Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive AV

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Village pump (technical) archive

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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Diff pages and whitespace

The software that creates the diff pages seems very bad at identifying when a block of text has been unaltered but merely moved by the addition or removal of empty lines (example - scroll down a bit). This makes it very difficult to see at a glance if part of the text has been modified, as the entire block is highlighted as a change. Is there a bug fix in the works for this? — Swpb^talk|edits 15:35, 30 July 2007 (UTC) 22:51, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly how you would rather see this rendered. That's not simply the addition of an empty line, but a splitting of a line--that is, this was formerly one continuous line of text, and two linebreaks were added to the middle of it. If you have P1 \n P2 and you add another line in between those P's (P1 \n\n P2), it will treat P1 and P2 as context and indicate an addition of a line between them, but this cannot be done in the middle of a line, unless we move to something like eclipse's diff rendering method, which, IMO, is horribly illegible. (We are currently just making use of the unix utility Diff3). If you could mock up a sample image of how you would have rathered this be presented, that would be helpful. AmiDaniel (talk) 18:37, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

We do not use diff3 to generate regular diff pages; we use a fast diff implementation known as wikidiff2, developed by Tim Starling. 86.134.25.176 21:23, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

In the example I linked, take the paragraph that begins "In the two-stage design..." or the one that follows. Clearly, there have been some changes within these paragraphs, but the diff display isn't helpful in finding them, since the entire paragraphs are red, just as if they had been added or removed entirely. The handful of words that are not red in each seem to be arbitrary and unrelated to the actual changes. The yellow/green highlighting is helpful in showing where whole blocks have been moved, but the red bolding should still just show changes within those blocks, as it does when they haven't been moved around. It's tricker when two paragraphs have been merged or one has been split up (as in the paragraph that starts "Public safety diving and military diving"). This could still be displayed without red/bolding the unchanged text ("Scientific diving is used by..."). I would imagine a white gap cutting the green block in two between what were formerly separate paragraphs - but sort of a zig-zagged tetris-block style cut to account for the split or merge occuring in the middle of a line. I will try to mock this up. — Swpb^talk|edits 15:35, 30 July 2007 (UTC) 12:51, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok, here's what I mean: Image:Diff3.jpg. — Swpb^talk|edits 15:35, 30 July 2007 (UTC) 13:57, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it, part of the reason why Wikipedia's diff rendering is sometimes suboptimal is that, to increase speed, the currently used diff engine works in two passes, first computing a crude paragraph-level (line-level, actually) diff and only then doing a word-level diff on pairs of differing paragraphs in similar positions. The problem is that the first pass is unable to distinguish between a single-word change in an otherwise unmodified paragraph and the replacement of an entire paragraph with a completely different one. Thus, it will not always be able to match the old and new paragraphs properly for the second pass. For example, consider the following change:

Old	New
Hello! This is a test.	This is a test.

In this case, the first pass diff engine will correctly identify the last paragraphs as identical, and produce the following output:

Old		New
-	Hello!
	This is a test.		This is a test.

However, if any change is made to the last paragraph, like this:

Old	New
Hello! This is test 1.	This is test 2.

then the first pass diff will not recognize them as the same, and will instead try to match the first paragraphs of both versions together, producing a diff like this:

Old		New
-	Hello!	+	This is test 2.
-	This is test 1.

The problem could be partially fixed by doing the second-pass diffs between entire blocks of non-matching paragraphs, but this might destroy the very advantage the two-pass system was originally devised for, which is increased performance for diffs with lots of changes, such as an entire article being overwritten. It also wouldn't help with the related problem where changing a paragraph slightly while moving an empty line from above it to below it or vice versa will cause the first-pass diff to match the empty lines and to consider the non-matching paragraphs to have been deleted and inserted instead. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:23, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that this is not an important area of performance optimization. The number of diffs must be less than 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of the number of page renders, for example. I'd like to see the diff be of better quality myself. Tempshill 20:11, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

So would this merit a bug report? I guess it would require making the line-level diff aware of when lines are mostly the same, to match up moved but slightly altered text. It seems to me that a good diff page is important enough to building the encyclopedia that it's an area where server performance could take a back seat. — Swpb^talk|edits 15:35, 30 July 2007 (UTC) 14:27, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Page moves don't show up in watch list?

Was it always the case that page moves do not show up in your watch list? I noticed this today. I would have expected they do, and seem to remember they used to. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:10, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

See bugzilla:5546. --- RockMFR 06:26, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Watch this space. Srsly. 86.134.25.176 21:24, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Any problems yesterday with WP email?

Quick question, does anybody know if there has been any recent problems with sending/relaying emails through the WP interface, or where I need to look to find out? I played around last night sending myself emails; three emails sent over the course of a couple of hours arrived several hours later with the same timstamps. An email sent from a different account (off-wiki) arrived promptly. Or is this normal behaviour? -- Steve Hart 18:38, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

There was extra load on the mail server yesterday and mail was delivered late. --brion 20:26, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, do you know if there's anyplace I can see the current workload on the servers or is access limited? -- Steve Hart 20:33, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Special:Statistics shows the current job queue length which is an indication of server load. I have no idea if this has any relationship to load on the mail server though. I suspect not. —Moondyne 04:19, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Note: The job queue estimate (and it's a poor estimate, don't trust it at all) shown on Special:Statistics has nothing to do with "server load" - it's an estimate of the number of background processing jobs we've got queued up awaiting...processing. 86.134.25.176 21:26, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Nope. :) But you can peek at our nagios and ganglia monitoring systems if you like. --brion 18:31, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

PNG transparency Javascript "fix" option?

How do I turn off the PNG transparency Javascript code, which I strongly suspect is contributing to slower loading of pages with inline images, and significantly increasing the frequency of browser crashes on my system? I'm currently using "Classic" skin. Thanks. 02:42, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I would talk to Remember the dot (talk · contribs). He was the master architect of the recent changes. --MZMcBride 03:08, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

By the way, if possible, all IE5 and IE6 users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to IE7, which fixes this issue entirely. --MZMcBride 03:09, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Not anyone is running XP or later, you know? Some are 'stuck' with 2000, so upgrading to IE7 (or switching to Firefox) is not an option. Please stop advising this when someone has an issue with IE6, especially with regard to a script designed for IE6. — Edokter • Talk • 14:04, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Firefox will work on Windows 2000, and has no problems with PNG transparency. But like I said, I will work on the IE6 performance issues. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 20:21, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I'll echo the comment that pages are loading far slower with this fix than before. At first I thought it was a slow Internet connection (I was using WiFi in a hotel room on a business trip), but now that I am hooked up to my regular broadband pipe, I still see a noticeable delay.

I'll also echo the comments about IE6 vs. IE7. I remember reading (recently) that ~60% of page views are still with IE6, so Wikipedia really needs to take into account this "laggard majority". Andrwsc 18:08, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

My recollection is that we didn't bundle the 'fix' for general use because it is kind of problematic sometimes, but I haven't really looked into it in ages. --brion 19:45, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Please let me know if you find any specific, measurable problems as a result of the new code. A couple have been found and fixed already. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 20:21, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Remember the dot (talk · contribs) is currently working on fixing the speed issues. Please be patient, he expects to come up with a fix within 24 hours. — Edokter • Talk • 19:54, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The reason why it's so slow is (almost certainly) because it uses innerHTML. Gracenotes^T § 15:17, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

User Page Assistance

Hi! If someone could take a look at my user page, I would appreciate it. I would like my current tasks and membership under the left-hand column. If someone could tell me why my Monkeynoze box and Monkeynoze cartoon box don't line up horizontally, I would appreciate it. If you can fix it yourself or tell me how to do it, I would appreciate it. Thanks Monkeynoze 02:01, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Section adding feature

I just noticed this text:

"Subject/headline (because of a bug, do not use this section adding feature if the headline contains a link):"

For my money, if it's bugged, revert the "improvement" until it works without a bug.

If you must retain a bugged feature, the text needs some work:

It gives no suggestion if the problem is temporary or permanent
It's a bit rude - certainly abrupt
It's not very clear what you mean.
It gives no information about where more information about the bug can be found

I suggest you replace it with something along these lines: While we [[Wikilink to somewhere where the bug's being discussed|tackle a coding bug]], until further notice please do not use links in headlines.

Addresses all four issues. However, I reiterate, my preference would be to ditch a flawed enhancement of the coding. --Dweller 12:16, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

NB I wanted to link to this post at Bugzilla, but found it extraordinarily and offputtingly unuser friendly. How ironic. Can someone please point the (much appreciated) buggy people here for me. --Dweller 12:20, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

One can still put a link in a headline, but in that case one should not use the section adding feature, but apply the section editing feature to the previous section.--Patrick 12:58, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Eh? --Dweller 13:42, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Above it says "Seems to be fixed in the repo (rev:25598 and later)". If someone can confirm that this fixes it we can add something about this.--Patrick 13:02, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The offending text seems to have disappeared. --Dweller 13:45, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

It would be better if the bug had disappeared.--Patrick 13:51, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

lol! --Dweller 13:54, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

By amazing coincidence they've both disappeared! Wait, maybe it's not a coincidence. :) --brion 14:04, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!--Patrick 14:08, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Edit Button Overlap?

Is it normal to have two edit buttons right next to each other like this?--69.118.235.97 00:14, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

See WP:BUNCH. Adrian M. H. 00:19, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Do you think you could implement the {{FixHTML}} tags on google toolbar? I tried doing so myself, but the result was a mess.--69.118.235.97 01:30, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

That doesn't really need a bunch fix (only one infobox and one image). I just moved the image to a more appropriate place, so all the edit links now line up with their headings. Adrian M. H. 14:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Web hosting for MediaWiki

Hi there, does anyone know of any good free web hosts that support PHP 5, ImageMagick and command-line PHP so I can install MediaWiki 1.93 or 1.10 - I am setting up a new wiki which will have mw:Extension:Makesysop and mw:Extension:Checkuser on it.

I am going to be exporting some pages from here to the new wiki, per the terms of the GFDL - however, I need to find a free host first.

All advice is appreciated. Thanks, --SunStar Net ^talk 18:41, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

If the webhost can support more than 1 MySQL database, then so much the better... --SunStar Net ^talk 18:45, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
- It looks like 110mb meets those criterion. (Found via a brief Google search.) I've never used them, though. AFMU seems to do the trick if you can pay for domain registration, with a $27.95 annual cost. Gracenotes^T § 19:01, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Put article namespace items first in "what links here"

The usefulness of ~~"What links here"~~ "file links" on image pages is often severely compromised by the alternative-namespace links being mixed in with the actual encyclopedia content. For example, Image:Madame Grande.jpg has 208 links to it, but only one actual article (Catherine Grand). Would it be possible to put the actual articles at the top of the ~~"what links here" page~~ file links section? --Sean 20:59, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The filter is only a couple of clicks away. Adrian M. H. 22:00, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I misspoke: what I'm actually interested in is the "File links" section on that page, which is different to "what links here". "What links here" on that image page actually does not include articles containing the image. "File links" is (confusingly) the relevant "what links here" for image pages, and does not have a filtering capability, so it's that which I think should be sorted so articles come up first. --Sean 23:03, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I was not aware that "What links here" does not give the necessary results for image pages, but after testing it, I see that it does not. I doubt if that will ever be implemented unless the same solution from "What links here" is added to the "File links" option. It probably works on the same principle as "What links here" - ie, the list is likely to be in chronological order. That's why it appears to be arbitrary and it's why the filter was introduced to make searching a little easier. Adrian M. H. 23:20, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The solution: userscript Sort Image Links ∴ Alex Smotrov 04:12, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Great, thanks! --Sean 19:45, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Special:Log/delete

Is there any way to filter image deletions from the deletion log?--VectorPotential^Talk 18:20, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I would say no, there is no way. Of course, you could filter them directly on the page using JavaScript ∴ Alex Smotrov 04:12, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Some javascript that can do that (and more). --Splarka (rant) 08:46, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Chinese template

I recently used a template for Chinese pop stars which have a Chinese name. The template was {{zh-st|s=|t=}} . However, once I finished using it and saved the page, the article's side bar of "Other languages" came up with a repeated link to this:한국어 . This is with the case of the article I was working on: Jane Zhang. Could you please have a look and see what is wrong? Thank you. σмgн gσмg 11:57, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

It was a problem in {{Zh-st}}. It's fixed now. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:24, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

The Spam filter as a barrier to reporting copyvios

I recently came across an article (Business Triage) that looked like it might be a copyvio: a lengthy, news-article style page in classic businessese and not much Wikimarkup, with only one contributor. I Googled a couple of sentences from it and, indeed, up came a web page that matched the entire article word-for-word (and had copyright notice at the bottom). After satisfying myself that this page was the original publisher of the article (i.e. it was not copied from a GFDL-compatible source), I tried to put a db-copyvio template on the article, specifying the url in question as the url= argument -- only to find myself confronted with:

Spam protection filter: The spam filter blocked your page save because it detected a blacklisted hyperlink. You may have added it yourself, the link may have been added by another editor before it was blacklisted, or you may be infected by spyware that adds links to wiki pages. You will need to remove all instances of the blacklisted URL before you can save.

So the copyvio is from a blacklisted page. Alright. But this means that anyone reporting the copyvio then has to then spend time working out how to obstuficate the URL to get past the spam filter, in order to tell the deleting administrator which page the article's a copyvio of! Is there no way to make the spamfilter selective (say, ignoring any urls inside {{template brackets}})? If not, then perhaps there needs to be a discussion on whether the status quo is an acceptable drawback to the advantage of being able to filter out spam links -- IANAL, but could there be potential legal issues here regarding the OCILLA and presenting barriers to "expedious action"? -- simxp (talk) 20:46, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I think this is easily overcome by reworking the URL (add a space or two in the domain) to 'fool' the spam filter + adding a note on how to make the link valid again. Admins can read :) — Edokter • Talk • 21:09, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, just a ctrl-f search of the source and add "_SPAM_" somewhere in the domain name. No technical fix that I know of. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 21:12, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Or even better, just include the problematic URL in <nowiki> tags. Anomie 21:22, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I didn't think of using nowiki tags since I assumed it was a plaintext search filter -- stupid of me. Thanks! EDokter's suggestion was what I ended up doing in the end. The nowiki solution should probably be documented somewhere for other people who run into the same problem in future to note as the best solution -- maybe on the spam filter information page. I'll bring it up on that talk page. -- simxp (talk) 22:06, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Image absence

It seems to me that lately icon like images from the commons (like the global for coordinats and the flag for ships) are not showing up. I switched from my home computer to my laptop and then my mothers laptop, but the result doesn't change. Did something happen to the images? TomStar81 (Talk) 03:51, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. You have to purge the images to see them. - BANG ! 04:27, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. I'm pretty sure this is a purging related problem, but so far I've discovered that users have tried purging with it not working and that it's a problem on multiple language wikipedias. Do the images in question really work for you right now? -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 05:52, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I have also seen some odd "missing image" problems. On List of Registered Historic Places in King County, Washington, the image associated with Broadway High School is not showing up on my browser, although it seems that all others are. As far as I can see, it is included exactly the same way as all other images; neither the wikisource nor "View source" on my Firefox browser suggest any difference. The image ultimately comes from Commons, but so do nearly all others on the page. No problem accessing the corresponding image page on Commons or on en:. Any clues? Can others replicate this problem? I'm pretty sure it's not a "purge" issue unique to one image. - Jmabel | Talk 05:57, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I see what you're talking about there, but for that case I'm also lost as to what's going on. The bigger problem, though, is that things like the Red pog.svg have stopped working on the normal wikipedia. So practically everything using Template:Location map has an error of not displaying the dots on the page, see Nuclear power in China for example. This is probably affecting a good deal of articles (I mean like a large percentage of all of Wikipedia). -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 06:11, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

A similar problem exists with the icons on railway line diagrams (example: Template:Esk Valley Line). Some aren't showing up at all which makes the diagram look "broken". -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 06:27, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Just for information, this problem is also affecting all articles including some chess diagrams, see for example Chess or Template:Chess diagram. That means most of the 2000 articles about chess cannot be read properly for now.

This image problem has been going on for more than 10 hours now and is affecting a huge number of images, so I would call it a major problem. Still worse: there is no error message warning the casual Joe that something is going wrong, so he may think this mess is a normal situation on Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SyG (talk • contribs) 07:09, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm having this problem too. None of the images in flag templates are working, e.g., the one in the Cloverfield infobox. Actually, it seems the problem is almost exclusively to do with images in templates. For me, anyway. --Closedmouth 09:25, 16 September 2007 (UTC) It's working again, hurrah --Closedmouth 15:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Multiple sections on this issue

I believe #What happened here?, #User talk:172.206.116.36, #Image:Locator Dot.svg, #Loads of images (particularly flag images) not showing, #Image:Flag of Canada.svg, #Is it just me, and #Images not showing are all this same issue; it's a little hard to tell, because some are only minimally described. - Jmabel | Talk 09:26, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Probably a separate problem

So mine is probably a separate problem. As mentioned above, on List of Registered Historic Places in King County, Washington, the image associated with Broadway High School is not showing up on my browser; neither, it turns out, is the image of the Cowen Park Bridge. There might be others, too, but these are the two I noticed. Anyone with insights? I take it from Theanphibian's remark above that my observation is, indeed, replicable. - Jmabel | Talk 08:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks like there's now four separate sections on this same issue. Anyway, the only remedy so far has been purging, but that doesn't seem to be a permanent fix, as some of the images I've purged ended up broken again after a period of time. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 08:07, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

TMF, I believe mine is a distinct issue (it lacks several of the characteristics discussed elsewhere). I started a separate sub-section here so that this distinct issue won't get lost in the shuffle. - Jmabel | Talk 09:16, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure? The image was not showing up for me either but I purged the commons and it fixed it as with the problem discussed above and elsewhere. What exactly is different between your problem and the one already discussed Nil Einne 09:22, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

My apologies: all the others seemed to be talking about the much-reproduced icons in articles, not "normal" images, but I guess that was a distinction without a difference. Yes, this appears to be the same problem. - Jmabel | Talk 09:37, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I had the problem with the FA image yesterday too, see #Loads of images (particularly flag images) not showing. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anything we can do other then purge and wait Nil Einne 11:45, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Just wait?

While not confirmed, from what I can tell the general idea appears to be that the problem is likely related to the high job que as a result of the template standardisation (which of course meant that everything else got back logged as well). I believe the template standardisation has finished so now we just have to wait a while for the job que to reach more resonable levels. For more info check out Wikipedia talk:Template standardisation/Archive 2#Overloading and Wikipedia talk:Template standardisation/Archive 2#Disappearing (default) images. I'm not 100% sure why purging commons helps but I guess purging commons must result in wikipedia getting a new version with high priority Nil Einne 09:22, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks like earlier speculation may be incorrect. The problem is occuring within the commons as wellCommons:Commons:Village pump#Image Problems and may have been originally related to a disk array running out of space. But this was fixed and the problem still seems to be occuring. The commons has a site notice about it, I suggest we do to Nil Einne 12:20, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Userpage Problems Cont.

Ok, I contacted another user to see if he could fix it and he said it looked fine. For some reason, the text on the left of my userpage is overlapping the right side, but it only does it on FireFox and not IE. I just downloaded FireFox yesterday so I haven't tweaked any options yet. Is there something I'm missing? Tyler Warren 22:50, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

You had a nowrap style defined for the text, meaning it didn't break across lines when it ran out out of space. It is likely that IE doesn't recognise the style type, so it didn't enforce any nowrap. Should work now [1]. matt br 08:13, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

"Automatically add .. protection templates"

Whatever happened to the bot that was supposed to start adding protection templates to protected articles with no protection templates? Did it fail its BOTREQ or did something else happen to it? I can't seem to find it in the BOTREQ archives.--69.118.235.97 11:22, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't follow BOTREQ, but for what it's worth, User:MadmanBot did this for a while in early August. —Cryptic 14:58, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_12#Automatically_adding_protection_templates, nothing much ever came of it though.--172.165.0.100 00:09, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Image:Locator Dot.svg

Can someone take look at why this image is not showing up? It initially looks odd, so I had reverted it. It is currently being used by many articles. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 03:34, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

It's showing up now. I guess it just needed to be purged. - BANG ! 03:38, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Show/Hide

Hi. For the userpage I am trying to create, I would like to hide the bit at the top that says User:The dark lord trombonator. Does anybody know how to do this? In essence, I am trying to create a personalised version of the Main Page, and would prefer instructions rather than someone doing it for me. Cheers, THE DARK LORD TROMBONATOR 09:05, 9 September 2007 (UTC).

Check my userpage. The div class is "title override" I think... -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 09:08, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

The Main Page has special coding to remove the title, which you couldn't apply to your userpage. There's a piece of CSS code you can use to overwrite the title, though, which has a similar effect; see {{User:One/Title}}. (It's not perfect, though, so don't use it in articles!) Anonymous Dissident's userpage coding looks to me like a substed version of that user template. --ais523 14:03, 10 September 2007 (U T C)

Awesome, thanks for your combined efforts. Now, is there a way to shift the contents of the page up the X-amount of pixels I have blanked? THE DARK LORD TROMBONATOR 05:40, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

What happened here?

Screenshot, Firefox 2.0. See the strange text in the right corner.

article: Cory Maye. After logging in it was fine, but without being logged in, it looks like on the screenshot.

Taka 22:35, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Try purging your cache while logged out. The message only displays for anonymous users. --MZMcBride 22:39, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Hey, I don't have a problem with it, but non-logged in users might have. Would it help to redirect ~~non-logged in users~~ anonymous visitors to the purging page? Taka 22:43, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

No, you can't purge a user's browser cache remotely without hacking into their computer, as far as I know. The screenshot will only happen to anons who visited the site with the wrong timing, though, although it will persist until the next time their browser cache is bypassed. MZMcBride: I think you meant to link this page (about bypassing browser caches) rather than the one you linked (about bypassing server caches). (Bypassing the server cache whenever an anon visited is 'possible' in that it's theoretically possible to code, but it would cause the servers to collapse almost instantly, so it would never be done in practice.) --ais523 13:59, 10 September 2007 (U T C)

My mistake, you're absolutely right about WP:PURGE vs. WP:CACHE. For some reason, I thought it was all contained in one page. --MZMcBride 02:36, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Table viewed differently in IE and Firefox

Can anyone please help me with making this table look identital in Internet Explorer and Firefox? I spent a whole day to match the column widths with the positions of roller supports in Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7, but the table does not look the same in Firefox. Is there any way I can fix it?


	Joint	A		Joint	B		Joint	C		Joint	D
Distrib. factors	0	1		0.27	0.73		0.67	0.33		1	0
Fixed-end moments		14.7		-6.3	8.33		-8.33	12.5		-12.5
Step 1		-14.7	→	-7.35
Step 2				1.44	3.88	→	1.94
Step 3					-2.05	←	-4.09	-2.02	→	-1.01
Step 4				0.55	1.50	→	0.75
Step 5					-0.25	←	-0.50	-0.25	→	-0.13
Step 6				0.07	0.18	→	0.09
Step 7					-0.03	←	-0.06	-0.03	→	-0.02
Step 8				0.01	0.02
Sum of moments		0		-11.58	11.58		-10.20	10.20		-13.66

--Sjhan81 06:11, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Can you perchance provide an img of how the table is rendered in IE? I don't have IE on this machine, so it's rather difficult for me to test. In any case, the table looks fine for me in Firefox, but I'm not sure it's exactly as you want it. AmiDaniel (talk) 18:21, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I've got IE 7 and it looks fine. I don't know how it's supposed to look though--Pheonix15 23:13, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I've uploaded two screenshots here. They look different and I want to match the columns with the positions of the roller supports as viewed in IE. Will it be possible? --Sjhan81 02:59, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Make your Firefox window wider so the left column is wide enough for the text to fit on one line. (Or of course force the column wider, the way you force the other columns. :) --brion 05:47, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh the left column wasn't the real problem. (I should've uploaded another screenshot.) Anyway, thanks for your comment. --Sjhan81 09:26, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

It's worth pointing out that Wikipedia content (as different from it's rendered display) is just that; content. This is one of the fundamental reasons why it is written in it's own markup. By trying to optimise for any particular browser you miss the point, which is separation of content and delivery.

Just use the table markup to create the table, don't spend ages trying to optimise it for [insert browser name here] because fundamentally that is not our job. And if you think that by browser I mean 'IE or Firefox' you also miss a whole range of other devices that can access Wikipedia content. EasyTarget 10:08, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes I agree with your point, however it was just that I wanted to know why the table looked different and wanted to make the table look identical and better in both browsers. IE and Firefox are the most widely used browsers, I understand. If there isn't any way to make the table look identical (using wiki markup or anything), I won't mind anymore. Thanks anyway.--Sjhan81 10:52, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

You are of course right that other things being equal, the rendered page should look the same on both IE and FFox. This is really an issue with the wiki software/skin/CSS (eg [common.js]) itself, rather than something to do with how the markup is written. I poked around looking for the correct page where to post such bugs/questions and it's.. this page. So I'll get my coat now and leave it up to the experts. :-) EasyTarget 13:12, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Dear friend, 2 steps required. first change the image size to 700px. Second, add style padding:1px; to all cells except for first column. I've tested using the preview. It looks similar in IE as well as FF. I found that size of em is rendered more in FF. I assume IE is ignoring or calculating it differently. The table cells are inheriting the style for padding:0.2em from stylesheet. FF calculates it to 2.33px. I've not edited the table, but you can review it. thanks Jitendra

Thank you very much! That's exactly what I've been trying to do. I should learn more html and css things from now on :) --Sjhan81 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sjhan81 (talk • contribs) 01:04, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

The "New Messages" Bar Question

Is there a way to get that "New Messages" bar back? Because my talk page is archived by me and it won't appear!! -- PNiddy Go! 00:57, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Because you moved your User talk page to a subpage, it created a redirect at User talk:PNiddy. I've remove the redirect. When another user adds something to your talk page. It should bring up the new messages bar. Cheers. --MZMcBride 01:00, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

JavaScript PNG transparency fix

I've adapted pngfix.js to work (hopefully) with Wikipedia. If this works, it will fix PNG transparency issues for Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6 users. If you have a working copy of IE 5.5 or 6 and are willing to test this, please add the following code to your Special:Mypage/monobook.js:

/*

Correctly handle PNG transparency in Win IE 5.5 & 6.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola. Updated 18-Jan-2006.

Tweaked 8 Sep 2007 (UTC) by Remember_the_dot so that it works properly inside Common.js

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/pnginfo.htm states "This page contains more information for the curious or those who wish to amend the script for special needs", which I take as permission to modify or adapt this script freely. I release my changes into the public domain.

*/

function PngFix()
{
   if (document.body.filters)
   {
       for(var i=0; i<document.images.length; i++)
       {
          var img = document.images[i]
          var imgName = img.src.toUpperCase()
          if (imgName.substring(imgName.length-3, imgName.length) == "PNG")
          {
             var imgID = (img.id) ? "id='" + img.id + "' " : ""
             var imgClass = (img.className) ? "class='" + img.className + "' " : ""
             var imgTitle = (img.title) ? "title='" + img.title + "' " : "title='" + img.alt + "' "
             var imgStyle = "display:inline-block; vertical-align:middle;" + img.style.cssText 
             if (img.align == "left") imgStyle = "float:left;" + imgStyle
             if (img.align == "right") imgStyle = "float:right;" + imgStyle
             if (img.parentElement.href) imgStyle = "cursor:hand;" + imgStyle
             var strNewHTML = "<span " + imgID + imgClass + imgTitle
             + " style=\"" + "width:" + img.width + "px; height:" + img.height + "px;" + imgStyle + ";"
             + "filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader"
             + "(src=\'" + img.src + "\', sizingMethod='image');\"></span>" 
             img.outerHTML = strNewHTML
             i = i-1
          }
       }
   }
}

if (navigator.appName == "Microsoft Internet Explorer")
{
    var version = parseFloat(navigator.appVersion.split("MSIE")[1])
    if (version <= 6 && version >= 5.5)
    {
        window.attachEvent("onload", PngFix)
    }
}

Then visit a page such as Special:Upload and see if it displays transparency correctly. If this works, it would greatly improve the user experience for IE 5.5 and 6 users and reduce the need to keep both specially tweaked PNG images in addition to the original SVGs. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:05, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Remember to bypass your cache after adding the script. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:16, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I just updated the script to fix a bug. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 02:40, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

And here I was, just trying to put that script into my monobook.js, not working of course. But this does the trick quite nicely! This should go in common.js! (Only downside is, can't right-click and save inline PNG images anymore.) — Edokter • Talk • 21:10, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

That's no biggie - trying to save an image by right-clicking just gives you the thumbnail, which isn't very useful. IE6 users are of course encouraged to update to IE7 which resolves this issue and many others.

I'll go put in an edit request for common.js, now that someone other than me has confirmed that the script works. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:10, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Of course, any more "it works!" !votes would still be appreciated. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:14, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, as soon as M$ releases IE7 for Windows 2000, I will upgrade... — Edokter • Talk • 23:27, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

psst... —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:45, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Well then I wouldn't need this script, would I! — Edokter • Talk • 12:11, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I see the script has made it to common.js. Congratulations! Now IE6 user can view PNG as they are meant to be seen. I've removed the script from my monobook.js, purged, and still see PNGs properly. One small change was made I see (one I was going to propose anyway); sizingMethod has been changed from 'scale' to 'image'. A logical step, as Mediawiki already does all the scaling (and icidentally fixed the border bug just below). I've made the same change to the script above, for those users on wiki's that do not have this script incorporated in their common.js yet (like nl.). Does this happen automatically, or is each wiki responsible for their own common.js? — Edokter • Talk • 12:11, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Common.js is local per project; if a change is going to happen on all projects, it needs a dev to set it directly in the software (which affects all MediaWiki wikis the next time they upgrade, even the non-Wikimedia ones), or in the configuration files (which only affects Wikimedia wikis). --ais523 13:56, 10 September 2007 (U T C)

Watchlists down?

My watchlist says that "Due to high database server lag, changes newer than 1268 seconds might not be shown in this list.". Ow! That's about 20 minutes.. Technical problems? Secretlondon 12:34, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I can reproduce, 1769 secs here. Navou ^banter 12:43, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

My last entry 12:04 UTC (still). The only change is the lag figure, which keeps going up. Secretlondon 12:57, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks like at 12.15 UTC the wiki went down. I'm guessing whatever runs the watchlists isn't up again. Secretlondon 13:03, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Nothing useful to contribute, other than the fact that it's still down at over an hour of "database lag". (ESkog)^(Talk) 13:17, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Watchlists are overrated anyway, and an undisputed source of stress. I predict a drop in edit and social conflicts for the duration. ←Ben^B4 13:20, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Heh... we can hope. BTW, it's now at 4654 seconds (pushing 78 minutes). --Ali'i 13:32, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Well I'm finding I can't check all the bureaucratic pages I need to.. Secretlondon 13:34, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Is there any way the lag warning can give a figure in minutes rather than seconds? 5484 seconds is effectively meaningless (reminds me of the roadworks warnings that say "delays for 104 weeks, instead of the 2 years they really mean!). DuncanHill 13:45, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

How many more tasks should the servers perform due to the servers being overloaded? (SEWilco 17:52, 7 September 2007 (UTC))

Would it be more work to give an output in minutes rather than seconds?DuncanHill 12:04, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

When I clicked the blue triangle in front of an item to see additional changes, I was redirected to an empty page called "RCI0". For the next item it was "RCI1", then "RCI2", "RCM2", "RCL2" etc. I use FF 2.0.0.6. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 15:36, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I've never heard of blue triangles, so you might want to take that up with one of the seven (!) extensions you have in your monobook.js. ←Ben^B4 15:39, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

No, it's a setting in your preferences, section "recent changes", tick "enhanced recent changes". Lupo 15:50, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I get blue triangles in recent changes, but not my watchlist. ←Ben^B4 16:13, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

They work now. And yes, there appear to have been technical problems. WP was inaccessible for a few minutes, then in a database lock as the slaves caught up to the master. At a wild guess, one of the servers reset. >Radiant< 16:17, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
- This might be relevant: Wikimedia projects downtime Thu Sept 6, 12:00 UTC; it's at about the time the problems were reported. --ais523 16:25, 6 September 2007 (U T C)

Ad Ben et al: section "watchlist", tick "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes". It's still disfunctional. --Eleassar ^{my talk}

Mine's fine. I'll go check again. --Pupster21 Talk To Me 12:06, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh shoot mine says this. "Below are the last 29 changes, as of 12:06, 10 September 2007." I think something's wrong. --Pupster21 Talk To Me 12:07, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

That sounds right. Ryan Postlethwaite 12:09, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I just realised that the watchlist time is GMT I'm US EDT. Still, I'm lagging one minute at least. --Pupster21 Talk To Me 12:13, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

My Userpage

This is my userpage. I made it in Internet Explorer and it looks beautiful. However, last night, after downloading Firefox just to use TWINKLE, I happened upon my userpage and it looks horrible. Can anyone help fix it so it looks good on Firefox AND Internet Explorer? Free barnstar to whoever fixes it. If you can fix it, please use my Sandbox and post the entire userpage , fixed in my sandbox. my sandbox Tyler Warren 21:03, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Tyler Warren. You should know that Microsoft's Internet Explorer does not render websites correctly. So, when you say "In Internet Explorer it looks beautiful", you're false: For an internet developer is your userpage horrible! - That, what Mozilla Firefox/Safari or eg. Opera you show, that is right. And nothing else. --194.208.72.24 11:00, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I would say that neither of them is always correct. --Kubanczyk 07:20, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Edit count in preferences?

Wait, when did that happen? I just noticed it while checking my Wikinews account... it apparently counts all edits, as it's quite a bit higher than what I'm used to seeing with wannabe kate. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:50, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Goodness, I didn't notice that either. It looks as though it was added four weeks ago by Rob Church (see rev:24758). Cheers. --MZMcBride 01:10, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Note that that count is based upon this editcount field that is stored for each user, incremented each time the user makes an edit, but not decremented when a user's edit is deleted. Therefore, that count includes deleted edits, which contribs-scraping tools don't, and does not include moves, which other tools probably do. That should usually mean that the count shown in your preferences is higher than that reported by scraping tools. AmiDaniel (talk) 04:47, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

That would explain why there's not nearly the lag when opening my preferences as there is when I check wannabe kate. EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:55, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

How very convenient. Let's just hope it doesn't promote editcountitis too much, though it is useful. Now all we need is delete counters for admins (just kidding). :p Nihiltres^(t.l) 16:24, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:ADMINSTATS. --MZMcBride 03:15, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Defaultsorting double-barrelled, non-hyphenated name

Hi, how do I defaultsort Richard Carew Pole? He should sort under C, after the other Carews, but if I try {{DEFAULTSORT:Carew Pole, Richard}} he sorts to the beginning of the Carews. Anyone know how to fix this? DuncanHill 21:39, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, "Carew Pole" is less than "Carew, Richard", which is why it winds up where it does. A dirty hack would be to default sort him as "Carex" or "Carew, Rj". None's particularly perty though :) AmiDaniel (talk) 22:09, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I think I've got it to work now - I did DEFAULTSORT:CarewPole, Richard}}. DuncanHill 22:21, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Timestamp Wrong!!

Once I found some little mistake on the Block log, it says "8:15 12 September 2007". However, it's supposed to be "8:15 11 September 2007". Will you PLEASE fix that problem? -- PNiddy Go! 15:19, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

By chance are you looking at the expiration date in this line?

08:15, 11 September 2007, Wknight94 (Talk | contribs | block) blocked 68.153.118.241 (Talk) (expires 08:15, 12 September 2007, anon. only, account creation blocked) (Vandalism) (Unblock)

That looks quite legit. If you see it somewhere else, can you refer to the exact log line you see? --brion 15:33, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Evolution vandalisers

Is there any way we could have a bot that would automatically revert a massive, multi-account campaign to replace the contents of the Evolution page with the first two chapters of Genesis? Or just prohibit saving when that particular page is replaced with Genesis, or perhaps even better, all the ones in Category:Evolution to prevent overspill by annoyed idiots? Adam Cuerden ^talk 15:17, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe someone could set one of the anti-vandal bots to give special attention to this case of vandalism. Shouldn't be hard. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 15:27, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

PNGfix for all skins?

On projects that do not yet have the pngfix script incorporated in their common.js, I have placed the script in my monobook.js... but that only works when my skin is set to Monobook. To my dismay, I found there is no working equivilant like Special:Mypage/common.js or Special:Mypage/common.css for userspace tweaking that works under all skins. (You can create them, but they are not imported.) Might this be considered as a future upgrade? — Edokter • Talk • 13:46, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

You could go and talk to devs on the existing mediazilla:10183 («Add personal Common.css & Common.js»). Or you could simply create your common.js and start all your skin-specific .js files with importScript('User:Edokter/common.js') ∴ Alex Smotrov 14:04, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I've left a comment. Good to know I'm not the only one. — Edokter • Talk • 14:28, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

User talk:172.206.116.36

User:DerHexer has made two edits to this page. I can see both edits in the edit history, and I can see both edits when I attempt to edit the page myself. But when looking at "Current version", only one of the edits is showing up. Any ideas? Corvus cornix 18:57, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Seems fine for me. Adrian M. H. 20:52, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

How very strange. This is the only page I seem to be having a problem with. Corvus cornix 22:03, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I see both edits. Try to bypass your cache. PrimeHunter 22:15, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I did that already, several times. :) I'm going to shut down my PC and see if that makes a difference. Thanks. Corvus cornix 23:53, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Note: viewing websites on your PC will only get more problematic after you shut it down, unless you also start it back up afterwards. EVula // talk // ☯ // 00:01, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Now, why didn't I think of that? However: I am now on an entirely different computer, and still only see the first edit. I'm using IE7 on both. Corvus cornix 01:44, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried Wikipedia:Purge? Are the computers using the same ISP? Some ISP's make a cached copy which users cannot bypass. PrimeHunter 02:00, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, if Ctrl+F5 doesn't work, you have to purge the page. - BANG ! 02:33, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I can see it now! Happy dance! Corvus cornix 15:25, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Colored vandalism warnings

At User talk:212.219.90.77, and on at least one similar vandalism-dominated talk page I remember, when a user is blocked the message is colored. But when he's unblocked and lower-level vandalism warnings resume, they are also colored, even though the same template used on most pages shows as white. That is probably a bug. Art LaPella 18:21, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid I really don't follow -- can you try to explain the problem again? AmiDaniel (talk) 04:50, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I understand, and it was a result of the (then used) template for being blocked, not having a </div> to close it properly. You can go in and manually place the tag to close it and it fixes the rest of the page, as you'll see was done to the page you mentioned [2]. Here is what it looked like before the closing tag was added, [3]. Hope that helps explain it! (The template has since been fixed, this issue should not happen now). ^Ariel♥Gold 04:53, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Art LaPella 20:31, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

"border" option for image syntax seems to have gone away (or broken)

For example, [[Image:Flag of Japan.svg|22px|border]] → . This is a widely used and incredibly useful feature of MediaWiki syntax - what happened? Andrwsc 07:41, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Looks fine for me. --ST47Talk·Desk 21:28, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

You see a one pixel gray border around the flag? Hmm. It no longer appears when rendered by my browser (IE6, alas) and it did a couple of days ago. Andrwsc 22:28, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Don't know what's wrong then, but the image looks fine to me (IE 7 and Firefox). Valentinian ^{T / C} 22:42, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

This may just be a case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, but MediaWiki:Common.js was just updated to try to resolve some issues regarding rendering images in IE5 and IE6. May be related. --MZMcBride 22:51, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm seeing the changed behaviour with SVG files, not just PNG, and the JavaScript code appears to only apply to PNG files. But the IE6-specific change to Common.js seems more than coincidental... The altered rendering I'm seeing is on every page that uses templates like {{flagicon}}, which are many tens of thousands of transclusions. Is there a way in which we can test to see if your PNG fix is to blame? Andrwsc 23:07, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I noticed one code fragment in the added function is sizingMethod='scale', and I haven't yet mentioned that I'm also seeing some distorted flag icons. For example, [[Image:Flag of Canada.svg|22x20px|border]] →

looks wierd now. The aspect ratio of the full size SVG (2:1) is no longer being respected - I see a 22x16 icon. I've got to think that the "scale" parameter is inappropriately being applied here. Andrwsc 23:20, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Please be patient. I've put in for a change at MediaWiki talk:Common.js#Bugfix. We may end up trying it a couple of different ways to see what works best. In the meantime, it would probably be best if you browsed with Mozilla Firefox. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 00:26, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I don't have that option on this particular PC (company-owned and maintained), but when I'm home from this business trip, I have IE7 and Safari on my home PC and Mac. Thanks for looking into this. Andrwsc 00:31, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

By the way, all SVGs are rendered as PNGs on this wiki; that's why I brought up the recent changes to Common.js. --MZMcBride 00:56, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Try purging your cache and the problem should be solved. --MZMcBride 04:29, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Yep, the span fix worked. Thanks! Andrwsc 06:17, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I ~~briefly~~ still ~~saw~~ see the image without the border too, ~~but that seems to have been fixed with the sizingMethod change from 'scale' to 'image (which I wanted to suggest anyway, as Mediawiki already does all the scaling).~~ Scrap that... at work, it looks OK (IE6/XP), but at home (IE6/W2K) there is no border and the image jumps up/left 1px. Investigating... — Edokter • Talk • 11:51, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

The code's been changing recently; try bypassing your cache to make sure your browser's using the most recent version of it. --ais523 16:33, 10 September 2007 (U T C)

The final code just went into common.js, so all problems should be fixed. Thanks got to Remember the dot. — Edokter • Talk • 08:33, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Login Problem with Microsft Internet Explorer (MSFT IE) - HELP!

Microsft Internet Explorer (MSFT IE) version: 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254

I have a problem. I had not done any editing on Wikipedia for a while. But, when I tried to strart up again, around May, I could not get Wikipedia to open (come up) if I was logged in.

If I deleted my cookie and re-booted, I could go to Wikipedia fine, surf around and make edits on some articles. But, if I logged in, "nope", the progress bar just sits there. It just sits there, says: "Login Successful," but the progress bar is just stuck. If I use "Secure Login" it logs in, is very slow (I am on dial-up), and then logs me out when I go to a new page. It never opens the page, any Wikipedia page. Delete the cookie and re-boot, can go to any page. Login seems to go fine, says that you're logged in, but doesn't open any pages.

So, after a week or so of frustration, I started using a different account. That worked fine until today (2007-08-25). Now it is doing the same thing. Logged in, nothing just a stuck progress bar. Delete cookie and re-boot, view articles.

I tried the things on the help page. But, they don't seem to work either.

I don't have problems with any other site. Just this one. It has to be something that the sever admin's did, made a change in the cookie or something. 90% sure of that. I can connect fine, I can be connected for six, eight, tweleve hours at a time, and surf around to a hundred sites. Of course with dial-up I do avoid sites like U-Tube and the like. I can't believe I am the only one having this issue..???

I think it must have something do with COOKIES? I did a search for "WIKI" on the hard drive and found 26 files (2 *.HTM and 24 *.TXT). I deleted all of them, rebooted, searched, "none", signed on this time it worked, but then when I went to the next page...LOCKUP... So, I searched again:

C:\Temporary Internet Files
- Cookie:don@en.wikipedia.org/

C:\Documents and Settings\Don\Cookies
- don@commons.wikimedia[1].txt
- don@en.wikipedia[1].txt
- don@en.wikipedia[2].txt
- don@en.wikiquote[1].txt
- don@en.wikisource[1].txt
- don@www.mediawiki[2].txt

With just ONE sign in I got SEVEN new files. And notice the "1"'s and "2"'s....this must have something to do with it?? I had to delete them all to get to this page. I have never seen a sight that gives you so many cookies (unless they are ads embeded in a webpage) with just ONE signin. It would also seem that having a "1" and a "2" might cause a conflit?

Is anybody else going to step up to help? I see questions in this forum being answered that don't even belong here, but my problem goes mostly ignored. Thanks

IE 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254
Windows XP - Home Edition - Version 2002 - Service Pack 2
Earthlink Total Access - Dial-Up

What is the deal?

207.69.139.157 00:49, 7 September 2007 (UTC) (WikiDon)

Have you tried logging in from another computer? --MZMcBride 00:55, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I can't help you solve it, but the cookies are normal. If you visited any wp sister sites, you have cookies. Many sites will give you multiple cookies, like google, which usually gives you three or more. Thanks. ~A H 1^(TCU) 00:59, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, it HAS to be something with the way that MSFT IE caches passwords/user names. I downloaded Mozilla Firefox and it is working fine. Of course I have not checked the box "Remember me" on the Wikipedia Sign in (log in) page, or do I say "Remember" to "Do you want Firefox to remember this password?" pop-up either. Choosing "Not Now" instead.

So, if I can login on the same computer, all else being the same, and work fine, it MUST be the way that Passwords and/or Usernames are being cached.

How do I clean out the MSFT IE and/or Wikipedia caching of Usernames and/or Passwords, besides clicking "Delete Files" and "Delete Cookies"? They must be hidden in there somewhere.

Please give suggestions. 207.69.139.149 15:33, 11 September 2007 (UTC) (WikiDon)

auto-filled formulas?

i speculated on this in talk on the barry bonds page, and it could apply to many, many articles that have statistical data on them that is frequently updated. is there any functionality in wikipedia for 'linking' data from one part of an article to another? for example, on the barry bonds page, the data for a dozen or more different statistics change every few days - he gets a walk, hits an RBI, etc - and since those data appear in more than one place/format in the article, some baseball stats wonk has to go in and update the numbers in a dozen different places. wikipedia lives in/on a database - this seems like something that a database should be able to handle automagically, that is, maintain one table of data - hidden at the top of the article - then use variable substitution in the article to represent the data, so they only have to be updated in the one place. if there is no such functionality....why not! it really seems so basic - to me at least - to the whole point of using databases. i'd think it wouldn't be all *that* difficult to implement, but then my opinion and $3.50 buys you a vente latte. or something like that....Anastrophe 16:54, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

It's possible for information on one page to be automatically copied into other pages, even into multiple places in some other page (see Wikipedia:Transclusion). However, this is normally discouraged in the case of articles, because it makes updating them more difficult for people who don't know what's going on. --ais523 16:57, 12 September 2007 (U T C)

thanks - but that's not what i was suggesting. i was talking about only data within the same page/article - in different places within that same page/article. data carried between different articles would indeed present a problem. however, data that appears in multiple places within the same article shouldn't have that problem, if variable substitition is clear, a la

hidden table at the top of page lists "RBI-VAL=447"

later on within the article, it has "bonds hit RBI {{$RBI-VAL}} on xyz date", which would be

replaced with "bond hit RBI 447 on xyz date" when the article is displayed.

and in a chart of his stats, in the RBI column it would simply list that variable again.

something along those lines. Anastrophe 17:30, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I think there is code written for this or something very like it; see mw:Extension:VariablesExtension. However, that extension isn't enabled on Wikimedia wikis (including Wikipedia) at the moment. --ais523 17:40, 12 September 2007 (U T C)

cool! thanks for finding that. hopefully it'll be ported some day. Anastrophe 19:30, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't seem likely. —Cryptic 19:59, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

About Sinter & Pellet

Dear Sir,

I would like to ask a question that What is the difference between Sintering & Pelletizing (Of Iron Ore Fines)?

Could you help me in this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.168.70.129 (talk) 04:01, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I am copying your question to the Science reference desk which is a better place for this type of question. DuncanHill 12:45, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Cite.php improvement request

Background:

The basic problem is that the inline citations that work so nicely for auto-numbered footnoted citation lists, make the article source very hard to read. Some workarounds that have been tried are to put the citations all together in their own section, between <includeonly> or tags. There are two problems with this type of solution:

The reference numbers are no longer guaranteed to be in numerical order (not so serious)
One backlink in each reference is now broken.

Apparently some people have started hacking at cite.php, but no definitive solution has yet arrived.

Please comment! --Slashme 15:36, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I think this is the "simple solution" to many of the problems discussed in the past. I have a system in place at M200G Volantor, that's an example of the basic idea. The only problem with this system is that there is a non-functional backlink on each reference. Otherwise this gives editors the option to combine references, or to continue to use them in the body of an article. This would not mandate either style and I firmly believe that neither system is necessarily more appropriate in any given article than another. Many editors would like to have this option and by finding a way to hide that non-functional backlink, the system would be more friendly to content contributors.--JayHenry 15:55, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Of the links provided, I find the first to be unhelpful as it is mainly just people complaining about the current system without a coherent proposal and the second unhelpful as it contains no proposal at all. The third is most useful as it contains an actual proposal; I note that the first point ("named references can be used before being defined") seems to have been realized since then. The second point, if implemented, would easily take care of Slashme's complaint.

Also, some way to see the text of a named reference when editing a section would be helpful; otherwise, on pages that use this new feature it will be a pain to find just what a reference is referencing. Anomie 18:19, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Slashme was just acknowledging that this problem has a history of discussion. Actually, seeing the text of a named reference is already a problem in articles. In an article that uses a reference 10 times, it's very difficult to find the original use. It would actually be easier to find named references with this system, than the system currently in use (but again, using this proposed system would be completely optional). --JayHenry 18:34, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Talking off the top of my head after looking at the cite.php code here, it seems to me that the <Ref name=whatever>...</Ref> tag pair could easily be extended to provide a mechanism allowing an editor to flag an instance where link/backlink generation by cite.php should be suppressed in the expansion of that tag pair.

It looks to me as if this could be implemented most easily in cite.php if the extension were to define alternate name for the "name" parameter (e.g. "namenl=") which would be used thusly: <Ref namnl=whatever>text to be later expanded</Ref>. In this example, using namenl instead of name would cause cite.php to generate neither a forward link at the point in the article text where this is encountered nor backlink to that point. It would probably be best (and would simplify implementation) to treat <Ref namenl=whatever/> as a synonym for <Ref name=whatever/> — that is, only suppress link/backlink generation on the <Ref namenl=whatever>...</Ref> pair which supplies the string to be expanded. -- Boracay Bill 04:17, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Probably more intuitive, a new tag name something like Refhide could be defined and used like <Refhide>...</Refhide>. Processing that, cite.php could set a variable like $mInRefhide TRUE inside that block and when processing <Ref name=whatever>...</Ref> occurrences while $mInRefhide is TRUE, cite.php could (1) not generate a link and (2) not stack backlink information. -- Boracay Bill 06:29, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I see this is "Idea Whose Time Has Come": See m:Talk:Cite/Cite.php#Forward_references_are_working. Maybe we should take further discussion to the cite.php discussion page? --Slashme 09:03, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

My knowledge is also fairly limited, but I think it seems fairly simple to implement as well. I'm not seeing any reason to object to this, right? --JayHenry 02:45, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I see this was raised at Meta -- I also copied the request onto mediawiki.org as I think this is where active discussion happens on the template. --JayHenry 00:59, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Userboxes/New_Userboxes not displaying properly

I just made my first userbox (yay,me!), I brought it here to share and ask for comment...and nothing at the bottom of this page is showing properly. It's just a bunch of broken templates and such. I tried to fix it, but it's not cooperating...it did show properly when I previews just the "September 13th" section, but it doesn't work when I try the whole page. Can someone please go over and help with it? NOTE: I mistakenly posteded this at WP:AN, and another user is also having issues with this. --UsaSatsui 02:14, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Fixed; it was due to Template limits. I archived July 2007 to fix the issue. Cheers. --MZMcBride 02:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh, awesome. Thanks!--UsaSatsui 02:47, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Undo

All of a sudden I'm getting edit conflicts when I attempt to undo an edit when another editor reverts the edit. This didn't used to happen, it's just started occurring in the last few minutes. Corvus cornix 21:58, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Hm. Now it seems to have stopped doing that. Corvus cornix 22:03, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm having a minor problem, which could be fixed in a tick.

The code below im my template:

{{#ifeq:{{{extended|}}}|yes| • | }}

Notice the two spaces either side of the •, well the spaces don't appear on the template. Any way of fixing this. SpecialWindler talk (currently offline) 21:08, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Replace them with  . EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:10, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Or   . --MZMcBride 22:22, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Infobox Settlement's titile appearing smaller without reason

{{Infobox Settlement}} is having its "official name" field (the one that is at the top of the infobox) suddenly appearing much smaller than normal. There doesn't appear to be any changes that would cause this with in the last few hours. Does anyone have a clue why this is happening? Infobox Settlement is transcluded on 14,607 pages, so fixing this is of high importance. —MJCdetroit 03:24, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be OK now. Whatever it was must have been fixed. Adrian M. H. 10:14, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Web Hosting Service

What web hosting service does WP use? Or does WikiMedia manage its own servers? Smaug 20:24, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia manages their own servers. See Wikimedia servers. — Edokter • Talk • 22:01, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

There has got to be about 200 of them, see here. Prodego ^talk 22:25, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Template:Geolinks-US-streetscale

Is everybody seeing a red box instead of an image when Template:Geolinks-US-streetscale is transcluded? Corvus cornix 22:51, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Looks like Commons:Image:Erioll world.svg needed to have its cache purged. It seems to be working fine now. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:39, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Ten things you didnt know about wikipedia etc.

Hi, if this is not the right place to discuss these, could someone point me in the right direction. For those who spend their entire time logged into Wikipedia, and thus wont have seen these; when you view Wikipedia anonymously, two sets of links appear at the top of the page. The first, at the very top right is a subtle link to the Wikimedia donations page, which is understandable; The second is a list of Wikipedia Essays and Help Pages and it appears at the top of the article space on the left. I would like to propose the removal of these left-hand links from Wikipedia:

They are scruffy, aligned to a random position at the top of the title bar, in a smaller, slanted font which is hard to read.
They are irritating, just like Google adverts, but not even targeted, and also repetitious.
They are inconsistent, The two essays in the list are targeted at semi-wikiholics, whilst the four help pages are targeted at new users.
They are hacked in, added by Javascript in an absolutely positioned div, which unsurprisingly makes the occasional mistakes, resulting in a garbled mess.

If the consensus is that Wikipedia is improved by these links, could they please be rendered tidily and legibly, targeted at a specific audience, and dismissable. Also, a few more than seven links would make it seem as though there was a point to this exercise; just because we have the technical ability to do something like this, does not make it a good idea. Conrad.Irwin —Preceding unsigned comment added by Conrad.Irwin (talk • contribs) 19:00, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks as though there was discussion a couple of days ago about merging the donation messages with the "tips" (see here). Hopefully that proposal goes through.... It may be a good idea to talk to Mets501 (talk · contribs) or leave a note on MediaWiki talk:Common.js. --MZMcBride 19:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Preferences - Math

What does the "Math" bit in preferences actually do? DuncanHill 15:30, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It changes how it renders the LaTeX equations. Try changing it and viewing this:

This^{changes}\,depending_{on}\,{\frac {your}{settings}}-\tau ry\,it.

x42bn6 Talk Mess 15:59, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Just one more thing.... what's LaTeX? DuncanHill 16:02, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

LaTeX. It's a way of typing up documents, similar to HTML, but has nice little functions to type up mathematical equations, amongst others (bibliography, tables, nice fonts, etc.). x42bn6 Talk Mess 16:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you again :) DuncanHill 20:15, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist?

I'm currently unable to collapse my watchlist by closing any blue arrows. When I click on them to expand the list of edits, the arrows just disappear. Never saw this happen before, and I've purged various caches, but the problem continues. It kind of defeats the purpose of the collapsed list when the rest of the arrows flow off my screen the first time I click on the arrow for one article. Is this a new watchlist "feature"? Dekimasu よ! 13:19, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

What are these blue arrows of which you speak? DuncanHill 13:25, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Help:Enhanced recent changes. FWIW, when I turned that preference on temporarily it seems to work fine for me (Firefox 2.0.0.6). You say the arrows just disappear; if you click where the arrow should be, does it still collapse? Anomie 13:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have been more specific in my description, but I was just trying to jot down my problem while working on other pages. It doesn't collapse at all; there's just simply nothing to click anymore. Thanks for telling me it's not a feature change... I wonder what made it stop functioning on my IE. Dekimasu よ! 13:39, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to work for me (Safari on WXP), the arrows don't appear at all. DuncanHill 13:52, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Redirect change?

I typed in 'poetic form' into the search box and was surprised to land in a section rather than the top of the page. Can we redirect to a specific section of an article now? This is the URI I got to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetic_form#Poetic_form

--Ancheta Wis 10:47, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes. See this post. -- Tim Starling 10:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)