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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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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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Watchlist timelength

The watchlist used to go back for 30 days, but now it only goes back for 7 days. This was done without warning and also makes the watchlist almost useless for people who either don't use Wikipedia on a daily basis, or who don't want to maintain all the pages on their watchlist every day. —Centrx→talk • 01:16, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Willing to buy us some servers to get it back the way it was? Watchlists utilize about the most expensive query on all of Wikimedia, and massive efforts are being done to minimize their effect upon the servers. This was one of them. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:53, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
At least make it possible to do a longer query, in the same way one can query user contributions above the last 500 edits by manually putting a number in the URL. This change was done without warning, and anyway are you sure that this was not a change of the recent changes table without any consideration of the effects on the watchlist?
Other options: change the default query to 1 day instead of 3 days; the default query is the most common, and is duplicated by anyone who then chooses "all". Also, why not instead prevent the creation of new pages by newly registered users, a vast number of which require the creation of a page, several edits, and then the deletion of it because it was junk. Why not make the watchlist be limited to 14 days instead of 7 days? That's still less than half of the previous 30 days. There are other options; the watchlist is the most useful feature on the wiki, aside from the plain editing. —Centrx→talk • 03:07, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
You are correct, the watchlist times were changed as a result of the default RC max age being changed to "7 * 24 * 3600". I would suggest filing a bug report for Wikimedia to request the value be set to a higher amount locally, as it's not going to be resolved here. AmiDaniel (talk) 21:58, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
Why not change it back to the higher time length everywhere? This is a problem that effects every wiki, not just the English Wikipedia or just Wikimedia projects. There already is a bug report filed, 10349, but this is a new introduction of erroneous behavior on an important feature of the site that renders the feature almost null for a significant population of users. —Centrx→talk • 23:13, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
I agree that it could be at least 14-15 days. Also I suggest that temporary you return 30 days watchlist and then to warn users that watchlist will be reduced from 30 days to 14-15 days after for example one week so that they can prepare themselves for that change. This reduce of watchlist time without warning caused problems to many users. PANONIAN 16:05, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
I have to throw my vote in favor here too. I've been backlogged on my watchlist about ten days and now I've been cut off from the tail end. I think that changing the default query to one day as Centrx suggests would help cut down server load from the vast majority of queries. Thanks! —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 16:58, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
I have posted a link to this conversation and to the bug report at Help talk:Watching pages#Watchlist only going back one week now so that editors visiting there can know what's going on. Cheers! —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 00:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Posts not automatically getting signed

Since I refuse to submit to the ridiculous process of manually doing something the software is capable of doing: how come my posts aren't automatically getting signed anymore by the bot?

User:HagermanBot. EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:13, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Just use 4 tildes (—METS501 (talk) 00:10, 24 June 2007 (UTC)) which will automatically sign your posts. —METS501 (talk) 00:10, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
The bot was added because many people, such as yourself, either do not know how to or forget to sign their posts on talkpages, using 4 tildes (~~~~). It is nonetheless still considered quite bad form not to sign your posts, a task that requires practically no effort, and it creates additional overhead and resource waste to simply reply upon a bot to add {{unsigned}} to all of your posts. We are not sure when the bot, or a clone of the bot, will be back up and running, but until then, and even after then, please sign your posts yourself, as it is a sign of decency and proper etiquette. AmiDaniel (talk) 00:44, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

You have no argument. That's like telling me I have to put four tildas at the end of my post when posting on a forum, otherwise the template that encases my post (that has your username and other info) won't show up.

If you think you can do better, then do so. Whining here about your own laziness is going to get you nowhere. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:58, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Don't tell me I'm whining; I'm suggesting an improvement to the system. Granted it's not that hard to put four tildas after your posts, but a lot of other things aren't that hard either that we can make manual: Why not take away the "keep me logged in" function and make users log in everytime they use the site? It's not that hard and takes up hardly any time.

Wikipedia has a purely wikitext-based thread system; it's not like posts are arranged in little units, as in forums (see m:LiquidThreads, a system in development which will do that). Whatever text people want to add to a page they should add without worrying that it will be modified by a machine somewhere in between submitting it and viewing it. (Unless you consciously want MediaWiki to modify it; for example, template substitution, or replacing ~~~~ with a sig.) The idea of a wiki, at least in my interpretation, is: people know what they're doing, so let them do it. If you don't want your posts to be signed, don't add ~~~~. It's very simple :) GracenotesT § 04:24, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that nice, rational explanation--that really clarified things for me. I still think the fact that you have to sign your posts is ridiculous, though (in this case you want machine intervention); however it's good that LiquidThreads is underway. Lumarine 04:47, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

The question remains, though, what happened to Hagerman (talk · contribs) since he stopped editing about a month before his bot did. I've sent him an email from his userpage and am awaiting a reply, but I wonder if I'm not the first to do so. Call me a worry wart, but my imagination's run rampant and I hope he's okay. —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 00:27, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Before the latest absence, Hagerman didn't edit from February 5 to April 28. When he came back, he only edited for two days before going away again. It seems like a pattern, so I wouldn't be too worried that anything is amiss. Comments on his talk page made it seem like he was away on business during March/April. There was also a thread about his absence on the Bot owners' noticeboard last time he wasn't editing. Mike Dillon 02:30, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The mystery of the disappearing PNG

Image:Mount Tai dot.png shows up blank both on its image page, and on Mount Tai. I'm using Firefox 2.0.4 on WinXP. It does load when I click for the full-size version, so I have no idea whether it's browser or Mediawiki that's at fault. Purging the image page then the article doesn't help either. Resurgent insurgent 03:51, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I tried to reupload the image to see if that would have any effect and it didn't. Then I got a message from N that said there may be size limits in the thumbnailing process. Uploading the image at a smaller size could help with that. Alternatively, Lupin may be able to recreate the image as an SVG file, since he originally uploaded it via LupinBot. Mike Dillon 16:00, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
The image is almost 7 megs uncompressed (and only 200 odd k compressed, impressive). The thumbnailing process can't handle images that large. The workaround is to upload a lower resolution version, let the thumbnail appear, and then re-upload the high res version. I'll see if I can't do that. -N 16:14, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
If the thumbnail algorithm needs to have the image completely converted to a full color bitmap before processing, then it's not designed very well; it should only keep a narrow horizontal stripe in memory at any time. This implies that there should be a separate thumbnail algorithm for each image file format, but I don't think that would be a big problem. --Derlay 09:49, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
Just wanted to say, I tested this on my PPC 6700 and it rendered the image flawlessly. If my phone can do it there's no reason the MedaWiki software can't. -N 10:14, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
There is a reason MediaWiki can't: it has code to explicitly check for the image size and not do the thumbnail generation if it's too large. The thumbnailing is in fact not done by MediaWiki itself, but by imagemagick, and the excessive resource usage is a imagemagick limitation. --cesarb 23:59, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
It's not a limitation, it's just an issue with the default limits for memory usage. There is a -limit option to convert that can be used to limit the amount of memory used. It defaults to 1 gigabyte, which is probably way too high for a high-concurrency situation like the Wikimedia upload server. It should be possible to adjust it down and get the right balance. Mike Dillon 00:26, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

"IP Data" links not working in user contributions

Hello. Today when I tried to check the "WHOIS" information for an IP editor from his contributions page, dnsstuff acted like the address was never put in. The same thing happened for the other links on that page Special:Contributions/70.217.214.35. However, when I turned over to the user's talk page I found that the links are working properly. This seems to be the case on all the IP pages I'm visiting today. Thoughts? —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 16:53, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Template help

Is there a way to fix this Template:Infobox cardinalstyles so the text in the articles doesn't butt up against the info box? Here's an example page; Francesco Cardinal Marchetti-Selvaggiani. In all the articles with this templete it makes the page unsightly and a bit difficult to read on the articles that have more text. The example I gave is just to show what I mean. I do not know how to configure templates at all, or I'd do it myself. Thanks for any help anyone can provide. - Jeeny Talk 22:24, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The margin-left I just added to the table's style should do it, if you're asking what I think you are. —Cryptic 22:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Yay! Thank you! You're the best! :) - Jeeny Talk 23:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

wiki "servers not found" on 25.6.2007

Almost all day today from around 10 am to 11 pm, all wiki servers (pedias, commons etc.) have been unavailable from my IP address. I could only access the http://wikipedia.org address, but all links there got a "server not found" error. My ISP said they could access all wiki servers, so I have no clue to the problem. Suggestions? --Janke | Talk 20:07, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Try doing a tcptraceroute to the Wikipedia servers; it will probably point exactly to the problem location (since it uses TCP packets, it can also find out some port-specific firewalling problems, and even uncover transparent proxies). --cesarb 22:52, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
There was apparently a crash of the .org TLD server today. Everything's been restored and is working again; however, the bad dns was cached by many ISPs. Please flush your dns cache, and if that doesn't work, contact your ISP to ask them to flush theirs. AmiDaniel (talk) 22:57, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
The entire .org TLD crashed??? That's unheard of. --  Denelson83  23:48, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Template admin needed

This request for a edit to an protected template would best be undertaken by someone familiar with template coding. (I've had mixed results and hassles even when giving something that can be cut and pasted in verbatim as this one, and I won't be here to field questions as I'm about to leave the office.) Thanks // FrankB 14:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

What's happened to the Arch. Portal?

WP:ARCH suddenly looks very strange - but nobody seems to have edited in a while - I suspect something like the box-headers have been changed, and this has affect the layout - Portal:box-header doesn't seem to have been edited though - anyone got any ideas what's happening? --Mcginnly | Natter 12:39, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The selected article closed its division twice. See my last edit to Portal:Architecture/Selected_article/2007-26, which has fixed it.-gadfium 20:30, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Centered digits on Template:NFPA 704

It appears that the digits in {{NFPA 704}} look centered in their respective cells on some browser+skin combinations (Mozilla Firefox+Classic skin, Konqueror+Monobook) but not others (Mozilla Firefox+Monobook). Lowering the digits a pixel or two would make it look fine on some while breaking it on others, so it's not an acceptable solution. Is there any way of making the digits appear centered for everyone? --Fibonacci 09:53, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Changes to "What links here"

Two changes to "What links here" would make it much more useful:

  1. The default namespace should not be "All". It should be the namespace of the article. If you are in the main namespace, you are probably looking for articles that link to the article, and not everything.
  2. The links should be ordered alphabetical. If there are more than a page worth, there should be a table of contents.
Are these changes possible? -- ☑ SamuelWantman 03:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
The first idea seems meritorious, although there are perhaps some drawbacks (incoming links from Talk pages may be interesting, and of course it's important to know whether some of the links may be template-generated). As for the second, though I'm not a dev, it seems like it would be difficult to arrange, and could add significantly to database load... It's worth noting that we don't have automatically generated TOCs for categories either, and category listings are similar to Whatlinkshere in being the products of a (more or less) live database query. Of course, categories *are* alphabetized, so perhaps that part of the proposal is feasible. -- Visviva 05:00, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Categories are alphabetized by their sortkey, whereas other links only have the page id of the page linked from in the database. It is techinically possible, but I'm not sure if it is too much of a burden. Another useful change would be filtering of transclusions (only them, or none of them, or either). However, the proper place for feature requests is bugzilla. Kotepho 05:14, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm most definitely aware that category TOCs are the result of a template (I wrote the first iteration of {{CategoryTOC}}). I am ignorant about how special pages come into existence. Does changing the default on the namespace require a developer? I noticed that "What links here" recently changed. Was that a software change? I've seen discussions on this page previously get implemented rather quickly if there is support, and if it inspires the right person with the skills to make it happen. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 06:34, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, for special pages you have to get someone with svn access to commit it and then a systems admin will update the copy of mediawiki used for wikimedia from svn. Sometimes you can harass them into doing things quickly, other times it can take months. You also have to convince them it is a good idea. Other times it things can be changed either in the site's javascript or other pages in the MediaWiki: namespace that any administrator may edit. These can happen a lot quicker. Kotepho 08:30, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

DOI issues

I'm having a problem placing this doi number into an inline citation: 10.1666/0094-8373(2004)030<0522:OEAMDO>2.0.CO;2. It is an accurate one, yet when I save the page, it creates a whole different doi number, this one: <0522:OEAMDO>2.0.CO;2 10.1666/0094-8373(2004)030<0522:OEAMDO>2.0.CO;2 into the citation in the footnotes section. Can anyone help? Orangemarlin 00:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't accept "<" or ">" in external links. I think it is possible to work around this by using URL codes instead of those characters. Now someone remember what the codes are? Dragons flight 02:47, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
You mean < and >? --Visviva 04:53, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
No, we need the URL codes not the HTML codes. As in how "%20" codes for a space. Dragons flight 05:56, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
%3c and %3e respectively. —Cryptic 07:12, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Edit conflict (but I was busy testing it before posting). --Splarka (rant) 07:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
This will be unfortunate, because in some of the scientific articles DOI numbers give quick links to the article abstract, and you can confirm the reference actually being germane to the issue at hand. The great DOI angels create these numbers, so I'm not sure what the workaround can be if I cannot use the "<". Orangemarlin 07:06, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm feeling a bit of deja vu... --cesarb 09:44, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

urlencode would probably be a good idea, although for some reason it's making < into XML-compliant &lt; before encoding it. I'm not positive if this would work with URLs. GracenotesT § 17:06, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Cryptic's ideas worked. And thanks Splarka for implementation. I hate DOI codes, but they really cut down on the work necessary to read these articles. Orangemarlin 18:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Oops, I was referring to the template in general (that is, urlencode the {{{1|{{{id}}}}}}). GracenotesT § 21:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

"Email this article"

Hi. I have been on Wikipedia for a few months, and I totally enjoy it. I have used it many times for my school assignments. My id is: Calypsos. I have some advice for you that I think may help make Wikipedia a better place for everyone, and to help increase Wikipedia's membership. If you have an "email this article" button on each article then that would be great. I have thought about emailing so many articles to my friends, but I could never find that button (and I know they would enjoy the article). Yahoo has the button on its news articles. I think it would make Wikipedia even better than ever! Thanks for your consideration (and thanks to Beth Dodge for pointing me here). Calypsos 03:21, 23 June 2007 (UTC)Amin Isaacks

I believe someone already wrote an extension for this -- not sure if there's a reason it's not enabled on enwiki. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, and we will consider it =D. AmiDaniel (talk) 03:27, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
At first this confused me, because we have "E-mail this user". When I saw it in my watchlist I thought you mean't e-mailing the article (as in, writing to the article), which didn't make much sense. Now it does :), and it seems like a good idea. --(Review Me) R ParlateContribs@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 15:54, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
There's mw:Extension:EmailArticle; it doesn't look like it was written with Wikimedia in mind in the first place, and the devs would probably have to review the code and check its performance first. You could ask for it to be installed at bugzilla:. --ais523 14:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
We have no intention of adding an "e-mail this article to someone" feature at this time. There's a couple reasons for this:
  1. It would be too open to abuse for spamming.
    Since articles can be created by anyone, and you would be sending mail to other people (not confirmed users on the wiki), it would be far too easy to abuse the system to create a spam message and email it out to a bunch of people. This is pretty different from centralized news articles where the only things you could mail out were written and pre-approved by employees somewhere.
  2. It's not that hard to email something yourself. :) Every browser I've seen has an "e-mail this page" feature of some kind, and even if you're not at your own computer just about everyone's got webmail of some kind. A couple clicks and you're in your email and can send it out to as many people as you like (and confirmed from your own mail server).
--brion 15:30, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Why can't we edit the first section of articles?

Why do you have to open the edit page for the entire page to edit the first section of an article? Why can't it just have an "Edit" above it like every other section?

You can actually edit just the first section. When you edit any other section, just replace the section number with '0'. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29&action=edit&section=0 will edit the header of this page. There is also a user script here which you can add to your monobook.js. This will add a tab which does the same thing. Harryboyles 06:20, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
As well as a template: {{edit-first-section}}. Don't place it on articles, though. Resurgent insurgent 03:47, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Why isn't it set up for everyone?

I have also noticed this problem. I hope that the Wikipedia development team consider making this an integral part of page section editing. Axl 12:11, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
It's a long-standing feature request (bugzilla:156). The reason there isn't a link is apparently because nobody can agree where it should be. For some possible placements of the link, it might even be possible to add the link by editing MediaWiki space, apparently. --ais523 12:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
I just had a look through "my preferences". I can't find a reference to "monobook.js". Axl 12:18, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Special:Mypage/monobook.js; it's a page you edit to add user scripts (monobook.js and monobook.css between them form a sort of 'advanced preferences' system). See WikiProject User scripts' script repository for information on how to install a script, and the scripts that you can install themselves. --ais523 12:24, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
I tried installing a script using the "importScript" example. It didn't work. *Sigh* I shall go back to editing the whole page when I want to edit the lead section. Axl 17:09, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
You have to bypass your cache (Ctrl-F5 on IE and Firefox) after changing your monobook.js. --ais523 17:16, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Axl: from the history of your monobook.js I can see that you only tried the first script from this list. That script adds 0 tab, not the [edit] link, maybe you simply didn't notice that tab. Try Simple Edittop script, and if something doesn't work, I will be glad to help ∴ Alex Smotrov 17:34, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. It actually worked! :-) Axl 17:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Partial talk page history deletion

Though I am an admin, some folks think that I should know everything about everything but I don't - ever since I became an admin I realised just how much I don't know!

For example, from time to time I get requests from editors for a deletion from their history of, for example, spurious warning templates placed on their talk pages by vandals. Whilst such warnings are easily reverted users would like them deleted from their history whilst leaving the rest of the history in place - can this be done, please? TerriersFan 22:47, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the deletion policy allows this. Mike Dillon 23:07, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
This is not an acceptable practice and any administrator who engages in such deletions should be sanctioned. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 17:10, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
It's technically possible, but inadvisable (it would take a strong consensus somewhere like the admin's noticeboard that such a deletion is necessary to convinve me to do this); if a warning isn't justified, striking it out and giving an explanation as to the circumstances can be used, and in the case of vandalism removing it is the simplest thing to do (just removing it could also be done in other situations, although I think striking such warnings is more transparent). --ais523 17:26, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
To do it you need to use selective deletion. However, warnings should not be deleted from the page history, I personally follow the oversight guidelines for selective deletion. You should avoid selective deletion whenever possible, it is legally dubious, as it often breaks the GFDL. Prodego talk 21:07, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
If you eliminate any direct derivatives of that section, then it should be OK. Of course, if it's essential that it be deleted, to be 100% certain you've not caused any GFDL violations, you'd need to delete all the revisions after that date. Not ideal. --Deskana (talk) 16:08, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
There's always the trick of "copying and pasting the edit history in the talk page", which has been used in the past for transwiki (where it's kind of hard to preserve the full details of the edit history). --cesarb 23:52, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
Unless you can use Special:Import for the particular transwiki, of course. --ais523 10:14, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
That's why I said "in the past"; IIRC, it was done that way back when Special:Import didn't work so well (or at all, I don't remember the details). --cesarb 00:31, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Help with Template:Cite journal

Hello. Do you have any idea why the publishers do not show up in these two citations? 1. Hart, Joseph (6 May 1998). "Room at the Bottom". City Pages 19 (909). Retrieved on 1 April 2007. and 2. Anfinson, Scott F. (1989). "Part 2: Archaeological Explorations and Interpretive Potentials: Chapter 4 Interpretive Potentials". The Minnesota Archaeologist 49. Retrieved on 3 April 2007. Sorry if typos of mine are the cause. Thanks for any help. -Susanlesch 16:56, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

server lag?

Am I the only one getting severe server lag today?--VectorPotentialTalk 16:53, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

View my entire UserSpace

Is there a way to check for orphaned or old userspace pages that I may have forgotten about, or to view a list of all pages in my userspace? Thanks! CredoFromStart talk 14:46, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Here ya go.[1] You can replace the username with anyone to check elsewhere. EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:52, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Excellent. Put it in my wiki bookmarks. Thanks! CredoFromStart talk 14:56, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Not a problem. You can also add an ending slash to just display subpages. (tiny detail) EVula // talk // ☯ // 14:57, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Viewing site wide changes made in the past (not so recent changes).

I want to check site wide changes made just after 04:00 GMT on 2007-06-05, but the link [2] only shows the current changes. Help:Recent changes doesn't help. -- Jeandré, 2007-06-25t11:51z

Recent changes only covers up to 5000 edits as per this section under the help page you provided: "Restriction on number of edits; alternatives". This covers only about three hours here because of the sheer quantity of edits that are made here. As of a few seconds ago, the latest revision ID was 140509529: thats 140.5 million revisions/edits in the database (assuming they were all there, which they aren't). There is no practical way that Wikipedia would be able to serve live the number of edits you requested (about 800,000 - 1,000,000). Harryboyles 12:46, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
The information is still recorded somewhere, though (in the histories of the individual articles), but presumably it would take a custom script run on a database dump to find it (unless there's something on the toolserver for this). --ais523 12:49, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
The revisions are, for the most part, in chronological order (barring undeletion of revisions deleted before the current numbering system was created, and other strange crap). So, what you can do, is go to diff=135964858 (title parameter will be ignored) and increment it by one digit until you get bored. Also, you could do some clever stuff with api.php, such as get the title of several revisions at a time. --Splarka (rant) 08:21, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

help

Why does on Queensland state rugby league team players, the template {{leagueicon}} suddenly stop working in the "2007 series" section. The template outputs little square coloured boxes. as it has done so, throughout the article, then the first one it works, but the rest it dosent?? Why. There dosent seem to be anything wrong.

SpecialWindler talk 02:53, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. It has to do with Template limits. A template can only be transcluded so many times, and a larger template will hit the limit sooner. Cheers. --MZMcBride 03:02, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

help again

Obviously there are some limits, to how many transclusions you can have on a page. But on Queensland state rugby league team players, it happens again, where at the end of the article, the template stops working. Now I need to have those little things next to every name on that sheet, how do I work around this? SpecialWindler talk 10:56, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

PS. The limit is crap (sorry for rudeness) SpecialWindler talk 10:56, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Try substing the templates. (The limit is to prevent you creating a page which is too heavy on the servers to render; the limits were originally set to half their current value, if I remember correctly, and increased due to complaints, so any page even getting anywhere near them is probably a problem.) --ais523 11:28, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Vote prompt won't stay hidden

I don't have enough edits to participate in the board election, so I clicked "hide" on the vote prompt at the top of every article. But when I close and re-open the browser, it's back. This also happens to me on the MediaWiki wiki (I can't hide it on Meta, since I don't have an account there.) Is there a way to permanently suppress that type of message? Thanks! Rockerbaby 04:56, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

The 'hide' information is stored in a cookie; it seems as though your browser's deleting that cookie for what it thinks are security purposes. --ais523 09:22, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Footnotes comment in articles

Is there a way to find all articles that have the following comment in the references section:

<!-- This article uses [[Wikipedia:Footnotes]]. Please use this format when adding references to material in the article. External links added directly to this section will be swiftly deleted without notice. -->

This comment is found when you click on "edit this page", it's commented out in the references section in some articles. It is not newbie friendly and really should no longer be in any article, especially since we now have {{reflist}}. Articles with this comment cannot be found via the Wikipedia search feature or Google. It would be helpful if we somehow could get a list of these articles, go through them (perhaps with a bot) and get rid of these comments found in articles. --Aude (talk) 15:30, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

If you temporarily remove the Wikipedia:Footnotes link from tags like {{Citations missing}} (that seems to be the most prominent one, if there are any others), then Whatlinkshere will be useful. –Pomte 18:06, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
The Wikipedia:Footnotes link is in the wiki code and is commented out. It's not part of the {{Citations missing}} tag. You only see the comment if you click on edit this page or click the "edit" link for the references section in some articles. It was in this version of the Ben's Chili Bowl article. I have since removed the comment, so it's no in the current revision. A newbie saw the comment and was frustrated and confused by it. This editor at least left a note on the talk page and I was able to help. I'm sure many see the comment, are scared away from editing, and don't leave a note on the talk page. I would like to know what other articles have those comments in the references section, and would be interested in seeing them removed. Might be a good task for a bot. --Aude (talk) 19:15, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
I understand the issue, and I'm positive that Whatlinkshere includes links that are <!-- commented out -->. For example, Special:Whatlinkshere/User:Zocky/PicturePopups.js lists your monobook. Try removing the first line:
// User:Zocky/PicturePopups.js - please include this line
and you'll no longer see your monobook listed there. The only obstacle so far is that most of the listed articles are due to {{Citations missing}}. –Pomte 19:56, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
This is a different thing: although user .js pages are shown as plain text, their contents are still interpreted like any other Wiki page, so the "//" comment has no effect. Counterexample: I put a commented out link to User:Dapete/Test in User:Dapete/Test/Test and it's not shown. --Dapeteばか 20:10, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
I stand corrected. I suppose a bot can detect that comment, so Wikipedia:Bot requests? –Pomte 21:09, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Rendering problem at Korea Greens

Check out this rendering problem in Firefox 1.5.0.12 on Korea Greens:

Image:bug-koreagreens.png

Is this a Firefox bug or a Wikipedia bug? Tempshill 18:19, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Different browsers will render it differently, but the big problem on that page is that there is so much material in infoboxes and very little in text. I've fixed the immediate problem by adding {{-}} to force the bottom box to really be at the bottom.-gadfium 20:05, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! Tempshill 15:53, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Wierd different recent changes

There's some wierd thing in recent changes, it's like

Special:Recentchangeslinks/[pagename goes here]

And then it does this wierd narrowed down recent changes to a certain number of pages. I'm not sure how it works, anyone seen it? I found it somewhere once and didn't save where it was. Anyone know what i'm talking about? Joshua Zelinsky 15:24, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

In the toolbox on the left click "Related changes" on a page. It is the recent changes of all pages linked from that page, it even works on categories I believe. Kotepho 15:37, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. So it's just stuff that the page itself links to, or is it also stuff that links to the page, or is it both? Joshua Zelinsky 10:47, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Stuff that the page itself links to, including ones linked through templates. –Pomte 18:10, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Confused on how to use javascript tools

How do I use this tool? User:Lupin/editcount.js, I've added his picture popups tool to my monobook, and it works, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to make this one work. This isn't a question about the script in question...just how you are supposed to make them work in general. Bassgoonist 19:42, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Make sure that you've bypassed your cache (Ctrl-F5 on Internet Explorer or Firefox for Windows); also, some scripts work on some browsers but not others. There are quite a few FIXME comments in Lupin's editcount script, so it's possible it isn't working at the moment or that it isn't working in your browser at the moment. In general, see the instructions at Wikiproject User script's script repository for information on how to install user scripts. --ais523 17:43, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Typo in page header

While I was seeing what W3C's CSS Validator would show on a wikipedia page, I discovered what appearently looks like a typo in the header. The line "<style type="text/css" media="screen,projection">" has "screen,projection" set for media. What should be set is "screen, projection". You can find the error on every normal page on Wikipedia. You can find the error here (It's the first error the validator produces). --Andrew Hampe Talk 23:11, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

popups

All of a sudden my popups seem to have stopped working, does anyone have any idea why? My monobook.js & my popups.js--VectorPotentialTalk 22:24, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind, they're working again, must have been a fluke--VectorPotentialTalk 22:25, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist

Is there some sort of hack I can add to my monobook that would allow me to watchlist only a talk page, but not its corresponding mainpage?--VectorPotentialTalk 19:15, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, you cannot stop both pages from being watched, but you can stop specific pages from appearing in your watchlist (with JavaScript, or very hacky CSS). GracenotesT § 19:40, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Never mind, it appears that even CSS 3 is not that hacky. GracenotesT § 19:46, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Edit history problem?

I added a vandal warning to User_talk:Lcb91. The weird thing is, I tried to edit the June section, and the server told me said section did not exist (twice), but I was able to edit it on a whole page edit. Furthermore, the user has warnings going back to May, and yet only shows 8 contribs in their history, all dated 28 June. I'm a bit confused. Is there a problem someplace MSJapan 10:57, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

They have one warning, in May, for creating a nonsense page. Since the page was deleted it doesn't show in their edit history--VectorPotentialTalk 11:55, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
The problem is the {{#if:...}} around the first header; that screws things up. --brion 14:19, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Different image appearing

I'm moving this from Wikipedia:Help desk#Different image appearing since no one there can figure it out. I changed the image in the Chayanne article from Image:Chayanne.JPG (a copyvio) to Image:Chayanne.jpg, which I just uploaded at Commons. Now some headshot of the guy (not the free picture I uploaded) is showing up in the article. I checked the history of that filename, and there was a file uploaded there, but it was deleted in December and looks different from the one that's showing up. Purging the cache hasn't done anything. ShadowHalo 04:23, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I've found that the real image will be shown by changing the thumbnail size to one that hasn't previously been used elsewhere. Note that if you try to show this one in 200px, there's an even different third fourth image. –Pomte 04:33, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Wow, that's bizarre. So does that mean that the issue is probably coming from Commons since there's only been one image uploaded here but several deleted from there? ShadowHalo 04:50, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
It appears that Commons doesn't delete all stored sizes of an image after it has been "deleted". So if you delete Chayanne.jpg from Commons again, all of the following (and more) may still remain: 200 201 230 231 250 345 –Pomte 08:23, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

I like the new way of adding pages to your watchlist. -Yancyfry 22:04, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

err what new way? Lynbarn 00:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I really like the new feature as well. It's a big improvement. Grandmasterka 02:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Much more convenient. –Pomte 02:23, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
The new way uses AJAX to watch/unwatch the page without going to an interstitial page and redirecting back. Mike Dillon 02:36, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Okay thanks. That is neat, but I wonder (After 25 years working with 'em, I've come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a coincidence where a computer is involved!) if this could be the cause of the issue I mentioned on this page two items below, re MSIE ActiveX/plug-ins? Regards Lynbarn 08:32, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
That seems quite likely. I'll comment below. Mike Dillon 14:57, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Any way to identify the current section?

Is there a system variable that can be used to identify the section a template is in? Specifically, I'm working on a template that requires different wording depending on whether it is at the top of the page or in a section. I'd like to use an "IF" condition based on section, the premise being that if the section is "0", it would use one block of text, and another if not. Alternatively, a "top of page" indicator would work as well. Thoughts? (Replies can go here or on my talk page - thanks!) --Ckatzchatspy 00:52, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Nope, there is not, as far as I am aware. System variables (magic words) are listed here (plus ParserFunctions). GracenotesT § 02:53, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
It could probably be done with javascript, but that is not really an option here. Prodego talk 03:25, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

User talk:Mike Garcia

Can somebody explain to me how the edit history shows several edits having been made to this page in recent days, but only the redirect is actually there on the page? Corvus cornix 21:12, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

That's how redirects work. If the page starts with #REDIRECT blah, everything else will be ignored. MaxSem 21:18, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Ah. I thought it showed anyway. Thanks. Corvus cornix 21:37, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Global CSS / JS

The recent changes requiring everything inside of these pages to use <pre> tags has broken any internal links and templates (one of which provided all of the interwiki links). There's a discussion here. Should the templates and wikicode simply be removed? Cheers. --MZMcBride 15:58, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

wgAjaxWatch error

My browser says that wgAjaxWatch.watchLinks is null or is not an object (line: 133). I have been editing some hours ago without this problem, so it must come from a recent change in wiki-software. Rjgodoy 11:35, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, for me watching/unwatching has reverted to the older method, rather then doing it via JS. --soum talk 12:15, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
This has been restored to working order. --brion 14:16, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Glitch!

A glitch I found when trying to get to my user page:



File:Wiki Glitch.JPG

It's fine now but it was weird. Coastergeekperson04 a.k.a. Ceres3 18:08, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

That happens to me occasionally. --ɐuɐʞsаАəp (ʞɿɐʇ) 18:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
You might mind fixing your sig. It won't render properly on my computer. Coastergeekperson04 18:17, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
This bug happens eventually on every computer on every page. (At least to my knowledge.) —Andrew Hampe Talk 00:50, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I've only encountered this error on IE6. Never had it on Firefox, Opera, or Konqueror. Has anyone else had it on a browser other than IE? AmiDaniel (talk) 17:35, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
I have IE6. Coastergeekperson04
Not me, but it happens in IE7 too. -Amarkov moo! 17:41, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
It's a bug in IE. --brion 20:01, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Activex in wikipedia?

To help dissuade my PC from collecting virii, I have increased the security by blocking activex from running in MSIE7. Normally, this hasn't caused any problems, but today, on almost every Wikipedia page I go to, I get the following dialog box appearing: 

Do you want to allow software such as Activex controls and plug-ins to run?
  • Has anything changed in wikipedia to require an Activex or plug-in?
  • Has anybody else experienced this behaviour?

Thanks for your comments, regards, Lynbarn 22:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I am quite sure that Wikipedia doesn't use Activex. Maybe you have some kind of Adware on your computer. Try Spybot - Search & Destroy --Apoc2400 08:29, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestion. It certainly never used to! It may not be ActiveX that is triggering the dialog box, but some other plug-in. I ran S&D over the weekend, but something may have happened since. There is also another possibility - see my comment in Thanks - the item two above this one. Regards, Lynbarn 09:31, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Try watching/unwatching a page with ActiveX/plugins disabled, and see if it works; that should indicate whether it's that that's causing the problem. (Based on how the AJAX watch works, I wouldn't expect such an error to come up until you actually tried to watch or unwatch if it was that that was causing it, though.) --ais523 10:43, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

It looks like this is indeed caused by the AJAX watchlist functionality. When a page with a watch/unwatch action is loaded (which includes all pages except special pages):

  1. ajaxwatch.js is loaded
  2. This adds an onload hook for wgAjaxWatch.onLoad
  3. If there is a watch/unwatch action link, wfSupportsAjax is called
  4. This calls sajax_init_object

Inside of sajax_init_object is the following code: 

function sajax_init_object() {
    sajax_debug("sajax_init_object() called..");
    var A;
    try {
        A = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
    } catch (e) {
        try {
            A = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
        } catch (oc) {
            A = null;
        }
    }
    if (!A && typeof XMLHttpRequest != "undefined") {
        A = new XMLHttpRequest();
    }
    if (!A) {
        sajax_debug("Could not create connection object.");
    }
    return A;
}

If you have ActiveX restrictions turned on, then Boom! Mike Dillon 15:02, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

That looks to me like a bad design for the watching; initalising the XMLHttpRequest object only when the watch link was actually clicked on would seem better in this case. (I suppose it's done the way it is so that other AJAXy features can be implemented without having to create a new request object.) --ais523 15:47, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
This is now fixed for IE 7; the native XMLHttpRequest control is now used instead of the ActiveX one, avoiding the warning.
For IE 6 the best we can do is probably to delay initialization until click time, but it would still prompt once you click the link. --brion 16:12, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
...aaaand that's now done too. --brion 16:23, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Yep, that's fixed it for me. Many thanks, guys! Lynbarn 08:39, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Problems with google search

The article Hodge-Laplacian is a redirect to the article Laplace operator.

When I did a google search for "Hodge-Laplacian wikipedia" the first result is to the (bad) mirror site http://www.savage-comedy.com/_Hodge_Laplacian.

If you do a google search for "Laplace operator wikipedia" you get the nice wikipedia article as the first result.

My guess is that the reason is the way Wikipedia shows it pages to the Google robot? Is there any way to correct this problem?

Best regards, Pierreback 22:41, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

It would probably help if the exact phrase "Hodge-Laplacian" was mentioned somewhere in the article; I don't think that the words appear next to each other in the article at the moment. --ais523 14:25, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
The article probably should contain "Hodge-Laplacian" somewhere (I don't know enough to know for sure), but that would be for encyclopedic purposes rather than for Google. I don't really think we should be tailoring our content for any external service, even one as prominent as Big G. -- Visviva 12:57, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Edit icons disappeared

The icons at the top of the edit box have disappeared (I mean the ones for "nowiki", "redirect" etc). DuncanHill 16:46, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

That reveals an easy answer to both of your questions: it is very likely that your browser, or an extension, has blocked JS for this domain, either by your inadvertent intervention or because of a reinstall/rollback/crash/error/gremlin. Delete as appropriate. Adrian M. H. 19:33, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, I purged my cache twice, and now pop ups and the edit icons are back working. DuncanHill 20:31, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Pop ups stopped working

Hi, my popups seem to have stopped working - anyone know why/how to fix them? I know next to nothing about how these sort of things work. DuncanHill 16:45, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Try clearing your cache in your browser and force-reloading a Wikipedia page, that might help. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 20:26, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Anon election notice

A well intentioned admin added a notice about the WMF election to Mediawiki:Anonnotice, the site wide notice shown to not logged in Wikipedia visitors. Since non-editors can not participate in the election, I feel this is a pointless distraction to the vast majority of Wikipedia visitors, and he disagrees. Since nearly no one watches Mediawiki talk pages, I am posting in a couple common places to hopefully draw further attention to this.

Please comment at Mediawiki talk:Anonnotice#Election notice is bad. Dragons flight 03:34, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Greek alphabet

Would it be suitable to implement (in MediaWiki:Common.css) the fonts as they are used in sl:Predloga:Jezik-el2? The rendering seems prettier than with the current {{lang-el}}. --Eleassar my talk 20:00, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

It will look prettier for people who have those fonts installed, that's all. I don't see any particular reason why not, but this does mean that {{lang-el}} will be different from everything listed here. GracenotesT § 22:06, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

The font list at that page is: new athena unicode, athena, gentium, code2000, palatino linotype, serif; and font-size is 110%. You can set a similar style on :lang(el) yourself if you want, in your monobook.css.

Interesting captcha

 

I did a double take when I saw it. I realized after a few seconds that it is peas + hits, but ... well ... umm ... yeah. It may be a good idea to have either a profanity filter or to at least remove a few key words from the dictionary. This one could definitely be taken the wrong way. --BigΔT 03:33, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

I dont get it . . how do you peash something and what's the it that it's talking about? But yea, I'd agree there. Q T C 04:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, very interesting. I would have thought about neither the peas, nor the hits ;-) Rjgodoy 11:33, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Ohhhh dear. --ɐuɐʞsəp (ʞɿɐʇ) 14:18, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Heh. Well, Wikipedia is uncensored... ;) Probably worth adding a blacklist for string combinations on the generator. --brion 14:29, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
"Oops". EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:18, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Haha! I love it =D. AmiDaniel (talk) 17:31, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Remember programs don't have bugs, just random features. ;) Valentinian T / C 22:18, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, I don't mind reading it, no one cares, but It feels weird to type "peashits" (It feels weird to type that too) in a box. Coastergeekperson04

Reflist issues

I mentioned this on Template talk:Reflist, but I haven't heard anything. The problem is that whenever I view a page that uses {{Reflist|2}}, the references are only extended half-way across the page. See Image:ReflistAU.jpg for what I'm talking about. It's not an issue with simply {{reflist}}, just when two columns are enabled. Anybody else having this issue, or know how to fix it? - auburnpilot talk 03:41, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

It looks OK for me today using FireFox and the default MonoBook skin. Can you give a few examples of other articles that fit that pattern of double column formatted references that you see as single column? - Bevo 17:33, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

{{portalwarning}}

After seeing a ton of portals not updated today, I have created a template called {{portalwarning}}. If you place the template on your user page for a portal that interests you, you can get an automatic warning that a monthly portal page doesn't exist. It will warn you if either this month's article or next month's article is missing. Example: 

{{portalwarning|portal=College football|page=Selected article}}
{{portalwarning|portal=College football|page=Selected picture}}

Enjoy! --BigΔT 00:04, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

CURRENTMONTHNAME

Is there a constant like CURRENTMONTHNAME that would give me next month? I guess I could make a template with parser functions if there isn't. --BigΔT 21:17, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

See here for a list of "magic words." There isn't a magic word for the next month. Just use ParserFunctions. Cheers. --MZMcBride 21:34, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Line spacing change when using references

When inserting references the line spacing seems to double. This makes some paragraphs appear to be two or makes it hard to see actual new paragraphs. Example:

This is
one[1] paragraph.

This is a new paragraph.

This appears to be 3 paragraphs when it is only 2. The reference seems to increase the line height and so the line spacing for the other letters. This can get rather confusing for large articles with multiple paragraphs. Is there any way to prevent the references from changing the spacing or alternatively decrease the line spacing on lines containing references? -196.207.32.38 16:50, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

How to vote in Board Elections

I a so very sorry but I do not understand the instructions the Help Desk is giving me regarding how to vote in Board Elections. I registered in May of 2006 and have 24,000+ edits on the English Wikipedia. I am following the link at the top of my Watchlist on the English Wikipedia to get to the voting. When I do that I am immediately switched to Wiki Commons. If I do not sign in at Wiki Commons, I clearly cannot vote. If I do sign in, I am ineligible as I have no edits there, never having been able to figure the Wiki Commons instructions. The Special:Boardvote (the link given to me by the Help Desk) leads me to the same situation.

Am I allowed to vote, and if so, how? Please forgive me for asking this question. And please to do look down upon me for asking the question in two places as the Help Desk seems to have no more help. Sincerely, Mattisse 11:29, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

When you go to the secure server (you may have to accept the self-signed SSL certificate, depending on how your browser is set up), do you see Welcome Mattisse@enwiki! anywhere? If not, it's most likely a cookie problem. You may, for example, have your browser set up to only selectively accept cookies (which is a good thing, by the way). In that case, you need to permit the webserver at wikimedia.spi-inc.org to set a cookie on your machine. The easiest way to do that is to just temporarily allow all cookies (allowing them just for this session is fine), go to your watchlist or any other page that requires you to be logged in to this wiki and then go to Special:Boardvote. There's no need to log in to Commons. --S up? 13:40, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
You should end up here with "Welcome Mattisse@enwiki!" on the page. There is no way you could get to commons, perhaps you mean meta? Prodego talk 18:40, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I do end up where you say I should. But I still must register on Wiki Commons and there I am inelegible to vote. I think I am not allowed to vote because I am not an inner circle wikipeida person where all the important stuff takes place. Sincerely, Mattisse 23:01, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
What on earth would give you that idea? You're eligible to vote; if you're unable to do so, then it's a technical problem, either on your end or ours. Have you enabled the reception of cookies from wikimedia.spi-inc.org? That is what this problem sounds like to me. Additionally, you keep saying "Wiki Commons"--do you mean commons:, meta:, or another wiki? There is quite simply no way that visiting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Boardvote could land you at Wikimedia commons, at least no way I could fathom. AmiDaniel (talk) 23:10, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

HEEEEEEEEEEELP! EMERGENCY!!!

Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Twinkle has done something very wrong to my monobook page. Now what I do? Who can help me with this? Aditya Kabir 10:47, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Looks fine for me. To judge from the note at the top of the script page, that's to be expected for browsers other than Firefox at the moment. Or perhaps the version in your browser cache was picked up when it was being edited, and it's unstable. Try bypassing your cache. TCC (talk) (contribs) 19:17, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
If you mean the colors, that is normal, if you mean the page looks screwed up, click here to fix. Prodego talk 19:38, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Double redirects

Why there is no message prompting to fix double redirects after moving a page anymore? I'm guessing that they are fixed by a bot anyway and there is no need to do it manually anymore. Is that correct? Jogers (talk) 13:29, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

The convo at MediaWiki_talk:Pagemovedtext#.241_and_.242_in_fullurl:_don.27t_work seems relevant. It looks like the mesage was moved from MediaWiki:Pagemovedtext to MediaWiki:Movepage-moved. fake example. --Splarka (rant) 07:15, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Creating an Infobox

I have created a new Infobox for characters in the Dune Universe which I believe will be useful. However, I don't known how to create an actual "copy and paste bit" for pages that want the Infobox added to them. If anyone could help, that would be great. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blurgle Fragle (talk • contribs)

I can see you've made the page at {{Dune character box}} and the text on there at the top left can be copied and pasted to put that infobox on pages. I've fixed a couple of missing parameters so the text should now be OK. Tra (Talk) 15:47, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm afriad I don't quite understand. What exactly do you mean by the "top left corner", and when I actually paste the Template title on the page all I get is the {{{name}}} bit and the Real-Life information title, with no space for adding the actual information.Blurgle Fragle 17:27, 9 July 2007 (UTC)


You may want to look at Template:Heroes_character_box and some of the pages using it. -- User:Docu

I deleted the actual example infobox from this discussion, since it was floating to the bottom of the page, away from the article discussing it. If you need it for further discussion, dig it up from the History and then put it in a talk page somewhere, and provide a link here. Pete St.John 19:03, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
What I mean is that there is a box on the template page that looks like this:
{{Dune character box
| name = 
| image = <!-- Wikipedia image of the character. -->
| caption = <!-- Caption for the image. -->
| alias = <!-- Pseudonyms and special monikers, not nicknames. -->
| gender = 
| born = 
| died = 
| occupation = 
| spouse = 
| parent(s) =
| child(ren) = 
| sibling(s) =
| other = 
| affiliation = 
| portrayer = 
| debut = <!-- First book the character appeared in. -->
| departure = <!-- Last appearance of the character -->
}}
What you need to do is copy the text in that box, paste it into an article and then fill in the details by putting the facts to the right of each equals sign. Tra (Talk) 19:09, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

"Unknown exception in diff."

This diff fails to show a difference between two revisions that are actually different (I removed two quotes: '"elected"' -> 'elected'), diplaying a message 'Unknown exception in diff.' instead. Same with this diff link for the same edit. Is this a known bug? Regards, High on a tree 22:09, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Here somebody observed the same error message in April. Regards, High on a tree 22:15, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

New searching features

Tim and Rob upgraded the Lucene search engine (which is used for Wikipedia) over the week-end, and we now have lots of exciting new searching features. Read all about it here. AmiDaniel (talk) 20:22, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

help

Why does on Queensland state rugby league team players, the template {{leagueicon}} suddenly stop working in the "2007 series" section. The template outputs little square coloured boxes. as it has done so, throughout the article, then the first one it works, but the rest it dosent?? Why. There dosent seem to be anything wrong.

SpecialWindler talk 02:53, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. It has to do with Template limits. A template can only be transcluded so many times, and a larger template will hit the limit sooner. Cheers. --MZMcBride 03:02, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

help again

Obviously there are some limits, to how many transclusions you can have on a page. But on Queensland state rugby league team players, it happens again, where at the end of the article, the template stops working. Now I need to have those little things next to every name on that sheet, how do I work around this? SpecialWindler talk 10:56, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

PS. The limit is crap (sorry for rudeness) SpecialWindler talk 10:56, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Try substing the templates. (The limit is to prevent you creating a page which is too heavy on the servers to render; the limits were originally set to half their current value, if I remember correctly, and increased due to complaints, so any page even getting anywhere near them is probably a problem.) --ais523 11:28, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Help formatting template please

I have drawn up a template here for the British Odin class submarine. I copied the template from the S-class submarines here but I've obviously cocked up somehow as the links at the top left (to View, Discussion and Edit) don't work. Could someone advise please? (My first attempt at a template, so apologies if I've missed something obvious.) Kim Dent-Brown (Talk to me) 10:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

You need to include the template name in the second parameter of {{tnavbar-collapsible}}, which I have done for you. Hope that helps, mattbr 14:37, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Passing (parts of) a table as a parameter

I hope I can make myself clear, since I'm no native speaker. I'm trying to make a template, where the parameters it evaluates are supposed to be parts of mediawiki-coded tables with | |- |} etc... . The problem with these things is that the Mediawiki software thinks these tablecells etc. are new parameters for the template, which ofcourse they aren't. Say I want to pass as a parameter exactly this line : 

| blahblahblah

How can I get this line passed as a parameter without Mediawiki thinking the vertical line | is just a new parameter? 82.169.140.227 08:57, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Here on Wikipedia, you can use the template {{!}} as a workaround (it's a delayed-action |). On other wikis, you can use the same technique but may have to create Template:! first. --ais523 09:07, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Transparency issues

 

This image shows up as solid gray with a white number and white trim in my browser (IE6). When I downloaded it to fix it, the gray areas come into my MS Photo Editor as transparent (which is correct). So the png appears to be right. Is this something I have to live with in my browser, or can I tweak the png to show the transparency correctly? I noticed that roughly 90% of the uniforms in Template:Basketball kit properly display the transparent areas, (Image:Kit body aab.png for example). What's different about those? Hoof Hearted 19:01, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, IE6 doesn't support png transparency, and is entirely a failing of IE6. Bassgoonist 19:39, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
As our article on PNG details, while IE6 does not support alpha-channel transparency, it does support the simpler palette transparency (which is the same you would find on GIF images). Indeed, a quick look at both examples you gave with the sng tool show that Image:Kit body bb whitetrimnumbers.png is a truecolor image with an alpha channel, while Image:Kit body aab.png uses a palette, with the first entry transparent. It shouldn't make any difference, if it weren't for that MSIE bug. --cesarb 00:38, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Using IE7, all I see is a white shirt, no number. Corvus cornix 03:34, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Since the number is white opaque, you may not see it until you put the entire image over a color. Hoof Hearted 12:29, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

File:Kit body bb whitetrimnumbers test.png Is this correct? I undestood from your exposition that the image should be transparent, instead of gray, with white background and white number (tested with MSIE 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254). Btw, I did save the image as bmp, and then I created the png again. Rjgodoy 11:53, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, RJgodoy's image is showing transparent in my browser. Was saving as a bmp first the key? Would you be willing to fix roughly 70 images on the Basketball kit so they'll show up properly in browsers like mine? If not I'll see if I can duplicate your fix and try it myself. Hoof Hearted 12:29, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, now I'm really confused. I downloaded your test image (which is transparent) to transfer, but when I upload it to the right location it comes in gray. Somehow my computer is cancelling out the changes Rjgodoy did. Hoof Hearted 12:45, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps my cache needed clearing, suddenly it's fine. Thanks Rj! Hoof Hearted 13:31, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes... I also experienced problems whit the cache when trying to see the new version of the image. For bypassing the cache (using MSIE6) you can press CTRL F5. More detailed instructions for MSIE6, as well as instructions for other browsers are given in WP:CACHE.

About your request, I can help but I have no experience with Template:Basketball_kit so I don't know which images have this problem. It would be helpful if you can provide me a list of such images (e.g. you can post their links in my talk page).

About the workaround I followed, the idea was to "regenerate" the palette (since User:Corvus cornix pointed that it was the problem). Note that some programs won't work: for instance, mspaint cannot handle these images properly, so I used MS photo editor 3.0 (hmmm... shoud I say I love old software?)

Rjgodoy 00:39, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

I think that it is transparent, as the background to the english wiki is blue. However, the number is not transparent. I belive The editor made the number white but not transpartent. Coastergeekperson04 19:40, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Image thumbnail issue back?

I noticed tonight that Image:2005PoinsettaBowl-Navy-LOS.jpg wasn't showing up. I tried purging the page cache and re-uploading it. (This image had been working just fine.) The 400px version [3] displays just fine, but the 800px one [4] doesn't. When I try the 800px version, I get this error: 

Error generating thumbnail
Error creating thumbnail: convert: Insufficient memory (case 4) `/mnt/upload3/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/2005PoinsettaBowl-Navy-LOS.jpg'.
convert: missing an image filename `/mnt/upload3/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/2005PoinsettaBowl-Navy-LOS.jpg/800px-2005PoinsettaBowl-Navy-LOS.jpg'.

Yes, I've cleared cache, tried a different browser, etc. Any thoughts? --BigΔT 05:56, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

It looks like creating the thumbnail is generating too much server load for some reason, so the server's refusing to thumbnail the image. I'm not sure why this would be, though. --ais523 16:34, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Colours

Hello, I've noticed that on various infoboxes (and some user signatures) a variety of different colours are used. When I look at the code, the code for particular colours usually looks something like #FEDABC or something. The trouble is I have no idea how to use these codes to make the colours I want. Does anyone know where I can find out? G-Man * 20:37, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

It's hexadecimal. A byte for red, a byte for green and a byte for blue. #RRGGBB. Try looking at Web colors and other related articles. --ɐuɐʞsəp (ʞɿɐʇ) 20:41, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh, thanks that answers my question. G-Man * 23:29, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

New Message Banner

Something is wrong with my new message banner. It is appearing constantly (even after checking last change). The help desk suggested I bypass my cache. I tried this and I tried to clear my cache. Neither worked. Please advise.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 17:10, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

What about logging out and logging back in? That might help clear out a stuck cookie that doesn't realize you've check your talk page. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:31, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Identifying where a contributer is located

For anonymous users I know how to use Whois to find out a little about a person from the IP address. Is there any way to do the same thing for a registered user? Thanks --Appraiser 20:24, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Not unless they tell you. The only people who can view a logged in users IP address are Wikipedia:Checkusers.--W.marsh 20:40, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
It's kind of funny how being "anonymous" can be more revealing than a consistent account... 141.224.64.41 12:39, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

List template with inclusion of overview?

I have seen many lists like the List of network theory topics. I wondered if it would be possible to use something like the sortable table technology to include the overview/introduction of each link on this page. This might be useful in category displays as well. I was thinking that this would be a clickable that would show or hide these details. Currently such lists require that the user clicks each one and then backs up when they are trying to find relevant entries.

I guess this may not be possible due to performance issues. However, I used some templates on Comparison of Gnutella software and it seems to load as fast as any other pages. This seems so useful that maybe such a thing already exists? Bpringlemeir 16:38, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist message

Is there some monobook way to hide that "this page has been added to your watchlist" message that now appears when you click the watch tab? >Radiant< 09:42, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

div#mw-js-message {display: none; }


  • Thank you. >Radiant< 16:19, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

can article visitor-traffic be measured, as it can on a website?

Hi - Is there a tool that shows how many visitors read an article during a certain day, week or month?

I'm just wondering if there is any way to measure the results of improvments to articles and improvments to inter-article linking by watching the changes in traffic over time.

Not looking for information about individual user names accessing articles, just general statistics for particular articles.

Thanks --Parzival418 Hello 21:01, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki does have a built-in hit counter, but if implemented on Wikipedia it would take up a lot of server load. There is an external tool called Wikicharts, however. It analyzes approximately one out of 6000 page hits on Wikipedia, so it a reasonable statistical sample. The only problem is, it appears to be down. GracenotesT § 22:07, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
I seem to remember that there was a page visit counter operating in the early days of wikipedia. But it was disabled yonks ago and never re-started. Presumably because it slowed everything down. I agree it would be nice though. G-Man * 23:32, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Yeah it would be a useful tool. Well, thanks for the info. Have a good day... --Parzival418 Hello 01:44, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
I find that Google PageRank varies among Wikipedia pages: Main page = 9, RSS = 9, China = 8, Pescadores = 6, Leonidas Alaoglu = 5. This presumably is a measure of inbound links. Generally you just open the article using a browser in which the Google Toolbar has been installed and read off the PageRank. EdJohnston 02:13, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Hi - that sounds interesting, thanks. It's not what I was trying to do though. My thought was to get an idea of traffic within Wikipedia, to see how actively visted any particular article is - in other words, I think there are lots of editors working on obscure pages that are not receiving much traffic from people looking up those topics. If someone wants to edit those pages because they like to, that's great, then we'll have deep knowledge here. But sometimes I wonder if maybe a page I'm working on would be better left in a less developed state, in favor of working on a related page that is getting more traffic from readers - that way, the more visited articles would be of higher quality in shorter time. Just an idea, maybe it's not practical. But I know for sure of some editors who have fully beautified articles that may be read by almost no-one. I'm not saying it's a problem, just noticing that it's happening. --Parzival418 Hello 02:39, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
You might have a peek at WikiCharts. Data seems quite up-to-date and accurate. AmiDaniel (talk) 03:54, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the link. That's an interesting tool! I wonder if that script could be modified to find the stats for an article by inputing its page name. Maybe I'll email the developer of the tool. It seems like if the data is already there it might not be hard to format the inquiry differently. Well, maybe that's a bit farfetched, just a thought... Anyway, Thanks again!- -Parzival418 Hello 05:20, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Oops, that must be the link! GracenotesT § 06:01, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh .. I do apologize. I didn't realize you had already linked to it above =D. Maybe next time I should read through the thread before posting to it -- anywho, glad some good (the correct link) came out of my laziness. AmiDaniel (talk) 07:13, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Hm, that's odd. Last time I checked Wikicharts, it was down, so when I saw that your link worked, I assumed that there was something wrong with my link :) GracenotesT § 07:29, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Hi - I checked the first one when you posted it, and it was definitely down. Then I checked the second one when it was listed here, and it worked. So when I saw this conversation, I checked the other one and now they both work. But the first one is in German and the second one is in English. I think the program was down before and is working now, but the extra code in the second link makes it appear in English... it seems... --Parzival418 Hello 07:46, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Page size messages

Someone has changed the messages we get when we edit so that it no longer gives the page size. It was very, very useful to know the size. Does anyone know who changed it and why, or where it was discussed? SlimVirgin (talk) 02:07, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

The exact size is still available if you hit the history tab (it shows up after every edit now), but it was nice having the reminder on the edit page. Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:10, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Sorry if I'm being dense, but I don't follow. I can't find the sizes anywhere I look now. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:42, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
If you click on the history tab, after each user name and (talk contribs) is a number, which is the number of bytes in the page at that point. This gives you the total page size. The old notice on the edit page only gave a specific size when a page was over about 30k, so in many ways the history tab is more helpful. There are javascript tools to get other sorts of page size info (size of reference text, for instance). Gimmetrow 02:45, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
For me the top revision of this page in the history is:
02:42, June 29, 2007 SlimVirgin (Talk | contribs | block) (68,485 bytes) (→Page size messages - reply to Seraphimblade) [rollback]
So the pagesize is given after the username and before the edit summary... WjBscribe 02:46, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I see now, thank you. It's not as helpful as before, in my view, because when you wanted to see whether removing a section would substantially reduce page size, you could remove it, preview, and check the difference. Now you'd presumably have to save before you'd see it. Does anyone know where the discussion about this took place, or can be started? SlimVirgin (talk) 04:44, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
You can use a bookmarklet (a favelet) to get a poor alternative. Add javascript:alert((""+window.getSelection()).length) to your bookmark. Now, select some text and click the bookmark, it will pop up the size. So, while editing, select the entire text, click the bookmark and you will know the size (Technically the number of characters, since WP uses Unicode which is 2 bytes per character, the size is twice the length). --soum talk 12:27, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
No, Unicode is not 2 bytes per character. UTF-16 and UCS-2, which Wikipedia do not use, are (ok, sometimes UTF-16 is 4 bytes per character). Wikipedia uses UTF-8, which is a variable length encoding (but, most of the time for English, 1 byte per character). --cesarb 21:23, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Er, what's missing where? --brion 14:18, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
It was this change in MediaWiki:Longpagewarning, now reverted. SlimVirgin: next time go to Special:Allmessages (warning: a huge page), find corresponding Mediawiki message, check page history ∴ Alex Smotrov 14:33, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

~~~~ seems to be broken

The four-tilde signature (~~~~) appears to be broken; it results in this:

[[User:Tualha|Tualha ([[User_talk:Tualha|Talk]])]] 14:37, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

It appears that some of the brackets are misplaced. I don't recall that ~~~~ includes the talk page; is this a recent change? Tualha (Talk) 14:37, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

This seems to be related to the "raw signature" option in user preferences. It happens if that is unchecked, but not if checked. Tualha (Talk) 16:26, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, if it's unchecked it will link whatever you put in "Nickname" to your userpage. Raw signature means that you have to link everything manually. AmiDaniel (talk) 16:37, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
That would be "Signature:" not "Nickname:" thanks to what is probably my most important edit ever, made on 21:20, 28 June 2006. :) Prodego talk 02:58, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Edit conflict page not working in Macintosh Internet Explorer browser, no editing icons, and Javascript inserting symbols not working

The Internet Explorer browser for Macintosh (version 5.2) keeps shutting down rather than show an "edit conflict" page. I think a Wikipedia developer should try to fix that problem. Normally when I save an edit on Wikipedia, everything works fine: the edit gets saved, and the updated page gets fully loaded. But when there is an edit conflict, I briefly see the title "Edit Confict: [whatever the name of the page is]," and then the entire browser shuts down and I have open it up and try to save it without an edit conflict occuring all over again. It is very frustrating. Also on this browser, there are no helpful editing icons on the edit pages (eg. the "insert links" icons, the "nowiki" icon, the "insert signature" icon, etc.). Also, when clicking on the Javascript links on the bottom of the edit pages, the respective symbols are not inserted into the edit box. — 216.250.39.226 21:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I have found a shortcut around the problem: Safari. It looks exactly the same as Internet Explorer for Mac except that it actually works. All of the problems I stated earlier do not exist with Safari. --216.250.39.226 21:45, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

That version of Internet Explorer is seriously obsolete. You are much better off using Safari. Mike Dillon 23:44, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
I have to echo that statement. Microsoft abandoned IE on the Mac side several years ago (around when Safari was launched). Ultimately, though, nobody should ever use IE... so many problems. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:20, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
I was able reproduce the crash on edit conflict here on Wikipedia (IE 5.2.3 on Mac OS X 10.4.10 Intel) but haven't been able to reproduce it on a local wiki installation. I can only assume it's a weird interaction with _something_, which could be very difficult to track down.
There's no useful debug symbols in the backtrace I get from the system, either. While I do my best to keep IE/Mac from breaking outright, I do have to concur with the recommendation to use anything else if you can! :)
Safari or Firefox work great on modern Mac systems (OS X 10.2 or later). If you're stuck on a really old 10.x or OS 9 system, you might have to use an old Mozilla release, or give iCab a try. --brion 20:24, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Database server lag

The lag is up to over a half hour now, is something busted?—Elipongo (Talk contribs) 20:11, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Likewise - I've become used to the occasional "server lag" notification on watchlists; usually, it is only a matter of minutes. However, it has suddenly gotten way behind, and my most recent "Watchlist" request returned "Due to high database server lag, changes newer than 2002 seconds might not be shown in this list." Any idea what's happening? --Ckatzchatspy
Thanks to Tim, it should now be fixed. May take a while for everything to catch back up, though it looks fine on my end. AmiDaniel (talk) 20:28, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! it all looks good now. —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 20:35, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks as well. --Ckatzchatspy 20:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

CAT not shown

The article StumbleUpon is assigned to three categories, but these are not active. What's wrong? -- Scriberius 13:49, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. One of the references wasn't closed. See my edit summaries in the article history - the offending reference probably isn't a reliable source anyway. Graham87 15:03, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Hit lists

Is there a top 100 list of hits on Wikipedia pages? Also, is there anyway of finding the hits on individual pages, please? TerriersFan 23:27, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

The top 100 list is here. There is, however, no way of finding the hits on pages other than those listed by that tool. Warofdreams talk 04:21, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Showing log for a deleted page without going to log gone?

What happened to the deletion log showing on the actual page when you navigate to a previously deleted page (ie. without clicking on deletion log). It no longer shows on the actual page. It just has the link to the log. R ParlateContribs@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 20:20, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

The log shows when you attempt to edit, not when viewing the article page. I don't believe the log has ever shown on the article page. --- RockMFR 20:28, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh...I guess I didn't notice that it only showed in edit mode. Thanks. R ParlateContribs@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:28, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, it did, but only for about a week or so. It doesn't make much sense to warn the user about recreating a page until he's actually about to recreate it. AmiDaniel (talk) 00:07, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Bot needed for Category:Foundation schools

Is there a bot available that can look for the phrase 'foundation school' (ignoring caps) in articles and then allocate the article to Category:Foundation schools, please? TerriersFan 17:02, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a job for AWB. Prodego talk 18:12, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Edit icons disappeared

The icons at the top of the edit box have disappeared (I mean the ones for "nowiki", "redirect" etc). DuncanHill 16:46, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

That reveals an easy answer to both of your questions: it is very likely that your browser, or an extension, has blocked JS for this domain, either by your inadvertent intervention or because of a reinstall/rollback/crash/error/gremlin. Delete as appropriate. Adrian M. H. 19:33, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, I purged my cache twice, and now pop ups and the edit icons are back working. DuncanHill 20:31, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Pop ups stopped working

Hi, my popups seem to have stopped working - anyone know why/how to fix them? I know next to nothing about how these sort of things work. DuncanHill 16:45, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Try clearing your cache in your browser and force-reloading a Wikipedia page, that might help. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 20:26, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Icons do not line up properly

This has been discussed and reverted back and forth many times but there is still no solution to this dilemma. See here and follow the long tedious discussions leading to nothing. I'm not expecting a miracle here but does anybody have absolutely any idea how to fix this? We've tried everything! Its surprising how such a simple thing can cause a lot of headaches for a lot of users. --Hdt83 Chat 08:28, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Bizarre template behavior: {{{parameter}}} inside [url] inside {{#if}}

The following links seems to screw up in interesting ways. Why are the link brackets shown in the rendered HTML?

Note that the {{#if:x|...}} wrapper is required. Without that, things work as expected:

Likewise if the [link brackets] are omitted:

It also works if you include an explicit alternative:

I'm at a bit of a loss to explain this.

If it's something obvious, have a look at Template:arXiv, where I had to use the kludge above to work around the problem. You might clean it up before I do.

P.S. Am I encountering mediazilla:5678? And the changes aren't in Template:arXiv; they also depended on {{#pos}}, which is a StringExtension that WP doesn't support ATM... 71.41.210.146 07:43, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Getting a 404 for some uploaded images

I've stumbled across a few images lately in which the latest uploaded version appears not to exist. Clicking on the image yields a 404. Examples:

What's the deal? —Bkell (talk) 04:48, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Looks like we had some files go missing -- I'll try to find out what's going on and if they can be recovered. AmiDaniel (talk) 16:56, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
They should all be fixed now, except for a few missing old revisions. -- Tim Starling
Thanks Tim =D. AmiDaniel (talk) 08:13, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Search button question

Using the "Search" button gives different results for Bevo and "Bevo". Does anyone know why? - Bevo 00:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

This morning it seems to be fixed (both terms now result in returning the same set of links) - Bevo 13:46, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Audio on English Wikipedia via .de

Hello, I reported this to GMaxwell but wonder if anyone else here can hear any audio on the English Wikipedia? Two examples that do not "play in browser" here are 1 and 2. Thanks for any information. -Susanlesch 17:12, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

  • P.S. Here is one I can hear 3 from tools at .de. -Susanlesch 17:16, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Thanks anyway, another editor confirmed the Wikimedia Player is not functioning at this time. -Susanlesch 00:22, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
  • At this time I have the same results. I can hear 3 and not 1 or 2. -Susanlesch 22:14, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Looks fine now. Thanks to whoever fixed whatever it was. Best wishes. -Susanlesch 22:19, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Help talk:Variable history is screwed up

Help talk:Variable is not displaying correctly for me (for one thing, authors' names do not appear.) Is this a problem with all discussion pages pointing to history on meta? BenB4 12:53, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

The bot maintaining that page history made some markup errors during transwiki, which you can see if you view the source. æ² ✆ 2007‑07‑08t16:28z

Reflist issues

I mentioned this on Template talk:Reflist, but I haven't heard anything. The problem is that whenever I view a page that uses {{Reflist|2}}, the references are only extended half-way across the page. See Image:ReflistAU.jpg for what I'm talking about. It's not an issue with simply {{reflist}}, just when two columns are enabled. Anybody else having this issue, or know how to fix it? - auburnpilot talk 03:41, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

It looks OK for me today using FireFox and the default MonoBook skin. Can you give a few examples of other articles that fit that pattern of double column formatted references that you see as single column? - Bevo 17:33, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Creating new article problem

Hello, I have a problem. I used the "create article box" (using the inputbox option) in the Romanian Wikipedia, and I was wondering why there is a problem with it there and here not. If you register to ro.wiki and go to http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilizator:Danutz/Cutie you will see that at the bottom of the page there is a problem with it, the page is not displayed properly. I hope you see what I mean, but I repeat, that only happens when registered (logged in). The same problem appears with the box on ro.wikinews.org . If you understood what I mean, please write here about how this problem, please tell me how this was fixed on the english wikinews. Thank you! --Danutz 21:41, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

The page linked looks fine to me, logged out and logged in. What os/browser/version are you on? Or...do you mean the edit page? This bugzilla entry might be relevant to you. --Splarka (rant) 07:32, 7 July 2007 (UTC)


Yes I ment the edit page. The "minor edit" checkbox and the watch checbox are displayed wrong. But this boxes appear only when a user is logged on, that's why I prompted for log on. I tried making that change to Medawiki:Common.css, now we should wait and see if the problem dissapears. --Danutz 08:40, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Ahh. The simple answer is that those checkboxes only appear for logged in users (anonymous users cannot do minor edits, nor have watchlists). The actual problem is with the editintro url parameter, which the devs are aware of but not able to easily find/fix yet. The CSS fix should work fine. --Splarka (rant) 07:07, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Links embedded in Euromoney article

Somebody look at the ref tags used in Euromoney; are these PHP arguments sneakily meant to inform the Euromoney webmasters when someone was "referred" to their site via Wikipedia? (If so, they weren't competent enough to actually make the links render.) –Unint 00:51, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Could be, I suppose. In any case, it's clearly someone without much computer know-how ... AmiDaniel (talk) 01:10, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
If I were to visit the URL would they receive the message? (Sorry about the long line.) –Unint 01:16, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Your browser actually tells the server where you followed a link from (via the HTTP "Referer" header), although this can be disabled in some browsers. Hidden messages can be sent in the manner you describe, since that website's server probably keeps a record of requests sent to it (I know that Apache does, although this one uses Microsoft-IIS, version 6), although you can actually send a message to a website without connecting to it (has to do with DNS lookup). GracenotesT § 04:04, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Weird edit I made; any ideas how this happened?

In trying to cast my !vote in an RfA, I seem to have inadvertently loaded and edited an earlier version of the page. Here's the diff. Now I can just about believe I somehow loaded an earlier version (perhaps because I came to the RfA via another editor's contribs?), but what I cannot easily understand is how I saved it. I definitely would have noticed the red warnings you normally get when saving an earlier version of a page (usually when reverting) and so I can say with confidence that I never received a warning. Any idea what's going on? --John 00:08, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

This is typically a browser caching problem and has been known to happen several times in the past. What web browser are you using? If you've recently made any changes to your settings concerning caching, cookies, etc., do revert them. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:07, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your answer. I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.4 and I haven't changed anything recently. --John 01:31, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Password emails

I've been getting a lot of emails with temporary Wiki passwords over the past few weeks - almost every day. It seems someone is trying to hack my account; I've seen a hacked admin account in action and it isn't pretty. I have a secure password, but if someone requests a temporary one and then is able to intercept the email sent by Wikipedia to my account, my password won't matter. Is anyone doing anything about this? Is there a relevant discussion somewhere? Surely I'm not the only one this is happening to. Kafziel Talk 18:50, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

As long as nobody else sees the temporary passwords in the e-mail, you should be fine. If you're worried that the e-mail could be intercepted, you can remove the e-mail address from your preferences to dissable these e-mails. Be aware that this will have the side effect of preventing people from e-mailing you through Special:Emailuser and will also mean that if you do actually forget your password, you won't be able to retrieve your account. Tra (Talk) 19:17, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
I can't remove my email. People need to be able to contact me. I get at least one email per day, from confused new users, spammers I've warned, users I've blocked, etc.
I know this doesn't seem like much now, but it's a potentially serious security breach. Nobody realized it was important to encourage complex passwords until it was too late, and although this seems like a minor annoyance for the moment (which is why I waited so long to look into it) it will develop into something much worse the minute someone finds a way to do it properly. This should at least be being discussed somewhere. Kafziel Talk 19:35, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
I suggest that the automatically generated email with password changes, include the IP address and date of the original request. When you legitimately ask for a password change, you would just be seeing your own IP address, which is no privacy violation. You would only be seeing someone else's IP in the case that they requested the password change with your account ID. However, the likeliest cause is probably just a user with a similar name making an honest mistake, e.g. someone named Kafzeal has forgotten how he spells it, himself. But if you had the IP you could at least post a question or remark to their default login page; you would also be easily able to spot a kid brother hack, because he is using your own IP, etc. Pete St.John 20:17, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
The emails do include the requesting IP, but it's always different. And it's quite unlikely that there is anyone with a very similar name to mine (if there was, they'd be blocked) and even more unlikely that they forget their password each and every day. I'd suggest limiting the number of password requests to one or two per month, as well as some kind of security question necessary to generate the email, at least for admin accounts. At least, that would be my suggestion if there was a forum for them, which there doesn't seem to be. That's what I think is odd. I can't be the only admin with this problem. Kafziel Talk 20:48, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
If your in doubt you might be able to ask a checkuser to look at other accounts on those IP's because they could becoming from a sockpuppet/vandal/open proxy. ∆ 01:34, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
I've been getting at least one of these a day now for weeks and weeks. Perk of the job. --John 01:38, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorting of articles in categories

I think this falls into the technical part of Wikipedia. I was wondering if you all agree that the categories should be sorted by {{PAGENAME}} instead of {{FULLPAGENAME}}. For example, all templates go under "T" because the namespace starts with a "T", right. The current best way to get around that is by writing {{DEFAULTSORT:{{PAGENAME}}}} into all the templates. But why? Shouldn't all pages be defaultsort:pagename anyway? Am I missing something? Why are all pages sorted by fullpagename by defaulst? --Steinninn 15:28, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Categories aren't usually supposed to contain pages from different namespaces. Even in those exceptional categories that are, it doesn't really make much sense to mix the Template, User and Wikipedia pages with mainspace articles; if anything, they should be separated under their own headings like subcategories and images. --Derlay 21:40, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
Yea, so let's say there is a category for Templates. They all go under "T". Does that make any sense? Let's take Category:Convenience templates for instance. Someone took the time to go through all those templates and sorted them by PAGENAME, as they should've been. It's much more organized that way. Now I couldn't find any category here, but I know of one on is: where people don't have the time for (let me say) stupid cleanup jobs like this. is:Flokkur:Þemasnið is very badly organized, because less then half of them are sorted by PAGENAME. The better half is sorted by default (FULLPAGENAME), and thus, go by "S". Am I making myself clear? --Steinninn 23:36, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes you are. I totally agree with you man. --Stefán Örvarr Sigmundsson 02:21, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
Makes sense to me. -- nae'blis 06:02, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Creating an Infobox

I have created a new Infobox for characters in the Dune Universe which I believe will be useful. However, I don't known how to create an actual "copy and paste bit" for pages that want the Infobox added to them. If anyone could help, that would be great. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blurgle Fragle (talk • contribs)

I can see you've made the page at {{Dune character box}} and the text on there at the top left can be copied and pasted to put that infobox on pages. I've fixed a couple of missing parameters so the text should now be OK. Tra (Talk) 15:47, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm afriad I don't quite understand. What exactly do you mean by the "top left corner", and when I actually paste the Template title on the page all I get is the {{{name}}} bit and the Real-Life information title, with no space for adding the actual information.Blurgle Fragle 17:27, 9 July 2007 (UTC)


You may want to look at Template:Heroes_character_box and some of the pages using it. -- User:Docu

I deleted the actual example infobox from this discussion, since it was floating to the bottom of the page, away from the article discussing it. If you need it for further discussion, dig it up from the History and then put it in a talk page somewhere, and provide a link here. Pete St.John 19:03, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
What I mean is that there is a box on the template page that looks like this:
{{Dune character box
| name = 
| image = <!-- Wikipedia image of the character. -->
| caption = <!-- Caption for the image. -->
| alias = <!-- Pseudonyms and special monikers, not nicknames. -->
| gender = 
| born = 
| died = 
| occupation = 
| spouse = 
| parent(s) =
| child(ren) = 
| sibling(s) =
| other = 
| affiliation = 
| portrayer = 
| debut = <!-- First book the character appeared in. -->
| departure = <!-- Last appearance of the character -->
}}
What you need to do is copy the text in that box, paste it into an article and then fill in the details by putting the facts to the right of each equals sign. Tra (Talk) 19:09, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Replacing the logo in my monobook.css

I replaced the logo using: 

#p-logo { 
   background: url(http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n41/thesublime514/Temp/TransNikipedia.gif) no-repeat; 
   display: none
   position:absolute; /*needed to use z-index */
   top: 8;
   left: 15;
   height: 0;
   width: 0;
   padding: 0 0 154px 154px;
   overflow: hidden;
   padding-top: 5
   padding-left: 10
}

However, when I did it, the logo ceased to be a link back to the main page. Is there a way I can make it be a link again? — thesublime514 • talk • 04:29, July 9, 2007 (UTC)

Try this instead. --Splarka (rant) 07:06, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
#p-logo a { background: url("http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n41/thesublime514/Temp/TransNikipedia.gif")
    center no-repeat !important;  }
You can't make it display perfect for everyone, Titoxd. --Splarka (rant) 09:38, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
That works, thanks — thesublime514 • talk • 18:36, July 9, 2007 (UTC)

DeletedContributions

Just a heads up that the DeletedContributions extension is now live here. Administrators can access it at Special:DeletedContributions. AmiDaniel (talk) 21:55, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Another weird glitch

The link "older edit" from here links to here (which is in a different namespace, although the h1 makes it seem like it's in multiple namespaces, an article which has lots of edits from just a few minutes ago). --PEJL 19:45, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Same problem here. I tried to change the session by logging off/on but in vain. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 19:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Some sort of ID corruption probably. --PEJL 19:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm getting it too, seems to be happening every time I try to look at a diff past the most recent edit. Just started a few minutes ago.--Fyre2387 (talk • contribs) 19:51, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

For the past 10 minutes, every time I try to do something on Wikipedia, the text Wikipedia:Wikipedians is somehow included in the URL so I end up at Wikipedia:Wikipedians if I am using the comparison between revisions. I know I am not explaining this very well but does this ring a bell with anyone? Joie de Vivre T 19:50, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, there's a thread on ANI and it's hitting lots of users.-Wafulz 19:51, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
3 threads at AN as well. KOS | talk 19:59, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Something similar has happened before, see this. That problem was apparently due to desynchronisation between the servers. Either way, Brion is currently working on the problem Brion has apparently fixed the problem. --Deskana (talk) 20:02, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry guys, I broke it and then fixed it. :P --brion 20:14, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Thumbnails (A sugestion, to check consensus)

Currently, the thumbnails of images are generated in the same format the original picture was uploaded in (save for SVG). Wouldnt it be better if there was a user-selectable preference option that would let them choose the format of the thumbnails (between JPG or PNG, much like size is selectable). That way users who (or when) want the images to download quickly (say, when on mobile or dial up) could choose JPG and when they want a better quality would choose PNG. --soum talk 12:01, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Featured article's picture on the Main Page doesn't appear, but does within the article itself

Anybody know what causes this? I've only noticed it with Explorer 6.0 so far and only for certain featured articles on the main page. If you like I can go back and figure out which ones. For example, today's featured article doesn't show its picture on the Main Page. Ideas? --Meowist 00:04, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

You've probably heard this before, but you should get IE7, or even better, Firefox. This may fix your problem, at a guess. --Deskana (talk) 00:49, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, IE6 is rubbish. IE7 and Firefox are free downloads so there is no reason to use an outdated browser. --John 00:51, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
For the love of god, you're suggesting IE7?! It's even worse than IE6. Get yourself Firefox or Opera--there are other decent browsers out there, but those tend to be the best (unless you're a w3m kinda guy =D). In any case, we still haven't answered the fellow's question--I've no explanation for it, though I will go try to figure it out right now. Just because we can all agree that IE is shit doesn't mean we're free from having to support it =D. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:04, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Google Analytics stats on a website I run (it's a site of limited interest, and these figures only reflect 585 visitors, 60.5% of those being new visitors)shows that browser usage by visitors to that site in the last month break down as follows:
  • 58.46% IE
    • 33.04% v7.0
    • 65.79% v6.0
    • 0.58% v5.5
    • 0.58% v5.0
  • 35.04% Firefox
    • 76.10% v2.0.0.4
    • 11.22% v1.5.0.12
    • 4.88% v2.0.0.3
    • 1.95% 2.0.0.1
    • 1.95% v1.0.7
    • 0.98% v2.0.0.2
    • 0.98% v1.5.0.11
    • 0.49% v2.0
    • 0.49% v1.5.0.9
    • 0.49% v1.5.0.10
  • 4.62% Opera
    • 70.37% v9.12
    • 11.11% v9.21
    • 11.11% v9.01
    • 3.70% v9.10
    • 3.70% v9.20
  • 1.2% Safari
    • 42.86% v419.3
    • 42.86% v312.6
    • 14.29% v522.12
  • 0.34% Netscape
    • 50.00% v8.1.3
    • 50.00% v8.1
I think the technical point of concern for Wikipedia is not what browser any particular visitor might be using, but rather how far Wikipedia websites should go towards accommodating older browsers which are still in use. -- Boracay Bill 01:53, 10 July 2007 (UTC) (copyedited 01:56, 10 July 2007 (UTC)}}

I agree that the issue is how far Wikipedia should go to accommodate its users. Judging by those percentages above...we should at least try to figure out why IE 6 does this. Just for the record...I use Firefox at home, but I'm forced to use IE 6 at work (I can't even upgrade the trash). Hmm... I'm using Firefox 2.0 right now and looking at the Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 2007 page and going through to recall which articles haven't worked before and curiously...the ones that didn't work also don't have their pictures visible in the archive listing - namely Ebionites and West Wycombe Park. For June archive: Final Fantasy VI. So, the problem is not just with IE 6, it's also with Firefox 2.0. --Meowist 08:19, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I think I've discovered a possible cause that is connected with similar issues I've had on other pages. I believe the cause is the number of px in this : Image:West Wycombe 3 (Giano).gif|120px|West Wycombe's double colonnadeWest Wycombe's double colonnade, the image tag within the FA's brief description bit that appears on the Main Page. When a number higher than 120, say 130 is tried, the image displays, but at 120 nothing. For example, a link to the image is in this post right now... if you see no image within my text... then you have this problem too. This (not 120, other numbers) seems to be the cause in the other 3 main page FA article pictures. I've also run into a problem like this one on some supernova remnant pages. See Special:Contributions/Meowist for some supernova articles I've edited by changing the image's px value because I thought the no-display issue was not just mine. Anyone know why/how too low px values cause this? Can anyone else confirm it happens to them as well? I'd really appreciate figuring this out. --Meowist 08:38, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest almost always leaving out the optional px specification in thumbnails. You might want to make the page graphically appealing, but it will only be true for readers with the same sized screen and resolution settings you have. Much better to let thumbs come up at the size specified by each user. The ideal size will be different for someone looking at the page on a 3-inch screen vs. a 30-inch screen. Specifying sizes defeats that feature. It also causes problems like this poster's--Appraiser 20:24, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Diff not showing all changes

This diff looks like it just removed a single byte, but really did more than that (36 bytes added according to history). How is that possible, is this a bug? If so, it is possible someone was deliberately using this bug to vandalize the page without being noticed, as the hidden changes were vandalism. --PEJL 11:12, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

The diff seems to have missed something. I don't see any deletion logs, I'll file a bugzilla. --ST47Talk 11:52, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
Bug 10511 submitted. --ST47Talk 12:00, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
Random interjection, it works if you swap them. --Splarka (rant) 07:13, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Navigation

Template:30 most populous cities of Norway has a problem: the header is two lines high, but the second line overlaps the body. Template:Navigation is a but too cryptic for me, and it's locked anyway; can anyone fix this please? – gpvos (talk) 21:56, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I've fixed it, is that better? --ST47Talk 23:03, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, better, thanks. I've made it a little larger still, since it could use an extra few pixels. Still, I somehow think there should be a better solution, so that the header resizes automatically. – gpvos (talk) 21:27, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Please unlock the schizophrenia wiki page; it is incomplete.

Please unlock the schizophrenia wiki page it is incomplete. It does not list anhedonia as a negative symptom of schizophrenia, which it is. Many websites make this mistake because anhedonia is not well understood, but it is truly a negative symptom of schizophrenia that more knowledgeable sources will note.

I have been diagnosed with schizophrenia and diagnosed with having anhedonia as one of the negative symptoms. So I kn ow what I am talking about. I know what anhedonia is because I experience it and am being treated for it.

Wiki pages should NOT BE LOCKED. I can understand some barriers for spammers, but it defeats the purpose of Wikipedia to lock pages.

Please unlock the schizophrenia webpage.

HopeMr 20:49, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Well-answered on the Schizophrenia talk page where I was about to suggest HopeMr address his suggestion (but he already had). Pete St.John 22:02, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Actually the thrust of the question hasn't been answered. The page is only semi-protected, as such you'll be able to edit it after a while HopeMr. If you want to request unprotection, Wikipedia:Protection policy tells you how and also explains why articles are semi-protected. In this specific case it was semi-protected in January so someone might be willing to give it a chance. However due to the nature of what it covers, this may not work out Nil Einne 20:16, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
Sorry I made a mistake. Indeed it was semi protected in April after a brief unprotection attempt [8]. Given the history, I'm doubtful you'll be able to convince an admin to un-semi protect it Nil Einne 20:12, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Bengali text

 

Bengali text on my computer overlaps part of other text (see image). Any clue on how to fix it? borgx (talk) 08:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

You wouldn't happen to be using Firefox on Linux, would you? The issue might have to do with Pango text rendering in that case; try launching Firefox with MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1 firefox in a terminal. æ² ✆ 2007‑07‑08t03:38z

It works, Thanks. I'm using Firefox on Windows. borgx (talk) 09:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Javascript link

Is it possible to make an ordinary link to a Javascript function? (i.e. something like this, but with "javascript:document.editform.submit()" instead of "google.com") SalaSkan (Review me) 18:54, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

To save others from testing, [javascript:document.editform.submit() this] doesn't seem to work. --PEJL 19:03, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
It's not possible, Mediawiki removes any potentially dangerous html code (e.g. javascript: or onclick). But you can do pretty much anything with a personal script ∴ Alex Smotrov 19:43, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm using the Welcome script, and it creates a button at the top of every user talk page which "links" to 'javascript:welcome()'. Then how does that link work? SalaSkan (Review me) 20:20, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
It's not parsed from wikitext into HTML; it is HTML. GracenotesT § 15:22, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh... how can I create HTML tags in MediaWiki? <html> doesn't work. (sorry for me being so newbish) SalaSkan 22:11, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
In Wikipedia, you're limited to a restricted set of HTML tags; and one of the things that you can't add to a normal page is javascript, in case it does anything dangerous. If you have your own wiki running MediaWiki (separate to Wikipedia) then you can configure it to allow raw HTML but you should only do this if it can only be edited by trusted people. Tra (Talk) 22:29, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist programming wish

General question to the techs who recently allowed us more review on our watchlist? I have a "wish", as my watchlist grows and grows, to be able to sort the list by topic. I would like to be able to call up list A, B, or C - and review activity in those specific areas. Does this sound like others might find it useful too? If you are doing programming in this area, please let me know. WBardwin 05:46, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Categorization of watchlist items sounds a very good idea. --soum talk 10:12, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I would find this quite useful too, if it were possible. and also being able to sort against different categories (such as time, article name, editor name, size of edit,) Regards, Lynbarn 19:20, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm glad to hear that some people like the idea. When I'm on a new topic, with lots of related articles, or expanding an old one, I would like to keep track of what is happening to my recent efforts. I thought it would be useful for articles relating to Wiki-project editors belong to as well. Hope someone with programming skills picks up the idea. WBardwin 02:54, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

This idea would be easy to implement with a different output format of the watchlist. Currently, the list is output as an "html outline" that presents only one view of the information. Some "filtering" is possible, as you already know, with the form controls at the top of the page.

In contrast, if the information were output as a table, the sorting and categorization could be accomplished easily. Even with no programming at all, any user with a spreadsheet could load the table and do all the searching, sorting, and analysis they wanted. Technically, you could do this right now, but you'd need to have at least minor programming skills to convert the irregular "outline" into a "table". Irregular output formats are a common problem of software design, and is usually the principle limitation that prevents easy implementation of ideas such as the ones you propose here. dr.ef.tymac 03:52, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Now that any editor can import, export, and edit watchlists as text using the "View raw watchlist" option, isn't it fairly easy to keep a "master" watchlist offline (spreadsheet, whatever) and swap out versions (lists) as one wishes? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:54, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Updating links after disambiguation

Following the creation of a new disambig page, I would like to update all the pages which link to it so that they point to the relevant unambiguous page. As 99% of these links all need to link to the same (renamed) article, is there a search & replace tool / bot / admin facility / something where I can request that these edits are made automatically, rather than having to do them by hand. Thanks. SP-KP 16:46, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Not really a bot task that one, but you can take a look at AWB. --soum talk 16:48, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Be careful to check each edit before you save it, since the other 1% of the links might need to point somewhere else. Tra (Talk) 16:59, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Also see Wikipedia:WikiProject Disambiguation/fixer. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:57, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Template coding help

I am attempting to write a template that call another template in a parser function. Just beyond my skills, and I'm not knowledgeable enough in the area to know whether what I am attempting is even possible. Can someone please take a look at {{Creation}}? Currently the interior templates are in nowiki tags.--Fuhghettaboutit 05:18, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

What you probably want do in that case is put <includeonly> </includeonly> around the subst in the sub-templates. Kind of like this maybe? --Splarka (rant) 07:55, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I fixed it (I think).--Patrick 08:01, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I did the same except that I also substituted the switch.--Patrick 08:08, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Beautiful. Working perfectly now. Greatly appreciated. I've figured out this stuff just so far. I think I even understand your fix, though I'm not sure I could have implemented it myself with just an explanation without a great deal of futzing.--Fuhghettaboutit 14:21, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Fascinating. I didn't know the Wikipedia test wiki existed. May come in useful in the future.--Fuhghettaboutit 14:24, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

TOC doesn't render in IE7

The Table of Contents at Structural history of the Roman military disappears after Section heading 6 (Non-Citizen Recruitment (49 BC - 27 BC) ) and re-appears at References; if someone can find the problem, it would be appreciated. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:12, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I should point out that this seems specific to IE7 - I have tested it in other browsers such as Firefox and Epiphany and there is no problem. Cheers - PocklingtonDan (talk) 06:15, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Its renders fine for me in IE7, FF2, FF3a7, Opera 9.21, and Safari 3.0.2 beta 1. --soum talk 07:19, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Do you have any ideas why it would render fine in IE7 for you but not for someone else? I will check my other computers tomorrow, but it would still be good to get to the bottom of this. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:50, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Something got fixed, or one of the recent edits to the article section headings solved the problem, because the TOC is back now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:53, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, the references were being modified. Maybe one was left open by mistake. Thats causes lots of funny problems, specially when they get nested. --soum talk 08:12, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Using modular Special:Userrights

rev:23410 seems to be active, so I suggest that the following be added to Wikimedia's LocalSettings.php (or wherever they would be appropriate): 

$wgAddGroups['bureaucrat'] = array('bot', 'sysop', 'bureaucrat');
$wgRemoveGroups['bureaucrat'] = array('bot');
$wgAddGroups['sysop'] = array('ipblock-exempt');
$wgRemoveGroups['sysop'] = array('ipblock-exempt');

This means that a bureaucrat make users into an admin, bureaucrat, and add/remove a bot flag. Nothing new. The novel part is allowing an admin to add users to the "ipblock-exempt" user group—this means that open proxies can be hard-blocked, and users like Armedblowfish, CharlotteWebb (if she chooses to return to the project under this username), and Duff can edit. Any suggestions or comments? GracenotesT § 02:45, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Please see the discussion at WP:BN. Additionally, ipblock-exempt is right and not a group, and one that all sysops have by default. At present there is not group on Wikipedia which can be assigned via Special:Userrights (except for sysop) to make users ipblock-exempt. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:49, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Oops, that's right. We would also have to do
$wgGroupPermissions['ipblock-exempt']['ipblock-exempt'] = true;
unless I'm wrong about that as well. Thanks for the pointer. GracenotesT § 02:56, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I've read your note about this on WP:BN. If modular userrights isn't going to implemented for a while, is there much harm in adding a Special:Makeexempt (actually Special:Makeipexempt 04:52, 14 July 2007 (UTC)), given that such an extension already exists? GracenotesT § 02:59, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
That is the hard part. The reason I asked at the 'crats noticeboard about enabling user rights was due to the discussion at Jimbo's talk page about Tor proxies. Enabling the userrights page really gets rid of Bug 6670 and anything else that requires custom groups. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 04:25, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
In the words of AmiDaniel, though, "the discussion of the developers is tending toward the removal of this functionality and its reimplementation as an extension" which will take "quite some time". If it's not a possibility now, perhaps ^demon's extension should be tentatively enabled, rather than waiting for Godot. GracenotesT § 04:52, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Do we really want a right as trivial as this to appear in Special:Listusers? Prodego talk 17:11, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm aware of the ipblock-exempt issues and the Tor discussions. However I don't see a clear proposal here, and the WP:BN discussion seems to be petering out. Absent something concrete and practical-sounding from Gracenotes, I don't see how to proceed with this. Conceivably there could be a policy that enwiki bureaucrats are allowed to ask stewards to add people to ipblock-exempt who are not administrators. That would possibly avoid some software development. If more than ten such requests ever occur, then we could wait for the interface to be properly done. EdJohnston 17:39, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
EdJohnston: there isn't one clear proposal here; rather, there are two: add the above lines of code, or commit ^demon's extension. The situation itself is half-unclear, in terms of what the MediaWiki developers want to do (or don't want to do). Prodego: preferably not, but I'm strained to think of a better solution, and would be surprised (in a good way) if someone came up with one. GracenotesT § 20:32, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Safari and sortable tables

I recently discovered the the sort function on "wikitable sortable" e.g. List of United States cities by population does not work with OSX and Safari. Sometimes clicking in the data fields just toggles the list up and down alphabetically; today for some reason the sort buttons are missing completely. This applies to both OS 10.3.9 with Safari 1.3.2 and OS 10.4.10 with Safari 2.0.4. OS 10.4.10 with Firefox 2.0.0.3 is fine. Ben MacDui (Talk) 19:07, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Konqueror, which has a common origin with Safari, seems to handle that page fine. I'm running Konqueror 3.5.6 on Kubuntu i386.-203.173.179.215 23:58, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
It seems to work with Safari on Windows XP. DuncanHill 00:06, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

These are no doubt helpful remarks from the point of view of solving the problem, but they are not solutions. Is there somewhere else I should be asking? Ben MacDui (Talk) 14:02, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

You might try Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing. dr.ef.tymac 04:17, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Gracias. Ben MacDui (Talk) 18:18, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

List of botanists by author abbreviation

When I go to List of botanists by author abbreviation and click the edit button, I get only "This is a list of [[botanist]]s by their [[Author citation (botany)|author ", yet the article is 73K long. What gives? – Quadell (talk) (random) 19:51, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

There was lots of whitespace that seemed to have been inserted into the middle of the first line, that pushed the rest of the content below the fold. Tra (Talk) 20:05, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Me = dumb. Thanks. – Quadell (talk) (random) 20:33, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Refs vs. Notes

I'm not sure what the proper terminology is, so as a prelude I'd just like to point out that my use of the term "note" here may be non-standard.

I often come across points in my articles that deserve a sort of "sidebar", a small amount of text that is potentially interesting but is out of context if placed in the main body of the text. In traditional publishing this is handled by either a sidebar or a footnote. Note that in this context, "footnote" is in no way synonymous with "citation" or "reference". The ref tags are technically perfect for this, but they only get collected into a single section.

So is there some other tag that might be useful here? If not, may I suggest a "note" tag that gets collected in a {{notes}} section?

Maury 12:22, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

There's the {{ref}}/{{note}} tags, and there have been occasional proposals for a separate footnotes version of <ref> but no word thus far. --Golbez 12:30, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Does the note tag do anything different than ref? Maury 14:29, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Reading over cite.php I see that the same confusing terminology is being used there. Footnotes are a superset of a references list. The later may be displayed in a footnote fashion, or endnote fashion, or a separate section. Footnotes, on the other hand, contain any sort of text, sometimes references, but many times non-references. The Footnotes3 description on cite suggestions that "note" is synonymous with "reflist", which is confusing indeed! Maury 14:36, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Still a screwup with moving pages?

I've just moved the article Popplagið to it's more correct title of untitled 8. When I moved it, I got this message:

The page "Popplagið" (links) has been moved to "Untitled 8" (8 links, 8&wpNewTitle=Popplagið&wpReason=revert&wpMovetalk=1 revert).

I assume that it should simply say "revert", yes? Will (talk) 21:22, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

The space isn't being converted to an underscore, see bugzilla:10532. --ST47Talk 00:36, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
See also MediaWiki talk:Movepage-moved. --Splarka (rant) 07:23, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh, THERE it is! I couldn't find it, tried pagemoved and such. Heh. --ST47Talk 11:11, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Identifying where a contributer is located

For anonymous users I know how to use Whois to find out a little about a person from the IP address. Is there any way to do the same thing for a registered user? Thanks --Appraiser 20:24, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Not unless they tell you. The only people who can view a logged in users IP address are Wikipedia:Checkusers.--W.marsh 20:40, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
It's kind of funny how being "anonymous" can be more revealing than a consistent account... 141.224.64.41 12:39, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Numbered list starts over in second column

Hello! I'm trying to put the list of participants at WikiProject Sailor Moon in two columns so that it looks a little nicer, but as you can see, the numbered list starts over at the top of the second column, so that it looks like we're in two teams of ten rather than one of twenty. It must be possible to keep that from happening, or at least {{reflist}} seems to do it, but I can't make heads nor tails of its code. Any help? --Masamage ♫ 23:37, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

There are two ways to do this, see my Sandbox. Prodego talk 23:49, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Wow, excellent! That second version doesn't even require any tinkering on the part of the person adding their name. I'll take it. :) Thank you very much! --Masamage ♫ 23:56, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
The column-count method isn't quite as secure, in some browsers, including IE6, it will fail and produce a single column list. The first method should never fail. Prodego talk 00:58, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Donation link in top-right corner

When not logged in, the donation link Your continued donations... floats above the content-space (as it should). But, under Firefox 2.0.0.4, only on mainspace pages, it is pushed down and pushes the rest of page (including the page title) down with it. This, that and the other [talk] 07:22, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Someone was trying to fix the link not working in IE6, see history and talk of MediaWiki:Anonnotice, seems to be reverted now, still doesn't work in IE6 ∴ Alex Smotrov 14:46, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
IE6 is still an extremely widely used browser, I would say accessibility in IE6 is more important then styling concerns. I would prefer to have some more opinions rather then blindly reverting, so anyone? Prodego talk 20:07, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Revert

Why using the revert function says "Return to Main Page" on the revert completion page. AFAIR, it used to link to the page reverted, and that was more useful. The reverts are being successful, though. --soum talk 06:49, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh ok, I remember now. It used to load the reverted version of the article. This is better. --soum talk 07:02, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
It is? I find it extremely annoying. What's the point of having a link to the main page after a rollback? I prefer it the old way, you were immediately transfered to the article you just reverted. Garion96 (talk) 10:05, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Better as in not the link, but that the article is not loaded. In most cases I am not interested in the article. So, theres no point wasting bandwidth loading it by default. But yeah, linking to main page is stupid. --soum talk 10:14, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
That's been fixed. --brion 01:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Page history visualizers

Are there any current/working/lightweight versions of the Wikipedia History Contest concept? (e.g. 1, e.g. 2) Of the 4 versions listed, 2 are inaccessible, and 2 are greasemonkey scripts that don't seem to work.

Also, are there any actually usable implementations of the more abstract historyflow?

(Or any suggestions on more appropriate/likely places to ask?) Thanks. --Quiddity 06:00, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Aaron Swartz wrote this essay on analyzing page histories to collect statistics about contributors. This is not the same as visualization, but his software must gather some of the same data. He processed an offline dump to do the work. EdJohnston 20:03, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Weird diff

Hello. I am not too worried but I may have accidentally reverted a valid edit. For some reason the diff page is scrambled. -Susanlesch 04:15, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

The edit is a production of Goatse in Wiki Table [sic] format—and at least to a user who, as I, is possessed of minimal technical competence, a darn good one—and so was properly identified as vandalism; no worries. Joe 05:58, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I see that the edit about which you were concerned was your revert of the adduced diff; my bad. In any case, there is, once more, no problem here; 70.55.84.49 simply removed the Goatse depiction without reverting the excision of text, and you addressed the latter issue.  :) Joe 06:12, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Thank you, Joe. I don't know every step here but as you say it all looks well. Best wishes. -Susanlesch 16:15, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Tibetan

(I took this and copied it ffrom my question at NCHP.)

I have a Microsoft Internet Explorer browser and a Windows XP 2000. I don't know if it's with everybody, my computer, or my browser but Arial cannot show Tibetan. I downloaded a font called "jomolhari" to the computer and it can read Tibetan. So, I changed the Tibetan script in some articles to Jomolhari font. Am I doing something wrong by chanigng the font for Tibetan in WP articles? Should I change it back? ionas68224|talk|contribs|email 02:41, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

What OS is that? Windows 2000 or Windows XP? These are two different releases of Windows, and not identical. I have no experience with Windows 2000, so I'll answer your question assuming XP. I don't think this part is different anyway.
You can display a wide variety of scripts using the built-in fonts, as long as you enable support for a larger range of UTF-8. To enable the widest possible script support, open the "Regional and Language Options" control panel, click on the Languages tab, and make sure both checkboxes under "Supplemental language support" are checked. You may need your Windows installation CD if you don't have a CD image installed on your machine. Once that's set up, there are only a few exotic scripts that you won't be able to see, and they're not all that common.
Having said that, it does sometimes happen that a particular font will display a script in better style than those that come with the system. In those cases there's nothing wrong with specifying the font, as long as it's for UTF-8 which is the encoding Wikipedia uses and not one of the other standards. If a font isn't present on a reader's system, it falls back on the default, so no harm done. But in that case the better solution is to create a template along the lines of {{hebrew}}, especially if the glyphs are rendered smaller than the surrounding text for some reason. TCC (talk) (contribs) 03:03, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
By the way, it's XP and I tried but I don't know what CD you are talking about. The program also referred to some "disk", and I don't know. I'm a kid. ionas68224|talk|contribs|email 04:00, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
By CD I meant the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM installation disks for Windows. If you follow the process I gave you above and it asks for a disk at some point, that's the disk it means. If you bought your system with Windows pre-installed, you might still have gotten it disk but it will be labelled a "recovery disk" or something like that. TCC (talk) (contribs) 06:18, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Raw watchlist

The watchlist now has an Edit raw watchlist option! This is positively brilliant! When did it appear? I've long wondered how I would deal with losing all my watches, but now I can easily back them up. How would I lose them? A database glitch, permanently forgot my password, or accidentally pressing the dreaded Clear watchlist button. Presumably the last insists on confirmation, hopefully by entering the account password, but I've not had the guts (before) to try it. —EncMstr 20:00, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

You can thank mw:User:Robchurch for that one -- it is indeed an excellent feature. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:52, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

The "leave a comment" tab

I love that the "+" tab has been replaced with a "leave a comment" tab on talk and discussion pages. This should keep discussions much more organized. Kudos to whomever came up with this idea! —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 15:33, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

For more information, see MediaWiki:Addsection and WP:VPR. --- RockMFR 16:26, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Ugh, I hate it. Is there any way to override this besides using Javascript to change document.getElementById('ca-addsection').firstChild.textContent? Anomie 19:20, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, that would be the way to do it. Prodego talk 21:23, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
You can change your interface language. Seems like a bit much, though. GracenotesT § 01:42, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Changes to talk page tabs for main discussion and a poll. MediaWiki:Talk was also briefly changed, to read "talk" instead of "discussion". --Quiddity 01:50, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

It's been changed back. GracenotesT § 02:21, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

CommonSettings.php

On Meta, I noticed a link to the CommonSettings.php here - http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/CommonSettings.php.html.

I have three MediaWiki installations on a WAMP server, with only sysop/bureaucrats, but no steward/oversight in the userlist of usergroups.

What would I need to do to get CommonSettings.php to work?? I can set up Makesysop.php and Oversight extensions correctly, but I'm having trouble with Commonsettings.php

All advice is appreciated. Thanks, SunStar Net talk 09:09, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Our CommonSettings.php is just all the stuff in LocalSettings.php, but bigger and uglier and specific to our installation. It's a different file name only for aesthetic reasons; it's just include()d from our LocalSettings.php. --brion 13:19, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Deleted Contributions

What is "deleted contributions"? -Yancyfry

Basically, contributions or edits made to an article that later gets deleted. Harryboyles 07:27, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
It can also refer to a special page available to admins, Special:DeletedContributions, that chronologically shows a user's deleted contributions. GracenotesT § 02:27, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Redirect page not working correctly?

Hi

I tried to set up a redirect page for Sjogren's syndrome using

  1. REDIRECT Sjögren's_syndrome

and the result given was as above, rather than the usual thing. Is this something to do with the special characters in the address?

Soarhead77 14:33, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Fixed by using #redirect Sjögren's syndrome without %-encoding ∴ Alex Smotrov 14:46, 12 July 2007 (UTC)


Great! Thanks...

Soarhead77 20:53, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Special:Fewestrevisions

I think that REDIRECTS shouldn't be listed at Special:Fewestrevisions, make confusion, there are hundreds of thousands of redirects with fewer that two revs. Maybe the same thing should bbe applyied with moved pages --Andersmusician VOTE 04:18, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Had missed this until now; belatedly adding my support to this suggestion. Adrian M. H. 21:45, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
Moved pages are also redirects, any page that is a redirect should be excluded from this to make it useful. — xaosflux Talk 23:49, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Internal Link to Disambiguation page should throw warning

When one links a word(s) to the corresponding article page, several times one inadvertently links it to disambiguation page instead of the proper page. This will hep editors point to proper pages. As of now there are several pages which inadvertently links to disambiguation page. Vjdchauhan 13:46, 18 July 2007 (UTC).

I' d agree with this - it would make it much less likely that editors link to dab pages. DuncanHill 13:55, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
In theory, Special:Disambiguations is regularly cleaned out by the Disambiguation Bots. --Splarka (rant) 07:23, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Practically I have regularly come across Disambiguation page being linked by several articles incorrectly/inadvertently. Pls check. Vjdchauhan 08:43, 21 July 2007 (UTC).

I'd just like to point out here that an internal link to a disambig page is not the end of the world. In fact, it's much less problematic than an internal link to the wrong page (that is, an unintended meaning of a term) -- that's a situation much more likely to confuse readers, and much less likely to be easily detected and corrected.

So while I have no objection to seeing a warning when adding such a link, assuming it's convenient to code, I would caution against getting too zealous on this issue and making it appear that internal links to dab pages must be resolved at all costs. When you're not sure, it's better to leave the link to the dab page than to resolve it to the wrong page. --Trovatore 08:59, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Deletions by namespace

I think the deletion log could be made more useful if entries could be filtered by namespace and month/year. That way, someone patrolling the deletion log for article deletions wouldn't have to look through dozens of images. It can also reduce the number of times someone has to hit "next 50", which is probably a problem for those with slow connections who can't really utilise the option of displaying 500 entries on a single page. Any thoughts? -- Black Falcon (Talk) 02:04, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Filtering is enabled on mediawiki by default (not by namespace, but by matching beginning text); I am not sure why it is disabled on enwiki, but I presume it is for performance reasons. It is, however, quite a helpful feature. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:51, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
What I had in mind is basically the filtering that is currently provided for Special:Contributions. What performance reasons might be involved? There are many more edits made each day than deletions, so I would not expect that allowing filtering of deletions would have much overall impact. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 18:20, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
I am honestly not sure -- please do file a bug for it. AmiDaniel (talk) 08:15, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Apparently this issue has already been raised. See b:4204. -- Black Falcon (Talk) 02:47, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Templates from other languages

Is it possible to use english templates on other wikipedia languages? I'm talking about using Template:GeoTemplate/Lang on these other languages;

Makes much more sense to have just one template that everyone uses instead of keeping 7 templates up to date. I tried {{en:Template:GeoTemplate/Lang}} but it don't work, doesn't even give a warning. --Steinninn 18:05, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

No, that's not possible. If you're planning on updating them often and there are many of them, you could perhaps request a bot to copy over the templates from one language to another. Tra (Talk) 18:16, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Editing semi-protected article by new user

Disappearance_of_Madeleine_McCann is semi-protected so how is a new user able to edit it, as here, please? TerriersFan 16:56, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

That account registered a long time ago. [9] Prodego talk 16:59, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Another strange thing.

[10]

Fix one bug on the move page, three more appear in its place. :D Will (talk) 13:53, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Mobile devices

I anyone doing any work (or has any work been done) to make Wikipedia more user-friendly, on small-screen mobile devices? Andy Mabbett 12:01, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it would be practical for much of WP's content. You only want to create mobile-friendly layouts for content that will still be usable in that form. Adrian M. H. 16:23, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
In what way would it not be usable? Andy Mabbett 20:55, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Take a peek at wapedia, encyclopodia, and the ipodlinux solution. There was at one time a mobile.wikipedia.org or the like, yet I'm unable to find it right now. There is also a quite buggy handheld stylesheet (so buggy in fact that we are considering removing it altogether) that should allow Wikipedia to be reasonably well rendered on handhelds. You may also try using the Simple skin to see if that helps at all. There is presently quite a bit of effort going into making Wikipedia itself more friendly to pda's and similar devices, though we're sill far from there. AmiDaniel (talk) 06:17, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Ah, there we go: http://en.wap.wikipedia.org/ AmiDaniel (talk)

TOC doesn't render in IE7

The Table of Contents at Structural history of the Roman military disappears after Section heading 6 (Non-Citizen Recruitment (49 BC - 27 BC) ) and re-appears at References; if someone can find the problem, it would be appreciated. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:12, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I should point out that this seems specific to IE7 - I have tested it in other browsers such as Firefox and Epiphany and there is no problem. Cheers - PocklingtonDan (talk) 06:15, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Its renders fine for me in IE7, FF2, FF3a7, Opera 9.21, and Safari 3.0.2 beta 1. --soum talk 07:19, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Do you have any ideas why it would render fine in IE7 for you but not for someone else? I will check my other computers tomorrow, but it would still be good to get to the bottom of this. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:50, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Something got fixed, or one of the recent edits to the article section headings solved the problem, because the TOC is back now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:53, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, the references were being modified. Maybe one was left open by mistake. Thats causes lots of funny problems, specially when they get nested. --soum talk 08:12, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Using modular Special:Userrights

rev:23410 seems to be active, so I suggest that the following be added to Wikimedia's LocalSettings.php (or wherever they would be appropriate): 

$wgAddGroups['bureaucrat'] = array('bot', 'sysop', 'bureaucrat');
$wgRemoveGroups['bureaucrat'] = array('bot');
$wgAddGroups['sysop'] = array('ipblock-exempt');
$wgRemoveGroups['sysop'] = array('ipblock-exempt');

This means that a bureaucrat make users into an admin, bureaucrat, and add/remove a bot flag. Nothing new. The novel part is allowing an admin to add users to the "ipblock-exempt" user group—this means that open proxies can be hard-blocked, and users like Armedblowfish, CharlotteWebb (if she chooses to return to the project under this username), and Duff can edit. Any suggestions or comments? GracenotesT § 02:45, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Please see the discussion at WP:BN. Additionally, ipblock-exempt is right and not a group, and one that all sysops have by default. At present there is not group on Wikipedia which can be assigned via Special:Userrights (except for sysop) to make users ipblock-exempt. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:49, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Oops, that's right. We would also have to do
$wgGroupPermissions['ipblock-exempt']['ipblock-exempt'] = true;
unless I'm wrong about that as well. Thanks for the pointer. GracenotesT § 02:56, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I've read your note about this on WP:BN. If modular userrights isn't going to implemented for a while, is there much harm in adding a Special:Makeexempt (actually Special:Makeipexempt 04:52, 14 July 2007 (UTC)), given that such an extension already exists? GracenotesT § 02:59, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
That is the hard part. The reason I asked at the 'crats noticeboard about enabling user rights was due to the discussion at Jimbo's talk page about Tor proxies. Enabling the userrights page really gets rid of Bug 6670 and anything else that requires custom groups. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 04:25, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
In the words of AmiDaniel, though, "the discussion of the developers is tending toward the removal of this functionality and its reimplementation as an extension" which will take "quite some time". If it's not a possibility now, perhaps ^demon's extension should be tentatively enabled, rather than waiting for Godot. GracenotesT § 04:52, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Do we really want a right as trivial as this to appear in Special:Listusers? Prodego talk 17:11, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm aware of the ipblock-exempt issues and the Tor discussions. However I don't see a clear proposal here, and the WP:BN discussion seems to be petering out. Absent something concrete and practical-sounding from Gracenotes, I don't see how to proceed with this. Conceivably there could be a policy that enwiki bureaucrats are allowed to ask stewards to add people to ipblock-exempt who are not administrators. That would possibly avoid some software development. If more than ten such requests ever occur, then we could wait for the interface to be properly done. EdJohnston 17:39, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
EdJohnston: there isn't one clear proposal here; rather, there are two: add the above lines of code, or commit ^demon's extension. The situation itself is half-unclear, in terms of what the MediaWiki developers want to do (or don't want to do). Prodego: preferably not, but I'm strained to think of a better solution, and would be surprised (in a good way) if someone came up with one. GracenotesT § 20:32, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Query about search

There exists an article Padre Conceicao College of Engineering in Wikipedia. However, when I search for something like 'padre conceicao college', this article doesn't show up in the search, while I think it should. Why does this happen? Is it because the search index is out of date? It may be worth noting that an article with the same name as the current article had earlier been deleted due to copyvio. Does this have anything to do with it? The Discoverer 05:32, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Works for me. This, that and the other [talk] 07:35, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes! It has indeed started working. I speculate that it was due to the search index being out of date.The Discoverer 06:37, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Category watch needs improvement

  • I am sue this would have been raised earlier as well but couldn't find on FAQ pages so here it goes. I would like to know whether this proposal is being taken up or is rejected altogether.
Category watch should report addition and deletions of a page to the category (one level only). Vjdchauhan 20:52, 21 July 2007 (UTC).
  • That would be handy Saintrain 23:41, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I too would find that extremely useful. DuncanHill 23:56, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Category watch should report changes made to pages in a category again one level only and may be restricted to articles appearing on first page of the category if the category is quite large. Vjdchauhan 20:52, 21 July 2007 (UTC).
  • Until this happens, an easy work-around can be seen at User:Saintrain. Check out the "(Recent changes)" links. Saintrain 23:41, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
I think related changes link does recursive check thus it goes into subcategories, and also goes to pages (not this in the category/subcategory) which are linked to pages under the category through internal links.


I would like to see uploading of a new version of an image count as a "change" when the image is watched. For categories, I'm not so sure about the idea; I have a number of categories on my watchlist just so I can be informed if someone takes them to WP:CFD, but I couldn't care less if someone adds or removes a page (besides the pages I already have watched). I have absolutely no desire to know about any random change made to a page in the category, and if I did the "first page only" restriction would be frustrating. Anomie 21:19, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
I typically would like to watch few categories (with some exceptions of watching only standalone pages) instead of hundreds of pages there under the watched categories. Apart from having a smaller watch list, I would also get notification on addition of pages to the category. Vjdchauhan 13:10, 22 July 2007 (UTC).

Link to deleted contributions

Is it possible to add a link (perhaps visible only to sysops) to Special:Contributions that would lead to the new Special:DeletedContributions for whoever's contributions are being viewed at the time?--Chaser - T 18:30, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Just committed as rev:24140 and rev:24141. Should be live on enwiki within the week. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:13, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Cool. Thanks for doing that, AmiDaniel.--Chaser - T 01:14, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Not a problem =D. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:46, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Template coding help

I am attempting to write a template that call another template in a parser function. Just beyond my skills, and I'm not knowledgeable enough in the area to know whether what I am attempting is even possible. Can someone please take a look at {{Creation}}? Currently the interior templates are in nowiki tags.--Fuhghettaboutit 05:18, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

What you probably want do in that case is put <includeonly> </includeonly> around the subst in the sub-templates. Kind of like this maybe? --Splarka (rant) 07:55, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I fixed it (I think).--Patrick 08:01, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I did the same except that I also substituted the switch.--Patrick 08:08, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Beautiful. Working perfectly now. Greatly appreciated. I've figured out this stuff just so far. I think I even understand your fix, though I'm not sure I could have implemented it myself with just an explanation without a great deal of futzing.--Fuhghettaboutit 14:21, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Fascinating. I didn't know the Wikipedia test wiki existed. May come in useful in the future.--Fuhghettaboutit 14:24, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

The new 'undo' function

Taken from Jimbo's talkpage


Well, I can't say as I'm a fan of the new 'undo' quick-access function that is available on clicking the 'History' section of articles. Vandals are going to have a whale of a time with that aren't they? Lradrama 10:34, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

That's new!?! Thank goodness, I thought I was losing my mind. Yes, it is very handy. :)--Cronholm144 10:38, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Too handy... Lradrama 10:40, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
The "undo" function itself has been around a while now on diff pages; its inclusion on the history page is new, though. WarpstarRider 11:00, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry too much, vandals typically aren't typically schooled in the finer points of wikitechnology. I think it is more of a boon for us, the editors.--Cronholm144 10:47, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I've seen the odd vandal using the old undo button (on diffs), but not very many. Some bored kid in a school probably isn't going to know about article histories. Hut 8.5 17:16, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
But they will learn. I am not convinced that making this available in the "history" section is a good idea. --Anthony.bradbury"talk" 17:21, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Vandals can learn very quickly about article histories. On a few occasions, they've looked at the history and quoted to me what the revert message says. I have also seen them use the 'undo' function already too, but the thing is, that is much harder to find for them. With this new function, they're handed the ability to contest anti-vandal reverts on a plate. I think it's just a cue for mayhem. But we'll see... :-S Lradrama 17:41, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
If you're that worried about it... I have an idea. The same condition that allows people to edit semi-protected pages could be applied to the undo button, so that only "trusted" users can use it. Does that sound like a good idea? But we should see how the current setup works first, methinks. Gscshoyru 17:45, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Either way, Jimbo had nothing to do with this function, and can do nothing regarding its implimentation. You may wish to instead request input at WP:VPT or some other village pump. --Deskana (talk) 17:50, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Newer comments

I liked Gscshoyru's idea. NikoSilver 22:57, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Seconded I can't really imagine many Anons using it legitimately.--Cronholm144 23:11, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Oppose - I have often seen IPs use the undo function to legitimately delete vandalism- more often than I've seen it used to re-do vandalism in fact. Let's see how the current setup works before we try that. —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 23:18, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Undo lets them do something that they could already do anyway, but just a little bit easier. They'll still get blocked if they are reverting inappropriately. --Deskana (talk) 23:37, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
[11] they learn quickly.--Cronholm144 23:45, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Keep in mind, the undo function has _always_ been available from diffs (last I checked, it didn't work properly on diffs across multiple versions, either. )--Random832 01:21, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Much more apparent now--Cronholm144 01:25, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
You've seen a few people edit warring using a software feature and you want it removed? My opinion isn't going to change. --Deskana (talk) 17:27, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Changing the user group for a visible undo link on history pages is more or less trivial. About a week ago, (undo) on the page history was only available for those with the rollback privilege; that's how Werdna (who basically coded the undo function as it is today) implemented it. Shortly thereafter, he made it available for all editors. (One can actually build the "undo" URL from the "last" diff: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Page&diff=A&oldid=B to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Page&action=edit&undoafter=B&undo=A. That means that, if I wanted, I could write a user script to add the undo button to page history.) The functionality is not that powerful. It is prone to abuse (like the undo function itself), but what isn't? I second Elipongo: let's just see what happens. (I also see a reasonable amount of undoing from vandal-fighting anons.) GracenotesT § 03:58, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
By the same token, one could say that vandal-fighting anons should be able to revert changes in semi-protected articles. Of course, the semi-protection prevents the vandalism in the first place, most of the time, so the argument is not as strong. All this new undo link does in either case is speed up the ability of both sides to revert and re-revert. But I third Elipongo, as we should see how the current configuration works before we make changes. Unless the undo-vandalism becomes more prevalent than before (how would one quantify such a thing?) we should leave it as is. Gscshoyru 16:05, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
That edit button is quite prone to abuse too; maybe we should remove it. My only objection to the undo buttons in the history is aesthetically based--a problem we're trying to find an elegant way to resolve. Once it gets cleaned up a bit objection to it will likely die down here. AmiDaniel (talk) 17:21, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I usually sign out before un-vandalizing to prevent (or at least minimizing) retaliatory vandalism of "my" stuff. Anything that helps me fix vandalism is good. Anything that gets in the way of that task is bad. 66.214.248.177 20:16, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

On reflection, and after reading the comments above, I also withdraw my initial "liking" the idea. Anons can be bonafide users fighting trolls (above), anons can be reverted, warned, blocked, indefed, plus I don't see "undo" as a special frequent vandalizing tool. I initially thought it wouldn't hurt to "soft block" it, but now I see the harm of doing so will be greater than the benefit received. NikoSilver 22:37, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
I also withdraw my initial comment. @Deskana, I never meant to suggest that function should be removed.--Cronholm144 23:12, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Here's more evidence of the point I was making before - someone undoing a revert by the good old MartinBot. Tut tut tut, Lradrama 16:41, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Once person abusing a new function is hardly grounds to remove it. The page move function is also prone to abuse, but nobody ever says we should remove that because it has legitimate uses. Vandals can be blocked if they're abusing the undo function for vandalism. We shouldn't remove it because of a few deliquent anons. --Deskana (talk) 16:44, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Fair point. Yeah, I was just saying that it is really easy to find, when it wasn't such beforehand. But we'll just have to live with it I guess. I fully understand what your saying though - thanks for sharing your views. Lradrama 17:53, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

template problem - > number of apperances in a page

Hello. Someone is working on this page on the romanian Wikipedia: ro:Lista piloţilor de Formula 1 (List_of_Formula_One_drivers). There seems to be a problem with the {{flagicon}} template. It's only working up to the letter W. Suddenly the flag is no longer showed in the list and it is replaced by a link to the template page: ro:Format:Flagicon. I believe the problem is related to the number of apperanaces of a template in a single page. How can this number be modified? I counted using a text editor, and it seems that it is working correctly only the first 752 times it is used...rather strange number. Please answer on my ro.wiki talk page: ro:Discuţie Utilizator:Bekuletz. Thanks. ro:Utilizator:Bekuletz

I've replied at the user's talk page. It's most likely a problem with template limits. Graham87 06:40, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

How can we solve this problem?? --Godfroid 21:37, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I see that you've now solved the problem by only transcluding the documentation, rather than placing it in the template within nowiki tags. Warofdreams talk 23:24, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
  1. ^ This is a reference.
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