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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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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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What links here

Is there any way to alphabetise the list of articles that link to a specific article? Sometimes it looks like an attempt has been made (like so), but then given up halfway through. Would it require a change of my settings, or would specific code need to be written? THe help page states the following, but does not suggest why, or provide a remedy:

When the link tables in the database are rebuilt, the lists are alphabetically ordered. However, adding a link subsequently causes it to be added to the end, and thus these occur in chronological order.

Seems a good idea to alphabetise instead of leave random, has it been suggested before? - mastodon

I would also like having alphabetical order as an alternative, but is very useful to be able to see what links have recently been added to a particular page. If I have to choose, I prefer the chronological list. For most articles, incoming links aren't that numerous and finding a particular one is not a problem despite tha lack of alphabetical order. Tupsharru 06:38, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Watchlist's all messed up

You know how watchlists are supposed to only show the most recent change for each article on the list? Well, now every time an article on my list gets edited, there's an entry on the watchlist page for it. My watchlist is now covered with 50,000 edits (or so it seems =P) to George W. Bush. Is this a bug, a sudden policy change, or what? Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 05:03, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I see the same too. Megapixie 05:07, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I think it has to do with the new "hide bot edits" feature. I sort of like the new version but would definitely like the option to switch; the notices on the admin board are clogging up my watchlist. --Mmx1 05:09, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Looks like a bug to me. I clicked Hide Bot Edits, and it still shows every single page, multiple times.ॐ Priyanath 05:11, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

It's terrible and I hate it. I have an RfC and a contentious talk page on my watchlist; for only 50 on my list there are 125 entries in 3 days! Please I only need to see the most recent change so I can check the history. Please make hiding all but the most recent edit an option again. Thatcher131 05:13, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I can see how this new look would be useful. It might be worth asking a dev to make it an option. Raul654 05:13, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Is it a bug or a new feature? I can see that some people might like it this way, but I don't. If it's a new feature, at the very least there should be an option under Preferences to switch it off. Angr (talk • contribs) 05:15, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Yikes, me too. Anyway, thatcher, this is probably a bug related to the (much-needed) new 'hide own edits' and 'hide bot edits' permanent options. ericg ✈ 05:20, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I would like the option to not show all the edits. I prefer only the most recent. Regards, ßlηguγΣη | Have your say!!! 05:16, 18 April 2006 (UTC).

I saw it too. I think it is annoying, especially when the top ten edits on your watchlist are all to WP:AIV. I see how it can be useful, so perhaps making it an option instead? Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 05:17, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad I'm not the only one! I thought I found a bug in my program when it took two minutes to load the 1000+ edits being displayed in the watchlist. Change it back!!! AmiDaniel (Talk) 05:21, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

For the record, I don't like it either. Can you not test such things in a test environment first before bringing it to live Wikipedia? I thought that's what test.wikipedia.org was for. Please reverse it. —

nath a nrdotcom ^{(T • C • W)} 05:22, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Even having enabled the new option to only keep the recent change, the list of people who have edited it is rather a clutter. I still prefer the classical option, rather than the new variant or the list-all option.ßlηguγΣη | Have your say!!! 05:31, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I also much prefer the old version. While I see how the new version could be helpful, the old watchlist form should be preserved as an option. E WS23 | (Leave me a message!) 05:37, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, me too. :( —Khoikhoi 05:41, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Especially as the edit summary is now only displayed if there is one recent edit. With users who I have previously come across many times, I prefer to simply trust and read their edit summary, rather than have to scan every single one.ßlηguγΣη | Have your say!!! 05:42, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There's now a note to use ERC (doing which causes WP:VandalProof's RCP to malfunction, and not doing which causes its Watchlist to load ridiculously slow), but even using ERC it looks horrible and unuseable. The upside to using a watchlist was that it only showed the most recent edit--I don't need to see every edit, as even just for one day that's thousands of edits, and I don't feel like waiting for that to load. I also use my Watchlist as a sort-of favorites menu, which I can't do now. Please, oh please, change it back. Make this way the optional way, if you're so inclined. AmiDaniel (Talk) 05:46, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I use it as a favorites too. I much prefer the old. This newer version is horrible for articles that get massive amounts of edits such as some of the administrator articles that I keep on my watchlist - not any better for with the enhanced version either. Too hard to read. I seriously hope they change it back. K1Bond007 05:49, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, this change is incredibly unproductive. Please put back in all the features that were removed. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:53, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

The watchlist now contains a notice: "To hide them, disable "Enhanced recent changes" under 'Recent Changes' in your preferences." But I don't even use that option (hence it is already disabled) and I'm still seeing every change. --TheParanoidOne 05:54, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

The notice says "to hide them, disable ERC", which doesn't make sense. At the very least it should say "to summarize older edits, enable ERC". freshgavin ΓΛĿЌ 05:56, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

What I want is to have it exactly the same as it was yesterday. As it is, neither option to "Recent Changes" in Preferences does that. Would someone with the appropriate privileges (developer? bureaucrat?) please revert this change to the code until it is either (a) fixed and (b) discussed here on VPT? Much thanks. MCB 06:02, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

It has to be a developer. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 06:08, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

eeew. Make it stop. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 06:05, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
- Fixed now. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 06:11, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Woa, they seem to have just fixed it. Thank god. AmiDaniel (Talk) 06:11, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks developers. :o) E WS23 | (Leave me a message!) 06:13, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

It seems the change was accidental; Tim Starling changed it back. I would like a toggle in the preferences, since I rather liked the new version. // [admin] Pathoschild (^talk/_map) 06:14, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Apologies on behalf of the developers. Someone accidentally removed the one line in SpecialWatchlist.php that makes watchlists stupid and useless. I've reverted it temporarily until someone makes the necessary user interface changes to go along with it, such as an user-specified entry count limit like on RC, "enhanced" display by default, and an option to display only the most recent change if anyone seriously wants that. -- Tim Starling 06:19, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for leaving the perma-hide options in (and for fixing it). I wouldn't use the new one, but I'd support it as an option. ericg ✈ 06:16, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Dang, that didn't last long. Oh well. --Cyde Weys 06:17, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for restoring the old behavior! MCB 06:20, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I would still want the diff and hist options on the LHS of the screen and lined up, as the output is more structured and easier to comprehend that way -ie the old way. Regards, ßlηguγΣη | Have your say!!! 06:31, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Turn off "Enhance recent changes" under "recent changes" in your preferences. That should do it, I believe. K1Bond007 07:00, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Thankyou.ßlηguγΣη | Have your say!!! 07:44, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

A problem I seem to have now which I didn't have before is that it's now impossible to have more than 500 edits show up in my watchlist. Since I want to catch up with the recent changes to the pages I watch from the past three days, I've got a problem. Help!? —Nightst a llion (?) ^{Seen this already?} 18:22, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

how are my edits broken down?

I ran into a tool a while ago that allowed me to determine what the total # of edits i've made are, what types they were, and i even got a detailed breakdown on how many of each category i had. I'd like to use it again. I wonder, what is this tool? How do i get to it?--Screwball23 ^talk 00:13, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

You were probably using Interiot's Tool. Currently the toolserver is down for some reason, so the stats aren't up to date, but there are tools independent of the toolserver as well. AmiDaniel (Talk) 00:15, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Please see WP:KATE for the original tool and a list of corresponding tools at the bottom. Note that en.wikipedia.org is no longer updating to the toolserver so you may have to use some of the alternatives listed at the bottom of the page; see User talk:Interiot#Toolserver is effectively down for more information. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 00:16, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Yesterday and today I have tried to get the JAR file at Wikipedia:WikiProject edit counters/Flcelloguy's Tool#Quick-start directions, but I haven't even been able to download it. Is this a problem with my security settings, or is the server down? Ardric47 00:53, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... the JAR file was downloading fine when I last checked it a few days ago, but it seems to time out now. Unfortunately, I'm not the right person to ask - perhaps the site we temporarily hosted the file on is down or overloaded for now. I've left a note on the talk page about this; you should check back there for replies so we don't clog up this village pump. :-) The right person to ask would be AySz88: I believe that he's the person responsible for hosting the JAR file. I'll also give him a heads up to the talk page. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 01:32, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry; please try again, the port had to be changed. --AySz88 ^-^ 18:17, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

adding html tag to userpage

trying to add <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE"> to my userpage to make Google drop its cache, which contains my real name and email address in an old version, but am unable to do so - it comes through as text. Does anyone know how/whether I can do this? Thanks - the.crazy.russian τ ç ë 21:39, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

You're better off asking a sysop to remove the offending revisions from the page history, and then wait for Google to refresh its cache next time. <meta> is one of the HTML tags that the Mediawiki parser is hardcoded to ignore and show as HTML, iirc. Kimchi.sg | talk 01:30, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

The appropriate meta tag is automatically inserted by MediaWiki to deleted pages, and only to deleted pages. So the fastest way to remove a Wikipedia page from Google's index is to have it deleted by an admin and then go to [1] and request "removal by meta tags". (I can do both for you if you want.) The process will take up to a week, though it may be faster in some cases. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 06:33, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

If you don't want it searched, TAKE IT OFF THE PUBLIC WEB. --Brion 07:33, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to all. It's been off the web for months. I moved my userpage to a different page, recreated my userpage in just its present form, and had the moved page CSD'ed. Will this help? - the.crazy.russian τ ç ë 17:58, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Don't fix links...

(Moved from Wikipedia talk:Redirect)

Ok, I've been said redirects are cheap and fixing them is a strain on the server. I have created a bot (MiszaBot (talk · contribs)) that can automatically fix single-/double-/triple-/whatever- redirects. It can work in two modes:

Doing a general cleanup of a page like here or here (slow and thorough).
Going through multiple pages, bypassing one (or more) specific redirect(s) (fast).

While I understand that the second behavior is a strain on the servers, I'd like to ask for an expert's opinion on the first type. Thank you, Misza 13 ^{T C} 21:10, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that many redirects are unprintworthy, though. Ardric47 22:10, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps, but many unprintworthy redirects don't really need fixing, especially not by bot. In particular, note what it says in bold just below: Most especially, there should never be a need to replace [[redirect]] with [[direct|redirect]]. In fact, I'm almost tempted to remove the reference to Category:Unprintworthy redirects from that paragraph entirely, since it is at best misleading. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 06:24, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Short duration for cookies

Is there any reason the authentication cookies only last a month? If I remember correctly the maximum time for cookies is a year, and it seems a little silly to cut them that short. --Kickstart70-T-C 15:35, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Remember me is a great feature, but it does have security implications. — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 16:37, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Really, those security implications are extremely overstated then. If the insecurity of being logged in was an issue for a year-long cookie, then the same issue exists for a month-long cookie and the users re-logging in whenever it expires. --Kickstart70-T-C 19:36, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

You might try telling that to the developers. — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 00:48, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

A month sounds fine to me. I usually end up clearing all my cookies anyway in that long a period. If you'd like, you can set the expiration date far in the future using a cookie editor like Firefox's Addneditcookies extension. Superm401 - Talk 18:14, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Hey, Superm401, if you find that you're getting a lot of extra junk cookies added on, you may be interested in the CookieButton. — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 19:39, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Special Pages

Does anyone who has the ability to edit them actually read the Wikipedia talk:Special: pages? Ardric47 04:50, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, per say, you can't edit a special page. There are, however, associated system messages (MediaWiki:) that get displayed on such pages. You'll probably find a more receptive audience there. If you want something about the special page changed, it's probably a technical thing, go to Bugzilla for that. I'd say... well, I won't say no, but I don't read them. — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 16:39, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Should I go to Bugzilla even if it's not really a bug? The "problems" that I've been seeing are inconsistencies in the names of the pages. For example, if I clicked on "Long pages" in the list of special pages, I couldn't link to it by putting brackets around the title that shows up, Special:Long pages (don't be fooled by the blue link), because the real name is Special:Longpages. Ardric47 22:06, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I can see two bug reports from this behavior: 1) don't make non-existant special pages linked blue and 2) a feature request to allow the specification of aliases/redirects to special pages (something I was unable to find on Bugzilla). — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 00:46, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Watchlist too short

The default setting for the Watchlist now only displays the changes in the last 12 hours. Can the default be changed back to the changes in the last 3 days? Also, when I try to view the changes to all the pages in my Watchlist, it only displays the changes in the last 28 days. ⇒ JarlaxleArtemis 05:03, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Watchlist behavior changes automatically when your watchlist grows beyond a certain size. I don't know for certain why this is, but if I had to guess, it might be to limit the impact on the servers of querying very large lists. Dragons flight 05:37, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Correct; there's a little check that happens in the watchlist code to cap the limit for performance.

Might this be the reason for my problems? I can currently only see the last 500 recent changes to the articles I watch, but I'd need more and can't figure out how to change that. ARGH. —Nightst a llion (?) ^{Seen this already?} 19:24, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Search finds deleted article

The article on shadowwar was deleted on March 26th. A copy of it can be found here. When I search for (say) "In the land of shadowwar" (with or without the double quotes), the deleted article shows up in the search results as a blue link! Is this the right place to report such inconsistencies? If not, where should I go? Cheers, Chris Chittleborough 00:58, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this is the right place. It happened because the search index hasn't been updated yet. Just wait for it to be updated. --cesarb 02:40, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for answering my question here and at the top of the page. (Weeks? Sigh.) Sorry to bother you, Chris Chittleborough 05:33, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

These questions are entirely self-inflicted by MediaWiki onto itself. The Special page with search results does not display the date/time of the last refresh on the search index consulted. MaxEnt 22:18, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Highlighted links

I'm getting fed up with the inability of 'experts' on here to provide an answer as to how to switch off and on the highlighted links on a page. It is poor design to default to highlighting links as they are 99% irrelevant to the article in question. If this isn't already available then somebody should have it done by the end of the week.

Thanks for volunteering to improve the Wikimedia software. However, this is the wrong forum to submit patches; they should all go to http://bugs.wikimedia.org/. Thanks for your interest and constructive feedback, though! dewet|™ 16:31, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

"Highlighted links"? I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that terminology. æle ✆ 2006-04-13t20:13z

I don't know how those sarcastic comments (?) are supposed to help, but in "my preferences", go to the "Misc" tab and there should be a drop-down menu for "Underline links:". Ardric47 00:50, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Frankly, I had no idea what the original commenter what referring to either. Also, by default links are not underlined, so I have a feeling this is not what he was talking about. ~MDD 46 96 00:53, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

They were for me... Ardric47 01:09, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Ah, the default is "Browser default". In Firefox and IE6, with the Monobook skin, this renders as not underlined. You created your account quite some time ago, so something probably changed. ~MDD 46 96 01:31, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Hello, I too feel the underlined links are kind of a pain. I'm running Firefox 1.5.0.2, and I have unchecked the 'underline links' box. Unfortunately, the links in Wikipedia, and no other sites, are underlined. I did try clearing cache and bypassing cache. Any suggestions are appreciated! --AnthonyA7 08:42, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, by the way, the box 'Allow pages to choose their own colors' is checked, because otherwise I wouldn't get nice backround graphics and such. --AnthonyA7 08:44, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

css: Font size for references

m:cite.php emits the references on the Mediawiki reserved tag <references/>. I've seen the html produced for this is <ol class="references">.

On a lot of articles, editors put the <references/> inside a <div style="font-size:85%"> (or 90%) which causes me having trouble reading that small font. But it seems like I'm a negligible old man and thus fail to convince the majority of youngsters with perfect sight to use a larger font for the references :-(.

Luckily, I can set a larger font in my own monobook.css. I have specified .references { font-size:111%; } there (to compensate for 90%).

Instead of specifying in each and every article <div style="font-size:85%"> before the <references/>, couldn't we agree to set that in Mediawiki:common.css or at least in Mediawiki:monobook.css as .references { font-size:85%; }?

This would also make it easier for me to set a larger font for myself by overriding that setting in my monobook.css.

As a side note, someone even created Template:Footnotes... (mentioned in Wikipedia:Footnotes).

Thanks for any comments and tips. I hope this is the right place to ask. --Ligulem 17:49, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Start with a font size where you can read small without effort. No joke, I got my glasses this year, and just spent some hours with rewriting a colour scheme I've used for more than a decade, because I couldn't read it anymore. With a W2K box you've somewhere the option to change all fonts to 150%. It has some minor side effects, you'll have to resize many folders, but otherwise it works. -- Omniplex 12:25, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree completely with Ligulem. Omniplex, I think you're missing the point about readability; this 'wrap references in a div' stuff is ridiculous. There's no reason to have hundreds of div style tags scattered around the wikipedia when it could be changed once in monobook.css; once that's done, we can AWB the divs out. ericg ✈ 19:01, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. — ceejayoz ^talk 20:48, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Discussion continued at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#proposed change to css (.references) --Francis Schonken 12:04, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Archiving

Does anyone know how to archive stuff? My talk page is getting pretty long! Joziboy 19 April 2006, 23:25 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page. --Dhartung | Talk 23:37, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Site Javascript

The file http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=-&action=raw&smaxage=0&gen=js has javascript that transforms the Article tab for the Main Page to say "main page". It should really be changed to "Main Page", as all the other tabs are capitalised with the lower-casing done by CSS. This causes the Main Page to look horrible and inconsistant in browsers that don't support text-transform: lowercase; (or for anyone browsing with CSS off). — Ian Moody ^(talk) 23:23, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Way to find out the longest protections outstanding?

Is there a way to find out what pages have been protected for the longest amount of time running, similar to the was UuU was found out the be the earliest edited page? I know some pages are protected forever, but some other ones get protected and then forgotten about for ages, see for example Tom Swift III which was protected for about 9 months (Give or take...). Thanx. 68.39.174.238 21:58, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Deletion of redirect to make way for move

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post but here goes. I've been doing lots of renaming recently after putting through two naming conventions (companies and TV shows). One thing that I regularly run into is deleting a redirect to make way for the main article. Sometimes the redirect has a useful edit history that can only be preserved by moving it to another name, deleting the redirect to the new temporary redirect then moving the existing article to the correct name, then moving the original redirect back - typically to where the correctly named article was. That was confusing so hopefully this will help

Incorrectly named article --> Correctly named article (redirect with useful history).
The redirect has to be deleted along with the useful history to make way for the move
It would be helpful it the Incorrectly named article could be transposed with Incorrectly named article

Example - "HCA Inc." needs to be moved to "Hospital Corporation of America", but there is a useful history at "Hospital Corporation of America". The only way to save "Hospital Corporation of America" is to do multiple holding moves then moving the edit history at "Hospital Corporation of America" to "HCA Inc." which is now a redirect to "Hospital Corporation of America". It would be very helpful if the two articles can be transposed at the time of the move with both edit histories retained and the new destination redirected by the source article rather than a new redirect with no edit history HCA Inc. <--> Hospital Corporation of America

Thanks! --Reflex Reaction (talk)• 21:14, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Thumbnails not appearing

I notice that thumbnails are, all of a sudden, not appearing on many, many pages. See, for instance, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I've seen dozens of these in the last 30 minutes. Can anyone help??

Same problem here 24.224.158.166 20:41, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Use ?action=purge. --Brion 22:44, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Parser functions to test for broken links

I have made a request for this feature at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5653. Please discuss there. Ingoolemo ^talk 18:33, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Thumbnail/Performance problems

Image thumbnails are displaying error messages. This has happened from different machines on different LAN's, so the problem seems to be Wikipedia's. Also, response time has gotten very slow: five minutes to load a page.208.20.251.27 15:29, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I edit conflicted with you to say the same thing--User:Rayc

I think it's away now. Kilo-Lima|^(talk) 17:12, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

No, it's not. The messages look something like this: Error creating thumbnail: convert: unable to open image `/mnt/upload3/wikipedia/en/b/b4/Tjlogo.png': No such file or directory. convert: unable to open file `/mnt/upload3/wikipedia/en/b/b4/Tjlogo.png'. convert: missing an image filename `/mnt/upload3/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b4/Tjlogo.png/150px-Tjlogo.png'. --Rabid Monkeys Eat Grass 18:16, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I've also been encountering this problem, eg << Error creating thumbnail: Error saving to file /mnt/upload3/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Green_Arrow_Up.svg/10px-Green_Arrow_Up.svg.png >> in Template:Time Warner. Problem is, it seems to be happening sporadically. At present, if I access the Template directly it works, but if I view it on a page such as Turner Classic Movies I get the above error instead of a green up arrow! johnwalton ^(talk) 19:56, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

This is a HUGE problem. Thumbnails are not appearing on dozens of pages.

Use ?action=purge. --Brion 22:44, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Images not shown in galleries

Hi

Several users from the LB-Wiki have a problem with the galleries. Some of the horizontal images are not shown when inside a gallery-tag. Apparently, according to rumours on DE-wiki, this has to do with a specific version of Norton Antivirus who reacts to images having a certain size. However, after some testing, some of the images, even after resizing, cropping etc. still wouldn't show. So there might also be a problem with the image itself, maybe depending on the camera ?

Is this problem known ? Thx in advance :-)

Briséis, LB-Wiki

Combined category searches?

Is there a way to find articles that are in two categories? For example, articles that are disease stubs that also have cleanup or wikify tags? Thatcher131 02:09, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if something like this is possible, but if it was implmented, it would solve alot of problems in regards to Wikipedia:Cleanup process/Cleanup sorting proposal. Pepsidrinka 03:09, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

There's a tool called CatScan that can do this (it uses an offline copy of the database, so the results are not strictly current). Please see http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/WikiSense/CategoryIntersect.php. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:26, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Just a little clarification: CatScan uses an "online" copy (normally at most a few hours behind the real database). The problem is that replication on the Toolserver (where CatScan is hosted) has broken down for the English Wikipedia, so the information is now several days old. It's not clear when this will be resolved. —da Pete (ノート) 08:19, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

AFD problems

The last two AFDs I made have not show up on the main AFD page. Can anyone tell me what is going on? Is it some glicth in the bot or something? It usually adds itself to the page. The Republican 01:50, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Which articles? I'll take a look. I haven't seen anything wrong. Thatcher131 02:07, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, Republican, are you talking about AfD or WP:PROD? AfDs do not involve a bot or any automatic process; after adding the AfD tag to the article (with {{subst:afd ...}} and manually creating the actual discussion page with {{subst:afd2 ...}}, you have to add the listing to the AfD daily log manually, following the link in the now-rendered AfD block in the article, and then using {{subst:afd3 ...}} to transclude the AfD discussion into the daily page. To my knowledge, that process has never been automatic. With PROD, on the other hand, all you have to do is add the {{prod|reason}} tag, and an automatic process lists it in a log. However, that process is currently not operating as intended, because of the toolserver outage for enwiki. So PRODs made now will not show up in the log, but will be in Category:Proposed deletion. MCB 02:19, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

delete history

Is there any possible way to delete a page's history? Or at least so that no one else on Wikipedia can see it? Jonathan ^talk File:Canada flag 300.png 03:58, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

The only way to hide a page's history is to delete the entire page, and only users with sysop access can delete pages. ~MDD 46 96 04:02, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, what's sysop? I'm a registered user but not an administrater. Could I sign this page up for deletion somewhere? Jonathan ^talk File:Canada flag 300.png 14:24, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

It is possible to delete only selected parts of the page history. If you have a good reason to have parts of the history deleted (libel, personal information), ask at the administrator's noticeboard or ask any administrator (for example, me). To have a page deleted completely, see Wikipedia:Deletion policy. Kusma (討論) 14:37, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Jonathan ^talk File:Canada flag 300.png 23:47, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Need help merging three articles

I have pretty well finished merging three articles: Nozzles, De Laval nozzle and Flow through nozzles. What I need to know is:

How to merge the three Talk pages? Or is that necessary?
How to merge the three History pages? Or is that necessary?
How to merge the listings in the three "What links here" listings?

Please let me spell it out for me in much detail ... I've only been working in Wikipedia for a few months. - mbeychok 23:09, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

No. The talk pages are helpful in documenting each article individually.
No. They can't usually be merged. In the case that they can, it is usually an admin-only trick. The histories must be non-overlapping for this to be possible.
They can't be merged.
-Splash^talk 23:18, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Splash, thanks for your response but I'm still not clear. Once the merging is complete, can I then "empty" the three current articles by deleting their contents entirely ... and then redirect the three emptied articles to the single new, merged article? Will that not in effect merge the "What links here" listings? - mbeychok 23:57, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

What you'd do is merge any relevant material into the one article, and make the other two into redirects to that article. Explain where the material came from/is going in the edit summaries. Anything which links to those articles will then be automatically redirected (check and fix any double-redirects). The redirects will still show the history of the original articles, so no history is lost, and redirects can still quite happily have talk pages, so there is no merging necessary there. If you want to you can correct the articles listed in "what links here", but that isn't normally done by the merger, ahtough it will probably be gradually fixed by subsequent editors. Grutness...wha? 00:11, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

A full merger is impossible but it's recommended to move the Talk contents from any pages that turn into redirects into the Talk page for the main article, if it's relevant (not always true). That way people editing the merged article know what issues have been brought up before and how they were dealt with. Make a note to the effect so people know the Talk conversations were moved, good to go. --Dhartung | Talk 23:21, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Formula rendering broken?

At Apr 14, 2006, 11:14 AM (GMT-3), it seems that formula rendering in PNG is not working. Can anyone check that? --zanderredux 14:15, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

As of GMT 14:18, it's working fo me. Isopropyl 14:18, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

It's back! Thanks! --zanderredux 14:22, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

There still seems to be a problem on Conservation of angular momentum, lots of parse errors << Failed to parse (Can't write to or create math output directory): >>? Same seems to be happening with a load of other pages, like Angular velocity. Is this due to the downed server? johnwalton ^(talk) 20:05, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Same problem here: Green's_function

Use ?action=purge to clear the cache for that page. (Try it again on the actual page if you're on a redirect.) --Brion 22:25, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Watchlist enhancements

In Special:Preferences, on the Watchlist tab, there are two new options. By selecting Enhanced watchlist, the watchlist will change behaviour, to be more like Recent changes. That means that instead of just seeing the lates edit to each article on the watchlist, the most recent edits to all the articles are shown. In order not to overwhelm editors with thousands of articles on their watchlist, there is one other new configuration on the watchlist tab, Number of edits to show in expanded watchlist, with a default value of 250. If this value is set higher than that, it is recommeded also to check the Enhanced recent changes (JavaScript) option on the tab for Recent changes. -- Wegge 22:09, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Repeated paragraph in a wiki

Say I have a wiki article AAAAA. Article AAAAA includes section aa, section aaa, and section aaaa. For some reason, I want to include section aaa of article AAAAA in article BBBBB as section bbb. Can I do this and maintain the link to aaa? So that if aaa was edited in AAAAA, then the edits would show up in BBBBB? Thanks, Mike --MikeShelton 21:06, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

If for some reason you must do this, you could write the paragraph as a template and include it in both pages. --Brion 21:08, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I think I found my own answer at [[2]]

Image in World War II

There seems to be a problem with one of the images in World War II. If you go down to the section "Aftermath" and look down the images on the right there is one with the caption "Zones of occupation of Germany in 1946" obviously intending to be a map. However it's actually a picture of a (modern) tank. If you follow the link then it goes to an image showing the map I would expect. My technical knowledge has reached its limits - would someone else mind looking at it? DJ Clayworth 15:45, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Searching for a new user name

I'm looking for a new user name. Is there a way to search the special page User list using wildcards so it brings back similar names? It seems to only return exact matches. Thanks. Thatcher131 11:46, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Move/rename

I think the name "move", while technically correct, is not the exact right choice to use. From what I get, the page history is moved to the other page, but it is basically renaming—and would be a simpler concept for new users to grasp, no? Would people be opposed to calling it "rename", or something along those lines? -Mysekurity^[m!] 03:55, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

It's how you think about the main article space. I view the mainspace as a bunch of slots, some are filled with articles, others are empty. Calling it "rename" suggests that it is a collection of articles in space. I think the former is more accurate, because each article title must be unique; there is a finite number of slots. From a spatial viewpoint, we could have any number of distinct articles with the same name. ~MDD 46 96 04:03, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

As I said, I know the former is technically correct, but I think for the lay editor looking at the shiny "move" button, "rename" is a lot more intuitive for new users, no? I guess there are technically a finite number of spaces, but for all practical purposes, there really aren't. It's much like a computer's "rename" function, which requires less explaination than "move". -Mysekurity^[m!] 04:10, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Sig check

Would someone mind taking a look at my sig and letting me know if I can cut out any of the HTML code without changing its appearance or function? Thanks. TIJUANA BRASS^¡Épa!-E@ 02:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

So you won't have to "edit" to see it:

[[User:Tijuana_Brass|TIJUANA BRASS]][[User_talk:Tijuana_Brass|¡Épa!]]-[[Wikipedia:Esperanza|E@]]

-- stillnotelf is invisible 03:13, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I was able to cut it down somewhat, by a little more than 100 characters: Tijuana Brass^¡Épa!-E@. The code is [[User:Tijuana Brass|Tijuana Brass]][[User talk:Tijuana Brass|¡Épa!]]-[[Wikipedia:Esperanza|E@]]. ~MDD 46 96 03:16, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

You can further cut it down by changing Wikipedia:Esperanza to WP:ESP or WP:EA. Good luck! -160.39.139.21 03:58, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks guys, y'all are great. I appreciate it. Tijuana Brass^¡Épa!-E@ 04:16, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Is email permission to use a photo enough?

I want to add another cooling tower photo to Cooling tower. The one already in that article is of a hyperbolic tower, and I want to add a photo of a non-hyperbolic tower (as widely used in heavy industries). I found a photo that I liked on the website of the Marley Company ... one of the leading companies designing and erecting such cooling towers. I emailed their webmaster and asked permission to use the photo in Wikipedia. Here is a copy of the email request I sent him:

Dear Mr. Tevis:

I am working on an article about cooling towers in the online Wikipedia and would very much like to include the small photo of a Marley Class 800, 8 cell mechanical draft tower that is displayed on your website at http://www.marleyct.com/wet/ . If you are not the correct person to grant me permission to use the photo, please let me know to whom I should address my request.

The Wikipedia article in which I would like to use your photo can be seen at http://www.marleyct.com/wet/ .

Thanking you in advance and awaiting your response,

And here is the answer that I received by email:

Hi

We're big fans of Wikipedia. Wikipedia has permission to use any photos found on our public website.

Good luck and let me know if we can be of further assistance.

Sean Tevis

SPX Cooling Technologies

7401 W. 129 Street

Overland Park, KS 66213 USA

(913) 664-7710

Fax: (913) 664-7872

Is that good enough for me to go ahead and use the photo in Cooling tower? If so, when I upload it and have to supply information on the photo and where it came from, exactly what should I say? - mbeychok 00:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it is not enough to get permission to use the image on Wikipedia alone. We would like images to be freely licensed. You can check out Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission for ideas on how to ask for permission. ~MDD 46 96 02:53, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I partially misunderstood your question--when you upload the image, include a summary of what the image is, a link to the web page that you got it from, a note describing the permission to use the image (could even be the actual email response from them), and a license tag. Also, if you receive permission, post it at Wikipedia:Successful requests for permission and send a copy of the permission email to "permissions at wikimedia dot org" where it will be permanently archived. ~MDD 46 96 02:57, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Outage

We had another power failure at our Florida hosting facility a few hours ago. They're blaming the equipment, and it's being replaced.

Hopefully pretty much everything's working correctly by now. Note that the data dumps on download.wikimedia.org are currently offline; if we don't get that server back up soon I'll move them to another machine. --Brion 18:25, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Still getting some Wiki-lag. Martial Law 19:48, 19 April 2006 (UTC) :)

http://download.wikimedia.org/ is back online. I'll start the dump processes up again in a bit; I'm also adding back checksum generation. --Brion 07:14, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Buttons

Sometimes, the radio buttons don't show up. Is this an issue that has been brought up? Will this be worked on?

68.148.165.213 08:36, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Which radio buttons, where?

Brion 18:26, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I've seen this happen on edit pages (like where I'm typing right now). The alt text shows instead of the graphics, so you see "Horizontal line (use sparingly)" as a button to click on. I think it's related to slow graphics elsewhere in the system, but maybe it's part of the revision of the javascript (see several questions back, where I replied). Ctrl-Alt-R refreshes the javascript cache in Firefox, and fixed it for me.

Dhartung | Talk 23:32, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

No, I'm sorry, Dahrtung, that's not where I'm talking about; I'm talking about the history pages.

68.148.165.213 01:49, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Category background

Would it be possible to add an ID to the table that contains the category listing so the background color can be overridden with CSS? Right now it has a white background which looks weird against the light blue used in Monobook for the main article section. —Locke Cole • t • c 22:39, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Using the wiki math generator...

I want to use the wiki math gen to create some equations for work i'm doing. Is it possible to

a) download a gen applet so i dont waste wikimedia image space for non wiki equations; and more importantly

b) get a vector/adjustable resolution image to the equations aren't pixelly in my word processor?

I know the system is based on LaTeX (correct me if i'm wrong here), so do i have to buy a version of LaTeX to make this happen, or is it free and usable? Thanks in advance for any help!

Cheers - LozDunn (at) gmail.com

LaTeX is free software, available on many platforms. It is not only a software to write equation, but also a complete word processor. As LaTeX can generate pdf or postscript files, it is possible through conversions tools like pstoedit to get a vectorized image of the equations, though latex is powerful enough to replace your word processor. -- CyrilB 16:26, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

texvc is the program which convertes latex to images. You may also be interested in meta:Blahtex which is a tex to MathML converter. --Salix alba (talk) 18:27, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

If you're on Windows, I would recommend MiKTeX. Very good package that works like a charm — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 20:25, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Search results

I have created an article on Freezywater which is a place in London Borough of Enfield, but when you type Freezywater into Search, only the London Borough of Enfield appears in the results, you then need to click on this and then select Freezywater within the article. How do I make Freezywater appear as a result? Rogwan 12:55, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Updates to the search index are currently about a week behind. It'll show up after a while. — Saxifrage ✎ 13:03, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

(ec)The search engine is updated off of the database dumps and the dumps are only produced periodically. It might take say, a few days to a week (or more) for the engine to pick it up. However, if you type Freezywater into the search box and press Go, it should pick it up more or less immediately, up to perhaps a few minutes of delay (it has picked it up now for me). I am delighted to learn that such a place exists, btw! -Splash^talk 13:04, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Renaming links after an article is moved

I have moved the article on Country rock to Country rock (music) and made Country rock a disambiguation page (due to the term's use in geology as well). The 400 or so links to the old Country rock page should be revised to link to the new page (Country rock (music)). Is there an automated way to revise all Wiki links to a page? Thanks: Hgilbert 08:17, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

There's a few bots that do that (can't remember who off the top of my head), or you could try AWB. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 08:27, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Ampersand Operator to Show Diff Without Preview

I've spent quite a bit of time searching for this without luck, and then I decided to make it easier on myself and simply ask if such a thing exists. Is there an ampersand operator (i.e. "&action=edit") that will allow me to load a diff while hiding the preview? I was thinking something along the lines of "&showpreview=false" but have had no success with any of my guesses. I believe such an operator would add a serious boost to the speed of my app and could result in a great deal more vandalism being reverted, as I would no longer need to wait for images, etc., to load--simply seeing the change is usually enough to determine whether or not an edit is vandalism. Essentially what I would like to do would be to load a diff exactly as it does when you click "Show Changes" when editing a page (without the editform of course). Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. AmiDaniel (Talk) 05:17, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Also, is there anywhere that these things are listed? I figured out all that I know of them primarily by glancing through html sources, but it would have saved me a lot of time if there was somewhere that all of the ampersand operators were explained. AmiDaniel (Talk) 05:19, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there is one for what you want to do, but I could be wrong. As for where they're listed, I think the only place they can be found is in the PHP source code of MediaWiki. If you can read that even a little it would be a good place to start.

A suggestion to speed loading: when viewing a diff, you could have the app not retrieve any images. If you wanted to get fancy, you could set it up that clicking on a placeholder image causes the app to fetch and display that image so that the user doesn't have to wait for them by default but can choose to see them if they need to check for image vandalism. — Saxifrage ✎ 06:36, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like something we could add, though. Rob Church (talk) 10:34, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I think it was supposed to come with the external API also planned, but that seems to be still under development. — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 20:26, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

hi

i have some doubts in communication

What is modulation and demodulation ? why we go for modulation ? can v transmit signal without modulation if not why ?

Have you tried the reference desk? Isopropyl 04:36, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Search Engine

I notice that everytime I typed in a search, there pops are a list of pages > that closely resemble what I looked for. > > However, whenever I typed in a search that is "not 100% technical as it > should be", I usually see 0 resemblance pop up, and said "try searching > again." So I may suggest that it could be improved if somebody set up a "do > you mean ____________(link)" and then searcher can click on the link instead > of retype.

Like if you don't spell something correctly? I am sure the devs have thought of this, but wish to have a life since I assume it would take a pretty complex algorathem to accomplish this. Mike _{(T C)}

02:17, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Sure, would be a nice feature, but not only does it take time of developers to implement, but I think also a good deal of server resources. Instead, try http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:en.wikipedia.org&hl=en&lr=&safe=off. -Kmf164 (talk | contribs) 02:20, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

or http://search.yahoo.com/web/advanced?ei=UTF-8. -Kmf164 (talk | contribs) 02:24, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Search numbers / hidden search results?

What does it mean when a Wikipedia search says "Results 1-4 of 4" but only shows 1 result? For instance, this search. Are there 3 other articles hiding out there that match the search but aren't being displayed, or is it just some counting bug in the search engine? –Tifego^(t)_{00:18, 21 April 2006 (UTC)}

Ah, never mind, I found the hidden results (user talk), so it's simply a mediawiki bug or oddity that counts filtered-out results in the displayed number of results. –Tifego^(t)_{00:23, 21 April 2006 (UTC)}

Linux Firefox

All of a sudden, the little automatic editing boxes don't work (bold, signature, etc). Is this some security option? Or do I just have to wait for this annoyance to get flushed out the system? --Zeizmic 20:05, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Clear your cache. --Brion 22:22, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah! Thanks. Everything works great now. --Zeizmic 01:46, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

List of people whose Living status is unknown

It used to be possible to get a list of articles which seemed from their categories to be biographies but there was no category to show whether they were still alive. Can we get that list back please? - Runcorn 12:20, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

That should be a category, not a list. As a a category, it will be maintained as people die. --John Nagle 17:34, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I believe he's refering to a toolserver script which found biography articles with no year of death category and no Living people category. I recall finding it recently, but can't seem to locate it again. — Ian Moody ^(talk) 17:47, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I believe he is talking about Interiot's undead report. With the toolserver's replication of enwiki down, I don't know how useful the list is. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 20:17, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

The "References Converter" and Cite.php

User:Cyde has developed a References converter to revise article using the older methods of referencing such as {{reference label}} and {{note label}} to the new Cite. php method using <ref> and <references/>.

The older method using {{reference label}} and {{note label}} placed a caret (^) in front of each cited reference in the reference list which was quite clear and easy-to-read. The new Cite.php method places an anaemic, washed-out and hard-to-read vertical arrow in front of each cited reference.

I asked Cyde if we could somehow get to use that much better looking caret (rather than the washed out arrow) with the new Cite php.method and he agreed that the caret looked better. He also said "I think you're onto a good thing here and the change you're suggesting would be REALLY simple to make (a single character substitution to the code, actually)." Although Cyde is an administrator, this is out of his bailiwick and he suggested that I broach this suggested change here. If anyone knows how to bring this to the attention of whatever group developed the new Cite.php referencing methd, PLEASE do so! Thanks, - mbeychok 03:48, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I remember that the caret was abandoned after a request to make it an arrow, but I don't remember where that discussion was held. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 03:58, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Here's the link, to the Manual of Style's talk page. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 04:00, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

The arrow's look depends on the fonts your browser is using, so you might get a nicer arrow by changing your fonts. Carets are considered bad because Cite.php is deployed multi-lingually and the caret is an accent mark in most languages and so doesn't look like an arrow at all to those language-speakers. — Saxifrage ✎ 20:37, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

absolutely displayed header for large tables

i suggest to implement a feature which allows (screen-) absolute displaying of the header of a large table for better orientation while reading/comparing contents within large tables which do not fit on one screen-site.

technically the table header would simply be a non-ambiguous css-class, which is de/activated via a toggle-button like i.e. the one wikipedia already has to show/hide contents.

PutzfetzenORG 22:06, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Can you give an example? I don't quite see what you're proposing.. i guess the table is too wide and scrolling is inefficient for comparing data? Before getting into something terribly technical, you might just consider making the font size a bit smaller.. drumguy⁸⁸⁰⁰ - speak? 22:36, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I think he means a "frozen" header which remains on screen when a long table is scrolled, so that you can always see the column titles, even when looking at data at the bottom of a table. I don't know whether it's possible with CSS or not, or whether it might have undesirable side effects, however. — Catherine\^talk 17:17, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

It's possible with CSS, but you'd need a way (probably javascript) to toggle it on and off. ericg ✈ 17:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

The necessary CSS is unsupported in IE6. — Saxifrage ✎ 20:12, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

New Map Article

(appologies up front if this post is in the wrong location)

I have an old 1946 city planning map for Huntington Township on Long Island, which IMHO is of historical significance as a snapshot in time before modern suburbs exploded. I've already provided a copy of the map to the Long Island historical society but I'd like to share the map with anybody online by creating an article for it and then linking to it from the Huntington article. First of all, is there anything wrong with that from a non-technical level? The article would contain text explanations but the primary feature would be just a big map.

Now if there's nothing wrong with the concept of creating an article for displaying this map, I'll move on to my technical questions. My map is large and has great detail down to street names and such. It's been scanned to an image at a whopping 8,790 x 6,400 pixels. Obviously this would be a ridicuous size to fit on any webpage and scaling it down would eliminate the details that make it important. What I would ideally like to do is to break the map down in to sections and table-it together so that clicking on a section would go to a full-screen version of that section.

Would that be possible? Would that be allowed?
Is it possible to use low-rez thumbnails that link to the full size images? Otherwise using Wikipedia's resizing function would make it display smaller but would still be a file-size problem.

Any other ideas if this doesn't belong or technically can't be part of Wikipedia? If there's another good option out there I suppose that could be done and then an external link added. But I still think this is good encyclopedia-worty content (like original town names, structures and streets that no longer exist, etc.). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fife Club (talk • contribs) 21:21, 18 April 2006.

I could do it for you.. and yes there is a way to do this. I would create separate page and make the map a maximum of 700 pixels. you yourself will have to break the maps up. It's a simple html table application.. you can patch images together using the image tag and not inserting "thumb" or "frame".. let me know if you want my assistance. drumguy⁸⁸⁰⁰ - speak? 22:47, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Firstly: Be sure you upload it with the proper source and licensing information! Without this, we cannot include it on Wikipedia. You can use Cornell's handy copyright table to determine the copyright status. If the image is public domain, upload it to the Commons. You can link to it normally from Wikipedia; it's just that the Commons is meant for media, whereas Wikipedia is for articles.

Now, when you upload it and add it to the appropriate article, add it as a thumbnail with a proper caption, like this: [[ImageName.jpg|thumb|A nice caption.]]. This will make a thumbnail on the article. It is my opinion that the best way to include this image in an article is to link to it as a thumbnail; if readers want to see or use the full map, they will know to click on it.

I would not recommend uploading split tiles or a scaled-down image. If, after you upload it, others feel that making it clickable/zoomable is useful, it will be easy for someone to do. However, it is much more difficult to go from split up or otherwise modified images to the original.

File size (both in px and MB) is not a problem whatsoever. Wikipedia uses ImageMagick to automatically scale the image in both aspects. Hope this helps! You can leave a message on my talk page if you want more help. ~MDD 46 96 22:54, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks y'all for your help. Much appreciated. If I read correctly, it sounds to me like Drumguy8800 is suggesting a clickable thumbnail links table like I first envisioned. But Mdd4696 seems to advise against this method. I do not have even a fraction of Wiki-experience as either of you but my thoughts were that multi-image would be best because your can "zoom in" to see great detail on the corresponding sub-maps. But like you suggest, perhaps I can start off with the one big map (thumbnail in the article) and break it down later. I'll start the basic article (unlinked until it's finished) and let you see it if you're interested.

And speaking of the copyright, it was definitely produced by a government agency so I figure it should probably go under that license and therefore Public Domain. However there's a story about how I now "own" the map. Basically, my father used to work for the New York State Division of Housing and Urban Development. Sometime around 1980 his office was relocated and rather than move thousands of old city planning documents they were ordered to throw most of them out. My father came across this map during the process and he decided to save it. Now I have it, so should I be the copyright holder? Fife Club 03:38, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

No. Copyright only protects original creative expression, thus it only applies to the original creator. The purpose is to encourage creative expression by allowing creators to have a protected period of time when only they can profit from their work. When the creator is a US government employee, the item enters the public domain because the taxpayer paid for it so it should be free to all taxpayers. You can't recapture copyright on something once it has entered public domain. A digital clickable map might be copyrightable (but probably not) by the person who did the conversion, but that would not alter the public domain status of the underlying map. (Copyright protects creativity, not technical know-how. For example if you scanned every pre-1923 issue of National Georgraphic into a keyword-searchable database, you couldn't copyright it because it was a technical task not involving creativity.) Thatcher131 05:22, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I keep bothering y'all but I need copyright help. I tried to upload to the Commons but I can not find the appropriate copyright tag. The thing is that the copyright I need should be an obvious one that should already exist. There's PD copyright for works of the US Governement but nothing for State governments (except California), County Governments, or City/Town Governments. In all cases they should still be PD because they were created with tax payer money but there are no local-level licenses. Shouldn't there be?

For the record, the document has no copyright information displayed but it does state:

Town of Huntington
Suffolk County, N.Y.
Huntington Town Planning Board

So I'm not 100% sure whether it was the county or town that originally made the map.

The works of most US state, county, and city governments are not public domain, but are copyrighted by that government agency. Ditto for the works of almost all nation-level governments, other than the US (and a very few others, like the soviet union). While morally you're quite correct in thinking "I already paid taxes for this, why isn't it free?", but unfortunately that's not the legal position. If the image was produced by the NY-HUD then NY state owns the copyright, and it can't be used on wikipedia. Bummer, huh ? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 17:53, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

That just sucks :( Well thanks for your help anyway. I may still try to upload the map to my own website (bandwidth issues) but I wouldn't want to burden Wikipedia with the liability. Thanks again. Fife Club 19:24, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

The solution proposed above.. that is just having a thumbnail.. ignores the fact that its an extremely large image. If people want to see a specific area, they should be able to. You should have larger versions of smaller sections and a master file link at the top or bottom (or legend) of the map. The idea here is accessibility... this method is hitting two birds with one stone. And even if imageMajick scales down the size and image, it doesn't mean that viewing a large portion of the image will be any easier for a user.. drumguy⁸⁸⁰⁰ - speak? 22:29, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, actually.. sorry. Didn't see that you had been advised against uploading this by Finlay McWalter.. I believe the idea here is that the US operates as a federal government not confederal and thusly each governmental entity is underneath and thusly "a part" of the U.S. government.. but I of course know none of the specifics like mcwalter seems to know. If anything, contact the Town of Huntington and get permission. Just because someone copyrights something doesn't mean they reserve all the rights to it. drumguy⁸⁸⁰⁰ - speak? 22:33, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm just spoiled with my university's internet connection heh. A clickable map is useful as long as we have the original image. ~MDD 46 96 22:49, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm back. I've contacted the town historian who believes that the document would be public domain. Now back to the question of how do I put that license on the image upload. I can explain the details but which image license should I choose at the Commons? Once I get the file uploaded to the commons I can proceed individually, talking to you guys one on one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fife Club (talk • contribs)

There's always the pd-because template, where you can simply leave the explanation that the town historian considers the map to be in the public domain. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 20:04, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

If I'm reading the Cornell table right, it was published between 1923 and 1977 in the US and lacks a copyright notice so it's plain-ol' public domain. That suggests a template of ~~{{PD}} or~~ {{pd-because|Published in the US between 1923 and 1977 without a copyright notice.}} would be right. — Saxifrage ✎ 20:09, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I see now that a plain PD template is deprecated on Commons. From list of copyright templates, the best I can see is either the pd-because above, pd-old, or PD-US. — Saxifrage ✎ 20:42, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Hyperlink for Add to Watchlist?

I recently learned of the specific URL construction that lets you create a hyperlink that opens a new subject on a page:

[{{fullurl:{{ns:3}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}|action=edit&section=new}} leave a message]

Is there a similar construction that allows you to create a hyperlink which will add a page to the user's watchlist? Thanks in advance. — WCityMike (talk • contribs) 22:03, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[{{fullurl:{{ns:3}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}|action=watch}} watch]. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 22:05, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm obliged. Thanks. — WCityMike (talk • contribs) 22:07, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Problems With References/Probably An Easy Question

You should probably go over to Heraclitus and click edit to see what I've done to get a fuller appreciation of this. Anyways, I'm trying to create references for things by using the Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page without content in them (see the help page). format that I thought I was supposed to. After I have put my references between the brackets and everything, however, the link that I created doesn't link to anything, plus my references don't exist in the "references" section. To clarify, this means two things are going wrong: (1) my references aren't in the reference section, (2) the reference "link" doesn't link to anything. Can someone go over to Heraclitus, fix this, and then tell me what I've done wrong and how to do it right if I ever need to cite references again? God bless you, every one (that was a joke of sorts, I'm agnostic), --Matthew 17:58, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

You were missing <references/> in the References section - this is what displays the references cited inline in your article. ericg ✈ 20:38, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Transferring contributions from one account to another

If I recall correctly, it is possible to transfer edits done in one account to another. Do I recall correctly? And if I do, who do I have to contact to have it done? Thanks, Yuval madar 17:22, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

If the destination account does not exist, see Wikipedia:Changing username. At this time, it is not possible to have edits reassigned from one account to another (this requires developer intervention, which there generally isn't time for). Rob Church (talk) 19:02, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Yuval madar 19:31, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Is "prod" fixed yet?

Is "prod" still broken because of the toolserver outage, or is it back up? And is there a status page for this? --John Nagle 16:42, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

According to WP:PROD there is a backup system in place. RicD o d 17:00, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

A clever system is in place, which uses a template to provide a KEY to sort the PROD'd articles in the category, placing the oldest in the back. --light darkness^(talk) 17:14, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

long pages within category

Is there any way to view the longest pages within a particular category, instead of globally? --Froth 15:26, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Nested superscripts are broken

I just noticed that the parser mangles nested  tags. This breaks mathematical expressions involving nested powers rather badly: for example, xyz renders as x^{y^z}, where it should look like $x^{y^{z}}$ . One can of course use math mode to work around this, but this forces the expression to be rendered as an image, which is less than ideal. I'm pretty sure this used to work once, though I've no idea when it may have been broken. Anyway, a fix would be nice. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 14:58, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

The problem is with HTML Tidy. See for example http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=108, and also some discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics#<math> rendering bug. Dmharvey 15:08, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I thought it was still recommented to use the math markup anyway. After all, it only renders as an image in browsers that don't support MathML, and more and more will do so as time goes on. — Saxifrage ✎ 21:24, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Psssssssssssssssssssssst!!!!!

Thats me spraying a sock-bug - AGAIN. I've done what I could on my end, and it still comes back. Martial Law 23:51, 21 April 2006 (UTC) :)

I don't mean to be rude here, but what the hell are you talking about? Rob Church (talk) 17:27, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Martial Law, if you're asking for assistance with something, you're going to have to be more specific with the problem. We can't read your mind. Was there an edit somewhere that looked odd? Do you know how to show a "differences" link? If not, let me know, as that's one of the best ways to demonstrate exactly what a problem looks like. Joyous | Talk 17:36, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

A technical request for information

I will like to find out what IPs in the range 61.95.147.0 to 61.95.147.255 have made contributions to Wikipedia. Is there some tool I can use/someone I can request to find out this information? Simply the list of IPs that have at least one contribution will suffice. Thank you. Loom91 07:23, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't know of a tool to do this. For my own personal use (and since it's only 256 GETs), I would do this with a local script that downloaded the contribs page of each of those, did some string-matching to see if there are any contributions, and then print out the list of matched IP addresses. Actually... that's pretty easy to do, so I've just written and run that, and I've posted the list on your Talk page. — Saxifrage ✎ 21:54, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Next tip link

Could someone take a look at WP:TIP? The next tip link in all the tips has stopped working and I'm unsure what caused it or how how to fix it. --Hetar 01:24, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I think there's something wrong with {{day+1}}; it appears to be returning

MONTH DAY,

instead of

MONTH DAY, YEAR

Someone should probably fix it, because I don't know how. Isopropyl 04:51, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

This appears to be due to the template being recently converted from {{qif}} to {{#if}} and is probably a bug. — Saxifrage ✎ 06:39, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

There was a mistake in the conversion. Fixed now. --CBDunkerson 15:38, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Is this image behaviour a bug?

Image at 200 pixels

Image at 100 pixels

Image at 40 pixels

I know this isn't the place to report bugs, but I'm not sure if this is a bug or if something else is going on. I'd like to know if anyone has seen this before or if they know anything about it.

I recently noticed the icon image in {{game-stub}} was showing nasty jaggies because it was being scaled down and GIF images don't scale down well at all (see the version in question). I downloaded the GIF from Commons, converted it to PNG with The Gimp, reuploaded it to Commons, and then changed the stub template to use it instead.

The trouble is that it shows completely blank. The image itself seems fine, and it shows up as a 200px thumbnail at right just fine. The 100px and 40px versions (40px being what the template uses) both show a blank image for some reason. Does anyone know why this is? Should I report this as a bug? Is it something wrong with the file? Is there a better place to ask this? — Saxifrage ✎ 18:30, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

It's probably a bug, perhaps in ImageMagick, which MediaWiki uses for resising images. You may want to report is somewhere, possibly at the Wikimedia bugzilla. Meanwhile, I've reuploaded the image with full alpha transparency, and that seems to have fixed the thumbnails as a side effect. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:46, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Imagemagick is fussy but that doesn't mean its nessacerally in the wrong. In particular i've noticed imagemagick chokes if there is garbage after the end of the compressed data inside the idat chunks. Either way if this is a repeatable problem with gimp and imagemagick it should be reported to both of them. Plugwash 17:49, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Coordinates in article heading (more)

Cesarb handled the Monobook.css, and Docu handled the CologneBlue.css, is anybody game for more? On Saturday, I also posted:

--William Allen Simpson 06:38, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Still begging for these to be transferred from Talk to .CSS, there are many thousands of pages using the templates now!

--William Allen Simpson 04:17, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd make the proposed changes if they worked for me. Unfortunately they don't — the coordinates overlap other text on the page. The problem with Nostalgia may be simply insufficient top margins, but with Standard the issue is more diffcult: the CSS puts the coordinates over an HTML table, and the spacing between the table cells can vary significantly depending on font and window sizes and other things. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:14, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Odd, they worked for me when I changed my preferences to each, and viewed pages such as Detroit and Chicago.

~~And I never tried with different font sizes. I expect that nothing positioned "absolute" will work when the font size changes.~~

Nostalgia is supposed to fit between the lines on the left, like CologneBlue, just under "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" avoiding the globe on the right. Now tried it increasing and decreasing font +2, +1, -1, and -2 sizes, and worked like a charm on FireFox!

Standard is supposed to fit on the right, like monobook, under the line. Don't know about the "HTML table", as it doesn't appear in the source, unless you are talking about the search box. There's no conflict there. Now tried it increasing and decreasing font +2, +1, -1, and -2 sizes, and worked like a charm on FireFox, staying right under the search box. Heck, works better than the title line (that moves all over the place).

Oh well, unless somebody steps forward and does some serious testing, looks like those two lose out....

--William Allen Simpson 09:50, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

The problem with the Standard skin is that the coordinates overlap the "In other languages" links. Unfortunately, the way the "topbar" in the skin is set up, it's really hard to find a place for the coordinates that wouldn't overlap something at some font sizes. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:16, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

For reasons like this I think the coordinates should be left inline in those skins, out of the way of the article text (i.e., at the bottom), and should never be used in Geo templates or cityboxes. — Saxifrage ✎ 07:08, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Since these are primarily used in Geo templates and Infoboxen, that argument doesn't hold water. And having them at the bottom of the page is just plain useless. Defeats the whole point of having them easily accessible at the top!

--William Allen Simpson 20:22, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

File:Chicago with Standard top 4.5em coordinates.pdf

Here's my screenshot. It fits quite nicely above the "In other languages", with a lot of space left over. I've tested at 5 different text sizes. There's that little {{Audio}} image that is sitting on top of my "Talk" link, but nobody has fixed that problem, yet.

File:Chicago with Nostalgia top 3.9em coordinates.pdf

Likewise, here's my screenshot. It fits quite nicely below the "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". I've tested at 5 different text sizes. Again, there's that little {{Audio}} image that is sitting on top of the globe, but nobody has fixed that problem, yet.

--William Allen Simpson 20:38, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Search engine abstracts

Search engines show redundant information. Also, infoboxes should not be part of a search engine abstract. The discussion is here Wikipedia_talk:List_of_infoboxes#Search engine appearance, but it's relevant outside of infoboxes. --GunnarRene 22:24, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Errors?

Is anyone else getting these errors on wikipedia?

Fatal error: Call to undefined method SpecialPage::`ddpage() in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.5/extensions/BoardVote/BoardVote.php on line 468

(10.0.5.3) --Zeno McDohl 19:59, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, for example on Template:Infobox --GunnarRene 22:25, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

This was a temporary glitch. --Brion 23:59, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

wikistats

Wikipedia statistics haven't been updated for quite a while (dec 2005). Anyone knows why ? Are they gonna be updated regularly again ? Xevi 18:25, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Alternative query interface is now available.

There is a new interface to get parsed data from mediawiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/query.php

It allows bots and javascript code to get useful information like what links and templates does a page have, user status, page revisions, and much more in many formats such as XML and JSON. Operations in bulk are supported. Any suggestions are welcome. --Yurik 17:56, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

New page

i've just started a page at Wikipedia:Css and javascript hacks to keep track of css and javascript hacks that are used to workaround defficancies in mediawiki. Plugwash 17:11, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

New preference

Hi there, I'd like to add a new preference to the user profile. This has been discussed, with some people in favour, and some unconvinced and willing to see it in action. I have a couple of questions.

Could you please give me a couple of pointers on how to add this new preference? I presume there is a UAT/QA installation of Wikipedia to try out new features. Where is it?
Once the preference is in place, is there a way to make a template behave conditionally to the value of this setting? (Or indeed to whether a reader is logged in?) Can you point me to any templates that already do this kind of thing?

Thanks. PizzaMargherita 15:25, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

How does random articles

Does anyone know how the "Random articles" selection of articles work? We have been trying to make some statistical research on the Swedish wikipedia by having 10 persons check 100 random articles and categorize their quality. However, it seems a little that the selection process tends to pick forgotten articles, not the ones that are recent or popoular. Am I wrong or is the random articles working like this? MoRsΞ 10:48, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

It's random, and the base of articles is large. Most articles are neither recent nor popular. --Brion 10:53, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Expression error: unexpected preg_match failure

Is there anyone who can give a expression with this error?

It seems to be impossible:

......
            } elseif ( ctype_alpha( $char ) ) {
                // Word
                // Find the rest of it
                $remaining = substr( $expr, $p );
                if ( !preg_match( '/^[A-Za-z]*/', $remaining, $matches ) ) {
                    // This should be unreachable
                    $this->error( 'preg_match_failure' );
                    return false;
                }

Is there a string with one heading letter being ctype_alpha but can't preg_match? I think this won't appear, but Tim Starling says: "Finding a method for reaching that branch is left as an exercise for the reader. Or you could find something more useful to do, like I don't know, writing some code of your own." (m:talk:ParserFunctions#what's the use of preg_match_failure ?) I've been messed up on this. meta:User:Upssdr 09:27, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Im new and would like to know how to edit well

I need help,everytime i post, a blue box appears and cuts my edit short,especially new subjects.

FOr example, I edited the article "The Emperor's New School" to include another heading about the timeline of it, but it showed a few words and cut into something else, thanks in advance Julz 03:07, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi, and thanks for editing. The problem you're having is because you're putting a space at the beginning of the line you're typing. If you delete that space, the dreaded blue box will go away. That happens to just about everyone when they start editing. Joyous | Talk 03:12, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Shared Proxies and Https

Since 15 Apr 06, the article Wikipedia:Advice to AOL users has stated that "[t]here have also been plans to modify the MediaWiki software so that AOL users would automatically be made to bypass the proxy system using https. This feature is currently still at an early stage, but it may be enabled some time in the future." As I have never heard anything about this, I was wondering if someone could confirm or deny that this is actually being done, and perhaps also give a status report. Furthermore, is work currently being done to implement the same kind of secured server editing requisite as was done at Wiktionary? (see Wiktionary:AOL) Any input from devs or involved persons would be much appreciated, as we are currently in the process of rewriting and/or rejecting a proposal very closely related to this. Thanks. AmiDaniel (Talk) 20:56, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it is going to be implemented any time soon, as it would require many more servers than the Wikimedia server farm currently has. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 21:59, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, the https server already exists (at secure.wikimedia.org), and it seems to me that if only anons from AOL and other shared proxy ISPs would be restricted to editing using the secured server (not browsing, etc.) that this wouldn't be too taxing on the existing server (unless I've misunderstood your response). Basically what I'm wondering is: would it be plausible or a technical possibility at the current time to propose a policy restricting editing from shared IPs to secured servers only? Thanks for the quick response. AmiDaniel (Talk) 22:09, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

No, there's no such plan of anything like that. --Brion 06:26, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Red ? marks

These red ? have just recently (see my time/date stamp) shown up on my talk page. I have no clue as to why. If I did something to cause this, please explain. If I'm not to worry, also please explain. Thanks for helping me to sleep better tonight. ;-) hydnjo talk 00:59, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Er, I can't see them, but I imagine that this has a red question mark next to it too? Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 01:05, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

What Titoxd's getting at is that there's a preference you may have changed. Click here while logged in, click the "misc" tab, then look at the first option "Format broken links like this (alternative: like this?)." I think that controls the problem you might be having. -- stillnotelf is invisible 01:13, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

(after edit conflict)

Ummm, you don't see ] ?s here? As in User:Flockmeal's welcome,HighHopes ^{(T)⋅(+)⋅(C)⋅(E)} 08:30, 24 September 2005 (UTC) sig all linking to this message. I'm baffled, help!!! hydnjo talk 01:33, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to all, I'll check those out. I'll BE BACK if nothing pans out. I'll also be back if I figure it out. Thanks again y'all. hydnjo talk 01:33, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Nah, still getting No such action page when clickiking the <font color="red"?. I'm just going to to try editing them out (ouch) and see what happens. Let you know if you give a s***. ;-) hydnjo talk 01:40, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the Preferences "Format broken links... " was unchecked so I checked it and all seemed to go back to normal (or at least what I'd been used to). Thanks to all for your help. :-) hydnjo talk 17:21, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

'Crats, bots and new pages

Couple of updates. Thought I'd announce one here while I'm at it; the other has to be announced.

New pages

Special:Newpages now offers namespace filtering. Go nuts.

Bot status

Bureaucrats can now grant and revoke bot status for users on the local project. This is in response to a long-standing request from the stewards, both to cut down their workload, and to allow local projects to have more control over what happens there.

Bureaucrats

Now's the time to clean up the bot approval pages and get that process kicking. The new page is available at Special:Makebot. It should be obvious enough how to use it, but I'll put up some documentation post-haste, for the curious.

Logs

An audit trail for use of the MakeBot extension is available at Special:Log/makebot.

Interface

For the curious and 'crat-flag-devoid; a nice screenshot can be found at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/c/c0/Makebot.png.

Cheers. Rob Church (talk) 23:53, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Nice screenshot! Jud e (talk,contribs,email) 23:55, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

How about revoke button on Special:Makesysop also :) borgx ^(talk) 11:33, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Very nice, namespace filtering is always useful. Thanks to all the devs. Martin 11:40, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

While I make no promises; I was planning on reviewing the user rights extensions we used to see if bureaucrats couldn't take a little more control there, too; however, this does need a lot more discussion, since it's going to be adding further powers to bureaucrats. A bot flag is a negligible problem if revoked; someone going insane and desysopping everyone could cause several problems if no stewards were around to cull them. Rob Church (talk) 17:21, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the Special:Makebot. As a steward, I'm glad I won't have to do those anymore, though as a bureaucrat, I suppose I still should. If you do add an option for bureaucrats to desysop, please make it optional on a per-wiki basis. Not all wikis have as high standards as the English Wikipedia when it comes to assigning bureaucrat status. Angela . 09:31, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm far more likely to hack at the blocking mechanisms before touching that, to be honest. Also, as noted above, there'd be a lot more discussion, possibly involving the good old cabal, for the reasons you hint at. :) Rob Church (talk) 17:17, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

WP:AUTO but might pass WP:BIO

The article in question is Rui Roentgen. I hate to AFD it and bite the newbie; I've suggested he move it to his userpage... but what else can I do? Is there a tag to indicate autobiographical content in an article? Alba 19:10, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I'm pretty sure it doesn't pass WP:BIO at all. The example categories there include "notable" actors, politicians holding office, political figures with major news coverage, and the like. This guy has been involved in notable things, but he doesn't sound like anything more than a successful university student: he's acted in a couple things, participated in model UNs and stuff. The only thing that even approaches notability is being chosen to host a Dominican show, but then the show itself is the (possibly) notable thing, not him. He may become notable, but right now this article is very vanity and wouldn't survive a speedy-delete. — Saxifrage ✎ 19:28, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Stupid question, but...

This is a stupid question, and I should really know the answer, but how would one go about editing their monobook.css file? Specifically, I want to use the monobook skin on a wiki that has removed it (options are Classic, Nostalgia, and Cologne Blue). --SheeEttin 01:27, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Norns! Cool :). Anyway, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SheeEttin/monobook.css and edit away! ~MDD 46 96 01:37, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Heh, don't see many other Creatures enthusiasts. Thanks, but I found the answer seconds before I read this. Now all I want to know is what is already in monobook.css? --SheeEttin 01:47, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Your personal monobook.css is empty by default. You can find more info on Wikipedia's CSS at Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes and Help:User style. ~MDD 46 96 02:25, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Or look in Mediawiki:monobook.css and Mediawiki:common.css. — Saxifrage ✎ 06:31, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

My User page is buggy

The image I tried to put on

Hi! My user page (User:Pharaoh Hound) seems to have some bugs, for one thing I can't edit the individual sections. For another, when I tried to put an image on it the image appeared at the bottom of the page, rather than in the "My pets" section where I put it. I'm pretty new to wiki, so I don't know what's wrong. could someone please help me?Pharaoh Hound 19:43, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I see the "edit" links are missing from the sections. if you look at the bottom of the page near the bottom of your userboxes, you'll find most of the edit links are down there. I'm not sure how to fix it, but I know the culprit is your userboxes—instead of floating to the right, they seem to be pushing everything down which makes the edit links and any images appear at the bottom. I don't use userboxes so I'm not familiar with how they work, but you might be able to figure out what's wrong or missing from yours to make it behave by taking a look at the user pages of others who have userboxes. — Saxifrage ✎ 20:24, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Better now? The instrument box forces all new images an links below it, unless it is enclosed in a box. --GunnarRene 22:32, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you both!!! everything is fixed!

Pharaoh Hound 20:06, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Official Wikipedia API

I and many other web developers would dearly love to see an official, endorsed Wikipedia API that allows people the world over to take all the wonderful Wiki encyclopedic information and use it in their web sites and web applications, especially in these days of Web 2.0 and mash-ups.

The current APIs on offer either cost a lot of money or use horribly ugly screen scraping techniques which just isn't cricket.

So what do people say? I say please Wikipedia, please make an official Wiki API so we can use and make the most of all the lovely vast Wiki data and promote Wikipedia evermore at the same time.

Yours with fingers and toes crossed,

Paul.

Your prayer has been answered -- http://en.wikipedia.org/w/query.php :) --Yurik 18:09, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Note that this is not a stable interface. --Brion 00:27, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

So true, so true... But someday... Hopefully soon :) --Yurik 02:03, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

interlanguage link featured article stars

Is there a way of automatically placing the "featured article star" on the inbound "in other languages" links from other language wikipedias? Currently it is necessary to manually go through each linked language and add {{Link FA|en}} to the code, surely this could be done with a bot or something. Furthermore, the stars need to be removed when an article gets de-listed from FA status, this should also be done automatically. Is this even possible? Witty lama 14:27, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Try asking at Wikipedia:Bot requests. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:17, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Internet Explorer cannot open the page

Periodically, when I open a Wikipedia page I get an error that "Internet Explorer cannot open the page"; this appears in a window superimposed over the properly opened page! Clicking OK goes to the IE error page; if I click on IE's Back button, the proper page reappears. Does anyone know a fix for this problem? Hgilbert 07:52, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I also get this same error about 10 percent of the time when I'm editing or viewing pages. I don't know if it's a server or client error. The page appears, but with the error message; when you click OK to close the message box, the page changes to a 404 not found page. As you said, clicking Back in IE then displays the page correctly. DavidH 16:10, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

How do I fix my wikipedia skins?

I hope this is the right place to post this but, my defult skin has changed and it is really awful now and doesn't even work right anymore (i.e. I cannot click on a link when there are other links on the left of the screen.) It was hard and slow to change it to one that works (others are broken too). I'm now using classic mode but I dont like it. Please send for help. Greasysteve13 13:38, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Access //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Preferences&useskin=monobook, which will force the Monobook skin to be loaded. This should allow a skin change. Rob Church (talk) 10:36, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

No, I'm saying the Monobook skin (and others) has stoped functioning correctly on my computer.--Greasysteve13 05:20, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Double-byte characters and AWB tool

Can someone shed some light on the discussion I'm having with User:Mboverload? I suspect that the Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser tool he used to do this edit broke the double-byte characters in Pescadores Islands, but I can't tell from what he's saying whether it's just something wrong with my browser that I'm seeing the html escapes as ?'s marks for real or if the AWB tool is really obliterating them, or if the two of us are just talking past eachother.... thanks, Kendrick7 15:19, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

You don't have the language pack installed, if you want to install it do; Start => Control panel => Regional and Language options => Languages => check the correct tickbox, and then Ok, it will then install it, but will require your XP CD. Martin 15:32, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

You don't necessarily need the XP CD. There are separate downloadable language packs here. (they say "XP Office", but they nonetheless contain fonts that are useful for all apps in Windows) --Interiot 16:10, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'll be darned. I just looked at this on my Linux box at work and the chars do show up fine. Better safe than sorry, but, yep -- My mistake! Kendrick7 16:39, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Useroxes

Where are the Userboxes Korodzik 09:37, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Userboxes. — TKD::Talk 09:50, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

No, I mean that I see Userboxes deleted (see: Userbox.) Why? Korodzik 10:11, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Userbox is an article in main article space, which is reserved for actual articles. There's no article about userboxes because userboxes are utterly non-notable and merely a Wikipedia-specific phenomenon. --Cyde Weys 10:12, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

However, if we had Useroxes, that might in itself be notable (if only because of the misspelled plural). Lupo 10:18, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Questions about tables

I have figured out alot. Just one last question how do you get the light blue object below the panther? John R G 06:23, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Potomac Senior High School
File:PSHS.jpg

Established

1979

You would need to put it in the same table, using another row. However, you might be looking for the functionality of {{Infobox school}}. — TKD::Talk 09:45, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Questions about Tables

basically im trying to get the following centered. If that helps.

Potomac Senior High School

Should be sorted. Note the float and align attributes. I also centred the text and converted to CSS at the same time. Hope this helps. Rob Church (talk) 12:27, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Citing references

On this note I am sure i have the link formatted correctly, but it won't load that way. I've examiend the actual code at least 2-3 times and it is driving me nuts. Can someone see if it's a bug or if it's something that I just overlooked? - Hbdragon88 04:55, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

All better! There was an extra carriage return in the middle of the link, so that was messing it up. J. Finkelstein 12:48, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Questions about Tables

I am trying to make a table the trick is Im trying to use a different color of font and center and make it colspan=2. can you help me? John R G 04:50, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

You may need to provide more information. You should read Help:Table, but if that isn't enough, maybe this will get you started:

{| border="1"
| colspan="2" style="color: green; text-align: center;" | Cell 1, row 1 
|- 
| Cell 1, row 2 
| Cell 2, row 2 
|}

... which produces:

Cell 1, row 1
Cell 1, row 2	Cell 2, row 2

From your recent edit at the Sandbox, I think I can show you where you went wrong. You wrote (leaving out the "right" attribute because it's a pain for this example's layout):

{| border=0 cellpadding=3 cellspacing=3 width=280 |
|colspan=2| bgcolor=#000080 | <font color=#75B2DD> '''Potomac Senior High School'''
|}

Which produces:

bgcolor=#000080 | Potomac Senior High School

The correct format for this is:

{| border=0 cellpadding=3 cellspacing=3 width=280 |
|colspan=2 bgcolor=#000080 | <font color=#75B2DD> '''Potomac Senior High School'''
|}

Notice there is no bar between colspan and bgcolor, and there is a terminating bar at the end of the list of attributes for the whole table. This produces:

Potomac Senior High School

Note that what you are trying to accomplish with this might be better achieve through different formatting than a table. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style for how articles are formatted at Wikipedia. — Saxifrage ✎ 12:39, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Questions about Categories

Hello all - I wonder if anyone might be able to help me with a catagory task that i've begun. I created the category Current_British_MPs (self explanatory I hope). You'll also see that I've added the first 5 MPs to the list. There are 646 MPs in the Commons, so to complete the list manually will take a while. We currently have other similiar cat.s - such as Category:Members_of_the_United_Kingdom_Parliament_from_English_constituencies - which feautures members of the House of Lords as well as House of Commons. My question is this - is there a quick way of editing cat.s, for example putting all of Category:Members_of_the_United_Kingdom_Parliament_from_English_constituencies into Current MPs, and then somehow just going through a list and quickly deleting 'Lords' who don't apply? Any clever cat. editing tips would be appreciated - or even just confirmation that its a long, manual task - then I'll go and try and get some help doing it.... thanks! Petesmiles 03:59, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

External Redirect

I want to link to an external page from many different Wiki pages. I would like to be able to put the external link on one Wiki page, so that when you click on the link to the Wiki page in another page it automatically redirects you to the external link. This could save a lot of time when the external page changes, as it does periodically. For instance, I might like to provide a link to a baseball teams home page on the Internet. [[Washington Nationals]] and the Washington National page would be a link to [http://washington.nationals.com/ Washington Nationals]. If the Nationals change their web site, I could change it in just one page and all of the links would go to the right place. I would like to make it so that when the Wiki page is called it automatically goes to the external link rather than having to make another click on the external link in the Wiki page. Talk to Dr. M 01:32, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, this has not been implemented as it could be maliciously exploited. ~MDD 46 96 04:40, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

...although you could use a template which consists only of the external link, and then you could include the template. This would do what you wanted. See Help:Template. ~MDD 46 96 04:41, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Labeling IP ranges

Hi all. Is there any system in place for labeling IP ranges with who owns them? Is this even a good idea? I know we have AOL's IP ranges on Special:Blockip, but I'm wondering what others think of labeling IPs owned by universities, schools, or other organizations whose IPs are shared by many people. This might make it easier to determine whether an IP is static or not, and assist admins in making their blocking decisions. ~MDD 46 96 02:30, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Known shared IPs can be tagged with {{sharedip}} on the IP's talk page or userpage. It's also reasonably easy to go and look it up if you're so inclined... Shimgray | talk | 18:26, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Very true. {{Sharedip}} satisfies my question however, thank you! ~MDD 46 96 00:34, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Image on both Commons and en.wiki

Hi, I put a picture first in en.wiki and then on Commons (it was my mistake), and they have the same name. Now I updated an improved version in Commons and I'd like it to be changed in en.wiki as well, but en.wiki completely ignored the updated version. How can I do so that it will be updated automatically?? (I'm interested in it because I have more than one picture to update in the same way). The picture I'm talking about is Image:BesselJ_plot.svg on en.wiki and this on Commons. Alessio Damato 20:57, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

To let the Commons version pass through, you will need to have the en version deleted. Since you are the only contributor to that image, you can request speedy deletion. You can add {{db-author}} to the en version's description page and someone will make it disappear soon enough. --iMb~Meow 21:20, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

User pages in Category:Articles with unsourced statements

Today I saw that my own Talk page was labeled "Category: Articles with unsourced statements". I checked the category, and found lots of user talk pages on it[3]. Now, I would hardly consider my talkpage an article, and there is no statements on it, in a citateble sense, so I wanted to remove the label but couldn't find it in the edit box. And I cant seem to find it in the history of my talkpage either, so I can't even see who labeled my talk page. Can anybody help me with this? EyesAllMine 22:37, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

You wrote {{fact}} in a comment without putting <nowiki></nowiki> around it or using the {{tl}} template. All the others on that list are probably there for similar reasons. It should be fixed now. — Saxifrage ✎ 23:08, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

(blushing) Thanks ... I feel so ... well, stupid. LOL EyesAllMine 23:21, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Happens! It's not an easy thing to catch. I had to paste it into a local text editor and run a bunch of searches on it until I came up with that. — Saxifrage ✎ 23:38, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Some "featured articles" templates link to the picture and not to the article

Take a look at Java programming language, and click on the Wikipedia:Featured article emblem in the upper right corner, you will be redirected to information on the image.

Take a look at India, and click on the featured article emblem, you will be redirected to the article about featured articles.

What is wrong with the Java programming language article?

--Velle 18:10, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I can see nothing immediately that is different between the two either. I've copied your message to Template talk:Featured article where there has been previous discussion on problems with the FA star (but not this problem). Thryduulf 18:50, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Mozart Smyphonies @ hungary

I have to say, thet the hungarian names of Mozart symphonies has changed to eg. Mozart: Szimfónia No. 1 to Mozart: 1. szimfónia, szó please tell to a robot to change the links. Thx. w:hu:User:NZs ----

Reference formatting

I'm having difficulty getting the refs at the bottom of Thermopsis rhombifolia to show properly. I can see nothing wrong with the code - what's the problem? Thanks in advance! D e nni ☯ 15:29, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

It looks like an anon answered your question. Always good to read the documentation. — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 21:10, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Permanent Link to Page Different than Current Revision

Could someone take a look at these links and tell me if they have a clue what's going on:

If you scroll down to the bottom you'll see that in the current version there are two names in the last list, whilst in the permanent link to the current version they're not there. (Hopefully no one will edit the page before someone gets a chance to see this). If you have any ideas, please let me know! Thanks. AmiDaniel (Talk) 07:02, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Gahh ... now someone just edited it, and the two names disappeared from the bottom. Well, I guess problem solved then lmao ... strangest thing ever. AmiDaniel (Talk) 07:07, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

where can i download dictionary

Hi,

we are working on a spellchecker for which we need a dictionary. we came to know that Wikipedia offers a free open source dictionary database. Where to download this dictionary database..?. Are there any specialized wordlists available...i mean specialized wordlists for world wide web, Domains, Medical...etc

So, kindly plz help us by giving some information regarding that.

Regards, Srik. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.63.122.130 (talk • contribs) 22:39, 27 April 2024 UTC [refresh].

You're probably thinking of Wiktionary, not Wikipedia. That said, I don't think they have a downloadable version of the database. You might try dict.org, which I know does have a downloadable version of the database. — Saxifrage ✎ 08:28, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiktionary/20060421/ --HartzR 11:09, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Image, small black border

What's the best way to add a small black border around an image, without having a caption? In HTML, I'd just do <img ... style="border:1px solid black">, but I don't see a straightforward way to do that in wikitext. (this is for userpages or whatnot, I realize it's not the standard layout for article images). One way is to add a div with a hard-coded width and height... is there a better way to do it?

--Interiot 14:50, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Try a table:

—Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:24, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I guess that'll work. Not sure why I didn't try it myself (I guess I was hoping for something that didn't need a float:left sometimes). Anyhoo, thanks much. --Interiot 02:16, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

How are SVG to PNG conversions being done?

I found on meta a reference to a modified version of rsvg that is used for the conversions on Wikipedia, but was hoping to find more details. Is there a reference of exactly what commands are being used, what fonts it has available, and so on?

I'd like to duplicate the conversion locally so I can make sure that images (especially those containing text) will appear as intended before uploading.

Thanks. --iMb~Meow 02:46, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't know your exact situation, but it seems to me that uploading the SVG is always preferable, and that if it doesn't render properly, you can upload the PNG afterwards. Unfortunately I can't answer your question, but I am interested in the answer as well... ~MDD 46 96 03:06, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

That part -- giving up and using another format -- is what I'd like to avoid. I can test browser rendering easily enough, but right now the only way to see how it will appear in Wikipedia thubnails is to upload and hope for the best. One workaround for differences in text handling is to convert the text to outlines, but that makes it harder for others to make spelling changes or translations. --iMb~Meow 03:29, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I've taken to uploading the version with true text first, and then, if it doesn't render correctly (which is like, always), overwriting it with a version in which the text is converted to paths. Of course this should be noted in the upload summary or in the image description or both. That way, anyone wanting to change the file can at least get the original file from the first revision, and we can hope that person will upload both versions again too... -- grm_wnr Esc 14:04, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I can't stay logged in!

My username is Torvik on the English Wikipedia, and whenever I attempt to log on, it either reverts back to where I was without logging in, or it will log me in successfully, but as soon as I click a Wiki-link, it will take me to the proper page, but I will suddenly be logged out. I tried both FF and IE, and the login status is equally unpredictable using both. Thanks. -Torvik 67.142.130.22 09:30, 22 April 2006 (UTC) PS: Please don't tell me to clear my cookies and restart my browser. I've done everything I can possibly think of on my own end. And yes, I've activated my account with the link sent to my email address.

Try pressing Ctrl-F5 (which clears your cache). In IE, go to Tools | Internet Options | click "delete all offline content" and then click "delete files" or something to that effect. The process should be similar in FireFox. You might have cookies turned off, or they might not be saving correctly. Check your cookie folder, and check the settings in both browsers. I've seen other people with this issue before, and I think they solved it, but I can't recall how. Try logging in on a different computer to see if it has something to do with your account, and if worse comes to worse, just reinstall Firefox (or IExplore). HTH -Mysekurity^[m!] 09:35, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like you have your browser set to reject cookies from Wikipedia (or all cookies). Look around in your Privacy or Security settings for either a list of sites that are not allowed to set cookies, or for general cookie-setting-permission settings. — Saxifrage ✎ 21:26, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

None of that worked, guys. I tried it all. I even tried creating a new account, Smith24. It still does the same thing. (Which is obviously why I'm not logged on.) Btw, I also have an account on Simple English Wikipedia, S-torvik, and it experiences the same thing. — 67.142.130.26 06:08, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Try going to this page and click on the "Test Browser" button at the top, and tell us what the test results are. –Tifego^(t)_{08:10, 23 April 2006 (UTC)}

Thanks, but everything passed on both browers, and I have them both accepting everything thrown at them. Every other website lets me log in and STAY logged in just fine. This is just weird... Oh, hey, looking back at the first reply, I haven't yet tried logging in from a different machine. I will try that sometime in the next couple days. Until then, I'm gonna try everything I can think of. I'll report back. Thanks for your help thus far, guys. By the way, I just created the Pierre Trudeau article on Simple English, of course logged out. It would have been under S-torvik, though. — 67.142.130.26 08:48, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, this is weird. After a restart, I open Firefox and go to the English WP Main Page, and try logging in from there. It works, which doesn't surprise me. (It usually logs me on properly, but just whenever I click a link, it follows the link correctly, but I'm logged out.) However, I clicked the "Return to Main Page" link at the bottom of the Successful Log in screen, and it takes me to the Main Page, fully logged in. Refreshing the page, I'm still logged in. So I got my hopes up. Then I clicked Community Portal and all was lost. What in the heck is going on? — 67.142.130.43 18:56, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

WTF?! Five minutes after posting ^that^, while on this page, I clicked the WikipediA logo in the top left corner to return to the Main Page. All of a sudden now, I'm logged in when I'm on the Main Page, but returning to VPT, or anywhere else for that matter, I'm logged out. Again returning to the Main Page, I'm logged in. I am now thouroughly confused and annoyed. I explained all this in my User talk:Torvik page. — 67.142.130.43 19:03, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I've found out that logging on from a different computer works just great, so it is definitely my home machine. But what's wrong? I've tried everything. Man, this is seriously annoying. I want to start contributing properly. — (Torvik) 67.142.130.21 22:43, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Haha!

I fixed it! It had nothing to do with my cookies. I was getting desperate, so I sent a password request email for Torvik and S-torvik, used the new jumbled-up password, and it works seamlessly. Amazing. Thanks for your help and stuff, guys. - Torvik 04:43, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Which web sites do edits go thru

I would like to find out all web addresses that wikipedia and related websites use, so I can set my internet filter to stop filtering my edits to pages here. I first put in en.wikipedia.org but it didn't solve the problem. I then put in upload.wikimedia.org which seemed to help most things, but it is still pulling out some words. Although my primery concern here is about Wikipedia, I would also want to stop filtering other sites of Wikimedia. Can I get a list of all web address which my edits are going thru, or anything to do with HTTPS FTP or anything else that might solve this problem. Shlomke 20:04, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Here they all are. - Drrngrvy 20:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I cant seem to find it there. I dont see a list of actual sites or a link to it. Can you point it out for me? Shlomke 20:32, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

All of the light blue links in the white table are links to other Wikipedias, or Wikimedia projects. ~MDD 46 96 23:01, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Getting more out of the category database

Wikipedia category information is stored in a database. Is it possible to make non-trivial queries to that database? Are Boolean operators available? With better searching, some problems with the category scheme can be cleaned up.

For example, we have Category:Canadian musical groups and Category: Hardcore punk groups. So how would one query for "Canadian hardcore punk groups"? If that's not possible, it should be. What tends to happen now is that there are occasional categories like Category:Australian punk rock groups, but they're not used much and aren't maintained, and thus aren't too useful. --John Nagle 18:35, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

There are extensions to the mediawiki software which can do this. Some users have been discussing how to implement this in wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Category math feature and its talk page for more details. --Salix alba (talk) 19:40, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Just went over there and made some comments. --John Nagle 19:56, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

If you have access to the actual database you can run pretty much any query you want. That's that the m:Toolserver is all about, it gives selected users access to a read only (near) real time copy of the public Wikipedia tables that they can make all sorts of usefull tools based on. For example there is a tool called CatScan that let you find all articles that intersect various categories (or immediate sub categories) and such. The toolserver is not quite up to date with the english Wikipedia database these days, but the are working on it. --Sherool (talk) 20:10, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

How do I add a redirect??

Up, that is the question, How do I add a redirect to a Wikipedia article so that, for example, someone searching for "Jose Afonso", doesn't get a "sorry that is not in this encyclopedia" message because the person making the inquiry did not or could not spell "Jose" with an accented "é".

Basically, you create a new article titled Jose Afonso, the contents of which are a redirect. Just enter Jose Afonso in the search box, click "Go", and when you get the "no page with that title exists" page, click on the link for "create this article". In the edit box, enter:

#REDIRECT [[José Afonso]]

Save the page, and voilá, you have created a redirect! For more information, see Wikipedia:Redirect. MCB 16:48, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

(Just one more thing: I looked at the page in question, and you should actually point the redirect at Zeca Afonso, since that is the actual article title; José Afonso in fact redirects there. We prefer to avoid "double redirects" (a redirect to a redirect)). MCB 16:54, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

How to look at a contribution history

Hi,

When I'm looking at an anonymous IP's talk page, often I'd like to briefly see the contribution history of that IP when dealing with vandalism. There doesn't appear to be a 'contributions' history button on the talk page, though. What's the quickest way to get to it? - Richardcavell 06:00, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Any difference between two versions in a history gives you a "contrib" link. Or write {{user|Richardcavell}} on some convenient page and do a preview. Nagle (talk · contribs) --John Nagle 06:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

It depends on which skin you are using. In the default skin (monobook), there's a "User contributions" link in the Toolbox on the left of the screen. In classic, there's a link both at the left of the screen and at the bottom.-gadfium 06:16, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Bot and "permanent links"

Hi folks, I'm currently pushing my company to adopt mediawiki as our main collaborative working tool. I'm looking for a way to automaticaly create an article containing a list of permanent links pointing to specific versions of articles. It could be a category but this category should be "frozen"; the category should list the articles versions frozen at time T.

In short, I'm trying to "tag" (as in cvs or subversion) a list of articles.

Is it feasible with mediawiki? Maybe using some Bots?

Thanks, --Effco 20:46, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki doesn't currently offer this facility. It's an interesting idea though. Try Bugzilla. I might be interested in working on an extension for this. — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 21:08, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

That would be a great resolution to the debate about "completed" articles. Instead, tag an article as "approved", "expert review complete", or whatever. Then add a simple top-of-page link, for articles so tagged, which select the current, possibly hacked up version, or the expert reviewed version. EncMstr 20:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Sounds very similar to article validation and would be immensely useful for 1.0's Work via WikiProjects group. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 20:58, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Tables now fully justified

It appears that at somepoint recently someone has changed somethign somewhere to make the contents of table cells fully justified if they are on more than one line. Imho this looks absolutely atrocious on most tables and should be set locally and the global reverted to standard left-aligned text. I haven't been able to work out where the change was made, but it affects all tables whether or not they use the Wikitable class. I also cannot find any discussion on this anywhere. Can anyone help! Thryduulf 18:03, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Is there any chance you could show an example of before and after? - Drrngrvy 20:02, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

It has gone back to how it was previously now! I still don't know what was changed as it didn't show up in any recent changes in the MediaWiki namespace, there were no edits to common.css or monobook.css. As it is how i prefer it I'm just going to put it down to "one of those things" unless someone finds the answer! Thryduulf 20:28, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Names of languages in "Other languages"

I'm an admin and can alter MediaWiki pages. How do I correct the name of a language displayed in the "Other languages" box? MediaWiki:Otherlanguages isn't it. Angr (talk • contribs) 12:09, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

My guess is that this will be an interwiki configuration thing - try asking somewhere on Meta perhaps? Thryduulf 19:37, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Down at the very bottom of an article, you'll ree something like [[fr:Hat]]. This adds a language to the "other languages" list on the sidebar. If the language is wrong, change the prefix, like if it displays "French", and it should be "German", change [[fr:Hat]] to [[de:Hat]]. (Actually, you'd use the article title in the other language, but I don't know the German word for hat.) --SheeEttin 19:47, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

You'll have to ask someone with database access, as the names of languages are stored in there. æle ✆ 2006-04-26t20:12z

It seems to be in names.php, which can indeed only be changed by developers. Try the tech mailing list perhaps? — sjorford (talk) 16:19, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

File a bug report at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/. Please include the correct spelling with your bug report. :) --Brion 18:12, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Editing fault

I think this is fixed now: Go to your user preferences, and look under editing. If "use external editor by default" is on, turn it off. Correct me if I'm wrong MBlume 08:42, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Every time I click on 'edit this page' it starts a download for a file called 'index.php,' and doesn't go to the editing page. It wasn't like this before. I am using Firefox 1.5.0.2. Please help me!

It seems that I can edit from the side 'edit[s]' but not the main 'edit this page', for instance I had to click on 'edit' on the above question and alter it to write this down. How queer. Skinnyweed 21:36, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Are you still getting this? Because that sounds like a bug in Wikipedia, not a problem on your end. Every once in a while Brion or another developer makes a change and we'll see something strange like this, but only ever for a few minutes before they catch it. — Saxifrage ✎ 23:19, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Yep, still happening. Been going on for a few hours now. Please help me! Oh and I seem to have another problem with saving, when I make a save and go back to it, it doesn't save it. It tells me 'Your preferences have been saved' but it hasn't at all. Skinnyweed 23:27, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I've actually been having this problem for a few weeks. Oddly enough, it only affects me when I'm logged into my account, but when I am, it follows me everywhere, even if I'm at a different terminal, in a different browser, or in a different OS MBlume 00:19, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

In case this helps, I've copied the file which downloads whenever I click "edit this page," you can view it here: http://128.195.100.222/~mike/index.php.txt MBlume 00:23, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

That's right. When I log out, I can make edits, but can't when logged on. Has anyone put sanctions on my user? I don't understand the text file. Skinnyweed 00:44, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

According to the block log, you haven't been blocked from editing. It sounds like this is a bug, and looking at the page that you linked above I can't really tell why it's doing what it is. Unless Brion or a developer notices this section, your best bet is to file a bug by following the instructions at WP:BUG. — Saxifrage ✎ 00:59, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Lol, I tried, Bugzilla seems itself to be having some trouble today. MBlume 02:31, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I think I've fixed it. Go to your user preferences, and look under editing. If "use external editor by default" is on, turn it off. MBlume 02:34, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh! That would do it, definitely. I'll have to remember that next time someone has this issue. — Saxifrage ✎ 02:39, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

It should be noted that your browser is supposed to download index.php when you're editing. That's the page that has the edit form. It should still go to the edit form, however, once it's finished downloading the page. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:36, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

As noted above, the external editing preference causes this. The contents of the file, however, are not a standard edit form; it's a control file which is passed to a helper application (there are few implementations of this at present) which handles downloading the page, assisting with editing, and resaving the page. Rob Church (talk) 13:26, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Quantum mysticism revert

Hi - this is a naive question, I'm sure, but a page I've been working on has been kind of hijacked, and because its title has been changed, I can't seem to locate the versions of the page that were listed under the original title. (The original title was 'quantum mysticism', the new title is 'quantum metaphysics'.) Thanks. Adambrowne666 11:21, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Quantum metaphysics is a cut-and-paste move from Quantum mysticism. Cut-and-paste moves are bad, for this exact reason - they break up the history of the article. I'll see about fixing it - please hold off on editing the article for a little while while I do. FreplySpang (talk) 11:42, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

There, done. That wasn't so bad. FreplySpang (talk) 11:46, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you very much for your help, Freply. Adambrowne666 20:57, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Argh! I'm an idiot! I've done exactly what you warned me against, and done a cut-and-paste move, losing the history of the article. I can't see how to fix it.Adambrowne666 21:01, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

If nobody else edited the article after you, undo the mistake (changing the old page to its original contents and the new page to a redirect to the old page) and ask for speedy deletion of the new page (so you can move the old page to it correctly). If someone else edited, you probably have to ask for an administrator to do a page history merge... --cesarb 03:47, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Image float bugs

File:Float left bug.png

A screenshot of Venus in my browser.

See the linked image. It's pretty much self-explanatory. This occurs when editors using low-resolution screens don't put sufficient space between images, and when viewers with high-res screens (such as I) come along, the images stack in a really aesthetically-unpleasing way. How can we fix this bug, other than just shuffling the images around in the article so that they have sufficient space between them? I think the desired behavior would be to have the images stack to the left on top of each other, not stick out to the side like that. But I don't know if this is a browser issue or what. Please, I'm hoping someone in here has the technical knowledge to figure this out. P.S. Ignore Alphax's meddling. --Cyde Weys 05:16, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

It probably needs either a {{clearleft}} or a {{clear}}. --cesarb 03:48, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Missing Contributions

I have a 3 day gap in my contributions at the beginning of the month (30th March to 3rd April). I know that I made edits during that time. Is it possible to find out what was deleted and why ? Frelke 21:50, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you weren't logged in on those days? Check your IP address's contributions on those days, or find some article you remember editing and see if your name is there? -- stillnotelf is invisible 22:02, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I was definitely logged in. The contributions were definitely made. There are even discussions with an admin about those contributions which is there on the 3rd. But it looks to me like 3 days worth of contribs have just been deleted (probably by the same admin). Is that possible?

We'd have a better shot at checking if you could say what pages you made edits to. --Brion 02:52, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

So what you are saying is that it might be possible? Is this the correct place to report and request a check ? If so, then the following pages were created by me on those days

All of these pages have been deleted recently by someone other than myself. Frelke 04:55, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Robsteadman announced early in April that he was leaving Wikipedia, and asked me to delete his user page and talk page. I deleted his user page immediately, and began to delete the archives while thinking about whether or not it would be appropriate to delete the talk page. The archives, I felt, could be deleted without objection, as there would be nothing in them that wouldn't be in the history of the talk page itself. I thought I'd ask other admins what they felt about the request to delete the talk page. As far as I know, it's not forbidden, but some people think it shouldn't be done. I was quite happy to do it if it was found to be appropriate, although Robsteadman has certainly not been a friend to me. When I deleted an archive, I checked "what links here", and it brought me to the Frelke subpages. I found that he has started copying all the material on Rob's pages to his own subpages. I wondered for a moment was he Rob, coming back under another name, but realized he wasn't. I asked him about it on his talk page, and he called Rob "a very dangerous moron". Discussion can be found here if he doesn't remove it. (If he does, it can be found in the history of his talk page.) I found it remarkably petty. I think I was going into work at the time, but another editor reported it at WP:AN/I. The archived discussion can be found here. I had nothing to do with the deletion of the pages, but support it wholeheartedly, and very much question the appropriateness of copying these pages and making spiteful comments. AnnH ♫ 11:47, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Before my comment I asked a very simple question "Do I have to delete these pages?". I never got an answer to that question. I still haven't. I would deleted if I was told I had to. Instead someone deleted them for me. Without telling me. I don't know when it was done. And I still have a large gap in my contribution record which may or may not be related. I just would like to know what happened, how it could have been avoided, and what should happen in the future?

I also made the point that I felt that the record of what happened on the Talk:Robsteadman pages should not be expunged. It seems as if some admins shared my concerns. I had a number of contributions on those pages which have now been lost, given that the history has been deleted with the pages.

I would like to point out that contrary to the assertions of Sophia at WP:AN/I I never refused to delete the pages. In fact, as should have been clear to all concerned, I could not delete them. All I could do was blank them.

To finish then, a few questions. Could someone/anyone give me the answers, please.

Is it good form to not advise someone that they have been reported at WP:AN/I?
Have all my edit records between the above dates been deleted?
If yes, then why?
Is it acceptable to delete an accounts talk page ?
If so under what circumstances?

TIA Frelke 18:54, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I asked the admins for advice as I found it worrying that copies of Robsteadman's talk page had been kept by a seemingly unconnected editor. Especially when Rob was having difficulties with another editor who at the time seemed solely to exist to cause Rob grief - causing Rob to decide to retire from Wikipedia. I'm not up to speed with all the procedures yet but I apologise to Frelke for not informing him of the post to WP:AN/I as I just didn't think to do so. I was not the only one who mistook the "Do I have to?" comment by him as a refusal to delete the files - especially after Felke made it clear that he had a very low opinion of Rob calling him a "very dangerous moron" - see User_talk:Frelke#Robsteadman. What has never been explained by Frelke is why these files were kept. Also only the copies of Rob's files were deleted - as far as I'm aware Frelke's talk page was untouched. As to whether this was the right thing to do or not the admins will have to answer that one. Without a convincing explanation by Frelke as to why he felt it necessary to keep tabs on Rob Steadman I feel they did act correctly by deleting them. Gilraen of Dorthonion AKA Sophia^TalkTCF 20:24, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

This is all cock-up rather than conspiracy I feel. I appreciate and accept Gilraen's apology. Again I do not know or understand the procedures and would not necessarily have known what to do in her place. I have explained here about the why I kept copies of the pages. Basically I object strenuously to the deletion of any of our contributions, including talk pages. I had contributed to the original pages and didn't want them deleted without keeping a copy. I chose to keep them as subpages mainly because I had just come across subpages as a facility and wanted to try them out. I could have saved them onto my desktop and avoided all this trouble, but I didn't. Mistake? Maybe. But Wikipedia is a learning exercise. Everyday I learn something here. Hopefully I can learn something out of this. Frelke 20:58, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I was a frequent poster on Robs page but do not remember any posts at all from Frelke which is why his actions drew suspicion. What posts did I miss? Sophia ^Gilraen ^{of Dorthonion} 11:40, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm guessing that it was before your time but we had a bit of a set-to over Ruth Kelly. I seem to remember your (1st?) attempt to mollify him over Jesus and the cabal issues. His talkpage was on my watchlist since the RK incident. Admittedly his talk page filled up quite rapidly during March and he started to archive off/delete most of the contributions. Frelke 13:10, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Is wikipedia backuped?

Hi!

I was just wondering, does Wikipedia use some kind of backup system? I mean it would suck if a database crash wiped wikipedia away from the internet. I mean it would take a while to rebuild right? So is there any articles somewhere which I can read about wikipedia backup?

Thanks!! -Enselic 16:36, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if there is an article that specifically adresses your question, but you might be interested in meta:Contingency plans and meta:Data dumps. ~MDD 46 96 16:20, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

That seems old. Will that plan scale, as Wikimedia has grown significantly since then? Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 19:16, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Odd message?

I keep on getting this message whenever I edit Wikipedia:

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.

What does this mean? Thanks for your help! --HappyCamper 03:07, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I am having trouble logging in today, and have been getting that message too. My login is not remembered and the edit is credited to my IP address, even though I am logged in. Please help! 67.72.98.93 03:14, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

This is an intermittent problem which we haven't totally resolved yet. Log out, clear your cookies, and log back in: usually this will fix it. --Brion 04:12, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

That didn't help during the time when it happened, but now stuff looks okay. Wonderful. --HappyCamper 14:54, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

DB bug?

http://img103.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wikibug0ul.png

I looked up an article, and it for some reason gave me this bug at the bottom of the screen. Any insight as to exactly what happened?

It looks like the server ran out of disk space. See the error: "The table "profiling" is full"? That either means there's a set limit on how large this database table can grow, or the disk the table on is full. Either way it will probably get archived and/or cleared and the error will go away. Gwernol 02:10, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

The profiling table is in-memory and has its own, limited, maximum size. While this shouldn't show up, it's harmless and you can ignore it. --Brion 05:11, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Opera Mini and IP blocking

I'm pretty sure this is not the place I should make this question (so admins: feel free to move it to anywhere appropriate). Please note that everything that follows is either AFAIK, or IIRC, or a speculation.

Opera Mini allows phone users to browse the Internet as they would normally do from their computers (well, almost) -- this includes Wikipedia. I used Opera Mini to make some contributions here and there, and it works just fine.

The service should work as follows: When I follow a link, Opera Mini servers retrieve that page and size them down (cutting images away, removing bells and whistles, probably using a proprietary language, etc.) before sendind to your phone.

Now, suppose another wikipedian using Opera Mini gets an IP block, a ban or whatever that applies to IPs. This block(/ban/whatever) will not only legitimatedly prevent edits from this user but will also prevent edits by other non-blocked(/banned/whatever) users. This is because all Opera Mini end up to share the same IP range as a result of this mechanism.

What do you think?

PS: Excuse my bad spelling, grammar and knowledge of Wikipedia policies.

--badpazzword 21:36, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The IP address used by Opera Mini has already been tagged on its user talk page, so administrators are already warned to be careful with it. It's not different to what currently happens with shared school proxy IPs, or any other shared ISP proxy. --cesarb 22:42, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. --badpazzword 11:47, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Strange diffs

Could someone else please look at these diffs [4] [5] [6] and tell me what they see? I was expecting diffs on JzG's article page (which I was looking at via Interiot's tool while researching my vote on an RfA), but I'm getting three different pages - one of which has JzG's name in the title... —Wh o uk (talk) 08:45, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

The problem seems to be that the diff values aren't actually for diffs on that user talk page. I'll pass this on to Interiot. —Wh o uk (talk) 10:25, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Apparently, if one provides two revision ids, the page title is not used. This is a feature, as one can compare two different pages [7]. - Liberatore(T) 13:04, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Float thing?

What's that template to clear floats before a new heading? --Connel MacKenzie 04:08, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

You're looking for {{-}} and {{clear}}. — Saxifrage ✎ 04:55, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much! --Connel MacKenzie 09:46, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Why aren't these questions archived sanely? I'm lucky to make it over to Wikipedia once a week as it is...much of the time it is much, much longer between my visits over here. --Connel MacKenzie 04:08, 26 April 2006 (UTC) (Wiktionary sysop)

Hmm... there's always Google ;-) — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 21:09, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Possible bug?

This diff [8] comes from my contributions according to Interiot's tool, yet it doesn't lead to one of my diffs by to a diff on a completely different page. Any idea what's up? (If this is the wrong place to bring this up, feel free to move it whereever it should be). JoshuaZ 19:57, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

This is a known issue with some of the data in the toolserver at the moment. It's being looked into. Rob Church (talk) 06:41, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Bypassing browser cache

Is there a way to make a link on a page that will bypass the browser's pass, as if you were pressing CTRL+F5 or SHIFT+Reload? I tried using this code: [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAME}}|action=purge}} Purge page cache], which produces this link Purge page cache but it doesn't seem to work on my user page. Suggestions? J. Finkelstein 13:10, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

The modern way to write that is {{fullurl:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|action=purge}}, which produces (on this page) this link. Note that, with either syntax, you need to use PAGENAME without the extra E, otherwise the page name gets URL-escaped twice. I've fixed it above for you. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:30, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the update :) . Unfortunately, that didn't fix my problem, but I figured out that I was trying to solve the wrong problem. I think the problem is that I don't want to purge the page cache, I want to do whatever happens when I press SHIFT+Reload, and I don't know what that is. Could you help me with that? J. Finkelstein 22:14, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

A purge should deliver a page that tells the browser not to use its cache. If it's not doing that, though, I imagine only some Javascript can tell the browser to do a forced-reload and I'm pretty sure that would be stripped out of any regular Wikipedia page. — Saxifrage ✎ 23:14, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean, "stripped out of any regular Wikipedia page"? J. Finkelstein 03:28, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

The "purge" action instructs the servers to clear the parser cache and purge the squid caches for a page. This causes the output sent to the browser to be more up to date than the local cached version, and so all the caches are updated. "Ctrl + R", or a hard refresh in most browsers, causes that browser to fetch the most up to date version of the page possible, although server-side caching is not affected using this method.

I imagine, "stripped out of any regular Wikipedia page" above, used in context, refers to the JavaScript hinted at in the post; Saxifrage suggested some JavaScript could be used to instruct the browser to hard-refresh the page, but rightly stated that this would be escaped by the parser and sanitiser, to prevent obvious abuses of such misfeatures. Rob Church (talk) 06:39, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Infobox alignment

How do we get the infobox right-aligned? I was trying to write this article into OE, but the infobox is left-aligned, and text starts underneath it, not next to it as in the English Wikipedia.--JamesR1701E 18:00, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Check that you have the latest ~~monobook.css~~ file installed on your wiki. Which infobox on http://ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/ are you trying to use? --GunnarRene 16:59, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Common.css, I mean. I found an example of an infobox there, and fixed it temporarily [9]. The css statements from that which you need are "float: right; clear: right;", but they should be put in common.css, not jury-rigged into the template, as I did.--GunnarRene 17:12, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes , Mediawiki:Common.css --GunnarRene 17:16, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Um....I'm gonna need a bit more help...I copied it into the common.css on ang:, but it didn't do anything. I'm not a wiki-tech...--JamesR1701E 19:22, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Edit toolbar buttons

Quick note: I've changed how the edit toolbar buttons work a little bit. If you find that the buttons don't work in Firefox or Konqueror when clicked, make sure you've reloaded all the JavaScript. (Command+R twice in Safari, or ctrl+shift+R in Firefox.) There was a funky incompatibility with the custom 'redirect' button, now fixed. --Brion 11:13, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Ah, that fixed what I came to the Pump to ask about. This has been annoying me on three computers and two browsers (Firefox and Safari) and a regular cache clear didn't fix it. I wonder if this could be publicized better? --Dhartung | Talk 23:25, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I ask that because I've noticed a huge uptick in the number of unsigned edits to Talk pages. --Dhartung | Talk 23:25, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Let me just test if this works ... The answer is 'no'. I've just done the ctrl+shift+R in firefox, and I still have the problem where the screen scrolls up and the pointer slides off the bottom of the button. Noisy | Talk 17:38, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I've quit the browser and relaunched to see if that makes any difference ... Nope. Now I'll try a reboot. Noisy | Talk 17:42, 22 April 2006 (UTC) Trying under Netscape ... still bad. Noisy | Talk 18:46, 22 April 2006 (UTC) But MSIE is OK. Noisy | Talk 18:51, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Updated Firefox to the latest version 1.5.0.2 and ... it works. Noisy | Talk 00:08, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

It's still broken. All the buttons come through as text in Firefox 1.5. Cleared the cache. Tried ctl+shift+R. No good. How do we do an rvv on this? --John Nagle 18:02, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

For me, all buttons to the left of the left of the redirect button are there, but inoperative, including the redirect button itself. All other buttons (i.e., the Extra edit buttons) work fine. A ctl+shift+R does not help either. I'm running Firefox 1.5.0.2 on Win XP. Sandstein 05:04, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

After uninstalling the extra buttons, the standard buttons run fine. Odd. Sandstein 05:16, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Nothing works for me. It's still broken. Can we revert to an older version that works? --John Nagle 05:52, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I have changed the Extra edit buttons javascript. The problem seemed to because the original code used the onload event. This overrode wikipedia's use of the onload event stopping wikipedia building its buttons correctly. I have replaced that with an addOnLoadHook call to wikibits.js.

When I did this a problem with the order of the buttons occurred. The extra edit buttons were inserted before the wikipedia toolbar buttons. I haven't really resolved this because I can't seem to force extra edit buttons script to put its buttons after Wikipedia's (I think this is because Wikipedia's buttons haven't been built at the time). In the end I have settled for putting the buttons a second line.

I have tested this in Firefox and IE and it looked okay. YOu will need to force a refresh.

My javascript / DOM knowledge is not very good so if anybody has any better solutions please amend the code. --MarkS 21:04, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Now they work fine. Thank you! Sandstein 04:47, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

They still don't work for me, and I'm getting tired of being told to refresh/revert/reload/restart/reboot/upgrade/flush caches/etc. The latest excuse is "upgrade to Firefox 1.5.0.2". If you have to have the absolutely latest version of the browser to make something this basic work, it's badly designed. We should revert back to the old version. --John Nagle 04:59, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Can you provide some more information about what buttons / code / browser you are using. I tried viewing your monobook.js but couldn't see a reference to Extra edit buttons. If it is these buttons I am happy to look as soon as I have something to go on. --MarkS 13:55, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

As mentioned above, I'm using Firefox 1.5. (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5) The standard (not "extra") toolbar buttons stopped working about five days ago and haven't worked since. (This is, I assume, what you've been changing, since the article is titled "Edit toolbar buttons".) I don't have anything in monobook.js because I'm not trying to use any "extra" features. What I get for all edit pages are two lines of clickable text with the text descriptions of all the buttons. The clickable text actually works, but the button graphics disappeared last week and haven't been seen since. I've cleared the cache, done control-shift-R, and reloaded the browser. Doesn't help. --John Nagle 20:16, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

The buttons I have been refering to can be found here Extra edit buttons. To use these buttons you insert a small piece of javascript into your monobook.js. This small piece of script then downloads the main script everytime you load a page. This main script then adds some extra buttons to the end of the standard buttons. These extra buttons are only added if you have amended your monobook.js. I am assuming therefore that you aren't using these specific buttons. However, last week the standard toolbar buttons were not working if you were using the Extra edit buttons. The standard toolbar buttons appeared but weren't always filled in and never worked if you clicked on them (the sort of problem you have experienced). It appears that wikipedia's toolbar was updated a couple of weeks ago and this update was not compatible with the extra buttons. This was the fault of the extra edit buttons which didn't work in the way they were suppose to. As you are not using the extra edit buttons then the problem must lie with the update made to wikipedia's toolbar. This is beyond my area of expertise. You might want to see if Brion can help as he seems to know about the changes to wikipedia's own buttons. --MarkS 13:07, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I have updated Extra edit buttons again. This time I have removed all the old code (which entered HTML at the end of the toolbar). The new code uses the wmCustomEditButtons array, which means Wikipedia itself creates the extra buttons. The new code is a lot simpler. I have tested this on Firefox (1.5.0.2), IE (7) and Opera (8.5). For the moment the new code is under the development area so I can test it for a couple of days before updating the live version. If anybody has any comments let me know. --MarkS 20:01, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Basic buttons still broken. Submitted Bug 5747. --John Nagle 19:04, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Mail downtime

Mailing lists, OTRS, etc. will be unavailable for about an hour as of 19:00 UTC. This is to allow Jens Franck to perform maintenance on mail.wikimedia.org. Rob Church (talk) 19:00, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Mail should now be back up. Rob Church (talk) 21:17, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Interiot's tools

There seems to be a problem with the editcounter, which is showing my no. of edits to be 7, whereas they are actually ~4000. What's up?--May the Force be with you! Shreshth91 ($ |-| ŗ 3 $ |-| ţ |-|) 15:50, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

The database replication to the toolserver machine is currently not working so well, see user talk:Interiot for current status. -- Rick Block (talk)

Template help?

I'm trying to get a better Template:citeencyclopedia working with ParserFunctions, but one segment simply refuses to cooperate. Anyone familiar with #if know why {{#if:{{{authorlink|}}} |[[{{{authorlink}}}| }} doesn't want to work even though the same code is used in Template:cite book? PoptartKing 01:08, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I figured out why it's happening - the hanging [[ of the wikilink breaks the if structure for some reason. That explains why Template:book cite is so oddly formatted. Guess I'll steal that workaround. 01:27, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

The parser is sensitive to line breaks, so the open [[, text resulting from the #if, and closing ]] must all be on a single line (from the parser's viewpoint). Line breaks within the #if are "consumed" when it is evaluated, so this means the opening [[ and opening {{ for the #if must be on one line, and the closing }} for the #if and closing ]] must also be on one (although perhaps a different) line. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:15, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Please help test Citation Tool

The tool (semi-bot) that I have been working on, Citation Tool has reached a usable and useful state, I believe. The purpose of this tool is several fold, but the main (and implemented) goal is the detection and guided correction of errors in m:Cite.php markup.

As of this exact moment, the tool does the correct diagnosis of two types of errors. By later today, it should also be able to propose specific modified text that corrects the errors (sometimes requiring operator decisions). The web page for the tool also links back to the edit page for a given corrected article. Notice that any modification made based on the advice of Citation Tool is made under the user's own WP username. The two types of problems currently identified are:

Multiple <ref name=...> tags with the same name but different contents (hence hiding all but the first in the rendered page).
Empty <ref name=...> tags that occur before ones with content. Same basic problem, but this is especially easy to inadvertantly create if articles are reorganized.

These type of errors seem to occur quite frequently "in the wild". The proposed changes made by Citation Tool do not change the referencing style or technology used on a page (currently: plans are underway to aid insertion of Harvard references as an adjunct to footnotes, where a mixed style is appropriate). So as far as I can see, the changes proposed by the tool should be non-controversial. The only possible issue I can see is that editors might disagree about whether a currently hidden footnote content is or is not better than the one that had been visible; but that's a pretty regular editorial/content issue, per article.

Well... the other issue is that the tool might be buggy, since it hasn't been banged on by anyone other than me yet. That's why I'd appreciate some other people using it, and paying attention to results. If the diagnosis or proposed solution seems to be wrong for certain pages, that matter needs to be identified and fixed. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:41, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I would think that problem #2 is actually something that should be corrected in Cite.php. As in, refs that are empty, even if they are first, should not appear in the <references />-generated code instead of a contentful link that appears later in the page. — Saxifrage ✎ 01:09, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Is there a way to filter Autoblocks by the blocking user?

I want to check which autoblocks have been generated on the basis of blocks I have made, but can't find a way to filter the list (search filters on the blocked user not the blocking admin). Can anybody help? Cheers TigerShark 19:30, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

This sounds like a useful feature - try suggesting it at Bugzilla: Thryduulf 23:21, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Have a look at Bugzilla:3345, that seems to be what you are after. Thryduulf 20:51, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Actually Interiot pointed in the direction of this tool, which was written by Pgk and does most of what I wanted. Cheers TigerShark 00:25, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Popups

I put Popups in my monobook.js and they came up. However, when I click the revert button the popup, it does nothing. It goes the editing page of the article and says the submit button has already been pressed. Once it submits, nothing happens. I'm just on the same page and it doesn't show my revision in the history nor does it actually revert. Why is this? Please reply on my talk page. TeckWiz 20:14, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Mine doesn't even have a revert button! J. Finkelstein 20:20, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

It only shows the revert botton on the history page of an article when you hover over a specific revision.TeckWiz 20:23, 30 April 2006 (UTC) (This question is still open-read above entry by me)

oh J. Finkelstein 20:54, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Template:Infobox World's Tallest Building

Can someone who understands these thing edit Template:Infobox World's Tallest Building so that the optional "destroyed field" has Destroyed left aligned like all the other entries. Because it is optional, it appears to be done with a classs rather than a style, so... (For an example, see World Trade Center -- SGBailey 20:15, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. -Kmf164 (talk | contribs) 22:25, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Arrowbox next to link

How can I remove the automatic box with an arrow coming out of it that appears after a non-wiki link, like this one?

It is discouraged to do so for links that point to external sites, but you can do it by wrapping the link in a tag. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 18:56, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm experimenting for my userpage, I wouldn't do that in an article :P . J. Finkelstein 19:36, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Possible duplicate images

Developer Ashar Voultoiz has compiled a list of images which are possible duplicates. I'm sure there's a bunch of users out there with a master plan for dealing with this sort of thing. Have fun. Rob Church (talk) 18:40, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Grazie! ~MDD 46 96 18:50, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Full policy links

I've drafted a new policy -- it doesn't require any devs, but if implemented it would result in the creation of hundreds of new templates (in a psuedo-namespace: each would be prefaced with "WP"). Would this have any technical implications? Tlogmer ( talk / contributions ) 08:06, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind. AmiDaniel came up with a better solution. Tlogmer ( talk / contributions ) 09:18, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Compare (1) category:WP shortcut templates and (2) template:WP (AmiDaniel's proposal, contains #switch). I believe solution (1) is better for the servers. It also scales better. Solution (2) will create a high use load on template:WP and every change (is needed to add a new shortcut) to that template ripples through to all inclusions. As a side note, (1) has the benefit that a "What links here" can be queried on each shortcut template separately. --Ligulem 10:35, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Alright. If nobody minds, I'm going to start making the templates. Tlogmer ( talk / contributions ) 21:42, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Naturally if Template:WP is not subst'ed when used, it would create an immense lag on the server--it would be necessary to put a warning in there much like PROD now uses: "SUBST THIS TEMPLATE OR DIE!" I think that so long as the template is subst'ed (which I did not do when I first presented it, in the interest of making my point about how it works) it will be far more economic than creating thousands of templates. If people get tired of typing in {{subst:WP|blah}}, it wouldn't be too hard to create a script to put a toolbar button in for using it. The other method, as you pointed out, has the advantage of using "What Links Here" to find out where certainly policies are cited, etc. Besides the server space it requires to store the thousands of templates, it would be quite a tedious task to create each of these templates. I'd have no problem writing a bot to assess each shortcut item and output them to a list that I can copy and paste into one template--I would however have a problem with a bot that creates 1000+ templates (as I'm sure many would), meaning that each template would have to be created by hand. Please hold off on creating these templates until there can be some agreement about it, though. Please also contact the devs as well, as they know far more about this than I do. AmiDaniel (Talk) 22:26, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Please note that substing {{WP}} isn't helpful, as the switch isn't replaced. (Example of what subst of {{WP}} left behind: [10]). Please consider voting for bugzilla:2777 which would fix this. --Ligulem 22:35, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Shit. Well, I wish I would have known that sooner--I just added the warning into the template:

{{WP|NOR}} now produces {{WP|NOR}}

whilst substed it produces this whole mess: Wikipedia:Shortcuts. Okay, it looks like this probably isn't going to work. If it can be fixed so that subst'ing a template containing a switch just leaves behind the link rather than the whole mess I could support doing it with {{WP}}; however, I really can't support creating 1000+ templates just for this purpose. I'm afraid we're SOL for now--sorry ~~Ligulem~~ Tlogmer! AmiDaniel (Talk) 22:51, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Please continue discussion on →Wikipedia talk:Full meta links. Thanks. --Ligulem 23:27, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

subst and afdanons

I added the afdanons template a an AFD recently, and noticed something odd. I used subst on the template because I'm currently under the impression that subst is better in places where the notice won't really be changing based on the template changing. However, the afdanons template also includes instruction for users on how to sign posts with ~~~~ inside of a pair of nowiki tags. subst unfortunately ignored the nowiki tags and replaced them with my signature. (See the diff at the beginning for the exact scenario). So anyway my question/comment is this: shouldn't we make subst ignore text inside nowiki tags? --Bachrach44 16:15, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

This was a long standing bug. I've just committed what appears to be the fix for it, however, so with a bit of luck, it won't happen again. Rob Church (talk) 02:21, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

We have a bigzilla?! (In retrospect, I guess I shouldn't be surprised). Thanks for the fix, and I'll make sur eot use the bugzilla in the future. --Bachrach44 01:43, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Redirects checking

Would it be possible to add all redirects to entries at the complete watch list (Special:Watchlist/edit), so that it is easier to check whether essential redirects are added to the page? KimvdLinde 19:39, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

All you have to do is go to the redirect you want and press the button "Watch". General Eisenhower 21:44, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I know, but when you have around 500 species on the list, which have at least one redirect, it is a big job. Furthermore, when new redirects are added, it is difficult to find them (can go for each to what links here). Redirects are kind of belonging to a page anyway, so it seems logical when you can check the whole series, not only the page itself. KimvdLinde 21:51, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Redirecting links

If i wanted to redirect some search keywords to an already existing site, how would i do that?

See WP:R for information on how to use a redirect. Essentially, on the article that you want to use as a redirect to a different article, you make one line that says "#REDIRECT [[target page name]]", where target page name is the name of the article to which you want a user redirected. Follow the link for more details. J. Finkelstein 18:21, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Question about bots

Dear all

Daniel5127 asked me this question and I don't know the answer. Could someone please respond to Daniel? Deb 12:50, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Bot.

Hi, Deb. It's me Daniel5127. I have been using Wikipedia since March. 3. 2006. Ahh, I have a some question of Wikipedia. As I read all of Wikipedia Policy, It's little bit hard to understand because there are many policies more than I know. So, Let me ask you about Wikipedian Bot. So, What is the job for Wikipedian Bot? I personally think that Wikipedian Bots know all of languages(English, Italian, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Portugese, French etc..), and cleaning some messy things. Does Wikipedian bots care about vandalism? I have seen some article was bad articles, but Wikipedian bots doesn't care about it. That's why I want to know more about Wikipedian bots. Ok? Please, Explain to me Why does wikipedian bots ID end with BOt. Cheers!!!! Daniel5127, 01:21, 30 April 2006(UTC)

Bots are simply programs that do various automated tasks, see Wikipedia:Bots. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:19, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Tawkerbot2 is an anti-vandalism bot here on the English Wikipedia. Bot names do not have to end in "bot", but it makes it easier to identify them. ~MDD 46 96 23:06, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

why header jumps?

Today, the header on each page, with "my watchlist", has started jumping from the right side of the page to the left side of the page every time I try to click on it. I somebody working on this? Rick Norwood 12:45, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Tell Microsoft about it. --Brion 18:25, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Redirects to other wikis- Why isn't this possible?

I made a test redirect page to see if redirecting to a different Wiki would work. It didn't, although it looked like the "redirect=no" page and the link was clickable. So I'm wondering, why isn't this activated? What problems could it entail? --Shultz IV 05:52, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

It was used for vandalism, constantly, as it is very hard to track back through. --Brion 06:42, 1 May 2006 (UTC)