Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 95

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Village pump (technical) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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Article Feedback Tool

Hey guys; there's going to be an Office Hours session tomorrow at 22:00 UTC to discuss the new article feedback tool. Hope to see you all there :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

When you say tomorrow do you mean "10pm UTC on Friday 18th Novemeber 2011"? Posted times at IRC_office_hours are slightly mixed up. See the discussion page. fg 20:39, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

The last one was good - I shan't be able to make this one. Rich Farmbrough, 23:50, 17 November 2011 (UTC).

Ahh, looks like someone fixed that; thanks, Fred! Sorry to hear you won't be along, Rich; want me to send you the logs? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:17, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

That would be interesting, thanks. Rich Farmbrough, 16:28, 18 November 2011 (UTC).

You can also add meta:IRC office hours/Office hours 2011-11-18 to your watchlist. Helder 19:10, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Helder. That's ideal. (as was your edit summary :-) fg 19:16, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Messed up table

Want a project? Does anyone want to fix the current revision of Mike_McCallum? It's got a lot of visible CSS trying to make a table. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:19, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I've added the missing table header and footer, by doing a straight copy from James Toney. n.b.: I have not moved the table to the proper place: it needs to be verified, especially the summary in the header which is almost certainly wrong. But at least you can use the table as a table now. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:28, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Survey results

Hey guys! The results of the new page patrollers survey should be out within the next few days; thank you everyone who participated. The data will be used to further investigate how we can help improve new page patrol on a technical front - hopefully it'll turn it from a job everyone hates to, at least, a job everyone can tolerate :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:45, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Reference syntax issue on List of Occupy movement protest locations in the United States

On List of Occupy movement protest locations in the United States, there is a sea of red in the references section... apparently there's some kind of syntax problem, but I'm not sure exactly what it is. Can somebody more WikiWonky than I am take a look at it? *Dan T.* (talk) 05:39, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I fixed it. The problem was this edit. It screwed up the <ref></ref> pairs and began a template call with {[ instead of {{. —teb728 t c 06:15, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

{{Sec link auto}} family

Are these templates actually still necessary. All interwiki links now use protocol relative URLs, so the desired behaviour is already natively supported by MediaWiki. Any reasons not to deprecate them already, since they add unnecessary workload to the parser. --The Evil IP address (talk) 15:33, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Worth leaving a note for Davidgothberg I would say. Rich Farmbrough, 23:54, 17 November 2011 (UTC).

I did that now. --The Evil IP address (talk) 16:03, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Cologne Blue

Please can somebody make it possible on the colognre blue setting to place the big bloated categry/interwiki section at the top at the bottom and just have the article appear normally at the top. Also, why haven't the developers considered a hideable taskbar which only appears when you hover over it? ♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:39, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Wasn't it always like that ? Anyways, the cologneblue is not actively supported. It is only kept in a 'working' state, but as far as I know, no one is actually thinking about improving it or stuff like that. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:50, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, it seems there are actually a couple of errors in the skin that were introduced in 1.18. bugzilla:32474 and bugzilla:32460. Those will get fixed, they are regressions. No ETA though. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:50, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I think I fixed them. Might take a while before the changes go live though. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:38, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Prepend WikiProject Banner?

Hello,

I have a list of ~300-400 articles that I'd like to put a WikiProject banner on (just prepend to the talk page), but I can't seem to find any good way of automatically doing this (the one script I found seems to replace what was already on the talk page). Could anyone point out a good way to do this (or let me know if this is a bad idea?) Thanks! – Ilyanep (Talk) 22:34, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I simply don't know if what you are proposing is a good idea or not but the method should be simple enough. Loop through the list of articles and drop the template? on each. If you get reliable feedback telling you to go ahead, I'll happily attempt (with high probability of success) to make the script for you. fg 22:51, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Aren't there bots which will do this, given one or more article space categories to work from? --Redrose64 (talk) 23:07, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure some of the more heavy duty bots are able to do it, but I wanted to see if there was a simpler script. I'd write my own but I'm sort of short on time at the moment. Also, I don't think that these articles are all in the same category, and putting them all in a category would reduce to a similar problem to the original one. – Ilyanep (Talk) 23:36, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

This is a good thing to post on WP:BTR. Depending on what form your list is in, this could also be something they could handle at WP:AWB/TA. — Bility (talk) 00:46, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Have found a bot that does this sort of thing: DodoBot (talk · contribs). --Redrose64 (talk) 16:48, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

There are a number of bots which do this. Generally it is done using WP:AWB with WP:Plugin++ - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 17:18, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

You can just use AWB with no plugin. Make your list of articles, go to the "more" tab, select "prepend", and put the text in, off you go. The plugin however will presumably do clever stuff, like banner grouping, copying stub class over etc. Rich Farmbrough, 11:50, 20 November 2011 (UTC).

Unordered list not nesting

This one has me completely puzzled. Consider the navboxes show on the right: The list in the below part of the first navbox refuses to nest; the HTML produced shows a new list. However, ordered lists and defenition lists do properly nest. What could be the cause of this? — Edokter (talk) — 13:35, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Apparently, it only happens when the below list is of the same type as the other lists in the navbox. — Edokter (talk) — 13:38, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Without looking at this real hard, my initial SWAG would be HTML Tidy fixing things yet again. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:44, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Very possible, even though there is nothing to fix. I've patched navbox to correct the problem. — Edokter (talk) — 13:56, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Minor formatting error in "Edit raw watchlist"

After editing the watchlist via Special:EditWatchlist/raw, the following message appears:

Your watchlist has been updated.n titles were removed:

where n equals the number of titles removed. There should be a space between "updated." and n. Minor, but annoying. Could someone touch that up? Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 18:45, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

They are actually two seperate messages. I've added a space to the first one (MediaWiki:Watchlistedit-raw-done). — Edokter (talk) — 19:15, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

See also T34505. Anomie⚔ 00:26, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Noted. — Edokter (talk) — 00:47, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Trouble making action=edit etc link without outside link icon attached

I'm trying to improve a welcome template and have so far produced this. I've used [{{fullurl:Special:Mypage/sandbox|action=edit&preload=Template:User_Sandbox/preload}} this] (which makes this) in order to produce a link to create a user sandbox but without the outside link icon attached, and it hasn't worked. The icon remains. I'm trying to get it to look like the same link used in {{Sandbox_heading}}. Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong? fg 23:50, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

You left out the <span class="plainlinks">. I've added it for you. Goodvac (talk) 23:53, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Ah ha! Thank you very much Goodvac. Very much indeed  fg 23:58, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

False edit conflicts

As I posted upstream, I'm still getting false edit conflicts on some pages in Google Chrome. It's happening totally at random — for instance, it just happened now on Jason Sellers even though I haven't edited the page in months. I've even tried clearing the cache and nothing works. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 10:11, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

It's possible that you've accidentally submitted the page twice, so that you actually edit conflict with yourself. —mc10 (t/c) 06:47, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

And how would I be doing that? I'm only clicking Save Page once. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 20:28, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Includeonly removes edit link

Hi, I added includeonly tags to a discussion section in order to be able to do a selective transclusion (since RfDs aren't on unique subpages like AfDs are). Unfortunately this had led to the disappearance of a section edit link for that discussion. Could someone please advise me how to put one back? It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 16:42, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I've created a possible hack of a solution for you. It's very rough and ready and I don't (at this time) understand why the section edit links went missing, but See this diff for something that might work for you. If you choose to use that method, you'll need to add it to the current version of the page. fredgandt 19:50, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

For now, you can just edit the previous section to edit that section. The wiki is seeing both sections as one and the same. Gary King (talk · scripts) 21:30, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

As I see the page there are NO edit sections at all when the <onlyinclude>...</onlyinclude> are in place. fredgandt 22:06, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

None of the edit links are visible in preview or history, but they are there in the current version of the page. All sections are in the TOC, but there is no edit link for the section in the onlyinclude tags, and attempting to edit by using the section number it says that the section doesn't exist (it is regarded as part of the previous section). It seems to be a bug but until it is fixed maybe a solution for that page would be to have a section heading before the onlyinclude and one within the onlyinclude that doesn't appear on the page unless transcluded (either using includeonly or parser functions with the page name). Peter E. James (talk) 22:38, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Quite right  fredgandt 23:19, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Using Peter E. James' suggestion, I think I fixed it. According to the discussion page at WP:SELTRANS, quite a number of people are confused by this. I myself asked about section transclusion at the technical pump a while back. There is apparently a WM extention that allows section transclusion without this messing about (but I haven't yet looked at it). All in all I am glad this came up since I now know more than I did. Whoot! This → {{Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2011_November_15|transcludesection=Pakistani textbooks}} does transclude the section correctly and the source page now has a working edit link and section heading. fredgandt 23:44, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

It's not quite fixed yet I'm afraid. I now get an edit link on Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2011 November 15 but not on Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Education or Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Pakistan, where it's transcluded. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 00:06, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

The simple solution would be to not transclude the section heading at all and simply have a normal section heading on the target page(s). fredgandt 00:10, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

The drawback to that solution is that when you click the 'edit' link, you get a section that contains only the transclusion. And then someone who doesn't really understand what is going on will try to reply under the section transclusion, where their comment will be seen by the people reading whatever page is doing the transcluding but won't be seen from the actual RFD. Anomie⚔ 00:42, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

The mind boggles. Some sort of two way transclusion then? Alpha is transcluded to beta and a subsection of beta is trancluded to alpha so that wherever a response is made both alpha and beta get a copy? Templates used to scare me half to death btw so the fact I have got this far is something I'm quite chuffed about. What would be the ultimate solution Anomie? I expect you either know or can think of something (what with you being quite smart with code etc.) fredgandt 00:52, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

The ultimate solution is to figure out some way to transclude the whole thing, section header and all, so the edit link goes to the transcluded page. Anomie⚔ 01:37, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I couldn't figure out how to fix this, but the behaviour isn't a bug; it's a result of the Migration to the new preprocessor in 2008. I tried adding a line break before the section heading, but it didn't help (since adding any non-comment text to a line containing a heading makes it uneditable). Before the migration, includeonly and noinclude tags would cause section edit links to behave quite strangely; I mentioned a related problem at this section of the village pump. FWIW, the section at User:Graham87/sandbox16 is editable as it's meant to be; see the code at User:Graham87/sandbox15. Graham87 03:08, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Graham87: If there were more than one section at sandbox15, how would you go about transcluding just one of them to sandbox16? fredgandt 03:46, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Either using noinclude/includeonly tags or using parser functions (the latter of which is kinda what is done at the RFD). IIRC something similar is done at AN or ANI discussions when a section of a blocked user's talk page is transcluded so they have a chance to comment at the discussion. I can't remember for the life of me how it works though. Graham87 05:52, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I think what we have here is the birth of a feature request. The Wikimedia software seems to purposefully not include a section edit link for transcluded section headings since they would link to a section that didn't truly exist. The toc understands it but unless the transclusion was substituted there is no true section. So what we would need is for the section edit link to be created as a link to the source page section (edit) (as my trick version does but for real), then once the edit is saved the user is returned to the transclusion page (the one they clicked the edit link on, not the source) automatically. Where does one properly post feature requests? I guess the first stop is Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)? fredgandt 05:05, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

This is a bit weird. A simple test I did at User:Graham87/sandbox16, using onlyinclude, shows that the section header with edit link appearing on User:Graham87/sandbox15. This would be expected behaviour I think. Perhaps includeonly does not play nice with parser function, and theoretically, only one pair on onlyinclude can appear on one page. If this is going to be a feature, something list <onlyinclude id="section">...</onlyinclude> coupled with {{transcluded_page#section}} would make sense. — Edokter (talk) — 11:03, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I did actually say that before but to no avail. Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_94#Making_better_use_of_Template:_pages fredgandt 13:52, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Regardless of how well (or badly) the feature works, you shouldn't be doing it here - you messed up WP:Redirects for discussion, which is among the pages transcluding it. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:18, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

If something is broken by anything I have done, I can only apologise. Luckily this is a wiki and can thus be simply fixed by almost anyone. fredgandt 13:52, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

show date-time zone (viz., UTC) wherever not under user pref

Anywhere in Wikipedia that a date-time is given in which the zone is not subject to user preferences, it should be labeled as UTC or whatever zone applies. I just discovered that I was copying date-times from talk diffs and talk history pages; and the difference in my zone is about 4–5 hours. In lists of date-times, a single statement that date-times on that page are in UTC or other applicable zone would be enough to inform us. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:45, 21 November 2011 (UTC) (Grammatical correction attempted but blocked by edit conflict and not done after the answer: 18:22, 21 November 2011 (UTC))

I just checked - both page histories and user contributions are set by your preference time zone. On what page did you see problems? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 17:52, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I withdraw the issue. I just tried replicating and failed. (It involved a diff and the history, but not this time.) I have seen the discrepancy but maybe it was a glitch. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:22, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

The only time that times should appear as UTC is in comment timestamps... which can be converted to your local time by installing Wikipedia:Comments in Local Time. Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:39, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

What's happened to the colour in "diffs"?

When you click on "diff" on a watchlist, you used to see the before and after highlighted in colour. That seems to have vanished (I use Firefox.) If this is a deliberate (intentional change),it makes checking histories much more difficult. Anybody else notice this, or have an opinion? Bielle (talk) 21:18, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Colour is back: must have been me, or a temporary glitch. Bielle (talk) 21:21, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Probably a stylesheet wasn't properly loaded. If anything like that happens again, refresh the page in whichever way you must (browser dependant) in order to bypass the browser cache. fredgandt 21:48, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Referencing display issue

I'm not sure I fully understand the technical bits here, but when I look at the cites list in Mark XIV bomb sight I see that the last item in column 1 wraps its page number to column 2. This might need you to adjust your screen width to get the same effect. Anyhow, it seems like this is a problem? Maury Markowitz (talk) 17:42, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I added a &nbsp between the p. and #; it still looks weird but is better. Chris857 (talk) 17:50, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps this should be the default? Where do I post this suggestion? Maury Markowitz (talk) 17:54, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Since the note concerned was constructed "plain", rather than with a template (see here), there isn't a "default" as such. It's whatever you type between the <ref>...</ref> tags. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:02, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I think you're looking at the wrong one Rose... at the bottom of column 1 in the cites list I refer to an item on page 1. I see the main part of the ref in column one and the page number, "1", at the top of column 2. Maury Markowitz (talk) 19:48, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I was assuming that you were referring to citation 16, which at the time you raised this thread was constructed as follows:

<ref name=types>"Bombsights, Types T-1A and T-1B", (US) Army Air Forces, p. 1</ref>

Everything between the <ref>...</ref> tags is plain text. There are no templates, no explicit formatting, and nothing to prevent word wrapping, and that is why there isn't a "default" which can be modified. The fix applied by Chris857 (talk · contribs) replaced the normal space with a non-breaking space inside the "p. 1". --Redrose64 (talk) 20:04, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

This is a known issue; see Template:Reflist#Columns. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:26, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

sfn for notes?

I've started using "SFN" in all my new articles because I think it makes it both easier to edit and much cleaner body text. However, I've also started making more widespread use of a separate "notes" section. I know that I can use SFN to create a note body using group=, but others have said that I should only use SFN for, well, short footnotes. Is there another SFN-like template I can use for these notes? One that's basically the same syntax but with a different tag so we maintain the semantic value? Maury Markowitz (talk) 17:45, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Background to this is at Template talk:Sfn#Requesting more flexibility to allow wider deployment. and subsequent sections. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:58, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Maybe {{note}} can be used? I don't know off the top of my head whether it conflicts with other reference templates. — Bility (talk) 18:02, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Looking over this, perhaps all I'm looking for is the note template? I always connected that with cites, but in retrospect I don't know why...

So if I do ^ This is the text of note one. is that going to do what I'm trying for? Maury Markowitz (talk) 19:48, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

{{Note}} creates a different type of anchor, so it cannot be used with {{sfn}}. I don't understand why you would use {{sfn}} to create explanatory notes— I would have to see an example of what you are trying to do. You can easily use {{sfn}} within <ref> tags to reference a note, which gets around the issues of nesting <ref> tags. See Help:Shortened footnotes#Explanatory notes for examples. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:23, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Alternative needed for layout table

{{Historical regions of the Czech Republic}} (for example) uses a table for layout. Is there a better way to achieve similar results? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:56, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Quick-list essays of transcluded templates

I have created 2 essays for explaining the recent 3,000 most-transcluded templates, as lists for October and November:

• Top 3000 in Oct.: WP:Most transcluded templates in October 2011
• Top 3000 in Nov.: WP:Most transcluded templates in November 2011

Those essays contain extra explanation about the top 3,000 templates. Also, each essay just lists the 3,000 template names in a quick bullet-list of 3,000 entries, with no wikilinks, and displays the list perhaps 5x-10x times faster than the formal report with the masssive wikilinked 3-column table:

• WP:Database reports/Templates transcluded on the most pages

By scanning through the quick essays, it is easy to spot unusual templates, such as the "10,978" pages using Template:ISO_3166_code_Pakistan, which I noted in WP:TfD under entry:

• WP:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2011_November_22#Template:ISO_3166_code_Pakistan

I think the data about those 3,000 templates is important to check, if it can be kept in super-quick essays, to explain some unusual templates and why they have been used so many thousands of times, or note which templates were headed for deletion. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:27, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

A table shows below the rest of the page, even if it's not

In Boxing in the 2010s there's a table with upcoming matches, which in the source is in the proper place, and in the page rendering is on the bottom after the citations. In the talk page the problem was confirmed by another user. Why does this happen, and can it be fixed? 78.90.26.228 (talk) 23:28, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Fixed in [1] by placing {{s-end}} at the start of a line. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:37, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Good catch. I am not a fan of tables using start/end templates, such as {S-start} and {S-end}, which obscure the table syntax and prevent text-searches for the obvious start/end tokens, "{|" and "|}". However, some articles also have mistakes in use of the table-end token "|}". Meanwhile, the use of decorative green and red background-boxes (such as Template:No2) in the table seems unnecessary, while making the table a "non-printable table" with red/green colored cells requiring those succession-box templates. Anyway, I made a quick copy-edit of the text for about 70 other typos, so the problem with the table template {S-end) was just one of several issues there, as it would be in thousands of other articles, rather than a problem only with table-markup templates. -Wikid77 (talk) 04:40, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Please do not "safesubst" templates

I see a worrying trend that editors are adding "safesubst:" in various permutations into templates that are not ment to be substituted, with the reason of "just in case they are substituted". Now I am quite the expert when it comes to template, however "safesubst" is still one big black box to me, mainly because noone has bothered to document it properly.

I ask of those editors to please not add safesubst unless absolutely necessary. I am sure I'm not the only one having trouble grasping the inner working of this undocumented feature, and everytime safesubst is added, the entire template becomes one big blank for them as well, which means less people are able to maintain them. — Edokter (talk) — 20:02, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

There is some documentation at Help:Substitution (though I agree it's mostly unnecessary to use this keyword - even if a template is unexpectedly substituted, it shouldn't break just because safesubst is missing - safesubst is for templates that are expected to be substituted but might just happen to be transcluded).--Kotniski (talk) 20:08, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

More documentation at Substitution and specifically at Multilevel substitution fredgandt 20:12, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Do you have any examples? –xeno^talk 20:19, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Templates {{su}} and {{tag}}. — Edokter (talk) — 20:22, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Ok, so it looks like both had safesubst support added for arguably good reasons (editors have been substituting the templates). It isn't that complicated; {{{|safesubst:}}} is simply added just inside the opening curly braces of any material that should be substituted upon substitution of the template in question (such as parserFunctions or subtemplates: e.g.). –xeno^talk 20:27, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that is a valid reason at all; I don't believe in accidental substitution. When there are, it is just inproper use. It just needlesly complicates the code. — Edokter (talk) — 20:32, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

It's [safesubst] use seems simple enough (having just read up on it). We use it in the page we are going to transclude, within any templates that (once transcluded) we want to be substituted. If the source had ordinary subst's in its templates, as soon as the page is saved the substitutions would occur right there instead of waiting until transcluded to be substituted. I don't see how accidental substitution is possible either but also don't see how safesubst has anything to do with accidental substitution. fredgandt 20:49, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Not sure you've explained that right - we don't use safesubst: to prevent substitutions occurring "right there" (that's the reason we have to enclose the (safe)subst in curly braces and put a pipe before it). We use it because, in their wisdom, the developers originally designed the "subst" keyword so that it wouldn't work "as expected" during transclusion, and that behaviour can't now be changed because certain applications now rely on it.--Kotniski (talk) 09:46, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm going by this: "When substituting a template it may be desirable to carry out a substitution inside the template too. This can be done with "safesubst:" in the template. To prevent premature substitution (i.e., when the template is saved), this code is provided as default value of an unused parameter. Since the empty string is a possible but for other purposes uncommon parameter name, it is usually a suitable choice for the name of this unused parameter, so we can use the code {{{|safesubst:}}}." Taken from Multilevel substitution. I am a learner though  fredgandt 09:58, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's right; but it doesn't mean "to prevent premature substitution, use safesubst as the modifier rather than subst", it means "to prevent premature substitution, wrap up the modifier (which for other reasons will normally be safesubst rather than subst) as the value of a parameter".--Kotniski (talk) 10:05, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

← Ok. I'm following that. It reads as if safesubst is good for transclusion while subst is best for direct substitution. Is that correct? If so, why and if not, why? What is the actual difference between the two? fredgandt 12:44, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

P.S. I just thought: Mediawiki is open source isn't it? If that's right, I shall examine it and find out for myself. Not being snotty. I am just extremely over tired and not thinking straight. fredgandt 12:52, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

If you want to just substitute something on the page you're editing, use subst (though I think safesubst would have the same effect, it's just more typing). But if you're writing a template that you want to do recursive substitution (i.e. if the template is substituted, you want certain subtemplates etc. to be substituted as well), you'd probably want to use safesubst rather than subst (because subst will break if the template is transcluded, or is viewed on its own page) AND you'll need to wrap the modifier to prevent premature substitution.--Kotniski (talk) 13:19, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

There are 15 cases to consider:

	On template page	Substituted into article	Transcluded into article
{{#if:...}}	Correct	Incorrect	Correct
{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>#if:...}}	Correct	Correct	Incorrect
{{{{{|subst:}}}#if:...}}	Incorrect	Correct	Incorrect
{{<includeonly>safesubst:</includeonly>#if:...}}	Correct	Correct	Correct
{{{{{|safesubst:}}}#if:...}}	Correct	Correct	Correct

As you can see, prior to the introduction of safesubst there was no way to have a template that behaved properly when transcluded or when substed, unless you used a hack such as typing {{example}} normally and {{subst:example|subst=subst:}} when substing (and then the template would contain {{{{{subst|}}}#if:...}}). Anomie⚔ 19:37, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There are some templates that should always be substituted (e.g. user warning templates) and some that should never be substituted (e.g. WikiProject templates) - in these cases, {{Substitution}} guidance should be added to the template documentation. On the other hand, there are some where editors may either substitute or transclude templates depending on the context (i.e. using {{su}} in a signature - should be substituted, whereas {{su}} used in an article - should not be) - in such cases, adding safesubst support to the template is an improvement. That you do not yet grasp the usage of safesubst does not strike me as a legitimate reason to revert the addition of safesubst support.
One (admittedly hacky way) of editing a template that has had safesubst support added would be to copy the code into a notepad, find&replace {{{|safesubst:}}} with <!-- BLAHBLAH --> or some other unique string, doing your edits, and then do a reverse find-replace to re-add the safesubst code once you have finished your edits. I do understand that it is a little difficult to visually parse the template once all those extra curly braces are added. –xeno^talk 20:53, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
I am responding to a talk page request, precipitated by my addition (and the poster's subsequent removal) of safesubst from {{su}}.

• First off, I feel a bit bad because I readded it contrary to WP:BRD, so apologies.
• Second off, safesubst actually isn't that big of an enigma. The exact reason why it works is a black box to me as well (no offense, but WP:TL;DR on much of this thread), but I do know that it works as expected, i.e., that the keyword substitutes the parameters without all the unnecessary markup (e.g., {{#if:yes|1|0}} -> 1). It is nothing particularly special, other than the fact that it causes substitution when the template is substituted rather than leaving in that ugly markup. Still, I think it is a very useful thing; there is no reason not to include it other than complexity, but many of our templates are very complex. And there is reason to include it, namely that policy prohibits substitution in signatures, and at least one person is using the template as a signature. I imagine there are other uses of it as well, and it's always better IMHO to remove the markup when substituting, as it can be easier on the parser.

PS. the unindent template I used above is one I've made safesubst'able, as is the wink smiley you're seeing to the right. Magog the Ogre (talk) 23:09, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually, WP:SIG prohibits transclusion. Substing templates in signatures is fine, provided those templates are ment to be substituted. So whatever person is using the template, he should fix his signature. — Edokter (talk) — 23:42, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Or you could stop reverting people who fix the template to be substable. Anomie⚔ 01:03, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I could... but that will result in every template with parser functions being made substable in the long run. No, better to stop that doom-scenario now then suffer the consequences later. — Edokter (talk) — 11:58, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

If there is a usecase for substituting a particular templates, adding safesubst support perfectly appropriate. Reverting the addition of safesubst, not so much. –xeno^talk 13:41, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

This needs a solution in core. Since I haven't seen any parserfunction that 'need' to be substituted (correct me if I'm wrong here), why not filter out parserfunction in the parser by default and just substitute the result? — Edokter (talk) — 13:55, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

{{uw-coi-username}} has a parserFunction that needs to be coded onto the page during substitution. –xeno^talk 14:20, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to see safesubsting up the line as often as possible so that any suitably substable templates produce a completely substed result. I just safesubsted a flatlist for example (love the layout) which I used to replace a mess of little templates and the substed transclusion was a mess with a perserfunction and a template left behind for no apparent reason. What I expected and would prefer is that when a template contains a (for continued example) flatlist that I add safesubst to, when I subst the transclusion of that template the page once saved contains no templates or parserfunctions but is made entirely of html and/or wiki-mark-up (preferably the latter of course). fredgandt 14:39, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Er... Your example actually proves my point. The parserfunctions are safesubsted, preventing the parser function from ending up on the destination page. This is actually a perfect example of what should be done by default. — Edokter (talk) — 15:35, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

No - there are some parserFunctions in there that are meant to be substituted, and one that isn't. The one that need to stay unsubsted is the one in the second part of this diff. So the status quo provides the flexibility that under-the-hood substitution could not. –xeno^talk 17:43, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

← I openly admit to being a learner (I always think there is more to learn but with templates I really am just learning) but this doesn't seem right to me at all. When either safe or just substing a flatlist one gets (for example):

<div class="hlist " style="margin-left: {{#expr:0*1.6}}em; ">{{#if:
*foo
*bar
*baz|

*foo
*bar
*baz
</div>}}

The #expr and #if have not substed and no wonder. They have no safesubst in the flatlist source. Would the result not be better if when a flatlist was substed or safesubsted (no difference at the point of sale) all that was left is mark-up? fredgandt 16:39, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Of course, if a flatlist shouldn't be substed at all, then it's perfectly fine as it is. Although in this case it might be an idea to mention it in the documentation with {{Substitution}} fredgandt 16:48, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

bug 22297 seems to make things quite clear (to me). An alternative of "subst-if-substed" was almost going to be safesubst's name. One comment that "safesubst" is better since "it would likely be more consistent to chose a name that doesn't quite mean anything :)" seems (by looking at this very discussion) to have been proven wrong. So (I didn't actually find the applicable source code. I may try again sometime) it seems that we simply use safesubst to subst any templates or parser functions we are transcluding and it's use anywhere else is identical to the use of subst. Strikes me that using safesubst for everything and not using subst at all is the easiest thing to do. fredgandt 10:52, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, unless you particularly want to break the template on transclusion (there are various tricks people use to get the template to behave differently, e.g. display a warning message, depending on whether it's transcluded or substituted), you can always use safesubst. It's... well, safe. Though if you're actually in the act of substituting a template (rather than writing the code for one) then it makes no difference, so you may as well type the shorter "subst".--Kotniski (talk) 11:11, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

True. I like short variable names. s & ss would suit me just fine. fredgandt 11:37, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

AFD log

I'm getting "failed to find the target" when I try to list an AFD. What got screwed up? Anyone know? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 00:16, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

This is a Twinkle issue. Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Twinkle#AFD. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:44, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Paypal link

Copied from Wikipedia:Help desk. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 02:12, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

The site seems to have a problem with the paypal link... When I click to make a paypal donation and try to login, it flips out... Just thought y'all should know. Cleared cache and cookie, Norton 360 antivirus current, and restarted puter... still an issue. Happy Thanksgiving!69.180.162.254 (talk) 23:13, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

What does "flips out" mean exactly? My best bet is that your browser gives you a 404 or 503 error or a similar browser problem? Gary King (talk · scripts) 05:45, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Using a .kmz file

A user asked at WP:MCQ#Adding a Google Earth .kmz file to an article. if Wikipedia has any way to use a kmz file. Does anyone here know; I doubt that anyone there does? —teb728 t c 05:10, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

• STEP 1: Be sure it would not be a WP:COPYVIO to put Google Earth data into Wikipedia, and explain the situation to them. Don't be an enabler for uploadaholics. Also, beware someone asking, "Is there an easy way to upload 900 images that matched an image search?" ;-]   We have 10 million images on Wikimedia Commons already (over 50 for every major town on Earth?), so perhaps there are a few files already there which they can use. –Wikid77 (talk) 07:22, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

If you had followed either of my links you would know how inappropriate your reply was! A kmz file is not an image; it is pure data: a set of coordinate pairs—in the case of this query, apparently the locations of all all the power stations in New Zealand. The connection to Google Earth is that a program like Google Earth or NASA World Wind is the consumer of the kmz file. Look, I answer questions at MCQ; so I know about copyright issues, OK. The job of this forum is to answer questions about technical issues at Wikipedia, right?

There is also the issue of WP:NOTDIRECTORY, to avoid lists of non-notable data. In asking "how" to do something, I wonder "why". It is like asking, "Where should we put a data file of the population of every village in the world below 200 inhabitants?" See more below. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:24, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

So, does anyone here know as a technical issue if if Wikipedia has any way to use a kmz file? —teb728 t c 10:09, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Both kml and kmz are not supported at this time due to technical limitations bugzilla:26059. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:45, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the bugzilla link. I see there are a number of kml files in Commons:Category:Geocoding overlays. Those I have looked at are all over two years old. So apparently what happened is that sometime between when the files were uploaded and when the bug was discovered on 2010-11-22 a change was made to the MW software that has a side effect that it prevents uploading kml and kmz files. According to bugzilla accommodating kml uploads would be difficult, but with the new improved zip parser it might be possible to add support for uploading kmz files.

Existing kml (and presumably future kmz) can be sent to Google Earth by calling http://toolserver.org/~dschwen/kml.php?page=File:<filename> —teb728 t c 01:37, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

As the initial poster, I mentioned that the file was freely available from the NZ Electricity Commission; there is no copyright restriction against usage redistribution or alteration/anhancement/corruption. Indeed, its main security is security-by-obscurity. The target article has a map with some dots and links to articles with some more maps with some dots, and a schedule of some power stations, but this .kmz file has many dots and much information. Another larger such file shows transmission lines and substations. So, the idea was to provide substantial information in one place rather than thin information scattered about. But so far as I can see, .kmz files (and their unzupped form, .kml) are rejected by Wikipaedia.

The suggestion by TEB728 is somewhat above my head. Is the .kmz file to be supplied to some service ofered by toolserver.org, with then the W. page having a reference to it? Which reference could be followed by those interested to obtain a download? It appears that this service is supplied by W. Germany, so I presume it would be stable. This now is a second system whose arrangements I would have to flounder through. From what I can see so far, it is intended to support the storage of "tools", which I take to mean software of some sort, rather than be a repository for data files, no matter how interesting.

One objective would be indeed to have a map and all the fancy dots with information displayed in the W. rendition of the W. article, with the option to zoom in to smaller areas, etc. rather than have a scattering of a few simple map images. All this functionality would be supplied via the W. page and would be a great deal of effort. It would be far less effort for W. to have some sort of "thumbnail" or icon, which if poked would attempt to invoke Google Earth on a copy of the .kmz file, similar to a .pdf file. The basic arrangement would be to indicate that this file was directly available for download, after which Google Earth could be invoked. But, I don't know how this could be done, which is where I came in.TryItAndSee (talk) 20:43, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Let me explain it this way: It appears Wikipedia itself has no way to use a kml or kmz file; so Wikipedia uses the kml.php tool on the toolserver as a workaround for that lack. For example, Commons:File:Bavay - Dinant.svg has a kml overlay at Commons:File:Bavay - Dinant.svg/overlay.kml. The svg file is used in the box at upper right in the article Chaussée romaine de Bavay à Trèves on French Wikipedia. If you click the “Open this map in Google Earth” link on the svg file page or the «Détails du parcours avec Google Earth» link on the article, those links call the kml.php tool to send the kml file to Google Earth.

Unfortunately uploading new kml or kmz files is not supported, as explained at the bugzilla link above. —teb728 t c 02:29, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I looked at the French page, and saw what seemed a workable scheme (poke a link and Google Earth is invoked with the desired file) though the results were rather poor (at least for my superficial trial), however, if I can't upload the new file, I'm stuck. Presumably, I can't upload it under a different name then change the name to .kmz once established. (The file is 1.65MB as .kml, 209KB as .kmz) I suppose I could upload the file to some service and name it via a reference in the W. article so that interested readers could download it and etc. but now I have to find some service that would enable this, and stick around indefinitely without my further attention lest the link rot. Dropbox? Presumably such a link, not involving a .kmz file's content, would not upset IEx. TryItAndSee (talk) 20:32, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

If you just want the data from the locations and don't want to overlay them on anything, you can change the .kml/.kmz file into a .svg at http://kml2svg.free.fr/ and upload the resulting .svg. That's how I got the .svg file I eventually used to create this map, which originated as a .kmz. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 23:15, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Dear friend, I had a go. With the .kmz file the response was "(Error 2) The file is not a valid kml ou kmz ressource, type_file= 'application/vnd'" while with it converted to .kml the response was Erreur 500 - internal server, however on a second try there was more progress, except the process seemed to stall at the "convert" stage. One problem is that the .kmz file has not just points in NZ, but also at Greenwich (longitude zero is not on the benchmark) so the result would be a map of almost the whole globe. Anyway, a static image (as in your example) would lack the ability to zoom in, and the whole country is splattered with many dots and their annotation even without their associated text. So, all in all, it appears that I'm stuck with supplying the file via something similar to Dropbox. TryItAndSee (talk) 20:18, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

As an alternative, look at using {{GeoGroupTemplate}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:35, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I've had a look, and if I follow what is going on, it seems that the W. article would contain a wad of stuff using the GeoGroupTemplate, which can be recast as a .kml file that can be exported to Google Earth for its display. In other words, the content of the original .kml/.kmz file would be translated into the GeoGroupTemplate style for placement in the W. article. Humm. Aside from the number of items, there is significant organisation in the PowerStations.kmz file, with power stations in collections according to type or membership of a scheme, and there are depictions of the routes of canals as well. Further, there may be substantial text associated with a power station, along with links. Aside from the effort of conversion, it appears that the GeoGroupTemplate protocol deals with only a limited set of the features offered via .kml. In other words, this is not a simple data file (containing a list of names and coordinates) as disfavoured in the "beware" note below but a complex pile of stuff to be rendered similar to html except it is kml. And the information is of enough interest that partial schedules of approximate information are already scattered around in other articles. Agh, I was attempting to slog through the convoluted procedure to upload a sample image, only to be blocked as not yet autoconfirmed. If anyone is interested in a copy, I can be reached via yahoo com and cardprezzy (not in that order). Indeed, I could attach the actual .kmz file. TryItAndSee (talk) 20:47, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

• Beware WP:NOTDIR of data files, as Wikipedia is not a directory of coordinates for a list of sites in some region. The proper technical solution to uploading raw data, or primary source data, is to NOT upload it into English Wikipedia, but only provide an External link. If the data could be summarized as in a graphical map, or a bar chart or histogram, as interpreted by reliable sources, then that summary image or chart could be uploaded. Otherwise, beware trying to upload detailed coordinate data which should be considered for Wikisource or some other plan for storing primary-source data. Wikipedia is intended for summarized or excerpt information, not whole collections of raw data. I hope that helps to explain the technical limitations for that aspect of Wikipedia storage. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:24, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Coordinate display preferences

Where {{Coord}} is used, users can choose to see coordinates in deccimal, DMS, or both, formats by setting their own monobook.css (see Template:Coord#Per-user display customization for details). How could this be moved to an option in their "my prefernces" settings? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:01, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Only as a Gedget - see Wikipedia:Gadget. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:01, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Or as a MediaWiki extension, which would make the whole thing a lot more flexible. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:39, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, both. How do we take either of those options forwards (I'm not a coder, so can't contribute), and how long would that take? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:40, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Weird search results

I am a Wikignome who searches for spelling mistakes. My standard search for "relevent" [2] currently states there are 23 matches, but Page 1 "Results 1-20 of 23" has only 11 entries, and Page 2 "Results 21-23 of 23" only has one entry - a total of 12.
Recent problems with the search facility have been due to a "stale ... search index slice" - whatever that means. Is this another? and can someone please fix it.
Arjayay (talk) 09:19, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Could I add that "relevent" is not the only word causing problems lots of words are - e.g. "reserach" and "responsibilty". - Arjayay (talk) 18:59, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Search of all areas (check all boxes) gives me 12,491 hits for "relevent". fredgandt 19:12, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

813 "reserach"'s (including "reseraching"'s). That's a lot of weird spelling. fredgandt 19:17, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Back on topic - Arjayay's post includes a link showing which namespaces are being searched. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:29, 23 November 2011 (UTC) revised 20:13, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Cough! I am very much on topic. I misunderstood the meaning of standard search. Since the results of what I took to be standard (a search of Article, User, Wikipedia, File, Template, Help, and Category with "List redirects" also checked (the default and thus standard)) did not match Arjayay's, I thought I'd report on a search that's easy to repro. I too see the problem Arjayay reports if I use those search params. fredgandt 20:00, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

The default search is Article only with "List redirects" checked. You can see that by logging out. I guess you have checked the namespaces you mention at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-searchoptions. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:46, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

My apologies to anyone who feels they are warranted. I forgot all about those settings. I basically never log out (every 30 days I have to reset cookies but that's it) and haven't set prefs for a very long time. fredgandt 01:53, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Seems to be bug 32376. I've temporarily stopped search indexing until the issue is resolved. --rainman (talk) 00:20, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

This bug is now fixed. There might still be some discrepancy between the number of results and number of hits shown in upper right corner for a while, but should decrease over time as pages are correctly re-indexed. --rainman (talk) 11:55, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks - Arjayay (talk) 13:31, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Edit summary prefill error

Resolved

 – It's a bug in the software, a bug report was opened at bugzilla:32617. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:58, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

As is well known, when editing an article section, the edit summary entry item is pre-filled with the relevant section header, enclosed in C/Java/whatever comment markers /* ... */. When editing the whole page, the edit summary is initially blank. If you have Preferences → Gadgets → Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page enabled, and you edit the lead section, the the edit summary is also initially blank. However, I've just noticed strange behaviour: when editing the lead section of Sunderland station (if you don't have the gadget enabled, the link is here), the pre-filled edit summary is /* History of the current station */ . This is actually a double mystery, because the article doesn't have any section of that name. Have tried purging, also using different browsers (Chrome Firefox IE7 Opera Safari), and also editing when logged out (How? By logging in, going to the page, right-clicking the [edit] link for the lead section, selecting "Copy link location", logging out, then pasting into browser address bar). It's there every time. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:26, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

The section is there, but it's hidden. Peter E. James (talk) 21:05, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

More precisely, the section is commented out. It's a bug to show it in the section edit summary. I couldn't find it at Bugzilla and I'm not reporting it. The gadget is not needed to see the bug. Anybody can see it with http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sunderland_station&action=edit&section=0. By the way, many editors haven't noticed that /* ... */ has a function described at Help:Edit summary#Section editing. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:44, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Specifically, the bug is that it just picks out the text from the first line that has something resembling "header" markup (text surrounded by one or more '='). You can see the same thing with this edit link where section 0 contains broken header markup. Anomie⚔ 23:18, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

It still does it when JavaScript is turned off, so I suppose it's in the MediaWiki core somewhere. I haven't been able to find the code that makes this happen, though. Ucucha (talk) 23:46, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

I found the issue in the MediaWiki code and reported it at bugzilla:32617. Ucucha (talk) 23:59, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Error on loading page

Resolved

 – Error fixed. —mc10 (t/c) 19:31, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, so far the symptom has been fixed in one particular case, but the underlying problem cause (a programming error in MediaWiki:Common.js) remains unfixed. I could make it fail again on this very page or any other page by adding a collapsible table with an empty first table header. Lupo 20:11, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Now it's fixed. ;-) Lupo 21:39, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I am getting webpage errors consistently when loading Demographics of Croatia, but not any other page. It complains of an "invalid argument" in line 6, character 224. Line 6 in view-source reads in its entirety

<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />

so line 224 may have to be sought in a different galaxy :))

This occurs in MSIE7, with all of Vector, Classic and Simple skins. I wouldn't mind it, but it prevents Ucucha's wonderful duplinks tool from appearing in the sidebar, and I really do want that. (But duplinks isn't causing the error, which appears even when duplinks is switched off). Thanks. --Stfg (talk) 14:42, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

No errors for me on that page. Vector, Chrome, XP fredgandt 15:21, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I see the error in IE8 standards mode. Using debug=true, the error is traced to line 264 of this piece of javascript in Common.js, where IE points it fingers to this line:

Header.insertBefore( Button, Header.childNodes[0] );

Subsequently, javascript stops working and the navboxs have no show/hide links (and popups is screwed). I don't know what's causing it, but somwhere in the article is some faulty code, perhaps leaking though from some faulty template. — Edokter (talk) — 15:34, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Don't have IE8 available right now, but I do see a <th></th> in the page HTML on the first collapsible table. I could imagine that IE has Header.childNodes === null in that case, and then trying to access the first element though [0] would crash. Why is that code not using Header.insertBefore( Button, Header.firstChild ); anyway? Lupo 15:47, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I just added something into those ths; did that fix the issue in IE8? Ucucha (talk) 15:59, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

That indeed fixed it. Would firstChild not also crash if it is empty? — Edokter (talk) — 16:36, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

No, it would not. childNodes[0] fails if childNodes === null because the [0] tries to dereference a null pointer. If firstChild === null, we'll just pass null to insertBefore(), which makes it simply add the button as the last (and in this case, first) child of that table header node. Lupo 20:00, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I replaced it with firstChild in Common.js. I'll revert if this breaks in other ways. — Edokter (talk) — 20:21, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Fixed on IE7 also. Thanks very much, everyone. --Stfg (talk) 17:12, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

New Pages and Village Pump links in Sidebar

I would like to see a few additions made to the sidebar. Under the Interaction tab (where we have help, about Wikipedia, Recent changes etc) could we posably add links to New Pages and The Village Pump. Would make new page patrolling a lot easier and also make it easier to make proposals at the pum without having to search for these pages. Oddbodz (talk) 17:41, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Don't know if it works in all skins, but it's possible to add additional functions in classic skin. See function SidebarExt in User:Optimist on the run/standard.js for an example of how I've customised mine. An optimist on the run! 20:14, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Watchlist notice bug

The current watchlist notice looks like it has an error in the template syntax (the conditional shows up).Jasper Deng (talk) 06:20, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I just saw that too, though now there are no notices on my watchlist. —{|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|} 06:22, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

This was due to a typographical error on my part, for which I apologize. —David Levy 07:54, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

How to add columns to refs?

I read documentation of Template:Reflist, but I must have missed something: why is this having no effect? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 00:30, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

That should theoretically work, however, the linebreak after the "2" broke it. Should be fixed now. — Edokter (talk) — 00:38, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

String equalities

Is there any way of determining string inequalities (e.g. "defg" > "abc") within expressions? An optimist on the run! 18:28, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Don't see anything listed at Template:String templates see also text. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:17, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Could try === as with JS and PHP (Hi, I'll be your template noob this evening...). Could that work? Template expressions do other kinds of maths (don't they?). fredgandt 19:31, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions#.23ifeq Bingo! fredgandt 19:36, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

#ifeq: only compares strings to see if they're equal or not, it doesn't do comparisons. I want to determine whether one string is alphabetically before or after the second. An optimist on the run! 19:41, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Ah sry. Whenever I get stuck on something I look for the simplest crayon drawing that works (however ugly) then refine from there. Could you convert the letters to numerical values then compare? Maybe create a template that does that and transclude it to the one you're working on to save space then work on trimming the code? Something like that anyway. fredgandt 19:47, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

In "comparison behaviour" on the same mw page there is "Once a match is found, subsequent cases are ignored:{{#switch: b | f = Foo | b = Bar | b = Baz | }} → Bar". I am tired but this could be a start of a lovely crayon drawing. Possibly a massive template but better than nothing? fredgandt 20:03, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

I suppose you could do it, using something like a template that returns 0 for a, 1 for b, 2 for c, etcetera, and then another template that uses that template to perform comparisons. Couple all that with some liberal use of {{str sub}}. I wouldn't recommend this if you want to remain sane, though. Ucucha (talk) 23:22, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

That could work - I'd only be interested in the first couple of characters as it's for interwiki language codes. I'll see what I can do. An optimist on the run! 23:37, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Now created as {{str gtr str}}. Thanks for the suggestions. An optimist on the run! 11:22, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Improving search for templates

A search for, say, "{{Authority control}}" (or "{{Authority control") should be treated as a search for "Template:Authority control" (or at least return that template page ahead of other search results). How can this be arranged? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:03, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Write code to do that and try to get it committed to MediaWiki; or, file a Bugzilla report and hope for the best. Ucucha (talk) 22:03, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

I'll do the latter, thank you, but I'm surprised the search feature isn't configurable separately, without code. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:01, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

No. That would make it impossible to search for the string "{{Authority control}}" as such... not a good idea. That's why there are namespace selectors on the advanced search page. — Edokter (talk) — 12:39, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

How would my parenthetical alternative prevent that? How do namespace selectors assist people searching for "{{Authority control}}", including newbies who don't know that "{{" designates a template?? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:02, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Newbies are not interested in templates. What I do know is that search should not return results outside the given namespace selection, i.e. when the Template: namespace is not selected, it should not return templates. — Edokter (talk) — 13:20, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

"Newbies are not interested in templates" - There is no basis for that statement; and there is no namespace selection in the default search box which appears above every article. Our search works (but does not find the template in the case given above) when no namespaces are selected. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:58, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

That is because it reverts to the default namespaces set in your preferences. — Edokter (talk) — 15:26, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

"... search should not return results outside the given namespace selection" – Actually, when I search up "File:Some_test_keyword", and use the default search settings, "File:" namespace results show up. —mc10 (t/c) 00:39, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

talk-page magic word

Resolved

What's the magic word (or similar) for inclusion in a template that will make a link to the reader's tall page? I've searched, but to no avail. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:56, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Special:MyTalk? -- John of Reading (talk) 12:18, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Seems to be, thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:25, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Vector vs. Monobook

If I read this correct, according to our database reports, over 2.1 million registered users still use Monobook, against only 178 thousand that use Vector. We are a conservative bunch, aren't we? — Edokter (talk) — 15:32, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Heh, or we just know a bad thing when we see it. :P - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 15:36, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't know how to read that report. The largest number is "MediaWiki:Skinname-" which says 7201746. The sum of all rows is 9874636. {{NUMBEROFUSERS}} produces 48,195,729. I don't remember whether accounts created before Vector were automatically changed to Vector. Many of the accounts have not logged in since Vector was introduced. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:08, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Those must be users that have never set their skin option. A far as I know, users that had Monobook set were not automatically set to Vector. However, it seems that user who never set their skin were migrated to Vector. So I guess there are more Vector users then there are Monobook users. — Edokter (talk) — 16:23, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Skinname- is probably some default option, which resolve to Vector, afaik. Petrb (talk) 16:14, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I was curious and done an sql to select to find more

mysql> select * from user_properties where up_property='skin' limit 20;
+---------+-------------+----------+
| up_user | up_property | up_value |
+---------+-------------+----------+
|       3 | skin        | 0        |
|       5 | skin        | 0        |
|       6 | skin        | 0        |
|       7 | skin        | standard |
|       8 | skin        | monobook |
|       9 | skin        | 0        |
|      10 | skin        | 0        |
|      13 | skin        | 0        |
|      14 | skin        | 0        |
|      15 | skin        | 0        |
|      17 | skin        | standard |
|      18 | skin        | 0        |
|      19 | skin        | 0        |
|      20 | skin        | 0        |
|      21 | skin        | 0        |
|      22 | skin        | 0        |
|      25 | skin        | vector   |
|      27 | skin        | monobook |
|      28 | skin        | 0        |
|      29 | skin        | 0        |
+---------+-------------+----------+
20 rows in set (0.01 sec)

I believe that 0 means default skin, so that there are much more users who use vector. I tried to do a select on my user account, but it didn't even return skin property, so maybe not :) Petrb (talk) 16:25, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

In the cluster tables, only preferences which differ from the default are stored; so the discrepancy between the 9.8m and the 15.7m are all users using the default skin, which is Vector. Prior to MW1.16 all preferences were saved including defaults, so most of those 9.8m are old accounts who never changed the preference, rather than those making an active choice to switch 'back' to Monobook. I'm not sure what the zeros in that SQL snippet represent; they most likely do translate back to "default", but I'm not sure how they got there. Maybe they were added by the replication routine that populates that toolserver table. Happy‑melon 23:16, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Skin notes: 0=default, 1=nostalgia, 2=cologneblue; amethyst was introduced 1.4 and removed 1.5; majority of users don't have a skin "set" and are not included, thus the difference in skin vs site totals are the one using the default skin/update preferences. The user_touched column (user activity: login/watchlist/editing/etc) is exposed in the anonymised version of the table. — Dispenser 01:18, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

mysql> SELECT /*SLOW_OK*/
    ->   up_value,
    ->   COUNT(*) AS Users,
    ->   SUM(ts_user_touched_cropped > NOW()-INTERVAL 30 DAY) AS Active
    -> FROM user_properties_anonym
    -> WHERE up_property="skin"
    -> GROUP BY up_value;
+-------------+---------+--------+
| up_value    | Users   | Active |
+-------------+---------+--------+
|             | 7201459 |  33391 |
| 0           |   54310 |    772 |
| 1           |    1772 |     29 |
| 2           |    3090 |     42 |
| amethyst    |    1293 |      2 |
| chick       |   30435 |    401 |
| cologneblue |   78534 |   1486 |
| modern      |   60343 |   3374 |
| monobook    | 2182701 |  22140 |
| myskin      |   15524 |    201 |
| nostalgia   |   20818 |    235 |
| on          |      16 |      0 |
| simple      |   13265 |    311 |
| standard    |   33015 |    849 |
| vector      |  177848 |   2603 |
+-------------+---------+--------+
15 rows in set (16 min 13.90 sec)

Active sums to 65,836 out of 143,614 according to Special:Statistics, but SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT rc_user) from recentchanges; gives me 239,978. Go figure. — Dispenser 01:51, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

odd article counts

When viewing a category with subcats, the subcats show the number of subcats in that subcat ('C') and the number of articles ('P'). Since yesterday or so, the article count now includes the number of subcats. For example, in Category:Schools in the United States, this is shown: [+] Schools in the United States by territory‎ (4 C, 4 P). In fact, Category:Schools in the United States by territory‎ just has four subcats and no articles. The counts are now confusing, misleading and wrong. Hmains (talk) 18:34, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Cannot get #explode to work

Resolved

 – StringFunctions is not installed; see bugzilla:6455 for more information. —mc10 (t/c) 00:45, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Using {{#explode:Foo bar baz| |1}} should return "bar" but it is currently not returning anything but itself. Check out the result of adding that exact code here → {{#explode:Foo bar baz| |1}} ← It's not resolving (or whatever the term is). Before the last arrow and after the first should read " bar " (without quotes). It's as if #explode isn't recognised as a function. Is there some reason I have missed for this code not working or is it simply broken? fredgandt 21:07, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

{{#explode:}} is from mw:Extension:StringFunctions. That extension is not installed. See bugzilla:6455. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:13, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Facepalm! TYVM PrimeHunter. I'll crawl back under my rock now. fredgandt 21:15, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Italicized titles chopping off J's

Moved from Wikipedia:Help Desk.

On Wikipedia articles that have a title in italics and begin with a "J" (Jumanji, Just Kids), I'm showing that the J is cut off in the article's title, making it look like an I. I wonder if this is a known issue or due to my configuration. I'm using Vector and Firefox. Gobonobo ^{T C} 19:06, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

What encoding do you use in your browser? What font?--♫GoP♫_T^C_N 19:42, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I see it as well. it seems to be a consequence of the CSS having no "padding-left", and "overflow:hidden", so the kern of the 'J' is beyond the box and so hidden. I'm not sure what should be happening - it may be a rendering bug in Firefox, or it may be an infelicity in the definition of CSS. --ColinFine (talk) 23:07, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

(Later): I haven't been able to identify anywhere that this issue is discussed, either in the CSS spec, or elsewhere, so I suspect that it's something that neither the CSS guys nor the Firefox guys thought of. It's something that Wikipedia could work round, but it's fiddly, because you would want to add some padding-left to an <h1>, <h2> etc, but only when it starts with a <i>. --ColinFine (talk) 23:21, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Using Vector on Chrome on XP. Chrome's standard font set to arial. I'm not seeing any chopping of the J's or j's mentioned. fredgandt 06:45, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Firefox , Windows 7, Font Arial. J clearly visible. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 06:56, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Looks fine in Firefox/Vector and several others, for me. Sounds like an old IE6 issue, really (although that was on the right). Pursue-not the padding-left; nothing's moving anything to the left. Alarbus (talk) 07:52, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

I am seeing this issue using Firefox 7.0.1 and Konqueror 4.6.5 on Ubuntu. Tested in Monobook in Firefox and in both Monobook and Vector in Konqueror, the same is happening in all instances. Gobonobo, what operating system are you using? Thryduulf (talk) 11:06, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm using Ubuntu 11.10 and Firefox 7.0.1. Gobonobo ^{T C} 16:19, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

This is a local issue. Theoretically, nothing should be cut off. If they do, it is a rendering issue which is most likely caused by an incompatible font; the standard font may not have a proper Italics variant installed, which causes the OS to slant the regular font instead, with cut-offs as a result. So do make sure that your default fonts have all their variants present and installed properly. — Edokter (talk) — 12:28, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. It's just that when this happens, your letters are now cut off due to the overflow:hidden. We use overflow:hidden for countering the issues with WP:BUNCH. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:11, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the overflow has any effect. Let's try:

JJJ no overflow WWW
JJJ with overflow WWW

Those with proper fonts (or proper OS slating) should see no cut-offs. Otherwise, both lines should show cut-offs. — Edokter (talk) — 14:10, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Arrr. I see both the above lines correctly, but the title in Jumanji is cut off. Firefox 8.0, OpenSUSE 11.4, standard font settings. --Mirokado (talk) 22:39, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Then I really don't know what's causing it. I changed the size of the above lines to 200% (same as article title). Are they still showing correctly? — Edokter (talk) — 23:48, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Still as before, both above lines correct, Jumanji cut off. This time with Ubuntu 11.4, Firefox 8.0, standard font settings. --Mirokado (talk) 09:26, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Is the issue replicated with Chrome on Ubuntu? —mc10 (t/c) 19:02, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Chromium does not have this issue for me, just Firefox. Gobonobo ^{T C} 23:43, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Can you report the fonts that your version of Firefox uses? It's "Edit" (I believe on Ubuntu) -> "Options" -> "Content" -> "Fonts and Colors" section. Check the advanced settings as well. Compare those to the ones that Chrome uses. —mc10 (t/c) 00:37, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Firefox 8.0 now, with Times New Roman as the default font. Advanced fonts: Proportional - Serif, Serif - Times New Roman, Sans-serif - Arial, Monospace - Courier New. Character encoding is Western (ISO-8859-1). I've matched the fonts to the setting from Chromium, but the issue remains. Gobonobo ^{T C} 01:23, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Odd. My settings are exactly the same, except that character encoding is Unicode (UTF-8), which I doubt makes a difference in this case, as we're dealing with simple letters. You didn't set a minimum font size, right? —mc10 (t/c) 01:12, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

"This edit has not yet been patrolled"

I am seeing an exclamation point in my watchlist by the link to the article Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Pontcysyllte aqueduct arp. When I hover my mouse over the exclamation point, I am told "This edit has not yet been patrolled". I don't see any item on the page that allows me to mark it as patrolled. Help would be appreciated. Pine^talk 08:54, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:New pages patrol/patrolled pages. To make the exclamation point go away, you'll have to find the page via Special:NewPages and visit it from there. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:23, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Surely pages in Wikipedia space shouldn't be flagged in this way? I just created a deletion disussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Neil Chriss and see that it is also flagged, even though it doesn't appear at Special:NewPages. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:42, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

By default Special:NewPages shows only pages in article space. Just above the list is a box where you may enter search criteria; one of these allows you to select all namespaces, or one specific namespace. You will see that there are unpatrolled pages in most namespaces, even obscure ones like Portal: and Book:. It's probably only MediaWiki: where everything shows as patrolled, for the simple reason that only admins can edit in MediaWiki: space, and all admins are autopatrollers. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:55, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

It now shows on Special:RecentChanges and Special:Watchlist too (r103641, r104250). Makes it easier to see changes to new pages and mark new pages as patrolled. Since those pages show changes from all namespaces by default, you will see pages that you wouldn't normally patrol. Feel free to check them and patrol them, or just ignore them. Reach Out to the Truth 17:26, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

DISPLAYTITLE is not working

Atop the article 2^43112609 − 1, I put {{DISPLAYTITLE:2^43112609 − 1}}. It doesn't work. It doesn't have any problem with subscripts at E₈ (mathematics). What's going on? Michael Hardy (talk) 19:23, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

You removed the caret. As a result our DISPLAYTITLE normalizes to "243112609 − 1"; not the same as the article title. It has to normalize to the same title or DISPLAYTITLE won't work. Reach Out to the Truth 19:28, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Fixed it for you. I added the ^ back and wrapped it in <span style="display:none;">. Reach Out to the Truth 19:31, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you.

What does "normalize" mean in this context? Michael Hardy (talk) 23:15, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

See Text normalization. "2^43112609 − 1" contains the same characters as "2

^

^43112609 − 1", if you ignore the fact that in the second case the caret is hidden (by using {{nodisplay|^}}) and eight characters are superscripted. In your normal browser view, drag your mouse from here →2

^

^43112609 − 1←to here, copy that to the clipboard, then go to a plain text editor (such as this editing screen) and paste it in. The caret magically appears. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:26, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually, that is not the case; text that is not displayed cannot be copied. — Edokter (talk) — 23:29, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

 Works for me Your browser must be different from mine (Firefox 3.6.24). The caret is there - it's hidden inside a <span class="display-none" style="display: none;">^</span>. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:44, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Then your browser is old and broken , just like IE8; they both copy the caret, but both Firefox 8 and Chrome 15 do not. — Edokter (talk) — 23:51, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Caret copied: Firefox 3.6.24; IE7. Caret not copied: Chrome 15.0.874.121; Opera 11.52; Safari 5.1 It's in the HTML source though, whatever browser is used. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:30, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

It isn't copied in IE9 either. Status of current browser versions: Not copied in IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera. Copied in: None known. DISPLAYTITLE is intended to only make changes which allow a user to copy-paste the pagename into a wikilink, at least when mw:Manual:$wgRestrictDisplayTitle is true as in the English Wikipedia. bugzilla:26547 is the request: ignore "display:none;" inside displaytitle. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:22, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

New Tool For Admins: File Swapping

Hi all. I'd like to introduce a new, revolutionary bot task to the community! Have you ever had the problem where you've had to replace one image with hundreds of image links with another image? Have you ever had to orphan a file redirect with an excess of links? If you've ever had either of those problems, they'll trouble you no more; I'd like to introduce Fbot task #10, a bot which will swap the usages of one file for another on request by any administrator! It's easy to request a swap. Simply go to User:Fbot/Replace, follow the administrator instructions, and you're good to go. The bot will complete your request within 48 hours. While Fbot #10 is currently in trial, it is fully functional, and ready for use. Presently, requests may be made by any autoconfirmed user, as Fbot 10 is still in trial. That said, for the duration of the trial period, all requests will be manually checked before being submitted to the bot, and inappropriate requests will be promptly removed. Once the trial is over, requests will be limited to administrators only, and non-admins may request swaps here. Happy swapping! FASTILY ^(TALK) 00:34, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Why the restriction to admins only? Malleus Fatuorum 01:56, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I would guess because admins are, generally speaking, trusted users, who will not (we hope) request the mass change of images like File:Information.svg into something offensive. I hope I haven't violated WP:BEANS here. If everyone could submit bot requests for image swap without scrutiny, half-assed attempts like this and this would become easier to get syntactically "correct". --Redrose64 (talk) 13:42, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that admins are the only trusted users? Malleus Fatuorum 13:48, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

No, I'm not: but the next level down is "autoconfirmed", for which the threshold of trust is rather low, since it's granted automatically on a pure count without assessing quality. Ten edits over four days could be ten instances of vandalism. The announcement above implies that manual assessment of the requests will end once the bot's trial period is over; so if there is to be no manual assessment, we simply cannot open it up to potential malicious requests. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:04, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

is "Xenocidic/statusChanger2.js" safe?

according to its page, this monitors your computer status and refreshes the status template. (Template:Statustop). is this method safe? there is a warning on its wikipedia page, reading, "Code that you insert on this page could contain malicious content capable of compromising your account. If you are unsure whether code you are adding to this page is safe, you can ask at the appropriate village pump. The code will be executed when previewing this page under some skins, including Monobook." Abc123456person (talk) 01:45, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

That warning is on any JavaScript page. I don't see anything suspicious in that particular script. Ucucha (talk) 03:11, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

A second opinion from me agrees with the first. Nothing about that script is malicious or dangerous at all. The warning is as stated generic and stated on every JavaScript page just in case someone creates something naughty. This script is all above board. It simply semi-automates the process of updating the content of a page that a template uses to set the display of your online status. It doesn't know anything you don't tell it, and won't do anything you can't do manually. fredgandt 03:27, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

The warning is even on a completely empty .js page, including one that doesn't exist yet (because you've just clicked the redlink to create it). --Redrose64 (talk) 13:54, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

The code's fine; I've used it myself. Essentially, it creates a few links on the top-right corner, near the log out links: "online", "busy", "around", "offline", and "sleep". Your status is only updated when you manually click the link—the script then edits a page (by default, Special:MyPage/Status), adding one word to the page. To display your status, you have to add the template {{Statustop}} or {{UserStatus}} to your user page. —mc10 (t/c) 02:35, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Category counting seems off

Something's wrong with whatever counts and displays the number of categories and pages in a category on a category page. For instance, looking at Category:Ships by navy, Category:Ships of the Brazilian Navy is showing "15 C, 16 P", but when you click on it, there are 15 categories, and only one page. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:13, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

It appears that the script is counting the subcategories as pages, so that (for instance) Category:Mine warfare vessels by navy, with 66 subcats and no pages in it, is showing as "66 C, 66 P". - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:15, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Also #odd article counts above. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:06, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Is there any way of fixing this? Tinton5 (talk) 14:21, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

RefToolbar oddity

I have version of (what I think is) RefToolbar, which I can't find documented anywhere. Nor can I find the script or gadget which has enabled it. There's a screenshot at http://twitpic.com/7il7o0 - note the green icon. I'm most perplexed by this, having spent an hour or more,over two days trying to find out how I got it and who to talk to about a proposed improvement. Can anyone enlighten me, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:54, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. RefToolbar generally is at Wikipedia:RefToolbar and the newest version is at Wikipedia:refToolbar 2.0. But apparently the code works through MediaWiki:RefToolbarLocal.js, which hasn't changed since January and MediaWiki:RefToolbarConfig.js hasn't changed since March. No idea why anything would have changed recently for you. It appears User:Kaldari was involved in creating it and User:Mr.Z-man was involved in turning it into a Gadget, so maybe they can help. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 02:29, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. nothing has changed recently; I've had this for some time, and only recently discovered that others see a different version. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:45, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

It's built-in; log-out to get the latest version (or config in prefs;) It, and it's cite template support, are standard equipment for all, now. Alarbus (talk) 03:28, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I've been logged in and out a lot recently; and even saw the version described when I logged on a machine I was using for the first time, yesterday. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:45, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Since you're using the old editing toolbar, the code you're looking for is at MediaWiki:RefToolbarLegacy.js. Search for "fetch" to find the code that generates that image. For some reason only the legacy version has this feature. Reach Out to the Truth 07:42, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

But where a I invoking that code? Also, I hope upgrading won't loose the feature, I use it daily, and my proposed improvement was in regards to its functionality. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:45, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

It's loaded from MediaWiki:Common.js/edit.js. As you can see, there are three different versions that can be loaded depending on your toolbar preferences. Regardless of which toolbar you use, you will have RefTools. Reach Out to the Truth 03:03, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

What toolbar preferences? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:55, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Editing tab of Special:Preferences, under "Usability features". If "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" is unchecked, the RefToolbarLegacy script is loaded. If it's checked and "Enable dialogs for inserting links, tables and more" is also checked, the RefToolbar script is loaded. If the first is checked and the second is unchecked, RefToolbarNoDialogs.js is loaded. So regardless of your preferences, there's a RefToolbar for you. Reach Out to the Truth 20:27, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

You are using the standard toolbar, thus you have RefToolbar 1.0; the cite icon is on the left. See Wikipedia:RefToolbar for the different settings to change between 1.0 and 2.0. You can discuss changes on the talk page, but there has been little response or late. See Help:Citation Style 1 for the templates supported by RefToolbar 1.0, RefToolbar 2.0, ProveIt and SnipManager. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 03:23, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

The cite icon is the rightmost of the toolbar icons (cropped in the above screenshot). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:55, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Odd, sure looks like the standard/old tool bar. See Wikipedia:RefToolbar. The 1.0 icon moved to the left after the WM 1.18 update. Added the scripts to Wikipedia:RefToolbar. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:16, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

The {{CITE}} button is definitely on the right. I've amended File:RefToolbar 1.0.png by taking a fresh screenshot. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:38, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Not sure when that changed back, but it was on the left in March. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:12, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, all. I think I've got that straight in my head, now. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:44, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Using magic words in monobook.js

Resolved

At the bottom of my monobook.js, there is a "Personal toolbox" that displays external links on my sidebar. One of the entries is:

var list_m = document.createElement("li");
list_m.id = 'v-google';
var link_m = document.createElement("a");
link_m.href = 'https://www.google.com/search?q=&tbm=nws&tbs=ar:1';
link_m.innerHTML = 'G News archive';
list_m.appendChild(link_m);
list_ul.appendChild(list_m);

I want to substitute the name of the article I am currently viewing into "q=article name". I tried adding {{urlencode:"{{{1|{{PAGENAME}}}}}", but that didn't work because I think magic words don't work in monobook pages. Are there any workarounds? Thanks in advance for any suggestions, Goodvac (talk) 06:00, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Try link_m.href = 'https://www.google.com/search?q=' + encodeURI(wgPageName) + '&tbm=nws&tbs=ar:1'; or something similar. Using stuff like PAGENAME in JavaScript won't work, because these get interpreted by the MediaWiki parser, which then sends the HTML to your browser. JavaScript runs in the browser itself and needs to use variables accessible there. Ucucha (talk) 06:16, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

That works; thanks a lot! I have another issue though: when I click on this Google News link on a page that contains spaces (for example, The Cry for Myth), the link will turn out to be a search for "The_Cry_for_Myth" when I actually want "The+Cry+for+Myth". Any ideas? Goodvac (talk) 06:30, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

link_m.href="https://www.google.com/search?q="+encodeURIComponent("The Cry for Myth").replace(/%20/g,"+")+"&tbm=nws&tbs=ar:1"; returns what you're after in this particular case but may not always be exactly what you want. may take some experimentation. fredgandt 08:13, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Or even better: link_m.href="https://www.google.com/search?q="+encodeURIComponent( wgTitle )+"&tbm=nws&tbs=ar:1"; or link_m.href="https://www.google.com/search?q="+encodeURIComponent( wgPageName.replace('_', ' ') )+"&tbm=nws&tbs=ar:1";, depending on wether you are actually interesting in the pagename or the pagetitle. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:26, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Please don't change other editors comments. I specifically used the actual string instead of the variable name "wgPageName" in order to more graphically show that the string starts out with spaces that must be encoded but if pluses are wanted instead of the normal space encoding the replace will take care of it. Regardless of why and what I typed. Please leave it as I typed it. fredgandt 08:37, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about that, I was editing my own comment, but yours and mine looked too much alike, so I accidentally changed the wrong paragraph. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:59, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Ah. I can well imagine. All is well in the world once more. Ommmm... fredgandt 14:44, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

So as TheDJ was trying to point out by changing my code offering(manually reverted), wgPageName returns the page name with spaces already replaced by underscores so; the method would be encodeURIComponent(wgPageName.replace(/_/g,"+")) to end up with (for example) "The+Cry+for+Myth". I'd really rather not have my mistakes overwritten by others. I'm quite capable of admitting them without running to my room for a blub. Enlightenment doesn't come easily and denying ones demons is a sure fire way to avoid it. fredgandt 09:04, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Notice also that since MediaWiki 1.17, the page title/name should be accessed through mw.config.get( 'wgTitle' ) and mw.config.get( 'wgPageName' ), because wgTitle and wgPageName won't be global variables forever. For more details, see mw:ResourceLoader/Migration guide (users)#wg* Variables. Helder 11:54, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Wow, thanks all for the suggestions—Fred, TheDJ, Helder! Using my rudimentary knowledge of dot notation, etc., and many tests, I was able to tweak it to link_m.href = 'https://www.google.com/search?q="' + encodeURIComponent(mw.config.get('wgPageName')).replace('_', '+') + '"&tbm=nws&tbs=ar:1';. The help was much appreciated. :) Goodvac (talk) 22:06, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

.replace( '_', '+' ) will only replace the first underscore found with a plus sign. .replace( /_/g, '+' ) (the "g" stands for "global") will replace all underscores. fredgandt 22:12, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I had just been testing it on pages with one space. Thanks again, Fred! Goodvac (talk) 22:18, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

← If you use Chrome (or I believe Firefox too and probably Safari) there is a JavaScript console built into the browser. It's extremely useful for testing and working out how to pick up and drop elements in pages etc. Right click the page, click "Inspect Element", then bottom left or the console that opens click the icon that looks like >= (but with three dashes) and a JavaScript console opens. Much time can be saved and numerous headaches too  fredgandt 22:24, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

p.s. Ctrl+Shift+i to open "inspector" and Ctrl+Shift+j for js console (in Chrome) fredgandt

I use Firefox, and it's Ctrl+⇧ Shift+J as well. Will check it out. Goodvac (talk) 23:06, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Undiscussed change to display of transparent images on the file page

Until an hour or two ago, the view of an image on the file page has been displayed with a checkered background to make it easier to differentiate between "image with a transparent background" and "image with a white background". This was a local customization; the MediaWiki default has been to just use the page background color. In T28470, some people requested that our customization be copied to standard MediaWiki, and for some unknown reason the devs decided that they'd have the checkered background show on hover only, meaning it will flicker on and off as the mouse is moved across the page. And for some even more unknown reason, User:Edokter decided unilaterally that we should follow that change here, rather than raising the issue for discussion anywhere. So, discuss. Anomie⚔ 21:52, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

• Personally, I find it annoying for the background to flicker as the mouse is moved. If a toggle is needed, I'd rather something be added using Javascript to allow for manually toggling the background used as necessary, alongside the "This image rendered as PNG in other sizes: 200px, 500px, 1000px, 2000px" bit already being added with local scripting on SVG image pages. Maybe I'll go write that script now, for my own use if nothing else. Anomie⚔ 21:52, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
  • This is the amendment in question. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:04, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
  • I've finished my script. Seems to work ok in Monobook and Vector on Firefox 8.0 and Chromium. See User:Anomie/file-toggle-transparency. Anomie⚔ 03:57, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
    • That's nifty (and easily customizable to incorporate a user's preferred default background and color choices). Thanks for writing it! —David Levy 05:22, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
    • IE doesn't work; in IE8, clicking the buttons does nothing, and in IE7 the buttons don't even appear. — Edokter (talk) — 12:14, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
      • I can't say I'm terribly surprised. Please report the actual error messages (or whatever else you might be able to determine) at User talk:Anomie/file-toggle-transparency. Anomie⚔ 15:44, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
        • There were no errors... just nothing happening. — Edokter (talk) — 16:28, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
          • I've gotten it working in IE6 under Wine, keeping in mind that PNG transparency doesn't work in IE6 so I had to find an arbitrary GIF image to test it with. Does it work for you now in IE7 or IE8? Anomie⚔ 18:05, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
            • IE6 should have PNG support through the PngFix script (but it may well clash with your script). At least it work in IE7, but in IE8, I still have to hover to see the new background. Also, regarding the colors; to even out the spacing between the gray levels, I recomment using #404040, #808080 and #C0C0C0 respectively. CSS triplets like #888 expand to #888888, which is slightly off-gray (#808080).
            • IE8 seems to work after all... — Edokter (talk) — 18:15, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
• I just tested File:Face-smile.svg and saw no flickering on mouseover or out. the rendering of the chequered background was quite stable. I am using Vector on Google Chrome on XP. I do think the chequered background as the default is better to quickly and familiarly spot an image with a transparent background though. I see that the alternative versions still have a default chequered BG but do prefer that the main image is in what I have to think is a globally recognisable form when partially transparent. However, it would be great if onmouseover the chequer was removed so we could see how it would look against a normal page. Effectively just reverse the code (sry if I waffled. I need to sleep soon). fredgandt 23:55, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Don't like the hover, so I disabled it in my CSS. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 01:24, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I personally like the change, but I agree that it should be reverted unless and until there's consensus for such a setup. —David Levy 02:10, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Somtimes the only way to create a discussion is to just do it and see the responses. — Edokter (talk) — 11:53, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Personally I have no objection either way. Both are looking good to me. I would object to a javascript toggle though, that's much worse than this hover. Also, for MediaWiki as a default, the hover is probably much better. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:43, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

User Watchlist option

I would like to propose that an option be added that would allow a user to use a user subpage as a watchlist vice the my watchlist. User watchlists are stored on the server and cannot be viewed by others. Doing this would also allow bots to automate some tasks such as removing deleted content from them, delete pages based on a timer or event, add pages to them or various other tasks. Of course this would have to be an opt in function. --Kumioko (talk) 04:36, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

This can effectively already be done using Special:Recentchangeslinked. You could write JavaScript to simulate watching/unwatching by adding or removing entries from the list. Ucucha (talk) 04:49, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Interesting, Ill take a look into that thanks. --Kumioko (talk) 04:56, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

You don't get the privacy Kumioko is asking for. All the rest is doable. Rich Farmbrough, 00:02, 28 November 2011 (UTC).

Personally I don't care who knows whats on my watchlist but I understand that others do and its good that we have the ability to keep it private. The problem with the private one is that there is no way to automate any of the functions associated so if your like me and have a large watchlist removing things can be a bit time consuming. I am just looking for an alternative to the private watchlist that will allow me to set up a bot to remove pages that have been deleted and some of the other things mentioned above. --Kumioko (talk) 00:41, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Is this about watchlist pruning? Because I have code that can load watchlists into the Toolserver, do some SQL on it, and spit it back out for MediaWiki. Only thing is I've been having trouble coming up with suitable rules for page removal as I keep mine under 500. — Dispenser 05:50, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Well its partly about pruning, I find that I need to check mine fairly often for red links and things of that sort and somehow I get an occassional stray oddball that just shows up out of thin air (sometimes just gibberish). I also sometimes chop certain things off of mine based on time or some other event. There just seems to be quite a few instances where having a bot or something that would/could do some of this for me would be beneficial. Especially since I don't really care who sees what I have. Mine is way too big quite frankly but since I logon frequently I usually don't have that much to review and it saves me from missing something. --Kumioko (talk) 05:55, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I've reread it a few times and am still a confused on what your asking for. Red links on you're watchlist or in articles your watching? Unwatching pages with a timer can be emulated by watching a sub-page with an expiry date. A simple example of the tech is disambiguation links from your watchlist for the disambiguation project. — Dispenser 09:25, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Combining the nowiki and pre tags

(Moved from {{helpme}} [3] - is apparently re. User:GarveyPatrickD/Combining_the_nowiki_and_pre_tags -  Chzz  ►  21:25, 27 November 2011 (UTC)}

As I state in the opening paragraph of this page, "This is motivated by the results seen after a migration utility was used on pages encoded in another wiki syntax for use in a replacement MediaWiki." The question I have now is, could this page be more compactly coded?

I wanted to show the MediaWiki source, how it displayed, and make a comment about what should be noted about each use of the tags. It was interesting getting the Display: portions to work the way I wanted them to display.

In fact, even when I had everything vertically and horizontally spaced and in a bold font as I wished, on my Dell Inspirion 1300 laptop running Windows XT SP2, it looked like the virgule (slash) in the end tag display was not bold. On our HP TouchSmart 600 running Windows 7 64-bit, the virgule still looks like it might not be as thick as the other bold characters in the tag.

So, I have two questions: Can fewer or different tags be used to build the Display: sections? Is the virgule transmitted actually a bold character?
GarveyPatrickD (talk) 19:41, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

You could create a template that takes the source as a parameter and then creates both a Source section and a Display section from that input.

Source: {{#tag:nowiki|{{{1}}}}}

Display: {{{1}}}

Then on the page use {{templatename|input you want to test}}. The input and output will be printed. Reach Out to the Truth 23:22, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

{{pre2}} has a nowiki parameter, but it has never worked properly— it does not do a nowiki, it expands the template. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 02:17, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

nowiki is ignored inside a pre, which is rarely a problem because pre already provides the same functionality as nowiki. This is an intentional behaviour, apparently implemented for backward compatibility with pre-1.6 versions of MediaWiki (where that functionality was perhaps not intentional). So nowiki inside a pre is ignored. It seems that pre2's use of ParserFunctions has managed to override the non-parsing behaviour to allow parsing of wikitext, but nowiki continues to be ignored. From the looks of it, pre2 only works because of a bug in ParserFunctions. Reach Out to the Truth 06:57, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I had figured that since <pre> and <nowiki> are both parser tags, there was some odd interaction there. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:48, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Q1: Are "User:ᐅ/pixeled.js" and User:ᐅ/pixeled.css safe? Q2: Which one should I use for the skin?

Just wondering before I try it out. See also Q2. —ᐅ^{can't see character?} (see my contributions) 01:41, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Without reading the whole script, my gut feeling is not good. The css page doesn't actually contain css and the js has more php than js and I have never seen a greater over use of the php tag before. It may not be purposefully malicious but (as I said) without reading it fully it just looks off to me. fredgandt 02:13, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Well User:ᐅ/pixeled.php will not work, correct? Php is not used for skin modification, correct? —ᐅ^{can't see character?} (see my contributions) 02:18, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

php is server side scripting. I haven't actually tried to run any so don't know if the Mediawiki software will allow it or not. Mostly, if you want changes to the skin you would only need to use css and/or JavaScript since the changes are all local (done on your computer). Server side scripting such as php would normally be used to deal with database I/O or processing form data etc. fredgandt 02:25, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

No, you cannot run arbitrary PHP code on the MediaWiki server—that would be a security hole. Taking a brief look at the code, it seems that the PHP code creates a MediaWiki page from scratch, within a class—it, by itself, doesn't actually do anything. But it's pointless anyways; you can only run JavaScript code (and write CSS rules) on the wiki. —mc10 (t/c) 02:30, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Security is very important part of MediaWiki. As a result of these security efforts, PHP embedded in wikitext does not work. If you find a way to do so, report it immediately. That would be a major security vulnerability. So your code is safe, because it doesn't do anything. Reach Out to the Truth 06:11, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Well how do I use the skin? (By the way, I was looking to try the "Pixeled" skin in the gallery of user styles.) —ᐅ^{can't see character?} (see my contributions) 13:25, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

← Without looking into it much, it looks as if those skins are for use as skins if installed to use on any Mediawiki site. Wikipedia would therefore have to install the skin for use by any user through their preferences. Try searching User scripts for JavaScript/css combinations designed to change the layout of already available skins. fredgandt 14:37, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I see. You have to be careful when using the gallery of user styles. In addition to .css files (which was the page's original intent) the page also offers skins. You can't use skins as user styles; you have to install them on your site as a system administrator. Skins use PHP files and were never intended for a site's users, so only use .css files that you find there. And they should be named after the skin you want to apply those styles to (in all lowercase), otherwise they won't be used. I'd direct you to Help:User style... but it contains to much sysadmin material to be helpful to users. I don't think that will help make it any clearer. Reach Out to the Truth 22:51, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

REVISIONUSER seems to have changed

Resolved

 – User error

A welcome template using REVISIONUSER to introduce the welcomer, had just started failing where it was not before. For some time the template used {{{1|{{{{{|safesubst:}}}REVISIONUSER}}}}} which (right or wrong) worked. I just discovered that that code is no longer working and have replaced it with {{{{{|safesubst:}}}REVISIONUSER}} which (right or wrong) does work. What changed and which is correct? Could whatever has changed effect many other templates? I imagine so. fredgandt 03:51, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

In what way was it not working? I just copied the old version and tried it, it seemed to work fine. Anomie⚔ 04:38, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

That's odd. Thanks for testing. The failure occurred twice with two versions of the template. I used my version and the result was this. So I fixed mine and went to check the other and on testing found it to have the same issue so fixed it. Now it seems that whatever the problem was has indeed passed. I really have no idea what went wrong. fredgandt 05:21, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Did you happen to do something like {{subst:Welcome-to-Wikipedia|}} rather than {{subst:Welcome-to-Wikipedia}}? The former explicitly supplies an empty value for |1=, so the default specified in the template wouldn't be used. Anomie⚔ 18:04, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

That is possible. To be frank I really have no idea now. I've chopped the template up quite a bit since then. So many braces! o.o It was probably my fault. It's working perfectly now. I think you're probably right. Mhmm, user error. Thanks for taking me seriously Anomie. It actually means a lot.  fredgandt 18:36, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Getting more functionality out of DYK tools

Hey guys,

Consider me a girl of limited technical knowledge. However, I was wondering if there was any way that A) We could have the DYK checker made into a function whereby a person only had to insert the name of an article and press a button to check and B) whether we could do anything to auto-fill the fields on the duplication detector, again, by filling in the fields on-wiki and then pressing a button. I apologise again for being a lady of little knowledge, but if you could let me know the feasibility of either of these things it would really help! Thanking you. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 16:16, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

There's a straw poll on how much this is/isn't a good idea which can be found here for the curious. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 23:18, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Years ago, I made a wrapper for the peer reviewer script, but a quick look at DYK checker shows a heavy use of calls to the API. It might be better to rewrite for the Toolserver. Alternatively, an admin could copy it to the MediaWiki: namespace and users could run it by adding &withJS= to the URL. As for B, you're going to have to ask User:Dcoetzee to add that to the code. — Dispenser 06:17, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Up until that last sentence I have no idea what you just said to me. Could I beg your patience for an explanation? Apologies. Panyd^{The muffin is not subtle} 15:41, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Redirect has no history, yet it apparently redirected someplace else before

I was looking for "Hamp" and found a redirect with this history.

But I should have been looking for HAMP, and look at what was in its history: A hatnote about a redirect from hamp and its removal when a new disambiguation page was created.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 21:09, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

The logical explanation is that Hamp never redirected to HAMP despite what the hatnote said. Unless Hamp was moved somewhere else and the redirect suppressed (but I think this would show in the logs). — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:27, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

So no one knows? I'll contact the person who put in the hatnote, though that was three years ago.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 22:01, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I also guess Hamp never redirected to HAMP. However, at the time of the edit, Hamp did not exist and a user entering "Hamp", "hamp" or other capitalizations in the search box would have been taken to HAMP. This could easily confuse an editor into making the redirect hatnote. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:09, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

That makes sense. I hadn't thought of that. Thanks.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:24, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Cannot create page

Resolved

I want to create a new page at the title Hemistola kezukai. It is a valid moth species from Taiwan. Currently, I get a page with "Wikipedia does not have this article", but I cannot edit it. Could someone tell me what is going on here? Ruigeroeland (talk) 12:35, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

It seems to be blacklisted, though I can't see why. If you try to edit the page anyway you'll see a notice with further instructions. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:43, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your swift response! Posted a message on the Administrator noticeboard. Ruigeroeland (talk) 12:47, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

False edit conflicts

Background: this is follow-up to TenPoundHammer's threads at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 94#Edit conflicts and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 95#False edit conflicts which got archived without satisfactory resolution. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:52, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Will someone please help me already? Ever since I switched to Google Chrome, I keep getting false edit conflicts with myself. Sometimes it even happens on pages I haven't edited in months. WHAT IS GOING ON!?!?!?!? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 02:36, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I use Chrome and have experienced nothing like what you describe. However, I am not exactly clear about what you describe. Could you offer an example or two? It would help also to know what operating system you're using (in case there are known issues there), what skin, and if you are using any user scripts as tools or skin adapters etc. The more details you can provide the more likely someone will be able to help. fredgandt 02:56, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I open a page and edit it, and the edit goes through but the edit conflict notice comes up. This happens at complete random — for instance, I can make several edits in rapid succession to an article and never get it, or edit a page only once and get it. I have Google Chrome 15.0.874.121, Mac OS 10.6.8, and the only gadgets I have on are Twinkle and RefTools. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 03:01, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

For just one example, it happened just now on List of Elektra Records artists, a page I haven't touched in ages. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 03:02, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I see no one else was editing there at the same time. Last edit before yours was a week ago. If it only happens with Chrome and not (say) Firefox or the dreaded IE, I wonder if you may have an app attached to your browser that is messing with the javascripting somehow and causing a double hit on submit. So in effect you are submitting twice without meaning to. Some Chrome extensions seem to attach themselves quite sneekily and without your direct request (I've seen it with AVG Norton (on a freinds laptop) and I had a web-phone skype like thing hiding in the background for a while). Check "Tools > Extensions" and see if there is anything there you don't recognise first off. Then if nothing obvious springs to light, try leaving your inspection panel open while working (you can un-dock it so it doesn't get in the way) and watch for errors in the bottom right of the window. If anything I just said needs more explaining please say so. I will e awake for another 15 minutes or so. fredgandt 03:26, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Unchecking "Predict network actions to improve page load performance" seems to have worked. The only extension I have is AdBlock Plus. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 03:37, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Sweet. I'll check back tomorrow and hopefully all will still be well. Honestly right now I am having trouble seeing the keyboard. Is 4am a normal bedtime?  fredgandt 03:49, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

This is interesting, please do report back if this is indeed connected. Also re enable the option at some point, to see if the problem then start reoccurring. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:53, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Nope. Happened to me again on Jason Sellers just now. Also happened on Pinmonkey, which I haven't edited since last August — in fact, I don't think I even read the page since I switched to Chrome. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 22:46, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Heck, it even happened to me when I edited the above post to say that it just happened to me on Pinmonkey! Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 22:50, 29 November 2011 (UTC)r

First: It's not Chrome. It may be Chrome + something else, but if it was Chrome's fault it would be happening to me too. Do you ever get edit conflicts on pages you have never edited before? I still think the problem is likely to be that you are (not that you want or mean to) submitting the updated version twice (when it happens). This would most likely be caused by some messed up scripting that somehow iterates the submission. Are you sure it's not happening when you use another browser? fredgandt 22:59, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

This right here is a test edit in Safari, the only other browser I have. I switched to Chrome because for some reason, Firefox was crashing on startup even after I reinstalled it. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 23:10, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Nope, no problems in Safari. Could be because I hit return to submit the entry instead of clicking on Save Page, so let's try that. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 23:11, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm using Windows XP with Chrome and just tried 7 test edits hitting return to submit instead of mouse clicking the "Save" button and got no edit conflicts. 5 were editing the whole page and 2 were editing a level 1 section. If there is a bottom to this, I'm sure we'll get to it. Maybe another MacOS user could be helpful. fredgandt 23:37, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

← I just read one of the archived versions of this query and have a thought. Try forcing your browser to not cache pages by Ctrl+⇧ Shift+I, then at the bottom right of the console click the icon that looks like a cog. The resulting form has several checkboxes, one of which (under "Network") is labelled "Disable cache". Check it, close the semi transparent black form and close the console. The idea of this is to be sure you are requesting a new version of all pages you visit. Might help. Might not. No harm done either way. fredgandt 23:51, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Which does nothing since again, I'm on a Mac. What's the name of the command Control-Shift-I corresponds to? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 04:00, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry forgot. It opens the "Inspect element" or "Tools > Developer tools" console. I find sometimes that pages are still cached even when I've got that box checked unless I leave the console open. Since that's often not practical it is perhaps not the best suggestion of a possible fix to ever pass my fingers. fredgandt 04:49, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I tried clearing the cache before but that didn't help. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 20:19, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm really sorry TPH but I can't think how best to advise. The possibility that Chrome and MacOS don't get along is there. Then there is possible ISP problems like server caching and/or bandwidth issues. It's even possible that one or more of your drivers are fubar'd somehow (i.e. keyboard driver conflict???). These are all stabs in the dark and possibly not worth the pixels they're printed in. You could try searching Google's Chrome help/development blogs for some inkling of a lead. A basic Google search for "Chrome MacOS conflics" does turn up results but then I imagine so would "Bathtub artichoke frostbite" so possibly no use there either. If I think of or hear of anything, I'll let you know but I recommend finding someone who uses MacOS to work with as Chrome on XP works as sweet as hive fresh honey for me. fredgandt 01:56, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

P.s. "Category: 1 - Saint Louis Events Weekly | Saint Louis Visitors Guide ...

www.stleventsweekly.com/1/category/yelp/1.html10 Jun 2011 – We got to enjoy Roasted Garlic, Spinach & Artichoke Dip, Spicy ... Not to mentioned that Frostbite Gourmet Ice Cream handed out some frosty treats! ... be complete unless there was some good old bathtub gin-style drink! ..."  fredgandt 02:00, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

User:MediaWiki default

I think the documentation at User:MediaWiki default is out of date, and mw:Manual:rebuildmessages.php isnt very helpful either. There are several wikis where this bot has been blocked and/or de-botted. See SUL. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 23:11, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it's no longer used, and hasn't been for some time. Ucucha (talk) 23:57, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I believe the comment that "it is not a bot and cannot be blocked" refers to the fact that it operates directly on a low level and bypasses checks for things like being blocked. I don't see where it was ever used in mw:Manual:rebuildmessages.php, but mw:Manual:deleteDefaultMessages.php does use it (and will give it the bot flag when run), as does the installer. Anomie⚔ 00:38, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)It's partially true. The script that deletes the pages is not rebuildmessages.php but deleteDefaultMessages.php. MediaWiki default is not a bot, or a even user. The script creates a user with that user name and makes it bot to hide its edits from recent changes, but it never adds the user to the database. Once the script stops executing, the user no longer exists. Being a nonexistent user it shouldn't be blockable. I don't know how other wikis have managed to block it, and I don't know how this wiki managed to block some of its maintenance scripts either. Blocking is kind of pointless, since the maintenance scripts don't check if their user has the required permissions. Being run is considered permission enough. Reach Out to the Truth 01:03, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Some vandals have created accounts with the usernames of these imported scripts, so they have had to be blocked. The user ID number of the edits of many of these scripts is 0, like edits by IP addresses, so there actually weren't any registered accounts for these scripts until the vandals came along. Graham87 03:14, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

It is a default user account that is included in all default MediaWiki installations, It is available for any maintenance scripts or extensions that want to do a action that needs/should be logged as a user doing it. It doesn't matter if its blocked or bot flagged in most cases since its primary use is designed to be done at a lower level access than the user interface so it doesn't get the block checks down. Peachey88 ^{(T · C)} 12:14, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Template:br separated entries

Resolved: Example templates substituted to save magic.

Template:br separated entries doesn't seem to work with spans that include a class.

* {{br separated entries|<span>No class</span>}}
* {{br separated entries|<span class="test">With Class</span>}}
* {{br separated entries|{{#if:1|<span class="test">With Class and If</span>}}}}

• No class
• With Class and If

Only the item without the class works. If it has a class then it only seems to work if wrapped within an #if. Any ideas why? -- WOSlinker (talk) 11:45, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

* {{br separated entries|<span>No class</span>}}
* {{br separated entries|<span class{{{|=}}}"test">With Class</span>}}

• No class
• With Class

Note that equals's are wrapped in braces. fredgandt 11:50, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

P.s. mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions#Raw_equal_signs fredgandt

General rule: if a parameter value contains an "=", you must escape it by either using {{=}}, or prepending the parameter with 1=. Embedded parser function do not have this problem (except #switch:). The {{{|=}}} construct does not work, as it still passes a raw equal sign. — Edokter (talk) — 12:07, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Should have spotted that. Thanks -- WOSlinker (talk) 12:18, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

blue buttons above the edit window (b, i, ab, signature, etc)

Half of mine have disappeared. One I used to use regularly, the "hidden comment" button, is one of those that's gone. It isn't my browser as the buttons are also gone on another computer. Any ideas? Parrot of Doom 20:03, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I've got 23; and they look like this. The "hidden comment" feature is also available in the edit tools box below the "Save page" button. Select "Wiki markup" from the drop-down menu, and it's second from last, in between <nowiki></nowiki> and <span class="plainlinks"></span>. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:00, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

That's what I used to have, now I have only 12. Parrot of Doom 23:10, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Question: deleting old revisions

A bunch of image files are showing up on my watchlist as being tagged by Fbot as "non-free file with old revisions" -- these are files that I've edited at some time in the past. The old revisions need to be deleted, but I, as a non-admin, cannot do so.

My questions therefore are:

• Is it technically possible to create a user privilege which would be limited to deleting old revisions in the File namespace?
• If it is, is that something that would be helpful in doing "gruntwork" that only admins can do now?

Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:31, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Confused about autopatrol

If a user has autopatrol rights, doesn't that mean their new articles aren't supposed to show up on [[4]] new pages? Just had that happen, so either there's a bug or I don't understand how it's supposed to work. Gerardw (talk) 01:21, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

You have &hidepatrolled=1 in the URL. Just remove that, or select the "Show patrolled edits" option on the page. Best, - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 01:39, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

That should make patrolled edits not show up, right? And if an autopatrol right editor creates an article, it should start off patrolled, right? Gerardw (talk) 02:27, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

You are right Gerardw. And please note that autopatrolled right and reviewer right are not the same. -- ɑηsuмaη ^{ʈ ᶏ ɭ Ϟ} 10:38, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

pp-semi-usertalk

Is there a template similar to {{Pp-semi-usertalk}} except for use where the user is not blocked - for example, when the page is semi'd due to persistent vandalism/sockpuppetry/whatever? I realize this template is customizable for such circumstances, but it also adds the users into a "blocked user" category which in some cases is inaccurate. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:21, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

You should be able to clear the category with an explicit |categories= parameter. T. Canens (talk) 08:21, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

"Autochecked users"

At the bottom of Special:ListGroupRights#sysop, it says that admins can add and remove the user group "Autochecked users". This entry has a link to Wikipedia:Autochecked users, a page which appears to never have existed. I can find no other mention anywhere else of this elusive user group (e.g. in the drop-down at Special:ListUsers, or at the ListGroupRights page itself.) What is going on? — This, that, and the other (talk) 08:44, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

After I made a search with Google, I found this. According to this information I think "autochecked user" has something to do with Flagged revisions. This link says "autochecked users" have the "group-autoreview" right, which would mean their edits don't need to reviewed. Also a variation of the reviewer userright without the possibility of reviewing. Armbrust ^{Talk to me about my edits}_review 09:13, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. The peculiar thing is that AFAICS the autochecked user group doesn't actually appear to exist here on enwiki, or perhaps it has no rights assigned to it. I can't find mention of it, or any similar user group, here. Whatever the case, something (a redirect, perhaps) should be put at Wikipedia:Autochecked users, just to clarify the situation. — This, that, and the other (talk) 09:28, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

After doing another search I have found MediaWiki:Group-autoreview. Such page is also present at the German Wikipedia (de:MediaWiki:Group-autoreview) for the user right "Passive Sighter", whose edits are automatically marked as reviewed if the last edit on the page was already reviewed. I found it interesting, that even tough MediaWiki:Group-autoreview exists, and doesn't show up as a redlink, it has no edit history. Maybe because it was never implemented? Armbrust ^{Talk to me about my edits}_review 10:00, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

If MediaWiki pages lack an edit history, that is because the default message is "shining through" - no modification has been placed on top. So you are right. Thanks for shedding some light on this curious case. — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:17, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

This seems to be a bug, see T34751. Anomie⚔ 14:04, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I've made a little page, so Wikipedia:Autochecked users isn't a redlink any more.  Chzz  ►  19:05, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Looking for bot operator

I am looking for a bot operator to take over a few tasks from VeblenBot and PeerReviewBot. Please see Wikipedia:Bot_owners'_noticeboard#Looking_for_bot_operator, thanks. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:12, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Problem with File:BSicon_uxgKRZo.svg

This file is stored on Wikimedia and shows a blue vertical canal crossing a green horizontal one. It is used on canal maps (eg Template:River Nar map). I uploaded a new version to Wikimedia on 8 November. It took a long time to update on en:Wikipedia, but eventually did so on about 16 November. The image on Wikimedia is still correct, but it has reverted to the previous version (with the green vertical) on en:Wikipedia. Is this a problem with Wikimedia or Wikipedia? I have asked the same question on Wikimedia. Here it is:  (uxgKRZo) This appears with a green vertical line when I view it, (which is wrong), but if I click it to look at the source it has a blue vertical line, (which is correct). Bob1960evens (talk) 15:05, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

It looks correct to me now; perhaps this was some caching issue. Ucucha (talk) 15:22, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

When this sort of thing happens, the problem may be in one or more of three places, so do all of the following in the same order:

1. Go to the image description page on commons:, and purge it by selecting the "Purge" option from the pull-down menu. This ensures that the master on commons is correct.
2. Go to the image description page on English Wikipedia, and purge it by appending "?action=purge" to the URL and pressing Return. This ensures that the copy on Wikipedia is correct.
3. Clear your browser's cache. The method for doing this varies between browsers; some common techniques are described at Wikipedia:Bypass your cache.

Please note that the project named "Wikimedia Commons" is normally referred to as "Commons" for short, because there are several other projects whose names include the word "Wikimedia", such as Wikimedia Meta-Wiki (a.k.a. "Meta"). Even the English Wikipedia (where you are now) is itself a Wikimedia project. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:01, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the help, although I could not find a purge command on the drop down menus on Commons. However, I followed the rest, and it is now displaying correctly. Bob1960evens (talk) 08:58, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

If you have the default setup on Commons (Vector skin), then along the top of the file description page you will see the usual tabs - "File" and "Discussion" at the left, then a gap, then "View", "Edit" and "View history". Then comes the 'watch' star; after that is the pull-down menu, which contains at least five options: "Global usage"; "Find categories"; "Log"; "Purge"; and "en". If you are using the MonoBook skin, it's different - there are nine tabs all at the left: "file"; "discussion"; "edit"; "history"; "global usage"; "find categories"; "log"; "purge"; "en". --Redrose64 (talk) 13:41, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

PDF creator creates PDFs without images

I tried to print the AmigaOS article, but the PDF produced is without images. I 've ruined the article beyond recognition (added lines etc) in hope the changes will make the PDF creator create a PDF with images, but with no result. Someone fix Wikipedia's PDF creator and revert the changes I 've made (i don't know how) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.251.197.118 (talk) 15:39, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

AmigaOS (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

I've fixed the article, but I'm afraid I can't help you with the PDF creator. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:50, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the article. The PDF creator of Wikipedia must be really poorly written. One "bad" table or image, and it's enough to make all the tables/images of the article not appear in the PDF. For example, in the "MeeGo" article, the PDF creator didn't create the tables, but once I played around with a table, removing one useless column made the PDF creator work. I tried playing around with the AmigaOS article, but I ended up ruining the article without managing to fix PDF creator.

Now the only choice seems to go down the article history and see what bad edit broke the PDF creator. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.130.121.48 (talk) 15:57, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I not certain if this is intentional but it actually appears that the Wikipedia's built-in PDF creator only seems to include freely licenced images and excludes all non-free copyright images from the pdf. If you try gNewSense, which I see you edited, it works fine because all the images are freely licenced. You could use the "printable version" and send that to the pdf creator on your computer; build in on Macs, but PC users likely need to download some software. ww2censor (talk) 18:44, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

SVG rendition stopped working after purge

OK, so there was File:Bertrand3-translate.svg, which was rendering properly. After purging that page, the rendering... stopped working. Now there is juts an ugly link to the image page at Bertrand paradox (probability). What's going on? Is this desired functionality? (FYI, the image is now moved to File:Bertrand3-translate ru.svg, where it's not rendering either, despite being the same image; but I can assure you it happened at the aforementioned image first). Magog the Ogre (talk) 20:41, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Forgive my confusion but the file that was deleted seems to have been deleted by you. If deleted, it can't render. the link would thus need updating to point to the commons version. fredgandt 20:46, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

That SVG file seems to contain 'illegal' markup which the scaler can't handle. — Edokter (talk) — 21:06, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I totally misunderstood. fredgandt 01:04, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

The SVG is valid, it's just that our parser doesn't fully understand. This xml declares entities for the namespaces. Although valid, this has become a bit of a problem in real life situations, because it is a rather good way to make a parser run until infinity (This attack is called an xmlbomb). As such most parsers on servers don't support this type of entity declaration anymore, because you can use it to crash the server. However, without this definition, the file has no namespace, and our parser won't recognize it as a valid SVG file.

I have uploaded a new version that does work, and i'll think about adding some special case support for this type of Adobe file. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:01, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

This is bugzilla:31719. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:33, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

TOC right not floating correctly?

On Hitler (disambiguation) the TOC is positioned above the first section for me (using IE9). I haven't been using IE9 very long, so I'm not sure if it is the browser or something else. Seems that {{TOC_right}} used to float the TOC so it appeared to the right of the first section heading. older ≠ wiser 13:28, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. The template is supposed to float the TOC so it floats right, wherever you place the template. The template is placed before the first section heading, so that's where it goes. And it gets pushed down a bit by the Wiktionary template. Gary King (talk · scripts) 17:31, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I know what {{TOC right}} right is supposed to do. Most of the time it floats the TOC at the point where the template is. However, for some reason on this page, the TOC is on the right side, but the text does not flow around it on the left as it usually does. For example, on Hanover (disambiguation), the template is in the same position, but the TOC floats properly and the text flows around the template on the left. older ≠ wiser 23:18, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I was mistaken -- in both IE8 and IE9, the page Hanover (disambiguation) displays TOC right exactly the same as the Hitler page. That is to say, the TOC is on the right, but the text does not flow around it on the left. older ≠ wiser 23:28, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Does it still happen if you log out? Anomie⚔ 17:50, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it still happens when I log out. And it also happens in IE8 on a different machine. It displays fine in Chrome on that machine. Not sure if this is related, but IE8 displayed this error message the first time I loaded it:

Webpage error details User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; GTB7.2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729) Timestamp: Sat, 3 Dec 2011 23:00:54 UTC Message: DOM-L3-XPath 0.0.3.0: Invalid expression, "Object required" Line: 1 Char: 16030 Code: 0 URI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_(disambiguation)

But strangely, the message did not reappear after reloading, although the problem with the TOC remained. older ≠ wiser 23:18, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

The scripting error is unrelated. It looks like the issue with the TOC is a bug in IE's "standards" mode rendering, it appears to calculate the width of the header box before applying the padding on the table and then pushes the header down because it won't fit after applying the padding. Fun. Anomie⚔ 00:34, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

On a side note, it looks like the template's <table> could use a margin on the left. The edit link is resting uncomfortably next to the toc. Even better would be a div and not a table... shrug. --Izno (talk) 19:03, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

New functionality for our first real-time feedback dashboard - please check it out

Hey everyone,

Recently the tech team at WMF has deployed a couple experimental tools for new editor feedback, called MoodBar and the FeedbackDashboard. Since then, over 8,500 of pieces of feedback have been created by thousands users. You can watch stats roll in here.

Today we have deployed new functionality that will enable experienced editors to easily respond to this feedback right from the dashboard itself. Anyone who wants to help new editors through their initial few edits may now respond in-line with a simple dropdown. Additionally, you’ll be able to see if and when another editor has responded to the feedback.

This new in-line response tool means we’re inviting you not just to watch this feedback roll in, but to join us in giving these newcomers a helping hand.

We’ll need to continue experimenting with this type of feedback mechanism for capturing the experiences of new editors. Currently, the invitation for feedback appears in the upper left-hand corner after a new registered user has attempted an edit, regardless of whether they were successful. Through this mechanism, we get about 50-100 pieces of feedback per day, about 40% of which are sad or confused. We’ll be experimenting with ways of encouraging well-intentioned editors tell us more about their early editing experience. For example, we may show the feedback form directly to a user after their Xth edit.

How you can get involved

Currently, Special:FeedbackDashboard is deployed on English Wikipedia as a primary testing ground, and together Maryana and I have started a new informal taskforce that we hope you’ll join.

The goal is simple: give every piece of genuine feedback from well-intentioned new editors a great response in a timely fashion. To join us, you can sign up for the new editor feedback response team (WP:RESPONSE).

To the 30-plus editors who’ve joined the group to date: thank you! We hope this experiment can be a chance to systemically change how Wikipedia communicates with new editors, and your work is a step towards this important goal.

Office hours this Sunday about the tool

This Sunday, December 4th, there will be an open “office hours” in IRC for anyone interested in learning more about how to respond to new editor feedback and discuss the feature. If you’re new to this, or feel like you have some experience to lend, your participation is highly encouraged. (Details here.)

In the meantime, if you find bugs or have ideas for improving the feature, please bring them at the talk page.

Thanks for reading the TL;DR post ;) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:25, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the update, Steven. I really appreciate the work you and Maryana have been doing. I like how the new feature shows which comments have been responded to. It seems there's a significant percentage of new users that really want to help us, but are having a difficult time learning the ropes. Responding to their comments seems like an ideal way to help those users that are ideal candidates to become long-term Wikipedians. I too, hope that others will join in and help respond to the new user comments. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 23:46, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Some problems

I wanted to respond to one comment - because I'd checked it, found that the user was a vandal-only, reported it to AIV, and it'd been blocked; I thought I'd note that as a 'response'. However, I had no idea that it would put a message on the user talk-page [5].  Chzz  ►  17:41, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Another one I checked said Unfortunately I found that it's very easy to edit articles on mgid.com and damage company reputation - but investigation showed their issue had apparently been dealt with to the user's satisfaction [6] - so I don't want to respond to that user, but there's no way I can mark the feedback as 'done'.  Chzz  ►  17:48, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

When I wrote this, I put my sig after the first part, then put {{subst:user:chzz/help/ref}}, then signed again on the end. But the first signature (which was directly after "Please see WP:FIRST.") was not posted on the page.  Chzz  ►  18:51, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

That kind of feedback should just get hidden by an admin. On a happy note, blocks now apply to leaving feedback, so that won't happen anymore. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 19:45, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

"Welcome" option

It would be nice if we were able to add the welcome template as well, preferably the section introduced by the "help with feedback" form. Some sort of form in that case? "Include welcome" or something? Would be nice to include for new users. --Izno (talk) 21:31, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

user side issues out of my reach

Once again [7], my edit has been reverted because someone else sees the effect different. This is spoiling the fun and essence of editing WP, and I can not do anything about it because I only have this one browser &tc. How to edit without this spoiler? -DePiep (talk) 00:51, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Hiya. Can you tell us what browser you're using and on what operating system? Are all your drivers up to date? What screen resolution have you got? Is your computer configured correctly to display pages on your screen? Also, in what way do you think the article looks better with a space added in each of those cases? fredgandt 01:03, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Easier is your last question: a combining character (aka non-spacing) is designed to combine with a previous character, e.g. in diacritics. Basically Unicode. Sole circumflex using HTML: >̂< or copied char: >̂< (produces irregular spacing in the greek table). Combined it is >ô< >ô<. To get the greek table right, I added a NBSP: > ̂< > ̂<.

I use Firefox 5.0.1 op top of WinXP. Screen 1024x768 for three years already. I do not know, check or update driver versions apart. Is your computer configured correctly to display pages on your screen? is a silly question. In general, I am not talking about my first edit. -DePiep (talk) 01:30, 3 December 2011 (UTC) edit -DePiep (talk) 01:34, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I meant no disrespect. I am trying to establish basic need to know parameters. if your computer thought (due to incorrect settings) that your screen was a different resolution then it really is, you would see the world all squashed up. Also, drivers should be constantly maintained as time goes on. However, regarding non-breaking-spaces: I am wondering if the reason you're seeing the table differently to (seemingly) most other editors, is that you have got some improper font support. The characters look as if they may be multi-byte (or whatever the correct term is) and possibly even contain (I think this is possible) half spaces (or similar quirks). Adding &nbsp; could under those circumstances perhaps twist the characters out of shape. I, luckily for you am not the only other editor here, and freely admit to being an enthusiastic learner. now the fundamental questions have been answered, it will be quicker and easier for a more expert editor to possibly assist you. Good luck. fredgandt 01:41, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I also saw uneven spacing, because you left out a few rows. That will trigger other editors to revert. (Preview is your friend!) If you want to widen (and center?) that column, the only reliable way to do so is with CSS in each cell for that column (e.g. style="width: 2.5em; text-align: center;"). — Edokter (talk) — 01:49, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

@Fred_Gandt: OK, understood. My experiences are Unicode-based, so I cannot react about multibyte or halfspace effects. With me, the sole combining char is now overlapping the left borderline of a cell. By adding the NBSP I made the combining a complete set.

@Edokter: I did preview. The rows I skipped (did not add NBSP to) were already spacing diactritics, e.g. U+00A8 is a standalone spacing diaeresis >¨<, the nonspacing i.e. combining one is U+0308 >ö<. A pair of characters should be OK, and take its own space in a table. Widening the column or centering I did not seek, and also, is does not always solve the dislocated incomplete combining char effect (the diacritic has no character to combine with, and may be out of line). In general, I experienced that a widowed combining character effect (displacement) should & can be solved within character world (font quality dependent), not by invoking CSS.

And very useless is an edit summary that says "tables looked fine before last two edits, now a mess" - not a way to start improvement talks. -DePiep (talk) 02:18, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I see no dislocated combined characters in the original markup (XP, Chrome/Firefox, Arial). If you do see dislocated characters, you have a font problem; either your default font contains a bug or Windows has trouble locating a suitable unicode-capable font. Make sure you default font contains the necessary glyphs. Arial should be good, Verdana has issues. You may want to try downloading the DejaVu or Liberation fonts and setting those as your default. Greek diacritics should be supported by most common fonts. For the more exotic ones, you can force a unicode font by wrapping the characters in {{unicode}}. Provided you have a suitable unicode font installed (may I suggest Arial Unicode MS which comes with Office), you should see the correct glyphs. — Edokter (talk) — 03:04, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll look into that. -DePiep (talk) 10:34, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

There does seem to be something wrong with your setup. In your edit, for example, you inserted a space before U+1FBF because you saw it combining with a non-existent preceding character. But U+1FBF is not a combining character; U+0313 is the combining version. In other words, x̓ "x̓" should show as an 'x' with a psili over it, while x᾿ "x᾿" should show as an x followed by a standaline psili. Anomie⚔ 17:04, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

To add, combining characters are cases where browsers fail often, and where using {{unicode}} is appropriate (as I did not the correct character as posted by Anomie). — Edokter (talk) — 17:55, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

@Anomie, on detail 1: I agree. U+0313 ̓ COMBINING COMMA ABOVE, greek table row is: uppercase, smooth, --, is spacing (a stand alone thing), so does not need a char-to-combine with. My edit (now reduced in relevance) stays: the preceding NBSP I added there should do no harm (but for widening the column and maybe irregular vertical lining). The revert & es does not point to this situation, and it is solvable more easily than by reverting all. And: this is not about my setup (physically; unless you refer to my state of mind, which I better respond to later on ;-) ). It is basic Unicode stuff.

Detail 2 -- hold on, breaking self-discovery. While explaining & researching: I might be wrong. Maybe they are not "combining" chars at all. There might be more "0313" (not combining) situations. I'll be back here on this. Reply to Edokter postponed too. -DePiep (talk) 19:15, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Timeout please. Overview. Step back. The greek tables at issue use like style="font-family:sans-serif;font-size:50%" | circumflex | <big>῏</big> || Ἆ . See, I am not stupid, while the edit-environment here at WP (including revert+es habit passable) tries to tell me otherwise. It is just spoiling the fun of editing. All editors help me is great at heart, but the bottom line is: I should change something (behaviour, settings, understanding). While, only a year ago, I could create this /doc, and this, and this. Quite some table-font-CSS issues. Now there is not even a step-through-update procedure or whatever to get me to the starting position for an edit. For today, I'd better stop writing here. It's the frustration I opened this section with. -DePiep (talk) 19:45, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Take a deep breath. Computers suck, for many reasons. The internet is not perfect at rendering whatever you throw at it, certainly not consistent, and definitely don't expect it to be. MediaWiki is even worse by definition. We have a tendency to try to get as much out of HTML as possible here on Wikipedia, but this IS hard and as long as everyone realizes, that some things will take days/weeks to make proper, and some things won't be proper for years to come, then we can all stay sane. It could be worse, your language could be in a script that doesn't even have keyboard layouts (like most Indian scripts). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:47, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Breath taken as advised. Will reread TheDJ's comment later on to regain trust in my own editing. -DePiep (talk) 23:32, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Intermediate observation: what a Talkpage is for text, we do not have for CSS-font-browser issues. -DePiep (talk) 16:13, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

You mean Mediawiki talk:Common.css? That is where all CSS related discussions are held. — Edokter (talk) — 17:01, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I see. Can we add that link to the page header template here? -DePiep (talk) 21:49, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Demo template

How does one create a template such that {{Mytemplate|''B''}} produces a sentence "Code ''B'' produces B"?

I tried various placements of "nowiki" tag, but none of them works. Thanks --Pavel Jelinek (talk) 17:05, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that's possible. Someone recently suggested changing MediaWiki to make this kind of functionality available. Ucucha (talk) 18:47, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I probably don't understand this— are you trying to show the expanded template? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:09, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

If I understand you correctly, I think this is possible. Tweaking the code of meta:Template:Fd, if you create a template (for example, Template:Testing code) with Code {{#tag:nowiki|{{{1}}}}} produces {{{1}}}., {{Testing code|1=''B''}} will result in "Code ''B'' produces B." Goodvac (talk) 19:45, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW! This is so beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeautiful! This is very handy. Thanks, Goodvac! --Pavel Jelinek (talk) 13:33, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Toolserver broken?

What is up with the toolserver? I have not been able to access anything for weeks. Is it working? SpinningSpark 18:19, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

It's working for me, though it's a bit slow. Example links: [8] [9]. Goodvac (talk) 18:25, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

There appears to be a discussion going on at the German Wikipedia's Village Pump (here) for a while now about how to fix the problem, which appears to be ISP-related. I, however, don't understand all the technical details. I fear that even if the problem can eventually be solved, it might take a long time. Really damn annoying for me too! Jared Preston (talk) 18:38, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it could be a Germany related thing, I have been here for about three weeks now. I thought I had had problems while still in England, but I could be mistaken about that. My ISP here is Arcor. SpinningSpark 20:16, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Toolserver is working again for Arcor users, so it seems! Jared Preston (talk) 20:34, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Hidden html comments and expressions

I'm having some trouble with a template I'm building that uses expressions to add up some numbers and spit out the result. The template has a shell that is transcluded to a talk page that gives a setup version of the template, with html comments used to indicate what should be entered into each parameter. Unfortunately this is causing the expression to break and return the error "Expression error: Unexpected < operator"

So how do I add comments without the expression function trying to calculate what they mean? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 20:03, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

What is the template you're working on? It looks like you can have HTML comments in the middle of an expression: {{#expr: 1 + <!-- test --> 2}} gives 3. Ucucha (talk) 20:09, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Also, I think the error message you mention usually appears when one #expr is trying to use the result of another, but the second #expr returns an error. In that case, it spits out HTML like <span class="error">Oops!</span>, and the outer #expr trips on the leading <. Ucucha (talk) 20:11, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

That's probably the case then... That will definitely help with tracking it down though. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 21:01, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

style permalink in print

Is there any way to style the permalink that appears (at the bottom) on the print-version? If so, how? Specifically: it converts all special characters into gibberish (%CD% and so on). I want to avoid that. thanks. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 02:39, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, that is what URLs look like in reality. It's the most safe way to represent the url. bugzilla:16659 is somewhat related to it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:33, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Further information at Percent encoding. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:28, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I need some input. Copy vio? Or, "partnership"?

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:KDAV#Name. Planetary ChaosTalk 06:54, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Stale pages

I may have mentioned this before. I'm sure everyone knows about the long-standing bug whereby users may see stale pages (all that "purging the cache" nonsense). Probably, like me, you have given up any hope of it ever being fixed. The problem seems to be noticeably worse with redirects. For me, it is very apparent with the reference desk pages. If I go to "WP:RD/L", for example, I often see pages days out of date. When I go to Annobon I currently see a page two weeks out of date. I do not understand how for ten years there has always been something more important for the developers to do that fix these obvious and glaring bugs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.179.117.252 (talk) 14:15, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

This is a very well known issue bugzilla:29552. As to the reasons as why it is not fixed. Well what can i say. It's not a simple thing to fix.. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:41, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

LJ on watchlist

On my watchlist I am now seeing what looks like an "LJ" in front of the section edit information instead of the typical arrow.

Instead of

(diff | hist) . . Wikipedia talk:Reference desk‎; 13:10 . . (+265) . . APL (talk | contribs | block)‎ (→More "medical" nonsense: )

I am seeing something that looks like

(diff | hist) . . Wikipedia talk:Reference desk‎; 13:10 . . (+265) . . APL (talk | contribs | block)‎ (LJMore "medical" nonsense: )

where the LJ contains a link to the associated section.

Is there a reason for this? A bug perhaps? It seems like a weird notation to be using there. Dragons flight (talk) 21:18, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmmmm, nevermind, whatever I was seeing seems to have fixed itself... Dragons flight (talk) 22:03, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Let me guess... Chrome? It has it's glitches that are usually resolved after restarting it. — Edokter (talk) — 22:19, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Protocol relative collateral damage

From page	el_to
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-06-13/New syntax draft	//
User:USERNAME/Preview	//
Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/George P. Smith II	//
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)/Archive 1	//Gana_language
Talk:List of mancala games	//Hus
Omweso	//Hus
Bao (mancala game)	//Hus
Help:Colon trick	//Hus
Talk://Hus	//Hus
Hewes	//Hus

Something yet to be mentioned in WP:Technical restrictions for the three affected pages is that wikilinks cannot start with two slashes: [[//]]. — Dispenser 23:25, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Already covered last week. Haven't been paying enough attention to my watchlist lately. — Dispenser 23:37, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

SELECT el_from, el_to
FROM externallinks
JOIN page ON page_namespace=0 AND page_title=el_to
WHERE page_title LIKE "//%";

I've quickly put together a basic list using SQL on the Toolserver. This excludes normalized title, e.g. percent decoding, underscore => space switch, and #anchor links. — Dispenser 01:03, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Picture suddenly sideways?

IE7. I have been working on American Wirehair. Today, I opened the page, and for some odd reason, the picture was sideways. I went to the file page File:American Wirehair - CFF cat show Heinola 2008-05-04 IMG 8721.JPG, and all the preview sizes are sideways, as is the file history thumb, but full resolution is upright. What's going on? (I've tried ctrl-F5 on the file page already, and nothing changes) Brambleclawx 00:07, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Happens a lot lately. The picture was taken sideways. The camera detects this and stores a piece of data in the image to tell whatever is displaying it to rotate it 90° clockwise. However, the piece of software that generates the thumbnails sometimes has trouble with this, hence the rotated image. I have requested the file to be rotated on Commons (done by a bot). — Edokter (talk) — 00:17, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Mind sharing how to do that? I found another: File:Orelhershiser.jpg 68.190.231.128 (talk) 07:13, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Go to the Commons page for the image. And right below the image, there is the line "Orelhershiser.jpg‎ (550 × 414 pixels, file size: 35 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg); ( request rotation)". Clicking on "request rotation" will bring up a window with options. Selecting an option will add a template to the page. Alternatively and more directly, you could add the template {{rotate|90}} (replacing 90 with the number of clockwise degrees necessary for appropriate rotation) to the image page, which will call the bot. Goodvac (talk) 07:52, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the "request rotation" function is a gadget (see commons:Help:RotateLink) that only registered users can use), so I'd recommend adding the template manually in future instances. Goodvac (talk) 08:01, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

It would be nice to have this gadget on Wikipedia. Since this has been coming up on the HD, I started {{HD/rotate}}, whcich could use a little polishing. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:10, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I improved the help text a bit (also by referring to the more detailled help text on COM). Cheers --Saibo (Δ) 17:23, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

References

How do I converge all the references from one source into one, like here? (the second refereneces section)--Gilderien Talk|Contribs 21:39, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

You want to change one of the references to be:

<ref name=scoble>'''Scoble''', Malcolm J. (1995): ''The Lepidoptera: Form, Function and Diversity'' (2nd edition). Oxford University Press & Natural History Museum London. <small>ISBN 0-19-854952-0</small></ref> (note the ref name)

and replace all the other Scoble refs to be <ref name=scoble/> (note the slash). This will compress the twelve or so uses to one listing. Chris857 (talk) 22:03, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Don't forget the quotation '"' marks. For example use <ref name="Smith"/> not <ref name=Smith/>. – Allen4names 20:05, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Quotes are optional if the only characters used are letters A–Z, a–z, digits 0–9 and the symbols !$%&()*,-.:;<@[]^_`{|}~ -— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:22, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

The entire series of changes by Gilderien appears to be inappropriate, per WP:CITEVAR. Gilderien appears to have changed from parenthetical referencing, a perfectly acceptable system of citation within Wikipedia, to footnotes, without seeing consensus for the change on the article's talk page. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:41, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I did not know about WP:CITEVAR, and I apologise if I have edited in error. However, I thought that some of the citations would be easier to locate if they all linked to the same reference, so I changed them all, to maintain consistecy, under WP:BOLD--Gilderien Talk|Contribs 21:53, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

You could have done something along those lines, without making such drastic changes, by using {{harv}} - see Wikipedia:Parenthetical referencing#Linking inline and full citations. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:10, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

1.19 will switch to French diff colors

See this message on wikitech-l. 1.19 will feature new diff colors that are already in use on the French Wikipedia. Past discussion were not favorable to that color scheme, even though it does help people who have trouble distinguishing colors. In anticipation of the backlash, code for a 'classic diff' gadget is already in place. — Edokter (talk) — 01:54, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Mmm. Example here. A change from yellow/green to green/blue may be reasonable, but I'm not sure about the darker background for the actual changed text: with the black text, does this satisfy WP:CONTRAST? --Redrose64 (talk) 13:24, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that highlighting is subtle. I'd like to see a greater amount of contrast, and I don't have any particular accessibility issue. I'd imagine it could be a real problem for some. LadyofShalott 13:32, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Archive search bug?

I was trying to search for an ANI thread in which I participated and could not find it. It was archived here: [10] to [11]. But putting "Poplavskaya" in the search bar at the top of AN results in this: [12]. (This, at least when I do it, only hits my recent query about this archiving issue at WP:AN.) I note that it defaults to article, but checking "all" doesn't make any difference: [13]. Inputting the user name instead doesn't help: [14]. Berean Hunter suggests it might be a bug. Anybody have any ideas what's going wrong? I can take it to Bugzilla but thought I'd see if anybody had insight first. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:11, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Very long pages might not be fully indexed. Due to some technical limitations, I think only the first 100,000 words are indexed, while this page has more than 120k words, so the last couple of headings are actually not indexed. --rainman (talk) 22:37, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Ouch. So going forwards, should we reduce the "maxarchivesize = 700K" at WP:AN and WP:ANI? -- John of Reading (talk) 07:43, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, I was not expecting that.... should we put a maxsize on the VPs as well ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:08, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Looks like it; that sounds quite a serious "bug", given that archives are intended to be searchable. Can we have something documented about exactly how much of a page will always be indexed? Then we could try to ensure that all archives (of whatever page) are configured so as not to exceed that limit.--Kotniski (talk) 10:54, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Given the number of 700K archives we have, could the software be changed to index 100K words or 700K bytes, whichever is larger? Or perhaps even 4Mb, looking at the last entry at Wikipedia:Database_reports/Long_pages? -- John of Reading (talk) 11:11, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I think it would be best if the software could be changed. Otherwise, not only are we going to need to do some adjustment of archive sizes, but we should ideally fix the older archives so that material can be found. The search function at ANI is important, since sometimes user behaviors need to be documented. :/ --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:22, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I've submitted T34871 to see what the devs have to say. -- Tagishsimon (talk) 10:21, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Web scraping tool for article research (list expansion)

I want to expand a list with data that is available on governmental website (license - in public domain). It is a list of about 100 entries with reference externally linked from each row. I need to harvest text strings that are on a specific HTML-table on the linked reference pages. Could someone suggest a software tool (preferably client software, not crawler) than would be able to collect the data and export it somehow (spreadsheet, csv etc.)? Thanks! --Kozuch (talk) 08:34, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Do you fancy pointing us to the data; might make it easier to figure out an expedient way to harvest it. --Tagishsimon (talk) 10:10, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

This is about CS Wikipedia, I hope you will not mind it. I ask here because I did not get help there. I want to expand this list with some dates. I already began harvesting the dates manually - see first 5 rows, 2nd column. The dates are located under external ref links (1st column) in each row - you just add a "#pd" anchor (example link for 6th row of the list). At this external link you will see a table with dates - I need the oldest date from 2nd column (called "Datum vydání") in that little table. The data is PD by Czech Gov. Thanks for help!--Kozuch (talk) 12:30, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Romanian diacritics & clickable icons

Hi. As a Romanian user who contributes a lot of content on Romania, I rely heavily on the character map (clickable icons?) that comes under the "Latin" sections of the editing window menu - it gives me the native diacritics, which I dislike having installed on my keyboard(s). I am taking in particular about the Ţ, ţ, Ş and ş characters. However, over the last years, the standard Romanian spelling of these letters has switched, and they are now Ț, ț, Ș, ș (the difference may be hard to observe, but trust me, it's there). There is an ongoing debate about whether there should also be such a transition on the English wikipedia, where things have so far been left halfway, with disagreements between the interested users - for the overview, and for my opinions on the matter, please see this relevant thread: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#I *think* this is vandalism, but it's systemic.....

The reason I was directed to this board is this one: regardless of whether we do get around to using the new diacritics, or stick to the old ones, I believe that the new set should also be made part of the clickable map that I for one use. They are not there at all currently, and I feel this needs to be addressed. Is this the right venue for this, or can you direct me to a better one? Regards, Dahn (talk) 13:16, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Before you ask: no, these are not the same as the existing Ṭ, ṭ, Ṣ, ṣ. Dahn (talk) 13:18, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

This is the right place. See Help:Edittools (which I just started since I can never remember the right pages; needs expansion). If there are other discussions, please direct those editors here. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:32, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Cool. So would you please add them there? Dahn (talk) 13:37, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Start a discussion on the talk page and see where it goes. Is the proposal to add or replace these characters? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:12, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

To add. I picture that is non-controversial? Dahn (talk) 15:14, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't see an issue, but I have no expertise here. Please propose on the talk page, including where these characters should be inserted. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:21, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

At the risk of annoying you, when you say the talk page, do you mean MediaWiki talk:Edittools? It's that I never had to deal with these pages before in my life. (Also bear in mind that would be the third time I revisit the issue in one day.) Dahn (talk) 15:26, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I've added the characters. — Edokter (talk) — 15:37, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, but, well, they still don't show up in my kit. Is there a lag or something? Dahn (talk) 15:47, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

There may be a delay due to caching. I've purged the pages, they will show soon enough. — Edokter (talk) — 16:19, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Still not showing, no. Dahn (talk) 17:49, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

You may need to WP:Bypass your cache. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:14, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Tried it, doesn't do anything. But that may be my settings - I don't want you guys to waste all your time on me, so just let me know if you have them in your displays; if you do, then it's no bug, and I'm sure the problem I still have will be remedied on its own. Dahn (talk) 19:52, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, when I select "Latin" from the drop[-down menu, I have the following available to click on: SsŚśŜŝŠšŞşȘșṢṣß TtŤťŢţȚțṬṭÞþ - I am certain that your characters shown above as "and they are now Ț, ț, Ș, ș (the difference may be hard to observe" are among them. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:00, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, they are, and thank you. I still don't have them, but I'm certain they'll be there on my next log-in. Dahn (talk) 20:05, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I updated the version number of the edittools, this should force any cache to be bypassed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:27, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

It did the trick, thanks! Dahn (talk) 13:29, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Template guru needed before January

The template {{Rfd2}} is a key part of the nomination process at WP:RFD, and one aspect of it is a link to the viewing stats for the previous month. 11 months a year this works fine, but it breaks in January (when we want month+11, year-1, ratherthan month-1). Currently someone has to remember to change the code at the beginning of January and then again at the end of January.

If possible, please could someone add some magic to the template so we don't have to remember to kludge it every January? Thanks. 03:43, 8 December 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thryduulf (talk • contribs)

That should do it. The code {{{{{|safesubst:}}}#time:Y|{{{{{|safesubst:}}}#time:Ym|-1 month}}}} winds up calculating something like {{#time:Y|201112}} to get the year, but "201112" is interpreted as "today at 20:11:12" rather than "December 2011". It works accidentally, except in January when last month's year is not the same as today's year. Changing it to just {{{{{|safesubst:}}}#time:Y|-1 month}} is both more straightforward and doesn't suffer from this problem. Anomie⚔ 04:07, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you.Thryduulf (talk) 09:52, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Cannot undelete File:Elyse.JPG

I tried to undelete File:Elyse.JPG, but was given an internal error message saying that the file already exists. Could someone else try undeleting it? -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:19, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

It worked for me. Please please please tell me this is for a real DRV overturn of its deletion --Guerillero | My Talk 05:36, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is for a DRV. See my talk page, "re File:JesseDirkhising.jpg." -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:39, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Banner at the top

When I click on the banner at the top I am linked to a page that informs me they are no longer seeking participants as their target number has been reached and apologizes for any inconvenience. Should we be taking this down before more people click there only to find they are no longer needed?AerobicFox (talk) 07:17, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm addressing this to the team from there. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 08:54, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Error fixed. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 09:03, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Does this bug still exist?

Template:Stats.grok.se#Known issues notes special characters in an article title cause a template malfunction. It provides a test case and a link to bugzilla:17153. The bug is shown as still open, but the test case appears to work without issue. I don't have the technical ability to investigate further, but it seems like either the bug should be closed as fixed or the test case adjusted. Thryduulf (talk) 12:44, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

I have requested a status check. – Allen4names 17:09, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Edit Counter opt-in Monobook code

What should I put on my monobook page so I won't get hacked? I'm not good with things like this (lol). Master&Expert (Talk) 16:43, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

only admins and you van change your skin's js --Guerillero | My Talk 16:47, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, but on the page, it says "Code that you insert on this page could contain malicious content capable of compromising your account." Can I type anything, or does it have to be in a specific format? Master&Expert (Talk) 18:00, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Any text you add to your skin.js or common.js pages will be read as if it were JavaScript. If it is not proper JavaScript, it will create errors but more often than not do no real harm. The warning is that, imported scripts may have been written to do things that you wouldn't want done. Also, if you find a script elsewhere to paste into the page, it may be malicious (but then may not be). If you want to use any published user scripts, and are unsure which are good and which are not, just ask for guidance at the user scripts talk page. fredgandt 18:19, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Master&Expert (Talk) 18:35, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

HTML color names#Shades

please fix syntax (http://www.colourlovers.com/web/blog/2007/06/30/ultimate-html-color-hex-code-list), thanks, --77.4.53.167 (talk) 19:59, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done, by adding the missing HTML syntax: the green and blue ones lacked the opening <td style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 14pt;"> , and all three tables lacked an enclosing <table><tr>...</tr></table>. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:24, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

More rotation issues

I'm running IE 8 in Windows 7. Despite all the hubbub about images rotating wrongly, I hadn't found any problematic images until just now, when this image appeared with the street at the left edge of the picture instead of the top. Since I've seen that Rotatebot is having trouble, I downloaded the image, rotated 90º counterclockwise and saw that the image was right-side-up on my computer, and re-uploaded. It displayed as it had before, so I purged, and now the image is still sideways — but the opposite way, with the street on the right edge of the picture. It seems that the metadata rotation thing has now decided to rotate automatically, but why? What can I do to get this image to display properly? Nyttend (talk) 19:29, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

I added the rotate template to the page, not having read that you said Rotatebot isn't working. But as of now, it seems fine. Just 6 minutes ago, it made a round of uploads. Goodvac (talk) 19:34, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

The backlog for rotatebot was about 4 days 36 hours ago, so the commands can take a while. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:52, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Maybe that's the issue — I've just seen people complaining that Rotatebot wasn't working as they expected it to work, and others telling them that they'd have to wait longer than normal; I figured that it must not have been working at all, and that they'd be waiting for someone to fix it. Nyttend (talk) 20:10, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

The basic problem that gives rise to all the difficulties is that some photo-handling programs do not correctly update the "rotation" tag in the file when they rotate an image. I see, looking at the file, that you rotated using Microsoft Windows Photo Viewer -- most likely that is one of the ones that don't do the right thing. Looie496 (talk) 20:08, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

"The right thing" is a bit of an incorrect statement. It used to be that almost nothing supported rotation information, but for the pas 5 years this has been slowly turning around towards a situation where most modern tools DO support it. Problem is that there is still a lot of old crap around. I guess Microsoft is once again clearly in that category :D I rather look to the future. Anyway, this has already been going on for at least a month, but accelerated over the past days, because the thumbnail server was almost full and needed to dump a few of it's images that were not in article use. That has somewhat overloaded the rotation queue. The thumbnail purging process has now been adapted to ignore likely incorrectly rotated images, which should make the queue a bit more manageable again. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:33, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

The problem is not so much that there are still tools around that don't work correctly, as that there are a hell of a lot of images around that were edited using tools that didn't work correctly. Looie496 (talk) 20:48, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

The image was fixed on Commons, but showed here rotated until I purged. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:57, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

File:Bronx-20110511-00259.jpg needs to be rotated. There's no registered user name User:Rotatebot (so I'm assuming it's a Commons only bot), nor is there a quick guideline page for it (I'd imagine WP:ROTATE would be a nice easy shortcut). Do we have any standard protocol/documentation for how to tag an image needing rotation? hbdragon88 (talk) 00:25, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Simply tag the image on Commons with the rotate template. — Edokter (talk) — 00:57, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I see the "Request rotation" link and icon are not featured on the file pages here (WP) as they are on commons pages. Would it not be a good idea to install the same link and icon to file pages here too? Might save a lot of confusion (by the looks of things). fredgandt 01:34, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Commons has a bot (commons:User:Rotatebot) which goes looking for images on commons tagged with commons:Template:Rotate. These templates are added manually, but the process of doing so is simplified if you have the relevant gadget installed in your Commons preferences. There is no equivalent bot on English Wikipedia, and nor is there a directly-equivalent template; there is thus no equivalent gadget. The best template that we offer is, as advised above, {{cleanup image|rotate 90 degrees anticlockwise}}, or similar, see advice given on Template:HD/rotate. Volunteer users then download the image, rotate it manually, and then re-upload. This is an oversimplification, since to avoid similar trouble in future, the software used to perform the rotation must correct the EXIF data; ideally, it should also perform the JPEG decompression and recompression with as little loss as possible. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:44, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Hidden table columns

WikiProject National Register of Historic Places is converting its list articles to use header / row templates, making the tables more easily parsed and data harvested by bots. We'd like to make one/some columns hidden.

1. I'm not sure a good way to do this with the currently available css. I think it's possible to add "display:none" to the Template:NRHP header and Template:NRHP row, but it's an ugly hack. Any ideas?
2. Would hidden columns be a useful thing to have, beyond WP:NRHP?

I have created User:Aude/hidecolumns.js to do it with jQuery and incorporating classes like "hidecol6" or "hidecol2" into the template (Template:NRHP_header). I also have a css only method which is faster to load: User:Aude/hidecolumns.css. Any feedback on either of these approaches?

I have sandbox pages, which might be useful for testing hidden columns:

• User:Aude/Sandbox21
• User:Aude/NRHP header
• User:Aude/NRHP row

Cheers. --Aude (talk) 03:33, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I'd go with the dispaly:none; in the template. Cuts to the root of the issue without any users or their bots having to follow instructions or learn or import new scripting or css. Jobs done in one stroke. All that is, if I've understood what you're trying to do correctly, which is to hide columns from humans but leave them in place for bots?

P.S. I see you have the AlexNewArtBot...SearchResults for your field shown on the page. You may or may not be aware of a script I wrote to search those results pages for unpatrolled pages and mark those that need patrolling with a link to do so. If interested, see User:Fred_Gandt/getUnpatrolledOfAlexNewArtBotResultsPages.js and import the same if satisfied. fredgandt 03:51, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

display:none would have to be set by a template parameter, like "hidecity" (for the city column), and the param would need to be specified repeatedly for each row of the table. Is there a better way to do the templates, without introducing new js or css? Cheers. --Aude (talk) 04:09, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Little bit wired right now due to lack of sleep, but could the whole header template have its own <style type="text/css">.dn{display:none;}</style> added for transclusion; then use the class throughout? I am thinking about testing the idea as I type, so not sure if this is even possible, let alone how it would look (in code). I'll try it after making a cuppa and get back to you. fredgandt 04:42, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Tried this (big fail) (no surprise really). Honestly too tired. Anomie and Edokter are the template pros. Sorry. Need sleep. fredgandt 05:21, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm puzzled why you would want to hide columns. Is there a particular reason? So far as I understand, display:none isn't something we should play around with from the point of view of WP:Accessibility... --Izno (talk) 05:47, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

It seems like a shortcut to supply semantics. Info purely for bots, so no people are being hard done by. fredgandt 05:54, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

In this situation, the city column is redundant. Some of our lists, such as National Register of Historic Places listings in Sandusky, Ohio, are for individual cities; lists for larger cities can employ this column to indicate the neighborhood, but some lists (like Sandusky) are for cities too small to have useful defined neighborhoods, so it's been our standard to remove the column entirely. I couldn't care less if the bots are able to read the city, but it shouldn't be taking up space on the article as it's seen when the "article" tab is clicked. Nyttend (talk) 06:05, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Ahh, so if the column is hidden, it's because there isn't any info there at all? In that case I would go for a completely different approach. ^{(eating sweet biscuits to stay awake now)} Instead of hiding what isn't needed, just don't create it in the first place. I'll be back. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life... fredgandt 07:04, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

You can watch or join in with my fumblings at Template:NRHP header/sandbox & Template:NRHP row/sandbox if you like. I think I'm kinda getting there. fredgandt 07:39, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Some progress at User:Aude/Sandbox21, with a placename and placecolumn parameter in the header template and accompanying place parameter in the row template. With placecolumn + place, the place column is added. Placename in the header can be used as a substitute for the place column, for the bots. --Aude (talk) 20:57, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm rather late to the party, but hiding columns with CSS sounds like HiddenStructure all over again. This isn't as bad a problem for screen reader users as it was five years ago, but it is still Not a good idea. I'm glad that alternatives are being used. Graham87 14:47, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Billboard Year-End

Can someone tell me what's wrong with the navboxes at the bottom of Billboard Year-End? They're showing up as links to the template (e.g. Template:Billboard Year-End number one albums) instead of the actual template. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 18:49, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Look at the page source:

NewPP limit report
Preprocessor node count: 202617/1000000
Post-expand include size: 2048000/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 1368612/2048000 bytes
Expensive parser function count: 1/500

See WP:Template limits. Ucucha (talk) 18:59, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

The page has hit the template limit. There are some 343 transclusions of the cite templates. Viewing the page source shows an HTML comment similar the one at Wikipedia:Template limits#How can you find out?. I think there is no solution except to expand the navbox templates and for clarity leave a comment at the end noting what the template was (e.g. <!-- from Template:Billboard -->). Goodvac (talk) 19:08, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Could we split the article by year? Like, say, in blocks of 20 or 25 years? hbdragon88 (talk) 21:51, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I've converted the navboxes to use hlist. That should have fixed it. — Edokter (talk) — 22:53, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

time zone difference without notice

Page times that don't reflect a user's preferences when other page times do should be marked for the time zone or with another indicator. I'm reviving an issue that I withdrew when I couldn't replicate it. I've now replicated it.

An example formed by comparing two adjacent page revisions for a diff from the page history shows the time difference between the sigs in the new posts (each "12:34") and the page heading ("07:34"), the latter conforming to the underlying page history leading to it, but not to what I had been viewing on other pages in the same login session on my laptop, thus not susceptible to my prefs.

An example with a different URL composition has the same effect on my laptop ("18:59" in the post sig vs. "14:59" in the heading). The latter URL was arrived at by starting as I did above then clicking on the resulting page heading the "Next edit" link a couple of times.

The time discrepancy is either 5 or 4 hours. No change in standard vs. savings time occurred during the December session when all these URLs were accessed. A time discrepancy straddling midnight results in a date discrepancy, too. I wouldn't mind either discrepancy as long as there was notice, e.g., "UTC".

Nick Levinson (talk) 20:28, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Your link "underlying page history leading to it" had my mystified, until I found that I had to go for "older 50" twice and then scroll down to find it. Here is the same page history, limited to one entry: the entry in question. I see 12:34 here, also at the top of the diff which you linked first, also in the signatures on that page. In your third link, I see 18:59 at top and in signature. In Preferences → Date and time, I have "Use wiki default (UTC)" selected. This does mean that between March and October, I have a one-hour difference between Wikipedia time and local time, but it does avoid confusion between what I see on various parts of the pages. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:42, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Since I prefer my local time, a solution is either to state on the prefs page that it does not apply to all time expressions or to add kindred notice to pages unaffected by the pref. The history page in your link showed "07:34" and the diff produced via the "prev" link also showed "07:34", but, since my time pref is local, "12:34" is shown in the top where lines are compared and in the page body. You use UTC and still have a discrepancy for part of each year, so perhaps the solution requires language on the displayed pages, whatever the prefs page might also say, since someone accepting UTC might never see the prefs page. I erred about the 50/500 matter; thanks for continuing to look. Nick Levinson (talk) 21:33, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

It appears you have your timezome preference set to America/New_York or something similar. The reason your "example with a different URL composition" link shows only a 4-hour difference instead of a 5-hour difference like the other diffs is because that one is from in October, before daylight savings time ended, while the other diffs are from November, after DST ended. If you look at just the right time, you might even be able to find where time in the page history seems to go backwards because one edit was 01:55 EDT (05:55 UTC) and the next was 01:05 EST (06:05 UTC).

In general, dates and times in the page content will be in UTC (and will be tagged as such), while times in the interface will respect your timezone setting. The reason for this is simple: the interface portions are generated when you load the page, while the content portions are heavily cached. I'm not sure where you're saying you see a UTC time that isn't indicated as such. Anomie⚔ 22:08, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

The problem is reducible to notice to the user.

• Ideally, the software would generate the preferred date-time on all pages, but I assume that's complicated to implement.
• So the second choice is to post "UTC" or whatever indicator on all pages that do not respond to user preferences. That indicator is not present now. If it's on your pages that don't accommodate prefs, I'd be curious why it's not on mine.
• The third choice is to write on the preference page, next to the setting, that not all pages will show the preferred date-time unless the preference is for the default. That's only the third choice because users rarely look at prefs unless they're changing them.

My concern is not with whether savings or standard is different; I was just detailing that the discrepancy cannot be handled with a simple constant subtraction/addition, especially since the user's locale is not determinative, as the time in question depends on the other editor's locale, somewhere on the planet.

The backwards effect presumably includes a date-flipping, so that it's actually still forward; I covered that in mentioning the date discrepancy as well as the time discrepancy.

Nick Levinson (talk) 02:43, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

In most cases it can be handled by a simple subtraction/addition and does not depend on the timezone setting of any other editor. You just have to take into account your own DST rules, i.e. you personally must know to add 4 hours to dates between the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November and 5 hours otherwise (unless of course you're looking at pre-2007 revisions). The exception is when some other editor quotes a time in a comment somewhere in their local time rather than UTC.

Also, you still haven't said where you are seeing dates that aren't honoring your user preference setting and are not specifically labeled UTC (besides the aforementioned instances of human error). Anomie⚔ 03:33, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

You're right; I see my mistakes with the second suggestion. The others probably won't happen. Thanks for your patience and your help; I should have caught my errors. Nick Levinson (talk) 05:23, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Listing all subcategories

What is the quickest way to get all subcategories of a category via the API? The code is of course smart enough to ignore infinite recursion. Magog the Ogre (talk) 12:40, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

There isn't any particularly quick way; you have to use list=categorymembers with cmtype=subcat to get the immediate subcategories of the category, and then repeat with that list of subcats while being sure to avoid infinite recursion. For a particularly large subtree, this will of course take some time.

You might get somewhat better speed doing it on the toolserver, as that can at least avoid HTTP overhead for all those requests. Or if you don't mind the results being somewhat out of date, you can download the categorylinks.sql and page.sql database dumps and process them offline. Anomie⚔ 15:59, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

well using a web page and not the api you can use CatScan eg https://toolserver.org/~daniel/WikiSense/CategoryIntersect.php?wikilang=en&wikifam=.wikipedia.org&basecat=Christmas&basedeep=7&mode=cl&go=Scan&format=html&userlang=en Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:21, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Good catch GB. I'll ask the author on Commons. Magog the Ogre (talk) 05:32, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

wikipedia:good articles/recent

TBR1 was recently promoted to Good article on 8 Dec '11, but the bots haven't picked it up yet. I wonder: why? --Ancheta Wis (talk) 12:56, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I took a look at the bot's logs and it's as I suspected: three were promoted in the same 15 minute period (the others were Pon de Replay and Feminism in India). This is very unusual (not during backlog drives I suppose, but the rest of the year), so the bot figured it must have got something wrong and declined to edit the page. The bot is deliberately very conservative about this because in general it matters less that some GAs get missed from the list and more that items that aren't actually new GAs get listed. Hope that clarifies, - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 12:21, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 19:18, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

What is wrong with this image?

In Ishi there is an image that won't render correctly. It doesn't fill the image box but hangs in the left corner and leaves the rese of the thumb box empty. The image is big enough if I remove the "thumb" but then I can't position it correctly on the page and it looks funny. (I'm using Firebox 8.01 but I haven't had this problem anywhere else.)

thumb|Ishi's Quiver of Arrows

What is wrong? Thanks! MathewTownsend (talk) 23:21, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

The image just needs to be cropped; the whitespace is part of the image itself. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:30, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Image cropped. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:34, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Looks like we cropped at pretty much the same time, and mine is bigger than yours (as it were). Mind if we revert to my version? Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 23:36, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I never thought of that. (It does look pretty big in the article. But I can adjust that, can't I? MathewTownsend (talk) 23:43, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Bah, I totally forgot that I'd been cropping sizes with a specific width, hence my resized image was way off. Looks like Edokter already took care of it. EVula // talk // ☯ // 07:00, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Fundraising problem

Can anyone try to guess what the problem was at Help:Searching/feedback#Feedback_from_24.11.11.230_.2811_December_2011.29? -- John of Reading (talk) 07:59, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I would say the problem is a misunderstanding on part of the IP. The IP seems to believe he / she either cannot contribute to or get information without donating. It's a bit unclear to me what the IP means by "to get to my information", ie whether this refers to contributing to the encyclopedia or reading an article, which I guess is what you would like to find out. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 08:10, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

My guess after reading it again is the IP referred to reading an article. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 08:15, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

My guess: The IP clicked a donation link at wikipedia.org and was taken to wikimediafoundation.org without realizing the difference. The IP then tried to search Wikipedia but only got hits at wikimediafoundation.org and viewed it as being "held hostage". PrimeHunter (talk) 12:20, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, that looks very plausible. I've posted at User talk:24.11.11.230, though the message may never be received, of course. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:51, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

My apologies - thank you, too, for your suggestions Toshio. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:30, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Template issues

Djwilms has asked for assistance with a template he recently created, Template:Patriarchs of the Syriac Orthodox Church It looks fine in the template space but won't display properly when added to articles. I took a look at it but the issue lies somewhere beyond the horizon of my technical know-how. Can anyone assist him?--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:14, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I see where a few fixes can be made. I don't see it used in articles, so I won't have any way of knowing if it is fixed. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:18, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Is used here fredgandt 14:22, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Per his request I added it to Dionysius Telmaharensis pending sorting it out.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:24, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

 Fixed There was a <noinclude> before the closing braces, so the template was not closed when transcluded. Also updated to use hlist ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:28, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

While your mojo is purring, you could maybe take a look at #Hidden table columns too? I tried and failed (my mind is fried and concentrating is hard at times). fredgandt 14:33, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Great, thanks everyone!--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:34, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Editor who created the page

Looking at mw:Manual:Parameters to index.php I can't figure out how to create a URL which lists the person who created the page.

There is:

"(deprecated) go=first the first (earliest) page of history is shown"

...but that has been depreciated.

Any suggestions? thank you. Igottheconch (talk) 17:04, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

The "earliest" link on the history page specifies "dir=prev", so something like http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&action=history&dir=prev&limit=1 may do what you want. Anomie⚔ 17:16, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you've already found mw:Manual:Parameters to index.php#History; if you look earlier on in the same section it does describe dir=prev. Please note that the terms "deprecated" and "depreciated" have very different meanings. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:40, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

thank you both very much. I really appreciate it. Igottheconch (talk) 18:05, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

dir=prev didn't have an example, I tried it, but without &limit=1 thanks for clarification

dep·re·cate   /ˈdɛprɪˌkeɪt/ Show Spelled[dep-ri-keyt] Show IPA

verb (used with object), -cat·ed, -cat·ing.

1. to express earnest disapproval of.

2. to urge reasons against; protest against (a scheme, purpose, etc.).

3. to depreciate; belittle.

4. Archaic . to pray for deliverance from.

Sigh. I will look at Deprecation. 99% of people outside of computer programming dont know what this word means, including myself. Igottheconch (talk) 18:54, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

So was go=first supreceded by "dir=prev"? Igottheconch (talk) 18:58, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Add articles that don't exist to your watchlist

There are times when an article gets deleted and I would like to add it to my watchlist so I know if it is created. I know I can manually add it by modifying my raw watchlist, but is there a way Wikipedia could change it so the star to add a page to your watchlist still exists on the top of pages that have not been created? Ryan Vesey Review me! 19:47, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

In Monobook the "Watch" tab is still there even on an uncreated page, can't speak to the new hotness though. --Golbez (talk) 19:54, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Same for Vector. Tested. "The page 'Wertjfc' has been added to your watchlist...". It's there all-right. fredgandt 19:56, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh wow, it is there. Was this a recent change, I haven't been extremely active in the last couple of months and I posted this question without actually trying to watch a deleted page. Ryan Vesey Review me! 20:09, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

See what I was advised just recently. --Theurgist (talk) 20:06, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

As far as I recall (2½ years), when clicking a redlink there has always been a "watch" tab in Monobook, or white star in Vector. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:56, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Try Special:EditWatchlist/raw. Mind you have to be logged in. (Mea culpa. I should have read the question more carefully.) – Allen4names 05:15, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Problem with image size

The infobox image at Asher Arieli is not the same one as on commons. Also, at Ksav Sofer, the updated image is squashed? Chesdovi (talk) 22:16, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

WP:PURGE. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:40, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Did you fix it yourself Dr Gadget? If so, thanks alot. Chesdovi (talk) 23:19, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

readability

It occurs to me that other people (besides me) have difficulty reading long lines of small type. Please consider using two columns of information rather than one wide column that spans the width of the page. Some years ago, there was a guy named Rudolph Flesch (Flesh?) who wrote a lot about "readability." One of the things he wrote about was the length of lines of copy as related to the size of the type face. He concluded, generally:

Long lines/small type face: suck

Short lines/small type face: Okay

(Redacted) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.1.67.217 (talk) 17:45, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

It's almost impossible to make that work robustly given the freedom that readers have to alter the size and shape of their browser windows. Handling text would probably be possible, but handling images in a variable two-column format is extremely challenging. Looie496 (talk) 18:11, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, there would be ways to do this with CSS, the problem is that browsers don't properly support this to not totally screw up the layout of a considerable amount of users. So we have to wait for the browser implementations to mature more. Say about a year of 5... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:47, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

A problem with Template:Non-free reduce

Template:Non-free reduce currently instructs editors to replace it with "{{Non-free reduced|~~~~~}}". However, this is incorrect: it should be entered like this: {{Non-free reduced|date=12 December 2011}} (something I learned over at the help desk). Template:Non-free reduce should be edited to instruct the use of a date parameter. Chris (talk) 22:24, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done, see here. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:11, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

(Indeed. The five tildes is autocorrected later. 12:05, 13 December 2011 (UTC) )

Fix for Template:User-uaa

{{User-uaa}} has links to block the user, which differ from each other in the circumstances in which they are used. Each is set to have an expiry time of "indefinite", and each has their own block reason; for some reason, these settings aren't working. Can someone please fix this? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:45, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Getting there Template:User-uaa/sandbox fredgandt 10:26, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Might be fixed. I'm not clicking any of those links to find out what happens though. Let me or someone else know if it's working and then I or they can clean it up. fredgandt 10:47, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

They renamed the parameters in MediaWiki 1.18, see T33851.  Fixed Anomie⚔ 12:07, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Is anything I did in any way useful or good? I'd really love to know if I have any idea what I'm doing. fredgandt 12:12, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't see that anything you did fixed the issue raised here; it looks like it was mostly reformatting to use the new "hlist" thing, on which I have no strong opinion. And something in there is certainly screwed up, compare the rendering of * User: {{User-uaa}} in the current and sandbox versions. Anomie⚔ 18:21, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I didn't know the actual links were broken, so I concentrated on making sure all the encoding was working correctly and making it (what I think is) neater. "hlist" doesn't rock my world, but it is a very neat way to do what was previously a nasty bunch or hacks. I'm gonna try using the links you fixed in my reformatting and let users decide. fredgandt 18:35, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I swapped the links over to Anomie's working links but kept the other changes I made in the sandbox. One thing I noticed is that the original links used Special:Blockip but now all the links use Special:Block in its place. I didn't know which was right so left it as Special:Blockip, but updated the query-vars. Another point was that some of the links were not fully urlencoded. In the sandbox version, they are (I think). Not sure how much it would have mattered, but my philosophy is "better to be safe than sorry". fredgandt 19:07, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

New reports

I have recently learned about WP:DBR. I saw Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count and wondered if it would be worth producing similar reports for template space, image space, category space and project space. Also, since the report ingores redirects (and there are more redirects than non-redirects in mainspace), maybe a redirect list could be produced too.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 16:22, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

P.S. if I am in the wrong part of the WP:VP let me know.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 16:23, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

How to write?

Hello! How to write in wikicode: (Nr1 / (Nr1+Nr2)) * 100 ?--84.245.231.134 (talk) 17:45, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

<math>{Nr1 \over Nr1 + Nr2} \times 100</math> yields ${Nr1 \over Nr1+Nr2}\times 100$. Goodvac (talk) 17:53, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

No, I mean like here (in such way).--84.245.231.134 (talk) 17:59, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean creating a template that takes parameters "Nr1" and "Nr2" and inserting them into the formula above? If so, {{#expr:{{{1}}} / ({{{1}}} + {{{2}}}) * 100 }} would be the code for the template, and to output the result, {{template name|Nr1|Nr2}}. Goodvac (talk) 18:09, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! Now it is OK.--84.245.231.134 (talk) 18:23, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Office Hours

Hey guys! With the new Article Feedback Tool nearing completion, we're holding another Office Hours session - this will be around deployment time, so it's super-important that as many people as possible can attend. It will be held on Friday 16th December at 19:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office; as always, if anyone can't attend, feel free to drop me a note on my talkpage, and I'm happy to send you the logs. Hope to see you all there! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:33, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Search banner Wikipedia Research Committee

Please centralize discussion at-->> meta:Research talk:Dynamics_of_Online_Interactions_and_Behavior --Kim Bruning (talk) 02:23, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

"Please help advance research with a quick interactive online experiment. Learn more now!" SciencesPro, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, with support from Wikimedia Research Committee. Is this a real banner from Wikipedia? Or a virus popup? Because it sure looks like a pop-up ad. Maile66 (talk) 23:10, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Well, I got one too: and it looked external/commercial, so I clicked the X icon to dismiss rather than following the links. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:13, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Its an ugly banner ad, plan and simple. These ads should have no business being here. I'm quite ashamed that a neutral source like ours would act as a plug or "research tool" for any external organization. ThemFromSpace 23:16, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

It is an advert and should be quickly removed. This should not be allowed on Wikipedia as it sets a precedent that contravenes our values. --Fæ (talk) 23:26, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Is there any CSS that will allow me to blacklist all SiteNotice banners for eternity? hbdragon88 (talk) 23:29, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

It should but it is a foundation decision --Guerillero | My Talk 23:48, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

The "Suppress display of the fundraiser banner" gadget in preferences. — Dispenser 00:48, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

This is going to sound odd. But I've had that "Suppress" option checked at least for the last year. After reading your post, I took a look - and it was unchecked. And I didn't do it. Hmmmm.Maile66 (talk) 01:01, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Whose idea was it to make it open in a new window/tab, with no way to control its target? I stopped the page before it had a chance to load anything, closed the tab, and then clicked the X on the banner. That's all the research data I will contribute. I will not have control of my browser taken away from me. Reach Out to the Truth 23:55, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

It passes on quite a lot of hidden information when clicked:

<input type="hidden" name="login" value="NUMBER OBSCURED">
<input type="hidden" name="group" value="rollbacker">
<input type="hidden" name="duration" value="588">
<input type="hidden" name="editcounts" value="2334">
<input type="hidden" name="last6monthseditcount" value="2272">
<input type="hidden" name="username" value="Fred Gandt">
<input type="hidden" name="secretkey" value="NUMBER OBSCURED">
<input type="hidden" name="lang" value="en">

Not sure if any of it is terribly sensitive, but there is no warning that this info is being shared. fredgandt 00:26, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

More data: meta:Research:Dynamics_of_Online_Interactions_and_Behavior. Also see the talk page. for links to AN discussions etc. --Kim Bruning (talk) 00:45, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

The banner should obviously have a prominent link to a wikipedia.org or wikimedia.org page explaining that it is legitimate and inviting questions. This should be common sense. I could not design a creepier ad and application if I tried. What the hell kind of URL is "grebdioz.sciences-po.fr" anyway, and what kind of title is "ERC 2010 enbr1.0"? These sound like Aphex Twin songs. —Designate (talk) 01:03, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

• Two points. I don't think there is ever a good reason to use CentralNotice for research projects; instead, project-specific MediaWiki or Watchlist banners should be used. Secondly, wow, the surveyors must have a heck of a lot of money, if they're looking for 2000+ participants and paying them a minimum of $10 and a potential average of $30/each. Risker (talk) 01:12, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

It's certainly doing some suspicious things: it's got the "link" mouse pointer, but when I right-click on it, I don't get a "link"-related context menu. I browse the Wikipedia using HTTPS, and if I left-click on the banner, my browser asked me if I wanted to submit a form to an insecure website. The wording and layout imply three hyperlinks to three different pages, but it's actually all one banner -- and clicking on areas that don't look "active" cause it to attempt the insecure form submission. The only redeeming feature is that the close box looks legitimate. I don't think it's malicious, but I also don't think they could make it look more suspicious if they tried. --Carnildo (talk) 02:00, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

• I've uncollapsed this because there are pointers at the meta page leading to this discussion. While centralization is useful, it's appropriate to also have this discussion here. Risker (talk) 02:44, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

• (Not a fan of collapsing this. / ec, uncollapsed) I agree that the presentation is lacking. There should be some link that confirms the association with Wikimedia. It is ironic that trust is an issue here, given that trust is the subject of the research.

More importantly, there is no disclosure of what information is collected about you. The answer is:

• Your Wikipedia user name, and more minor related Wikipedia user data, as mentioned implicitly higher up
• Your IP address, obviously
• The email address you enter
• I'm not sure if Paypal returns one's real name to the payer when the money is sent to the receiver's email address. Does anyone know? If so, that would be the biggest issue given Wikipedians' penchant for anonymity.
• Demographic questions in the survey itself

The first section deals most directly with game theory; if all four randomly matched participants send their $10 to the pool, they all receive the maximum outcome. I figured the type of participants being solicited would understand this, but only 2 (me and one other) contributed the full $10. The other three sections... deal more directly with greed and fair sharing. Or something. I participated in the survey, and on balance am glad to receive what I consider as a little 'bonus' for my contributions over the years. Assuming I receive it. Riggr Mortis (talk) 02:50, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

• I thinks this makes a lot more sense as a fundraising strategy than the Jimbo banners. Also it is clearly not an advert - but an experiment and a fundraiser for wikipedia at the same time. And it gives you money rather than ask for it (if we can trust it). The opposite of what the word "advert" implies where I am from at least. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 03:01, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

• I absolutely agree with Riggr Mortis; it's about time that editors received something tangible for their contributions instead of the usual crap dished out here. Malleus Fatuorum 03:15, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Yes... Pragmatically, such incentives would make me mildly interested in Wikipedia again. (But that's not the reason I should be here, says the local ethics committee, so I packed 'er in. On the other hand, I don't really expect to be incentivized to contribute to something that I'm not an expert on--which is everything.) Riggr Mortis (talk) 04:42, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Ok, we now have discussion in at least 3 places. There is also discussion at: -->>Wikipedia:ANI#Harvard.2FScience_Po_Adverts. There's a reason I was trying to centralize discussion. It's called preventing a meatball:ForestFire. Since we're not centralizing, we're going to have to keep an eye on all 3 locations! --Kim Bruning (talk) 03:24, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps the quick spawning of multiple discussions is a sign that this should have been discussed more before implementing it ;-) Buddy431 (talk) 04:33, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. I looked here first/only, and later posted what I thought would provide a bit of context to people who were also wondering about it (by which time it was capped--always late to the party (to which I was not invited)). Riggr Mortis (talk) 04:42, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

No use crying over spilled milk, have to play the ball where it lies. :-) --Kim Bruning (talk) 05:05, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

A quick note on privacy

Hi folks! Per some of the comments made above, I thought that people would like one of the members of the research team running this study to explain its privacy policy here. So here I am! :) This research project is subject to European privacy protection protocols, which basically means that (a) we will use the data collected in this study for research purposes only and (b) only a fully anonymized version of the data we collect will be released under an open access license (so that people can reuse the data we currently gather any way they see fit). All the demographic questions that are asked in the end questionnaire of the survey are subject to this strict privacy policy. I would add that it is a part of our research design not to record or use participants’ IP addresses. When participants click on the banner, they are directed towards a proxy that redirects them to the survey. Hence, each time a participant is loggin in, we are not exposed to his IP address but to the proxy’s one. Finally, we will never be exposed to participants' real identity through the PayPal payment process or through any other means. We do ask for a valid e-mail address to process the payment, but that's the *only* personal information that we require for this purpose. I hope that this helps answering some questions... :) Thanks! SalimJah (talk) 04:54, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks SalimJah - that eases my concerns a little :-) The Cavalry (Message me) 06:14, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, thank you as well. I did not participate (I do not as a rule) but I am glad to know some thought was taken about this. Perhaps a little community notice before such an ad "pops up" (so to speak) is in order.--Wehwalt (talk) 07:13, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

"European privacy protection protocols". That could be even more vague if you drop the "European". Is there a page which actually describes the privacy protection protocol? Though you claim not to collect the IP, you do collect a lot of personal information, an email address, and presumably the Wikipedia username (as it is passed through) which will give you a vast amount of background information through the editing history should you wish to access it. The IP is fairly irrelevant after you have all that. Yomangani^talk 10:31, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, link to protocol please. We actually tend to read them in this place. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:57, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

I asked the researcher to elaborate on that matter. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:44, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Ability to disable this

Ok, so I am generally apathetic to the banner (I find it annoying, contrary our goals and most importantly undiscussed with the community.. but whatever). We do have the technical ability to disable this banner - so in case consensus is reached to do so this is how; add the following the MediaWiki:common.css:

.harvard-title { display: none; }

This also works in your personal CSS. Just throwing it out there. --Errant ^(chat!) 09:13, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Perfect, thanks! --Kim Bruning (talk) 10:26, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

RFC

As promised, I have opened an RFC discussion in project space to help us resolve some of the issues related to this. Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Central_Notices. --Errant ^(chat!) 10:53, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Change displayed sort header in categories

Resolved

The category header shows "C". Is it possible to have it display "C/Ch"? (only what's displayed should be changed internal handling can remain) .css/.js? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 10:16, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

So... nobody knows, nobody understands the question, or it can't be done? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 08:21, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

A code such as the following would do that on Category:Countries, but it probably wouldn't work for other cases.

$('#mw-subcategories').find('h3').filter(function(){
    return $(this).text() === 'C'
}).text('C/Ch');

Why do you need to do that change? Helder 12:54, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

In some languages Ch (digraph) might normally be placed alphabetically away from C so writing "C/Ch" in categories with many page names from such a language might help some readers, but I don't think we should do it in the English Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:01, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Exactly the case (of course I'm not asking for en.wikipedia, I just know that if somebody knows, that someone will most likely be here).

I tried it; works for subcategories, thanks; what would it be for the part where the pages are listed? (I'm guessing #mw-subcategories must be changed... #mw-pages maybe?) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 13:17, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

BINGO! Awesome, thanks! Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 13:37, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Find/Replace

Up until yesterday, the tools at the top of the edit window included a find and a replace option (ie. type in text and it shows you where in the edit window this text appears). These functions no longer appear in my edit window, and I'd like them back. I'm using the latest version of Firefox, if that helps. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:20, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

They did? If I'd known of that I'd have used it. Hundreds of times. Anyway, I have 23 buttons now, the same as I have had for some weeks - specifically, these 23 buttons - none of them seem to do either a find, or a find/replace. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:49, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. My toolbar doesn't look like that, though I have WikEd and some other gadgets enabled, so maybe that's why. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:17, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay, this is what my toolbar previously looked like. I'm now missing the middle section. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:20, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Ah, you're using wikEd, which is a third-party gadget. You probably need to ask at its talk page, User talk:Cacycle/wikEd. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:43, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, reading through the help page, it's possible that you've collapsed the buttons - see User:Cacycle/wikEd help#Collapsing button bars. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:57, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

No, the grip wasn't there at all. However, the section has now reappeared, so I guess it was just a temporary glitch. Thanks anyways, though. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:00, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

The default MediaWiki toolbar also has a search button in the "Advanced" tab. Helder 12:59, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

December 2011 fundraising appeal

Hi, a fundraising appeal box with a picture (like that of the woman who wrote 549 articles, or the girl who did 18,000 edits) keeps popping up when I log in. But no matter how I try, I am unable to open the link. I keep clicking on the picture, or the underlined message (today it's "Please read: A personal appeal from Wikipedia author Dr. Sengai Podhuvan"), but nothing happens. Yoninah (talk) 15:02, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

If you're using Google Chrome on Windoze, press Ctrl+⇧ Shift+I to open your inspection console. Then click on the banner. Look in the bottom right of the inspection console for a little red icon and a number (probably "1" if it's there at all). If there is a little red icon, click the link, and copy the error report, and paste it here in <pre /> tags.

If you're not using Chrome, I think Firefox behaves much the same way.

The reason I ask this, is it is possible there a JavaScript error (due to a number of possibilities). fredgandt 15:41, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

If you want to donate, you can do so at Wikimedia:Donate.

The woman with 549 articles' banner is this, and the letter is here.

The girl who did 18,000 edits banner is this, letter is here.

Dr. Podhuvan's letter is here.

Other banners/stories can be seen via meta:Template:Translate-status/Fundraising_2011/en.

Hope that helps.  Chzz  ►  12:30, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

False edit conflicts, take 3

I'm still getting false edit conflicts, but now they're at total random. I edited the same page twice (Back to Tennessee) and got a false edit conflict the first time, but not the second and third times. I can't find any pattern whatsoever as to when this happens. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 21:53, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

• And now I got one on a page THAT DIDN'T EVEN EXIST UNTIL I EDITED IT (Talk:Nineteen (song)). What the hell. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 21:55, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
  • U iz kurst O.o fredgandt 05:25, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Check to see if your computers clock is set to the right time and that your user prefs regarding the time are correct. It is possible that you are occasionally finishing your edit before you've started (or something similar). fredgandt 05:36, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
  • This happened to me a while back but it went away. I guess you sometimes get screwy times from the servers and/or your computer. In my case the edit still went through, so perhapstry checking the history before taking the time to address the "conflict". - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 12:06, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
    • Does the conflict mirror the one from Rich reported below ? And i mean the signature part of the report. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:18, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
      • No, because none of my self-edit conflicts have involved signatures. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 18:38, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
• Changing the time didn't help, as I just self-EC'd on Cat's in the Cradle, but only on my last edit. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 19:43, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

• WHY THE FUCKETY FUCKING FUCK DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING AOIRUEWIORHWEJLTHWELJKEWHLJKRTEWHLJKTLKHJWETJHKLWTLJKHTEWJKL Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 02:11, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

• FWIW, I occasionally have the same problem. HurricaneFan25 — 02:24, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Content id added to external links

What do people think of this edit, which I have just come across? User:Mcarone1 (self-declared as an employee of Mathworks) is adding a content identifier to all the links to urls within mathworks.com. This sounds great because it means that if Mathworks changes the structure of their website, they are able to redirect people to the correct content. By being helpful like this, Mathworks are solving the problem of link rot (for Mathworks urls). However, the downside is that Mathworks are able (in theory) to record data on how many of the page views come from Wikipedia. Are we concerned by that?

For all I know, this could be quite a common practice that everyone is fine with... but I thought I'd highlight it here because I've never come across it before.

Yaris678 (talk) 12:14, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Does their webserver not get referrer data irrespective of the change User:Mcarone1 is making? --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:20, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I dunno. This is the sort of thing that I thought you guys might be able to clarify. Yaris678 (talk) 12:44, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay. Referring to HTTP referer we find that the destination web server does indeed receive information on the referring page. That being the case, I'm not seeing that mathworks is getting anything additional after the change than a more appropriate URL; I'm not seeing any concerns since the change does not appear to give them any more information about the referrer page than they previously had. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:56, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

They will know one more bit of info: For the http://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab link, it's in the infobox and in the External links section, so with different param, you can tell which of those two was clicked, not that it really matters much. -- WOSlinker (talk) 14:12, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

So, on balance, it looks like there is nothing to worry about and Mathworks are helping us with link rot. Excellent. Yaris678 (talk) 15:22, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Watchlist notices

After clicking [hide] and refreshing my watchlist, I often accidentally click "rollback" (on line two) instead of "diff" (on line one) while viewing my watchlist as the text shifts up when the watchlist notice disappears. This has caused a lot of accidental rollbacking (example here). Is there a way so the watchlist notices don't even appear when I reload (but I still want to see new ones...)? HurricaneFan25 — 21:04, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Not easily that I can think of. Can't you just make rollback a two-step process rather than a one-step process using a userscript which creates a popup "Okay"/"Cancel" dialog? - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 23:16, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

escape character for < and >

How do I create an escape character for the characters < and >? Do escape characters work with span style?

I am attempting to get:

<span style="color:green;">{{{label|}}}</span>

to work in a template. For some reason when I add the span tag, "label" does not show up.

If I add {{{label|}}} TEST both "label" and TEST appear.

I am thinking that the problem can be solved with an escape character, like template:! is | . Is there a < and > escape character template? Thank you. Igottheconch (talk) 21:57, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

It should work. What template are you working on? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:01, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I just tried <span style{{{|=}}}"color:green;">{{{label|}}}</span> and it worked as expected. i.e. {{Foo|label=Bar}} makes a green "Bar". I suspect if it is not working in your template that there is something other than this code wrong. fredgandt 23:41, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Escape character category

I was thinking of adding a category for all of these templates like template:! I sense category:Escape Character would be deleted. What is a better name? Igottheconch (talk) 22:01, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

slow and dead scripts and designers testing on slow hardware and network

I often stop scripts from running. I do that when my browser tells me that the script is running slowly. The message says, "A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding." When this comes up, I have no idea what the script is supposed to do but I guess it's okay to stop it. It's annoying to have this happen so often. Suggestion, if not already applied: For every new script about to be released or implemented, test its execution on a slow computer through a slow network. My browser is Firefox 3.0.4; perhaps replication is possible with any browser that gives the user a slowness alert. Nick Levinson (talk) 03:16, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Weather box template

Can anyone figure out what's wrong with the climate chart here? I know that those weird rectangles are caused by spaces on new lines or something like that, but I looked at the article in edit mode and nothing looked wrong. My browser is Safari 5.1.1. Jsayre64 (talk) 04:04, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't see any "weird rectangles" in the climate chart (Chrome/XP/Vector). fredgandt 04:15, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I see {{#if:63, {{#exand cock, }} (17) as the first three columns of row one, ad the whole table is like that. I see the 'boxes' every third column, looks like a template broke. Chris857 (talk) 04:21, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Strange. It's better now even though nobody has edited the page to fix it. Jsayre64 (talk) 04:55, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

screenshot. (The little turquoise crosses are made by a user script) fredgandt 05:09, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I think you were looking at cached versions of the page. See the template history to understand why you saw errors. fredgandt 05:18, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Edit conflicts - with pre-save transform

Is there a bugzilla for self-edit-conflicts? I get these with increasing frequency, the "Stored revision" has my sig, while "Your text" has the ~~~. Rich Farmbrough, 12:11, 13 December 2011 (UTC).

The "your text" should have exactly what you entered.  Hazard-SJ  ±  03:27, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

When this happened to me, if I checked the history, my edit had actually gone through i.e. I literally was just edit conflicting with my own edit. Is it the same for you? - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 17:12, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Mobile view in print

Printed pages end with "* Mobile view", even though I am not using a mobile device. FireFox 9.0 on windows 7. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:48, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Also see this when logged in with my alternative, clean account, but not when logged out. Also occurs with IE9.

Another minor issue: "Wikipedia® is a registered trademark ..." should be bulleted. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:59, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Which skin are you using Gadget850 ? Also. the "Wikipedia is a registered trademark is debatable. The three bulleted items are last modified, copyright statement, contact us. The copyright statement is seen as a single item in the footers, even though it uses two separate lines. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:20, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Monobook. Don't see it in Vector. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:51, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Your change to MediaWiki:Print.css removed the text. Had an orphaned bullet until I purged. Thanks. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 00:20, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

See also bugzilla:33136. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:40, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

NOEDITSECTION

__NOEDITSECTION__ doesn't seem to be working, see Portal:Contents for example. I see it was also mentioned on Village pump before and has bugzilla jobs: T33445 and T33647. They say resolved but it still doesn't seem to be working properly. If you purge the page then the edit button(s) goes away but they come back if you read the page again. Either by clicking on read at the top of the screen or by clicking on a link to it. Mattg82 (talk) 00:31, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Verified (Chrome/XP/Vector). My first visit had no section edit links. Refreshing the page forced them to show. Subsequent refreshes and navigations away and back to, resulted in no change (the edit links remained). I tried moving the magic word to the top of the page, but other than the first view of this new page having no section edit links, the behaviour was the same (refreshed showed links). fredgandt 03:39, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

The bug has been patched, but the patch itself has not been deployed yet. — Edokter (talk) — 19:30, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I just came across this bug on my user page. When will the patch be deployed? —danhash (talk) 21:07, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I can't say for sure, but it is not marked for merging with 1.18, so it probably will be included with the 1.19 update. — Edokter (talk) — 21:13, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Seems like it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't...odd. Just so I know for when it's fixed, is there any way to suppress the edit link for just a single section? —danhash (talk) 21:16, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

No, there is no such mechanism. — Edokter (talk) — 22:23, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Headings created with HTML like <h2> should not be editable, due to the migration to the new preprocessor in January 2008. Also headings with empty noinclude or includeonly tatgs are not editable either. See User:Graham87/sandbox2. Graham87 01:58, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Ditto with headings imbedded in noinclude/includeonly tags. Graham87 02:01, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Lack of user creation info in database

While trying yo help someone in our IRC help channel, I noticed that some usernames are missing creation dates. (See Special:ListUsers/Leslie for a few examples). Is this another bug?  Hazard-SJ  ±  03:44, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

They are probably accounts that were created before the user creation date was recorded, meaning in the early days of Wikipedia; before 2003 perhaps? Gary King (talk · scripts) 03:53, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Possible, but uncertain.  Hazard-SJ  ±  04:30, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Mostly correct, except where accounts had edits already. All users who edited before or were created after MediaWiki gained the user.user_registration field have a value there. This is because it only applied to accounts created after the fact, excepting where fixUserRegistration.php was run (once) to guesstimate this (based on first edit). See bugzilla:18638. --Splarka (rant) 08:49, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

And the new user log was created in September 2005. Graham87 01:48, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

"What links here" to a section

Is there a way to list links to a given section? It is much labor to use "What links here", browse the source code of all articles and see which of them lead to a given section.

I would find it very useful. Is there any intention to enhance the "What links here" feature to handle this? Or is there a tool for this? --Pavel Jelinek (talk) 16:09, 15 December 2011 (UTC)Thanks

Not easily, no. You can always scan teh dumps, but that is tricky. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 17:14, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I estimate that it would take only several hours of work to implement a web page with algorithm, which

• first calls "What links here"
• then asks Wikipedia to provide the source code of those pages returned by "What links here"
• analyzes them and displays the result.

I don't have the skill to implement it, but I am surprised that this does not exist. I think that this would have an extremely high "benefit/labour" ratio, compared with other tools. --Pavel Jelinek (talk) 17:51, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

A few different times I've thought such a tool would be useful. Perhaps someone with time and toolserver access could create one? —danhash (talk) 21:18, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

url that contains [ or ]

In Dejan Udovičić, the reference is the following url http://www.waterpoloserbia.org/index.php?id=724&tx_bzdstaffdirectory_pi1[showUid]=17&tx_bzdstaffdirectory_pi1[backPid]=719&cHash=1d3d80ccd1137e08bc790e4261d931c5. However, it seems that the link parser stops at the first square bracket. How can we force it to link the entire thing? Chris857 (talk) 18:11, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

URLs containing certain characters will display and link incorrectly unless those characters are encoded. For example, a space must be replaced by %20.

sp	"	'	,	;	<	>	?	[	]
%20	%22	%27	%2c	%3b	%3c	%3e	%3f	%5b	%5d

Single apostrophes do not need to be encoded; multiples will be parsed as italic or bold markup

The link button on the enhanced editing toolbar will encode a link.

The URL must start with a supported URI scheme. http:// and https:// are always supported. gopher://, irc://, ircs://, ftp://, news:// and mailto: will create a link and an icon but require an agent registered in the browser. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:16, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

(ec)

http://www.waterpoloserbia.org/index.php?id=724&tx_bzdstaffdirectory_pi1%5BshowUid%5D=17&tx_bzdstaffdirectory_pi1%5BbackPid%5D=719&cHash=1d3d80ccd1137e08bc790e4261d931c5

>Percent-encoding

Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 18:22, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Chris857 (talk) 18:27, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Non-English article titles

We have {{Italic title}} for article titles which need to be italicised; and {{Lang}} for article content which is not in English - but what about articles whose titles are not in English, like Kruidnoten; or partially not in English, like Banket (food). How can we apply HTML language attributes in such cases? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:43, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

What attributes would be needed? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:10, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

The same as those emitted by {{Lang}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:26, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

{{Lang}} does not work in titles becuase of included categories, but {{DISPLAYTITLE:<span lang="nl" xml:lang="nl">Kruidnoten</span>}} seems to work OK. — Edokter (talk) — 16:07, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that seems to work; thank you. I wonder whether we shouldn't make a template to do that, and simplify the metadata entry? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:37, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Something like {{Titlelang}}? (Doesn't handle partial non-en titles though.) — Edokter (talk) — 17:08, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

(e/c) {{lang title}} as a first setup... Wondering what to do about foreign words, with in multiword titles and dabs though... perhaps the template isn't really that useful ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:13, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

It should be possible to have a {{multilangtitle}} template that coped with these situations, e.g.{{multilangtitle|part1=Banket|lang1=nl|part2=(food)|lang2=en}}, etc. This would provide a human readable equivalent to the code above. Thryduulf (talk) 17:42, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Like I said above... {{lang}} outputs categories rendering displaytitle non-funcitonal. As for partial titles, include the mechanism used in {{italic title}} into {{titlelang}}? — Edokter (talk) — 21:08, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for this, but yes, we need to cater for mixed languages in titles. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:43, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Then any template that incorporates DISPLAYTTITLE: is out unless you want a heap of parameters. You just need a variation of {{lang}} that you can embed inside displaytitle and does not include categories. — Edokter (talk) — 13:07, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Personal CSS

I'm trying to get the left column to scroll and have a "scrolling bar" when necessary, as it's too long for the page. Is this feasible? (Current CSS code here at bottom) Thanks. HurricaneFan25 — 19:02, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

To make the side panel (in Vector at least) stay in place while scrolling you only need a few lines of css in your common.css.

#mw-panel
{
        position:fixed !important;
        max-height:500px;
        overflow:auto;
}

The height setting is something you might want to adjust for personal comfort. My javascript sets that property by measuring my window. fredgandt 19:19, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I use User:Omegatron/monobook.js/floatingSidebar.js in my monobook.js. Not sure if it works with Vector. Goodvac (talk) 19:33, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

@fg: The logo disappears when I preview :/ HurricaneFan25 — 20:09, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah. I haven't figured out where it goes either. I admit it's not perfect but does the basic bits. I'm still working on a total redesign of the Vector UI (including scripting and styles) and when I get it all figured out will write it all up somewhere for people to use if they like. For now, the logo is a casualty of war. fredgandt 20:13, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

The logo is still there where it used to be. But since #mw-panel is its parent, and the logo is placed 160px above it (top: -160px;), it is hidden from view due to the overflow: auto; directive. With overflow set to anything other then visible, any element outside its boundaries are hidden from view. Just so you know ;) — Edokter (talk) — 22:43, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Did some digging. You need to add these lines to make the logo appear:

div#mw-panel {
    position: fixed;
    max-height: 500px;
    overflow: auto;
    top: 0;
}
div#p-logo {
    top: 0;
}
div.first {
    margin-top: 160px !important;
}

— Edokter (talk) — 23:04, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Now it sits pasted right over the sidebar... :P Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 23:15, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Same here. yrtneg (talk) 23:18, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Fixed the code and merged both examples. — Edokter (talk) — 23:41, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Edokter. If I can figure out what to do with the logo later, I will use this as reference. Mine is actually hidden on purpose now since the whole ofmw-head is floating and partially collapsible. It was simpler to just hide anything that got in the way. fredgandt 09:20, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

WebKit warnings for event.layerX and event.layerY

Opening and/or closing e.g. <div class="portal expanded" id="p-interaction"> in #mw-panel is generating 2 warnings each click that "event.layerX and event.layerY are broken and deprecated in WebKit. They will be removed from the engine in the near future.". FYI fredgandt 20:36, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

jQuery needs to be upgraded to v1.7 to stop those messages. See T34879 for upgrade. -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:16, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Good. As long as it's being dealt with, that's fine. Thanks WOSlinker. fredgandt 09:20, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Odd parsing

Can someone explain to me why my edit here didn't properly parse the http link? Magog the Ogre (talk) 14:51, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Newline in the middle of it?--Kotniski (talk) 14:58, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. I just fixed it. Ucucha (talk) 15:01, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Magog the Ogre (talk) 15:14, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

German cite error

At the bottom of WT:TOL, there is a cite error message in German (I can provide a screenshot if necessary), even after I purge the page. This is from MediaWiki:Cite_error (says uselang=qqx), and through that it should apparently come from MediaWiki:Cite error refs without references, but apparently it doesn't. Anyone know what's going on here? Ucucha (talk) 15:00, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I saw it, but a null edit seems to have fixed it. A pity, perhaps, since that was a bizarre error. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:19, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I saw it as well. You should not be seeing any error on a talk page since you don't have brokenref enabled in your CSS. The message was not classed with brokenref so it was not generated by MediaWiki:Cite error refs without references. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:23, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I know those errors are supposed to be hidden on talk pages. uselang=qqx does not show cite_error as being involved in a different page with this error (Ascanio Condivi). Ucucha (talk) 16:34, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

If by "in German" you mean "with my interface language preference set to German, or with uselang=de", that would be expected. Generally only the standard English messages are customized here on enwiki; even en-gb usually remains uncustomized.

OTOH, if by "in German" you mean you saw "MediaWiki:Cite error refs without references/de" at the bottom of the page even though your language preference is standard English, that sounds like some sort of caching bug: someone with German set for their language would have viewed the page, pulling in the error message with the German text, and then due to the caching bug this German-language cache was used when displaying the English-language page to you. This would be worth reporting in Bugzilla, particularly if it seems to differ in cause from T34686.

The reason uselang=qqx blames MediaWiki:Cite error rather than MediaWiki:Cite error refs without references is because error messages from Cite are structured oddly: all errors messages are "wrapped" in MediaWiki:Cite error. Presumably to allow some sort of customization to be applied to all cite error messages in one place. Anomie⚔ 20:04, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed response. I did see that German message, though I did not use uselang, and I have never set my MediaWiki or computer interface language to German.

That bug report seems to describe a similar problem. I was just able to reproduce the bug by setting the language of my alternate account Oryzomys (talk · contribs) to German and editing User:Ucucha/test. That page now shows the error message in German. It also showed the error message in English instead of German when I viewed the page with my alternate account. I suspect there is something wrong with the way Cite retrieves its error messages. I'll report this issue to Bugzilla. Ucucha (talk) 20:15, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Turns out it's already reported: bugzilla:31216. Ucucha (talk) 20:18, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

What would allowing Move over pure redirect break?

Resolved

It is fairly common on Wikipedia for page moves to fail because the page being moved to is already a redirect to the original location? What would it break (other than policy) for the move process to allow for a move over redirect to delete that redirect, either under any condition *or* if the only edit on the redirect was its creation? If it would not break anything, where would be the proper place to propose this change to the move concept? (example xyz123 exists and abc1234 is a redirect to xyz123. An attempted move is make from xyz123 to abc1234)Naraht (talk) 18:21, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

If the only edit in the redirect's history is its creation, the move is already allowed by the software. Otherwise allowing deletion is a trivial privilege escalation, allowing anyone to delete a page by first editing it to be a redirect, then moving the redirect target onto it. Happy‑melon 18:24, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

This (under "If the only obstacle to a technical move is a navigation aid") provides a fairly simple way of dealing with redirects that are in the way of a page move. Gary King (talk · scripts) 19:30, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I did not know that the software allowed for moves over top of creation only redirects. I missed that particular part of WP:MOR. And I guess I wasn't thinking evilly enough in terms of eliminating the history of a non-redirect abc1234 by changing it into a redirect page to xyz123 and then moving xyz123 over top of it. I knew it could be requested, I was trying to make it easier, but HappyMelon pointed out that at one level it is dangerous and at the other it is already done. Thanx to both of you!Naraht (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 03:41, 16 December 2011 (UTC).

The point about privilege escalation is true, but at the moment we often have the following order of events: (1) Redirect is created. (2) Template describing redirect type is added (e.g. {{R from alternative name}}). (3) Attempt to move target article to redirect fails due to non-trivial edit history, even though it was never anything but a redirect to the same page.

It would be nice if the software could deal with this situation as well, at least when the number of versions is small. Hans Adler 20:22, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Something similar happens with: (1) Redirect is created; (2) Target page is moved; (3) Redirect is amended (by bot or by regular user) to avoid double redirect; (4) as (3) above. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:15, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't seem like a terribly high priority for developers to chew on. Either {{db-move|page to be moved here|reason for move}} can be used or a technical move can be requested. older ≠ wiser 22:26, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Rev-deletion of partially suppressed page versions

The text between the revision and the restrictions is old, but the funcionality is all present.

I was working through a kind of two-stage oversight process, where some material was suppressed and I identified more problems. I revision-deleted the text portion of several revisions prefatory to the second oversight request but ran into a problem. One revision had been touched by an oversighter, who suppressed the edit summary but left the version text intact. I was not able to select this version to revision-delete the page text, as the square checkbox was greyed out. This meant that I had to leave material publicly viewable (from the page history) while I waited for further suppression at the oversighter level.

Was there some other way I could have deleted the version text, or is this a bug? If the version text is publicly viewable, I should be able to delete it with the sysop bit, right? Obviously I can't make more relaxed settings than the oversighter role has set, but I should be able to apply more restrictive settings. This looks to me like a privacy hole in the software. The suppression is now complete, so there's no point in my supplying diffs (and I wouldn't point to a live problem either), perhaps someone could replicate this on a test wiki? Franamax (talk) 19:40, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

That feels like a software bug. I'll try and have a look tomorrow (or someone else can in the mean time). - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 23:19, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:Revision deletion#Changing visibility settings, that's the way the feature works (see screenshot to the right). Each revision has 4 options which can be turned on or off individually. The last one is that anything redacted from the other 3 is invisible to admins. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:30, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmm? I think the point here is that oversighting some properties of an edit prevents admins from rev'del'ing the other properties of it. I can't see how that can be by design. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 11:42, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Bug filed - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 12:29, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Still trying to find where I recorded my Bugzilla password, and I only have 1.13 local, but it seemx to me that the granularity is there. The 3 possible suppressions are selectable, and at least from revdel are individually adjustable, i.e. they have a persistent state in the database which I can choose to leave unchanged. So the problem could be that the selection is restricted at the check-box level for sysops, whereas selection could be allowed, with the ability to view (or change for public access) the granular items subtractive-only for the sysop role, i.e. if the version text is supressed and the suppress flag is set, then sysop can neither view the text nor unsuppress the text for others. The drawback here of course is that sysops can force more restrictive settings under cover of the suppress flag, which then couldn't be viewed or reversed by other sysops. What was it you said, "eurghh"? ;) I don't have the current code, but I think it's doable mechanics-wise. It would need to be a logged and audited action though, and misuse == -sysop, so possibly not scalable to smaller wikis. Hmmm. Thanks for filing the bug report. :) Franamax (talk) 04:54, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Template Template:ASCII code/doc is listed on Special:UnusedTemplates but is in use.

Am I just too tired to do anything useful, or is something screwy going on? fredgandt 22:14, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Nah, it's just that the special page doesn't filter out subpages (or pages with template namespace transclusions). So /doc is unused by its count. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 23:14, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. I'm not sure I understand what you mean though (I am very tired). Don't worry about explaining. As long as nothing is broken, I'll just carry on camping. fredgandt 23:44, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

The special page is Special:UnusedTemplates. Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:ASCII code/doc showed Template:ASCII code as "(links)" and not "(transclusion)" before I made a null edit of Template:ASCII code which had not been edited since the doc page was created. I wonder whether Jarry1250 is right, or the doc page will be removed in the next update of Special:UnusedTemplates. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:21, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Ah, that'll be it. It just hasn't understood it's transcluded. My bad. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 19:36, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Special:UnusedTemplates was updated 16 December. As expected, Template:ASCII code/doc is not listed. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:35, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh?! It's not a live page? Eeep! How often is it updated? fredgandt 14:37, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I've asked that the notice that the page is cached to be bold, and state how often it is updated on its talk page. fredgandt 14:44, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

SVG to PNG

Thank you thank you thank you! A long time coming! MSIE does not handle SVG worth a damn, and zooming them in Firefox is slow and horrible. I always dreaded SVGs because some people used nominal sizes that were too small, or totally huge and unwieldy, and there was no way in hell I was going to download one and open it in Inkscape just to get a view of some map. So again, thank you so so so so so for this! --76.18.43.253 (talk) 00:58, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this functionality has existed for as long as Mediawiki has supported SVG, because browsers did not widely support it at that time so it made more sense to embed rendered PNGs for thumbnails. Due to differences between rendering engines, as you noted, I think it still makes a lot of sense. Dcoetzee 15:08, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

"Facebook" at Special:Version?

Resolved

Given that there is currently such unanimous opposition to FB integration, "Likes" and the rest of it, can I check why Special:Version has the word "facebook" in it? N.B. it might be something innocent, and I know nothing about coding, but I just wanted to check. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 14:02, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

As I understand it Wikimedia uses facebook's patches/version of the MySQL database (See here) --Chris 14:07, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

What does that mean, sorry? It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 14:19, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

That it has nothing whatsoever to do with "likes" and similar stuff—Wikipedia is merely using Facebook's improvements to the MySQL database management system. That Wikipedia and Facebook are facing similar technical challenges and thus also using some of the same solutions isn't surprising, since both are very large websites running on PHP and MySQL. There's also ongoing work on making Wikipedia run under HipHop for PHP. Ucucha (talk) 14:22, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

OK, fears allayed! It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 15:29, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Internal error

Resolved

 – Has been fixed; see Bugzilla:33101  Chzz  ►  20:24, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Please see User_talk:213.253.39.xxx.  Hazard-SJ  ±  03:26, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

That message was posted in 2007. I think we can safely ignore it. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:05, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Er, no; whilst that page was indeed last edited in 2007 [15], the currently displayed "internal error" when one tries to access it is an error, now. It's not the page content. In case someone nul-edits/fixes it somehow, I'll paste a copy here;

Error shown when viewing User talk:213.253.39.xxx 09:30, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Internal error From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Tried to load block with invalid type Backtrace: #0 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.18/includes/Block.php(1039): Block->newLoad('213.253.39.xxx') #1 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.18/includes/Article.php(646): Block::newFromTarget(NULL, '213.253.39.xxx') #2 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.18/includes/Article.php(570): Article->getRobotPolicy('view') #3 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.18/includes/Wiki.php(479): Article->view() #4 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.18/includes/Wiki.php(250): MediaWiki->performAction(Object(Article)) #5 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.18/includes/Wiki.php(635): MediaWiki->performRequest() #6 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.18/includes/Wiki.php(542): MediaWiki->main() #7 /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.18/index.php(57): MediaWiki->run() #8 /usr/local/apache/common-local/live-1.5/index.php(3): require('/usr/local/apac...') #9 {main}

Presumably, it's something to do with the page title with the .xxx?  Chzz  ►  09:30, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Oops, you're quite right. Here's two more: User talk:216.195.179.xxx, User talk:209.75.42.xxx. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:32, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

In which case a bugzilla ticket needs to be raised (and or, bugzilla checked for existing reports of this issue). I'll do this later if no-one beats me to it. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:45, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I've logged a bug, Bugzilla:33101  Chzz  ►  12:58, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Where it's been awarded "critical" status. Chzz shoots, s/he scores! --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:31, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

It isn't only user talk pages See User:213.253.39.xxx too.  Hazard-SJ  ±  22:26, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Systematically search for readlinks

Moved from Wikipedia:Help desk § Systematically search for readlinks

Is there any tool that can be used to create a list of all redlinks on Wikipedia? Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 17:29, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Talk to people at Wikipedia:WikiProject Red Link Recovery ... they might know. --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:52, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually it would be a trivial Toolserver query to write, but the question is, why would you want such a thing? And in what format? There would millions... - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 17:58, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I would be interested in this as an inspiration to create some new articles. After all, that's the main purpose of redlinks, isn't it? Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 19:02, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

...well, there are a lot. Perhaps WP:RA is more suitable for inspiration? - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 21:41, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure the Red Link Recovery WikiProject will point you here, but this page has a number of relevant tools. Mark Hurd (talk) 10:34, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

In fact it does, right at the top... Mark Hurd (talk) 10:36, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Problem with deleting image revisions

When I attempted to delete the non-free orphaned revisions of File:Dodie_Stevens_-_Pink_Shoe_Laces.ogg, something went wrong - the page content got deleted. I restored all history, but now when I try to delete an orphaned revision, I get this:

There is no archived version of Dodie Stevens - Pink Shoe Laces.ogg with the specified attributes.

Any idea how to fix this? --JaGa^talk 14:57, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Never mind, I got it. When I restored the file, I restored the page history but overlooked the file history. I deleted the file again and re-restored properly. --JaGa^talk 15:29, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Help

hello,

could someone please do: this. Thanks♫GoP♫_T^C_N 15:52, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

• DONE: I have updated the /sandbox version, as noted & tested in Template_talk:Legend2. In general, it is always best to debug new parameters (such as "text=xx" & "textcolor=white") using the sandbox version, so that the attending admin can see ample evidence that the new features would work, correctly, before changing a fully-protected template. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:40, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

FBI template

I noticed that at Template:Federal Bureau of Investigation, the listing under "Federal Agency" (which should be "United States") is instead this: [[]]. I can't figure out how to fix it. Can someone help? --NellieBly (talk) 19:07, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

It was missing the country= parameter. — Edokter (talk) — 19:14, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! --NellieBly (talk) 19:28, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

newsgroup URI scheme

The main CSS has rules for external link icons based on recognizing URI schemes. For example, the main Vector CSS has a rule for news:// so that it creates a link and an icon.

As I see it, per RfC 5538, the URI scheme can be either news:// or news: but the latter is not supported by the CSS. Looks to me like the CSS should be updated to support news: which would support both schemes. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:49, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Correct. This should be filed at bugzilla. — Edokter (talk) — 00:00, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Just needed a sanity check. T35246 ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 00:16, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Green in diffs will now mean *removed*!?

'See also #1.19 will switch to French diff colors --Redrose64 (talk) 17:43, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Cross-posted from Village Pump Misc.

Anyone else think the upcoming diff color change (Green will have its meaning completely reversed and counter-intuitively changed from added to removed) is going to be hugely confusing? Perhaps the WMF tech team could be convinced to not invert the meaning of green? --Cybercobra (talk) 05:42, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that's weird.--Taylornate (talk) 06:05, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, it's a bit weird, but I guess we'll get used to it. Seems fair enough that the colour scheme changes for accessibility reasons, but I'd love to see the design discussion which led to green being swapped with (yellow->blue). Oh. here it is. So. Not much thought, then. I suggest you raise an objection there. --Tagishsimon (talk) 13:14, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

For your personal tastes, you can add:

.diff-deletedline{background:#ffa !important;}
.diff-addedline{background:#cfc !important;}

to your common cascading style sheet, in order to override the change if/when implemented (should work). fredgandt 13:54, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

There is already a gadget in place to show the 'classic' colors, which will be activated when 1.19 in rolled out. — Edokter (talk) — 14:22, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Surely the same should just be added to the common .css sheet for en.wiki? (At least until the community consensus exists to change the diff view to a counter-intuitive colour scheme...) –xeno^talk 14:31, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

This was supposedly done for the color-blind. Most people aren't. Guess who loses... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 14:41, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

It makes more sense (to me, anyway) to provide a gadget for individuals who suffer from colour-blindness, rather than the other way around. –xeno^talk 14:44, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

true. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 14:48, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

This is an accessability enhancement made in the software, and as such should not be subject to project consensus. It's a minor visual change, with an option for individual users to disable revert to the classic scheme. — Edokter (talk) — 14:44, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

It will be made more accessible to the colour blind, and less accessible to the non-colour blind. Has this actually been given the once-over by the accessibility team? The commit comments simply say "it is believed to be easier to read for people perceiving colors differently." Why weren't other options explored (e.g. green on the right and blue on the left)? –xeno^talk 15:00, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Xeno, yes it's good to make things more accessible for the colour blind but not at the expense of those who are not. Personally I find green and blue harder to distinguish than green and red. Green for the removal of information is also completely counter intuitive. I also dispute that this is a "minor change" and that software changes should not be subject to consensus. Sorry, but I completely object to some unspecified person's "belief" being the basis for a change of this nature - in the article space this sort of change would be reverted pdq for good reason. Thryduulf (talk) 17:13, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. There are accessibility changes which make things either better or no change for everyone else, and there are accessibility changes which make it worse for everyone else. This is one of those. Such changes should be opt-in, not opt-out. --Golbez (talk) 17:24, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Have you tried looking an example of the French diffs? I'm not convinced it's made things worse for non-colour blind users although IMHO keeping green for added on wikis that are used to it that way round is the way forward. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 17:26, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Just had a look and cannot determine what the blue is so it is obviously worse for me. This should definitely be an opt-in rather than opt-out change. Keith D (talk) 17:48, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm with Keith, that's really not intuitive at all - to me the green says "new" or "added" and the blue says "information" which doesn't make sense in this context, except perhaps as a reference for what was removed. Thryduulf (talk) 18:38, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Not knowing the language means I have to rely on the near-universal color cues of green=good, red=bad, and this goes counter to those completely. Did the developers think to consult any non-colorblind people when making this change? --Golbez (talk) 18:45, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

This is a terrible change for the majority of people (who are not color blind). Surely better colors could be found? Green doesn't have to be one of the default colors, but if it is used, it should be for the addition of content. This is an utterly ridiculous change. —danhash (talk) 21:05, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Also WikEd and WikEdDiff use green for the addition of content. This change would create an inconsistency for the many people who use WikEd and WikEdDiff. —danhash (talk) 21:57, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Here's the contrast check for the newer colours in rev:105280:

•  black on E4F6D8  - Contrast Ratio 18.47
•  104000 on B0E897  - Contrast Ratio 8.45
•  black on D8E4F6  - Contrast Ratio 16.35
•  001040 on B0C0F0  - Contrast Ratio 10.14

All of these seem to be WCAG 2 AAA Compliant (which is more than can be said of the first 3 letters in my sig). --Redrose64 (talk) 20:15, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to point out the irony that, in the bugzilla link you give (rev:105280), red and green are used in the code diff. --Golbez (talk) 20:16, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

It's not bugzilla, it's MediaWiki. Have now darkened the red in my sig just enough to be WCAG 2 AAA Compliant. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:26, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Keeping the current yellow & green background colours but changing from red to #a00 for the text colour would mean that it passes the WCAG 2 AAA tests. You can't really just check a single background & foreground colour at once and then say that everything passes. You really need to check the whole palette of colours at the same time. Comparing the constrast between the light & dark blue or the light & dark green from the new scheme doesn't give very good results. -- WOSlinker (talk) 21:46, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but it doesn't get around the colour blindness problem, which is why the change is being made. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 21:51, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

When we briefly adopted the French diff style in 2008 (before it was determined that the change lacked consensus), I adjusted it to incorporate the familiar color scheme (amber on the left and green on the right). Here's a screen capture.
I've used that code in my personal CSS ever since. Does it present any accessibility issues? If not, it seems like a better solution. —David Levy 21:35, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, amber and green are also non-distinguishable for color-blind people (red and green are both perceived as amber/orange). — Edokter (talk) — 21:41, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that the primary concern pertains to the red text on a green background. As has been noted (including by Brion Vibber), the ability to distinguish between the two column colors is unimportant. (It would be okay if they were identical.) A problem arises when the colors are discernible and convey unintended connotations.

So unless the amber coloration somehow reduces legibility for certain people, I see no good reason to suddenly abandon it. (For the record, I find it easier to read than the blue variant is.) —David Levy 21:56, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

We're in the process of swapping the colors. Hope that takes care of the biggest concern. — Edokter (talk) — 21:41, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Preview available

There is now a gadget to preview the new (expected) diff color scheme. Now everyone can see what it is all about. (edit:) Also, notice how spaces and indents now show correctly in diffs. I hope this feature will make it into MediaWiki as well. — Edokter (talk) — 15:38, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

9th down in "appearance". Doesn't look too bad. I'm sticking with my own .css though. fredgandt 18:40, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Now this is something I could get used to. Much easier on the eyes, and the highlighting of the text of changed content is much nicer than coloring the text itself red like before. —danhash (talk) 18:46, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not colorblind, and I like it too. I always found the red to be kind of harsh on the eyes. Hot Stop talk-contribs 20:08, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I find it very hard to read. I like the highlighted text, that looks better. But the background shades are so light & so similar I find it hard/straining to differentiate blue from green. --Errant ^(chat!) 13:35, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

An aside

Is there any way to have a single column diff as an option? I'm not actually that bothered by diffs, but I find I actually prefer reading single column diffs (I use Vim and Git and don't bother with an split-view diff utility). It'd be nice to have that on Wikipedia too. —Tom Morris (talk) 20:56, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Rollback links in watch list

Yworo (talk · contribs) asked, over on the help desk, [16]

Is there a way to disable the rollback links in my watchlist? They don't play well with a touchscreen and fat fingers. Yworo (talk) 08:24, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I've moved the question here, as I think it's quite a technical question.

I guess the user would like to disable 'rollback' links only on the Special:Watchlist. Is that possible with a bit of js?  Chzz  ►  09:00, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Get Yworo to add .page-Special_Watchlist .mw-rollback-link {display:none} to User:Yworo/vector.css (assuming Yworo uses Vector). Jenks24 (talk) 09:18, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for this! I have the same problem when using my touchscreen mobile phone. The "diff" and "rollback" links for consecutive watchlist list entries end up next to each other quite often. Roger (talk) 09:50, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Jenks24, thanks.  Chzz  ►  11:37, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

You might also want to use media queries to target the mobile device only. I've got an example of how to target the iPad in my vector.css. To target smaller devices (smartphones etc.) you simply need to set a smaller device-width property and wrap the rollback selector above in that. —Tom Morris (talk) 21:02, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Colon indentation

The common technique for indenting paragraphs is to precede it with a colon. This sets up a <dl>...</dl> enclosure containing one or more <dd>...</dd> elements. Where is the style sheet that defines the indentation for the <dd>? the reason I ask is because it seems to have been reduced recently, so that {{outdent}} now draws its lines too long - previously, the use of e.g. {{outdent|::::}} would draw a line to de-indent from 4 colons. But not any more, as here:

One colon

One colon

Two colons

Two colons

Three colons

Three colons. As you see, the outdent line gets increasingly "too long". --Redrose64 (talk) 22:54, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

The : indent was indeed reduced a couple of months ago, along with an increased indent of *. Both now indent 1.6em. — Edokter (talk) — 23:00, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, will examine {{outdent}} to see what can be done - it uses the padleft: magic word. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:14, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

And a non-widely used font. I have a new version using the parent font ready in the sandbox. — Edokter (talk) — 23:47, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

But now the horizontal line is raised above the projecting segments of the ┌ and ┘ characters (Windows 7, Firefox 7.0.1) -- John of Reading (talk) 15:33, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I thought Firefox was supposed to be compliant... Oh well, back to the old approach. — Edokter (talk) — 15:40, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Looks like it is, actually, at least for CSS2.1. The default alignment for an inline-block is baseline. CSS2.1 has this to say: "The baseline of an 'inline-block' is the baseline of its last line box in the normal flow, unless it has either no in-flow line boxes or if its 'overflow' property has a computed value other than 'visible', in which case the baseline is the bottom margin edge." So it's aligning the bottom edge of the inline-block with the baseline of the rest of the text. I suppose you could try specifying vertical-align on your inline-block to align it to the top/middle/bottom of the ┌┘ line box; it works here, but would need testing on a wide range of other browsers.

I tried to figure out what CSS3 had to say, but it's much more complicated. It's not clear that the bit about alignments in CSS3 even considers inline-blocks with an overflow other than 'visible'. Anomie⚔ 20:40, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. It worked in Chrome, but not in FF and IE. I tried vertical-align but that also results in inconsistent alignment between browsers. Too bad; using padleft is not ideal as different fonts have differen metrics. Something I hoped to solve using an inline div given a width. — Edokter (talk) — 21:42, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I wonder if something like ┌────────────┘ would do it? Anomie⚔ 04:13, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Brilliant. Why didn't I think of that. — Edokter (talk) — 13:07, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I think it could perhaps benefit from being a little darker than it is right now. I'd suggest something along the lines of #666; (the mark of the beast!). fredgandt 15:25, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

It was #808080, now #AAA, same as header underlines. It becomes a bit obtrusive when darker (I think). — Edokter (talk) — 15:39, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Ok. It is a little faint to me, but that could be my eyes or screen, so no big deal. fredgandt 17:40, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Looks fine now. Good work Edokter. fredgandt 17:20, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

The line was previously solid, now it's dashed (at least in Firefox 8.0/Ubuntu), is there a reason for this? I personally think it looks better solid. Thryduulf (talk) 01:45, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I thought it looked nicer and less 'in-your-face'. — Edokter (talk) — 12:08, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Now br generates br-space-slash

I was wondering when the MediaWiki preprocessor was changed to generate "<br />" when a page contains simple "<br>". Recall the old obsession with coding a line-break br-tag by "<br />" as being, specifically, "<br space />" when the simple "<br>" tag (without the space-slash) is automatically converted into "<br />" when a WP page is formatted for transfer over the Internet. NOTE: There is no need for pages to contain the space-slash form "<br />" because "<br>" generates exactly the same result in the MediaWiki markup. The space-slash headache had existed for years, so when did "<br>" start generating the space-slash form automatically? -Wikid77 (talk) 17:40, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

<br /> is valid XHTML1.0. Wikimedia accepts all sorts of illegal permutations like </br>; those should be removed on site, but both <br> and <br /> are valid, so I fail to see the problem. — Edokter (talk) — 19:21, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Not forgetting HTML5 too. Standards are moving on. All tags will soon have to be closed. Well within 10 years or so at least. fredgandt 19:28, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It was already doing it before MediaWiki 1.18, so since at lease MediaWiki 1.17 (February 2011).

Please note that whilst <br> is valid HTML right through to HTML5 (with most browsers permitting the <br /> form as an alternative), XHTML 1.0 (which is what MediaWiki generates) requires the <br /> form. See HTML vs XHTML, header "Empty Elements Must Also Be Closed". Somewhere (can't find it right now) there's a doc that notes the unspaced form <br/> as invalid. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:30, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Wikipedia currently renders XHTML 1.0— <br /> is valid XHTML and <br> is invalid. Normally HTML Tidy will convert a variety of malformed versions of the break tag to <br />, but this does not work in a lot of MediaWiki interface pages and breaks the page. There are also issues when a page is exported to a wiki that does not use Tidy. When we move to HTML5, then both breaks will be valid. Malform breaks that are converted include <br>, </br>, <br/> and <br.>. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:40, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Technically <br> may be invalid, but no browser will have a problem with it. So there no reason to disallow it. — Edokter (talk) — 19:52, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Do MediaWiki pages still break on invalid HTML? I am pretty sure the issue with Twinkle and <br> in editnotices was fixed. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 20:19, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with such breakages. Actually the most breakage I witness is caused by Tidy itself when it tries to 'correct' what it perceives as invalid HTML, usually when it finds a block element inside an inline element. — Edokter (talk) — 20:28, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

We still have the namespace editnotice {{Editnotices/Namespace/MediaWiki}} in place. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:10, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Ah, you mean the namepace! Sorry, I thought general wiki pages. Yes, they might break depending on what part of MediaWiki parses the message. If it's the wikiparser, then it goes through Tidy. Other extensions may treat messages quite differently, and may not even allow any wiki/HTML at all. — Edokter (talk) — 21:17, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

You asked "when the MediaWiki preprocessor was changed to generate "<br />"". It was in May 2004, in r3784, in response to SF bug 963341. Strictly speaking, the preprocessor didn't exist as a separate entity at the time. Before that it was "<br/>", since r2962. -- Tim Starling (talk) 03:51, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I saw <br> in the HTML source until very recently; it may well be that after the last Chrome update, it now shows <br />. — Edokter (talk) — 12:13, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Blank spaces in articles with tables/pictures

I don't know exactly how to explain it or how to call it, but from the beginning of December, a new problem seems to have emerged (at least for me) of some articles yielding a large amount of blank space between paragraphs. (Example here). It seems that if there there is a table box or two close thumbnails that overlaps two paragraphs, the beginning of the next paragraph will be pushed down visually until the bottom of the table/picture. Meaning: there's a lot of blank space left in between two paragraphs in the article text. I am not sure if this can be fixed with some simple edit in an article, or if this is a problem of the new tools (it wasn't a problem before December). Any illumination would be welcome. Walrasiad (talk) 16:57, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

That should not happen. I just fixed the infobox, does that make any difference? — Edokter (talk) — 17:04, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I see it with IE9 in compatibility mode. The History section title is correct, but the section content starts at the end of the infobox leaving a large gap. See User:Gadget850/IE space issue which illustrates the issue. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:09, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I see it in IE8 compatilility mode (IE8 standards mode behaves nice). That's an old IE float bug. — Edokter (talk) — 17:36, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

It's an IE bug that has existed in IE7, possibly other IEs, for at least as long as I've been editing Wikipedia (2½ years). It affects most box-type objects, including infoboxes, images, and those pesky things that we railway types call WP:RDTs (see here - that orange bit on the right is the corner of an RDT). Unfortunately, different browsers (and different versions of the same browser) behave differently, so what looks "right" for you may look wrong for others, and vice versa - fixing for IE may cause problems for Firefox. When articles have an infobox followed by long stack of right-aligned images, what I prefer to do is move the images to points later in the article - preferably into the most relevant sections - and left-align a few of them. When doing this I try to ensure that the first right-aligned image is well clear of the bottom of the infobox at several resolutions, otherwise it gets pushed down and pushes the others (left-aligned included) with it. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:18, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

• Text-gaps at right-side images/tables in IE7: In general, any closely bunched right-side images/tables need to be stacked, together, or placed just after an infobox end "}}" so that there will not be a large text-gap beside those images on wider-window screens. At first, I thought the use of IE7 browsers was very rare, until I checked computers at libraries, hotel Internet rooms, and hospitals in the U.S. To my surprise, some hotels had installed MS Windows Vista with IE7 (but not upgraded to IE8), and some hospitals still used IE6 because they cannot afford the regression testing needed to upgrade their hospital medical-records software to IE7 or IE8, when health-critical operations were running fine on IE6. For that reason, I refer to them as "libraries, hotels, hospitals and other 3rd-world browsers" as a reminder to people who imagine that "no one" uses IE7 any longer. I am thinking that right-side images should continue to be stacked for the next 2 years (until 2014), until more people can migrate to IE8 or beyond. Perhaps it could be argued that computers installed 4 years ago should never have kept IE7, or some company should re-release the IE6 and IE7 browers with patches to avoid those text-gaps, but the reality is that the old browsers seem stuck, for years, and so Wikipedia needs to meet the needs of real users and understand how unprofessional the bad formatting looks on IE7-compatible browsers. Meanwhile, users with newer browsers are typically completely unaware of the text-gaps being seen on IE7-style browsers, so they do not realize how adding non-stacked right-side images/tables can cause those huge blank gaps on the screen. Meanwhile (again), there is an image-placement guideline that proscribes the left/right staggering of images (which would avoid text-gaps), but such staggering of images is NOT being followed either. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:33, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Per Wikimedia Analytics - User Agent Breakdown by Browser, IE7 has 7.63% use and IE6 has 2.22% . ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:43, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

• ☑ Kim Jong Il
• ☑ Khaddafi
• ☑ Osama Bin Laden
• ☑ Saddam Hussein
• ☐ Internet Explorer

Let's hope not for long :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:25, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Image links

Is it possible to get image links for images en masse via the API? It is possible to get upload histories, page texts, and templates en masse (e.g., [17]), but I don't see how this can be done en masse with image transclusions. Magog the Ogre (talk) 16:51, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

How to query for the image usage of one image; not sure there's a way to query en masse. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 17:41, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

There is no way, just as their is no way to query "what links here" or "what transcludes this template" en masse. The difference seems to be that queries that at base use the page_id for indexing (it may be that the page_id is quickly fetched from the page table first) are "en masse"-able, while queries that at base use an ns+title for indexing and then cross-reference to the page table to get the result are limited to just one ns+title per query. Anomie⚔ 04:00, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Excessive new page flags?

This may be in the wrong place, as I can think of a few relevant places to post this issue, but here goes:

When a new page is created, it is flagged as such for patroller review. New page patrol seems to focus solely on new articles and the major issues pertaining to them. Flags, however, appear on all "new pages", such as talk pages for users, where they don't seem to actually belong. These will not get patrolled anyway because of the scope of the new page patrol. Would it therefore make sense to adjust the wiki coding to not flag new talk pages for review? MSJapan (talk) 01:12, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

en.m.wikipedia.org renders an outdated version of Main Page

Stumbled on this because I sent someone a link to the "Did you know" box on the main page, which works fine on my desktop (I tried Chrome on a Mac and IE & Firefox on a PC). They viewed it on a Smartphone and got a different result. Yes, I am aware the mobile main page is way different than the desktop version. Both he and I clicked the "View this page on regular Wikipedia" link at the bottom of the page.

It's easiest if I just show you the links. Here's two links, both to the main page, the ONLY difference between the URLs is one goes to en.wikipedia.org and the other goes to en.m.wikipedia.org:

• Main Page on en.wikipedia.org
• Main Page on en.m.wikipedia.org

As I type this, if you click the first link you get today's main page, customized for December 14, 2011. If you click the second link, you get the Main Page as it appeared December 1, 2011.

I was going to report this in Bugzilla, but frankly I can't tell if this is actually a software bug, or some sort of configuration/operational issue with the servers. So I thought I would bring it up here first. Cheers.

Krelnik (talk) 18:09, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

If I view the mobile version of the main page on my BlackBerry's browser, I see the up to date page. Same if I view http://en.m.wikipedia.org/ on my desktop. – ukexpat (talk) 18:21, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

That wasn't the point; it does give you the Dec 1 version when you switch from mobile view to normal view. Go to the mobile page and click "View this page on regular Wikipedia" at the bottom. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 18:24, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Ah OK got it. I can replicate this problem too. – ukexpat (talk) 18:31, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Admittedly, some websites will render very different content depending on browser, its possible the Blackberry flavor of MediaWiki's output for the main page does not exhibit the bug. I tested this on Android 2.3.3, IE9 on Windows 7, Firefox 8.0 on Windows 7 and it definitely occurs. Be sure you click the "view this page in regular wikipedia" link at the bottom of the page, OR use the links I provide above. Krelnik (talk) 18:30, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I mean, to put it simply, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&useformat=mobile&mobileaction=view_normal_site is clearly not the current main page. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 23:22, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes I have experienced this problem many times on the Mobile Wikipedia, too. I often see pages that are outdated by a few days; it's very strange. It's not limited to the Main Page, and it only happens on Mobile Wikipedia. I think I experience it most when viewing an article, clicking a link, then hitting the Back button; I am then shown an older version of the first article. Gary King (talk · scripts) 18:58, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

It could be a caching issue on the technical side.  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  01:43, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

That makes sense. Right after I reported this, it seem to be fixed. But as I am typing this the mobile site is showing the main page from December 15 while the regular main page is for December 17. Krelnik (talk) 18:09, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

The mobile main page is still showing December 15th's content for me. Thryduulf (talk) 13:37, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Even after a hard refresh it's still showing content from the 15th. Thryduulf (talk) 17:02, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Bugzilla Downtime

The database server for Bugzilla (db9) will be read-only starting at 2011-12-22 0200UTC (2011-12-21 1800PST). This is also the database server that handles the WikiMedia weblog so commenting on the blog won't work at that time, either. – ☠MarkAHershberger☢(talk)☣ 18:47, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

All my new pages

Where can I see a list of all pages I have created? "My contributions" obviously shows them, but I don't know how to sort the list to only show new pages. Special:NewPages works only for recent pages (and doesn't show pages I created 10 minutes ago). —danhash (talk) 20:49, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

this tool will allow you to check that. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 20:53, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Any way to see all namespaces at once, for a format easily exportable as wikicode, or for this feature to be included in MediaWiki? —danhash (talk) 21:17, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

I put together a very simple manual procedure for duplicating the list on a userpage at user:danhash/NewPages in case anyone is interested. —danhash (talk) 23:29, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

If you go to your contributions and then scroll to the very bottom, you will see a box containing several links. Towards the right is Articles created, which is similar to the one already mentioned by Floydian, but is pre-set to list articles (as opposed to talk pages, templates, etc.) only, and to exclude redirects. It's not possible to list all namespaces at once, but redirects may be listed mixed in with normal pages by omitting the &redirects=noredirects search term, as here. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:26, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks :) It's nice to have a link on the contributions page. This should really be incorporated into the software though. It should be rather trivial I would think—new pages are denoted with N in contributions (and other places); shouldn't that be a simple thing to sort by? WhatLinksHere for example gives several options for sorting through data. A temporary fix, without having to change MediaWiki code, could be creating a simple edit filter which only matches new pages, and sorting the contributions page by edit filter tag (that is, if edit filters apply retroactively). (Btw I didn't realize Special:NewPages hides redirects by default, which is why I couldn't see the pages I'd just created before). —danhash (talk) 14:15, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Testing new versions of the Article Feedback Tool

I wanted to let everyone know that we recently began testing some new versions of the Article Feedback tool. As you may remember, the first version of the tool (launched earlier this year), focused on having readers provide feedback on the quality of articles. The new versions try a different approach, based in part on feedback from the community. Rather than ask readers for feedback on quality, the new feedback forms prompt the user to help improve the encyclopedia. For example, one version we're testing asks the reader "Did you find what you're looking for?". If the reader answers "No", the tool prompts them to explain what is missing. The intent is to provide editors with some idea of feedback on what readers are actually hoping to see when they read a Wikipedia article, so that the editing community may incorporate that feedback when developing the article. Hopefully, some of these readers will also become editors.

Please see the blog post for more details on the test. Right now, there are three test versions running on approximately 10,000 randomly selected articles.

We don't know if this feedback is actually going to be helpful, so the next step is to evaluate the comment streams coming in from each test version. We'll need to figure out which one offers the most number of constructive comments accompanied by the least amount of noise, something we're doing with the community. Oliver Keyes is leading the effort to evaluate the feedback coming in from these test versions, so if you'd like to get involved, please drop him a note on his talk page or mine. Howief (talk) 04:49, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I forgot to mention -- the comment streams are not going to be visible on Wikipedia for now. They'll be accessible via toolserver for evaluation purposes. We are working on ideas for presenting the comments, with moderation, on a per-article basis. We definitely need help from the community on designing this "Feedback Page". Please let either me or Oliver know if you'd like to be involved. Howief (talk) 04:54, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I expressed my concerns about how these comment streams will be visible as if they are there will be obvious problems - BLP issues, vandalism, etc. Somehow we need to minimise the effort required to moderate these while at the same time making it as easy to catch any problems as it is with ordinary editing. I've volunteered to do half an hour of evaluation (as a start). Dougweller (talk) 14:13, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Dougweller, really appreciate your reasonable concerns and willingness to help evaluate the feedback we collect from this experiment. We are very sensitive to these issues, and will proceed carefully with small incremental steps, aiming to surface the most valuable feedback and to avoid creating more work for the editors. Thanks for helping us build new tools that can turn more readers into editors over time. For now, you can track our work in progress on this project page. Happy holidays! Fabrice Florin (talk) 19:56, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Why is this talk page showing up in a Google search?

Just found Wikipedia talk:Article wizard/Neologism - a bogus article in fact - in a search [18]. I didn't think talk pages were indexed by Google. I guess I'm wrong? Dougweller (talk) 06:46, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Have a look at robots.txt. Some sets of pages within this namespace are marked "Disallow", but that's all. If a bogus article is created in a strange place, such as this one, then it will be indexed. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:51, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

The only namespaces where indexing is disabled on the English Wikipedia are the talk and user talk namespaces, as far as I know. Graham87 08:31, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Is there any reason not to change this? I can't see any positive reason to let any talk pages be indexed by Google, and I do see the possibility of more BLP violations being indexed, let alone fake articles, etc. Dougweller (talk) 08:36, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I've disallowed search engine indexing of any subpages of Wikipedia talk:Article wizard at MediaWiki:Robots.txt. However I don't think that the entire Wikipedia talk namespace should be noindexed because some interesting policy discussions have been stored there, among other things. Graham87 14:20, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Google searching is better than WP search, especially in the annals of talk page archives, its been discussed before certainly. I'm not sure what the policy is, but I believe fake articles are allowed in userspace only, and only if they are being worked on. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 14:28, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

"Time Error" in GA Review

I did the GA review on Shiloh (novel) recently which was passed. There seems to have been an issue which has left an "invalid time" error in the article history at Talk:Shiloh (novel). I've had a tinker with it, but can't get it to go: is there something I missed, or is it a Bot error? Thanks - SchroCat (^ • @) 09:41, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Fixed in this edit, though I'm not exactly sure what was wrong. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:47, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

That's great - many thanks indeed, whatever it was you did! Cheers - SchroCat (^ • @) 11:51, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Visual editor

The developer team of the Foundation has launched their first prototype of a VisualEditor. It really is a marvel if you ask me, cause many of us know all to well how difficult it is to write stuff like that in Javascript, and how more difficult it must be because of our complicated wikisyntax. There is still a lot of work to do of course, DOM and feature wise the work is only in its early phases, but it does seem like a very good foundation to build from. Try it yourself !. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:34, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree it's impressive. However, rather than doing it from scratch, it seems like it would be easier (almost trivial for a good programmer) to take the well-known, well-tested, open-source TinyMCE visual editor for HTML (used in online blogs and forums) and modify it to output Wiki code instead of HTML. Perhaps that was done, I don't know. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:52, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

The complexity of the Wikipedia setup lies in the syntax, not in the GUI. Generating is easy, it's the reading and not breaking what has been written before that is the difficult part. TinyMCE is very suited if you have everything under control and have a somewhat logical syntax that maps well on HTML (like BB code for instance). Wikicode is none of that :D I'm actually quite sure that tinyMCE has been tried before. It performed similar to FCKEditor, but with better inline editing.

A visual editor is sort of the holy grail. It's been tried about a dozen times, but none ever made it to a state that would ever be accepted on existing wikipedia's (see also wikia's editor for instance). The reason is because they all break existing content and that is something the communities won't except. (we tend to be rather picky) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:52, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

They've reimplemented the whole thing without textboxes -- all in Javascript and divs, basically, including the caret (another div). Really the reason things like TinyMCE aren't used is because they're very hard to implement lots of Wikipedia-ry things in like refs, headers, and so forth on top of. That's the impression I get from speaking to developers, ahyway. I agree with theDJ though: there's just as much if not more work here to get the new parser right and deploying it in a way that doesn't break things/annoy editors. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 21:54, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I tried the visual editor. While it was rather impressive, I can't imagine it being anywhere close to being ready for use on Wikipedia for a very long time. The undo feature for example had bugs (removing a link or part of a link cannot be undone), and that is a feature which must be flawless. If the visual editor is not near-perfect I feel we should only let experienced users who ask for permission have access to using it (similar to the permission process for using AWB or rollback), or else at least require people to edit their own .js file to use it (exluding IP editors). Sure a visual editor is good for the less-technical users, but I don't even want to think about how many wasted man-years would go into reverting and fixing edits if an even slightly buggy version of this becomes the default option, or even an easily-accessible option for registered users (let alone IP editors). (Good editors who choose to edit from IPs could perhaps use greasemonkey or a browser add-on.) Even if someone chooses to use the visual editor, they should still have at least a moderate understanding of MediaWiki markup, and probably Wikipedia templates too. There are a lot of newbies and non-techies with all the good intentions in the world who would likely cause a steady stream of broken stuff, requiring more wasted time on the part of experienced editors, who already spend a lot of time dealing with vandalism. Personally, I think it's a good thing that Wikipedia has a learning curve to editing for most people. —danhash (talk) 21:46, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Can you also make a colour button, which (as the name suggests) easily and painlessly allows you to change colour without the hassle of those annoying lines of text? Also easier ways to make and use tables/templates/infoboxes etc. would just make life so much easier for us and also new editors (like I once was 5 years ago) who struggle endlessly with how different the editing process is from, say, Microsoft Word.--Coin945 (talk) 04:39, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I was a bit surprised that it erased links when I did a block-and-copy to move text from one place to another. That's going to limit its usefulness; there's not a lot of linkless wikitext around. - Dank (push to talk) 18:51, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Visual editing tool going in the wrong direction?

The WMF's 2011-12 Annual Plan says that visual editing is one of the "big obvious fixes" for declining editor participation (which they say is "by far the most serious problem facing the Wikimedia projects"). According to the current Mediawiki roadmap the finished tool is scheduled for release in April. I checked out the sandbox today and there's no support for references yet. That worries me greatly. What's the point of attracting new editors who can't cope with wiki-markup and then expecting them to use raw citation syntax to complete their contributions? This is going back to the bad old days of inexperienced contributors adding unsourced stuff that other people have to fix. It would accelerate the decline in experienced editors, and new editors aren't likely to stick around if their contributions are greeted with a blizzard of {{fact}}, {{says who}} and {{uw-unsourced}}. AFAICS the WMF strategy team is looking in entirely the wrong direction: promoting an editing tool that encourages unsourced content will be a disaster for Wikipedia, not a triumph. - Pointillist (talk) 00:10, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Remember that this is a beta tool. I have little doubt that they're planning on introducing support for references; if you want to make sure that happens, you should file a bug on Bugzilla. Ucucha (talk) 09:15, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Why has the fundamental problem here been ignored for so long?

Many, many editors begin by adding stuff they know to be "true" about where they live or the team they support, only to have it removed. Why not ask that every new editor actively agrees to a basic policy such that whatever they add has to be attributed to someone other than themselves? Malleus Fatuorum 21:22, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Better to have a "Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey" attitude than a "Get it right or get out!" policy. Too much would be lost if we forbade unattributed additions. Better to interactively encourage new editors to try to find citations (slap a {{Citation needed}} on it). Use edit summaries and their talk pages, to explain. We all have to start somewhere. fredgandt 21:41, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Sorry Malleus; I rolled you back in error - the "rollback" link was just above a "diff" link, and the page scrolled one line just after it loaded.

Anyway. On principle, I agree; but how would it be enforced? Citations need not use the <ref>...</ref> method; and even when they do, the ref might support only part of the claim. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:46, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Have you ever looked at the flood of new articles Knut? Malleus Fatuorum 21:48, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

For new articles, Malleus is right; that's the way it should be done. But try to explain to a newbie that they cannot add a small snippet to a page that has the big "needs additional citations"-banner on top. They will rightly think "so everyone before me was allowed to do this, and I can't?". (btw, why is this @ technical?) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 21:51, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I think it is technical because it requires a software change. Your general point I agree with; it's long been recognised that social hygiene is important. Malleus Fatuorum 22:01, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Seb (excuse the shortening) makes a valid point. This would require a fairly dramatic change of policy before anything technical could be done. Also, since it's a proposal (of sorts) it would need to swing by that village pump before coming here. I surely hope no eager techy-types decide to overrule the community and install some block on unattributed additions, without it being carefully discussed elsewhere first. fredgandt 22:45, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I find that to be a rather curious position. Why have pillars that aren't actually pillars at all? Malleus Fatuorum 22:53, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I haven't suggested that attribution should be ignored or disregarded, but I don't support blocking unattributed material. Allow editors to learn to contribute before stinging them with policy. I have seen new articles deleted within minutes of creation. This goes against not biting and frankly is just plain stupid. The reasoning is often that the subject doesn't appear notable since there is no attribution. How about trying to salvage and improve, instead of block and delete? Not all the little bits and bobs that count toward an article, are, can, or need to be attributed. If something is missing from an article, and a casual reader decides to add the info; it should be a simple matter for the less casual to check, verify, and cite (if possible) the addition (if it has any value), or slap a "cite needed" on it. Not just undo it because it has no attribution. I hope you agree. So why should the software block a user in those circumstances? How many characters would be allowable before attribution was a strict requirement? Could people still fix grammar and spellings? This is both technically and policially (made up word) impossible to get right. The status quo has proven itself to work. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If anything should be fixed with regard to how new editors are treated, it should be that they are encouraged to do better and more. All too often I see fumbled but well intentioned work rolled back (against best practices), and no effort taken to explain why or how it might be improved. This could lead to a discussion about IP editors, and how it is difficult to encourage someone, if they are a different someone by the time the message you left on the talk page is read. But that's a whole other ball game (or is it?). fredgandt 23:31, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

@Fred Gandt. So, is not-logged-in editing desirable on Wikipedia? - Pointillist (talk) 00:20, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

(e/c) This is VP/T, where you can ask technical questions relating to the software and operations of en:wiki, and make proposals for changes from the technical standpoint. The five pillars are a social contract, largely not executable in software or by technical means. NPOVbot still has a few glitches to work out. Are you suggesting that every single submission to the site should have a properly formatted reference accompanying the changed text? That's (relatively) easy to check for in software, though there is approaching-zero chance of determining whether or not the source is actually relevant, and leaves out correcting article errors where the source is already present. Are you suggesting a "terms of use" check-box where editors can acknowledge they have read the requirements and certify that the edit complies? Also easy to do technically, and no problem for the editorship, new or not - everyone here knows how to click "I agree", after all that's how you get the game to play. Or do you wish the software to actively monitor whether editors actually comply with the stated terms? That's far harder, and currently beyond any computable approach. This really isn't a VP/T question, and we have tons of introductory material and welcome templates and the Missing Manual and everything else we've been able to think up. Ultimately, you can't rescue people from themselves, especially in the online world. Ideas on how ti introduce people better into the editing environment are always welcome, but if you're suggesting a box with "I agree" there to click, I'm not sure what value is being added. Franamax (talk) 23:45, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Since my last post here, an IP editor added an unreferenced statement to Web browser. I contacted them about that and another edit they made. They answered me, and the article now has new, cited information. So ner  fredgandt 02:45, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

So anyways, this is not a technical question; the software will not be able to recognize what to block and what to allow. Let's just close this one. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 03:12, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree this is not technically possible, especially as we have very wide variations as to how much citation we need, comparing a BLP article and a maths article for example. (Not that the maths article doesn't need citations, but much more of it is more likely to be seen as self evident -- when it could be OR -- where as BLPs need thorough referencing -- at least that's the intention.) Mark Hurd (talk) 04:33, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the policy is that things need to be attributable, not necessarily attributed. We would lose vast amounts of valuable information (existing and future) if we started making ref tags after every sentence a technical requirement (not to mention the low-quality and entirely spurious references that would come to be inserted). But I'm not sure that was the proposal - perhaps it was just that every new editor should be presented with a brief summary of our sourceability requirements (among others, perhaps) that they should be asked to read and tick off before making their first edits. That would seem entirely feasible.--Kotniski (talk) 08:57, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Your second interpretation sounds like a good idea in principle, but unfortunately the EULA has ensured that hardly anyone ever reads these kind of summaries/messages. Maybe we could deposit people by default at WP:tutorial/Keep in mind at the end of the account creation process. In fact, I don't know why that section is hidden away at the end of the tutorial - it's the most important by far in my opinion - as far more bad experiences for new users seem to be caused by ignorance of what is expected by the community than by ignorance of the technicalities of how to edit. In fact I might take a re-ordering of the tutorial sections, together with prominent presentation at the end of the account creation process, to the ideas lab. At the moment, from the comments of new editors (admittedly there might be a hefty reporting bias here), it seems like starting here is a bit like a game of Mao for lots of people - trying to learn the rules from a dozen non-obvious sources before they do something wrong and get their new article/contributions deleted. Equisetum (talk | contributions) 17:09, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

In case it wasn't clear what I am saying is that Kotniski's idea is good - but in my view would be better without the mandatory "tick box", having to check a box before continuing no longer means "this is important", long experience has taught most people that it means "this is lots of boring legal gumpf". Equisetum (talk | contributions) 17:14, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

The essential idea is absolutely right: every contributor should assert that each contribution they make is accurate and verifiable, at the time they make it. The wider interpretation (that each new/changed statement in an article should be referenced by its contributor) will probably become Wikipedia's norm sooner or later. - Pointillist (talk) 00:41, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Many of the edits I make to articles are adding, improving or standardising hatnotes, or adding maintenance templates (e.g. {{citation needed}}, {{when?}}) - these edits cannot be referenced. Equally some major changes cannot be referenced, see for example my recent edit to Standing [19], which shows also that a metric of how much text is added/removed doesn't show what needs a reference and what doesn't. Redirects and disambiguation pages also do not, and per policy should not, contain references. Software cannot distinguish these edits/pages that don't need references from ones that do. It's also too simplistic to say that every change to an article must be referenced. Thryduulf (talk) 09:50, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Block images only for me in common.css?

Is there a way for me to use common.css to block specific images from loading/displaying? This would obviously only affect me and only while I am logged in. There are some articles (like Bursitis) that I have an interest in reading/editing but that contain images I consider unpleasant to see unintentionally. I thought I saw instructions for something like this before, but I can't find them (if they even exist). If I only used Wikipedia from one browser on one computer I would simply use Adblock Plus, however I use Chrome on one computer and Firefox on the other, and the crappy "Adblock Plus for Google Chrome" beta is very limited compared to the real Adblock Plus.
tl;dr
I need to block images just for myself with css. Any suggestions? —danhash (talk) 23:14, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Help:Options to not see an image Anomie⚔ 00:19, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Fantastic. Why isn't it easy to find? —danhash (talk) 00:39, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Because few people use it :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:01, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Complicated WikiProject merger

• Section moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 07:26, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

etherpad + bugzilla + weblog Downtime again tonight

The maintenace for db9 was successfully completed but some followup maintenace is needed. As a result, you might have trouble with Wikimedia's Etherpad or Bugzilla or CiviCRM sites/services tonight. If interruption continues after 1820 PST please tell us in #wikimedia-tech (webchat link). -- ☠MarkAHershberger☢(talk)☣ 15:33, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Can the same template be justified right, left, and center?

Resolved

The image map code in the Millennium Park series of articles has been replaced in all but two cases by {{Millennium Park Map}}, which produces a left justified image map (see for example Exelon Pavilions). However in two articles the image map is either centered (in BP Pedestrian Bridge) or right justified (in Cloud Gate). Is there any way to use the same template, but adjust the justification within the article? Otherwise I had thought about making a centered version and a left justified version of the templare, but that seemed a little silly for use in one article each. Thanks in advance for any assistance, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 16:36, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

See {{quote box}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:44, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

This floats left or right but not center. FYI. fredgandt 16:55, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

P.s. {{Millennium_Park_Map/sandbox|right}} or {{Millennium_Park_Map/sandbox}} (for default left). fredgandt

Thanks. I tried center with qalign = center diff and salign = center, but it did not work for me. I will try the right justification next, thanks again, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:00, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks - that works for right justification on Cloud Gate. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:08, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I used Help:Table#Centering_tables once: {| class="wikitable" style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto;" [etcetera]. So, the word "float" is not used for centering (we cannot use construct float:{{{1|right}}};), and actually two setting tricks are used in margin. (I recall testing 0em instead of 1em worked OK). -DePiep (talk) 17:16, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks - I am not sure what you are trying to tell me to do (sorry). Just to be very clear, I would like to use the same template, but align it in three different ways. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 17:19, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

See below for an example. -DePiep (talk) 17:49, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

• Very bad idea to use a sandbox template in an article. I've added a quick fix margin to the div (I proposed as a potential idea for development) but the whole would need to be more carefully written to be fully usable. Sandboxed versions of templates should only be used for testing. fredgandt 17:22, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

{{quote box}} with |width=20% and |align=center

-— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:35, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

• Or see {{Millennium Park Map/sandbox2}} and {{Millennium Park Map/testcases}}. Input options now are: left, right, center (using the div-box as Gadget did in first /sandbox. default=left). -DePiep (talk) 17:47, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
  • Thanks everyone - I copied DePiep's sandbox2 version to the template and updated the two oddball format articles. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:48, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Done? Someone clean up the sandboxes ;-) -DePiep (talk) 21:03, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I tried to clean them up, but did not do it right - I did delete Sandbox 2 - thanks again DePiep, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 22:26, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

You cleaned up OK. I had /sandbox2 deleted (using {{db-g7}}) after it was made useless. The primary /sandbox was used in main space articles (as Gadget here complained about), so I waited till it was just a sandbox again (the articles use the main Template now correctly). What I left behind is a /sandbox with code copy from the main template, and the /testcases page to, well, test. Or: everything should be OK now, whereever you look. (If not, contact here or my talkpage). The good thing we all did is: not disturbing the readable articles. -DePiep (talk) 23:07, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I can let one go, but not two. Gadget850 has not been the only other contributor to this thread and might be less than pleased to be associated with my work. fredgandt 00:50, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

You are right, I was typing from memory - bad habit. So user Fred_Gandt with the funnycolors is included at the top of the compliments too. This I am typing ashamed and bowing, from below my desk. So more errors might arise. -DePiep (talk) 01:06, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

While your under the desk, can you see if you can find a pen I dropped last week?  fredgandt 01:19, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Looking for this green one? Yes. -DePiep (talk) 01:21, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Geonotice script error

Resolved

Chrome on XP. Getting a script error in this script: Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected identifier. I'm pretty sure the issue is with this:

NARA4:
{
begin: '22 December 2011 00:00 UTC',
  end: 'January 8 2011 00:00 UTC',
  corners:[ [39.7, -79.5], [36.5, -74] ], 
  text: 'You are invited to participate in Wikipedia's [[meta:w:en:Wikipedia:Meetup/NARA 4|<span style="color: #4169E1;">'''National Archives Extrava<span style="color: #FF0000;">SCAN</span>za'''</span>]], taking place January 4–7. Please [[meta:w:en:Wikipedia:Meetup/NARA 4|sign up and submit ideas]].'
},

 fredgandt 02:16, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

In text:, you need to escape every single quote; it now closes prematurely at Wikipedia'. — Edokter (talk) — 02:31, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Mhmm. I try and avoid single quotes for that reason. Only pulling them out when strictly required. This habit means I am very used to escaping quotes (doubles need a lot of escaping). The question is, who fixes it? fredgandt 02:35, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

I could, after I get confirmation that this code will not break it:

  text: 'You are invited to participate in Wikipedia\'s [[meta:w:en:Wikipedia:Meetup/NARA 4|<span style="color: #4169E1;"><b>National Archives Extrava<span style="color: #FF0000;">SCAN</span>za</b></span>]], taking place January 4–7. Please [[meta:w:en:Wikipedia:Meetup/NARA 4|sign up and submit ideas]].'

— Edokter (talk) — 02:38, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Cool. fredgandt 02:41, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

It seems it was already reverted. — Edokter (talk) — 02:45, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Should be back up, and fixed. I can't see the notice, so let me know if there are any problems. Prodego ^talk 02:48, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

No script errors. I'm going to assume the notice is showing "cough, kinda css'd to death". fredgandt 02:53, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Software Utility Suggested: WP utility (Tab Near "Edit" tab) to collate all previous "diff" files in an article

and append them to the current version of the article creating just one document. Any software WP'ers around who can build such a utility? This utility would be a tab next to the "edit" tab at the top pf each article. Upon pressing the tab, a box would pop-up and it would ask the user how far back they want to incorporate previous edits of the current article (either by:

1. date,
2. total byte size, or
3. total number of edits).

and then retrieve those previous edits one at a time from the history page and then collate them into one big document topped off with the latest copy of the article. (BTW, what programming language is WP written in)? This would allow a user to retrieve an article which includes the current article itself along with some historical edits. Any programmers interested in this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.228.198.40 (talk) 02:06, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I kind of understand what you want, but am not understanding a few crucial details. Such as, you essentially want to download the current version of an article plus the last, say, 10 diffs? The one thing I don't understand is collating them as one big document, especially considering that each article is the sum of all its diffs (unless it was blanked and written from scratch at one point, I guess). Also, Wikipedia is written in PHP; the source code is part of a project called MediaWiki, and it's open source so you can check it out. Gary King (talk · scripts) 05:46, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your replies. There's lots of internecine 'holier than thou' tug of war type editing wars that cause material to dematerialize and rematerialize depending on the power-tripping whims and assorted pontificating edicts issued by said dictatorial editors (who Freud might conjecture are compensating for other parts of their life which are lacking). The idea is to capture the 'churning' of the article content by examining the trajectroy of said edits/diffs for particular topics.'198.228.199.248 (talk) 18:25, 23 December 2011 (UTC)'

Although you can't easily obtain the diffs, you can obtain up to 1000 previous versions of a given page as a single download. In the "Toolbox" menu in the left margin, select "Special pages", then under the "Page tools" heading is the link Export pages. Select that, then enter the exact article name in the larger box; then uncheck the "Include only the current revision, not the full history" option, make sure "Save as file" is checked, and click "Export". --Redrose64 (talk) 18:49, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your replies. I did as you mentioned however the page recycles to the same page but with the formerly filled input fields now blanked. How does one retrieve the final resulting document? TIA.'198.228.199.248 (talk) 18:25, 23 December 2011 (UTC)'

After clicking the "Export" button you should be presented with a dialog box asking whether you want to save the file or open it. Unfortunately this dialog doesn't just vary between operating systems, it also varies between browsers. For example, Internet Explorer 8 under Windows XP asks "File Download Do you want to open or save this file? Name: Wikipedia-20111223193710.xml Type: XML Document From: en.wikipedia.org" and three buttons Open, Save, Cancel. Clicking "Save" here actually carries out the download, and then presents a further dialog where I choose the folder in which to save the file. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:52, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Note that some browsers can be configured to just automatically save the file somewhere without any sort of dialog; instead, they will just give some sort of unobtrusive notification somewhere that a file is being downloaded. And some may even come configured that way by default. Anomie⚔ 21:40, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

SVG not showing up?

See here. I have since uploaded one of those svg images locally as File:Phenanthrene Clar rule.svg, with the same effect. Materialscientist (talk) 06:28, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

There's some issue that prevents the software from rendering some SVGs; I don't remember exactly what, but it may have had to do with namespaces. I'll see whether I can find it in the archives. Ucucha (talk) 09:34, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I have no time track, but the suspicion is that they become invisible recently, after some software update. While "my" examples have some coding problem and don't pass validator checks, all versions of File:Sulfamerazin.svg are fine for that, yet some are are not displayed, because of black line rendering. Materialscientist (talk) 09:41, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Librsvg was updated 1,5 month ago (or was it 2 already ?). I'm not sure, but i suspect this is caused if a path starts drawing outside the canvas. The entire path (not just one segment of it) is than 'invalidated' and not rendered. These would previously be rendered with a strange 'random' diagonal line (forcing the path closed). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:55, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

That may be a contributory factor, but I doubt if it's the whole story. SVG images like this rely on certain points being outside the canvas, since the calculation of the shape is so much easier. This one is two quadratic Bézier curves, both being mostly outside the canvas: the end point of the first and the start point of the second are at 35,465 which is within the 500x500 box; but the start point of the first is at 250,1000 and the end point of the second is at -500,250, both being well outside the box. The shape could have been drawn in outline (two straight lines following the canvas edge plus a curved line) and then filled, but this would have been much more complicated. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:11, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Here is a relevant bugzilla bug and discussion. However, reading it didn't help me much, as "my" files apparently contain "stroke=black". They don't pass validator, but pass Commons check. Thus, can someone fix or tell how to make visible this table? Materialscientist (talk) 04:04, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Graphics lab people on Commons fixed those images. Thus resolved. Materialscientist (talk) 22:52, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

False edit conflicts, THE END

So I've posted 3 times now that Google Chrome was giving me false edit conflicts (the edit would go through, but the edit conflict notice would still show up). Well, I just wanted to post that this has now come to an end. Apparently Chrome took a huge dump all over my OS, as my computer was running ungodly slow for weeks. It finally decided yesterday that it wouldn't boot up. One OS reinstall and a switch to Opera later, and everything's right as rain. (And I have all my old files, too.) Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 18:59, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Grats! fredgandt 19:53, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I've been getting similar, intermittent, ECs, in Chrome, which I put down to inadvertently hitting "return" or clicking "Save page" twice in quick succession. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:14, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

How to Embed a Random Page from a Specific Category?

Hi, I'm trying to learn how to write a PHP tag extension. If you want to embed a random page from a specific category, how might you go about doing so (would you use MySQL, the API, or what)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Octify27 (talk • contribs) 23:35, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

MediaWiki (the software that makes Wikipedia work) doesn't allow PHP contained in pages it governs to run (not for mere mortals anyway). We can have pages of JavaScript and/or CSS that will run.

Depending on where you want to embed pages from Wikipedia, PHP could call for them by several methods (variations on HTTPRequest) and echo them to whatever element on whatever page. The depending part is that you can't do that here. So if you wanted to use PHP to embed a Wikipedia page on another website, that is a possible method (although iframes would be simpler).

To embed a Wikipedia page somewhere else on Wikipedia, you can use transclusion. {{Example}} placed on a Wikipedia page, will call for the content of Example and put it where the template is.

I could go on and on, but it might make things simpler and quicker to know more exactly what it is you're trying to do. fredgandt 00:42, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

See the Random article tool. The code should be on the toolserver. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 03:19, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

It sounds like this user is trying to write a MediaWiki extension. If so, you'd probably want to use MySQL directly, using code similar to the tool that Gadget850 mentions or the core "random article" tool. Ucucha (talk) 11:21, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for the late response, I someone actually managed to help me already with this, but I really appreciate your help! :) I did still read through everything, I was just trying your suggestions and then the holidays caught up with me (-_-;), and someone else ended up helping me anyways, but thank you nonetheless :D

route templates on mobile

Canal, rail and road route templates such as {{Wyrley and Essington Canal map}} render badly on our mobile site (example). Is his something we can fix in CSS? Do we have a Wikipedia: page for the mobile CSS? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:11, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Not possible at the moment. See also bugzilla:22659 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:34, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Disable edit button on busy articles

I suspect that all of us regulars know that if an article is trending you don't hit the edit button at the top of the page, instead you edit one section at a time. You still risk edit conflicts, but anyone hitting edit on one of our busiest articles is pretty much guaranteed an edit conflict. Now the number of articles involved in this is probably tiny, but the number of newbies who hit this particular problem probably isn't. For example Sarah Palin peaked at 25 edits per minute on the day she was announced as John McCain's running mate, I don't think we have any record of the number of edit conflicts that also took place.

So I'd like to suggest a little feature that clicks in whenever an article is uber busy, perhaps as defined by the number of edit conflicts per minute. The idea being to deflect editors from such edit conflicts by having the Edit tab link to a little message to the effect that:

This article is currently being edited so frequently that editors risk losing their work due to edit conflicts. In order to reduce the risk of editors losing work we are limiting editors to editing one section at a time. Please pick one section, and apologies for any inconvenience: Followed by a list of headings, each with an edit tab. Or you could just bounce the cursor down the section edit tabs ϢereSpielChequers 23:35, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

If any of that requires running JavaScript code to work properly then it would break Wikipedia for me. HumphreyW (talk) 23:46, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

I think that this would mean that no one could edit the article lead. There is no edit button for the lead section. HumphreyW (talk) 23:50, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

We could add one for the lead. One of the plugins already does this.--Taylornate (talk) 00:00, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Good point, I have an edit button for the lead but I think I had to do something in user prefs - if there are still people without that we'd definitely need to give them that on articles where we took away the option to edit the whole article. ϢereSpielChequers 00:13, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Adding an edit button for the lead section (set in the user preference page) requires running JavaScript for it to work. HumphreyW (talk) 00:27, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't have to though. Prodego ^talk 00:47, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

{{Editpoint}} to the rescue!! (unfinished project) (discussion) fredgandt 00:49, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

• On a browser address-line, the lede section is section zero, accessed by "&section=0". -Wikid77 00:57, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

• Perhaps just warn editors at busy pages: Rather than alter the edit-tabs for a page, perhaps the interface could just warn editors to edit-by-section to avoid whole-page edit conflicts. This is an WP:AGF issue, where there is no need to "put shoppers in handcuffs" to deter shoplifting. I think a simple warning message would be sufficient: "Shoplifting is a crime handled by police, not a cute prank". So, warn editors that a whole-page edit would risk an edit-conflict. -Wikid77 00:57, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't see this as an AGF issue, more a practical way to steer people away from edit conflicts. To follow your shopping analogy, this is about directing the shoppers to the tills with the shortest queues. Not shoplifting. ϢereSpielChequers 02:06, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't edit 'busy' pages, so I've never met the problem, but I think it's a good idea and I support the basic concept as proposed by WSC. (Just how many/few editors can't use js. in their browsers?). Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:18, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Slowness and loss of data

Just in case this is happening to others. WP crawled to almost a standstill in the last half hour or so. Saved edits have had a several-minute delay in showing up on my Watch List. When I recently did a save, it swallowed everything but my lead paragraph. I was able to restore a previous version of the page. Maile66 (talk) 00:19, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Malfunctioning variable?

What happened in the early block entries for Renamed vandal 00010? To quote:

(del/undel) 06:55, 1 January 2005 Nunh-huh (talk | contribs | block) blocked Renamed vandal 00010 (talk | contribs) $3 with an expiry time of $2 ‎ (vandalism) (unblock | change block)

I'm sure that $2 and $3 are some sorts of variables, but what are they? Nyttend (talk) 03:44, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

The message is made by MediaWiki:Blocklogentry. The page history shows the variables have changed. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:36, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Can't see fundraiser banners while logged in

The option to suppress the display of the fundraiser banners is unchecked in my preferences, yet they haven't been displaying for some time. I thought they had stopped running until I happened to see them while logged out. B7T (talk) 05:23, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Do you have the cookie mentioned at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 94#How to hide all fundraising banners on all Wikimedia wikis until next year? PrimeHunter (talk) 05:51, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't seem to have such a cookie, or any cookies called "centralnotice_"+anything. B7T (talk) 15:26, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I recall reading somewhere else that that was done on purpose. I guess the idea is if you don't have an account you have to see an ad. However it seems to me that the people with accounts are more likely to donate. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 18:54, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I found META:Fundraising 2011, but i didn't see an explanation while skimming. There is a discussion board where you can ask about this. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 19:19, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

At this point in the fundraiser the banner is turned off for logged in users. Prodego ^talk 00:58, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Odd rendering of articles in 64-bit Firefox

From the top, 32-bit Firefox Gnome (openSuse), 32-bit Firefox Windows, 64-bit Chrome Gnome (Ubuntu), 64-bit Firefox Gnome (Ubuntu).

Can someone explain why 64-bit Firefox on Ubuntu is displaying the italics hypertext instead of actually the text in Italics? IIRC, it didn't do this in 32-bit Ubuntu. Magog the Ogre (talk) 17:23, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Odd. Definitely a Firefox problem though. Have you looked at http://bugzilla.mozilla.org? — Edokter (talk) — 18:08, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

No. I'd like to first figure out where in the Javascript the call is to make the italics. Then I can identify the faulty function. Magog the Ogre (talk) 19:57, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Ack. Further debugging shows it's the StumbleUpon toolbar. Well I'd still like to see where the problem is so I can report it to them. Magog the Ogre (talk) 20:10, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

There is no Javascript call to make it italics, the <i>...</i> tag is output directly into the HTML. Your StumbleUpon toolbar is apparently screwing it up somehow. Anomie⚔ 20:47, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this is a StumbleUpon problem mentioned at Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2011 October 16#Titles are not appearing in italics. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:10, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Mass restore and CSD removal needed

A couple hundred templates were mistakenly tagged for deletion. I spot-check a number to confirm they weren't being used, but some are, and all might be. I don't know how, but that's not important.

I manually restored every single one of them, but had to run out. Simply restoring them left the CSD tag, so Fastily deleted them all.

I'm not looking forward to manually doing it all again, and removing the CSD tag manually from each one. Is there an automated or semi-automated way to do this? The templates in question were deleted today, and had the string "meta' in their names. E.g. Template:BPD/meta/shortname--SPhilbrick(Talk) 03:22, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I ended up doing it manually.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 12:32, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Problem with Talk page TOC related to slash in name of a different article

A couple of weird things I noticed in the TOC of Talk:Solstice. First, before today the TOC did not show up at all [20]. There's no NOTOC in the source code, and putting in FORCETOC did not help. I added {{TOC left}} [21] which at least forced the TOC to show up, but oddly it has three dummy entries at the top reading "Headline text". I believe this might be occurring because of two other pages that the software is interpreting as subpages of Talk:Solstice. The two pages are Talk:Solstice/Sound and Shadows and Talk:Solstice/Sound And Shadows (the latter being a redirect to the former). Or I don't know, maybe that's just coincidence. WP:NC-SLASH seems to suggest that there's nothing wrong with naming an article Solstice/Sound and Shadows. Still I am curious why the TOC at Talk:Solstice is screwed up. Mathew5000 (talk) 06:11, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Fixed by removing a heading from a Comments subpage.[22] The subpage is transcluded three times by wikiproject banners. The TOC was in a hidden part of the first banner before being forced to appear somewhere else. PrimeHunter (talk) 06:31, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you PrimeHunter; that had been driving me crazy. Mathew5000 (talk) 07:06, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Problem with ‹ The template (Infobox writer) is being considered for merging. ›

Why does ‹ The template (Infobox writer) is being considered for merging. › appear above the infobox here? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 12:13, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

This is a deliberate side-effect of the {{tfm}} template at Template:Infobox writer. The idea is to attract attention to the discussion about the proposed merge. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:18, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

So, how many articles would this incomprehensible piece of internal technobabble be appearing at the top of? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 12:38, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

13435. But there's no way to only show it to logged-in users that I'm aware of (even if we wanted to). And is it really so awful? We have big boxes across the top of articles warning them about many things in the same vein. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 18:37, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

I closed the discussion, so it's gone for now. Sometimes the notice is placed inside of <noinclude>...</noinclude> tags, but this tends to reduce the number of participants in the discussion. There are various options to make it less intrusive, like type=sidebar and type=tiny, ... Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 19:01, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

For the Common Good

We now have a new Transfer to Commons tool: For the Common Good. Please try it out! -FASTILY ^(TALK) 22:03, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Inability to Edit an Article.

I had created an infobox for this article but whenever I tried to edit this article, the browsers are not responding to the submit button ("save page"). I was facing the same problem in all browsers - Chrome, Safari, Firefox, IE, SeaMonkey,etc. I suspected either censorship or a technical snag. Hence, I had requested the editors/admins on its talkpage to:

• Insert the infobox which was currently posted on my sandpaper page.
• Insert the website logo image.

Although one admin helped with the editing work, I am unable to edit only this article on en:wp. Please help me as why this problem exists? Will I be able to edit this article on my own, if required? Hindustanilanguage (talk) 11:00, 19 December 2011 (UTC).

Since you clearly have Chrome, open the page with that browser. Press Ctrl+⇧ Shift+I and at the bottom of the window, an inspection panel will open (unless you've used it before and un-docked it). While the inspection panel is open, click on the "scripts" tab at the top of it, then click on the refresh icon (at the top left of your window) to reload the page. Look at the bottom right corner of the inspection panel to see if any little red icons appear. If they do, click on the link under the number next to the icon, and copy the (full) details of the error report, and paste it here. If no little red icons appear, erm...no idea. Why the submit button should not respond on just one page is pretty weird. fredgandt 11:32, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes Wikipedia goes into "read-only" mode (it's done it a couple of times lately) - and the "Save Page" button don't work, there is added a small and almost insignificant message box at the very top of the editing page - above the edit bar, but it's easily missed.  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 21:04, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Report of the red text generated by Chrome as asked for article on Dalitstan.org

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Regards, Hindustanilanguage (talk) 05:50, 21 December 2011 (UTC).

Well ok. That doesn't actually look much like an error report to me. You got an error when you visited the troublesome page, and clicked on the little red icon, and copied this from the panel that opened? fredgandt 06:10, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes. Please advice me or suggest some solution. Regards, Hindustanilanguage (talk) 09:58, 21 December 2011 (UTC).

As I said; that doesn't look like an error report to me. I'm afraid I can't deduce from that what error is occurring. Sorry. fredgandt 13:53, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

You copied the script the error occurs on (as loaded by ResourceLoader), not the error message itself. — Edokter (talk) — 14:06, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes. The problem there (correct me if I'm wrong) is that although this script may have highlighted the error, the error could really exist in another script referencing this one, that was loaded before this. So the browser thinks that this one (having come later) is the script that actually caused the error. Other than the two semi colons at the very end, I can't see anything obviously wrong with it. We need the error report to go with it. Right? fredgandt 14:18, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

So please tell me what I should do to report the problem precisely. Hindustanilanguage (talk) 10:15, 26 December 2011 (UTC).

• Go to Dalitstan.org and select the edit on that page that gives you problems. If editing a section is the problem, open an edit on that section.If editing the whole page is the problem, open an edit on the whole page.
• Press Ctrl+⇧ Shift+I
• Click the "Scripts" icon at the top of the inspection panel.
• Reload the page by clicking the browser "reload" icon (top left).
• At the bottom right of the still open inspection panel, click the number next to the red "x" icon.
• Another panel will open.
• In that panel, copy the red writing and save it to a text editor like Notepad (software).
• At the right of the line of red writing, there will be a linked name of a script. Click it.
• In the panel above the one with the red writing in it, the script with the problem will be shown.
• Either red or yellow highlighting should show the part of that script that is causing an error.
• If you don't see any coloured highlighting, Open the panel a little more by dragging the top up the page a little way.
• Click the link to the script again, and the highlighting should show again. It may just flash up and fade away.
• Copy the text that is highlighted. If none is highlighted, don't worry about that bit.
• Come back here, and paste the red writing (you have a copy in your notepad), the name of the script that was linked (the link you were clicking), and if you have it, the text that was highlighted in the script.

We can take it from there. If you have more than a few lines of code to paste, you've done something wrong. You should have a short error report and no more than a line or two of code from the script. fredgandt 19:20, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Images

Hi, could someone explain why the images on North Barrule and South Barrule are not showing? I put both of them there, so its probably a mistake in my template use. Thanks--Gilderien Talk|Contribs 11:49, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

There was a long pause, but now they are both showing for me. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:05, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

They both loaded for me, without a noticeable pause --SPhilbrick(Talk) 12:33, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

They are both there now. Presumably a delay in crossloading them to WP.--Gilderien Talk|Contribs 21:31, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Problems with Categorization bot

Hi, I received yet another email today about an image I uploaded in February not being categorized. This image is File:Rosa nutkana with sepals.JPG, and I was sure to categorize it when I uploaded it, yet I got repeated emails about it not being categorized. Every time I went in and re-uploaded it with categorization. There has been no activity with this file for some months now, yet today I get another notice about it not being categorized. Why is the categorization disappearing? Dog Walking Girl (talk) 20:19, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

(This relates to Commons, incidentally.) Are you sure you got repeated emails about it being uncategorized? From the look of things, you received 1 or 2 emails about its being incorrectly sourced (an issue later resolved by Havang) on your behalf, after you reported being unable to save your updated licensing information. That was back in March. What happened recently was that you uploaded a different image, Rose show 2011.jpg, without categorization, and you got an email about that.

To address your issue with updating directly, you seem to be trying to update the file description by uploading a new file with the same name. Is that correct? - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 20:49, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

There was (there may still be) a problem with Commons image uploads where if you selected some categories from the tool provided in the "Upload options" box, and then went for the "Preview" button, the categories would all be lost. I don't know if this is still a bug; but there are two workarounds: (a) don't use the "Preview" button; or (b) if you do wish to use "Preview", don't use the category selector, but enter your categories at the bottom of the "Additional info" item within the "File description" box: as with cats on article pages, enclose them in the usual square brackets.

If you need to amend information on an image, but you don't want to alter the actual image itself, you should use the "Edit" tab at the top of the file description page. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:14, 26 December 2011 (UTC)