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Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive AG

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Wikitable leaving no whitespace

I'm using wikitable in the Eicosanoid article for three tables. The information displays well, but the body text, especially the EDIT links, runs right up against the edge of the table and looks bad. Am I using the table wrongly? David.Throop 21:04, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Sort of. The style as designed isn't really meant for right-floating tables. I've added a manual override so it works as expected. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:51, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks. And I'll copy the change you made into the other wikitables.

Is there another table style that would be a better choice? David.Throop 22:57, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Afraid not. You could ask for a standard style to be added at MediaWiki talk:Common.css. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:26, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Text blacklist?

I know that variations of URLs can be auto-blocked via some magic done on the meta spam blacklist. Can that same code be used to block insertion of a string of text? [1] On that diff you see the text that is a constant battle to remove when it is repeatedly inserted by anons. In any other article that text is random gibberish. SchmuckyTheCat 17:44, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... that is serious. Maybe an oversight should delete those diffs? I would semiprotect the article to prevent new additions. You know, copyright violation and piracy concerns. -- ReyBrujo 18:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Taking one of these actions would create an unfortunate precedent for using oversight and text blacklisting to settle a content dispute. It looks to me like the entire basis for the article's existence is that the full key is widely known (and it is, see [2]), so it seems futile for us to try shoving some genie back in a bottle. Some people might use these letters and numbers illegally, to violate copyright, just as they could if it they were written on a shirt, but nobody would be arrested for wearing the shirt, and just some people can and do dial 867-5309 to make lewd phone calls, but radio stations still play the song every freakin' day. Maybe I've got it all wrong, but I think Wikipedia:Risk disclaimer and Wikipedia:Spoiler warning satisfactorily address issues like these. — CharlotteWebb 18:52, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I doubt it's quite as serious as you make it sound — it's not like anyone who wanted it couldn't just google for the title and see the full key on the first page of the results. While including the full key in a Wikipedia article is probably not appropriate, at least not while there's a chance that anyone might still want to use it, the fact is that having it there isn't really going to help anyone infringe Microsoft's copyright. That particular cat is well out of the bag by now, and has been for years. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict)That the key may be widely known does not mean we can include it here. My main concern is allowing others to point to those versions. Remember how the German Wikipedia was used to spread a trojan/virus by pointing to an old version of a page? Anyone could point to that version from their blog or forum thread. We are lucky only "this" particular serial is famous. -- ReyBrujo 19:05, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
The blacklist is for spam and spam only. We shouldn't really start censoring every single license key for every single piece of software, which is time consuming and inappropriate. I would probably just put that up for semi-protection and/or oversight the bad edits (if really necessary). x42bn6 Talk 20:07, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think publishing the key is a huge massive problem for Wikipedia, it's that the constant patrolling of the article to remove it is such a PITA. SchmuckyTheCat 04:20, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Two notes:

1) This is possible to do, and has been done on Wikimedia before, but I believe it requires dev modification of the local files.
2) This only really works to block spambots who don't have consistency in their URLs (or don't add URLs), as it is too easy to bypass by non-robots (spaces, comments, other fun delimiters).

--Splarka (rant) 08:54, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

If you can demonstrate that there really is a clear consensus that the key should not be in the article, then one of the people running anti-vandalism bots (such as AntiVandalBot) might be willing to add that as a special case to their vandalism detection ruleset. It wouldn't be too hard to write a new bot for this specific purpose either, but it'd be easier if it was done by an existing bot that is already watching the RC feed. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:45, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Hehehe, nah, no worries. With articles like this, it makes no sense :-) -- ReyBrujo 23:04, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

New user preference: don't show page content below diffs

There's now a new checkbox on the last page of Special:Preferences labelled "Don't show page content below diffs". Checking it will cause all diffs to appear like this instead of like this. I expect people doing RC patrol will probably find this useful, since it can significantly reduce the loading time of diff pages.

Incidentally, as the links above demonstrate, the preference may be overridden by adding diffonly=1 or diffonly=0 to the URL, which may be useful when posting links to diffs of very long pages for review. Note that, even with this feature enabled, you can still see the content of the page by clicking on the "Revision as of" links above the diff table.

Ps. This resolves bugzilla:3446. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Very, very nice. I only have a very small qualm: Sometimes I do a diff of a talk page, read a reply, and click the little arrow in the diff edit summary to go to the section to reply. Could this little arrow be modified so that, whenever you are in a diff without the page content, it points to the section of the current page version? That way we would have a one-click link to the section in the current version without having to reload the page and then browse to the section. -- ReyBrujo 20:47, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
That sounds reasonable. The current behavior (try to go to a nonexistent section on the current page) is certainly broken and needs fixing; I'll go take a look at it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
As it turns out, the fix was trivial. Thanks for noticing the problem, though. As usual, expect some delay before the change goes live on Wikipedia. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:42, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Nice, the change went live. Thanks! -- ReyBrujo 21:02, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh cool! As an avid RC patroller and CVUer, I'm sure this is going to be _very_ useful, since it will cut down loading time immensely ... Yuser31415 23:49, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't work fully on category or image pages. —Cryptic 22:43, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I just committed a quick fix to svn. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 05:04, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Automated creation of pages in talk namespaces

Recently the spammers have taken to using automated software to do their dirty work, in the process creating lots of pages with nonsense titles. Is there a way to implement some sort of CAPTCHA when IPs create new talk pages, to throw these automated programs off? Flyingtoaster1337 11:44, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I would not be surprised if there is, but I think this would be a bad idea because we are immediately putting newcomers under a shadow of distrust. I, if I was a newcomer to Wikipedia, would think that it would be inconvenient to type in some nonsensical string of characters before creating (or editing) a page, talk or not. There's also the issue where, for example, I think CAPTCHA might be cracked, because a lot of vBulletin forums are receiving a lot of spam nowadays. x42bn6 Talk 21:34, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... or we could prevent page creation where there is an external link but no internal links. Just an idea. Flyingtoaster1337 05:32, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Dashes in article names

I've been having the following discussion with 213.155.224.232:

Sorry that I am pestering ;-), but ... At WP:MOSDASH is mentioned: Hyphens and dashes are generally rather avoided in page names (e.g., year of birth and death are generally not used in a page name to disambiguate two people with the same name). (...)If hyphens and dashes are needed to write a page name correctly (e.g., Piano-Rag-Music, Jack-in-the-box, Nineteen Eighty-Four), prefer simple hyphens, and avoid hair spaces, even in the odd case of a range forming part of the title, e.g., History of the Soviet Union (1985-1991). I see some work to do for a bot... --213.155.224.232 20:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Meanwhile I certainly found out the reason. When you save a HTML page, by default most browsers use the title tagged name of the page. Windows or even Windows NT however doesn't save the dashes as Unicode characters but as ASCII-150 (for the m-dash). When now loading the file into IE or Firefox the file name is considered an URL to the local HD, but within URLs only lower case characters are allowed. As a result opening it fails. I am not aware if the problem occurs in Latin-1 based languages as well, but at least in every localised Windows/NT version which primarly uses Latin-2 character sets. It's basically a kind of inconsistency between ASCII and ANSI. I experimentated a bit and it seems that the single quotes (left and right) - but not the abostroph - are causing the same problem. --213.155.224.232 09:50, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

This might be an interesting point to bring up on the talk of WP:MOSDASH or on the technical village pump; at the moment the guidelines would seem to be inconsistent and/or unclear (there are some examples with ndashes in the title on WP:MOSDASH), but if it's causing technical problems that may be a reason to change the guidelines. At the moment, I won't change it back yet again so as not to start a move war (that page seems to have had enough names, according to the number of double-redirs I had to fix), so it's probably worth having some discussion first. --ais523 13:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Could you try to ask there, because my English seems so weird. ;-) --213.155.224.232 13:22, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

The question is, are these technical problems enough of a problem to use a hyphen rather than a dash (seeing as the guidelines are inconsistent at the moment; see my talk page and User talk:Nightstallion), in article titles? (For some context, the article in question is War in Somalia (2006–present), but there's no reason why this wouldn't apply equally to other articles with ranges in their titles.) --ais523 13:30, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

See here for some earlier discussion on this issue, that didn't really resolve it. The same issue applies to scientific concepts named after multiple people, which properly should use an en-dash as with the date ranges. My own feeling is that getting the title of the article correct is more important than avoiding some silly glitch in Windows. —David Eppstein 17:00, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I think it's important to have article names that can easily be typed by users into the search box. In my view, this means avoiding characters that aren't found on the keyboard, even if this renders the article title less typographically correct. Nareek 17:12, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
As there are usually redirects from the title with hyphens to the title with dashes, this is not a problem. Kusma (討論) 17:18, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
To which I'd add (1) the en-dash and em-dash are easily found on my keyboard, and (2) I think it's also important that the dashed version of the name be found when typed into the search box: even if the article is titled with a hyphen where a dash would be more grammatical, I'd want to see a redirect from the dashed name. As Kusma says, these redirects usually exist in either direction, are supposed to be created by policy, and can be easily created when it is discovered they don't exist. So this really doesn't affect the issue of which name should be primary. —David Eppstein 19:00, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
@David Eppstein: So you think that good looking (according to proprietary US-english POV) means more than correcteasy access to every user form the Azores to East of New Zealand? Shouldn't it be access first, then optics? You talk about your keyboad. What abut mine? What about that of 5.8 billion people on earth w/o a qwerty keyboad? --213.155.224.232 20:52, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
No, I think that ease of access is important. But I also think that the choice of which character to use in the primary name and which to use in the redirect name makes little to no difference in ease of access, and therefore that we are free to apply proper rules of grammar in our naming conventions. —David Eppstein 23:14, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
But in this case we have a technical restriction which is effecting maybe 90+ percent of mankind, i.e. all who don't use US-en-based computer systems. BTW, we're not talking about applying grammar, we're talking about typography. You didn't get the point: It's not about accessing the file via redirect but it's about problems with saving the article on local hard-disk and accessing it again. Therefore any naming convention which causes problems is no good solution, it it causes technical problems, which the unexperiences user might not be able to resolve. --213.155.224.232 18:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Do you have any evidence that any significant number of those people affected are actually saving the article as you describe? This seems like way too minor of an issue to change the guidelines for naming. Mike Dillon 19:30, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't have numbers, but certainly Microsoft knows how many not US-en Windows installations they've sold. OTOH, noone wants to change WP:MOSDASH, but to clarify: Shall Wikipedia should use standard rules of English punctuation for dashes. override what's written later on that page, If hyphens and dashes are needed to write a page name correctly (e.g., Piano-Rag-Music, Jack-in-the-box, Nineteen Eighty-Four), prefer simple hyphens, and avoid hair spaces, even in the odd case of a range forming part of the title, e.g., History of the Soviet Union (1985-1991). (Underlines added by me). Are you particular sure, that the issue doesn't effect users of non-Windows systems, for example? If you'll have a look in the source code of WP articles using em dashes, you'll see that for the mdash the software doesn't use the appropriate unicode but HTML markup, as mdash; . So we're not talking about unicode, but about HTML conversion into windows. (Maybe that even effects US-English users as well, but that you'd have to try out for yourself). --213.155.224.232 22:01, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The test would be: save War in Somalia (2006–present) on your HD (by default IE or Firefox use the article's title as a file name), then close you internet connection and empty the cache. Afterwards load the local saved file in your browser. If it behaves like at me, you'll see the text and all except for any of the images. If so, that's what I am talking about. BTW, I use XP. --213.155.224.232 14:26, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I updated guidance in several places:
Please don't use n-dashes (–), m-dashes (—) or any other type of dash, apart from standard hyphens (-) in page names of content pages, because such symbols, apart from regular hyphens, prevent that some systems (including Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP) could save the page as a file to their computer.
The non-hyphen dashes can however be used in redirect pages if an enhanced precision for the page name is desired for use in wikilinks elsewhere.
Rationale: see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dashes)#Dashes in article names.
Could someone check whether there's a bugzilla: report about this? And if there's none, that one is made? (Possibly the problem could be tackled server-side as I surmised at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dashes)#Dashes in article names...) --Francis Schonken 14:32, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I didn't find this bug so I announced it as a new on, MediaZilla:8660. I hope it's understandable. Maybe the issue can be fixed by the software by converting dashes in articles into normal hyphens. --213.155.224.232 14:58, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Seán Dunne - Poet

I have recently created a page for popular Irish poet Seán Dunne. Yet the link from the list of Irish Poets still goes straight to the page for the politician Seán Dunne; a completely different person. Can someone either rectify this by making the link on the list of Irish Poets go to the "Seán Dunne - Poet" page reather than the politician, or tell me how to do this. Thank you for listening. -Poetry Lover 15/1/07

I've fixed the link. Someone else moved the page to Seán Dunne (poet) to fit the Wikipedia naming conventions. Mike Dillon 22:15, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that Poetrylover 23:52, 15 January 2007

Can not edit last section

Is there an error? When I go to edit the last section in an article, I click the edit point at the side of the page and I get a black page. Is the bug because there is a templete box tag the end of the page. Try editing the external links on the "Opera" page. I have tried other pages too. Snowman 18:46, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

The edit tags are defaced, probably due the images. Try clicking the previous edit one. I will see if I can quickly fix that. -- ReyBrujo 18:51, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
It seems to me that the only way to edit the last section on the "Opera" page is to click on tab at the top of the page, but as this take up more wiki-space I will try again later when the bug is fixed. Snowman 18:59, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
I reordered some sections, apparently it is fixed now. -- ReyBrujo 19:06, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Image Resize!

I need help in resizing a image its too big

can anyone tell me how to resize it? if you wanna see the picture for yourself its in haegemonia on the disscussion page

please help me out Maverick423 15:09, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Done already. -- DLL .. T 17:31, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Suspect

I have tried on Multiple computers to access the WP:SSP page, but my PC always freezes ont hat page and only on that page. There may be a bug. Zbl 14:50, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I tried on a Single computer and it's OK. -- DLL .. T 17:33, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Works for me too, but the page does appear to load very slowly. I wonder if this is connected with Zoe's question below. Tonywalton  | Talk 17:39, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks search box bug

Hi, I don't know if this the best place to post this sort of things, but anyway... The search box, the place where you can search for book modules without having to enter the main page of a particular language (at least for me) redirects to Wikipedia, not Wikibooks, which is somewhat weird... Does the same thing happen to all you? --Taraborn 10:25, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

No. Check you search, it should be something like "http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=my_author&go=Go" -- DLL .. T 17:37, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Got this fixed a short while ago. --brion 17:51, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

New user

Hello. I'm a spanish wikipedia user, and I would like to ask something. Excuse me if my english is not good. I'm trying to create a new user with the name Ilfirin, the same I have in es.wiki. Then, the web says: there is another user with that name. Ok, I searched his page, but it does not exist. There is no user with that name, not now, not in the past, because there is no User contributions page of Ilfirin, and no Discussion. I don't understand what is happening. Can anyone tell mw why can't I create that user, please? Thank you, Ilfirin. --193.146.59.37 22:06, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid there is a user with that name, but that user just has no edits. I'm afraid you cannot register with this name. Sorry. And your English is fine; it's very good, infact! --Deskana (request backup) 22:08, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, Deskana. Now I know it I've created another one with a similar name. If the other one is not active I think he would not mind about it. Thank you again, and greetings from Spain. --Ilfirins 22:22, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I have formally welcomed you. Hope you have a great time here!   Yuser31415 22:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
There is a new policy that allows unused accounts (accounts with no edit history) to be taken over by another user - see Wikipedia:Usurpation. John Broughton | ♫ 15:31, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

"Source" field below "edit summary" field.

On the verifiability policy's talk page, there is an ongoing discussion on how to make the policy easier for newcomers to understand and follow. One of the suggestions is to add a "source" field below the "edit summary" field. As this entails changes to the MediaWiki software, developers and technically-inclined users are invited to participate in the discussion. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:02, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Monobook.js deactivated?

Hello. Starting with the last couple of days, most of the "extra" features I've installed using my monobook.js seem to be failing. And today, they're all gone for good. (Sorry this sounds like a medical report, but that's what has been happening) I dont see popups any more, and nor do I see the ARV report tab or the "0" lead editing tab. I haven't made any changes to my monobook.js recently. Also, this problem seems to be happening only on en.wiki. Everything works fine in other wikipedias (using the same code). Could I have somehow disabled my monobook.js file here? Please help.--thunderboltz(Deepu) 13:53, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Check #Error in js? css?. Mine works, but is pretty simple. Do you have popups installed? -- ReyBrujo 19:50, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
This is the same problem I'm seeing - see above. I have de-installed popups. Could this line
document.getElementById('p-cactions').childNodes[3].insertBefore(y,x.nextSibling);
be causing a problem for both/all of us? Rich Farmbrough, 12:00 10 January 2007 (GMT).
Me too. Same line - same problem. I've resorted to loading new js, - it's good but unfamiliar.Ian Cairns 12:15, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Is it to do with handhedl change? #Weird bar Rich Farmbrough, 15:41 10 January 2007 (GMT).

Check this modification I did on Fang Aili's monobook.js, it worked for me, hopefully for her too, and for everyone else. That is why you should not copy the code, but instead reference the monobook of the keeper :-) -- ReyBrujo 03:41, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
This sort of JS setup is extremely fragile. It broke because it depended on the exact order and structure of descendant nodes, which changed when a wrapper div was added. ReyBrujo's fix will work, but only until the next time someone decides to tweak something in the document structure.

I think it would be good if I added a convenience function to the software to handle this kind of thing easily, so that people don't have to resort to stuff like childNodes[n]. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:57, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

A monobook API? I like the idea. Move the burden of keeping compatibility in the framework and not those using it. Another way is to be informed, somewhere, somehow, when the DOM is modified. Not as useful as an API, but at least we would know what broke and how to fix it. -- ReyBrujo 05:08, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks ReyBrujo! That did fix the error. :-) --thunderboltz(Deepu) 13:23, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

English Wikipedia in French?

Maybe you already know this, but in many articles in the side bar instead of "cite this article" you see "citer cet article". Any explanation for this? (User:Nitrato in it.Wiki) --84.72.60.47 10:43, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Typo in a localization file update. Fixed. --brion 10:46, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Cascading protection

I've enabled Werdna's new "cascading protection" feature and set it on the Main Page. The purpose of this is to (temporarily) protect any template or image which is in use on the cascade-protected page, minimizing the damage of vandalizing of forgotten subtemplates on the highest-trafficked pages.

(Note that this doesn't protect commons images on commons.)

If necessary it can be removed from the mainpage by unchecking the "Cascading protection - protect any pages included in this page" box on the unprotect tab at Main Page. --brion 10:00, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeeeeeeeaaaah! :) MaxSem 10:17, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Impressive work, many thanks to Werdna and everybody who contributed to this. See also bugzilla:8575 for tracking any possible issues that might come up (currently none). --Ligulem 10:23, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Forgetting to log in; appending username to an edit

I unfortunately forgot to log in during a recent edit, and just the IP address is displayed for one of my edits in the edit history. I'd kindly prefer for my username to be there instead. Also, I'm also kindly noting that that IP address reflects a number of edits associated with it from a while back that are not mine. Is there a way that, say, an administrator can fix this one recent mistake? Thanks! —Catdude 08:19, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

You could request that the edit you made be oversighted, if you are concerned about your IP address being revealed to others. As far as the other edits attributed to the address, IP addresses are often shared, especially in the case of IPs assigned to ISPs. The edits were presumably made in the past by someone else who was temporarily assigned the IP. --Slowking Man 08:45, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Thank you very much, Slowking Man, for the reply and valuable information! —Catdude 09:19, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Image Problem With Eskimo Article

The text of the "Eskimo" article is partially obscured by one of the article's images when viewed with MS Windows XP Professional Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600 running Internet Explorer 7 Version 7.0.5730.11 and MS Windows 98 Version 4.10.1998 running Firefox Version 2.0.0.1. I don't know if this is a technical issue with Wikipedia, a mistake in the article mark--up, or a rendering problem with the browsers I'm using.

Akulo 07:20, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

How about now? I reordered the images. -- ReyBrujo 07:45, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject CCT (Current City Time)

Your assistance and technical expertise is required for the developement of WP:CCT. Any comment is greatly appreciated on that articles discusion page. Thank you! --CyclePat 00:29, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

This will not work as you intend, because content is heavily cached. The listed time will be that of the last time the page was edited or purged. For even the largest cities, that's probably a few hours out-of-date on average, making this pointless. It will be weeks or months out of date for mirrors using HTML dumps (and please see WP:ASR; don't say something like "click here to purge cache" on article pages, because we write our content with the intent that it be mirrored and such a link would do nothing on a mirror).

I recommend you not spend more time than you already have on this. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:13, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Tools tabs

I used to have extra tabs appear at the top of the page (next to "discussion", "edit this page", etc.). One of them appeared when I edited talk pages, and I'd have options like {{test1}}, {{test2}}, etc. Another appeared to help close AfDs quicker. For some reason, these tabs have disappeared. I haven't been messing around with my monobook or anything. I really don't know how these things work, and I'm hoping someone can tell me what happened. The tabs made it a lot easier to do certain things, and I'd like them back. I'm using Firefox on Windows. I tried opening Wikipedia in IE, but had the same problem. I have been using Firefox for ages. Thank you, Fang Aili talk 22:58, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

By any chance, do you use popups? There have been some reports that popups is apparently broken, possibly breaking javascript after it. Try removing popups and a full refresh. -- ReyBrujo 23:03, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Check #Error in js? css? and #Monobook.js deactivated? for further information. -- ReyBrujo 23:05, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I do, but I don't use them. Actually they're kind of annoying and I'd like to remove them. How do I remove popups? I don't know anything about javascript. Interestingly, some of my other functions still work, like I still have the protect/unprotect tab, and various other links in the left-hand toolbox that I added. --Fang Aili talk 23:09, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the links to the related problems too, Rey. Unfortunately I'm kind of confused and not sure if there was a solution stated in there somewhere.. I don't know how to "restart" my monobook per se, other than just blanking it. And the AfD tab, for instance, appeared when I became an admin, so I don't see how changing my monobook would fix the problem anyway. Sorry to be so ignorant of these technical details. --Fang Aili talk 23:16, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I hate messing with other's people monobook.js, just like with monobook.css. But you can edit User:Fang Aili/monobook.js, search where you have the text:
 // User:Lupin/popups.js - please include this line 
 document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' 
              + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/popups.js' 
              + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');
 simplePopups=true;
 popupAdminLinks=true;
 popupStructure='menus';
and delete it all. Then do a CTRL+F5. My guess is that what is above popups is working fine, but what comes after does not. -- ReyBrujo 23:22, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for the help. Unfortunately it didn't work. Any other ideas? Feel free to putz around with my monobook if you like; it can always be reverted. --Fang Aili talk 02:56, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
I copied your full monobook.js, and noticed an error:
 [Exception... "Node was not found" code: "8" nsresult: "0x80530008 (NS_ERROR_DOM_NOT_FOUND_ERR)" location: "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:ReyBrujo/monobook.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s Line: 491"]
 491 document.getElementById('p-cactions').childNodes[3].insertBefore(y,x.nextSibling);
Apparently, the layout of the page changed, and that element does not exist anymore. I will check to see if I can fix it now. -- ReyBrujo 03:30, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Done, hopefully :-) -- ReyBrujo 03:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Fixed! ReyBrujo is teh awesome. ;) --Fang Aili talk 05:14, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Dated prod was broken on usertalk? underscores in namespace variables

Template:dated prod was broken on usertalk pages (I think I patched it up for now), apparently because {{NAMESPACE}} and {{ns:3}} disagree on the underscore in "User talk" so the comparison failed. Was the output of these variables recently changed? Femto 12:03, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

{{ns:}} returns the underlined namespace in 1.7. Looking at the CoreParserFunctions.php revision history shows $param = str_replace( ' ', '_', strtolower( $part1 ) ); hasn't been changed in the 3 months worth of revisions I checked (and probably more). Using {{NAMESPACE}} should have always been broken, was it not? Try using {{NAMESPACEE}} which returns the namespace with underscores. --Splarka (rant) 22:19, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
That could be it, the functionality may have been broken all along, but it just wasn't noticed until 3 days ago due to the low volume of prodded user talk pages. I've implemented NAMESPACEE in the template. Thanks! Femto 12:51, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

null (?) edits appearing in page history

Why do these "edits" [3] [4] appear in the page history if no changes were made? Interestingly, User:VoABot II gives a warning [5] to this IP and claims to have reverted the same edit shown in the first link. Here is more strangeness from the same IP address: [6] [7] [8]. — CharlotteWebb 06:08, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

A "null edit" usually means that the previous version was deleted due by oversight. I don't know if that's the case here, but I know that's one way it happens. --Golbez 06:48, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
That was my first thought, but those edits are pretty darn recent and the edit summaries imply that the user intended on making a null edit (hence saying "you can't revert this!", because rollback or reverting doesn't work on null edits). The only other thing I can think of off the top of my head is that perhaps there are some ASCII or Unicode control characters in there that diff isn't picking up? That's really scraping the bottom of the barrel though, I have no earthly idea. —bbatsell ¿? 06:52, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Golbez, I do not think oversight is the case here. If the anonymous user made an edit and it was oversighted, the history would appear to show VoABot_II reverting an edit that no longer exists, which is not the case.
In the bot's message at User talk:71.138.132.40, the bot says "your edit has been reverted" and links to the first of two edits which both obviously still exist, and implies that the bot at least attempted to revert that edit. So this probably means that the bot made a truly null edit while attempting to revert, just as I did when I hit [rollback].
So it could be that B is different enough from A to be a newly saved revision, but A isn't different enough from B for the software to allow us to revert back to A, or something.
Or it could be that the first edit differs from the original in some way that does not appear in the diff, and the second edit is reverting back to the original, and the bot was slow on the draw and made a null edit after 71.138.132.40's edits, maybe...
My head hurts. — CharlotteWebb 07:29, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
P.S. Maybe we should block the IP for disruption. — CharlotteWebb 07:30, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Tim Starling is looking into fixing it. I shan't give people ideas by saying what causes it. Angela. 22:18, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

need a reference button

Per discussion at Wikipedia talk:Footnotes, there should be a button in the article editing interface that inserts "<ref></ref>" and puts the cursor between the two tags. Kaldari 23:15, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

The place to request this is at MediaWiki talk:Common.js. Since you're an admin, you could add it yourself if you think the Wikipedia talk:Footnotes provides sufficient consensus. Look for mwCustomEditButtons in the code. Mike Dillon 03:37, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I made a button for this a while ago: Image:Button_ref.png. Suggested code below. --Splarka (rant) 08:21, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
   mwCustomEditButtons[mwCustomEditButtons.length] = {
     "imageFile": "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c4/Button_ref.png",
     "speedTip": "Ref tags",
     "tagOpen": "<ref>",
     "tagClose": "</ref>",
     "sampleText": "references"};
R. Koot has been protecting the toolbar images, so this one will need to be protected as well if it is added to Common.js. Mike Dillon 16:15, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Units of measurement template

Are there any templates to automatically generate text like "2 in (5 cm)" and the like? I was thinking of something along the lines of {{meas|2|in|cm}}, maybe with one more optional parameter for precision. Yes, the code is a bit longer than the actual text, but since it would perform the calculations automatically, it would make including lots of measurements much easier. Does anything exist? Should I try to write one? --Fru1tbat 18:04, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Look at Category:Conversion templates, in particular {{Inch}} does something that, except for rounding. Logic for rounding is in {{AcreAndHectare}}, {{CubicFeetPerSecAndMeters}} and {{Mile}}. —EncMstr 18:21, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Would it be difficult to make a metric/imperial choice in the "My preferences" features with the use of this template? I'm only interested in seeing metric, so could I turn the imperial portion of this template off? --maclean 06:49, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
One solution would be to wrap all such double-return templates (as well as any instance of both metric and imperial measurements appearing side-by-side) in a pair of spans that users could selectively block in user/monobook.css. For example, if the code on {{inch}} were changed to:
<span class="measureImperial">{{{1|1}}} [[Inch|in]]</span> <span class="measureMetric">({{round|{{#expr:{{{1|1}}} * 2.54}}}} [[Centimetre|cm]])<span>
you could hide one or the other globally, for example: .measureImperial {display: none; }. This would take a large concerted effort to standardize wikipedia-wide though. --Splarka (rant) 08:23, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Page move function

Which was the earliest version of MediaWiki to use this function?? Or have all versions had the function. --SunStar Nettalk 19:06, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

All I know is that is was before m:MediaWiki 1.5, but I am not sure of the exact reason. Perhaps someone with more expertise on the history of Wikipedia would be able to clarify. Yuser31415 20:16, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
More or less forever. --brion 21:50, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

repetition in a table

In the table at "Blood type#Table of ABO and Rh distribution by nation" is it possible to style the table so the style does not have to be entered with every entry in the table. Snowman 16:34, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I've modified the table formatting there to do this. Tra (Talk) 17:41, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. I can do html4 tables, but I find wiki-tables more difficult. Would you look at the consistency of the spacing in the table called "RBC compatibility table" lower down the "blood type" page? Where are the instructions for making wiki tables? Snowman 17:57, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
They are here. —EncMstr 18:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I've tidied up that table. Tra (Talk) 19:03, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. The table looks better. Snowman 19:12, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Changing vertical spacing

In the section Support_for_evolution#United_States I am trying to position the statement Table summarizes the results obtained in a 1997 Gallup Poll [1] vertically. I either want it above the table, and close, or below the table, and close, or to make a superscript or reference at the upper right hand corner of the table. Can I do this?--Filll 16:20, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I've reformatted it using the |+ table notation. Is that what you want? --ais523 16:24, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
So is that a sort of title? It might be a start. Can text be moved up and down at all, not just left and right?--Filll 16:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
You can increase spacings using CSS (like I've done with this comment), but reducing them is hacky and not a good idea in articles. --ais523 16:35, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

References

Hi, I'd just like to know how to ask for a reference in an article. Does it exist something like {{reference}}? Thanks, Ajor 18:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

What happenned? Ajor 18:04, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

You transcluded the {{reference}} template by accident. I fixed it for you. I restored this section as well, assuming you only withdrew your question because of the ugly red message. Sorry if I assumed incorrectly. --Fru1tbat 18:09, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Do you mean like [citation needed] ({{cn}} or {{citeneeded}})? —EncMstr 18:15, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

How to find requested but not found articles?

I would like to see a function that list say top200 of requested articles but not found ie like this: 

 Someone types 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telex'
   Wikipedia says Telex not found etc..
 Someone types 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kjfdlf'
   Wikipedia says Kjfdlf not found etc..

 Most requested articles:    (under some /wiki/Special: page)
   1. 'Telex'    120 hits
   2. 'Kjfdlf'   90 hits
   3. ...        5 hits
   etc..

Point being people will not add an request (Wikipedia:Requested_articles). So this would be a way to find out what people really type.

Any possiblity to implement this..? Can't be that hard.. Electron9 12:01, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I have always though this wuld be good for identifying mispelling redirects needed. It could probably be picked up by a standard logging option, but care would be needed, ogs can grow very quickly! Also we could use the look-aside toolserver logs woith the database - much nbetter no additonal overhead, hmm. I'll ask Leon. Rich Farmbrough, 20:26 11 January 2007 (GMT).

A crude way could be to collect 10000 entries, pruge 50% which has the lowest numbers. Then continue until presentation say every 30 minutes. Thus large logs avoided. Electron9 20:57, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Some time ago we already discussed this so I filled a feature request on bugzilla: bug 6373. Perhaps you would like to comment it or vote for it. --Eleassar my talk 21:56, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

my watchlist isn't showing everything that changes

For example there has been a small vandalsim/revert war at the Dizzy Gillespie page but my watchlist only shows a few of the changes. Another example is entrie for my own talk page notes my comment about the watchlist irregularity on an editor's talk page I know User talk:Jeff3000 but not his response to me, but then it does show my response to him on my talk page. I haven't done an exhaustive survey for discrepancies but you can see this can get a bit unnerving. I do not see a general failure - things are being added. I don't see a pattern in terms of whether minor vs not-minor changes (that is my watchlist shows minor changes and some of the changes missed have been not-minor.) Anyone got any ideas?--Smkolins 11:08, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

update - I significantly changed my watchlist prefs and that seems to have made things appear right, if a bit more confusing to me.... specifically I changed the default to 6 days worth and I checked "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes". But I'm not sure I like that effect so I may turn it back off and see if the watchlist looses some pages.--Smkolins 00:43, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
As you've noticed, the watchlist only shows the latest change to a page, while the enhanced watchlist allows you to see all the changes within the time period. It might have also been that you have a "Hide certain type of edit" option selcted. If the Dizzy Gillespie doesn't appear at all in the watchlist and you know that it was last edited within the time period selected, then that's a different kettle of fish altogether and something I don't know the answer to. I'm just making sure that the simple causes are ruled outHarryboyles 00:47, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
No it's not whether I'm hiding edits - I'm not. However my experiment tripped the problem again. I unchecked that threading option and it lost the recent edits (back to before Jan 6) to the Dizzy page.--Smkolins 00:53, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Let me be specific - the history section of the Dizzy page says - (adding syntax so that it keeps the line formats)

(cur) (last) 15:19, January 11, 2007 Mlouns (Talk | contribs) m (→Later years and death - Modified internal link)

  • (cur) (last) 15:17, January 11, 2007 Mlouns (Talk | contribs) m (→Later years and death)
  • (cur) (last) 15:15, January 11, 2007 Mlouns (Talk | contribs) m (→Later years and death - Malcolm X as Attorney General)
  • (cur) (last) 21:07, January 10, 2007 Tom harrison (Talk | contribs) m (Reverted edits by 76.181.73.101 (talk) to last version by Jeff3000)
  • (cur) (last) 21:04, January 10, 2007 76.181.73.101 (Talk) (→Early life and career)
  • (cur) (last) 16:13, January 10, 2007 Jeff3000 (Talk | contribs) (rvv)
  • (cur) (last) 15:50, January 10, 2007 209.7.84.2 (Talk)
  • (cur) (last) 15:44, January 10, 2007 AntiVandalBot (Talk | contribs) m (BOT - rv 209.7.84.2 (talk) to last version by Robotman1974)
  • (cur) (last) 15:44, January 10, 2007 209.7.84.2 (Talk)
  • (cur) (last) 12:41, January 9, 2007 Robotman1974 (Talk | contribs) (rvv)
  • (cur) (last) 11:35, January 9, 2007 Abreezy (Talk | contribs)
  • (cur) (last) 11:31, January 9, 2007 72.10.124.210 (Talk)
  • (cur) (last) 09:16, January 9, 2007 Jeff3000 (Talk | contribs) (rvv)
  • (cur) (last) 09:06, January 9, 2007 72.10.124.210 (Talk)
  • (cur) (last) 19:04, January 8, 2007 Catzrthecoolest (Talk | contribs) m (Reverted edits by 64.252.131.22 to last version by Smkolins)
  • (cur) (last) 19:03, January 8, 2007 64.252.131.22 (Talk)
  • (cur) (last) 07:57, January 6, 2007 Smkolins (Talk | contribs) (→Later years and death)

while the Dizzy entries on my watchlist are exactly -

m 15:19 Dizzy Gillespie (diff; hist) . . (+31) . . Mlouns (Talk | contribs) (→Later years and death - Modified internal link)

and that's the only entry back to Jan 5th. On my watchlist page I've got namespace set to all and no hiding - same as my prefs. I'm also fairly sure it used to show my Jan 6th edit. If I change to 7 days I then see

14:07 Talk:Dizzy Gillespie (diff; hist) . . (+15) . . Cricket02 (Talk | contribs) ({{talkheader}})

--Smkolins 02:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Later my watchlist shows -

20:25 Dizzy Gillespie (diff; hist) . . (-15) . . Jeff3000 (Talk | contribs) (rvv)

but now the Mlouns entry is gone.--Smkolins 02:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

It looks like your watchlist is only showing the most recent edit of each article, mine used to do that, then I ticked the box for "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes" in the Watchlist section in My preferences and it started showing every edit. Do you have that box ticked? - MTC 06:34, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

How did this start happening? Yes it goes away if I check the box for expand watchlist - which really means threading and I don't particularly like the effect. But this didn't used to happen and I know other still see it "normal" and get all the history of hits.--Smkolins 03:08, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Coords and Donations

If you don't dismiss the donations banner, it interferes rather nastily with the "coord" template: I noticed it cleaning up Glenforest_Secondary_School. Maybe one of them should be raised or lowered. yandman 13:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Breaking a multiple dif

I check my Watchlist; an article has had 4 edits (say). To see if anything of interest to me has happened here, I click the "changes" link and get an overall dif of all four changes, with the text "(3 intermediate revisions not shown.)" displayed. If I notice that some sensible and some not-so-sensible changes have taken place, I'll want to walk through these edits one-by-one. I ususally do this chronologically, so I next click "Older edit" immediately followed by "Newer edit". Others may prefer reverse chronological order, which can be accomplished by clicking "History", immediately followed by "Compare selected version" (if newest version in the dif was the top). But why not expand aforementioned text to "(3 intermediate revisions not shown. Show first / last revision.)" ? I know, it would save me one click only, but what do you think?--Niels Ø (noe) 09:34, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Can edit only from secure connection

Recently, I've been unable to make certain edits when using en.wikipedia.org URL - the browser just times out waiting for en.wikipedia.org. For example, I had to make [9] and [10] from secure.wikimedia.org. However, I can still make other edits from en.wikipedia.org, [11] and [12] for example. I've tried editing using Opera and Firefox instead of IE, but they also have this problem. Does anyone have any idea why this happens? FWIW I'm accessing from university network behind NAT. And loading pages from either secure.wikimedia.org or en.wikipedia.org is still fast. Flyingtoaster1337 02:03, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Does your university have a new firewall that could block Wikipedia? (I admit I am not too knowledgeable when it comes to Windows; I am primarily a Linux user.) Yuser31415 05:32, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Hmm... It could be my school's proxies. Since the network admins never tell us when they change the network infrastructure, I'll never know for sure. :S Flyingtoaster1337 06:43, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
And now I can edit and save this section via en.wikipedia.org, which means things are working normally again. I guess someone on my school's server was fiddling with configs. Flyingtoaster1337 11:59, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Problems when saving long text to Wikipedia

Hi everybody. Sorry if this is not the right place to write this... I use a iMac with Mac OS X 10.4.8 and a ADSL line with router. Since one or two months ago, I have got problems when trying to preview or save text to Wikipedia. Short texts are no problem, only long texts (2 or more edition windows) simply do not get saved (Message in browser: in the tab: Loading, and in the status line, in the bottom: Waiting for xx.wikipedia.org). This happens no matter the browser I use (Firefox, Opera or Safari). When editing from the office (with Windows XP) everything works fine. I checked my MTU, and it is 1500, what should be OK. Note that this problem appeared 2 months ago: from August (when I bought the Mac) till November everything worked fine. I suspect two things: a)changes done by my internet provider in his configuration or b)one of the many upgrades in the Mac software I installed. Does someone have the same problem? Any suggestion? Thank you all for your help. Mschlindwein 18:46, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like what I had experienced (see #Can edit only from secure connection, below). Probably something changed on your ISP's proxies. Flyingtoaster1337 12:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist links to other language watchlists

Is there any way I could set my en.wikipedia Watchlist to link to my other language accounts (see user de:samwaltz's Watchlist in German, user fr:samwaltz's Watchlist in French, etc?). I know it is a special page, and has minimal editability; perhaps through a setting? Is there any Wikipedia function which actually allows you to link my accounts across various languages? I know. I'm a horribly horribly lazy person for not wanting to go through three whole clicks (selected_article:German:Watchlist), but programming is here to help us skip over automatable sequences, right? Oh, and please reassure me. I am actually posting this on the right page, right?samwaltz 23:19, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Not possible now. It's a much sought-after "distant future" improvement. And yes, you're posting in the right place. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:05, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! samwaltz 09:04, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Google search

Which part of Wikipedia is searchable by Google? I have seen things like deletion review logs appearing in search results. Is there some policy defined in this regard?

It's an important policy issue which Wikipedia needs to be conscious of, considering that these pages often contain imprecise information which could be misinterpreted by users. It can put into question the utility of an otherwise valuable resource. -- Knverma 23:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

For the full answer, see http://en.wikipedia.org/robots.txt where the precise rules are listed. To summarise:
To answer your question about deletion review logs, these are searchable, and the pages indexed are listed here. Tra (Talk) 23:25, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
AFDs are blocked, but not DRVs. That could be changed. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

From what I could figure out, talk pages (of articles in main space) are disallowed. I would like it to be so. -- Knverma 00:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

From what I've seen there seems to be other restrictions besides the ones in robots.txt. As you've noted, talk pages of articles are one of them. I believe this is done based on the User-Agent HTTP header in the Squid proxy layer. Mike Dillon 06:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, it looks like talk pages are allowed if User-Agent contains "Googlebot". I don't know the exact rules, but some of the exclusions are based on User-Agent and enforced by the caching Squid layer. Some of the restrictions are also based on the rel="nofollow" HTML attribute on links. Mike Dillon 06:40, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
This is also handled on a per-page basis. The robots.txt just prevents the bots from even trying certain common paths. If however a bot finds itself trying to index a page such as /wiki/Main_Page?action=edit (robots.txt can't easily block all such possibilities), it will often find: <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" /> asking it kindly not to index (noindex) the page. --Splarka (rant) 08:23, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, such requests to bots are what I had in mind. AFAIK Google considers these requests. -- Knverma

Infobox alignment

Simple question: How do I align an Infobox, from a CVG template, to the left. Since the usual <div align="left">xxx</div> method doesn't work, I'm pretty much stuck.

Thank you,

~~MaxGrin 15:25, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Because Template:Infobox CVG is fully protected, I put in an {{editprotected}} request to add the feature, see here. --MZMcBride 00:20, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Thank you!

~~MaxGrin 07:06, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

The difference between current and history in the database dump

Hi there. I have downloaded a portion of the English Wikipedia database dump on 30th Nov 2006 and I have imported stub-meta-current.xml.gz (364.7 MB) on my machine. Curiously, I found that each of the following three tables: page, revision and text has exactly 6,635,199 records. As the label 'current' might suggest, is any of the data in the three tables truncated? I have a hunch that the tables revision and text are truncated at whatever the number of records that table page has. Is this correct? What does 'current' actually mean?
Furthermore, I wish to understand what are the differences among the following three files in the db dump:

  • stub-meta-history.xml.gz 3.1 GB
  • stub-meta-current.xml.gz 364.7 MB -- This is the one that I'm staring at now.
  • stub-articles.xml.gz 238.9 MB

Thank you --WikiInquirer 11:36, 10 January 2007 (UTC)(Talk)

Meta current is all pages - including user pages etc.
Meta history has all the history of the pages, so you can analyse changes, authorship or do roll backs.
Articles is just article pages plus possibly a few bits and pieces...
That's my best take on it. Rich Farmbrough, 11:55 10 January 2007 (GMT).

Thanks Rich for the above reply. Does that mean that stub-articles.xml.gz contain only pages and no revisions/text? In stub-meta-current.xml.gz, why would the tables page/revision/text have exactly the same number of records? Any missing data here? --WikiInquirer 04:41, 11 January 2007 (UTC) (Talk)

"Current" means no histories, as opposed to complete or whatever (the much bigger one). Thus for each page, you have one entry in revision (the current one) and one entry in text (that of the current revision). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Simetrical. You answered my question on the spot. --WikiInquirer 07:19, 12 January 2007 (UTC) (Talk)

Images taking a long time to load

Images in image space are taking forever to load, if they ever do. It has been happening all day for me. Is anybody else experiencing this issue or just me? I'm using FF 2.0 on WinXP.--NMajdan•talk 22:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Max watchlist size

Is there a cap on the amount of pages in the watchlist? If so - what is the limit? Yonidebest 21:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Yoni is asking on my behalf... I have ~12,250 pages, and noticed today that a certain page suddenly is not shown as having been changed (it was there one moment, gone the next). The page in question is still shown in bold in recent changes, so it is still on my watchlist, but it is not shown. I'm concerned there could be others... Odedee 21:48, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Now I'm thinking this may be related to #my watchlist isn't showing everything that changes. Odedee 21:51, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Disappearing image

An GFDL image used by several pages has disappeared. Stem cell diagram File:StemCellsDia.png that was created by User:Adenosine. Was linked to by Stem cell. Any help appreciated. TimVickers 18:48, 11 January 2007 (UTC) Thank you. TimVickers 19:05, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Should be fixed. The image was moved to Commons but renamed to Image:Stem cells diagram.png which broke the links. -- JLaTondre 19:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Deleted templates leaving inappropriate speedy deletion tags and cats

I've noticed CAT:CSD filling up with inappropriate entries recently. These are often talkpages or userpages, and they appear on the CAT:CSD page despite the article itself not appearing to contain a pink speedy delete box à la

This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion.

It seems what's happening is this:

  1. A template is transcluded onto one or more pages. The use of {{civil0}} on Talk:September 11, 2001 attacks/archive25 is an example.
  2. The template, in this case {{civil0}}, is tagged for speedy deletion
  3. As one would expect, pages transcluding the template are therefore also tagged. So far so good.
  4. The template is deleted
  5. Pages which transcluded the deleted template remain on CAT:CSD. No "pink box" appears. However on editing the page the list of transcluded templates includes a redlinked "dead-template" (the original template, say civil0, which was deleted) "db-whatever" (the original speedy tag applied to the template), "db-meta" and "hidden-delete-reason" as still transcluded by the page.

I wonder if someone who knows more than me about templates could take a look at this (I know next to bog-all about them). Possibly something somewhere should have some <noinclude> wizardry so that the speedy deletion stuff doesn't "bleed" out of templates onto pages that transclude them (though that may be rubbish, as I say, I know pretty much bog-all about templates). And a solution to the mystery of why tags persist as "ghosts" even though the template that put them there has been deleted would be very welcome! Tonywalton  | Talk 13:06, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

You can tag a template with a speedy tag so as not to tag things transcluding it by typing <includeonly>{{db-whatever}}</includeonly>; I'm not sure about how to repair the sort of CSD flooding you describe above, but purging the deleted template might help. --ais523 13:09, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for that. I wonder if the db templates could contain code along the lines of "if this is in the template namespace don't allow these bits to be transcluded", thus automating what you describe. I've tried purging the civil0 template, purging pages that transclude it, and even re-creating the template (containing only a comment), then purging the transcluding page. None of it gets rid of those /expletive deleted/ spurious delete tags. Tonywalton  | Talk 13:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
As for the automatic bit you were talking about, I was experimenting with that and found I couldn't make it work with transcluded {{db}} (I could make it work with substed {{db}}, but that would be too much of a change and making {{db}} subst-only wouldn't be worth it). --ais523 15:59, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Having messed about in my userspace I think you may have meant <noinclude> rather than <includeonly>. <includeonly> seems to put the db tag on the transcluding page(s) only, and not on the template, which appears to be the exact opposite to what's required. Regards, Tonywalton  | Talk 13:44, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
You're right, of course, I used the wrong tag. --ais523 15:56, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Situations like this should be dealt with eventually by the job queue. You should be able to wait them out. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:17, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, however assuming the "job queue" you refer to is CAT:CSD I'm one of the ones with the broom that's trying to sweep the stuff off the queue in the first place - it rarely disappears by itself :-) (if that's not the job queue I apologise but consider myself confused!) Tonywalton  | Talk 18:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
No, it's not. See Special:Statistics and meta:Help:Job queue. --TheParanoidOne 20:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Aha! Thanks for that - I am no longer confused. Tonywalton  | Talk 20:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Images not showing up in logs

I have found two image uploaded by User:Arpingstone which do not appear in that users' upload log (Image:Airbus.a320family.750pix.jpg and Image:Typhoon.750pix.jpg). Is there some kind of technical limitation (the images in question are from 2003 and the upload log only goes back to December 31, 2004)?

Without knowing how many images the user has uploaded I left a message on his talk page that there might be more messages forthcoming regarding uploaded images in the future (diff). --Oden 01:06, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I can see them [13]. --Deskana (request backup) 01:09, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, my version of the log page only goes back to December 2004 (logs for Arpingstone). It does not show the user creating an account either (user creation log). --Oden 01:15, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Silly me, I think I was getting confused with other images. I can't see them at all. --Deskana (request backup) 01:42, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure when the upload log was created, but the reason he's not in the new user log is because that's a rather recent creation. It's quite possible the same thing is happening with his upload log. --Rory096 02:12, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

The Logging table was introduced in MediaWiki 1.5, on r4919. Titoxd(?!?) 02:20, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! --Oden 03:13, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Having trouble finding my error in a conditional template

A few days back I tried adding the DEFAULTSORT magic word to the {{Lifetime}} template so that biographical articles would be automatically sorted in more than just the birth/death categories. I did some testing in a sandbox but it turns out I missed a bug that occurred when the sort key parameter is missing; this was supposed to result in the DEFAULTSORT being omitted but it was still being left in with a broken sort key that put the article under "{". I've since done a bunch of fiddling with parser functions (User:Bryan Derksen/Template sandbox if you want to see the embarrassing wreckage of my experimentation) and can't figure out what I'm overlooking. Why does

{{ #if: {{{3|}}} | {{DEFAULTSORT:{{{3}}}}} }}

not work? Or does it actually work, and I'm just screwing up testing it somehow? Bryan 21:01, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Fundraising CORE reporting malfunctioning.

Hi, it should have been noticed but I bring it up here since I don't see anybody's talking about it. The fundraising CORE reporting page displays donations from April & December 2007 (Future) when sorted by date. I think it's some kinda error or hacking maybe. I don't know where exactly to report this and I wrote it here, please don't mind. Godric/Talk 20:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

watchlist

OK so what are these funny numbers in ()s that have started to appear on my watchlist? -- RHaworth 19:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Number of bytes of last edit. Bytes added (green) or bytes removed (red). Big edits in bold. No difference in bytes are gray. — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:10, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. Could that be put on the page somewhere please? (Yes, I know I could probably change it myself but someone who knows what to edit can do it quicker.) -- RHaworth 20:24, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

sortable table articles not displaying

On the article Heisman Trophy and NCAA Division I-A football team records by decade, they are using the class="sortable" on the wikitables. When I attempt to view the articles, it appears as if they load and sometimes they appear for about .1 seconds before the entire screen just going white (empty). I've tried several times. I know that this is probably the problem because I added the class="sortable" to the second article (and now can't get back into it) and on the previous because I have been to that article before and knew it existed there and now confirmed this is probably the reason why. Any thoughts on how to fix this? Is it me or Wikipedia? --MECU≈talk 19:06, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

What browser are you using? It appears to work properly on IE6 and FireFox. Tra (Talk) 20:33, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Firefox 2. After the page goes white, the mouse icon stays with the arrow and timeglass like it's thinking but nothing ever happens. --MECU≈talk 22:15, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I tested it with FireFox 1.5. I can see you've got a lot of scripts in your monobook.js, try blanking that temporarily to see if it's a problem with any of them. Tra (Talk) 22:41, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
We have a winner! Thanks. --MECU≈talk 22:48, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
What you can do now is add back each of the scripts one by one until it breaks again, then you know which script is causing the problem. Tra (Talk) 22:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Stupid Database Lock Up

OMG I COULDN'T EDIT WIKI FOR FIVE MINUTES! I'VE JUST LOGGED OUT TO SAY YOU ADMINS ARE JEWS!!! WHY DID I BOTHER DONATING! I COULD HAVE DONATED TO STARVING AFRICANS INSTEAD!! bah

David Anderton. 14:53, 10 January 2007 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.202.134.235 (talk • contribs)

Thank you for sharing a piece of your maturity with us, we appreciate it. :) -- intgr 15:34, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
The admins are jews? I thought they were Giant lizards who were part of a <carries on for ten thousand words>... and then when I woke up there was no evidence. --Charlesknight 15:41, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
How do you do green font again? Rich Farmbrough, 15:50 10 January 2007 (GMT).
Green text can be done like this: <font color="green">hello</font> gives: hello. Tra (Talk) 20:26, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I thought we were Communist fascist Arab-loving Islam-haters. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:24, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I am apparently anti-Jamaican. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 20:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Last time it was a cabal of Communists  . Yuser31415 20:53, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

White-on-black color schemes

Wikipedia currently only has black-on-white (black text on white backgrounds) themes, or "skins"; however, I know there are some people out there, such as me, who prefer white on black. I have created my own standard.css, which works well in some cases, but there are lots of templates that only override the background color to a light color, and assume that the text color will always be black. In such a situation, the template appears as white on a very light color, and is obviously unreadable. What's worse, they mostly use the style= HTML attribute, which makes it impossible to override in your own CSS. Does anyone have ideas where to bring up this question, or where to discuss possible solutions? Perhaps someone is even interested in starting up a wikiproject dedicated to fixing these templates? -- intgr 08:01, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

You can usually use the !important qualifier to override the HTML style attribute. Also, Memory-Alpha (a Star Trek wiki hosted by Wikia) currently has a pretty nice conversion of Monobook to white on black. You can try copying it to your user css -> MemoryAlpha:MediaWiki:Monobook.css (although it won't work perfectly. as you say, in content here assuming light backgrounds or dark text that isn't forcibly overwritten). --Splarka (rant) 08:58, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
MemoryAlpha is CC-by-nc, so I think including that stylesheet on Wikipedia might be copyvio due to the incompatible licences. --ais523 09:10, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually the original monobook is under GPL (see the comments in the css file), so Memory Alpha's should also be. the wub "?!" 12:27, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
The problem is not styling MediaWiki, but the various Wikipedia templates. And the problem is not overriding elements, but simply constructing the CSS selectors – I've tried something like td[style="background: #ccccff"] {}, which doesn't work at all. And even if it did work, it would be an appalling hack. Not to mention that all the templates are very inconsistent right now, and it would take kilobytes of CSS to override most existing templates on Wikipedia. The templates should be fixed to use class attributes instead, but I wouldn't want to do that before discussing it (and possible alternatives) with other people. (And of course it would require cooperation from administrators if the style= attributes were going to be removed in the first place)
And then there are all those editors who think they're cool when they have custom-colored backgrounds on their user pages. Bah! -- intgr 11:49, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Hmm... I remember a rather nice windows colour scheme I developed, but had to abandon becasue the button text in MS Access was hard-coded to black. Plus ca change (or whatever). Rich Farmbrough, 15:53 10 January 2007 (GMT).
I don't think there's any chance of getting every user page to display perfectly in every skin and every browser and every custom monobook.css (and that includes my own, which has a yellow background and doesn't display completely correctly in FireFox). This is because user pages are generally not required to follow many of the style and accesibility guidelines related to other pages. As for the templates, the main problem with putting each and every formatting rule through the class attribute is that it would require all of the style rules to be defined in the sitewide common.css which is only editable by admins, meaning that it would be difficult to make any sort of formatting edit to them easily without the help of admins. What might be possible would be to edit monobook.js to loop through all of the style attributes hardcoded into page elements and invert any colours mentioned. Tra (Talk) 20:24, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
A non-intrusive approach would be to use class attributes in addition to style attributes – so that users could override the classes in their personal stylesheets. Although I personally think that the various templates should use standardized colors/style instead. Where really necessary, one can obviously fall back to manually changing the style attribute, but this should be the exception rather than the rule. -- intgr 20:45, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
  • There should be no problem adding CSS classes to templates, as long as they don't conflict each other out. That said, such a move would take forever to do... Titoxd(?!?) 02:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Monobook CSS thumbnail border problem

 

There's a problem with thumbnails against colored backgrounds, as can be seen at Wikipedia:Community Portal#Core Topics Collaboration currently with Confucius. The following code, taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css is probably the problem. 

div.tright {
	clear: right;
	float: right;
	border-width: .5em 0 .8em 1.4em;
}
div.tleft {
	float: left;
	clear: left;
	margin-right: .5em;
	border-width: .5em 1.4em .8em 0;

I'm pretty sure the solution is to change the 2 "border-width:" lines to "margin:" (and to remove the superfluous "margin-right…" line). Probably. :) —Quiddity 10:06, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

The intent of using borders was so that rules (such as from headings) wouldn't appear to run up to the image, but would stop a bit short. The same could be accomplished using padding, presumably. Margins would allow the rule to run all the way up to the image. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:15, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, as long as you/someone knows the (minor) problem exists, my work here is done :) —Quiddity 19:45, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Changes i didn't make are attributed to me

hello, there's a bunch of changes made to the Toni Collette article that are attributed to me, but i didn't do any of them, i just added the [citation needed] tag and saved the page. What's going on???

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Toni_Collette&diff=95568257&oldid=95366290 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Toni_Collette&oldid=95568257

Witchinghour 17:13, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

You must have accidentally edited an old revision rather than a current one, so your edit had the effect of reverting most of the page past several revisions. Watch out for a large warning that tells you that you're editing an old revision above the edit box. --ais523 17:28, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Also watch out for the edit conflict notification: it isn't terribly obvious what is going on at first, but an extra edit box appears. —EncMstr 17:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Found it, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Toni_Collette&diff=95568257&oldid=75236642 but still i don't remember going to the history of that article. weird!! --Witchinghour 18:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Dont know if this is related: Twice now posts have been deleted from discussion pages and the edit history shows that I did it. Neither time did I do anything that should have had this result, at least as far as I know. Is this a common bug in the Wikipedia program or am I making a common mistake? SmithBlue 14:21, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Most likely, you're going to the page via the history or a diff, and your timing's sufficiently unlucky that you open an old version of the page just after a new one's been saved. As this is the method used to revert an edit, the software removes the previous edit. You then add your comment and save, and apparently nothing is wrong (because reverts can't lead to an edit conflict). In order to stop this happening:
  • Use the 'edit this page' button or a section-edit link if you're editing a page, not the (edit) links on a diff, and
  • Check for a warning above the edit box that tells you you're reverting (it looks like this:
and will be quite obvious on many, but not all, browsers). --ais523 14:36, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Does this exist?

Are there any tools where one can select a phrase in the text of an article and find out when it was inserted? Occasionally I come across a phrase that seems slightly out of context to the point i suspect it is some kind of tricky vandalism, but have no easy way of telling who put it there. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 129.78.64.106 (talk) 04:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC).

A tool could be written to do this. But for now, you can do a binary search by hand... pick an edit from somewhere in the middle, check if it's there. If it is, you know the edit that made the change is in the earlier half of history. If it isn't, you know it's in the latter half of history. Repeat this halving process, and you can relatively quickly (eg. 13 checks for a 5000-edit article) find the edit that made the change. --Interiot 05:24, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
AmiDaniel has WhodunitQuery in his user space. In theory this should do what you require but I've not managed to get it to work in practice. -- MarkS (talk) 20:53, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Update: As this didn't work for me and somebody else was looking this sort of program I have taken the opportunity to revise AmiDaniel's version so it works (at least for me). The revised version should be a little quicker but doesn't introduce any extra functionality. You can get to the alternative version via the WhodunitQuery page. --MarkS (talk) 11:09, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Google Web Accelerator blocks

Shouldn't the GWA IP blocks be AO the way they are for other open proxies? NeonMerlin 05:12, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

What does "undo" do?

I don't know what the undo link found when you look at the diffs does, exactly. Yeah, I know it undoes something...but what? --75.26.13.88 03:44, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Undo removes the modifications that were done in that version. In example, if I add the word "major" to an article, someone else adds the word "minor", and then you undo my version, the word "major" is removed without losing the word "minor" (which is what happens when you just revert to a previous version). I hope I have been clear :-) -- ReyBrujo 03:46, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Image:Heat Pump COP VS Temp Curve.JPG ... is the licensing valid?

This image was uploaded by an intermittent visitor to Wikipedia. His image summary says that the image came from a Canadian government website ... but he licensed it as a Work of the U.S. Government. I used the link he provided for the Canadian government website and read completely through the the publication that contained the image ... and nowhere did I find that it had come from a U.S. Government agency, although it may well have done so. Is the licensing of this image as Public Domain from the Work of a U.S. Government source valid? Could someone more experienced in the subject of image licensing please look into this? - mbeychok 02:57, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Image pages of Commons-hosted images

Is it just me or are the image description pages of Commons-hosted images not currently being transcluded to Wikipedia? For example, at Image:Morteratsch glacier 1.jpg, I see no file information below the "This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons..." message box, only the "what links here" section. --KFP (talk | contribs) 18:22, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Ok, the transclusions seem to be working again. --KFP (talk | contribs) 19:08, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Really slowwwwww

Wikipedia is running seriously slowly right now. In fact, I keep encountering read time outs. User:Zoe|(talk) 16:32, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Happening to me too, and this diff seems to imply it's happening to Duja too. --ais523 16:38, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Though this may be a red herring, I did notice that this coincides with a lot of archiving by werdnabot and essjaybot II. perhaps it's a slight overload? - jc37 16:51, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Something is wrong. I haven't been able to edit for at least the last hour (except for this page). The server times out for everything. Somcerely, Mattisse 17:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
From IRC, there may have been a problem with someone putting {{SITENAME}} in an interface message on de.wiki. There may have also been some malformed search queries on es.wiki. Naconkantari 17:22, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

It's getting a little bit better now. -- Szvest - Wiki me up ® 17:38, 9 January 2007 (UTC) Still slow for me. Shawn in Montreal 18:59, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

check that. The moment I entered the above it Just Got Faster for me, tooShawn in Montreal 19:14, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I had it really slow about an hour ago, but now I'm back up to speed again. *relief* Yuser31415 19:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Seeing subcats on cat page

Is there any way to make all the subcats appear on the first page of a category? Just noticed the problem at Category:British historians where some sub-cats only appear on the second page, which could be confusing to some. DuncanHill 02:14, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... that's a weird one. Probably a bug report on Bugzilla is warranted. Titoxd(?!?) 02:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Saw that at some album categories. The subcategories are sorted according to the 200 articles listed in the category. Thus, in the first page appear the subcategories that go from A to N or so if the 200 first articles go from A to N or so, and the subcategories starting from O appear in the second page. That is why most times you use * as sortkey for subcategories, to force them appear in the first page. -- ReyBrujo 02:29, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Mediazilla:1211 —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:13, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Picture is not displaying.

Image:1st lieutenant SLA.GIF is not displaying on Military ranks and insignia of the Sri Lanka Army's table. I tried on that by reducing the size of it from 70px to 60px, and then it start to display. Can anyone help me regarding this? --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ Walkie-talkie 22:40, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Looked fine to me at 70px, so I put it back that way, to be consistent with other images. I'm using Firefox on Windows XP, for what that's worth. John Broughton | Talk 22:45, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Yeah even I'm using Firefox 2.0 on Windows XP SP2 but it perfectly dispaling on IE 6 SP2. But still I can't see that. And thank you for your swift reaction. --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ Walkie-talkie 22:51, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
The thing is John when I create the article two weeks before it was working as 100% correctly and today I just notice that the picture is no displaying   --♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪ Walkie-talkie 22:56, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Just FYI, it's coming up fine w/ IE7.0 @ the current resolution - lines up nicely w/ others. SkierRMH 22:59, 8 January 2007 (UTC)


Try a full refresh (CTRL+F5). If that does not work, try clicking on the image link directly, since I see it, it must be a problem with your browser cache instead of Wikipedia :-( -- ReyBrujo 20:51, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

User option to make "Show preview" default button on edit form?

I find myself often clicking "Save" by accident when I have not really finished editing. This leads to multiple edits. I propose that there should at least be a user preference to choose the default button, if it is not made the universal default. This would be extremely beneficial, I think, to new users, and to users like myself who click first, think second.

I don't know the technicalities of the mediaWiki software, but I presume that this is possible. -- Jonabofftalk 10:07, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)‎ would probably be a better place to discuss this - among other things, that page is monitored by the Wikimedia Foundation programmers.
Also, changing your default so that there must be an edit summary would help, if you haven't done that and if your style is to wait to add an edit summary until you're done with previewing. Then inadvertently hitting "Save" would just generate a request for the edit summary, rather than doing the save. John Broughton | Talk 15:20, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I will post this in the tech page. And to answer you, I have set that option, but I tend to make changes, then make changes, click save again accidentally; of course it only returns the no history prompt once, and so this does mean there are half the number of edits, I suppose.
I suppose that I am trying to use MediaWiki to repair my own faults, but there must be others out there with a similar problem...
If this was implemented, it would bring the guideline to show preview into line with the guidline to provide edit history, as both would provide warnings.

Thanks, Jonabofftalk

21:36, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Above taken from post with same title on Village pump (proposals)

Thanks, Jonabofftalk

21:36, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a "Show preview on first edit" option in the edit page of the preferences. I personally have to press enter to activate the save button since I use a screen reader; that only works when you're not in the edit box, so the only time I can accidentally submit an edit is when I'm in the edit summary or navigating through the check boxes (minor edit, watch this page, ETC). Graham87 04:01, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

The real issue here is that HTML itself provides no way to explicitly designate the default submit button for a form. Because of this, browsers always use the first submit button as the implicit default. MediaWiki would have to change the order in which the buttons are added to the HTML source to make this work in a natural way (and the skin's CSS would have to be changed to make a different button bold).

A slightly unnatural way to do this without changing the source button order is to insert a dummy submit button with style="display: none" before the other buttons with the same name as the button you want to be the default. This has the effect of making the dummy button the default. This doesn't account for the CSS styling that makes the "default" button bold.

The only technical limitation I can see with the "dummy button" approach is that the default button would appear twice in non-CSS browsers (primarily screen readers). If it was only done based on a user preference, this problem would have a low impact. Another (probably better) approach that would avoid this entirely would be to just stick the default button first in the HTML and do away with the dummy button thing. If this were done, using a CSS class like "wpDefaultButton" to do the bolding instead of using the "wpSave" id would allow the default button to always be bolded. Mike Dillon 07:28, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Sending a request without clicking any buttons on the form is different to sending it and clicking on the default button, for an example, when performing a Google search, this is the URL of the results page when you don't click the button:
And this is the url when you do click on 'Google Search':
However, it appears in the browser that the first button is the default button. If a preference was changed to make 'Show preview' default, it would require that MediaWiki is programmed to do a show preview if no button is detected. Tra (Talk) 18:18, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
After reading these responses I think that I meant "change the button order" rather than "change the default button", since I usually use the mouse to click Save anyway. I will say that I am using the preview more often than I did a week ago now, although I still think this would be beneficial for new users to discourage multiple edits.
With the "dummy button" idea, I presume the dummy button would have to change in order to carry out the correct action? Why can the real buttons not be changed in the same way? Could it not use a simple if-else function?

Thanks, Jonabofftalk

18:11, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Basically, when you submit the edit form, there are four different things you can do:
  • Click Save page
  • Click Show preview
  • Click show changes
  • Press enter
The server will know which of those four actions take place, and for the first three, it will do the relevent action, and when enter is pressed, the code will say to save the page. I don't think a 'dummy button' will change this; this could only be changed by modifying the server-side code.
As for re-ordering the buttons, this could be done easily with javascript, but it will not affect the action that is performed when enter is pressed. Tra (Talk) 19:11, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
This is a long shot, and with my intermediate knowledge of javascript I doubt it to be possible, but could I reorder the buttons myself with my user.js files? As I said above, it is with the mouse that I accidentally click the edit button. I would prefer Preview to be immediately on the left. I think a poor section header lead to me starting a different discussion to the one I intended.

Thanks, Jonabofftalk

19:51, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
It should be simple. Something like
editbuttons = getElementsByClass( 'editButtons' )[0];
save = getElementById( 'wpSave' );
preview = getElementById( 'wpPreview' );
editbuttons.insertBefore( preview, save );
Although probably not exactly. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:55, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure there's no way to submit a form in HTML without the submission being associated with a submit button. Of course, it would be possible for the browser to make up its own POST or GET request as you describe, but I don't think they do. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:55, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Au contraire: <form action="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search" id="searchform"><div><input id="searchInput" name="search" type="text" accesskey="f" value="" /></div></form> (note no submit button) submits in firefox when I press enter. The fetched URI is /wiki/Special:Search?search=. --Splarka (rant) 08:46, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Category problems

For some reason, articles are not showing up properly in Category:Taxation articles with comments. For example, Talk:2006 New Jersey State Government shutdown & Talk:Internal Revenue Service are part of this Category but do not show up. I've tried a "?action=purge" with no luck. Morphh (talk) 18:23, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I did a null edit on the two talk pages, which seems to have worked. Tra (Talk) 19:53, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Cool - Any way to fix this problem as editors leave future comments. I'm probably not going to be aware of all articles that require "null edits" to get them to work. Is it a problem with the template? Morphh (talk) 20:07, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
No, the template's working properly. I think it's a problem with MediaWiki in general. Hopefully, if comments are left on the talk pages then it would fix the category links but this is not an ideal solution. Tra (Talk) 21:36, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm seeing this problem too. User:CBDunkerson has belonged to Category:Administrators open to recall since June 2006, but has vanished from the list. Tim Smith 20:15, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I fixed that by doinng a null edit to his user page. Tra (Talk) 20:41, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
'Look ma, I'm famous!' :] Thanks for nothing. (the null edit) We used to have problems similar to this with 'what links here' going all wonky. I've had trouble loading pages off and on the past few days... possibly there is some sort of general load problem which is impacting various things. That used to happen quite a bit and they upgraded the servers to address it. --CBD 21:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Signature length

Is there a cap on signature length? If not, can we please have one? Longer rationale and discussion unanimously in favor of shorter sigs at VPR. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 02:48, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

There is currently no possibility of a cap on signature size. Such a cap could, of course, be imposed by simply blocking users who ignore warnings to shorten their signature, or even via a clever bot. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:12, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't think this would be too hard to implement, you could do it by putting maxlength="xx" in the signature field in the preferences form then, to make sure, have the server-side code check again that the signature is not too long and if it is, give an error message in a similar way to the error messages about invalid wikicode. I suppose the harder part would be handling users whose signatures are already over the limit. Maybe run an SQL query for signatures that are too long and then truncate them? This still wouldn't stop users who increase the signature length by substituting templates or pasting the code in manually so that would have to be handled by blocking. Tra (Talk) 02:57, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Does it really matter? I don't like reading around them in the source code, but I doubt it has any effect on anything else. Maybe it would be best if we went back to templates for signatures? That was around for a while, but shot down because of claims of server load problems. But were there ever really server load problems? This is the only comment I know of on the matter. — Omegatron 02:06, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
If you use a template, every time the template changes every page containing it needs to be recached. If sigs are templates, this could lead to hundreds or thousands of pages per change, times thousands of users. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:28, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Of course. But does that actually hurt anything? — Omegatron 03:40, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, because server load becomes non-negligible. Let's take, say, the featured star template. About the same length as a signature, or at least the longer ones, which do make up a considerable portion. It's transcluded in about 1000 pages. Now, a signature template for a user with about my level of contribution would be transcluded around the same number of times. So it's still negligible, in that case. But then multiply that by the thousands of Wikipedia users who would have long fancy templated signatures. And consider that most Wikipedians that would have at least twice my edits. Now server load is no longer non-negligible. -Amarkov blahedits 03:45, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
I was under the impression that the vast majority of server load came from unregistered users viewing cached versions of articles. Talk pages and other meta-content account for a very small proportion of the load. — Omegatron 18:59, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
In general, yes, but it's possible for the meta-content to contribute disproportionately to load. The job queue can't get too long, and it's exclusively lengthened by editing of various kinds; some things can cause heavy latency even if they don't use up much resources (such as the extreme nesting of templates that led to the imposition of the 2 MB pre-include page size); and so on. I don't especially know why Rob removed the ability to have signature templates, but it's not my place to undo his changes if Brion and Tim are okay with them. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:36, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Templates for signatures might not be a problem if heavy users would agree to have them protected and not change them often. But if the user in question isn't an admin, protecting their sig is kind of awkward (as far as I know it was never done), and if you don't then they become vandalism targets that are both potentially annoying to clean up and less than ideal from a server point of view. In general, widely-included templates shouldn't be changed frequently if possible, because that requires reparsing every page containing the template. Templated signatures can be widely included and encourage frequent change. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 18:28, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Templates for signatures might not be a problem if heavy users would agree to have them protected and not change them often.
Agreed. Most everyone was using {{User:Username/sig}} for their signature. It could be made into a special page, like {{User:Username/monobook.css}}, so that only the user could edit it, and a custom message could be displayed while editing the sig about not updating it often, like MediaWiki:Usercssjsyoucanpreview. — Omegatron 18:59, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Please vote for Bug 8458, primarily to stop the possibility of 16 line monstrosities like this, but also for the sake of the arguments against long sigs listed at Argumentation on formatted signatures. Thanks. —Quiddity 20:01, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Problem with Skin

Just got to Wikipedia to find that before and after I logged on (use mono skin and Firefox2.0) that the rendering of the pages is mucked up - not on the the links are at the top where they should be (e.g. my watchlist, my prefs etc...) and the side bar contents have been moved to the bottom of the page. I also noticed this is the same problems as at [14], but does not seem to be a probably at other language wikipedias e.g. [15] and [16].

Whats going on - this needs urgent sorting if it aint just a problem with me Cheers Lethaniol 13:39, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay it looks like someone has fixed it while I was writing this :):) - oh and people that care - I do generally forbid wikipedia from running javascript (to speed things up on slow connection) so this might have been a factor 81.111.69.221 13:42, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Oversight in user page history

I have some personal information in the previous versions of my userpage I'd like to have permanently removed. Is this appropriate for WP:RFO? Or do I just have to live with it? John Reaves 01:26, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I am guessing your userpage does not have a long history, so any admin should be able to delete your page and restore only the revisions without that information. -- ReyBrujo 01:29, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
It doesn't matter the size of the page, I can delete it for you. (You could get oversight, depending on the kind of info. WP:RFO explains what qualifies) Prodego talk 01:33, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Would you delete all versions except the current one, and do the same with User:John Reaves/Userpage? John Reaves 01:36, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Done. (Note the full history is still visible to administrators). Prodego talk 01:42, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. John Reaves 01:50, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Hehehe, went to help with the AIV backlog, and return to find your problem solved :) As Prodego said, you can still contact an oversight to completely purge the information from your record if you want to (and if it qualifies to RFO, of course). Cheers! -- ReyBrujo 01:58, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Odd Recent changes/new page question

I was just looking for a redirect that I created from the AfC page, and for some reason the new redirect didn't appear at New pages, or any of the namespaces. Ditto when I go to "my contributions" and look in "all" namespaces. Not a biggie, but where do they go? ;) SkierRMH 23:02, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Try doing a Control-F5 (if you're using IE) to clear your cache. That happens to me sometimes. User:Zoe|(talk) 00:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Nope, in fact, I looked back, and can't see any of the Redirects that I created as a separate page/article! Bizarre :) SkierRMH 02:07, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Error in js? css?

From about 11 this morning, my monobook.js won't load, firefox or IE. No changes for some days. Checked from work and home (and works on other wikis, so doesn't seem to be client related). Turning on error checking with IE gives error in line 934, position 9, bad parameter (or words to that effect). Is this due to changes in the wikimedia software? If so what's the fix? Thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 20:00 8 January 2007 (GMT).

My monobook.js looks but it doesn't work correctly any more, incidentally around 11 as well. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 20
35, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I added something into MediaWiki:Common.js this morning, at about 11:45 [17]. That can't be related can it? It was something to do with the blank edit summary warning feature. Truth is, I didn't know for sure it was safe to add it in but I didn't see any reason why it wasn't. By the way, User:Rich Farmbrough/monobook.js loads fine for me, but obviously I can't tell whether it works or not. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 20:43, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I was going to suggest that, but since I was seeing the dates at local time, it was 8 AM for me. You can try installing Firebug for Firefox to see what is happening there, or maybe revert Deskana's edit to check if you can then load your script... I have had no problems, but my scripts are pretty simple. -- ReyBrujo 20:46, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I wondered about main.ccss. Thanks both I've installed firebug. Rich Farmbrough, 20:56 8 January 2007 (GMT).

Have you fixed the problem by reverting my change? I do hope I haven't caused this problem unintentionally. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 21:00, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I can see your page rich, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television shows up as a blank white page to me though in FireFox, shows in IE though.. :-( thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 21:02, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I believe I've pinpointed my error to the javascript, as soon I commented out a table which used javascript the page began showing again, if you could please temp. revert just in case it is causing problems. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 21:13, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
My edit was reverted a while ago, then the revert was reverted. I think Rich has come to the conclusion that I didn't cause the problem? --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 21:14, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm having problems though and I'm pretty sure it's JS related. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 21:25, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Firefly pointed to "popups" with this error

[Exception... "Node was not found" code: "8" nsresult: "0x80530008 (NS_ERROR_DOM_NOT_FOUND_ERR)" location: "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Rich_Farmbrough/monobook.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s Line: 938"]

Looks like popups, but can't see why as I have commented it out of my monobook and reloaded, and it still happens. Rich Farmbrough, 22:01 8 January 2007 (GMT).
P.S.
document.editform.wpTextbox1.onmouseup=function() { doSelectionPopup(); };
is the actual line which errored, I think. Rich Farmbrough, 22:04 8 January 2007 (GMT).

A new sort of navigation icon

Would it be acceptable and satisfy all the rules to have some wiki approved navigation icons that also have the text on them (or below them), or ones where the editor can write some text on them and choose an icon. The clickable area would be combined text and clipart. Perhaps a bit like a user box (but with various sizes and shapes to choose from), where the entire box (with icon and text) is clickable. Would that be acceptable? Snowman 19:25, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

We have {{click}} I think, but it is not recommended because it does not work in some browsers. -- ReyBrujo 17:32, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
{{click}} is Bad. Don't use it. — Omegatron 19:04, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
What purpose did you have in mind? Something like {{help contents back}}?
Though I don't think we should even be doing that, as it's a confusingly inconsistent/adhoc navigation method we've just tacked on (and it uses "click"). I'm also strongly against the cutesy/cartoony/ICQ style graphics that seem to be spreading from commons:Category:Nuvola icons.
If you meant something else entirely, please excuse my tangential rant :) —Quiddity 10:26, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
The "Wikipedia:Good articles" page has lots of intuitive icons and they look like navigation icons, but when they are clicked they go to a clipart picture, which is probably not what the user expected. To me the "Wikipedia:Good articles" page has a problem and I am seeking a solution. Something like "help contents back" would help, but if "click" is not technically good then that can not be used. Even the archive box which looks like a navigation icon goes to a picture of a box on clicking, users actually have to click on the word "archive" below the box for the expected navigation action. Also almost every stub tag has an icon but again they are not navigation icons. On the main page of the wiki the globe is a navigation icon, so I think that this sort of navigation aid does have a use. How does the globe clicking work? Perhaps, the wiki might have a set of approved navigation icons. Snowman 10:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
As another possible solution, there's an ImageMap extension being developed at the moment which can be used as a {{click}} substitute (it puts a small icon in the corner of the image that links to the licence, but the rest can be used for navigation). It might be a good idea to rewrite {{click}} in terms of it at some point. --ais523 11:01, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Hit counter question

Hi, is there a way I can see the number of hits on a particular article at Wikipedia? Thanks MapleTree 13:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Short answer: No. Long answer: Look here. John Reaves 13:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for the timely response, based on what I am reading there is no way or mechanism at Wikipedia to determine the hits on a specific article. I think this would be a good feature to add to Wikipedia. MapleTree 13:18, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
The feature exists in the software, but it's not enabled because it uses too many resources. Plus, this feature wouldn't really be useful to writing an encyclopedia, it would be more of a trivia item. John Reaves 13:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I disagree, it would have relevance on {{{afd}}} votes and would allow editors to know, which topics are being utilized by the general public. MapleTree 13:37, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
It would have no relevance on AfD votes, since WP:ILIKEIT is not a valid keep criterion. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Although the page hit counters are disabled, there is however, Wikicharts which gives the top 100 most viewed pages. Tra (Talk) 18:27, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Look at how high up sexually related topics are in that list. Hmph. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 19:34, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Don't eve make the top 5. I'm more worried about No 15. Rich Farmbrough, 20:06 8 January 2007 (GMT).
I liked that one! --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 20:10, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I have seen that near the top 10 for some time already, maybe it is being linked from Nintendo directly. Help:Contents is 91 in the all-namespace list. We would save quite a lot of time if it were in the top ten :( -- ReyBrujo 20:21, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
User:SmackBot is 18 in user: ! I'm surprised, and I think, pleased. Rich Farmbrough, 20:55 8 January 2007 (GMT).

Transclusion list out of date

I've noticed that when you view the source of the Main Page, at the bottom it lists all the pages transcluded onto the Main Page, yet this is incredibly out of date (over 1 hour behind right now). Isn't this list generated dynamically? The Main Page itself is updated with the latest content, but the transclusion list is using yesterday's templates. Anyone know what's going on? This is a bit of a serious issue, because Shadowbot2 uses this list to perform its protection scans to defend the Main Page against vandals. Shadow1 (talk) 01:18, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Changes to the template list due to a template being edited will be performed via the job queue. Changes to the template list due to an implicit change of a variable, such as {{CURRENTDAY}}, will not take effect until the page is edited. -- Tim Starling 02:03, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
The load on the server for this job is high enough to add it to the job queue? I would think that this would be a relatively low-load task. In any case, thanks for the explanation Tim! Shadow1 (talk) 18:52, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
To figure out whether anyone has added a new template, the server needs to parse the page, and yes, that's slow. That's why we have a job queue altogether. It doesn't actually do anything else. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:04, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Page history anomaly

I've recently reverted a vandalsim in the Daisy Dee article ([18]), but I can not see my edit in the page history [19]. Is it a local problem, or noone else can see it? --91.120.87.31 18:39, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

You're logged in as an IP. Perhaps that's your problem? I can see it just fine. By the way, please be more civil in your edit summaries. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 18:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Logged in as an IP? How? Be more civil? Civil how, when I log in to my account and a guy is reverting all my edits, with edit summaries as "rv vandalism", no matter wiht how many refs did I cited that that I'm right? I've to deal with such an asshole day-by-day. Whenever I posted a comment on WP:PAIN or WP:ANI, in the end I was the one, who were asked to stop. Stop WHAT? Contributing? Thankfully on Citizendum such dilettant bull-headed hostile good-for-nothing ppl are simply banned from those articles, since they are not experts of the field. And usually these guys do not have any diplomas, since they even didn't finished high schoo yet. Thanks Larry. --91.120.71.154 01:01, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Not logged in would perhaps be a bit more appropriate. And if you feel you don't need to follow WP:CIVIL (as your previous message indiciates) you can be blocked to prevent your incivilities. You are expected to be civil at all times, regardless of who you are dealing with. So please mind your behaviour, you were warned. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 01:08, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

"Zero length reply"

For the past four days or so, every once in a while, when I do an edit, I get an error page saying "Zero length reply" when I try to do a save. This is happening on different computers with different operating systems and different versions of IE. If I go back to the previous page and re-save, it seems to work ok. User:Zoe|(talk) 00:08, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I've had the exact same problem (though not very recently), but it's usually when I do a "Show changes" while editing. The odd thing is that it only seems to happen when "Show changes" is the first action I perform after typing in my edit, and it happens even if I go back and click it again. If I preview the edit before showing changes, I usually get a normal response. --Fru1tbat 00:16, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I just got the error again. Here is what displays on the screen:

ERROR The requested URL could not be retrieved

While trying to retrieve the URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&action=submit

The following error was encountered:

Zero Sized Reply Squid did not receive any data for this request.

Your cache administrator is nobody.

User:Zoe|(talk) 16:23, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I have a Macintosh and use Firefox (usually), and I get the error, too. It has been happening for several months, at least. I only get it occasionally, so it is not a big problem for me. However, I have not been editing as much recently, so maybe it has gotten worse. Fortunately, it is easy to go back and resubmit a preview or save. -- Kjkolb 16:33, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Right, I agree, it's not a major problem, it only happens occasionally, and reclicking "Save" has always worked, so far. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:13, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Protected edit request

Per the text at the top of MediaWiki:Common.css ("Any changes to Monobook.css or Common.css should be first proposed to Wikipedia:Village Pump"), I am copying a protected edit request here to be commented on. The following is the discussion, and the edit to made, if accepted.

There's some inconsistency in edit-screen messages at the moment; it was suggested on MediaWiki talk:Talkpagetext that there should be a CSS class that can be used for consistent styling. I'd like the following to be added to common.css (originally taken from MediaWiki:Longpagewarning: 

.editscreenmsg {margin: 0 0 1em; padding: .5em 1em; vertical-align: middle; border: solid #aaaaaa 1px}

(It could be argued that this should go in monobook.css, as it's an interface message, but placing it in common.css is the least change to the current situation.) It would be nice if MediaWiki:Talkpagetext, MediaWiki:Longpagewarning, and MediaWiki:Newarticletext were all updated to use the new class (resulting in no visible changes to the first two, and only a slight change to the third), but I'll put up {{editprotected}} messages after the class is added if necessary. --ais523 09:16, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Isn't this what .standard-talk is for? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:31, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
standard-talk is for divs/tables placed at the top of a talk page. This is for divs/tables added by the software above the edit box when editing a page, and looks quite different. --ais523 14:56, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Should the proposed edit be made? And I would appreciate that an admin reading this make the change, because I'm not the best with CSS. Thanks! If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 04:04, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Just to be clear, the only visible result from this change would be from
to
, to bring it in line with the two other edit-page messages. (I'm suggesting this should be in common.css because it's currently the same for all skins, but it debatably belongs separately in monobook.css and each of the other skins.) --ais523 14:24, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Hmm. Why not use #talkpagetext, #longpagewarning, #newarticletext as your selector? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:08, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
The idea's to make a consistent style for the non-warning (that is, not big and red) messages that go above edit pages, including any new ones that might be created in the future. At the moment, the only messages that this applies to that I know of are talkpagetext, longpagewarning, and newarticletext, but if any are implemented in the future or there are some that I don't know about (which have a similar 'grey-bordered box' style), I'd suggest that the new style apply to those too. --ais523 09:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, I don't know that this is really necessary, then. If it's only for interface messages, it doesn't make much difference if edits have to be made to the new message or to the stylesheet. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Isn't consistent styling of things what CSS is for? Yes, each of the messages could be changed individually, but this would centralise the formats to prevent a need for synchronizing the messages again if consensus was to change the format. It's like creating a template in article space; yes, you could edit all the pages individually, but if they have something in common (a tag on articles, for instance, or in this case the style of an interface message), why not reflect that in the way it's coded? --ais523 11:01, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Either way is consistent and requires no synchronization. If your class is added, then any new message we wanted to style this way would have to be edited to add the class. If my id's are used, then any new message would have to be added by id to the main stylesheet. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:00, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
You're right, of course. I don't mind your solution here (it would be an improvement over the present situation), but I prefer mine slightly because it would prevent a large row of selectors in common.css if it was scaled up massively (not that I expect it to be scaled up any time soon). On the other hand, my method introduces a new CSS class, which has lead to problems in the past (I remember 'metadata' was unintentionally used for two incompatible purposes), so maybe your solution is better. --ais523 10:07, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I wish I could add something to this discussion, but I'm CSS-challenged. If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 05:59, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

De-adware the default theme

For anyone (else) who is irritated by the Virgin ad at the top of every page, you can kill it by adding the following to Special:Mypage/monobook.css:

#fundraising { display: none; }

Enjoy. Cynical 23:32, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

You can also click 'Dismiss' to the right of it, for an even simpler way of getting rid of it. Tra (Talk) 23:38, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, hadn't noticed the Dismiss button :) Well, I guess at least my way stops it coming back tomorrow/next ad/next year/whenever the dismissal resets. Cynical 23:42, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, I've already had to dismiss it a half-dozen times, so an actually permanent way of disabling it would be nice. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:45, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
If you want to completely permanently get rid of it, you could put #siteNotice { display: none; } in monobook.css which will hide the entire sitenotice for every fundraiser or annoncement that takes place, ever. Tra (Talk) 23:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
.....or you could donate money so the goal is reached faster.... --Splarka (rant) 08:12, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
The funniest thing is that I was considering donating this time round, until the ad crap started. I'm happy to donate to the running costs of the WMF, but I am not about to subsidise ad revenue. Cynical 16:01, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Same here. I've contributed in the past, but I've procrastinated this time around because of the annoying banner at the top of every page that I can't dismiss permanently, and the fact that I can't find more than a vague description of how the money is going to be spent. — Omegatron 02:13, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
How about $1.67 million to triple the number of WMF servers? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 18:21, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
??? — Omegatron 18:51, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
It isn't an ad, neither in intent or under law. If you don't want you contribution matched, just wait until the fundraiser ends and donate then. Prodego talk 16:04, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Simetrical your link to meta just gets me a page not found error. Plugwash 16:41, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Ahh, found it it should be foundation:what we need the money for not m:what we need the money for —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Plugwash (talk • contribs) 16:43, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

Weird bar

What's with the ugly whitespace bar that I'm seeing behind the editing buttons at the top of a page? Grandmasterka 11:08, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Whoops, it's gone now... Funny. Grandmasterka 11:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Still there for me. Unusual. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 11:10, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I've just noticed that too, in the last two minutes or so! SGGH 11:10, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
MediaWiki:Monobook.css hadn't been changed since last month either. That's unusual, it's gone now. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 11:13, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia ghosts. SGGH 11:14, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Handheld support was added into main.css and the evasion ticker wasn't updated, should work fine now. →AzaToth 11:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

village pump: archived after seven days

From Wikipedia:Village pump

The village pump is not a place to make lasting comments as inactive discussions are archived after seven days, and then permanently removed after a further seven days.The village pump is not a place to make lasting comments as inactive discussions are archived after seven days, and then permanently removed after a further seven days.
  1. What is used to archive the discussions after seven days?
  2. Is there an article which list the bots used on pages in the Wikipedia project that could be used to do this?
    --Philip Baird Shearer 11:07, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
This page is archived by Werdnabot, you could look here? SGGH 11:13, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Undo and edit summary

It is just me, or whenever you use Undo, its edit summary is not detected as such (aka, with the option to always use edit summaries, I get the second screen that reads "You have not provided an edit summary blah"? -- ReyBrujo 19:01, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Happens to me, too. I've got the "warn if no option summary" switch set to "yes"; it seems confused about such undos. John Broughton | Talk 20:47, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
The edit summary prompt checks to see if the edit summary has been changed from the default, not if it's blank. Therefore, it gives an error when you attempt to undo a revision and leave the default summary. You can fix this by putting the following code in your monobook.js:
 //fix edit summary prompt for undo
 addOnloadHook(function () {
   if (document.location.search.indexOf("undo=") != -1
   && document.getElementsByName('wpAutoSummary')[0]) {
     document.getElementsByName('wpAutoSummary')[0].value='';
   }
 })
Tra (Talk) 21:07, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Neat. Any chance this will be fixed globally? I am adding that to my monobook, but guess others may bring the same question later. -- ReyBrujo 21:14, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I added it into MediaWiki:Common.js. Hopefully that should fix it for everyone... but the truth is, I'm only guessing it will. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 11:43, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Automatic warn for no edit summary

There seems to be a bug in this preference (or perhaps I could define it as an important lack of a feature): Sometimes, when you hit send, Wikipedia will come back with some error message along the lines of your session data did not initiate, and it will return you to the same screen, with all the same information already filled out. But, after you simply click to resend, the preference will (incorrectly) kick in and say you didn't fill out an edit summary. Doesn't sound like that bad an error, right? Well, first off, it's a little annoying to click send three times. But here's the kicker: often times, when that error message comes up, it does so multiple times. So, once you finally get the document to send, it sends you to the "didn't give an edit summary" screen, but when you click send the second time, the problem can come back up, and you have to start all over again. This can mean sometimes a taking a few minutes to send the document, especially on a slower computer. It would be real nice if someone on the dev end could fix this problem (or is it in the monobook.js file for everyone?). Thanks. -Patstuart 18:33, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

That happens to me sometimes anyway, and I'm pretty sure I don't have that feature turned on. Happened today for the first time in ages, funnily enough. --Deskana (For Great Justice!) 18:35, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I find that your session data did not initiate pops up for me if I'm clicking save page before the edit this page page is totally loaded, and thus my edit summaries go a little haywire also, so for it just means I have to wait for the page to be fully loaded (including all the stuff at the base of it, which can take a little while) before I can save my edits. Don't know if this is the cause of your problem, SGGH 11:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Images/media deletions page

Hi. Please see this page. Thanks. Xiner (talk, email) 16:27, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Why? You asked a question, got an answer, asked another question, got another answer. Seems good to go. John Broughton | Talk 20:49, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

SIDEBAR BROKEN

moved from Talk:Main Page

The sidebar with Main Page, Featured Content etc. is Broken! Some of the links and text is faulty. What is happening? David 14:41, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


lol htmlentities()
-- Mik 14:54, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Ah, so it is. I checked recent changes to MediaWiki namespace (where the interface text is kept) and nobody's made any relevant changes recently, so it's probably something gone wrong with MediaWiki itself, as the result of a new revision going live, or the developers changed something related to the site configuration. I imagine it will be fixed soon, whatever it is – Gurch 15:01, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I've already posted on Wikitech-l [20]. --Ligulem 15:21, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Check out all these deletions by MediaWiki default, they probably have something to do with it. timrem 21:37, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Yup. These have something to do with the change to the MediaWiki software announced on said Wikitech-l thread. All MediaWiki interface messages that are on their install defaults are deleted. This is in-line with Tim Starling's redesign on that matter [21]. Tim swiftly fixed the sidebar problem [22]. See also [23]. --Ligulem 00:13, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Shrinking signature

Looking at my signature code, I was thinking there must be a better way to get the same result with less markup. Anyone here have any advice? — Dark Shikari talk/contribs 22:31, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't really see any way to make that much shorter. You might be able to save 1 or 2 characters, but... Prodego talk 22:34, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
You could change it to this, which is a bit shorter:
— Dark Shikari talk/contribs
But technically, it's not valid HTML so it won't go through the preferences box and you'll have to sign your posts by pasting in the code manually. If you need a signature that's still valid HTML, you could try this, but it is a bit longer:
— Dark Shikari talk/contribs
Tra (Talk) 23:37, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, testing shortened sig. — Dark Shikari talk/contribs 01:00, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Testing a slightly further shortened version based on your suggestions. — Dark Shikari talk/contribs 01:03, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

It is still almost 400 characters long. Basically longer than any talk you have done in this section ;-) -- ReyBrujo 01:06, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I used to have a long sig, and then shortened it dramatically; actually, I found that I like at its 34 chars  . You can review my history of sigs at [24]. Cheers! Yuser31415 05:00, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I assure you, unless you are a vandal, nobody ever will click your contributions link. I wonder why people like gradients, maybe we should just incorporate a style in the global stylesheet for a blue, green and red gradients, instead of every user having to create its own ;-) -- ReyBrujo 06:26, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Not true; contribs links come in useful at the Help Desk (to figure out what people who didn't specify were talking about), when reading ANI reports, and to help me judge whether a user's online. --ais523 11:35, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

You could use a template. However, the template must be in your user namespace. I also don't know if templates work witht the built in sig tool. If so, I might switch to it myself. Will (Talk - contribs) 06:50, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

If you are using a userspace template you MUST use subst: in the signature. — xaosflux Talk 07:34, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

"Loss of session data" errors

I've been getting a lot of errors that say: 

Sorry! We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data. 
Please try again. If it still doesn't work, try logging out and logging back in.

This has been happening very frequently for about the past three or four days. I'll get the error on one page, then not on the next, often within seconds of each other. Reloading the page will (usually) make it go away. It's not critical, but when it happens on out of every 7 or 8 pages, it's really annoying. Has something changed? I don't think I'm doing anything different... -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 15:58, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Every once and while I've had a day with a lot of those. It's worth shutting down and restarting your computer, if you've not tried that. If I had to guess, I'd say it might have something to do with confusion over the cookie (whether you're logged in or not), particularly if your computer has been running for a number of days, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's something else. John Broughton | Talk 23:18, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
That does seem to have fixed it - thanks for your help! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 15:36, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Links underline in sidebar

Why are the links in the sidebar suddenly underlined? I'm sure it wasn't like that before. Thanks. --liquidGhoul 11:34, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, it is gone now. --liquidGhoul 11:57, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Redirect to Main Page

%s redirects to the Main Page, but when it does so, the Main Page does not display "Redirected from %s". I know why this occurs, but does anyone know how this occurs? --MZMcBride 04:21, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

The Main Page header covers up the text saying that you followed a redirect, I believe. --Rory096 04:39, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Why does it occur?
They are suppressed in MediaWiki:Monobook.css. It's the first rule in the file. Mike Dillon 06:14, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism Reverts Won't Show

Hi, I reverted vandalism on this page, but the edit isn't showing up in the histories. I was figuring considering the location asking for help. Just H 22:08, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

It looks like Wiki alf beat you to it, and since your version and Wiki alf's version were the same, you didn't get an edit conflict. Prodego talk 22:11, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

101 Ranch Oil Company

The listing for the 101 Ranch Oil Company is no longer accessible. Although it shows up when searched for.

Should someone reload it?

Jcmcapital 17:16, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

The page still exists at 101 Ranch Oil Company. Tra (Talk) 17:26, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

New message error

The yellow new message box at the top of my screen would absolutely not disappear, even after I clicked on my talk page (and yes, I did open new pages, so it wasn't a cache problem or anything like that). It only went away when I made a change to the page. Anyone else experience something similar? Patstuarttalk|edits 17:12, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Well the database was just read only for a few minutes, and in order to clear the new message bar, something would need to be written in the database. Perhaps that was it? Prodego talk 17:15, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Godmode-light doesn't revert

Its most recent version, User:Olliminatore/godmode-light.js, was broken after the undo feature was introduced to MediaWiki. Now it cannot revert. Can someone proficient with JS fix this? Cheers, MaxSem 11:39, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Fixed for diffs, I will get see if I can get the contributions page working as well in a minute. Prodego talk 17:42, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Never mind, it is working on contribs pages, it was grabbing my real rollback links and returning an error, but it works as long as you are not an admin. Prodego talk 18:01, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! MaxSem 18:09, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Equals sign in template parameter

Here's the issue: I'm using a template that requires an unnamed parameter, but the value of the parameter includes an equals sign. For example, {{subst:image source|Image:Alfredo catala==.jpg}} results in this:

==Unspecified source for {{{1}}}==

Thanks for uploading [[:{{{1}}}]]. I notice the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you have not created this file yourself, then there needs to be a justification explaining why we have the right to use it on Wikipedia (see copyright tagging below). If you did not create the file yourself, then you need to specify where it was found, i.e., in most cases link to the website where it was taken from, and the terms of use for content from that page.

If the file also doesn't have a copyright tag, then one should be added. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then the {{GFDL-self}} tag can be used to release it under the GFDL. If you believe the media meets the criteria at Wikipedia:Fair use, use a tag such as {{fairusein|article name}} or one of the other tags listed at Wikipedia:Image copyright tags#Fair use. See Wikipedia:Image copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have specified their source and tagged them, too. You can find a list of files you have uploaded by following this link. Unsourced and untagged images may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the image is copyrighted under a non-free license (per Wikipedia:Fair use) then the image will be deleted 48 hours after 07:44, 6 January 2007 (UTC). If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

Does anyone know a workaround for this? Thanks. howcheng {chat} 07:44, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Try using & #61; instead of =. (remove the space between & and #). -- ReyBrujo 07:55, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
{{subst:image source|1=Image:Alfredo catalan==.jpg}} also works. --Dapeteばか 08:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I totally forgot you can specify the unnamed parameters like that. Thanks! howcheng {chat} 19:25, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Updating the cache Special:Deadendpages

Is there a way to clear the Special:Deadendpages cache more often? It seems to be frequently out of date. John Reaves 08:36, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Updating it uses 'excessive resources'. See the discussion above at #Special:WantedPages page appears to be down for why this and a few other pages aren't updated more often. Tra (Talk) 13:35, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Edit submission failures

Recently when I have edited a page and pressed "Submit", my browser takes a very long time to load the page, and finally I get a server error page from Wikipedia stating that session data was lost or the cache was lost or something along those lines. I lose the entire edit and have to start all over. It's annoying!

We, er, kinda need the actual error before we can attempt diagnosis. :) "Session data" loss and "cache" loss are two different things, and happen in a different place in the whole, big chain that kicks off when someone edits something. 81.156.126.223 00:55, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
If that happens, try pressing F5 immediately. You'll be asked if you want to resend the data; just click Yes or Retry. If that brings you back to the same error page, try refreshing a few more times until it works. Tra (Talk) 01:44, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

mark my own edits as patrolled option missing

I just upgraded to 1.9a, and for the life of me, I can't figure out how to make it mark my edits as patrolled! The "mark my edits as patrolled by default" option I remember is missing - How can I bring this option back for sysops on my wiki? ℑilver§ℑide 23:12, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, Rob Church disabled the user preferences checkbox, so everybody who had that checkbox just has it marked as patrolled no matter what. --Rory096 00:45, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Read the release notes! The option was removed because it was pointless. From now on, users with the autopatrol right will have their edits marked as patrolled automatically. 81.156.126.223 00:54, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks! <3 you lots, mr anonymous contributor - no, anonymous benefactor! - SilverSide/Peer, too lazy to sign in (We need ajaxified sign ins!)

Edit toolbar images missing?

Somehow I can't be the only one experiencing this, but I see no discussion of it, so I'll just ask. Two of the images from the edit toolbar are missing: Button_enter.png and Button_small.png. What gives? –  Anþony  talk  22:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm missing them too. Those links that you have given don't even work.--Bjwebb (talk) 22:26, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
The images here got deleted because they were on the commons, and the links died. I have fixed it. Prodego talk 22:41, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

And I broke them again... images this widely used should not be left unprotected at the Commons. —Ruud 23:26, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Recieved talk page notification for the IP I am using due to a loss of session data

I just recieved talk page notification for the IP I am using (you have new message) after a long edit. The server seems to log me out after some idle time. And every time I am logged out in such way I got the notification. It is a little annoying.

A walkground is to save my password when login, but I am using a public computer and don't like to save my password on it. --Skyfiler 18:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

When you see the new messages notification, you should be able to click on it to make it go away. The automatic logout is by design, since it stops other users of the public computer from accessing your account. You could tick 'remember me' when you log in, then remember to always click log out before you leave the public computer, and that way other users won't be able to access your account. Tra (Talk) 19:35, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

DynamicPageList2

Would it be possible to install the DynamicPageList2 extension on the English Wikipedia? Is there some specific reason as to why it isn't installed? Noclip 18:31, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

The extension and other possible implementations were discussed locally at Wikipedia:Category intersection, the conclusion seemed to be that performance could be a problem in some cases, that there might have to be limits on how long queries could take before it could be installed on larger wikis? --Interiot 19:45, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Skin

Hi! I added some data to my monobook template, but it will only show it is preview mode. Did I do something wrong? I did save it. RyGuy Happy New Year! 17:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Try pressing Ctrl + F5. Tra (Talk) 17:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! That worked! RyGuy Happy New Year! 18:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Boy, I had a scare there! The skin was Unusable, but I was able to get it back to normal. I think I'll stick to the default monobook, but thanks anyway! RyGuy Happy New Year! 18:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Nethac DIU's sign adventures

Since a long time I've been used a template for signing. This is the code: 

<p style='font-family:Tahoma;text-align:right'>
{{ #switch: {{{1}}}
| en = —[[User:Nethac DIU|Nethac DIU]], always would speak [[User Talk:Nethac DIU|here]]—
| es = —[[User:Nethac DIU|Nethac DIU]], siempre dispuesto a hablar [[User Talk:Nethac DIU|aquí]]—
| gl = —[[User:Nethac DIU|Nethac DIU]], non pararía falar [[User Talk:Nethac DIU|aquí]]—
| {{{2|—[[User:Nethac DIU|Nethac DIU]], [[User Talk:Nethac DIU|¡¿?!]]—}}}}}
<br><small>{{{3|}}}</small></p>

I used that #switch because:

  • Maybe I needed to answer something in other language than English, or in more than one languages
  • I could pick up the code and copy&paste on other wikis

But a moment ago I noticed there was a police in this wiki about sigs, that said something like this:

  • Don't use images or templates in your sig.
  • Don't make it too long.
  • Don't make it too distracting or confusing.

Now, I am correcting my own signatures to normal code with a button I had in my user JS toolbar (prepared before I knew code in normal sig could be changed) that writes my sig code (without the #switch, just in English), and it's not very difficult, just a little repetitive.

My question is: when I arrived to a talk page about a IPA symbol I wanted to write in one of my posts, and tried to do it through the normal sign button. But when I clicked the preview button, I saw someting like this:

—Nethac DIU, would never stop to talk here—

17:44, 5 January 2007 (UTC)


The timestamp, accordingly to my code, must be written in Tahoma, small letters, right-aligned and under the sig. I checked the code and saw this: 

<p style="text-align:right; font-family:tahoma">—[[User:Nethac DIU|Nethac DIU]], would never stop to talk [[User_talk:Nethac DIU|here]]—<br/><small></small></p>

Between the small tags, I wrote five tildes. I tested writing them again and they dissappeared again. Why? It's a bug or has a logical function?

And sorry for the long text. :)

—Nethac DIU, would never stop to talk here—
17:44, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Merge user archive pages

How do I put in a request to for an admin to merge two of my user archive pages? (I want to merge user talk:Pink moon1287/Archive 1 and user talk:Pink moon1287/Archive 2 to user talk:Pink moon1287/Archive 2006 because I'm going to start archiving by years. I don't get enough messages to archive by week or month but I do need to archive my talk page. Pink moon 1287(email • talk • user) 15:41, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

The only reason admin help would be appropriate here is if you needed to preserve the page history (revisions, etc.). I can't think of any reason why that would be important for a personal archive.
So you can do this yourself: move one page (to the new name) via the "Move" tab, then copy-paste the contents of the other page to the newly named page, then tag the now-empty page for deletion per Wikipedia:User page. John Broughton | Talk 16:56, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

OK thanks! I suspected I had to something like that. Pink moon 1287(email•talk•user) 17:26, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Wiki Search

the serch tool in wikipedia is very poor. the results shown are almost always irrelevant and inconvinient in terms of viewing. even google provides better search results for wikipedia than wikipedia for itself. if the search could be improved, wikipedia would become perfect! --194.83.71.232 10:53, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, it's pretty bad. I'd guess it's a question of money and programming priorities. For example, Google sells "search appliances" - bundled hardware and software - which could take the search load off the regular servers - and deliver better search results, of course. John Broughton | Talk 16:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
The Wikimedia Foundation has generally taken pains to use only free software on its servers. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Flag templates

There has been an ongoing discussion of how to reduce the number of templates required to implement a flag icon on a page. It currently requires four templates to insert a flag icon (e.g. {{USA}}) and when multiple flag icons are used, it can make the list of transcluded templates obnoxiously long. Obviously a large template using a switch tag can not be done because flags are used more than once on a lot of pages, and there are limits to this. I was wondering if anyone had any clever or creative ideas to solve this problem, hopefully making the use of only one or two templates necessary, and ending the list of templates that can be seen on pages like this. Because image redirects are currently not possible, duplicate images could be used as an alternative, seeing that flags are unlikely to change, and the code could be simplified to something similar to [[Image:Flag of {{{1}}}.svg]]. However, I realize that there are downsides to this option (server space, etc.). I can't find a decent solution, but a lot of smart people look at this page, so if anyone has an idea, please share it. Thanks. --MZMcBride 04:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Uh . . . why don't you just have every country's flag be called Image:xx flag, where xx is the country code? Yeah, you can't actually move the flags, so just duplicate them, link back and forth, and maybe deprecate the old images. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:12, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
The issue is that some users will type in {{flag|USA}} while others will type in "United States" or "US" or "U.S." or "U.S.A." or "United States of America," or other variants. Country codes can become obscure for lesser known countries, seriously hindering user usage. But, should the images just be duplicated i.e. an image at Image:Flag of Australia.svg and an identical image at Image:Flag of AUS.svg, etc.? --MZMcBride 22:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, people can learn the codes easily enough. Or you could use the full country name if you really like. Yes, there would be some duplication in the short term, hopefully fixed once we finally get the bloody image backend overhauled so we can have stuff like image moves and redirects. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:01, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
One of the reasons for the present method is because flag files are in many formats and a single suffix would require all flags to first be converted to whatever the newly mandatory format is. Including images in Commons, where country abbreviations are the standard (what's the ISO abbreviation for Algeria, Great Britain, or England? Sorry, England doesn't have one.). So the name of the existing flag file is stored in one place. Some time ago User:Jimbo Wales suggested a data tool for information such as the capitol (or, I suppose, the capital) of a country. Anything close to being used? Wikidata or WikiTextrose? (SEWilco 06:52, 4 January 2007 (UTC))
You could use ISO 3166 and perhaps some extensions like BS 6879. Then England would by GB-ENG, for instance. I admit that that becomes tricky when you get to stuff like the flag of New York City, at which point you could just give up and use the full name. Or do that to start with, if you don't mind the extra typing. And I thought it was generally accepted that flags should be SVG? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:01, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you referring to {{flagicon}}? People reading this might also be interested in WP:FLAGS, which suggests that flag icons should not be overused. Carcharoth 16:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

All this aside, Adobe have announced in December 2006 that their their SVG Viewer (ASV) will reach EOL as of January 1, 2008. That leaves less choice of SVG viewer for people with Internet Explorer who previously used the ASV browser plug-in. OK, so not everyone likes Windows or IE, but it is a significant proportion of web users, the ones Wikipedia is supposed to be aimed at DO use this combination for browsing. OZ_Rhett 16:57, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Secondly the Australian flag SVG does not display properly in ASV 3.03 Build 94 (the latest, I believe) when viewed at FULL resolution (i.e. NOT the PNG on the Image: page, but when you click on that image to view it stand-alone as a SVG). Other flags e.g. Brazil and United States, DO display properly. Is there some bug in the Australian flag design ? Can someone confirm this ? OZ_Rhett 16:57, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

You might contact the person who edited that flag. (SEWilco 21:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC))

Getting back to the original post, are there any creative or clever ideas that would reduce the number of templates that would work? Are image redirects a possibility with a few minor tweaks to the software? Any new ideas would be fantastic. --MZMcBride 20:00, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

On the same page as the original link in this discussion, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Flag Template#Ideas for reworking. (SEWilco 21:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC))

New page list

Hello, can anyone tell me how I can interrogate my contributions list to give me a list of the new mainspace articles I've created since I created my account? Cheers. --Mcginnly | Natter 23:01, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

You mean integrate not interrogate right? — Stevey7788 (talk) 04:07, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
No, I don't believe there is a way. Interiot once made a script to find that, but since the toolserver is no longer replicating enwiki, that no longer works. --Rory096 04:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Now that I think about it, I believe because of the recent toolserver problems, the enwiki in the toolserver is actually somewhat new (late January I believe). Assuming you don't need things more recent than that, you might want to ask Interiot to run the script for you. --Rory096 04:41, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
The enwiki database on the toolserver is from December 18 (calculated from the current lag shown in this graph). --Dapeteばか 07:24, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, it's stuck at Dec 18. Anyway, the list of articles created before then will be available here in a few minutes. --Interiot 07:35, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

That's fantastic! many thanks. --Mcginnly | Natter 09:07, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Number of times a particular term is searched

Is there a way to find out how many times a particular term (e.g. kitchen sink) is used in a search by users? I've gone through as many FAQs as I can think of, and missed it if it's there. Something somewhat similar to Google Trends, I guess--though a hard count would be even better.

No, no way to do that right now. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:04, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Reserved IP and contribs

It's a well-known Wikipedia curiosity that 127.0.0.1 has contribs. I was testing out the feature where you're redirected to an IP's contribs page if the IP doesn't have an article (so 127.0.0.1 redirects to localhost in the Search box with Go, but 1.0.0.0 redirects to Special:Contributions/1.0.0.0), when I typed 1.2.3.4 and reached Special:Contributions/1.2.3.4. ARIN, however, lists this IP (along with the rest of 1.0.0.0/8) as 'IANA reserved', which would imply to me that there's no way that this IP could have edited, so it's a bit of a mystery how it came to have contribs at all. (On another note, User talk:1.2.3.4 seems to be unrelated to the IP itself and was created by another anon.) Any ideas as to how this could have come about? --ais523 15:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

It could be that a developer was editing Wikipedia in an unconventional way that caused the edit to be listed under this IP. Tra (Talk) 15:19, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree. Some contribution can be done with an internal computer (i.e. the local conputer) and in this case the preference IP is 127.0.0.1 and not the "public" IP. For the 1.x.x.x net, I don't know. Maybe an error on assigning local (internal) IP. Further reading: meta:Wikimedia servers and RFC3330. --Cate | Talk 15:24, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Strangely, RFC 3330 doesn't mention the 1.0.0.0/8 range, in seeming contradiction with ARIN. --ais523 15:37, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
It is more subtle. According gwhois: "NetName: RESERVED-9; NetType: IANA Reserved". So the network is reserved. The RFC3330 specify special use IPs. So you should not use 1.x.x.x, it is not a special (i.e. private) use. Now it is not used, but maybe in future IANA can allocate addresses in 1.x.x.x, so really nobody should use such addresses privately. Probably such networks were used for old tests. Cate | Talk 15:56, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Probably someone was fiddling around with the database, needed to add a user to account for the contribs, and hadn't thought of reserved account names yet. "testing" speaks for itself. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Note that Kate (whose user subpage was edited by that IP) was a dev. --Rory096 04:35, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

PHP library of common Mediawiki functions?

For a little side project of mine, I'd like a PHP library that can expose document revision history info, parse wikilinks, and so on. I'm re-inventing the wheel on each of these things right now, and it occurs to me that someone else might have needed to interact with a remote Wiki via PHP at some point too. I see the various python libs that do this, so I figured it would be worth asking here. I'd like to make a little utility to browse an article as-it-was at a certain point in time, much like viewing a specific revision now, except with all the wikilinks modified to point to the revision that was current at that time. It's an idea I'm mulling about regarding providing links to static content (like for references, citations, etc) that gives a full 'as-it-was' performance. I could probably do this via Javascript too, now that I think about it, but if there's a PHP lib that exposes these functions, that'd be handy. Thanks! - CHAIRBOY (☎) 21:33, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there are any client-side PHP components for doing this, but there is a server-side API being developed. See meta:API and be aware that it is still under active development. Hope that helps. Mike Dillon 04:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Bummer, but thanks! - CHAIRBOY (☎) 14:15, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
You can use MediaWiki itself as a library, like what all the scripts in the maintenance directory do. -- Tim Starling 12:40, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
If the wiki was local to me, I think that'd work perfect, but I'm talking about interacting with a Wiki that's on the other side of the NIC. But thanks, and you're right, for a local Wiki, it'd be hard to beat using those libraries themselves. Regards, CHAIRBOY (☎) 14:45, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Splitting ToC into two columns?

The ToC for Hanging is way too long. Can this be split into two columns? TerriersFan 20:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't look too long for me (only 30 headings, the whole TOC fits in a single screen). There is no way I know of to split it in two columns, unless you want to use the Gecko-only method used for references on some pages. You could also try {{TOCright}} or {{TOCleft}} (but discuss on the talk page first if you want to try them). --cesarb 23:18, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Looks like the problem was solved by adding {{TOCright}}. John Broughton | Talk 02:28, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes it was; many thanks. TerriersFan 16:29, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Special:WantedPages page appears to be down

Sorry to post a temporary bug report here, but I don't know a better way (yet). The page Special:WantedPages is down. A comment on its Talk Page suggests it has been down for about a day so far. It reports 0 items (which seems very unlikely). Thanks. Peter H. St.John, M.S. 17:49, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I've disabled updates for the following pages due to excessive resource usage:
  • en.wikipedia.org: Ancientpages, CrossNamespaceLinks, Deadendpages, DoubleRedirects, Mostlinked, Mostrevisions, Wantedpages
  • de.wikipedia.org: Ancientpages, CrossNamespaceLinks, DoubleRedirects, Mostlinked, Mostrevisions, Wantedpages
  • fr.wikipedia.org: Ancientpages, DoubleRedirects, Mostlinked, Mostrevisions, Wantedpages
  • commons.wikimedia.org: Mostlinked
-- Tim Starling 18:49, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Is this a temporary? Is it intended to improve their behavior at some point? Or will this functionality evetually be removed? —EncMstr 16:42, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Lost password

I asked for a re-send of my password but it hasn't happened yet after 24 hours. is this common?

patrick14:46, 4 January 2007 (UTC)65.95.105.241

Normally it'll come faster than that. Password requests can't be sent from a blocked IP (but you edited here, so you aren't blocked), and are throttled to prevent abuse (but if the throttle was hit that would mean some have already been sent, and you should have received them). Probably, either you didn't give or didn't confirm your e-mail address (in which case you'll have to remember your password or create a new account), or your email system's blocking Wikipedia's email address for some reason. It's also possible you entered the wrong username when sending a reminder. Hope that helps! --ais523 15:00, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

userboxes. i cant find them

where is the complete list of user boxes on wikipedia? Subatomicguy 10:14, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Userboxes, the links in that page and navigate also into the categories that you find in that page. Cate | Talk 10:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Protect, delete, move, watch, and a #FFFFCC bar of death

I have found buckets use for the buttons which, thanks to this page, I learned how to append to the top bar, adding them to my list of one-click personal pages via my Monobook.js. I am now wondering if it is possible for me to remove the Protect, Delete, Move and Watch buttons from the top bar and add them to my linkbar, preferably beneath, (or next to, if this is impossible) the existing pages which I have appended, they being my Missing Articles Project and my sandbox.

And while I'm thinking of it, is there any way for me to change the Orange bar of death to a #FFFFCC bar of death? My main problem is not knowing where to insert the code between - that and not knowing which code to use!

Thank you in advance for your help. Bobo. 03:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

To do the link changes, change ppersonal in your monobook.js to the following: 

function ppersonal() {
    var tb = document.getElementById('p-personal').getElementsByTagName('ul')[0];
    addlilink(tb, '/wiki/User:Bobo192/MAP', 'MAP', 'p-map', 'User:Bobo192/MAP', '1');
    addlilink(tb, '/wiki/User:Bobo192/Sandbox', 'Sandbox', 'p-sandbox', 'User:Bobo192/MAP', '2');

    // Add a new box under the main personal tools box
    var newBox = document.createElement("div");
    newBox.setAttribute("class", "pBody");

    // Create the inner link list
    var newList = document.createElement("ul");
    newBox.appendChild(newList);

    // Function to move links from tabs to p-personal
    function movelink (name) {
        var link = document.getElementById("ca-" + name);
        if (link) {
            link.parentNode.removeChild(link);
            link.id = "pt-" + name;
            newList.appendChild(link);
        }
    }

    // Move links
    movelink("protect");
    movelink("delete");
    movelink("move");
    movelink("watch");
    movelink("unwatch");

    // Add the new list to p-personal
    tb.parentNode.appendChild(newBox);
}

I believe that will work, but I don't have the admin tabs to test it.

To do the color change, add this to your monobook.css: 

.usermessage {
    background-color: #ffc;
}

You may want to change the "border-color" attribute as well. Mike Dillon 05:04, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Fire

in the info box of some places eg Lightwater, the fire link seems to be in curly brackets. How do I fix this? Thanks SuzanneKn 21:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Fill in the fire field:
   |Fire = -
Or ask someone to make that field optional in the template itself. — Omegatron 22:06, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

"New Pages" link in navigation sidebar

Is there a user script that puts a link to New pages in the sidebar (similar to the recent changes link)? John Reaves 23:57, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Try this in your monobook.js. --Splarka (rant) 08:41, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
addOnloadHook(addnav)
function addnav() {
    var tb = document.getElementById('p-navigation').getElementsByTagName('ul')[0];
    addlilink(tb, '/wiki/Special:Newpages', 'New pages', 'n-newpages', 'Special:Newpages', '');
}

function addlilink(tabs, url, name, id, title, key){
    var na = document.createElement('a');
    na.href = url;
    na.appendChild(document.createTextNode(name));
    var li = document.createElement('li');
    if(id) li.id = id;
    li.appendChild(na);
    tabs.appendChild(li);
    if(id)
    {
        if(key && title)
        {
            ta[id] = [key, title];
        }
        else if(key)
        {
            ta[id] = [key, ''];
        }
        else if(title)
        {
            ta[id] = ['', title];
        }
    }
    // re-render the title and accesskeys from existing code in wikibits.js
    akeytt();
    return li;
}

That worked, thanks. John Reaves 08:51, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Coloured numbers and others

Wouldn't it make sense to keep some of these discussions, colouring as an example, for future reference? Simply south 20:18, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Everything is archived. And even if it weren't, it's available in the history--TheParanoidOne 20:52, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, Village Pump discussions are removed entirely from the archive after 2 weeks of inactivity, so the page history is the only place you'll find them. If you need to keep any of these discussions, you could copy and paste them to Wikipedia talk:Added or removed characters. Tra (Talk) 21:20, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Canadian Current Events.

The boxes are optimized for Firefox/IE at 1024/768, right? But this is what I see on the Canadian Current Events Page (Link to Image). The Portal box is overlapping the boxes of information.

Any clues as to what's going on? User:Logical2uTalk 20:15, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Error with pages with a slash before

Due to the way Wikipedia handles subpages, this page can not be linked to, a link like this - /dev/null - takes you to the current pages subpage. What should be done?--Bjwebb (talk) 19:55, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Type [[:/dev/null]]. That will let you link to it. Prodego talk 19:57, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Yup: /dev/null. The colon in front is also useful when citing a category - for example, Category:Wikipedia style guidelines. In that case, without the colon, you'd be labeling the page as a category (which would, of course, indirectly provide a link, but at the bottom of the page, and this isn't good when one doesn't want the page itself in the category). John Broughton | Talk 20:01, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Thankyou for your help. However, it's strange, because on the page Null, the link does work as just [[/dev/null]]. However, the same is not true for this page (presumeably because it is in the Wikipedia: namespae), but more interestingly it is also true for the pop up box that you can configure (can't remember what its called). See this screenshot.--Bjwebb (talk) 20:08, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
It looks like Mediawiki doesn't interpret the page Null like a normal page. Prodego talk 20:14, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Nope, its not Null. The pages which link to null in the main namespace all seem to not need the colon. I think it's because you don't have subpages in the main namespace, so slashes don't take you to a subpage. However, the pop up box thing that you can configure (see my picture if you don't know what I mean) seems to handle slashes as subpages anyway.--Bjwebb (talk) 21:44, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Be aware that pages starting with a slash are actually illegal; an old bug in MediaWiki allowed them through, and we put off fixing it for a while since some pages have to be renamed. But be aware that they will be. --brion 21:50, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Converting from FrameMaker?

In the real world, I work for a software development group. We've been running MediaWiki for internal documentation for a while. Today, the head of the documentation group told me that she's interested in converting all their FrameMaker docs into wiki form. Are there any tools that might help with this job? -- RoySmith (talk) 16:23, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Intersection of two categories

I need to have a way of determining the articles that appear in two separate categories. Is there a wikitool for doing this? This would help me with assessment. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 15:21, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

WP:AWB. MaxSem 15:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I noticed that AWB requires .NET be installed. I was hoping to not have to install that monster on my Win2K system. Are there any other alternatives for determining the intersection of categories? Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 15:33, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
There is a tool on the toolserver machine called CatScan that can do this, but nothing on toolserver has been working with the en.wikipedia database for quite a while. If you're doing this once, you might just copy and paste the category lists to a file on your PC and use local tools to figure out the intersection. This technique is scriptable as well, so could potentially become a new toolserver tool if someone felt like writing it. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:51, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Enwiki replication lag is actually down to 15 days, so CatScan may work fine, as long as you don't need the absolute latest results. --Interiot 16:16, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't. CatScan should work fine for my purposes. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 18:23, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Rick! Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 18:23, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
  1. ^ Public beliefs about evolution and creation, Robinson, B. A. 1995-2006.
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