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Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 30

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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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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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Update description at www.wikipedia.org

I notice that when googling for wikipedia, the first hit is www.wikipedia.org, which lists a slightly out of date description:

The biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. Over 7 million articles in over 200 languages, and still growing.

It might not be a bad idea to update this a bit.--Filll (talk) 12:16, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

It's not written by Wikipedia. Google gets many of their descriptions from the Open Directory Project, including this one which is from http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Groupware/Wiki/Topics/. A new description can be suggested with the "update listing" link at top. An ODP volunteer editor will review the suggestion at some time. But I don't think they should be troubled every time Wikipedia grows a little. There is a way to ask Google not to use the ODP description of your site but I don't know what they will use instead, and the description looks OK to me. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:53, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, we have over 10 million articles in 250 languages now, so it is quite out of date. Mr.Z-man 14:55, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Can't figure out why a portion of the page does not display

I was not sure who to post to, I hope this is the appropriate forum

The monowheel page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monowheel has something wrong with it and I can't figure out what it is. The discussions are from 2006 so I'm guessing its not an active page, thus I thought if I just posted it in the discussion page nothing would happen.

The problem with the page is that some of it does not show and I don't know enough formatting to figure out why. When I look at the page I see a "Fiction" section at the bottom of the page, but when I go to edit the page I see there is a "non-fiction", "advertising" and "external Links" sections in the code that do not show. The code looks good to me (with my limited knowledge of the wikisyntax) but they don't show so something must be wrong.

I just noticed the discrepancy and hope that someone can take a look at it.

MarkButler10 (talk) 15:50, 31 March 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by MarkButler10 (talk • contribs) 15:50, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

  Done The closing </ref> tag was missing, so Wiki assumed that the remaining text was part of the reference- and correctly didn't print it!ClemRutter (talk) 16:07, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Import references from Bibliographic Management software

I would like to import entries from Bibliographic Management software (e.g. BibTex) to wikipedia - is it possible? Otherwise the task I would be facing (create wiki article based on an article I have in LaTeX) looks rather daunting... As a next best thing is there any application which would convert .bib files to {{cite}} format? Ryszard.czerminski (talk) 21:05, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Check out Wikipedia:Tools#Importing (converting) content from other formats to Wikipedia (MediaWiki) format. (I found it in the editor's index, under "Importing".) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:08, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Problem with redirect (bug?)

Would an administrator please have a look at Gömböc. It strangly redirects to Gomboc (the old site), although there is no redirect. Gomboc on the other hand redirects to Gömböc. Something seems to be messed up here. SpNeo (talk) 00:56, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Gomboc was moved to Gömböc 28 March and redirects there as it should. Gömböc does not redirect. If Gömböc looks like it rediretcs to you then try to bypass your cache. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:11, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Why'd it think I added an external link?

elsewhere in the article.When I did this edit just now, I got the screen that says "Your edit includes new external links. ... To help protect against automated spam, please enter the words that appear below". But as you see, I wasn't adding any external links. What's up with that? --207.176.159.90 (talk) 03:24, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I too have occasionally got that screen (when working as an anon) when I've not been adding ext. links.--217.43.84.100 (talk) 06:39, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I notice the edit immediately before yours added a naked link to the same line you edited. Maybe has something to do with it, but I'll leave the mechanics of it for others to comment on. Franamax (talk) 07:09, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Not the same line; it was in the following paragraph. --207.176.159.90 (talk) 20:44, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
When this was asked recently, one reply stated that it can be triggered by bad links in another section of the page, which would have been added before they were blacklisted. The spam filter then picks them up on the next edit to occur after their addition to the blacklist. Adrian M. H. 15:11, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, after that edit I did a series of edits to related pages (different Toronto subway station pages), and I got captcha'd on most or all of them. As I was not adding external links, it got to be rather annoying. It would be nice if someone could pin down the cause and fix it. --207.176.159.90 (talk) 20:44, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Trying to delete revision of image (admin issue)

Wondering if anyone could help me here. Someone uploaded a copyrighted image over Image:Jesus.jpg (vandalism for sure). I have reverted that, but I have been unable to delete that old image. I've been hitting the "delete this" link in the column for the image, but I get There is no archived version of Jesus.jpg with the specified attributes. What am I doing wrong? Can another admin try to delete that revision using the "delete this" link? -Andrew c [talk] 16:52, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

It may help if you can indicate which version you're trying to delete. (Perhaps it's already been deleted?) --brion (talk) 21:09, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Funny enough the only pages that link to that supposed picture of "Jesus" are all user page links. Also, the various uploads of the "Jesus" version of the picture look like copyright infringement and the others appear to be vanity uploads. So if it is not used in any article space related to Jesus (or prowrestlers)...should the image survive at all?¤~Persian Poet Gal (talk) 21:16, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
I think that's why it's on IFD. But given the history of frequent uploads, it will probably just get created again. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:18, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

text/x-wiki - action=raw

Is there a way to make firefox view these directly in the browser as text rather than attempting to download it as a file called "index.php"? —Random832 (contribs) 17:33, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

No. Maybe we could get the developers to change the MIME type to text/plain which would work fine. —Remember the dot (talk) 18:25, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
One can specify a MIME type, but the only allowed types are text/x-wiki, text/javascript, text/css, and application/x-zope-edit (mw:Manual:Parameters to index.php#Raw). Perhaps the devs might be willing to add text/plain to that? GracenotesT § 18:58, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
text/plain is not included due to security flaws in all known versions of Internet Explorer and at least some versions of Safari -- they will automatically switch the rendering from plain text to HTML if the content appears to contain HTML tags, allowing an attacker to create arbitrary JavaScript code for cross-site scripting attacks.
You can view the text inline in Firefox by requesting ctype=text/css. --brion (talk) 21:07, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Special deletion

I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the right place- somebody just posted a redirect for deletion; apparently there is an old redirect to Slashdot under the name [[/.]]. It's visible in "whatlinkshere" for that page but gives a bad title error if you click the link. I thought I'd post it here in case admins can't get to it to delete it. Thanks, JeremyMcCracken (talk) 19:18, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

It's already been reported to the right people, and they say that since it shouldn't cause any actual problems, they don't plan to do anything about it. There are plenty of bad titles in the database, the software does a decent job of working around them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:13, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Makes sense. JeremyMcCracken (talk) (contribs) 22:12, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Bad titles in the system are occasionally flushed out with a batch process. As noted above, they don't usually hurt anything while they're in there, though. --brion (talk) 21:04, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you are the right guys to ask

I need help with personal attacks

After all this time on Wikipedia I still do not know how to deal with them. For example, I think that two of the diffs below are the correct way to do a diff and one is not in terms of reporting or trying to get help for this problem. Could you tell me which?

Also, I only know one kind of template: ({{uw-npa3}} I put it on his page but he removed it. I know you will say cool off, etc. except this is ongoing for over a month now in an article that is in FAR. Is it true that sometimes there is just nothing to do about it and I have to just let go of the article. My view is the majority view, but everyone else just gets frustrated and leaves.

Thanks! Mattisse (Talk) 23:01, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

In a technical sense the two pairs of diffs you provide are equivalent. For the rest of your question I'd suggest reading Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:06, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Is that true for 3RR also? When I attempt make a complaint there, they say that I was providing the wrong format of diffs. Thanks, Mattisse (Talk) 13:55, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Content Rating System

Good morning,

I want to suggest you to include on the Wikipedia an "article rating system". So everyone that reads a Wikipedia article is able to rate it, good or bad. This will enable all Wikipedia users to have a quality indicator of the articles presented. Of course, it is important to show the amount of votes that have been submitted for each article so that users can evaluate the rating's reliability.

Best regards,

--201.153.90.8 (talk) 03:21, 1 April 2008 (UTC)Luis Villegas. LVVL100@hotmail.com Mexico.

Cross-posted from WP:VPR. Algebraist 12:27, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
FlaggedRevs is coming!! – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 03:06, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Note that this is not what the user is requesting. mw:Extension:Review and some others are closer. Perhaps someone can dust those off. mw:Extension:AjaxRatingScript looks pretty interesting. Voice-of-All 06:18, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Problem with article's cache

Hello, would an administrator please have a look at coinside and the discussion "Article does not appear at friends or when I deleted my browsers cache (and not logged in)" at (talk) of tsb1977. I purged the cache of this page several times but other users still cannot see the page, depending where they are working geographically. We already tried things like purging the server's cache, or bypassing the browser's cache - it does not work :-( —Preceding comment was added at 09:43, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Block user - drop down menu

When going to block a vandal I noticed that the drop down menu for the time period has been converted from hours/days to seconds. Can this be fixed, please? TerriersFan (talk) 16:51, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I suspect it is some kind of "joke" - see this diff [5]. DuncanHill (talk) 16:53, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Recentchanges in Mediawiki namespace always fails

Today I have tried many times over half the day to see what the Recent changes to the mediawiki namespace have been (since some people like to change the interface for April Fool's). However I always get the following error message: 

Request: GET http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?days=30&limit=500&title=Special%3ARecentChanges&namespace=8,
from 155.69.15.191 via yf1002.yaseo.wikimedia.org (squid/2.6.STABLE18) to 203.212.189.202 (203.212.189.202)
Error: ERR_READ_TIMEOUT, errno [No Error] at Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:48:11 GMT

Does this indicate a problem with the servers? Pegasus «C¦T» 19:03, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks fine to me in MSIE, including a 10 editor roundup in 1 minute at MediaWiki:Tagline‎. MBisanz talk 19:14, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Works for me.[6] A browser problem, perhaps? EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:22, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
The outcome probably depends on your Preferences, for me 50 or 100 items page opens fine, 250 - slow, 500 - very slow. —AlexSm 19:31, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
OK, I toned mine down to 50 items and now it displays. Thanks for all your help. Pegasus «C¦T» 19:50, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Very odd behavior with metadata script

The script at User:Pyrospirit/metadata.js and the identical gadget at MediaWiki:Gadget-metadata.js are behaving rather oddly on a couple of pages. It detects War (card game) and Mission: Impossible both as disambiguation pages, while they clearly are not and show no signs of being such. I've tested both pages very thoroughly for the conditions the script detects to mark something as a disambiguation page, but none of the required conditions are present.

I purged both pages and cleared my browser cache, so that is not the issue. Just in case it matters, I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.13; however, I believe the script works the same on all major browsers. Can anyone see what could be causing it to behave so strangely with regard to these two pages? Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 23:53, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Both talk pages contain the word "disambiguation" in the normal text. The script has this "/class *= *(dab)|(disambig)/i" part which checks the talkpage. But this regexp is wrong. It checks of "class = dab" OR "disambig" instead of the intended "class = dab or disambig". The regexp should be "/class *= *(dab|disambig)/i" I think. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:03, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Oh, so that's what it was! I thought regexps were evaluated in the opposite order. I'll go and fix that now. Thanks. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 00:07, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

How can I delete my user page?

Someone created my user page "because redlinks are annoying". However, I like a red link because of my name and it allows me to easily find my comments in some talk pages. How can I delete my user page to get my red name back? TheRedPenOfDoom (talk) 13:14, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

The speedy deletion template {{db-user}} should work. silly rabbit (talk) 13:16, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Also, you can ask to have it permanently protected at WP:RFPP. Userpage protection is fairly common, although I don't know if an active user has ever had his or her nonexistent page protected. Give it a shot, though. silly rabbit (talk) 13:18, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
You could also give yourself a custom signature in your preferences so that it will be red whether or not you have a user page. Sbowers3 (talk) 16:44, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

If you have a CSS3 browser, you can add to your user css something like this. --Splarka (rant) 07:23, 2 April 2008 (UTC) 

body.mediawiki a[title^="User:TheRedPenOfDoom"] {background-color:#ffffaa;border:1px solid red;color:red;}

Bad bot

Does this bot's edits AkhtaBot (talk · contribs), discussed at Wikipedia:AN#ANI_is_locked need to be mass reverted or AWB corrected or nothing done? MBisanz talk 19:28, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

What exactly is wrong with the edits? asenine t/c 22:29, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

MfD templates listing for deletion all pages using the nominated template

See Template_talk:Md1-inline and Template_talk:Md. I noticed the failure when other editors had to manually add "noinclude" tags around the subst'ed code to solve the problem [7] [8]. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:47, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Strange 'media' in new article

I created a small stub and I just noticed that my first edit shows a mysterious [[Media:Example.ogg]]. I'm pretty much sure I didn't do it... Maybe a bug? - Nabla (talk) 16:26, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

There's a button above the edit window that inserts that text in the document if you press it. OGG is a container, and can be audio and video. ffm 16:33, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Note, that's my first edit in that article, not on WP. And that never happened before to me... but well, maybe I did click it without noticing. - Nabla (talk) 16:43, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

"cite" button

At the bottom of each answers.com article is at least one "cite" button which shows the enduser the correct syntax for citing that article. By clicking on the "cite" button the enduser can also choose MLA, Chicago and APA syntax.

This would be a very valuable feature to have automatically on each Wikipedia article. Kingturtle (talk) 21:38, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

If I understand what you're describing, I think we already have this. Special:Cite is linked to from the toolbox on the left of every article in the main namespace. Canderson7 (talk) 21:50, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. I am not seeing it. Maybe my monobook.css is blocking it from view? Kingturtle (talk) 21:56, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

It should say "Cite this page", and only appears for main namespace pages. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:57, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Some skins don't have it but MonoBook should unless you somehow disable it. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:01, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I am using classic skin. Is that one of the skins that doesn't have it? Kingturtle (talk) 22:05, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I totally forgot about skins. You're right, I don't see the link in classic. Canderson7 (talk) 22:13, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
Man, why am I always the last to know? :) . I'll be right back. I'll take a look under a different skin. Kingturtle (talk) 22:16, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
OK, cool. It exists. But only in default skin, as far as I can tell. Kingturtle (talk) 22:23, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
If it's not in a skin then you can start by clicking Special pages (is that in all skins on all pages?), then Cite and then enter the page name. See also Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 1#Missing links in some skins says it is intentional for the Classic and Nostalgia skins. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:02, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Merge log

What is the world is the merge log for? It has no entries and says its for page histories that have been merged. MBisanz talk 04:41, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

svn:trunk/phase3/includes/SpecialMergeHistory.php, in essence the automatic merging (as in you don't have to delete, move and restore) of page histories. It's still experimental and as such isn't live or documented anywhere but this obscure page. MER-C 07:01, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Interesting. I'm sure we'll need a policy if this goes through. And a user-right of who can merge page, and of course a page merge review O goody, more bureaucracy! Maybe even a Merge Committee MBisanz talk 07:07, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I'd assume it would be just for admins, and simply a shortcut for what we already do with delete/move/restore. -- Ned Scott 08:19, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm vaguely aware that Special:MergeHistory has been created, but it doesn't actually do anything at the moment. (It doesn't work for administrators just now, most likely it was disabled by making it not available to anyone or dev-only while they test it.) I think part of the reason that it's been created may be that there were plans somewhere (not entirely sure how advanced they are, this might just have been a bright idea that someone had several months ago and then forgot about, because this is just something vague from the back of my memory) that would mean, among other things, that the delete/move/restore method would no longer work for merging page histories. --ais523 08:26, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Problem with Coordinate template.

Please examine the coordinates for Naval Air Station Alameda. You will find the page has coordinates (on the top right) that are incorrectly stated. It claims that the N/S component is 122 Degrees. That is incorrect. It is also outputting a space in the link before the first number. Magnus tells me this breaks the lookup tool causing it to use 0N, 0W. Will (Talk - contribs) 14:25, 2 April 2008 (UTC-5)

  Done There was an extra "|" in the coor code. I changed it into an coord at the same time. It could've been done by using "inline,title" in the infobox coord, but that resulted in a small font title. – Leo Laursen – ☏ ⌘ 09:02, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

No capital letter

I moved euphoria (gaming software) to Euphoria (software). When I click the latter link the article displays as euphoria (software) - with no initial capital letter. Can someone explain why? Thanks? - X201 (talk) 14:15, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

There is spare {{lowercase|euphoria}} in the top of the page. Names cannot start with a lower case in MW, so we use the template to cheat. ffm 14:23, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 Y Done Ah, got it. Thanks. - X201 (talk) 14:28, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

sortable dates

I have absolutely no idea where to post this, so I figure I'll start here.

With regards to sorting dates with the "wikitable sortable" table class: Would it be possible to force the "YYYY-MM-DD" format when formatting dates that are wikilinked? In particular, I'm looking at List of Registered Historic Places in Barnstable County, Massachusetts (and literally hundreds of similar historic places lists). Right now, sorting the date columns depend on your WP prefs. For example, my format is "MMMM, DD YYYY", and so it puts "April 1, 2008" before "March 31, 2008" simply because A comes before M in the alphabet. tiZom(2¢) 15:21, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

{{dts}} is all you need I think --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Template:Bots expanded to include opt out of messages

I have just expanded Template:Bots to include the capability for users to select to opt out of specific types of messages (or all available types). Bot and script owners are encouraged to implement this feature as well as all of Template:Bots features if they had not previously done so. This will eliminate users needing to know what bots are leaving them messages, and just select not to receive messages in general (at least from bots/scripts). If you have any questions or comments (or a item that should be included on the opt out list (excluding the limitations)), then let me know or post on the talk page. MECU≈talk 16:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


This is just a heads up, letting those who may not know, bots are not required to follow {{bots}} or {{nobots}} so bots may or may not respond to that template. βcommand 2 21:10, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

CSS vs coordinates

At Template talk:Coord#Display problem I found that coordinates inside infoboxes are being shown in different screen locations than those outside infoboxes. I think the CSS triggered by table styles is affecting the {{coord}} output. Can a CSS person take a look? I suspect a coordinate style might be a solution. -- SEWilco (talk) 17:59, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Infobox margin issues

I'd noticed recently an odd whitespace issue with Infoboxes. At first I thought it was, as usual, a problem with extra linebreaks in the template page. Not so. Turns out that back in February, it was suggested that the .infobox class from Common.css get a margin top because it clashed with the {{ambox}} template.

What people didn't notice is that in the absence of {{ambox}} or {{otheruses}} derivatives, this cause any text following infobox to receive extra margin at the top, creating odd spaces where there had been previously none, most notably at the top of articles, where the 0.5em combines with the 0.3em bottom margin applied to "#bodyContent h3" by the Monobook software stylesheet (in this case, the concerned layout bit is the "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" text) to create almost a full line of whitespace that gets quite annoying between articles. I haven't noticed any issues with headers (use of these boxes after headers is not nearly as frequent), but it is almost certainly present there too.

I'm not sure what is the best way to deal with this. Possibly we could alter the en: Monobook.css to give #siteSub a 0.5em margin, which instead of adding to, would collapse into the Infobox margin where present, and otherwise be a 0.5em margin on other pages. Header issues could be partly dealt (depending on browsers) with by using the adjacent sibling combinator (hx + .infobox etc.). Any other ideas/opinions? Circeus (talk) 20:26, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I suggest the following 

table.ambox + table.infobox {
 margin-top: 5px;
}

explanation of syntax. I'm not sure if all browsers support it, but if they don't, it won't make things any worse then they were a couple of weeks ago. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:41, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

It'd be supported for everything but IE (not sure about the beta v8). We want the extra margin in that specific case to be there for everyone, but its removal everywhere else might not be possible for everyone (my solution would leave space elsewhere than the top of article, but that space is currently present for these people anyway). Circeus (talk) 23:12, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Namespace background colors

There is a discussion taking place here regarding the background colors used in the Monobook skin per namespace. Feel free to comment there. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:38, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Older version of article when not logged in.

Hi!
When I visit the article Largest urban areas of Norway when I'm logged inn, I'm being forwarded to the latest version of 29. mar 2008 kl. 02:25.
But when I visit the same article when not logged inn, I'm being forwarded to the version of 26. mar 2008 kl. 11:14.
Why is that? I've tried it on both my laptop and desktop, so it's not just a cache problem. Any of you got the same problem? --Kjello0 22:34, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:PURGE the server cache. ffm 22:38, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Using DEFAULTSORT on Talk pages?

I can't seem to get {{DEFAULTSORT}} to work on Talk pages. I'm trying to sort the names at Category:Top-priority biography (core) articles since I enjoy using this category as a work list. The names are currently sorted using listas, which from reading Category talk:Biography articles without listas parameter, is currently broken. Anyone able to tell me why {{DEFAULTSORT}} does not work on Talk pages, or can someone show me a Talk page with the magic keyword working? (P.S. I am using the magic keyword and not the template.) Gary King (talk) 00:26, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Many project templates use PAGENAME in the category line itself, which overrides defaultsort, and I think some even include {{DEFAULTSORT:{{PAGENAME}}}}. A biography with only the WPBIO template should work with listas, no? Gimmetrow 00:50, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Talk:Adolf Hitler is sorted incorrectly at Category:Top-priority biography (core) articles even with listas. Same with Che Guevara. Gary King (talk) 01:21, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm guessing here, from previous SNAFUs along these lines, but it tends to be to do with the order of templates on a page. I had a long discussion about this at Template talk:WikiProject Biography/Archive 4#DEFAULTSORT and listas problems. I tried to provide a summary here. Hopefully this will help. Listas is not broken, just, shall we say, not fully implemented and maybe broken because of the failure to clearly delineate the way listas, DEFAULTSORT and PAGENAME interact. Carcharoth (talk) 01:45, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I found the problem. It was {{todo}}. If I move that above {{WikiProject Biography}} then problem solved. Gary King (talk) 01:48, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
And as Gimmetrow rightly surmised, that template has a {{DEFAULTSORT:{{PAGENAME}}}} bit, which (to be more precise) is a case of a secondary (further down the page) DEFAULTSORT over-riding an earlier one. I think. Carcharoth (talk) 02:00, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Removing items from logs

Hi. About 15 minutes ago, I performed a request for east718 to check a function he was making to prevent vandal page moves (like the GNAA ones). The resulting blocks, I can live with. I'd prefer not to have the move in the log, however: it's got a propensity for WP:BEANS. Sceptre (talk) 02:34, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Grab Tim or Brion from this list [9]. MBisanz talk 02:41, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Such things are only used for severe situations. Voice-of-All 05:24, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
True, considering I have only a suspect inkling at what that means, and even that requires a large amount of my adminy knowledge, I don't think there is a major issue here, that won't also be a major issue the first time its used on a real vandal. MBisanz talk 05:30, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Compression?

Does anybody know if the wikipedia web servers use HTTP compression for faster downloads? Thanks.—RJH (talk) 16:10, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Mediawiki supports compression. I assume it is used on WMF sites, though I have no direct knowledge of that. Dragons flight (talk) 16:21, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I got a Content-Encoding: gzip on Special:Contributions (the first page I checked), in response to a request that said Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate (what Firefox defaults to). So WMF will use at least gzip if the browser says it's supported. (Interestingly, there was also a Vary header set telling the cache to cache gzipped and non-gzipped versions separately, serving the gzip version if it was present in Accept-Encoding, so the Wikimedia caches seem to be aware of the existence of compressed download as well as the software itself. That's a good thing too, because otherwise there would be performance problems due to the server having to regenerate a gzipped version of a page every time a Firefox-using anon comes along.) --ais523 08:43, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Thank you.—RJH (talk) 17:40, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Help needed with subst for Template:Db-notice/Test

Can someone please help fix this subst so it works properly? This is a template frequently transcluded by other templates and substed into user talk pages. The idea is to, in most cases, include a line mentioning some admins' willingness to provide a copy of deleted articles, but to exclude that line if the article is a copyvio or something like that. This is implemented by an optional parameter passed by the template calling this template. Thanks, Sarah Lynne Nashif (talk) 20:50, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Is this (kinda), what you had in mind? It should now show the last line if you give the parameter: |willprovide=yes (or indeed if you pass any argument at all with this parameter).MiCkE 10:23, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, see what happens when I put: {{subst:Template:Db-notice/Test}}

Here is the diff. I'm trying to get that line to not show up in the markup when it's substed. There's a way to do it. I will continue researching. Thanks, Sarah Lynne Nashif (talk) 16:21, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I think I've fixed it now [10][11]. MiCkE 08:13, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


Strange error - "Replaced by addPortletLink()"

I've just started received this pop-up notice when loading pages:

Replaced by addPortletLink()

It appears four times in a row as a pop-up message in Firefox (2.0.13) before the body of the page appears. This has just started in the past few minutes - are there any changes to the software or scripts before I start disassembling my monobook code? --Ckatzchatspy 04:58, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Omegatron used to have a function called addlink which was a wrapper for addportletlink, and this function is still used by a few user scripts. Omegatron replaced this with an alert recently.[12] Gimmetrow 05:15, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
function addLink(where, url, name, id, title, key, after) {
   // addLink() accepts either an id or a DOM node, addPortletLink() only takes a node
   if (after && !after.cloneNode)
       after = document.getElementById(after);

   return addPortletLink(where, url, name, id, title, key, after);
}

You can add the above wrapper to your own monobook, before any loaded scripts, and it should work. From your monobook, it looks like the three scripts from Bobblewik and the one from user:js depend on addlink. Gimmetrow 05:20, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Is this for js or css. Well I'm stupid. CAn you just install it into my page please? Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:26, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Removing Bobblewick's code resolved three of the four errors (I wasn't really using it anyway). I'll try the js script next to conform, before installing the workaround. Thanks for the quick replies. --Ckatzchatspy 05:34, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Monobook.js. Sorry, I should have specified. Blnguyen, you added it fine, then removed it. However, you don't need it, since Omegatron's wrapper is the second-to-last load in your monobook. Just remove it; I've already fixed Dr pda's prosesize script to use addportletlink directly, so it doesn't need addlink. You'll probably have to "reload" your monobook after a change. Try shift+refresh or some other variation from WP:BYPASS. Gimmetrow 05:38, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, I've just gone back to basics. Dr pda was never working for me anyway. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:39, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I found the last issue with my scripts - js's "diff.js" is fine, but the addLink call appears in AndyZ's peer review script. (That's a useful one, too...) --Ckatzchatspy 05:45, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I saw addlink in user:js/watchlist.js. AndyZ's uses it a few times, so until someone changes it, suggest using the workaround. Gimmetrow 06:00, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
That addLink() is an internal function, not related to this issue; I already renamed it to avoid possible confusion in future. —AlexSm 19:10, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I've been getting this too. I just blanked my monobook.js file and purged my cache, but I'm still seeing the error message twice per page I try to load. Is there something else I need to do? — Dulcem (talk) 08:50, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Never mind. Made a null edit to my monobook, and that seems to have fixed it. — Dulcem (talk) 08:54, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I have this problem too - message appears once per new page opened. I have added the above wrapper to my Monobook and by-passed the cache and quit and re-opened. Still there. Any help appreciated. Ben MacDuiTalk/Walk 11:12, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm still having it also, even after wiping out my monobook and restarting my browser. I tried making a null edit to the monobook also. Any other ideas? Ealdgyth - Talk 14:38, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Second restart of the browser did it, I think. Finally. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:41, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I've tried all the suggestions here and still have this problem, even after multiple re-starts. — Zaui (talk) 16:49, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's gone, but I took everything out of my monobook except popups and had to restart my computer. — Zaui (talk) 16:58, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I give up. I completely cleared out my monobook, refreshed, restarted twice. I need my monobook tools back; someone pls wake me when it's over (I had six tabs open in the middle of trying to promote/archive FAC, lost it all ... <grrrrrr ... > ) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:56, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Can we create a list here of the scripts that are affected ? Then we can check which ones are fixed and which ones are not. It really is easy to fix these scripts, and personally I stand with Omegatron on this. It's about time that people started converting to addPortletLink. That mediawiki javascript code has been available for some 2 years or so now. I'm not an admin, but i will gladly help any admin to make the appropriate changes to userscripts if needed. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:45, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

addLink scripts

I think it was a bit irresponsible for Omegatron to do this edit. —AlexSm 19:10, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry

Oops. I didn't realize people were importing scripts from my userspace.

I did a cleanup of my monobook.js last night, and I changed my personal addlink function to that alert so that I could make sure I had migrated all my own personal scripts to the built-in function. I didn't realize other people were using it. (I had copied it from User:Trilobite/Tools)

I have reverted my changes so they should work again. — Omegatron 22:48, 4 April 2008 (UTC)j

I'm still getting this error message. Morphh (talk) 23:00, 04 April 2008 (UTC)
I edited my monobook.js page, then restored it... no more issues. (before doing this.. I had purged the monobook.js page but it did not correct the issue). Morphh (talk) 23:04, 04 April 2008 (UTC)
You have to bypass your browser's cache. — Omegatron 23:46, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Edit Button for the Lead Section Disappear

After I add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page, I got an edit button for the lead section on the top right corner. However, this button disappears every time I purge. How to solve this problem? --Quest for Truth (talk) 11:08, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't know whether you can get the lead section edit link and the purge url at the same time. But you can just click the article tab (or whatever it's called in the namespace), or manually remove ?action=purge from the url. If the purged version is not displayed afterwards then reload the page. Or just click the edit link which will load the current section in the edit window even if you saw an old page. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:07, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki transclusion?

Is transclusion from, say, Wikisource or Wikiquote into Wikipedia possible? In my case, I've come across an article (Porphyria's Lover) which has a "Poem Text" section, despite there being a perfectly reasonable rendition of the poem already available at Wikisource. I feel that the poem has more chance of being edited and maintained at Wikisource and so think that it would make more sense to have the text in the Wikipedia article synchronised with that over at Wikisource. However, I have, as yet, been unable to achieve this. Could anyone help?

Alternatively, if you feel that the "Poem Text" section in the Wikipedia article should be deleted altogether as it goes against a Wikipedia policy, please say so and point out what it is that it goes against. It Is Me Here (talk) 16:38, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki transclusion is disabled in Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2007 May 12#How can I use my templates that are on en.wikipedia on en.wikinews? Apart from content problems like vandalism, it would also create technical problems and not work for some legitimate users of Wikipedia data. See Wikipedia:Lyrics and poetry. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:55, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Block not shown in user block log

Recently I blocked User:Matt09pv. However, the block doesn't show up in his and my block log, while it appears on the Ipblocklist and I get the 'already blocked' error if I try to re-block the user. Does anyone else have the same problem, or is it just on my side? Regards --Oxymoron83 17:43, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, strange. Voice-of-All 19:01, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Later I saw that a page I deleted around the same time (Flalahahaaha) also has an empty deletion log (altough I'm sure I deleted it).
Maybe it's a bug related to the announced basical changes of the MediaWiki software regarding logs (which e.g. would show page protections and moves on watchlist) or the inclusion of oversight functions into the Wikimedia Corecode? But I think these MediaWiki changes aren't in effect yet. --Oxymoron83 19:29, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
You're correct, that code isn't live, per Special:Version. However, it is possible (occurs very rarely) for things to not get logged (bugzilla:12129 for patrol log, but possibly the same error occurs for other log types?) – Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 20:06, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Scripts

Could anyone explain to me which script from my monobook.js file had this "  Replaced by addPortletLink()". warning message every time when I turned to a new page including while it's loading, I've replaced my monobook with just two scripts at the moment and it seems to be fine but wondered which one it was so I know I shouldn't re-add them. Terra 18:55, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

See the above thread #Strange error - "Replaced by addPortletLink()" --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:05, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Apologies, didn't realize a discussion was taking place on this section. Terra 19:07, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:BYPASS and it should work again. — Omegatron 23:56, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Searching wiki markup?

Can someone search en.wp, or their copy of the 2008-03-01 dump, for a list of articles with {{DEFAULTSORT:X* or {{DEFAULTSORT|X* ? -- Jeandré, 2008-03-07t12:57z

Accessing Commons problem

Sometimes I can't access Commons, though it's not something that affects all other users at that time necessarily. Any ideas why? And is there some workaround? Ty 01:06, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I think it has to do with the fact that Wikimedia's servers are located in a few places around the world, so if one location is down for a bit, only the areas served by that server or group of servers is affected. WODUP 04:27, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

URGENT action required, please: browser issues with eng.WP alone

Someone appears to have introduced a bug into WP's javascript in the past day or two. Here are posts at the Apple support site (Safari section). I'll have to curtail my WP input unless it's fixed! It's a major bug.

Topic : Bizarre message box confronts me at English Wikipedia alone

ME: "I use the English Wikipedia site a lot. I've made no technical changes to my Mac or connection or settings at the site, but since this afternoon, every time I open a page there, a small message box comes up with the Safari icon: "http://en.wikipedia.org" "Replaced by addportletLink()". I have to hit the "OK" button exactly three times, and only then is the page displayed. This problem doesn't occur on any other Wikimedia site (Commons, foreign-language Wikipedias, etc). I've cleared the cache, re-installed Safari 3.1. I'd be very grateful for tips."

FIRST RESPONDENT: "I'm seeing the same message box popup for every page I navigate to on Wikipedia. It seems something about Safari has changed in the last week to make it behave strangely on a number of websites."

SECOND RESPONDENT: "I'm having the same issue on Windows with IE. I haven't fired up my mac (10.5.2) to see if it has the same issue."

THIRD RESPONDENT: "I'm using Firefox 3 beta 5. I have to click OK once. It just started today. No idea how to solve it, but I'd say it's a bug introduced by someone editing Wikipedia's javascript. I'm betting it'll be solved in a few days. As a temporary fix, you can just log out, if you're only browsing. Or, you can change your skin (in "My Preferences", click "Skin" and change to Modern, or something)."

Tony (talk) 01:26, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

You should report this on http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org. FunPika 01:31, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
It's a monobook.js problem. I suggest clearing your monobook, clearing your cache, and then replacing the scripts one by one until you find the one that caused the problem; I had the same problem. Keilana|Parlez ici 01:34, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Strange_error_-_.22Replaced_by_addPortletLink.28.29.22 Assuming it's the same thing, now that Omegatron has replaced the original code, clearing the cache in Safari should take care of it. Gimmetrow 01:35, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Short answer, Tony, Omegatron's change affected your Bobblewik scripts. Gimmetrow 01:37, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Do I have "Bobblewik" scipts? What are they? I remember something about that ages ago, but they didn't seem to work. How can I remove them? (If it's a single action, perhaps you could help this techdummy here?). Tony (talk) 01:42, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
All fixed after cache clear (I'd cleared cache initially with no benefit, so Omegatron's actions have done the trick). Thank to him and to Gimmetrow. Tony (talk) 01:45, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
BTW. You have these userscripts installed in your monobook.js page. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:55, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing this folks. Ben MacDuiTalk/Walk 08:15, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

For the record, this ain't my fault.  :) Other people were importing my personal scripts inside their own scripts without my knowledge. I've reverted so they should work now, but we should go around migrating scripts to the new syntax. (Might reduce page load time a little, too?) — Omegatron 20:18, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Crazy for caring, please tell me I'm not insane at seeing...

Please take a look at Smiley#Internet_use, in particular at the second isolated paragraph (pasted here so you know which one I mean):

The Wingdings font also includes a smiley:   Smileys and emoticons are often used on Internet forums.

Looking at this in IE7, there is no space between the first two links and the word following. So I tried FireFox and same thing. Opera and same thing. But when I cut-n-paste above, spaces separating link and word!

Hey, I even updated both FireFox and Opera and retested. Is this just one of those things and I should go bay at the moon to feel better? Shenme (talk) 07:28, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I saw it too. I was rather confused. Then I saw the extremely malformed Wikitable on the line above it. Someone mangled the table of Unicode smileys a while ago, and what they left there didn't display on the page but apparently weirdified the next line. I've fixed it now. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 07:59, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Wow. Must have been the things like ';&' and ':&'. I could see where something like that accidentally copied verbatim would confuse HTML parsers? Thanks. (Though now I wonder about the sanity of the parsers....) Shenme (talk) 08:05, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
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