reason. If you're really concerned that using <noinclude> would be the best "solution", but since the text has no effect I personally don't think that the effort is worth it. If you're really up to doing either, I'd say that such effort would be better expended in TFD'ing all of them, and adding the categorization to the redirect pages themselves. (which could be a good bot task, incidentally).
— V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 16:43, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
I think concerns about space are irrelevant. I really don't care whether the documentation text is done via noinclude tags or by a doc subpage. My point is that the current text on the template is confusing as it is never displayed in the context for the perspective in which is is presently written. I strongly disagree with having a bot replace the templates with categories. The categories used for these have undergone periodic renaming, and occasionally a new category is added. In my opinion, it is preferable to maintain a relatively small number of templates than to have bots churning through hundreds of thousands of pages making pointless edits. older ≠ wiser 17:10, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree that concerns about space are generally irrelevant, but creating a few hundred new pages and moving things around for no particular reason just isn't the best use of time or resources, you know? Aside from that, it may be slightly confusing that the text doesn't show up on the redirect pages, but it's there if you look at the template itself, it's not affecting anything at all, and the passages on the template pages generally make sense, so I guess that I'm just not convinced with respect to the confusion argument.
Anyway, I can see the point about the categories themselves. My question there though is, have any of these categories been changed recently? the normal pattern is that after categories are initially created they go through some periodic adjustments, and then settle down to a fairly stable state. All of the Category pages themselves (that I've looked at, at least) have the same or similar passages that the templates use written to them, so their all seemingly well developed. The objection here though seems to have been to the templates is all, which is where the idea came from, but if we want to keep them then that's fine by me (I'd actually prefer to keep the templates I think, but that's not what most people seem to prefer these days...) Aside from that, the bot task would clearly be just be a one time task, so the characterization that "bots churning through hundreds of thousands of pages making pointless edits" would be needed is a red herring.
— V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 17:51, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Whether it is a one-time activity or ongoing, the fact is a bot would be churning through hundreds of thousands of pages to make edits of questionable utility. As for the text, just so we're clear, you don't find it even a little odd that the following text displays only on the template page:?
This is a redirect from a disambiguating title that is too ambiguous to identify an article. Such titles should generally redirect to the appropriate disambiguation page (or section of it). For more information, follow the category link.
What is the redirect being referred to? Which category link is being referred to? older ≠ wiser 18:02, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
OK.
— V = I * R (Talk • Contribs) 18:36, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

The R from... templates are for categorisation. Don't go removing them from redirects just because they don't look like they do anything. If anything, add them to uncategorised redirects and save other people the work. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 17:48, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. older ≠ wiser 18:02, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
The issue described in the original message is filed as bug 7304. Graham87 09:41, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks Graham. For what it's worth, bug 14323 addresses the issue of the text in the R from foo templates not rendering on the redirect page. And bug 927 also has background info pertinent to both issues. And this discussion also touches on the issues. older ≠ wiser 23:37, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Can anyone tell me any use for the redirect categories? (Given that they're never going to be complete anyway.)--Kotniski (talk) 08:01, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
For a start, WildBot uses them to cheaply load redirects to disambiguation pages - it just loads everything in that category. WildBot also uses {{R from incorrect name}} to edit wikipages, correcting wikilinks. Josh Parris 09:30, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Wasting Time

I don't know how much time I waste because there aren't separate tabs for:

  • Edit this page (article)
  • Edit this page (discussion)
  • History (article)
  • History (discussion)

I have a really slow connection, and this drives people away. And this applies for templates. There should be 6 short cuts, not just those 3 view, edit, discussion letters.

You can't make a new section tab for articles, cause which headline would you use?

In view source pages, the new section tab doesn't even have to appear, since it would be impossible to add ANYTHING anyway.

I can't understand why there are a "million" blue links on the left, and 6 simple tabs can't be put into the web pages.174.3.98.236 (talk) 11:17, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Hear hear. ("Usability" folks - please take note...) --Kotniski (talk) 11:20, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
If you want "usability" folks to take note, you should probably use the usability wiki. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:27, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Ironic, isn't it, that we have to go and make ourselves at home on a whole separate project in order to raise matters of "usability"...--Kotniski (talk) 14:10, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
A script can easily be created for this. I know that tabs can be added at the end of the tab bar; not sure if they can be added in between existing tabs, though. Gary King (talk) 17:29, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, this can be done by using the function addPortletLink(). Does anybody know where is it documented except before its source code (in wikibits.js)? Svick (talk) 19:56, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
You might find some hints in some userscripts. It's fairly simple to do. I'm also pretty sure that there is a script out there somewhere that already does this, but I cannot find it right now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:32, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
I just found out that there already is a script that does exactly this: Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Six tabs. It does work in the default monobook skin, but not in the beta vector. Svick (talk) 01:17, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I love this page, it's like going to a garage sale and finding lots of goodies :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:08, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

odd Safari issue

I just noticed this effect, and I can't figure out what causes it. in Safari (4.0.4, on Mac OS 10.6.2). when I right-click or control-click on a section header it acts as though clicked on the edit link - it opens the section for editing. I don't get the same effect in Firefox (3.0.15) on the same machine. I don't think I have any gadgets that would do this enabled (though I'll check). does anyone have any idea what else might cause it? not much of a problem, but it is a little annoying when I right click on a section title by accident. --Ludwigs2 07:27, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Check "Preferences" / "Editing" / Enable section editing by right-clicking on section titles (requires JavaScript) Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:31, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
ah, that was checked, so that was probably it. that opens a new question, however: why didn't it work in Firefox? --Ludwigs2 09:43, 9 February 2010 (UTC)--Ludwigs2 09:43, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Do you have Java installed for Firefox? Beyond My Ken (talk) 09:50, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Java and JavaScript are two completely unrelated things. It works for me in Firefox. Ludwigs2, were you logged in when you tried it in Firefox? Svick (talk) 13:49, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Ah. no. for some reason I assumed that I would be logged in when I switched browsers (which is so completely bone-headed I don't even know where to start with it). never mind, I am now going to sheepishly withdraw from the conversation.   --Ludwigs2 19:58, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki options - email upon talk page and watchlist updates

Hi. As an occasional visitor and a very occasional contributor of this project, I would find it very useful if the option of receiving e-mail notifications upon talk page or watchlist updates was activated. Maybe there is a good reason not to do so? Regards, --Eusebius (talk) 10:11, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

You can get RSS or Atom feeds of page history or your watchlist. See Wikipedia:Syndication. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:29, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
I have never managed to make it work for the watchlist (what I get is my contribs, not my watchlist). It would also be possible to activate e-mail notifications and therefore give the choice to users... It is currently desactivated for performance reasons on large projects, but I bet only close-to-inactive users like me would dare to activate it. --Eusebius (talk) 13:11, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
The syndicated watchlist doesn't let you filter your own edits out, so if no-one else is editing your watched articles, you'll only see your own edits (which why I also don't use it). OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:07, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Again: I don't see my watchlist, I see my contribs (maybe because of a config issue on my side, I don't know). I assure you I am able to tell the difference. --Eusebius (talk) 08:55, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Change Of Info Message

In [2] it says

  • Provide a link to the article in question at the top of your request using {{La|article title goes here}}

or something similar. It should read

  • Provide a link to the article or template in question at the top of your request using {{La|article title goes here}}

or something similar.174.3.98.236 (talk) 00:08, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Use {{Lt|template name here}} for linking to templates, not {{La}}. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:10, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Show/hide toggle on templates

This seems to have disappeared across all templates and now they all show as expanded. Any reason for this? Lugnuts (talk) 18:46, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I made an error in the sitewide Javascript for a minute. You must have just dropped into that timeframe with your download. Try to WP:BYPASS your browser cache. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:50, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks - that's done the trick! Lugnuts (talk) 19:04, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
This also affected the watchlist notice, for the record. It does seem to have cleared up now, at least for me. — Gavia immer (talk) 18:52, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Bug with javascript on and images off.

Has anyone edited wikipedia with images turned off, it really is sh*t. I am using Firefox 3.5.7 with "Load images automatically" turned off as my broadband is not working, and I am connected via a slow expensive PAYG mobile phone. On my preferences I have "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" selected, "Enhanced recent changes (requires JavaScript)" selected, Wiked turned on as well as Twinkle and Popups. When hovering over a + on my watchlist (which would be a right arrow if images were one) the plus flickers such that it appears an disappears very fast. Clicking on it is very difficult as I guess that I have to make the click whilst it it there. Similarly when editing many other text fields on the edit tool bar and wikEd tool bar exhibit similar behaviour. Turning off java script on my computer stops this behaviour, then I cannot expand my watchlist.

Apologises for posting here, or if this is a know bug, but I am currently paying by the byte. Martin451 (talk) 18:59, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Just to note, I have turned off experimental features in the editing tab, and Enhanced recent changes, and the problem persists when hovering over tool bar text. Martin451 (talk) 19:15, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
I edit without images using Opera 9 for Macintosh and using Lynx, and I'm not experiencing any of those issues. --Carnildo (talk) 00:32, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Edit box & monospace style changes

Would whoever is playing with the edit box and monospace text please stop and revert all their changes? Ewwwww. The text is too big now. This edit box has no padding. Evil. How do you just up and make a drastic change like this? It's been fine the way it was for years. ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:14, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not noticing any change in editbox behavior. Cleared cache and nothings changed recently. Might be browser related, Tried FF 3.6 and IE 8.0.6001.18702 but haven't seen anything weird. Q T C 07:34, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Nope, it's not browser related... just like I told you already on IRC.

¦ Reisio (talk) 07:44, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Seems to be Enhanced Toolbar related. Q T C 07:54, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Why has someone made the edit area a rich text? The only difference is the bigger font and among side effects there's an issue with copying anything to it (like article titles to make a link, which copy now huuge and add a new line you need to delete manually). Lampak (talk) 09:45, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
There is a blog post explaining the recent changes at Deployment of Babaco Enhancments on the Wikimedia Technical Blog. The issue seems to related to the enhanced toolbar and navigable table of contents as part of the Usability Beta. mattbr 10:34, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
So the rich-text edit box is a foundation on which a WYSIWYG editor may eventually be built upon? Great. But shouldn't they build anything upon it first? Now in the transitional phase it seems to be just an extra difficulty with nothing to reward it. Lampak (talk) 10:48, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Everything has to start somewhere, and the features are part of a beta release which is for usability testing and can contain bugs. I'm sure this is something they'll look into and provide a solution for so that the foundation is in place so that further improvements can be made in the future. In the meantime, you can 'Leave beta' or disable the 'enhanced toolbar' and 'navigable table of contents' options in the 'Editing → Experimental features' section of your preferences. mattbr 11:04, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks :) I've tried leaving beta but forgotten about the table of contents. Now everything's all right. Lampak (talk) 11:17, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not part of the Beta — it says "Try Beta" in my screenshots. I think I might have tried the beta in the past, though. Did my preferences just not all get reverted upon leaving the beta? ¦ Reisio (talk) 11:54, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

You appear to have the enhanced toolbar enabled (either it wasn't deselected when you left beta or you have manually turned that option on). You can disable it by unchecking the 'enhanced toolbar' option in the 'Editing → Experimental features' section of your preferences. mattbr 12:02, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Meh :p Thanks for the links. ¦ Reisio (talk) 12:16, 5 February 2010 (UTC)


I'm not using Beta, and I don't have the enhanced toolbar enabled. My toolbar was missing entirely until I disabled Special:Preferences → Editing → Enable navigable table of contents. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:21, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I definitely noticed an issue today when I logged in as well and I am not using the beta. I noticed my font size was much larger and I was missing a bunch of my editing links. I had made some changes to my gadgets, so I reversed those changes but it did not change. After reading this, I began playing with the experimental features and it appears the problem lies with the navigable table of contents. See this screenshot.—NMajdan•talk 14:26, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

This is the most user unfriendly modification. Pasting text between wiki pages now includes the line breaks of the original text, requiring manual fixes. Pasting the title of an article creates a rich text section header, requiring users to backspace the paste into place. And all paragraph breaks are automatically removed whenever you preview or save. I even reinstalled Firefox because it never even occurred to me that the Foundation would implement changes that would roughly double the time it takes me to do routine editing. If someone doesn't fix this I will likely make a note at MediaWiki:Watchlist-details so editors know an experimental preference setting has been changed to do something absurdly unhelpful. - BanyanTree 15:31, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I also find it disconcerting that when I paste text into an edit box, it appears in rich text. For example, I paste an article title selected from a user's contribution history as part of leaving a warning template, and have to edit the result.-gadfium 21:46, 5 February 2010 (UTC) I also used to press <tab> to get from the edit box to the edit summary. Now, tab goes through several other locations, and doesn't seem to get to the summary box at all. I have to reach for my mouse and click on it.-gadfium 23:36, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I have the same observations as gadfium. Pasting as rich text was very weird, but messing with the tab order is a very, very, very serious usability problem. I am not participating in beta, and I do not have the enhanced toolbar enabled. I did have the navigable TOC enabled. I just turned that off and it appears to have fixed the tab order problem. No great loss, though the navigable TOC was useful when editing long pages. older ≠ wiser 23:47, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
Is this what happened. It's quite annoying. Someone needs to revert, and quick. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 01:39, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Hello. The usability team is working on the following issues.

Bug 22402 The classic toolbar disappears in monobook if NTOC is turned on. (Firefox)
Bug 22401 Line breaks are removed at preview or save.
Bug 22398 Pasted text has line breaks. (Firefox)
Bug 22394 Formatting is applied when a piece of text is pasted from outside the editor.
Bug 22311 Tabbing from the editor should go to the edit summary.
Bug 22393 Special characters and template insertion tool below the editor do not work.
Bug 22440 Cursor position randomly jumps

In order to avoid issues listed above, please go to your user preferences, and turn off all three experimental features under "Editing". We are working on the solutions right now and plan to apply the changes as soon as possible. The most affected users are users who are using Firefox who adopted hidden beta features. Our sincere apology for causing grief. I will send out update as soon as problems are resolved. Shuhari (talk) 02:47, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I was having to repair all the line breaks manually. SharkD  Talk  04:32, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Update 1: Bug 22402 has been resolved. Opting out from the beta now turns off all experimental features.Shuhari (talk) 20:26, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Update 2: Bug 22401 was resolved as of Feb 8th. Shuhari (talk) 07:36, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Update 3: Bug 22311 is fixed. Tabbing from editor now goes to Edit Summary. Shuhari (talk) 17:20, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Update 4: Bug 22394 and Bug 22393 have been resolved as of Feb 10, 2009. Shuhari (talk) 20:28, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Please see also bug 1941. If at all possible, please remove the forced monospace from the font. Proportional text is more readable, and indeed there are issues with monospaced font such as the difference between en and em dashes and hyphens, e.g. "—" and "–" and "-", and "—" and "–" and "-". {{Nihiltres|talk|edits|⚡}} 05:32, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

This kind of changes must be communicated to other subprojects. There are now discussions at several projects about possible "bugs" relating to this. Jeblad (talk) 09:35, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Why turn the edit box into a "rich text" control at all?--Father Goose (talk) 09:40, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

The developers at the Usability Initiative want to create an in-browser WYSIWYG editor for MediaWiki, with syntax highlighting and other JavaScript bloat snazzy features. Apparently, learning Wiki markup is hard. Whether this is a good thing or not is a different question -- editing WP requires a brain. Avoiding any usability stuff is probably the best way to go for established editors until it becomes stable. MER-C 09:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

It looks like having ANY of these experimental editing options turned on disables the WikEd gadget, too. Andyross (talk) 17:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Here is a blocking edit box bug:
Bug 22435 &amp;nbsp; and <p> get deleted from article text
See [3] for the bug in action. And my gosh, the styled pasted text thing is annoying. Ozob (talk) 18:19, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
The fix for Bug 22435 is being tested and scheduled to be released on Feb 9th. As a work around in the mean time, please opt-out from the beta using the "Leave Beta" link on the top of every page or from user preferences. But don't forget turn opt in back to the beta after the fix is in place.:) Shuhari (talk) 07:36, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
This fix is now live. --Catrope 14:27, 9 February 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Catrope (talk • contribs)

where download the wikipedia software and is there a feature for "structured articles" ( I wanted to make a collection wiki)

I can't find the wikipedia download - I thought anyone could download it and set it up locally. I was intersted in using it as an alternative to forum software and adding document entry forms. I wanted tighter connection between article and talk section- essentially having a short main article with a forum beneath it. Frurhter, it seemed it might be nice to make posts strcutured and allow for modification to the article using formattedin posts ( I thinnk linux has something called a patch file, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_(Unix) Just thinking out loud, but first I'd like to get the wikipedia software. It does seem easy to mirror wiki and add something like openX if you want to try to get ad support with good content for almost no effort :) That isn't exactly my intent but I thought I could add ads to the wiki-esqwue forum.Thanks. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 22:59, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

You can download the Wikipedia software (MediaWiki) here: mw:Download. Ucucha 23:05, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
You'll probably want to look at mw:Extension:LiquidThreads with all that talk of setting up forms. — Dispenser 00:55, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, I'm looking at that. I moved it all to a server but haven't installed it yet as I got started with some forum software. It occured to

me that what I wanted was to embed edits into the forum posts, making it more difficult to escape edit summaries. In this context, with structured docs, there is more likey to be a rationale and a short edit rather than obvious paragraphs. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 01:54, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Tool needed

Is there a tool, the equivalent of Wikistalk or Intersecting Contributions, which will allow you to input a number of articles and return with the users who all have editing those pages in common? Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:22, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

If one doesn't exist, it shouldn't be hard to build one. Give me a yell if your searching turns up nothing. Josh Parris 09:36, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
I'll have to see ifmy bash scripts can do that. I made some that scrape the web page and correlate various things. I used it to generate total edit counts on various

pages for myself and IIRC things like domains used as refs in each article. It shouldn't be hard to download each history page and generate lists of users in each. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 16:36, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

If either of you folks would be interested in giving it a try, that would be great -- I haven't found anything in my search through existing tools. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:21, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Scraping the history page may work. I was waiting for some other stuff so I gave it a try,

680 wikiutil -history Marchywka_Effect 689 more .wikiutil_1.txt | grep "cur)" | awk '{print $10}' | sed -e 's/\[.*\]//' | sort | uniq -c

126 Nerdseeksblonde 9 Rjanag 2 Verdatum 2 SmackBot 2 Shubinator 1 Terrek 1 TenPoundHammer 1 Tassedethe 1 RjwilmsiBot 1 Pascal666 1 Lordhatrus 1 Josh 1 from 1 Erik9bot Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 15:12, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

This doesn't work all the time ( first and last cases etc), but I do have what you want almost now. You can enter arbitary page names on command line

and get back a list of contribs sorted by number of pages to which each person edited,

wikiutil -histories Marchywka_Effect Dendreon | more

2 Dendreon 65 Nerdseeksblonde Marchywka_Effect 126 Nerdseeksblonde 2 Dendreon 5 SmackBot Marchywka_Effect 2 SmackBot 2 Dendreon 1 from Marchywka_Effect 1 from 2 Dendreon 16 Shubinator Marchywka_Effect 2 Shubinator 2 1 Marchywka_Effect 9 Rjanag

Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 16:02, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Slow restorations

Why does it take so long to restore deleted versions in order to merge edit histories? It seems like about an hour. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:52, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

...and lost histories

OK, here's what happened, resulting in the loss of the history of deletions:

Michael Hardy (talk) 19:26, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I think the histories are here. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:47, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Deletions don't follow page histories around. That is part of the reason why history merges work. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:01, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
I think he knows that. If the restore took unusually long, maybe there was lag in the database, causing the log entries not to show up at first. That could make it look like the log entries were gone (temporarily). — Carl (CBM · talk) 20:04, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I see the logs that appear when you click on "logs", but I still don't see the usual notice that you click on to see deleted versions. Normally I see that when I view an edit history, if there are deleted versions. Michael Hardy (talk) 21:11, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

As I understand it, there are no deleted versions: you undeleted all the history. Ucucha 21:16, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Oh. OK. [quote Emily Litella] Michael Hardy (talk) 21:42, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

...back to the first point...

...so why do restorations take an hour? Can anything be done about that? Clearing some cache or something? Michael Hardy (talk) 21:43, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't know. When I asked about it on the #wikimedia-tech channel just now, the response is nothing should be causing it. Is this happening routinely, or just for this one page? — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:15, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Restorations never take an hour; they'll take a minute at the most. The problem is that you need to clear the cache. This is done by going into the page's history and selecting a different history length to the default 50, say 20. If there are less than 50 edits in the page history, you'll have to do this by adding "&limit=<some random number>" to the end of the URL. See Wikipedia:How to fix cut-and-paste moves#Lost history bug. Graham87 14:04, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Apologies if I'm missing something, but isn't clearing the cache much simpler than that? On Firefox, just Ctrl+Shift+R. On Chrome, it's something like Tools, Browsing Data, and then Clear Cache (I'd check but can't get the browser at work). Not sure about IE, I avoid using it. I do history merges and I only ever use the two methods I just mentioned, and it works well. Maedin\talk 14:18, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
This is about the server cache, not user cache. It's similar to purging a page, but for history. Svick (talk) 14:30, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Hmmm, okay. Ignore me then! Though still wondering how I've done histmerges and page restorations and never had to use Graham's method. Maedin\talk 14:55, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, Graham87. In my experience, they've always taken about an hour, but I've never tried purging the server cache in this situation. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:28, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

...I see you're from Western Australia, so that's getting added to my mental list of places where people say "different to" instead of "different from". Michael Hardy (talk) 19:31, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Edit window scrolling

  Resolved
 – Redrose64 (talk) 21:17, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Right, first off: Windows XP, Firefox 3.0.17, Monobook, not using beta. Have not recently changed any of those, nor my preferences.

Problem: In the last day or so, the edit window has begun to behave differently. Specifically, clicking something outside the window which causes text to be inserted into the edit window (such as the   etc. buttons above, or the <ref></ref> etc. links below), now scrolls the window upwards until the insert point is on the top line. This is annoying when you are trying to read a paragraph above when editing. Until circa 9 February, no scrolling occurred, so you could position the actual line you were editing in such a way that text above or below might be seen while you were typing. How do I restore previous behaviour? --Redrose64 (talk) 16:30, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Several bugs were introduced with recent 'Beta' enhancements by the Usability team. They recommend that those users having issues with experimental features disable them; features can be turned off at Preferences → Editing tab → Experimental features. — as noted at the top of your watchlist. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 16:38, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
(a) I'm not using beta, as I stated earlier; (b) all three of the experimental features (Enable navigable table of contents; Enable enhanced editing toolbar; Enable dialogs for inserting links, tables and more) are turned off, and moreover, I've never turned them on. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:08, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Seems to be working properly now. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:17, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

CSS to hide language links

Renamed from Proposal to eliminate language links

Many articles have long lists of language links at the start of the page, and long lists of language links at the end of the page. However, clicking one of these links is probably a rare operation for most WP visitors. The lists waste space and can require readers to scroll down to see the beginning of the article. (Note: the exact behavior depends on the skin chosen to view pages in a user's Preferences.)

I propose that these lists be replaced by a single link to a new Special page (or similar mechanism) that would contain the links. I imagine that the programming to accomplish this would probably not be difficult for our developers, yet would make WP much more usable. David Spector 21:16, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Can you show me a printscreen of this as you see the problem? –xenotalk 21:20, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
This person is likely using the standard skin or cologne blue skin instead of monobook. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:23, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Couldn't they use a .css to hide the links if they are so married to those skins? –xenotalk 21:26, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I am indeed using the original Cologne Blue because the text is larger. Like many members of the Baby Boom Generation, my eyesight has deteriorated. I guess my problem could also be solved by creating a new skin that has large text but puts the initial and final language links out of the way. David Spector 21:41, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Or by using monobook and increasing the font size, either via CSS or your browser preferences. Algebraist 21:45, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Try looking at Earthquake in Cologne Blue. Even with my text size set to 150% there is no way to see the start of the article without scrolling. David Spector 21:47, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Creating User:David spector/cologneblue.css with the code 
#langlinks { display: none; }
should make the links disappear. Svick (talk) 21:54, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for that. And yes, individual editors setting css is probably going to be much more well-received than a proposal to eliminate our long-standing custom of interwiki linking. –xenotalk 21:56, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! It works to suppress the initial language links, but not the final language links. David Spector 22:11, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I, for one editor, appreciate the language links as they are now. -- Wavelength (talk) 22:32, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
The interwiki links have value for editors. It may happen that another Wikipedia's article is better than ours, and may give hints on what can be improved. EdJohnston (talk) 05:02, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
I've retitled the section header as this is proposal is DOA, especially now that the editor can hide them thru CSS. –xenotalk 14:18, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
David: If you wish to remove the bottom links, you are also going to lose the entirety of the footer to the page. If this doesn't disturb you too greatly, then 
#langlinks, #footer { display: none; }
is what you need. Otherwise, stick with what Svick gave you. The reason you lose the footer is because there isn't an id or class to remove the bottom links without also removing possible other page contents.
Submitting a bug to bugzilla to get some of the html in that area cleaned up might be a good idea (and moving some stuff into CSS…). --Izno (talk) 20:00, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Template for creating distribution map

Sorry if this is in the wrong place! I'm in the middle of writing an article which could do with a map or two that illustrate the distributions of place-names in Scotland.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to do this in a template similar to that used for the UK-infobox:

Template:Infobox UK place/doc/examples#Scotland

That shows a single location in Scotland, based on latitude and longitude paramaters.

Would it be possible to adapt this to show multiple locations? Catfish Jim and the soapdish (talk) 12:54, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

That template uses another template, {{location map}}, and I believe there have previously been similar discussions on its talk page, Template talk:Location map. The people who watch that page are likely to know more about the specifics. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:04, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Just found this: {{location map many}}, which allows for up to 9 markers. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:06, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks... I've gone ahead and asked a question there. I'd need more than 9 markers (actually, more than 300) so I suspect the answer is going to be no! Catfish Jim and the soapdish (talk) 13:38, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
300 clickable elements might bring some significant speed penalty to page rendering. Besides, 300 elements are hard to keep apart on smaller screen webpage viewings I'd suspect. Are you sure that there are not better ways to present your information ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:58, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
There probably are. I was thinking in terms of ease of entering the data and ease of editing it. I'll have a look at creating a chart in Excel that can generate the distribution maps and importing it to Wikipedia as an image. Catfish Jim and the soapdish (talk) 14:44, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikibreak Enforcer

What an I doing wrong? Frustrated and need a break. Justin talk 16:54, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

The code works for me. Aren't you using the Beta skin (Vector)? Svick (talk) 17:04, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
If you are using the Vector skin (at My Preferences -> Appearance), then you need to copy the code to Special:MyPage/vector.js. Gary King (talk) 18:49, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Reference/Citation Auto Citation

I've seen a number of Wikipedians spend hours converting urls to their proper citation template, when a simple parser could do it.

Then there's the WikiProject Citation cleanup which "formats" these citation templates.

I'd like to propose that rather than wasting man hours filling in these citation templates, that a parser be written to fill them in automatically. A number of major online news such as the New York Times offer API's which provide all the information that people are otherwise wasting time filling in. The sites that don't have API's can be easily scraped.Smallman12q (talk) 17:52, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Reflinks does the trick for bare URLs, and it works great. Gary King (talk) 18:50, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Seems interesting...but it doesn't pick up authors, and the titles are a bit off...perhaps a web parser that is programmed for individual sites...Smallman12q (talk) 19:25, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
It picks up authors for certain websites like nytimes.com. Gary King (talk) 19:30, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Ah...you are right...it does pick up the first author...but in an article like this, it doesn't pick up coauthors. I've just looked at the console, and it seems that it scrapes the metadata off the site rather than using the API...I'll notify User:Dispenser that there is an article search api. The screen scrape is similar to what I did in php at User:Smallman12q/Scripts/New_York_Times_Citation.Smallman12q (talk) 21:53, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Citation cleanup is only peripherally about the format of the templates. Principally it is about populating the citations that are incomplete. While an author, date, and page will normally be an unambiguous citation, most readers prefer to actually know the title and journal. Personally I find that being able to just click on something blue and read the paper is frequently helpful, so I like to have a doi, pmid, or isbn too. These have the other nice feature of providing some redundancy so we can catch typos or vandalism in, say, the author's name. User:Citation bot normally fixes many of these things but is presently blocked due to an obscure fault. LeadSongDog come howl 19:57, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
(e/c)Unfortunately there is no universal standard in HTML for any of the data items which may be used within {{cite web}}, except for |title= where the <title></title> tag should be a valid value, but often isn't. Getting date, author, publisher is very often a case of going to the actual URL, and reading the page retrieved. Sometimes, if you use the "view source" feature provided with most browsers (in Firefox it's Ctrl-U), you might see HTML comments which give these details, but not often. In some cases, I find that the details are present on the site, but not on that particular page: they might be on the base page for the site, or on a page described as "Contacts", "About us", "Site map", "Credits", etc. |accessdate= is definitely among those which it's not possible to retrieve using any of these methods, so your choices for that are to either put in today's date, or go back through Wiki page page history to find out when the URL was added to the Wiki page. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:59, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
There is no standard, but most websites follow their own "standard"...we should be able to write a simple parser for the top 100 most cited websites...Smallman12q (talk) 21:35, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
The problem of course isn't just {{cite web}}, it is that we persist in citing websites as if they were stable, where in fact few of them are. If we were being rigorously encyclopedic we would put an accesstime (not just an accessdate) on all urls, at least for recent news stories used as references. Then we would insist all urls were to an archive site as a condition of FA status. Get the Webcite, Internet Archive and like efforts moving at full steam. LeadSongDog come howl 22:43, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
My goal in bringing this up here is to develop a master bot and a master web interface that handle as many different sites as possible...Smallman12q (talk) 23:09, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Searching for Schools (TRINIDAD)

My name is X and In my early age of 21. I am a high school dropout and am really now looking for a turn around in earning an High School Diploma, So I can further my studies. CAN ANYONE HELP ME? I AM NEW IN TRINIDAD AND THIS IS MY FIRST TIME USING WIKIPEDIA. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bommerkingdom (talk • contribs) 00:09, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

What kind of help are you looking for? You may be looking for Wikiversity.Smallman12q (talk) 01:04, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Problem with a special page

Special:LongPages appears to have an issue. It says that there is no information for the report. Does anyone know how to fix it? Brambleclawx 02:01, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Just Posting So Someone Can Post This To Bugzilla (I Don't Have An Account)

Is there anyway to have a table such as in 1903_Tour_de_France#General_classification, but showing "ranks 1-10", and then collapsing the rest? I am trying to bring the two tables together, then collapsing the lower rows. How do I define how many rows to collapse?

see me.174.3.98.236 (talk) 08:53, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

There isn't a way to collapse only some rows in one table, but two tables put can be put closer together to create a similar appearance. By adding "margin:0px" to the style for both tables, there is no whitespace between them, so it displays the first ten rows and then the next ten rows are collapsed. I've made these changes to 1903 Tour de France#General classification. It's not exactly the same as if it were all one table, but it's as close as it can get. --Mysdaao talk 14:48, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
also, you can enclose a collapsible table within a normal table to get more complex effects. --Ludwigs2 05:02, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Freeze Panes - Top Row in Tables

Could we implement an option where the top row in a table (the one with labels) would scroll along with the broswer window when viewing long tables? Microsoft Excel has a similar feature called "Freeze Panes." It's rather annoying to have to scroll back up to recognize what a column means and we have many pages of long tables where I think such an enhancement would greatly aid the user experience. For example Assembly of the International Space Station TheFutureAwaits (talk) 10:04, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I think this question would be better suited to Village pump (technical), however I doubt that it would get much support for two reasons;
  • Wikipedia strives to be as compatible as possible, so we keep the 'mark-up' as simple as possible. This allows the pages to be read on all kinds of devices.
  • Huge tables are best avoided, and wherever possible information is presented in prose form.
I do see what you mean on the article Assembly of the International Space Station - if there was a simple way to lock the headings, I agree that it would be useful, but I don't know how it would impact on compatibility. Smappy (talk) 15:49, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, couldn't resist. :P — Bility (talk) 18:54, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Heading Heading
Cell Cell
Cell Cell
Cell Cell
Cell Cell
Cell Cell
Cell Cell
Cell Cell
Cell Cell
Cell Cell
Cell Cell
Cell Cell
That doesn't expand when printing. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 23:08, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
Would take a minor addition to the print stylesheet. ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:03, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Actually Wikipedia appropriately specifies much of its included CSS for "screen" only, so it wouldn't come up at all. ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:36, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Can't work, because it changes the semantics of the table (there are basically two tables now). We might not see this, but a person using a screenreader would get different results than on a normal table. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:22, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
Oh I hadn't actually looked at the code. You can do it with one table, I've seen it. ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:40, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
That's an amazing idea. I just need it to be able to expand. So like if we want to make it bigger, wider, or tall, individual cells and all.174.3.98.236 (talk) 00:12, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
That's a lot of wishes. That will take an awful lot of JS code to implement. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:23, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

SO it seems like this is totally feasible and I imagine most people would support it assuming it prints properly and can be turned on and off.

How do we move forward with it? I have no understanding of the bureaucracy here but I'd like the idea to be voted on. TheFutureAwaits (talk) 16:13, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Someone has to create the Javascript code. I'm not doing it. :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:22, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
I'll look into creating it today. It wont be the double scrollbar method displayed here, but will detach the scrollbar as it goes off screen. — Dispenser 21:48, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
I came here looking to see if this was being implemented yet. Any news on the progress? Thanks to all those working on it.--Metron4 (talk) 21:53, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

User Contributions

We should be able to hide reverts, and possibly elsewhere. Post on bugzilla as I don't have an account.174.3.98.236 (talk) 05:48, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Is there a particular reason why you don't have an account? Jan1naD (talk • contrib) 13:20, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Would you mind reading a dictionary-definition of the word "please" before you edit Wikipedia again? Thanks in advance. ╟─TreasuryTag►Speaker─╢ 13:51, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

It's already been requested, and depends on another bug to be fixed first. You would've seen this if you took about 10 seconds to do a Bugzilla search yourself. ^demon[omg plz] 18:02, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

White space above tables on Wikipedia namespace pages

A minor niggle. I have used tables on Help:Wikitable to display wikitext code. There is a white space above the table. Can it be removed? I know the I can display the code without using a table but if that is done that box takes up 100% of the page width. I want to avoid that had make the text box equal to the max text width in the box. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 06:32, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's worth it, but you could use <pre style="display: inline-block;"> ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:53, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
That did the trick. Thanks for that. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 21:02, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Special:CategoryTree link

Would it be possible to have an auto-generated link on each category page to Special:CategoryTree/CATEGORY NAME? It would be quite helpful to have this function enabled, especially when checking through category trees with multiple levels of parent categories and subcategories. -- Black Falcon (talk) 07:44, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not objecting, but is there any reason you prefer to use Special:CategoryTree rather than just navigate the subcategories on the category page itself?--Kotniski (talk) 14:27, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
If you have a large category, the subcats can be spread across several pages making them easy to miss. I have used this markup on some large categories:
<div style="-moz-column-count:2; -webkit-columns:2; column-count:2;">{{#tag:categorytree|{{PAGENAME}}}}</div>
It will list all of the subcats in two columns (except for IE8 and below). ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 17:17, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Just noticed, link broken "Discuss this special page at Wikipedia talk:Special:CategoryTree/Fundamental. " on Special:CategoryTree/Fundamental. — Dispenser 19:19, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Kotniski, my preference depends on what I am trying to accomplish. I find Special:CategoryTree to be more useful than the subcategories when working with:
  1. large categories with many subcategories, not all of which are on the same page (i.e., to reach them, one must click "next page" repeatedly);
  2. complex, complementary category trees, where subcategories are placed in multiple sub-trees of a larger category tree (e.g., People by nationality, People by occupation, People by nationality and occupation, and so on); and
  3. a large number of similarly-named categories, when it is much easier to spot discrepancies and differences using the long drop-down list format provided by CategoryTree.
-- Black Falcon (talk) 19:39, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Defaultsort/redirect cursor location

Can someone take a look at : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk#Defaultsort.2Fredirect_cursor_location GrahamHardy (talk) 18:17, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

See also #Unwanted space after character I click on. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:45, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Webslices for the main page

I've written a simple page illustrating how web slices would look on the page, and how each section would look at User:Smallman12q/webslice test. For those without IE or the firefox equivalent addon, here are some screenshots.

Anybody else think adding webslices would be a good idea?Smallman12q (talk) 02:14, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

It seems this currently only works on IE8, but that browser is widely used.Smallman12q (talk) 14:48, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Microsoft is proposing Webslices in a standard, but I do not believe any other implementations have emerged. Probably best to wait for others before a large deployment. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 14:59, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
But why? Web slices are currently used on some wikipedia pages via the {{WebSlice-begin}} template...I don't understand the benefit of waiting in this case...Smallman12q (talk) 15:59, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm neutral. It's a good idea, but it's possible the webslices will make the Main Page look different for users with different browsers. I suggest testing it out on all major browsers, including Opera, Google Chrome, Safari, and Konqueror, before implementation on the Main Page. Shubinator (talk) 17:32, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
I believe they shouldn't change the way the page looks at all. For those who are familar with html, the code is relatively simple.
<div class="hslice" id = "hslice-id goes here">
<div style="display:none" class="entry-title">Title goes here</div>
<span class="ttl" style="display:none">360</span><!-- How often to refresh -->
<div class="entry-content">
The content goes here
</div>
</div>

Or in wikiterms (as an example 

<div class="hslice" id = "hslice-idDid you know">
<div style="display:none" class="entry-title">Wikipedia Did You Know</div>
{{span|class=ttl|style=display:none}}360{{endspan}}
<div class="entry-content">
{{Did you know}}
</div>
</div>

I've only tested on firefox and IE7/IE8, but if you have another browser, you can give see if anything looks odd by viewing my example at: User:Smallman12q/webslice test.Smallman12q (talk) 19:28, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I like the idea. We already have this layout basically for the elements in the main page. We just need to add the "hslice", "entry-title" and "entry-content" classes to the appropriate places. Add a hidden ttl somewhere, and were done. Sounds simple enough. Little work for a nice feature that many IE users might appreciate. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:29, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
P.S. I note the {{WebSliceDisable}} on your example, which of course doesn't work because you cannot add the HTML-element meta. It isn't on the whitelist of mediawiki (for good reasons). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:41, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
Ye, I realized that "<meta>" isn't supported... I've put up a simple example at User:Smallman12q/Main Page Web Slices. Currently, its only a simple wrapper around the templates, and not any of the css...but it should serve as a good enough example to get the point across. It would indeed make a lot of IE8 users rather happy...and with very little work. Let me know what you think.Smallman12q (talk) 23:01, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
I've put up some screenshots at imageshack,for those of you with IE8, you can give it a try at User:Smallman12q/Main Page Web Slices.Smallman12q (talk) 23:22, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

It seems like browsers should be able to do this without our help, and I don't like he idea of adding more proprietary code to the site. ¦ Reisio (talk) 05:57, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

It's not really proprietary as the format is released under the Microsoft Open Specification Promise and under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication. I don't really see why we can't help the browsers out=P...Smallman12q (talk) 21:07, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

It is proprietary. It's a Microsoft-made technology that only Microsoft products support. The browsers don't need help. ¦ Reisio (talk) 21:31, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

The specification is under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication...just because its the only browser to support it, doesn't mean its proprietary. (I hope this won't derail this discussion.)Smallman12q (talk) 02:41, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

No, just because it's the only browser to support it doesn't mean it's proprietary, but it is an indicator that it's almost a certainty that it's proprietary. Java™ is GPL, but Sun runs it. Flash is partially open, but entirely controlled by Adobe. It's not about the license. Banks give "free" credit to students (to anyone really), but you always pay, because it's their rules. ¦ Reisio (talk) 07:00, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

  • I don't believe you understand what proprietary means...proprietary software is often used to mean computer software which is neither free nor open source. The web slice specification is released under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication. Proprietary is defined in legal terms, not by usage...if firefox offers HTML 5 support, and Internet Explorer does not, that is not an indicator that it's almost a certainty that it's proprietary(the it being HTML 5).
  • Your example appears to lead to a logical fallacy. You state that It's not about the license. and then state that Banks give "free" credit to students (to anyone really), but you always pay, because it's their rules.. First off, it is entirely based upon the license which serves as a legal contract or service agreement. As for your reference to banks giving free credit and then you having to pay, they give free credit based on the terms to which you sign or agree to participate in (which are their rules). I believe the "free credit" rate change you are referring to is the Universal default.
  • This seems to be derailing the purpose of this discussion which is whether or not it would be beneficial to add web slices to the main page.Smallman12q (talk) 14:16, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Web Slices are not "proprietary". However, they are not an open standard. MediaWiki and Wikipedia already use plenty of vendor-specific extensions to web standards, like <link rel="apple-touch-icon">, <a rel="nofollow">, IE conditional comments, etc.

IMO, we should try to avoid vendor-specific extensions in favor of open standards as a general rule, but especially if they make the nonstandard browser look more attractive than the competition. E.g., we use IE conditional comments so that IE < 8 can display the page as correctly as other browsers, and that's okay. But we shouldn't make IE look better by using their non-standard features. Let them get it on the standards track first. Doing anything else encourages browser vendors to do the wrong thing. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 17:53, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Is there a policy/guideline link for that? I always thought that the idea of Wikipedia was to provide functionality...Smallman12q (talk) 21:21, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
No, no policy/guideline. Just an opinion. The purpose of Wikipedia is, however, to provide free functionality, meaning free as in speech. From foundation:Values: "An essential part of the Wikimedia Foundation's mission is encouraging the development of free-content educational resources that may be created, used, and reused by the entire human community. We believe that this mission requires thriving open formats and open standards on the web to allow the creation of content not subject to restrictions on creation, use, and reuse." Encouraging the use of non-standard web features is against Wikimedia's mission, at least to some degree. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 15:32, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Agreed with Simetrical, the fact that there isn't a free implementation is also particularly troubling. And minor point with the implementation is that non-CSS browser will see an odd number hanging around. Can use the title attribute to hide the minutes between updates: <abbr class="ttl" title="1440"></abbr> and there's also an endtime property. — Dispenser 16:28, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Well there was a free implementation using WebChunks, and firefox users can also use Fireclip...I'm merely trying to provide some additional functionality to the 20-25% of users who use IE8.Smallman12q (talk) 22:07, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

So I take it that there is no support for adding web slices to the main page?Smallman12q (talk) 18:46, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

tag ref and ref name

Because of problems with the order the parser handled things, {{singlechart}} uses the #tag ref syntax to create references. Now I'm getting requests to name the citation that singlechart creates in order that the article can use the same reference and not have to duplicate it. I cannot figure out how to do that. Anyone got an idea?—Kww(talk) 00:15, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

{{#tag:ref|content|name=Foo}} Mr.Z-man 01:13, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Promising, but there's a glitch that's mystifying me. User talk:Kww/singlechart is a test case for User:Kww/singlechart. The "name" works, and you can see that the two invocations of the macro produce the same reference, and receive a shared reference in the reference list. However, when I try to format a matching name and use it in text, I get an error message and the reference name isn't processed. I've modified the reference output to show the generated name, and it certainly seems to be sc_Australia_Bonzo+Dog+Doo+Dah+Band, which is what I've used in the test case.—Kww(talk) 02:23, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Try putting quotes around the value, ie name="value" instead of name=value. The HTML spec requires all attribute values to be quoted unless every single character is a letter, digit, hyphen or period; and you have some underscores and plus signs in there. I believe the XML spec is even more stringent. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:41, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
That did it. Thanks.—Kww(talk) 14:51, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

WP e-mail

  Resolved
 – ISP/e-mail provider problem (or "new feature" as they preferred to call it)

appears to be broken, anyone else having problems?   pablohablo. 15:55, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

  Works for me Gary King (talk) 18:22, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Me, not so much. I've sent you one as an experiment.   pablohablo. 19:10, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
I got yours. You can just test the system by sending yourself an email. Gary King (talk) 19:19, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I did that. Didn't work. The e-mail address itself is working, just not via Wikipedia.   pablohablo. 20:06, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Have you checked your spam folder? Svick (talk) 20:53, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes.   pablohablo. 21:38, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Works for me as well. Must be a problem with your e-mail address and/or program and/or provider. Regards SoWhy 21:48, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Provider probably. Thanks all, anyway.   pablohablo. 23:09, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

IP address bot

This one kinda cought me off guard. I have cluebot set to archive my talk page. It works fine, but yesterday it removed a discussion (which it was supposed to), from an IP address. Something is strange here, but it's definitely not the edit itself.diff - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 19:02, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

This was discussed at ClueBot's talk page. Svick (talk) 19:40, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Unicode in raw recent-changes IRC feed?

I keep getting strange Unicode when looking at the raw IRC feed, like this entry:
[[̇Santiago AragÃହ̔]]4 MB̐ http://en.wikipedia.org[..]&oldid=[..]5803 5* ＃Cydebot�� 5*� (+3) ̐Robot - Moving category Football (soccer) midfielders to Association [..].�

Well, actually, it was
\x0314[[\x0307Santiago Arag\xc3\xb3n\x0314]]\x034 MB\x0310 \x0302http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=343888972&oldid=336985803\x03 \x035*\x03 \x0303Cydebot\x03 \x035*\x03 (+3) \x0310Robot - Moving category Football (soccer) midfielders to Association football midfielders per [[WP:CFD|CFD]] at [[Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 February 5]].\x03

Is there a reason for that? (for example, do they mean anything?) Calvin 1998 (t·c) 02:32, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Edit box issue

I don't know if I'm the only one seeing this, but is anyone else noticed a gray box below the normal edit box? A few times, I've even had it flip with the edit box. I'm not using the beta version, but this recent development in the past few weeks is a bit weird. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:48, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Unwanted space after character I click on

In the past couple of days when I have used the list of characters below the edit window for templates, piped links, etc., I have discovered that the cursor advances by one after the character appears. This messes up what I am working on because the next thing I add has some character before it that should be after it.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:18, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Are you running the beta ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:43, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm experiencing this issue as well, and I'm not running Beta. If there is text present after the inserted character(s), then the act of insertion advances the cursor by one space. If there is no text present after the inserted character(s), then the act of insertion causes the cursor to disappear from the edit window altogether, and no further text can be typed without clicking in the window. -- Black Falcon (talk) 19:47, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
I don't know what Beta is, so I'm guessing no.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:59, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Everyone on IE8 ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:17, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Me too. on IE8 WinXP. Not using beta. Sick of being asked if I'm using beta. Haven't changed any gadgets or scripts lately. DuncanHill (talk) 20:49, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Well since that's where most bugs are atm, that is rather important information in the debug process. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:03, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
I am. But this is a very recent development.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:50, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Well, this is interesting. I just now discovered the | on the keyboard of a computer I have used for 19 months. I guess I thought | was something else. So that solves that problem, if I can remember to use it.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:59, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm plucking my skull empty here. No idea so far about what could be causing this.... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:10, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

The issue seems to disappear if http://bits.wikimedia.org/w/extensions/UsabilityInitiative/js/plugins.combined.min.js (which seemes to catch the ordinary addButton function) is not included in the source… is this JS supposed to be included for non-Beta users? ¦ Reisio (talk) 00:06, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
bugzilla:22507 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:35, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
This problem should now be fixed. Confirmation would be appreciated. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:09, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
It appears to have gone away now - thanks to whoever dealt with it.Nigel Ish (talk) 18:38, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Seconding Nigel's confirmation. Thanks to everyone who identified, reported, and fixed the issue. -- Black Falcon (talk) 19:32, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Usability initiative causes complete editing breakage

  Resolved

Just documenting this in case others encounter it. For some reason, the "usability initiative" people have decided to test a script that overlays the edit window with a broken "loading" graphic that prevents editing. If you encounter this, the "Leave Beta" option will restore the ability to edit. For the record, not allowing users to edit is a decrease in usability - I shouldn't have to say it, but apparently someone with code access does not quite follow that reasoning. (Okay, I'm documenting it AND bitching about it). — Gavia immer (talk) 20:30, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh you always bitch, everybody is used to it :D (PS. bugreports should be accompanied with information about the browser you are running.) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:42, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
Are you by any chance running Firefox and do you have Gadgets enabled? I heard about a very annoying issue earlier today with the GoogleTrans gadget, which caused the exact same behavior. This is a bug in Firefox causing it to overzealously enforce cross-domain restrictions when you pull in a script from a different domain (say google.com). We're not sure about how we need to work around it just yet. --Catrope 20:44, 12 February 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Catrope (talk • contribs)
I am using Firefox 3.6, but I've just verified that the GoogleTrans gadget doesn't cause any problems (it doesn't do anything to the edit window in any case, so it wasn't the problem). It was something with the Beta usability stuff that caused the problem, and since that changes somewhat at random I wasn't sure Bugzilla was the way to go.
For the record, though, I also use NoScript, so my restrictions on cross-domain scripting are stronger than anything vanilla Firefox would do, but I trust any WMF domains to serve scripts. I can't imagine any restriction on cross-domain scripts that I would ever describe as "overzealous", by the way - if your position is just that I should allow permissive scripting because it's easier on the developers, and that it's okay to have breakage in the edit window if I don't - well, I don't feel that's an increase in usability, and the rest of what I might say on the subject is probably not civil enough to post here. — Gavia immer (talk) 21:02, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
The 'loading' window over the editor has been disabled now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:06, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
These cross-domain restrictions were enforced by vanilla Firefox as well: I was able to reproduce the bug without NoScript. I'm very much in favor of cross-domain restrictions, except when they apply to stuff from the same domain, or even within the same script file. Read "Permission denied for <http://localhost> to get property Window.document from <http://localhost>." and tell me that's not ridiculous ;) --Catrope (talk) 14:16, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

(Forgive me: Abject Idiocy!) Small photos, when clicked on, loose all important accompanying text!

Apology in front for not being able to discover where this topic has been discussed in depth, for I suspect it has been.

Basic point: almost all photographs accompanying Wikipedia articles are tiny: far too small to serve as anything but thumbnails. Therefore, one would expect that such tiny, barely comprehendible pictures would be robustly designed to be almost invariably enlarged by an article's readers with NO LOSS OF ANYTHING, and one would also expect the enlargement process to amplify accompanying text. (That is, if I click on your microscopic photo, then I expect your explanatory caption to AT THE VERY LEAST NOT DISAPPEAR!) However, when I click upon such photos, and (fortunately for me) there happens to be a more-than-thumbnailish resolution available (which happens less often than it should: many pictures on Wikipedia are provided in such limited maximum resolutions that I'd rather have them eliminated), all accompanying text is lost! I summarize: when I click on a ridiculously tiny, barely comprehendible picture with a paragraph of elucidating text below it, and that picture happens to be also available at a more useful resolution, I am (thank you!) provided with the picture at the more useful resolution. But the caption text disappears!

I'm greatly appreciative of Wikipedia. I'm not very tolerant of intolerance. Nvertheless, this state of affairs has been bothering me for a long time. I think it's an example of abject idiocy. It boggles my mind that this problem isn't in headlines somewhere in all the Wikipedia Reasons For Self-Castigation articles.

Thanks. Sorry. But.

GrouchyDan (talk) 07:27, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Images look fine to me and others don't complain about their size so it may something special on your system. What is your screen resolution? What is your thumbnail size under Appearance at Special:Preferences? Clicking on an image leads to an image page. Images may be used on 0, 1 or more pages and the image page doesn't display the image captions on those pages. Wikipedia doesn't pay for images and cares about copyright so this limits which images we can use. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:06, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Just a suggestion for general life. Complaints and suggestions, whether reasonable or not, which are delivered as aggressive, hyperbolic and, in your own words, "grouchy" diatribes, are significantly less likely to receive any attention than calm, reasoned comments. Bug reports which include the words "ridiculous", and "abject idiocy" generally receive a lower priority than other reports. Happy‑melon 13:42, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Globally locked accounts

When a steward puts a global lock on an account, it seems non-admins (and AIV helperbots) have no way of telling that the account is already blocked. Admins can only tell because the 'block' link turns into 'change block'. See <snip> for some recent examples. Is there some workaround for this? -- zzuuzz (talk) 18:18, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

[4]. (Those ones you posted have been revision deleted on meta. There may be a bug, API returns "user does not exist" for your examples.) MER-C 03:27, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Edit summary not saving?

I just reverted this edit. Then I checked the history and read that it says 'remove unsource', was a bit surprised firstly because that is bad grammar and secondly because is't not what I wrote. So I hit the back button on my browser(firefox) a few times and my submission reads "remove unsourced claim. Nothing on http://twitter.com/ladygaga". Do we have some technical fault here? SunCreator (talk) 16:50, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Either a technical problem, or you were typing the edit summary, only typed half of it, mistakenly hit enter, continued typing the rest of the message while the next page loaded, then hit enter again thinking you submitted it the first time. It's possible, considering that Wikipedia pages load slowly most of the time. If you know for sure that it is a problem with the server, then you should probably submit it to Bugzilla. Gary King (talk) 18:21, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
If I submitted the same revert twice but with a different edit summary won't it give an edit conflict? SunCreator (talk) 16:25, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
No, the second time would be a null edit and not be recorded. 87.60.76.206 (talk) 17:15, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Template:Blockquote

I noticed here that transclusions of {{Blockquote}} (a redirect) seem to be interfering with {{subst:afd top}} and {{subst:afd bottom}}. Note that the blue archive box ends after the first transclusion of {{blockquote}}. At first I thought it was because the redirect added a parameter to a transcluded template which does not appear to take any parameters, but changing that seems to have had no effect. What's causing the issue with the AfD? Thanks in advance! -- Black Falcon (talk) 03:34, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

well, for practical resolution, remove the indenting colons in front of the {{blockquote}} templates. for some reason they screw up the archive box. I'm still looking into why, however, and I'll get back to you when I know. --Ludwigs2 05:02, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
alright, this is what's happening, as near as I can tell. In case you didn't know, WIkipedia translates indent colons into definition list elements (<dl></dl> blocks). when you use {{blockquote}} with a prefixed colon, the wiki-software places the HTML <blockquote></blockquote> block inside of a <dd>...</dd> block, but for some reason it subsequently misplaces the final closing div tag. compare the html on this:

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

front test words

inner test

back test words

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

against this:

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

front test words

inner test

back test words

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
this strikes me as a weird rendering issue in the software itself, rather than something to do with the template (though I'll look a bit more closely at it). At any rate, removing the indent colons should resolve the problem for the time being. --Ludwigs2 05:17, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
P.s. - Ah, interesting. I've traced the problem down to this construction:
:<blockquote class="templatequote"><div>toodle 
</div>
</blockquote>

causes problems, while: 

:<blockquote class="templatequote"><div>toodle </div></blockquote>

does not. It has to be some media-wiki issue with the way that wikitext colon-indents are expanded - it seems to be automatically ending adding a closing div tag at the end of the line with the colon, at the same time as it closes the indent, without looking ahead to see if there's a closing div tag given in the next lines. that might be an unavoidable wikitext limitation. --Ludwigs2 05:34, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Huh, I would not have thought that the issue could be fixed at the site (the AfD) rather than at the source (the template(s)). By the way, I stumbled upon another way to resolve the problem: replacing the template transclusion with <blockquote></blockquote>.
In your opinion, is the issue worth reporting at BugZilla? It's the first time I've encountered it (then again, it could be because I almost always use <blockquote> instead of {{blockquote}}), so I'm not sure whether it's an issue worth addressing. Thanks, and thank you in particular for your detailed response and clarification, -- Black Falcon (talk) 07:07, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
well, I dunno. it's only going to apply where someone tries to use an indented blockquote template within another div (or div-based template). how often does that actually happen? It can't hurt to make a bug report, I suppose, but I doubt it's going to make it onto anyone's high-priority list.
Incidentally, converting to blockquote tags is only a partial solution - I think you'll find that it works well for single-line quotes, but goofs up the indenting on multi-line quotes. I think thats the reason that the blockquote in the template contains a div block, but it's the contained div block that's causing the problem with the outer div. it may be possible to rewrite the blockquote template to only use a div - I'll experiment, and make a suggestion on the template talk page if it works. --Ludwigs2 07:33, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
P.s. Eh, another solution is to move the colons inside the template, e.g.:
{{blockquote|
::::this is indented text}}
gives
this is indented text
--Ludwigs2 07:44, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
This sort of problem does not just occur with {{blockquote}}; I've seen it elsewhere (navboxes for instance). There are a number of restrictions on where a <div></div> block may be used. In places where it causes trouble, a <span></span> may be a better choice. I do realise that a lot of templates use <div></div> and they are unlikely to change. Generally: don't place indenting colons before any template which uses <div></div>. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:19, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Unfortunately, span blocks don't work quite the same way: div blocks will preserve the indent across paragraphs, spans won't. --Ludwigs2 07:16, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes; but it depends where they're used. A <div></div> is a block-level element, intended to enclose other block-level elements (it can't be used inside paragraphs); whereas <span></span> is an inline element, intended for use within blocks. <blockquote></blockquote> and <dl></dl> are both block-level. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:59, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

This issue indeed presents with all block elements in indented lists. It's a well known problem, though I'm not sure if there is a bug ticket for it. I suspect it is HTMLTidy trying to cleanup and incorrectly guessing that this is illegal construct. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:48, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I expect this is Tidy. How untidy... :D Happy‑melon 13:35, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
We need a way to disable Tidy for troubleshooting— perhaps a NOTIDY magic word. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 14:38, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

What a problem...

When I edit some article then press preview, sometimes, whole thing in the edit field is gone. -- JSH-alive talk • cont • mail 12:07, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

What browser ? If it is Firefox, do you happen to have any extensions installed ? There is no error or warning whatsoever ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:12, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Firefox 3.6 on Windows XP. I have ChatZilla, DNS Cache, Dom Inspector, DownThemAll!, Java Console, Java Quick Starter, .NET Framework Assistant 1.1, Personas, RealPlayer record plugin, TV-Fox, and two English Dictionaries. JSH-alive talk • cont • mail 07:12, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

WikiChecker problem

I'm looking at a user's recent edits, but however, when I analyze more than 2,000 edits, the periods of time only display 1/1/1970 - 1/1/1970, whereas no record data is shown at all. Is anyone else encountering this besides me? Schfifty3 00:30, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

It does this to me even for 501 edits. I think you should contact the owner of that site. Svick (talk) 08:25, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikilinker

Hi. I've recently created a list. List of Czech actors and List of Czech actresses but it takes a lot of time just to wikilink them (I'm still slowly doing the actresses list). Does anybody know if it would be possible to add a new tool feature to the itinary in your preferences or toolbox which enables you to highlight a mass of selected text and programme it to add a [[ ]] around each name, so whatever is on a line it places as [[ ]] around it. This would be a great help in list work, in the workspace too in compiling lists of missing articles for wikiprojects. So it would wiki link all of the selected text lines in an instant rather than having to go through and do each one seperately. So here I could highlight D-Z and it would place a [[ ]] around each name being on a different line. ‡ Himalayan ‡ ΨMonastery 15:54, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Having a tool is a possibility, but with this list, you could just copy it to Word and find/replace all "* " with "*[[" and all paragraph marks with "]]<paragraphmark>".—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:07, February 16, 2010 (UTC)

I am pretty useless with anything like word or excel!! I'd like a wiki tool when editing page to be able to instantly do this and [[ ]] a mass of highlighted links at once. ‡ Himalayan ‡ ΨMonastery 16:33, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty useless with writing tools for wiki :), but I can help you with this list. I can either tell you how to wikilink this list in Word (step-by-step; it's really really easy) or I can wikilink the whole list for you no problem. Just give me a holler if you want my help. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:41, February 16, 2010 (UTC)
I am pretty sure that there is a link suggestion tool somewhere, maybe on the toolserver, but I'll be darned if I can find the link...anyone? – ukexpat (talk) 19:35, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
This one perhaps? I only ever used it once though. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:51, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Possibly, but the tool page link seems to be dead. – ukexpat (talk) 20:00, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Square brackets in URL

I have been trying to use a URL with some square brackets in it as the url parameter to the {{Cite web}} template. I have tried using the <nowiki></nowiki> tags but without success. Is there any way that the brackets can be escaped to allow their usage in the URL? Keith D (talk) 19:18, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

How about %5B and %5D for [ and ] respectively? RJFJR (talk) 19:26, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
As above, and see Percent-encoding for further info. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:41, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for that, I have managed to get the reference in. Keith D (talk) 19:49, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Text only watch/unwatch link in Vector

I'm trying to skin Vector so that the watch/unwatch link (in the bar at the top of a regular page) is purely text, like its counterpart in Classic. Is there a simple UI option for this?

Looking at the HTML, the correct text ("watch" or "unwatch") is there when the page loads, inside ca-watch a span and ca-unwatch a span respectively (depending on whether the page is unwatched or watched when the page is loaded). To my mind the javascript that toggles the star icon should also toggle this text.

Following the javascript, the responsible code appears to be wgAjaxWatch.setLinkText in ajaxwatch.js, but it changes the icon (rather than the text) if iconMode is set. It looks like that is set in the onLoad method in the same file, which sets it if ca-watch has class icon with the following: 

if ( el1.className.match( /icon/i ) ) {
  wgAjaxWatch.iconMode = true;
}

So, how can I turn icon mode off? Is there a skin config option, so that the HTML is generated with a class other than icon? Right now I've got the icon graphic itself hidden and the text shown with CSS in my my vector.css, using: 

 #ca-watch   a span {display: inline !important; width:auto !important; }

but the text itself doesn't change when I watch and unwatch, because ajaxwatch thinks we're in icon mode regardless.

If I'm barking up an over-complex tree, how can I get Vector to show a simple text watch/unwatch link?

Thanks. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:21, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

One way: 

#ca-unwatch span:before {
	display: block;
	content: "Unwatch";
}
#ca-watch span:before {
	display: block;
	content: "Watch";
}
#ca-watch a,
#ca-unwatch a {
	width: auto !important;
	overflow: hidden;
	line-height: 50px;
	margin-top: -16px !important;
	height: 56px !important;
	text-decoration: underline;
}

Would actually be a little "cleaner" to just display: none; the span's and use only the a's, but I didn't feel like sniffing out the text styles. :p
¦ Reisio (talk) 22:49, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

The following code works for me.
addOnloadHook(function() {
  el = document.getElementById("ca-watch");
  if (el == null)
    el = document.getElementById("ca-unwatch");
  el.className = '';
});
 
wgAjaxWatch.setLinkText = function( newText ) {
	for ( i = 0; i < wgAjaxWatch.watchLinks.length; i++ ) {
		changeText( wgAjaxWatch.watchLinks[i].firstChild, newText );
	}
};
Thanks for the pointers, I find the star annoying, but I wouldn't start to investigate this myself. Svick (talk) 22:57, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Adding "status" indicator

Tried to install status indicator to my user page, can't get it to work. It is showing current status as "LOST" which is true..It seemed simple after reading the instructions, can someone help ? ( I'm lost can someone find me ? lol) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mlpearc (talk • contribs) 04:58, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

You have to place importScript('User:Henrik/js/automod.js'); in your monobook.js (I can see that you had this code there before, but it's wrong now). Then wait few minutes and bypass your cache (Ctrl+F5 in Firefox). Also, do you use the Beta skin called Vector? If yes, you would have to put the code in User:Mlpearc/vector.js. Svick (talk) 14:50, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm still trying to get this toy to work I have the Boxed Indicator posted on my User page It's Indicating I'm "Lost" but when I click on "on, busy, off, etc. I am sent to this page User:Mlpearc/Status and loges me out. I know it's "Bells and Whistles" but I would like to get it working Mlpearc (talk) 17:50, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry i"m not using Beta and I use IE 8 and currently use default Monobook.Mlpearc (talk) 17:54, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
You still don't have the correct code in your monobook.js. Svick (talk) 18:01, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Do you have a link to "Wiki for Dummies"? I placed the code on Mlpearc/monobook.js in every cofiguration I can see, unless I'm need to replace somthing wihin the code with other ? Mlpearc (talk) 18:46, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
And there we have it! You put it in Mlpearc/monobook.js whilst it should be in User:Mlpearc/monobook.js. Wrong namespace. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:49, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Google indexing of search pages

While googling for a Star Trek quote, I noticed that the first link started with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search?search= (screenshot). Since I'm pretty sure that Wikipedia would rather search pages weren't indexed, I thought I would draw somebody's attention to the fact that this string isn't prohibited by the robots.txt. --superioridad (discusión) 05:14, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I asked domas, and this is pretty much unblockable. robots.txt can only block prefixes. but there is no consistent prefix for ALL possible variantions for the search interfaces. Basically, anything unknown that has ?search= in the query will be handed to the search interface. The search results are noindexable I think, but because this page is an exact match, it goes to the article itself... These kind of cases usually end up in Google by links from other webpages. It's not a big problem, it's more of an issue for Google actually. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:49, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
I don't see an issue with this. The returned result is the most accurate thing that fits the term as the actual page in this case has not yet been indexed by Google. You can however see that Google watches you and has a record of things that you search even when using wikipedia's search! SunCreator (talk) 17:22, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

My Watchlist reloads every two seconds

  Resolved
 –  – ukexpat (talk) 15:41, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Starting late yesterday, My Watchlist began reloading ever two seconds, each time taking a long time to reload, making it virtually unusable. Is anyone else having this problem? Is there anything I can do about this? Regards, —mattisse (Talk) 13:06, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Haven't you accidentally turn it on yourself? In Firefox, you do that by right clicking on the page and then selecting “Reload every”. Svick (talk) 13:22, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
I opened the Watchlist in a new tab, and that seemed to fix it. But thanks for the tip about the right click "Reload every". I was unaware of it. It doesn't seem to be reloading at all under its new tab. I will definitely check that "Reload every" if I have similar problems in the future. Thanks for teaching me about that! Regards, —mattisse (Talk) 14:10, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Various links are broken throughout this page, why?

Perhaps I'm missing something really obvious but half the links on Studio 54 seem to be broken, I can't work out what's wrong. It's the same with Firefox 3.5.7 and IE 6. Is this just my browser or are other people getting this? The links seem to be formatted correctly. SteveDavey (talk) 15:04, 17 February 2010 (UTC)—Preceding unsigned comment added by SteveDavey (talk • contribs) 15:03, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

There where a load of new lines throughout the article, and where there was a new line in side a link, the link broke. It should be fixed now :) - Kingpin13 (talk) 15:13, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Sweet, thanks, that was really getting on my wick SteveDavey (talk) 15:38, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

User-agent nonsense

This is a re-hash of my first attempt to get an answer on this over in "help_desk"; I was redirected here.

Since when does wikipedia *require* a user-agent header?? Someone please undo that braindeath, as such a header is completely controllable by the connecting client. What browser anyone is running is none of a site's business if the user chooses not to reveal it.

The obvious symptom is if a browser [or protective proxy that it's running through] doesn't send a User-Agent header when accessing the HelpDesk or similar, a page simply saying "please provide a User-agent" or some such is displayed and no real information is returned. This is incredibly stupid, as if I then send something like "User-Agent: fuck off" with every request then it works fine. What knowledge has anyone gained from that header??

FIX IT. Don't rely on externally settable fields.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.70.42.13 (talk) 15:08, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I believe this is meant to make irresponsible crawling little harder (and hopefully the crawler will find out that this is forbidden in the process) and also blocking little easier. IHMO, most of the time empty User-Agent means that someone wrote a program to download pages from Wikipedia and either doesn't know about User-Agent or forgot to set it. I see no reason legitimate users would want to have it empty. Svick (talk) 15:47, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Like Svick says. There are two types of problems: Clients who do bad stuff without knowing it, and clients who do bad stuff because they want to abuse Wikipedia (data mining for SPAM for instance). Both such cases will be dealt with by banning all that traffic. The user-agent requirement helps better serve the first group, hopefully preventing someone with good intentions in getting banned. See also the announcement on the -tech mailinglist here. The lack of user-agent has simply been too much abused by badly written SPAM bots. Domas no longer considers it healthy for the wikimedia network, to continue to allow them to do that. P.S. Using a rather unique string as a UA, makes you MORE unique and more easily identifiable. If you appreciate your privacy, better hide under the UA of a well known and widely used browser. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:19, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Graphs (search servers, API servers) which illustrates the ridiculous amount of resources that became available after blocking traffic without UA. Most of this traffic (likely 90+ procent) will be spam bots, most of the rest are tools that don't send UA, but are not malignant and will supply a UA in the future. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:35, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
Like the original poster I do find it a bit useless. If the idea is to block/restrict irresponsible crawlers, then it's a complete waste, as irresponsible crawlers use false headers anyway. So real reason for this seems unknown to me. SunCreator (talk) 17:26, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
See... well, all of the posts after OP. Graphs and diagrams demonstrating the benefit of blocking no-UA traffic. --King Öomie 17:47, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
I saw the stats and I'm sure it helps for now. But as a concept it still seems flawed. It's like having a house party and a bouncer stands at the door asking those arriving are they allowed in, and if they answer yes, they get it. So all it takes to get in is to lie - and those that wish to cheat will learn to lie. Is there not other methods to reducing this traffic. Some form of throttle control, white listing certain IP bots, even authentication of automated processes. SunCreator (talk) 22:06, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
It is not the lying domas is concerned about (that already happens). It's blocking good faith users that he wants to prevent. Detecting abusive behavior is not the problem. Detecting wether or not the abusive party is good or of bad intentions that was the problem. "Now if someone sets "WikiTrust 0.9.8 user@wikitrust.org", he will know to contact wikitrust so they can fix their tool. If he sees an abusive party faking as IE, he will indefinitely block all their IPs, file abuse reports at their ISP and get all medieval on their asses. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:04, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Double borders on "no article" message

This is a pre-emptive message since we usually get questions about these things:

At the moment many users will see double borders on the message you see before creating a new page. This is because I just did some updates to MediaWiki:Noarticletext and MediaWiki:Common.css. If you see such double borders, just bypass your browser cache and it will go away. I'm sorry that there were no smoother way of doing the update.

If any of the geeks here are curious about this, see MediaWiki talk:Noarticletext#More notices.

--David Göthberg (talk) 06:01, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:BLP kertuffle

Would anyone help sort unreferenced BLPs by country? This would help people take care of those article in their area of interest. Some of these article might have available sources in a language other than English. Thanks. Maurreen (talk) 16:08, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

This can be done using CatScan. An example of such a list is Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia/Unreferenced BLPs. Graham87 01:00, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. Maurreen (talk) 08:09, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Count articles listed on "What links here" pages

I think it would be nice to have an article count at the top of the "What links here" page for each article -- i.e. something that says "X articles link to this article".

Obviously, you can manually count inbound links for articles with a small # of them. But for articles that are not linked to enough to fall under Wikipedia:Most referenced articles, but linked to more that a few dozen times, it would be nice to be able to quickly see how frequently other articles link to it, for a variety of reasons. For instance, a while back, I had to count the number of inbound links to help resolve a dispute about which of two articles was the primary topic for a term. It would also be nice for working to drive more traffic into semi-orphaned articles, by checking to make sure that important topics are widely linked.

This very well might already be available somehow -- if so, please let me know about it. If not, please comment on whether you think this would be useful, a waste of time, impossible to implement, etc.

Thanks, Jrtayloriv (talk) 21:20, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Counting, and most people don't know this, is a very 'expensive' operation (meaning it takes a lot of computer resources). Not only that, it is also a very inaccurate process, because Wikipedia is run on multiple servers (every server keeps its own score and is continuously corrected by the updates on other servers). As such the developers try to avoid counting where ever possible. I think that is the reason this is not yet implemented by default in the 'What links here' page. If you need to get a count for something, I'm sure that there are bots or other tools that can count "What links here" for you. Though I have no idea what they are called. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:32, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
I have a tool that counts transclusions (templatelinks), and so it should be too technically difficult to count normal links (pagelinks). I would just copy and paste my tool but alas, I have a very poor record in optimising SQL queries, and there are far more pagelinks than templatelinks - and I don't want to annoy the toolserver admins (for the umpteenth time). - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 12:53, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
The Disambiguation project has something to count inbound links to dab pages. DuncanHill (talk) 12:54, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you all for taking the time to answer my question. I'll probably just end up modifying the dab link counter. Appreciate it! -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 21:23, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Coloring/protecting .js and .css pages

I have two questions:

  1. How does Wikipedia automatically color .js and .css pages?
  2. How does Wikipedia protect self .js and .css pages from other users (except for administrators)?

Help is appreciated! Thanks. —MC10 (T•C•GB•L) 03:42, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki (the wiki software that Wikipedia uses) uses the GeSHi syntax highlighting library. See mw:Extension:SyntaxHighlight GeSHi for the MediaWiki specific details.
If you want to use such syntax highlighting on other wiki pages, like this page, then use <source></source> tags. Here's an example:
.someCSS {
  color: #000;
}
Just add the <source> tags on a page and preview it, that gives you a message that explains how to use them.
--David Göthberg (talk) 06:42, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Per question #2, sysops have the "editusercss" and "edituserjs" rights (may be "editusercssjs" on your wiki), which others don't have. — Bility (talk) 18:38, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Both of these are hardcoded in MediaWiki. Pages in the MediaWiki: namespace, or subpages in the User: namespace, are syntax-highlighted if the page name ends in ".js" or ".css". User subpages with such names are also magically protected so they can only be edited by the particular user, or by someone with the correct right. The protection code is in includes/Title.php (search for "isCss" or "isJs"), while the highlighting is done in Article::showCssOrJsPage() (default is just a <pre>, SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi uses a hook to do actual highlighting). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:46, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Stacked images and spacing in lead

I'm having some issues with Internet Explorer reading a large white space in List of invasive species in the Everglades when the two large images appear stacked such as in this version. Another user shifted one of the images to another section because he says it looks disrupted. (See that version here.) I have looked at the version with stacked images in Firefox and IE and cannot notice a difference. Because the article deals with both animals and plants, I feel that they both should be represented by images in the lead. I appreciate any advice you can give. Thanks. --Moni3 (talk) 19:19, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

try using the {{infobox}} template. it has provisions for adding two images, and you can leave all the other fields blank (unless you can find something interesting to say in them). I'll go ahead and make that change, and you can play with it or delete it as you like —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ludwigs2 (talk • contribs) 19:34, 18 February 2010
(edit conflict) Everglades? It must be Moni3. :)
In IE7, the text of the lede begins level with the top of the second image. In Firefox 3.0.17, the lede text begins level with the top of the first image.
I think that you can get around it by using a right-aligned table:
{|align=right
|[[File:Lygodium microphyllum in Loxahatchee.jpg|thumb|300 px|alt=An aerial photo of an island surrounded by flat grass; the island is covered with extensive vines|Old world climbing fern blanketing a tree island in the [[Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge]]]]
|-
|[[File:Gator and Python.jpg|thumb|300 px|alt=An alligator on a bank with a large snake in its mouth that has also wrapped itself around the alligator|[[Everglades National Park]] staff took this image of an alligator and Burmese python locked in a struggle.]] 
|}
--Redrose64 (talk) 19:36, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
I considered using a table. Would an off-page template such as what I used at Template:St. Johns River geobox for St. Johns River be necessary, or is that just an extra step? Should I diversify what I work on? My topics give me away... --Moni3 (talk) 19:44, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Since suggesting the above, I've tried it in IE7 and it does work - lede text aligned with top of first image. If this sort of prob is likely to come up in several articles, a template may save time in the long run, but for a one-off instance, just do it as I did above. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:13, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Picture tutorial#Avoiding stack-ups has some ideas. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 20:22, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Ludwigs2 inserted an infobox. Not sure which is better. Any tips? --Moni3 (talk) 20:27, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
The infobox method has a nice border enclosing both images, which my table method doesn't. However, a disadvantage of the infobox method is that it shows "This box: view • talk" lower right. In IE7 it also looks kinda odd in that the word "Old" doesn't appear with the rest of the caption, but upper left of the infobox.
Looking at Finlay's suggestion, later on in that, at Wikipedia:Picture tutorial#Co-aligning, this advises the {{multiple image}} template. This gives good results for me (border, and no infobox-style peculiarities):
{{multiple image
 |direction = vertical
 |width     = 300
 |image1    = Lygodium microphyllum in Loxahatchee.jpg
 |alt1      = An aerial photo of an island surrounded by flat grass; the island is covered with extensive vines
 |caption1  = Old world climbing fern blanketing a tree island in the [[Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge]]
 |image2    = Gator and Python.jpg
 |alt2      = An alligator on a bank with a large snake in its mouth that has also wrapped itself around the alligator
 |caption2  = [[Everglades National Park]] staff took this image of an alligator and Burmese python locked in a struggle.
}}
Just cut'n'paste that lot. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:51, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Or {{Vertical images list}} that I recently added to John F. Kennedy assassination to deal with a multiple image problem. – ukexpat (talk) 20:59, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Or if you want to keep to actual thumbs, you can {{stack}} or {{FixBunching}}. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:16, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

a Redirect malfunction

I just wrote a Redirect page, which is error-free I believe, as follows:

  1. Redirect The Eagle and the Raven (book) (you must look at the Edit version to see what I wrote, of course)

and the response was to redirect a person to the correct page name but in RED rather than in BLUE. And of course clicking on the RED page name does not bring one to the desired page, whose correct title is "The Eagle and the Raven (book)". The malfunction is that a BLUE link is not produced. You can see the actual malfunction, if you click on the blue link below for "The Eagle and the Raven".

This suggests to me a technical bug, arising somehow because of James A. Michener writing so many books, mostly (novel)s but some other (book)s such as the The Eagle and the Raven, forcing the extra word to be added which then in turn require redirects to be written (and made to function correctly).

I'll copy this request on my talk page, and I hope to receive a response there... For7thGen (talk) 23:26, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

The correct title of the article is The Eagle and The Raven (book), not The Eagle and the Raven (book) (notice the changed capitalization of "the"). Also, I think the proper name of that article should be The Eagle and the Raven, as there is no reason for disambiguation. Svick (talk) 23:39, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Category trouble

This template Template:Notenglish-section was created as a variant of Template:Not English just for sections (who'd have thought it), but for some reason it appears in the category Category:Wikipedia articles needing translation, as well as adding articles to it. This edit [5] stopped it appearing the category but also stopped articles tagged with it in the category too. Can someone help me out please?--Jac16888Talk 13:07, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Problem solved I think, with this change. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:00, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
That did it, thanks--Jac16888Talk 20:11, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Actually, more trouble, how can I get Template:Notenglish-section/testcases and Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English to stop appearing in the category? Thanks--Jac16888Talk 20:24, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Please--Jac16888Talk 13:29, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
  Done The two pages concerned were passing a |category= parameter into Template:Notenglish-section, but that did not recognise this parameter. I have amended the template to look for |category= and pass it on unchanged if present, otherwise behave as before. I have also amended Template:Notenglish-section/testcases and amended Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English to pass |category=no. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:17, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
Thank you--Jac16888Talk 15:02, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Media display is a problem

 
Accordion chords
Click play here and the text to the right gets covered
Problems playing this file? See media help.

Playing of media using {{listen}} is not pretty for users of Firefox and Google chrome. When you click to listen either the control covers other text or if it's placed far right makes the article width long - hiding the sample length and mute.

 
Accordion chords
Click play here and the article width increases
Problems playing this file? See media help.

I created a workaround in {{listen300}} but being wider in it's unplayed form means that is no solution either. Can someone more technically minded come and investigate. SunCreator (talk) 14:56, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

This is caused by the fixed width of the div that [[:File:]] inserts around a player after parsing. The FF player has a minimum width of 300px, and overflows correctly. Unfortunately that width is rather critical.... The new player that mdale is developing provides it's own controls and does not have this minimum width issue in FF and Chrome. I'll look into the sourcecode, to try and change the "width" attribute of the surrounding div, into a "min-width" when using the 'noicon' mode. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:23, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
I have filed bugzilla:22538. If you want, we could probably use JS to fix this problem, until it is fixed in mediawiki. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:14, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
TheDJ, Thank you. SunCreator (talk) 00:00, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
P.S., I looked at this again, and fixing this with javascript is actually quite difficult. Due to the different players, and media insertion modes, it is very difficult to identify the element positively and correctly. I think it's better if the patch were applied instead. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:31, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Template help wanted

Templateers:

I'm working on a masters...starting a new site for the purpose of collaboration/social change at yadabyte.org. I've loaded Wikimedia (many thanks to the entire Wiki community) and could use some help building a template for the "add new project" page which will be the base template for all additions to the site. Anyone interested in getting in on the ground level, I'd be happy to entertain any and all of your ideas.

Thanks,


Chad Stevens

wonk1 (at) yadabyte.org

YadaWonk1 (talk) 23:55, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Template tutor wanted

Hi. I would like someone good at making to templates to teach me some tempalte cration skills. Specifically, right now, I'm making a custom vandal warning template, where I can type somethign like {{subst:User:Brambleclawx/warn1|Chuck Norris|ip}} and get something like



  Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Chuck Norris, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. Also, try Wikipedia's tutorial for tips on how to edit. Thank you. Brambleclawx 01:58, 20 February 2010 (UTC)


Which would warn IP users, and {{subst:User:Brambleclawx/warn1|Chuck Norris|user}} to warn registered users like this:


  Hello {{BASEPAGENAME}} Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Chuck Norris, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. Also, try Wikipedia's tutorial for tips on how to edit. Thank you. Brambleclawx 01:58, 20 February 2010 (UTC)


Brambleclawx 01:58, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

You're pretty much there! I think all you need is {{{1|}}} in place of "Chuck Norris" and {{#ifeq:{{{2|}}}|ip|Welcome to Wikipedia.|Hello {{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>BASEPAGENAME}}.}} in place of the text before "Although everyone...". Good luck! — Bility (talk) 02:20, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

RSS feed not realtime

I noticed that when I subscribe to my talk page as RSS, my reader gets the updates in a jumpy fashion, i.e, I got 4 new items hours after I had seen them on WP. Any solution? ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 04:03, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Your reader is probably set to check for updates only every few hours. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:31, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
Yeah. The feed itself updates immediately. You are probably using an online reader. Desktop readers usually check feeds once you open them. Gary King (talk) 18:01, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
I had this same problem, even when I used the 'update now' link, my feed would be lagging a good bit behind what's on my watchlist. Is the RSS feature still under development, because in my experiments with it I found it to be next to useless, for a number of reasons beyond this lag issue. --Ludwigs2 18:14, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
The RSS watchlist feature is a total hack that I wrote in like twenty minutes, it wasn't really tested or anything. It should update as fast as your watchlist, though, as far as I know. (Let me see.) —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 18:52, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
That edit of mine showed up immediately. Try viewing the actual watchlist directly, not through a feed reader, to see if the problem is really on our side or your feed reader's. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 18:53, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
I have it set as a Live Bookmark in Firefox and have never noticed it lagging behind. It still is pretty useless though, as you can't filter out your own edits. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 18:53, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
Hmmmm maybe it's a Safari thing. there's no lag if I click on the RSS feed button. I'll have to re-enable it and play with it some more.
While I have your ear, though, if you want to spend another ten minutes and revise the feed so that it handles section links, that would make it a hell of a lot more useful. It's a pain that all the links go to the top of the page and not to the actual revised section. --Ludwigs2 01:51, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't really have any time to work on this. I hoped someone else would submit patches once the basic feature was in place, but very little has been done on it since I added it. Maybe some developer will start using it and get annoyed enough to fix it so it works well. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:05, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Templates

Is it possible to put four tildes into a template so that when 'subst'ed, the template gets signed by the 'subst'er's name and date? -- SGBailey (talk) 08:39, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

There are lots of ways. Here's one:
~~<includeonly></includeonly>~~
— Bility (talk) 08:43, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
Or you can do ~~<noinclude>~~</noinclude><includeonly>~~</includeonly> so that four tildes actually show up on the template page but when substed also substs the signature. —MC10 (T•C•GB•L) 18:05, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
The above does that as well. And the shortest is ~~<noinclude/>~~, I believe (If you don't want to use stuff like {{subst:SIG}}). Amalthea 20:36, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
Just remember that not everyone signs using four tildes...—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:11, February 19, 2010 (UTC)
Well they probably should... OrangeDog (τ • ε) 18:50, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
To get a isignature like this, you need to sign with three tildes; in that case, the time is imbedded in the signature, so signing with four tildes would cause the time to appear twice. Graham87 06:32, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Also, some editors' signatures will break if they are silently expanded inside a template call (e.g., anything with a pipe character ( | ), and possibly anything with an equals sign). Also also, you can't rely on signatures starting or not starting with a dash inside the automatically expanded text, so some signatures will be misformatted (two dashes or no dashes). Autosigning is a neat technical hack the probably shouldn't be used if you can avoid it. — Gavia immer (talk) 01:57, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks all. in the end I used ~~</noinclude><includeonly>~~ which worked fine. (FYI, see http://wiki.fantasticcontraption.com/wiki/Template:Welcome) -- SGBailey (talk) 06:51, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps something like [[User:{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>REVISIONUSER}}]] {{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>#timel:H:i:s, j F Y}} (UTC) would be better for a more consistent result such as "User:Richardguk 15:12:24, 20 February 2010 (UTC)". This assumes that Extension:ParserFunctions is installed and that the server timezone is set to UTC, which I think is always the case on Wikipedia.
— (signed with ~~~~) Richardguk (talk) 15:12, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

show/hide div?

just out of curiosity is there a predefined class that allows for div boxes that can be hidden? I've noticed that the banners at the top of the page (e.g. the current steward election banner) have a dismiss button that hides the div, but I don't know if that can be accessed by normal users. the reason I'm asking, incidentally, is that I recently changed by New Message banner to be a floating div, which I like, but I'd like to add a a bit to click it off. I could write javascript to do it myself, of course, but I'm lazy.   --Ludwigs2 09:08, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

LOL I was thinking about this myself the other day. I know for a fact that it's possible to do, but I can't recall exactly how off the top of my head.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 09:23, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Found it: Wikipedia:NavFrame
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 09:25, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
On an only tangentially related note: I seem to have convinced User:Edokter to change {{talkback}} so that it no longer uses the raw .usermessage ID. That's definitely a good thing, but the side effect is that I no longer have a ready supply of examples to work with! (No good deed goes unpunished, eh?). The point being, I'm fairly certain that adding class="NavFrame" to the .usermessage ID works to achieve this, but I can't readily test it.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 09:35, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
ah, no, that doesn't do what I want. I'm looking for a link that will make the div disappear completely (set display: none;) rather than simply collapse it to a single line. Incidentally, for testing purposes you can use {{New messages psyche}} - it's a joke template someone created (so don't click the links) but it uses the usermessage class. --Ludwigs2 10:00, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Hey, cool, thanks for the tip! I'll keep looking around for an easy way to do that.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 10:13, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
NavFrame is deprecated and unmaintained. CollapsibleTables is the best way forward for collapsing things. Happy‑melon 11:06, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
You would need to use java-script to change the rendering like you desire after a page has been loaded. Peachey88 (Talk Page · Contribs) 11:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
I would point you towards {{divhide}}, but it uses NavFrame. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:29, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
eh. it looks like I'm going to have to add some custom javascript for the task, because I don't see anything that would be easier. bummer.   --Ludwigs2 16:48, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

API version

Is there an API call to request the version of a module, or the general version being used? I'm aware of Special:Version and api.php?version, but there doesn't seem to be any documentation of either...Smallman12q (talk) 23:03, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean by a module? action=query&meta=siteinfo will give you info on the installation of MW, or you can use action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop=extensions to a get a list of extensions, some of which will return a version. — Bility (talk) 23:14, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
The action=query&meta=siteinfo siprop=extensions doesn't give the versions on all the modules...but its got most. Thanks!Smallman12q (talk) 03:13, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Erm, looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop , I get a strange response

"You are looking at the HTML representation of the XML format. HTML is good for debugging, but probably is not suitable for your application. See complete documentation, or API help for more information.

<?xml version="1.0"?> <api /> ". It should give a properly formatted error or some kind of properly formatted response, no?Smallman12q (talk) 03:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I've opened a bug report at T24603.Smallman12q (talk) 03:59, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
It's not a bug, it's a malformed query – you have to put something after siprop (e.g. siprop=extensions, from above). What exactly are you trying to do? — Bility (talk) 07:52, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
It is a malformed query, but that doesn't mean the response should be malformed.Smallman12q (talk) 13:02, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Actually, while it is a malformed query, the problem stems from "public function extractRequestParams" in ApiBase.php in that there appears to be no check that props are provided. So either some check will need to be added to apibase.php or to all the other api scripts that depend on it.Smallman12q (talk) 14:23, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Ah, I see what you're saying. If I had read more closely I would have seen that you knew what you were doing. Good luck! — Bility (talk) 19:47, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! The devs don't seem to willing to fix it atm though...hopefully I can change their minds=P.Smallman12q (talk) 22:55, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Small text

I recently opened my user page to find that the text had shrunk. I know it was fine yesterday. I haven't played with my zoom on the page or inserted anything to shrink it, so any help will be appreciated. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 05:11, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

You sure you haven't played with the zoom? (If you're in firefox, hit ctrl+0 to reset the zoom.) (If you're in IE, check your lower right hand corner to see it says 100%.) This is almost always zoom.Smallman12q (talk) 13:05, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
No, the zoom was set normally. When I zoomed in, it looked just funky. It's alright now though. Maybe all I had to do was to restart it. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 16:28, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

API URI/Scriptpath

How does one figure out where api.php is sitting based on the base wiki URI? Or, how do you figure out what the scriptpath is based on the base URI?(api.php comes after the script path). Any help would be appreciated.Smallman12q (talk) 23:04, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

See the Javascript variables in the page source. You use: wgServer+ wgScriptPath + "/api.php". —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:55, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Ah...you're right. Don't know how I missed that.=DSmallman12q (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:09, 22 February 2010 (UTC).

"Updating search index" out of order?

Every search result is dated to the 16 February 2010 or older. Is it possible, that somebody check the bot??? THX --Pitlane02 (talk) 21:56, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the incremental indexer seem to have been stuck. I've restarted it and it should catch up by tomorrow. Thanks for the report. --rainman (talk) 12:44, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Everything seems fine now. --rainman (talk) 17:48, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Bizarre interaction with Skype

I just had a strange interaction between WP and the Skype add-in for Firefox. Apparently the add-in has a feature that highlights phone numbers so you can click on them to make a call. An ISBN number was erroneously highlighted. But what was really weird is that the effect carried over into the edit window, causing additional text related to the link to appear in the wikitext, even though it wasn't really there before. I thought someone else had inserted the link into the wikitext, and tried to remove it. It was only after a failed attempt to remove it that I realized it was my own browser causing the problem. I finally switched to a different browser (with no Skype add-in) and was able to fix the problem. Has anyone seen anything like this before? --RL0919 (talk) 01:32, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I remember someone else reporting this problem on the Helpdesk or the village pump. Can't seem to find it back in the history however... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:30, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Hopefully others will be able to find this discussion in the future. I disabled the add-in, since I use WP about 20 times more than I use Skype, and the add-in doesn't do anything I need. But it's a sufficiently perverse effect that I wanted to document it in case others experience the same thing. --RL0919 (talk) 17:23, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Re-uploaded photo?

While not new to Wikipedia, this is my first post to the village pump (I was chastised the last time I posted something of this nature to the ref desk). I recently noticed that one of the first photos I uploaded to Wikipedia, File:Tzitzis Shot.JPG, no longer bears any mention of my name as the uploader. If anyone can explain how/why that is, thanx. DRosenbach (Talk | Contribs) 02:53, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

N.B. I followed the user whose name is listed as the copyright holder to a Wikimedia user who has been blocked indefinitely for vandalism. I'll admit that I don't really know what Wikimedia is, though, other than having heard about something called 'the commons.' DRosenbach (Talk | Contribs) 02:59, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Wikimedia is the name of our governing foundation. Wikimedia Commons is an online media repository of free files. All it's files are directly embeddable by any foundation wiki. (Most of our free images are on Commons.) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:39, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Odd - you uploaded a pic of that title on 2nd Sep 2005. It appears to have been deleted in 2007 for "CsD I8" (see [6] for the deletion log. DuncanHill (talk) 03:04, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanx! DRosenbach (Talk | Contribs) 03:14, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
I've asked the admin who deleted it about what happenned at User talk:Fran Rogers#Deleted Image DuncanHill (talk) 03:16, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
This is what happens when someone deletes the image without checking in person wether the transfer to Wikimedia Commons was done properly. I have now fixed the transfer to Commons and again deleted the local version. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:39, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanx to all who understood what I did not and did what I could not. DRosenbach (Talk | Contribs) 13:14, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Italic edit-summaries

Since this morning, on my watchlist, edit-summaries no longer show up in italics – I'd quite like them to look like (revert vandalism) again. Anyone know how I can do this? ╟─TreasuryTag►stannator─╢ 09:15, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes I get pages or special lists looking odd, because a slow/intermittent connection has caused a corruption; not necessarily in the page itself, but possibly in the css. Try purging your browser's cache to force a clean reload. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:52, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Aha, that did it, thanks!! ╟─TreasuryTag►consulate─╢ 09:55, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Help needed at wikipedia:es

Hello. I come from the wikipedia in spanish, with a request for help. We have a problem concerning collapsible tables inside infoboxes and Internet Explorer. Here you can see a typical infobox with collapsible tables inside. This is an article using that infobox. Now, if you open that article with IE, the collapsible tables don't work, but with Firefox they do work. This is our template, which is the same as yours, they have the same code.

I've been thinking, maybe the problem is inside our Common.js, but I have no idea how to prove that.

So, does anybody know why does it work correctly over here (with IE), and over there it doesn't? We would much appreciate if you could help us!

Thanks! --Aibdescalzo (talk) 18:22, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

It works for me in IE8. Svick (talk) 18:42, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
No way, did you open the article with IE? The collapsible tables inside the infobox are not working correctly, and I have no idea why. --Aibdescalzo (talk) 19:03, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
He clearly said he opened the article with IE8. ╟─TreasuryTag►assemblyman─╢ 19:05, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
He wasn't that clear, maybe he opened the infobox template, they work there, but in the article, they just... don't. --Aibdescalzo (talk) 19:15, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
By the way, it's not just my problem, we have a lot of people complaining about this. So I'm sure it's not my computer. --Aibdescalzo (talk) 19:17, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
You didn't say that it works on the template page, so, yeah, I looked just there. Yes, it doesn't work on es:Blaise Pascal and I think it's caused by the line tit.setAttributeNS("http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace", "lang", "es"); of function iProject() in es:MediaWiki:Common.js. The function setAttributeNS() apparently doesn't work in IE and so all script processing stops at that line, and the result is that the table collapsing code is never run. Removing that line should fix the issue. Svick (talk) 19:40, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
OK, I will ask for that line to be removed, hopefully that should solve the issue. I'll tell you later if it worked. Thanks! --Aibdescalzo (talk) 20:35, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
  It worked! Thank you very much for your help! --Aibdescalzo (talk) 21:19, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Anti-Vandalism BRFA (User:AVBOT)

Hello. I have opened a BRFA for a new anti-vandalism bot (User:AVBOT). It reverts vandalism, blanking and test edits. This bot has been tested in Spanish Wikipedia for about 2 years, and it has reverted about 200,000 vandalisms.

Some more features:

Also, the code is available for reviews. Thanks. Regards. emijrp (talk) 21:47, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Chrome still breaking Unicode

I am running the latest version of Chrome under Windows 7 and have Office 2007 installed. A year old edit of mine was fixed today which brought this back to my attention. Here's the test I did on the article [7] (which I reverted using Firefox). Is there a solution to this? Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 17:51, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Which version of Google Chrome? ¦ Reisio (talk) 18:14, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
4.0.249.89 but it used to happen with earlier versions. Dougweller (talk) 18:45, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Found this discussion [[8]]. Dougweller (talk) 20:00, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
It's a bug in the textarea's of Google Chrome. You'd have to contact them. The discussion you linked to is not relevant. It's not Chrome specific (even though the intro suggests this). When characters are not supported, you are supposed to see a box. I have that too if I visit an article that includes glyphs that are not supported by my computer (like some India related pages). I think the problem is that Google seems to convert these characters to the "broken character" glyph (should be the "unknown character" glyph), for display, but does that at a wrong level (should only do it at the display level, and not at the data level). These converted characters are then part of the stored data of the textarea, and you submit this changed text. Just a guess. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:03, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

You can report this to Google. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:54, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I've done that now. Dougweller (talk) 19:23, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Do you have a link to the issue to share here? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 17:51, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm thinking it might be this one —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:07, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

External link icon disappears

 
External link icon missing in Internet Explorer when link wraps to next line

When an external link wraps around to the next link, the icon   disappears and is replaced with a white space. Is there any way to fix this at all? —MC10 (T•C•GB•L) 23:37, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Could you give an example?Smallman12q (talk) 23:44, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
And what browser are you using ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:10, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
(See image on right)
This bug only shows up in Internet Explorer. (I have IE 8.) Firefox appears to not have this problem. —MC10 (T•C•GB•L) 05:18, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Seems like a bug in the browser, please report to Microsoft. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:58, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

CIDR blocks

Does a notice given to, for example, User talk:167.128.0.0/16 result in all IP users from that range seeing the notice? —EncMstr (talk) 18:50, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

This is just a warning on the subpage 16 of User:167.228.0.0 I think. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:45, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
They should get a similar notice when trying to edit anyway. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 18:54, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Codes js/css

Dear BugZilla,

I joined Wikipedia yesterday and opted-into the Beta version today, I received a message that asks if Codes js + css would act as malicious adware and affect the performance of Beta. Can you explain in laymen's terms what that means, please?

Respectfully Sincere, Richard F Johnson —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rjs2010knowall (talk • contribs) 18:25, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

It's a standard message when you edit your user stylesheets or JavaScript. It's basically a warning not to copy/paste code into those pages from sources you don't trust. — Bility (talk) 21:12, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

AJAX question

This came up in a discussion having to do with offensive images, and I got curious about it. note that I'm only interested in the technical aspect of the question here; whether or not we'd want to do this is an entirely separate (and likely highly contentious) question. That being said, would it be technically feasible to set up some system where a template could make an ajax call to load specific content on user's request, after page load? imagine, say, a warning template that would load a disturbing image only if the reader actively chose to see it. --Ludwigs2 18:41, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Sure, but doesn't require AJAX. It could be like [show/hide] links now, except instead of JavaScript telling the element to set display from none to block or vice-versa, it just changes the src attribute of the <img> tag. — Bility (talk) 19:46, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

"Random article" feature out of order ?

"Random article" feature out of order, I think (at least in my web browsers :-). I get this: error 310, ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS --Volume42 (talk) 22:07, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I get:
Redirect Loop
Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.
The browser has stopped trying to retrieve the requested item. The site is redirecting the request in a way that will never complete.
* Have you disabled or blocked cookies required by this site?
* NOTE: If accepting the site's cookies does not resolve the problem, it is likely a server configuration issue and not your computer.
--Redrose64 (talk) 22:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm also getting this problem on Firefox. The page isn't redirecting properly. Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete. This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies. ╟─TreasuryTag►Captain-Regent─╢ 22:17, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

To whom it may concern, Special:Random/Main and others (Special:Random/Template, Special:Random/File, etc.) still work. edit: So does http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Random. — Bility (talk) 22:22, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Yep, seriously broken: 

 wget -v http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
--17:16:08--  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
           => `Special:Random'
Resolving en.wikipedia.org... 208.80.152.2
Connecting to en.wikipedia.org|208.80.152.2|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random [following]
--17:16:08--  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
           => `Special:Random'
Reusing existing connection to en.wikipedia.org:80.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random [following]
--17:16:08--  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
           => `Special:Random'
Reusing existing connection to en.wikipedia.org:80.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random [following]
--17:16:08--  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
           => `Special:Random'
...

Studerby (talk) 23:17, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Now Special:Watchlist is stuck in infinite redirect too!

The horror. –xenotalk 00:20, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Seems fixed now. Almost died for a second. -- Scjessey (talk) 00:24, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
Yup, there was a problem for a minute, after domas tried to fix the redirect issue. It was only a minute or so, and everything seems to be in order again now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:26, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
Yea, I almost had a nervous fit. –xenotalk 00:26, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Conversion template errors

Check out these two conversions: 44 metres (144.4 ft) 45 metres (147.6 ft)

They should give conversions of 144.4 ft and 147.6 ft, respectively, perhaps rounded to 144 and 148.

Instead they round to the nearest 10 feet, which is misleading and useless. HowardMorland (talk) 23:27, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Fourth parameter is your rounding. — Bility (talk) 23:37, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Actually, this is correct: significant figures require that the result of a conversion be no more precise than the starting figures. If you know that the numbers are exact and want to get the result to the nearest tenth of a foot, type 44.00 metres (144.36 ft) and 45.00 metres (147.64 ft). Nyttend (talk) 23:38, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. HowardMorland (talk) 06:30, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Template performance

Where's the best place to discuss performance issues related to templates? I am curious if adding new parser functions would help. So, for example, one often sees templates that use #if prior to wrapping a parameter with a prefix and/or suffix before outputting it. Here's an example from {{Citation/core}}: 

{{
  #if: {{{format|}}}
  |&#32;({{{format}}})
}}

In the example above, if format is not empty, the template emits a space and open paren (a prefix), the value of the format parameter, and a closing paren (the suffix). This could be replaced by a new #wrap function that accepts three parameters: prefix, value, and suffix. If value is empty, there is no output. If value is not-empty, the function emits the concatenation of the prefix, value, and suffix. 

{{#wrap:&#32;(|{{{format|}}}|)}}

Building the test-for-empty into the function simplifies the code and reduces the parameter references by one. I suspect that's a marginal improvement, but this pattern is very common in templates and a small saving in lots of places would add up. In {{Citation/core}} alone there are probably dozens of places where #wrap could replace #if.

I don't know enough about the MediaWiki template infrastructure to know if #wrap is worth the effort, and it's just an example, but I suspect there are opportunities to analyze common template patterns and implement more efficient methods, and I'd like to discuss the idea with people in the know. — John Cardinal (talk) 01:54, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

RSS List

I see only a few items in my Watch List are in my RSS list. Is this fixable? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Solitonwave (talk • contribs) 07:19, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I think it only shows edits in the past 12 hours or so, and I don't think you can change that. Gary King (talk) 18:00, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
See section immediately above. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 18:51, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Maybe this is a characteristic of Wikipedia's watchlist. Is there discussion of of adding an RSS button for every article so people can add articles they like to their RSS list? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Solitonwave (talk • contribs) 05:25, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

You can already do that. Just go to the history page of the article and click on the RSS icon in your browser. For more information, see Wikipedia:Syndication. Svick (talk) 07:04, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Template parameters in source tag

  Resolved

I'm trying to make a template which includes a source tag containing a parameter. The problem is that the source tag overrides the parameter and the result is something like this:

To install, type this code in your skin js page. 

importScript('Fixed!')


I think that template parameters should be giving precedence over the source tag. Then, even if one wants to put triple braces, a combination of includeonlys can be used. Any other solution? ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 08:48, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

You can use the other way to write the <source> tag: {{#tag:syntaxhighlight}}. See the two examples below – the first doesn't work, while the second does. Note that the lang parameter has to be placed after the content of the tag when using {{#tag}}. Svick (talk) 13:01, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
{{PAGENAME}}

Village pump (technical)/Archive 71
Thanks! It works perfectly now! ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 15:01, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

hide sidebar

How do you hide the sidebar?Smallman12q (talk) 02:06, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

What sidebar and which skin? — Bility (talk) 16:26, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
The default sidebar on the left hand side in monobook.Smallman12q (talk) 22:03, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Well, you probably wouldn't want to hide the whole thing, as the tabs at the top of the page (edit, history, etc.) and the personal links (preferences, watchlist, etc.) are tied up in the same element. So you probably want to hide each element individually. In monobook.css you can use: 
#p-logo, #p-navigation, #p-search, #p-interaction, #p-tb {display: none;}
to hide the stuff on the left. Just hiding the elements won't collapse the space over there though – it will just be blank. — Bility (talk) 22:29, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
To also collapse the space, the code #content { margin-left:0; } should work (per Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 65#expand the main page contents to full screen?). Svick (talk) 23:16, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, it works great, thanks! Note: I still had to hide "#p-logo" and "#p-search", which were floating on the side. — Bility (talk) 23:22, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
The wikipedia logo, search bar, and "languages" box aren't hidden, how do I hide those?Smallman12q (talk) 00:49, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Try this — Bility (talk) 01:20, 23 February 2010 (UTC) 
#p-logo, #p-search, #p-lang { display: none; }
Also, you might be interested in user:js/bottomSidebar, from WikiProject User scripts. — Bility (talk) 01:24, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I got it to work=D. So to "remove" the left sidebar you need to add: 

#p-logo, #p-navigation, #p-search, #p-interaction,  #p-tb, #p-lang { display: none; }
#content { margin-left:0; }

Thanks!Smallman12q (talk) 01:51, 24 February 2010 (UTC) :You could also add some js which pushes the sidebar open by undoing the css with a thin, tall, button. I'll try it out... ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 04:57, 24 February 2010 (UTC) ::Finished with the script, adding cookie support, ask me for the basic script if u want it. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 07:53, 24 February 2010 (UTC) Completely finished. It works perfectly in Monobook, but DO NOT TRY it in vector (beta) as it will push its own tab out of the window. To install, add this to your monobook js page : 

importScript('User:Manishearth/sidebartoggle.js');

Then purge your cache. You should see a 'siamese twin' tab (one tab with two links in it) saying "Show sidebar", and "(s)".

The "show sidebar" tab, when clicked, shows the sidebar and turns into a "Hide sidebar" tab. Clicking the "(s)" will save the current configuration (in your browser as a cookie). Basically, the "(s)" makes the current state of the sidebar the default one. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 08:18, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Works like a charm=).Smallman12q (talk) 01:33, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

After a spam-site is blacklisted is the db then "swept" for the offending site?

And, if so, then what?

Thanks. Saintrain (talk) 00:38, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, otherwise it would be impossible for anyone to edit articles that link to that site. I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but Special:Linksearch can be used to find which pages link to a particular website. Graham87 03:25, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Bug 1505 was fixed back in 2008, so that's not a problem. I don't think there is any automated scanning for the blacklisted links, AFAIK it's up to the people running the blacklist to follow up on the existing links using Special:LinkSearch. Anomie⚔ 04:03, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
That would be correct (or at least the person noticing the spam). MER-C 08:18, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the Special:LinkSearch. Only 79 hits for that domain. That won't be sooooo baaaaaaad. Saintrain (talk) 18:03, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
It doesn't always happen; the Help Desk recently had several requests for help to deal with "unrevertable vandalism" because apparently some websites were put on the blacklist after the vandalism was made but before the wannabe reverter came along. I had to rollback an admin here as if were vandalism, because rollback was the only way to restore a link that had been put on the blacklist even though talk page consensus supported its inclusion on that page. Nyttend (talk) 18:33, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
If rollback bypasses the spam blacklist, that's a bug. If a vandal removes the link, then of course you can't re-add it: that's the point. If you want to re-add it to any page, you have to get it de-blacklisted (as far as I can tell). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:53, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Add help links to Special:Preferences

Moved from WP:VPR

I have recently been through Meta's meta:Help:Preferences page to bring it into line with today's preferences pages (some stuff was original 2003 content). Each tab in the Preferences page now has a corresponding section heading, and thus a hash link.

I am suggesting that we add a "help" link at the top of each tab in Special:Preferences, maybe worded "Help on/for these options/this tab".

The advantages of this would be:

  • Easier for people to get help on what can be a complicated preferences system
  • Less need for verbosity on the actual preferences pages themselves
  • Reduce helpdesk requests on preferences (currently there is no help link at all on Special:Preferences)

There is a minor issue: the content is on Meta, not here. We have no control over the content, WP-specific info cannot be inserted, and wiki users could get confused about where they have gone if they were sent to Meta. We may need to copy the content locally, or restart the old bot update service that used to run about five years ago, in some form or other.

Any thoughts? — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:25, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Why would we need to insert enwiki-specific content? There are no enwiki-specific preferences. Also, this material should be at MediaWiki.org, not meta. Fantastic job on getting it up to date, however. Happy‑melon 18:24, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Strongly agree. These help pages are hard to find, even for experienced editors. There are more people requesting the same thing at Help talk:Preferences#Add link from Special:Preferences, and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 70#Context-related help and searching in a new window.
The Technical issues are, how do we add a link, and where do we add a link, to the Preferences page(s) themselves? I don't know how. As for where, preferably at the top just above the "My preferences" header; or if that is impossible, then at the bottom next to the "Restore all default settings" link. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:48, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Bogotá Image

The user Jumamuba insist to upload a copyright file. Was deleted on Commons, but many times he put this on the city article. --190.29.129.138 (talk) 12:54, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Another version. --190.29.129.138 (talk) 12:55, 25 February 2010 (UTC) The deletion request on Commons here.
Yet another copy: File:Bogotacoolpictureb.jpg, both here and on Commons. If you haven't noticed that the file is actually a .bmp, see my new post #Images uploaded with wrong file extension below. PleaseStand (talk) 03:02, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
And another, on Wikipedia (check File links section on description page): File:Bogota skyline and Panoramics.jpg. PleaseStand (talk) 03:20, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Files_for_deletion/2010_January_8#File:BogotaSkyline and another interest points.jpg for what is likely one of the first copies, even though I cannot verify this (deleted file). The user has been reposting pictures for quite a while. Is there any way to stop it? PleaseStand (talk) 03:47, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Police officer template

How can I modify the Template:Infobox police officer for Charles L. Beck to indicate that he is the 55th Chief of Police for the LAPD -- I think it should be included under his name just like Obama has an indication that he is the 44th POTUS. DRosenbach (Talk | Contribs) 14:15, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd just edit it in: say: "55th Chief of Police - 11/2009". the template kind of sucks, IMO. However, we could revise it with a 'current rank' section just under the header if you like. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ludwigs2 (talk • contribs)
You could add something like:
|-
{{#if:{{{chief|}}}|
{{!}} colspan="2" {{WPMILHIST Infobox style|header_bar}} {{!}} {{ordinal|{{{chief|}}}}} [[Chief of Police]]
— Bility (talk) 17:17, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
I'm actually toying with the idea of rewriting the entire template using {{infobox}}, so if we're going to do revisions we might as well commit ourselves to doing proper revisions. --Ludwigs2 18:32, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Mmmm, makin' templates…   — Bility (talk) 19:19, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
alright, I changed it. still needs to prettification, but I'll get to that later if no one else does. --Ludwigs2 21:20, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Looks good – well done! :) — Bility (talk) 21:32, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Why is this article sorting wrong?

The article Royal Hospital School sorts under "m". Can someone take a look a figure out why? Thanks. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:38, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Could you please be more specific? In which categories does it sort incorrectly? Not in those I checked. Hans Adler 19:45, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Fixed. — Bility (talk) 19:57, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! Geez, I even looked for that and missed it. Good eyes! Jason Quinn (talk) 20:01, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

User Registration

Seems to be broken at the moment, admins have been notified. Q T C 21:40, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

  Resolved
Seems fixed now, was down for about 1:45. Q T C 21:51, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Odd search bug

Something in this article is causing an odd bug in my browser when I try to do a search on the article William Halsey, Jr.. Using IE7.0.5370.13 with Windows XP MCE (SP3), I get "An error has occured in this dialog. Error: 239 Object doesn't support this property or method" This is the only article that does this, I've tried closing the tab and the window, but the behavior sticks to only this article. bahamut0013wordsdeeds 23:38, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Odd indirect transclusion of db-g6

Currently, several talk pages show up in CAT:CSD for no obvious reason. For example Talk:University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. If you edit this, among the list of "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page:" are:

  • Template:Db-g6 (edit) (semi-protected)
  • Template:Db-meta (edit) (protected)

But as neither is directly transclsuded, they must be indirectly transcluded via one of the many other templates on that page. Is there any way to find out which one short of manually examining the code for every template called, directly or indirectly, from this page? DES (talk) 00:25, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Other examples:

There seems to be a NJ connection. DES (talk) 00:34, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Seems to be related to Wikipedia:WikiProject New Jersey/Deprecation of comments. The transcluded comments pages have now all been speedied, so the talk pages should be out of the CSD cat as soon as the job queue gets round to doing it. A null edit will remove a page immediately if that's needed for some reason. Algebraist 00:36, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
As long as I know, and it is going away, no problem. I think i understand now what happened. DES (talk) 00:37, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Sort issue in Safari 4

Didn't know where best to ask this question, but if anyone from VP could take a look at my question at Help talk:Sorting#Sort issue in Safari 4, it would be appreciated. Thanks.—NMajdan•talk 18:29, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm guessing that the ordering is determined on the first vs. the last element in the table. So in normal sort, it starts at the top, sees that the range is a string, and treats the rest as strings. When you do reverse sort, the algorithm starts at the bottom of the table, sees a number and parser the rest of the tablecolumn as numbers. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:36, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I have another sort issue, so I'll ask here rather than starting a new thread. A reviewer for an FLC I have up is saying the the postseason columns at List of Texas A&M Aggies head football coaches are not sorting correctly. I've looking in Safari on Windows, and it appears fine. Any help would be appreciated.—NMajdan•talk 16:52, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Bouncing edit window

Perhaps this should be on the computing reference desk since it was also happening in an email. But I find that the text I am editing bounces. In the email, when I would click on one of the other activities I was working on, the email's editing box would jump so I could only see the top of the message. It's not as serious on Wikipedia, but it is annoying. I have to keep scrolling back down to see what I'm working on, though at least what I'm typing stays on screen, which is more than I can say for one message board site where the problem is separate but similar and has been happening a long time.

I'm on a computer with Windows 7.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:01, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

More: The gray rectangle on the right side, whose size is supposed to vary with the fraction of the entire page or section being edited, goes from tiny to huge (almost as big as the entire right side of what is visible) and back again as I type the edit summary.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:08, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps screenshots would work better. I can't understand from your description. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 02:19, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
It would have to be a video. I'm not sure, even if I could remember how to do screenshots, that it would show what is happening. And I won't be on that computer for another week. That day I won't have much time.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:47, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

PHP json decode

  Resolved
 – Smallman12q (talk) 11:51, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm trying to print a nested variable ("url") from a json response in php 5.3.

Json code 

{
  "offset": "0",
  "results": [
    {
      "body": "body info",
      "date": "date info",
      "title": "title info",
      "url": "url info"
    }
  ],
  "total": 1
}

My current php code 

$info = json_decode($jsonresponse);
print $info->{"results"}->{"url"};//this doesn't work

How would I print the value of the "url" variable in php? (This should be fairly simple...)Smallman12q (talk) 02:44, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

It should be
$info = json_decode($xml,true);
print $info["results"][0]["url"];

Smallman12q (talk) 11:51, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

preferences and signatures

Would it be possible to design a tool to be self activate in the my preferences section that reminds an editor when he or she has forgotten to sign something? Given that we have a similar tool to remind people about providing edit summaries I would think this would be something easy to tweak, and may help ease the work load of sinebot at the same time. TomStar81 (Talk) 10:13, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that signing is very context specific. As such, letting the code interpret this on every post is complicated, and even worse, probably project specific. Such things are difficult to solve in the core software. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:31, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Ain't that hard, a JavaScript one-liner gadget could look for the four tildes. — Dispenser 18:30, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree, it wouldn't be too hard to implement. If TheDJ is talking about making the the tool "correct"—meaning it only tells you to sign if you need to and deals with all the various circumstances that we encounter when signing or not signing an edit—then I agree; that's much too complex for a computer to try solving on every post. If all TomStar81 wants is something like a not signed or signed under the Save page button or next to the edit summary preview, it would be doable based on the presence of the four tildes in the new text. As long as it doesn't impede editing, I think some kind of notification could be helpful. — Bility (talk) 19:14, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
The problem is not so much one of detecting an unsigned post, it's knowing which unsigned posts should have been signed. A general rule is that all talk page posts should be signed, and article space posts should not. Unfortunately there are some namespaces (such as Wikipedia:) where posts are normally unsigned, but in specific cases (such as Wikipedia:Help desk and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)) they should be signed; so a simple all-encompassing rule can't be put together. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:34, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
The general rule could be all namespaces, or all namespaces but 0. We're just talking about a simple, unobtrusive notice. Its meaning should be that you haven't signed, not that you should sign. — Bility (talk) 19:36, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
I was using "should" in its imperative form. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:05, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
I agree with you. :D Determining whether a user should sign in every scenario is too complex, which is why I never suggested it. I'm talking about a simple indicator of whether the user has signed. It would then be up to the user's human brain to decide whether they should sign. — Bility (talk) 20:15, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Like Bility said, we do not need a tool to determine whether we should sign, this would just be for cases like in the talk name space and then only for when folks forget to add four tildes to sign. As a practical matter, the tool does not need to work in every case; what this tool fails to pick up Sinebot should detect and fix accordingly. TomStar81 (Talk) 22:39, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

The other problem is that sometimes you fix a part of the discussion like done here by Bility when I forgot to link the image. The script should prompt first. Why not ask the operator of SineBot for the algorithm? ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 04:05, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
Check User:SineBot#What it looks for. Note that SineBot sees the code after the tilde-based signature has been expanded as well as all substed templates. So therefore it has to look for the two components of a proper signature in any edit to a talk page: the link to the user page and the UTC timestamp, according to that page. Unfortunately, for user JS to implement the same approach, it has to somehow have access to a diff, and to implement it in the same way as SineBot (to account for self-signing templates), that diff would need to come from the server. Here's some code that has been around for several years, but if you both read the (rather messy) script and understand my explanation above, you know why it is limited to only a specific set of pages. PleaseStand (talk) 04:39, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

How to find non-displayed text in WP article?

Hi!

I noticed a (probably) hijacked external link in The Tale of Genji. I'd like to:

  1. restore the original link
  2. id the vandal

How do I find the text inside a link, i.e. the "spamsite.com" part, in the page history? I've looked at the last several months of page history diffs without finding it. Is there maybe a hidden option for wikiblame?

(I've already commented-out the EL and requested add to blacklist.)

Thanks Saintrain (talk) 21:22, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

The link was added at 1:43, 18 April 2005 by User:Chinasaur, and it hasn't been changed since. The way you find the text (or at least the way I did it) is by editing a previous version. Clarityfiend (talk) 21:41, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks Clarityfiend. Would you please elaborate on your method? Saintrain (talk) 22:17, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
A simple, but lengthy method is to verify where the link appears in the current version, then check the page history far enough back that you're reasonably certain the link won't be there. For instance, you can check a year back; if the link is still there, check another year back - in this case, you would have to go back a ways. Once you have located a version without the link, and a version with the link, about a year apart, you split the difference. Check a version about six months into the year, and it will either have the link or not, and you have a closer window for when it was added, inbetween your six-month version and one of the two. Then keep on splitting the difference that way until you find it. This requires checking a lot of versions, but it's not really that hard to do. — Gavia immer (talk) 22:38, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
You can automate that using WikiBlame which will compare the versions for you, searching for a specific string of text and when it was added. Regards SoWhy 22:46, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
The sad thing is, I know about that tool, and I still have been doing things manually. Le sigh. — Gavia immer (talk) 22:48, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
I was afraid you might say that :-(. And wikiblame (apparently) locates only "printable" text, so not the link/formatting stuff. Thanks. Saintrain (talk) 00:38, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
It's not so bad, actually - if you've got things down to a year's range, then three careful slices can get you down to a month and a half, six can get you a range of less than a week, and nine get you to less than a day. — Gavia immer (talk) 00:48, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
I've mentioned this several times already to Flominator, he still wont add a checkbox but you can force it by using &tags_present=true [9]. It's almost enough to make me rewrite on the Toolserver. — Dispenser 03:24, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I've added the parameter but forgot to add the checkbox. I will add it soon. --Flominator (talk) 06:51, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
BTW Gavia immer got it exactly right how I tracked the info down. Clarityfiend (talk) 09:38, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
The old binary search gag! But isn't that what computators are for? :-) And thanks Flominator for the cool tool and Dispenser for the (undocumented) &tags_present=true. Saintrain (talk) 18:00, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
You're welcome. Function has been added to the UI now. --Flominator (talk) 18:41, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Reference

Winter_storms_of_2009–2010#cite_note-51 seems to go into the next column in my firefox browser...is it just me or is this a bug?Smallman12q (talk) 14:31, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

That is correct, it is a very long unbreakable string, and thus it overflows the page. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:51, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

mygiganticstringisprettycoolbecauseitmakesthispageevenwiderthanitshouldbeanditstotallyunreadableaswellsoitshouldbefinetoincludeinthispageandwillbeveryusefultoanypotentialfuturereaderswhoreallyshouldntcareaboutseeingthisurlwithaproperdescriptionaswouldbepossiblebyusingthebracketnotation. Basically the url is one long word :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:55, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

The URL also seems to be a redirect to another target. There are three ways of fixing this:
  • replace the exceedingly long URL with the true target, which is hopefully shorter
  • place square brackets around the URL and give it a title
  • use the {{cite web}} template
The first option is the least preferable because a bare URL is not very intuitive. See Wikipedia:Linking#External links. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:15, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Especially since the link in question is a Google link that redirects to a blog home page. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 17:48, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Please don't "fix" HTTP redirect, often the new URL has less Wayback history. For the semi-productive editor there's WP:REFLINKS, for the lazy editor the a one-click bookmarklet, that runs a bot. — Dispenser 18:37, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
So add the archive link at the same time as fixing the url. Problem solved. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:09, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Mobile Wikipedia

At http://en.m.wikipedia.org , you will find a page which is effectively the main page for mobile telephony. It only contains information that changes on a daily basis. The expectation is that mobile traffic will bring the biggest growth to Wikipedia and, as the English Wikipedia grows most in absolute numbers, it is imho important that its main page gives a good mix of information. For me it means that there is at least a link to a page where a lot of the information that can be found on the standard "Main page" can be found..

A "How to" was published on the Wikimedia Techblog and the Swedish Wikipedia is where new functionality was developed. My problem is that I am no good at templates and stuff so I am looking for people who can make something awesome for the English Wikipedia and, this should be the example that other Wikipedias can copy.

So, my request is one that allows you to help yourself (ie en.wp) and, when this is done well, it will be of benefit to many more Wikipedias. Thanks. GerardM (talk) 12:16, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Another problem with the mobile site is that infoboxes take up too much room. On normal WP, infoboxes are on the side, so you don't notice their length, but on the mobile site, infoboxes are shown at the top, and they require a lot of scrolling. They should be shown by default but have a show/hide button like the sections on the mobile site. Most WP editors don't use the mobile site, so its kinda neglected.. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 16:10, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
I'd prefer 'slow development' as a description :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:10, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
The mobile is there because the staff got iPhones/iPod touchs and wanted something better. Same goes for that apple-touch-icon and other vendor specific stuff the enwiki community would object to (see previous discussion on webslices). We can't even edit what goes on the homepage and the stylesheet is hack together of whatever looks good on Safari. The actually mobile/lite interface was apparently suppose to be the chick skin (as far I've been able to gather). — Dispenser 21:14, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
That's not entirely true. It also works on Opera Mini, Sony Ericsson phones, PSP, Nintendo Wii and a few other devices. You are more than welcome to create more refined stylesheets. And you very much can edit what goes on the homepage (if you built a custom portal page). Just let me know when you got something or file a ticket in bugzilla. Also, if you have a good icon for the mobile version, that would be appreciated as well. The chick skin is a slim skin for mobile devices, but it is a tad cluttered and cannot very well adapt to multiple devices. That doesn't mean it won't be used in some form. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:35, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Page view statistics function

The article page view statistics function is down for the past three days. Any idea why? Thanks. Dr.K. λogosπraxis 03:06, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Viewing a 'cached' page

Hello everyone

I've just noticed this over the last month or so. Whilst viewing Wikipedia my computer now seems to be bringing up cached pages for whatever reason. I've tried disabling viewing cached pages in my preferences but so far no difference.

The reason I think it's a cached page I'm viewing is because on the page it always says "retrieved from".

Does anyone have any ideas regarding this? 5 albert square (talk) 15:02, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Do Wikipedia pages look normal otherwise? Which browser and skin are you using? It sounds like your browser isn't properly loading/interpreting the Wikipedia style sheets. Try to empty your browser cache and check your CSS/JavaScript settings. Graham87 15:42, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
Hi Graham, thanks for that. it's my works computer that Wikipedia looks strange on so I don't think it's anything to do with skins etc as Wikipedia looks normal on my home pc. I will try to clear my cache and check my Java settings next time I'm with the pc and will report back :) --5 albert square (talk) 13:29, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Small request from Bengali wikipedia

This is a small request from Bengali wikipedia. I know that is not a right place for that. We have a page named LocalSettings.php. I am admin there. This page is a main namespace. We know that it is not an article but its occupied one article count. There is no page like LocalSettings.php in this english wiki. If I delete this file, could it create technical issue/problem for this delete? Any one know that what is for that? Main creator cant memorized why he create that page. Please help us. - Jayanta Nath (Talk|Contrb) 15:39, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

You can delete it without problem. Changes to LocalSettings.php can only be made by the wikimedia system administrators. Such changes should be requested at bugzilla:. The page you name cannot affect the software. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:45, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks you for this confirmation.- Jayanta Nath (Talk|Contrb) 15:54, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Creating a category redirect

I am redirecting Category:Infections of the skin and subcutaneous tissue to Category:Infection-related cutaneous conditions, but I want to do so such that the Category:Infections of the skin and subcutaneous tissue is not itself categorized. Restated, when I look at the Category:Infection-related cutaneous conditions, I do not want want "Infections of the skin and subcutaneous tissue" listed. Any ideas? ---kilbad (talk) 16:58, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

It looks fine to me. However, I note that you created the redirect in the incorrect manner (#REDIRECT [[]] cannot be used for categories); and a 'bot has altered it to the {{Category redirect}} template. Perhaps you last checked it before the 'bot edit? --Redrose64 (talk) 17:19, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
I had... looks great now! Thank you. ---kilbad (talk) 18:19, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Custom edit button: add text, set caret position & auto-summary

Hi, I'm trying to create a custom edit toolbar button that adds a summary when you press it along with adding text to the textarea. I tried various things with javascript but I don't know it very well. Basically, I want it to insert a tag (like {{cleanup}}), set the caret position after the "p", and add the summary "adding {{cleanup}}". The only way I know how to set the caret position is by using the mwCustomEditButtons thing where you can define tag open, tag close, and sample text but I don't think that will work if I want a edit summary to. I'll settle for a bookmarklet if I'm asking too much. I'm using firefox, so I don't need any support for other browsers. Voxii (talk) 00:36, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi, from WikiProject User scripts: you could try User:MarkS/Extra edit buttons or User:Flyingidiot/buttons.js (with some modifications). — Bility (talk) 01:25, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, I checked out those pages but neither one mentions anything about an auto-summary. The "with some modifications" part is what I need help with. :) Voxii (talk) 02:16, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Testing… Svick (talk) 10:25, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
The preceding line was brought to you by
javascript:document.getElementById('wpTextbox1').innerHTML += '\n:::Testing… ~~~~'; document.getElementById('wpSummary').value += 'Testing javascript';
Hope this helps. Svick (talk) 10:28, 23 February 2010 (UTC)
Thank you! It's those little things in js that always trip me up (and online documentation is so bad). I really appreciate it. Regards, Voxii (talk) 12:28, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

We should really work on some good online documentation, with all variables listed, etc. To learn how to add new tabs, fetch page names, etc, I had to prowl the other userscripts. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 09:15, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I've suggested that before...the API and overall Wikipedia interface require a lot better documentation (w/ examples=P).Smallman12q (talk) 01:34, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
In a month, when I'm free, I'll make a list of all functions/variables, important stuff, and stuff you should know...ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 03:10, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Note that the new toolbar and editing interface that the Usability Initiative is working on works completely different from the current toolbar. Its also about a million times more complex and almost completely undocumented. Mr.Z-man 03:57, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
I know about that... I'm first gonna document all variables (eg wgServer, wgCanonicalNamespace) and functions (like addPortletLink()). Then I will work on the edit box for monobook. Beta will come much later. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 04:29, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Images uploaded with wrong file extension

It is apparently possible to upload a .bmp with the .jpg file extension (apparently by setting the upload title), and the server generates a .png preview. (See the MIME type of File:Bogotacoolpictureb.jpg, which I have identified as a repost of non-free content and might be deleted soon.) Because we shouldn't use BMP files here since they are a waste of disk space, I am wondering: how many files here are uploaded under the wrong file extension? PleaseStand (talk) 02:54, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, you get a warning when you do that. And we can move those files to a correct title + extension. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:29, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
I compiled a list of files with mismatched MIME type and extension and files with extensions we may not want (like bmp) or i don't know (like graffle and xcf). It is available at [10]. Svick (talk) 14:57, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Oh nice list. I'll plough trough some of that. Do we have any CSD rules about incorrect filetypes ? I don't think so right ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:32, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Its probably never come to the notice of anyone. Either request a CSD rule/make one yourself. Or get bmps approved (I'm against it, whoever makes an image should have enough time to save it as jpg). Or request a tweak in the mediawiki code (read here).


I checked out the wp upload settings here. Search for "wgFileExtensions", and you'll see this (see the "read here" link above to understand the variables): 

/**
 * This is the list of preferred extensions for uploading files. Uploading files
 * with extensions not in this list will trigger a warning.
 */
$wgFileExtensions = array( 'png', 'gif', 'jpg', 'jpeg' );

/** Files with these extensions will never be allowed as uploads. */
$wgFileBlacklist = array(
    # HTML may contain cookie-stealing JavaScript and web bugs
    'html', 'htm', 'js', 'jsb', 'mhtml', 'mht', 'xhtml', 'xht',
    # PHP scripts may execute arbitrary code on the server
    'php', 'phtml', 'php3', 'php4', 'php5', 'phps',
    # Other types that may be interpreted by some servers
    'shtml', 'jhtml', 'pl', 'py', 'cgi',
    # May contain harmful executables for Windows victims
    'exe', 'scr', 'dll', 'msi', 'vbs', 'bat', 'com', 'pif', 'cmd', 'vxd', 'cpl' );

/** Files with these mime types will never be allowed as uploads
 * if $wgVerifyMimeType is enabled.
 */
$wgMimeTypeBlacklist= array(
    # HTML may contain cookie-stealing JavaScript and web bugs
    'text/html', 'text/javascript', 'text/x-javascript',  'application/x-shellscript',
    # PHP scripts may execute arbitrary code on the server
    'application/x-php', 'text/x-php',
    # Other types that may be interpreted by some servers
    'text/x-python', 'text/x-perl', 'text/x-bash', 'text/x-sh', 'text/x-csh',
    # Client-side hazards on Internet Explorer
    'text/scriptlet', 'application/x-msdownload',
    # Windows metafile, client-side vulnerability on some systems
    'application/x-msmetafile',
    # A ZIP file may be a valid Java archive containing an applet which exploits the
    # same-origin policy to steal cookies
    'application/zip',
);

/** This is a flag to determine whether or not to check file extensions on upload. */
$wgCheckFileExtensions = true;

/**
 * If this is turned off, users may override the warning for files not covered
 * by $wgFileExtensions.
 */
$wgStrictFileExtensions = true;

/** Warn if uploaded files are larger than this (in bytes), or false to disable*/
$wgUploadSizeWarning = false;

It's obvious after reading the manual that bmp isn't blacklisted in $wgMimeTypeBlacklist, so there is no effect. See if you can get it changed. In the meantime, create a wikiproject to download, convert, and reupload those images. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 16:09, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I have a wikilist here: User:TheDJ/badfiletypes for those that want to assist. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:37, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
bmp wouldn't be blacklisted. Though we discourage the use of suboptimal file types, we don't block them since encouraging collaboration is generally a greater good than the savings in bandwidth / storage, especially since we can clean up those issues later without too much trouble. Regarding the general phenomenon of incorrect extensions, Mediawiki is planning to move towards an extension-less system so rather than having "File:Bogotacoolpictureb.jpg" we would just have "File:Bogotacoolpictureb" whose image type could change over time and the server would transparency take care of delivering the right extension and mime type information to browsers. The fact that one can change the content type of an existing image now and the server doesn't barf is part of that, but the implementation to fully eliminate extensions is not yet complete. Dragons flight (talk) 16:46, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
From experience, transparent PNG images with a JPG extension do not render properly. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 16:52, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
There will always be people who believe that renaming Example.bmp to Example.jpg is enough, and don't appreciate the process of changing the file type when doing a "Save As". It should be possible to verify the file format at upload time; I believe that many common image file formats have a "magic number" - two bytes at the beginning which identify fhe file type, which can be more reliable than the file extension. It's not confined to UNIX - files conforming to the Microsoft BMP format, for example, always begin with the hex data 42 4D ("BM"); JPEG files begin FF D8. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:23, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
There is already a check for the type when moving a file— you cannot move a .PNG to a .JPG (try it). There is no check when using the upload a new version link. This is actually handy when you want to upload a new version of the same image in a different format— all you have to do is then move it to the proper extension. You don't have to orphan the old version, you can keep the old versions if you mess up and you don't need to change the rationale and licensing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gadget850 (talk • contribs) 17:53, 26 February 2010
I meant that users could be renaming files on their home computer prior to upload, and not on Wikipedia afterward. They see that message "Change the destination filename to something descriptive. Don't use default filenames" and later on "Permitted file types: png, gif, jpg, jpeg, xcf, pdf, mid, ogg, ogv, svg, djvu, oga."; they may not appreciate what the file extension can be used for, and rename "doc1.bmp" to "Cool image.jpg". --Redrose64 (talk) 18:24, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
The main problem with MWs extensionless version is that there are already multiple images which exist in multiple formats and they are different. (Example: File:Americanflag.JPG and File:AmericanFlag.png.. completely different). In the meantime, MW could make sure that there is no MIME 'phishing'. Actually, BMP's are a small problem compared to redirects, see discussion here. That discussion didn't go anywhere because people were confused on the proposal and how to implement it. I'm working on an airtight method to for this to work, once i get time (in about a month). ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 02:19, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

←I wrote a Toolserver script to display files with incorrect MIME types; it's available at tools:~earwig/cgi-bin/file_extensions.py. — The Earwig (talk) 17:17, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

I made a template {{wrongmime}} which is used like this: {{Wrongmime|.abc}} to produce

ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 03:21, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I've just come across an instance of incorrect extension as I described earlier - File:File-Little Lost Hen.jpg is a Word doc. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:29, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
No need to report it here. User:Earwig wrote a toolserver script here, which finds all filed with incorrect MIMEs. You can also config it to process a certain MIME type. If you are interested in checking these images, fixing them (by downloading, using "save as", and re-uploading), or marking them for deletion, please form a Wikiproject (Be sure to list it at Cleanup wikiprojects directory). Maybe WP:Wikiproject FixImage? ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 13:14, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to add Template:Inappropriate comment class to MediaWiki:Common.css

/* Makes boxes partially transparent on mouse over in [[Template:Inappropriate comment]] */
.InappropriateCommentMouseOver {
    opacity: 0.9;
    filter: alpha(opacity=90);
}

.InappropriateCommentMouseOver:hover {
    opacity: 0.1;
    filter: alpha(opacity=10);
}

Template:Inappropriate comment has a "tag over" feature that places a semi-transparent box over an offensive comment. It's a stern step before refactoring or removing the comment under WP:TPG. When a mouse hovers over the semi-transparent box, this class should decrease the opacity from 90% to 10%. The hover feature has already been discussed on the template's talk page, please note. What do you guys think? ChyranandChloe (talk) 17:14, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Isn't that very browser specific ? I'd think that many older browsers won't support this right?. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:21, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
My buzzword of choice would be WP:NOTCENSORED; although as always the point can't be summed up with one link. Using this method to hide comments is not saying that you think the comment is inappropriate, it's saying that you don't think other people should (have to) read it. That's not the same thing at all. If a comment is inappropriate, it should be removed; and replaced with a "redacted" note if the removal disrupts the flow of the discussion. The only difference between a disruptive talk page comment and an image of Mohammed is that the presence of disruptive talk page comments hampers our ability to create an encyclopedia; as such, they should be removed entirely, not just censored. There's also a healthy dose of WP:DENY involved; you're creating a huge "hey look guys, I wrote something bad, aren't I bad" flag, rather than achieving the goal of purging discussions of disruptive comments. Is there a discussion which concluded that hiding disruptive comments in this fashion was a good idea? Because I'm thoroughly unconvinced. And that's before we even get near the technical issues TheDJ raises, which are indeed serious (you know the box will be permanently opaque on FF<2, IE<=6, and various other browsers?) Happy‑melon 17:37, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
Two issues then. I use browser shots with this as the test url. Works for Firefox 0.9, IE six and up, and most others. Compared to .reflist columns, which doesn't work for the number one in browser shares, IE, I think it fairs.
Yeah, there's been discussion. As much as I'd like to agree with you, if removing a comment were so easy, then there wouldn't be debate at the climate change probation about it. You should ask 2over0, he's admin who worked on there. ChyranandChloe (talk) 06:57, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Accessibility looks reasonable. Old browser degradation is acceptable I think. The template would require a namespace check in my opinion, but besides that, I see no huge technical problems (at least no bigger problems than collapse has now). Question becomes, would the community accept it ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:19, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
(outdent) I don't know. While I was brainstorming features last month, this was the plan: an experiment. I can track which pages use "tag over" either through categories or what links here. After randomly selecting sixty uses (to satisfy normality for a placebo controlled two sample t-test), I can assess whether it's working as a stern warning or failing as a flawed flag. People are affected by their own philosophy. This makes judgement objective.
Of course it works better with all the features in. I appreciate all the attention you've given, but please remember that this discussion isn't about whether "tag over" is acceptable, it's whether a CSS class can be added to MediaWiki:Common.css. The acceptability of "tag over", in my opinion, should be discussed on the template's talk page. Thanks! ChyranandChloe (talk) 05:32, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Invictus (film)

Hi everyone. I wanted to tell you that I made a mistake by renaming this article. I thought I was on the French WP page so I wanted to follow the French WP standards for films! Sorry for that. --TwøWiñgš Talk to me 22:56, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I've moved it back to the proper format. — Gavia immer (talk) 23:22, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Question

I am trying to remove a category from Template:Skiing and Snowboarding-stub since I renamed the project. I can change the category on the page of the template, but when I go onto a page where the template is on, it shows the old category. What am I doing wrong? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:24, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Probably nothing. Category changes in templates take a while to propagate through to articles. If it's not sorted itself after 24 hours, put another message here. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:37, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
More specifically, they take a while to go through the job queue. Graham87 07:39, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
I see they are now moving, albeit slowly. Looking deeper into this, I see that you made seven edits to Template:Skiing and Snowboarding-stub between 02:48, 27 February 2010 and 19:20, 28 February 2010. Of these, four of them changed the category in question (originally Category:Skiing stubs, it became Category:Skiing and snowboarding stubs, then Category:Barnstable, Massachusetts, then none, then Category:Skiing and snowboarding stubs). For each of those seven edits, all the pages transcluding the template will have had to have been placed in the job queue to be rebuilt. What I don't know is whether these requests are processed together (one job for seven changes) or in turn (seven jobs for one change each). --Redrose64 (talk) 17:50, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Okay, that all makes sense now. At the rate it's going at, it will be emptied on Thursday afternoon. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:36, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

It only moved two of them in the past 20 hours, and only 22 in 48 hours. I guess it has stalled out, so any help would be appreciated. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 20:17, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

CustomizeGoogle

I need a new version of http://www.customizegoogle.com/ because Google's new layout doesn't have a Wikipedia link with that anymore.

Would someone who understands how to "convert the CustomizeGoogle extension to a zip file and then edit the files in that" please help me out? My friend says that's the way to get my beloved one-click Google-to-Wikipedia link back.

Anyone who knows how to do this, if you turn out to be local to me (and it's quite possible) then I will babysit your pets, kids, house, or fish as you see fit for a week. Thanks in advance!

Logoth (talk) 06:35, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

http://www.optimizegoogle.com/ took over the codebase. I've used it for a few weeks (it's identical to customizegoogle) and recommend it to all. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 07:28, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
How do you look at the source code? Logoth (talk) 03:49, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
XPI and JAR files are just zip files. Unarchive and read/edit. See [11] or [12] for more details. (Also, this isn't a good place to discuss non-Wikipedia centered problems. Ask at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing if you have further questions :) -- Quiddity (talk) 19:47, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
So asked there. Thank you! Logoth (talk) 20:29, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Does that work with the new Google layout? They are asking for developers. Logoth (talk) 18:47, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I made this ranked-choice voting poll so you can pick your favorite search engines to appear on the next version of OptimizeGoogle -- PLEASE VOTE WIKIPEDIA! :D Logoth (talk) 18:47, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

There is also a SourceForge project and a Google Group. Logoth (talk) 03:46, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Manually adding talk page section produces wrong edit summary

When a user adds a talk page section via the "new section" link, the new section name appears in the C-style comment prefacing the edit summary. However, if the user manually adds the new section (by using "edit page" and typing "=="), the preceding section name appears instead. Presumably this is because, logically, it's text added to that section (although that interpretation could easily be repaired by detecting the "=="). The resulting incorrect edit history display is a source of minor inconvenience and confusion. Can we do anything about it, or is it a bug in the MediaWiki software which we don't have the power to fix? PL290 (talk) 13:34, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

The MW software sees the section number. For example, [13] pints to this section. See the part &section=31? That's what the software recognizes, and puts it in the edit summary when the page loads. This means that the edit summary is already filled in before you touch the editbox, and it is submitted alongwith the edit, not after. The software cannot tell if you added a section because the summary loads before you edit. You have to manually change the text between the C comments (case sensitive). You could make a script for that, which checks if there are extra section headings on a page with &section=... in the title, and changes the summary comments. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 13:47, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. I realized my description was inaccurate anyway; it can't be with "edit page", since that generates no such preface, so the user in this scenario must be editing the last section. And as you say, the comment's already generated before anything's typed. Mind you, it's always struck me as odd that that's an editable part of the edit summary; were it generated separately instead, after Save is hit, that would seem more controlled, and in that case there would indeed be opportunity to interpret whether a new section's been added. I don't really want to make a script; more to make the right thing happen whenever users add new sections in this way. PL290 (talk) 14:00, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
Yeah. It's kinda weird that you can edit it. I tried it out at the sandbox. If you see this diff, you can see that I edited a section called "section test", which doesn't exist in both that revision and the previous revision. See the history of this page, too, the edit which I am making now has an edited section title. 59.183.154.54 (talk) 14:07, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
That's me above... Forgot 2 login. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 14:41, 1 March 2010 (UTC)
So anyway, is it something WP can change? Or would this be a MW enhancement suggestion to file somewhere. PL290 (talk) 09:19, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
It would be MW. Lets say you are editing a level-3 header (===Header===). MW would know the header level of the section you are editing, and could look for an increase in the number of headers of the same level. Then it could say "new section" and all that. But really, why not use the "new section" button? It adds a new section to the end. You rarely have to add a new section in the middle, and even then, its only a tiny error. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 10:03, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
  • This is a major pet peeve of mine, but ultimately it is a user issue. People should learn to use the new section button and not "edit the last section to coattail a new one at the bottom". –xenotalk 14:26, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
I doubt it would be hard to add to MW.... But its kinda trivial and I doubt they'll listen...ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 15:04, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

WikiMiniAtlas

Going off on a tangent, why is there no easy way to opt out of WikiMiniAtlas? As far as I can see (using IE8), WMA seems to slow down page rendering significantly, even for pages with just one coordinate; and makes it unworkable to include geolinks at all in long coordinate lists; yet the open source maps are currently inadequate for many purposes so it is usually better to click through to external maps. Is it true that there is no WMA opt-out parameter in coord templates (and also no opt-out in user-preferences)? And if there isn't, is there a reason for this? — Richardguk (talk) 02:13, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

It's easy to create a disable hook for that. A gadget that sets wma_settings['enabled'] = false or just add it to your personal Javascript. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:13, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Safari sort issue

See here for the question. I appended it to an earlier question, but it looks like I need to point it out again. Thanks.—NMajdan•talk 16:38, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

You should give more detail. What exactly goes wrong, and which exact column? It's unlikely that Safari would behave differently on different platforms here. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 17:59, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I have linked to the FLC where the exact issue is described.—NMajdan•talk 21:57, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll just move the question here:

I have another sort issue, so I'll ask here rather than starting a new thread. A reviewer for an FLC I have up is saying the the postseason columns at List of Texas A&M Aggies head football coaches are not sorting correctly. I've looking in Safari on Windows, and it appears fine. Any help would be appreciated.—NMajdan•talk 16:52, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't have any issues with Safari 4 here either. Unless the editor has a more accurate problem description (browser version, path of actions, screenshot of result), I don't think anyone can do anything else. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:35, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Are you using Safari on Mac?—NMajdan•talk 19:34, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Image Annotation

Commons has this (eg). Would it be hard to flip the bit here? Noodle snacks (talk) 09:33, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Image Annotator? You'll need an admin to do this. See commons:Help:Gadget-ImageAnnotator/Installation. Once installed, it will even show annotations for images used on WP but from commons. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 09:57, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Wait... theres a discussion on this above... Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#ImageAnnotator_gadget_on_WikipediaManishEarthTalk • Stalk 10:34, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

regex look ahead

I'm writing a url validator in regex but can't figure out how to look ahead for a "/".

For example: 

root/directory1/pagexyz.html
root/directory2/pagexyz.html
root/pagexyz.html

Currently I've got root/(directory1|directory2)/

How do you get it so it doesn't check (directory1|directory2) if there isn't a "/" later in the text?Smallman12q (talk) 13:12, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Not quite sure I understand what you mean, but are you looking for: root/(directory[1-2]/(.|\s)+/) that will only match if you have "root forward-slash directory one or two forward-slash and a forward-slash after some more text/whitespace". Hope that's what you wanted. - Kingpin13 (talk) 15:11, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Erm sort of...I figured it out...it should be root(/(directory1|directory2)|)/

I needed it for my nytimes article url validator

Smallman12q (talk) 02:26, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Hungry links

  Resolved

When you forget to put a space after a link, the link eats up the adjoining word. For example, [[WP:SB|hi]]bye produces: hibye. Notice that the link has eaten the 'bye'.
Interestingly,

  • [[WP:SB|hi]][[WP:WP|bye]] produces: hibye (not merged)
  • hi[[WP:SB|bye]] produces: hibye (not merged)

Is this fixable? ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 13:40, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

It's by design—see WP:LINK and Help:Link. Apart from anything else it lets you link to things like apples without additional piping. PL290 (talk) 13:57, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Aaaaaaaaaaaaah.... I see. That would be quite useful. Thx. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 14:14, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Transferring an image from another language Wikipedia

I wanted to embed this[14] image on an english Wikipedia page, but it's not working.

How do I transfer it?--Lastexpofan (talk) 17:07, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

If it's eligible you may place the image at Wikimedia Commons. Tools and guidance are available at Commons. Here's a link to the Commons Helpdesk in case you need to ask for guidance on the specifics. PL290 (talk) 17:32, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Alternatively download it to your computer and re-upload here. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 18:59, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Template documentation

Why does the left border of the template documentation of templates such as {{R from alternative name}} and {{Copy to Wiktionary}} not match (on IE8) the left border of the documentation transclusion notice ("The above documentation is transcluded...")? Compare to, for instance, {{Dicdef}} and {{Notability}}. Thanks, -- Black Falcon (talk) 21:12, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

IE7 also, but not Firefox 3.0.18 (in IE the upper green box is wider than normal; the lower green box is normal width). --Redrose64 (talk) 21:19, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Hmm, the upper element is a div, and the bottom element is a table. I'm guessing that is causing the difference... I'll point David at it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:32, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
Should take this to Template talk:Documentation. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 02:48, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
In the interest of keeping the discussion in one place, I've posted notices linking to this discussion at Template talk:Documentation and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Templates, though I suppose that this thread could be archived and moved if needed. -- Black Falcon (talk) 06:10, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
We are aware of this problem, see the old discussion at Template talk:Documentation#Problem with right-aligned images. Please continue this discussion there.
But here's the technical details: {{R from alternative name}} and {{Copy to Wiktionary}} contain right floating boxes in their documentation, and that sometimes removes the left margin from surrounding divs in most versions of Internet Explorer. We can probably fix this the usual way: We should change {{documentation}} from using a <div> to instead use a <table> for the big box. Divs simply aren't a mature technology, different browsers cause all kinds of different bugs when using divs, while tables are robust and work the same in most browsers. That's why we use tables for the mboxes such as {{ambox}}, since that was the only way we could make them render consistently in all browsers.
--David Göthberg (talk) 07:44, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for explaining the issue and pointing out the previous (ongoing, I suppose) discussion. I will follow the discussion thread there. Thanks again, -- Black Falcon (talk) 07:48, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

different skins for wikipedia

What are the advantages of the different skins? Are there ones that make the pages load faster? Or are the differences personal preference only? Talking image (talk) 22:25, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

No idea about load speed, but skins make things look a lot prettier. Carrite (talk) 01:56, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

There are some that are more functional or efficient than others. ¦ Reisio (talk) 02:03, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Skins like Chick, Standard, Simple, and Nostalgia load quickly (but take up the same bandwidth--they are light on CPU). Monobook is best if you wanna use userscripts (Most are developed for monobook). Vector (beta) is a little slow on the load (again, it takes the same bandwidth, but takes up CPU time), but the new edit box is much better there. ManishEarthTalk • Stalk 02:43, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you! Talking image (talk) 18:22, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Bot request

I have very little programming experience, but I have a simply idea for a bot that will be able to churn out autoreview requests/privileges much faster than I can:

  1. Go through a list of editors with high edit counts one by one.
  2. If username=[Placeholder], skip to next entry.
  3. (optional)Look up edits. If most recent edit was in 2009 or earlier, skip to next entry.
  4. Look up user rights. If autoreviewer=1 or if administrator=1, skip to next entry.
  5. Look up article creations. If greater than 75, do one of the following depending on how much trust we would put in such a bot:
    • Append WP:RFP/A with {{subst:rfp|username|Have a nice day! <name of bot here>}}
    • Assign autoreview privileges to user.

Personally I would prefer the first option, as there should definitely be some human oversight in case the user just creates disambiguation pages or mage 100 clone articles that are being considered for deletion or whatever. Should be easy to do, yeah? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 04:41, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Nice idea, obviously we shouldn't assign autoreviewer privileges without a human check though, so I'd go with the template. Why not extend this to remind all the active non-admins that the could be admins too? (Clean block log, more than 6 months here, over 5000 edits?) Fences&Windows 12:42, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
The reason why I thought of this bot for autoreview requests is twofold: First, autoreview is relatively obscure compared to administratorship. Second, autoreview requests are a simple pass/fail and thus no harm would come from having a sudden large influx of requests, where as RfA would grow so massive that it would collapse into a black hole if too many requests came in at once. Also, along the same vein, new admins require some teaching and knocking around to become productive (which may be problematic if there are 4000 new ones on the same day), whereas new autoreviewers can just keep swimming along without ever having known that they were given the tool. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 13:57, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Clean block log Y, more than 6 months here Y, over 5000 edits Y - Apparently I qualify for Admin. No way do I want to be nominated for that - I've seen the grillings that go on at WP:RFA. I've also seen the user page vandalism that adminship attracts. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:02, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I agree this isn't a suitable way to pick candidates. Although it could create a list of users for human editors to look over. Back to the original auto reviewer request, the correct place to make a bot request is WP:BOTR. This looks like a fairly easy program, and I could technically manage to create this bot if you don't find someone else. For it to be approved you will need consensus that it's actually wanted. The people it will effect most are the admins working at that page, suggest you get their input (since you've already done a similar thing manually, they will know what to expect if a bot picks this up :D). - Kingpin13 (talk) 16:06, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Ah, I was not aware of the bot requests page. Thanks for the heads up. I will be sure to invite permission-granting admins and New Page Patrollers to the discussion. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:25, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Is there a way to capture the name of a redirect?

I have a case where I'm considering a merge between two templates: one template has a feature that I would like to include in the other as a non-default option. I want to do this without messing up the current usages of the template-to-be-merged. is there a magic word I don't know about that will give the name of the page redirected from, or some other tricky technique, that will let me use an IF or SWITCH statement with the redirect name? maybe clearer:

  • template A has X built in.
  • template B has X as a non-default option.
  • how to merge A into B, but preserve X as a default for the redirected pages?

--Ludwigs2 05:42, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

There's no such magic word that you are asking about. So instead of redirecting template A to template B, you need to call template B from template A but with the X option set. Here's how the code of template A can look:
{{B
| X = yes
| forward = {{{forward|}}}
| all other = {{{all other|}}}
| parameters = {{{parameters|}}}
}}<noinlude>

{{documentation}}
</noinclude>
There are more ways to do this, but the above is usually the cleanest way to do it. Of course, even better might be to update all usages of {{A}} to directly call {{B|X=yes}}.
--David Göthberg (talk) 08:08, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Tfd notification template

There is a bug causing the Tfd notification on transcluded templates to expand to a very long width. That is probably the case when the inline template is not used at the bottom of the article, but somewhere besides text. RedRose indicated this is the code responsible for the displaying of the message:

<div class="boilerplate metadata plainlinks" id="tfd" style="background-color: transparent; padding: 0; font-size:xx-small; color:#000000; text-align: center; border-bottom:1px solid #AAAAAA;">‹ The [[Help:Template|template]] below {{#if:{{{1|}}}|(''[[Template:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]]'')|}} is being considered for deletion. See [[Wikipedia:Templates for discussion#{{{2|Template:{{ucfirst:{{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}}}}}|templates for discussion]] to help reach a consensus. ›</div>

This looks like this:


I took the liberty to change the template with this one:

{{ombox | type = delete | small = yes | style = width:315px; | text = <small class="plainlinks" style="line-height:1.2em;">The '''[[Help:Template|template]]''' below {{#if:{{{1|}}}|(''[[Template:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]]'')|}} is being considered for deletion. See '''[[Wikipedia:Templates for discussion#{{{2|Template:{{ucfirst:{{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}}}}}|templates for discussion]]''' to help reach a consensus.</small> }}

which looks like this:

I set it to a fixed width of 315, which makes it look good in War on Terror, but here it looks too large. Is there any way to acquire the width of the template below? --JokerXtreme (talk) 17:42, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're after here, but TfD templates shouldn't really be appearing on mainspace pages - they should only appear on the template that's up for deletion. if there's some problem with a template on a mainspace page, just remove the template and leave a note in talk that you've removed it for the duration of the TfD discussion. do you mind if I remove the templates? --Ludwigs2 17:58, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I didn't add anything extra. There already was a notification template and I just changed it, because it caused problems.
The way this works is, when a template is nominated for deletion, the Tfd template is added on that template page. That causes a notification to be displayed on the articles that the template is used, notifying editors that it is considered for deletion, so that they'll join the discussion. I think that's useful --JokerXtreme (talk) 18:04, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
The only way to get the {{tfd}} to inherit the width of a box-type template that it's placed on would be if it were placed inside the box itself. There are two problems with that: (a) boxes are done in different ways (some use a {| ... |} table, some use a <div> ... </div> enclosure, and some go off to another template entirely such as {{ombox}}); and (b) the {{tfd}} template is supposed to be placed at the very top of the template which it applies to, and therefore cannot appear within any box that the template produces. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:13, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I see the problem with that. Can't that information be passed by a control that contains both Tfd and the target template? Say by some code that will be used in template namespaces? --JokerXtreme (talk) 18:20, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
all it needed was for the TfD template to get put inside a 'noinclude' block. Joker, that's pretty much standard practice for TfD templates - is that not part of the instructions? I went ahead and fixed the problem. --Ludwigs2 18:22, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Well, yeah, I know that can be fixed like that, but this is just a lame fix IMHO (not referring in how you handled it). We should correct the tfd template, so that fix won't be necessary. Notifying users is helpful I think. If it's not then we should remove that code altogether. --JokerXtreme (talk) 18:30, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

actually, there's a bigger problem here. the TfD template has built-in namespace detection, so it shouldn't appear on any page outside of Template namespace. yet for some reason it is. I can't imagine why that would be. any ideas?

The "traditional" version of {{Tfd}} (before any changes by JokerXtreme) displays a relatively large box on the page of the nominated template, and a two-line notification (the words and horizontal line that appear in the first example above) appears on pages where the template is transcluded, including mainspace articles. This is the way it has worked for a long time. Having the notice appear on pages where the template is used is important, because in many cases the people who are interested in the fate of the template are not going to be visiting the template page very often (if ever) and probably don't have it watchlisted.
What JokerXtreme is talking about is the appearance of that notification. He doesn't like the old version that puts a horizontal line across the entire page, and tried to create a more narrow box-style notification instead. Frankly I'm not seeing the improvement. The new version is more obtrusive in some cases due to greater height. Worse, despite saying "The template below ...", it doesn't necessarily appear above the nominated template; it can appear beside it instead. (See National Football League for an example as of this posting.) I'm inclined to revert the template back to its old version, but I'd be curious to see what others think of the change first. --RL0919 (talk) 18:28, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't mind if my version is not used. But the previous wasn't working very well either. It "pushed" the text on the side, when it was used in the body of the article. --JokerXtreme (talk) 18:35, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
ah, I get it now. let me see if I can come up with something less obtrusive and more specific. --Ludwigs2 18:41, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Maybe use some simple text with no divs like inline tdf. --JokerXtreme (talk) 18:43, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Meaning this:

‹The template Village pump (technical)/Archive 71 is being considered for deletion.› 

--JokerXtreme (talk) 18:52, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

well, I kinda think we should go back to the original version and add in a width parameter that defaults to the standard Ambox width - that way it wont cover the entire page, and can be adjusted as needed to match the template it is covering. I kind of like the simple lower-line thing (a full box draws too much attention, though we could twiddle with the CSS a bit to make it more noticable. --Ludwigs2 18:56, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Ah, sorry, didn't see the reply. Yeah I'm doing what you're saying. I removed a sentence to make it shorter. That way it doesn't stick out. My guess is that the tfd was originally designed for templates that were used only at the bottom of the articles, but is now somehow used in sidebar templates. --JokerXtreme (talk) 20:27, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I believe it was always intended for use with any block-level template, and it has had the "line across the whole page" appearance for years. Some people are more sensitive to its presence than others, and some nominated templates are more used than others, so placing it on a widely used template can create negative reactions. (It is worth noting that many, probably most, nominated templates are used on few or no articles.) Where it becomes very annoying is when {{Tfd}} is used for inline templates, where {{Tfd-inline}} should be used instead. --RL0919 (talk) 22:12, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes, and this is quite common as I see. --JokerXtreme (talk) 22:17, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
I finally managed to duplicate this problem in a test page: User:JokerXtreme/test-WoT. How about a new template (say, Tfd-side) that will deal with these kinds of problems? Using inline in that case, seems to make things worse. --JokerXtreme (talk) 00:29, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I have seen the tfd-inline stuck inside the top of the infobox in such cases, basically to prevent this problem. I don't know if we need a new template, or just add an option to the current one to set the width and float it right. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 00:38, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't like adding more templates that do essentially the same thing, but adding options to {{Tfd}} sounds good. Even if the nominator doesn't use them, someone "in the know" could adjust the template if there are complaints. --RL0919 (talk) 00:41, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Agree. If you ask me I think inline should be an option too, I just offered that as an easy solution. --JokerXtreme (talk) 00:43, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Even better, merge tfd-inline with tfd and have "one ring template to rule them all". We can discuss the technical details back at Template talk:tfd? Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 00:48, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
Sure, less crowded. --JokerXtreme (talk) 00:51, 4 March 2010 (UTC)
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