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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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Triva template wierdness

For lack of a better place to put this... what exactly is up with this: [1] ? Look at the edit summary. I can't figure out why it's like that. I know I've seen it before, too, but I can't remember where. What's causing this? Gscshoyru 17:59, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

You sure no one did it *by themselves*? --soum talk 18:00, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Looks like one of those random, completely pointless edits we annoyingly encounter all the time to me. Get it reverted! :-) Lradrama 18:21, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
The edit itself is fine, it's the edit summary that's messed up. There's no reason to revert. But the edit summary is of the automated kind, the gray text with the arrow, and I cannot understand where it could have come from. Gscshoyru 18:23, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I concur with Soumyasch. This isn't the first time that editor has used that kind of edit summary (see history). Black Falcon (Talk) 18:30, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Well... look at that... You're probably right, he did do another before (at least). But still... my question then is how would one do that? Gscshoyru 18:39, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
you mean like thissssssssssssss? The how is easy, just edit the automatic text. As for the why? - that's a different matter entirely!!! Regards, Lynbarn 19:15, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh. Well I'm just stupid. Never mind me then. Gscshoyru 19:38, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Stupid? I very much doubt it, but some times it is isn't easy to "see the wood for the trees"! Regards, Lynbarn 20:07, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Corrupt image?

Can anyone see Image:AVATARLOGO-blk.jpg? The image (full size and thumbs) will not display in Firefox 1.5 or IE6, but I can view it in a number of graphics editors. --- RockMFR 02:18, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

It seems to have had an excessive amount of comment data, some sort of xml. I re-saved the image from Irfanview without the comment and uploaded it on top of the old image. The result is half the file size, and it works now. ~ Booya Bazooka 12:04, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

watchlist and tools.wikimedia.de

Last night, when clicking on "my watchlist", I noticed that it said in the status bar "contacting tools.wikimedia.de". I was quite concerned about this, because tools.wikimedia.de responds extremely slowly for me, with response times on the order of a minute.

Today I am not seeing "contacting tools.wikimedia.de" when using "my watchlist", but I would like developers to be aware that there is a problem with that website for users with certain configurations. I don't know what configurations; I've never been able to debug the issue, but I use the web in general just fine with these configs, so the problem is with tools.wikimedia.de. Thus I would request that nothing critical be hosted there (such as watchlists). --Trovatore 18:02, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

This is most likely because there was an undiscussed change made to MediaWiki:Common.js yesterday that pulls a script from tools.wikimedia.de. Mike Dillon 18:11, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
What does the script do? --Trovatore 18:14, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
The stated intention seems to have something to do with geotargeted site notice messages. However, neither I nor Ruud Koot could get it to produce any JavaScript code, so it's unclear what it actually does. Mike Dillon 18:54, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

This code has been removed for the time being. Go ahead and bypass your cache to see if you see any further issues. Hopefully, if this is redone, it is done in the proper way as a MediaWiki extension that is actually installed on the Wikimedia server cluster. FYI, it seems to have been related to trying to show notices regarding Wikipedia:Meetups by geographic area. Mike Dillon 20:17, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Notice the initial report said that it said contacting tools.wikimedia.de but he did not report that the page actually loaded slowly. The code is constructed in a manner which makes even worst case failure modes not impact the page loading (thought your browser may still say 'contacting toolserver.wikimedia.de', it won't impact page display, this was tested in FF2,FF3, Opera, IE6, and IE7, Konqueror, and Safari). --Gmaxwell 01:04, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

It will prevent subsequent onload hooks from running. This will impact users that have scripts to modify the behavior of the watchlist if they are hit by the latency problem. Mike Dillon 01:08, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
So do you know what's causing the "latency problem", and can it be fixed? Tools.wikimedia.de would be a nice thing except it's unusably slow for me. For example the "geographical coordinates" people have standardized the templates to use the German toolserver, which effectively makes them useless as far as I'm concerned; when I raise the issue no one responds. --Trovatore 03:44, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Nope, I don't know what's causing it, but I do recall other people mentioning issues with that server in the past. Mike Dillon 04:52, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
No it doesn't prevent onload hooks from running. Go ahead and actually test. There is no impact. As far as tools.wikimedia.de being slow, if thats the case it is almost certainly because your host thinks it has IPv6 connectivity but it actually doesn't. If you fix your host your connectivity there will be restored, but that has absolutely no relation to the discussion here. --Gmaxwell 06:36, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, could tools.wikimedia.de please stop looking for IPv6, given that no one actually uses it? I don't have this problem with any other website.
Alternatively, if you can figure out how to disabuse my machine of the notion that it has IPv6, that would also be good. I'm using pppoe, and as soon as I run "pon", an interface called "sit0" shows up that refuses to die no matter what I do:
zermelo:/etc/ppp# ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0E:7F:70:87:7A
         inet6 addr: fe80::20e:7fff:fe70:877a/64 Scope:Link
         UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
         RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
         TX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
         collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
         RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:720 (720.0 b)
         Interrupt:11 Base address:0xc000

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:09:5B:C6:E8:25
         inet6 addr: fe80::209:5bff:fec6:e825/64 Scope:Link
         UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
         RX packets:263 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
         TX packets:230 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
         collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
         RX bytes:214961 (209.9 KiB)  TX bytes:33727 (32.9 KiB)
         Interrupt:11

ppp0      Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
         inet addr:71.138.134.48  P-t-P:71.138.135.254  Mask:255.255.255.255
         UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST  MTU:1492  Metric:1
         RX packets:237 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
         TX packets:216 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
         collisions:0 txqueuelen:3
         RX bytes:203385 (198.6 KiB)  TX bytes:28526 (27.8 KiB)

sit0      Link encap:IPv6-in-IPv4
         inet6 addr: ::127.0.0.1/96 Scope:Unknown
         UP RUNNING NOARP  MTU:1480  Metric:1
         RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
         TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
         collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
         RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

zermelo:/etc/ppp# ifdown sit0
ifdown: interface sit0 not configured
zermelo:/etc/ppp# ifconfig sit0 down
zermelo:/etc/ppp# ifconfig sit0
sit0      Link encap:IPv6-in-IPv4
         inet6 addr: ::71.138.134.48/96 Scope:Compat
         UP RUNNING NOARP  MTU:1480  Metric:1
         RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
         TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
         collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
         RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
You can see how this sort of thing could get frustrating. --Trovatore 07:22, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Well v6 works fine on toolserver, I use it myself to connect to it.. but if your v6 is broken, you'll have issues. Eventually we may need to use v6 on more of our systems, so toolserver is a reasonable low impact way for our folks to get practice with it. As far as getting rid of v6 on your system, it depends on your distros networking scripts. In Fedora you can make sure you have "NETWORKING_IPV6=no" in /etc/sysconfig/network. To make sure your issues are v6 related try using the IPv4 IP of tools.wikimedia.de rather than the hostname: 145.97.39.143. If that works much better than tools.wikimedia.de then your issue is almost certainly v6 related. If someone restores the geowatchlist notice I wouldn't see any problem with using the IP rather than the name to avoid the cosmetic "contacting foo" issue for people who are having v6 related issues. --Gmaxwell 07:44, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
You're right that it won't prevent other onload hooks from running. The one thing it will do is prevent any script or style tags added by subsequent onload hooks from loading until the tools.wikimedia.de script has timed out, which is admittedly a pretty marginal case. Mike Dillon 14:55, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

So I found a BRUTAL UGLY hack -- I moved /lib/modules/2.6.8-3-k7/kernel/net/ipv6 to /lib/modules/2.6.8-3-k7/kernel/net/disable.ipv6. Now the module loader doesn't find the module at all at boot time, throws a hissy fit about it, but eventually boots without it. And now I can see tools.wikimedia.de in a reasonable time. But come on, don't you agree this is bad behavior on the toolserver's side? It ought to be able to figure out that a client is experiencing this issue with a much shorter timeout, then remember it for the rest of the session, rather than repeating the same huge timeout for every single request.

(By the way, I *did* first try changing /etc/modules.conf -- didn't work; something else is causing the module to be loaded, and I have no reasonable way of figuring out what). --Trovatore 08:40, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

there is no way to do that on our side. the problem is your host trying to contact the server using a network connection that doesn't work. the right way to fix it is for people to not have broken network configurations. (if people keep saying "don't use ipv6 because it doesn't work for me, and no-one uses it", then it will never be used). kate.
(offtopic) Renaming the module is a not the best way to do it, since it'll simply be back the next time there is a security update to the kernel (since either it will get reinstalled or you will install a new kernel). The correct way to disable the module is to add blacklist ipv6 (and perhaps other blacklist lines) to /etc/modprobe.conf; see man modprobe.conf for the details. That said, disabling ipv6 shouldn't be needed; since you don't have a default ipv6 route, the connection should fail and your browser should immediately fallback to the ipv4 alternative. Another option is to actually add a working ipv6 default route to your computer (installing miredo is an easy option if you are behind a NAT; if you aren't, setting up 6to4 with the default anycast route will give you better performance).
(ontopic) I don't think IPv6 is the cause; if code was added to the common js to pull a script from the toolserver, it probably got really overloaded (its single machine is no match for Wikipedia's massive cluster), and that is enough to cause the observed symptoms, without having to invoke the spectre of misconfigured IPv6 routing. --cesarb 17:17, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Actually I'm pretty sure it is the cause; I've seen the slowness from tools.wikimedia.de for at least a year. It didn't suddenly show up when the script was added. But it did go away when I killed ipv6.
As far as making ipv6 work -- I'm not willing to do that until I have solid, tight packet filtering set up for it. And I don't know how to evaluate ip6tables rules, to make sure nothing sneaky can get in (my rules till now have been "drop all packets"; that seemed safe). Thanks for the "blacklist" info, though; I'll take a look at that. --Trovatore 17:28, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Wait... Are you saying you were dropping all IPv6 packets? That would obviously cause a lot of slowness, because your browser would have to wait until the timeout, instead of immediately receiving an error. Did you try REJECT instead of DROP to see if it cures the slowness? If it does, it means the filtering rules were at fault here. --cesarb 00:48, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
My ip6tables doesn't seem to have the REJECT extension:
zermelo:~# ip6tables -A INPUT -j REJECT
ip6tables: No chain/target/match by that name
Good idea, though. --Trovatore 17:13, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Looking at the kernel source code, the module for the REJECT target is ip6t_REJECT, enabled by CONFIG_IP6_NF_TARGET_REJECT ("REJECT target support"). --cesarb 17:54, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Where does this CONFIG_IP6_NF_TARGET_REJECT go? Are you saying I have to recompile my kernel to use this?
I found an easier way, though. In Mozilla, I just go to about:config and set network.dns.disableIPv6 to true. Now I can leave the ip6tables rules to first LOG, then DROP, everything going in or out, and still use toolserver.wikimedia.de. That way I can see if anyone is actually probing me over IPv6. So far it doesn't look like there's much going on; maybe the hackers aren't using it yet either (not that I'd count on things staying that way). --Trovatore 18:02, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
The code is back, NoScript pops up everytime I access the watchlist :-/ -- ReyBrujo 04:47, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Clear Watchlist

Having a link that wipes the whole watchlist which is as directly accessible as that, alongside the others, is just wrong. Please, please, please, move it somewhere less accessible. --Stephen Burnett 10:42, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I've been terrified to click it to test - does it at least CONFIRM if you want to clear the watchlist first? --Golbez 10:53, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
It does ask you to confirm clearing the watchlist. It shows the text in MediaWiki:Watchlistedit-clear-confirm which, at the moment, is the default message provided by the MediaWiki software. Harryboyles 11:49, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
I've updated MediaWiki:Watchlistedit-clear-confirm to include a stronger warning, and an escape link. — xaosflux Talk 14:17, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
I changed the cancel link to link back to "My watchlist" rather than the main page. As most often people will come from the watchlist to the clear screen, it makes sense to go back. Harryboyles 15:13, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Hi. On my computer, the "cancel" button is right above the "clear" button. What if someone tried to cancel but accidentally clicked clear?! A catastrophe, that's what! So, please move the cancel button away from the clear button. Also, it'd be nice if it also mentioned that you can click back on your browser. Also, it may be helpful if the warning were larger, like Nuvola.apps WARNING: THIS CHAGE CAN NOT BE UNDONE! CLICK CANCEL OR BACK ON YOUR BROWSER TO CANCEL THIS ACTION.. Thanks. ~AH1(TCU) 16:14, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Now that the watchlist can be edited (almost) like any other page, there isn't really any need to have the "clear watchlist" link at all. I think it should be removed completely. --Derlay 22:20, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
I've added some line breaks to force some space between the cancel link and the clear button on low resolutions. — xaosflux Talk 01:10, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree - I've been very wary of it since a very first saw it (half a year ago!) I mis-click things all the time, because I hate progressing slowly, and a misclick on the watchlist would be disastrous - just think of the amount of time that would have to be spent building it all back up again - something I can do without. I agree with the suggestion that it should be put in a less accessible place. Lradrama 18:19, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

help with using multiple #ifeq:

Hi. I'm currently using this (long) code:

{{#ifeq:bird|{{{1}}}|[[Category:Bird-stub]]}}

{{#ifeq:bird|{{{2}}}|[[Category:Bird-stub]]}}

{{#ifeq:bird|{{{3}}}|[[Category:Bird-stub]]}}

on is:wikipedia. Dose anyone know if I can make this code shorter? Something like

{{#ifeq:bird|{{{1}}} or {{{2}}} or {{{3}}}|[[Category:Bird-stub]]}}

But I tried that, and couldn't get it to work. --Steinninn 20:25, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Try #switch. AmiDaniel (talk) 21:01, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks AmiDaniel. I think this should work:
{{#ifeq:bird|{{{1|}}}{{{2|}}}{{{3|}}}|[[Category:Bird-stub]]}}
--Steinninn 21:19, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
That works, but (discounting weird coincidences) it's an xor, not an or. Depending on how you want the template to work, {{#switch:bird|{{{1}}}|{{{2}}}|{{{3}}}=[[Category:Bird-stub]]|#default=}} might do the trick. Depends, again. GracenotesT § 22:00, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, my suggestion did not work. most of the categories don't show. It's a long template so it's going to take some time to retest it with another code. Here's the link is:Snið:Stubbur/test. --Steinninn 01:13, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Ok, it only works with #switch. There's just one more thing. What dose #default= do? I couldn't find anything about it on meta. --Steinninn 01:31, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Never mind. --Steinninn 01:58, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Besides switch, this should work for an "or": {{#ifeq:bird|{{{1|{{{2|{{{3|}}}}}}}}}|[[Category:Bird-stub]]}} Anomie 21:13, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
That assumes that only one of the parameters is given; if one of them has an incorrect value and one of them has a correct value, it might not work. --ais523 17:06, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Ugh, you're right. It works for "are any of these set", but not "do any of these equal that value". Anomie 17:10, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Check to see if pages are watched?

Is it possible to check if a page is on at least one person's watchlist? I'm trying to find unwatched pages, but the admin-only specialpage hasn't been too useful.-Wafulz 19:26, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

No, Special:Unwatchedpages (for admins only) is the only way ∴ Alex Smotrov 19:43, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Strange and incorrect page diff

I was looking at the difference between my revisions on my talk page and found this one [2]. Which is interesting, because I never made those changes. If you look at the revisions in comparision seperately, [3] and [4] you can see that those changes never occured. The only thing I had changed in that edit was adding a response to the bottom topic. What could be causing this error? --Android Mouse 04:46, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

This comes up occasionally. Check out the comment by Simetrical at Bug 10511. --- RockMFR 04:59, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the link. So it should fix it self when the cache is refreshed? --Android Mouse 13:33, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Safari and sortable tables

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

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

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

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

screening deletion log

Is there any way of screening of filtering the deletion log so it shows only deletions of articles from mainspace? I'm trying to analyze recent speedy deletions WT:CSD/Analysis, and I want to eliminate the 80% or so that are images, talk pages, redirects, user pages, and so forth to speed up work on the rest. DGG (talk) 04:39, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

See also above, #Deletions by namespace. GracenotesT § 04:53, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
From which I gather that the only direct way to do it is currently disabled. Does anyone know a work-around?DGG (talk) 04:23, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Variable that contains the username

Is there a variable that contains the username of the current editor, ie. something like {{CURRENTUSER}} that I can use in templates? ~~~ (sig without date) isn't any good as it usually contains all kinds of formatting. I need only the username. --Edokter (Talk) 17:02, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

No, and for a good reason: page content is generated on main servers and then cached on other servers. If the page content depended on the user viewing it, then no caching would be possible ∴ Alex Smotrov 17:19, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
No, actually, I mean the username of the user currently editing the page, not viewing it. Just looking for a way to automatically add (subst rather) a username, just like a signature (~~~~) would do. --Edokter (Talk) 17:29, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Never mind... I just realized it wouldn't work anyway (without substing) for what I had in mind. --Edokter (Talk) 19:05, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

'What Links here' to a page should put User page links at the bottom

There are times when several user pages links to an article and the it becomes difficult to know which main space articles links to that page. Putting User Space links at bottom/separately will help. Vjdchauhan 13:52, 18 July 2007 (UTC).

Another good idea - would be especially useful when repairing dablinks. DuncanHill 13:56, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
You can cause the Whatlinkshere list to only display mainspace (articles) with the dropdown box, which is helpful for disambiguation links. See example GracenotesT § 14:02, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Little script to make 'What links here' show only articles by default ∴ Alex Smotrov 14:22, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
addOnloadHook(function(){
 var ln = document.getElementById('t-whatlinkshere');
 if (!ln) return;
 ln.firstChild.href = ln.firstChild.getAttribute('href', 2) + '?namespace=0';
})
Thanks for both the above (must admit I hadn't noticed the dropdown box - how long's that been there?). DuncanHill 14:27, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
A couple of months maybe, not sure ∴ Alex Smotrov 17:19, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

File links on Image page should put User page links at the bottom

If there are numerous links to an image file then it becomes difficult to know which main space articles links/uses that image as several times it is cluttered with links to User Pages. Vjdchauhan 13:52, 18 July 2007 (UTC).

Use 'What links here' and solution below ∴ Alex Smotrov 14:22, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
"What links here" doesn't include image usage, just as the "File links" section doesn't include wikilinks. Anomie 14:44, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Okay, my fault, then here you go: a little script Sort Image Links ∴ Alex Smotrov 17:19, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Technical questions

I have three questions:

  • Presentation of redirects. As I understand it now, if the first line of a page contains #REDIRECT [[smth]] tag, it becomes a redirect and if browsed with "&redirect=no", a page appears that contains only heading, elaborate redirect sign and categories (and "in other languages" on sidebar). Yet redirect templates (such as Template:R to section) are intended to create a message on this page, such as "This is a redirect from alt. title. Do not pipe it unless the page is edited otherwise etc." It is indeed visible, but only in "Preview" window, where the rediect is shown as "1. Redirect smth". Can it be altered somehow so that template messages etc. are visible on the final page?
  • Linking to sections. At the moment, in HTML code before each section title "a" anchor link is created, but this does not work perfectly. When an interwiki link to section is created elsewhere, in an article or redirect, the target page loads with the section title in any place of the window, sometimes even directly below the screen, as the invisible link precedes the title. The needed section is thus often hidden. When anchoring with <div id="smth"></div> tangs around the whole section, everything works properly: the title is on top, and the whole of the section is visible (or the upper part if overlong). Consequently I suppose it will be better to create <div id="title"> before the section title and </div> before the following section instead of <a name="title" id="title"></a>.
  • "+" option on talk pages. This adds a new section to the bottom of a page, but this is wrong in certain cases, for example on WT:Me there's a navbox at the bottom, where it should remain. People are using "+" function, produce messages below it and subsequently tweak - see the mess at the history page. Can some tag be created before which the messages will be posted by the "+" fuction? Súrendil 08:42, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
    The first two pertain to developers. As for the third item, I've changed the talk page to use a little CSS hackery; hopefully it looks reasonable. GracenotesT § 14:25, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
    Concerning the second point, examples of pages that exhibit the problem would also be helpful. What would the effect be of using the div in older browsers, or the interaction of using both in newer browsers? Also, I've noticed that some browsers will initially jump to the correct anchor, but later as the images on the page are loaded the scroll position is not updated. Is this the issue, and is it truly fixed by changing to divs or were the images simply cached for the div-using test? Anomie 14:51, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
    I made no reference to images, as I never noticed such situations. Is the case with the changing text indents due to changing image size? Div works perfectly in lists I know, e.g. Minor places in Middle-earth via redirects e.g. Dimrill Dale. Ugly linking with common A tag is present with all articles, though sometimes it works properly. By the way, at this moment redirects to section are not woking at all in my browser! Súrendil 15:42, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
    If the image size isn't specified in the HTML, the browser will insert a small placeholder box and expand it later when the image is actually downloaded. This can change text indents, and can change the line height for lines with inlined images and cause blocks to change size vertically, sometimes dramatically if the image is much larger or smaller than the placeholder. Late-loading CSS can cause similar issues, as can Javascript manipulating the page elements. FWIW, both the div and a anchors in Minor places in Middle-earth seem to be working fine in IE6, IE7, and Firefox 2.0.0.4. Which browser are you using? Anomie 16:12, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
    In Firefox it does work fine. Bugs appear in IE7. But I said, sometimes they appear, sometimes not.Súrendil 16:30, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

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

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

Thematic watchlists

May I and how create several personal watchlists for different topics? --Quellem 16:33, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

At the moment, each user only has one watchlist. If you don't mind the list being public, though, you can do something similar; create a user subpage (such as User:Quellem/Watchlist1) containing nothing but links to the articles you want to watch, and then the 'Related changes' in the toolbox will show a watchlist-like view of recent changes to those articles. Hope that helps! --ais523 16:46, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

There is a harder task which is to make such lists not using each word 'personally', but fitting each word to the list from a suitable (interesting for me) category. For instance, I tried to insert manually to my list every relevant astronomical term, but quickly understood this is not for a human being. Any programming proposals? --Quellem 18:27, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I recommend that you try the Special:Export function. In the upper bar, you can enter a category, and it'll generate a list of pages in that category (one page per line). Then, you can copy that list to a user subpage of yours, link the titles, and there it is. Just click Special:Relatedchangeslinked for your watchlist. SalaSkan (Review me) 20:28, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
What ye can now see is User:Quellem/Space. The problem is not that I forgot to press Enter after every article name, since those names are connected with _. The problem is not there are too many astronomical categories: I have written a half, methinks, already. The problem is that all those names are not interlinked. The task is to put double brackets (]]) before every space and ([[) after every one. Sadly I have not seen anything akin to 'Change to...' command in Word. Another programming proposals to me, for I am a foul lamer? --Quellem 14:56, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Now it seems to me the situation changed automatically. The only problem now is to delete png-picture files. --Quellem 15:14, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
For what it's worth, if you don't want to use search and replace functionality outside of Wikipedia (e.g., copy text to Word, edit it, paste back into the editing window, you can find javascript code at Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts#Editing that will do search and replace within the normal editing window. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:44, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Order by size

Hi! Does anyone know how I can make a list such as this one:

Category:B-Class Wikipedia 1.0 Arts articles|Anime and manga

Be ordered by article size, or by "what links here"? Or better yet, is there a guide or a manual somewhere for these things? Thanks! --SidiLemine 13:09, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not at all clear what you're asking, I think. Does the list that you want consist of articles in two (three?) different classes? (I ask because there are existing solutions for finding what articles are at the intersection of two categories.)
Secondly, I understand "ordered by article size", but how would you order by "what links here"? (Count the number of incoming links; order from most to least incoming?)
Finally, keep in mind that there are a lot of things that can be done with a database dump that simply can't be done in the live (MediaWiki) environment. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:49, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist programming wish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Using redirects to link to anywhere in an article

Have a look at how I set up Nature abhors a vacuum. Is this way of setting up a redirect to link to a paragraph within an article a good thing? Should the practice be more widespread? Carcharoth 16:23, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Quite a significant number of redirects like this exist. See Windows Search, Saved Search et al. As for this being widespread, I dont think there needs to be a formal guideline for that. Wherever editors feel linking to a specific title is more relevant, they can do it. Same for using {{anchor}} tags. --soum talk 16:31, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
(Just my opinion) I really dislike this practice. It may make extra work for readers with some spatial/cognitive disorders and in the case of all readers, it leaves them unexpectedly looking at one part of an article that lacks context until they scroll up and look at the whole picture. Very annoying when it happens. The rare exception to this, in which relevance takes over, is section links whose content is distinct, such as WP:WAX, which goes to part of WP:ATA. In those cases, it is just about tolerable. Adrian M. H. 16:34, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Like everything else, of course this can be misused, but used properly can be a great organizational and navigational aid. And since its very hard to document all its possible uses, I said whether to use it or not is best left to the editors' discretion. --soum talk 16:42, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
BTW, such redirects (using section title instead of an explicit anchor) tend to get broken when someone renames the target section. --217.151.225.40 18:43, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes. I was hoping that people would spot that I used an explicit anchor, but some didn't. Carcharoth 13:22, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Per Wikipedia:Redirect (I just changed it, adding content from another guideline), when creating a redirect to a heading, you're supposed to add a hidden comment about the redirect, at that heading, so that someone who changes the title can also change the redirect. And a bot got approved two weeks ago, to add these hidden comments. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:09, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Image with an & in the file name shown only as text link

On the page Johnny Fingers the image Image:JX, JP & KG.jpg appears as a link rather than displaying the actual image. This is the markup used: 

[[Image:JX, JP & KG.jpg|thumb|right|Johnnie Fingers with colleagues and friends JPR and Miumiu, August 2006]]

The actual image should appear. I assume this is related to the & in the filename. I asked this at MW:Project:Support desk#Image with an & in the file name shown only as text link and the only response I got was that it may be a caching problem. Is this a known issue? Thanks Patleahy 01:25, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Same problem as above. Anomie 02:02, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Patleahy 02:33, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

'[edit]' option for top section of the article

If someone wants to edit top section of the page he/she have to go through 'edit this page' tab which opens whole page for editing and if the page is large then it takes time, similarly preview also takes time. Providing '[edit]' link to the top section is solve this problem. Vjdchauhan 13:42, 18 July 2007 (UTC).

There is a script that does this. It adds a "0" link to the top of every page, since when you edit the lead (top section) of an article, you are editing section 0. The script is located here; just copy and paste the contents of that page into your monobook.js. GracenotesT § 14:08, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Another script which does the same but creates [edit] link. This was also discussed on bugzilla: bugzilla:156. P.S. I guess it's time to add this question to Wikipedia:Technical FAQ… ∴ Alex Smotrov 14:22, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

editing large articles causes technical problems

People editing large articles are not always aware of this. For huge articles, say, 400KB+, this can cause breakage on days when the server is very busy. I had intermittent problems editing Wikipedia:List of missing journals until I discovered the section 0 trick and added the edit link. Two suggested workarounds: 1) make the monobook.js with the [0] tab included one of the scripts listed in the preferences, or 2) a robot that automatically adds the edit {{Edit-first-section}} template to articles big enough to cause technical problems. Even if you do the first, the 2nd is very desirable. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:18, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Tibetan

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

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

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

Project template-tiger

Hello, I want to make a little bit advertisement for a project that extracts all datas from templates from the database dump.

Project page: de:Wikipedia:WikiProjekt Vorlagenauswertung/en
Startpage: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~kolossos/templatetiger/template-choice.php?lang=en
You can also make simple queries. --Kolossos 20:59, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Help us help the admins by providing an easy "Report copyright violation" link that goes to Wikipedia:Copyright problems on image pages. I felt like I was using up a good deal of time trying to find this page, when it could have been an easy link from the image page. Thanks! Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 16:41, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I suspect this will suply everything you need. It's some javascript (with instructions) that puts a number of links in your toolbox when looking at an image: "nominate for deletion", "no source", "copyright violation", etc. It tags the image, reports the problem, and notifies the uploader with one click. Very useful. – Quadell (talk) (random) 18:31, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea, but I use the cologneblue skin, and it doesn't seem to work with that. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 19:30, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Hide bot edits on "Related changes" pages

I have a simple request: Please give us the ability to exclude bot edits on "Related changes" pages. "Special:Recentchangeslinked" is used by some projects for project-level watches, and having to wade through bot edits can get annoying at times. Thanks! Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 16:00, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I'm a bot-runner, and even though my bots have community approval and are absolutely doing good, needed work, I still get complaints on my talk page about the bot "cluttering up rc". – Quadell (talk) (random) 16:31, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
I certainly appreciate the good work that most bots do, and that is certainly why I don't always need to review them when looking at recent changes. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 16:39, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Auto watch list question

I am interested in a system that might allow a group of editors to add a large number of selected articles relating to a specific Project to their watch list. Is there a simple way to find out if any existing bots do this? Is there an alternative method anyone knows of? Cheers Ben MacDui (Talk) 19:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Watchlist&action=raw ←BenB4 19:20, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Gotcha - thanks. Ben MacDui (Talk) 19:33, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Deletions by namespace

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

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

Interference fringes of doom.

I'm afraid there's no way to show this without a couple sample pictures, as it's a rescaling bug. It's most visible at around 400px, though it's visible to some extent at most resolutions except the very large.

As you can see, the fine lines that make up the sky in this engraving get turned into interference patterns, and not even consistent interference patterns. Why? Adam Cuerden talk 15:13, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

It's a Moiré pattern. Isn't it pretty? The pattern is not perfectly horizontal and consistent because the lines in the source image are not perfectly regular with respect to the pixel grid. Blurring it before scaling it would fix the problem, at the expense of fine detail. -- Tim Starling 16:48, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Ah, right! Just seemed odd the image was changing depending on what size I chose. (And aye, it is pretty. Just worried it might make an odd sky =) Adam Cuerden talk 17:01, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Weird diff

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

The edit is a production of Goatse in Wiki Table [sic] format—and at least to a user who, as I, is possessed of minimal technical competence, a darn good one—and so was properly identified as vandalism; no worries. Joe 05:58, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I see that the edit about which you were concerned was your revert of the adduced diff; my bad. In any case, there is, once more, no problem here; 70.55.84.49 simply removed the Goatse depiction without reverting the excision of text, and you addressed the latter issue.  :) Joe 06:12, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

New template

{{Talkback}} Tell me what you think. My first venture in templating. --Edokter (Talk) 19:05, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to template design! A good first effort, too. But, I'm not sure that this gives any advantage over simply providing a link to the discussion and signing it if you want to notify them. It's a bit too "high-viz" as well. Adrian M. H. 20:53, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
My idea was not having to clutter up the other person's talk page, and to mimic Wikimedia's messagebox. Having to remove it is a bit of a downside, but at least it gets your attention :) PS. Is there a talk page where template design is discussed more in-depth? --Edokter (Talk) 21:09, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Here are some resources (presumably their talk pages can be used for questions):
Hope that helps. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:36, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
I think that is a very good attempt, and I like the idea. To be honest I hate it when people reply on their own talkpage because I have to keep checking their talkpage to see if they've replied. That template would be useful in that sense. But wouldn't it just be easier if we replied on our talkpages, and then copied and pasted the message onto the recipient's talkpage too like I do? I find it keeps the conversation together, while the person I'm talking to gets the message alert. Brilliant! Lradrama 11:34, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
If you want to mimic the New messages bar, it would be better to use <div class="usermessage"> template contents </div>. There are people who have customised their new messages bar . Harryboyles 11:44, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
I actually copied those parameter from .usermessage, but without the font-weight as I needed non-bold, but yes, it would be better. (Update) I've fixed it. --Edokter (Talk) 12:22, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
I think copying and pasting the entire message invloves more work then just adding the template. Plus, it really gets the other person to your message a lot faster. Post something on my talk page for a little demontration... --Edokter (Talk) 12:43, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
I've done the test and it worked well! Keep working on it. Lradrama 17:35, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
No doubt I will; just added an edit link. --Edokter (Talk) 18:05, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Customising the text labels on tabs

Someone recently introduced me to a technique for customising the labels of the tabs (from Edit this page to edit, for example) using: 

    if(document.getElementById('ca-edit')) {
        document.getElementById('ca-edit').firstChild.innerHTML = 'Edit';
    }
})

But I cannot get this to work. I checked this code against the user's own JS page and I could not see any differences, I cleared my cache and purged the server cache, but the only effect was negative - it caused Twinkle's CSD tab to vanish. I should be able to do this, but I must be missing something. Adrian M. H. 16:42, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Did you do it just like that, or is that inside of an onload function? You could also look at my version, I've only tested it with Monobook in FF2 but it shouldn't break too badly in other setups. Anomie 17:05, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
The script above is missing the 1st line (see below) ∴ Alex Smotrov 17:19, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
addOnloadHook(function(){
Ah, I see. The other user didn't provide that line and I didn't notice it in his JS page (might have been further up), so it never occurred to me that an entire line might be missing. Thanks very much, Alex and Anomie. Adrian M. H. 18:16, 18 July 2007 (UTC)


You should probably also check that that $wgNamespaceNumber != -1 to avoid obnoxious js errors on special pages .. if you care about that, that is :D. AmiDaniel (talk) 08:19, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

That code there already checks to see if an edit tab is present; there wouldn't be one on a special page, so there's no problem in that regard. --ais523 17:14, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Thus far, I have had no problems with special pages, using Anomie's code, so it appears to be OK in practical terms, but thanks for the info. Adrian M. H. 17:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Stewards question

From a discussion on Wiktionary (copied and pasted here):

Note: the users are linked to their Wiktionary accounts here:

Why is it that steward access works on meta and here on Wikipedia only, yet any other Wikimedia project can list them but it does not work?? Interested to know! --SunStar Net talk 22:25, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Stewards usually only have the steward permission on Meta, although it's described as a global permission; steward operations are normally performed through the Meta user interface itself. This is a matter of convention, not a technical restriction. 86.133.208.191 22:20, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Sign-in problems ...& MSIE "vs." Mozilla

Hello! I have a technical problem. I am a newcomer on Wiki and the exact opposite of a nerd, so this may be the wrong place to ask or I may be making some other mistake, and I know you all have other things to do. Please forgive me in that case. I have asked real-life friends for help, but they doubt the problem is with my computer.

To the point:
1. I created my Wiki account about a week ago. I got an e-mail, which I was asked to browse to confirm my account. I did that (any number of times), but only got to the "confirmation invalid" page. Now, I happened to be logged in over the deadline and a nice older colleague told me my account was verified by that. But I had also asked for the e-mail connection, and that part gave the same result when I asked for it anew today. I had protracted problems with my e-mail server last week, but when it did function, only this seemed not to.
2.a) Browsing with Microsoft Explorer: Every time I turn pages (whether by search&go, topflap, link without or -in a box), I get error messages (which I just okay away). Most often: "Line: 672 / Character: 35 / Error: '}' expected / Code: 0". But some hour ago, it changed to: "Line: 673 / Character: 8 / Error: '}' expected / Code: 0". With the former error, I seemed to have no further problem within a page. At the same time as the latter turned up (connection or not?), it became impossible to make a redirect. I checked my typing many times over, but all I got was a normal article text reading: "1. REDIRECT", and then the target word in normal size.
2.b) Using Mozilla Firefox, the page turning works allright. Instead, as far as I have discovered, some section "edit" marks are displaced up or down, and on the "edit" subpage, a hotchpotch of words (from those handled by the last few editors, it seems) appear underlined in red. The editing works somewhat erratically.
Both these browser problems appear, as far as I have discovered, only in the English Wikipedia. Not on other Wikipedias I have peeped into, nor on my e-mail or Google.
Can somebody help me, or repost this letter to the right authority? I would be infinitely grateful. Yours sincerely, Keinstein 20:29, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I cannot answer your question on IE errors, as I don't trust MSIE enough to run it on anything but Microsoft's update site (and, most of the time, the computer I'm using doesn't even have MSIE), but as to your other questions:
  1. The email verification is only for sending/receiving email messages via the "email this user" function, and for recovering a lost password. You could try going to your preferences and requesting the email confirmation again there.
  2. Redirects do show as "1. REDIRECT [[Example]]" when edited directly. It should still work, unless you added extra whitespace before the redirect.
  3. The misplaced section edit links are a known issue; see Wikipedia:How to fix bunched-up section edit links for more information.
--cesarb 00:37, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Many thanks for taking time with me!
And yes, I have to remember to check the whole process before I assume something is wrong.
...but...please get me right, I'm not blaming you - I still can't make the e-mail service work. Perhaps I have to let my real-life friends supervise if I'm consistently missing some obscure button after all...
...and as to MSIE, I must confess I am a little puzzled. I've understood it's not very popular, but to me, this far, these error messages apart, it seems to work better than Mozilla. (??) Keinstein 11:44, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
See Criticism of Internet Explorer for more detail. --cesarb 23:39, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll do so! Keinstein 16:01, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Not found error only in a citation template

Hello, and pardon if this is my error or I overlooked an obvious reason. Under the "External links" section in Minneapolis Post Office, why does the U.S. Postal Service not find a url inside a cite web template and does in a simple link? Looking back in the edit history, 1) a simple link works, 2) cite web template fails to connect, and 3) a visual approximation of cite web but again a simple link works. (To maybe save some time, I'll copy this question to both the Village Pump technical and the cite web talk page.) Thank you. -Susanlesch 03:05, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Because the link in question contains a pipe character which is used in MediaWiki to separate template parameters. Converting the pipe into the URL encoded version (%7C) makes it work: link. This much shorter link also works. Mike Dillon 03:17, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Any update on Unified Login support

Any update on Unified Login support whereby same user-database will be used on all of Wikipedia's sister projects. Vjdchauhan 20:52, 21 July 2007 (UTC).

[5]. AmiDaniel (talk) 22:00, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Internal Link to Disambiguation page should throw warning

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

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

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

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

!vote icons script

I know this page isn't really intended to deal with user scripts, but I figured I would probably get a quick answer here. =)

I'm using the script that adds the !vote icons to vote pages. How could I restrict the pages on which this script initializes, such as only on AFD discussions? GrooveDog (talk) 02:33, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

See the if(wgNamespaceNumber==0) return; bit? You can just add some more if() or a switch() there to cause the script to abort, if certain conditions are not met. Some useful js variables for this would be wgPageName and wgTitle. --Splarka (rant) 07:31, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Since when do we add vote icons to AFD discussions? I thought that idea had been soundly rejected. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:40, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, please do not add icons to your voting script. For some background information, note that {{Support}} and {{Oppose}} are salted, and see these two discussions: at AfD and at RfA. It seems clear they have been rejected. --Iamunknown 01:58, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
I presume the script being referred to is User:Ais523/votesymbols.js. This only affects the appearance of the page for the person using the script and not other users, which avoids the problems mentioned above. Tra (Talk) 02:19, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Ah! Then script away. :P --Iamunknown 02:29, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
If you are referring to my script (whose whole purpose is for people who like the icons to be able to see them without forcing them on anyone else), contact me on my talk page if you have a specific feature request for it. --ais523 16:29, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Two AFDs Stuck With An Invisible Template That Shouldn't Be There

On Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2007 July 22 there are two entries (separate from each other) that have {{Discussion blanked}} stuck on them:

The AfD pages themselves seem fine; the templates are not there:

The templates aren't there, yet on the log page, they're stuck with the two. -WarthogDemon 17:17, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

NOTE - The tag on the first one seems to have vanished. -WarthogDemon 18:03, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Someone transcluded Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Moshe Aryeh Friedman twice, then someone else fixed the first but left the second intact. I removed it. --Derlay 23:28, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Category watch needs improvement

  • I am sue this would have been raised earlier as well but couldn't find on FAQ pages so here it goes. I would like to know whether this proposal is being taken up or is rejected altogether.
Category watch should report addition and deletions of a page to the category (one level only). Vjdchauhan 20:52, 21 July 2007 (UTC).
Category watch should report changes made to pages in a category again one level only and may be restricted to articles appearing on first page of the category if the category is quite large. Vjdchauhan 20:52, 21 July 2007 (UTC).
I think related changes link does recursive check thus it goes into subcategories, and also goes to pages (not this in the category/subcategory) which are linked to pages under the category through internal links.


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

Some images don't appear

It seems that some images don't appear at certain sizes. Of the 19 pictures in the two galleries here, I can only see ten of them. Sometimes I'll add a picture, not see it, change the px parameter slightly and then I will see it. I have this problem using Firefox, IE and Opera. All show or don't show the same images. This has been bothering me for months and months, I finally decided to ask about it.-- ☑ SamuelWantman 07:39, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Now then. I can see 18 of the 19 images. The first one doesn't appear for me. On the bottom left of my display monitor (above 'Start') it says Done, but with errors on page. Don't know why. Lradrama 10:48, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
18 of 19 showed up for me as well, and checking that one that didn't (Image:Bridge151.jpg) revealed that it was deleted on 2007-06-02 under CSD I4. So I replaced it with the image from the linked article, and now all are fine. Does this only happen for you with Wikipedia, or all Wikimedia projects, or does it occur on other sites as well? Anomie 13:37, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, thanks Anomie, they all appear for me now. Lradrama 20:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

This happens on all wikiprojects, for example, 6 images don't appear on this category page in commons. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 10:46, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Need help!

I need help with regards to templates. For more information, please view this page. I feel that it is paramount to achieve consistency with regards to templates. If anyone knows how to correct this, it would be much appreciated. --Siva1979Talk to me 05:21, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

The red link is gone now so all articles with cat should end up at Category class articles. --Hdt83 Chat 05:40, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

CSS

I have (again) a CSS related question: How can I override the personal userlinks? Specifically, I'd like my userpage link go to my "welcome" page. It must have something to do with the #pt-userpage value, but I have no idea about the proper syntax. —AldeBaer (c) 17:52, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think you can do that with CSS, but it shouldn't be too hard with JavaScript. Try copying and pasting the following three lines of code to your monobook.js page:
addOnloadHook(function () {
    document.getElementById("pt-userpage").getElementsByTagName("a")[0].href = "/wiki/User:AldeBaer/welcome";
});
—Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:04, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Works perfectly - you're totally my hero!! If I may ask another question: Where can I best learn stuff like that? —AldeBaer (c) 19:14, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

A great place is WikiProject User Scripts. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 06:05, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

screening deletion log

Is there any way of screening of filtering the deletion log so it shows only deletions of articles from mainspace? I'm trying to analyze recent speedy deletions WT:CSD/Analysis, and I want to eliminate the 80% or so that are images, talk pages, redirects, user pages, and so forth to speed up work on the rest. DGG (talk) 04:39, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

See also above, #Deletions by namespace. GracenotesT § 04:53, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
From which I gather that the only direct way to do it is currently disabled. Does anyone know a work-around?DGG (talk) 04:23, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Automatic addition of inline citations

Has anyone seen or heard of a solution that allows users to automatically generate citation code for WP articles? If you are wondering what I am talking about, see auto-cite proposal. Thanks for your comments and feedback. dr.ef.tymac 20:32, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Template help

I have created the template {{Age in weeks}} for use on List of ATP number 1 ranked players, for example. I need help making it always round down even if it should round up; a floor function or something? —MC Snowy · (talk) 18:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand if you want to round up or down, but see {{roundup}} and {{rounddown}}. --PEJL 18:25, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you! That led me to {{floor}} which works. I wanted to round down… —MC Snowy · (talk) 19:33, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Gallery/image issue?

Hi, I'm having an issue with galleries or images, not sure which, on this page: User:Wickethewok/images. On this page, the first image under "Professional images" is not showing. In general, I can't get the image (Image:Sasha2.jpg) to show up as a thumbnail. FYI, I recently moved this to Commons along with a few other images, but this one is giving me problems. Does anyone know why it won't show up? Much thanks! Wickethewok 17:12, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion for watchlist - linking to new sections

When you create a new section of a talk page with the + tab, the edit summary in the watchlist does not provide a section link or the /* */ syntax that indicates section editing. I propose adding this syntax and link (the → link) so that it is easier to follow a link from the watchlist directly to the new section. I'll open a feature request bug if others agree. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:42, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

This is a great idea. The only thing is, it would be useful for the edit summery that is generated to be able to be distinguished from the one generated when someone edits the section and leaves the default summary, e.g. have it say +/* Example section */ instead of /* Example section */. Tra (Talk) 16:12, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, the entire edit summary is already automatic - the software takes the section title and uses that as the edit summary. So instead of FOO the software could easily use "/* FOO */ (new section)" or something like that. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:15, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Rendering problem

Rendering problem in the Theodore Roosevelt article. Click for detail.

Sometimes I see a picture render over text in a Wikipedia article. Is this a problem with my browser (firefox 2.0.0.4) or with Wikipedia? My uneducated guess is that the judgment of when text should wrap needs to be more strict. Tempshill 05:45, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to the wonderful world of CSS wierdness. I see the same problem you do, using IE 7.0.5730.11 and Firefox 2.0.0.5 browsers running on WinXP. I see similar problems with Apocalypto#Notes with Firefox (look at notes 2, 6, 8, 10, 11) but not with IE. IE displays the notes on this article in a single column, Firefox in two columns. Using {{reflist|2}} instead of the raw HTML/CSS currently used doesn't solve the problem. I'm not very good with CSS, so I'm not looking deeper at this. -- Boracay Bill 06:55, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
IE doesn't display the notes in two columns because IE doesn't support the CSS3 column-count property. Anomie 13:39, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
It's a known bug in Firefox; see bug 41412 and its related bug reports. --cesarb 19:19, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Search Robot exclusion?

Is there a way to exclude a wikipedia page from search engines? For example, Wikipedia:List of gay, lesbian or bisexual people/To be sorted is an internal WikiProject page that we're using to determine if people have referenced sources that claim that they're LGBT. But it often shows up when I'm Google-ing for those references :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 20:52, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there is, and it's done for VfD, for instance. See /robots.txt. --cesarb 00:20, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks - I've put in a request at bugzilla for our page to be added to the robots.txt. Much appreciated! -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 15:32, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Once a request/bug has been reported at bugzilla, can I expect any reply or anything? Something to let me know the developers or *someone* has seen it? I looked through the site and didn't see any documentation on that aspect :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 15:46, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

"What redirects here"

There doesn't seem to be a way to tell what pages redirect to a given page, other than to look through "What links here". In my case, I want to know what templates redirect to {{WikiProject Biography}}. I happen to know that Template:WikiProject Biography is a redirect there. Are there any others? It appears to me that the only way to tell is to go through the "What links here" list, and since there are 380,000 pages that transclude this template, that's a bit prohibitive. Any ideas? – Quadell (talk) (random) 11:39, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

There is no general "What redirects here", but in this case you can select in "What links here" the template namespace.--Patrick 12:19, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
That works in this case. Thanks! – Quadell (talk) (random) 16:27, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
User:Barticus88 has created an enhanced version of "What links here" which can filter by redirects. Insert importScript('User:Barticus88/WhatLinksHere.js'); into your monobook.js file. Harryboyles 13:58, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
It's nice, but it only filters one page's worth at a time. For my example, it says there are no redirects, because there are none on the first page. – Quadell (talk) (random) 16:27, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Solution 1: Use the api.php backlinks query to fetch the list of backlinks for the page and then use the api.php prop=info query on those titles to see which ones are redirects. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:39, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Subpages (in article talk namespace)

What should be done so that Talk:I/O request packets is *not* a sub-page of Talk:I ? --soum talk 08:04, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

You could move the article to Talk:IO request packets or maybe use some unicode form of "/". If neither of those is attractive, then I'm afraid there's not really much you can do, except maybe hide the linkback with css tricks. AmiDaniel (talk) 08:13, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
The fact that it's a subpage doesn't really matter, I think. It's a designation by software that only means something when you want it to :) GracenotesT § 12:42, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
But the link to Talk:I looks odd.--Patrick 13:45, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 Done with CSS hackery. I'm sure no one cares either way :) GracenotesT § 13:59, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Ewwww ... you hack you :). Just so you know, that'll probably break on non-monobook skins. Suffices for my tastes though :>. AmiDaniel (talk) 03:36, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, it's really ugly for people who don't have the default colors, font sizes, skin, etc. [6]. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:30, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
If we really cared, this could probably be fixed with a magic template and a bit of site-wide javascript, similar to the way {{wrongtitle}} works. Not sure if anyone does, though. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:18, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

I've completed much of the work on my dead link checking script. With this script, you may check a single page or entire category of pages for bad and dead links. Each link detected will be given a score based on its error code, content-type, and redirection. This way it can elevate 'soft' 404 error or servers sending out a bad MIME type. The results are colored according to their rank progressing from red to green and group by page. If you’re using Firefox, click the "Use javascript" button to enable enhancements that let you preview the page, built-in search types for locating the link again, and submitting the changes to Wikipedia using your account. I'm currently looking for some feed back over the interface and methods for searching replacement links. —Dispenser 23:20, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Image with an & in the file name shown only as text link

On the page Johnny Fingers the image Image:JX, JP & KG.jpg appears as a link rather than displaying the actual image. This is the markup used: 

[[Image:JX, JP & KG.jpg|thumb|right|Johnnie Fingers with colleagues and friends JPR and Miumiu, August 2006]]

The actual image should appear. I assume this is related to the & in the filename. I asked this at MW:Project:Support desk#Image with an & in the file name shown only as text link and the only response I got was that it may be a caching problem. Is this a known issue? Thanks Patleahy 01:25, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Same problem as above. Anomie 02:02, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Patleahy 02:33, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Main Page modifications

Per Wikipedia:Help_desk#Technical_Questions and MediaWiki_talk:Common.css#Main_Page_title_coding. I was looking at other outlets to get this issue answered. Thank you. --User:Charitwo/Sig 01:06, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

'[edit]' option for top section of the article

If someone wants to edit top section of the page he/she have to go through 'edit this page' tab which opens whole page for editing and if the page is large then it takes time, similarly preview also takes time. Providing '[edit]' link to the top section is solve this problem. Vjdchauhan 13:42, 18 July 2007 (UTC).

There is a script that does this. It adds a "0" link to the top of every page, since when you edit the lead (top section) of an article, you are editing section 0. The script is located here; just copy and paste the contents of that page into your monobook.js. GracenotesT § 14:08, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Another script which does the same but creates [edit] link. This was also discussed on bugzilla: bugzilla:156. P.S. I guess it's time to add this question to Wikipedia:Technical FAQ… ∴ Alex Smotrov 14:22, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

editing large articles causes technical problems

People editing large articles are not always aware of this. For huge articles, say, 400KB+, this can cause breakage on days when the server is very busy. I had intermittent problems editing Wikipedia:List of missing journals until I discovered the section 0 trick and added the edit link. Two suggested workarounds: 1) make the monobook.js with the [0] tab included one of the scripts listed in the preferences, or 2) a robot that automatically adds the edit {{Edit-first-section}} template to articles big enough to cause technical problems. Even if you do the first, the 2nd is very desirable. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:18, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

There has recently been discussion on a talk page to change the newly added interwiki links on the geohack. To see an example on how these interwiki links look like go here. The idea is to add a code to the Magnus' toys that finds any interwiki links in the Template and changes them into interwiki links to the geohack.

A few flaws are in the current interwiki links.

  • It's unusually placed at the top of the page instead of the normal bottom right bar.
  • It doesn't render the entire link, such as type, scale and region.
  • It has problems understanding some of the country codes
  • Adding new interwiki links the right way is difficult, you will have to go trough 10 different templates and add the link.

I believe it would be best if we would avoid the discussion to spread trough many places and continued the discussion at the original talk page, instead of here. Thank you. --Steinninn 13:07, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Help moving over existing page

I wanted to have the article "Hybrid ARQ" under the expanded title, "Hybrid automatic repeat-request", and redirect to it from the abbreviated title. I created a new page with the expanded title, pasted the content from the old page, and replaced the content in the old page with redirect code. But then I read that this is bad because it does not preserve the content history. So I reverted "Hybrid ARQ" to its old state and deleted the new content of "Hybrid automatic repeat-request". Then I renamed "Hybrid automatic repeat-request" to "Hybrid ARQ (temp)" and planned to rename "Hybrid ARQ" to the expanded title. But I can't because the page "Hybrid automatic repeat-request" still exists (and redirects to "Hybrid ARQ (temp)"). How to solve this mess? -Pgan002 05:14, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requested moves is the place to be. In the mean time, I've redirected Hybrid automatic repeat-request to Hybrid ARQ. --Edokter (Talk) 08:51, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
You just need an administrator to delete the leftover redirect. Done. Now you can move the page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:33, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Captchas when reverting

I've found that when I try to revert simple page blankings I'm required to fill in a captcha because of the external links that are being added back. When did this happen? This is becomming a large annoyance when fighting vandals and my patience for this recent change is wearing thin. --Android Mouse 23:28, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

As far as I was aware it's only supposed to affect anons and newly registered users, it's one of the reasons I hardly ever edit as an anon anymore. --VectorPotentialTalk 23:37, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
That makes sense, since I tried reverting on this account and didn't get it. How long until I can use the account I created today for vandal fighting without having to deal with the captcha? --Android Mouse 23:47, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Should be 4 days from whenever you registered your new account until you get an autoconfirmed flag, after that you should be able to revert without getting the CAPTCHA. --VectorPotentialTalk 23:49, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Ok, thanks. --Android Mouse 23:50, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Editprotected request at Cite web

See Template talk:Cite web#Parameter language. The span wrapping $language was specifying an apparently superfluous position, which I'm told was causing display errors in one or more versions of IE. I've removed that, for the time being, if anybody wants to have a look. The rest of that request has more to do with whether $language should be bolded or not -- for that, I figure we need some more discussion. Input welcomed and requested. – Luna Santin (talk) 20:13, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

A small CSS bug (I think) in IE6: when an external link wrap to the next line, the link icon disappears. Actually, it moves to the very end of the next line, and you can still see the top of the icon. I can't actually find where this is defined; I found a whole slew of a.external classes in main.css, except for regular http: links. But I think it is related to the following: 

background: url(external.png) center right no-repeat;

Firefox displayes it correctly. --Edokter (Talk) 13:21, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Simple solution: don't use IE6. :P
All seriousness aside, IE6 has numerous CSS-related issues. The CSS code you provided really is proper for the effect that the software is going for; the fact that it breaks in IE6 is unfortunate (plus, external link text probably shouldn't be two lines anyway; almost always, you can provide shorter link text and then a description next to it). EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:54, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Polar co-ordinates and boundaries (template:co-ord)

Can anyone with an insight into technical issues involving maps have a look at Template_talk:Coord#Co-ordinates_for_polar_locations and the discussion below that one as well, please? Thanks. Carcharoth 13:15, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

All these database lags

Is someone working onfixing them? I made a major edit to an article I had hoped would have help save it, but when I pressed save, it didn't do the usual This is only a preview page it went straight to the page, but with none of my edits! Hitting the back button showed no sign of my edits having ever been done, so I couldn't do my usual copy+paste+save. I looked at my watchlist, where I was confirmed that the site had a major database lag of 157 seconds. If anyone could at the very least help me find at lest a quarter of my edits to the Non-canonical spells in Harry Potter page, I'd be much obliged. Therequiembellishere 17:22, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Mine and Andre's fault, probably. The database lag is typically caused by user renames. To be honest, though, it doesn't cause problems like you described. Sometimes during an edit conflict, instead of saying there's been an edit conflict, it just acts as if it's saved your edits. --Deskana (banana) 19:29, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
But there wasn't an edit conflict! (If you look around the time this was made, you'll see an edit I made, and one and little bit after this by GlassCobra, I believe. Mine should be between those) I think I just had some weird anomaly. I've remade my edits, so I don't really care anymore, but it would be something to look out for. Therequiembellishere 20:38, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Monobook CSS infobox class: text-align:left

Here's an example
This will wrap:                             It shows the odd wrapping in Firefox 2.0.0.4, and IE6 and IE7 via Wine
Anomie 21:26, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Currently infoboxes inherit text-align:justify from the bodyContent class (in MediaWiki:Monobook.css). This can look ugly, because it creates huge gaps; see for example Universal Serial Bus, where in "Number of devices" there is such a big space between "Number" and "of" that "of" is closer to the text in the right hand column than to "Number". I think it makes sense to add text-align:left to infoboxes to fix this. Headings should be unaffected since they have text-align:center set manually on them. Hairy Dude 20:46, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Hrm, it looks just fine in my browser (Safari 2.0/Mac). What are you using? Can you provide a screenshot? EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:48, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
This may be a result of having Misc > Justify paragraphs enabled in Special:Preferences. Tra (Talk) 20:56, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
I think you're right. For the record, I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.5 on Ubuntu Feisty. I still think the change is a good idea - I'm not going to give up nicely justified article text for slightly better-looking infoboxes. Hairy Dude 21:00, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
You could put .infobox {text-align:left} into your own monobook.css so that it appears just for you. Tra (Talk) 21:25, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Same Firefox version, same Ubuntu, seeing the same mess. Let me try to dream up a global fix for this -- there are lots of us Ubuntians out there :). AmiDaniel (talk) 22:09, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist

I'm not sure if this has ever been discussed, but I was wondering if its possible to include the time/date of the edits made on a watchlist. Pats Sox Princess 20:35, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

It already does, or am I being dim and missing your point? (Which happens!) Adrian M. H. 20:46, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
To clarify, when I view my watchlist, I see a list of edits under a date heading, but the time the edit was made isn't shown. Pats Sox Princess 20:49, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh, then I guess it's your watchlist that is missing something rather than me! It should show the time of each edit, regardless of whether you use enhanced changes, all recent edits, or whatever setting you choose. Adrian M. H. 20:52, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Do you know how to correct that problem then? Pats Sox Princess 21:11, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
No, otherwise I would have provided the answer. I have never seen this before. Adrian M. H. 21:13, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Are you sure? Here is an entry from my watchlist (pulled off the top):
 (diff) (hist) . . User talk:Moe Epsilon‎; 22:41 . . (+1,168) . . Rbellin (Talk | contribs | block) (→Lists - an agony in eight fits - reply)
Note the time: 22:41. Prodego talk 22:43, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

OMG. I can't believe I never noticed the time. I'm used to looking at Special Contribs, and just learning to use the watchlist. I guess the fact that the time is in a different place in the watchlist than Special Contribs through me off. Pats Sox Princess 23:34, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, we really need to standardize all this crap. If contribs lists entries one way, wl and logs should probably do the same. AmiDaniel (talk) 17:32, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
That's bugged me for a long time too. The fixed length fields should be first in the line so more items line up. Note also that a history item contains the date. Or maybe that's specific to my settings, as mine shows seconds too: Recent changes:
(diff) (hist) . . Oneworld destinations‎; 11:17:07 . . (+4) . . 213.158.196.65 (Talk) (IB fly's to warsaw now:))
Article History:
(cur) (last)  2007-07-26T11:17:31 Malkageffen (Talk | contribs) (6,740 bytes) (undo)
The difference between (cur) and (last) has always puzzled me, as does the meaning of the labels. (I muddle through by ignoring (cur)). —EncMstr 18:31, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
(cur) is the difference to the current revision; (last) is the difference to the revision before the one you clicked last on. --ais523 08:24, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, if its possible, everything should be standardized. Make time go to the right of the pagename, and get rid of (cur) and (last)--just use (diff) Pats Sox Princess 19:38, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Oooooooo nooooooo! Please put the times to the left of the page name, so they line up. And delta sizes to the left of the name too. —EncMstr 20:02, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Yeah I meant left. Right wouldn't line them up correctly. Pats Sox Princess 21:13, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Idea for a possibly useful template

The context would be article content something like: 

Dawkins says that Caddis larvae are among most remarkable creatures on earth.<ref>{{harv|Dawkins|2006|p=238}}</ref>
[...]
== References ==

<references/>
[...]

== Bibliography ==

  • Dawkins, Richard (2006), written at New York, (30th Anniversary ed.), United States: Oxford Press, Inc., 0-19-929115-2 {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help).

</nowiki>

All of that currently exists, of course.

The first bit with the {{Harv}} puts an entry in the References list containing an item which wikilinks to the matching citation in the Bibliography section. There may be several of these linking to the same book citation with different page numbers. If one follows the wikilinks, it is necessary to use the browser's page history (via the Back button, etc.) to back up from the Bibliography list entry to the Reference section item from whence one came. There is a clickable backlink at the References section item which links back to the ref in the article text. Most navigation to between refs and notes/cites is done with clickable links and backlinks. This need for the Back button to be used is an exception to that user interface convention.

My idea is that it might be useful to have a template ( {{Back}}? ) which could be placed immediately prior to {{Citation}} in the above context example and which would insert an icon ( ^ would do fine, like other backlink icons ) which, if clicked, went one page back in the article history (back to the page showing the References list item from whece the user came).

My javascript skills are very rusty, and I'm not sure whether javascript can be used inside of a template. Comments? Have I OD'd on wikiedits today? -- Boracay Bill 08:05, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I've browsed around a bit and AFAICT, scripting which would accomplish this is not supported in Wikipedia, including in templates. This could be accomplished via an external link to an outside helper page but, though I haven't seen that disallowed by policy or by guidelines, I expect that this would meet with disapproval (besides being flakey). -- Boracay Bill 02:01, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Autoblock duration

I've always assumed the autoblocker sets a duration of 24 hours, when we block somebody with autoblocks enabled. I've seen a few cases where someone's autoblock seemed to outlast their original block, though. In cases where fewer than 24 hours remain on the original block, is the autoblock duration still 24 hours? – Luna Santin (talk) 22:04, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes. --cesarb 23:36, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I thought that was fixed a long while back? Dragons flight 23:39, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Bugzilla?

Hi, all! I reported a request (not actually a bug) to Bugzilla.wikimedia.org several days ago. Will I hear something back from them? What's the process? Bugzilla doesn't seem well documented except for How to report a bug - everything else is a bit unclear. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 21:20, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Assuming you used a real email address, you'll get an email whenever there is a comment or status change posted. Given the work load of the devs, low priority requests can sometimes be ignored for very long periods of time, though. Dragons flight 21:31, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Auto watch list question

I am interested in a system that might allow a group of editors to add a large number of selected articles relating to a specific Project to their watch list. Is there a simple way to find out if any existing bots do this? Is there an alternative method anyone knows of? Cheers Ben MacDui (Talk) 19:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Watchlist&action=raw ←BenB4 19:20, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Gotcha - thanks. Ben MacDui (Talk) 19:33, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

New Favicon?

I am seeing a weird favicon now in my browser when i come to wp, its like a 3d box with red blue and light blue sides? Is that supposed to be there? When I request the url directly its the correct one. Is this a bug in IE or something? pw 13:14, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure not seeing it in Safari, so probably, yes. Nihiltres(t.l) 13:47, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
To be fair, Safari chaches favicons something awful. The image itself could change (or even the hard-coded reference to it) and you'd keep using the cached version. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:23, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

alt attributes

Is it possible, and if so how, to specify the alt attribute of an image a) when uploading the image and B) for an individual use of that image in an article? Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 13:21, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Just set a caption when adding the image to the article. --cesarb 13:37, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, that's better than nothing, but the caption often isn't suitable for use as alt text (which should not simply duplicate text on the page); and some templates don't have a linked caption facility (example: Delirious?), or editors don't want to use captions for aesthetic reasons. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 16:09, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Use it without 'thumb' to hide the caption. --Edokter (Talk) 16:19, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, but I don't understand what you mean. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 18:34, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Alternative text for images#Conflict between caption and alt text: "the image syntax has no way of specifying alt text that is different from the caption". -- Patleahy 20:47, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Which is a pity, really, because users of text readers often benefit from a more specific, literal description than you would normally expect to see as a caption. Adrian M. H. 20:51, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree. This was suggested as a new MediaWiki feature a long time ago, see [7]. -- Patleahy 21:24, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
"a more specific, literal description" sounds more like a "longdesc" attribute than "alt". Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 23:33, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
It does not have to be longer than a caption, it just helps at times if it is different. The ability to enter some longdesc text would be useful, but may not be worth implementing in practice. Adrian M. H. 17:11, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I tried to nominate my recently created article Bernard d'Abrera at Did You Know but I was unable to make the wikilink work properly: [8] --Filll 17:55, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Fixed it. What happened was that the link name had this ` and the article name had this'. It was recognized as two different names. I redirected the article so it always goes to the correct name. --Hdt83 Chat 18:59, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you very much.--Filll 20:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki microformat mark-up issues

For issues encountered when adding microformats to Wikipedia and other sites, using Media Wiki mark-up, please see [9]. Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 16:50, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

New usermessage

I originally had this in WP:VPA but decided to move it here. I was wondering if there is a way to make a usermessage similar to the orange "You have new messages" one. The new one would appear when a user page was edited by anyone other than the owner of the page. The message would probably be red and say something along the lines of "You have new vandalism." I realize that there probably would be a large amount of people against this as an official feature, but is there a way for it to be implemented as a user script? — Bob • (talk) • 22:40, July 26, 2007 (UTC)

The problem with such a feature is that there is no "owner" of a page. Wikipedia:Ownership of articles might be of interest to discussion participants. — Madman bum and angel (talk – desk) 00:15, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it's more-or-less possible to do it with JavaScript, but I hesitate to write such a script for the reason Madman mentions. GracenotesT § 00:43, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I thought it'd be okay since it would be only to a userpage, but I see that they too belong to the community. Thanks anyways, — Bob • (talk) • 02:06, July 27, 2007 (UTC)
I actually quite like your idea. My page has been vandalised quite a lot, and sometimes, it hasn't been noticed by others on RC Patrol, meaning someone could look at my page and see some vulgar language (or something else that usually gets put on by vandals) and I won't know unless I look at my watchlist. I think it's a good idea. Lradrama 13:30, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Open in New Tab

Having now become addicted to tabbed browsing, I find it frustrating that the Wikipedia search entry does not support this. I doubt that I am the first to raise this point. Is this the correct forum to mention this? --CloudSurfer 21:14, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Depends on your browser. I use Safari/Mac, and I can get it to show up in a tab just fine. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:22, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Try this in your javascript. --Splarka (rant) 07:43, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
addOnloadHook(function(){
  if(!document.getElementById('searchform')) return
  var search = document.getElementById('searchform');
  var check = document.createElement('input');
  check.setAttribute('type','checkbox');
  check.setAttribute('name','newwindow');
  check.setAttribute('id','newwindow');
  check.setAttribute('value','true');
  check.setAttribute('onclick','searchTargetSwap(this.checked);');
  search.appendChild(check);
  search.appendChild(document.createTextNode('new window'));
});

function searchTargetSwap(chkd) {
  var search = document.getElementById('searchform');
  if(chkd) {
    search.setAttribute('target','_blank');
  } else {
    search.setAttribute('target','');
  }
}

Alternative approach (without extra checkbox). Tested in IE 6 (hold Shift) and Firefox 1.5 (hold either Shift or Ctrl). You do not need the script in Opera 9.2, it has this functionality built-in (hold Shift) ∴ Alex Smotrov 15:17, 27 July 2007 (UTC) 

//hold  shift to open Go/Search in new windows 
addOnloadHook(function(){
 var but
 if (but=document.getElementById('searchGoButton')) but.onclick = newWinSearch
 if (but=document.getElementById('mw-searchButton')) but.onclick = newWinSearch
})
function newWinSearch(e){
 if (!e) var e = window.event
 this.form.target = (e.shiftKey || (is_gecko && e.ctrlKey)) ? '_blank' : ''
}

I've been running something like Sparkla's checkbox version for a few months: User:Mike Dillon/Scripts/searchNewWindow.js. Mike Dillon 18:03, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Whether or not this opens in a tab is controlled by browser settings for whether or not "_blank" windows open in a tab or window by default. There is no way in JavaScript to create a tab explicitly, at least no cross-browser way that I've seen. Mike Dillon 18:06, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

semi-protection indicator

The article Sea turtle is current semi-protected, yet I don't see the usual indicator on the top of the rendered page (while I'm logged on) that indicates that it is indeed semi-protected. Why is Sea turtle different from other semi-protected pages like George Bush ? - Bevo 16:30, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Because {{pp-semi-protected}} was not put on Sea turtle page. Personally, I find it very inefficient that protection requires 2 edits in history (protect + put template). Developers might fix it in future, see bugzilla:10347.
Also automatic protection notice now can be done with Javascript. I do not propose this at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) simply because nobody else will care, as usual ∴ Alex Smotrov 16:55, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I've added the template. Tra (Talk) 16:59, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, you can see it now. I think that problem has occured on various other pages around Wikipedia, I can't name any, but I'm sure I've come accross some on RC Patrol. Lradrama 13:27, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

User creation log doesn't go back past 25th July

I was trying to look up user accounts created between 15:00 and 15:20 on 20th July, but the log doesn't go back past 25th. Despite that, usernames created earlier do show up when searched for. Is there any way around that problem?
I neeed this information because it may be relevant to a vandal who utilized sockpuppets created several days before the actual attack in order to circumvent partial page protection. There is a gap between the creation times of two of his accounts - which may mean he has created one or more in between - so I want to check the list of accounts created in the corresponding period to see if any other were used in a manner that may suggest a connection with the vandal.--The Fifth Horseman 15:44, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

  • There appears to be a limitation on viewing logs past a certain point in the past, most likely for performance reasons. Aren't there database dumps you could download? -Nard 15:51, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Didn't know about that. After I checked the descriptions for the dump contents, however, none of them indicate - to my understanding - that they contain the user creation logs. Or am I just plain missing something I should have been aware of? --The Fifth Horseman 09:52, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
You want the "logging" dump. That contains all log entries, including user creation. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 10:43, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Sign-in problems ...& MSIE "vs." Mozilla

Hello! I have a technical problem. I am a newcomer on Wiki and the exact opposite of a nerd, so this may be the wrong place to ask or I may be making some other mistake, and I know you all have other things to do. Please forgive me in that case. I have asked real-life friends for help, but they doubt the problem is with my computer.

To the point:
1. I created my Wiki account about a week ago. I got an e-mail, which I was asked to browse to confirm my account. I did that (any number of times), but only got to the "confirmation invalid" page. Now, I happened to be logged in over the deadline and a nice older colleague told me my account was verified by that. But I had also asked for the e-mail connection, and that part gave the same result when I asked for it anew today. I had protracted problems with my e-mail server last week, but when it did function, only this seemed not to.
2.a) Browsing with Microsoft Explorer: Every time I turn pages (whether by search&go, topflap, link without or -in a box), I get error messages (which I just okay away). Most often: "Line: 672 / Character: 35 / Error: '}' expected / Code: 0". But some hour ago, it changed to: "Line: 673 / Character: 8 / Error: '}' expected / Code: 0". With the former error, I seemed to have no further problem within a page. At the same time as the latter turned up (connection or not?), it became impossible to make a redirect. I checked my typing many times over, but all I got was a normal article text reading: "1. REDIRECT", and then the target word in normal size.
2.b) Using Mozilla Firefox, the page turning works allright. Instead, as far as I have discovered, some section "edit" marks are displaced up or down, and on the "edit" subpage, a hotchpotch of words (from those handled by the last few editors, it seems) appear underlined in red. The editing works somewhat erratically.
Both these browser problems appear, as far as I have discovered, only in the English Wikipedia. Not on other Wikipedias I have peeped into, nor on my e-mail or Google.
Can somebody help me, or repost this letter to the right authority? I would be infinitely grateful. Yours sincerely, Keinstein 20:29, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I cannot answer your question on IE errors, as I don't trust MSIE enough to run it on anything but Microsoft's update site (and, most of the time, the computer I'm using doesn't even have MSIE), but as to your other questions:
  1. The email verification is only for sending/receiving email messages via the "email this user" function, and for recovering a lost password. You could try going to your preferences and requesting the email confirmation again there.
  2. Redirects do show as "1. REDIRECT [[Example]]" when edited directly. It should still work, unless you added extra whitespace before the redirect.
  3. The misplaced section edit links are a known issue; see Wikipedia:How to fix bunched-up section edit links for more information.
--cesarb 00:37, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Many thanks for taking time with me!
And yes, I have to remember to check the whole process before I assume something is wrong.
...but...please get me right, I'm not blaming you - I still can't make the e-mail service work. Perhaps I have to let my real-life friends supervise if I'm consistently missing some obscure button after all...
...and as to MSIE, I must confess I am a little puzzled. I've understood it's not very popular, but to me, this far, these error messages apart, it seems to work better than Mozilla. (??) Keinstein 11:44, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
See Criticism of Internet Explorer for more detail. --cesarb 23:39, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll do so! Keinstein 16:01, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

monobook.js

My monobook.js stopped responding. It doesn't work at all. How do I fix this? -FlubecaTalk 15:15, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Strings in JavaScript can't contain literal newlines. I think I've fixed your monobook.js for you; try bypassing your cache and seeing if it works then. --ais523 16:22, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
WooHoo! It works! Thanks! -FlubecaTalk 20:20, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Clearing my cache is something I always forget to do too! Mind-you, I've tried installing two anti-vandal tools via my monobook.js, and even with the cache cleared, I still can't get them to work... :-( Lradrama 13:22, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Deleting user scripts

It seems that {{db-userreq}} no longer works to delete user scripts, as the template is not expanded. Similarly, manually adding the script page to the deletion request categories fails. Any suggestions? Anomie 23:19, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, on .js/.css pages templates and links are not rendered but they are still "expanded" in some sense. Your userscript page does appear in Category:Candidates_for_speedy_deletion_by_user ∴ Alex Smotrov 23:40, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
How confusing... Thanks! Anomie 01:02, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Deleting orphaned categories.

I have recently moved all the articles from Category:Max Ernst paintings to the new Category:Paintings by Max Ernst to be more in keeping with the relevant naming convention. I assumed that categories disappear after you remove the parent categories, but the old category still exists with no links or contents. How do I get rid of it? Justin Foote 23:12, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

See WP:CSD#Categories. I think #1 should be applicable, which needs {{Db-catempty}}. Adrian M. H. 00:01, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

BAG membership nomination

As is the custom, to ensure openness and encourage community participation, I'm informing the technical community of a pending BAG membership nomination. All comments are welcomed, and all are treated equally. Madman bum and angel is the user in question, and you can view the debate here. As always, any comments you may wish to make on open BRFAs will be very welcome on their respective pages :). Thanks, Martinp23 18:55, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Ditto, for Daniel as well. Daniel 03:05, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Image problems

I was wondering if someone could take a look at the problem I posted about Here. After several people trying to help, the issue is still unresolved. I'd like to add that I've disabled Adblocking in Firefox 2.0.0.5, and have no add-ons running in IE7 (7.0.5730.11), and have disabled all of the native blocking services that came with it (I use IE7 specifically for various testing purposes, so nothing is blocked with it). I'm very computer savvy, software savvy, and I have done everything on my end I know of that would cause this issue. (Also I'd like to reiterate that I do see all other images on Wikipedia. I've never been to a page and not seen the images that were supposed to be there.) Any help you could provide would be appreciated. Thanks! Ariel♥Gold 10:31, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Very interesting problem. Seeing that you're an experienced user and considering your detailed description, I think it's safe to assume that you've considered the usual suspects. FWIW, the image does render fine for me in the latest Firefox stable, as well as developer nightly. The same is true for the six versions of Internet Explorer I have handy on this machine and for an older version of Opera. That's what leads me to believe that it's not the Gecko engine. Hmm, is it possible that there's a transparent ad-filtering proxy on your network or (this is less likely) on your upstream provider's network? Another possibility would be deliberate nullrouting (for instance via /etc/hosts or its Win32 equivalent)? I'm afraid that's pretty much all I can come up with at this point but I'll try to check if there's anything weird about the image (ISO 10918-1/2 non-compliance, etc.) when I get a minute. Cheers S up? 11:03, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
First, thank you very much for the prompt reply! I too am using Nightly tools, so I'm unsure what the issue could be. Here's the thing, if this were some blocking done from my end, then none of Wikipedia's images should be showing up for me, right? And it is definitely not a proxy issue on my end or my provider, lol, they don't block a single thing. I'm not sure what nullrouting is, but I strongly doubt that's it, (I'm running Win XPSP2 with all updates, and I have not edited my hosts file at all.)
I suspect that it is related to the /ad/ tag that is in the image's URL, but after someone else tried to re-upload it without success in removing that tag, I don't know what else to do. (FWIW, the image is completely mine, taken by me, with my camera, and has never been distributed other than my own private rarely visited web site.)Ariel♥Gold 11:17, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
It's not a tag; IIRC, it's the first two characters of the hexadecimal representation of a cryptographic hash on either the image's content or the image's name (I don't remember which). It's done that way to avoid the performance problems caused by having too many files in a single directory (it's a very common trick on Unix-based servers). If it's a hash of the image name, try uploading with a different name; if it's a hash of the image file, only changing the image itself would change the value. And to check if there is a proxy in the way, try running something like tcptraceroute. --cesarb 13:35, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

What do you see when you go directly to the image? If there is a transparent proxy in there somewhere, it might be replacing the image with an HTML explanation page which you might be able to see that way. If that doesn't work, you could also try installing the Firefox Live HTTP Headers extension to let us know what you see in the server response when using Ctrl-F5 on the above image link. For example, I see:

HTTP/1.x 200 OK
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Etag: "7261208650148119589"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Last-Modified: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 09:42:36 GMT
Content-Length: 8620
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 09:43:23 GMT
Server: lighttpd/1.4.13
Age: 2720
X-Cache: HIT from sq43.wikimedia.org, MISS from sq41.wikimedia.org
X-Cache-Lookup: HIT from sq43.wikimedia.org:3128, MISS from sq41.wikimedia.org:80
Via: 1.0 sq43.wikimedia.org:3128 (squid/2.6.STABLE12), 1.0 sq41.wikimedia.org:80 (squid/2.6.STABLE12)
Connection: close

Anomie 13:45, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I see nothing. No box, and no image placemark (I have my browser set to display image placeholders). There's just... nothing, lol. I'll install that addon and update once I get some sleep. Thank you everyone for the assistance, I'll update later tonight. Ariel♥Gold 14:26, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Alright, I installed the Firefox Live HTTP Headers extension, but it is not showing up in my add-ons list, nor in the "view" menu, so I'm unsure what to do with it. Pressing ctrl-f5 when viewing the page, does nothing, the image is still not there for me. *shrug* :) Ariel♥Gold 10:53, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

It should give you an option under Tools to bring up the window. Anomie 12:51, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Okay, for some reason it did not install the first time. I reinstalled it, but when I click on it, there's absolutely nothing in the HTTP Headers box. (As compared to when I look at this page or any other page there is plenty of info there.) I'm stumped, LOL! Ariel♥Gold 08:12, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Nothing at all for the absentee image, even if you Ctrl-F5 on the image page with the HTTP Headers box open? Anomie 12:07, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I guess I did it wrong or something, I've never used that add on. I opened the page, Image:Amy Grant in 1998.jpg and then I opened the HTTP Headers and did not see anything. This time, I opened the HTTP headers first, and then loaded the page and hit ctrl-f5. I got a whole bunch of stuff, too much to paste here. What should I be looking for? Ariel♥Gold 12:20, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
There should be a section beginning GET /wikipedia/en/a/ad/Amy_Grant_in_1998.jpg HTTP/1.1, or you could just load the image directly after clearing the box and it should be the only section. Anomie 13:22, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be dense, but I do not understand what this add on does, or is supposed to do. I'm still not seeing the image, and there is a whole ton of info in the box when I hit ctrl-F5. Clearing the box does just that, clears it. Pressing ctrl-F5 again fills it up with the same amount of stuff. I am still unsure what you mean by "you could just after clearing the box" I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do :) Again, I'm sorry I'm having a hard time figuring this out.Ariel♥Gold 13:37, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Hrm, I really think you're having trouble with some sort of ad-removing proxy. The text I posted says "you could just load the image directly after clearing the box", with "load the image directly" being an external link to the image. If you're not seeing that, the proxy must have edited the page to remove the "ad".
As for what the add-on does: When you want to see a webpage, your browser sends a request to the server. The server responds with some information (like what I posted earlier) followed by the HTML or image data that you actually see. See HTTP for more information. This extension shows you the actual request and the response information that you otherwise cannot see. I'm hoping that the response information you're seeing will have an explanation of why the image is being blocked for you. Anomie 14:03, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
That is very strange that you have text I'm not seeing. I don't see it in IE7 either. I have never had any problems with text, or with links being removed from any websites, so I'm at a complete loss as to why yours was. Now that I'm in the edit box, I see the orginal text you put in, the link directly to the upload:wikimedia site. So, using that link from this box, here is the result:
 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ad/Amy_Grant_in_1998.jpg

GET /wikipedia/en/a/ad/Amy_Grant_in_1998.jpg HTTP/1.1
Host: upload.wikimedia.org
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
If-Modified-Since: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 01:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: max-age=0

HTTP/1.x 200 OK
Server: Netscape-Enterprise/2.0a
Pragma: No-cache
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 23:00:00 GMT
Last-Modified: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 01:00:00 GMT
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 881
Content-Type: image/gif
----------------------------------------------------------
http://sb.google.com/safebrowsing/update?client=navclient-auto-ffox&appver=
2.0.0.5&version=goog-white-domain:1:23,goog-white-url:1:371,goog-black-url:1:12900,goog-black-enchash:1:30188

GET /safebrowsing/update?client=navclient-auto-ffox&appver=2.0.0.5&version=
goog-white-domain:1:23,goog-white-url:1:371,goog-black-url:1:12900,goog-black-enchash:1:30188 HTTP/1.1
Host: sb.google.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 300
Connection: keep-alive
Cookie: PREF=ID=7e348dffb4cac7e3:TM=1185535849:LM=1185535849:S=o7OEtEZQjZIKTZYR

HTTP/1.x 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Server: TrustRank Frontend
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
----------------: ----
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2007 17:19:44 GMT
Cache-Control: private, x-gzip-ok=""
----------------------------------------------------------

So, the big thing that jumps out at me is this sb.google.com thing, which bothers me for a number of reasons. First, I do not have google toolbar installed, (*Holds up garlic, the sign of the cross and any other items to ward off evil* lol)

I have never installed any google software, nor do I have any other google add-ons installed. I do a comprehensive virus scan each night with two different programs, as well as spyware/adware scans with two separate programs each morning. In over 10 years of being online, I've never once had a virus, or any type of adware/spyware. I just ran both scans, and again, 0 threats found, even on deep scans.

I found this site but it still would not explain why the image will not load in IE7, to which I have added no add-ons, and I have disabled the built-in pop-up blocker, and the built-in phishing filter. I use it for testing purposes, and therefore nothing is blocked in IE7.

The add-ons I have installed on Firefox relating to advertisements (adblock, noscript) I've disabled, restarted Firefox, and tried again and still see no image.

At this point, I am ready to just give up and say "oh well, I can't upload images if I want to see them" lol.Ariel♥Gold 17:44, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

It looks like your request for the image is giving you back an 881 byte GIF file (image/gif) instead of the requested JPEG. The headers indicate that it was served by "Netscape-Enterprise/2.0a" and that the image was created in August 2000. This definitely sounds like an ad-blocking proxy that is replacing the requested image with a transparent one-pixel GIF. What does the title bar in Firefox say when you load this image? Does it say "Amy_Grant_in_1998.jpg (GIF Image, 1x1 pixel) - Mozilla Firefox"? Mike Dillon 17:59, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
The Google thing is an anti-phishing thing built into Firefox, you should be able to configure or disable it by opening Edit→Preferences and looking in the Security section for "Tell me if the site I'm visiting is a suspected forgery".
This is the response from when you request the image, and it doesn't look at all like what I see:
HTTP/1.x 200 OK
Server: Netscape-Enterprise/2.0a
Pragma: No-cache
Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 23:00:00 GMT
Last-Modified: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 01:00:00 GMT
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 881
Content-Type: image/gif
Do you have a proxy configured in your browser settings? In Firefox, that would be in Edit→Preferences, then Security, then Network, then "Configure how Firefox connects to the Internet". Anomie 18:12, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Tools-Options-Advanced-Network = No, no proxy. Never have.
I disabled the Anti Phishing thing. Ariel♥Gold
Mike: It says Amy_Grant_in_1998.jpg (GIF Image, 32x32 pixels) - Mozilla Firefox (Build 2007071317) I did notice this, and thought it odd, but I'm not sure why it is doing that. As I said, I've never once had any issues with Wikipedia images showing up (or any other images on any other site) and it is doing the same thing in IE7, so... lol
As a note, there is no "source" to view, I tried that. I tried saving the image, and I can save the image, but when I open it, it is a 32x32 white box. I'm not altogether moronic regarding things, I've created a number of websites, so while I don't know the intricacies of how the scripting stuff works, I have a basic knowledge of pages, images, html, etc. And I'm baffled, lol.
I do wish to say thank you to everyone who has been working with me on this issue over the past few days, I appreciate all of your time and effort, and you have my most sincere thanks, even if I don't solve the problem. :) Ariel♥Gold 18:26, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Sorry for just responding now - things are a bit busy here at the moment and I'd simply forgotten to reply. If this is really a transparent proxy (or, well, technically it's an intercepting proxy, I guess), you may have more luck with actually using a third party proxy. There are several commercial services (mostly privacy-related, some of which use SSL) and there are obviously tor nodes and open proxies (which may or may not be blocked). And this doesn't necessarily have to be ad-related (even though I assume it is). I know of a number of bigish sites that do still employ some form of relatively simple content filtering solution at their gateways. Since that is mostly signature or heuristics-based there's always the possibility of a false positive. Another possibility would be an IDS. Unfortunately, that's all I can come up with and I'm afraid it's not much of a solution. Sorry. S up? 23:55, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Did you try the (slower) secure server, which you can find a link to in the FAQ at the top of this page? It should bypass any proxies you have, and probably will workaround the problem. If you can, try doing a tcptraceroute to the en.wikipedia.org server on port 80; it should stop at the transparent proxy instead of getting all the way to the Wikimedia clusters, and show you where the problematic proxy is. --cesarb 00:53, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Alright, thank you to everyone for the suggestions and assistance! It is most greatly appreciated.Ariel♥Gold 17:53, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Technical problems in the Latin Wikipedia

Since yesterday we are having technical problems in the Latin Wikipedia. Some/many talk pages are not displayed, I mean, they are displayed blank, there is not even a navigation on the top. See la:Vicipaedia:Taberna#Blank_talk_pages.

To whom should we report this problem? Thanks! --Roland2 06:40, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Solved. --Roland2 11:39, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Recent changes patrol

Hi, My user name is borgx from Indonesian Wikipedia. I would like to ask the strategy used for English Wikipedia in monitoring their recent changes. As far as I'm concern it has thousands of edits an hour (exact numbers escape me). My questions are:

  1. Did you ever miss an edit? (Yes, there are a lot of tools for monitoring recentchanges, but these also can't make sure no vandal edits unmonitored).
  2. If yes, what if they were vandals edit? What is your solution for these?

Indonesian Wikipedia now has approx. 1,300 edits per day and the numbers will only grow in time. Although the numbers (comparing to yours) considered low, we also have a very limited number of sysops -- specially when out of 14 syspops, we only have a few active ones and during their monitoring period -- which is not a continuous-- they only check the top 50 or 100 and go about and did something else. These actions leaves gap out of the 1,300 edits a day + we have no mechanism that gives an information to public user saying " the changes had been checked" so we might be checking the same thing several time.

I understand that we have a "patrolled edit" mechanism, but this mechanism is not going well this time because new users may edit something up to 20 times in a certain time and we need to marked patrolled edit 20 times <-- this is not practical. (I have submitted bug 8697 for this but there's no action from developer for my request).

Thanks for any advice - Regards - borgx (talk) 00:00, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, we miss edits, we do find month old vandalism, though we get most of them very fast. We use a lot of automated and semi-automated tools. We have a few bots that watch every contribution and look for blatant easily detectable vandalism. The bots revert, warn, and report vandalism.
We also have a few wonderful tools for humans to use, my favorite is WP:TWINKLE. It allows for one click reverting, warning, and reporting of vandals. As an admin the tools allow for fast deletion and removal links for images and articles, it allows for the fast posting of warnings and block messages. With Twinkle one person can do the work of 3. We have WP:AIV for reports of vandalism that can be handled with very little investigation, on this page vandals are reported and blocked on wholesale levels.
Most importantly we have a huge army of anti vandal patrolers that do a wonderful job. I am sure that all of our solutions can work on the Indonesian Wikipedia, the tools just need to be translated. We don't even use patrolled edits here. Until(1 == 2) 00:23, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
I've worked on implementing this idea of collaborative patrol before, yet neither my attempts nor others' (i.e., patrol, an extension by Rob Church whose name I'm forgetting, etc.) have proved particularly successful. The primary problem is not developing a robust framework with a competently deployed server-client model--the problem is motivating users to make use of it, which has not been too successful in the past. With one of my attempts I even introduced a fairly complex and accurate "priority" system that ordered the edits displayed to reviewers based upon the likelihood of their being vandalism. This did not succeed in reducing the boredom users felt much at all. In fact it does seem to be this element of boredom vs. excitement that is the motivating force--with things like twinkle and similar scripts people feel as though they're taking part in some sort of first-person shooter, whereas with collaborative patrol tools they feel as though they're working. What we really need to do is get ourselves a video game developer to find some interesting way to integrate vandalism patrol with Counterstrike :D. In any case, if you have some firm ideas about how you would like to implement this on that wiki and could provide me with some sort of concrete specification, I'd be glad to work on implementing something for you guys. I'm just not going to promise that it will be successful, as in the past it's been quite the opposite. AmiDaniel (talk) 00:38, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
the key is not to aim at efficiency, but redundancy, and to make sure that gaps are eventually covered. Perhaps we should simply think of a calendar-like tracker, where you'd fill in the time period you covered. I use something of the sort for some specialized tracking. DGG (talk) 04:27, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
There are now so many people using Wikipedia that the recent changes is now like trying to monitor an immense swarm of insects. There are so many edits that identify as vandalism that yes, initially, some of them are missed, but never obvious ones like large-scale deletions or page blankings. Sometimes, an RC Patroller maybe unsure whether a certain edit is vandalism because he or she may not be specialised in the subject point of the article, and it may be missed that way too. However, I think that in time, most vandalism gets iradicated, because nearly all articles are assigneed to a Wikiproject or two (or even a fair few), and the article's main editors will identify it one way or another. Little stubs/articles not assigned to Wikiprojects and which are infrequently edited are the problem thus. Lradrama 15:25, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Boise is devoid of intelligence?

I couldn't help but laugh at this. Guess Google caught a vandalized version again. See the entry for Wikipedia, and you'll know what I mean... --Hdt83 Chat 05:54, 30 July 2007 (UTC) http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&q=boise&btnG=Search.

Quick! To WP:BJAODN! — Bob • (talk) • 08:09, July 30, 2007 (UTC)

alpha channel for favicon

Why not map the white colour of the favicon to an alpha channel so it appears with transparency? I have uploaded a version of the Wikipedia favicon with transparency to this location...

http://wikicode.frihost.net/bt/favicon.ico

I have tested this in Firefox and the transparency does function correctly so there is not that silly white box surrounding the W in tabs and in the bookmarks menu. --Anthony5429 03:05, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

It used to be that way, looks like someone broke it. Prodego talk 03:47, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

My edits taken away

I was just editing Dir en grey discography, wikifying it. I was going by section, so as not to wikify it all, and then have an edit conflict. Anyways, I did the Albums section, the EPs section, the Remix albums section, and was working on the Singles section. I was done with the Singles section, clicked "Save page" and it said "Wikipedia is currently down, so you will not be able to save your edits." or something like that. I assumed it just meant the Singles section, since all the other sections had already been saved. I edited the page, and the other sections were wikified, and I started to work on the Singles section again. I was done, clicked "Save page" and then the only section that was wikified was the Singles section. All the other sections had been reverted to a list format. Help? *silver* 23:47, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

This is your problem, I think. --Deskana (banana) 23:49, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Any idea why Cyrus XIII reverted all my hard work? I've wikified other discography pages and they were not tampered with. I'm really sad that all my hard work just went down the drain. *silver* 23:51, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
"restoring full release dates, no need for tables in a name/date-only-scenario" was the given reason. If that doesn't make sense to you, you should ask Cyrus. --Deskana (banana) 23:53, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, it makes sense, but the full release date is on the page for the album/single/EP/remix album/compilation album! Besides, a lot of discography pages do not have the full release date. That was a lot of hard work.

Move permissions

The option to "unlock move permission" in the protection window for currently unprotected pages does not seem to working properly for me. Specifically, the move window stays disabled even after clicking the checkbox. Dragons flight 22:16, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Confirmed. It looks like Rob Church broke it somewhere in here. Prodego talk 22:17, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
It was accidentially broken earlier while fixing mediazilla:10642; actually Rob Church is the one who fixed it, see mediazilla:10732. Now you just have to keep checking Special:Version and wait for that revision. ∴ Alex Smotrov 22:36, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Ah, that would explain why I couldn't find exactly what broke it. :) Prodego talk 22:42, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

State Farm Insurance looks blank

The page State Farm Insurance looks blank, even though it seems to have valid content. --Amir E. Aharoni 14:57, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

New Shortcut Prefix Proposal

I would think it would be excellent if we could create a shortcut like WP: for user pages. U: would be my suggestion for user pages and UT: for user talk pages.. Thoughts? Jmfangio| ►Chat  09:22, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Bad idea. WP: shortcuts do not work magically, a redirect has to be created for each: Special:Prefixindex/WP:. Allowing potentially millions of users to have a mainspace redirect for every page and subpage of their user and talk namespace would be... silly. --Splarka (rant) 10:05, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I like the idea, but it would only be used by reasonably active users. Probably a rule that you cannot create one to your own - leave it to if someone else finds it necessary. Matt/TheFearow (Talk) (Contribs) (Bot) 10:41, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
  • That's a good point MtF. My thinking is that there are a million instances when I'm jumping back and forth between different user talk pages and it would be easier to just type U:username into the search box. Jmfangio| ►Chat  10:58, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
It's a nice thought, but in practice it's a bad idea. Littering mainspace with tons of userspace redirects isn't a good idea. When users become inactive the redirects will stil be there, and we'd need to patrol them. Overall it wouldn't work. --Deskana (talk) 11:21, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Magic words don't do what you seem to think they do. If I put __NOTOC__ in here, there'd be no table of contents, for example. They alter things when you put them on pages, they don't have anything to do with shortcuts or redirects. --Deskana (talk) 11:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
  • I was thinking there would be someway to create a template that relies on magic words so that if someone entered the template - like TL:U:username, it would work. That's where i was thinking magic words could come in, but again - i don't know a darn thing about implementing them. Thanks for your comments, alas i will have to stick to the current system :-) Jmfangio| ►Chat  11:39, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
It seems shortcuts like "u:" are possible with the current software by defining them as interwiki links. That could be convenient in the address box of the browser. If used in a page the appearance according to CSS class "extiw" could be confusing.--Patrick 12:39, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
It's a good idea, and I would certainly use it. It saves using the search function or typing User:(username) in all the time. But I have to admit, User:Deskana ;-) has a very good point. Lradrama 13:31, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
That is why putting it in the address bar (replacing the current page name) might be preferable.--Patrick 22:54, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

There are millions of Wikipedia users, it would be very likely that more then 1 user would want the same shortcut, thousands of users would fight over U:Model Wikipedian.  Tcrow777  talk  23:49, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't think userpage redirects would be a good idea, but would it be possible to make shortcuts to special pages? I know you can't redirect to special pages (is that a bug or intentional?), but even soft redirects could be useful. — Bob • (talk) • 04:13, July 30, 2007 (UTC)

Master-Slave language in db lock message

I was attempting to edit a page when I received a "Database locked" error message ("The database has been automatically locked while the slave database servers catch up to the master" [controlled by MediaWiki:Readonly lag]). I know there has been a bit of controversy surrounding those terms, and I think it would be best for us to at least interwiki link the words "master" and "slave", not only as a political correct approach, but also to be less cryptic and have the error message more understandable/useful. Thoughts? -Mysekurity 21:00, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Due to the frequency that I have recently been seeing those messages, I can see why it would be a good idea. I understand them but I am a programmer. I know many people who would have no idea what that really meant and would think something was broken. Perhaps a clarified version might be a good idea if possible. -- Chrislk02 (Chris Kreider) 21:03, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, we could wikilink the phrases to Master-slave (computers). EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:22, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I like EVula's idea: let's wikilink it. It avoids changing the wording while adding meaning. Nihiltres(t.l) 21:25, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I think EVula has the right idea. Until(1 == 2) 21:37, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I was about to edit the page myself, but then realized it'd probably be better to check here first. I was going to wikilink both slave and master to master-slave (computers), but wondered if there was something more appropriate. If someone gives me the go-ahead, I'll edit it now. -Mysekurity 22:12, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
[ec]Since everyone seems to agree that I'm awesome for making the suggestion (mmm, ego), I made the change to MediaWiki:Readonly lag. I apparently created the page, though, so I'm not sure if it will override stuff or not. I'm actually kind of confused by it... EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:13, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
That should be fine, the MediaWiki namespace is for deviations from the default system messages.--Patrick 23:03, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
/me sings EVula theme song GracenotesT § 22:36, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Now all we have to do is lock up the database to test it. Anyone feel like deleting the sandbox? -Mysekurity 22:48, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
EVula, from what I understand of the MediaWiki namespace, the creation oddity is because a nonexistent MediaWiki page has content: the MediaWiki default message (which is null by default, for some). Creating the page overrides the default with the content of the page. As for deleting the sandbox... ouch that would lag. We'll have to wait and see, I don't think anyone really wants to try to lock up the servers. Nihiltres(t.l) 00:57, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Just wait until a few users are renamed. I'm pretty sure someone has tried to delete the sandbox before, causing about 15 minutes of lag, so please don't do that. You will get several developers vying for your head. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 01:05, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
I guess facetiousness doesn't come across over the interweb. I've never understood why they don't just lock up deleted pages that default to something else (Commons images on a project, e.g.). Is there a technical reason they can't stop someone from uploading naughty pictures over one from the Commons, or is it just policy? -Mysekurity 07:49, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't think such a feature (autoprotection of images that already exist on Commons) exists, but it shouldn't really be too hard to implement. File a bug? As for MediaWiki: pages, those are always fully protected (and cannot be unprotected) anyway. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 10:05, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Per m:Help:User rights it seems "upload", "reupload" (overwrite), "reupload-shared" (overwrite on Commons?) are separate rights, so it should be technically easy, if not politically. --Splarka (rant) 07:14, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

(arbitrary undent) I just got a database locked notice while deleting stuff at CAT:CSD, and the words didn't seem to be linked, despite the message having been changed. Any idea what happened? Nihiltres(t.l) 18:59, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Don't quote me on this, but I believe some MediaWiki pages don't accept Wikisyntax, and instead have to use standard HTML (a href tags, e.g.) to achieve wikilinking. Maybe I'll try to change the wikilinks to plainlink externals and see what happens. -Mysekurity 08:22, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
I've seen the same thing on some page somewhere, but I was expecting broken [[formatting]] in that case, I suppose. Well, trying out HTML links can't hurt all that much, it's probably worth it. Nihiltres(t.l) 14:22, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
It really is not that important. The terms "slave" and "master" are only insensitive if we apply them to people, it is a perfectly healthy relationship that 2 pieces of hardware can share. Hardware thrives on this sort of relationship, and does not do well in the relationship of equals humans have come to expect. Has anyone actually complained about this wording? Until(1 == 2) 14:29, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Right. I don't think you, I, nor anyone else reading this page (or most of the tech aspects of Wikipedia) would object to the language, and I think it's written in such a way that it isn't likely to make someone think we were talking about slavery, but it's enough to make a new user question. I was more concerned about the jargon being unfamiliar to the layperson and therefore upsetting than about the political correctness. That said, there really isn't any reason that "primary" and "secondary" wouldn't work just as well. -Mysekurity 20:32, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
That makes sense. Until(1 == 2) 20:52, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Except for the reason that "primary and secondary" are not used much in that regard, "master and slave is". I do support a link to Master-slave (computers) if really necessary. Garion96 (talk) 21:02, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but the purpose of the message is not to provide the devs with anything. They already know what's happening. It's the layperson who we're more concerned about, and whom this page will actually be useful. Cryptic error messages and unfamiliar jargon detract from that usefulness and should be avoided or explained if Wikipedia is to become usable by the tech-illiterate. -Mysekurity 23:29, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Correct, so a link to Master-slave (computers) should educate the tech-illiterate, much better than using a term which is not the actual term for it. But if that is too much work for the dev's (or perhaps they think it's pointless work on which I tent to agree) it should stay the way it is. Garion96 (talk) 19:07, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
I just got the locked database message and the words weren't linked. — Bob • (talk) • 01:31, July 31, 2007 (UTC)
You could try raw HTML, which might work. I don't think it will though. Prodego talk 03:00, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
I've added some title attributes to the HTML markup that Prodego added to the page. That should help finish the "faux wikilink" effect. EVula // talk // ☯ // 03:51, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I've completed much of the work on my dead link checking script. With this script, you may check a single page or entire category of pages for bad and dead links. Each link detected will be given a score based on its error code, content-type, and redirection. This way it can elevate 'soft' 404 error or servers sending out a bad MIME type. The results are colored according to their rank progressing from red to green and group by page. If you’re using Firefox, click the "Use javascript" button to enable enhancements that let you preview the page, built-in search types for locating the link again, and submitting the changes to Wikipedia using your account. I'm currently looking for some feed back over the interface and methods for searching replacement links. —Dispenser 23:20, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

My signature

Sorry to post on the village pump again, but I have another problem. Silly me. Anyways, I want *silver*► to be my signature for whenever I type ~~~~, with the date, of course. Anyhow, I entered that into the signature slot on "My Preferences," and checked "Raw signature." It was too big, but I'm positive I've seen people with signatures bigger than that. Help? *silver* 16:19, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Just use <font color="#003333">blah</font> instead of <span style="background-color:White;color:#003333">. Until(1 == 2) 16:25, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
<font> instead of CSS? Gracenotes goes into combat mode ;)
It's not a length problem, actually: it's an issue with invalid XHTML. The last </small> tag isn't matched with a starting tag, and the first <span> isn't matched with a closing tag. Regardless, the following works, and it's a bit shorter than your previous one:
*silver*►
Hope this helps, GracenotesT § 21:30, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
You could further shrink the size by making "background-color" just "background". EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:07, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
Check out this recently archived thread too: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive#Reduce allowed length for signatures and usernames. --Quiddity 16:55, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Change Common.js to fix NavFrame bug

Moved from MediaWiki talk:Common.js#Please set NavigationBarShowDefault .3D 0 (an editprotected request):

In the unmaintained but very widely used Dynamic Navigation Bars (NavFrame) section, the variable NavigationBarShowDefault controls how many NavFrames need to appear before they are all supposed to be initially collapsed. Currently it is set to the value of autoCollapse (== 2), which controls the analogous behavior for collapsible tables above.

Sadly, the templates which use NavFrames, e.g. {{hidden}} and {{ifd}} contain <div class="NavContent" style="... display:none; ..."> which, when there are 2 or fewer NavFrames on a page, results in a "[hide]" toggle which doesn't do anything but change to "[show]" the first time it is clicked, which then acts normally. This bug has been reported multiple times, e.g., on Template talk:Hidden and Template talk:Ifd.

This problem can be corrected by changing var NavigationBarShowDefault = autoCollapse; to var NavigationBarShowDefault = 0; which will have no adverse effects (in fact 0 is suggested as a value in comments just above the assignment statement.)

A superior but more complcated fix would have createNavigationBarToggleButton() examine the .style.display of its NavContent and NavPic children, and have it set the NavToggle to be a NavigationBarShow instead of a NavigationBarHide if any child's .style.display == 'none'. Code showing how to query those children's values is already in the previous function toggleNavigationBar() where they are toggled. Then you could remove the NavigationBarShowDefault variable and the loop it controls at the end of createNavigationBarToggleButton(). This would be far superior because it will allow effective control of the toggle's initial state, but you would want to debug it in your personal Common.js file first, of course. I have tested the fixed code below in my monobook.js Thank you. BenB4 01:45, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Totally agree, current implementation needs to be fixed ∴ Alex Smotrov 15:34, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
I'd go with the complex fix, as the quick fix will unnecessarily collapse navigation boxes on articles which have only one. —Ruud 22:24, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Although I prefer the complex fix, I haven't been able to find any use of NavFrames which don't have style display:none. Do you know of any? ←BenB4 22:42, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Nevermind, {{hidden begin}} does. Complex solution attempt follows. ←BenB4 01:05, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
This is the code for the complex fix; I tested it in my monobook.js
 /** Dynamic Navigation Bars (experimental) *************************************
  *
  *  Description: See [[Wikipedia:NavFrame]].
  *  Maintainers: UNMAINTAINED
  */
 
  // set up the words in your language
  var NavigationBarHide = '[' + collapseCaption + ']';
  var NavigationBarShow = '[' + expandCaption + ']';
 
  // shows and hides content and picture (if available) of navigation bars
  // Parameters:
  //     indexNavigationBar: the index of navigation bar to be toggled
  function toggleNavigationBar(indexNavigationBar)
  {
     var NavToggle = document.getElementById("NavToggle" + indexNavigationBar);
     var NavFrame = document.getElementById("NavFrame" + indexNavigationBar);
 
     if (!NavFrame || !NavToggle) {
         return false;
     }
 
     // if shown now
     if (NavToggle.firstChild.data == NavigationBarHide) {
         for (
                 var NavChild = NavFrame.firstChild;
                 NavChild != null;
                 NavChild = NavChild.nextSibling
             ) {
             if ( hasClass( NavChild, 'NavPic' ) ) {
                 NavChild.style.display = 'none';
             }
             if ( hasClass( NavChild, 'NavContent') ) {
                 NavChild.style.display = 'none';
             }
         }
     NavToggle.firstChild.data = NavigationBarShow;
 
     // if hidden now
     } else if (NavToggle.firstChild.data == NavigationBarShow) {
         for (
                 var NavChild = NavFrame.firstChild;
                 NavChild != null;
                 NavChild = NavChild.nextSibling
             ) {
             if (hasClass(NavChild, 'NavPic')) {
                 NavChild.style.display = 'block';
             }
             if (hasClass(NavChild, 'NavContent')) {
                 NavChild.style.display = 'block';
             }
         }
     NavToggle.firstChild.data = NavigationBarHide;
     }
  }
 
  // adds show/hide-button to navigation bars
  function createNavigationBarToggleButton()
  {
     var indexNavigationBar = 0;
     // iterate over all < div >-elements 
     var divs = document.getElementsByTagName("div");
     for(
             var i=0; 
             NavFrame = divs[i]; 
             i++
         ) {
         // if found a navigation bar
         if (hasClass(NavFrame, "NavFrame")) {
 
             indexNavigationBar++;
             var NavToggle = document.createElement("a");
             NavToggle.className = 'NavToggle';
             NavToggle.setAttribute('id', 'NavToggle' + indexNavigationBar);
             NavToggle.setAttribute('href', 'javascript:toggleNavigationBar(' + indexNavigationBar + ');');
 
             var NavToggleText = document.createTextNode(NavigationBarHide);
             for (
                  var NavChild = NavFrame.firstChild;
                  NavChild != null;
                  NavChild = NavChild.nextSibling
                 ) {
                 if ( hasClass( NavChild, 'NavPic' ) || hasClass( NavChild, 'NavContent' ) ) {
                     if (NavChild.style.display == 'none') {
                         NavToggleText = document.createTextNode(NavigationBarShow);
                         break;
                     }
                 }
             }
 
             NavToggle.appendChild(NavToggleText);
             // Find the NavHead and attach the toggle link (Must be this complicated because Moz's firstChild handling is borked)
             for(
               var j=0; 
               j < NavFrame.childNodes.length; 
               j++
             ) {
               if (hasClass(NavFrame.childNodes[j], "NavHead")) {
                 NavFrame.childNodes[j].appendChild(NavToggle);
               }
             }
             NavFrame.setAttribute('id', 'NavFrame' + indexNavigationBar);
         }
     }
  }
 
  addOnloadHook( createNavigationBarToggleButton );

The first and last lines match the already-existing section beginning and end lines. Note that this solution will not fix the bug if there are nested NavFrames, as many of our templates, e.g., {{hidden}} have for some reason. I will fix those separately. ←BenB4 01:33, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

The reason these templates have nested NavFrames is to artificially increase the count of NavFrames in the page, thus pushing it over the threshold and making all the NavFrames on the page hidden by default. Yes, it's an ugly hack. --cesarb 03:23, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Ah! So that's what they are for. It's funny, {{ifd}} only has two, which doesn't work because images usually don't have any other NavFrames, and two or less don't get collapsed. Anyway, this change would fix that problem, as long as the affected templates are unkluged. ←BenB4 03:25, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Two or less? When adding the double nested NavFrames was being done everywhere, the code was configured so that one or less didn't get collapsed; the default must have been changed later (probably after other, less kludgy, ways of having a default-collapsed box were added). --cesarb 13:24, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Currently, NavigationBarShowDefault = autoCollapse; and autoCollapse, from the completely independent collapsible table implementation just prior in Common.js, autoCollapse = 2. ←BenB4 16:32, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

There are two supporters above, are there any objections or more support? ←BenB4 07:04, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Category activation

Talk:Standard penetration test says that it is in Category:Unassessed CE articles, but it is not displayed on the category page. I have tried purging and refreshing the pages, but I can't get it to show up. It has been about one day since the category was created. Does anyone know what is going on? -- Basar (talk · contribs) 00:47, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Problem solved. It was due to the use of a template redirect, which has now been replaced with its correct title. Adrian M. H. 00:53, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
"You could use javascript to add a check-box to the page, then have another javascript function check the status of that check-box before continuing." That would work most excellent-ly. Would you mind showing me a script that could do this (I don't know javascript..) The only thing is - can you add a check box somewhere where it would appear on every page in wikipedia? (like in a portlet area?) Obsidian Mask
I know javascript enough to know it is possible, but not enough to know how to do it, I am sure someone does. Until(1 == 2) 00:52, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
AFAIK, javascript is disallowed in wikipedia articles, and addition of HTML containing javascript is prevented (see Help:HTML in wikitext). If I am wrong on this, I would be interested in learning the details. -- Boracay Bill 02:02, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
You are wrong in the sense that any user can chose to run javascript for himself by adding code to their username/monobook.js. Otherwise, yes, javascript can not be run for anyone but the users who add code they would like to run. (note administrators can execute javascript for everyone through Mediawiki:Monobook.js) Prodego talk 02:08, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
This script would only be for my use - to turn on and off another script I'm using. Obsidian Mask 02:13, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
What exactly do you have in mind? I know a few expert javascript coders that have created my monobook, and they could probably help you out. Prodego talk 02:31, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
I left a message about it here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject User scripts. Obsidian Mask 02:52, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Javascript - toggle

Is there a way to use javascript to toggle another function? I.E. have a link (perhaps a porlet link) that is used to toggle a function on/off to keep it from always acting? Obsidian Mask 23:27, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

If you mean in a userscript, better ask your question for example at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject User scripts and please be more specific. There are different ways: you could import the script "dynamically" when you click the link or use cookies ∴ Alex Smotrov 00:10, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
You could use javascript to add a check-box to the page, then have another javascript function check the status of that check-box before continuing. Or just add a onclick hook to the check-box. Until(1 == 2) 00:15, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

hCalendar microformat

FYI, I have made a first attempt at adding hCalendar microformats to articles about dated events. Some issues remain to be resolved! Andy Mabbett | Talk to Andy Mabbett 20:01, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Corrupted contribution list?

On the German wikipedia my list of contributions (here) has a series of entries relating to edits to de:Benutzer:ABF/Politisches System Belgiens I have never made (on the German Wikipedia). The page seems to have been imported with its history from the English wikipedia. The edits to the above page predate my first contributions to the German wikipedia! How can this happen? Who could correct this? Cheers. --Edcolins 19:14, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Now that is truly strange. Until(1 == 2) 19:23, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
It appears to have been imported with Special:Import or something like it from Politics of Belgium; Politics of the People's Republic of China also seems to have been imported by the same user. Why would someone do a history-preserving import there, is a question you should ask on their equivalent of the Village pump. --cesarb 20:59, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

All these database lags

Is someone working onfixing them? I made a major edit to an article I had hoped would have help save it, but when I pressed save, it didn't do the usual This is only a preview page it went straight to the page, but with none of my edits! Hitting the back button showed no sign of my edits having ever been done, so I couldn't do my usual copy+paste+save. I looked at my watchlist, where I was confirmed that the site had a major database lag of 157 seconds. If anyone could at the very least help me find at lest a quarter of my edits to the Non-canonical spells in Harry Potter page, I'd be much obliged. Therequiembellishere 17:22, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Mine and Andre's fault, probably. The database lag is typically caused by user renames. To be honest, though, it doesn't cause problems like you described. Sometimes during an edit conflict, instead of saying there's been an edit conflict, it just acts as if it's saved your edits. --Deskana (banana) 19:29, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
But there wasn't an edit conflict! (If you look around the time this was made, you'll see an edit I made, and one and little bit after this by GlassCobra, I believe. Mine should be between those) I think I just had some weird anomaly. I've remade my edits, so I don't really care anymore, but it would be something to look out for. Therequiembellishere 20:38, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm trying to create a collapsible table, but with the show link right next to the content of the firs cell: like this (non working, just grahics):

Disc one [show]
Disc one [hide]
# Original title English translation Length
1. "プレリュード" (Pureryūdo) "The Prelude" 3:12
2. "オープニング~爆破ミッション" (Ōpuningu ~ Bakuha Misshon) "Opening - Bombing Mission" 3:59

This last table is what I am trying to reproduce. I know it is possible, because it is what the "Contents" box of all pages look like (apart from text-align=left). Is the any way of controlling where and how the [show] link appears? Maybe by using a bit of HTML, or use a bit of script? I'll take anything. Please help me. Thank you.
happypal (Talk | contribs) 08:16, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid Common.css says "a.NavToggle { position:absolute; top:0px; right:3px; ..." whereas there is no specific css for the TOC's toggle link. The NavToggle is added to NavFrames with javascript, so you can't override it with css styles. Sorry. ←BenB4 09:35, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you for the answer. What would one have to do to change that? happypal (Talk | contribs) 16:06, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Monobook CSS infobox class: text-align:left

Here's an example
This will wrap:                             It shows the odd wrapping in Firefox 2.0.0.4, and IE6 and IE7 via Wine
Anomie 21:26, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Currently infoboxes inherit text-align:justify from the bodyContent class (in MediaWiki:Monobook.css). This can look ugly, because it creates huge gaps; see for example Universal Serial Bus, where in "Number of devices" there is such a big space between "Number" and "of" that "of" is closer to the text in the right hand column than to "Number". I think it makes sense to add text-align:left to infoboxes to fix this. Headings should be unaffected since they have text-align:center set manually on them. Hairy Dude 20:46, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Hrm, it looks just fine in my browser (Safari 2.0/Mac). What are you using? Can you provide a screenshot? EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:48, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
This may be a result of having Misc > Justify paragraphs enabled in Special:Preferences. Tra (Talk) 20:56, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
I think you're right. For the record, I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.5 on Ubuntu Feisty. I still think the change is a good idea - I'm not going to give up nicely justified article text for slightly better-looking infoboxes. Hairy Dude 21:00, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
You could put .infobox {text-align:left} into your own monobook.css so that it appears just for you. Tra (Talk) 21:25, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Same Firefox version, same Ubuntu, seeing the same mess. Let me try to dream up a global fix for this -- there are lots of us Ubuntians out there :). AmiDaniel (talk) 22:09, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
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