Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 89

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Village pump (technical) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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Address of redirected page not as expected

A redirect results in the display of the correct page, but the displayed url is of the redirect. For example, W. V. Quine redirects to Willard Van Orman Quine, but my browser (Firefox) displays in the address bar: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._V._Quine". This is confusing. If I then want to email that article, I do "<Alt>File>Send link" and get the address of the redirect page instead the address of the page I see displayed. Can the software be changed so that the browser displays the correct address? -- Hpvpp (talk) 01:53, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't know about a software fix. If you click on the article tab, it will reload with the direct URL. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 01:57, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

May I then request this be escalated into a change-request? -- Hpvpp (talk) 02:44, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ This may already be poseted, so try a search. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 02:57, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I have submitted a request on bugZilla. -- Hpvpp (talk) 03:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Err, why does it matter which URL you send to someone? The link still reaches the content, doesn't it?

If you want to send someone the URL of the target page instead of the redirect, you should navigate to the target page yourself first (which as Gadget850 notes, is easy enough to do by clicking the "article" tab). --MZMcBride (talk) 03:43, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, considering the number of much more important bugs still pending, I am pretty sure this will stay open for ages to come ;) Whenever I need to copy the address, I use tab-clicking technique as mentioned by Gadget850's, I don't find it that difficult. If you want to skip this step, you could simply right-click the "Article" tab, and click "Copy link location", that costs you no extra clicks... Rehman 08:15, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

This is correct isn't it? The page you went to was a redirect - it displays the URL of the page you went to, not the page of the redirect and is the same for all pages as far as I am aware. Take for example UAV - the page you clicked on (the link) is the URL that you went to, the redirect is a soft redirect which loads the target page content (Unmanned aerial vehicle) rather than changing the URL to Unmanned aerial vehicle.

If the redirect was a hard one (changing the URL) no-one would be able to get to the UAV page to edit it, it would never load as it would always hard redirect. Chaosdruid (talk) 10:22, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this is not a bug and I'm sure the bugzilla report will be closed without anything done.--Atlan (talk) 12:01, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Not quite. There is always a link back to the redirect on the top of the page, and there is the &redirect=no option. — Edokter (talk) — 15:19, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

This is the desired behaviour, because it aids caching and hitcounting. A redirect is a valid page which should be cached; its contents are very similar to the target, but with the extra 'redirected from' link. And it's useful to be able to track hitcounts for a redirect page as well as the target. Neither of which would be possible if the URL hard-redirected. Happy‑melon 15:54, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Really tiny text

Resolved

 – Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:46, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

About ten minutes ago, everything on Wikipedia shrunk to about half its normal size. All the text, boxes, buttons etc is now ridiculously tiny and quite difficult to read. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:27, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Browser/OS information please? and is it en.wp or other sites? ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 14:30, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Sitting 10 feet away from your screen will do that.;) Seriously though, everything's fine here.--Atlan (talk) 14:32, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Google Chrome (latest), Windows Vista, Monobook skin. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:36, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Check your browser settings for zoom or text size options, and ensure that they are set to default. Also does this happen both logged in and logged out? ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 14:41, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

That did it. I must have pressed something unintentionally. Thanks. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:44, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

On firefox, ctrl + rolling the center mouse roller will cause that. The browsers like copying each other so Chrome might have similar behavior.TStein (talk) 19:37, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Or Ctrl+- I believe. Gary King (talk · scripts) 19:44, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Requesting help with {{cite report}}.

{{cite report}} seems to be the neglected little brother of the more popular (web, book, news) citation templates. It's not listed in WP:CT, and it doesn't generate COinS metadata, but there are plenty of places where it's more apropos than {{cite web}}. Is there anyone skilled in the deep arts of template fiddling who can update it to be in line with the capabilities of the more popular templates? grendel|khan 15:16, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

{{Cite report}} and {{Cite techreport}} aren't little brothers, they are bastard stepchildren. They have a different style, thus should not be used with Citation Style 2 (cite web, book, journal, video, etc.) Both can easily be replaced by {{cite journal}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:46, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't quite see how. See here; "Costs and Causes of Zimbabwe's Crisis" isn't in any sense a journal; it's not part of a numbered series. How would you cite that with {{cite journal}}? grendel|khan 18:55, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Quite easily:

cite report

Clemens, Michael (2005-07-20). Costs and Causes of Zimbabwe's Crisis (Report). Center for Global Development. Retrieved 2011-04-04. {{cite report}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

cite journal

Clemens, Michael (2005-07-20). "Costs and Causes of Zimbabwe's Crisis". Center for Global Development. Retrieved 2011-04-04. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

Note the style differences. YYYY-MM-DD is not a recommended date style but that is a separate issue.

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:51, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Parser function for string operations and variables

I'm trying to do some tricky work with templates and I'm not sure how to proceed. First, I'd like to strip a character off an argument. In this case, given an expression (say in {{{1}}}), return the expression without an initial minus sign.

What I'm trying to avoid is {{#expr:abs({{{1}}})}} which would turn "-1/2" into "0.5" rather than "1/2".

Also, I find myself using the same expressions many times in the same template. I don't suppose it's possible to store those in a temporary variable?

CRGreathouse (t | c) 20:54, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I think you could store a common expression in a separate template, say Template:Example/common, depending on what it is. For a substring, use Template:Strr. Gary King (talk · scripts) 21:06, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! CRGreathouse (t | c) 21:22, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Tutorial

Is it just my computer, or is the tutorial script at Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Tutorial broken? I just tried running the script in safari, using the monobook skin, without success. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 01:03, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

That script doesn't work by itself. As it says, it needs the Add LI link code, too. I'm not sure if it will work even with that, though. Gary King (talk · scripts) 02:39, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

commenting out large sections of text

I have repeatedly run across situations where it would have been extremely convenient to comment out large portions of text but found it was impossible to do so because the text itself contained numerous comments. This has happened in articles, templates, and in stylesheets. It often occurs when initially building the page or when debugging it. There ought to be a way to do this.
Just granpa (talk) 15:29, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

How do you think it should be done? Happy‑melon 15:40, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Use a template which produces no output. Taemyr (talk) 16:06, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Template:Void

Just granpa (talk) 02:22, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

• We have been using #ifeq to omit the contents of the if-then clause: {{#ifeq: hell| freezes over|...massive_lines_of_text... }}. That will work well unless there are problems with the nesting of "}}" inside the skipped text. You can also use <includeonly>...</includeonly> during edit-preview. -Wikid77 20:11, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

maybe use template void with the content between pre or nowiki tags

Just granpa (talk) 10:25, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Persondate template adding Moto GP?

(Copied here from another user's post at WT:Persondata#Moto GP?): This template doesn't seem to be working - putting information about Moto GP in the templates, see e.g. Hasan of Basra. JohnCD (talk) 20:55, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

The template is Template:Muslim Saints. On its own page, the data looks right. In test, it's become a Moto GP data template. Peridon (talk) 20:59, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I have fixed the article, for the moment, by changing to the existing template Template:Muslim saints (with a small "s"). The Large-S version was created recently by Imadjafar (talk), who has been working on the article; it is now not used anywhere. I will leave him a note about it. It is suggested he may have been trying to create an infobox. There is still a puzzle, now not urgent, over why Template:Muslim Saints (large S) expands to say things about Moto GP. JohnCD (talk) 21:41, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Problem seems to have gone away - don't understand it, but there are more urgent things... JohnCD (talk) 14:30, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Development of a tool for detecting offensive/racist terms

How difficult would it be to develop a tool or tools for detecting offensive terms from sources that may creep in to articles? This is in regard to an India project, a possible solution for which which can be found at - Wikipedia for schools - India version. Per that solution the tool would have to:

1. Look up a repository of sources which contain offensive terms and check the article's references section if they are referenced
2. Directly search the article for offensive terms
3. Check the article history of the article for editors/contributors who have been banned for POV issues.

The article could be flagged if any of the three items above are a match. Zuggernaut (talk) 05:07, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Edit filter does that type of thing. Suggest dropping a request at Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested and they'll tell you if its possible. Moondyne (talk) 08:40, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Job's comforters

I have an issue that I'm not sure how to resolve, and was hoping someone here could help. The title Job's comforter has for some time been a soft redirect to Wiktionary — but at some point yesterday, an anonymous IP user overwrote the redirect with a dicdef "article" which was soon thereafter reverted back to the redirect. The problem is that this sequence of events caused the article to get picked up by the Untagged Uncategorized Articles list — it would be inappropriate to tag it as {{uncat}}, obviously, but I have to get it off the list somehow and I can't figure out another way.

Does somebody here know how to fix this? Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 07:10, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I've asked the creator of that tool for input. Amalthea 09:27, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

It's out. The tool is coded to exclude pages in the hidden category Redirects to Wiktionary, but an update hadn't run yet. --JaGa^talk 15:02, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

My "birth" date

This seems more cosmetic than problematic, but I'm curious. When I mouse over editors' usernames, popups show something like: "userright1, userright2, xxx edits since: yyyy-mm-dd". When I do the same over mine, it ends at "since: " (with no date). I thought this might just be because it's my own account I'm seeing, but while logged out I just looked myself up using the Users query (using FF3, FF4, and IE8) and notice that I don't have a creation date displayed, whereas many other users do. Is this something I can fix? I don't recall anything unusual about my "birth", so I'm not sure why I'm different. I'm not very experienced in the workings of WP, so this might reflect my ignorance. -- Scray (talk) 17:19, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Your 'birth date' probably predates the 2005 introduction of the New User log. Any names registered before that date have 'no' date. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:19, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. I guess I lurked awhile before I edited. My memory may be worsening as I age. thanks. -- Scray (talk) 19:30, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that's the right explanation since e.g. users Jimbo Wales, Magnus Manske, The Anome, Brion VIBBER all have creation dates. You are not alone though, Scray, there are a couple of accounts that are missing a creation date. Amalthea 20:50, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Your examples are compelling (for longterm users who have creation dates); why do you say "a couple" have missing creation dates - is there a report that reveals how many? In any case, the mystery remains. Anyone know of a fix? -- Scray (talk) 21:29, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

No report that I know, but I remember that Lifebaka (talk · contribs) also has no creation date set, and if you check the log from back then you'll note that none of the users with red-linked contribs show a registration date, and even some of the ones with contributions (like you) don't. Not sure what the underlying bug was, I presume it is known and fixed since current new users show a registration date from the get-go.
I presume that the respective database field of all affected users is simply empty. It should be fixable for all those users created past September 2005 since we have the user log entries (here's yours). However, you need a developer with database write access to run that query, and I don't think this task will have priority anytime soon. But if you want that fixed, first step is looking into bugzilla to check whether an issue for this already exists, and opening one if it doesn't. If I'm right and it's as easy as filling in that date it's a rather simple task. But also not an important one. Amalthea 22:19, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

If this is not a persistent bug, I can't see a reason to bother anyone with it. Thanks VERY much for clarifying. -- Scray (talk) 00:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

AFAIK: Upon introduction of the user creation log (along with a field for user creation dates in the user table), a script was run to retroactively populate this field based on first edit/log dates. However, any users without edits/logs prior to the execution of this script did not get it populated, and it hasn't been run again. So (generally) if your user was created before the new user log, but edited after, it will have no date (but note the script was not instantaneously executed). See bugzilla:18638. --Splarka (rant) 07:24, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I think you nailed it. My account was created a few years before I edited, and it seems running of that script fell between those dates. Thanks to all, especially Splarka for clearing this up for me. I'll probably never get a date, but at least now I know why. - sounds like a teenager's lament -- Scray (talk) 15:56, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I remember there was a toolserver script that produced an approximate account creation date based from the account creation date of accounts with IDs close to yours. I can't find it, though... Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 20:27, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Need help with linking to complex URL

I tried to link to this url: http://www.oz-online.de/index.php?id=97&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=36421&cHash=6d15a445ea=f7e0196df2 but when I do that the regular way [tt_news=36421&cHash=6d15a445ea=f7e0196df2 link name] it is broken off after tx_ttnews. So how can I link to it. putting it in a TinyURL and then linking to that won't work since Wikipedia blocks TinyURL. Haven't tried another URL shortener but I guess they may be blocked as well. SpeakFree (talk) 19:26, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Encode the square brackets, like this: http://www.oz-online.de/index.php?id=97&tx_ttnews%5btt_news%5d=36421&cHash=6d15a445ea=f7e0196df2
Amalthea 19:35, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

See more at meta:Help:URL#URLs in external links. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:18, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

You can also use the urlencode magic word:

• {{urlencode:http://www.oz-online.de/index.php?id=97&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=36421&cHash=6d15a445ea=f7e0196df2|WIKI}}
• http://www.oz-online.de/index.php%3Fid%3D97%26tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D%3D36421%26cHash%3D6d15a445ea%3Df7e0196df2

Note that as of version 1.17+, the WIKI parameter is mandatory. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:59, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

No. urlencoding the whole url would break the query string since you encode all the parameter separators and existing encoding as well (?=&+%). Also, the second parameter is not mandatory, and you only want to pass 'wiki' if you actually want to encode a wikipage for use in an url, otherwise you also break spaces. Amalthea 19:16, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Fake scrollbar

I have been getting a scrollbar across my screen almost every time I use my watchlist. The scrollbar even has the navigation arrows at each end. But it is a ghost scrollbar. Every time I click on it simply disappears and it is completely non functional. Any idea as to what this artifact is? Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 15:00, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Have you changed any of the preferences for your watchlist recently? Or installed any new scripts or gadgets? Try creating a new account, adding a few recently updated pages to the watchlist, and see if you still get this scrollbar on that account's watchlist. Does the scrollbar look "activated" or is it deactivated? (Usually, activated scrollbars are colored in, while deactivated ones only use grayscale colors.) Also, are you using Internet Explorer by any chance, and if so, what version? Gary King (talk · scripts) 15:04, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. No, I haven't changed anything in my watchlist preferences. I have not added any gadgets either. The scroll bar appears light blue. I mostly use Google Chrome. I'll try the Explorer and Firefox again. I am not sure if it appeared in the latter two because I don't use them very often. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 16:02, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I recalled that IE had problems with "ghost scrollbars". Stick with Chrome then, and try testing a new account. Gary King (talk · scripts) 16:05, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I use Chrome in Windows 7 and this as been happening to me as well, though I didn't specifically notice that it was my watchlist. The horizontal scrollbar seems to get generated below the bottom of the visible page and appear when I scroll down. If I scroll up (or down) so that it is no longer visible, it is gone when I scroll back down. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ost316 (talk • contribs) 16:34, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the advice. Take care. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 17:01, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

If it's not a scrollbar for the entire page, then it's probably located inside a frame. Why a frame is created on your watchlists, I don't know why, but it'd probably be a script that you have installed, most likely one that affects the watchlist. Which is why I suggest trying a new account; that would likely not have the problem. If it doesn't, then at least we know it's something wrong with your account. Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:41, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I've confirmed that mine is not on my watchlist—at least not exclusively. The scrollbar appeared on a window in which I was editing. I did not have WikEd on, either. It's not a problem that bothers me, it does not happen often, and I'm yet to determine how to make the appearance repeatable; I will see if it appears when I poke around a bit as an anon, but I don't think it's worth me creating a new user account to test. —Ost (talk) 21:27, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Wierd glitch on one image...

If I type this: [[File:Red information icon with gradient background.svg|26px]]
Then I get the image:
But if I make it one pixel smaller and type this: [[File:Red information icon with gradient background.svg|25px]]
Then I get a link instead:
Wierd. I didn't do that before. I don't know what it means, if anything. It only seems to apply to that file, and for values of 25 or less. Just thought I'd mention it. Herostratus (talk) 18:04, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Image thumbnail was broken, purging the page helped (you may need to bypass your browser cache. It didn't actually render as a normal link, it displayed the alt-text instead of the image. Amalthea 18:36, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Ah, thank you. Herostratus (talk) 23:45, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Delay between when an edit is made and the text becomes available

I have been noticing a delay of 15 to 30 seconds between when I make an edit and it becomes possible to see the text displayed within an article or talk page discussion. Bypassing my cache appears to have no effect on this delay. Is there some type of server or database problem? --Allen3 ^talk 20:16, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah the servers have been having this problem for a few weeks now. There are several threads about it already. I personally don't know what the status is with the problem, though. Also, I personally experience this problem only once every hundred edits or so. Gary King (talk · scripts) 20:19, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Delay in updating Search Index

The Search Index has not been updated for at least 4 days. Help:Searching#Delay_in_updating_the_search_index says this should be reported here. Can the update be manually triggered? as it is frustrating us WikiGnomes in our tidying up, and we get a huge backlog of spelling, grammar and other mistakes to correct when it is eventually updated.
Arjayay (talk) 08:44, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Message passed along to sysadmins via IRC —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:18, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

It's bugzilla:26304 again. I've manually skipped some articles, so it should catch up by tomorrow's index update. --rainman (talk) 13:55, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Session data drop-outs

Over the past two days I've experienced intermittent session data drop-outs between opening edit windows, previewing and saving (maybe one every couple of hours, compared to none in the past two weeks).

Is there anything going on at Wikimedia that might cause that problem? My internet connection appears to be as reliable as always and I've had no config changes on my PC. How long can a session remain idle before being disconnected? Not a biggie, but as a nerd I'm curious. Regards — Peter S Strempel | Talk 15:24, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I suppose the hard number is hardcoded somewhere, but for me, I've experienced session data loss when I leave an edit window open for an hour or so. I rarely experience this, though, since I usually make long edits in a separate text editor before pasting it into the wiki. So as I mentioned, I rarely experience this. If you are experiencing this frequently, then you might want to report it as a bug. Gary King (talk · scripts) 16:27, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Why is the editor dropping text?

I seem to remember the days when I could type in an edit- and leave the page to research a link and return and my text would still be there ready to be completed. In those days I could follow a whim- google something- follow the link and may be another and safely back page to the editor and carrying on working. Today, I still can go forward one page, or maybe two and my text will remain but any further the text is erased from the editor. So is it incompatible js, Firefox 3.16.6 or Ubuntu 10.10 or has a server declared a vendetta on me? --ClemRutter (talk) 15:31, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

This is similar to the problem mentioned here. I don't think that it makes a difference how many pages forward you go; one page forward is the same to the browser as multiple pages, up to a maximum of 10, I believe. Gary King (talk · scripts) 16:18, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Possible sound icon issues with some browsers (Safari) at Template:IPAc-en

The sound icon (.ogg file) at Template:IPAc-en doesn't seem to work in 5.0.3 Safari, but does work in 3.5.18 Firefox (same machine). Is this a technical issue that can be fixed on Wikipedia's end or does the situation possibly just need a notice maybe on the template page or within the template itself? Thanks Shearonink (talk) 17:22, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

The problem with Safari is that it is not possible to change file associations without the help of a third-party program like RCDefaultApp. That's probably why it downloads .ogg files instead of playing them directly in the browser. You could place a notice on the template's documentation; not on the template itself, though, since it's already so small. You could, I suppose, put some text in a tooltip, though. Gary King (talk · scripts) 17:46, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

It works just fine. It's not a player, it's a download link, so Safari behaves correctly if it doesn't have a native playback component for it. Only Firefox, Opera and chrome have built-in support for Ogg Vorbis playback. This is why we have {{listen}}, which actually loads a player. There are some thoughts about adding a 'mini' mode to the upcoming new TimedMediaHandler and friends, but I'm not sure if that is implemented yet. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:57, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for all the replies. TheDJ, do you know if the "Template:listen" fix is noted at Template:IPAc-en? I didn't see that option there but, I admit it, I'm not very technologically-gifted so maybe I just missed it. (I was in the IRC help channel and an editor came in asking why the sound icon wasn't working at Sponge for the word Porifera. I didn't know the answer and so have ended up here at WP:VPI.) Thanks again, Shearonink (talk) 18:11, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

There are Safari plugins that you can install to have Safari natively play ogg files if you really want to. I don't know any specifically, but they shouldn't be too hard to find. Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:14, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Pending changes edit summary

I just noticed that when I reject edits made by IPs on pages with pending changes protection, the default edit summary includes a link to [[User:x.x.x.x]] rather than [[Special:Contributions/x.x.x.x]]. The native rollback and undo features both link IP edits to Special:Contributions, so this seems like an oversight to me. Is this intentional, and is it easy to fix? All the best. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 17:49, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

I think this has been fixed in trunk. Reach Out to the Truth 19:52, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Ok, thanks! — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 02:30, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

30 kb

Hi. I noticed that the warning no longer comes up for 30kb when the article is over it. Was there some consensus or discussion on this? I'd long thought 30kb a ridiculously low limit anyway.For many topics it is difficult to write a comprehensive articles under 60kb let alone 30. List of Chinese inventions is how long?♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:32, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

This message was disabled due to bug 21911. Graham87 07:44, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

However the functionality could be re-enabled by moving MediaWiki:Longpagewarning to MediaWiki:Longpage-hint, changing $1 to $2, and adding a condition to only display the page size when it is above a certain limit. See this talk page message. Graham87 07:51, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I think we should do that, but change the limit to something higher, like 40kb. WP:SPLIT makes me think that or 60kb is a good benchmark. However, if we don't do this, Wikipedia:Article_size#How_to_find_long_articles needs to be updated. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 00:00, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I think (IIRC) that the 30KB threshold was implemented quite a while back and may not reflect current web page sizes across the Internet as well as the presence of much more powerful devices across the board. The problem is, to what size would we change it to? I'm having a hard time trying to find reports or studies that are current, i.e. 2009 or later, in any search on web page sizes. –MuZemike 15:10, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

60kb is fair I think.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:22, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

from ceyockey — I would actually argue for twice that -- 120kb. There is a site, which I won't call authoritative, which states that the average page size as of 2009 was 500kb.[1] Another site quotes an average size as of 2008 of 312kb.[2]. Still another value is 320kb as of 2010.[3] I am not arguing for a specific limit, but it is reasonably clear that 60kb is substantially below the current much-varied but generally larger current average page size. --08:20, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

The numbers you are citing are for web page sizes, presumably including CSS, JavaScript and (most importantly) images. Here we are talking about page sizes in terms of MediaWiki source code, which are considerably smaller. Hans Adler 09:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

from ceyockey — OK - it would be good to say something constructive about how a "web" page would translate to a "mediawiki" page. I do understand that an image here is but a link; however, for a page to render properly, the image needs to be transmitted along with the rest of the page content; thus, my comment below about what the aim is in choosing a limit. The numbers I've provided are not useless; they need to be put into perspective with respect to comparable content here on the wiki. --09:48, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

We need some statistics before implementing a limit. I thought that 120KB looked ok, but then I noticed that Homeopathy is a "good article" and it's 138 Kb long. Partly, because well-referenced articles have a lot of extra size due to all the references. I suggest that we look at the typical sizes of featured and good articles before suggesting limits. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:48, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

from ceyockey — I think that the specific limit chosen is less important than the aim of choosing a limit. Is it to accommodate mobile users, who might get Wikipedia articles on their smart phones? Is it slow connection users, who need small page sizes to have practical access to content? Or is it a gauge of a "minimum informational unit", geared toward some level of semantic equivalence or information content equivalence? --08:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Statistics

I went looking for actual wikipedia content statistics and found the pages http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm and http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm . For some reason, the more detailed content analyses do not extend past January 2010. In the latest Jan 2010 data (see section http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm#distribution), the highest size bin provided is "<64 k ch" or 'less than 64,000 characters' which translates to <64kb. This highest size bin contains 99.9% of articles; the next lowest, "<32 k ch", shows 99.1% of articles. So, if we go with size distribution as a guide alone (as of Jan 2010), then either 30kb or 60kb could be quite valid as covering >99% of all articles. I don't think that these measures would vary by more than a couple-tenths of a percent if the data were updated to today.

What type of additional statistic would be useful? For instance, should we consider the size distribution for a) 'Good' articles, b) 'Featured' articles, c) high traffic articles? If we come up with a short list of statistics which would be useful, I think we could find someone with the skill and access to do a one-time export and calculation. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:23, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Search software

I spent a long and frustrating time trying to find out about a novel, "Easy Travel to Nearby Planets," and finally found that the novel was "Easy Travel to Other Planets;" I'll cut to the chase: any knowledgeable human would quickly have corrected my mistake and directed me to the right book. This is a prize-winning book, which introduced the phrase "information sickness."

The problem isn't only with Wikipedia's software: I tried two search engines, and the Library of Congress' software forced me to go through scores of titles containing the word "Planets" till I found the right title, and of course, I recognized it instantly. I used to storesit--I wasn't a salaried sales clerk--and customers would sometimes want a novel whose title and author they'd forgotten, while they remembered only the plot; I don't expect software to be able to do that, but finding a title or another phrase that's different just by a word or two seems thoroughly practical.

Francvs (talk) 10:42, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that Wikipedia should have a facility for correcting misremembered names of subjects on which it does not have articles? -- Hoary (talk) 12:57, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

After not coming up with the result you wanted, when you knew the book existed, you should have assumed that the problem might be that the title you were using might not be exactly correct. In this case, the thing to do would be to eliminate any words you were not absolutely positive of, or boil it down to the most basic of the words. A search for easy travel planets (without quote marks surrounding) would have, in most search engines, brought up some links that would allow you to make some progress. The problem here is not with the search engines per se, but with the way we utilize them. We need to be flexible about our search parameters in order to et what we want. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:21, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I do not believe that Google search is a panacea, but it does cure many ills. "easy travel to nearby planets" returns "easy travel to other planets" as a google books result, in position 8 of the top 10 returned hits. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:38, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Editing semi protected pages with Internet Explorer 8

I originally posted this message at the Helpdesk, but have been advised to being it here. I updated to Internet Explorer 8 this afternoon and discovered an interesting little quirk - I can't edit semi-protected pages, although ordinary pages are fine. Basically, when I open a page the cursor appears for a split second then vanishes and the text box becomes locked. Attempting to type produces no response, other than to scroll down with the space bar. I can type into the page summery box, however. Has anyone else encountered this? Is there a fix for it? Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 18:16, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I just edited a semi-protected page in IE8 with no problems. Does editing semi-protected pages work fine for you in other browsers, such as Firefox? Then at least we can be certain it's the browser and not a script you have installed or a preference, perhaps, although admittedly I don't know why those would be problems. I just found your other thread at Wikipedia:Help_desk#Semi_protected_pages_and_Internet_Explorer_8 which explains that other browsers are fine. You said you just upgraded to IE8. Have you tried IE9, since that's the latest version of Internet Explorer? Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:34, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Sadly it wouldn't really rule out scripts, or preferences etc. Because there are ways to only apply scripts/styles etc to certain browsers. We know it's not exactly a browser issue anyway, rather it's more like to be an issue with some of the settings RetroGuy is using in IE8 (e.g. a cookie setting, although I did some experimenting with cookies in IE8 just now, the only time it would stop you from editing a protected page is if it's set to block all cookies, which would also stop you from logging in). RetroGuy, when you're editing a semi-protected page (or not) are you still logged in? Does purging fix it? - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 18:38, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I tried "Refresh" if that's the same as purge, but that doesn't seem to help. I was prompted to install IE9, but there was some kind of problem in the process and I was asked to install it manually. I'm not sure where I need to go to look at the Cookie settings so some advice there would be greatly appreciated. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 18:47, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Here's instructions on changing cookie settings in IE8. Also, for purge, refer to WP:PURGE. It's not the same as refreshing. Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:50, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Have tried both of these suggestions, but sadly without success. All cookies are enabled, and purge doesn't seem to fix the problem. I think it might be easier to go back to go back to IE7. How do I do that? Do I need to uninstall IE8 then search for IE7 again. TheRetroGuy (talk) 19:04, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Really it would be nice to find the issue and fix it, although you are of course free to simply install a different browser, but doing so would make it very difficult for us to find the problem (I guess uninstalling IE8 may allow you to install IE7). I would really appreciate you bearing with us so we can find the issue. So are you seeing this message or this message when attempting to edit? - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 19:17, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

And, if you aren't seeing those error messages, perhaps taking a screenshot and showing it to us would make it easier to understand the problem, depending on whether or not there are any useful visual cues that are shown, of course. Also, uninstalling Internet Explorer is usually a fairly complex process since it's a part of the Windows operating system. I found some instructions here. I don't use Windows myself so I'm not familiar with exactly how difficult it might be. Gary King (talk · scripts) 19:23, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh dear, I've just jumped the gun a bit and uninstalled it, but you're right about it being a complicated process. I had to go into the Computer file and do all sorts of right clicking, searching menus, etc, etc. I came to the conclusion that there might be other unseen problems with it and I was better to go back to the tried and tested version.

I don't think uploading a screenshot of it would be of any help as it basically looked like the page should look, but without my being able to type anything into the text box. Neither of the abovementioned templates appeared either. With IE7 back in place it's all working fine again and I can edit everything. I've no idea why it doesn't work with IE8. The only thing I can think is that I downloaded a script error which was causing problems. Thanks for all the suggestions, anyway. TheRetroGuy (talk) 20:05, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I think also I'm going to start using another browser as there are issues with IE7 which occasionally cause problems. It crashes with YouTube videos, for example, and is far slower and more cumbersome with large pages of text. If you would like me to reinstall IE8 again then I'm happy to do that so we can try some other possible solutions. 8 seems to be a far better version of the browser and would be good if I could get everything to work, but for now I'll go with Google Chrome or Firefox. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 20:13, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Sure, IE7 is a bit outdated, and I would expect there to be issues with it. I would recommend you install IE8 or IE9, even if you are going to start using Chrome/FF as your default. If you do find you still have to issue with IE8 after reinstalling, I would love to help out. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:16, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

ok, I'll install it again tomorrow afternoon and come back here if the problem re-emerges. At least I now know the problem appears to be with IE8, but I'll have a think about what else it could be, and if for whatever reason we can't diagnose what it is, I am now familiar with how to install and uninstall updates. My system is about 18 months old so it shouldn't be a problem, but I'll see what happens. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 20:35, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I checked with IE8 using a clean, non-admin account and I just don't see the problem. I have IE 6 through 9 available for testing. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:54, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Just re-installed IE8 and I still have the problem. I'll upload a screenshot of a page I've just tried to edit, but I don't think it will give any clues as there appears to be no physical difference. TheRetroGuy (talk) 17:53, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Regretfully I am unable to convert screenshots into jpg images as I don't appear to have the software to do that. I've just tried pasting it into a word file and uploading that to commons, but Wikimedia doesn't seem to accept doc files. Oh well, looks like I'm going to have to return to IE7. I'll leave it installed for a couple of days in case anyone can help, but if not, then IE7 it'll have to be. TheRetroGuy (talk) 19:16, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

To save the screenshot as a jpeg, just open MS Paint (that's in Start > Programs > Accessories > Paint) and then paste it into there instead. It would be useful to see, because you'll almost definitely be getting one of the two MediaWiki messages I linked to above, or another MediaWiki message, and which of them you're getting may give us a clue as to if it's a client side or server side problem (although it is almost certainly client side) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 21:03, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I'll have a go at uploading it later today. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 10:54, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

ok, here it is. File:Wikipedia locked semi protected page screenshot.jpg. As you can see, there doesn't appear to be any physical difference. I just can't type into the text box. I hope it was ok to upload it to Wikipedia. TheRetroGuy (talk) 18:38, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

By the looks of it it does look like it's IE that's the problem and not Wikipedia. The text area doesn't look like it's using readonly, which is an HTML attribute that restricts you from typing anything into the box. Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:43, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Is there a way to fix it? Perhaps a setting I can change or something like that. TheRetroGuy (talk) 19:05, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Not that I know of. IE shouldn't be able to disable textareas, anyway, so the fact that it's doing this is baffling. Gary King (talk · scripts) 20:20, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it's possible the textbox is using readOnly, readonly doesn't actually change the appearance of the textarea. If you could go to a page where you can't edit, then press F12 (which will bring up a developer tools window), click somewhere in the developer tools window (on the code for example) to bring it into focus, then hit Ctrl+B, then click on the Wikipedia edit box, which will highlight a line of code in the developer tools, right click the highlighted piece of code, and select "Copy", and then paste that to us, it might give us a clue. While you're there, another thing to try is in the developer tools window, to select the "Disable" menu, and play around with disabling JavaScript and CSS, disabling these will make the page refresh, and look a bit weird, but you can try those and see if it lets you edit. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 21:47, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

New subsection

I hope you don't mind, but this section is getting a bit cumbersome to edit so I've created a new subsection. I'll go through the instructions suggested above, but post the codes, urls, etc that I get at each phase.

1. Clicked on Joanna Lumley (a currently protected page)
2. Pressing F12 brings up Developer Tools window. Two lines of text are available;

a) <!-- DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd" --> and

b) client-msie client-msie-8 client-trident client-win

Selecting "a" brings up nothing, but selecting "b" brings up two subheadings - Inline style, and within this overflow-x : hidden.

1. Now selecting CTRL+8
2. Opening Joanna Lumley page. url reads http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joanna_Lumley&action=edit&editintro=Template:BLP_editintro

I'll take a look at the options shortly. TheRetroGuy (talk) 15:53, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

ok, disabling CSS doesn't allow me to edit. Interestingly I don't seem to have an option to disable JavaScript, there's not a selection for it anyway. TheRetroGuy (talk) 16:03, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Believe it or not, now I can't edit anything in IE8. Just made one edit to my talk page in IE, tried to tweak it a little and couldn't, so had to go to Chrome. I've come to the conclusion that (for me at least) IE8 is good for browsing the web, but crap for editing Wikipedia. I am wondering actually if my screen magnifier is causing the problem. I have trouble reading very small print so use a magnifier to enlarge the screen, and it may be possible that elements of this are clashing with IE8. I know there were one or two issues with it in IE7, most notably that it kept adding tags to text I was editing (see here for example) so something else could be manifesting itself with 8. Having said this, however, it doesn't explain why I have been able to edit some pages and not others, unless semi-protection upsets something in the software. Can't seem why it would though. I might try editing without it, though I may have to ask someone to make the edit for me as the text is a bit too small for me. TheRetroGuy (talk) 12:50, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Problem identified

I took the magnifier off and, using Windows' own screen enlarger, I was able to successfully edit the Joanna Lumley page (see here and apologies for making what is, effectively, a test edit). This tells me there's definitely a clash with the software. I might contact the company who makes it to ask them if there's a fix. My last problem required me to change one or two of the settings, so it may be the same here. I'll also drop a note to the ACCESSABILITY project talk page to see if anyone else has experienced this. But I think from now on, I'll stick to Chrome or Firefox. Thanks for all the suggestions, btw. I'll let you know what happens. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 13:24, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Preview problem

I have clicked on "Show preview" many times and found that after the first time I could check each link and still go back and not have anything change. Today, several times I made a change based on what happened after I checked a link, and when I checked the next link and went back, my last revision was gone. Now I could click "Show preview" every time I make a change, but I used to not have to. And if I'm not in the habit of doing this, things get lost and I end up with reference problems and all sorts of other problems I didn't expect.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:10, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

This is part of your browser. You might've changed browsers, then, which changed this functionality for you. I don't think that technically, the page is ever supposed to remember what you typed in when you hit the "Back" button to return to the edit page, but your browser is nice enough to do that for you. Therefore, if it doesn't do that anymore, then something changed in your browser. Gary King (talk · scripts) 20:18, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I've generally made changes like this at libraries. Maybe I haven't done it at home. Anyway, I did a test with Heart West Midlands. What I said happened did happen. Without previewing a second time, I made two more changes, and as you can see, after I checked a link that was part of the first preview, the second set of changes didn't take until I redid them.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:21, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

My suggestion is to try a different, more modern browser. I'm using Firefox 4. My browser does what you want; I can type anything in an edit box, click on a link, then hit the Back button, and my changes are still there in the textbox. I do not have to hit Preview. Gary King (talk · scripts) 20:45, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't listen to people telling me change browsers, sorry. My explanation is on this site somewhere, but the short version is I'm comfortable with IE8 at home and don't have any desire to cause unnecessary headaches for myself.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:48, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Okay, that's understandable since you are already used to your browser. I don't think there is much else that can be done, though, since this is a browser feature and there is no way to turn it on or off. I suspect that IE8 should, as you have experienced, have this feature enabled since IE8 is a fairly recent browser, but I don't know why it stopped working for you. Also, my suggestion to try a different browser was just to test to see if it works in another browser, just so we could at least eliminate one variable. Gary King (talk · scripts) 20:53, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

You're a lot more understanding than those people on the Computing Reference Desk. I do have Firefox at one library and the option of Firefox at another. The first library sort of limits my computer time. Aside from the additional headaches that come from installing anything on my own computer, my biggest complaint about Firefox is that I like my activities to be at the bottom of the screen, and if they're not all there, I can't remember that if I click on one of the boxes the others will be at the top of the screen. I just hope this problem doesn't lead to my ending up with a bunch of links to disambiguation pages because I'm afraid to preview.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:57, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand your complaint about Firefox. When you say "activities", are you referring to the text box for edits, and what boxes are you referring to? Gary King (talk · scripts) 21:22, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

With IE8, it's a taskbar. With Firefox, it's a group of tabs. Although in limited circumstances, Firefox wll give me a group of activities on a taskbar too. It's just that some of those represent one tab, and to switch from one of those to one that is several tabs goes against what my mind is used to.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:30, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Go to Firefox -> Preferences -> Tabs and uncheck "Open new windows in a new tab instead". This is the wording in FF4, the option might be slightly different in earlier versions. To check a link, right-click on it and select "Open Link in New window", or similar wording in non-FF browsers. —UncleDouggie (talk) 02:27, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Vchimp, if clicking on links in Firefox opens the link in a new tab, then the suggestion above will indeed solve this problem for you. Internet Explorer and Firefox (and other browsers like Chrome and Safari) are ultimately, very identical in functionality on the surface, especially since Internet Explorer implemented tabs. Also, a few threads down, someone mentioned that they have a similar problem to the one you are having. One other idea that I have is that if you have any gadgets enabled that enhances the edit box, such as the wikEd gadget that adds lots of useful functionality to the text box to make it more similar to, say, Microsoft Word, then this will most likely disable the ability for your browser to remember what you had typed into the text box before you clicked on a link. Which is another reason why I suggest trying to test a new account first to see if that solves this problem. If it does, then the problem lies in your account, which helps us eliminate yet another variable and makes this an easier nut to crack. Gary King (talk · scripts) 16:23, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Seems like this happened when I tried Vector— just one of the reasons I reverted to Monobook. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:19, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps it's related to the advanced editing toolbar, then? I personally stick with Monobook, too, and I also remove all enhanced editing gadgets and whatnot (so, no more wikEd, advanced toolbar, and even no basic toolbar, too). No point in having buttons for bold, italics, etc. when I can type them out faster than clicking on them. Gary King (talk · scripts) 17:50, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

As I previously said, I'm not switching to Firefox at home. I don't need things to be complicated for me. I keep them simple.

As for gadgets to enhance the edit box, see the second sentence above.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 19:01, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Server issues

Lately, all the servers are having major problems:

• Replication lag is causing new users to be baffled by where their edit disappeared too, and this is on articles without pending changes. I found one user tonight who out of desperation was pasting the displayed preview into the edit box, completely destroying the article in the process, and was then surprised to get blocked. This isn't just an inconvenience; it's costing us new editors!
• The thumbnail server issues caused cascades of errors far beyond not displaying small icons. Many users posted here about gadgets being busted, etc. How many more wasted a bunch of time and gave up?
• We frequently find ourselves needing to purge a page, which is also much more than an inconvenience. While testing the new Twinkle tonight, I was getting edit conflicts trying to post to WP:UAA. I reverted to the code that had worked an hour earlier and I still couldn't post. Several hours later, I finally figured out that the edit conflicts where due to a bad server cache. The bright side of this is that the new Twinkle now automatically purges the page and reapplies the edit when this happens. However, users running the current Twinkle aren't as fortunate and we went four hours without a single post at WP:UAA. That never happens. Obviously, no one else figured out the problem either. How many other pages get messed up like this and cause totally bizarre errors?

I would gladly chip in another $5 on my donation to fix this mess. What can we do? —UncleDouggie (talk) 08:44, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I've noticed this a lot recently too. One thing I thought was a separate bug, turns out to be a help: the edit buttons go away if you get a lagged cached page. Hitting ctrl-F5 gets a fresh copy without having to use purge. I'm surprised about problems with twinkle since I'd expect it uses the API which never seems lagged. 75.57.242.120 (talk) 01:38, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

An HTML5 future?

I was surprised to read here that en:WP may switch from XHTML 1.0 Transitional to HTML5. Is this true, and if so, what sort of timescale is involved? -- Hoary (talk) 10:56, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

It's already happened for a day, but it's coming back for good as soon as we get the major utility scripts updated to use the API. Twinkle is 70% done. —UncleDouggie (talk) 12:04, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Not that I want to argue or anything, but I'm really interested: (i) Since the more widely used browsers (and I don't just mean IE) do a crap job of supporting HTML5-specific parts of HTML5, why bother any time soon? (ii) Why HTML5 rather than XHTML5? (iii) Will the preprocessor be tweaked so that (just as one tiny matter) the squillions of examples of laboriously typed "<br />" are converted to "<br>", or will some bot convert these within the text of articles? (iv) What's going to happen to FONT, CENTER and those other 20th-century relics so loved by so many en:WP editors -- automated conversion to CSS, or de facto HTML 3.2? -- Hoary (talk) 13:31, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Your reference is only regarding support of assistive technology using the new HTML5 features, the basic functions work fine. When it was active, we didn't see any formatting issues with articles. The problem was that all of our screen-scraping scripts broke. —UncleDouggie (talk) 14:33, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

It's not XHTML5, but it does happen to be well-formed XML. At least it is if $wgWellFormedXml = true, which I assume it will be. The switch to HTML5 won't automatically add a bunch of tags that aren't included in the XHTML spec. That is an ongoing process that is separate from the HTML5 switch, and appropriate fallbacks will be in place for browsers that don't support them Reach Out to the Truth 20:05, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

There are shims to add HTML5 to IE; one open source version is the MIT html5shiv. I would not be surprised if this isn't already being looked at. http://caniuse.com/ may be a better list of support for HTML5, CSS3 and the like. Yes, a lot of tags will be deprecated or changed, but the browsers will still support them. I don't believe HTML Tidy supports HTML5, so I am not sure where that is going; Tidy is a pain sometimes and there is some markup that is tweaked around it. Currently, there are issues when <br> is used in the MediaWiki namespace— when we switch to HTML5, <br> may be a problem. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:44, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

(i) If we wait until the current versions of browsers have full support, then when they do we'll be behind the curve. We've actually been using some HTML5 features for a while; the video player will insert a <video> tag with JS if you're using a supported browser.

(ii) As far as I'm aware, there are no significant benefits to using XHTML5 instead of HTML5 (and plenty of drawbacks).

(iii) <br /> is still allowed in HTML5.

(iv) Those are already deprecated in XHTML 1.0. As long as browsers continue to support them we'll probably do nothing. Mr.Z-man 21:55, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Well well. (iii) I don't see anything explicit at w3.org about slashes to close void (?) tags in HTML5, but they certainly do appear in the examples. (Oddly, no mention of them in this page about differences, either.) And (iv) doesn't it matter that the status of a tag drops from deprecated to unrecognized? (My intention isn't snark; it's just a question, really.) -- Hoary (talk) 06:53, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Testing IE with and without the MIT shiv using http://html5test.com/

Browser	Native	With shiv
IE10 preview	130+5	240+9
IE9	130+5	240+9
IE8	32+0	240+9
IE7	17+0	240+9
IE6	17+0	240+9

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:57, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for tipping me off to caniuse.com, an worthwhile site indeed.

I'm puzzled, though, in at least two ways.

1. It seems that the "big" browsers don't yet do well at supporting (the interesting bits of) HTML5. No doubt the forthcoming versions will do much better, but until this happens I can't see the point of HTML5 for this site. (Unless perhaps it's an evil conspiracy to help push the big browsers toward better support of HTML5.)
2. If I understand XHTML5 at all, I see a good reason not to use it: it has to be dished up as "application/xhtml+xml", and fairly recent (current?) versions of (the curiously popular) IE still offer to save this to file. (And the advantages of XHTML 1.0 over HTML 4.01 here have always been illusory.) Now, perhaps I understand even less of XML than I realize, but when ROttT says above that (if certain conditions are met) "[HTML5 is] not XHTML5, but it does happen to be well-formed XML", erm ... does XML allow meta tags that aren't explicitly closed (etc)?

Oh dear, the browser I happen to be using now only "scores 142 and 4 bonus points" at html5test.com/ -- perhaps I should be looking for a shim.

(Maybe my quest for knowledge would be better placed at a "Reference desk" than here; if so, sorry.) -- Hoary (talk) 02:59, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I have learned quite a bit from our discussions. Perhaps we should start WP:HTML5 to keep track of stuff. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:05, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I'd read that with interest. If somebody would care to start it, I'd be grateful. -- Hoary (talk) 13:19, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

People have been working on adding support for HTML5 in the software for a while now (probably at least a year). Since it doesn't cause any regressions, except breaking screen-scraping tools that rely on pages being valid XML (which have been discouraged for years), there's no real reason not to switch either. Just because browsers don't have full support doesn't mean we can't use the features that they do support. As for "the big browsers don't support it", Firefox 4 scores 240+9 on that test, the current version of Google Chrome scores 288+13. It's basically just IE that's behind the curve in support. Mr.Z-man 04:46, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Roll on IceWeasel 4 then. (My 142+4 scorer is version 3.5.16.)

This is all most interesting but it's also a little irritating for me as I now feel compelled to bone up on HTML5. A certain online book emporium has lots of books with HTML5 in their titles, but I suppose that many are either dross or old books with new paragraphs hurriedly inserted. Lawson and Sharp, Introducing HTML5 looks more promising than most (and actually exists); any recommendations for anything better?

(What an odd search engine that site has. Ask it for books on HTML5, newest first, and one of the items near the borderline between not published yet and published yet is "5-FU was well tolerated for pediatric warts.(SKIN DISORDERS): An article from: Family Practice News [HTML] [Digital]", not quite what I'd had in mind.) -- Hoary (talk) 06:53, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I found Dive Into HTML5 to be a good introduction, and the online version has the virtue of being free (gratis & libre). the wub "?!" 12:10, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

That's my kind of product, Wub. Thank you. -- Hoary (talk) 13:19, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Quite informative. HTML5 Peeks, Pokes and Pointers is formatted in an very familiar and hilarious way. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:06, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

See also the coverage in the Signpost some weeks ago: "HTML5 adopted but soon reverted". Regards, HaeB (talk) 19:37, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Prevent hyperlinking of RFC 1234

If I enter the text RFC 1234, it will be hyperlinked to that RFC. However, when referring to the same RFC multiple times (e.g., in the same paragraph), the hyperlinking become distracting. How can I suppress this hyperlinking? I assume that there is some template I can use to escape, but don't know which. Thanks.—C45207 | Talk 23:11, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

<nowiki>RFC 1234</nowiki> should do it. Feezo (send a signal | watch the sky) 23:18, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Works for me. Thanks!—C45207 | Talk 23:26, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

You can even use the template {{nowiki}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 00:49, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Reflists

I certainly don't have the power to do this, but is there any way that a bot can be created that would add a {{reflist}} to all pages? I know it isn't a major issue, but there are times when I start citing biographies and I need to make three or four edits in a row because I forget to add the template.Ryan Vesey (talk) 23:21, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Seems like this would produce a lot of "unnecessary" edits, because a large number of articles have no references at all, and some have been that way for years. Plus, a {{reflist}} template would also require a ==References== section, which would be empty if there are no references. And it is generally preferred to have the section created only when there is at least one reference. Gary King (talk · scripts) 23:37, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

See Category:Pages_with_missing_references_list: "An AWB task, generally run by User:SmackBot fixes many of the errors. It is run usually several times a day, but may occasionally go a couple of days without being run. See Category talk:Pages with missing references list/fix log for the last run time. See Help:Cite errors for information on other footnote errors." Ocaasi ^c 23:39, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

In addition to Gary King's input, there is also the matter of the broad auto-implementation of {{reflist}} effectively providing a default reference format, and there are at least two formats in use right now, the {{reflist}} format and the <References/> format. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:55, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Which give the same output by default since we updated the font size for <references />. {{Reflist}} has some other features such as columns and cile label styles.

Disabled special pages

I propose that the technical disabled special pages should be marked as such by their respective interface pages, such as for Special:DeadendPages, change the content on MediaWiki:Deadendpages from "Dead-end pages" to "Dead-end pages (disabled)" or something similar. Please note that my proposal includes other disabled special pages as well.  Hazard-SJ  ±  23:25, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

You mean you want more than the line that says, "Updates for this page are currently disabled. Data here will not presently be refreshed." And the timestamp at the very top that is quite dated? ;-) Killiondude (talk) 07:02, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Another option is to mark them with global JavaScript like I did here: ru:Special:SpecialPages (some links should be striked out like this). — AlexSm 21:06, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, yes, Killiondude. I want to know if it is disabled before I click the link on Special:SpecialPages to go to the page.  Hazard-SJ  ±  19:32, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

A good idea. I already did this at Wikibooks without the need for a discussion. Adrignola (talk) 20:49, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I wrote a patch for this very thing (it italicises them by default, but that can be changed), and it got merged in with the codebase. Should be live in the next couple of months, if everything keeps to timetable. - Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 21:37, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Do you know which revision number it was committed in? Peachey88 ^{(T · C)} 04:40, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Sure: rev:83554. - Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 09:28, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I was actually referring to Wikibooks, Adrignola.  Hazard-SJ  ±  00:08, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Technical issues about the MONGOLIAN VOWEL SEPARATOR (U+180E)

The MediaWiki system missubstitude the MVS to a general space, consequently Mongolian texts cannot be rendered correctly. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 12:50, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

See this: ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ ᠬᠡᠯᠡᠨ᠎ᠦ. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 12:52, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Can't be MediaWiki, since it never changes numeric entities (compare: 豈 vs. 豈). I suspect it's either the browser, or Uniscribe. -- Prince Kassad (talk) 20:47, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! It's a bug of my Opera Browser. ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 11:46, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

As I suspected. Opera is quite quirky when it comes to spaces: it either displays squares, or outright replaces them with the normal space. I have no idea why it does this. -- Prince Kassad (talk) 11:58, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

• But there's another phenomenon: Microsoft Windows will link to Microsoft Windows, why? ––虞海 (Yú Hǎi) ✍ 11:46, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Now that is MediaWiki's doing. The various Unicode spaces all have a compatibility mapping to the normal space. MediaWiki picks that up and replaces those spaces when they occur in links. -- Prince Kassad (talk) 11:58, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Request: allow edit summaries in new section creation

I'd like to request that Wikipedia allow the addition of an edit summary when you create a new section. Currently the only thing allowed is the "Subject/headline" line, but the title of a section and what you want to write as an edit summary are not necessarily the same, especially if you want more detail. (This originally came up at VP-Proposals, but directed to bug notices said to post it to VP-technical. ) 65.93.12.101 (talk) 20:22, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree, edit summaries when you click the new section link are strangely missing, it is a pain to have to create a new section manually if you want to leave a custom summary. Monty₈₄₅ 20:26, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Maybe you already know this but if you edit the whole page or an existing section then you can add the section heading manually (see Help:Section), and write any edit summary. I have never found reason to do this instead of the automatic edit summary. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:31, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

That doesn't help on high traffic pages, which inevitably result in edit conflicts, and being unable to save anything. It also causes problems on very large pages, with save failures, and taking forever to save something, or some people not being able to edit it because its too large. 65.93.12.101 (talk) 18:25, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

This would be useful. It's currently inconsistent and misses leaving specific rationales. Ocaasi ^c 21:56, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Certain notice-boards and administrative tracking pages have a standard template to use to add a new item. That's a catch-22 if we are trying to enforce edit-summaries, since adding a title to the new section breaks the tracking page (vs explicit instructions not to add one). It's not so much a problem not to have one here (not much more I want to say when creating a new XFD entry) but the interface gadgets that whine if I don't have one create an annoying hoop to jump through. So it would be useful to separate the two features a bit. DMacks (talk) 22:11, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Can someone give me an example of when this is needed? I've been editing for years and I can't think of a point when I've needed this. - Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 22:15, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't find it useful myself; When a new section is created, isn't the header usually a part of the summary? Shouldn't the header be a summary of the section's content? Additionally, the summary links directly to it, and also states that it is a new section.  Hazard-SJ  ±  01:11, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I think this is a 'nice to have', though I doubt I would use it. What I typically do is begin editing the section before where I want to add, add the new section, then compose an appropriate edit summary. For High Traffic pages, open for editing the section above where you want the new section be, add the new section header (no additional text needed), save, then beginning editing the new section through the new section level edit link. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:49, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, the API allows summaries for sections. You could make a script that replaces the "save" button with an AJAX API call and add a summarybox, but, in my opinion, summaries for new sections are useless. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 04:08, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Infobox alignment problem at Bonaventure

In Bonaventure in both Firefox and IE, the philosopher infobox and the mysticism template are showing up in horizontal alignment rather than in vertical. What do I need to do to fix this issue? Is the problem in one of the templates? Thanks, Aristophanes68 (talk) 17:23, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Update: It must be the {{Christian mysticism}} template, because I tried adding it to another page and it did the same thing--it doesn't align to the right margin. Help? Aristophanes68 (talk) 17:29, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Okay, even more confused now. I thought it was the "float:right" code, but when I removed that, it simply shifted the box to the left side of the page, which is not at all what I wanted. Help? Aristophanes68 (talk) 21:05, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Fixed by adding clear:right; to the template. — Edokter (talk) — 21:38, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!!! Aristophanes68 (talk) 21:45, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Error in parsing set of single quotes

... but ''Portia'''s much smaller eyes are 10 times more acute. The human eye is only 5 times as acute as ''Portia'''s. At at a distance of 200 mm, ''Portia'' may be able to be discriminate between objects spaced only than 0.12 mm apart. makes a mess, like this, up to the end of the para: ... but Portias much smaller eyes are 10 times more acute. The human eye is only 5 times as acute as Portias. At at a distance of 200 mm, Portia may be able to be discriminate between objects spaced only than 0.12 mm apart. WP's software should close ''Portia'' and then interpret the final apostrophe as a possesive. --Philcha (talk) 18:14, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

You need to use {{'}} for the last apostrophe. ''Portia''{{'}}s displays as Portia's. Goodvac (talk) 19:16, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Counting pages in a category

Is there an easy way (without using a bot) to count the number of pages in a category? (including the pages that come under its subcategories). I tried using the variable PAGESINCATEGORY but it doesnt count within subcategories. --Sodabottle (talk) 19:05, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Search quirk -- apostrophe the culprit?

I have tried searching for several variants of the name "David J. O'Brien" , which appears (and has appeared for some weeks) in Sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Philadelphia#Grand jury and aftermath in 2011-- with and without the apostrophe, with and without a space between the "o" and the "b". None yielded any result in Wikipedia. I tried a search for the full name without quotation marks and got 3000+ results which on the surface looked good ("O'Brien"s, "David"s, "J. O'Brien"s); I didn't try to search all 3000 to see if the Sexual abuse article was amongst them. I expect it was. But that doesn't answer the first problem. I did also search for "Terence McKiernan" and found the one appearance in Wikipedia to date of which I know -- in the Sexual abuse article, same section; just fine.

When I searched Village pump here for "search o'b" I got 4 responses, some of which omitted the apostrophe; none seemed to address my concern.

I'm wondering if maybe the apostrophe messes with the search function. Haven't turned up any other clues. Think it's a small but bothersome problem.

Further probe: I've just tried "Henry O'Brien" whom I saw has an article. Fine. Got the article. Then I saw he had an alternate name listed as "Henry F. O'Brien" in his named article Henry O'Brien. So I searched for that full name with middle initial "Henry F. O'Brien" and got one result -- but it was 11th New York Infantry; the named article Henry O'Brien didn't show up as a result. The middle initial plus the apostrophe is a problem? Sometimes? I don't know. It's late, I'm a little punchy. Would be interested if I'm missing something. I'd like David J. to show up in a search result.

Thanks. Swliv (talk) 07:02, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Try e.g., http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=%22David+J.+O%27Brien%22+site:wikipedia.org or see Template:Google custom#How to search entire sites. 12:10, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, the Google option does work. I was addressing Wiki's own search capacity. Thanks for the Google ref. Swliv (talk) 18:33, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Why does Special:AncientPages not work?

Any ideas why this page doesn't update anymore? Looks like it went through a name change and now something is borked. Anyone know how to fix it? --NickPenguin_(contribs) 15:02, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps best asked at Wikipedia talk:Special:AncientPages. — Edokter (talk) — 17:52, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Probably because dealing with the relevant database query takes up too many system resources. Graham87 03:52, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Problem with external links in citations

The icon indicating externals links overlaps with the link title in some citations. I use the latest version of Chrome, and Mac OS 10.6.6. See the screenshot below for two examples. Randomblue (talk) 11:55, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

What article is this from? Do you see the same problem if you are logged out? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:28, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Is the specific pattern "when it follows italicized text"? DMacks (talk) 16:55, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Looks fine for me. I assume it happens when the icon is at the end of the line, which almost never happens to any references for me, probably because my screen is wide so columns are also wider and it's less likely that the icon is at the end of a line. Gary King (talk · scripts) 17:21, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Checked Logarithm with Chrome and it looks fine. Try WP:BYPASS or WP:PURGE. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:34, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Zooming math

Is there any way to configure the resolution of tevc-rendered PNG from LaTeX codes? I really don't like the default size, but enlarging it results in ugly aliasing. Currently I'm using User:Nageh/mathJax, but it is too slow to load.--Netheril96 (talk) 16:06, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid there's no option for this at the moment; all renderings are at the same resolution. --brion (talk) 16:46, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

I suspect that it would be possible to change the size of mathJax rendering, but it might be non trivial to achieve. MathJax does allow a fair bit of control on how things are rendered. Its nice to see this extension which is a good step towards good mathematics rendering.--Salix (talk): 21:44, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Survery when trying to get to the wiki

I typed into my browser en.wikipedia.org and instead it asked me to do a survey. Fine but there was no way to opt out. When I finished the survey it told me I won a TV or other electronics and asked for my information. Thought I'd let you all know. 140.247.141.150 (talk) 21:13, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Your computer probably has a virus/spyware/adware/malare. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 21:14, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually I'd guess it was a typo in the URL. One time I went to en.wikpedia.org (or something similar) and got this strange website that was close to, but not quite, WP. There's a specific term for that practice but I forget what it is. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 22:10, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Ha, I did a quick test and discovered that en.wikipedi.org/ and en.wikiped.org redirect to a survey that proclaims, "You've been selected to take part in our anonymous survey. Complete this 30 second questionnaire, and to say 'thank you', we'll offer you access to exclusive offers." This is probably what the OP found. Goodvac (talk) 22:16, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Our article about it is typosquatting (also called URL hijacking). PrimeHunter (talk) 22:47, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Could I get an admin to rollback edits to a template

I don't know where to ask this, but could I get an admin to rollback edits to {{Infobox character}}? See here. Thank you! 198.102.153.2 (talk) 23:07, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Special:BlockMe

What does this do and why is it disabled?Jasper Deng (talk) 23:36, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

This is the closest I could find to an explanation, there's no documentation for it on mediawiki either that I can find--Jac16888^Talk 23:49, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Updated url for the link I gave there: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-April/012058.html. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:26, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Need a style with display:none

Further to this archived VPT thread, I've climbed a short distance up the learning curve and have prepared a new edit notice for the Help desk. When you look at User:John of Reading/Sandbox, you should see a warning about not posting your email address. But thanks to some settings in User:John of Reading/vector.css, I see some tips aimed at the Help desk volunteers.

BUT I've had to find a pre-defined style that has "display:none", and am currently re-using "catlinks-allhidden".

• Am I on the right lines?
• Is it acceptable to re-use "catlinks-allhidden" for this purpose?
• If not, how would I go about adding a style "helpdesk-editnotice-hidden" to shared.css?

Thanks -- John of Reading (talk) 12:23, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

You could have a new style added to Mediawiki:Common.css, provided consensus exists and it works fine. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 15:08, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll see how many Help desk volunteers respond at Wikipedia talk:Help desk#Edit notice - Testing needed. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:31, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Firefox 4 dots in lower right corner of edit window

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.

---

Does anyone know what this means? In the lower right corner when I edit, it looks like Braille. It's not in the area where I would expect to be able to type. On IE8 there is a down arrow in what seems to be the same place.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:44, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. It's a standard resizing handle. The cursor change when you mouse over it is supposed to be a clue. Nothing to do with Wikipedia. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 18:50, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

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.

How can I get a report of a specific project articles with incomplete B-class checklists?

I am pretty sure it is doable... but I forgot how. Concerns WP:POLAND. Thanks :) --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 23:26, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Bump to prevent archiving, question still open. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 22:30, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Still waiting. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 17:17, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

You may want to ask this at Template talk:WPBannerMeta. Amalthea 18:25, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I will. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:31, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

ceyockey — Maybe the page http://toolserver.org/~enwp10/bin/list2.fcgi?run=yes&projecta=Poland-related&importance=Top-Class&quality=Unassessed-Class could be of some help? --02:29, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Would be perfect if it had the added option of listing incomplete B-class checklists... --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:31, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Articles for Creation

When these are denied acceptance, the automated people entry is Declining submission: subject appears to be a non-notable person. Can this (edit) be replaced with a more neutral & less off-putting Declining submission: subject's notability has not been established? The stress of article creation and the (possibly unforeseen) AfD process do not require adding stress from an automated template in between. Dru of Id (talk) 23:54, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

That message appears to be hardwired in some afchelper scripts in various people's userspace. I agree with the sentiment of changing it but the only approach I can suggest is leave usertalk messages for the script maintainers. 75.57.242.120 (talk) 01:34, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Is that something I can do, and if so, where? Dru of Id (talk) 01:58, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

The script is located at User:Henrik/js/afc-helper.js (documentation). You can ask the owner on his/her talk page about modifying the wording. Goodvac (talk) 19:26, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I've posted there and await a response. Dru of Id (talk) 22:19, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

...But the user last edited on 23 Mar, so they may be on Wikibreak. Dru of Id (talk) 23:21, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Any administrator could change the script too. I guess it would be okay in this case, since the change is relatively minor and the Henrik seems to be away. Then there's also the option of contacting him via e-mail. User<Svick>.Talk(); 22:51, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Created redirects not functioning as redirects

While browsing new pages, I came across the new pages of Colombia678 (talk · contribs), who is making redirects from a company's web page to the article about the company. Here are a few. However, for whatever reason, despite the code on the page being perfectly sound, they aren't functioning as hard redirects and are rather acting as "soft" redirects to their respective articles. It's unclear whether it's a problem with my browser (Chrome on OS X) or if it's a server issue, but I figured I'd bring it up here to get it to the attention of people who actually might be able to figure it out. elektrikSHOOS 20:00, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

The pattern I see in the redirects you link to is that the title of the redirects end with ".com". I suspect the MediaWiki software does not accept redirects with article names that end with domains. HeyMid (contribs) 20:04, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

That's what I was suspecting, but I wasn't sure. elektrikSHOOS 20:30, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

No, that's not the solution. I created exactly the same redirect from scratch: It works, and it is one byte shorter. The extra byte is invisible. I am currently trying to find out what it is. Hans Adler 20:37, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Apparently, afaict, one of them is #REDIRECT [[PC Connection]], the other is #REDIRECT [[PC Connection]] I doubt you'll spot that in the wikicode though ;) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:48, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I've repaired the four redirects in question by re-writing them entirely. I'm unable to find out which symbols were not correct, nor does the MediaWiki diff software do. HeyMid (contribs) 20:56, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

OK, here is how it appears in the source code of the edit page: #REDIRECT&nbsp;[[PC Connection]]. I guess Colombia678 is an Apple user who is used to using the key combination for non-breaking spaces and who is typing in the redirect code manually. Hans Adler 21:05, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Isn't it simply more likely that Colombia678 is overriding Wikipedia's encoding (UTF8). You can test this for yourself, depending on the browser, I'm pretty sure you can change the encoding in Chrome/IE/FF, but only know bothered to look into how to do it in Chrome. So goto edit the broken version, select the Wrench > Tools > Encoding > the new encoding. Windows-1252 and ISO-8859-1 encoding both seem to let the character show up. I suppose it's simply not defined in UTF8, so it doesn't appear (I think the value of the character is c2). - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 21:14, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, Kingpin13, you're correct in what you're saying – I tried using both Windows-1252 and ISO-8859-1 encoding and it showed up that weird character after the "T" in "#REDIRECT". I'm wondering how the user got that weird character after the T, though. HeyMid (contribs) 21:39, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Like Hans Adler said, that character is a non-breaking space, the UTF-8 (the encoding Wikipedia uses) encoding of that character is two bytes (0xC2, 0xA0). If you switch the encoding in your browser to Windows-1252 or ISO 8859-1, those same two bytes get interpreted as two characters: Â and a non-breaking space. Makes sense? User<Svick>.Talk(); 23:29, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Truncations

Several articles fail to show completely. For example Lie theory. On other articles I clicked to edit, confirmed that all text was still in place, put "refresh" in summary, and clicked "save". The articles were restored. Edit history gave some clue that changes had been made to the page, but the characters resulting in the truncation were not visible.Rgdboer (talk) 20:43, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I seem to have fixed Lie theory by purging it, but I confirm that it was missing the TOC and everything after that. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:55, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

These articles have the same truncations: Formulario mathematico, Frobenius theorem (real division algebras), Italian school of algebraic geometry, Quaternion Society, The Principles of Mathematics, Ultraparallel theorem, Vorlesungen über Zahlentheorie. Is there a vandal targeting mathematics books and associations?Rgdboer (talk) 23:50, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't appear to be vandalism since the first article you mentioned contains no templates at all, and has not been edited in over a month. Gary King (talk · scripts) 07:58, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The problem has gone away today. Thank you to the fixer, whoever.Rgdboer (talk) 18:43, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Internal and external links to WP talk page sections not working properly

Something I've noticed a few times over the last few weeks. When I link to a talk page section, the link does not go to the top of the section, but to halfway through it, or close to the end. For example, I just tried linking to Talk:Roger_Scruton#RfC:_Neutrality_check_at_Roger_Scruton, and the link directs you to almost the end of the section. It's the same when linking to it as an external link. I've been noticing this a lot when trying to link to AN/I discussions too; for example, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive597#Noleander_redux doesn't take you to the top of the section. Any ideas how to fix this? SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 23:18, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I have the same issue. I always guessed it was the JS/CSS loading after everything else per MW 1.17 changes, and the stuff that gets loaded is pushing the page down. However, I don't know for sure. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 01:53, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't happen with articles, though, e.g. Deir_Yassin_massacre#Battle_plans goes to the top of that section. Any idea why there would be a difference between articles and other pages? SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 02:05, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm guessing because the collapse boxes are rendered without the collapse js (so they're fully opened), you get sent to the anchor, and then the js jumps in and the box collapses, taking you up the page. That's what I experience on this page (VPT), at least. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:57, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Do what I do. Use a script to reload anchors so that after the page and the scripts are done loading, the browser will jump you to the correct section. Gary King (talk · scripts) 07:56, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

View History - Page View Statistics

The page view statistics under "View History" link for article Automatic Dependtne Surveillance - Broadcast stopped tracking on April 8. Why did the tracking stop and how is that feature restored?

Using Internet Explorer 8

http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Automatic_dependent_surveillance-broadcast

AuburnADS-B (talk) 12:08, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

It looks like the Page View Statistics figures are currently broken for all pages. Several people have already notified the person who maintains the tool. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:23, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Please see Here for continuing thread about the stats history. -Maile66 (talk) 17:27, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Edit conflicts not getting detected

Another user (User:Bms4880) and I just now duplicated efforts at Scott County, Tennessee and Talk:Scott County, Tennessee. Apparently due to server lag, our edits ([4] and [5], then [6] and [7]) did not get detected as edit conflicts. In this case we were trying to do the same thing, so it doesn't much matter, other than making for a silly-looking talk page. However, in other situations, failure to detect an edit conflict could create a large mess. --Orlady (talk) 17:48, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

You both used the "+" button to create a new section, and you've ended up with two new sections. I don't think you can get an edit conflict when adding a new section, since the system "knows" that you intend your text to be appended to whatever is there already. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:59, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

You were not supposed to get edit conflicts in these situations. Your article edits didn't make different changes to the same paragraph (you both removed the same paragraph but that's OK), so the edits were automatically merged per Help:Edit conflict#Prevention. It appears the other editor didn't actually use the new section link on the talk page (there was no "new section" in the edit summary [8] such as for you [9]). But the other editor saved first and you used the new section link so your edit cannot edit conflict with others. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:37, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Category help

This requires some background so bear with me please. We've recently changed the CSD process to get rid of {{hangon}} through a direct link in the speedy deletion templates to contest the tagging. As part of this, {{db-meta}} now includes an ifexist parser that recognizes if there is or isn't a talk page on the tagged article. If no talk page it displays {{hang on/notice2}}; if there is a talk page it displays {{hang on/notice3}}. Because hangons are gone, its included Category Contested candidates for speedy deletion is also gone. To replace this category function at least a little bit, I created Category:Speedy deletion candidates with talk pages and placed that in {{hang on/notice2}}. I thought (obviously wrongly in hindsight) that the category would only include pages where the ifexist parser was invoked but I guess that doesn't make sense. The category is displaying all of the speedy deletion templates and all pages tagged for speedy deletion. So, the question is, is there a way to have the category only include pages where the parser is invoked (or some other fix)?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:02, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

The category isn't displaying all candidates. As I write this, World Literacy Foundation is tagged for speedy, has no talk page, and is not in Category:Speedy deletion candidates with talk pages. There may be a delay - why should the software know to re-categorise the article page just because the talk page was created?

But Wikipedia:Manual of Style (article message boxes) is in the category, and shouldn't be. It tries to show an example of the template using {{db-a3|nocat=true}}, but the "nocat" parameter doesn't get passed down to {{db-meta}} or {{hang on/notice3}}. Once that's fixed, it may become clearer how to juggle the includeonly/noinclude stuff so that the templates don't categorise themselves either.

Perhaps the simplest solution would be to disable Category:Speedy deletion candidates with talk pages and see if anyone complains! -- John of Reading (talk) 08:08, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for replying John. I've gotten myself into a lot of technical messes the past week with this process chnage but with users like you around I've managed. I found a solution. I added a namespace detect. The category now is added only when mainspace articles are tagged. They really are the only pages likely to have a high preponderance of talk pages that were created to protest speedy deletion.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:10, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

I'd also suggest we add support for and pass the |nocat= parameter through to {{db-meta}} and {{hang on/notice3}}, just in case. It wouldn't be too difficult, I don't think. Cheers. lifebaka++ 02:32, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

This is curious

OK. Now I'm getting scared. Check this out. Here is a page on the Russian Wikipedia: [10]. OK, now if you scroll down to the Gallery section, there are images specified. For the the first one, the file doesn't exist, so just the file name shows - it is File:Nikonov 1989.jpg. OK, fine.

But if you run it through Google translator, you get this: [11]. And the image appears. But when you click on it... the file does not exist. It never existed. It doesn't exist on the Russian Wikipedia, it doesn't exist on Commons. It doesn't exist under any iteration of the name, if you search using part of the name, if you use Файл rather than file, if you translate the file name into Russian, or anything. It doesn't exist.

But I can see it. I can see it, but I can't access it. This situation has persisted for a couple days, so it's not some ephemeral phenomenon.

The phone calls are coming from inside the house...

Weird. I wonder if there is an explanation that doesn't involve... supernatural causes. Herostratus (talk) 06:13, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

The file was deleted a few days ago (log). —Emufarmers^(T/C) 06:54, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

• A copy of the image had probably been hanging about in a buffer for a while after the image was deleted. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 15:05, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Ah, OK, thank you. I had thought that a search on a deleted file would show the file as not existing but having been deleted. But this is not so, on Commons anyway. Herostratus (talk) 02:27, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Deleted template still in use

A TfD for {{ref harvard}} was closed with the summary "Delete after replacement, with no prejudice against creation of a redirect", but it is still used. Can someone replace the remaining uses or give the job to a bot or something? I would redirect to {{Harvard citation}} like the TfD suggests but I'm not sure if that would fix the extant uses as the syntax employed may be different. Thanks, Skomorokh 13:33, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

The only uses are on discussion pages— we generally don't worry about those. If it is really bothersome, I can null them out, but nothing is broken. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:56, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Yep, discussion pages and userspace drafts (most of which are probably now stale and should be blanked or deleted). I looked at the format of the old template and can confirm that a redirect to {{Harvard citation}} definitely won't work. --RL0919 (talk) 14:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

This simply isn't true; please check the link posted. I understand if it's a low priority, but finding documentation broken by TfD without care is quite frustrating. Skomorokh 15:26, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

You will have to give a specific example. It is not used in any articles, the only Wikipedia page is the historical Wikipedia:Footnote3 where it shows as a redlink, as does the deleted {{fn}}. I checked a few talk pages but don't see anything broken. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:46, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Traffic states

[12] seems to haev stopped counting after 7 April. Any one know whats going on or how to correct it?Lihaas (talk) 14:31, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

As mentioned just up from here, the Page View Statistics figures are currently broken for all pages. Several people have already notified the person who maintains the tool. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:37, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Change to "input a non-English character" in edit mode

• For a long time, clicking on a character in the characters menu below the edit box made the character appear in the edit box. Now, every character must be copy-and-pasted manually. Please restore the old version. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 14:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

It works as before for me. If your character box is show in all black font and all the symbols in one huge box, the javascript for it probably isn't loading. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 22:11, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Footnotes in table

I created this table [13] based on a Save As from another article. The way the ref labels work seems strange, and the only way they format properly is to include the text that comes before it e.g. for footnote C I have had to include the text "2?" in the ref label. Is this the recommended way for doing footnotes in tables. I do quite like the way it looks visually though, and feel having Notes as a 3rd-level heading works better than having it as a 2nd-level heading. Any thoughts would be welcomed. Eldumpo (talk) 15:19, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

The refs aren't working in that table because of the notes have no names. I personally prefer using ref groups. They follow the same visual style as regular references. Gary King (talk · scripts) 19:39, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

And you can even use alpha labels now: see WP:CITELABEL. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:51, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Can't connect to wikidashboard

When I try to check user "edit history stats" by selecting that item on the left of the page, I get a error from Firefox "unable to connect." I'm trying to connect to http://wikidashboard.parc.com/wiki/User:Student7 (for my own, but the same happens to all other users, as well.)

I had just assumed it was a transient problem that was being worked on, but I see that no one else is reporting it. So I guess that it is unique to me for some reason. Any ideas? Thanks. Student7 (talk) 12:38, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it is unique to you. I just tried the link to the tool's main page and it does not seem to be working. Simply south...... trying to improve for 5 years 13:00, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

It's been down for a week or two. Does anyone know who maintains the site? I remember that they are a member here with a few thousand edits, but don't remember the username. Maybe someone should get in contact with them. Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:09, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Issue with blocking?

In Chrome and IE I'm getting this error when trying block: A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: (SQL query hidden) from within function "Block::purgeExpired". Database returned error "1205: Lock wait timeout exceeded; try restarting transaction (10.0.6.46)". RxS (talk) 05:01, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Seems fine now, shrug. RxS (talk) 05:11, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Invisible edit

Working on Sivaramakrishna Chandrasekhar the "Preview" failed, and when "Save" was clicked, the edit History showed the change had been made. Yet no change was visible on the page:

this edit

Very strange behavior.Rgdboer (talk) 22:56, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I see your edit. I don't know why preview would fail but lately I have sometimes had to bypass my cache after my own edit to see it. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:57, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

The edit is still not visible. Another try today also failed. Refresh doesn't help. Editing still working on other articles.Rgdboer (talk) 19:07, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

The problem has vanished. Thank you to someone that fixed the glitch. Full visiblility now.Rgdboer (talk) 19:19, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

It wasn't me but if one of the servers hasn't updated after an edit then a purge of the page may fix it. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:45, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

That happens to me all the time. It is more entertaining when you create a page and nothing is there for a few minutes even though your contibutions might say otherwise. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:52, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Editing sections with anchors

An extremely minor issue but I might as well mention it. When you edit a section, normally after you hit save your browser automatically takes you back to that section via an anchor. But when the section title has an {{anchor}} tag in it, this is disrupted. Should I report this as a bug to MediaWiki? Or maybe it is more an issue with Template:Anchor? –CWenger (^ • @) 02:29, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

It's not just the {{anchor}} template. It happens whenever any template is used in a section's title. So it's a MediaWiki thing. The anchor generated after you edit a section just takes the text from the title without parsing the template, but any template won't simply output their own name, so the anchor will never work. Gary King (talk · scripts) 03:51, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

This is T7019. User<Svick>.Talk(); 21:42, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

A solution might be to place the anchor just below the section title. I do believe its uses are hidden on the page proper. Killiondude (talk) 21:46, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Such anchors have the disadvantage that thy act differently than when they are placed directly into the heading: they don't jump to the heading, but just below it, so you can't see where you are without scrolling. User<Svick>.Talk(); 21:58, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Chart templates

Do we have templates for producing a chart from a table, like {{Climate chart}}, but more general. Right now, I need to chart a river flow like this, but it would be nice to have something even more general. Materialscientist (talk) 10:55, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for highlighting the existence of these. I'm not aware of a general charting template, but it would be useful to produce something along those lines. I know that the Atlassian Confluence wiki platform, which is hot among corporate users, has a general charting capability. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 18:58, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Javascript Question

Hello, I feel sort of silly asking this, but at my User:Fastily/monobook.js, how do I cause function test() to execute only when tab "Test" is clicked? Thanks in advance, FASTILY ^(TALK) 00:44, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Just take test() out of the addOnloadHook() wrapper. —UncleDouggie (talk) 01:35, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

It works now! :) Thanks, FASTILY ^(TALK) 05:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Template not working

Anyone know why the {{Italic title prefixed}} template is not working at List of identities in The Gangs of New York (book)? Gatoclass (talk) 03:02, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Naive comment: (i) the parameter in List of identities in The Gangs of New York (book) was wrong (should be 21, not 23 because the template requires a space after last non-italic word) - changed that. (ii) The template seems to be limited to 49 chars of total title length - tried to change that to 60, but that didn't help. Materialscientist (talk) 03:31, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

The template it's based off of has some strange issue with long titles. Might be something to do with that. Check its doc page out. Killiondude (talk) 03:38, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, there is something about 50 chars here. Materialscientist (talk) 03:41, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't have real string functions so some templates like {{Italic title prefixed}} make hacks with expensive string templates. The 49-character limit is there to reduce cost of uses. You can control italics manually with {{DISPLAYTITLE:List of identities in ''The Gangs of New York'' (book)}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:51, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Thankyou everybody for your assistance :) Gatoclass (talk) 06:33, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Has something changed recently in the way edit pages are rendered?

For the past week or so (maybe a little longer), when I edit a page, I have to wait and wait and wait for the entire page to render before I can edit, this takes about 30 seconds. If I don't wait, the section of the page I'm editing loses the cursor as the cursor disappears off the screen once the rendering finishes. The only way I can avoid this is to hit the "Stop loading this page" X at the top of the Firefox screen before the rendering completes. Corvus cornix_talk 05:13, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't happen to me. How does the cursor "disappear"? Is the browser moving your cursor without you moving your mouse? It shouldn't be doing that. Gary King (talk · scripts) 00:18, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, it does that because I start typing before the page finishes rendering, and once it does finish, it doesn't care what I was doing, it just makes the cursor go away till I position and click again. Corvus cornix_talk 05:30, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Once the text box loads, the rest of the page shouldn't take much longer to load, anyway. It's the article content that takes the longest for a page to load; the JavaScript should be cached, so that it takes less than a second or so to load. So it sounds like your JavaScript isn't being cached. In any case, you could also just use a script that positions your cursor into the text box after the page loads, although it won't be located where it was while the page was loading. Gary King (talk · scripts) 17:41, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

This happens even when I create a new page, there is no text to render. Corvus cornix_talk 18:25, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

There's probably something going wrong on your end, then. Perhaps the browser is not caching the JavaScript, for instance. Gary King (talk · scripts) 19:43, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Whatever the problem was, it's gone now. Corvus cornix_talk 04:40, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I had the same problem, caused by the editing toolbar. Since I don't use it, I deactivated it as follows: Preferences → Editing → Usability features: Enable enhanced editing toolbar. Hans Adler 06:13, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Rendering problems

For the past week or so I have noticed wikipedia pages render in a "jerky" fashion on Opera with Monobook skin. The symptoms are similar to, but not as severe as, those described at #Has something changed recently in the way edit pages are rendered?

Before one or two weeks ago I was able to browse wikipedia article history pages by clicking the previous diff and next diff links as soon as they rendered, but now I have to wait until the page finishes rendering. Otherwise, if I click as soon as the links appear, the page jumps down a line and Opera acts as if I had clicked one of the links above, the user name usually.

In my case it appears to be caused by the notice: "The Call for Participation for Wikimania 2011 has been released. Submit your presentations before April 30."

Once I clicked the "hide" link the jumpiness stopped. Is there a way wikipedia could display pages top down, so that this does not happen with future notices? My case is complicated by my use of User:84user/monobook.js and User:84user/monobook.css so this "solution" may not solve the overall slow and unsteady rendering of wikipedia lately. -84user (talk) 16:31, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

ADDING BACKGROUND COLOR TO INFO BOX-WRITER

Hi, Can someone please tell me how to add background color to info box for writer? Thank you! Nell 23:39, 18 April 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jespah (talk • contribs)

Help desk answer for reference. — Bility (talk) 00:00, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Templates not collapsing

I first noticed this issue yesterday on pages I was editing, but for some reason the infoboxes aren't collapsing for me when there is more than one. Is this a unique thing or have I missed a prior discussion and fix of this issue? Thanks. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:25, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Got a page with an example? Gary King (talk · scripts) 00:22, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Infoboxes (the information boxes to the top right) shouldn't normally collapse. Do you mean navigation boxes (often at the bottom) with links to other articles? We really need an example. Also say whether you see show/hide links on the boxes and can manually collapse them by clicking hide. Note that Help:Collapsing#Limitations says: "This functionality requires the end-user's browser to have Javascript enabled. If Javascript is disabled, the default behaviour is to show the content." PrimeHunter (talk) 01:27, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, the navigation boxes are whats the problem. I logged out and everything is fine. The entire "show/hide" link is completely missing as well. I haven't tinkered knowingly with anything so I'm wondering what could be up here. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:48, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Try bypassing your cache. User<Svick>.Talk(); 06:47, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Tried. See this image to see what I mean. Every template appears like that to me. It might be an Internet Explorer issue as everything appears fine in Firefox (and no, I won't switch to Firefox at this point in time). Kevin Rutherford (talk) 17:33, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

For that particular template, |state= isn't set, and the default from {{US Air Force navbox}} ("autocollapse") doesn't collapse the template. You could try previewing the page with the template set to "collapsed" and see if it works for you. — Bility (talk) 17:50, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

That particular template should be expanded, but you should also see the “hide” link. I thought that maybe your user scripts could be interfering, but I tried them in IE9 and everything seemed fine. User<Svick>.Talk(); 18:30, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Works fine for me in IE 8. — Bility (talk) 18:55, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not saying just that template is broken. Every template appears like that. I'm using IE8 though since I rather dislike the layout of IE9. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:15, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

This happens intermittently for me. It's not a template coding problem, nor is it a problem with parameters to the template, and neither is it confined to specific pages. It is partly to do with caching, but is also related to slow loading. When I go to any page containing collapsible objects (including, but not limited to, navboxes), it will always load with the objects uncollapsed. What happens when the page has finished loading doesn't just depend on the boxes' |state= parameter (or equivalent): in cases where this is |state=collapsed (or equivalent), then around 60-70% of the time these objects will then collapse (correct behaviour); but about 30-40% of the time, they don't, and worse, the "[show]" or "[hide]" link that you expect to see upper right of these boxes is absent. Pressing F5 to refresh the page will normally bring in a copy which behaves properly. Firefox 3.6.16, Windows XP, Monobook. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:53, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, it has been doing this since at least Saturday and I followed the instructions provided, so I guess I'll wait it out. At least I'm not the only one with this problem! I also have refreshed multiple pages multiple times, but to no avail. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 05:57, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Collapsible tables?

Header
Cell 1	Cell 2
Inner Header Inner Cell 1 Inner Cell 2
Inner Header Inner Cell 1 Inner Cell 2

Header
Cell heading Cell 1-1 Cell 1-2 Cell 1-3 Cell 2-1 Cell 2-2 Cell 2-3
Cell heading Cell 1-1 Cell 1-2 Cell 1-3 Cell 2-1 Cell 2-2 Cell 2-3

Rivers and stuff
By some grouping	By some other grouping
* Top level Level 2 Level 2 * Top Level :* Level 2 Level 3 Level 2 Level 2	* Top level Level 2 Level 2 * Top Level :* Level 2 Level 3 Level 2 Level 2

Hi. I'm wondering if it's possible to collapse certain rows of wikitables. I tried this in my sandbox with Template:Collapse top and Template:Collapse bottom. This worked, but it wasn't really what I was looking for. I tried collapsing between rows and it produced this problematic result. Does anyone know if there's a way to do this? Jsayre64 (talk) 02:01, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

The collapsible class is used by the collapsible table script to add the show/hide link to the header of the table and it collapses the whole table. You could do it by nesting tables as above, although it might get a little complicated. Also, you probably won't be able to use the sortable class, since you need to colspan the header. — Bility (talk) 16:40, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

At {{chembox}}, we've fought with this for months. The inner-tables approach works, but their column-widths drift (because they are not the "same table" as the rows not in that inner table). It's the same feature wanted by infobox in general--the ability to collapse whole sections. DMacks (talk) 16:56, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

If you keep the inner tables at 100% width and explicitly set the cell widths they should stay the same width, right? — Bility (talk) 17:25, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I really don't have any experience with HTML code. For the tables, I just use the sortable wikitable available in the "advanced" part of the editing toolbox. I'm discussing a tables idea at Talk:List of rivers in Oregon. Can the same stuff be formatted into that type of table? Jsayre64 (talk) 18:08, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Added one more along the lines of your original collapsible list idea. — Bility (talk) 18:51, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

This format will work well for the list. I've copied it into my sandbox. Thanks! Jsayre64 (talk) 23:02, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Modifying log comments after an edit

If you forget to add an edit summary, is there any way to add it after you have made an edit? Niluop (talk) 00:47, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

It requires exporting the page, deleting the page, altering the exported version's XML and importing it back in—in other words, not worth it. Use a dummy edit instead. — Bility (talk) 00:57, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Your suggestion was very useful. I added a space after the sentence. As a side note, it is unfortunate that nothing is built-in, and I'm not sure how much work that would take, or if it was ever discussed at length. Niluop (talk) 01:25, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

It's intentional that modifying a page's history is difficult, since we're legally obligated to keep the attribution to conform to our content license. — Bility (talk) 03:53, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

This makes sense. I would not advocate changing the history, but I would support annotating an edit with the annotation time stamp. Niluop (talk) 04:24, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

See also: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13937
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 18:56, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

This is very interesting reading. Thanks! Niluop (talk) 01:44, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Changing order of WP articles in Google search results

Hello all. For a long time, Grigory Potemkin was at the less common (in English) name of Grigory Potyomkin, whilst related articles (Battleship Potemkin, Potemkin village) used "Potemkin". As a result, users googling "Potemkin" are not presented with the article they probably want to view, but two tangentially related ones. Is there anything that can be done about this? Is a temporary no-index on the other two allowable in the interests of users? Regards, - Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 08:48, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

You'll just have to wait if you want the page to move up in the rankings. Putting no index on any article is not a good idea since they would therefore not appear in search results. I don't even know if you can put no index in the article namespace since that'd be a great idea for vandalism (now you see an article, now you don't! The great article disappearing act.). Grigory Potemkin currently appears fifth for me when searching Wikipedia for "Potemkin", behind Potemkin village, The Battleship Potemkin, Russian battleship Potemkin, and Potemkin. Gary King (talk · scripts) 15:30, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, I've been waiting two months now. Nothing's moved :( So I don't think it will. Hence the question :) Obviously no-index would remove the articles, but Google updates its cache of WP rapidly, so it would be back within a few days I think. - Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 17:51, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

From the noindex template, it has no effect in article space. Ravensfire (talk) 18:28, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually it looks like the NOINDEX magic word is disabled in article space, which I mentioned above makes perfect sense indeed. Also, if you planned to use NOINDEX only temporarily then it wouldn't change the rankings once you re-added the articles to Google's indexing. Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:33, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

You could just Google bomb it if you had the time and patience. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 06:07, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Category:Articles sourced by IMDb

Dozens of subcategories of Category:Articles sourced by IMDb are appearing in CAT:CSD, even though the contents of these pages are literally just {{Monthly clean-up category}} Two questions: (1) How does this code cause IMDB-related text to appear on the page? (2) Any ideas how to get these categories out of CAT:CSD? I've tried purging and null edits, but nothing happens, and the history for the template says that it's not been edited since November, so we can't have a caching issue for a template-added category. Nyttend (talk) 21:23, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Ive given them a swift kick and they seem to be fixing themselves. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 21:38, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Somebody put a {{db-g6}} onto one of the subtemplates of {{Monthly clean-up category}} and although it's been removed again (presumably because the process requiring technical deletion is now complete), the job queue does take a while for template changes to bubble all the way through. Until it does complete, you will get the category page showing anomalies like this. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:45, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

The category text is generated by Template:Monthly clean-up category/core, which itself calls on one or more of the 120+ subpages of {{Monthly clean-up category}}. The speedy deletion template also is generated by the "/core" subpage: {{db-g6}} is displayed if {{PAGESINCATEGORY:{{PAGENAME}}}} is equal to 0. It's a quite-useful feature (added by someone with much more programming knowledge than I have) that, in this case, produced a quirky result due to my decision to create the new categories before the template change (diff) had been fully processed. As the job queue moves along, about 70 or so subcategories of Category:Articles sourced by IMDB and Category:Articles sourced only by IMDB will become empty and appear in CAT:CSD, so I will continue to monitor the pages to perform requisite follow-up cleanup. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 23:50, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Hiding an entire section

How do I hide an entire section but with the show/hide link appearing to the left of an infobox from the previous section that extends down past the start of this section? The text of the section wraps to the left of the infobox, but not the show/hide link. My unsuccessful attempt is at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Source_Code&oldid=424620022. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hgrosser (talk • contribs) 04:56, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Don't collapse the plot of a movie just because it contains spoilers. See WP:SPOILER. To do what you want to do, though, margin-right would have to be used to avoid the infobox. You could use a fixed pixel margin or an em one, the latter being preferred since the infobox is 22em wide. Gary King (talk · scripts) 05:08, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

caching issue-is it me?

Over the last several weeks I have noticed that often after I save my changes the page appears to reload but the changes are not visible. They are actually there and if I bypass my cache and force a page reload I see them. Is this problem at my end or does it have something to do with the latest Media Wiki upgrades? (Using Safari 5.0.4 on Mac OS10.5.8 if that makes any difference) Beeblebrox (talk) 23:34, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I've also been experiencing this. I purge the page to fix it. It happens quite frequently though, several times a day. Dcoetzee 23:42, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

This has been happening a lot recently. There's a Bugzilla report here. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 03:53, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

So it's not me. Good, because I am too technically inept to do anything about it, and I just had my wifi connection upgraded so I was hoping I didn't have to call up and yell at them about something I didn't really understand myself. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:51, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I went to the Bugzilla report linked above and didn't know how to comment. Apparently I'm not registered or something, but I did register for all Wikimedia projects with this name, or so I thought. I believe this is the same problem I asked about here.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:38, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Making content more readable in the editor

When one edits a page, it is often very difficult to read the content and find one's way around due to all the code for references, images and other items. I was wondering if it would be possible for the editor software to automatically highlight the content text to separate it from all the mark-up? -- Derek Andrews (talk) 13:18, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Syntax highlighting is one feature of WP:WikiEd, assuming this is a personal query rather than a site-wide one. You can find more information there. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 13:43, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

It was more of a general suggestion, as i have to wonder if it puts off casual editors, but I will take a look at WikiEd and the Segregator (below) someday. Thanks. --Derek Andrews (talk) 16:13, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

An easier to use WYSIWYG editor is being worked on, but it may be quite a while before there is any workable result. — Edokter (talk) — 13:49, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Also, you may be interested in User:PleaseStand/References segregator, a script that removes much of the complex ref stuff while editing, and re-adds it back when saving. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:25, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

This thread prompted me to go looking a bit and I found Wikipedia:Text editor support which describes how to use a number of different external text editors with Wikipedia. I note that Notepad++ is not listed; this tool allows the creation of 'custom languages' which impose highlighting and other font effects based on syntax. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:02, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

P.S. I find that "MediaWiki Markup" has been contributed as a user-defined language; see http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/notepad-plus/index.php?title=User_Defined_Language_Files . --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The order in which articles are suggested as you type text into the search box

Hi. When you have typed a few letters or words into the search box, what is it that determines the order in which suggested article titles emerge? Furthermore:

1. Can this process/the order in which the articles appear be manually altered?
2. If so, where is the place where we should discuss such proposed changes?

Thanks. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 10:11, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Manually ordered in what way? I assume you want to change the rules of how the results are ordered, rather than the results for a specific term. I think the results are returned based on rules hardcoded in the code and not in a MediaWiki setting page or something similar, so I think it's unlikely that the rules would be changed. Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:19, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

The order is based on the number of links to the article. — AlexSm 16:31, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Follow-up: Disappearing new articles and talk pages still happening

I first reported the problem here and had more success getting answers here.

It's as simple as refreshing but it is annoying and to someone encountering the problem for the first time, it is likely quite discouraging since they would think they lost all their work.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:57, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

The Bugzilla ticket for this is here, which you can follow by adding your email address to the CC List and it will notify you when changes are made to the ticket. It's best to keep these discussions centralized. And yes, I do believe that creating a page and seeing a notice claiming the page does not exist is the same problem as making an edit and not seeing that edit immediately, essentially. Gary King (talk · scripts) 19:18, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. I should have checked those other sections that were said to be related to my problem.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 20:14, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Apparently, based on the Bugzilla report, this has been brought up here.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:40, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Exclude subdirectories from search

Is there a way of excluding subdirectories from MediaWiki search? I was trying to find if there were any other pages written on "how to make requests", to help decide where to include Sandstein's new WP:Guide to requesting assistance page, but my search kept turning up things like "Requests for adminship/xxxxx" or "Wikiproject XXXX/requests". I tried to mitigate this by making a search that looked like "intitle:requests -intitle:bot -intitle:bots -intitle:arbitration -intitle:WikiProject -intitle:checkuser -intitle:bureaucratship -intitle:adminship -intitle:mediation", but I gave up in the end. Is there an easier way of doing this? I can include it at Help:Searching if so. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 04:01, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it's possible. By the looks of it there are plenty of people online asking the same question but have received no answers. Gary King (talk · scripts) 05:17, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Google can do what you want in this case, partly because of the configuration of robots.txt on Wikipedia. Try This search. Graham87 05:51, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Except that it doesn't pick up Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests because of the rule in robots.txt to disallow all pages whose titles begin with the text "Wikipedia:Arbitration/". It might be worth updating the page Wikipedia:list of base pages in the Wikipedia namespace, as it's over five years old now. Graham87 05:58, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Google still returns subpages (that are not on that list). Gary King (talk · scripts) 06:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies everyone. I thought that Google might be the answer - I'll have another look using it. It does seem to be a lot easier than the MediaWiki search I tried. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 07:10, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Whats going on?

A few minutes ago I experienced difficulties. No Wikipedia site would display and I got a message saying something like "Wikipedia is experiencing a technical problem. Try again in a few minutes." Whats going on? Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 15:24, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

See above. It's a known issue and will hopefully be resolved shortly. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:53, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Category problem

I can't figure out why Category:Unadilla class gunboats isn't listing with headers, "A", "B" "C" and so on. All the other categories in the parent class, like Category:Alert class gunboats for example, list with the headers, but not this one. What am I doing wrong? Gatoclass (talk) 17:52, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

If you refresh a few times then the header slowly appear. Gary King (talk · scripts) 17:58, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

fixed you where forcing " " to be the sort key. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 17:59, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh gee, I should have seen that. Thanks T :) Gatoclass (talk) 18:02, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Ball bearing

Why is the "cz" interwiki link showing in the ball bearing article? It appears to be called out correctly in the article. Wizard191 (talk) 18:27, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

The language prefix for the Czech-language Wikipedia is "cs", though it appears that "cz" links redirect to their corresponding "cs" pages. I have fixed (diff) the link. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 18:35, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Shouldn't the "cz" prefix give some additional text with the link to explain that it needs to be changed to cs? The random link at the bottom of the article didn't convey that to me. Wizard191 (talk) 19:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Size of image in infobox template

Hi, Can you please tell me the largest size of image allowed in infobox for writer template? Many thanks! Nell 22:58, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

There isn't one. However, unless there is a good reason not to, it's generally best to omit the |imagesize= parameter in order to allow the default behaviour. In this case the default is to use the same width as "thumbnail" images, which is user configurable, see WP:IMGSIZE. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:15, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

300px is generally the largest recommended width for a lead image. Gary King (talk · scripts) 00:36, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Server problems?

During the past 24 hours, I have repeatedly encountered an error message stating:

Our servers are currently experiencing a technical problem. This is probably temporary and should be fixed soon. Please try again in a few minutes.

The message is accompanied by various error codes:

• Error: ERR_CANNOT_FORWARD, errno [No Error] at {date and time}
• Error: ERR_CANNOT_FORWARD, errno (11) Resource temporarily unavailable at {date and time}
• Error: ERR_CANNOT_FORWARD, errno (115) Operation now in progress at {date and time}

Does anyone know what is happening? Is this, in fact, an ongoing technical issue or something from my end? -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 15:16, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Techs are aware and working on it, per Twitter. --Izno (talk) 15:33, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I echo this. The problems were minor yesterday but seem to be increasing in severity today. It took me about six tries to be able to attempt to post this message, god knows how many more are ahead of me to get it to save. (5 and counting...) Carrite (talk) 15:32, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

THIS FROM TWITTER (just up): jeblad‎ RT @DivaDanese: #wikipedia is experiencing a site-wide slowness due to changes made yesterday. We are rolling back changes and normal service should resume. Carrite (talk) 15:32, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for shedding light on the matter ... I wasn't even aware that en.wiki had a Twitter feed. The problem seems to have passed. :) -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 18:27, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

• It was sorted at 16:49 (UTC), which was around 45 mins after I raised bugzilla:28624. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:36, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
  • I can confirm that the slowdown also occurred on the secure server yesterday. On a related note, somehow Redrose64's note was deleted yesterday 4/20, apparently by my account, but certainly not intentionally. Apparently service was so slow that my keystrokes took effect 4/20 at an unpredictable time in an unpredictable way. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 22:20, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

For me, it has started happening again, but only when I (try to) login via the secure server, not through the regular server. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:20, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Simples

Here's an easy test for you clever folk.

Can you rid us of the

|- |}

which appears at the end of the External Links section on this page?

Thanks in advance, Trafford09 (talk) 10:04, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

 Done - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 10:07, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Need help on Inkscape created file

Although I'm able to edit svg files by hand, I'm always iritated by inkscape created files. Can somebody cleanup this file File:Web 2.0 Map.svg and remove external (to non wikipedia pages) links, widnows desktop links (don't get it why including such links) and other optimizations? mabdul 13:15, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

If you don't get help here, you can try over at the graphic lab too. — Bility (talk) 16:02, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Can/may Extension:ABC be turned on?

mw:Extension:ABC seems like it doesn't have the problem which mw:Extension:AbcMusic has. Can the ABC extension be turned on for the English Wikipedia so that we can show the actual sheet music on pages like Helas madam? Banaticus (talk) 20:20, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Per WP:NOT, I'm not sure showing the sheet music is necessary, just like we don't usually have the full lyrics to an old song or a whole poem. Wouldn't a regular image suffice? I imagine many songs will be on the IMSLP site. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 22:09, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

See discussion on bugzilla:189. Bawolff (talk) 23:32, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

But we do have the full lyrics to old songs and whole poems, just not those new enough that someone still has them copyrighted. For all the songs and poems written before the past 75-100 or so years, we have the full lyrics/words. We just currently don't have a good way to put the note and music into Wikipedia or Wikisource without using a 3rd party program to build them then upload them as separate files. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Banaticus (talk • contribs) 04:26, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, as a precedent, (though precedents have little significance on enwiki), the hiero (hieroglyphics) extension is not used much, yet it's been installed. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 12:04, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Reading the discussion of bug 189 there are some real concerns regarding DoS attacks. Certainly an interesting Summer of Code project. Creating music extension should be limited displaying sheet music. This blog entry, "Super Mario Melodies", show some really amazing stuff. Annotates of different sections, highlighting the notes being played, slow tempo, and play notes individually. Having something similar would virtually be a requirement going forward. — Dispenser 18:49, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Delay in updating Search Index

The Search Index has not been updated for 4 days. Help:Searching#Delay_in_updating_the_search_index says this should be reported here. The last few times I have reported this it was bugzilla:26304, but there seems no priority in resolving this. Can the work around be scheduled? to avoid these backlogs which frustrate us WikiGnomes in our tidying up, and we get a huge backlog of spelling, grammar and other mistakes to correct when it is eventually updated.
If there is a better place to report this, please let me know where/how.
Arjayay (talk) 17:11, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

We are out of disc space, and a new machine is going to be setup in the next couple of days. --rainman (talk) 20:41, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the update - the Gnomes are getting restless. Arjayay (talk) 07:58, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Indexing has been restarted and is catching up now. --rainman (talk) 09:47, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

'Confirmed' usergroup

Wouldn't it make sense to merge confirmed to the autoconfirmed usergroup and then rename autoconfirmed to confirmed? Is there a way to make it possible (or is it already possible) for admins to manually autoconfirm users? Marcus Qwertyus 00:52, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

The autoconfirmed right is granted to a user by the system after 4 days and 10 edits. The confirmed usergroup is granted to users who have not reached the 4 day/10 edit threshold, but require, for whatver reason, userrights which are a part of the autoconfirmed usergroup. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 01:10, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Would it be easy to make it possible for autoconfirmed status to also be given by admins though? Marcus Qwertyus 01:34, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Autoconfirmed and confirmed are really the same thing. Autoconfirmed is when the rights are granted automatically, and confirmed is when the exact same rights are manually given. Jsayre64 (talk) 01:54, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

There are big technical differences though. The autoconfirmed is a 'status' of an account, that automatically grants you rights. If you are pretty new and login over TOR for instance, your previously autoconfirmed account might suddenly not be autoconfirmed anymore. This status is ALSO presented in the interface as a group, even though it really isn't a group at the datamodel level. Therefore 'merging' them is probably not as easy as it sounds. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:41, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Editor survey banner [x] does not work

I was editing a page and the new 2011 WMF Editor Survey centralnotice appeared. I clicked the [x] at the top right to hide it, but nothing happened. Is this just me, or are others having issues hiding it, too? It's not a big deal, as the banner does not re-appear on other pages for me, but it's rather odd. (Yes, I know you can use css to hide centralnotice banners permanently.) /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 22:02, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

You're not an isolated case. There were reports on IRC from other users who had similar experiences not being able to hide the notice. Killiondude (talk) 22:08, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I find that if I click the [x] and then reload the page (admittedly not a good resolution if you are in the middle of an edit, but OK when doing something else), the banner does not come back for the rest of my login session. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:18, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Should be fixed now. Kaldari (talk) 05:11, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Sort of unrelated...but where can we comment on the survey? I can't seem to find any redirect or meta page for it.Smallman12q (talk) 00:14, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Image display problem

In the History of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1648–1764) the first image in the first Commonwealth-Saxony personal union section (labeled "Lutherans executed at Thorn...") is no longer displaying on any of my two computers. Firefox shows a small vertical line, Internet Explorer a red x. May be someone can tell me what may be causing this, or where to go for help. Orczar (talk) 12:56, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I can confirm I have the same problem, although the image itself (File:Thorner Blutgericht.jpg) displays fine on its own page. I don't know what is the cause, I'd suggest asking at WP:VPT. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 16:55, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I furthermore noticed that the image in question is displayed correctly in the Tumult of Thorn (Toruń) article, but not in the article's German and Polish equivalents....Orczar (talk) 22:40, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

It likes to be displayed at 250px wide. — Bility (talk) 00:44, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Furthermore, it only messes up when thumbnailed and only the current version of the file (I tried uploading a slightly different image and the old one thumbnailed fine on the file page). — Bility (talk) 00:52, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, 250px worked also on the Polish Wiki article. Orczar (talk) 02:43, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

The tips at Wikipedia:Purge#For images might help. Graham87 06:31, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Opening the thumbnail in its own window reports: "403 Forbidden nginx/0.7.65", so it is a permissions problem on the upload servers. I have reported it on with system administrators on IRC and it has been corrected. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:31, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Why does "wiki:" go off site?

Why does this link [[wiki:Main page]] (i.e. wiki:Main page) go to a non-WMF site? This seems like strange behavior for Wikipedia. Putting wiki:Main page in the search box also goes off site. The only other link I know that goes outside of WMF owned sites is meatball: as in meatball:MeatballWiki, but I know why meatball does. I do not know why wiki: does. Does anybody know anything about this? - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 02:28, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

That is expected behavior, see m:Interwiki map and m:Help:Interwiki linking. — Bility (talk) 02:54, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Ahh, I see. Thanks for the link. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 08:35, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

There is an old discussion to remove it at meta:Talk:Interwiki map/Archives/2008#wiki:. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:05, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

relative "biggness" of h2 level headings vs h3 level headings

I am having a problem with the relative appearance of h2 & h3 level headings. (i.e. "==h2 level heading==" & "===h3 level heading===")
In my browser, h3 stand out more strongly than h2.
I am wondering if this is a general wikipedia-wide thing, or whether is specific to my configuration and browser?
I am also wondering if this is user configurable?

In my browser, h2 is non-bold and looks about 14pt, h3 is bold and looks about 13pt, h4 is bold and looks about 10pt.
(Is there a way I can determine exactly which font & size is being used?)

Thanks in advance. Pdfpdf (talk) 08:28, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

====example h4 level heading====
===example h3 level heading===
== example h2 level heading ==

*cough* Your examples are fucking up the structure of this page.

h4 is 116% the size of regular text; h3 is 132% and h2 is 150%. In Vector. The h2 is underlined, but not bold, and this may be part of what is confusing you. The fact that you were using ALLCAPS in section header text WAS NOT HELPING. (interested editors may wish to see User talk:Snottywong#Snotbot). 125.162.150.88 (talk) 08:38, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

You are not trying hard enough to be rude. I'm sure you can do a better job if you wish.

Meantime, perhaps you'd like to read WP:CIVIL?

Your examples are fucking up the structure of this page. - Well Einstein, do you have a better way to illustrate the problem? If so, please enlighten me.

h4 is 116% the size of regular text; h3 is 132% and h2 is 150%. - Did you not read what I wrote? For your sake, I'll repeat it: the appearance ratios on my page are 100%:130%:140%

The h2 is underlined, but not bold, - Again, did you not read what I wrote? That's exactly what I said.

The fact that you were using ALLCAPS in section header - It wasn't me who was using them.

WAS NOT HELPING. - Please refrain from shouting.

Congratulations on providing a reply that is completely free of any useful information. Pdfpdf (talk) 08:50, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Kindly refrain from skipping header section-levels, like teh MOS sez. 125.162.150.88 (talk) 09:04, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Add the following to your Special:mypage/skin.css file:

h2 { font-weight: bold; }

—UncleDouggie (talk) 09:15, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Editors genuinely wishing to demonstrate problems with headers or suchlike should do so on a sandbox page, and link to it from here; in order not to cause disruption and accessibility problems for other editors.. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:49, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

See User:Gadget850/FAQ#Headings ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:20, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Need help

I was adding article nomination for the deletion to the log and something gone wrong. Red CSD template appeared at the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2011 April 23. Can someone remove it? --DonaldDuck (talk) 07:14, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

That wasn't your fault. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Revert to older minecraft versions is tagged for CSD, and the CSD template was transcluded with the AfD onto the log. I added noinclude tags around the CSD template to prevent transclusion onto the log. Goodvac (talk) 07:23, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. --DonaldDuck (talk) 10:50, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Inquiry about image toggling

On the French wikipedia page fr:Longford and many others using that infobox, there is a map within the infobox which can be toggled via a link beneath it, administrative to topographique. I have tried to find an equivalent method here on the English site, if someone knows of a simple toggle method for images please respond here. On the French site, I see that the infobox fr:Modèle:Infobox Ville d'Irlande gets the maps from fr:Modèle:Infobox/Géolocalisation multiple, which uses the custom ".img_toogle ul" CSS class. From there I think it would be easier for someone who knows what I am asking to explain how we would set up an image toggle within a template as in the French site here on en.wikipedia, rather than me digging around trying to find it. Thanks Sswonk (talk) 16:14, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

It's a script they have in their Commons.js (Script pour alterner entre plusieurs cartes de géolocalisation), that looks for the "img_toogle" class. I think you'd have to get consensus somewhere to add a script like that to this wiki. — Bility (talk) 20:09, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that is helpful. I have now posed the question at MediaWiki_talk:Common.js#Map toggle for geolocation in infobox where I hope it will be possible to get the right editors lined up to assist with implementing this. Anyone interested, please follow up at that discussion page. Thanks – Sswonk (talk) 22:19, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Editing View Font

I have Firefox 3.6.16, Windows XP. My editing toolbar is fully functioning and looks normal. This has come on in the last few days, and I've been doing nothing different. It's only my view on the editing window, not after I save. The font looks like the old manual typewriter "Elite" font. It doesn't really "justify" the type on the line, but it throws off the spacing enough that I can't eyeball the text to catch any spacing errors. Sometimes when I preview, I see no space actually existed where I thought I hit the space bar. Or there will be extra spaces that I didn't catch. The visual is off, and nothing I click or unclick changes it. Clearing the cache does nothing. -Maile66 (talk) 15:40, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

What is Preferences → Gadgets → Make text fields (e.g. the edit form) use a sans-serif font instead of a monospace font set to? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:19, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

It wasn't checked. So, I checked it and cleared my cache. All it did was give the edit page the "Zoom In" effect of enlarging everything. But it didn't resolve the issue. So, I've unchecked it again. Any other ideas? The only place I have this issue is in the edit screen. Nowhere else on Wikipedia, nowhere else on my computer. Maile66 (talk) 17:35, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

What happens if you log out and edit? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:39, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

It looks the same, minus the editing toolbar. Maile66 (talk) 17:43, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Then it is not a gadget, CSS or script. What browser and version? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:01, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Firefox 3.6.16, Windows XP. The only other thing that comes to my mind is that on April 15 there was a security update on Windows XP. Maile66 (talk) 18:12, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Looks OK to me. Try resetting your preferences per http://en.kioskea.net/faq/1154-reset-firefox. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:41, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but I tried editing on IE also, and get the same thing. So, it's not the browser. It may be something that happened with that Windows XP security update. Odd as it is, it's not browser specific. So, I'll just try and live with it. -Maile66 (talk) 23:01, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I have Firefox 3.6.16 on Windows XP with the latest updates and it looks OK. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:05, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, then it must be a quirk on my computer. Thanks for trying. Maile66 (talk) 23:11, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

It's gadget specific

I'm using a public shared computer right now (no way to find out their operating system, but it's IE browser). If I don't sign in, or sign in but don't click the specified gadget, it looks just like the problem I've been having. If I click the gadget, it corrects it. Why my computer at home will not interact with the gadget is a mystery. But it certainly is tied in to clicking Preferences → Gadgets → Make text fields (e.g. the edit form) use a sans-serif font instead of a monospace font. And the phenomenon did occur on April 15 (tied to the XP update or not), because I can go back at my edits and check the edit date on the one where I last remember the fonts being normal. So, while we haven't solved the problem, at least thanks for connecting it to that gadget. Maile66 (talk) 18:11, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

And it's resolved

I just resolved this whole thing with a chance experimentation. I unchecked the suggested Preferences → Gadgets → "Make text fields (e.g. the edit form) use a sans-serif font instead of a monospace font on my computer". On my Firefox browser, I changed the default font from Times Roman to any number of other fonts. Changing it to anything else resolved the problem. I'm guessing the Times Roman font might be bad on my computer. But it's now set at Microsoft Sans-Serif, and everything looks great. Resolved it myself. Maile66 (talk) 02:18, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Using Hot Cat erases previous edits?

Has this happened to anyone else? I made some edits to Ron Hutchinson (screenwriter) and saved them. Then I added a category using HotCat, and when I saved that change, I saw all my previous changes had been reverted. I thought it was simply a cache issue until I checked the history and saw that the changes had truly been reverted with the category edit. I tried it again--same result. But I was able to add the category manually. Help??? Aristophanes68 (talk) 01:05, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Sounds to be related to this. It sounds like your last edit isn't published yet so when you add the category, HotCat grabs the most recent article version that it can find, which is the one before your edit, and then adds the category to that. Gary King (talk · scripts) 02:18, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

No orange message bar & toolbar partially gone

Recently I've stopped getting the orange message bar for some messages. It doesn't happen all the time, seems to be sporadic. This post for example didn't give me a message bar. Also, the edit toolbar is either completely gone, or partially gone. I'm on Safari 10.4.11. Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 18:04, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Help needed for categorization

Hi, currently there is an event for increasing participation from Malayalam Wikimedians to sharing images named "Malayalam loves Wikimedia". Images uploaded with that event is categorizing using commons:Template:Malayalam loves Wikimedia event template. Today (April 25) is the end date of the event, so we need a modification in the template. So that images from tomorrow using the template must go to another category. Please check parser functions at Commons:User:Praveenp/platform also. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Praveenp (talk • contribs) 02:56, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Requested photos/map overlay

Not sure if a tool already exists for this, but it would be nice to have a tool that can lookup locations from articles in Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in places (& subcats) and give a map layout based on them. Perhaps pulling from a coord template? This would be nice for a few reasons - if one was going on vacation, for example, they could put in an address where they are staying and see if any requested photo locations might be nearby. Or, if there are a lot in a given area that a Wiki*edian wanted to photograph, a map overlay would help plan an effective route between points, to save time and fuel. I have no idea how easy this would to implement. ^Avic_ennasis @ 03:46, 22 Nisan 5771 / 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Its currently somewhat out of date, but I have something like that here. Mr.Z-man 05:55, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Using Template:Random_subpage in two levels

Dear Wikipedians ,

Seasons greetings

What I am looking for is a two levels of random selection,i.e. template which can select randomly a page which again is selected randomly from next group of random sub-pages.

for Example in page Portal:Religion/Did you know Template:Random_subpage is be being used to choose did you know.At portal page Portal:Religion/Did you know they have allotted specific sub-page number to each religion.

For example in the same page for Christianity they have allocated sub-page no.12 to 16 , since previous and later sub-page nos are allocated to rest of religious denominations What option I do have if I want to insert additional sub-page for Christianity ? or for that matter Buddhism has been allocated single subpage and I want to insert one for them .Secondly Present system would not give enough justice to sub domains under each religion. So my question is , is it possible to have say subpage no 12 for 'protestant' and in turn sub-page 12 will again have Template:Random_subpage.What do I need to do to enable such a feature ?

The second question is can I use decimal points to to insert new sub pages for an example 12,12.1,12.2,12.3.....and so on ?

Last but not least is actually I have no plans for for making changes at Portal:Religion/Did you know but actually some other Template:Random_subpage based pages on Marathi language Wikipedia.

Mahitgar (talk) 15:20, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

The {{random subpage}} template can't select page numbers with decimals as it is currently set up, so once you have contiguous page numbers, there's no inserting new ones in between. That being said, if you wanted to do what I think you want to, you could use {{rand}} to select a (whole) number representing the group, then call it again to select the decimal. You could set up a subpage for each group (like zero, for example) that would transclude in the number of subpages in that group so the template could dynamically set its range even with different numbers of subpages in each grouping, and even when you keep adding to the number of subpages. It sounds interesting, let me know how you intend to use it and if you want me to take a shot at it. — Bility (talk) 15:50, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your prompt reply.Actually at Marathi Language Wikipedia is a small wiki community where I have been busy creating support pages, studying mistakes of new comers finding new solutions and supporting the new comers for past few years.I I have created good number of help systems but I want systems not just to give long list of rules to a new comers but incubate them in the wiki culture slowly besides to be self sustainable that means even if seniors retire or go on wiki leave new comers keep getting help in various way and following is one of the effort targeting the issue.(It is some thing based on lines of Wikipedia:Motto of the day on en wiki but we at mr wiki intend to include more types of help and info topics)

The page where I was looking for the guidance is related to helping increase awareness level of Marathi Wikipedians on various aspects , Now these various aspects are already studied and grouped under different headings and messages are ready.But my previous effort to implement it in two levels were not successful since I do not have tech back ground It gave me Template loop detected message.But now I will trying the same again with your guidance and inputs.

Your interest to participate also is most welcome,I will invite you for your support after doing little translations which will avoid language difficulties for you this will take couple of days for me,Once I am ready I will leave the message at your talk page.Thanks again for valuable support.

Warm Regards

Mahitgar (talk) 18:27, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like you're using a template that calls itself. As far as I know, the MediaWiki software doesn't allow template recursion, but I don't think it's necessary to do what you want. I'll take a look when you message me later. Cheers, — Bility (talk) 18:46, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Here's an example: User:Bility/doublerand. Randomly selects a month, then randomly selects a day in that month out of the number of days in that month. A separate template (User:Bility/daysinmonths) keeps track of the number of days in each month. Used to create a link to an AfD page: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2010 March 19. For your purposes, you would put the count of different groups in {{random number}} on the first template, then keep a count of all the subpages in the switch statement in the second template. Using the two numbers you can build the links however you want, such as in decimal form (groupnumber.subpagenumber). — Bility (talk) 17:39, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

If I search without accents Google gives article photograph a high ranking but not article

Hi, if I search on Google for the actor Iván Kamarás using the accents, my Wiki article on him comes up third in the rankings, behind imdb.com and his own website. However, if I search without using any accents (ie, Ivan Kamaras), I get the photograph from my article coming up third in the rankings (ivan kamaras.jpg) but I have to scroll through three pages of Google to find the actual article. But if I search for Gerard Depardieu or Gert Frobe not using any accents, the Wikipedia articles (with accents) appear top of the rankings in both their cases. I can't see anything in the way the Depardieu or Frobe articles have been set up that is any different to what I have done. Has anyone got any helpful suggestions? Here is the link to the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iván_Kamarás. Many thanks --Cathypryor (talk) 12:42, 26 April 2011 (UTC) Cathy

Google has several data centers, and each one gives different search results. Searching from Spain, your name with accents gives the article in third place, and without accents the article appears in second place.

Apart from that, it's possible that, when random people in the internet link to your article, they are all using your name with accents in the link, and that they are all linking to the article with accents. This means that google sees a lot of links to Iván Kamarás, but very few links to Ivan Kamaras. Then google goes and assigns a lot of weight to the article with accents and very little weight to the article without accents.

Also, google discards accents when people make searches. It gives both results with accents and results without accents. But I have noticed that, many times, it gives slightly different results depending on whether you use accents or not. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:22, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Enric. Does that mean there is nothing I can do? ... --Cathypryor (talk) 16:27, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Page view statistics for German pages

I recently made some revisions to the German page for the Dallas Museum of Art. My curator wants to see how many visits the page has been getting (and therefore see how effective the page is in terms of reaching out to users), but I can't find the "page view statistics" for the German page, either for the Museum's page or for any German page, for that matter. I can find it in English, Spanish, even Greek, but no luck with German. It doesn't seem logical, though, that there wouldn't be a link to it; is it just posted somewhere else? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scwoodbury (talk • contribs) 14:34, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Try this link. You can change the requested language version of Wikipedia within the interface of the Wikipedia article traffic statistics tool; the relevant combo box is just below the day-by-day statistics. Graham87 14:56, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Watchlist

I'm sorry about writing about this here, but I was unable to find out which MediaWiki page is concerned with this issue. At Special:Watchlist/edit, the list goes:

• PageName (talk | History)
• User:UserName (talk | History | User contributions)

The uppercase letters, which I am showing here in bold for emphasis, look a bit unsightly as opposed to "talk" and as far as I can tell are not usually used for these kinds of system messages (see for example Template:Request for permission), so I suggest changing them to lowercase ones. --Theurgist (talk) 07:15, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Random broken gadgets - No show/hide functionality for navboxes

I haven't viewed Wikipedia for about a week or so. Anyway, I logged back in the other day, and for some reason a couple of my gadgets seem to have stopped working. The one that changes the article heading into a colour indicating its quality no longer works, and there may be a couple of others I haven't noticed yet. However other gadgets seem fine. Also, all the navboxes on Wikipedia are showing for me, with no option to hide them at all (which is an absolute nightmare on some articles). Is there any reason why this is suddenly occurring? And does anyone have any idea why this is happening? --Dorsal Axe 12:59, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Step one is to check that your browser has JavaScript turned on. If you're not sure how to check that, post your browser and version here and someone will be able to give you step-by-step instructions. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:01, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

If javascript was turned off his other gadgets wouldn't be working fine, so that's probably not the problem. Dorsal, could you explain what gadget you're talking about? I can't find anything like what you mentioned. The only script you seem to have outside of your preferences is the link-classifier, is that what you're talking about? Also, what skin are you using? - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 15:10, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Today I had also the problems. A few minutes ago the problems were magical solved. Twinkle was not showing up. maybe others, didn't matter me. mabdul 15:27, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Note that due to the way JS is loaded, some gadgets or other scripts can end up breaking each other if they have an error, so sometimes you'll see something not working when it's actually another gadget that failed. It can help narrow things down to try putting ?debug=true onto the URL -- this forces scripts to be loaded individually and can help with pinpointing the error. --brion (talk) 17:31, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Problem with a template

Hi,

Help needed here. I tried to modify Template:Texas county seats by adding Zapata to the list. But for some reason, the change doesn’t show up in the template (hope I’m making myself clear!). Can someone help me with this template? CheepnisAroma (talk) 18:55, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

{{Navbox}} appears to be coded for only up to 20 groups, your Z is #21. See Template talk:Navbox/Archive 11#More than 20 groups and Template talk:Navbox/Archive 13#No more than twenty groups? for some discussion of the reason and alternatives. DMacks (talk) 19:15, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Argh!!! Didn’t know that :P Thanks for your reply. CheepnisAroma (talk) 19:20, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Commons also as a repository for templates and pages

Yes, as the name says. Please see the discussion here (and comment there), and remember to see the original proposal at Bugzilla:4547. Regards. Rehman 01:54, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I've provided some small input to this thread on Commons. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 04:27, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Database dump

Hi, where can I find a dump of the November 2005 version of enwiki (articles only)? Thanks in advance --Yannis (talk) 07:03, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I couldn't find a database dump archive from the exact time, but there is a 2006 archive. The latest dump contains full revision history, so it is possible to search the 2005 situation (though that requires work). MKFI (talk) 11:34, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Colour shading in tables

The colour shading in the main table and the key table at [14] look different to me when viewing the page, but going into edit it appears the colour codes used are the same. Maybe it's just my machine, or perhaps the upper colours look darker because they have text on top. Is anyone else finding the colours different on shading that should be the same, although in any case, I think the colours used in the table are generally too similar to be able to easily differentiate. Any thoughts? Eldumpo (talk) 12:47, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

See Contrast effect. Remove the text from the colored rows and you'll see the legend colors look the same. — Bility (talk) 15:39, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Vanishing watchlist notices after username change

I changed my username about two days ago (and was receiving watchlist notices under my old username, Wi2g). Now when I check my watchlist, I'll see notices for a second before they disappear. I'm using XP with Chrome; thanks for any help!--Miniapolis (talk) 15:01, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

If you see them for a second before they disappear, then you must have clicked "hide" on them, because if they're only appearing for a second, then that means they are being hidden by the JavaScript used to hide notices that the user has chosen to no longer display. Gary King (talk · scripts) 15:48, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I didn't hide them; think it's related to the username change. Tried the script #watchlist-message { display: all; } on both my /vector.css and .js subpages, but no joy. Where should I go to unclick "hide"?--Miniapolis (talk) 16:15, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I think you'll get the messages back if you delete any browser cookies you have from "en.wikipedia.org". You will have to log in again after deleting the cookies. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:27, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Don't know why it worked, but it did! Thanks a million.--Miniapolis (talk) 17:38, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Template group limit

Hi. In a grouped template, is the number of groups limited to twenty, or is there some other problem with the one I'm creating? (Here) Thanks WilliamF1two (talk) 23:05, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

There is a 20 group limit in {{Navbox}}. If you can group some of the groups together, {{Navbox subgroup}} or {{Navbox with collapsible groups}} may be of use to you. — Bility (talk) 23:11, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Bility, that seems to have solved it WilliamF1two (talk) 23:14, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Also {{Navbox long}}. — Bility (talk) 23:39, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Wiki Pages supposedly saved to "Book" vanish when session is over!

hello, i love using the new "add page to book" feature, but everytime i log off and back on, all my pages and books are gone--like they never existed.

i've spent hours adding hundreds of wikipedia pages from my browsers bookmarks to my wikipedia book(s), before deleting the bookmarks for organization.  now both are gone.

i am using Firefox 4 for Mac OSX 10.6.7 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moscarda (talk • contribs) 06:33, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I have replied at the Help desk; here. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:05, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Two supplementary questions from me:

• Why does saving a book need autoconfirmed status?
• Why doesn't the software warn a non-autoconfirmed user that they are wasting their time? -- John of Reading (talk) 07:09, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the intent of the first question. I'm not sure why the "User" group (see Special:ListGroupRights) has createpage yet you be in the autoconfirmed group to save book pages (collectionsaveascommunitypage and collectionsaveasuserpage).

To respond to your second question, any admin can change system messages. There's probably a few pages in the MediaWiki namespace that need to make this more apparent to non-autoconfirmed users. Not that I agree with the current setup, but at least for the time being they should be made more aware. Killiondude (talk) 07:15, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

For the autoconfirmed requirement, see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 47#Disabling "create a book" and bugzilla:18902. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:10, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Monobook

Apologies if this was asked before (I didn't find it if it was), but is there a way to make Monobook the default skin in all language editions of Wikipedia without having to set it in each edition manually? Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 28, 2011; 16:37 (UTC)

No, unfortunately not. Graham87 08:17, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

If you are currently using the Vector skin as the default, you can visit Special:UsabilityInitiativePrefSwitch, which would propagate the Monobook skin to most wikis in your SUL. However some wikis still remain out of reach and can display Vector skin instead (devs don't know why though). :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 09:40, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, folks. Not what I was hoping to hear, but thanks for taking time to answer anyway!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 29, 2011; 13:35 (UTC)

Display issue

Has something been changed in the software recently? The reason I ask is that on my user page, the GAs, ITNs and DYK medals used to display as three rows between the editor medal and babel box. Now, they are displaying as a single column down the page. I appreciate that my page displays differently on different monitors, but it is set up to look how I want it to on my regular screen. No editing has been done to the page recently, so the cause must lie elsewhere. Mjroots (talk) 10:51, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

...and now it's back to normal. Either a change has been reverted, or it was a glitch. Mjroots (talk) 11:05, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

It was the {{Click}} template. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:08, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the fix, objection voiced at CfD. Mjroots (talk) 20:04, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

tabs??

everytime I open a tab I am signed out. Is it because of the IP block for me?? I think the IP starts out with 24.110 something... Libertarians Will Rule (talk) 02:37, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

A block would stop you editing, but it wouldn't log you out. Does anything at WP:COOKIES help you? -- John of Reading (talk) 06:59, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Javascript errors

I got the following errors on IE:

Webpage error details

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0) Timestamp: Sat, 30 Apr 2011 11:43:41 UTC

Message: Object doesn't support this property or method Line: 1835 Char: 2 Code: 0 URI: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:AzaToth/morebits.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript

Message: Object doesn't support this property or method Line: 46 Char: 2 Code: 0 URI: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ioeth/friendlytag.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript

Please advise on what I should do to avoid them. The articles seem to load slower. Redtigerxyz ^Talk 11:50, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Remove Friendly from your monobook.js (assuming you are using the monobook skin). If you have twinkle or friendly installed anywhere else, remove that too. Ale_Jrb^talk 11:52, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

How to create a table and manage text flow

The featured article candidate Science Fantasy (magazine) contains images that are tables. When this was queried, an editor said "I don't think it's possible to have tables that text can flow around". Can anyone help? Please respond at the the featured article candidate discussion. Lightmouse (talk) 13:35, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Responded --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 15:03, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you very much. That's a great help. Lightmouse (talk) 15:06, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Combined category listing?

Suppose I want to list articles that are listed in both the Category:DOS software and the Category:Free text editors. How does one accomplish this without resorting to screen scraping? Electron9 (talk) 14:41, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:CatScan. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:54, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

THANKS!Electron9 (talk) 23:25, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

sandbox

Hello i was on sandbox and didnt know that you cant deleted the first part. I am so sorry and i hope that you can fix it So sorry —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.110.139.228 (talk) 01:26, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't worry, you should keep the first line of Sandbox there, so that other people can read the advice that the line produces. But it's automatically restored if you remove it, so it doesn't really matter that you broke it. Actually, that's what sandbox is for, you can try things there, and if you do something wrong, nothing bad happens. When you think you know how to do basic editing, you can edit some article that you think needs it. Just try to stay constructive and civil, but it seems you'll have no problems with that. User<Svick>.Talk(); 02:21, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Keeping disambiguation pages out of "random page" circulation

Has there ever been a consideration of whether (and how) to prevent pages that transclude one of the various disambiguation templates from appearing when clicking "random article"? Seems like a good idea to me – users clicking "random" who are more interested in reading than editing probably don't want to see dab pages, and editors using "random" to find pages to edit can easily get piles of dab pages by looking at their various categories. The other issue is technical feasibility, which I'm clueless on. Thoughts? » Swpb^{τ • ¢} 21:01, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

It's been suggested a few times but I don't know if it would be implemented in the built-in random page feature of Wikipedia anytime soon because disambiguation pages are merely a page that we as editors describe differently, but the software doesn't see it any differently, as opposed to redirects, which are built-in to the software. However, a few months ago I responded to a similar request and created the Wikipedia:Enhanced Random Article which can be used on a user-by-user basis to choose whether to not show disambiguation pages and/or stubs when using the "Enhanced random" link (added by this script) under the "Random article" link. Gary King (talk · scripts) 02:02, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion, that script should be added to user preferences if it isn't already. demize (t · c) 02:04, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I think having the dab pages in the random article search is quite valuable. It lets editors see if a random dab page needs fixing or improving. if you don't want to read that page, just click again. Softlavender (talk) 07:41, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Editors of dab pages have often been split between the "signpost" and the "waypoint" camps; the former looks upon then as navigational aids and not "articles" per se, whereas the later looks upon them as a point where click-paths intersect, providing opportunities for exploration. Including dab pages in the random page shuffle serves the signpost use case in the way that Softlavender has articulated; for other people, it serves the exploratory spirit, leading to the "oh, I didn't know it also meant THAT?!" --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 04:03, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I have often wanted the opposite: a way to generate a random disambiguation page so I can copyedit them. Jason Quinn (talk) 00:34, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Using http://toolserver.org/~erwin85/randomarticle.php:

http://tools.wikimedia.de/~erwin85/randomarticle.php?lang=en&family=wikipedia&categories=Disambiguation%20pages&namespaces=-1&subcats=1&d=10. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:41, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

watchlist issue

I'm not sure if this is a standard part of the watchlist or something added by twinkle, but I'm having occasional problems where I accidentally click the 'rollback' button at the end of some entry on the watchlist, and rollback someone's edit without even realizing I did it. I've done it two or three times myself, and someone else just did it with one of my posts. It's probably even a bigger problem for people who edit from phones or handhelds. If it's happened to me with this frequency, it's probably happened hundreds of time on pages across the project.

Do we need that rollback link there? How many cases can rolling back from the watchlist actually be justified (since it implies one hasn't actually looked at the edit itself, but just the summary)? Is there any way to make it a little less hair-trigger? --Ludwigs2 05:45, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I do not see why anyone would use the tool unless they were looking at the edit. Is there a need to have it in the watchlist? TFD (talk) 05:54, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

If you use pop-ups you can see the edit from the watchlist and rollback from there. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 06:35, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

If the extra links are those added by Twinkle, you can arrange for them not to appear in your watchlist. See User:John of Reading/vector.js for an example and Wikipedia:Twinkle/doc#showRollbackLinks for the documentation. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:57, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

For the rollback link that all rollbackers get, you can instead use this script: User:Ilmari_Karonen/rollbacksummary.js. With it each rollback link remains fully functional, but when you click it and have JavaScript enabled (important!), you are prompted for an alternative edit summary. Then you can just enter Return or click OK to accept the default edit summary, or click the Cancel button when you didn't actually want to rollback anything. Hans Adler 07:43, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

That's a useful script, thanks. --Ludwigs2 07:52, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I forgot another warning: Once you have the script, it's tempting to use it for arbitrary reverts since you can write any edit summary you want. But the reverts will still be marked as minor, and I got a complaint for that after doing it for months without thinking I was doing anything bad. (In retrospect it's obvious, of course...) Hans Adler 20:30, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

yeah, I can see that it's already going to require some rewriting. I think I can fix that, though. --Ludwigs2 00:22, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Entire website seemed down

I've been trying to get Wikipedia and Commons to load for most of the afternoon, but right now was the first time that anything worked. Prior to that, all I could get was "Internet Explorer cannot load this page", as if I'd gone to a website that doesn't exist. I'm running version 8, FYI. Any idea what was going on? Nyttend (talk) 21:46, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Big green box on preview

Suddenly today whenever I hit the "preview" button I get a big green box informing me that I'm previewing unsaved changes and telling me everything that means. Now, that may be useful for new users, but I've been editing Wikipedia since December 2004 and know what I'm doing. Is there some Preference I can set to get rid of the annoying thing? —Angr (talk) 16:20, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:MediaWiki_messages#Graphical : #wikiPreview { display:none; } in your css - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 16:30, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Thats a stopgap for a problem that was just created by an edit this morning.[15] Come visit the discussion instead and voice your opinion on it. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 16:47, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

In vector, the CSS fix also hides the page preview itself, not just the annoying green box above it, so it's not a very useful workaround. --Morn (talk) 18:29, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Use div.previewnote div { display: none; } - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 18:33, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that works! --Morn (talk) 18:44, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

• Well, what's the fix for Monobook? The above fix doesn't work in FF 4. RedWolf (talk) 04:53, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

• BTW, the first fix (which has been stricken out) makes the entire preview invisible in Monobook. RedWolf (talk) 05:26, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Editing the description of an illustration

On this page one finds the inane phrasing "a Euler diagram" instead of "an Euler diagram". (Apparently some people get all the way through secondary school without finding out that the first syllable of "Euler" is not pronounced like that of "Euclid".) Is it impossible ever to edit this thing? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:19, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

No, it's not impossible; I've fixed it. But since the image is at Commons, it had to be edited there rather than at Wikipedia. BTW, I got all the way through secondary school, 4 years of undergraduate study, and 7 years of (post)graduate study with a Ph.D. at the end without ever encountering the name Euler either spoken or in print. —Angr (talk) 18:31, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you.

He was one of the most prolific writers ever. Check out the list of topics named after Leonhard Euler. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:59, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Heh, you should get one of these (which, by the way, includes an informational leaflet explaining how to pronounce "Euler") ;-) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 18:39, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

geoiplookup popup

All of a sudden, I am getting two geoiplookup.wikimedia.org popups per page view asking for login/pass for authentication (the second one after canceling the first). I saw a thread from some time ago saying to add said address to the hostfile, but that does not seem to have done the trick, because I'm still getting them. I'm using Firefox 3.6.16. MSJapan (talk) 12:24, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Next step in Account Creation Improvement Project

Sorry for crossposting.

I just wanted to tell you that there are some interesting technical tests being done in the next steps of the Account Creation Improvement Project.//Hannibal (talk) 14:27, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Webroot no longer likes us

Hi. I use Webroot (less happily than I used to), and in the last couple of days it has grown increasingly suspicious of Wikipedia. Currently, it is blocking many pages. For instance, when I tried to get to Wikipedia:IRC, I received the following:

Webroot has blocked access to a potentially threatening site

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=Wikipedia%3AIRC&go=Go

This Web site has exhibited suspicious behavior or is similar to Web sites that are known sources of malware, viruses and spam. Visiting this site may put you at risk or compromise your identity or privacy.

On many pages that it does not block, it displays a message: "Webroot has blocked a potentially malicious resource found on page: bits.wikimedia.org/skins-1.17/chick/main.css"

I don't know what's up with it, but I'm a devoted enough user to say "Yeah, whatever" and click on through. I'm not so sure about other hapless Webroot users. Is there anything on our end that can be done, or is Webroot going to have to sort this? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:57, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

• I use Webroot as one of several like apps and I am not having a problem as you describe. I use "Webroot Antivirus with Spy Sweeper", version 7.0.8.7, security definitions version 1899, virus engine version 3.16.1. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:50, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

• Does it allow you to set http://en.wikipedia.org as a trusted site? (or some sort of avoidance/bypass/exclusion setting during scanning) Chaosdruid (talk) 02:43, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

  In my case, not that I can see. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:19, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

• I'm using Webroot Internet Security Essentials 7.0.8.7, security definitionos version 1935, virus engine version 3.16.1. It would allow me to tell it that I trust the site, but I've not followed that yet because I've been interested in trying to figure out what the problem might be. It did not block my access to a page yesterday, but it's still finding "potentially malicious resource"(s) on some pages, including on this one. I don't guess there's anything that we can do about it, since it seems to be a Webroot issue. I trust there's not really anything wrong with "bits.wikimedia.org/skins-1.17/chick/main.css", though I'm fairly clueless about such things and don't know for sure. :) I am more concerned about other would-be readers who may trust Webroot more than Wikipedia. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 18:12, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

This is what you call a 'false positive'. They have recently added a signature of something malicious to their list of issues, and that signature just by accident happens to match something that is in our main.css style file. You should report this problem to Webroot, so that they can correct it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:20, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Navboxes and/or Succession boxes

Is there any reason you can't have both a navbox and a succession box containing broadly similar information. At [16] the first of the succession boxes is similar to the first of the navboxes, but the succession has additional information on country/song title. Eldumpo (talk) 13:11, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

There are no technical reasons, any reasons would be purely stylistic I presume. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:30, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikilinks in diffs now clickable?

I must've missed this somewhere, but wikilinks in diffs are now clickable? Nice touch. Strange Passerby (talk • cont) 16:48, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Not for unregistered users. For registered users there are some gadgets that will do it depending on the browser. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:08, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

It's a feature of wikEd. Maybe we should enabled by default? Gadget's aren't getting the love the deserve. — Dispenser 17:37, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

It's a bad idea to enable it by default (unless you manage to enable only cretin modules). wikiEd makes browsers very slow, and it sometimes gets in your way. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 07:33, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Hmm... but I haven't enabled wikEd. Strange Passerby (talk • cont) 05:56, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

You imported User:Cacycle/wikEdDiff.js a week ago.[17] This includes "wikEd.DiffLinkifyStandard: linkify wikilinks in standard diff text". PrimeHunter (talk) 14:18, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Proxy error

I can open the page World War II fine when logged out. If I log in securely (https), I get the error below - just for that page, on two different PCs, on two different ISPs, whether I use FF3.6, FF4, Chrome or IE. All other pages that I've tried are fine. If I log in via http, there is a long delay, but the page loads. I'm in the UK. Started happening yesterday.

Proxy Error

The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server. The proxy server could not handle the request GET /wikipedia/en/wiki/World_war_II.

Reason: Error reading from remote server

Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) mod_fastcgi/2.4.6 PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.12wm1 with Suhosin-Patch mod_ssl/2.2.8 OpenSSL/0.9.8g Server at secure.wikimedia.org Port 443

(Hohum ^@) 21:50, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Me too. Marcus Qwertyus 22:17, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I notice Marcus and I are both reviewers, perhaps something is conflicting? (Hohum ^@) 23:01, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Just checked, same thing here. Logged in securely = proxy error; logged out (normal non-secure enwp) = totally fine. Also a reviewer, fwiw. Strange Passerby (talk • cont) 05:57, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Same for Barack Obama. This is bugzilla:25271 and caused by the servers taking so long to generate your page, that the proxy error throws a timeout error before the page result is delivered to the secure proxy server. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:39, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Btw, refreshing fixes it. ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 07:40, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Refreshing doesn't fix this for me. (Hohum ^@) 17:44, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Site notice options

Is there a way to restrict site notice appearances to certain type of pages?. In ta. wiki we want a particular site notice to appear only in top of articles. I would be grateful for any help.--Sodabottle (talk) 11:27, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps something involving conditionals in Parser functions using the {{SITENAME}} Magic word ? Here, that word is Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wtmitchell (talk • contribs) 12:27, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

See the list of templates at {{namespace detect see also}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:36, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Will check them out.--Sodabottle (talk) 04:45, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Template redirect

I've moved Template:US Nuclear Tests, but the redirect doesn't work (example: bottom of Operation Dominic I and II). How do I fix this? --Beao 14:06, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Because the template had been moved twice, from Template:US Nuclear Tests to Template:US nuclear tests and then to Template:Nuclear weapons tests of the United States, you created a double redirect. The software doesn't handle these automatically. I have fixed it for you. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:10, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Hitting watch/unwatch not doing so, but jumping to Undefined

Yeah this much be the weirdest error I've ever seen on WP. Just as it says....anyone else have this issue? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:07, 3 May 2011 (UTC) ...and it fixed itself already. Still, very weird. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:08, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Wrapping long line of diffs

I have a script that prepares a long line of diffs. In my browser, the line wraps nicely, but another editor says they see only one long unwrapped line (which requires awkward horizontal scrolling). Here are two examples:

• Talk:Islamic Golden Age#Misuse of sources (single line of 122 diffs, 6372 characters; no space between diffs)
• Talk:Alhazen#Misuse of sources (127 diffs; space manually inserted after every 3 or so diffs)

It's likely I'll have to make quite a few more of these lines-of-diffs, so I'm hoping someone will say what is a good way to provide such a long line, while having it work on a variety of browsers. Is inserting a space after every three diffs desirable/best? The background for why this is happening is at WP:Jagged 85 cleanup. Johnuniq (talk) 07:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Why not just add a space after every diff in your script? — Bility (talk) 08:50, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, yes, I will rearrange the output so it is spaced. I based the output on that produced by the Contribution Surveyor, but I see that for its intended use (copyright investigations), there is almost never a large number of diffs for one article, and that explains why it does not have a wrapping problem in practice. Johnuniq (talk) 03:19, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Inline reference tools

Are there Wikipedia tools to assist me in converting bare URL references to inline citations? I am already using WebCite and the toolserver makecite, which are external tools, but perhaps there is something easier. --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:30, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

WP:REFLINKS, User:Citation bot, Diberri are some of the ones I use. Rjwilmsi 12:41, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Vector personal links

I think Vector is a great skin, but some tidbits still remind my of Monobook. The personal links menu in the top-right corner is such one; it was never "vectorized". So I put some CSS in my vector.css to give it a slight update. Nothing dramatic, but refreshing none the less:

/* Personal menu dividers */
#p-personal {
  right: 0.25em;
}
#p-personal li {
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0.5em;
  background: url("http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Personal-break-vector.png") no-repeat left;
}
li#pt-login,
li#pt-userpage,
li#pt-anonuserpage {
  background: url(/skins-1.17/vector/images/user-icon.png) no-repeat left;
}

Try it out in your vector.css. — Edokter (talk) — 09:56, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

See also bugzilla:28835. A patch has been submitted, review pending. — Edokter (talk) — 16:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think you're on to something here - the updated css does look better, in my opinion. —DoRD (talk) 16:28, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I like it!! ManishEarth^{Talk • Stalk} 04:38, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

This is just a technical question

This is just a technical question - I am not too knowledgeable about technical matters, as you will probably know! I use Google Chrome as my web browser, and when I click on to log in to Wikipedia, I find my username appears, but I still keep having to put my password in (fortunately, I can always remember it!) As it happens, I have ticked the "Remember me" box, so I am wondering why I keep having to do this. While I am here, I have had some trouble on my laptop lately inadvertently locking keys - what is the best way to undo this? Any comments or advice will be warmly appreciated! I do not mind if you leave any answers on my userpage (that might be better, actually). Cheers and thanks, ACEOREVIVED (talk) 16:12, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

This depends on your browser and not Wikipedia. I have replied at Wikipedia:Help desk#Technical questions. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:22, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Can't see past versions of templates when editing

With most articles, to see the exact text used with piped links and other details that don't show up in what is visible, it is possible to click on "Edit" and see what was there, even though you get the warning that any changes made since that past version will be lost if this edit is saved. With templates, you can't do that. I don't know if the "show" feature is related to this, but when I needed to go back and check something I had done in Template:Sirius XM Channels (music), I couldn't do it that way. Fortunately, the problem was piped links and I was able to see where each link went.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:06, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean on a page where it's transcluded or the template itself? For the latter, you can see past versions (random example) in the history. On article pages, the current template is transcluded when looking at past revisions. I suppose it's possible to look up and transclude the last version of a template before the article's revision timestamp, but that could create a lot of overhead when looking at past revisions of articles with a lot of template transclusions, and browsing through diffs takes long enough as it is. It's a cool idea for when you actually want to see a revision with templates as they were in the past, but I don't know if anyone has made or is working on a tool that will do it. — Bility (talk) 22:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I was clicking on 'History" and then clicking on the past version I wanted and then "Edit", but for some reason it wasn't working. It did work for me just now. Let me go back and figure out what computer I was on.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:55, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I figured it out. I was clicking on the letter E. But just now I clicked on the edit link at the top and that worked. When I clicked on the E, on this computer, it did not. I got the current version.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:00, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

If you mean the lower case 'e' in the corner of many navigation templates then it's generated by the template code itself and it always makes an edit link for the current version, regardless of where the template is displayed. That is what it is supposed to do. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:24, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Global Variables

I'm attempting to get the Wikipedia Toolbar working for Firefox 4. I don't have much experience with this stuff, but I've determined the buttons that are not working are due to the fact that they use some global variables. From different pages that I've read, and directly from mw:Manual:Interface/JavaScript, window._content.document.location = wgServer + wgScript + "?title=" + wgPageName + "&action=edit"; should work, but it doesn't. If I take out the wgServer, wgScript, and wgPageName, it works. I've asked this over at MediaWiki, but they don't seem to think it's related to them. Thanks. MrKIA11 (talk) 05:01, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

So that seems to be some sort of Firefox extension; it may not have direct access to the JavaScript context of the wiki pages. Even if it does, it may simply be trying to work with things before the variables are set or in some other way such that they aren't accessible through whatever means the Firefox extension's chrome JavaScript code accesses the content JavaScript context. The global variables have been moved from being set literally in a script block near the top of the page to calling a function in the global mediaWiki object farther down in the page source, which sets them in mediaWiki's configuration array and into the window's global variable namespace. --brion (talk) 20:40, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I wish I understood all of that. Another detail which makes it more confusing, is that it still works fine in Firefox versions prior to Firefox 4. It does not interact with the page automatically at all, there are just buttons that are meant to perform certain actions (i.e., (un)watch, swap between main/talk space, etc...), which are all just meant to refactor the URL address for the appropriate action. Could you expand on how/where the variables were moved, and how are they meant to be accessed now that they are not directly on the page? Thanks, MrKIA11 (talk) 23:20, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

So I dug a little deeper, and I found an answer to my problem. For some reason, the first <script> element includes more variables in previous versions of Firefox that don't show up in Firefox 4; no idea why. But instead, I found that I can query the actual links that edit, (un)watch, swap, etc... the page directly, and use that. So as of this point, I have found my answer, until I run into another road block. Thanks for the nudge. MrKIA11 (talk) 00:21, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (footnotes)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (footnotes) at WP:IBID says not to use ibid., but it does not mention a tag for this usage. What is the tag for extensive use of ibid. in footnotes? --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:51, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

{{ibid}} -- John of Reading (talk) 12:58, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Edit view problem

I have noted there is a problem since yesterday with the viewing history for previous edits. The problem is that it no longer shows the orange and green on the before and after texts and in addition it no longer highlights in red what has been added or removed. another similar issue I've discovered is in the edit view itself. The problem theres is that sometimes the edit bar with all the Bold, Link etc. tools are not there also the copy and paste collection of characters below the editing box are no longer linked and are just words that you can't click on. I'm using Internet Explorer and I'm using the Non-Beta version of Wikipedia. What's wrong? The C of E. God Save The Queen! (talk) 14:55, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

This'll be the same problem as #No colour shading on diffs above; there are some edge cases or something that are still being worked out. --brion (talk) 21:11, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

PDF download of AfD discussion

There is a option to download archived AfD discussion as PDF format for offline viewing. I tried it, but the downloaded documents remain completely blank. Can anyone check this issue. --Reference Desker (talk) 09:38, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I couldn't find any such link. Can you post an example? User<Svick>.Talk(); 15:05, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

See [18] --Reference Desker (talk) 16:18, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

It is caused by a CSS class in {{Afd top}}. I made a question about it at Template talk:Afd top#CSS class metadata. User<Svick>.Talk(); 16:52, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Inappropriate usernames

Is it possible in the software, and if so is it reasonable, to so arrange the programming so that it is not possible, at least without a warning showing up automatically, to create an article with the same title as your username? As many of us know a lot of new users join wikipedia, often with the best of intentions, create a username which relates intimately to their personal interest, post an article of the same title, get blocked, go away and we have lost a potentially good editor. And all it takes is a warning before they post their edit/create their username. --Anthony Bradbury^"talk" 16:14, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

The Edit filter adds a warning to the edit summary. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:32, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but quite a lot of new users do not add an edit summary. I am trying here to be helpful, not obstructive! --Anthony Bradbury^"talk" 16:12, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

If a new user tries to create an article with the same title as their name, a warning is shown to them when trey try to save it, and they have to save it again to actually create the article. From my report, it seems this warning is not very effective and about 70% (cca 800 during March) of users who try to save such article actually do create it. I do not measure how many of the articles get deleted eventually, but from a cursory glance at the log, it seems it's a large majority of them. User<Svick>.Talk(); 15:26, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Display problems for 'Cologne Blue' skin

Hi. I had previously posted a question at the Helpdesk but have been advised to redirect my query here. When logging on this morning, I noticed a few design changes to various views. I have listed these in more detail here. This only seems to have affected the Cologne Blue skin which I use as my default skin. The problems are threefold:

• Blue boxes appearing around every image
• [edit] hyperlinks have moved and are too large
• A "Retrieved from" message appearing at the bottom of every page.

The Helpdesk advise that there have been no recent edits made specifically to this skin. Is anyone else experiencing these issues? Careful With That Axe, Eugene ^Hello... 09:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

These issues also seem to be affecting Simple, Nostalgia and Classic skins too. I am using IE7. Careful With That Axe, Eugene ^Hello... 09:51, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm having similar issues using Monobook; [edit] is now on the left (and in the way), watchlist now shows total byte changes in black rather than red or green, edit summary box ridiculously narrow. GedUK  11:51, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It seems pieces of CSS or javascript are missing. Usually that means bits.wikimedia.org could be overloaded. — Edokter (talk) — 12:12, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Overloaded for at lest three hours? That's alarming! GedUK  12:29, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I said "could be". The server log shows nothing unusual though. — Edokter (talk) — 12:31, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's still wonky. GedUK  07:29, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

One of the servers was out of sync with the rest. Should be fixed now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:01, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Sadly not, for me at least. I still have blue boxes around every image, 'edit section' hyperlinks have transferred to the left side of the screen (and in larger font) and there is a "Retrieved from" message appearing at the bottom of each page. These issues vanished for a period yesterday afternoon (UTC) but only intermittently. They are back this morning. Careful With That Axe, Eugene ^Hello... 09:42, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Not fixed for me either. I also can't see colour highlights on diffs (so you can see what's changed), the mediawiki privacy policy etc links that are usually at the bottom of the page are shoved into the left hand column, no italics for section headings on the watchlist and others that I think I've forgotten about. GedUK  11:41, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I've just tried it on vector, and that's worse; it's not loading properly, basically it's all coming out in plain text, so for some reason a style sheet isn't loading for me I guess. I've tried it with all of my scripts off as well, with no luck. GedUK  12:07, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I am only experiencing this problem when not using the default language. (See #Layout looks messed up when selecting an other language in Special:Preferences below). This means that the problem does exist for me when using "en-UK" as language in Special:Preferences, but when I use "en" (on this wiki), everything looks fine. Changing the language does however not fix Cologne Blue for me. --Tjibbe I (talk) 13:12, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

On FF4, Chrome and Opera on my mac at home, it's all fine. Just IE7 on my PC at work. GedUK  09:14, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Edit insert box

The below has been copied from Wikipedia:Help Desk who were unable to help me :-

There use to be an Insert box on the editting screen where you could insert Wiki markup, Symbols etc. It appears to have disappeared in recent weeks (although is still present when uploading a book cover image), is it possible for me to get it back ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 22:35, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

It's still there, right where it used to be. Perhaps it's a browser problem? Anyway, if it's not there, you can still insert those characters by clicking on the "Special characters" option in the edit toolbar (above the edit box). Most of the frequently used wiki markup can be inserted using the "Advanced" option. Hope this helps. Chamal ^T•C 02:57, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I Use IE8 and the box disappeared a month or so ago. I have Show Edit toolbar checked in my preferences but I cant see it... GrahamHardy (talk) 17:57, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Have you tried bypassing your browser cache? Graham87 02:16, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Partial success; whenever I edit a page 'cntl-pf5' makes the Insert Markup box appear but why do I now need to do this every time I edit a page ? Can I change something to make it appear every time by default ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 14:31, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps try clearing your cache, as described on the page that I linked above. Graham87 15:31, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Timeline of the 2011 Libyan civil war doesn't update anymore

I've noticed that the article on the Timeline of the 2011 Libyan civil war doesn't present any new changes, even though they appear in the history log. I've tried purging the article but it appears that doesn't have any effect on it. Can anyone take a look to see what's going on with this article? -- Mecanismo | Talk 11:04, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I see events all the way through May 1. What's the problem? MrKIA11 (talk) 11:11, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

RTL template transclusion problem

Hello. There's a transclusion problem with template {{Allah}} just in some pages and I cannot see why. I can read ...God (Arabic: [[Allah|الله]] Allāh)..., being the wikiling shown as it is, instead of "God (Arabic: الله Allāh)" (so, in this Village Pump it is well transcluded!). E.g. Ka'ab_al-Ahbar#Views. It was also at Muhammad but it's been changed with a simple wikilink. Any ideas? Thank you. -Aleator (talk) 15:29, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Fixed.[19] {{Allah}} had been changed to use a template which causes problems when transcluded inside a wikilink in article space. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:17, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Is the lack of colors on diffs being worked on, or not?

It's been three days now, and there's no precise indication in the threads above that this is actually being resolved. I'm on IE and I get no colors at all on diffs -- no red, no green, no yellow; just white with no way to tell what's changed except via detailed proofreading. Can we please have a show of hands as to who is working on this and when the ETA of it being fixed is? Thanks very much. This is frustrating when one is trying to monitor vandalism. Softlavender (talk) 12:00, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I have the Same Problum I'm on IE 8 and I use XP Jena (talk) 20:28, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

There are already two reports on this issue today as well at the help desk. Any updates or suggestions, anyone? Chamal ^T•C 04:52, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Has anyone tried Wikipedia:Bug reports and feature requests? --Jayron32 04:56, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Agreed -- we need to keep pummelling the Wikipedia:Bug reports and feature requests with reports until they take it seriously enough to fix it. It's been nearly six days, and this is one of the vital functionalities on Wikipedia. Softlavender (talk) 05:37, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I just tried to view a diff, and it worked fine for me, with the colors and every thing displaying as it should. However, I do seem to notice that apparently since the software update, the diff pages occasionally fail to load correctly, with probloems including no colors, as well as the edit information being left-justified over each diff panel instead of being centered above each diff panel as normal. I am using Internet Explorer 8 on Windows Vista. Regards, [|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|] 06:29, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I've still got the problems as well using Internet Explorer on Windows 7. This is getting beyond a joke now. If push comes to shove someone should just send information on it straight to the top. The C of E. God Save The Queen! (talk) 11:19, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

That won't work, but filing a bug report will. Softlavender (talk) 11:40, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Was already long since filed. This is bugzilla:28840. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:23, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

move edit toolbar to bottom?

this is one of those 'persona preference' things, but I'd really like to have the edit toolbar at the bottom of the edit window rather than the top (it would save me having to mouse up to click the add sig button). I'm guessing there's a way to do this via CSS, and hoping someone happens to know how, thus saving me the effort of digging through the page code to figure it out on my own. can anyone point me to the solution? --Ludwigs2 19:13, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

You just have to type in 4 of these ~ for a sig. The C of E. God Save The Queen! (talk) 16:51, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikitables - invisible unlinked text

Unlinked text in wikitables has become invisible to users of the blackscreen gadget. Has someone changed how wikitables work and set the font to black? DuncanHill (talk) 22:58, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Since when ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:02, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Noticed it yesterday, was OK as far as I remember about ten days ago. Not been on much in between. DuncanHill (talk) 14:05, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

This is expected. Wikitables have backgrounds, so they ought to specify their expected text color. This was corrected recently in the skins (and deployed 4 days ago). The black skin however is not yet aware, but this requires fixing in the 'black' skin. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:29, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

So who does this? Is there any indication of timescale? DuncanHill (talk) 16:00, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I fixed it (hopefully). Try it out. — Edokter (talk) — 16:03, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Still not right, and that was looking at a page I've never looked at before. DuncanHill (talk) 16:06, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Now it seems better, thank you. DuncanHill (talk) 16:08, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Help with table syntax

Hi, I'm failing miserably with a syntax problem. Could someone smart make me a copy of this table in normal wikitable format and dump the code here or on my talkpage? Feel free to make up numbers to put in the empty column if this makes life easier, I'll fix them when I put it into the article. Thanks so much! ╟─TreasuryTag►consulate─╢ 15:13, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Something like this?

For governor

Names	Choices	Totals
John Doe	First choices
	Second choices
	Third choices
Richard Roe	First choices
	Second choices
	Third choices

User<Svick>.Talk(); 15:21, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Perfect, thanks so much! ╟─TreasuryTag►collectorate─╢ 15:28, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Help with DISPLAYTITLE

Resolved

 – —mc10 (t/c) 02:08, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi, can anyone work out why the {{DISPLAYTITLE:I want to change the displayed title of this page}} magic-word won't work on my talkpage? (Feel free to have a fiddle yourself, I'd ideally like the title to display simply TreasuryTag) Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►UK EYES ONLY─╢ 17:32, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

The resulting text must match the title of the page; you cannot change the text, only it's appearence. — Edokter (talk) — 17:35, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Aha. Thanks. ╟─TreasuryTag►person of reasonable firmness─╢ 17:35, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

You can hide some of the page name but not add something different. Is [20] what you want? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:05, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Wonderful, thanks so much! ╟─TreasuryTag►consulate─╢ 21:06, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

No colour shading on diffs

Since yesterday, I'm not seeing any colour shading when I display diffs, which sometimes makes it really hard to identify what has been changed. Is it just me? I'm using the MonoBook skin, IE7 and Windows XP. Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 04:00, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

One of the servers was out of sync with the rest. Should be fixed now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:02, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 16:14, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Not sure about everyone else ... but the problem still remains for me (using Monobook skin). --- Barek (talk) - 16:26, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Note: I've cleared the cache in my browser, with no change. When I get back to my normal laptop later tonight, I'll test using multiple browsers to see if it makes a difference. --- Barek (talk) - 19:57, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I was going to report this. It happened to me several times. But I got some diffs with the colors, so I figured there must be some types of diffs that don't use the colors. I'm relieved, because these are impossible to figure out.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:18, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Same thing for me I'm using XP IE8 and Classic Skin Jena (talk) 00:51, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I've tried on a couple different computers and here's the results for me (not sure if others have the same result).

• All tests were with the MonoBook skin.
• In IE7 and IE8, the error occurs for me when using the secure site - https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/
• In IE7 and IE8, the standard site works fine - http://en.wikipedia.org/
• In Firefox, both the stnadard and the secure site work fine.
• In Chrome, both the standard and the secure site work fine.
• In Android 2.2's stock browser, both the standard and the secure site display fine.

So, at least for me, the problem with MonoBook appears to be limited to Internet Explorer (at least two versions) when viewing the secure site. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 03:13, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I've also used several computers and they as well have no colour on the diffs and also the edit toolbar above the edit box isn't there. The C of E. God Save The Queen! (talk) 07:13, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Same. No color on diffs. XP Pro/IE8/Monobook & Vector. Thanks! — SpikeToronto 06:52, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Issue with IE support. Tracked as bugzilla:28840. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:34, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

The temporary fix identified in bugzilla:28840 appears to have resolved the issue for me in IE7 using MonoBook. I will have access to my system running IE8 later tonight and confirm there as well.

Hopefully, a more permanent long-term solution can be found that will both resolve the issue and not present such a hack-ish solution for those working the code. --- Barek (talk) - 16:33, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Layout looks messed up when selecting an other language in Special:Preferences

When selecting an other language than "en - English" in "My preferences" (I tried in with nl and en-GB), the Vector skin does not seem to be working anymore. When setting the language back to the default language, the layout goes back to normal. I noticed a similar problem on other Wikipediae when using a non-native language (e.g. when using "en - English" on Wikipedia Bahasa Indonesia. Is there something that can be done about it? (I am using Internet explorer 7 at the moment: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)) --Tjibbe I (talk) 07:26, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

One of the servers was out of sync with the rest. Should be fixed now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:02, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the fix does not seem to have worked as expected. The problem still exists for me. --Tjibbe I (talk) 11:14, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

It might be required to WP:BYPASS the cache. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:32, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

To make sure that is was not the proxy server, I tried it on ru: and ar:. The problem exists there as well. On https://secure.wikipedia.org/en/wiki/https://secure.wikipedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/, the problem even exists while not logged in. I believe this problem might be related to the problem described under #Display problems for 'Cologne Blue' skin (see above). --Tjibbe I (talk) 13:59, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I see no problem when I attempt.  Hazard-SJ  ±  03:57, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Issue with IE support. Tracked as bugzilla:28840. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:34, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Bugzilla:28840 seems to be about diffs only, but it works for me now. Thank you. (The URI I mentioned before should be media .org). --Tjibbe I (talk) 13:49, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Slashes in page titles: proposed workaround for subpages that shouldn't be

Since subpages are disabled on mainspace but enabled in talkspace and others, we end up with inconsistencies like Talk:OS/2 being a subpage of Talk:OS (Same for Talk:GNU/Linux and so on). I suggest that talk pages of articles containing slashes in their titles be instead written with an alternative character that looks enough like a slash, but isn't. For example the "big solidus" (U+29F8), which renders as Foo⧸bar (cf. a real slash: Foo/bar). This would be similar to other workarounds currently used for cases of technical restrictions in article titles. The obvious problems of the manual linking and search not working as expected can be dealt with using redirects. Of course, this is still not ideal, but it seems preferable to have a redirect notice on top of a page (plus a comment on the redirect page, or a template similar to the {{R from other capitalization}}, for the curious ones) than a link to a (usually) unrelated page. In any case, there aren't terribly many pages where this would occur, so it wouldn't be an issue for most people. So what do you think? --Waldir ^talk 17:58, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Would be simpler to add .ns-1 .contentSub{display:none} to mediawiki:Common.css. (Of course, hiding things using CSS that should be hidden for real is a Bad Thing, but (a) it's not such a big deal if the link is there and (b) the solution suggested by the OP is also not ideal (as he says).)—msh210℠ 18:57, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I tend to recommend against using an alternate character as it's likely to cause confusion at best, and at worst will simply not render for some people, like this:

in Firefox 4, Ubuntu Linux 11.04. --brion (talk) 20:36, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

How could the Common.css hack be applied only to the relevant pages? I mean, we don't want to disable the breadcrumbs trail in all subpages (e.g. archives and such). As for the character not displaying, we already have issues with many other chars, given our internationalization focus. But I get that it can be a problem. The question is, only a portion of people would miss the appropriate fonts; from these, most won't ever visit the talk pages of articles; and there are only a handful of pages where this would be applied. So the effect is really minimal (while the breadcrumb does appear for everyone who visits those pages currently). But if a CSS hack is really feasible, I'd support that. --Waldir ^talk 05:21, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Apart from the subpage backlink, there is nothing inherently wrong with the linking mechanism. If we want to hide that backlink on article talkpages only, all that is required is hiding it with .ns1 #contentSub span.subpages { display: none; } (edit) But as Waldir pointed out, that would hide it on article talk page archives as well. However most archive pages contain a template with a link to the current talk page anyway. — Edokter (talk) — 11:58, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Just to make it clear: by "feasible" I mean "applicable only to the relevant pages". Otherwise it would amount to solving a problem in a handful pages by creating another in many more, which doesn't make much sense IMO. In other words: the breadcrumbs should be visible wherever they're applicable, for consistency. --Waldir ^talk 15:01, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Exotic characters like "⧸" also display as question marks for screen reader users like myself. Graham87 15:27, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I highly suspect that if such an article is moved, then the talk page will not automatically move with it. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:33, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Suspect? I am absolutely sure. The article/talk tab links would also cease to function (redirects aside). We shouldn't mess with the title, but perhaps a template and some javascript can hide the parent link where it is not wanted. — Edokter (talk) — 23:54, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Good point. I'll try the template+js approach. --Waldir ^talk 20:49, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Odd problem with collapsible tables/boxs and editing toolbar

I have been experiencing an odd problem with both of my accounts (User:SpikeToronto and User:SpikeTorontoRCP). When I am logged in, and I go to a page that has collapsible boxes/tables, they are all fully opened, and there are no [show]/[hide] buttons. Also, when I go to edit a page there is no visible editing toolbar.

The important thing to remember, is that this only occurs when I am logged in. While I never edit logged out, I wanted to check if this would occur without any of my preferences or either of my ".js" files loading (i.e., User:SpikeToronto/monobook.js or User:SpikeTorontoRCP/monobook.js). And so I had a look while not logged in. It does not occur when I am logged out. When I visit any page that has collapsible boxes/tables, and I am not logged in, they appear properly, complete with [show]/[hide] buttons. Also, if I click edit, and I am not logged in, there is an editing toolbar.

So, when logged out, everything works as it should with either the Vector skin or the Monobook skin (add ?useskin=monobook to URL). When logged in, nothing works as it should with either the Vector skin or the Monobook skin (add ?useskin=monobook to URL). Any ideas? Thanks! — SpikeToronto 07:56, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

P.S. If it helps at all, all the various scripts in User:SpikeToronto/monobook.js seem to be working fine (e.g., Popups, HotCat, etc.). Thanks! — SpikeToronto 08:03, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Disable your monobook.js scripts anyway, and re-enable them one by one; it is still possible that one of those script may be the cause. — Edokter (talk) — 09:09, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

 UPDATE:  Thanks for the suggestion Edokter! As you can see, with this edit, I disabled my monobook.js file. It had a mixed result:

• It brought back an editing toolbar; but
• It did not fix the issue with the collapsible tables/box/etc. They all still remain open and without [hide]/[show] buttons.

Also, after disabling my monobook.js, it’s as if some of my preferences are not working. For instance, I am seeing all times in UTC even though, I’ve ticked the gadget box to convert them to local times. Moreover, when I go to my preferences, they all appear on one long page instead of with tabbed sections. Finally, as an aside, just to compare browser versions, I went to another PC using IE6 and it is no different than the one using IE8. Thanks! — SpikeToronto 16:46, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what's wrong. If the show/hide links do not show, I'd say javascript is not working at all, or crashes during execution of a buggy script somewhere else. — Edokter (talk) — 17:12, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Is it possible that there have been some changes to the global ".CSS" and ".JS" files over at Meta? I ask because the only other WMF project that is also acting up is Meta. Thanks! — SpikeToronto 15:21, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) P.S. It just occurred to me that that question may not make sense. I assumed that because Huggle has a global config over at Meta, and because there are global configs over at Wikia.com that affect wikis there, that the same was true here. However, when I look at the MediaWiki pages over at Meta, I am not really sure that there is any such thing. At least the edit toolbar is back, as are the Peferences tabs. But, I still cannot figure out why [hide]/[show] for collapsible tables and boxes is still not working. Thanks! — SpikeToronto 15:37, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

It is probably related to a recent update to Mediawiki that was supposed to increase IE security, but overshot it's goal. See the Bugzila link in this discussion above. — Edokter (talk) — 15:33, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I think you may be right! It is a CSS issue, and there are lots of “dots” involved in the markup. So, is it just a matter of being patient? Thanks Edokter! — SpikeToronto 15:41, 9 May 2011 (UTC)