Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive AB

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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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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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Suggestion for the English wikipedia

Where might I suggest that the english wikipedia's Allpages list color-code articles based on whether they are redirects or not? This would help me out a bit and [1] the dutch wikipedia does it -—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 207.62.186.233 (talk • contribs) 22:27, 30 October 2006 (UTC).

Look in MediaWiki:common.css for a class called "allpagesredirect"; that seems to be where the Dutch wikipedia is overwriting that, and you could set your own to emulate that. Convincing the English Wikipedia to do the same globally is probably best discussed at MediaWiki_talk:common.css. -- nae'blis 22:42, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, if you create a login, you can modify it in your user/monobook.css --Splarka (rant) 08:23, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

editing question

Hi,

New to this, but I need to edit something on a page and couldn't find out how to do it on the edit tutorials. I need to add something in parenthesis to the actual page name. For example, the name of this page is Village pump (technical). I need to do something similar to another page. Can anyone help me with this? Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Songmerch (talk • contribs)

Find the page you want to rename, at the top of the page, find the move tab and click on it. When prompted, enter in the new name of the article, with the brackets added and move the page. For more information, see WP:MOVE. Tra (Talk) 22:03, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

200px and other versions of re-uploaded image do not update

I uploaded new versions of the following images. The server's 200px, 180px, etc. versions did not seem to want to update. Sometimes they do though. Doesn't seem to be a browser cache issue. Is there any way to force this? I've had this problem before. Only thing I have been able to do is change the picture size in the articles (which got me no pic at all, red x, in one case).

• Image:Sony_news.jpg (worst case of it, 180px, 200px, 250px all old version)
• Image:Sparc1%2B.jpg (180px would not update, removed all references to it, don't know if its still stuck)

I've purged both image pages. Do they look any better? Tra (Talk) 18:55, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, looks great. Thanks. Fourdee 23:22, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, something is still wrong with Image:Sparc1+.jpg - any use in an article gets no image, red x in explorer. For example, SPARCstation.

Sorry, had the filename wrong above - not Sparc1%2B.jpg. Changed the version used in the relevant articles to 180px, which is the old version of the picture. Attempting to use 200px or 250px causes red X, no image. Thanks for your help.Fourdee 23:32, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Creating a new Stub

Per the discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Proposals/2006/October#Cornwall_stub there was agreement to create a new upmerged stub for Cornwall. How do I do this? (I proposed the Cornwall stub so feel I ought to do it!). DuncanHill 15:02, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry - I've worked it out! DuncanHill 16:41, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Help

How do you write text so that there is a line going through the center of it? Thanks. Whirling Sands 03:35, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

<s>text</s> should give you text. -- nae'blis 03:40, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Note that if you mean to delete text, go for the more contextually correct tag: <del>. — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 02:54, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Mass reversion

Hi there, I'm just a random wikipedian, but after looking through the recent changes (which I ususally do for fun now and then), besides the usual 10% changes being vandalism, I noticed by clicking on a vandal's user history, they had vanadalized some obscure articles that haven't been reverted. Do you guys have some sort of process to revert all a user's edits and block them? If not, I suggest you look into it.

The process is normally either looking through recent changes or through your watchlist. Unfortunately, obscure articles are less likely to be on people's watchlists, so they will often be missed. In this case, the vandalism was missed so you need to go through the vandal's contributions list and revert all of the vandalism listed individually. As for warning and blocking vandals, WP:VAND will explain this. Has the vandal in question had their vandalism reverted yet, and if not please link to their contributions list. Tra (Talk) 23:33, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

It is more or less easy to find that htpt://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Uservandaloo is the keyword to Uservandaloo 's contributions list, so I tell it again here. -- DLL ^{.. T} 20:35, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

History of edits - question/suggestion

Is there any possibility shorten the history of edits list? I'm thinking on:

• Aggregate multiple edits by same user. (Example: 5 consecutive edits by one user shown as a single edit.)
• Collapse revert history. (Just show the original edit and not the change/revert edits.)
• Hide bot edits.
• Hide minor edits.
• Hide simple edits (simple spelling corrections like white space, and punctuation, linking [[]]).

If this is not possible, will it be sometime? Of course all this should be accessible by a plus-sign or a expand-button, but when change in content is interesting, to many insignificant edits make page history hard to navigate. Sometimes there is just one important content edit in the last 50 edits. Would be nice to have a technical tool to reduce the complexity - Kristod (talk) 09:18, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, this would be a really good feature. I haven't found a similar proposal on http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org , maybe you should add this there. CyrilB 10:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I have often wished this would be done, another thing to do that would be even more useful would be to hide reverted edits. At present it is very difficult to read the history of an article. Martin 11:07, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

See Mediazilla:3640 for separating out reverted edits. Hiding bot/minor edits would be neat, certainly, and shouldn't be too hard to do right now (since it's done for RC et al.). Collapsing multiple edits by the same user should also be doable. Hiding "simple" edits would require more effort, as would identifying reverted edits. Certainly, open bugs on all these (separate bugs for each, please). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:41, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Hiding reverted edits shoudldn't be too hard. Especially when it's a straightfoward revert of one edit right after it's done. Just have a checking system where by each edit is checked with the revision two edits ago - and if there's no difference, hid the edit and the edit in the middle (if a edit is the same as the revision two edits ago, it means the middle edit was reverted). That would fish out the straightforward vandal attack + reverts, which is the majority of reverts. It hsould also fish out any revert wars and collaps the entire revert war. --`/aksha 01:51, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Can anybody knowledgeable of bug reporting/feature requests do this for me? Looks like many like the general idea. - Kristod (talk) 16:14, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Template Code

How does one automatically spot if a page exists or not in template code? I'd like, if it's possible, to set up a template (Template:GetOotM - It's a subsection of a bigger project), so that if the page doesn't exist I can manipulate the text of the redlink and set it up to pre-load some text on the page when an editor clicks on it. I can do all that - IF I can determine if the page exists. Adam Cuerden ^talk 04:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

From m:Parserfunctions:

ifexist returns one of two results based on whether or not a named title exists. The usual case-sensitivity applies: if a page exists then also a non-canonical name for that page gives a positive result. E.g. on Meta:

{{#ifexist:Bugs|Foo|RFC 3092}} gives Foo, because Bugs exists

{{#ifexist:bugs|Foo|RFC 3092}} gives Foo, because bugs is in canonical form the existing Bugs

{{#ifexist:BUGS|Foo|RFC 3092}} gives Foo because BUGS does not exist

{{#ifexist:m:Help:Calculation|Yes|Oops}} gives Oops although m:Help:Calculation exists, because of the interwiki prefix.

The first parameter is the title to check for, the second is the positive result, and the third, the negative result. If the parameter passed does not produce a valid title object, then the result is negative.

m:Template:exists (backlinks edit) gives the same result, except that the result is positive for an interwiki link. m:Template:if interwiki link (backlinks edit) exploits this difference.

Combine that with the preload stuff used in Template:AfD and you're all set. —Mets501 (talk) 05:04, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm finding it much harder to apply than I expected, I dear. Could one of you have a look and tell me where I'm messing up? Template:GetOotM The funny business with the [edit] is because this is part of a system for setting things up on the Opera project talk page, and I was finding it difficult to get a real edit box to apply to the right thing (kept editing one of the templates in the chain instead), so I faked it. In any case, the pages being linked shouldn't have a header because of where they're used.

If it matters, my preferred preloaded text is Template:OotMStandard. Could probably get a little more technical and add in the month automatically, but that'd have to be stripped from the file name, which may be too difficult.

I just hope when this is done that a lot of projects steal my code. Adam Cuerden ^talk 06:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Adam Cuerden talk 06:36, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I think you're making it more complex than it needs to be. Try just using #ifexist for the switch. Something like this:

{{#ifexist:Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/OotM/{{{month}}}{{{year}}}
|{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/OotM/{{{month}}}{{{year}}}}}
|[{{http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?action=edit&preload=OotMStandard+starter&title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Opera/OotM/{{{month}}}{{{year}}}}} Click Here to set up {{{month}}}'s Composer of the Month!]
}}

Although, what is the function you desire if it exists? just the plain text? wrap it in double brackets if you want it normally linked: |[[{{Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/OotM/{{{month}}}{{{year}}}}}|Composer for {{{month}}}]] or such. --Splarka (rant) 07:31, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

If it exists, it should paste in the text: See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Opera which uses another script to auto-update the front page every month, and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Opera, where they're prepared.

I've still not got it fully working: Preloading isn't working yet: Note this produces a blank editbox [2]

but using Template:Afd2 works fine: [3] despite me setting Template:OotMStandard to the same as Afd2!?!?

What am I doing wrong in Template:OotMStandard?

Calling it Template:OotMStandard starter in your preload link. Fix the link or move the template. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:07, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

...Heh! Well, that's easy enough to fix. Thanks! Adam Cuerden ^talk 14:47, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Why did you ditch FULLURL: above? if you want the code to be portable, you should use that instead of a direct server-specific link. --Splarka (rant) 08:09, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

More specifically, if you don't use {{fullurl:}}, the links won't work properly when accessed via secure.wikimedia.org. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 02:56, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Thumbnail generation from SVG source buggy?

I've uploaded this image. The resulting thumbnail looks nothing like the source file. I've tested it and found it to work in both IE and FireFox (some bugs in older versions of FireFox, as FireFox didn't support the textPath element until v2.0). -SharkD 04:51, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The image itself looks fine... I would think that is indeed a bug with ImageMagick? Titoxd^(?!?) 04:58, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah the "raw" SVG file looks ok in Opera too, I know ImageMagic doesn't have 100% SVG support yet, so it's very likely a problem there. Not sure what you need to do to make a SVG compatable with ImageMagic though. --Sherool (talk) 07:01, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The only thing I can think of is that I'm using float values (i.e., low values largely between 0 and 1) for stuff like coordinates, stroke-widths and font-sizes. -SharkD 07:33, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

We use rsvg, not ImageMagick, for SVG rendering. --brion 11:43, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Don't rsvg and FireFox both use Cairo as their backend? -SharkD 19:15, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

My guess is that it's caused by this bug… –Gustavb 18:01, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

an annoying alert appears everytime when i browse wiki page......

since a few weeks ago, an annoying alert saying "do you want to allow a file to be downloaded?" has kept on jumping out everytime when i browse in wiki (this alert ONLY when i browse wiki)...either i click yes or no....nothing happen. it just keep jumping out in any page of wiki. this is a problem of IE i believe because this doesn't happen in firefox. but in other computers, this doesn't appear in IE either. it seems to be a problem only of myself. 219.77.121.33 17:21, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

It also appears to be a problem only you are having, sounds like your "Internet Explorer" browser has a problem. — xaosflux ^Talk 17:40, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

In Special:Preferences, go to the Editing tab and untick 'Use external editor by default'. Tra (Talk) 18:36, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm...Just tried that, but still useless.... I've just reinstalled IE, or trying to use IE 6, but still the problem isn't solved. Oh by the way, this problem has been emerging since few weeks ago. Before that, this problem never emerges, I don't know if it is the problem of windows update or what. Lugiadoom 21:32, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Try unticking 'Use external diff by default' as well. Tra (Talk) 00:03, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I just tried to uncheck that, (in fact i never check that two) still hasn't solved the problem. Quite strange. I have also cleared the cookies, temp files....But the problem still exist... Lugiadoom 05:45, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Does it give the name of the file it wants to download, and on which pages does it come up, which pages does it not come up on, does it still happen when you're not logged in, and do you get the same error when browsing meta: or wikibooks: (which run the same software)? Tra (Talk) 14:14, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

No, it just jumps out an alert window (as shown in this picture http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/2264/sshot20061024010421kf1.jpg) This happens also even I'm not logged in, and yes this also happens when browsing meta: or wikibooks:. Lugiadoom 17:08, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, this may sound paranoid, but when was the last time you updated your antivirus signatures and ran a complete scan? Have you ever run a program like Spybot Search & Destroy (also with updated signature files) to get rid of any mal/spyware that may have been installed on your computer without your knowledge? I ask this because the behavior you describe is not typical of wiki projects, and judging by the responses that you've gotten so far, not seen by other editors. Slambo (Speak) 17:25, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I updated that one week ago, but this happened since few weeks ago. I have been using Ad-Aware SE Personal for a few years... but i suspect this is a problem caused by some security updates...So i come and ask for advice. Lugiadoom 18:11, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps a firewall rule changed? Slambo (Speak) 18:57, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Nope, didn't edit the settings for a few months. Lugiadoom 19:39, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

You mentioned security updates. Just to clarify, are you running Service Pack 2? I can see by the screenshot that you've downloaded a lot of toolbars etc. Did you install anything or change any of their settings around the time when the alerts appeared? Tra (Talk) 20:00, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes I use XP SP2, and windows often updates sth....Sometimes internet security files, although I don't know what they are...I have tried to uninstall the programs related to internet security (E.g. Norton Internet Security) but still useless... So i think it is related to XP itself...But I don't want to format my computer... Lugiadoom 20:41, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

What I mean is things like the Xango toolbar and anything you've downloaded that affects the user interface of Internet Explorer in some way. Try disabling them and see if you still get the problems. Tra (Talk) 21:13, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Ohh....Just tried to disable the toolbars and some add ons, but useless. Argh, this is getting more and more confusing. Lugiadoom 09:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

It's a server problem. With me it happens also and I use Firefox, not the silly IE --84.153.72.142 09:46, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Started happening for me also, for about a week now, using Firefox 1.5.0.7. It could be something in Firefox, or it could be caused by the server providing an incorrect Content-Type header. There's a case on BugZilla which looks like it could be the same issue. Bug 7082 --Rob.au 14:45, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

This issue appears to be the same as the one being discussed elsewhere on this page at No extension downloads and messed up pages? What's going on? --Rob.au 14:52, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Upload Image license drop down box

At WikiProject Comics we've noticed that {{promocomic}} is not on the license drop down box. Where do I go to add it? I get there are concerns about using some classes of promotional images, but since no free to use image of comic book characters will ever exist, the fair use of these is just as strong as other images, perhaps stronger since they are released by the companies for the very purpose of promoting the work. Steve block Talk 09:36, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Bring it up on MediaWiki talk:Licenses. --Sherool (talk) 09:45, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah, is that where it is. I spent ages looking for it but couldn't turn it up, cheers! Steve block Talk 10:17, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Editing Edit Summaries

I sometimes make typos in Edit Summaries, and would like to be able to fix them (eg if I mis-type a wikilink). Is there any way to do this? DuncanHill 14:42, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately not. If you type something really bad, e.g. reveal someone's personal information, it is possible for the revision to be deleted or oversighted. Tra (Talk) 14:53, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I've not done anything terrible, just wanted to make it easier for other users to see what I've done. I'll just have to take more care in typing! DuncanHill 15:04, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

If there's an essential correction that should be visible in the page history, you can also do a follow-up dummy edit with a new summary. Femto 15:25, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Some wikitables no longer have any background

An interesting thing I've noticed over the past few days is that some tables using the wikitable class no longer have a grey background; instead, the background is completely white. What puzzles me, however, is that not all wikitables have lost their background. I'm using Firefox 2.0, though I don't know if this issue is browser-specific or not. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 22:54, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Same seems to go with everything that uses the CSS class "infobox". All band and film infoboxes on articles now have a white background instead of the grey one. I tried with both Firefox 1.07 and Opera 8.0. Prolog 13:28, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

See #Category pages background above. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:23, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I apologize, but I don't see anything in that section that relates to this issue - unless someone hacked the CSS in a way that messed up the table classes (wikitable, infobox, etc.). in order to fix that issue. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 03:42, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, true, it shouldn't affect wikitables. My bad. But the background seems to show up fine for me:

Test

Could you provide screenshots? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:20, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it was me who removed the table backgrounds, which must have affected Wikitables as well. I've fixed it now. —Mets501 (talk) 20:32, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Breakout of frames

I've noticed that Wikipedia has code that will break-out of frames. I was wondering why this happens. It is one of very few sites that still has such "functionality", and the feature seems to do more damage than good. I browse [reddit], and one of that sites features is to launch new pages with a bar across the top. I find this useful, as it allows me to comment or find out more about the link while still looking at Wikipedia. The worst part is that the script is instantaneous, so a single "back" click will push me forward to the unframed page. --Joshd 12:13, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Image Weirdness

Image:UtopiaDance.gif will not show at all. Anywhere. Particularly not on Utopia, Limited. It just blue links. HELP!!!!! Adam Cuerden ^talk 17:38, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

It seems you managed it, given the huge image on this page. Did you perhaps put a : after the first set of [[? This causes the image to link, rather than be displayed. --Lord Deskana (talk) 17:41, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The thumbnailing seems to be broken for this image. Going to the the thumbnail used on that page produces the following:

<html><body>
<h1>File not found</h1>
<p>Although this PHP script (/w/thumb.php) exists, the file requested for output
(/mnt/upload3/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3e/UtopiaDance.gif/201px-UtopiaDance.gif) does not.</p>
</body></html>

The same happens when looking at the image page itself (at this URL for me). Not sure why that is, though. --TheParanoidOne 21:01, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Forgive the giant image. Feel free to remove it. Adam Cuerden ^talk 21:04, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Animation in SVG images

For future reference, what is WP's stance on having animations (SMIL or JavaScript) in SVG images? -SharkD 15:17, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

No idea if there's any official stance, but the current rendering system certainly won't show any animations, and I don't really see that changing at least until most browsers can display SVG natively (and correctly!). —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:28, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

2 interlanguage link problems

I see two problems I need help solving: At the bottom of the Earth article, an interwiki [[tlh:tera']] will not work. Something has to be done with the apostrophe, I think.

Secondly, at Category:Astronomy, a bad Romanian (ro:) interwiki link shows at the top of the list. I was unable to remove it. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks. GilliamJF 14:26, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The tlh link (Klingon), seems not to be set up for interlanguage linking (I removed it). The issue with Category:Astronomy was an interlanguage link in Template:Astronomy-footer. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:19, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. - GilliamJF 16:00, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Stubs/Categories

If it just me, or does the current system of stubs and categories seem a bit redundant? Categorization adds an article to some fitting categories, and stub tagging adds the articles to a second set of fitting categories. Shouldn't there be some sort of tag that takes an article in categories x, y, and z, and instead add it to x stubs, y stubs, and z stubs? Is this impossible, or maybe something I should ask MediaZilla for? Does anyone else think that having every category correspons to a set of stubs and vice versa seem like a good idea? --Daniel Olsen 03:52, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

The stub categories are meant to be transient and to help lead someone interested in a particular topic to articles needing work. Regular categories are for browsing puposes. For more information you might want to bring this up with the folks at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:28, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I understand the function of stub categories (which I don't think will ever disappear), but it just seems that the process of browsing through categories and the process of browsing through categories that need improvement should be a little more... intertwined. --Daniel Olsen 02:43, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

i need help with boxes

i want to add separate talkpages for boxes, will somebody help me.Yousaf465

By 'boxes', I assume you mean userboxes or other templates. To make a talk page discussing any of these, on the template page click on the red tab at the top saying 'discussion' and you will be able to start writing whatever comment you need to make. Tra (Talk) 15:47, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

A strange issue with an SVG

Here's one of the strangest issues I've come across regarding SVGs in a long time. Image:OH-797.svg displays flawlessly at every resolution but 70px, which causes the image to not show up on Ohio State Route 797, the infobox on which displays the shield at 70px. This isn't related to the SVG bug that existed some time ago, as the image's source page at 70px [4] does not display a blank image; it displays an error message. I've tried purging the image on the Commons, on Wikipedia, and on the SR 797 article, but the shield still refuses to display. Normally I can figure things like this out, but this case has me stumped. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 19:56, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Never mind, the image finally decided to work at 70px after a few more purges. Regards, TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 19:59, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Adding an SVG image from Wikimedia Commons

I am having trouble adding an image to an article. The image is an SVG file, and I've posted it to Wikimedia Commons. I linked it as [[Image:image_name.svg‎|500px|thumb|Caption]], but it comes up as an empty box with a red link. Can you give me some guidance? The page I'm working on is Jericho (TV series). --TobyRush 15:59, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

What's the name of the image? Tra (Talk) 16:04, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It's "Cities_destroyed_in_Jericho_TV_series_v3.svg". It's located here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Cities_destroyed_in_Jericho_TV_series_v3.svg --TobyRush 16:08, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[[Image:Cities_destroyed_in_Jericho_TV_series_v3.svg|thumb|right|500px|Caption]] should work just fine. Commons images are actually accessed just like local ones, so long as there's nothing local with the same name. Weird, I know. -- nae'blis 16:11, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Nae'blis. I guess my error was in the order of the parameters, not the actual image link. Thank you for your help. --TobyRush 16:17, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Experiencing a weird problem

I hope someone can give me a good explanation for some of the problems I have been facing recently on this project. A few days ago, I installed Firefox into my PC as I was having problems with the connection speed of this website (It came suddenly). The other websites which I have visited does not have this problem. Because of this, I was unable to make any substantial edits to this project. Even after using the above mentioned browser, I still faced a slow connection to this website. However, I was pleasently surprised a few minutes ago, that the surfing speed of this website had returned to normal after using Crazy Browser. I really do not know whether this is a temporary problem or a permanent one. By the way, I am using a Pentium II PC with a 1500kbps connection speed and I have not faced this problem before. Does anyone know the reasons for this? --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 15:18, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Infobox Help

Hey there. I'm in the midst of creating a new infobox here and am trying to insert a horizontal line to divide some of the values but can't seem to figure out how to get it to appear... any help would be appreciated! -- Chabuk 22:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

How is that? --Splarka (rant) 07:58, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Perfect! Thanks a lot. -- Chabuk 16:09, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Firefox 2.0

Since I installed the newly released Firefox 2.0, the ALT key shortcuts on Wikipedia no longer work. I wonder if anything can be done about this. Is it a bug in Firefox? If not, can we change the shortcuts to something that will work in Firefox? Hesperian 01:03, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I just discovered this has been submitted as Mozilla bug 349716. For now the key shortcuts are all at ALT-SHIFT. Hesperian 01:28, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

This is an intentional change in Firefox 2.0. Zetawoof^(ζ) 18:24, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I saw this, too. Nice of Mozilla to not mention this anywhere. Do you know of anywhere it was announced? — Omegatron 00:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe it's in the release notes, not that anyone ever reads them. :) --brion 12:08, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Silly developers. No one reads the manual. — Omegatron 14:26, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Here is the relevant part of the release notes [5]: Access key definitions provided by web pages can now be triggered using Alt+Shift+key on Windows, Ctrl+key on Mac OS X, and Ctrl+Shift+key on Unix. --cesarb 15:12, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

That's three fingers. Lame. — Omegatron 14:26, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

User pages on web searches

Is it possible to prevent the user pages from appearing in the web search results? There are privacy concerns here.59.92.96.130 13:53, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Look a few sections above. I don't think privacy is an issue; if you don't want something to be visible on the Internet, don't post it to Wikipedia. I'm more concerned about spam. --ais523 13:55, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Talk:Physics/wip#Straw poll is not editable

We are having difficulty getting the edit button to direct to Talk:Physics/wip#Straw poll. I will try a workaround. --Ancheta Wis 11:29, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Problems with redirect

Yesterday I changed the G-force article to redirect to G force rather than Acceleration due to gravity. The change seems to have saved OK, yet it still redirects to Acceleration due to gravity. Does anyone have any idea why this isn't working? Matt 10:38, 13 November 2006 (UTC).

• Wikipedia has several servers; it may take a few minutes for the change to propagate. Also, your browser has a cache that may have stored the old version. You can clear your browser cache and try again. In my browser, the link shows as you changed it. (Radiant) 13:08, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

  Go to the article, and then add ?action=purge to the end of the URL; this should make it look correct for you. Otherwise, try bypassing your cache. --ais523 13:58, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, it's just started working for me now too, without my having done anything. I'm pretty sure it wasn't a local caching issue, so presumably some "stickiness" somewhere in the Wikipedia servers, although it lasted many hours rather than a few minutes. Thanks for info... Matt 14:19, 13 November 2006 (UTC).

Login problem

I can't log onto my account, it says that my cookies aren't enabled or whatever but they are... I'm using Firefox and it worked a few days ago but it doesn't anymore... Is it a problem with my computer or the website???

• Your computer, considering the rest of us don't have a problem. Try looking under the config options of your browser. (Radiant) 13:15, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Title template

Per a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), I, and those supporting that proposal there, suggest that some code be created in such a way that a template can be created similar to the __TOC__ template which would change the text displayed as an article title. Such a template would be similar to {{User:1ne/Title}} in use, although different by actually changing the server-rendered top title of the article. This would be an effective solution for some technical restrictions on article names, especially the initial capital restriction, for articles like iPod. Nihiltres 02:19, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

P.S. See also:

• MediaZilla:2118, but this suggestion would ask for a parameter that could be used as the title. Nihiltres 02:49, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
• MediaZilla:496, this has discussion of the implementation problems involved. I suggest merely replacing the general {{wrongtitle}} template family with a "to link to this article, use [[ThisName]]" template. Nihiltres 02:59, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Special:BrokenRedirects--Problems with Page

On the page mentioned above, when pages that used to have broken redirects are deleted, they are no longer crossed out. Instead, they all say that they are being redirected to Abderrahim Goumri. That page never existed, and is a problem. There has been a problem with this page for over a week, and this is the third time I brought it up here.--Willy No1lakersfan (Talk - Contribs) 21:04, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

When you previously posted it looked fine for me, but it doesn't work for me either now. I think the link you want is Special:BrokenRedirects. --ais523 14:01, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Toolbar

What about creating a multilingual Wikipedia Toolbar for browsers to make the searching easier?

See Wikipedia:Toolbars. What I do is I use the Google Toolbar and add a custom button for Wikipedia. Tra (Talk) 15:49, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

CSS issues

So all the ==Header==s lost their underlines, and the main page looks different. I can't find a relevant change in mediawiki space... does anybody know what changed, and how to fix it? --Interiot 15:08, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Just as I spoke, it started working for me again. Some people on IRC are still having problems though. --Interiot 15:12, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[6] --brion 15:49, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I actually thought the main page looked quite nice like that. the wub "?!" 15:59, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Distorted image

Does anyone have any idea why the image in the infobox of Robert Johnson is distorted? (I'm using the latest Firefox browser, and all other images look fine, if that helps any.) - Jmabel | Talk 08:21, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Purging the image had no effect, so I removed the image size specification in the article (which I incorrectly summarized as thumb size) which fixed it on SeaMonkey. I'm guessing the distortion (looked like fax paper not feeding smoothly causing vertical non linear compression) was related to downsizing a 391 by 304 image to 250 by something. Perhaps ImageMagick had trouble resizing by less than 2:1? — EncMstr 08:51, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Try blurring it with GIMP or something --wj32 ^{talk | contribs} 09:35, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem is with the Wikimedia proxy caches, which keep persistently serving an old version of the thumbnail with the wrong aspect ratio. We've been seeing a lot of this lately, but I don't think anyone knows what's really causing it — I certainly don't. Until it's fixed, I've worked around the problem for this particular article by changing the thumbnail size from 250px to 249px, which makes no visible difference but causes a new thumbnail with a different URL to be generated. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:17, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

The image was fine (click 'view image' in the context menu of the image), but the code including the image has height="194" width="250" in it - for a 350 pixel high image, this will cause distortion. -- 85.180.176.246 21:43, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem, of course, being that the 250x350 version has been deleted since October 15. Anyway, I asked JeLuF on IRC to purge it, and it seems to be fine now. If anyone has further problems like this, just contact him. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:17, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Unicode character

I've been using the yin-yang character (unicode 9775) for about ever as part of my sig. Now I get a grumpy face (we will not discuss whether or not this is appropriate...). Where has the original unicode character gone? Denni ☯ 23:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

It's still there. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:02, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I get a your-font-doesn't-support-that-character square. Dragons flight 08:39, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Considering which, try {{Unicode|☯}} instead. Does ☯ show up correctly? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:20, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I see the character in all cases (Safari on Mac OS 10.4.7), but support for certain characters is somewhat patchy across the browser spectrum. For example, I've had problems with friends on chat clients and the … character (ellipsis) as compared with three periods ... - the best advice I'd offer would be to keep your signature as simple as possible so that everyone sees it the same way. Frustrating solution: your signature looks nice as is. Nihiltres 21:42, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Inkscape

I uploaded an image that I made with inkscape onto wikipedia, but the backround dissapeared and the text turned to rectangles! What do I have to do so that my image comes out right??? Chris5897 (T@£k) 06:30, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

This is presumably Image:LGV map.svg. In this file, the map is included using the tag:

<image xlink:href="C:\Documents and Settings\...\France_cities.png" ... />

An svg can include another image, but mediawiki only allows that if the png image data is all contained in the svg. I'll take a look at it (you may also want to find out whether inkscape allows for doing that). Tizio 16:40, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

File:LGV map.svg

I fixed the background, but have no idea about the text. Are the boxes of the same color the text is supposed to be? Tizio 17:17, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, and I had to modify the backround, so the the elevation, scale and most of England should not be there. Chris5897 (T@£k) 07:49, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem with the text is that Wikipedia's SVG renderer can't handle "Flowed text" nodes. Convert them to normal text by using Text→Convert to text and/or Text→Unflow. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 21:45, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

auto edit summary for new articles

Plenty of new articles that are speedy deletable are short and have no edit summary, therefore it would be a very useful feature for new pages patrolling if the edit summary could be automatically filled in if one isn't given by the user, using the text (or as much text as can fit in) from the actual article. This would mean most speedy delete candidates could be identified at a glance. Martin 16:56, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• Reasonable, but you'd have to ask the devs about this. (Radiant) 13:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Navigation bar

As far as I can tell, template:Navigation bar is now ready for use (works with IE, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, Safari, and JAWS). It lets you turn a navigation box like this (old version of template:Footer Olympic Champions 4x400 m Men)

Olympic medalists in athletics (men) | Olympic champions in men's 4x400 m relay

1912 United States Mel Sheppard, Edward Lindberg, Ted Meredith, Charles Reidpath 1920 Great Britain Cecil Griffiths, Robert Lindsay, John Ainsworth-Davies, Guy Butler 1924 United States Commodore Cochran, Alan Helffrich, Oliver MacDonald, William Stevenson 1928 United States George Baird, Emerson Spencer, Frederick Alderman, Ray Barbuti 1932 United States Ivan Fuqua, Edgar Ablowich, Karl Warner, Bill Carr 1936 Great Britain Frederick Wolff, Godfrey Rampling, William Roberts, Godfrey Brown 1948 United States Arthur Harnden, Clifford Bourland, Roy Cochran, Mal Whitfield 1952 Jamaica Arthur Wint, Leslie Laing, Herb McKenley, George Rhoden 1956 United States Charlie Jenkins, Louis Jones, Jesse Mashburn, Tom Courtney 1960 United States Jack Yerman, Earl Young, Glenn Davis, Otis Davis 1964 United States Ollan Cassell, Michael Larrabee, Ulis Williams, Henry Carr 1968 United States Vincent Matthews, Ron Freeman, Larry James, Lee Evans 1972 Kenya Charles Asati, Hezahiah Nyamau, Robert Ouko, Julius Sang 1976 United States Herman Frazier, Benjamin Brown, Fred Newhouse, Maxie Parks 1980 Soviet Union Remigijus Valiulis, Mikhail Linge, Nikolay Chernetsky, Viktor Markin 1984 United States Sunder Nix, Ray Armstead, Alonzo Babers, Antonio McKay 1988 United States Danny Everett, Steve Lewis, Kevin Robinzine, Butch Reynolds 1992 United States Andrew Valmon, Quincy Watts, Michael Johnson, Steve Lewis 1996 United States LaMont Smith, Alvin Harrison, Derek Mills, Anthuan Maybank 2000 United States Alvin Harrison, Antonio Pettigrew, Calvin Harrison, Michael Johnson 2004 United States Otis Harris, Derrick Brew, Jeremy Wariner, Darold Williamson

into a navigation bar like this (current version of template:Footer Olympic Champions 4x400 m Men)

Please see template:Navigation bar for usage information. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:35, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to work in Internet Explorer 7. I just see the title with very thin (i.e. couple of pixels high) body with a horizontal scrollbar underneath. Tra (Talk) 01:48, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep, it's working now. Tra (Talk) 02:37, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

DANGER: BAD IDEA – Before taking the leap with this template read my argument here. ...Or try using the navbox example above for more than five seconds. —Down10 ^TACO 06:06, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, the template is non-printable. -SharkD 07:36, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

The same section was created in the beginning of this month, then moved to a discussion page. I read it again and I'm completely OK with one thing I saw there : users hate horizontal scrolling. Please consider this. -- DLL ^{.. T} 18:20, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Screen real estate isn't that important to me on wikipedia. Especially at the end of the page. I'm fine with a big block, but all these busy boxes with their wheels and knobs and pulley-things just make a mess of a page. We're aiming for simplicity, which is why we don't usually use frames or textboxes in the first place. That's some nifty code, but I don't think it's apropos to wikipedia. -Monk of the highest order 01:09, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I'm going to recommend to make it similar to the "contents" boxes at the beginning of articles, and make them collapsable with the javascript. Javascript works on almost all browsers, so compatibility shouldn't be that big of an issue. Phuzion 17:27, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Works for me, technically, but I hate it. Sorry. John Reid ° 10:02, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

PNG Compression

I don't think Wikipedia does it when generating thumbnails. Why not? -SharkD 14:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm just guessing here but probably because using a full 24 bit palette gives much better results when resizing images, with a bigger palette you can retain more details on a smaller area, thus thumbnail images (usualy) don't look like utter crap (compare PNG and GIF thumbnails). Pluss running more advanced optimalisation routines on the images would probably cost more CPU power than the saved bandwidth is worth. --Sherool (talk) 20:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

PNG images can be 24 or 32 bit and still benifit from compression. You'd think the thumbnails only need to be compressed once after editing a page that links them. However, if WP creates the thumbnails each time a visitor loads a page, I could see how the CPU issue would arise. -SharkD 01:35, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Image thumbnails are, of course, aggressively cached. Nevertheless, CPU is usually a bigger cost for us than bandwidth, AFAIK. More to the point, I don't think anyone's gotten around to fixing this. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 06:53, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

All PNG images are compressed; there is no support for uncompressedimages in the PNG spec. --brion 12:05, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I assume SharkD meant that PNGs aren't appropriately palleted and so forth. Although reading his second post I'm less sure. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:19, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

What I think SharkD is worrying about is that wikipedia needs to take up processor speed to resize large images every time somebody loads a page which shows that image in a different resolution. As far as I can tell, images are typically resized on the client side. Ever seen a small image on a fast webpage load real slow? Why would a small image load slow? Because the server actually holds the image as a big one, and it's sending all the data over to you for your browser to resize it.If images were normally resized on the server side, small images would always be sent over fast, though they wouldn't be there for a second or two while the server calculates the re-size. Wikipedia doesn't use up processing speed for making thumbnails, because it doesn't resize the images. It sends the image over in it's full size (which takes up lots of bandwidth), and tells the user's browser to resize it. As simetrical noted, bandwidth isn't the big concern for wikipedia right now, but automatically resizing every image uploaded to a bunch of different resolutions (like flickr does) would use up processor time, which is at a premium right now. So although the current system of no-precreated-thumbnails sometimes results in your browser taking a while to get all the image data of a huge image, it's simpler and easier on the servers as a whole for wikimedia to not have to resize and reprocess every image uploaded. -Monk of the highest order 01:06, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I think you'll find you are wrong here. Wikipedia does create thumbnails/resize on the server. No client-side resizing is done. Have a look at the following copies of Image:Archilochus-alexandri-002-edit.jpg which I generated just now: 800px, 321px, 53px. If you look at the properties of the images, you will see that the file size is successively smaller. --TheParanoidOne 06:20, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I'm afraid Monk is quite wrong in this case; resizing is server-side. All thumbnails are 24-bit (32-bit?) colour and use rather naive selection of PNG mode/settings, so that the PNGs are for many images too large. I have long suggested that flags be added to the image syntax to fine-tune these settings - at least the bits per pixel. Deco 06:29, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I hate to jump on the bus like this but it needs to be clear: Monk has it exactly wrong. Wikipedia creates, caches, and serves thumbnails. John Reid ° 10:00, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Should I do a redirect or what?

I wrote an article off the most needed songs list called Tweedlee Dee. After I finished it I found Tweedle Dee existed. I think (since I wrote it) that my article covers most if not all the information and is better sourced that the second. What should I do? (I'm not sure which spelling is correct -- a book I have says one way, the most need list had another spelling.) If you say "merge" or "redirect", please give me instructions as to how. Thanks! Mattisse(talk) 00:12, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Assuming both articles refer to the same subject, you would need to follow the instructions in WP:MERGE and merge the page with the incorrect title to the page with the correct title (which I think would be the one listed in your book, since that's a more reliable source than the most need list). Tra (Talk) 00:27, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

O.K. Thanks! Mattisse(talk) 00:49, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Edit summary box

Has anyone else's edit summary box suddenly changed so that it no longer looks like Image:Edit Summary-2.png? Is there a way to change it back? I am going to upload an updated version of this image, but I wanted to check with other users and make sure it has changed for everyone. Thanks, Dar-Ape 04:25, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed it too. I don't actually mind the change, as it allows for both a larger edit summary box and a "hey newbie, you should use this" message. EVula // talk // ☯ // 04:33, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

True. I uploaded a new version of the file, but it did not come out right: the right-left dimension was squashed and pixelated. I would investigate, but alas, I have already been logged on a little too long. Hope somebody figures this out, Dar-Ape 05:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I like it. Suddenly my custom combo box for fast summaries is aligned with the summary box :) I wish the 200 characters limit could be raised to 256 or 512, because my summaries tend to be extremely big, but as I said, I don't mind the new alignment. -- ReyBrujo 05:15, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

• That's not going to happen because the database field is in fact 200 characters wide. (Radiant) 13:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Edit summary usage improvement for explanation. -Quiddity 05:40, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm delighted to see this thread. I knew something was different, couldn't say what it was, and was a bit concerned about my mental health. Chick Bowen 19:16, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

No extension downloads and messed up pages? What's going on?

If it makes a difference, I'm using IE6

Whenever I click on a new article or page, it asks for me to download a file of the same name and it has no extension. If you save it or cancel it, nothing happens on the page. Click on the link again, and it works as usual. Also, this doesn't always happen.

With the same randomness, hitting the back button will often cause the page to become black with a few characters on it. I went back a few more, and it was fixed. Forward back them, and the problem was gone. Later, the same thing happened. Here's one example:  ?????? Try and edit this. There will be a series of spaces that don't appear on the page. When you backspace the spaces well ahead of the characters, the charcters and the spaces begin to go. And yes, the spaces came with the copy for some odd reason. I'm going to try clearing my cache...Going back the pages that did this works now, but it may just be the randomness. Can anyone tell me what this is?

Go to my preferences > Editing and untick 'Use external editor by default'. That article name you provided does not appear to be a valid article. Are you sure you gave the correct name? Tra (Talk) 17:58, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Snow White also believed that seven up was a drink. Try something stronger. -- DLL ^{.. T} 20:29, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

It is unchecked. And I didn't give any article names, are you sure that was meant to be for me?

Frankly, I like IE. I've used Firfox, but I never really liked it. Even if I did want it, my dad would never let me install it. Yeah, I know, it's sad that my dad won't give me admin privledges on my own computer. On another note, the weird downloads are popping up again. It happened when I clicked the link to this page, in fact. I saved and opened it with Notepad, but it was just the same useless text my computer can't read that I gave you before, but slightly different. Each page seems to be different. Does anyone else have this problem or have any idea how this might be happenning? --RockMaster 01:06, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Firefox doesn't require admin privileges to install. IE doesn't work properly with most websites these days anyways, so no reason to keep using it. — Dark Shikari ^talk/_contribs 19:11, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Are you talking about XP Home, or XP Pro? If it's XP Pro, then the Power User group can do so. With XP Home, the only other user group besides Administrator is Restricted User. There are some programs, however, such as Google Video, that do not access WINDOWS32 or Program Files. Is Firefox one like this? And as far as I know, IE will work for most sites. --RockMaster 22:42, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

If there are concerns about privileges, then something like Mozilla Firefox - Portable Edition could be used. --TheParanoidOne 13:57, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I must have misunderstood you. I assumed that ?????? referred to the name of the article, rather than the contents of the download. Do you get the same results if you try to edit the pages both when logged in and when logged out? Tra (Talk) 01:15, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

That's alright, no harm done. Never tried logging out, but it would be tough to tell. It appears so randomly, and clearing the cache does make it stop for a while. The error of the page as a whole showing up as gibberish text hasn't appeared since I cleared my cache. I wish I could program a nice bot to go to pages a lot quicker than I can, to see if that glitch really stopped or if it's just occuring less. The file does not pop up as much, as oppossed to every single time now as well. --RockMaster 02:19, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

This issue appears to be the same as the one being discussed elsewhere on this page at an annoying alert appears everytime when i browse wiki page...... --Rob.au 14:58, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

If bugzilla:1109, this should be fixed again as of a few minutes ago. --brion 22:40, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

No, it's not. That's in Firefox, and it asks to download index.php, not an extentionless file with the name of the page. If someone can tell me how to upload pictures here, I can give you screenshots of what the file and pages look like. --RockMaster 00:10, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

This phenomenon just happened to me too. It was doing that to me a couple of hours ago. Not on all pages — just on a few (maybe just one). It was consistent which page was doing it — most were not. The page that was mostly doing it to me was a redirect page, and I noticed that the "what links here" listing for its destination was not including that page either. I then logged in with a user ID and the phenomenon disappeared (possibly a coincidence) and did not reappear when I logged out again. I'm using IE 6, but I think that was probably not the source of the problem (because of the "what links here" issue). —131.107.0.73 01:46, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Incidentally, this seems to be the same problem reported here —131.107.0.73 02:00, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Please accept my apologies. I take back everything I said above about "what links here" having a problem. I hadn't noticed the "next 50" link at the end of the list of links - there were just so many links to the article that the redirect page I was looking for was not in the first 50. Sorry for the noise. (The problem that I experienced has not reappeared since I logged in and logged back out again.) —131.107.0.73 02:12, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I wish I could say the same. They stopped for a while, then came back full force. I loged out again, and they leave my alone for a while, with none since my last logoff. Could this be some bizarre server error dealing with stored information? The longer since the last logoff, the more frequent the error is. Is the server filling up my space and can't figure out what to do? That would be the only reason I could think of for the accumulation of errors. --RockMaster 04:13, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Aha, I got it. This is a picture of the Back Button error. Here it is. This is all that displays. --RockMaster 00:30, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Interlanguage links

Hello. de:Schlosspark inside double square brackets should go to Schlosspark according to How to edit. Any idea why it doesn't? I have two of these in Ian Hamilton Finlay and made them into external links as a workaround. Thanks in advance (and sorry if this is my error). Susanlesch 10:27, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi, if you look at the version before you changed the links, you'll see there are three entries in the "In other languages" section on the left, which is expected if you link to [[de:Whatever]]. If you want it to appear as a regular link, you have to use [[:de:Whatever]]. I'm not sure if you should put these links in, though; in the German Wikipedia such links are discouraged because they are not helpful to people who don't understand the other language, and I assume there is a similar rule here. —Dapete^ばか 11:54, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Gamma ray bursts: Hey, have we backed up lately?

Watched a program the other night on what I believe was about gamma ray bursts. It was suggested that an electromagnetic pulse could strike the earth if a burst happened near enough, which has apparently happened in the past.

Didn't see a mention of sturdy (heh) backups in the technical FAQ.

So, just how thoroughly is the database backed up? I wouldn't like to lose all the work we've (read: I've) done, not to mention whatever else gets completed in the meantime. -- RayBirks 23:47, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

You can back it up yourself if you like! I can't remember where the link is, exactly. --Lord Deskana (swiftmend!) 23:48, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Database download. Haha. If you can't remember the name of the page, try an abbreviation. Got it in one. --Lord Deskana (swiftmend!) 23:49, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Saw that link and thought Wikipedia:Doomsday. :-/ — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 03:52, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Watchlist Issues

• I set "Number of days to show in watchlist" to 300, but it goes to 7, so I tried 8... and it goes to 7, so finally I tried 7.5, and it goes to 7!! HaHa

Is 7 the maximum? If so, how can I increase it?

• If I edit a page, does the timer restart? (I have "add edited article to watchlist") —SolelyFacts 21:26, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

For performance reasons, you can't view more than 7 days or 250 edits in total. No, the timer doesn't restart. If you need to look further back, however, you could check the page history of the article(s) you are interested in. Tra (Talk) 21:35, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Kate's tool

What ever happened to it? Patstuart^{(talk)(contribs)} 20:37, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

According to WP:COUNT, it's not working. Wannabe Kate is one you could use instead. Tra (Talk) 20:49, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Cite page

I am admin on the ln.wiki. The cite page is still in english and I translated the terms like Author, Permanent URL, APA style, .... to lingalá. Unfortunately I cannot find this terms under Special:Allmessages. Is there some who know where this terms are hidden? Thank you for any help. --84.75.123.252 19:59, 11 November 2006 (UTC) Sorry, my computer logged me out. It's from me. --Eruedin 20:03, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

question about Harvard reference template

Hello. Is there any way the editors and if possible the photographer could show in a Harvard reference? Below is the markup, a note currently number 12 on Ian_Hamilton_Finlay. Thank you in advance (and sorry if I goofed).

Harvard reference | Surname1=Finlay | Given1=Ian Hamilton | Photographer=Werner Hannappel | Editors=Zdenek Felix & Pia Simig | Title=Works in Europe 1972-1995 Werke in Europa | Publisher=Cantz Verlag | Year=1995 | ISBN=3-89322-749-0

Susanlesch 19:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

changed to Template:Cite_book which seems okay. Susanlesch 00:20, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Blocked

My true username is ACEO, but I have been blocked from using Wikipedia pages because there seems to have been some confusion. I think that the problem is that my computer which I use to edit Wikipedia has been given a number which is the same as that of another computer. Any advice on what to do? ACEO 19:40, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Your log shows no block history. You will not be able to edit pages like this if you have been blocked. -- Ganeshk (talk) 19:55, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

You were probably unable to edit because another user who shares an IP address with you has been blocked. Wikipedia:Advice to AOL users will provide you with some useful information if your ISP uses a shared proxy similar to the way AOL works. If you are able to edit now, it could mean that your IP address has changed to one that is not blocked, or the block has expired. Tra (Talk) 20:28, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Templates and substitution

I feel when a template is substituted, resulting text should not include any parsing functions. For example, {{subst:smiley|17}} should return,

[[image:Cry-tpvgames.gif|20px]]

instead, it is returning a lot of extra code and a switch construct.

I am looking for a ASP kind of implementation where you could have a lot of ASP scripting on the server, but when the HTML is loaded you get only the HTML portion of the text. Is there some contruct that I can use in the template so that some text will not turn up on the substituted page? Or should this request go to the developers? Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 19:20, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

In {{smiley}}, {{ switch: could be replaced with {{sub<includeonly></includeonly>st:#switch: to give the effect you want, but this would mean that the template does not render correctly when it's not substituted. Wikipedia's servers don't support ASP, since they run on Linux. Tra (Talk) 20:44, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. The subst suggestion is really useful. I wasn't looking for ASP on Wikipedia servers. I was hoping the developers could enable ASP like interface as part fo the MediaWiki software. This will avoid complicated constructs like you just mentioned above. I am thinking like if a code is included between for example, <script>...</script>, then the server should parse the text inside it and return only the text portion. -- Ganeshk (talk) 21:52, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

You could put &action=render on the end of the page URL to get the HTML-version of the page's wikitext, without all the menus surrounding it etc (see the one for this page for an example). This can't be referenced through template syntax, however. Tra (Talk) 22:07, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

See Mediazilla:2777 and Mediazilla:4484. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:00, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Template messup

Something is wrong near the top of Talk:Fred Newman (a page that could use some archiving, but I was hoping to fix this first). It begins with
{{oldpeerreview}}
{{WPBiography|living=yes|class=|importance=}}
[[Category:Article talk header templates|{{PAGENAME}}]]
</noinclude>

I can't imagine what the </noinclude> without a <noinclude> is for; far stranger, though, if you look at the oldpeerreview box you'll see something about "To the Levert Family. We are so sorry to here (sic) about Gerald…". I have no idea where it comes from. If someone with an insight can fix it, that would be appreciated. - Jmabel | Talk 01:19, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi Jmabel: {{oldpeerreview}} was missing the parameter identifying the article reviewed, so probably picked up the "To the Levert Family..." text instead from further down the page. I supplied it with "Fred Newman" and removed the (likely) superfluous </noinclude>; hope all looks in order. (There's probably a good reason why {{oldpeerreview}} isn't instantiated as {{oldpeerreview|{{{ARTICLEPAGENAME}}}}} as a way to avoid this possibility...)  Best wishes, David Kernow (talk) 01:49, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! - Jmabel | Talk 08:20, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Signature Issue--Requesting Assistance

I like to change the color of my signature. How do I do this? Thank you. FactsOnly 13:54, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Try this. Or this. >Radiant< 14:03, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I put this, FactsOnly, in the "signature" box under "user profile" within "My preferences." And it gave me this: "Invalid raw signature; check HTML tags." What did I do wrong?

Testing<font color=blue>Facts</font><font color=green>Only</font> 14:11, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

• Do you have the 'raw signature' checkbox set? You should. >Radiant< 14:18, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes it is checked and I get "Invalid raw signature; check HTML tags" when I try to save, using this code: FactsOnly
    • I'm not sure what's wrong; I'd suggest asking here. >Radiant< 15:41, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

So I did ask here FactsSolely 15:59, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that the HTML code you're using is just plain bad. Here's the code you need:

[[User:Rrfayette|<span style="color: blue">Facts</span><span style="color: green">Only</span>]]

Which gets you:

FactsOnly

Hope that helps. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:07, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

It does; thank you. Would you also be able to tell me if there is a list of "color codes"? FactsSolely 16:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

A couple different resources: [7][8][9] In general, I prefer to specify the actual color rather than generic names, but that's also because I've been making websites for many, many moons. ;-) EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:22, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

You've been given the help you requested, which is good. I'd like to note that there is no policy forbidding colorful sigs but some of us feel they are rather silly and clutter up talk pages. Just an opinion. John Reid ° 09:37, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I second that. Many of us dislike colorful sigs. They are visually distracting in talkpages, cluttering in the wikicode, and tend (with a few exceptions!) to be used by the less-mature editors ("it's self-expression!" No, it's generally just attention-seeking. Self-expression is best confined to userpages). -Quiddity 23:34, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Template auto-hide

How can I make a template appear to be collapsed or hidden as its starting state when an article page is loaded? I specifically want to modify Template:Paraphilia this way, as it may become quite large in the future. Thanks. Robotman1974 10:01, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

{{hidden}}. --ais523 10:34, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Look at user:Kylu. Her user page has several templates that do just that. Actually the second template, user:kylu/main is the wrapper around the main course. — EncMstr 10:37, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmmmmm... Looking at the code for Kylu's userpage makes my eyes hurt. That {{hidden}} tag looks like exactly what I'm asking for... but how do I use it? Robotman1974 10:48, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Parameter 1 is the title of the box

Parameter 2 is what appears inside the box; you normally need to type '2=' before it; see the edit screen for this section.

• bg1 is the heading background-colour ('cyan' in this case)
• bg2 is the body background-colour ('yellow' in this case)
• ta1 and ta2 are the text-alignments for the heading and body (I've used 'center' and 'left'; note the American spelling)

Thanks for the template example Ais523. That will definitely help in the future, but I still can't figure out how to work the hidden/1/2 deal into Template:Paraphilia. Could someone maybe leave an example using that particular template on my talk page? Robotman1974 20:36, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Please do not do this -- make content hidden by default. This feature does not work in all browsers, so the content cannot be revealed. Show/hide is fine if shown by default. John Reid ° 09:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I strongly second this. Not everybody has JavaScript enabled, without which you don't even see the [show] button and you would never suspect that there might be hidden content. Femto 16:22, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm also against using this trick (at all). The [show] and [hide] links look confusingly like [edit] links (both location and silhouette), meaning many people will unconsciously skip past it without realizing what it is meant to be. --Quiddity 23:23, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Any way to ignore salted pages?

I was bored, and as often happens, playing around with Special:Random. However, it brought me to Dawn of the Dude, which isn't really an article. I don't suppose there's any way to force it to ignore pages like this, is there? From what I understand, it pulls from anything in the main article space, so it may be impossible.

And, of course, this may not even be that big of an issue. Of all the times I've used the random page, this is the first time I've run across a deleted article. EVula 23:20, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I was going to say that there is no way to avoid it, but then I got to thinking. Redirects are not picked by Special:Random right? So if we made all salted pages into redirects they would not show up on randompages, they would also not be counted as articles to be included in {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} and such either I believe. If we changed {{deletedpage}} redirect tagged pages to themselves the article is marked as a redirect in the database, but you don't actualy get redirected anywhere (obviously), only downside is the big "redirect" arrow on the top of the article... --Sherool (talk) 01:48, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Any such attempt would be forced to rely on unintended behavior which could change at any time. And, as you say, it's ugly. Better, on the dev side, to just allow protection of deleted pages. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:45, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

• Some admins prune SALTed pages with some regularity to keep the number down. >Radiant< 23:31, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

One way which it could be acheived without hard-codeing particular categories into the software is having a list of categories to avoid somewhere in the MediaWiki namespace. Special:Randompage could then check articles against this list to exclude them. --Salix alba (talk) 17:16, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I just asked the same question on the proposals page and someone pointed me here. I don't know much about the actual implementation of the software but this strikes me as something simple enough to fix without going roundabout. Pascal.Tesson 22:25, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Actualy I don't think it is all that simple. I mean sure any dav could "hack" the randompage function to exclude pages in scertain categories, but it would be a ugly hack, and the next time there is a software update they would have to do it all over again. Updating the base MediaWiki software with something like a __NORANDOM__ "magic word" would be a better solution than implementing local hacks based on the exsistence of scertain categories or whatever. --Sherool (talk) 23:25, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Error page grammar check!

The error recived at places like this needs to have the comma removed from the line about hiding revisions as neither of the fragments are independent clauses. 68.39.174.238 04:43, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Direct your suggestion to MediaWiki_talk:Missingarticle. --Splarka (rant) 08:34, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I forwarded your request there. Kavadi carrier 09:03, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone have tool and authority to check whether a particular viewer remain on a particular page for such and such duration on such and such time?

I am just interested to know whether there is any tool in Wikipedia to find out who read a particular article and for what time duration?

Does anyone have the tools to check & authority to check the above mentioned thing?

Could I be replied on my talk page? swadhyayee 02:31, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe so ... and I certainly hope not. That would be a horrible violation of privacy. Newyorkbrad 02:34, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

There is often very little information available about how often an article is viewed. Wikicharts is probably the closest thing to what you describe. It lists the top most viewed pages. Tra (Talk) 02:54, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I am interested in knowing whether a particular Wikipedian viewed a particular page or not? swadhyayee 03:10, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

No, sorry, detailed statistics like these are not available. The best you can do is see if a Wikipedian edited the page, by looking at the page history and user contributions. Tra (Talk) 03:19, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I am asking about just viewing and not editing an article. My feeling is, there must be a tool and very few may have the access or the authority. Are you sure Tra that such tool does not exist? Should I take your answer to be final and there is no one else upon whom I should look for an answer? swadhyayee 03:37, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

1) With the heavy traffic load this site gets, it would be an excessive drag on the server to keep logs of such things as individual page views, so it isn't done. 2) As others have pointed out, it would be an invasion of privacy to let you see what pages specific individuals have read. 3) Even if they kept logs of page accesses by user, you still couldn't tell exactly how long the user kept the page open, as browsers don't report back to the server when you close them. *Dan T.* 04:02, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

You may also wish to read this section of the Privacy policy for the Foundation's official policy on this. Tra (Talk) 04:07, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Many thanks Newyorkbrad, Dan T and Tra for the information. swadhyayee 07:18, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Glitches ?!

Just tried to get on this site, only that all edits are refused, can't even get on the site, then a "Host cannot be found" signal comes up. Are there servers that are damaged ? I don't know if even this will get through . Martial Law 22:43, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Probably your connection was faulty. Sometimes it happens... Titoxd^(?!?) 00:30, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Signature preview

I think it'd be useful to have a "preview" button on the preferences page for users to see what their signature would look like before saving it. --Gray Porpoise^{Phocoenidae, not Delphinidae} 19:56, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's too necessary, just create the signature in your sandbox and copy it to the signature box in your preferences. —Mets501 (talk) 21:41, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Just sign a page, any page, and do a "show preview". User:Zoe|(talk) 03:30, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Sharing Photos between Wikitravel and Wikipedia

I have contributed a bit to various articles on hot springs on Wikipedia, and I realized that there is some more information on Wikitravel, including some great photographs. When I went to import a photo, however, it was not the same photo on Wikipedia as on Wikitravel. So they have separate photo repositories? What gives? How does one use a photo from Wikitravel on Wikipedia?--Filll 14:05, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

As I understand it, the only photos one may use across different wikis are those from Wikimedia Commons, which may be used everywhere. Laurence Boyce 17:55, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikitravel is not a Wikimedia project and therefore cannot use images in Commons. The photos will need to be uploaded separately in both projects. Tra (Talk) 19:15, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikitravel and Wikipedia content are license incompatible. — User:ACupOfCoffee@ 01:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

This page explains the licencing issues. Basically, only some of the images can be moved between the projects. Tra (Talk) 02:41, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

why are profiles and other non informatory wikipedia sections a wiki?

wikipedia is great, and it is good we can all edit the pages congaing information. but why are the profiles editable by anyone. why is everyone allowed to edit everyone else's profile. i can see why moderates would have this power but all users?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by GreyCell (talk • contribs)

Actually, the ability to edit other's userpages is quite handy when updating userboxes that have been moved.

As for a reason why, I believe it would be exceedingly difficult to create a special editing system just for userpages. It makes perfect sense for it to be the same as everything else, and isn't nearly as problematic as you seem to believe it is. EVula 03:18, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Should user pages (generally vanity at best) somehow have more protection than what really matters, the articles? Notinasnaid 09:44, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

EVula, I don't think it would be that difficult to make a special system for user pages. The system is already used wher pages in userspace ending in .css or .js can only be edited by the accociated user or an admin. This would just need to be extended to the whole namespace. However, this probably wouldn't be implemented because of the various different reasons to edit other people's userpages. Tra (Talk) 20:50, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Someone came along and fixed a misspelling on my userpage yesterday. I was grateful and happy. Why would we want to make userpages un-editable? Vandalism is easier to fix then a word that you don't realize you've misspelled. ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 16:29, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I hadn't considered that, Tra... pretty good idea, though I'm still strongly opposed to userpages operating differently from the rest of the wiki. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Watch Special Pages

Is there a way to add Special:xxx/yyyy to my watchlist? I ask because I've been going through disambiguation pages and changing all internal links so that they point to the right place, but of course, people continue adding ambigous links that I then have to change back. If I could add, eg Special:whatlinkshere/The_end to my watchlist, then I'd be notified every time a link needed disambig-ing. Which would be useful. --User24 14:40, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I believe the answer is no since special: pages are generated and have no timestamp that could be put in the database record corresponding to your watchlist. If I'm understanding what you want to do, the best solution I can think of would be to write a script you could run from your PC to access Special:whatlinkshere for a list of article names and manipulate the output to find what you're looking for. I have written a number of scripts that do various things more or less like this and would be willing to help if you'd like (although not for the next two weeks or so). -- Rick Block (talk) 14:59, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah that'd be awesome; let me know when you have some time free, thanks. --User24 15:02, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I've made a start with one, which you can get by adding {{subst:js|User:Tra/whatlinksherewatchlist.js}} to your monobook.js and then adding the What links here pages to your watchlist, and viewing the watchlist through a link in the sidebar. Unfortunately, there are a number of limitations to it, detailed here. Tra (Talk) 00:25, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Problem with display of Justice - is it just me?

Hi. The article Justice is currently displaying (for me, at least) in a rather mixed-up way. The text is fine in the editor, but in the article, the first subsection (Virtue or results?) is moved to near the bottom of the page, messing up the referencing. Sorry if this isn't the right place to post this. Cheers, Sam Clark 11:36, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. Was old unreverted "vandalism". --Ligulem 12:33, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I wonder why I couldn't see the vandalism in the editor? Cheers, Sam Clark 12:37, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

There was a huge amount of text in a footnote, caused by an unclosed <ref> tag (see Wikipedia:Footnotes). I clicked on the respective uplink of that giant note in the article and landed in the lemma. Then I started looking at older revisions of the article to find out the last non-broken version (using the history tab) and copied that paragraph into the newest version of the article. But no problem with asking here. --Ligulem 13:12, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Strange Image in place of Marshall Islands flag

Looking at my user page (Roisterer) just now, I noted that the image of the Marshall Islands flag I have displayed (at 50px) looks nothing like the flag. When I increase the size of the image, it looks fine. Could someone check my page to see if it is just a problem with my computer or not? Here is what the Marshall Islands flag is supposed to look like: . Cheers. --Roisterer 02:49, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Just as a side note, the image that came up here as the Marshall Islands flag is the image I see on my page, so if you can see the flag then there's a problem at my end. --Roisterer 02:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

It looks good here, so I presume it's a problem with your cache. Ironically enough, the image on {{PDFlink}} was busted for me as well until I did a hard refresh. Is anyone having problems similar to these? Titoxd^(?!?) 06:23, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Administrator tools on a non-admin account

I hope this is the correct place to ask this, and if it's not please kindly direct me to the correct place. I logged on today and went to the AfD as I do rather regularly. As I was browsing today's AfD's I noticed that under each nomination I have a series of tools that allow me to protect, delete and undelete the article; I have never seen these there before. Now, to my knowledge only administrators are supposed to have these three options. I am not an administrator, and although I may consider attempting to be one in the future I certainly shouldn't have these tools now. However, if this is a general change and all editors now have the ability to protect, delete and undelete articles then that is another problem, and a much bigger one at that. --The Way 23:07, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Does it keep happening, or was it a one-off problem? Titoxd^(?!?) 23:32, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

It looks like someone's modified the standard template to include links to Special:Undelete/PAGENAME, the protect and delete links (which are just things like &action=protect added to the normal URL), and so on. This doesn't mean that by clicking these links you'll be able to carry out the action - you'll be given an error message and told you don't have permission, or something like that. You only need to worry if "protect" and "delete" tabs start showing up next to "history" at the top of the page... Shimgray | talk | 23:43, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Alright, thanks. Good to know people aren't randomly getting admin tools; I'd never have used them but I'm sure others would. It still seems that that is a totally unnecessary addition to the standard template that should be removed asap. --The Way 23:45, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

The administrator links are useful to those who close discussions where the outcome is "delete". And there are no security implications - the links just don't work for non-admins, delete or undelete will generate an error while protect will let you see but not change the page protection settings. (Disclaimer: I made the template.) Kavadi carrier 05:56, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

"You have new messages on your Wikipedia talk page"

Someone seems to have changed the orange 'new messages' bar, introducing the wholly unnecessary verbiage "on your Wikipedia talk page" (where else would I have new messages for Wikipedia to me telling me about them? my mobile?) Anyway, I know the place to dispute this is wherever the message template that was changed is, but I can't seem to find that - I tried Mediawiki:Newmessages, Mediawiki:Newmessageslink and Mediawiki:Newmessagesdifflink but none of them have been changed in a while. Can someone point me to the right place? --Sam Blanning^(talk) 17:51, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

The page in question is MediaWiki:Youhavenewmessages (probably the best place to look is the MediaWiki namespace RC log). This seems to be coming from a discussion on the policy pump, probably best to discuss it there.--Nilfanion (talk) 17:59, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

YouTube videos

Is it possible to embed a YouTube video into a user page? I've tried just pasting in the embed html supplied by YouTube, but it doesn't work. Laurence Boyce 13:39, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

No, I have seen users trying to embed videos before, and never worked. And hopefully, it will never work. -- ReyBrujo 13:52, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, while I'm all for intricately designed userpages, embedding a YouTube video is crossing the line. User-space != MySpace. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:24, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

It's not possible. Wikipedia has disabled embedding files from other sites, because of the risk that vandalism might occur by someone changing the file on the external site. There are also likely to be copyright issues with the video. I suggest you just link to it as an external link. Tra (Talk) 19:29, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Strange search behaviour

I'm finding some strange behaviour on the search page.

When searching for "Communism" the first match is "Communications"!

"Communism" itself is way down the list.

Why is this? I'm thinking perhaps it's related to the way the root of the word is used to generate near-matches?

Will

132.185.144.122 13:19, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The search software is Lucene, which computes a match based on the contents of the entire article not just the title. The search index treats various words as the same (communications and communism must be two like this), and since "communications" appears in the communications article more times than communism appears in the communism article, communications gets a higher score. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:31, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh, okay. So it's a feature, not a bug! But shouldn't the first page in the list be the page that exactly matches the search term though? The current system seems to make it slightly more difficult to find what you're looking for. (Because, in fact, why should communications and communism be treated the same when they're not related at all?) Will 132.185.240.122 10:02, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

This is a bug in Wikimedia's mwsearch module, the module which calls Lucene. I'm attempting to fix it. -- Tim Starling 05:08, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Problem with Wikipedia:Special:BrokenRedirects

moved here from User talk:Jimbo Wales - the wub "?!" 12:50, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I am contacting you since this seems to be an issue with the site iself. When bad redirects on te list are removed, thy are no longr crossed out. Instead, besde the page, a new link appears that says Category:User cello. This just startd happening last night November 3. ihope that you will be able to fix this for us. Thanks, --Willy No1lakersfan (Talk - Contribs) 16:00, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

It's fixed now, obviously just a very strange temporary problem. the wub "?!" 18:13, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

This is a problem again. I found out that the source of the problem was that the category was deleted, so I put something in the category page so it wxisted again. Now the category was deleted once again and the problem has reoccured. Please help with this problem...--Willy No1lakersfan (Talk - Contribs) 12:57, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

OK this is weird. All the deleted pages in Special:Brokenredirects show up as "redirects to Category:User cello" (a category deleted at UCfD) even though all of them were probably not redirects to that category in the first place (e.g. National Association of Condo Hotel Owners, About long island, and Weapon X (musician) all appear like that). Only non-deleted pages are struck out when fixed. I'd say this could be ignored, but right now it is making this Special page quite useless. Only a few non-deleted redirects show up as "fixed". Kavadi carrier 04:43, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Update... is someone trying to run a bot to fix these and simply redirecting everything to a random page? The current redirect is to Adberrahim Goumri! SkierRMH 02:11, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Help with wiki code

I'm writing an article about a song Work With Me, Annie that was in the RR hall of fame. I am using some code which I copied from another article which produces the following:

The song " Work With Me, Annie" is part of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll list.

The code is {{RRHF500| Work With Me, Annie}} which produces the line above. The problem is that it sticks a little footnote on the end, but the footnote does not show up in the footnotes section of the article. The footnote does not seem to go anywhere and I can't figure out how to either fix it or get rid of it. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks! Mattisse(talk) 22:31, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Subst-ing the template seems to make it work, so it might be something to do with template transclusion conflicting with the <ref> tags. Tra (Talk) 22:51, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing it! Could you explain what "sust-ing the template" means? How did you know what link to put in? And, is there a list of those templates somewhere? Thanks again! Mattisse(talk) 22:57, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:SUBST --TheParanoidOne 23:03, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer! (I'll work at understanding what that pages is saying.) Mattisse(talk) 23:25, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Werdnabot

Werdna quit last month but his bot still seems to be working. Is the bot one day going to stop doing its job? Anomo 22:04, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Werdna continues to actively maintain his bot. He's also now a MediaWiki developer, and is quite active in that role (moreso than I). I don't know if he's left the source code/data with anyone, but if he has it should be easy to keep it running smoothly. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 06:35, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Weird problem updating template

A few days ago I updated template:Germany Bayreuth district to include a link in the heading. Once I did this, it was simple to get Bayreuth to use the new template. But for some reason, I can't get Bayreuth (district) to get the update. I've tried action=pruge, null edits, non-null edits, etc. I don't understand why this page still uses the old version even after two days. -Steve Sanbeg 20:33, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

It's because when the template is transcluded in Bayreuth (district), the link at the top links to the same page that the user is on, and consequently, it appears bold but not linked. Tra (Talk) 20:42, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

odd behavior when right-clicking on section headers (only)

Using Firefox, I usually right-clink on links and then "Open Link in New Tab". Now all of a sudden right-clicking on section headings and subheadings (only) in Wikipedia takes me immediatly to edit mode. All other links, in Wikipedia or elsewhere, continue as before. I don't think anything's changed on my computer. Anyone else seen this problem? Herostratus 20:19, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Go to My preferences -> Editing and untick 'Enable section editing by right-clicking on section titles (JavaScript)'. Tra (Talk) 20:45, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Dang, you're right, wonder how that got set. THANKS! Herostratus 22:42, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

is it possible to use php/mysql in wikipedia project?

i'm thinking about storing of map system there for historical atlas project. generaly possible? already exists something storing data in mysql (installed directly at wikipedia.org?) and accessing it using php? any limits? Tblazko 18:04, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

For reasons that should be obvious, it's impossible for anyone but a developer to execute arbitrary code. If you think some kind of software extension would be useful, please propose it at Mediazilla, and perhaps write it (that will certainly help things along, although the path to enabling something on Wikimedia is generally long and difficult unless you're a core dev or highly trusted by one). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 06:31, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Is this program supported by the license?

http://earth.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=21422&topic=1141

We are trying to make a historical atlas.--Daanschr 13:45, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean, can you use Google Earth images in Wikipedia? Wikipedia requires a license including commercial rights, so those terms are definitely not suitable. Notinasnaid 13:47, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

what about use GE just like (one of possible) external map editors? (you can see my reply to Daanschr 10:33, 6 November 2006 (UTC) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_historical_atlas)

Tblazko 17:04, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks.--Daanschr 14:20, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

the same questions about nasa www - code already open source http://www.worldwindcentral.com/wiki/World_Wind_FAQ#What_license_is_World_Wind_released_under.3F there are some limits for exported pictures from nasa side too http://www.worldwindcentral.com/wiki/Copyright_Questions_When_Using_Images_From_World_Wind) so probably will not use pictures with satellite images from them just let them (offline) display our map borders at empty globe, show required detail (zoom) and save it like picture. what about limits of such pictures from wikipedia side? Tblazko 18:04, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

help

i'm new to wikipedia and have no clue how it works, but is my IP address secured and not in the hands of hackers and online predators? also how safe are the articles on wikipedia? I was curious and edited one of the articles by simply adding 1 letter, I was going to change it back, but it was already done. What if somebody changed an article and made it completely false? are we safe? not just our private information, but our knowledge.

please respond back via message or something.

Your IP address is not much use to hackers and online predators. You also send it to every web site you visit. However, Wikipedia does hide your IP address if and only if you register a user name and login to edit. Not sure what you mean by "are we safe" in connection with people making an article false. Notinasnaid 09:43, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

The body is commensal to plenty of germs ; as long as it stays in good health, there is no harm.

WP lives with a door open to plenty of *booh* vandals *booh*, but the organism is healthy and vandalism is seen and corrected quickly. Does that help ? -- DLL ^{.. T} 19:31, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Image thumbnail problem

First of all, we have followed the different advices at Wikipedia:Purge. However, we could not get File:Courier (Richard Shindell album - cover art).jpg to be purged, more specifically, the 200 pixel thumbnail. Other thumbnails, like the 199 pixel one, is correctly generated.

Is there another way to force the thumbnail recreation? The problem was raised at Template talk:Infobox Album#Image bug?. Thanks in advance. -- ReyBrujo 04:14, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm seeing this problem as well. I've tried every trick in the book, but I can't get the 380px thumbnail for this image to regenerate even though the image was replaced a day ago. Is anyone looking into this? Kaldari 17:52, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

This problem occurs when squid has cached an error page with the URL of a thumbnail, but the page is not purged with action=purge because the thumbnail does not exist. The solution is to request the thumbnail with an unusual URL, say by appending ?1 to the end. The thumbnail will hopefully be generated. Then do action=purge to delete the cached error. You should only do this if you have tried an ordinary action=purge and it hasn't worked. -- Tim Starling 07:17, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

That worked, thanks! -- ReyBrujo 17:05, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Tim! I have updated Wikipedia:Purge#For_images with your instructions for future reference. Please look over it and correct anything that looks amiss. Kaldari 21:22, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Specify namespace for "What links here" pages?

I work on disambiguating links to dab pages. I don't generally bother with links to dab pages from anything other than mainspace. It would be very convenient if there were a way to specify what namespace I want links from when looking at "What links here" for the dab pages I work on. Is there any way to do this that I don't know about, and if not, is it something that could be implemented? :-) --Tkynerd 01:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Possibly something at WP:TOOLS. I seem to remember AWB being able to do something like this, but maybe not. At the very least, I think the links are arranged by namespace when the index has been updated. Unfortunately that doesn't happen very often (on the order of weeks). Carcharoth 01:12, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

There is also this which will give you the pages linking to Guernsey that are in the article namespace. As you would see if you click on the link, it's in more of a machine readable format so for it to be useful, a script would need to be written to make it presentable. Tra (Talk) 01:16, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

This is bug 4624.--Commander Keane 01:55, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, all. At WP:TOOLS I did find this, which doesn't solve the namespace problem but looks like it does make the disambiguation task easier. So that's good. :-) --Tkynerd 02:31, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, that software does solve the namespace problem. It includes a checkbox for "0 namespace only." It's exactly what I needed; many thanks to Carcharoth for the tip. --Tkynerd 04:39, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

I use firefox's text-search highlighting. (ctrl-F, search for word, highlight all) Makes skimming down a long list really easy. --Quiddity 02:43, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

How does that help you ignore several different strings (Talk:, User:, User talk:, Wikipedia talk:...)? --Tkynerd 02:50, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, mis-read. I'm usually fixing project-space dbl-redirects, which this is useful for. Carry on :) --Quiddity 19:18, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Appearance of non-Roman scripts

Not sure if this is the right place to post this. Many Wikipedia pages link to the same article in other languages, and I'd like to be able to see what those languages are. I can interpret Deutsch and Polski but not தமிழ் and ܐܪܡܝܐ . Likewise, there are many links to different Wikipedias on [10]. Does a way exist to see what these languages are? Ideally, I'd like to hover and have the name come up in English. Any ideas? BrainyBabe 15:26, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

If you are just after the Wikipedias then m:List of Wikipedias is what you want. If you just want to see the cool languages though, then something like List of ISO 639-1 codes might be useful. --TheParanoidOne 20:20, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

They are both cool tools, and thanks for bringing them to my attention, but neither does what I want it to. I'd like it to be evident to every reader, and obviously most won't know to look here. Also, it requires scrolling through lots, and scrutinising unfamiliar scripts, and trying to estimate if the one you are curious about looks like the examples given of Persian or Thai or whatever. Perhaps someone else will pick this up. BrainyBabe 20:44, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Interlanguage links are designed to be comprehensible to speakers of the target language, not speakers of the current language. While it might be interesting to know whether the page exists in Thai or Devanagari, it's not very useful if you can't actually read the script, and if you actually care you can mouse over the link and look up the code. On the other hand, someone who knows little to know of the current language should be able to determine whether the page is written in their native language as easily as possible. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:09, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that makes sense, to prioritise the native speakers of each language. I was thinking more of curiosity than of strict usefulness, although it is useful to know if a page on (for example) corruption exists in (for example) Arabic or Farsi. How does one "look up the code"? I can see it displayed at the bottom of my screen when I hover my mouse, but what do I do then? BrainyBabe 12:25, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I've made a javascript tool that converts local language names in the sidebar to the English version of those names. To use it, put {{subst:js|User:Tra/sidebartranslate.js}} in your monobook.js. Tra (Talk) 00:54, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I just enter the code into the search box. The disambig page will invariably have a pointer to the appropriate language. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:22, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for both of those suggestions. I don't know what a javascript tool is; I know this is a technical page but, as I said, I may be asking in the wrong place (ie I think I am in over my head!). I did look up javascript and realised it wasn't what I needed. The second suggestion worked for me, but again, it will only work for those who think of it, which won't be most visitors to Wikipedia. I'll leave it at this, but if anyone has any practical ideas for how to make these non-Roman scripts also give the name of their language in English, that would be fantastic. Thanks again. BrainyBabe 15:02, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

SVG Fonts

Hi

What fonts can be used for SVG (i.e. what fonts are installed on the servers?)

Gary van der Merwe ^(Talk) 14:51, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Edit option on all pages....

The edit option on all of the pages is pretty dumb. I recently changed information on a page and it was left like that for about a week. This "tool" could be potentially dangerouse to all Wikipedia users. I sugest that you get ride of this iption or find away to make it more... safe. By the way, I kindly went back and changed teh information back to its origanal form before I did my little "test." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.255.109.142 (talk • contribs) .

Try reading this. Tra (Talk) 22:51, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

SVG TextPath

thumb Hi

Please can some help me figure out why the the text path in Image:Alfa_Romeo.svg does not show?

Gary van der Merwe ^(Talk) 20:04, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Arial Black is not installed on the servers, convert it to a path. —Ruud 20:38, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Oh - is there a way I can see what fonts are on the server? Gary van der Merwe ^(Talk) 20:47, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the real problem is: [11]. If the font is not there - it falls back to another font. Gary van der Merwe ^(Talk) 21:36, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Issues with Wikipedia:Special:BrokenRedirects

I bring this question up again because I fixed it but is broken again. The pages containing broken redirects that were deleted are no longer crossed out on the list. Instead, they say that they point to a broken redirect of Category:User cello. This is because that category was deleted. I replaced this category and it temporarily fixed the problem. Now the category is deletedagain and the problem exists again. Could somebody look into getting this fixed? --Willy No1lakersfan (Talk - Contribs) 13:04, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Don't create a category just to work around a software problem. It wasn't a "fix", it just made the problem appear to disappear. See also #Problem with Wikipedia:Special:BrokenRedirects above. Kavadi carrier 04:52, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Picture of the day/November 7, 2006

Why isn't this image coming up? The direct URL to the image is [12] and all I get is text, so something is screwy here. howcheng {chat} 04:56, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Interesting, it is the same problem I reported just above... -- ReyBrujo 05:12, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, this one seems to have fixed itself. ::shrug::. howcheng {chat} 17:36, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Vertical alignment in a div header

Is there any way to make a div tag use vertical text alignment with a NavHeader as seen here? I've tried "valign:center", "v-align:center", and "vertical-align:center", as well as many other things but nothing seems to be working. I'm just looking to have the top bar, that is visible when the window is not expanded, not be v-align:top. Thanks. --MZMcBride 01:27, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The "vertical-align" CSS property is for arranging inline elements proportional to each other, not to the boundaries of the parent object (except for table cells). In practial language: it doesn't do what you want. The relationship of it to the "text-align" css element (and the and "valign" parameter) is counter-intuitive. Try "padding-top:.4em;" on the inner div. Also, if linking to one of the sandbox templates, you can directly link to the old version -> [13]. --Splarka (rant) 08:32, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't work. Use tables. Yes, it's non-semantic, but there is literally no way to get reliable vertical alignment without using tables in CSS2. The W3C website even suggests it. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:28, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Rm '/wiki'

I know this would represent a huge change, a whole lot of confusion, and millions of broken links all over the internet but I'll throw it out there anyway. Isn't there a way to change all URL's from...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_name

to

http://en.wikipedia.org/Page_name

And wouldn't this make more sense and be more user friendly? Just a suggestion. --Anthony5429 16:33, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I do too, however the developers don't. :( Lcarsdata (Talk) 17:08, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I think /wiki/ is there to make sure the pages in the wiki don't conflict with other pages in the domain. However, if you do make a mistake and visit the page without /wiki/ in it, you will be redirected to the page you want. Tra (Talk) 17:58, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there is any directory data at the level which would conflict if the /wiki/ were not there. Also, if you remove the /wiki/ it doesn't work in Firefox 2.0 or IE 6. What web browser are you using, Tra? Thirdly, I am pretty sure I have seen the method for doing this explained in mediawiki documentation. Again, no big deal at all because as I mentioned more bad would almost definately come out of such a move than good. --Anthony5429 19:32, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm using Internet Explorer 7. What I mean is that, under the current configuration, if someone mistakenly goes to http://en.wikipedia.org/Page_name, they will see a page telling them it's the wrong place and that redirects them to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_name in four seconds. As for conflicting with non-wiki pages, index.php is one that would conflict, since removing the /wiki/ would mean that whatever's at w/index.php would not be accesible properly. Also, extensions such as query.php would have the same problem. There may be more problems if extra functionality is implemented in the future. It is possible to change the setting somewhere in the configuration, because I'm sure there's a wiki somewhere that uses it, but as for Wikipedia, this would probably just create a load of problems and break a lot of bots etc. Tra (Talk) 20:29, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I'm pretty you wouldn't have to worry about index.php, etc., since those are in the w/ subdirectory (I think). You would run into issues if we had an article named w/index.php, of course, but that strikes me as unlikely, and anyway I suppose we could just rewrite absolutely everything instead of just most things like now (e.g., Foo?action=edit rather than w/index.php?title=Foo&action=edit). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:36, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

This has been discussed before (on the mailing list IIRC); there are some article titles which conflict with "magic" files which must be located at the root, like for instance robots.txt (/robots.txt) and favicon.ico (/favicon.ico). There's no way to predict all possible future special filenames; having the articles on their own separate namespace avoids the problem. To help people who mistakenly forget the /wiki/, there's a 404 handler which creates an automatic redirection page to the correct URL (it cannot be a simple HTTP redirect for technical reasons). --cesarb 21:10, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Here is an example of a MediaWiki wiki with a null article path and null script path -> Wikiality. It was imported to Wikia recently, and at the request of the founders the article access was left root for the domain. Note that both robots.txt and favicon are (experimentally) unreachable. See also m:Using_a_very_short_URL. --Splarka (rant) 08:24, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

The thing that can't be a simple HTTP redirect for technical reasons is page redirects, not redirects for URL's without the wiki/. I'm pretty sure that the latter are deliberately not simple HTTP redirects so that people won't link to or rely on them. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:36, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I think your right, because http://en.wikipedia.org/foo used to just do a (simple) HTTP redirect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/foo. (this was a while ago). Bawolff 23:28, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

layout problems

I rarely but regularly notice layout problems on WP that cause text to be hidden by images. Sometimes they exist in both Firefox and IE (e.g. on Category:History, "Category:History by city" is partially covered) and sometimes only in FF (on http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Egyptomania&oldid=80966972 Egyptomania#Race_and_national_identity the first two lines don't stay to the left of the picture and the second line is truncated after "or Asia, or within the".) Is there an FAQ that deals with these problems? --Espoo 10:15, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I can't see it on both articles, since my font size is different from the default, but I think I know what you are talking about (the top or bottom of the image is over part of a line of text). This happens because the browsers don't correctly calculate the overlap between the text and the image; there's no way I know of to avoid it (other than moving the images to a different place and hoping it works in all possible font sizes). --cesarb 14:29, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The Firefox bugzilla entry for this is bug 41412. --cesarb 14:36, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

piston cooling system

please explain about piston cooling system with air suspension which is used in MAN KSZ type enginee My Email ID is jegadesh77/at/yahoo/dot/com

Try Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science, here we talk about technical issues with Wikipedia/MediaWiki, not engines. --Sherool (talk) 09:30, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

You have new message?

Since when was the alert for messages ungrammatical? Adam Cuerden ^talk 19:16, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

It's been fixed; I think an admin was playing with it, and it got changed back. -Patstuart^{(talk)(contribs)} 01:18, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Faulty watch-list

I'm currently watching the following page: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Vikram Rai. The AfD was closed down earlier today, yet the change does not appear in my watch list (though it appears correctly when I display/edit the complete list). I've tried unwatch and watch, but it still doesn't work. I don't need to watch it any more, but I'd like to know if the problem is with me or Wikipedia. As far as I can tell, all my other watched items appear correctly. — Tivedshambo (talk) 18:48, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

This is a known issue with page protection/unprotection changes. --brion 19:05, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Bot idea

I've come up with an idea for a useful bot, and I think I have the Perl chops to implement it, but could use some help - particularly an example of a successful Perl bot that I can use as a template. The idea is to fix basic English word errors, starting with replacing "predominately" with "predominantly" (do a search for the incorrect "predominately" and you'll see how widespread the problem is). As I said, I'm willing to do the heavy lifting, but could use some help to get me started. Thanks! | Mr. Darcy talk 17:05, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

User:Pearle. However, spelling-fix bots aren't a good idea when automatically run. --ais523 17:10, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. What's the issue with spelling-fix bots? I'd characterize this a little differently - I'm not trying to spell-check everything, but would want to convert a specific mis-spelling to the correct one. "Predominately" isn't a word, but eliminating it by hand would be a major task. Anyway, if this is something that isn't done on Wikipedia, I'm not going to push it. | Mr. Darcy talk 17:37, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

While most of the corrections would be correct, still some would be wrong and made then hard to correct. See Wikipedia:Bots#Spell-checking bots for details. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 17:45, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Also Wikipedia talk:Bots#Spellchecking has some discussion on the issue. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 17:55, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll take the discussion over to that page. I see exactly one objection - that such a bot would correct errors in quotations - and as I stated over there, this shouldn't be an issue because errors in quotations should be followed by [sic]. | Mr. Darcy talk 18:22, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

A) [sic] is infrequently used, so you couldn't rely on it. B) It's not the only time when the "misspelled" form of a word might be the intended one. For example we have misspelling, list of common misspellings in English and other pages which include intentional examples of misspelled words. Even if 99% of the corrections are appropriate, the 1% that aren't would be so hard to identify after the fact, that the community does not allowed automatic spell checking bots. Dragons flight 18:44, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Objection A is a problem with Wikipedia, not with the hypothetical bot. The use of [sic] should be obligatory, otherwise editors will manually "fix" those errors over time. Objection B is easily surmounted with an excluded-page listing. As I said, if it's not allowed, I'll respect that, but I do not find these counterarguments convincing. | Mr. Darcy talk 18:51, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Most contributors will not "fix" quotations. Further, there is in fact no consensus on the usage of [sic] at all, since some contributors feel it calls unneccesary attention to misspellings in a way that is disparaging to the original and prefer to just ignore errors appearing in quoted material (as most magazines do, for example). Unless you can find a way to systematically address the quotation issue first, there is no hope for such a bot. Dragons flight 19:03, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

We'll have to agree to disagree on sic. An automatic spellcheck bot could also identify quotations by the use of " or other quotation marks (like the << marks found in some Spanish-speaking countries), or by avoiding errors in italicized text. Anyway, what would a "manually-assisted" bot entail? | Mr. Darcy talk 19:24, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Manually assisted means a human reviews every edit before it is made. Other than that, how much or how little automated assistance is involved is up to the bot operator. Dragons flight 19:37, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:AWB (manually assisted bot) already has an option to fix lots of common typos defined here. Martin 19:42, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I've made the suggested addition on that list's talk page, thanks. | Mr. Darcy talk 20:23, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

"Bad Article" template

I know this sounds silly, but I get very annoyed when I see an article that has more than 2 templates at the top, eg here (and I'm sure there are worse offenders), especially when some of the templates are redundant (of course the factual accuracy is disputed if there are no citations; why do we need both templates on one page?).

So I'd like to suggest a "bad article" template. The main article can then have this one template, and all other relevant templates can go on the talk page. The template would read something like:

This article has significant problems in multiple areas.
Please see discussion on the talk page for further details.

(I'm not really suggesting it be called {{badarticle}}, maybe {{workneeded}} or {{problems}} )

To reiterate, I'm not suggesting that we get rid of X, Y or Z template, rather that I think there's a point where multiple templates should be moved to the talk page, and this template placed on the article instead.

Comments please. --User24 14:53, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

If you create a template like that, it would simply be added on top of the relevant templates, making the list even longer. See also {{toomanyboxes}} (deleted on TfD) and Wikipedia:Huge message boxes. --cesarb 15:22, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

well, hopefully people adding this template will move the existing templates to the talk page, but I can see that becoming a potential issue..

If so, perhaps there could be a bot that scanned pages that have this template, and moved other templates to the talk page. --User24 16:45, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

This is actually a policy question, not technical. Anyway, I am opposed to the idea. The number of templates at the top of an article is a good indicator of the number of problems an article has, and moving these to talk somehow hides this. Tizio, Caio, Sempronio 17:57, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Possibly a bug

OK, I've found a username which breaks the {{unsigned}} template. The name is E. Sn0 =31337=. Let me show you:

{{unsigned|E. Sn0 =31337=}} yields: — Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])

{{unsigned|Patstuart}} yields: — Preceding unsigned comment added by Patstuart (talk • contribs) .

{{unsigned|E. Sn0 =31337=|06:09, 6 November 2006 (UTC)}} yields: — Preceding unsigned comment added by 06:09, 6 November 2006 (UTC) (talk • contribs)

{{unsigned|Patstuart|06:09, 6 November 2006 (UTC)}} yields: — Preceding unsigned comment added by Patstuart (talk • contribs) 06:09, 6 November 2006 (UTC).

Hmm, looks like a problem with the unsigned template, right? Well, that's the catch: I think it has more to do with Wiki's {{{1}}} argument; it's unable to recognize his username. This sounds like a bug; do you guys know if anyone else has reported it to Mediawiki, and do you think it's worth a report? -Patstuart^{(talk)(contribs)} 06:11, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

That's no bug. It's because the username has the equals sign in it which is what MediaWiki takes to be a parameter to the template. You can force it to display as expected using {{unsigned|1=E. Sn0 =31337=}} which shows — Preceding unsigned comment added by E. Sn0 =31337= (talk • contribs)

And please don't start all the <nowiki> lines with a space, they make the lines look horrible. Kavadi carrier 06:30, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Um, yeah, I originally put the lines in because I wanted it to be monospace, but you're right, it's ugly. I'm not sure that feature doesn't need to be changed. -Patstuart^{(talk)(contribs)} 19:10, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

To put lines in monospace, you can also use <code> tags, e.g. <code>This is a test</code> gives This is a test Tra (Talk) 19:47, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Template optimisation

I've created a template to convert between various units of length. So far it can convert between 9 different units (and I plan to add more) in any combination, then I added some "aliases" to make the template more robust, that is it doesn't care if you type in "metre" or "meters" or just "m" and so on, however to do this I basicaly have to duplicate the code a bunch of times in a switch statement, since all these combinations can be combined in any way the code is getting rater large with lots of redundancy, and the more units (and aliases) that gets added it becomes more and more cumbersome to edit. Anyone know of some neat tricks to help optimise things like this? The only thing I can think of is to call various redirecting meta templates, but I understand that's a bit of a no-no... Template is {{length conversion}} by the way, use for example like so: {{length conversion|from=meters|to=furlongs|value=300}} which outputs: 300 metres (1.5 furlongs). It works ok, just getting a bit stressfull to update, any help would be welcome. --Sherool (talk) 19:29, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Also is there a performance issue with loading a 120+K template for something like this? --Sherool (talk) 19:36, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi Sherool! Great template! I've made some changes, mostly spelling and allowing for unnamed parameters, but it looks great! I'll check it out now to see if I can limit the file size. Well done! —Mets501 (talk) 19:58, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, here's my total changes. It's down from 120kb to 40kb now! —Mets501 (talk) 20:21, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, there is a performance issue; that's why there's a limit on the total size of the transcluded templates before the parser stops transcluding any new templates. Huge templates like that will hit the limit sooner. --cesarb 20:58, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

(In reply to Sherool) Especially read [14]. I've left a note on Template talk:Length conversion. Please consider avoiding such monster templates. --Ligulem 23:13, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I trimmed it down further (about 20Kb) and it still seems to work as well as ever. Is there any recomended maximum size on templates? As I understand it the 1Mb thing is a hard limit on the sum of all transclutions per article. --Sherool (talk) 01:27, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Correct, which means that you can include this about 50 times tops per page, and that's assuming no other transclusions. I think you'll find that's rather limiting. Templates were never intended to be a programming language, and still aren't. A new ParserFunction would be much better for this. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:40, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Templates were never intended to be a programming language, but #expr was intended for unit conversion. You just need to make one small template for each conversion, instead of merging them all together with a huge #switch. Yes that requires N^2 templates, but who wants to know how many chains are in a furlong anyway? Just create templates for the common conversions. -- Tim Starling 03:44, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Web 3.0 Glitch?

I clicked on the Special:Random button for fun and it took me to Web 3.0, a protected deleted page. Are protected deleted pages accessible when clicking Special:Random, or is this a glitch? -WarthogDemon 05:16, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

See #Any way to ignore salted pages? a few threads up ;) --Quiddity 05:19, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

extra buttons in the edit toolbar

As requested at MediaWiki talk:Monobook.js I have (re)added several extra buttons to the Edit toolbar. Could several people verify that:

1. pressing the "make table" button/using the "make table" feature does not crash Internet Explorer. (This was previously reported, but supposedly fixed.)
2. while loading the images of the edit bar (which now takes slightly longer on slow Internet connections) you can already start editing on every browser/system configuration.
3. it does not cause any JavaScript warnings/errors, delays or other problems.

Regards, —Ruud 23:27, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Pressing "make table" does crash IE6 for me, but doesn't crash FireFox; Windows XP, Broadband connection. You can start editing while the toolbar loads, and I don't get any js errors. —Mets501 (talk) 00:05, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

It only crashes after I clear my cache. Once I attempt to open it and it crashes, if I attempt to open it again it works. If I then clear my cache it crashes again. —Mets501 (talk) 00:08, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

In Internet Explorer 7, clicking the 'Make table' button causes a square shaped window to pop up, which has the URL about:blank and then the whole browser hangs. Tra (Talk) 00:17, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm trying it again and it's working. I didn't see any javascript errors by the way, and the buttons loaded too fast for me to see if it's possible to type whilst they are loading. Tra (Talk) 00:22, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, crashing IE6 is a pretty serious bug (arguably a bug in IE, but I don't think a new editor with a fresh cache will care whose fault it is.) I've removed the table generator and replaced it with a button. —Ruud 00:49, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

By the way, the 'Insert block of quoted text' button appears twice, for some reason. Tra (Talk) 01:00, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

My fault... it's gone now. —Ruud 01:28, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Table Fix

I found a solution to a problem, and would like to know if I should mention it anywhere in help files. In short:

This old revision of Agrippina (opera) has a "Roles" section done as a table. Unfortuntately, the references were throwing off the alignment between the columns by changing the line height.

I fixed this by adding  at the end of each element. (see Agrippina (opera).) It has no apparent effect on the display (unless you highlight it, when it is slightly noticable in some browsers, but that's a browser oddity), but fixes the table. I was unable to fix it using line-height or font style="bottom: ##" elements.

As this could come up again, should I mention it anywhere? Adam Cuerden ^talk 04:04, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Whole article deleted.

I wrote an entire article on Philip Riteman, a holocaust survivor, and because I made a mistake in adding an mp3 to my external links, the whole thing was deleted. Is there any way I can get it back?

Mattjblythe 01:06, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

The article Philip Riteman was speedily deleted because it does not assert the importance or notability of its subject. You might want to contact the deleting admin, Betacommand if you want the article back, or if that fails, try deletion review. Tra (Talk) 01:29, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Non-appearance of uploaded photo on Gerald Mohr Wiki site

One of the Wiki operators very kindly uploaded the autographed photo I supplied for this page but, for some reason, the photo does not display on my home computer, although it does so on my office computer. Further to a previous e-mail on the subject, I went through a number of times the purging, cache cleaning, deleting and bypassing procedures suggested, but all to no avail. I have also changed the Firewall setting to Medium for Trusted sites, which Wikipedia is. However, I still can't see the photo in the infobox. Something else on my computer must be blocking the view of this photo. Any further ideas, please?

The image server goes on the blink sometimes. Try resizing the image by 1 pixel to see if that helps. --ais523 09:41, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Timestamps in Talk Pages

Is there a technical statement as to why timestamps on talk pages do not conform to my preferences? Seems it would be a client-side issue and there would be something I could add or activate (like the Enhanced recent changes JavaScript) to do this. Is this possible? *Spark* 20:32, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Date preferences only work if the date is linkified, and having all the timestamps linkified would be very cluttering/distracting on talkpages. Hence timestamps are not configurable. --Quiddity 20:52, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the links would be cluttering/distracting on the talkpages, no more so than the links in signatures are. Be that as it may, is there any sort of utility javascript that can handle such a conversion? *Spark* 23:44, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Virtual classroom update and assignment template

We've moved on to our second lesson in the Virtual classroom, though each lesson is continuous so we may see more additions to the interface share and compare as well. The current topic of discussion is "stubbing."

To help keep track of what's going on, here's a template you can place at the top of your userpage or talk page:

Hope to see you at the Virtual classroom soon.  The Transhumanist    12:26, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

How on Earth...

So, I log in, as usual, and go to Special:Watchlist, as I always do. However, near the top of my watchlist, I see Baibars, a page I have never seen before, much less edited, sprinkled on my watchlist. I have looked at the deletion logs of the page, as well as the move logs, and cannot find any explanation as to how it got there. We haven't installed PovWatch, so am I the only one who is having these kinds of issues? Titoxd^(?!?) 06:13, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

What I think happened is that one of the pages on your watchlist was moved to either User talk:Centrx/dev/null or User:Centrx/temp1. Because both the old and new pagename is watched in a page move, you should see one of these pages on your watchlist. Then, that page was moved back, the resulting redirect was deleted and there was little noticible impact.

Later on, Baibars was moved to User talk:Centrx/dev/null then User:Centrx/temp1 then back to Baibars again, and in doing so, it meant that since User talk:Centrx/dev/null or User:Centrx/temp1 were on your watchlist, their move to Baibars caused that page to also be on your watchlist. Tra (Talk) 20:07, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Looking at the deletion history of those two pages, I can't see which page was moved there... I'm lost here. Titoxd^(?!?) 21:11, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

It could be that the moving or deletion of pages somehow messed up the logs. Anyway, looking at Centrx's move log, I can see that he has moved Roger Needham and Wikipedia talk:Counter-Vandalism Unit into there previously. Given that you have 32 edits to the latter page, I'm guessing that it might be that page which was on your watchlist. Tra (Talk) 22:03, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia blocking PHP?

I am trying to write a semi-bot/utility in PHP, but whenever I try to use file_get_contents to retrieve a Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?ns0=1&search=thier&fulltext=Search) i get a 403 error (forbidden). Is Wikipedia blocking PHP clients from accessing it? Is it because the script doesn't log itself in? I'd like for somebody to clear this issue up, particularly with Wikipedia's servers' client tolerances.

Brion has mentioned that it's a really good idea to set a custom user-agent for each program you write, so that if it goes haywire, it can be selectively blocked. When bots don't do this, sometimes general-purpose user agents get blocked. Along the same lines, it's a good idea to include an email address (or a reference to your main talk page, or some way to contact you) in the custom useragent string as well. --Interiot 01:42, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I've noticed this too: Wikipedia blocks bots that have certain user-agent headers from editing or viewing Wikipedia. Once while I was just messing around, i got blocked for having a header saying "Java 1.5", but once I changed it, it got better. -Patstuart^{(talk)(contribs)} 05:28, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Page protection breaking watchlist?

Hi all. I just observed a peculiar thing. A page whose most recent "edit" was being protected is no longer appearing at all on my watchlist. Have others seen this bug? Is it a feature somehow? -- SCZenz 22:48, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

This is a known bug that has been mentioned on this page before. I know nothing more than that. :) -Patstuart^{(talk)(contribs)} 23:40, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Image problem

When I try to upload the image here, I get this warning: '"." is not an accepted image file format.' Why? What on earth does that mean? I tried changing the filename on my computer to "SMITH.JPG" and it still didn't work. Chick Bowen 18:29, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

This one: Image:Emmitt Smith.jpg? It works fine for me. Possibly you added some non-printable char to the name without realizing. Tizio 19:16, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know; I tried it a couple times, changed the filename, etc. Anyway, thanks for uploading it. Chick Bowen 19:24, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

iProblem?

Hi, what's the technical probleme with the Ipod article? The page says that due to technical restrictions, titling "iPod" is impossible. So how is this possible?? and also that?? Cherry meliody 08:14, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Case-sensitivity can be turned on and off on a per-server basis via $wgCapitalLinks. I'm not sure what the considerations are for turning case-sensitivity on and off. I think if there are any links to IPod, but that's a redlink, currently MediaWiki isn't able to find iPod instead and go there?

Anyway, wiktionaries are one other obvious place that case-sensitivity has long been turned on (eg. so that bob and Bob and BOB can be different entries). --Interiot 08:49, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

The frwiki situation is explained well in fr:Template:Titre: "Un JavaScript peut détecter le bandeau (id="RealTitleBanner") et récupérer le titre normal (id="RealTitle") et remplacer le titre h1 avec, puis masquer le bandeau. Pour désactiver le script tout en présentant le bandeau, on ajoute un élément avec id="DisableRealTitle" quelque-part dans la page (ici)." I don't read much French, but it looks a lot to me like they've put something in the site-wide monobook.js to change the title, so it isn't being done portably (but appears to fail safe). --ais523 09:12, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Ahh, cool. Yes, if you turn off your javascript, you see the same thing as you see on enwiki... the message Ais523 linked to saying "due to technical restrictions...". If you enable javascript, the script quickly removes that message and fiddles with the title. Very nice. Could we add that to our monobook.js? If it doesn't get added to the global .js, I guess users can always copy the bits to their own monobook.js (see the "RealTitleBanner" bit here), though I don't see any reason it shouldn't be global. --Interiot 20:57, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Even the user-based version would require changes to all Category:Wrong title templates... something like this, though that didn't seem to work. --Interiot 21:17, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Gerbrant has gotten this to work for {{lowercase}}, yay. Just add {{subst:User:Gerbrant/realTitle.js}} to your monobook.js to see iPod be titled properly. --Interiot 01:15, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Local wiki viewer?

Is there a program that I can run on my computer and that displays wiki source (input) as it shows up on wikipedia and/or wikibooks? Your help is greatly appreciated.--Ujm 04:47, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Depending on the power of your computer, you can probably run Mediawiki itself. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 07:50, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

A while ago Pilaf gave me this tip when I was looking for an offline live preview: "Sverdrup made an offline version of Live Preview a while back, here's the link: [15] (save it as livepreview.html)." I tried it out just now, and it works ok. It doesn't recognise the new cite.php footnotes (they didn't exist back then, maybe Sverdrup has made an update), templates, or various other things.--Commander Keane 01:02, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Question about copyrights and uploaded images

This article Badrinath temple has a recently uploaded image

claiming

However, the same image is found here [16] where you can order a custom print of it. I do not know how to check out if it is in the public domain. I also don't know where to report it as I would do if it were a copyvio of text. Can you advise me how to handle this? Thanks! Mattisse(talk) 14:32, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

The tag is surely incorrect; what's depicted is not bidimensional. I seem to recall that, in such cases, the photo can be copyrighted even if the object itself is not. Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems is the best place to ask. Tizio 14:40, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! Mattisse(talk) 14:47, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Sam! Rewrite!

On John S. McCain, Jr., I rewrote extensively, but there's been some kind of glitch, because none of it below Haddo is showing up on the McCain page, the McCain talk page, or my own sandbox. It's in the edited page, but it's not coming up.... (BTW, my ~~~~ signature is coming up without the link to my page, & I'm danged if I can figure out why.) Help? Trekphiler 04:23, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

When this happens, it's usually due to an open <ref> without a corresponding closing </ref>. Indeed, that's the problem here, and I fixed it. --Interiot 04:44, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Copying data from English Gerald Mohr page to Swedish Gerald Mohr page

I tried to copy/paste the photo and infobox from the English version of the above Wiki page to the Swedish equivalent, but was unsuccessful. Grateful for suggestions. Also grateful for further suggestions as to how to bring the photo up on my own computer, as the box is blank, despite purging, refreshing and all other procedures which I have undertaken to clear the cache.

Probably the Swedish Wikipedia doesn't have the same infobox template. You'll need to translate the data into a comparable Swedish-Wikipedia template, if applicable.

Please make very sure that the Swedish Wikipedia permits fair use before uploading the image there. Once you've done so, you can download the image by going here, right-clicking on the image, selecting "Save As" or similar, and choosing an appropriate place to save it. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:35, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Page History and diffs: an alternative to URLs?

On talk pages in or edit summaries it is often necessary to refrence diffs, most obvious example that comes to mind - 3RR reports, however at present I am unaware if its possible to link a diffpage w/o having to input a whole URL? Same goes with past versions of the page, one can access them manually, one can reference with URLs, but in edit summaries, no way are you able to give a wikilink to a previous page when for example reverting. Is there any way that wikisoftware can be improved to adress this problem? --Kuban Cossack 19:11, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

You can quote the "oldid"s involved but the only way to get a page or diff from oldids is to construct a url by hand. Plugwash 19:25, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Hence why I am encouraging for someone to write a code that will allow one to bypass URLs, is there any way to properely submit this proposal to the wiki software developers? --Kuban Cossack 14:23, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

bugzilla: is the correct place to request enhancements. --ais523 14:25, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Signature issues

I just joined Esperanza, and decided to customize my sig. However, it did not come out right. It looks like this: -Ab[[User:[Your username here]/Esperanza|e]]g92 18:42, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Go to your preferences and click to enable raw signatures. --Interiot 19:48, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Cursor Focus

Hi

I would like to say that any page on loading can have a cursor, focussing on anything that is important in the screen. When we go to Google, there will be cursor focus in the Search textbox. Likewise here also you can provide with the cursor focussed in the Search box (both in the sidebar as well in the screen when one clicks GO or SEARCH buttons). I don't think so this so technical but am confussed on where to log this. Also do consider this and let me know your suggestions/answers.

Regards

--Kris 09:29, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

There is discussion about this from time to time; the problem is that loading the cursor in the search box (which users expect) would mean that the arrow keys wouldn't scroll the page (which users also expect). It would be possible to change the behaviour for a username using user scripts. --ais523 09:54, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I second that... you either get default keyboard-scrolling, or you get default editbox-focusing. If you want to enable editbox-focusing for your account only, edit your monobook.js, and add:

{{subst:User:Quarl/autofocus.js}}

--Interiot 21:26, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Get number of pages in category

Hi. I just installed a wiki to use for my clan in an online game, and I need to know how (if I can) get the number of pages in a category. Is there something like 6,817,967 that I can use?

I don't think so; otherwise User:DFBot would probably use it. --ais523 09:27, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah ok, I was thinking I may have to make a bot. Thanks for the info. --68.48.55.94 02:04, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Could someone pl. help?

1) We have enormous discussion on talk page of Hinduism. Could some knowledgable provide the page with "top" tool at the bottom of the page and "bottom" tool at the top of the page to go to these zones at a click of button?

[I believe this might be required on all pages as the drawback is with all pages].

2) Why we miss "edit" tool with each topic of discussion, forcing us to tremendously scroll up to go to edit tool?

Could someone pl. help? swadhyayee 03:44, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

(1) I don't know about adding buttons, but in Windows and Linux you can go to the top of a page with [Home] and to the bottom with [End]. In Mac OS X, you can use Command-Up Arrow and Command-Down Arrow to do the same thing.

(2) You do have edit buttons for every topic heading at Talk:Hinduism, or at least you did a couple of minutes ago when I looked. Some of the topics are very long, though, and probably should be broken up and/or old material archived from them. --Tkynerd 03:58, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Easier accessibility to portals & wikipedia institutions

I see many great portals, but there's no way to get to them or know that they exist. I think that links to these portals should be on the main page of Wikipedia. And for internal institutions, such as the Village pump, Mediation Committee, Arbitration Committee, etc., should appear every time we log onto Wikipedia using our private accounts. I did not know of their existence until very recently, even though I've been in Wikipedia for a long time. (Wikimachine 02:45, 18 November 2006 (UTC))

Hi Wikimachine, the portals are actually prominently featured on the main page :-) Check out the top-right area above the news. —Mets501 (talk) 02:56, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

How do I message a user?

I want to message Betacommand, about getting my deleted Philip Riteman article back.

--24.222.212.152 01:23, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

You go onto their user talk page, in this case User talk:Betacommand, and hit the + in the corner... then fill in the form... Cbrown1023 01:27, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Cancelation of an old user account

Hi guys,

I am a regular editor on the french "Wikipédia" ([17]), and, as I contribute from time to time to the en: version (often for improving international links... OK you don't care about that), I tried to open an account with the same name on this wiki. Amazingly, the name is already used. OK, it would not be a problem if this user was a "normal" one, after all no one can pretend to have an exclusive alias. However, the contributions of this "english" Arnaudus are somewhat... strange: two stupid redirects towards a porn picture in March 2005. "Surprizingly", this picture was at that time located on the french WP: did this strange alter ego know me? And more "surprizingly", it corresponds exactly to the time I was about to become a member of the arbitration comitee [18]. I guess that this stupid account has been created as a revenge or something similar. Is there a way to cancel it --or just to erase the password, I can live even with this "noble" history-- in order to keep the same alias on both WP? Thanks in advance for any advice,

Arnaudus (this one, not this one yet).

According to the current policy, you can't userp an existing account. This may change in future, so you may wish to make your request here but there still is a good chance that it may not take place because the account that you want has already made edits, and the user would still need to be credited to comply with the GFDL. There is also talk of a single login system for all Wikimedia projects, so you can have the same name everywhere, but this doesn't yet exist either. Tra (Talk) 22:51, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

MIDIs

For older composers who are out of copyright, it's often possible to get out-of-copyright midis by making them ourselves - but NOT to get out-of-copyright oggs, at least, oggs that aren't just disguised midis. Why not allow MIDIs to be uploaded? Adam Cuerden ^talk 17:28, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I believe the problem with MIDI, is that it is not a patent-free format, although this might change. However, Wikimedia Commons seems to allow mid uploads: 1 2 etc. --Splarka (rant) 08:16, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Patents expire after 20 years. What seems to be the problem here? --DavidHOzAu 12:55, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Search Box

In the search box it automatically saves the word searches that I made. I would like to delete those search words. How do I do that?

It is your browser that is saving those searches; how you clear them depends on which web browser you are using. — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:58, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I am using Internet Explorer as my browser.

In IE7 (I think IE6 was the same, but how quickly you forget!), click tools, internet options, general tab, delete browsing hisory, delete forms and press OK. close and restart the browser and it should be all good. — Moondyne 09:12, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your help. Unfortunately, I'm using IE6 and under the tools, internet options, general tab--there is no delete browsing history or delete forms. There is delete cookies, delete files and clear history--all of which I tried and none have worked. Any other ideas?

Upgrade to IE7 or Firefox (the latter preferably)! Someone else should be able to help I'm sure. Watch this space. — Moondyne 09:32, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

This is a feature of Internet Explorer called 'AutoComplete'. Looking for that name in the help files or Options may help (sorry, I don't know how to turn it off either). --ais523 09:38, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

In Internet Explorer 6, go to Tools > Internet Options > Content > AutoComplete > Clear Forms > OK. This will clear the autocomplete data for all information entered in forms for all of the websites you visited, apart from passwords. Tra (Talk) 17:07, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Non-appearance of uploaded photo on Gerald Mohr Wiki site

One of the Wiki operators very kindly uploaded my photo of Gerald Mohr onto his website within an infobox template. However, although the script in the infobox is seen, the photo is not visible on my home computer. It is, however, visible on my office computer. I have tried refreshing, purging, cache cleaning, cache bypassing and changing my firewall level to medium for a trusted site, but to no avail - I still can't view the photo on my home computer. Any ideas as to what's blocking this, given that I've followed all the above procedures? Wood 200, 18 November 2006Wood200 21:46, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

• Have you tried viewing it in a different browser? VegaDark 02:19, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Movies Text Box

For the movies text box, what about adding a "rating" category on all of the movie pages. For those of us, (like myself) who are big movie buffs, and for parents/kids looking up upcoming movies to possibly see, it might be a good idea to have a "rating" category in the box,(I realize I repeat myself, but I can't think of any other way to phrase it). This would definitely be a collaboration project if we are going to modify them all, but what do you think? Please respond. All opinions will be appreciated. --WTRiker 01:33, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

What kind of rating do you mean? Probably not the G/PG/R/NC-17, right? If you're suggesting a critical review or evaluation of the movie content, see WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. — EncMstr 01:44, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I do mean the G/PG/PG-13/R/NC-17. --WTRiker 01:45, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Don't these vary from country to country? There would need to be a whole table on its own to give all the different ratings assigned by different countries. Tra (Talk) 01:59, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

See {{Infobox movie certificates}}. Nihiltres 02:00, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Besides country-specific releases (typically cut for government or societal standards and maybe dubbed with a different language), there are television releases, each network has its own standard to edit for content. If the movie is rereleased, it is typically recut slightly and may gain a different rating from the original release, partly caused by marketing incentives and rating standards drift. Then there's "director's cut", airline cut, etc., etc. I don't doubt that it can be done, but it seems a lot of work for limited benefit. — EncMstr 03:24, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

The IMDB usually lists a wide array of ratings/certificates of most films for many countries, and any notable movie on Wikipedia has an IMDB link in the External Links section. Generally easy enough to find the information there without duplicating it here ^_^. --Splarka (rant) 08:20, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

This has been proposed many times and has been shot down each time. Futher questions of this type can be asked at WPT:FILMS. Cbrown1023 01:50, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Highlighting redirect terms

It would be useful if, when a redirected term is not simply an alternate title for the article's subject but instead a small part of a larger topic, the first instance, or perhaps all instances, of the redirect term were highlighted. Perhaps this could be on option to be specified on the redirect page, so that it would only apply to redirects that need it.--ragesoss 01:14, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

By the manual of style, the first occurrence of the redirect is to be bold in the target article. I would avoid doing that automatically; this is not done even for the title itself as there exceptions. Tizio 13:15, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Problem with images

Hi, I am writing an article Oymapinar Dam to which I was adding photos from the Wiki Commons. The trouble is that the images keep getting deleted from the article as not having correct license. Can you explain to me what is happening and how to deal with it? Thanks! Mattisse(talk) 18:01, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any removed images from Oymapinar Dam. Can you clarify? —Mets501 (talk) 02:41, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Doppelganger account

My talk page was recently vandalized. In reviewing the vandal's contributions page, I realized that he/she also left graffitti on user and talk pages with usernames similar to my own. I tried to follow the instructions at Doppelganger account, but was unable to create accounts with similar names, i.e. Bostonma and BostonMa, because the account creation software said the names were too similar to my own. My question is, is there a way that I can take control of these two user pages and associated talk pages? Alternatively, is there a way to request that an admin blank these pages and protect them from being editted? --BostonMA ^talk 16:20, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Due to a recent change in the software, an anon or regular user cannot register a name that is similar to one that is already registered. In other words, nobody can register Bostonma and BostonMa, so these pages can be just made redirects to your own user page. Generally, pages (including userpages and redirects) are protected only if vandalism persists. Tizio 16:37, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I deleted the User:Bostonma page. I know having your user page vandalized can be frustrating, but the odds are he won't stick with it. If he does, then report him and he'll be blocked. -- JLaTondre 16:42, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. --BostonMA ^talk 16:45, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

The referenced user account has already been blocked [19] --Ligulem 17:21, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Seeing this reminded me of a friend who warned me to block User:Nihiltrez from being created, and I just {{doppelganger}}'d it (having created the account). I'm wondering, where/what's the policy about creating redirects to one's user page? It'd be nice to help people, who, say, type in "User:NIhiltres". Nihiltres 02:23, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Photo not showing on home computer but visible on another computer.

A Wikipedia operator uploaded a photo onto the Gerald Mohr site for me but, when I go into the page on my home computer, the photo does not show. However, when I enter the same page on my office computer, the photo is there. I have gone through the purging, cache cleaning and bypassing previously recommended, but to no avail. I have also lowered the setting on my firewall to Medium on a Trusted site, but this hasn't brought the photo up, either. I don't know what else to try. Recommendations, please.

eh, I remember you having this problem before :). it sounds like there's something wrong with your computer's rendering engine. If it doesn't work on another computer, then there's probably something screwy within the image file itself that's causing certain renderers to go haywire. If you can find another computer where this is a problem (try another computer with exactly the same OS, and hopefully the same software), please write back. -Patstuart^{(talk)(contribs)} 05:31, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Check your ad-blocker software -- some uploaded photos end up in a directory with "/ad/' in the url, which can trigger adblocks. Your software should allow you to whitelist Wikipedia to avoid this problem. — Catherine\^talk 07:19, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Guys, thanks for this. I don't know what a rendering engine is or how to find out about it. I just know that the photo is showing up on my office computer and not my home one, despite tonight cache cleaning again, as another contributor has re-uploaded the photo. Maybe I should upload the photo myself? That might do it - but before I do, comments, please!Wood200 23:25, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Stuck in Chick

Is there a direct way to access Special:Preferences &rarr; Skin. Because I just switched to Chick to check if layouts work in other skins than Monobook, and it turns out I can't click on the Skin link from Preferences, so there is no (obvious) way for me to switch back. ~ trialsanderrors 21:14, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

As it says in the FAQ at the top of this page, click on this link then click Skin. Tra (Talk) 21:36, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks ~ trialsanderrors 21:48, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Scalable SVG?

I do not know if this is a Wikipedia question or a Firefox question, but here goes:

When I look at an article that has a SVG image , e.g. Unix System V, I see an image that is too small to read. But SVG is scalable, so I figure I will just click on the image. OK, now I'm on the image page: still too small, so I click onthe image there. Now I have an image that is far, far too large, and I have no way to scale it.

So, I need either

• a simple way to scale wuing my browser, or
• Wikipedia should have a way to serve a scalable image.

If the first is not obvious to the casual reader, the perhaps we can implement teh second with a template that creates and serves the image embedded in an HTML page the scales? -Arch dude 15:28, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, there are a few solutions to the problem. The first is to wait until Firefox supports scaling the SVG in the browser. The second is to install the Adobe SVG Viewer plugin, which should give you some additional features for SVG control. The other solution is on the backs of those who create SVG files. Because they are scalable, it doesn't matter what the 'default' image size is. So, for ease of viewing, SVG creators can specify "100%" as the width, meaning it will just fill the browser window, or they can specify a fixed size. In the case of the image on the Unix page, the default width was set to 6500px! I just downloaded, edited, and reuploaded the image to have a default width of around 1000px, which should be easier for the general user to utilize.

I don't think a feature change to Wikipedia is in order at the moment... Browser support for SVGs is moving fast, and there are probably things we should fix sooner, rather than work on something that should be better supported by browsers in a few years anyway. Phidauex 16:52, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Inserting dashes

I find that if I insert a dash from the insert menu below the edit box, it doesn't replace selected punctuation but lodges alongside it. This probably applies to all inserted items and I suppose there must be a good reason for it. Is there a way to type an em dash directly into the edit box without using the intrusive (for editors to read) and unintuitive &emdash; method? (Not --, which I dislike.) qp10qp 04:03, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

if function in subst'ing templates

When I save {{subst:Narniainterest|Aslan}} to a page, and go back to edit it again, the markup looks like:

Hi{{#if:{{{me|}}}|,|, {{PAGENAME}},}} {{#if:Aslan|and thanks for your contributions to the article [[Aslan]]!|I noticed that you have some interest or expertise in [[C. S. Lewis]]' ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]''.}} I thought you may be care to know that there is a [[WP:PJ|WikiProject]] working to improve articles about Narnia, and your help would be greatly appreciated. {{#if:{{{me|}}}|However, you should [[WP:WHY|register]] at Wikipedia first, because IP addresses will be removed from the participants list at the project page. Then, you should p|P}}lease consider joining the '''[[WP:WPNAR|WikiProject Narnia]]'''. {{#if:{{{me|}}}|If and when you do register, let me know on [[User talk:{{{me}}}|my talk page]].|}} Thank you! '''[[User:Fbv65edel|Fbv]]'''[[User:Fbv65edel|65]]''<font color="green">[[User:Fbv65edel/Esperanza|e]]</font>[[User:Fbv65edel|del]]'' / [[User_talk:Fbv65edel|☑t]] / [[Special:Contributions/Fbv65edel|☛c]] || 03:42, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

How can the template markup be changed so that there are no #ifs? Isn't there a way so that it appears just as the markup of what it looks like when you see it in its saved version? That is, is there a way for the markup of the page after saving to read: Hi, {{PAGENAME}}, and thanks for your contributions to the article [[Aslan]]! I noticed that you have some interest or expertise in [[C. S. Lewis]]' ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]''. I thought you may be care to know that there is a [[WP:PJ|WikiProject]] working to improve articles about Narnia, and your help would be greatly appreciated. Please consider joining the '''[[WP:WPNAR|WikiProject Narnia]]'''. Thank you! '''[[User:Fbv65edel|Fbv]]'''[[User:Fbv65edel|65]]''<font color="green">[[User:Fbv65edel/Esperanza|e]]</font>[[User:Fbv65edel|del]]'' / [[User_talk:Fbv65edel|☑t]] / [[Special:Contributions/Fbv65edel|☛c]] || 03:42, 30 November 2006 (UTC) Thanks! --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 03:47, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you could use a subst based on the text given as an input? E.g. {{subst:Narnianinterest-{{{1}}}}}? Adam Cuerden ^talk 11:46, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't follow you… There is an unnamed parameter, which in this case was defined as "Aslan," so {{subst:Narniainterest|Aslan}} entered Aslan as the first parameter. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 18:21, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Can't upload picture. Help?

I tried starting an article about Cape Gopher Snakes. I successfully uploaded my own picture of my snake, but when I tried to embed it to the article it wouldn't work. The preview showed a red link that automatically directed me to the upload section. When I attempted to re-upload it, I was directed to a page which told me that I was trying upload a picture that had been previously uploaded but deleted... the reason cited: no source... ok, so i tried to upload it another time from photobucket.com. Now, everytime I attempt click 'upload' with the source leading from photobucket, nothing happens. If I click 'browse' anytime after that, the page freezes and has to be shut down. This is really bothering me, i spent a long time typing the article about the snake and luckily i saved it before everything shut down... all i need now is the picture. help me out please. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mileshillie (talk • contribs).

cape gopher thumbnail example

If you mean Cape gopher and this image, everything seems okay. Or do you mean another image? — EncMstr 03:25, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I figured it out shortly after I posted the help comment.... only took a few hours... Now I have trouble with the redirect page. I created a page titled Baja Gopher in order to redirect to the Cape Gopher page, but the link is red. ?? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mileshillie (talk • contribs).

Fixed. The redirect linked to Cape Gopher instead of Cape gopher. — EncMstr 16:45, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. It was case sensitive. I have a problem noticing the obvious when the possible technical solutions are endless. Being new to this whole thing doesn't help either. --the oreo 00:17, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

not sure if bug or not

Kurdish people was protected; it then disappeared from my watch list. Is it supposed to disappear from the list?

see edit summary "(Protected Kurdish people: Some sort of IP madness [edit=autoconfirmed:move=autoconfirmed])" --Ling.Nut 01:43, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Known bug, introduced when move/protect log entries were added to the history of articles. See MediaZilla:4898. --Splarka (rant) 08:23, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Why "Go" *and* "Search"?

Why does the "search" widget, shown on virtually every Wikipedia page, have both "Go" and "Search"? Is there a difference between the two?

(and, yes, I already scoured the FAQs and Helps, etc, but couldn't find a relevant answer)

With only basic evidence to go off of, I think that Go sends one directly to a mainspace article if it exists at the title typed, while Search always sends one to a "search results" page. That's my guess, anyway. Nihiltres 21:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

That's correct. Pressing 'return' or 'enter' etc. means "Go" and will take you straight to any page (not just main namespace) if it exists. Search will show you all results of a keyword (even if it has its own article) in every field that you check in the search options. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 21:38, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

(undo)

I've just noticed an "(undo) button while paging through diffs. What does it do, exactly? Adam Cuerden ^talk 16:48, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Described above. Titoxd^(?!?) 16:52, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Sortable tables

To replace the countless Pokémon lists I have created a table (test version here) of Pokémon which is sortable by their various "Pokédex numbers" (a serial number assigned by Nintendo). However, not all Pokémon have certain types of Pokédex Numbers; only around 250 out of 400 have a Johto number, for instance. What I'd like to be able to do is that when sorting by Johto number, all Pokémon with Johto numbers appear at the top of the list, and all those without appear after these. However, no matter what I try using to represent blank numbers (hyphens, nulls, "N/A"s), the blank fields appear first. I've come up with a rather inelegant solution (assigning all Johto Pokémon a value of 999, in the same colour as the table), but is there any more normal, less-hackish way of doing this? Laïka 10:34, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

A quick glance at the js seems to indicate it uses a rough regex to determine the column type, and if it chooses ts_sort_numeric then it always defaults to zero for all non-numbers: if (isNaN(aa)) aa = 0; ... so you could try making it not numbers, maybe. --Splarka (rant) 08:35, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I've tried to sort the test version out; placing # at the start of each number makes each column detect as text, and because # comes ASCIIbetically before -, using a hyphen works when there isn't a number. --ais523 09:10, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

(Now how did this end up in the totall wrong section, thanks for moving it Ais523). --Splarka (rant) 11:07, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

A new project

I have an idea for a new project for the Wikimedia Foundation. It is a wiki dedicated to equations: mathematical, physical and chemical. This project can be very useful. It can be a free opponent to MathWorld and the mathematics section in Yahoo! Answers. We can also depend on the database of exampleproblems.com. What can I do to make the Wikimedia Foundation start the project? Thank you.

--Meno25 07:47, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

See m:Proposals_for_new_projects and incubator:Main_Page. You may also want to look at Wikia:Math. --Splarka (rant) 08:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Deletion review archive boxes

Anyone with more CSS and wikicode knowledge than me can help me out at Template:Drt? I'm trying to do two things: 1. I'd like to hard code the time stamp into the template, but the time displayed should be the time when the discussion is archived so, when template is substed (or translcuded) into the log. And 2. I'm thinking about creating a separate CSS class for debate boxes. ~ trialsanderrors 00:12, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Quite a few templates record the time of substing... eg. Template:Prod is one. I believe it involves some magic like: {{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>CURRENTYEAR}} --Interiot 00:59, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I think I figured it out. ~ trialsanderrors 02:30, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

As a side note, a template cannot record the time it was placed if it was just transcluded, it has to be subst'd in. A common workaround for this is to save the time as a parameter. Either by using a signature to autogenerate it: {{foo|~~~~~}} or an intermediary subst'd template: {{subst:bar}} with contents {{foo|{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>CURRENTYEAR}} etc etc}} for example. Using the cheesy subst-detection method with parserfunctions (it will be nice to have native subst detection) it is even possible to show a timestamp only if the template is subst'd in, and show nothing (or 'please subst!') if it isn't. --Splarka (rant) 08:21, 29 November 2006 (UTC)