Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive D

• Village pump
  • Policy
  • Technical
  • Proposals (persistent)
  • Idea lab
  • WMF
  • Miscellaneous

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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

---

< Older discussions · Archives: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU, AV, AW, AX · 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212

diacritics / accents

Can anyone tell me how to make a simple "e" with and acute accent, please? I notice there is now one amongs several other accented letter in the "Editing Help" special characters section - but when I copy them into an edit - they don't sho up properly at all on the preview or final page.

The "e" with the acute accent is just the most common problem I am having - information on how to form many other types of accented letters not in the lists at the bottom of the edit page or the special characters page, would be a great help.

Thanks in advance,

John Hill

It should work when you select the character from the list at the bottom of the edit page. If you want to follow up on why it doesn't, post here again with details of what browser you're using, with version and operating system, and also check that you have javascript enabled. What I do it to type the html for the accented characters I want, in this case, type &eacute; which appears as é. You can find a lengthy list of html characters at www.w3.org-gadfium 02:00, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Dear Friend:

Thank you for your extremely prompt reply. I hope they are paying you well!  :^))

I can use the characters at the bottom of the Edit box with no problems. But I can't see the character for e acute when I insert é or &eacute; only, unfortunately, an "i".

I am using Firefox 6 (with JavaScript enabled) and Windows XP Home.

I hope this is all of some help.

Thanks so much,

John Hill

You may have a font problem. Is this a problem in existing articles, or only in your own edits? (Note, edit box uses different fonts than read-only display of articles, so make sure you compare apples to apples). -- Jmabel | Talk 08:02, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. I have just noticed a strange thing. On the character bar that shows up on my editing page is a character that looks like an "i" just after the capital "E" acute. When I click that I do get an "e" acute (at last!). I will try it here to see how it looks after I have saved this page: é

The above character at the end of the line is an e-acute. -- Curps 01:44, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No, darn, it doesn't work (at least in my browser). All I can see is what looks like a small number "1". Do you have this problem too - or is it just me?

Thanks anyway for your help,

John Hill

An "i" is an "é" (e-acute) with the 8th-bit stripped away. See ISO-8859-1. Are you using a modem or other connection that is 7-bit only? -- Curps 01:44, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Dear "Curps" - thanks very much for your explanation. I have a new satellite broadband service that may be causing the trouble (i.e. it may be only of 7 bit capability). I don't really know but will try to find out (the technical support people I have contacted in the past seem largely ignorant of the equipment they are promoting). Anyway, if I use the e acute listed in the extra characters I presume it should show up correctly on most machines(?) If this is so, I shall have to go and edit a number of entries where I changed what appeared to me as an "i" to an ordinary "e" figuring that was less confusing. Do you suggest I should use the "proper" character even if i cannot see it?

Many thanks for your kind help.

John Hill

If the word is correctly spelt with an é, then spell it correctly. You can enter one by typing &eacute;. Chamaeleon 23:34, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Bottom tabs stopped working

The Help: User style bottom tabs addition stopped working. Anyone know why? - Omegatron 19:58, Feb 3, 2005 (UTC)

You could browse the cvs commit list for changes to MonoBook.php- there were some that might have broken the bottom tabs. -- Gabriel Wicke 08:39, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

On a related note the Wikipedia:Community Portal tabs, for example, move underneath the Project Page tab, when you float the cursor over the Project Page tab. Is this an experiment? Ancheta Wis 22:50, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Help with new templates for Calendars

I would like to create a template for Indian Calendars like the Tamil Calendar and the Hindu Calendar . For this I need to transalate the dates to the equaivalent Year, Month and Date in the tamil calendar.

I need to create equivalents like the ones used on the Main wikipedia page namely: {{CURRENTTIME}} {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}, {{CURRENTDAY}}, etc

Infact my goal is to create a new current events box template the would inlude the daily Indian Calendars.

I would appreciate some pointers in this regard, on how to go about it. I guess I would need to create templates named {{CURRENTTAMILMONTHNAME}}, {{CURRENTTAMILYEAR}}.

Thanks Arunram 05:09, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Can someone respond to this query please, I need help. regards Arunram 16:15, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Picture of the day

Picture of the day seems not to be working today. What's the problem? Wikipedian231 10:47, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

live RC link broken

The live RC link on Special:Recentchanges, or rather the page [1] is broken--looks like broken MySQL permissions. Demi ^T/_C 21:22, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)

Image on Wikiquotes boilerplate

I've noticed that the boilerplate for Wikiquote links (in wiki-coding, "{{wikiquote}}") does not display the Wikiquote logo. All other boilerplate links to WikiMedia projects (wiktionary, wikisource, etc) do display their respective logos, to the best of my knowledge. Has anyone else noticed this, or is this problem specific to my computer? Bbhtryoink 00:53, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It has been deliberately temporarily removed. See m:Image server overload 2005-03 for an explanation. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:23, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Royal Society

The Royal Society have a list of all their fellows, foreign members and presidents at http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=1727 and I think this would serve as a useful indication of articles that are needed. There are 26 pdf files at http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=1727 thru http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/downloaddoc.asp?id=796 but a script is needed to go through and somehow arrange them from "surname, firstname" into "firstname, surname", and ignore the titles. Formatting doesn't appear to be preserved by copying out the text, which would be very useful in knowing which data are where so that they can then be jiggled. Any thoughts? Dunc|☺ 23:12, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Image thumbnail wrong

(I use the classic skin. )In Latch the thumbnail is cropped at the rigjht edge. It is correct in the full sized image. What is going on? -- SGBailey 23:12, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)

Thumbnail looks fine to me (i.e the labels are visible). I suspect caching. -- John Fader (talk · contribs) 23:29, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, it also looks fine at work on a different PC. I'll try at home agin later. Thanks. -- SGBailey 10:51, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)

On the same page I also see that <math>\bar Q</math> displays in math but <math>Q</math> displays as a normal Q. Why? -- SGBailey 23:18, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)

If your user preference is set to "display simple Formulas as HTML, it will render the Q as Text instead of an image. -- 213.23.219.107 23:35, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. -- SGBailey 10:51, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)

ftp installation of wikimedia : MySql

I am planing to upgrade my own wiki (made with PmWiki ) to a mediawiki. Fact is 1-Ido not have local access to the servers (actually they are in other country) and 2 - even if I had, I wouldn't know how to do it. I konw bullies of MySql or pho. But I am planning to learn something. The user's guide tell me

 database requirements
    If you don't have root access, you will need to create a MySQL database and a user for the database at your local host.
    If you have root access, the setup file will ask you for the root password and automatically setup the database for you.

I have no root acces (repeat, I have only basic FTP access to the server). Is there a easy way to create a MySql database, something like create a zerolenght file called myDatabase and upload it or something? I mean, how do I create this?

--Alexandre Van de Sande 23:01, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This really depends on your hosting package. If it's not clear, MySQL is a program (and a big, fancy one at that) - one that needs to be running on your server for anything to work. So you'll need to check with your webhosting people. If they run mySQL (which many do) they should give you access to that (mysql has several communication protocols available) - but frankly if they don't give you shell access then I really doubt they give you mysql at all. If they don't have mysql running, and obviously you don't have permission to run arbitrary programs, then clearly you can't install it yourself and you're totally not going to get anything to work. -- John Fader (talk · contribs) 23:10, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Check if you have access to phpMyAdmin. Most hosts that give you MySQL should also give you PMA, which you can use to set up the databases. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 09:49, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Linking to edit pages

Is it possible to link to an edit/history page without having to type (for example) [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&action=history]  ? Also, to link to a .....&action=edit&section=new would be helpful. For example, just by typing [[Wikipedia:Sandbox|action=edit]] Can anyone help?--212.100.250.217 17:04, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

About the closest you can get is [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Wikipedia:Sandbok|action=edit&section=new}} comment goes here]. —AlanBarrett 17:53, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Link Structure Database?

Hello! Could anyone tell me if the databasedownloading of wikipedia comes with some sort of extracted overview of the internal links between the different wikipedia pages? Or if you know of anyone or somewhere other people have done this.

I am working on a project on IR retrieval and ranking of documents, and found the wikipedia database to be a great test-collection of documents. I will analyse the link structure within the documents to (hopefully) amend the ranking of the documents when searching. So my project is not focusing on link extracting from text, and therefor it would be nice if I didn't have to do an additional small project of extracting the links in the collection myself.

Anyways, thank you for a great product.

Sincerely, Glenn-Erik

The downloaded databse doesn't, but typically you'll run a script that comes with the mediawiki distribution which builds the link table (described at m:Links table. That gives you essentially the same functionality as "what links here", albeit with a limit of 500 in bound links per page (although that should be tweakable if you care more about correctness than performance). I forget what the script is calle, but it's something like remakelinks.php or somesuch. -- John Fader (talk · contribs) 17:00, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Or you could just download the links and brokenlinks table dumps along with the rest. --Brion 23:45, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

Statistics Page

Does anyone know what has happened to the Wikipedia Statistics page? It hasnt been updated since Jan 1 .

Theon 19:12, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

Try meta:Statistics - and your link is broken. URL links don't have pipes in them. The statistic page needs an SQL dump to be updated, which may not happen for a while (possibly some server issues). User:Alphax/sig 23:33, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

Special:Randompage filtering

Is it possible for some pages with explicit material, eg this page to be filtered out of random-pages? I feel scared to do this in case I get spotted.--213.18.248.27 16:44, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Minor edits on User talk pages

Will minor edits on a user's talk page cause them to get a "You have new messages" message, or does it have to be a major edit? User:Alphax/sig 09:41, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

Any edit triggers "You have new messages". _R_ 14:50, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The strange case of the reappearing template

I've been stub-sorting, and have been having a lot of trouble with a series of articles on runes: Berkanan, Ehwaz, Haglaz, Isaz... most of Category:Runes, in fact. I edit them, remove the stub template and replace it with ling-stub (linguistics), and... it reappears in Category: Stub. None of the articles have the generic stub template, but they all turn up back in the main category, and they have "Stub" listed in the list of categories at the bottom of each article. I thought at first it was a time-lag problem, but that shouldn't last 24 hours. I've tried the delete/revert trick to see if that helps, as well, but that doesn't do any good either. Any ideas? Grutness|^hello? 07:29, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Template:Ling-stub is listed both as Category:Linguistics stubs and Category:stub. The software works, you have to debug the user ;) -- Chris 73 Talk 07:38, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

the sound you hear is that of User:Grutness slapping his forehead with the palm of his hand. Grutness|^hello? 10:28, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

just what the hell is going on??

Ive just spent 5 minutes creatiing three pages and ONE HOUR getting submit timeouts trying to save them. in fact, ive given up, ive lost all three pages.

its not my PC, no other page or program lags.

its not the net, heres a tracert (leaving out the first 3 hops to protect my system):

• 3 10 ms 10 ms <10 ms nott-t2cam1-b-v133.inet.ntl.com [80.4.46.205]
• 4 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms nott-t2core-b-ge-wan71.inet.ntl.com [80.1.79.185]
• 5 10 ms 20 ms 10 ms nth-bb-b-so-200-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.37]
• 6 20 ms 40 ms 20 ms nth-bb-a-ae0-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.117]
• 7 10 ms 20 ms 10 ms gfd-bb-b-so-400-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.98]
• 8 20 ms 20 ms 30 ms bre-bb-a-so-000-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.149]
• 9 40 ms 40 ms 40 ms pari-ic-1-so-000-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.188.98]
• 10 30 ms 40 ms 30 ms feth2-kara-ielo.freeix.net [213.228.3.203]
• 11 40 ms 30 ms 40 ms feth0-bestelle.tlcy.fr.core.ielo.net [212.85.144.6]
• 12 40 ms 60 ms 40 ms chloe.wikimedia.org [212.85.150.132]

but what i DO get is:

• Sorry- we have a problem...
• The wikimedia web server didn't return any response to your request.
• To get information on what's going on you can visit #wikipedia.
• An "offsite" status page is hosted on OpenFacts.
• Generated Mon, 07 Mar 2005 22:55:37 GMT by will.wikimedia.org *(squid/2.5.STABLE4-20040219.wp20050114.icpfix.nortt.S7)

so the lag is internally in wikipedia. just what the hell is going on???

ive no doubt it may take up to an hour to save this page as well

Lincolnshire Poacher

I would like to echo everything User:Lincolnshire Poacher said and add that it is frustrating almost to the point of insanity. I am very willing to do my bit for the Wikipedia cause, but not at the expense of my wits. Jdcooper 00:50, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's obvious there is a problem. Editors and contributors should make a practice of saving their work offline before making changes to articles. In the meantime, let's wait a bit. Maybe it will work tomorrow. I'm in the same situation.--Fernkes 01:50, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

The problem was lock contention. It should be fixed for now, a tweak to the software to reduce lock time was made. -- Tim Starling 04:34, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

May be fixed but I am finding it increasingly difficult to make saves without loosing stuff because the browser sometimes locks up preventing the usual method of recovery: using the back button to save your work or resubmit. In fact, in recent weeks or months, the interaction of my (IE) browser and Wikipedia has steadily gone down hill. The most noticeable problem is when hitting a link from outside to get to Wikipedia (I have a Wikipedia button on my homepage). For most (all?) URLs, that action starts the little MS flag waving and eventually, if there are delays, a progress bar opens up along the bottom of the window showing "progress" in retreiving the request. For Wikipedia, what now typically happens is immediately or very quickly upon submitting the URL request, the browser freezes up. The flag does not move and in fact the browser must be closed to get any buttons to work. This state is usually not permanent. With patience, the request is honored and Wikipedia appears, ora server error message appears ("There is a problem..."). But the behaviour is unlike anything I get with other URLs and wonder what could be the cause, as it occurs very fast sometimes - hard to image something has come back that fast from the Wikipedia servers? Am I alone in noticing this? - Marshman 00:56, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

ERROR on every SAVE

Every time I click save, I get an ERROR message saying my transaction could not be completed, but the save takes place anyway. 66.60.159.190 20:59, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ditto, but no save takes place. Is there a squirrel loose in the servers or something? Mashford 21:07, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Most of the time, my edits are saved in spite of the error message. In fact, I had an edit conflict with myself one time. Strange! - Bevo 23:09, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have a different problem. When I press Save it often shows the preview and I have to press it once more. Just had to press it 5 times on one article before it finally stopped showing me the preview and went ahead and saved for me. violet/riga (t) 00:27, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Do you have problems logging in? Are you using the 'remember password' checkbox on login? --Brion 01:08, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

I've been experiencing all of the problems mentioned above, and more, for the past few days:

• Saves actually doing Previews
• Saves repeatedly generating errors but occasionally saving anyway
• Discovering Edit Conflicts with myself, typically resulting in two entries in the article history, the second of which is no change at all, presumably because it was the same Edit request.

I've periodically checked to verify I was still logged in, and haven't yet seen myself unlogged-in during these problems. The problem comes and goes, and seems worst when general access is extremely slow. — Jeff Q (talk) 20:19, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Clarification — the last Edit error I received was in the past half-hour, while editing Wikipedia:Village pump#Make your own nice-looking table. Rather than repeatedly pelt the server with Saves until I got no error, I waited a few minutes, tried the edit again, and found that my changes were in the Edit box already. I cancelled the Edit and hit my refresh at least seven times without getting a page showing the original edit had succeeded. Nevertheless, I checked the History and found my change listed. I finally closed my browser (Opera 7.23 on Win2k), reopened it, and fetched the page anew, to find my changes on the page. Some very weird stuff is still happening. — Jeff Q (talk) 20:28, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Besides experiencing all the above-mentioned oddness, I recently tried to do a sectional edit only to have the edit window open for the part of the page three sections below the one I clicked on. Rmhermen 23:34, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

Tilde

On this page Help:Page name it lists the "~" tilde as a character that can't be in a title. Is this because of a technical restriction? It doesn't list why as it does with many of the others. On the actual technical restrictions page, it doesn't mention the tilde at all. Just wondering? K1Bond007 20:10, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

Probably historic reasons: RFC 1738 (URLs) listed tilde as unsafe, because gateways and other transport agents are known to sometimes modify such characters (clause 2.2). Even if this is no longer always the case, consider how annoying the character is to some users: on many non-US keyboards the key just doesn't exist (its place is taken by another character), Portuguese users may be unable to easily type ~a, ~o or ~n (will become ã, õ, ñ), etc.. Even though RFC 2396, which replaces parts of RFC 1738, now lists tilde as safe, it is still recommended not to use a tilde (escape it as %7e). That's not even going into the fact a lot of server software suites use tilde for special uses, typically to mark the user's "home" directory (a Unixism). Since Apache is Un*x based, probably it uses the tilde like that (http://foo.bar/~baz/index.html would resolve to /home/baz/html/index.html on the foo.bar server). User:Anárion/sig 08:12, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Time sequence of history

How is it possible that the sequence of edits could look like this? Look at the times of edits[2]. The 13:01 edit was made after the 13:05 edit. I've seen this crop up on a few other pages, including here[3]. Rad Racer 04:11, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

There's something even more strange on this page. [4] The days are out of order for the edits. — J3ff 05:31, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It looks like the same thing. Apparently, a null edit will put it back in order. Rad Racer 05:33, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Generally this is caused by a mix of deletion, page moves, and undeletion being used to combine the histories of two pages, where the one being undeleted has more recent edits than the one that was moved in place. --Brion 06:26, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

All the cases I've seen before look like artifacts of multiple page creation, as mentioned above in Multiple instances of an article created - the top revision is a duplicate of the initial one, except (sometimes) for the timestamp. Worse, simple editting - even a null edit - of the "current revision" of such pages change that original text. —Korath (Talk) 07:19, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

A couple of days ago, Jamesday ran a script to repair multiple page creation. I'm thinking it didn't work quite the way it should have. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:42, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Titles

I want my title to be iPoder not IPoder. How can I modify the title to be iPoder and not always end up with the title IPoder?

You can't. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions) --Brion 03:15, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

But you can paste anything you want for a sig under your comments. —Michael Z. 2005-03-7 16:08 Z

Page move vandalism brouhaha

The wiki contains an optional hack to restrict page moves by the most recently registered users. I've engaged this mode on this wiki for now to discourage page move vandalism; most registered users should not be affected. (It's been on on de for some time.)

Note that when we upgrade to MediaWIki 1.5 (which should be sometime a couple months from now), page moves won't be as burdensome on the database, though of course they'll always be annoying. ;) --Brion 02:58, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)

How come favicon doesn't work?

On my web broser (Firefox 1.0.1)The icon for wikipedia in my bookmarks isn't there, It's just the generic icon. The icon apears in the adress bar when i'm visiting wikipedia and works in bookmarks for other wikimedia projects (specificly Wikibooks and tlh:). Is this a bug with my browser? I hope this is the right place to post this, and apoligize if it isn't or has already been discussed. Bawolff 02:03, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I use Firefox and the icon has come up in my bookmarks fine. So must be something wroung with yours. --JK the unwise 09:56, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Try deleting and re-creating your bookmark: sometimes favicons get lost, or bookmarks get the wrong icons assigned. Re-creation of the bookmark usually works. There are numerous bugs with Mozilla/FF and its treatment of favicons, see for example [5]. User:Anárion/sig 10:19, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

ThanksBawolff 04:59, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Multiple instances of an article created

I created a redirect page, Suprasegmental feature, which redirects to Prosody (linguistics). However, I got a server error when I first submitted so I hit reload to try it again. I hit reload one more time when I got another server error. Now, it looks as if three instances of the page exists because when you go to Special:Whatlinkshere/Prosody (linguistics), you see three instances of Suprasegmental feature. How do I fix this? -- Umofomia 09:00, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Nevermind... looks like this notice that appeared soon after I made my post explains it:

This wiki is read only for about 30 minutes to remove duplicate articles and prevent more duplicate articles from being created. The actual duration is as long as it takes the two commmands to run.

Looks like it's fixed now. -- Umofomia 09:49, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism

On the page about Thomas Burgess (philosopher) someone replaced all the content with a charming ditty about ducks and kangaroos. I am not too good with Wiki yet, so could someone please fix it?

Fixed. To see how to fix such a thing yourself next time you see vandalism, see Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version.-gadfium 18:49, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What links here

Something's wrong with the "What links here" function, at least as far as the Attila Hörbiger page is concerned. I moved the page yesterday from Attila Hoerbiger (a very unusual spelling of his name) to its present site and added two new links myself, Burgtheater and List of people by name: Hor-Hov. Today I tried again because I want to check possible (double) redirects, but it still says "No pages link to here". What's wrong? Who can help/explain? <KF> 17:41, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

Somehow, we've ended up with two copies of the page in the database. This occasionally happens when an article is created when the servers are running particularly slowly and have become out-of-sync with each other, so the article creator gets an error message on saving the page, and tries to save it a second time. I do not in any way suggest that you or anyone else who worked on this article are at fault here; you have come across a Wikipedia bug (which I think has since been fixed).

The normal way to fix this is for an admin to delete the article and then undelete it. This isn't possible at the moment with this particular article because it was created almost a year ago and has been compressed to save database space. I think a developer needs to look at this.-gadfium 23:33, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for explaining this. <KF> 18:29, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

I believe a similar thing has happened to the East Anglian Railway Museum and East Anglia Transport Museum pages (see above). Would it be possible to sort these pages please? (Our Phellap 19:26, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC))

Both of those pages turn out to have something called "block-compressed revisions" which currently make them impossible to delete-and-restore. (There's a complicated technical explanation for this, but the gist of it is that we just have to wait until it's fixed.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 20:00, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Both of these pages appear to have reverted to earlier versions. Can they be restored, or do they have to be rewritten? (Our Phellap 23:38, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC))

Global WikiTable cell stylesheets/templates

Hi, I have a question about stylesheets. We are currently in the middle of discussing table colour changes, but I'm thinking of the enormity of changing all the colours of all the table rows (see this example. Each row represents a different political party).

I was wondering if we could apply a CSS-type of scheme to these Wikitables. Instead of picking out a specific colour for each Liberal row for each year in which they are mentioned in these Canadian federal results articles, I'd like to create a style, and attribute it to a row (like class="liberal"), and store the colour scheme in a central template or style sheet. That way, if people down the road want to change the colour scheme again, all they have to do is modify the colour settings in the global file, instead of every table for every election year.

Is such a thing possible, and if so, how can I do it? If this is already covered in another article, I'd love to have a link to it. Thanks, Deathphoenix 15:23, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Note: By global, I don't mean across the entire Wikipedia, just among these tables (and possibly other Canadian political articles). --Deathphoenix 18:09, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You could do it with templates. For instance, have a {{color/Liberal Party of Canada}} template containing

bgcolor="lightcoral"

or only "lightcoral". It might even be a good idea to generalise this to all kinds of organisations or concepts. _R_ 19:33, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I didn't think of using the text templates like that. Thanks! --Deathphoenix 20:32, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What is the correct image copyright tag?

I resently uploaded this image. I got it from here an indemedia site. According to here [6] images on Indymedia sites are free for non-profit re-use in the spirit of Copyleft. So I think we can use it but I'm not sure what copyrigt tag to put on it (there doesn't seem to be a copyleft tag). I have looked on Wikipedia:Image copyright tags. Sorry if I'm being thick.--JK the unwise 10:49, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I believe the correct tag would be {{CopyrightedFreeUse}}. — Asbestos | Talk 11:08, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually, come to think of it, I don't think that's correct (Free use isn't given for all purposes). I think {{CopyrightedFreeUseProvidedThat}} would be correct (See Template talk:CopyrightedFreeUseProvidedThat which gives this condition as a valid one). — Asbestos | Talk 11:27, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Cheers. Further question, why is there no copyleft tag, copyleft seems to be popular on the internet, particulay amoung the anarchist set. Is it because copyleft is to underdefined as a concept and is not legaly regognised?--JK the unwise 13:01, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Basically, yes. GFDL is a copyleft. So are all the Creative Commons licenses. Their terms are very different. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:01, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

Non-commercial only images are not in general used here, except by other arguments (like fair use). --SPUI (talk) 00:08, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Why? If not why do we have tags for it? Can't understand why it would be a bad thing since Wikipedia itself is released on that kind of copyright (is it not?)--JK the unwise 08:49, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is released under the GFDL, which allows commercial use. --SPUI (talk) 08:54, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Just had another look at Indymedia page [7] and the text on copyright status hyperlinks the word Copyleft to this page [8] which goes on about GNU???? Anyway do I need to email them then to try to get permision to use the images?--JK the unwise 09:16, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think you have to. Images with the non-commercial provision are not compatible with the GFDL and will (eventually) be deleted. – flamurai (t) 09:25, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

Hex values for colors suddenly stopped working

<font color="ff0000">caca</font>: caca

<font color="red">caca</font>: caca

What the hell? It happened about 1/2 hour ago, and it's happening again - the former is black, and the latter is red. --SPUI (talk) 05:30, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

They both look right to me. Isn't <font color="#ff0000">caca</font>: caca canonical, though? —Korath (Talk) 07:38, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

<font color="ff0000"> is incorrect; a hexadecimal color must be prefixed by a #. Normally the tidy clean-up process will silently fix this for you, but a couple of the new machines hadn't been set up quite right, and you may have been intermittently hitting a server without tidy. This should be fixed now. --Brion 08:27, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

Strangely, the above still has it without the #, and it works again. --SPUI (talk) 09:50, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, that's probably because of everything I said in the previous paragraph. --Brion 23:26, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

But why would it work, if it hasn't been "cleaned up"? Or is this something that's done to the HTML code? --SPUI (talk) 00:59, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What usually happens is that html code generated by mediawiki is run through an html tidy program (maybe even htmltidy) which fixes a multitude of user-supplied sins. That's whay Brion meant above by "the tidy clean-up process". On a couple of the webservers that tidy function wasn't set up, so it let the bad html code through unfixed. If you'd looked at the same page via a different webserver (and you'd cleared the cache) you might have hit one of the servers that did have the tidy function setup, and you wouldn't have seen the problem. Now that all the servers are tidying correctly, the problem shouldn't be manifest at all. This wouldn't have happened, of course, if my suggestion of changing htmltidy to deliver painfull electrical shocks to the genitals of those who submit bad html had been implemented. -- John Fader 01:13, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Rollback error

Have any other admins been getting the below error message when trying to rollback vandalism? It doesn't happen often, but when it does clicking "reload" and "back" doesn't work, I have to go back to the history page, reload the diff and try again, and then it always works. I think it started sometime after the server crash a few weeks ago. Tuf-Kat 22:16, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking. Please hit "back" and reload the page you came from, then try again.

Nope.

Urhixidur 22:52, 2005 Mar 2 (UTC)

Interwikis for templates

It's long been bothering me that there's no convenient way to make interwiki links for templates: interwiki links on template pages will get included with the remainder of the template code and interwikis on discussion pages are disabled. To alleviate this, I suggest (and have already begun to implement) a {{Template interwiki}} template defined on all Wikipedias. All it does is providing a nice way of displaying interwiki links. Its use is demonstrated on Template Talk:Template interwiki. Thoughts and improvements welcome. _R_ 17:48, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Special pages

The special pages such as Short Pages and Uncategorized Pages have not been updating since the crash last week. Any idea when they will be back? - SimonP 16:22, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

IPstack template

Ancheta Wis 13:55, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC): This is what I saw when attempting to read the POP3 article:

Fixed. -- John Fader 14:36, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

New template to help linking to templates

Hi, I've just created a new template at Template:TemplateLink to help people link to template pages. I got bored trying to get my head round the awkward syntax every time I wanted to link to a template page, for example in category:computer stubs, and so created this as a tidy solution. You can use it by typing {{TemplateLink|template_name}}. For example:

{{TemplateLink|VfD}}.

which will create the text

{{VfD}}.

I hope people find this useful. Please let me know if I should publicise this elsewhere. --HappyDog 05:27, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Template:TemplateLink is a duplicate of Template:Template. Well, they have slightly different code, but identical purpose. The code in Template:Template is written in a weird way, probably as a workaround for a bug that has now been fixed. I suggest that you merge the two templates and then request that Template:TemplateLink be deleted. (I think it's a speedy delete candidate in terms of WP:CSD rule "General 7", so just add "{{deletebecause|original author no longer wants this}}" to the top of the template.)

• There's also {{tl}} which has existed for some time. _R_ 17:52, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I had a good look for a template that performed this function amongst the help pages, but found nothing. I am happy for them to be consolidated. I chose the name because I thought 'Template' on its own was a bit confusing (though less so than tl). However, as long as the functionality is there I'm happy for any suitable name to be used. I would also suggest that this is incorporated somewhere in the help docs (somewhere findable!) --HappyDog 19:15, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Its full name is {{Template link}}, but I think it's very convenient to have a shortcut. This way, even lazy people will type {{Template link}} instead of the less useful {{Template link}}. _R_ 00:29, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That was my bad; I tend to create templates for my own use and not document them anywhere. --SPUI (talk) 04:47, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That's useful. In that case I would suggest that my {{TemplateLink}} is deleted. I will amend the pages I have already edited to use it. I would also suggest that {{Template}} is deprecated in a similar manner. Could we also get the details about this template option onto the help pages a bit more prominently? --HappyDog 01:06, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

East Anglian Railway Museum / East Anglia Transport Museum

The East Anglian Railway Museum page appears to link to itself several times when looking under the "what links here" page. Can this be fixed?

Also the "what links here" page doesn't show any links for the article on East Anglia Transport Museum doesn't work (when at least Lowestoft and Suffolk pages do). This page also shows up as a linking to the template Template:British heritage railways when in fact it does not.

(Our Phellap 15:52, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC))

section edit links showing up badly

For the record: this is a relatively major problem on Mozilla/Firefox/etc and a rather minor problem on IE.

I'm sure everyone's seen this problem - the section edit links are pushed down by images (see User:SPUI/RI 10). Is the solution in RI 10, where a table is used to put the images to the right of the text, "acceptable" by the cabal? If not, what should be done? Is there a fix in the works? I know the images can be moved down into the sections, but this doesn't always work with bigger screens or smaller font sizes. --SPUI (talk) 22:10, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean. I see nothing unusual or objectionable in the formatting of section edit links in User:SPUI/RI 10. The images appear on the right, each heading has a section edit link on the same line as the heading, and the text wraps nicely around the images. I tried several combinations of font size and window width, without seeing any bad effects. If you see something wrong, please describe it, or post a screenshot. —AlanBarrett 22:47, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What browser are you using? I'm using K-Meleon, and the edit links for the route and history sections are pushed down almost to the bottom of history. See Image:fucked edit links.png. --SPUI (talk) 23:21, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I am using Opera, and I don't see anything like that. I suspect a CSS issue. You might get better help at Mediawiki talk:Monobook.css. —AlanBarrett 15:59, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I;m not sure that I would; I'd probably get technical explanations that I won't understand because I don't know CSS. --SPUI (talk) 17:35, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've managed to 'fix' it in RI 10; unfortunately it will only work if the images are all the same width (otherwise we'll have extra whitespace). --SPUI (talk) 01:31, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Apparently the fix looks like shit in Safari, so User:K1vsr is changing them back to the tables. I love extra whitespace. --SPUI (talk) 17:45, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Eh, I've posted on MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css#fucked up section edit links - CSS or Mozilla issue?. --SPUI (talk) 17:57, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Your insults have caused me to lose interest in helping you. —AlanBarrett 20:30, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've removed and reworded a couple things that could be considered personal attacks; my object is nothing of the sort. Let's deal with the real issue, the rendering problems. --SPUI (talk) 22:10, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A screenshot in IE: Image:IE SPUI R10.gif. Due to the window size, the top edit overlaps the image; this normally doesn't happen. It's still pretty much in the right place. Would it be possible to change the way the section links are handled to have them just as normal text next to the heading? Or does that cause other problems? --SPUI (talk) 22:10, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

spacing in automatic footnote proposal

A problem with spacing after links in Intenet Explorer has been discovered in my new automatic footnote proposal. It's maybe not a killer problem but it does look ugly. Images taken from Galeon and from Internet explorer are shown on the talk page. The generated HTML looks like this, so there's no space being output by MediaWiki.

...proposal<sup id="fn_autonumber_back" class=" plainlinks"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnote3#fn_autonumber" class='external' title=" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnote3#fn autonumber" rel="nofollow">[1]</a><span class=' urlexpansion'> (<i>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnote3#fn_autonumber</i>)</span></sup>. The...

Can anybody please suggest how to fix this? Mozzerati 08:03, 2005 Feb 28 (UTC)

It will probably have something to do with how the CSS rules for class=plainlinks and class=external are handled. class="external" means "add a little arrow icon to mark an external link", while class="plainlinks" means "no, don't add the arrow icon". IE is apparently leaving space for the arrow icon, but not displaying the icon itself. Opera does the same thing. The problem might be due to a browser bug, or an error in the CSS, but either way it is probably something that could be fixed or worked around in the CSS. You could try asking at Mediawiki talk:Monobook.css. —AlanBarrett 15:53, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Apparently the fix is known, but no admin has yet edited the CSS to implement the fix. See Mediazilla:714, Mediazilla:1516, Mediawiki talk:Monobook.css#class="plainlinks" fix. —AlanBarrett 20:36, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm going to copy this to the talk page of the proposal. Mozzerati 20:44, 2005 Mar 2 (UTC)

Where's the template for the >32K warning?

...the one that says

WARNING: This page is ### kilobytes long. Please consider condensing the page and moving the detail to another article so it is not approaching or in excess of 32KB."

(For my motivation in asking, see: Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Soften the 32K warning?)

Dpbsmith (talk) 15:39, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Looking at the source for mediawiki 1.4 beta 4 (which may be out of date) that string is part of the mediawiki dist, and doesn't come from a template. Technically it's a string labelled "longpagewarning" which is inserted into the page by editForm() in EditPage.php. The string is defined in all the different language files (in the case of EN, that's just Language.php). So it'll either need a developer to change, or a bugtrack request raised to change mediawiki to get the text from a template (which isn't, I think, an unreasonable request). -- John Fader 16:58, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

All messages that have string labels like that have defaults that are set in Language XX.php in the source code, but they can be overridden by template-like pages in the mediawiki namespace. For this message, see mediawiki:longpagewarning. To edit it, you don't need help from a developer; you need help from an admin (who can edit protected pages in the mediawiki namespace). To request a change to the text, try mediawiki talk:longpagewarning. —AlanBarrett 17:57, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Nanotechnology

Can someone review the extensive nanotechnology interview on Feb.26 on the Coast to Coast AM radio network, which interview for its subscribers can be heard on-line for the next 90 days?

Diffs have stopped working

All of a sudden, when I try to do a diff (on any article's history), I get:

Error From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The database did not find the text of a page that it should have found, named "Pope John Paul II (Diff: 10611117, 0)". If it is a recently changed page, trying again in a minute or two will usually work. Alternatively, you may have followed an outdated diff or history link to a page that has been deleted.

If this is not the case, you may have found a bug in the software. Please report this to an administrator, making note of the URL.

(note that the Pope John Paul II above is just an example. each diff uses the name of the article I'm looking at) RickK 09:51, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

pic not updating

I reverted the pic Image:Angelina Jolie.jpg to an ealier vertion (if you care about the "whys" see Talk:Angelina Jolie#picture) but in any case, this pic is used at Angelina Jolie which doesn't seem to be reflecting the change. I thought maybe it was jsut a time dependent thing but I did it 13 hours ago. To see what I mean, go to Angelina Jolie, see the pic and then click on it and it takes you to a different pic. (Control + F5 is not the answer this time) Cavebear42 09:06, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There seems to be a general problem with images disappearing. RickK 09:11, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

I noticed this myself. Three images I uploaded showed up as question-marks-in-boxes for several minutes. I was patient and the problem with these particular images resolved itself. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:48, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Images on Piccadilly Circus

For some reason, every image disappeared after a recent edit! I can still see the images in history but not in the current version - Why is that? Please help. JuntungWu 05:50, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Appears OK to me now. Does it still look wrong to you? -- Jmabel | Talk 06:35, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

• • Yes, it still looks wrong. Maybe it's something wrong with my computer. I'll see. JuntungWu 12:11, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Missing images

Following the recent discussion on Wikien-l about stopping images on Wikepedia, I un-clicked the load images box on the Firefox options page, to see what happened. I then clicked it to restore them and on every web page I look at the images download properly, except Wikipedia. So I have no globe and no pix anywhere each time I run it. As far as I can see there are no changes anywhere on my preferences page, and in any case I don't think we yet have an image disabling function there. Any ideas, anyone? Apwoolrich 18:47, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

And you've cleared your cache, naturally? -- John Fader 19:00, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Yes, no difference Apwoolrich 19:04, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm afraid I can't reproduce your problem. If I disable images in firefox, and reload, then images (including the wikipedia globe) indeed aren't shown. If I then re-enable them, and reload, all are visible again, including the wikipedia globe. Are you sure you haven't blocked images some other way too (like adblock) using a domain-specific method? -- John Fader 19:28, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have the same problem. Missing images, or blank boxes. But it's inconsistant. RickK 09:10, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

I had the box 'for the originating website only' ticked. Un-ticking it has brought them back in Wikipedia. Does this mean I am getting images from a different website? Apwoolrich 12:05, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Images are served from a dedicated box separate from the main web site. This is done for both performance (frees up HTTPD processes for heavy work) and security (potential JavaScript attack) reasons. --Brion 23:19, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

Recent changes???

The recent changes are not working. I rebooted my PC, purged the caché, edited Muhammad Ali and made a zero-edit in my own user page, which doesn't appear in the RC. Is there another database problem concerning the master/slave databases?? --Neigel von Teighen 16:01, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Live RC is still working, so I've put prominent directions to that in Wikipedia:Recentchanges for the time being. Does anyone know what's going on? —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 18:09, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

After I added the note to Wikipedia:Recentchanges and purged the cache of Special:Recentchanges, it started working again. I don't know if these two happenings are related in any way or if it was just a lucky coincidence, but the problem seems to be sorted out now. —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 18:24, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I made changes to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_the_buffalo and they don't appear in the article. If I do an edit, they are still there, but not in the live article as displayed. I've cleared my cached and tried on other computers. The problem persists 12+ hours after posting. Is this a separate issue? Seattle.

I agree that this is strange. I can't see any edits your IP address has made to this article, although User:Dave Cohoe made an edit recently. There have been problems in the last day with one cache not being up to date, but that's supposed to be fixed. Sorry, I can't help you except to reaffirm that something's wrong.-gadfium 07:46, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Working now! PFM! :) Guessing I'm hitting another server that was having problems updating. Dave in Seattle. 07:58, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If you are Dave, then I was seeing your edit. I also purged the page cache, which may be why you are now seeing it.-gadfium 08:26, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Bummer, I just went back to Donna the buffalo page and all the edits I made are gone. They're not even in history. Any ideas? Dave Cohoe 05:35, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

changing attributions to articles

Hi, I have a new account, but I've been contributing occasional edits anonymously for some time, using several IP addresses on dialup.

I went to the page "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Changing_attribution_for_an_edit" and read the Procedures there but I am completely baffled as to how to enter my list of IP addresses used. Do I edit an existing subsection, or what? And where and how do I list multiple IP addresses? And why do I have to log out before entering them? Etc etc etc.

Kalimac

(Also, why is it that, though I am logged on - there's my username at the top of the web page - I don't get a name and timestamp like other posters in this topic do? This may be relevant to my experience trying to Move a page, which kept giving me an error message saying I needed to log on, even though I kept repeatedly logging on.)

type four tildes (~~~~) for a name and timestamp, thus: rbrwr^± 20:58, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC). Moves are restricted for brand new accounts because they have been used as a sort of vandalism; this is a new feature, so the messages you get when you try might not have been honed into good shape yet. I have no idea at all about your main question. --rbrwr^± 20:58, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The logging out business is so that you can help prove that you are the anonymous editor for whose work you are claiming credit, that's all. Yes, you want to make a new section for your own addresses. If you want to add it on by editing another section, that's fine too; as long as you add your own header, yours will automagically become a separate section whe you save. --iMb~Mw 21:42, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You are probably out of luck claiming edits done from a variety of IP addresses. In principle, it could be done, but only by a developer and they simply have more important things to do.

I would suggest that you mention on your user page articles where you have done significant work and wish some sort of recognition (you can even link a particular diff in the history of the article if you want to) and you might (might) want to drop by the talk pages of any articles you worked on heavily and say, "Hi, I'm the anon who did such-and-such, I have an account now." -- Jmabel | Talk 22:38, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

How do I edit a stub?

The corp-stub function introduces into a every page in which it is used a link to the word company - which, as you can see, leads to a disambig page, leading to many more links to the company disambig. So how do I fix this? Please respond on my talk page. Cheers. --BDAbramson 05:10, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Fixed. All I did was edit Template:corp-stub and replace the company link with company. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 11:30, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• • • Very cool. --BDAbramson 14:12, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Enter multiple redirects in a single operation?

In my experience, it is often quite difficult to find things that are in Wikipedia.

The most recent actual example of this occurred just last week. I happened to be emceeing a performance of our barbershop chapter at an event called Irish Night, and for a song introduction i wanted to say something about the legendary giant of Irish folklore, Finn McCoul.

After searching in Wikipedia on Finn McCoul, Fin McCoul, Finn MacCoul, and Finn M'Coul, I gave up, Googled for Finn McCoul, and found what I wanted elsewhere on the web. I found it hard to believe we didn't have anything about the legendary giant of Irish folklore, but that seemed to be the case, so today I started to compose a stub.

When I checked to see that I had linked properly to Giant's Causeway, I noticed that Giant's Causeway links to "the giant Finn McCool (Finn McCool)" and that in turn led me to the article we indeed have.

Notice that Finn MacCumhaill itself is a redlink!

To make it link, the article pipes Finn MacCumhaill it to Finn McCool, [[Finn MacCumhaill|Finn McCool]] which redirects to Fionn mac Cumhail!

Now, apart from the question of whether the article should really be under Fionn mac Cumhail, 4550 hits, rather than Finn McCool 13000, the point is that I was utterly unable to find what I was looking for—because the string I was searching on, McCoul, simply does not appear in the article.

This is true even though the article has a section entitled "other names," which includes no less than 11 variations:

1. Finn
2. Finn mac Cool
3. Finn mac Coul
4. Finn mac Cumhail
5. Finn mac Cumhal
6. Finn McCool
7. Fionn
8. Fionn mac Cool
9. Fionn mac Coul
10. Fionn mac Cumhal
11. Fionn mac Uail

Whoever constructed the list went through all of the likely variations on Cool/Coul/Cumhal/Cumhail/Cumhaill, but did not go through all the combinatorial ways of combining them with M', Mc, or Mac, with the result that strings such as McCoul do not appear anywhere in the text and are not found in a global search.

I have added redirects for all the specific spellings I had personally searched for—Fin McCoul, Finn McCoul, Finn MacCoul, and Finn M'Coul. It is, in fact, quite laborious to add four or five redirects. To adequately cover Finn McCoul, we'd need more like twenty or thirty of them. (I went through this once before, with Alexander de Seversky, where the various combinations of de Seversky, DeSeversky, and just-plain Seversky, together with the presence or absence of the middle initial P and/or the middle name Procofieff mean that there are easily half-a-dozen variations that are actually seen in use.

Now, I don't want to get into anything terribly high-tech or fancy-schmancy in the way of Soundex or fuzzy matching or synonymies or anything like that... but it seems to me that in the case of foreign names, it would be extremely helpful if there were a way to enter up to a couple of dozen terms on a single screen as a list, that would allow you to create redirects from all of them to the canonical form in a single operation.

I don't know whether that's the best answer. All I know is that as of today, the chances of missing an article that is actually in Wikipedia are really quite high. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:03, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

ca & es wiktionaty SITENAME

Could somebody change the template names {{SITENAME}} of ca.wiktionary and es.wiktionary?

The requests are:

• ES: Wiktionary -> Wikcionario
• CA: Wiktionary -> Viccionari

Thanks. Llull 21:47, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Is move page broken?

I'm trying to move the page imattocanna but the system tells me I'm not logged in every time I click the move link.

I've tried a couple of different browsers but it doesn't let me.

I know very new accounts can't move pages, but what constitutes very new? This account is several days old now - is the limit a week or what?

Cheers, AndyT

No, it's not broken, it's just switched off for new accounts thanks to a vandal who discovered that by page moves he can create a lot of work for admins to clean up the mess, much more than with any other kind of vandalism. Currently it is set to something like the latest 2% of accounts, but this may change without notice, even though it's likely that vandal knows very well about the internals of this site and probably reads the technical mailing list as well. Simply list the move you want to have done on Wikipedia:Requested moves. andy 16:12, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks - I'll do that. It would be good if there was a better error message though. I wasted a fair bit of time trying different things like checking my cookie rules, trying another browser etcetera. before I realized the fault probably wasn't on my end. Most of the documentation just assumes it'll work so it takes a while to figure out there's a new user restriction. --Lordpixel 16:35, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The messages are at Mediawiki:Movenologin and Mediawiki:Movenologintext if someone with the power to do so is willing to clarify them. —Korath (Talk) 19:22, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)

Template:Newpagelinks and Template:Newpagelinksmain

Do these two templates actually do anything? Their ostensible purpose is to provide the Googlebot, among others, with ready access to new pages, orphaned articles, and categories. However, all the links are of the form http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Newpages, rather than Special:Newpages, and Wikipedia's robots.txt file contains these lines:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /w/

so can a search engine that's behaving itself actually follow any of the links on these templates? —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 18:44, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Unable to save result set

Hi,

I just got the following error when accessing the URL http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_computer_scientists&diff=prev&oldid=11152042.

Warning: mysql_query(): Unable to save result set in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.4/includes/Database.php on line 324
Error in numRows(): MySQL server has gone away

Backtrace:

   * Database.php line 502 calls wfdebugdiebacktrace()
   * User.php line 452 calls databasemysql::numrows()
   * SkinTemplate.php line 254 calls user::getnewtalk()
   * OutputPage.php line 417 calls skinmonobook::outputpage()
   * OutputPage.php line 614 calls outputpage::output()
   * Database.php line 360 calls outputpage::databaseerror()
   * Database.php line 309 calls databasemysql::reportqueryerror()
   * Parser.php line 3005 calls databasemysql::query()
   * Parser.php line 195 calls parser::replacelinkholders()
   * OutputPage.php line 230 calls parser::parse()
   * DifferenceEngine.php line 147 calls outputpage::addwikitext()
   * Article.php line 709 calls differenceengine::showdiffpage()
   * index.php line 127 calls article::view()

--S.K. 15:20, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Stuff like this happens intermittently. Usually if you try again you'll be fine. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:13, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

Category recursion problem

Category:Notability and inclusion guidelines for WikiProjects seems to be a subcategory of itself, yet when I go to edit the category to remove its own name from its list of categories, it isn't listed as one of the categories that it is in.

Um... I think that parsed OK... Any ideas? Grutness|^hello? 11:42, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It was probably created twice - an admin will have to delete it and recreate it, I think. --SPUI (talk) 11:58, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A null edit fixed it. —Korath (Talk) 17:32, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

Move

I'd like to have Denton welch moved to Denton Welch. I put comment in discussion, but must not have done it correctly. --Golden Eternity 07:00, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

See Village pump#How to change article name.-gadfium 07:52, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

phpbb/wikimedia integration

hi,

does anyone know of a way to integrate wikimedia with a phpbb user database?

thanks, will.

Persistent "Database error" trying to access talk page.

For the last several hours I've repeatedly tried and failed to access Wikipedia talk:What_is_a_featured_article, getting the page:

Database error
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Internal error

Can anyone else access this page? Paul August ☎ 22:08, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

Works for me. Depending on your browser, you might have to push the 'shift' or 'ctrl' key along with the reload button to make it really reload. --Brion 22:52, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

Ok, now it works for me too. Paul August ☎ 04:28, Mar 16, 2005 (UTC)

MediaWiki Installation goes nowhere

I return here in my quest to upgrade my PmWiki to a nice Mediawiki. Thanks everyone for the help.

I successfully went throught all steps of the installation process. In the end the install tutorial even said " installation succesfull, now visit your wiki!" But when I do visit the wiki nothing happens. I mean, really nothing, the page loads, stop and it seems I am still in the same page I was before. I tested in a pc (Firefox & ie) and a mac (safari & mozilla). Only safari did something different that was to give me the following error message:

Safari can't open the page.
Safari can't open the page:
"http://www.wanderingabout.com/kiwi/index.php/Main_Page"
because it could not load any data from this location.

I am completely lost, any tip? If it helps, the only warning output was about my "register globals" being activated which seemed a minor security issue, and the information that the problem persisted even afetr I changed folder permissions (chmod) back o normal.. --Avsa 20:05, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You'll have better luck reaching people who can help you through mediawiki-l. -- Cyrius|✎ 07:32, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The server isn't returning any response for that page; this is typically a sign that the web server process handling that request has crashed, closing the connection. Crashing web servers indicate a bug either in Apache, in PHP, or in some PHP module (such as a caching/acceleration module), which might be triggered by some but not all PHP code. If you have access to Apache's error logs, that might or might not help you.

The PHPTAL template system used for the MonoBook skin in 1.3 has been implicated in triggering cache-module-related bugs for some people; you might try installing MediaWiki 1.4rc1 which uses a different template subsystem. If that doesn't improve things, post what information you can in mediawiki-l or see if anyone can help you in the #mediawiki channel on irc.freenode.net. --Brion 10:27, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

Binary/Octet-Stream Error

Every once and a while I get Firefox 1.0 trying to download a page instead of displaying it. If I try again it usually works fine. Is this a Firefox bug or is Wikipedia's server glitching out? WhackaWhackaWoo 23:21, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Happens in Mozilla too so must be something to do with the Gecko engine. Started a few days ago and doesn't occur in IE or any other pages using Firefox/Mozilla. Andypasto 03:34, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Any WP constructs for showing and checking off todo lists?

I was just wondering if anyone has done any work with regards to showing their todo lists (perhaps on their user pages) in any special way. It would be nice if there were some kind of wiki construct that made doing this more usable and trackable, esp. from the sense of an encyclopedia-wide rollup of everyone's todo's. After all, if somebody wants to beat me to working on one of my todo's, so much the better. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 21:27, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:To-do list. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:04, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Looks good. Thanks! — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 03:42, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Rollup of section stubs

Curious: Do section stubs rollup anywhere? — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 21:22, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• I, for one, have no idea what you mean by "rollup". -- Jmabel | Talk 21:26, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)
  • Simple. Most stubs "rollup" into stub category pages that list all the stubs. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 21:29, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • In that case, no. The template doesn't have a category in it. --iMb~Mw 17:00, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • Oh, but you could use this. --iMb~Mw 17:06, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • Cool! Thanks! — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Contrib} 02:48, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Is search broken?

I haven't seen the in-house search facility for a long time. Is it broken? Bobblewik  (talk) 21:10, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It says Wikipedia search is disabled for performance reasons. You can search via Google or Yahoo! in the meantime. Just disabled because of load; perhaps it will come back when they have purchased new database servers. Thue | talk 21:32, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Now there is a funny thing. I have a mozilla search engine for wikipedia both in my home pc and my workplace mac. Sometimes, someplaces (i can't tell which exactly) i see the "search is disabled" warning other i just get e normal wikipedia search result. In any case, clicking the "Go" button always takes me where I really want (i want no search, I know wikipedia has all articles in the world). I wish that search thing for mozilla was just a "go to article" button.--Alexandre Van de Sande 20:26, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What would be more useful is if, instead of just displaying a page telling you search is disabled and giving you Google and Yahoo search boxes, is if it automatically redirected to Google (or Yahoo) search results. But i guess that violates some agreement with Yahoo!.

Bizarre screeshot/PNG bug

File:CT-SFH-003.png

CT-SFH-003.png

I uploaded this screenshot and could not see it: only a blank spot on the page. When I linked to it in the project image gallery, I saw an empty frame of the appropriate size (144x144px). I assumed it was a WP problem and fooled around several times trying to re-upload the image. Clearing the browser cache, quitting, even rebooting,waiting several hours (hoping WP would get right) all had no effect.

Turns out it has nothing to do with WP; I cannot see the image (as I originally uploaded it) in my browser (Mozilla 1.2.1 for Macintosh OS 9.2.2) even when I open the file directly from my local hard drive. Oddly, I can see it with other browsers. (!) I took the screenshot with Ambrosia Snapz Pro 2.0.1, which seems to add some nasty kiss-of-death scrap of code to the image which is preserved through edits and saves in PNG format; I tried Adobe Photoshop 4.0.1 and GraphicConverter 4.0.8. Nor does it seem to matter which kind of interlace or prefiltering is used. (!!) However, saving into GIF works fine. (!!)

I finally hit on the idea of opening the bad file and copying the image out (cut-and-paste) into a new file; this takes the bitmap of the image while leaving the KoD nastiness behind. This laundered image file displays fine both locally and after upload to WP. (!!!)

Even more bizzare: Other screenshots taken with Snapz Pro and saved directly (presumably with the nasty bit included) show up fine in Mozilla; but it's not only this one image that gave me trouble, but three in a row, all similar, but slightly different. (!!!!)

I'm fortunate that it was my browser that had the bug; if I'd seen the screenshot I'd have charged straight ahead and it might be ages before a frustrated reader had reported not being able to see the image(s).

You may be able to explore this bug by looking at older versions of the upload using the page's history. Please let us know what you see.

Recommendation: Workaround this problem proactively: Open all screenshots in an editor, copy the entire image, and paste into a new ("virgin") file/window, then save in PNG format; then upload to WP.

--Xiong 19:52, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)

Looking at the oldest file with sng, I can see it's a file with alpha channel, and also that all pixels are fully transparent. The most recent file does not have an alpha channel. Taking the oldest file and hand-converting all pixels to fully opaque made the image display correctly.

Some browsers are unable to correctly display transparent PNG files; all pixels are treated as fully opaque. Most modern browsers display them correctly, which results in a fully transparent graphic.

The image editors you used probably preserved the alpha channel. They probably have a function to remove it; doing so would also have fixed the problem (and resulted in a smaller file).

cesarb 20:55, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Instant Guaranteed Magic Fix for Server Performance Problems

Click this and put your money where your mouth is. --Xiong 19:41, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)

Nothing's instant when it comes to specing out and ordering big expensive servers. We've got money to spend on such things at the moment, although you're more than welcome to give more. -- Cyrius|✎ 20:07, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Is "E-mail this user" broken?

I'm wondering if the e-mail function on Wikipedia is actually working. I sent some messages to other users and to myself, but nothing got delivered—even tough I have correctly set my e-mail address in my preferences. Has anyone sucessfully sent an e-mail recently? --Plek 14:15, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Hmmm... Someone just sent me a test mail (thanks!) I guess that answers my question. Apparently WP is dropping emails to one's self, but is working normally for everything else. --Plek 16:50, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

How to change article name

I just started an article for Denton Welch, but didn't capitalize his last name. Can I change this?

Golden Eternity

Yep, you can use the "move" tab on your screen to move the page to a new name. Just type the name correctly into the box at the bottom of the page. Joyous 04:43, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)

Very new users cannot use the "move" tab, as a vandalism-reduction measure. The appropriate action for such a user, or anyone who finds the "move" functionality scary, is to request a move at wikipedia:Requested moves.

I note that the article Denton welch is currently under suspicion of being a copyright violation. You should follow the advice in the notice on the page before you request a move.-gadfium 05:05, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Is it possible to have a comment associated with 'Move article'? This works well for edits. Bobblewik  (talk) 21:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Can't find the category

The article Quinquagenarian is in categories stub and number-stub. I can see the template for num-stub but I can't see why it is listed for category stub. Can some look at this and spot it for me, please? RJFJR 03:36, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)

It includes {{incomplete}}, which is a redirect to {{stub}}, which includes the category. JRM 03:48, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)

Smoothest way of tagging all articles

In advance of a more complex rating/metadata system, I'd like to start tagging all articles with one of 9 or 10 classification-tags, describing roughly its state of development. I want to do this in a way that automatically generates a list of articles in each class -- for instance, by using templates (via what-links-here) or categories (via the cat pages).

Putting a template in 100k articles is bad; hard on the server. How about having a category that contains 100k articles? How should one do this so that it is minimally stressful on the db? +sj + 23:27, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Generally, it is underirable to have more than 500 articles in a category – remember, the categories are generated, to a certain extent, on the fly, so it also puts a strain on the servers doing this too. What was it you were intending to do? Are you talking about grading the articles? Smoddy (t) (e) (g) 23:36, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That's a terrible idea. Somebody would surely come along behind you and remove them. RickK 05:32, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

I think tagging the article development status is not good. Having stub and featured article tags is enough. There is, however, a related project on the german wiki de:Wikipedia:Personendaten, using metadata for biographies. This may be useful for database purposes. -- Chris 73 Talk 05:50, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Tagging like this is a very bad idea. Much better to have a per article voting mechanism where those data would be stored separate from the article. --mav 21:06, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Chris 73. Stubs for "really needs work"; featured articles that are "great". Every other stage of development in between is too subjective, and some folks might take any label personally. I haven't seen 'em yet, but I'll bet there have already been nasty wars over stub tags. I support the status quo. --Xiong 18:26, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)

linking/integrating Wikipedia search results

Hello!

-I would like to create a search tool that sends a query to Wikipedia's integrated search (among other sites), and creates a single results page that integrates the results from the various sources (as links back to those sources, of course). Is this possible/allowed, and do you know if anything along these lines has been done? Any guidance you can offer is a big help.

Thanks in advance, Dieter

Well, for one thing, you will have to comply with the limitations on bots. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:23, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough -- I'm happy to do so. I wasn't talking about anything automated; this would be user-driven, where a person enters a search query on a website, the site in turn submits the search to a number of engines (including Wikipedia), and then shows the combined results on a page. Do you think this is possible/allowed? -- dieter.randolph | Talk

You might want to look into http://clusty.com - I know they mirror wikipedia content, and AFAIK their search is up a lot more than the local Wikipedia search. JesseW 01:59, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Servers handling of URLs has died

Well, up until a few days ago, I would get to any article by simply putting in the address bar "www.wikipedia.com/[topic]" and it would work... However now it just displays this real dumb 404 error. It is pretty useless and it reduces some of the simplicity of working the site. (comment was from User:Floydian (Talk - moz.)

Are you sure that wasn't "www.wikipedia.com/wiki/[topic]", which should work? -- Jmabel | Talk 18:31, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

You need to put en.wikipedia.com/wiki/[topic] in your address bar. You have always need the wiki, but although using en instead of www was always correct, the handling of www changed about the beginning of this year. You also need to put underscores in if [topic] has spaces in it, eg en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Current_events. -gadfium 18:36, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Try .org instead! Noisy | Talk 10:35, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

Well, I know that now you need the /wiki part... But about a week ago I could do it without the /wiki

Its not really annoying to me as its 5 characters... However, it seems pointless that the backend couldn't just add that /wiki in the same way that it changes %20 to an underscore. - Floydian 22:37, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Of course, if you use Firefox, you only need to type wp [topic]. Smoddy (t) (e) 22:56, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That is incorrect - typing that will merely bring up the first hit on Google for wp [topic], which doesn't have to be Wikipedia.

wikipedia [topic] should work as you want, but only providing that the article exists and that it has been indexed by Google. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 00:55, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It does work. Not putting any article name goes to %s, which is a redirect to the main page. Any other phrase is automatically converted to the URL. I don't know where you got that Google stuff from – I am talking about in the main address bar... Smoddy (_t^g_e^c) 16:49, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it has ended, and I find it severely annoying. Up until bouta week or so ago you could just type wikipedia.com/article. --Alterego 18:12, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)

With IE, you can modify the registry to rewrite your URL for search engines - and the way Wikipedia works, it's a great thing to use the feature for. This can be done manually, or through TweakUI for XP. However, I would assume it will work on version of Windows with IE6, and possibly some earlier versions too. Haven't tested, though.

All you have to do is create a key in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl. Name this key the same as the keyword you want to use (for example wp). In this key, set the standard value to the URL you want to use, typing %s instead of the variable part (for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s for the English Wikipedia). Create additional string values to map special characters, such as space. If created through TweakUI, there will be four values by default: " "->"+", "%"->"%25", "&"->"%26" and "+"->"%2B". These should be created.

Regardless of which method you used (manually or TweakUI), change the first one to " "->"_" to allow articles with spaces in their names to show up properly. Once you're done, you can type wp [topic] in your address bar (substituting wp for the keyword you chose), and IE will take you straight to that article.

For those of you that use Firefox, I'm sure there's an extension or search engine wrapper somewhere, if you're not satisfied with the automatic Google search. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 16:44, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

For Firefox, you can define a bookmark like this: "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s", and assign it a keyword like wp. Then you type "wp article" in the address bar and off you go. Alfio 14:53, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What's the best way to wikify family trees?

Is there a good wiki way of creating family trees in such a way that the family members can be clicked? For example, I've made a couple in Dream of the Red Chamber using ascii art, but the wiki source is a disgusting mess to edit and maintain. Any better ideas? Lupin 14:08, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Tipping the tree on its side and doing it with a wiki-table is probably your best bet right now. There are extensions being developed elsewhere which will allow direct entry of trees for all sorts of things (WikiTeX amongst others) but don't go holding your breath. --Phil | Talk 17:06, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

This seems make the tree structure a lot harder to understand at a glance, unfortunately. Also I see no good way to distinguish between children and children-in-law with this method. Anyway, not a bad idea for simple trees! Lupin 02:25, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I couldn't resist. Here's my first attempt at a tree template: (calling template tree with parameters in Ahnentafel order, 1-15) {{tree|Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha|Ernest I von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha|Louise of Saxe-Coburg-Altenburg|Franz Friedrich of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld|Augusta von Reuss-Ebersdorf|August II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg|Louise Charlotte of Mecklenburg|Ernst Friedrich of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld|Sophia Antonia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel|Henry XXIV Reuss zu Ebersdorf|Karoline Ernestine zu Erbach-Schönberg|Ernst II of Saxe-Gotha|Maria Charlotte Amalie of Saxe-Meiningen|Friedrich Franz I of Mecklenburg-Schwerin|Louise of Saxe-Gotha}} produces:

Ernst Friedrich of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld

Franz Friedrich of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld

Sophia Antonia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel

Ernest I von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

Henry XXIV Reuss zu Ebersdorf

Augusta von Reuss-Ebersdorf

Karoline Ernestine zu Erbach-Schönberg

Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

Ernst II of Saxe-Gotha

August II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg

Maria Charlotte Amalie of Saxe-Meiningen

Louise of Saxe-Coburg-Altenburg

Friedrich Franz I of Mecklenburg-Schwerin

Louise Charlotte of Mecklenburg

Louise of Saxe-Gotha

suggestions? - Nunh-huh 18:04, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This seems to be a binary tree template - what if there's more than one child? Lupin 02:25, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think you're reading it backwards. It's showing Albert's ancestors, and therefore has to be binary (well, more or less). -- Cyrius|✎ 04:32, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Can the rendering be reversed, so that Albert appears on the right? That would be a more intuitive display. What about top-down, which would be the most natural?

Will this template work if we know more generations on one branch than on another? I guess the blanks could be filled with "unknown", or "-", or "?", or simply left blank. —Michael Z. 2005-03-25 06:47 Z

Here are some varieties. I don't know if there's a way to fix the spacing in the top-to-bottom/bottom-to-top ones when there are unknowns. Does someone know a way?

Charles Robert Darwin	Robert Waring Darwin	Erasmus Darwin	Robert Darwin
			Elizabeth Hall
		Mary Howard	Charles Howard
			Penelope Foley
	Susannah Wedgwood	Josiah Wedgwood	Thomas Wedgwood
			Mary Stringer
		Sarah Wedgwood	Richard Wedgwood
			?

Robert Darwin	Erasmus Darwin	Robert Waring Darwin	Charles Robert Darwin
Elizabeth Hall
Charles Howard	Mary Howard
Penelope Foley
Thomas Wedgwood	Josiah Wedgwood	Susannah Wedgwood
Mary Stringer
Richard Wedgwood	Sarah Wedgwood
?

Robert Darwin	Elizabeth Hall	Charles Howard	Penelope Foley	Thomas Wedgwood	Mary Stringer	Richard Wedgwood	?
Erasmus Darwin		Mary Howard		Josiah Wedgwood		Sarah Wedgwood
Robert Waring Darwin				Susannah Wedgwood
Charles Robert Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin
Robert Waring Darwin				Susannah Wedgwood
Erasmus Darwin		Mary Howard		Josiah Wedgwood		Sarah Wedgwood
Robert Darwin	Elizabeth Hall	Charles Howard	Penelope Foley	Thomas Wedgwood	Mary Stringer	Richard Wedgwood	?

Charles Robert Darwin	Robert Waring Darwin	Erasmus Darwin	Robert Darwin	?
				?
			Elizabeth Hall	?
				?
		Mary Howard	Charles Howard	?
				?
			Penelope Foley	Paul Foley
				Elizabeth Turton
	Susannah Wedgwood	Josiah Wedgwood	Thomas Wedgwood	Thomas Wedgwood
				Mary Leigh
			Mary Stringer	Joseph Stringer
				?
		Sarah Wedgwood	Richard Wedgwood	?
				?
			?	?
				?

?	Robert Darwin	Erasmus Darwin	Robert Waring Darwin	Charles Robert Darwin
?
?	Elizabeth Hall
?
?	Charles Howard	Mary Howard
?
Paul Foley	Penelope Foley
Elizabeth Turton
Thomas Wedgwood	Thomas Wedgwood	Josiah Wedgwood	Susannah Wedgwood
Mary Leigh
Joseph Stringer	Mary Stringer
?
?	Richard Wedgwood	Sarah Wedgwood
?
?	?
?

?

?

?

?

?

?

Paul Foley

Elizabeth Turton

Thomas Wedgwood

Mary Leigh

Joseph Stringer

?

?

?

?

?

Robert Darwin

Elizabeth Hall

Charles Howard

Penelope Foley

Thomas Wedgwood

Mary Stringer

Richard Wedgwood

?

Erasmus Darwin

Mary Howard

Josiah Wedgwood

Sarah Wedgwood

Robert Waring Darwin

Susannah Wedgwood

Charles Robert Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin

Robert Waring Darwin

Susannah Wedgwood

Erasmus Darwin

Mary Howard

Josiah Wedgwood

Sarah Wedgwood

Robert Darwin

Elizabeth Hall

Charles Howard

Penelope Foley

Thomas Wedgwood

Mary Stringer

Richard Wedgwood

?

?

?

?

?

?

?

Paul Foley

Elizabeth Turton

Thomas Wedgwood

Mary Leigh

Joseph Stringer

?

?

?

?

?

I don't know that left-to-right is any less intuitive than right-to-left, but bottom-to-top is clearly more intuitive than top-to-bottom. - Nunh-huh 15:19, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Simply because it follows the standard conventions for family trees, the penultimate table (ancestors above descendents) is the clear winner for me. It remains to see how a table could be used to effectively display more complex trees, eg involving multiple offspring, marriages and so on. I tried one fairly simple tree at User:Lupin/stone with a table and was not too pleased with the result. Lupin 16:03, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

FYI, both the bottom-to-top (that is, with the descendant at the bottom) and the left-to-right (descendant on the left, as in the original tree) are traditional. The former is more commonly seen in Europe, while the latter is more usual in America. Eugene van der Pijll 19:07, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Can I suggest that, once this discussion is done, these examples are moved to somewhere more permanent (e.g. wikipedia:family tree which can capture some of the possible ways of doing trees (and have existing stuff, like Image:SwabiaDukes.png and Family tree of the Greek gods as alternate approaches). Given that none of these options are entirely satisfactory, and the subject matter is one you'd expect to find a lot of in an encyclopedia, it might be in order to start thinking about what we might like a mediawiki family-tree extension to do. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 15:35, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The houses of Lancaster and York during the Wars of the Roses

None of the examples above look like family trees. While they might do for now, I think that what we really need is image map support, so that we can draw proper trees, like the one on the right, and still be able to click on a family member to go to their article. Gdr 19:51, 2005 Mar 25 (UTC)

How do they look if drawn without the borders? How about if each cell had a small "joining lines" graphic inserted above the name; this may also help widen tiny table cells.

Can MathML render a family tree? —Michael Z. 2005-03-25 20:16 Z

Rather than imagemaps I was hoping for somethink akin to easy timelines, where the syntax allowed one to define basic relationships (married, child, adopted, etc.). Then the extension would render that to whatever format. Possible formats would include a PNG with nicely rendered text like Muriel's examples (with imagemap links), a text-graph (like Family tree of the Greek gods) suitable for text browsers, one of the table types above, and later stuff like clickable SVGs. By representing the data in a more abstract form (family tree rather than imagemap) we can change the behavour, make improvements, and support new modes out output without having to change all the pages that use the syntax. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 00:10, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ideally this would be done by some extension for this purpose that allows the logical relationships to be expressed, but the most practical thing in the short run is to use tables. For simple family trees, I like the first example above, because it's compact and clearly expresses the relationships. Families with extensive interbreeding are a rarer and more complicated case to deal with — in the short run good image-map support may be the most general, useful solution, since it can also be applied to many other problems (such as a clickable United States map linking to each state or a clickable periodic table). Deco 01:30, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Here is the family tree I did for House Baratheon:

                   Steffon==+==? Eastermont
                            |
                   +--------+------------------+
                   |        |                  |
     Cersei==+===Robert  Stannis==+==Selyse  Renly
   Lannister |     |              | Florent 
             |     |              |
   +----+----+     +------+       |
   |    |    |     |      |       |  
Joffrey | Tommen  Mya   Edric  Shireen
     Myrcella    Stone  Storm

This works pretty well. The relationships are clear, and it is clickable. It can be scaled and printed, edited, and re-used. Within the current limitation, this scheme works better than most, and breaks down only for the really intricate trees like the Wars of the Roses or House Targaryen.

The biggest problem is really that it is ugly. The monospaced typeface is acceptable (and could be replaced by something less jarring than courier), but the worst thing are the lines and intersections. This could be remedied to some extent (and with minimal programming effort) if the software selected a correctly monospaced font for the Box Drawing range of Unicode characters, which are adequate for this purpose. Here's what that would look like:

┌────┬┄┄┄┄┐
Bob    Paul    Mary

Problem is, I cannot convince the rendering engine to use the same typeface (and hence monospaced character width) for the entire construction, so the tree is impossible to line up. (Especially over browsers, skins, and sizes.) However, all that is needed is really to have the underlying software select the same font. I have tried to force that with CSS, but couldn't make it dance. 130.235.16.196 11:05, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have played around with the Box Drawing characters a bit more. On a Windows box under IE I can get the machine to select both the text and the Box Drawing characters from the same font (Courier New), provided I stay within a small (but useful) subset of the Box Drawing range (see Box Drawing for a list of characters supported by Windows codepage 40 or so). That way I can produce pretty good-looking trees. However, try as I might, I cannot convince the Mac to do the same, under Safari and Firefox it insist on selecting the Box Drawing characters from some other typeface (hard to tell which), resulting in a terribly aligned mess. The "Courier New" on my Mac doesn't even seem to have the Box Drawing range. Arbor 08:15, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

And another attempt. This time I have tried to use tables, for House Tully:

Hoster Tully *242?

Minisa Whent †273? in childbed

Brynden Tully ‘The Blackfish’ *247?

Eddard Stark *262

282

Catelyn *268

Lysa *270

282

Jon Arryn *222? †297

Edmure *272

Robb *283

Sansa *286

Arya *288

Brandon *290

Rickon *294

Robert *291

To understand how I did this, let me switch on all table borders:

Hoster Tully *242?

Minisa Whent †273? in childbed

Brynden Tully ‘The Blackfish’ *247?

Eddard Stark *262

282

Catelyn *268

Lysa *270

282

Jon Arryn *222? †297

Edmure *272

Robb *283

Sansa *286

Arya *288

Brandon *290

Rickon *294

Robert *291

This solution can be scaled and printed, edited, and searched. We can have mark-up in the text, including character formatting and hyperlinks. The above tree I did by hand (which gives the nicest results), but I you want to avoid fighting with the HTML table syntax, Microsoft Excel allows you to draw the tree in a spreadsheet and then export the HTML. The code isn't as nice as mine, and the result doesn't scale as nicely either, but the result is pretty reasonable. Arbor 11:08, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wow. That is fantastic. Now we only need some perl/python wizard to knock together a script to generate this code from a human-editable family description and we're halfway to a MediaWiki extension. Lupin 12:55, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It looks nice in a visual browser, but the table structure is semantically meaningless. It won't make any sense to people with text-based or audio browsers, e.g. the visually impaired. It would be better to generate an image map.

I think something might be workable with a table if there were cells containing graphics analogous to the box-drawing characters. E.g., a T-shaped graphic with the alt text "spouse of" that goes between two spouses. —Michael Z. 2005-04-7 14:01 Z

Is there no way to assign "alt text" of some sort to a table cell or chunk of text? If so we could use the alt text of a family member to describe their place in the tree, like "Spouse of ..., second daughter of ...". This should be possible to do automatically given a sufficiently clever script. Also the table approach has the advantage over the imagemap that it can be scaled, so it's accessibility for some will be improved that way. Lupin 14:19, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Before this is deleted from the Pump, could someone take on the task of creating a page in Wikipedia-space talking about the various ways of doing this? There is some cool stuff here, that merits a how-to. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:56, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

List of cats/templates

Hi there! I would like to obtain a list (preferably alphabetical) of all categories, or all templates (I don't care if it's a couple weeks outdated). Is there a way to do that? Radiant_* 14:00, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Special:Allpages. —Korath (Talk) 14:30, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Uploading XCF files

Since m:SVG support seems to be a long way off, maybe we could upload native formats like .XCF (the GIMP's native format) for increased modularity, and the wiki software could make a rendered version for page display, just like it makes rendered thumbnails?

This way other editors can modify text layers easily, translate to their own language, etc.

I know, I know. I can upload both, but this would be better. - Omegatron 14:00, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

I have just the same problem (and I use Inkscape, which uses SVG as its native format). I think upload/download support for SVG will happen fairly soon. There has been talk about it on the wikitech-l mailing list, with a couple of people proposing writing programs that strip SVGs of scripts and other questionable content. That seems like quite a straightforward thing to do, so I think it will happen (if there's sufficient support for it). I agree entirely that diagrams should be uploaded in editable format (it's such a frustrating contrast being able to change any text in a page, but nothing in a diagram). As for XCF (which would also be good) I suggest you bring the subject up on the wikitech-l list. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 17:42, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

(I'm learning Inkscape right now, actually.)

Stripping of scripts? Why? Just render the SVG image as a PNG (in end user-configurable screen resolutions) for article display purposes, but leave the image source as SVG so people can edit it.

Ugh. Another mailing list?  :-) - Omegatron 18:30, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

The page you refer to points out that there isn't a open/free server-side renderer (Batik could do it, but it requires java, and so doesn't pass the open/free test). Imagemagick's version only handles a subset of SVG, apparently. The concern about scripts (which is entirely theoretical, as Dave points out on the list - no known SVG malware exists, yet) is that I could upload an SVG with a script embedded in it, and when you view or edit it the script does bad things. Frankly (I've not tried, but it should work) you could cut'n'paste the source of an SVG into an ordinary wikipedia page (ideally encased in NOWIKI and PRE tags). Inkscape rocks (it has a few issues, and crashes occasionally, but it's still excellent - try the caligraphic lines tool). -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 19:00, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

So rendering SVGs into PNGs is far in the future (waiting around for good/Free rendering software), and putting SVGs directly on the page is far in the future (waiting around for browsers to support them). GIMP rendering of XCFs should be completely feasible, though, right? That might help in the short term. Might not be worth the effort, though. Is there something even more standardized than XCF?

Yeah, I've played with Inkscape, Sodipodi, and Dia in the last few days and Inkscape seems to beat the others quite easily. Today I am focusing on trying to get precision out of it, though. It doesn't seem to have any "this point is colinear with this line", "this line is tangent to this arc", etc. I guess what I really want is a pretty-output drawing program with a CAD interface. Oh well. I'm making do with grid snapping for now (which isn't working the way I want). - Omegatron 20:05, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

I think you might see SVG clensing in 3-6 months. On the fly rendering could be here in 6-9, but I think super-high volume sites like wikipedia won't deploy it (smaller, quieter wikis might). If wikipedia had thousands of SVG images, we'd need a damn efficient SVG rendering and caching system. Browser and plugin progess for real SVG support is heartbreakingly slow. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 20:21, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Seems to me that the caching system is already in place for TeX markup and thumbnails. Lupin 03:31, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yeah...

Uh, for some odd reason that I do not understand the font of wikipedia on my comp is extremely larger than it's ever been before. Is this just me or a wikipediawide change? If it's just me, how do I change it back to normal?

It's the same as usual for me. Perhaps you accidentally modified the text size setting in your browser? What browser/operating system do you use? — Knowledge Seeker দ 02:58, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Number on Section Title

Is there the possibility to have a number proceding the title section? I was reading Wikipedia:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License, when I found part of sentence like as described in section 2 or must also follow the conditions in section 3. But there is not a section numerated as 2 or 3 (or similar). They are numerated only in the TOC. Is there a way to have them numered. The previous is only an example. There are many other case where it could be useful AnyFile 09:26, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Maybe you're looking for the "Auto-number headings" option which you can find under "Misc settings" in your preferences if you're logged in. Mgm|^(talk) 09:41, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

Serious software problems!

Ok, this is enough! On the German Wiktionary I just edited an article that actually had 6 revisions. When I clicked on "edit" the very first revision was shown in the edit box (I didn't know; was coming from Special:Uncategorizedpages). I saved it and then I saw in the history, that there were some newer revisions which were even better (article longer) than the new revision made by me!! Why did this happen? So, I cannot be sure whether I am destroying an article or improving it (see [9], 28.Jan.->3.Apr.)!! Sometimes the revisions get lost, too. When I saved an article on als.wikipedia for example (sorry, but unfortunately I do not know what article it was) the revision of the user who changed that article some hours before was gone in the history! This is not funny! How can I be sure that the revision of the article I am editing is the current one? In [10] it wasn't! Please fix this problem (I do not know what exactly is the bug/problem, I just can see the painful results)! I do not want to work with a software that is more buggy than any Microsoft software ever was! Sorry, but it is true!! If there should be a better place to post this (on meta?) I am sorry! But this is to urgent to post it on a maybe hardly read page! --- wikt:de:Benutzer:Melancholie/217.227.183.183 01:45, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Are you sure you were looking at the most recent revision of the article before you clicked edit? I never had such a problem, and I'm surprised you have as all Wiki's run on the same software, so someone should've noticed such a bug by now. Mgm|^(talk) 09:37, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
  • Yes I am sure! I was on "Special:Uncategorizedpages". I clicked on the link for this article and instantly saw the very first revision (and edited the first revision ->really strange, i know)! I hope this was a problem that will never occur again (or only on every 1.000.000st edit). But I am not sure! This is serious! --- wikt:de:Benutzer:Melancholie/217.227.183.183 09:45, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • Exactly the same thing has happened on the italian Wikipedia. I reported this as bug #1750. As the description says, in one case it happened to an automated script that cannot possibly have requested an old revision. --it:Utente:Leonard Vertighel 84.56.115.198 16:05, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

<gallery> seems buggy

How can I get the image Image:Lancaster Castle.jpg to appear in an image gallery? Seems there's a bug making it not show up. See User:Lupin/images/test for an example of what I'm talking about. Lupin 16:59, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. -83.129.63.102 18:39, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It shows up fine for me as well. Perhaps it's the browser you are using? — Knowledge Seeker দ 19:46, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Now fixed - Adblock was the culprit since the url of that image contains the string /ad/! Thanks for the help. Lupin 20:10, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

todo template?

Can someone explain the {{todo}} template to me? Does it go on the article or the talk page (see Akasaka, Okayama)?RJFJR 16:02, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:To-do list. It goes on the talk page. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:39, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

WP code

Copied from Talk:Main Page

I'm just curious, is there a ported VB/ASP or ASP.NET version of the Wikipedia engine code? Thnx. --rydel 01:00, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No. MediaWiki only exists in a PHP version.

However, if what you want is your own wiki and not to use our software specificially, see the Wiki Engines list at the Portland Pattern Repository (the original wiki). -- Cyrius|✎ 03:08, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you! --rydel 14:05, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

error message when trying to get into watchlist

Am I the only one getting this error message every time I try to get into my watchlist, or is it widespread? Error in numRows(): Lost connection to MySQL server during query

Backtrace:

• Database.php line 503 calls wfdebugdiebacktrace()
• User.php line 494 calls databasemysql::numrows()
• Skin.php line 589 calls user::getnewtalk()
• Skin.php line 435 calls skinstandard::pagetitlelinks()
• Skin.php line 398 calls skinstandard::dobeforecontent()
• Skin.php line 192 calls skinstandard::beforecontent()
• OutputPage.php line 418 calls skinstandard::outputpage()
• OutputPage.php line 616 calls outputpage::output()
• Database.php line 361 calls outputpage::databaseerror()
• Database.php line 310 calls databasemysql::reportqueryerror()
• SpecialWatchlist.php line 184 calls databasemysql::query()
• SpecialPage.php line 309 calls wfspecialwatchlist()
• SpecialPage.php line 220 calls specialpage::execute()
• index.php line 101 calls specialpage::executepath()

It is making using wikipedia practically impossible and has been happening for days, on various browsers. FearÉIREANN 19:56, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I keep getting error messages too, though not that specific one. How big is your watchlist? Jayjg ^(talk) 20:16, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If I could get in to it I could find out!!! It used to be large, then was trimmed, then grew again. I'm only newly back on wikipedia but I've rarely got to use it in the last few days. It is headwrecking. (BTW I am also getting error messages saying that a save hasn't worked. Yet in fact it did (as I found out when I exited the file altogether without saving and went back in. I was told the save of the above big message didn't work, saved it again and then found that I had saved it twice on the page. This is headwrecking. (And what is all this 'You have new messages' stuff appearing sometimes when I don't have any!!! It is driving me mad.) FearÉIREANN 20:59, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

See section Watchlist above. My similar problem is fixed as of today. Ian Cairns 22:37, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've been having watchlist problem for several days. Trimming my watchlist didn't help, but was probably Good For Me. I think the "You have new messages" was an April Fool's prank of some kind, not very funny. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:19, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

ArnoldofBrescia.jpg

The picture of Arnold of Brescia won't appear on the page as a thumbnail, but it will without. I'm not sure if this is where to ask, but can someone help or tell me what's going on? --TheGrza 06:42, Apr 1, 2005 (UTC)

This is a right enough place to ask. I'd help, but it's working for me. -- Cyrius|✎ 12:17, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, it appears on it's page correctly, but not on the Arnold of Brescia page. Is this just me? --TheGrza 07:08, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

It works fine for me. Perhaps it's a cache issue with your browser? — RJH 19:42, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Vandalism Report

Somebody's changed all the "edit this page" tabs to read "vandalise this page". Can't help admiring their chutzpah, but this could be the start of a more widespread vandalism. Stay #, people. Lee M 02:30, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Several pages I have recently visited have had the words "edit this page" replaced with "vandalise this page". --TommyBoy 02:46, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Is this an offical "April fools"?? , it's been improved if it is, discussion has become groupthink, history -> timetravel and watchlist -> stalk Richard Taylor

I saw this too. A giant smily face appeared in an orange box at the top of the page, and the tabs read trash, time travel, stun, vaporize, and teleport. Evidently, someone has been messing with the stylesheets. Is this the sort of joke that's only supposed to be funny in retrospect? Deco 05:39, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"What links here" for Ladino re-direct

The "What links here" button for the Ladino re-direct page keeps listing all sorts of spurious pages which used to link there, but which no longer do:[11] This has been going on for several days now; is there some sort of fix? Jayjg ^(talk) 23:43, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Page moves not included in page history

It would appear that when a page is moved, the operation is recorded in the history of the REDIRECT page which is created, but not in the history of the page which is actually being moved. Is there a particular reason for this? It would be useful to know where a page has been "living" without having to chase down all the possible REDIRECT pages which might or might not contain anythng approaching a clue. This is particularly true of pages which have undergone strenuous "discussion" as to the proper name. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 15:59, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

The reason for this is that the history page is built off article revisions, and has no place to store records of page moves. I think I recall hearing something out of Brion that he had changed/was changing the history system in a way that would allow for page moves to be recorded. I don't have access to my IRC logs at the moment, so I can't go looking for it. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:11, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I seem to be misremembering, because I can't find it. -- Cyrius|✎ 14:04, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That'll be in MediaWiki 1.5. Won't go live for a while yet. --Brion 01:42, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

Watchlist

My Watchlist causes server errors. What is going on? JFW | T@lk 01:30, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm having the same problem. No idea. Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 05:07, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Appears to be fixed now, however. Hope yours is, too. Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 06:12, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Not fixed, not at all. <KF> 20:32, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)

Seems to actually only be working more like 10% of the time. Someone fix this please. Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 12:59, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Things appear to have taken care of themselves. I'm so crippled on Wikipedia without my watchlist... Tim Rhymeless (Er...let's shimmy) 09:19, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Me too! Ian Cairns 23:26, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The impact is that my RC patrol has ceased for the time being. I can still edit. Error text follows. Is this what others are seeing? If so, feel free to delete this text. Ian Cairns 13:10, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The problem has now gone away - so I've removed the diagnostics to save space. Is there a Wiki policy on the maximum watchlist? Should there be an automatic clip when the watchlist exceeds a Wiki limit? Ian Cairns 21:25, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Still getting the same problem here. I notice that I am only getting it only my account with a large watchlist. With my sockpuppet account (the cunningly named Pcb22) my much smaller watchlist works fine. Anyone heard if anyone is working on this problem? Pcb21| Pete 22:41, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Klingon is not Thai

The Klingon main page [12] is currently redirecting to the Thai main page [13]. Apparently it's resolving "tlh" to "th," although other articles like tlh:tlhIngan Hol work. can somebody fix it?

Eh, works for me. -- Cyrius|✎ 06:06, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The main page was changed to a redirect to the Thai wiki at some stage, in this diff: [14] — It has been corrected now. If you clear your browser cache by holding control then refreshing, it should work now. - Mark 06:12, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Theres a Wikipedia in Klingon? Cool! (forgive my raving ignorance) Gkhan 01:38, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

Template sigs ( - reply →)

I know using templates for signatures is bad, but what can be done about those that already exist? Alphax ^τεχ 15:04, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I used to have a template sig, and when I discovered that (and why) it wasn't a good idea, I did a search'n'replace on the popular pages I haunt (VP, helpdesk etc). I did my own talk page, but not others' (figuring they wouldn't welcome a "you have new messages" just for that). Frankly, you could just search for {{templatename|Alphax}} or whatever, and just change it to {{subst:templatename|Alphax}}. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 15:26, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hrm... I've been doing this a bit since I discovered why they were bad, using Special:Whatlinkshere, and it seems like as good a time as any to refresh the {{anon}} tags on IP talk pages. (Oh, and I don't trust nowiki tags for braces, hashes or tildes. Too many bad experiences.) Alphax ^τεχ 16:47, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Two donations links in classic skin

I use the classic skin and I get two "donations" links in the toolbox at the left. One is quite enough! Where should I report this minor bug? Lupin 16:55, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Have you got user stylesheets running? Have you tried switching skins, then switching back again? Cheers, Smoddy (_t^g_e^c_k) 17:23, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I tried switching to monobook and back to classic, and there are still two links. My toolbox on the left looks like this:

Main Page
Community portal
Current events
Recent changes
Random page
Help
Donations
My watchlist
My contributions 
--
View project page

Discuss this page
Page history
What links here
Related changes
--
Upload file
Special pages
Contact us
Donations

I'm not sure if I have a user stylesheet - I remember messing around with stylesheets a long time ago but have totally forgotten what I did or how to see what I did :) Lupin 17:37, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Switching to Classic view, I get a double donations listing as well. I have been through all the files I can think of (an it's a lot), but I cannot find why the two have both appeared. Sorry. Smoddy (_t^g_e^c_k) 23:17, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Known bug. --Brion 01:43, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

What's the best way to wikify family trees?

Before this is deleted from the Pump, could someone take on the task of creating a page in Wikipedia-space talking about the various ways of doing this? There is some cool stuff here, that merits a how-to. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:56, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Family trees. -- Eugene van der Pijll 08:42, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Markup in galleries and image use on Commons

I have two questions:

1. Can Wiki markup be used in the captions of images that are in gallery tags? I tried italicizing something and just got two pairs of apostrophes. Links work though.
2. Is there any way to tell what articles on various language Wikipedias are using a certain image on Commons? Or does one have to go to each language that one is considering and run a search there?

Thanks! — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:50, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have two answers:

1. No, it isn't. Right now it's using the mini-parser used for edit summaries. See bug 1015
2. No, there isn't. I'd tell you to see bug 1394, but it's not terribly informative.

-- Cyrius|✎ 16:47, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, Cyrius, for that fast and helpful answer. Hope we can see them as future improvements then. — Knowledge Seeker দ 18:22, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wiki markup now works inside galleries. Thanks to our hard-working developers! — Knowledge Seeker দ 20:15, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Future dev

Does anyone know what is going to be added or changed in future MediaWiki versions? And when it is going to be done? Or where to discuss these things and have them noticed by the IMPs? Radiant_* 10:38, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

A good place to ask is the #Mediawiki IRC channel. The developers tend to hang out there. - Mark 06:16, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Two different 404 pages

When I type in a missing page name, I get a different result than when I click a red link. This is needlessly confusing for new users. Why shouldn't both ways of getting there yield the same results?

I think empty articles should always display the edit field, so I can just start typing. They should also have search, Wiktionary, and Commons links which appear on empty pages.

Actually there is also a third 404-style page - if you directly type in an URL to an article that doesn't exist, there is another page entirely. The one you get from clicking "Go" is useful because it has an "Index" link which lets you see all other articles with names alphabetically similar to the one you searched for. Very useful. But I see your point. - Mark 06:19, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

checkuser

On m:Special:Log/rights, I see a new "checkuser" right. This is not mentioned in Wikipedia:User access levels, nor in m:Help:User levels. Does anyone know anything about it, or where information about it might be found? —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 14:58, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It is a sockpuppet check feature for the arbcom. It is not active yet. [15] —Charles P. ^(Mirv) 18:23, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

VFD link in .js file?

Hi, I'd like to put a link to the current day's VFD listings (using the link [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/{{CURRENTYEAR}} {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}|Today's VFD entries]]. I use the CologneBlue skin. How do I go about doing this? Is it possible? Smoddy (_t^g_e^c_k) 10:50, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

See my js file for the general technique (it's for the classic skin, and adds links to the top). Where do you want the links to show up? —Korath (Talk) 18:34, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

What is the filename for the skin? I can't work out where to put it! (I don't know where cologne blue is, either...) Smoddy (_t^g_e^c_k) 18:54, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK, I have worked out where the file has to go. I'm afraid, though, that I have not the first idea how to add the stuff in with JS. I don't really care where it goes, but if it could go in the My pages section of #quickbar, that would be great. I can handle HTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL, but I have never managed JS. Cheers for any help, Smoddy (_t^g_e^c_k) 21:37, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

User:Korath/cologneblue.js does what you want. Mostly. It links to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Log/Today instead of directly to the day page, since {{CURRENTYEAR}} and so on are already parsed long before the javascript kicks in. —Korath (Talk) 22:39, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Wonderful. That is exactly what I want. Thank you very much for the help. Smoddy (_t^g_e^c_k) 22:47, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Archive policy

Can I put a notice that the archive policy applied at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Miscellaneous_archive also applies here? Currently, there does not seem to be a clear policy. If I don't get any objections within a week, I'll do it. JesseW 04:55, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

MySkin

When using MySkin, the pages use the following file as one of the stylesheets:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Brianjd/myskin.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css

No matter what I put in User:Brianjd/myskin.css, the above address gives the same content - I think it's the same as MediaWiki:Monobook.css. This appears to be a massive bug. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 09:44, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

It's a caching issue, probably in your browser. User CSS files are given tags intended to make browsers reluctant to re-download them. Try clearing your browser's cache. -- Cyrius|✎ 13:24, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I just tried this on a school computer and it worked OK so I'll have to try clearing my browser's cache. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 03:07, 2005 Mar 30 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages

When a page has a link that refers you to a disambiguation page but the link can refer to a particular page already listed on the disambiguation page then should I go ahead and fix the link to bypass the disambiguation page? I hope I worded this correctly. Jaberwocky6669 08:40, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, you should fix links to disambiguation ("dab") pages so they skip the dab page and go straight to the appropriate page. Ideally, dab pages should have {{disambig}} (the disambiguation notice template) in them, which actually tells you this advice, but many of them don't. — Jeff Q (talk) 08:55, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ahh, goodie, I already began to do this, but it occured to me that I may be causing a lot of confusion! Thank you. Jaberwocky6669 09:15, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Major search bug

There is a BIG bug in the way search tersm are passed to google -- the underscore must be converted back to a space. Eg, search for "wolf spider". The wikipedia search disabled page gives you "wolf_spider", and hands this on to google when you click the button. Google doesn't like this; you get more results with "wolf spider". Please could a kind soul report this to the bugzilla, my email si still out. -- Tarquin 14:07, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an article called wolf spider so I tried "wolf bug" with the Go button and "wolf spider" with the Search button and both worked fine (no underscores anywhere)! Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 09:47, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

I also just tried typing in "wolf bug" and pressing ENTER, which also works fine. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 09:48, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

New articles not being reported on user contributions

Maybe this is a known bug, but I just now noticed that when I create a new article is created, unless it's a redirect or a move, it sometimes does not have the label "(New)" next to it on the Special:Contributions. For example, picking a random example from Recent Changes, see [16]. There should be a "(New)" label next to Jhumri Tilaiya and Koderma, no? Why isn't there one? —Lowellian (talk) 04:52, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

You can only see that if it's the only revision of the page. The table of current revisions has a "cur_is_new" flag that's set if it's a new page, but there's no corresponding flag in the old table, perhaps because it would have the unfortunate name "old_is_new". Goplat 04:13, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Edit Interlock

I'm sure this is answered somewhere, but I haven't found it yet. So rather than drive down another street, I'm going to stop and ask directions. When two people want to edit the same article at the same time, what happens? Is the second person refused? (I've never seen this happen) Or does MediaWiki somehow merge the changes so that both people get what they expect? Or do we just get an error message when we try to save the edits? Shoaler 16:57, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

MediaWiki will first attempt to merge both edits, and if that fails it will then give the second person the "Edit Conflict" screen. -- Cyrius|✎ 17:04, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thank you! Shoaler 13:27, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Lost History

Two pages which I have been involved in editing seem to have lost their histories. See:

• Talk:Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II#History
• Talk:HMG

Is this a known bug and how much of a problem is it? --Philip Baird Shearer 10:53, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

User page redlinks

This irritates some people, and they will sometimes change a nonexistant userpage to a blank one so the links won't be red (I have done this once). Maybe a potential solution is to add a feature whereby nonexistant userpages automatically redirect to the user's talk page. [[User:Ingoolemo|User:Ingoolemo/Sig]] 19:46, 2005 Mar 23 (UTC)

I encourage people to do this; see User:Alphax/user-talk. Alphax ^τεχ 05:09, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

God mode monobook.js

After a lot of hesitation, I finally decided to publish a portion of the help scripts I use when RC patrolling. The part I am releasing is very simple: it is a piece of Javascript that emulates a sysop's [rollback] button. New links will appear on a user's Special:Contributions page, or when showing the most recent diff of an article's history, and clicking on them will revert the last modification. To benefit from it, put the following line in your monobook.js (or just copy the contents of this script, it is safer if you don't trust me, but you will not benefit from bugfixes):

document.write('<SCRIPT SRC="http://sam.zoy.org/wikipedia/godmode-light.js"><\/SCRIPT>');

Of course it is only useful on wikis where you are not a sysop. I hope it can be useful to someone, at least to people who RC-patrol and are fed up with three-click reverts. It should be pretty safe and secure, but any comments or enhancements will be appreciated. Sam Hocevar 17:04, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

You shouldn't have. Don't encourage people to revert.
Yes, yes, I know what you're saying: it's only a convenience, anyone could write this, you don't know who's already using something like this, etc. All true. I could have written something like this myself. Still, I'd like to believe there's a reason only admins are given the rollback button. Clearly it has little if anything to do with technical concerns. We might have a discussion on how (in)appropriate it is to restrict the ability to admins, that's fine; is there a particular point to opening the bottle and thrusting the genie in our faces like this? Is your "hesitation" written down somewhere? I'm not questioning your good intentions, mind you, but... hmmm. JRM 17:17, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)

I would also advise everyone -- admin or not -- that "rollback" should be used with caution. It's an appropriate way to deal with outright vandalism, and borderline appropriate with anonymous newbie error, but because it doesn't allow you to write an edit summary, it is very blunt and does not lead to clarification in areas of honest disagreement. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:04, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

The particular point is to help RC patrolling. We have more and more vandals and we have people who are willing to help but do not want to go through the hassle of the adminship procedure. I thought it would be rather safe to post a tool that is both very helpful and incredibly less dangerous than pywikipediabot. Sam Hocevar 23:47, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Automated scripts using XMLHTTP like that are Wikipedia:Bots and should be subject to the same policy. Goplat 20:20, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If automated script are not allowed monobook.js should be disabled phe 23:06, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is not a bot, it just provides the user with a kind of macro control over normal http functions. No sense in treating it as a bot. It should be used with caution, but then again so should page move and the like. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 20:31, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Be happy : it will be 1 request to revert against 3 requests to server, when servers are slow it helps a lot. FoeNyx 22:53, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

In fact it does just as many requests as a three-click revert. It just does it automatically (and is a lot more error proof). Sam Hocevar 23:47, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is useful for non-admins who do the occasional battle with vandals on RC. However, when used on an article that you are watching, it appears to take it off your watchlist. Is that expected or is it just me? - BanyanTree 19:40, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ah, this is indeed a bug. I will try to fix it. Sam Hocevar 22:10, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This bug is now fixed. Sam Hocevar 19:52, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Cool. The rollback tool was basically the only reason I became an admin in the first place. I haven't tried yours. Does it just put a link somewhere you can click on? I'd love if the revert tool had a few different links I could click on which would both revert and automatically put the desired test/test2/etc. message on the anon user's page. - Omegatron 01:09, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it just adds a new link. As for pre-recorded messages, that is an excellent idea. I will try to find some time to implement it. Sam Hocevar 19:52, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

When trying to rv anon vandals, I get Error: Talk is not the last editor! --Alterego 03:43, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Count on Special:Contributions?

Can we get a count of contributions on the Special:Contributions page? Something like "showing 50 of 394 contributions" or something would be great.

Is there some easy of getting these data already?

Demi ^T/_C 18:19, 2005 Mar 18 (UTC)

You can get a total count with Kate's tool, which is back up. (Huzzah!) —Korath (Talk) 02:47, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

This would be really useful to have on the contrib page. Hope it gets considered. Kaldari 21:30, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Can't access page

For some reason, starting Sunday I was unable to access the page List of features on the Moon. When I try to go there the browser just sits and cycles, but never times out or resolves the page. Any idea what's gone wrong? Thanks. — RJH 21:33, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Still can not get access even after the restart yesterday. — RJH 16:26, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • It works fine here. Have you given the old standbys (clearing cache and all those fun things) a try? --iMb~Mw 16:40, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Yes it seems to work fine now. Whatever the hangup was must have cleared up. Thanks. — RJH 23:35, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • It does seem, though, that wikipedia in general is getting increasingly less robust. Errors are becoming more frequent and pages don't get created in a timely manner. Perhaps the database back-end is hitting the skids in terms of scalability? — RJH 20:28, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Configuring display of numbers in Telugu wiki

I'm the sysop for the Telugu wiki and I have noticed that for the past couple of weeks all the digits are being displayed using the standard Telugu numerals instead of the Indo-Arabic Numerals. Many users have complained about this because most of us are not used to reading them. I haven't been able to figure out if there is a configuration parameter that can be set to control this, any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks, --Vnagarjuna 18:41, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

incredible shrinking text?

All of a sudden the text is shrinking in some long discussion-type pages. The top of the page is normal but the text gets smaller as you go down the page. I've seen it at Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). I'm sure this wasn't going on last night. Any ideas what's up? FreplySpang (talk) 15:48, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's because Demi didn't close the SUB tag in his signature properly. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 15:53, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The two occurences I happened accross at Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) were due to Smoddy forgetting to close a <font> tag in his signature which (for some reason I don't claim to understand) stopped the </sub> from having any effect. Thryduulf 16:15, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The problem is the nesting of tags. I had opened a font tag after a _{tag, so the} part didn't take effect until the </font> appeared. I'm very sorry about this: I hadn't seen it (perhaps it is a software update?). Actually, it could well be my more accepting browseer. Sorry again; it's fixed now. Smoddy ( 17:33, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Usually this kind of mistake is fixed by htmltidy, which cleans mediawiki's output before the apache serves it. I've also seen Jtdlr's sig messing up similarly, and I can't believe y'all simultaneously decided to change your sigs. Probably one of the webservers hasn't been set up with htmltidy, and this is (occasionally) exposing long-standing defects in people's signature markup. The signatures should, of course, be fixed, but I'll drop a note on wikitech-l asking the devs to check the servers anyway. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 17:43, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Confirmed. Tim says that htmltidy was turned off for a while (see his post). -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 19:20, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanations! FreplySpang (talk) 19:24, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

To avoid future problems (and shoving huge amounts of ugly links in) I have changed my signature to something equally cryptic, but tiny in comparison. Smoddy (Rabbit and pork) 20:32, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can I move just a talk page?

When you move an article there is a tick box for you to choose whether you take the talk page with it. However this option does not appear if you try to move a talk page, and I am loath to just blast away. Is it possible to move just a talk page without the associated article? (For the record, the move I'm after doing is talk:Carmine→talk:Carmine (color): I split the second off from the first, but the whole of the talk page is relevant to the second only.) Yes, I could cut-and-paste, but that's a last resort which breaks history and everything. --Phil | Talk 14:55, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

Hack: move both the article and its talk page, and then move just the article back. For cases where the destination article exits, I think you can use an intermediate throwaway name FOO - move both article and talk to FOO, then move article back, then delete redirect left at FOO, move talk:FOO to talk:dest, and delete the redirect left at talk:FOO. I'd experiment with that one on a safe place, however, before doing it live. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 15:21, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've certainly moved talk pages without the article - I don't remember a tickbox for "move the article too" - but generally only to bring the talk page and article back together again (mostly when I have moved an article and the destination article did not exist but the destination talk page did, so the article move goes ahead but the talk page is left behind). Try it and see - what is the worst that can happen ;) -- ALoan (Talk) 16:07, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Now done it for you. -- ALoan (Talk) 16:10, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. --Phil | Talk 17:24, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

SNAFU at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria

I listed this at VP (misc) and it was suggested that I list it here as well: There's been a major snafu at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Criteria. About 24 hours ago (I'd guess) there was a glitchy edit which resulted in the page doubling in length - the whole list, followed by the whole list again - you know the sort of thing. Unfortunately, since then, there have been quite a few edits to the page, with additions to both the top copy and the bottom copy of the page. It's all got too tangled for me to know exactly how to fix it up... anyone able to help? Grutness|^hello? 10:19, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm fixing it the long tedious way - bit by bit. Seems the only "easy" option. Grutness|^hello? 11:18, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Also see above, #duplicate content in articles and Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Duplicate_content_in_articles. I've seen instances of this shortly after they've occurred and have asked the users involved what happened, so far to no avail ("I don't remember" or no response). My current guess is that it is a user interface issue involving edit conflicts and section edits, and that users are inadvertently doing this by copying and pasting the entire article into what is meant (by the software) to be a section edit window. At least one of the problem edits for the stub sorting page was this one [17], from user:Circeus. I'll try to find out what happened in this case. -- Rick Block 13:18, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, I've experienced this a couple of times - it seems to be when the submit fails for whatever reason (once it was my organisation's firewall) during a section edit, when the user refreshes the page (sometimes under the instruction of the error message) to try and get it to work. What I've done is only replace my edit (in one case a single word) and that led to the doubling of the sections I wasn't editing (but not the one I was). Thryduulf 14:20, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The same appears to have happened at List of popes - see [18] and [19]. Thryduulf 20:21, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Duplication? Just look at recent versions of Pope Benedict XVI - triplication, event quadruplication. -- ALoan (Talk) 20:43, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Quadruplication? pah! See [20] for triple-triplication on Spain (i.e. NINE copies) :-) Thryduulf 21:24, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC) (oh, and if anyone knows what the word in -ifciation series for nine times is drop a note on my talk page).

Creating a sub-page

I should like to create a temporary page (a "sub-page"?) on which to place my alternative version of the Bell's theorem page so that it can be discussed before attempting to replace the existing one. What I propose is, in the first instance, to use the material from an early January version that is already available. How do I do this? Caroline Thompson 09:37, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You can create this as a subpage of your user page, i.e. User:Caroline Thompson/Bell's theorem, with content that is copied and pasted from the earlier version of the article. -- Rick Block 13:31, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Something odd in List of national flags

For some reason, I am unable to load List of national flags. It spins forever, and then brings up the "Sorry, we have a problem" page. Is it just me? --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 06:41, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It loaded for me just now, but it did take a very long time (well over a minute to come up with anything, and then several more minutes to load all the images). I would imagine that this is because it is one of the most graphic image-heavy pages, and if the servers were a little more overloaded than they were when I tried it you'd get timeouts. Other than suggesting that this sort of graphic-heavy page is not a good idea, I don't know what could be done about it.-gadfium 07:49, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You could try temporarily telling your browser not to download images: you could then display any flag you wanted by hand. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 08:03, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

Two-and-a-half feature requests

1. At present IIRC, the preference setting for date format is effective only for those dates that include all three components, day, month, and year with certain orders and certain representations. Not all well-formed dates should be linked, and some that arguably should, should not include all three components (to avoid repetition). But for dates unaffected by the preference setting, due to non-linking, the contrast with those that are preference-formeatted can be inconsistent, ugly, and jarring.
   • Proposed solution: a markup indicating the usual linked-date treatment should be applied to the date the markup encloses, except for the links.
   • Example: April 1, 2005 and \\April 1, 2005\\ should render the same except as to links being rendered; similarly, \\April 1\\ and \\1 April\\ should render identically, and \\April 1\\ and \\1 April\\ should render the same but linked.
2. If the above is being done, it's a good opportunity to add a choice between AD/BC and CE/BCE to the preferences. (That's the half request.)
3. The section-name info that appears in the Summary edit-window is variously rendered on different screens including history page, contributions, and watchlist; in at least one case, it ends with a dash. That is occasionally confusing in light of the attactiveness of typing "-" (and "+") for "removed" (and "added"). If at least the dash between section-hdg and typed summary could be replaced, preferably with a non-keyboard char (e.g. a bullet), the confusion would be alleviated. (Ideally, use the same character in all of the screens that display summaries.)

Thanks for your attention, developers. And, oh yeah, thanks for all the keen features already out there! --Jerzy (t) 02:15, 2005 Apr 19 (UTC)

Server response?

It seems nearly impossible to work on things right now. Is it my end or is the server labouring? --Zeizmic 16:07, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC) - Sorry, I finally found the section on server response. --Zeizmic 17:00, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Redirects missing from "what links here"

AQi Fzono links to ethnic music which redirects to Folk music. But neither “AQi Fzono” nor “ethnic music” seem to appear on Folk music's "What links here" page. Am I missing something obvious? Is there a different way to see “what redirects here”? Nurg 08:46, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There are well over 500 pages linking to folk music, which is the limit (the additional ones are due to redirects. Clearly the redirect was created fairly late on. Smoddy (_t^g_e^c_k) 08:59, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What development systems are typically used for bot development?

I've been on the edge of writing a bot for certain repetitive-edit purposes, and am curious to know: what language and development environments are "typically" used for writing bots? What language(s) have the most extensive built-in, or widely available libraries for, communicating with http servers? Java? PERL? Dpbsmith (talk) 12:28, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Perl and python, with python (pywikipediabot) seemingly rather more popular. Both should work fine on just about any platform that runs either platform, so your choice really is a function of which language with which you're more comfortable. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 13:06, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Although I believe rambot is written in java. -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 13:08, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Certainly pywikipediabot has in the past won the approval of developers because it edit-throttles nicely if needed. Homebrew solutions tend to be sloppy in this regard. Pcb21| Pete 06:55, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Kevin Reactor wrote his own bot in C# (I think it was C#). Speaking from experience, what I use is pywikipediabot framework primarily for the use of two functions getting the wiki-text and posting the new wiki-text. Although the majority of the bot code I'm running are a few lines of python, the archival stuff I'm doing for Wikipedia:Did you know was written in Perl with some system calls to Python to get and post the page. -- AllyUnion (talk) 07:13, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, mvs is written in Perl, and does a great job at uploading/downloading stuff. It was quite easy to integrate it with my perl bot. Oleg Alexandrov 18:45, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Problem with the Edit function

Myself and other editors are having a problem with the Edit function for each section on my talk page. What is happening is that when clicking on the edit function for each section, it brings up the previous section for editing. This problem has only just started happening within the last week. I don't know what's causing this problem, could someone help me fix it? – AxSkov (T) 11:02, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Fixed. You had a <h2> tag in there, which was messing things up. Smoddy (_t^g_e^c_k) 11:09, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Getting the problem myself. In my case, it was the result of the sig change that happened with the introduction of 1.4 (?). My old sig was incorrect, and now I suspect it is mucking up a whole bunch of talk pages. I've seen one person clean up one of my old sigs: I'd better go and find the rest, now. I think the developers must have just tested a new bit of software. Noisy | Talk 11:42, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

Thankyou. BTW I've had those <h2> tags there for a couple of months and they hadn't caused a problem until now. – AxSkov (T) 12:15, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I reckon, as Noisy says above, that there may well have been some new software introduction. That's my best guess. Smoddy (_t^g_e^c_k) 14:57, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Certain user-agents excluded

It would appear that the wikimedia sites exclude some user agents on the basis of the User-agent: header. What are the white and/or blacklists? What is the motivation for it? If anyone could point me to discussion on the topic, that would be great. Cheers! Demi ^T/_C 04:32, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC)

• I'm unaware such things, but I know you need cookies to log in and there could be additional requirements for the CSS to work. Maybe the system shuts out browsers that can't handle the rendering of the site? (pure speculation) Can you be any more specific? Mgm|^(talk) 19:40, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

Behold!

 $ GET -s -d -u -H "User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
 GET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
 200 OK
 $ GET -s -d -u http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page 
 GET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
 403 Forbidden

GET is a script distributed with the Perl LWP modules and uses lwp-request. Demi ^T/_C 20:15, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC)

When I paste your commands into the command line, I get the same result. But you left off the contents of the returned 403 page, which includes this:

  Another possibility is that your User-Agent is blocked,
  which is done to block e-mail harvesting bots used by spammers
  and some abusive download spiders.

Do you do a lot of web browsing using "get"? —Michael Z. 2005-04-16 21:02 Z

Did you try other user agents except "User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)"? What you proved so far, is that if you specify an user agent, you are allowed in, and if you don't specify any, you are not. Oleg Alexandrov 21:06, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Actually the default user-agent sent by LWP is "libwww-perl/#.##"; I showed that one worked and one didn't. As John points out, it looks like libwww/perl is on the blacklist. Thanks! Demi ^T/_C 22:46, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC)

Yes, many user agents are blocked (blacklist only, I think) to stop spiders and the like, and to discourage people from websnaking the whole site to get the content (although some of wikipedia's mirrors do this anyway). If you plan on mirroring or analysing the wikipedia database, you're much better downloading the database from Wikipedia:Database download (the techs have just switched to a new, fast download server with fresh dumps on it). If, however, you're planning on writing a bot or some other automated frontend to wikipedia, you should probably discuss the matter on the wikitech-l mailing list. Folks there will tell you the best way to get what you're looking for (which, for many cases, can be handled either by the pywikibot framework or a script calling special:export). -- John Fader (talk | contribs) 21:19, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Thanks--I was looking to do something similar to the fetch/edit scripts Oleg points me to below. Demi ^T/_C 22:46, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Text editor support for some bots. Besides the Python one, there is one in Perl (I use that one, and I love it). So, choice is available. :) Oleg Alexandrov 21:39, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Thanks for the pointer! Demi ^T/_C 22:46, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC)

Also, on Linux, one can fetch the html source with

wget -q -O - en.wikipedia.org

Oleg Alexandrov 21:39, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Two questions on links

There are two link bugs I'd like to know if anyone has a solution for. The first I know has been reported in the past, but hasn't been fixed: the pipe trick doesn't work if there's a ! or ? in the title (i.e. Neu! should work but doesn't). The second I only just discovered (I suppose it's not really a bug, since the software does what it is supposed to): it's impossible to use a normal internal link for the Devo album Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, it displays as a Wikiquote link, except broken. Tuf-Kat 01:45, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

• "q:" links automatically redirect to Wikiquote, just like b: for wikibooks and m: for meta: You'd have to find another way to link that and put a technical limitations template on the page. And I think your assessment about the exclamation mark is correct too. Mgm|^(talk) 08:24, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)
• as Mgm says, the only way to link to it internally seems to be to move the page, perhaps to Q. Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! and put a technical limitations template at the top of it. Thryduulf 08:28, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Would it work to use a character code for a ":" (whatever it is) rather than an plain ":"? -- ALoan (Talk) 11:08, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I beleive its &#58; - test: Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!. Thryduulf 11:26, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

that didn't work - its still wikiquote links. Another test: en:Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! Thryduulf 11:30, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

that didn't work out either. I think the only thing to do is the renaming as above. If you think it would be of benefit, and it doesn't violate any of wikiquote's policies (I'm not familiar with wikiquote at all), then you might want to put an explanatory note at the Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! page with a link to the linkable title on wp. Thryduulf 11:36, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!" - try putting the title in quotes? Probably breaks any number of conventions, but it seems to work. Noisy | Talk 12:08, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

That looks horrible to me - and there is a policy somewhere about not using quotes Thryduulf 13:11, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Does the article exist at all? Displaying the proper link is easy (just prefix it with w: Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!) but mediawiki will lead you to wikiquote anyway. Sam Hocevar 13:50, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think it can not exist, this is actually about possible page names, not about links.--Patrick 00:26, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hmm - unless someone else can think of a neat solution (is there a non-space character that could be inserted between "Q" and ":"?), then either Q. Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! or Q Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, with a {{wrongtitle}}, seems to be the best choice. -- ALoan (Talk) 15:55, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Please always keep an edit summary here. How else are we supposed to know what the subject of the current conversation is? Oleg Alexandrov 17:22, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sorry. Consider me admonished. -- ALoan (Talk) 19:43, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"my contributions:" what am I doing wrong?

When I open the en.wikipedia page, I am automatically logged in. However, for the past few days, whenever I hit "user contributions" something strange happens. I am taken to my user contribution page, BUT the most recent contribution listed is from 19:05, 27 Mar 2005 (I have made many edits since then). Also, it seems to have logged me out in the process, as "create an account/log in" appears in the upper right-hand corner of my screen (in place of the usual choices: Slrubenstein My talk Preferences My watchlist My contributions Log out). When I log back in, and try to go the "user contributions," the same thing happens.

As I said, the problem is not logging in -- I am logged in automatically, and when I use other links (e.g. to my watchlist or to an article) I have no problems. It is only when I try to access my "user contributions" that I am logged out, and the user contributions is missing all of my contributions starting 3/27. If I am at my "user contribution" page and re-log in, I get a message that the login was successful. When I try to return to "special:contributions," however, I get the message "No Target: You have not specified a target page or user to perform this function on."

The problem involves my user contribution page only, and it has been since March 27.

I don't know what to do. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:19, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No idea - when I view your user contribution list it's up to date, with a lot of recent edits. Try a hard refresh? --SPUI (talk) 22:34, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The thing that comes immediately to mind is a problem with cookies. I don't know anything about what cookies WP users (other than it uses them), but if it uses a different one for your contributions page than elsewhere it might be a problem with that cookie having become corrupt or having been blocked for some reason. My suggestion is to clear all your cookies from WP (having made sure you know your current password first!), make sure you aren't blocking any cookies from wikipedia and then try again. It may not work, but every time I have the failing to stay logged in problem with sites it is because of a cookie being blocked (I have firefox set to ask me about every one, and I reject most of them). Thryduulf 22:37, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks!

Small instead of Subscript

Is it acceptable to use <small> instead of <sub> to display subscripts? (<small> example: CO2) I am not suggesting it be globally recommended, as the intent to subscript should be maintained in Wiki text. I am suggesting that Template:Sub use <small> to display subscripts, so as to reduce the added text line spacing irritation which many browsers produce when <sub> is used. (<sub> example: CO₂) The intent to subscript is maintained by use of Template:Sub, and the display can be further improved in the future. Suggestions for alternatives to <sup> would be appreciated, as the recommended alternatives (¹,²,³) only offer three numbers. (SEWilco 19:25, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC))

• Well, at least on my browser (Mozilla Firefox on Linux), it's not small enough — it's harder to notice it's smaller than the text. The <sub> example is much better (the ₂ has the same size as 2, but is also moved down a bit). It does not cause any change on line spacing (at least not one I could notice). And even if it did, the small added uglyness would be more than compensated by the greater ease on reading. --cesarb 21:33, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• I concur with the above - ₂ looks better in Firefox on Windows

• With respect, this is not a policy issue. Would the original poster consider moving this discussion to VP:Tech? — Xiong熊talk 01:29, 2005 Apr 14 (UTC)
  • It seemed to be more a policy issue than technical, as the question is whether <small> is an acceptable display of a subscript. However, the Firefox comments above made me discover that the effect is dependent upon the chosen font size. Testing with CONTROL-ScrollWheel produces assorted combinations of appearances. However, there still tends to be an extra half-line of blank space below each <sub> use. It might sometimes be confused with a paragraph break. Moved to VP:Tech. (SEWilco 07:10, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC))

• Is there another smaller-font incantation which produces a better display of "subscripted" or "superscripted" numbers? (SEWilco 07:10, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC))
• Using <small> doesn't subscript text. It only makes text display smaller, whereas subscript also lowers the location where the text is placed. Mgm|^(talk) 08:20, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)
• Most importantly, <sub> carries meaning. If a particular rendering engine produces output that a user (or a whole community) doesn't like, then a stylesheet should be able to change that rendering (for example, so that <sub> elements are displayed just like <small> elements). However, the original markup should retain as much information as possible, i.e., stick to calling a subscript a subscript. Arbor 08:26, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Note that this question is about display by Template:Sub, where use of the template marks that a subscript is being used. Format of display by Sub can be changed in the future if better technology becomes available. (SEWilco 09:30, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC))
• The proper place for display, rather than semantic, issues is in a stylesheet. I don't have to use Lynx at work anymore, but <sub> tags work in that, while <small> tags wouldn't show up properly. —Korath (Talk) 12:09, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

This isn't merely a display issue; superscripts and subscripts carry meaning. Unicode has a better solution than sup and sub tags: how do these superscripts¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹⁰ and subscripts₁₂₃₄₅₆₇₈₉₀ look in your browser? Works in Safari/Mac with no ugly added line space. —Michael Z. 2005-04-14 13:52 Z

IE6/W2000: superscript 123 are fine, 4 is slightly larger and has an oddd horizontal spacing afterwards, but is also visible as a superscipt; 5-9 are square boxes; subscript 1-4 also fine (excellent!) although also have an odd horizontal spacing afterwards and 5-9 also boxes. Are these safe to use? -- ALoan (Talk) 13:59, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Does the following look better (in Template:Unicode) superscripts¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹⁰ and subscripts₁₂₃₄₅₆₇₈₉₀.

In Firefox/Mac they all work, but superscript 4 and subscript 1 through 4 appear in a strange widely-spaced font.

In Lynx, they look like this:

         tags: how do these superscripts¹²³^4^5^6^7^8^9^0 and                  
         subscripts_1_2_3_4_5_6_7_8_9_0 look in your browser? Works in         

—Michael Z. 2005-04-14 14:05 Z

Where I am right now (Mozilla Firefox on Linux, without lots of extra fonts) ¹²³ look fine (just a bit too small), 4-0 looks way too small and centered instead of superscript, and the subscripts are all square boxes (the required font(s) are probably missing from this box). Doing it this way depends way too much on the installed fonts, while <sub> and <sup> works everywhere. --cesarb 14:33, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If the style sheet made <sup> and <sub> elements smaller, that would help reduce the line-spacing problem. —Michael Z. 2005-04-14 15:04 Z

IE6/W2000 - can see all of these now, but superscript-4 and subscript-1,2,3,4 all have odd horizontal spacing after the number. Vertical spacing looks fine. -- ALoan (Talk) 15:28, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Now at another computer (Mozilla Firefox on Linux, lots of extra fonts installed):

• Superscript 1-3 look ok.
• Superscript 4 has extra horizontal spacing on both sides and is positioned about a pixel higher.
• Superscript 5-0 also look fine, but seem to be from a different font.
• Subscript 1-4 have huge extra horizontal spacing and seem to be from two different fonts.
• Subscript 5-0 look fine (and the font seems to be the same as for superscript 5-0).

--cesarb 21:04, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• The Unicode sub/superscript seem to not have the extra-blank-line problem. But ¹⁴C (Carbon-14) looks a little odd on browsers where the 1 and 4 use different fonts. (SEWilco)
  • However, is that font oddity better than having random blank lines scattered along documents? (SEWilco 00:55, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC))
  • Isn't using Unicode a solution requiring Wiki servers to emit those characters for text marked as Sub/Sup? So Unicode at present only an option for those who manually code text in Unicode, and not for text wrapped in sub/sup markup/template. (SEWilco 00:55, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC))

Best for Templates Sub and Sup

• Should Template:Sub continue using <sub> at the moment? (SEWilco)
  • Yes. --cesarb 18:20, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
• Should Template:Sup continue using <sup> at the moment? (SEWilco)
  • Yes. --cesarb 18:20, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Category:Candidates for speedy deletion broken?

Category:Candidates for speedy deletion seems to be broken; there is no articles in it, not even templates like Template:Delete which should be there in any case. Thue | talk 21:04, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Try a hard refresh? --SPUI (talk) 21:09, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Category:Candidates for speedy deletion is fine. The CAT:CSD shortcut is broken, however, since interwiki redirects don't work anymore (it used to go to w:Category:Candidates for speedy deletion), and redirects directly to categories never have. —Korath (Talk) 21:36, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Google, how do u get pages there?

ive been wondering, how do u get wiipedia pages on google for free? is there a way?

• Google spiders the web. If someone they know about links to you, they find you. Normal Google listings are free, the paid listings are clearly marked. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:18, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)

Can't access Wikipedia settings

Yep. I changed my language settings to Finnish on the En wikipedia to see how it looks. It looks fine, but trying to get back to the settings says (forget about the formatting):

utf8_decode_array given non-array

Backtrace:

   * LanguageLatin1.php line 39 calls wfdebugdiebacktrace()
   * LanguageLatin1.php line 90 calls utf8_decode_array()
   * SpecialPreferences.php line 354 calls languagelatin1::getmathnames()
   * SpecialPreferences.php line 121 calls preferencesform::mainprefsform()
   * SpecialPreferences.php line 21 calls preferencesform::execute()
   * SpecialPage.php line 309 calls wfspecialpreferences()
   * SpecialPage.php line 220 calls specialpage::execute()
   * index.php line 101 calls specialpage::executepath()

Ideas? -- Kizor 14:06, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It would be best to report this at MediaZilla: rather than here, and you should mention there whether the problem only happens on the English Wikipedia or on other versions as well. Angela. 01:12, Apr 14, 2005 (UTC)

Fixed. Definitely report these to the bug tracker in the future though... --Brion 23:12, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

Interface for audio files sucks

The interface for using uploaded audio files (people are using .ogg, it seems) needs some serious work. Check out the discussion at Template talk:Audio#Overloaded interface. Some issues:

• Ogg files linked directly from the page like this: listen, don't work without installing extra software. Novice users will be confused.
• Linking to the ogg file's image page isn't much better.
  • The file is offered as a file link, like this: Ru Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev.ogg; at least you can see a file link with ".ogg" at the end.
  • The page is called Image:xxx, but it's not an image.
  • There's no audio help on the image page.
  • The file is not embedded, so in some browsers it will download instead of playing, even with the right software installed.

I think fixing this correctly will require some developer help. Is there anyone out there working on this? —Michael Z. 2005-04-12 08:36 Z

I've filed Bug 1880 "Interface for uploaded audio media" at bugzilla. Hopefully some interested developer has a look. —Michael Z. 2005-04-12 22:55 Z

Save leads to preview

I've hit an odd glitch three or four times tonight. I've edited a page, hit "save", and been presented with a preview. If I hit save again, it comes up with the "edit conflict" message. Just once, and I might have thought I'd caught the wrong button... but it's happened about half a dozen times. Any idea what's going on? Grutness|^hello? 14:00, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Nope, not a clue. Do you ever use keyboard shortcuts or the tab key to move to the button in question? Mgm|^(talk) 21:25, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

It happened to me a few times last week, but seems to have settled down. —Michael Z. 2005-04-11 22:32 Z

CSS gone wrong?

What's up? The fonts are all of weird size, edit box used to have monospaced font and everything just looks not like it used to be. How to fix that? Variable width font in edit box is the most annoying since you can't tell two apostrophes from a quote mark. Grue 14:52, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Nothing's changed here. Try reinstalling your browser? --SPUI (talk) 14:57, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Have you changed any of your browser or monitor settings? Mgm|^(talk) 18:09, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

I haven't changed anything. Very weird... Grue 13:12, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Signature

What is the signature option under the preferences menu?? fixed wikilink 08:49, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Nvm, just figured it out lol Jaberwocky6669 08:50, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

And for those who want to try fancier signatures, see Wikipedia:Signature. — Jeff Q (talk) 09:35, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Calculations inside templates

Is there a way to perform calculations inside templates, for example in case of missing template arguments? My template expects a colour argument to be used as background colour, but if the argument is missing the background turns black:

 <td bgcolor="{{{Title_colour}}}"> {{{Title}}} </td> 

I would be insterested in a function or something that checks the Title_colour argument and if it is missing or empty, it should be replaced with some default colour:

 <func (col A)> ... if (A=nil or len(A)=0) return "white" else return A ... </func> 
 ...
 <td bgcolor=col("{{{Title_colour}}}")> {{{Title}}} </td> 

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance. --Eddi (Talk) 18:32, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I believe this is not possible with the current implementation of templates. See m:template. -- Rick Block 19:48, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The {{hiero}} template does something like this, I believe; or, at least User:Garzo was trying to make it work - see Template talk:hiero and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ancient Egypt for details. -- ALoan (Talk) 20:43, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This looks interesting, because the background colour in my template is actually determined by another variable that has a limited number of values and may be used to span a {{template/{{{theothervariable}}}/bgcolor}} space. In that case I can omit the Title_colour variable altogether. Just now the host wiki (nn:) has been down so I haven't had the chance to test it, but I'll check later. --Eddi (Talk) 01:06, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If you use css, you can get a less-bad result in this specific case:

<td style="background-color: green; background-color: {{{Title_colour}}};">

If a Title_colour (please don't name the real variable like this, by the way!) is given, the latter background-color takes precedence. If it's missing, the results vary by browser, but either just the second background-color is ignored, or both are. —Korath (Talk) 23:25, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

This looks interesting, too, because it's very easy to code – and it works just fine, at least in my browser. Thank you very much.
By the way, how come I shouldn't name the variable Title_colour? Is there a guidance on variable names that I have missed? --Eddi (Talk) 01:06, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Long variable names are difficult to remember, and ideally you shouldn't have to look at the source of a template every time you want to use it. The British/American spelling difference is problematic, too, in this case, but perhaps unavoidable. —Korath (Talk) 08:21, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

If you find yourself in the same part of the world as those who use the template, there should be no difficulties between British and American English. However, I agreee that such an obscure variable may lead astray since it is not shown in the template page, only in the template source. Now I have replaced the variable in question with references to another variable that is invariably defined, so my troubles are no more. I have used a combination of your two suggestions. (See nn:Mal:Grunnstoff.) Thank you all for your assistance. --Eddi (Talk) 23:44, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Automatic watchlist

I turned off the option to automatically add pages I edit to my watchlist but the box is still ticked by default on the edit page. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 06:52, 2005 Apr 8 (UTC)

Well, the first thing to do is go make sure you actually really saved the preferences change. -- Cyrius|✎ 13:47, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I noticed the problem some time after I thought I turned off the option both here and on Meta. Then I went to preferences and it was turned off. The problem seems to have fixed itself. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 04:44, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

I don't know whether it's still occurring--it was supposedly fixed in the last MediaWiki upgrade--but I was bothered for some time by a tendency of preferences to change themselves without necessarily being reflected in the appearance of the preferences page. It was possible to re-set the preferences, but I was never able to work out exactly what was required. For superstitious reasons, I ended up preferring to deliberately set the preference that had auto-changed to the wrong value, then save, then set it to the right value, and save again, so that the software would see that the preferences had been a) CHANGED, b) to the right value. The reason why it was difficult to figure out the correct repair procedure was that, it turned out, at that time, a change in preferences could take as long as fifteen minutes to "take." (And, yes, I'd been deep-refreshing pages and using the Purge command until I was blue in the face).

So, at the time, what I experienced was: I would do something reasonable to correct the problem. I would then get frantically frustrated because nothing I'd done seemed to work. Then ten or fifteen minutes later the problem would "mysteriously correct itself," i.e. the preferences I'd set had finally "taken."

I have no idea whether any of this is relevant today. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:10, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I am not familiar with this problem but I suppose it might be related to slow database updates when new pages are created (I don't know if that problem is still there). Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 05:16, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC) (signature added later)

It is still a problem - it says so at the top of this page. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 05:16, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)

I think what's happening with me is, I had that option on for a long time and my watchlist got really long, and when I edit any page that's already on my watchlist the box is automatically ticked. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 05:15, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)

Filmsite.org - a problem site?

I followed this lk from Apocalypse Now#External links. After i closed the pop-up that came with it, the window for the URL remains blank and cannot be closed. (Win NT 4.0, MS IE 6.0 SP1) If others have this behavior, IMO all lks to this site should be removed (except, maybe, if NT is required to reproduce it). Could a few others test it with recent browsers try this out? --Jerzy (t) 20:30, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

Continuing the above problem description: after abt a half hour, it closed and left a second pop-up behind. --Jerzy (t) 20:51, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

That's unfortunate. I've read that site before and found the content to be good. Firefox is immune to the popups, but I tried it in IE and it's very annoying. Too bad, since the reviews are pretty insightful. I tend to agree that links to the site should be removed, unless they're essential to an article. Rhobite 06:10, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

Too much white space between paragraphs

In addition to the above, there is another issue which I find very annoying. If an editor puts too many newlines (empty space) between paragraphs, then the wiki software displays it exactly that way. Why doesn't the software compress that whitespace into a single empty line? Probably this is a known issue, but I am new at Village Pump, and I could not find the answer to this quiestion after searching in several places. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov 23:09, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Seems like a feature to me. How else do you get several empty lines if you want them?

See, I liked that space. Seems more reasonable than forcing editors to put in raw HTML. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 23:36, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It is very rare when one would need a lot of empty space. Most of the time, so much empty space is left by mistake, and then it looks ugly. For example, of the around 6-8 thousand math articles, 847 have too much white space. I corrected a couple of hundreds of them (with a bot) and virtually everywhere (with the exception of ascii art) that space is unnecessary and unesthetic. So, it would rather be worth putting a <br> from time to time, than always removing extra white space. Other opinions? Oleg Alexandrov 23:45, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• Point taken, and you're right -- <br> should be the rarer case, and most likely multiple blank lines are mistakes. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 06:34, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Should this be classified as a bug? Oleg Alexandrov 18:29, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Not really, it wouldn't happen if people didn't do it. TAS 10:48, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Leading white space in templates screws up rendering

A few weeks ago templates started adding a single line break or carriage return character to the front of what they render. this is usually invisible, since HTML compresses white space, but it shows up as an ugly space in running text. This affects the way template:IPA and template:Unicode are usually used in linguistics articles. See the discussion at Template talk:Unicode#More problems with unicode template.

Can someone change the template code so it doesn't insert a leading line break character? —Michael Z. 2005-04-7 14:21 Z

I've filed Bug 1878: Templates insert newline character at the beginning at bugzilla. Hopefully a nice developer sees this and fixes it. —Michael Z. 2005-04-12 22:57 Z

Alert for red links turning into new articles

I realize I can already watch red-linked articles to see when they're created, but it would be even nicer if I could have a setting where when I watch a particular page, I would get alerts when any red links on the page get articles created for them. I'd like to be able to easily keep track of new articles being created from red links off articles I'm watching, as they oftentimes extend the article I'm watching. Does this sound like a good idea to others? — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 02:49, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can't you just put them on your watchlist or am I misunderstanding? — Knowledge Seeker দ 03:02, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Oh, I see, you want all articles from watched articles to show up, not just specific articles. — Knowledge Seeker দ 03:10, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, so I won't have to create watches for each individual article that's red-linked. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 05:28, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this would be a nice feature. I collect red-links about crypto in one to-do list, and then I can see by eye when someone's created an article. It would also be nice if there was an alert for new articles in a category, too. — Matt Crypto 21:58, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's a great idea too. — Stevie is the man! ^{Talk | Work} 03:39, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This would be very handy. Tuf-Kat 23:04, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

I agree, both these ideas woudl be very useful. Thryduulf 15:11, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)