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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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Issue with College Baseball Template - But Only Once

In the 2012 Big 12 Baseball Tournament article, the {{cbsb link}} template is used frequently. It works for the most part, but for some reason displays "Missouri Tigers baseball" in the first round of the "Bracket" section. It works fine in the standings. Manually changing and unchanging the display field failed to resolve the problem. Smartyllama (talk) 21:55, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Fixed by removing a wrong capitalization.[1] PrimeHunter (talk) 23:10, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Watching topic

This discussion is brought over from VPI

Before I start, let me say I have no idea how to do this, I just think it is a good idea. But will be willing to help anyone who wants to implement it.

At the moment, we have the option of watching pages. If I want to watch just one topic or discussion on that page, I have to watch the whole page. So when I look at what has changed in my watchlist, even things I am not interested in pop up. I think it would be a good idea to have an option whereby a user can watch a page, but also watch a topic, heading, or sub-heading of a page or article. Kinkreet~♥moshi moshi♥~ 20:54, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

It's a good idea. There is the script Catwatch lets you watch a category for changes (I misunderstood)Equazcion (talk) 21:14, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't think that's what Kinkreet is after. It sounds more like s/he would like to be able to watch (for example) a single discussion at WP:ANI without having to watch the entire page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:19, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
Oops I wasn't paying attention. Yeah this has been brought up before. Actually they were thinking of making all the ANI discussions into transcluded pages, so people could watch them individually and avoid edit conflicts, as is done on some other process pages. It never came to fruition though. The ability to watch a particular header would definitely be awesome. I think it would require some significant new coding and database changes in MediaWiki though. Equazcion(talk) 21:29, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing caught my idea right on, thanks. I want it (and I think others want it as well) for following a single discussion, as well as following a section of a large article. For example for quantum mechanics, if someone is a historian and only want to keep an eye out for the history of quantum mechanics, I think it would be more efficient for them if they are able to watch just that section, for example. Kinkreet~♥moshi moshi♥~ 10:41, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
Yes, a good idea, and may require effort to implement if it requires schema changes as Equazcion said. But as they say leave it to the bot. If the user has patience, a bot could produce such a report without Mediawiki modifications and produce a report once a day. And that would not overload the Mediawiki servers if and when distributed bots fly... but let me not get off topic, for this is unlikely this year. History2007 (talk) 21:57, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
I think we have establish this might be not a simple implementation, but if there is someone who we can talk to about this, who would it be? Kinkreet~♥moshi moshi♥~ 12:31, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
It would have to be brought up at bugzilla, that's how we communicate with the developers who make the major changes. It can be tough to get them to do stuff that constitutes major new features, unless a broad consensus is demonstrated first by the community (even then it can be difficult). A !vote at WP:VPT would probably be needed first. I can't predict how that might go. Equazcion (talk) 12:47, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice, I will move this discussion over there. Kinkreet~♥moshi moshi♥~ 08:26, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

I find that Wikipedia's watchlist is nearly useless on pages such as Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard‎. I want to see if anyone has posted to the one particular dispute I am working on, not every dispute on the list. Same with the Village Pump -- I want to see if there are any posts responding to the question I asked without seeing everything posted in response to the other questions. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:37, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Gets suggested often, there's one now at Wikipedia:Idea lab#Watching topic. PS I do agree this would be great. ANI alone is worth it. Equazcion (talk) 02:40, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Yes, that's an issue for me too. Please? HiLo48 (talk) 02:42, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
This does get suggested often, to the point where it is listed at WP:PEREN#Allow watchlisting individual sections of a page. The problem is that it would require a major change to the software, and no one with the necessary skills has stepped forward to plan out and implement the necessary changes at the code level. Anomie⚔ 02:55, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Has there been any effort to hire such a person on a short-term project basis? In software development, it often turns out that what was considered to be hard turns out to be easy once the right person looks at the problem.
I am wondering about that "it would require a major change to the software" bit. Right now the software feeds my watchlist the page that was changed, how many bytes, who changed it, when, and the edit summary. You could add the section title. Then the watchlist, when watching a section, could simply ignore anything with the wrong section title. Yes, this would fail if someone changes the section title, but that could be addressed by always sending me the pre-edit section title, so on my watchlist I would see the edit making the section title change. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:19, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Having to determine the section title that was edited would add significant complexity over the current process that occurs when a page change occurs, since currently it just registers that some change occurred without determining anything. There would need to be a kind of diff routine added each time. What if multiple sections were changed etc? We could have it use the section header noted in edit summaries, but that's not reliable since people can change that manually or delete it entirely, and it doesn't even show up if you hit the edit tab instead of a section link.
Any "simple" solution involving only using the current system of wiki headers would likely require updating a new set of data that catalogs section changes as they occur. This is all just based on my evaluation though; someone could come up with an amazingly simple outside-the-box solution, who knows.
Then there's the more complex route, where we change the way discussion pages work fundamentally. Personally I think that's the way to go. The WP:LiquidThreads vaporware is/was an attempt, though I don't know how well it'll accomplish the goal, if it ever does get implemented. Equazcion (talk) 04:41, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

It's a good feature request, and one that's been on the table for at least five years (and probably a lot longer). Basically, it's not technically feasible to literally watch the sections on a page; but as has already been mentioned, each section could be a transclusion of some other page, and you could watch that. These sorts of considerations fed into the design of a new extension, LiquidThreads; unfortunately, that project has a rather checkered history, so it's not deployed yet (and may not be for some time). Hence why you still can't watch individual sections of a page, unless you manually transclude them out, unfortunately. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 09:58, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

This is something that Mirror Bot will solve. Rich Farmbrough, 17:06, 26 May 2012 (UTC).

Pipe separator problems

Resolved
 – MediaWiki:Pipe-separator/en-gb has been created as clone of MediaWiki:Pipe-separator

Please see Template_talk:User#Pipe_separators and Template_talk:Toolbar#Symmetry_and_beauty. There is a problem for some editors (not all, though) viewing templates with pipe separators such that they appear with missing spacing – "talk| contribs" rather than "talk | contribs". Could someone please have a look? Thanks. It Is Me Here t / c 22:48, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Do you have your language preference set to en-gb (or something else) instead of en? I note that MediaWiki:pipe-separator has been fixed to not screw up when used in parser functions, while MediaWiki:pipe-separator/en-gb does not have any such fix. Anomie⚔ 04:03, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I have en-gb. It Is Me Here t / c 09:52, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Help:Preferences says (I wrote it): It is not recommended to select "en-GB - British English" or "en-CA - Canadian English" at the language option in preferences. Many interface messages have been customized at the English Wikipedia but only for the default selection "en - English". The language option only affects interface messages and not article text. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:17, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Actually, this applies to all language options— Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences shows the top language setting is es. I have a bit more on this at User:Gadget850/FAQ/Language. I made a proposal some time back about the possibility of redirecting messages where the default version has been modified, but there was no participation. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 11:29, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
The problem applies to all languages but if a user chooses a foreign language then the advantage of knowing the language better is often larger than the disadvantage of losing customized messages. Therefore I only disrecommended English variants. See Help talk:Preferences#What about Canadian English? PrimeHunter (talk) 12:01, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

This should now be fixed - MediaWiki:Pipe-separator/en-gb has been created as a clone of MediaWiki:Pipe-separator. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:03, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Fixed in en-gb and en-ca but not any foreign language. It seems impractical to create hundreds of identical language pages at Special:PrefixIndex/MediaWiki:Pipe-separator. It would be nice if MediaWiki gave an option for MediaWiki:Pipe-separator to say "Use this for any language without a customized message". PrimeHunter (talk) 19:14, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
AIUI there is a fallback feature that fails with language varieties. Rich Farmbrough, 17:09, 26 May 2012 (UTC).

TOC

Suddenly ToC is collapsed by default on articles - at least for me. What's happening? Rich Farmbrough, 01:25, 24 May 2012 (UTC).

It should remember the last state. If you expand one then are the following still collapsed? It works for me. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:14, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, yes it does - maybe collapsed is the default? Is this another "bugfix"? Pages are crafted to work with their ToC... Rich Farmbrough, 14:36, 24 May 2012 (UTC).
I'm not sure what you say yes to. If you still have problems then try clearing your entire cache. For as long as I know, it has worked so if you collapse one TOC then all following TOC's are collapsed in that browser until you expand one, and then they are all expanded until you collapse one. That is sensible to me and it also works for unregistered users who cannot set preferences. Maybe you accidentally hit a hide link in a TOC. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:44, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
Yes to - it works as you described. I'm not sure if it's a good thing though. Rich Farmbrough, 16:23, 26 May 2012 (UTC).

Image and Cache Issue

Hi,

I was directed here from Wikipedia's Cache page; I have recently uploaded a new version of this file. This new version is currently active on this article. However, there appears to be a caching issue. The image is not being presented correctly on Wikis such as this one. I have tried purging and, to a certain extent, that has worked. However, if I want to add this image to an article and I press the 'preview' button, the image is shown to be out-of-date and warped. Is there a way to fix this? Is it only a matter of time until the image will be shown properly? Thanks for the help. Poppersocks (talk) 20:58, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes this is probably a cache issue. I have seen this with images I have removed the letterboxing from - very confusing! Rich Farmbrough, 16:24, 26 May 2012 (UTC).

Category sortkey problem

This problem is stumping me, and I have to leave for the airport in 50 minutes so I don't have much time to work on it. Why does Category:1949 operas sort under the wrong place in Category:1949 works? It should be under "Operas" but it's the first entry in the list. Graham87 02:13, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, it was sorting as the first entry in the list because Template:Year by category had an extra space when it was constructing the category link. But fixing that makes it be under "1" instead of "o" in the category, so something in Template:OperasByYear still isn't quite right. Perhaps it should be redone along the lines of one of the templates for the other categories. Anomie⚔ 02:27, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
Fixed in [2] after reading the documentation of {{Year by category}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:00, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
Nifty! Anomie⚔ 11:34, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
Indeed! Thanks, guys. Graham87 01:19, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
A prime example of why content categories should not be in templates. Rich Farmbrough, 12:18, 26 May 2012 (UTC).

Access to Article Feedback Tool Data

Hi, I am interested to know whether it is possible to get access to Article Rating Data. I have found data on the earlier version, which covers the period of 2011march-september, but I would like to use the latest data. In case that is not public yet, is there any chance it also will be accessible in the future; and if so when approximately? Thank you in advance! — Preceding unsigned comment added by MkkLR (talk • contribs) 19:20, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

mw:Article_feedback/Data: Historical data dumps collected via previous AFT versions as well as weekly data dumps from the current AFT version are available for download, but only for English Wikipedia. All dumps are available as compressed CSV files and are released under a CC-BY-SA license. Real-time anonymized AFT data is also available via the toolserver. Version 5 of the Article Feedback Tool is now under development by the Wikimedia Foundation. This will be a huge improvement compared to older versions of the AFT because WP:AFT5 will actually be useful. Arcandam (talk) 12:58, 26 May 2012 (UTC) p.s. If you have any questions about the AFT its probably best to ask people like User:Okeyes (WMF) or User:Jorm (WMF).

Is there any technical reasons to keep Category:Hidden Categories a hidden category?

I don't think Category:Hidden categories should be hidden... and now it contains itself... Ibicdlcod (talk) 07:23, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

No there is no reason for this. Rich Farmbrough, 12:09, 26 May 2012 (UTC).
 Fixed Rich Farmbrough, 12:17, 26 May 2012 (UTC).

I have a featurerequest for an expert Python programmer; WP:REFLINKS sometimes mistakes the text in the commentbox as the name of the author which results in this kind of stuff. I fixed a couple of articles with that problem. "Meld je aan of registreer je om een reactie te plaatsen!" is Dutch and means "Login or register to comment"... The same thing happens on the English version of Youtube too but that is far more rare. It may be possible to get it to fetch the author's name correctly but if not the easiest hack would be to simply disallow a couple of strings. Unfortunately User:Dispenser does not communicate anymore. Arcandam (talk) 13:29, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

I looked at the reflinks.py and I'm missing where it does anything other than retrieve the title. Rich Farmbrough, 16:09, 26 May 2012 (UTC).

Problems in categorization of BLPPRODs "by days left", any template magic

The WP:BLPPROD template attempts to sort the articles it finds into Category:BLP articles proposed for deletion by days left, which sounds tasty.

But it's never worked correctly or that usefully at that. I kinda get why, but I'm too much of a template newbie to necessarily explain it well--roughly speaking the "number of days left" is only recomputed when the article is actually modified. Cache purge doesn't do it. So there are "expired" articles marked with 8 days left. While there's no hurry, it's a problem for people looking through the BLPPROD pile looking for things to put effort into, an accurate days left count would be a significant benefit to that triage process.

The relevant code is at Template:Prod blp/dated via Template:Prod blp for interested parties.

So, clever people, workarounds? Ideas? --joe deckertalk to me 06:46, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Meh, maybe the real issue is this --joe deckertalk to me 07:16, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
It certainly seems unwise to rely on articles automatically being re-categorised each day.
Maintenance templates are usually sub-categorised according to the month of transclusion, which results in a steady but slow increase in sub-categories.
Some possible workarounds:
  1. You could similarly sub-categorise according to the date of nomination, but that would create numerous sub-categories (a new one every day).
  2. Instead of using the initial digit (in the category sortorder) to indicate the number of days outstanding, perhaps you could extend this to an initial letter to indicate the day of the month that the article was nominated (eg 1 to 9 for the 1st to the 9th, then A to V for the 10th to the 31st).
  3. As a compromise between the above options, you could create 31 sub-categories, and have rolling sub-categories for the day of the month of nomination (but not sub-categorise the month or year).
— Richardguk (talk) 08:26, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
Or a bot could go through the articles daily and make a null edit if they are not categorized correctly. Null edits update category pages. Purges don't. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:24, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the brainstorming, folks. The thing that concerns me about the bot is the effect on article history. A moderate fraction of articles do survive the BLPPOD processW, it'd be a shame to leave ten null edits clogging the histories there. Perhaps every other day would be a better compromise.
Subcategory by, say, nomination date or expiration date has some real advantages, and the cleanup of empty categories strikes me as easy bot-based maintenance.
Anyway, the brainstorming is much appreciated, folks. Thanks! --joe deckertalk to me 20:57, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
A null edit is not shown in the page history or elsewhere. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:06, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
I did not know that, that pretty much does seem potentially practical. --joe deckertalk to me 08:51, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
I tihnk I'm going to follow up and attempt a BRFA on the idea. Thanks! --joe deckertalk to me 19:18, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
There is a work around which used to work, which is what I was doing when I created the mechanism, that is to null edit the template. This is not immediate (the job queue is involved) but is fairly quick in effect. I could easily add this to an existing Femto Bot task, but alas! that particular avenue of pleasure has been denied to me. Rich Farmbrough, 16:30, 26 May 2012 (UTC).
Hi Rich, sorry to hear it. Yeah, I'd been hand null-editing entries on and off the last year or two, but I'm doing less BLPPROD related work, and had noticed some longer delays without my assistance, same last year when I was in the arctic. Anyway, I am at trial now with User:Joe's Null Bot. By the way, it turns out there's one step between a regular purge and a null edit that works, it's damn near undocumented, but there's a forcecategorylinks option to the purge action which, if used on the including article, will cause the appropriate category updates. I'm thinking that might make a nice option to include on some of the purge templates. Cheers, --joe deckertalk to me 23:42, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
Interesting. I'll make a mental note. Rich Farmbrough, 04:44, 27 May 2012 (UTC).
Yeah, not much documentation, and I got the name wrong, [3] is the right syntax. --joe deckertalk to me 07:55, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
And it is in the docs here. --joe deckertalk to me 08:00, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

What WMF developers are going to be working on for the next year

In the interests of keeping the community more in the loop, here is a draft of the WMF engineering goals for the next fiscal year:

And here are the projects that the Features Engineering Team is working on specifically:

Feedback regarding any of these projects is welcome on the talk pages of the specific projects on mediawiki.org. Kaldari (talk) 22:45, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! I see a some amazingly cool stuff there. --joe deckertalk to me 20:49, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks! I will definitely look into this! Nageh (talk) 19:58, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the summary, looking forward to the new features.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 15:58, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Rollback now displays "(warn using TW)" when complete

After completing a rollback, the diff page used to say:

Reverted edits by Username (talk | contribs | block) to last revision by Bongwarrior (talk | contribs | block).

But today it says:

Reverted edits by Username (talk (warn using TW) | contribs | block) to last revision by Bongwarrior (talk | contribs | block).

What is the "(warn using TW)" addition all about? I haven't noticed any extra functionality, and it looks kind of ugly and unnecessary to me. I'm not sure if it was a Twinkle change, a MediaWiki namespace change, or something related to the MediaWiki 1.20wmf3 deployment, but I felt that, for the good of the project, it was important to make my displeasure known. --Bongwarrior (talk) 04:01, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

It was a Twinkle change. Prior to this, the link to the talk page was bold. →Στc. 05:58, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Bongwarrior, the change makes it look much uglier. Since Σ says it was a change in Twinkle, perhaps we should bring it up on the talk page for Twinkle. David1217 16:02, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
Thank you both for the replies, I have left a comment there. --Bongwarrior (talk) 21:05, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
I dislike it too.  Hazard-SJ  ✈  03:30, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
That was me, being overzealous. It's going away. — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:05, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Special:ApiSandbox does more than a sandbox should

I made this edit when playing with the action=edit. Does anyone know how one reports this sort of issue? →Στc. 06:14, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not clear what the issue is. But the answer is probably Bugzilla. Rich Farmbrough, 12:27, 26 May 2012 (UTC).
The API sandbox is a place where you can play with the API. It's not a true sandbox: you can indeed use it to edit the encyclopedia. Hence, take care with it. — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:09, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
Maybe MediaWiki:Apisb-intro should mention this. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:22, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
 Done Feel free to adjust it or propose adjustments if necessary. Anomie⚔ 15:45, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Error when saving an edit

All my recent edits have gone to a page with the following text:

"Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.

Try waiting a few minutes and reloading.

(Cannot contact the database server: Unknown error (10.0.6.61))"

I think the edit is saved though. Lugnuts (talk) 13:18, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm getting this as well, but you are right - the edits are going through. I find once I get this error, I can't load pages for s few minutes in that same tab. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 13:44, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
I keep getting a database error despite the fact the edit goes through. On top of that, the New Messages intermittently works. Never showed up for some edits but showed up for others.—cyberpower ChatOnline 13:54, 27 May 2012 (UTC)


Urgent problem

Some kind of evil bug on Xeno's archive page catapulted me to the below URL.

http://en.wikipedia.g-webs.com/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&action=submitlogin&type=login&returnto=User+talk:Xeno/Archive+24

Rich Farmbrough, 15:31, 27 May 2012 (UTC).

Ooh, that's evil... Are you on your own computer, or a public one? Does it happen consistently (doesn't happen for me on viewing User talk:Xeno/Archive 24). Happy‑melon 15:37, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
My own, it only happened once. Rich Farmbrough, 15:51, 27 May 2012 (UTC).
For information I'm using Palemoon with no clever plugins or anything. Rich Farmbrough, 15:53, 27 May 2012 (UTC).
OK the only things I can think of out of the ordinary are 1. I killed a script from bits, b/c it was eating to much res according to the browser 2. I visited two mirrors earlier:
Rich Farmbrough, 16:03, 27 May 2012 (UTC).
It's a Debian server in Paris, more than that I cannot say. Rich Farmbrough, 16:09, 27 May 2012 (UTC).

Black background on Wikipedia?

Is it possible to view Wikipedia with a black (or dark) background? Axl ¤ [Talk] 23:03, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, although the green-on-black gadget hasn't yet been updated to work with Vector properly, so you either have to switch to Monobook or put up with the logo in the wrong place. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 23:09, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
How do I view it like that? I am a relative novice in this area. Axl ¤ [Talk] 23:24, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
Ah, I figured it out, thanks. It's pretty garish! Axl ¤ [Talk] 23:30, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
Very much so. I mean, you can also try and "build your own", but it's a bit more complicated, especially if it takes you a while to work out what actually looks best. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 13:14, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

I am now using the green-on-black format. I find that some users' signatures are not visible. Here are some examples:-

mabdul

Is Back

Leaky

I presume that this is because the users have specified black as the text colour. Can this be adjusted for my viewing? Axl ¤ [Talk] 09:20, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

You should inform each of these users that their signature fails Wikipedia:Signatures#Appearance and color and WP:CONTRAST, because by explicitly setting a text colour without also setting a background colour, they have made incorrect assumptions about the background colour. If you examine my own signature, you'll see that those portions which explicitly set a text colour also set a background colour - the markup is <span style="color:#a80000; background:#ffeeee; text-decoration:inherit">Red</span>, which this contrast calculator shows as having a contrast of 7:1, and this one shows 7.02:1 - either way, it's WCAG 2 AAA Compliant. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:41, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
That's ridiculous. Those users have no need to change their signature because the gadget is making it hard to read them. If you have problem with reading the signature, turn the gadget off.—cyberpower ChatOffline 11:12, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
While I agree that the sign should be proper to all but I can assume that rarely 5-6 editors might would have been using that gadget so not many (in fact very few are affected). We are also not violating any policy. The sign must be such that all can view but if an editor turns on something which changes the background so that few sign cant be viewed, then it is not other editor's fault. I agree with 678 above. →TSU tp* 12:43, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
Why do you need a sig that takes up so much room in the edit box and makes it harder for some editors to see who has made a post? Turning the gadget off makes all of Wikipedia much harder for me to read. DuncanHill (talk) 15:50, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
I have some code in User:Ucucha/common.css (the part down to "Other stuff") that makes most custom signatures appear normal (it also changes some other, legitimate coloring, though, notably figure legends, so beware). Code like that may help you when using a black background. Ucucha (talk) 16:01, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree though that wikipedia should be much more flexible in terms of design and colors and you should be able to design your own skins and colours. If anybody else here is interested I'm thinking of proposing something to the developers.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:51, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't see anything in the link you pointed to that says that users can't have black signatures. If you are using non-standard settings, it is your fault if things don't line up they way you want them. Going around telling people to change their signatures like you did is inappropriate. No one else goes around mandating changes in signatures in order to fit their own personal setup, you're not special. Sven Manguard Wha? 20:44, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Accessibility? Secretlondon (talk) 20:54, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
Read it again, it says sigs shouldn't cause problems for other users. Of course, anyone vain enough to insist on filling up the edit box with unnecessary code because they want to have a pretty sig which adds nothing to functionality is unlikely to give a damn about the eyes of other editors. Your vanity is obviously more important than my physical pain. You're so special you can do what you damn well want with your sig and bugger the rest of us. DuncanHill (talk) 20:54, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
The policy states they have to be readable. Implied since Wikipedia has a white background, the sig needs to be readable on a white background. Therefore the user can make it black if they so choose. Turning on a gadget on your end that makes some of the signatures unreadable on your end, is technically your problem. There is code you can implement that override the black colors and make them white and other darker colors and make them lighter colors and so forth.—cyberpower ChatOnline 21:16, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
So we shouldn't use the gadgets in prefs, but get some random code from god knows where? Oh that's helpful. DuncanHill (talk) 21:18, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
What do you mean god knows where? It's on the internet. CSS can override font colors. That should probably be built in to the gadget itself. Google it. I'm sure you'll find it.—cyberpower ChatOnline 21:35, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
Google what? You may not have been previously aware of this, but in fact several Wikipedians haven't got the first clue about coding or CSS. That's one of the reasons Wikipedia has gadgets. DuncanHill (talk) 21:37, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
I've changed my signature accordingly. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 21:32, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I have invited WikiProject Manual of Style and WikiProject Accessibility to comment here. Axl ¤ [Talk] 22:10, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment." - first line of WMF:Home.
"Every single human being" includes the ones who need light text on a dark background because of the way their vision works. The odd thing is that it's perfectly possible to make all of our content, including editors' signatures, available to them - and all it requires is that when we set a text colour, we also set a background colour with good contrast. Now you may say "I don't have to do that", and you'd be perfectly within your rights. But ask yourself, "Does that actually move us nearer to the goal of every single human being, or further away?" --RexxS (talk) 23:28, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
On the other hand, you could ask whether it's really that big a deal. Foreign language signatures also prevent some percentage of people from properly reading it, but we don't have any issue with that; I see no reason we should have different standards here. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 03:09, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Accessibility issues are rarely a big deal until they affect you. Then it's a different story. Foreign language signatures do cause issues, but one fix is to provide something to identify you in English. Try signing your posts without the English part and see if "we don't have any issue with that". --RexxS (talk) 09:42, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Some people do that already, and have been doing it for years. It's not like there aren't workarounds for either one, some of which have been mentioned above and others which are even easier (just hover over the link for a second, or highlight it with your cursor, depending on your problem). I know plenty about accessibility issues in real life, lest you be concerned. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 16:09, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
If I change my background to blue such that the standard signs can't be viewed by me so will it be okay for me to drop a note on thousands of wikipedian's tp asking them to make color changes in their sign because I changed my settings, no I don't think so. Sorry but this will not be proper also leaving a note on editor's talk page and saying this: I have been asked to inform you to change your signature without any proper consensus wasn't the right thing that was done. →TSU tp* 04:18, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Shoot, It's really not that big a deal to change it. Granted the claim in policy is a little out there but who knows how many are using a black background? I have no problem since the request was friendly enough and well meaning. If he had come demanding we might have another issue.--SKATER Speak. 08:55, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
"Hi, Leaky caldron. I am not able to view your signature with my settings. I have been asked to inform you to change your signature. Please see here." Well, I'm not sure that it is all that friendly. Sure it has the obvious veneer of politeness. But it is also rather disingenuous. I have never encountered this editor yet he names me specifically in the earlier part of the discussion. There is also the fact that he appears to have gone looking for signatures that his gadget fails to render effectively and spammed then with a similar message. Finally, there is an implied threat, or at least suggestion of authority, in the reference to this discussion, "I have been asked to inform you to change your signature". No he hasn't. He has been advised what one possible solution to his viewing problem is. I don't see any "authority" to "inform me to change". I will await the outcome of this discussion. The editor is a doctor, I'm sure he can explain why this change is so important that a dozen editors need to be persuaded to change something that no one else has complained about. Leaky Caldron 10:14, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
In my case, I was happy to agree to the request, perhaps because Axl asked in such a reasonable manner, perhaps because signatures should be there to help, not hinder, perhaps because I understand the need for accessibility (which RexxS has explained so eloquently above) or perhaps because my entire signature would be invisible for those who use a black background. Anyway, I'm satisfied with my change, which few people would notice, but makes a enough of a difference so that it can be read. WormTT≡talk≡ 10:26, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
I ran the green on black gadget and other than the black absent status part of my signature, it's readable so it doesn't really matter to me what others do as it's their signature and they can choose to comply or not.—cyberpower ChatOnline 12:27, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Firstly, I apologize to anyone who found my message rude or inappropriately dictatorial. It certainly isn't my intention to make demands of editors. I have no authority to do so.

Secondly, I am dismayed by the hostility I have received. In particular, Sven Manguard and Leaky Caldron seem to be assuming bad faith.

After this response by Redrose64, I checked the guidelines that he linked (WP:Signatures and Accessibility). I admit that I not very familiar with those guidelines, but Redrose64's recommendation seemed to fit. Therefore I followed his recommendation. Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:41, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

How dare you accuse me of acting in bad faith. I have not discussed this matter on any other editor's talk page and have not discussed it with you directly. The bad faith is on your part, by dressing up your requirement for a change in my signature as a requirement of some authority that does not exist, i.e. "I have been asked to inform you to change your signature". You had been asked no such thing. If there is one thing that really gets me upset & annoyed it is blind dishonesty. Leaky Caldron 11:50, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict)No problem as your intentions weren't wrong. It is just that not everyone will be open to the idea of changing the sign on an request. I've been trying other look for my sign and will change shortly. Thanks! →TSU tp* 11:55, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

" How dare you accuse me of acting in bad faith. "

— Leaky Caldron

Huh? I have certainly not accused you of that. The last point of your post is particularly ironic. Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:59, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, you are correct. You said I was assuming bad faith not acting in bad faith. I apologise. To be clear, what I accuse you of is not being direct enough to request the change for yourself but to dress your request up in such a way as to make it look like a quasi-official requirement. You have not explained why this is necessary and why you need to track down editors with whom you have no regular interaction, rather than dealing with it on an as and when required basis (if at all). Leaky Caldron 12:12, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
I've just switched on this absurd green on black view. Apart from giving me a headache, I observed the following. Standard blue headings are much harder to read. More to the point, the second part of my user name linking to my talk page is perfectly clear. When you hover on it, it displays my full user name. This is a fuss about nothing. I do not accept that there is a legitimate accessibility issue and suspect that it is purely an aesthetic preference that has led to this request. As such I will not be changing the first element of my sig. until a better justification is provided. Leaky Caldron 16:16, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

The suggestion by Sven and others that they don't need to accommodate "non-standard settings" is patently absurd. These users who have implemented custom signatures are the ones forcing their "non-standard settings" upon everyone else. The default signature doesn't present accessibility problems. How is it the responsibility of anyone but those who made the mess to clean it up? Accessibility is a real concern and these users who have modified their user signatures to be non-standard are negatively impacting the user experience for others. What's the argument here? --MZMcBride (talk) 14:21, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Proxy error

I am getting these messages frequently:

The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server. The proxy server could not handle the request POST /wikipedia/en/w/index.php.
Reason: Error reading from remote server
Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu) Server at secure.wikimedia.org Port 443

I am assuming this is because some server is overloaded. I use the secure login—does that affect which servers are used? Can I do anything other than keep re-sending edited pages? Would I be better off using the non-secure login? --Greenmaven (talk) 01:46, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Are you using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ or https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/? If the latter, try changing to the former. Anomie⚔ 02:29, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
I will try the former, as I am using the latter. But I would appreciate getting a tech answer to my initial questions. Tks --Greenmaven (talk) 07:50, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
secure.wikimedia.org is deprecated. See Wikipedia:Secure server. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:56, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for that. I will read it. --Greenmaven (talk) 06:45, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

replacing references temporarily

Using Perl, I've slurped an article.

I need to match the first sentence of the article, but intervening references with a period in them create an ambiguity so the script does not find the period at end of the sentence (it finds the period in the embedded reference instead).

So, I'd like to be able to save references off and put them back again into the first sentence after I've extracted and processed it.

How can this be done? The Transhumanist 21:41, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Assuming you have the entire article in a scalar, I'd use a regex something like this (you'll need to add in other weird reference type coding, but you get the idea): if ($article =~ m$^(.+?)(<ref>.+</ref>)?(.*?)?\.$){$first_sentence = "$1" . "$3"}. In case you don't know, the ? following + makes it non-greedy, which is probably important for what you're trying to do. Shadowjams (talk) 23:06, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
That won't work if there's more than one <ref> element in the document and the first sentence ends between them. Something like this should work: m$^(<ref>.*?</ref>|.)*?\.$ (the sentence ends up in $&). You need to replace the <ref> part with something that will actually match all ref open tags (perhaps just <ref would work) and you will have to deal with empty tags as well. And I'm sure there are other bugs. I wish MediaWiki syntax wasn't such a mess. -- BenRG (talk) 23:44, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
Did you test that? I don't think it will catch the refs at all, because it should treat the entire OR as a single token... I'll test it in a minute. Shadowjams (talk) 00:22, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
Ok that works. I learned something new (could you tell me where I went wrong? I'm surprised the () group allows alternate versions like that). As an aside, you're gonna have practical problems with this script with things like infoboxes, and other templates, the IPA template, for example, has lots of periods in it that will cause you problems. You might do something like ensure a space after the period, which would cut down on some of these. Shadowjams (talk) 00:27, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
In your code, the initial .+? means that <ref> will match the first occurrence in the file, but the following .+ means that </ref> will match the last occurrence, which may be too late. If that .+ is replaced with .+?, it will match the first occurrence of </ref>, but in that case it will fail if there's a second <ref>...</ref> in the first sentence which has a period in it.
| is an infix operator that has lower precedence than concatenation (which is the only other infix operator, I think), and you can override that with any kind of parentheses. In older regular expression syntaxes parentheses were only used for grouping (as in mathematical expressions), but Perl uses them for capturing groups and has the ugly (?:...) syntax for pure grouping parentheses. I should have used (?:...), but I wanted the expression to be slightly more readable.
I had an amateur oversight for some reason... I misread (1|2)* as only matching 11111, 22222, and not 12121212. This seems obvious to me now. Temporary regression I guess. Either way, your regex is nicely compact, does the job well. Shadowjams (talk) 17:37, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Since Perl tries the leftmost alternative first, it will match <ref>.*?</ref> (a single reference) if it can. Otherwise it will advance by one character (matching .) and try again. Actually, this is buggy: if there's no period in the whole article outside of <ref>...</ref> pairs, it will backtrack and find a period inside a ref, which is probably not what you want. To fix that you would need to control backtracking somehow. I think that m$^(<ref>.*?</ref>(*PRUNE)|.)*?\.$ will work, but I've never actually used (*PRUNE) before. This expression still has a lot of problems, and Wikipedia being what it is I bet there are a lot of pages that will trigger those problems. -- BenRG (talk) 06:09, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
Using ?: has two main advantages, reducing processing time and readability. The first (as I understand it - later versions of perl may be smarter) only applies if it is used for all groups, and is negligible in most cases, the second is somewhat subjective. I tend to use it where branching selections would give different numbers, this is relatively rare and I have not looked for better solutions. Rich Farmbrough, 12:53, 26 May 2012 (UTC).
The big extra thing these regexes need to match is something like <ref[^>]*/> for named refs - and indeed the valid but meaningless &ltref />.Rich Farmbrough, 13:02, 26 May 2012 (UTC).
Further to the extra comments you made on my talk page about replacing the refs temporarily with XXXXX:
This process is called "strip marking" and is used by a number of processes including the MediaWiki software, AWB and the perl code for Helpful Pixie Bot and Pixie. There are several issues to account for:
  1. Assumptions. Depending on what you can assume you can make the process more or less simple. The following items can be ignored if simplifying assumptions can be made.
  2. No mis-matches. Sufficiently bad mis-matches means you have to throw the idea away (at least partly), and find another strategy. Sufficiently bad means:
    p(mis-match)* damage > threshold
  3. Nesting - code should deal with arbitrary levels of nesting if needed
  4. Removal - if the stuff surrounding thing you are stripping is removed, should it stay?
  5. Matching the strip marker. This has tripped me up using AWB (and indeed the coder's response to the bug I logged is how I know AWB uses strip markers).
  6. Conversely no aliases for strip markers. "Strip marker" would be a bad strip marker (in general), as would anything you might find on a WP page. I might suggest for generality using a bunch of Unicode characters form obscure planes (or even illegal Unicode characters if perl will let you get away with them - these should provide extra belt-and-braces if you check for legality before you write the page). But for this case even your "XXXXX" might well suffice.
  7. Replacement - if you can be sure the whole thing is simple you can push the items onto a stack (array) and pop them back afterwards. This is effectively an atomicity argument - and the way Pixie does it (though recursively in some cases - which is rather elegant in its way). If, however, you might re-arrange paragraphs you need to use something smarter - a hash for example. Strip-mark with a unique strip mark for each item (remembering how this affects the above point) and replace by iterating through the hash or strip markers - removing the items from the has h as you go. If the hash deos not end up empty, flag an exception.
Rich Farmbrough, 12:53, 26 May 2012 (UTC).
Try User:PleaseStand/References segregator. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 13:25, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
FWIW, AnomieBOT uses strip markers that match the regular expression \x02[a-zA-Z0-9_-]+\x03; the middle part is a base64-encoded hash of the text that was stripped (so if the same text-to-be-stripped appears more than once, it will have the same strip marker; I consider this a feature). Neither U+0002 nor U+0003 may appear in wikitext via normal edits, because MediaWiki automatically converts them in HTTP request parameters to U+FFFD (�). And it does so before the md5 parameter to action=edit is processed, so the edit will automatically fail if the bot code doesn't unstrip. Anomie⚔ 04:27, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
Elegant. Rich Farmbrough, 05:21, 27 May 2012 (UTC).


What I do is strip out the new line characters so that I don't have to specify multiline in the subsequent regexes (I was getting weird errors).

Then I put all the references into an array.

Then I do the strip marking.

Like this: 

   $slurped=~ s/\n//mg;                                      # strip new line characters (\n) to catch all refs
   @ref   =  ( $slurped =~ m/(\<ref.*?\<\/ref\>)/g );        # pull all refs into an array
   print "the zero ref is:  $ref[0]\n\n";                    # test that it is working by printing out some array elements
   print "the 1st ref is:  $ref[1]\n\n";
   print "the 2nd ref is:  $ref[2]\n\n";
   print "the 3rd ref is:  $ref[3]\n\n";
   print "the 4th ref is:  $ref[4]\n\n";
   print "the 5th ref is:  $ref[5]\n\n\n";

   $slurped =~ s/\<ref.*?\<\/ref\>/XXXXX/mg;                # strip marking (strip refs, replace with XXXXX)

What I can't figure out how to do is reverse the strip marking process, and put the array elements back in. Everything I've tried so far has failed.

Suggestions welcome. The Transhumanist 11:40, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

If you're storing the refs as an array, you could try something like $i=0; $slurped =~ s/XXXXXX/ $ref[$i++] /mge; or $slurped =~ s/XXXXXX/ shift @ref /mge;, although of course it'll totally screw up if "XXXXXX" happens to occur in the wikitext naturally or if you remove or rearrange any of the "XXXXXX"s. Also, BTW, I can't find it actually documented anywhere that s///ge actually evaluates in order left to right. Anomie⚔ 13:31, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Try using a hash instead of a bare array. Give a random key to each striping value (make it large enough it won't match anything in any article). Instead of using just XXXX for all references, use something like XXX$randomXXX and then store the random as the hash key, and the references as the value. Then replacement just involves iterating through your hash, looking for the key, and replacing it. This allows you to do more manipulation in the middle section of your program too, because you're not dependent on order to reassign the references.
For example, while ($slurped =~ /<ref.+?<\/ref>/is) {my $rand_key = "XXX" . rand() . "XXX"; $slurped =~ s#(<ref.+?</ref>)#$rand_key#is; $references{$rand_key} = $1}. Shadowjams (talk) 17:44, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Or better, use delimiters that cannot appear in wikitext due to normal edits: anything from U+0000 to U+001F besides tab (U+0009), LF (U+000A), and CR (U+000D) are usable for this purpose. Best too to use differing start and end delimiters, otherwise it locally appears that "!456!" could be a strip marker in something like "!123!456!789!". And if you must use rand(), at least check for collisions (e.g. something like my $key; do { $key = "\x02" . rand() . "\x03" } while exists($references{$key});).
You can also use the /e modifier and a callback function to avoid having to code a while loop for the stripping, something like $slurped =~ s/(<ref.+?<\/ref>)/ make_strip_key($1, \%references) /gise; (where make_strip_key might look something like sub make_strip_key { my ($text,$refs) = @_; my $key = ...; $refs->{$key}=$text; return $key; }). Anomie⚔ 18:39, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
You need to identify the references, otherwise you're basing it on order. I think concerns about rand for non-cryptographic functions are misplaced. Even a 32 bit seed is not going to have trouble avoiding collisions on say, 200 references. Shadowjams (talk) 19:59, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Actually, basing it on order (e.g. ++$global_counter) wouldn't be such a bad idea, since the actual number used is meaningless anyway. Sure, the chances are very low that rand() will return the same number twice while processing the references in a page (if I calculate correctly, 0.0004% on a page with 200 refs). But if you can easily lower the chances, why not do it? Anomie⚔ 21:04, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
(ec) I actually just spent way too long doing some back of the envelope calculations, and I thin you're right, an increment would be better for a host of reasons. My estimations are that if you evaluate 3 million articles with 30 references in each you have about a 26% of a collision on one of them. Those odds aren't bad for something in-house, but if it was ever going to be released you're right, it wouldn't be robust. And I hear people say lingering bad things about perl's rand generator; I don't know how many of those are true for the modern one, but better write it safer. Shadowjams (talk) 21:08, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Google Maps displays wrong place

I clicked on the coordinates in the Colvin Mountain article, chose Google Maps, which then displayed a place in California. However, Colvin Mountain is actually in Alabama. The coordinates in the article appear correct, and Bing Maps shows the correct place in Alabama. What's going wrong when I try Google Maps?—A bit iffy (talk) 18:53, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

I suspect that this is related to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geographical coordinates#Change in behavior of Google Maps. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:17, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
Still dsplaying the wrong place even after the change was reverted. I think the problem is with Google Maps — it's somehow deciding California's Colvin Mountain should take precedence even though the URL being passed contains the coordinates for the Alabama Colvin Mountain.—A bit iffy (talk) 10:32, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
One of the problems with making edits to Template:GeoTemplate is that changes take hours - even days - to propagate through to the articles. This is partly because it's not a case of the template being directly transcluded by Wikipedia articles - there is at least one layer of toolserver in there. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:47, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

You are probably aware of this, but just in case, there's a bug in 'what links here' navigation. If you 'view (next nn)' while the links are redirecting (say, when checking what still links somewhere after redirecting the link in a template), you can't go back to the first page. I assume you can't go back 20 unless there are 20 to go back to. It used to be that you'd just end up at the beginning of the list; now you have to do the search over. — kwami (talk) 21:27, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Can you give an example? - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 10:09, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Page name change request

Hey, we should really change the name of the page Tram tracking to "Tram-tracks." The latter is the more commonly-used term among members of the medical community. Just sayin....

Thanks,

Rob Hurt (talk) 00:57, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

You should ideally take that to the Talk page. -_Rsrikanth05 (talk) 10:36, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Broken deletion summaries

Sometime within the last 24 hours, deletion summaries have become a wreck. For example, when I was going to delete Category:Wikipedia files needing editor assistance at upload as of 25 May 2012, the deletion summary ends up looking like this: %5B%5BWP%3ACSD%23G6%7CG6%5D%5D%3A+Housekeeping+and+routine+%28non-controversial%29+cleanup. This also occurs with prods (take Bernie Marsden (album), for example, I get Expired+%5B%5BWP%3APROD%7CPROD%5D%5D%2C+concern+was%3A+no+sources+to+be+found.+no+such+album.+duplicate+of+%5B%5BGoing+to+My+Hometown+%28album%29%5D%5D). Same for File:Bishop Charles Blake, Sr..jpg, which I deleted a few minutes ago as a copyright violation. This seems to only effect pages tagged for deletion where the template automatically creates the deletion summary for administrators. Anyone know why it suddenly broke? — ξxplicit 00:57, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

I have no idea why it happened, but it looks like a second "urlencode" was added somewhere. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 01:00, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
This should have fixed the problem (at least it looked good on tests I did). —Kusma (t·c) 01:17, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Everything seems to be fine now, thank you so much! — ξxplicit 03:16, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
It appears the extra urlencoding was added in this edit by Krinkle (talk · contribs). It's probably not a bad edit (for reasons I won't go into), except that it needs a bit more thinking to do it right. Anomie⚔ 03:28, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T35973
MediaWiki:Sysop.js was recently moved to MediaWiki:Group-sysop.js (see MediaWiki talk:Group-sysop.js#Conversion to gadgets). The move left a #REDIRECT [[MediaWiki:Group-sysop.js]] behind, which I'm sure isn't valid JavaScript. This may also have something to do with it. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:17, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
That would be bug 33973... Helder 11:36, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Font in print version

Can I customize the font used in the Printable version of pages? I have a custom CSS and I'm customizing the body font, but it makes the Printable version uses the same font, when I don't want that. I tried to use a code print { font-family: serif; } but it didn't work and I can't find a way. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 10:59, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

I think you want @media screen { body { font-family: "Comic Sans"; } }, or whatever. Happy‑melon 11:39, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
You are cruel... he wants @media print { body { font-family: serif; } }. — Edokter (talk) — 11:41, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict)See Help:Printable#Personal customization, Change the print font size. You can use that as a start and add the font-family. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 12:16, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Thank you all for answering. Unfortunately, the problem is still unsolved after many attempts. The code didn't work, even after I attempted to copy from Help:Printable#Personal_customization. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 15:12, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Don't forget that the "printable version" is still a screen display; the @media print styles will only come into effect when a page is actually printed (or maybe on print preview, not sure about that). Have you tried adding an !important declaration? Happy‑melon 15:27, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Works for me. The article T shows a serif in print preview. Remember to bypass your cache, then purge the page you are trying to print. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 15:47, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
You are right. The style only appeared when I made a print preview. (at: Happy Melon) --Mahmudmasri (talk) 15:53, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Resolved

I have created a template with links. When used on the linked page, the self-link does not turn black as expected, but red. Any idea? (see Template:Periodic table (Pyykkö model), used on page Extended periodic table and Period 8 element. Expected regular selflink for "Period 8" or "9" in the leftmost column). -DePiep (talk) 17:23, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Er, because there's an explicit "color: #F00;" declaration for the cell? Any non-link text you put in there would be red, self-links included. Happy‑melon 17:26, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Got it. Thx. -DePiep (talk) 18:27, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Javascript issues

Hi, I'm recently having a few issues with Javascripts on Wikipedia. I use two tools for adding references, one just adds a {{}} icon after the signature icon and the other adds a three line box with options for refs, cleanup tags, infoboxes et al. The first one is no longer working on Mozilla Firefox 12.0 while the latter does. The reverse happens on Opera 11.61. In addition, Twinkle won't work properly on Firefox. The drop down menu only gives me CSD on Firefox and I don't see the Rollback options while viewing a page diff. I see them fine on Opera. Anyone knows why this is happening? --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 10:35, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I m also not able to see ROLLBACK & ROLLBACK VANDAL option in Chrome as well as Firefox while viewing any diff or article history or RecentChanges. →TSU tp* 10:38, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
I see the Rollback menu in a few pages like this one. TW dropdown gives me full mene in the History tab in a few sections. I'm not concerned much about this but I want my ref tool back. This is still on fx 12.0. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 10:53, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Which of your user scripts is the one that adds that button? When do you last know it was working? - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 10:56, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
I'm trying to recall that. I'll get back to you about it. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 10:57, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Hi Jarry, I do not know which .js I've imported for this, but this is what I used to use for refs. I think it is User:Smith609/toolbox.js. Here is a screeny. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 12:45, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Hmm, the screenshot looks like an older version of User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar.js. In any case, are your rollback options on diff working yet? - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 13:45, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I believe it was 2.0a. It used to 1.0 while I was on Monobook till mid-2009. The rollback options on diffs appear sporadically on Firefox and Opera now. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 14:26, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Can't see image

I added an image to the article about Sanhedrin, but I can't see it on the screen, only the caption. Did I do something wrong? --Jonund (talk) 16:30, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Seems to be working for me. Can you still not see it? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:42, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
No, I still can't see it. --Jonund (talk) 17:35, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
Try a WP:BYPASS. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:39, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
Thank you! It worked. --Jonund (talk) 07:39, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Some changes are not visible, f.i. in File:Kloster Höningen Spolien Hauptstrasse.JPG. I reloaded, purged but the "actual" thumbnail stays the same and the preview shows the version before uploading the new version. Server problems?--Hic et nunc (talk) 12:04, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

AFAIR thumbnails are created by a lower-priority background process on the server. It may take a while for the thumbnails to be updated. Nageh (talk) 12:18, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Error in wikitable sortable script when dealing with 2-row headings

Name
(English) 		Name
(Japanese) 		Beast mode
(transformation) 		Faction Animation Comics Ref(s)
MX PR BW BM BWII BWCC BWN DW IDW
Optimus Primal Beast Convoy Gorilla Yes No Debut Yes No Yes No Yes Yes
Leo Prime Lio Convoy White lion Yes No No No Debut Yes No No Yes

There is an issue with the script connected to the "wikitable sortable" class. I was working on a table to help clean-up the numerous list articles related to the Transformers: Beast Wars franchise. I couldn't figure out why the sorting wasn't working for the first columns, but it is, it's the buttons that aren't placing right. The Javascript is sorting the 2-row-heading columns, but it is putting the "sort" button on the first 1-rowed headings. So, when I click to sort under "MX" (the first heading that takes a single row), it is actually sorting by "Name (English)" (the first heading in the table). The entry "BM" (the fourth single-rowed heading) is actually sorting by the fourth entry in the table, "MX" (so it appears to not sort, because the two entries are the same). I hope the error is obvious, the table will appear to readers to be sorting by the wrong entry. Can someone skilled in JS take a look at the wikitable sortable script? Let me know if I am not describing the issue clearly. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 01:30, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the multi-heading columns aren't sorting at all. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 01:40, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Except the first, so the first three columns sort.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 01:48, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
I was unclear, I meant the columns that are under two separate headings (like Animation and MX) didn't appear to sort. I've replaced the icons with text and now they are sorting, so that part was my fault. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 01:56, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Is this a problem with the javascript, or is the placement off because of the CSS? Help:Sorting says the JS for this is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/wikibits.js , but there does not appear to be a JS file there. I also can't seem to find the class "wikitable sortable" in MediaWiki:Common.css, nor is it listed at Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes (although it obviously exists). ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 20:51, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Class names cannot contain spaces; there is therefore no such class as "wikitable sortable". There are two separate classes: wikitable and sortable. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:55, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Should I just make a bug for this? I assumed it would be a relatively easy fix, once someone located the code. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 01:52, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Two paragraphs in wikitext rendered as one

From a discussion here, some experimenting shows a peculiarity. This sandbox (permalink) contains wikitext (there are no hidden characters or trailing whitespace): 

{{talkquote|
*xyz}}

one

two

The "one" and "two" should be displayed as two paragraphs, but they are combined as "one two". Part of the html follows: 

<div id="mw-content-text" lang="en" dir="ltr" class="mw-content-ltr">
<blockquote style="background-color:#dfefff; border:solid 1px #1e90ff;
 border-left:solid 3px #1e90ff; margin:0px 25px 0px 25px;
 padding-left:8px; padding-right:8px;">
<ul>
<li>xyz</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>one two</p>

<!-- two comments omitted here -->

</div>

If the blank line before "one" is replaced with "----" (horizontal rule), there is no problem. It is something to do with the list ("*xyz"). This is pretty minor, but someone might like to look at it. Johnuniq (talk) 01:08, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

The wikitext essentially transcludes to:
<blockquote>
*xyz</blockquote>

one

two
This seems to be related to the guidance at meta:Help:HTML in wikitext#<div> (relating to the div element, but evidently applicable to other block elements such as blockquote):
  • <div> [and other block elements] should be followed by a newline
  • </div> [etc] should be preceded by a newline
  • </div> [etc] followed by text on the same line, two newlines and text before <div> [etc] on the same line should be avoided (because the two newlines only produce a space)
I've edited {{Talkquote}} to add newlines in the relevant places, which seems to fix the problem. Hopefully this doesn't have side effects.
— Richardguk (talk) 07:08, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
That looked easy! Thanks. Johnuniq (talk) 08:32, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Misplaced hope, alas. I've reverted the fix because it caused other problems where the template was transcluded within a wikilist (because previous transclusions had relied on the template containing no line breaks, so being treated as part of the transcluding list item).
Am now doubtful that there is a universal fix, but the parser ought to cope better with blockquote tags on one line, so I would call this a wikitext parser bug.
— Richardguk (talk) 01:30, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
FYI, the problem appears to be that MediaWiki tries to avoid automatic paragraph breaking inside HTML block tags like <blockquote>, and the fact that the </blockquote> is on the same line as the wikitext list element makes the parser get confused and never exit "in block tag" mode. OTOH, it's stupidly easy to confuse it the other way too because it doesn't take nested blocks into account, or check if the close-block tag even matches the open-block tag at all. Anomie⚔ 15:39, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm having a heck of a time researching how to format a wiki link, mainly because I don't know what the link format is called. I would like to use a single click link to a new edit section to my talk page,
like so Leave a message 

<span class="plainlinks">[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Mlpearc&action=edit&section=new Leave a message]</span>

But, I've seen it formatted something like this 

[[User talk:Mlpearc#action=edit/new|Leave a message]]

I can't come up with the correct format, and hoping someone could help me out.

Thanx Mlpearc (powwow) 04:10, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Try:
  • <span class="plainlinks">[{{fullurl:User talk:Mlpearc|action=edit&section=new}} Leave a message]</span>
which produces this:
More info at Help:Magic words#Paths.
— Richardguk (talk) 06:27, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
See also mw:Manual:Parameters to index.php#Edit and submit for details of additional query parameters if you want to include a custom message or default text on the edit page. — Richardguk (talk) 07:14, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict)The only thing I can think of is [{{canonicalurl:User talk:Mlpearc|action=edit&section=new}} Leave a message] which will give you " Leave a message " - which is slightly shorter, but still shows as an external link without the span tag. We have a template, {{span}}, that you could use as {{span|1=[{{canonicalurl:User talk:Mlpearc|action=edit&section=new}} Leave a message]|class=plainlinks}} to get " Leave a message ", but then you're starting to get a long string again with no real benefit. You could perhaps wrap it in a template entirely, If you don't plan to use it constantly - or, perhaps just subst: it when you do use it, like I tend to do with my tb template, {{User:Avicennasis/tb?}}. A quick scan through userspace shows that most people use coding similar to whats already mentioned above. Avicennasis @ 06:37, 9 Sivan 5772 / 06:37, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
fullurl has the advantage over canonicalurl that it uses whichever connection protocol the reader is already browsing with, so editors using https do not get switched to http. (Not sure whether this also has a similar beneficial effect for readers browsing on the mobile site.) — Richardguk (talk) 07:27, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Ah. I never thought about the secure server aspect - good information! Thanks! Avicennasis @ 07:30, 9 Sivan 5772 / 07:30, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
This cannot be done with a wikilink [[...]]. Category:Internal link templates has many templates which use fullurl or similar, and use the plainlinks class to format the link without an external link icon. For example {{Querylink}} where {{Querylink|User talk:Mlpearc|qs=action=edit&section=new|Leave a message}} gives Leave a message. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:06, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Thanks everyone, I thought I saw some wikilink that handled such a parameter. Maybe it was the " fullurl: " I saw. Mlpearc (powwow) 14:10, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

A recent software change causes untruths in old entries in editing histories.

Discussion copied from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive236#A recent software change causes untruths in old entries in editing histories.

Discussion continued

  • (empty) is what you usually see where the filesize would normally be when a page is 0 bytes. That, and the fact that the spectroscopy article shows an edit that expanded the page to 1892 bytes as being an edit that also added 1892 bytes suggests to me that empty is a synonym for 0 rather than "no data". If this is true then there is a glitch somewhere. It may that the Nicole Kidman edits above are part of the same issue, or a completely different thing. ☮Soap☮ 00:18, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Note the page is now at Scarborough, Maine again. ☮Soap☮ 02:23, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Gadgets all AWOL

None of my gadgets are working any more. Checking, I see that the "Gadgets" tab has disappeared from Preferences. This occurred at some point between 17:41 and 17:48 (UTC) --Redrose64 (talk) 17:51, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Same here. I am using the monobook skin. --hydrox (talk) 17:54, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Same here as well. I'm also using Monobook

KoshVorlon Angeli I demoni krushil nado mnoj 18:01, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Ditto. No Twinkle anymore, can't cope. A real pain for vandal fighters I'd imagine, harder to do AfDs, etc. Dougweller (talk) 18:03, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Was there some sort of update that damaged Monobook? I'm likewise affected. It would be appreciated if the developers paid attention to those of us who still use it; they've never gotten around to fixing the color for external links that have been clicked. Nyttend (talk) 18:05, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Likewise, twinkle not working and gadgets in preferences.--Chip123456 (talk) 18:07, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
(ec) I guess someone's accidentally broken something, like when Popups failed a couple of weeks ago. I'm looking to see if I can fix it, but I haven't found where yet.  —SMALLJIM  18:07, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
I noticed there was a period of about 5 minutes during which I got repeated "Wikimedia server error" pages, and then when it resolved, I had no gadgets. I'm using Firefox 12.0 with the monobook skin. WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 18:08, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Same with me - I'm on vector and can no longer access any gadgets... including Twinkle! AHHHHH!!!!! Theopolisme TALK 18:12, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Ditto - everything's dead, both the Gadgets, Twinkle and the stuff in CustomCSS and Custom JavaScript... - The Bushranger One ping only 18:13, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Preferences → Gadgets is missing. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 18:15, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Ditto the comments above. What's going on?--JayJasper (talk) 18:16, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
* Updated * ' I checked the wikimedia blog (both the general and the tech) and saw no changed that would account for this, and only one new patch | here and I'm not too sure this is what did it either .

KoshVorlon Angeli I demoni krushil nado mnoj 18:16, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Noticed this when the revision history has gone back to that version where you can see fuck-all with low colours used. Lugnuts (talk) 18:17, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Maybe it's a hack? - The Bushranger One ping only 18:21, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Im guessing theyre just working on something. It seems to look different every minute for me, e.g. sometimes it shows "updated since last visit" and sometimes it doesnt, although that could just be a problem with my Internet connection which has been very unstable lately. ☮Soap☮ 18:22, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Are people using the vector skin still able to use any gadgets? I use monobook and cannot... Salvio Let's talk about it! 18:24, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
It's not working on Vector either. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 18:25, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Since no one else has mentioned it, I'd add that I no longer have pop-ups either. --Arxiloxos (talk) 18:26, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Looks like you're right, the page is changing rapidly and it shows that it's been worked on as of about 3 mins ago.

"gadget" is showing up in the source code. Probably some coding in process KoshVorlon Angeli I demoni krushil nado mnoj 18:27, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

"Coding in process"???? Isn't there a sandbox where they work on this stuff? WikiDan61ChatMe!ReadMe!! 18:29, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
If there isn't, there should be - any coder worth beans should know you don't work on live code. You work on it, test it, then release it. - The Bushranger One ping only 18:31, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

WMF engineers are investigating. Kaldari (talk) 18:32, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Should be fixed momentarily. Kaldari (talk) 18:33, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
It seems to be fixed. Thanks!! - The Bushranger One ping only 18:37, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
There are people running down my street waving their arms in the air and screaming hysterically. -- Scjessey (talk) 18:35, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria! - The Bushranger One ping only 18:37, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
I have tested around 30 Wikimedia wikis, both Wikipedia languages and other projects. Three were missing gadgets, all three are Wikipedias: The English, German de: and Bulgarian bg:. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:36, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Hey, mine's working again! Anyone else?--JayJasper (talk) 18:37, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Looks like we got pop-ups and gadgets back!!! Great job!!

KoshVorlon Angeli I demoni krushil nado mnoj 18:38, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

It works! I can stop running down the street waving my arms in the air and screaming hysterically.--Muhandes (talk) 18:39, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Working again, although I had to reset all my gadget choices. (Hohum @) 18:40, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Gadgets are also in de: now but not bg: (I don't know whether they were there before). PrimeHunter (talk) 18:43, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Last time that I made a note (6 October 2011), Bulgarian Wikipedia definitely had gadgets. Among those I noted at the time were those corresponding to "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page" and "Add a "Purge" option to the top of the page, which purges the page's cache" These gadgets are no longer effective there. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:02, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Try blanking then reverting bg:MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition there (or asking a local admin to do it). That appears to be what fixed things here. [4] the wub "?!" 19:17, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
I didn't do anything but gadgets are back at bg:. Thanks. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:12, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I spoke too soon. I don;t get popups for diffs on my watchlist page any more. (Hohum @) 18:50, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Hmm... I hear that some people might have twinkle working again, but mine unfortunately isn't. I still can't warn vandals using twinkle, let alone click on any other tabs. Minima© (talk) 19:46, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
The only gadget to which I frequently pay attention is the clock with the purge link. Unlike earlier, the clock is visible, but clicking the clock has the effect of refreshing the page instead of appending "&action=purge" to the URL. Nyttend (talk) 20:10, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
I'm still having trouble with this. My popups aren't appearing any more, and neither is the clock in the top-right of the page that I use to purge the cache. – PeeJay 20:55, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Can you get to Preferences → Gadgets? If so, note down which ones are switched on; then switch them all off, save it, then switch them on again and save. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:00, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
I totally didn't think of that. Thank you. – PeeJay 21:09, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Go go Gadget Reset! - The Bushranger One ping only 22:28, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Getting "spacey"

Anyone getting |this , check the collapsed php code ) or | this . Seems like we have another little bug crawling 'round the pedia! It appears to be inserting spaces into anything that looks like code !

KoshVorlon Angeli I demoni krushil nado mnoj 19:52, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

That would be you, by the looks of it; your edit removed all the indentation (again). Please work out what's causing your edits to do that, and fix it. Happy‑melon 20:06, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually, one edit is mine, second edit has "RedRoses" name on it. I'm using the same browser (firefox 12.0), same gadgets, no new add-ons (I'm at work, and am limited to what I can add-in). I'm also not using any macros. hmmmm...

KoshVorlon Angeli I demoni krushil nado mnoj 20:11, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

My edit shown above was an intentional fix, a partial revert of KoshVorlon's bad edit. The actual chain (see User talk:KoshVorlon#Ancillary damage) was as follows. First came this edit, which I fixed; then came this edit three minutes later, which I fixed again; and now it's happened a third time. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:23, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Bad edit? No. Once again, I haven't touched the php code. I have entered two text message (not even in that section) regarding the gadgets tab,and two messages about this new error. I'm unsure why that code is being affected (both here and on my talk page), however, I am not actually editing it. (Using Win 7, Firefox 12.0, no add-on toolbars except google, very few gadgets on ) Same set up I've always used. (No recent updates on my computer either .... I'm at work and do that at the end of the day  :) ). I'm inclined to think it's a bug

KoshVorlon Angeli I demoni krushil nado mnoj 20:41, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Disable all script you load from your monobook.js and see if it still happens. Possibly, there may be some 'sanitizer' code active while you edit. — Edokter (talk) — 20:52, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Looks like it was the Javascript gadget. I've removed it and tested a few times, No odd spacing is happening now. Thanks for the advice !

KoshVorlon Angeli I demoni krushil nado mnoj 21:39, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

{{Supplement}}

Hello.

The above template is evidently not engineered to allow a shortcut box to be built in. Given that I do not know what code to insert to enable this, I am requesting that a more experienced user implement the change which I am requesting. Thank you. 76.251.28.21 (talk) 21:12, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Unlike {{Essay}}, {{Supplement}} requires named parameters for shortcuts as the documentation shows. You didn't name them when you changed from {{Essay}} to {{Supplement}} in [5] so I have done it in [6]. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:30, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
You also didn't give the pages parameter to say which page(s) it is intended to supplement. What did you have in mind? PrimeHunter (talk) 21:33, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Weird null edit problem on watchlist

Twice today I have noticed a strange bug on my watchlist - when someone makes a null edit (such as this [7]) it appeared on my watch this as

  • (diff | hist) . . Alan Wake‎; 23:30 . . '''(+81,433)'''‎ . . ‎Anthony77fx (talk | contribs)‎ [rollback]

The "81,433" is the size of the article at that edit, rather than the characters added. The null edit appeared after an actual edit (can be seen in the history). I can't seem to find the first instance of this bug. Яehevkor ✉ 23:36, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

See #Diff/watchlist difficulties above. Chris857 (talk) 23:47, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Ah, thank you. I browsed but didn't notice that. Яehevkor ✉ 17:10, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Template

I'm having a problem inserting cell padding into this template. The text is there, but it won't show up. Is it in the wrong place? – Confession0791 talk 05:10, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I got the padding to work. I'm not sure about the text problem you're referring to though. Which text won't show up? Equazcion (talk) 05:19, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
I just meant the padding between the text and the cell wall. Thanks for fixing it. – Confession0791 talk 06:13, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Advanced usage of pushpin maps

Assuming coordinates are given, I am wondering how to insert a pushpin map into an article outside of the infobox. Providing code (via the "nowiki" tool) and/or an example will suffice. GotR Talk 09:06, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Do you just want {{Location map}}? PrimeHunter (talk) 10:22, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
See for example Beacon Wood Country Park which has separate {{Infobox park}} and {{Location map}}. Compare that to Brockhill Country Park which also uses {{Infobox park}} but tucks the location map inside that infobox. There are several other examples in Category:Parks and open spaces in Kent. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:53, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

APNG format and alternatives?

I would like to create an animation of ~20 or so different leaf morphisms of Metrosideros polymorpha. I was originally planning on doing this as a ~400x320 px APNG and while this would work well on many browsers at the original resolution, it would never work on browsers like IE or Safari nor at different resolutions. One option would be to do it as a animated GIF but the quality would suffer due to the bitdepth restrictions. Another option would be to string them together into an Ogg, but that would mean that user would need to start the animation and would then have to wait for it to buffer. Does anyone have any suggestions for the best way to display a loop of ~ 20 frames that requires a high bitdepth? Thanks for any suggestions, a13ean (talk) 17:32, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I looked at this as a mostly intellectual issue previously, and it did seem that there is still a gap for a widely supported well functioning animated image solution. It may be worth asking at Commons, where they are media focussed, if you can't get a useful answer here. Rich Farmbrough, 19:22, 31 May 2012 (UTC).
Yeah I originally planned to post this there but it seems like it doesn't see much action. Will copy it over anyways, thanks. a13ean (talk) 19:32, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Odd file

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T36228

The file File:The Camden Head Front.jpg does not exist but says The requested page or revision cannot be found. Can someone check it? ww2censor (talk) 18:11, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

On initial page load, I only saw the error message. I purged (?action=purge) and now see the file and the log but the error is still there and there is no edit history. Quite odd. Killiondude (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:20, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
It appears to have revision 0. Worth of a bugzilla.
File:Camden Head Front.jpg is a duplicate, apparently, so use that for now. Rich Farmbrough, 19:25, 31 May 2012 (UTC).
Looks like the file uploaded but didn't create a file description page. This is being tracked by bugzilla:34228. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:26, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Edit summary to top

On some pages? I expect this is a known phenomenon, but it surprised me. Rich Farmbrough, 19:11, 31 May 2012 (UTC).

What are you referring to? If you mean that the arrow in the edit summary of section edits sometimes leads to the top of the page instead of the section then it's an old issue caused by certain characters in the section heading. If an anchor cannot be found on a page then browsers (all of them as far as I know) go to the top of the page. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:55, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
Oh, no. The "edit summary" text box appearing above the "edit" text box. I think it was a user talk archive page. Rich Farmbrough, 17:33, 3 June 2012 (UTC).

Edit logging

There appears to be a problem with edit logging this valid revert by an IP is followed by 3 additional log entries covering the revert but with no change in the content. Even if the IP had attempted multiple times these 3 log entries should not have been added as there is no change in the article. Keith D (talk) 20:13, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

This is another example of the issue at #Diff/watchlist difficulties. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:48, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Uploading a video from flickr

Could somebody upload this Creative Commons 2.0 licensed video into the commons for me. It would be a condierable help but I don't know how to do it.♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:36, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

According to Flickr you can only download your own videos, but not the ones from others. Armbrust, B.Ed. WrestleMania XXVIII The Undertaker 20–0 15:58, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
savevideo.me Arcandam (talk) 16:38, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Red X Won't fix dubious educational value. You could download it then upload it with the licencing information but I think it would be deleted as outside Wikimedia Commons scope. – Allen4names 17:19, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
You can safely assume he knows what he is doing; he has a Doctorate in Evil Medicine. Arcandam (talk) 17:35, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Twinkle

Just wondering if anyone else is having the same problem or know what could be wrong. Ever since the last software update the other day, when i use twinkle once it works fine but the second time i try to welcome or warn or prod something i click it and nothing at all happens. Don't get any options on which template to use just nothing. If i reset my web browser which is safari it works again. I use the Modern Skin. Any ideas. Edinburgh Wanderer 20:47, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

You should report this at Wikipedia talk:Twinkle. – Allen4names 05:03, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Project template – setting up a task force

Hello!

I was about to set up the Sports and games task force for the WikiProject Hungary, but did not manage to work out, how to set the Template:WikiProject Hungary. Although on the template's site it looks all okay, when added to for example Talk:Tímea Babos, it went all wrong and the task force slipped below the main project, as it can be seen. Could anyone tell me what is wrong or help to fix it and make the template correct? Since it's my first time to create a task force, I'd also very welcome any other help, if someone has the time and the will. (If not here, since I guess it does not necessary belongs here, then on my talk page.) Thanks in advance — Thehoboclown (talk) 13:15, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

This is definitely the place to come for technical help. I've fixed the template; have a look at what I did. --Izno (talk) 13:22, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Two words: Simply perfect! Thank you very very much for your quick help! :) — Thehoboclown (talk) 13:33, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Creating an assessment table

Hello!

I'd need some help to create a quality assessment table for the above listed Sports and games task force of the WikiProject Hungary. I tried to figure out how to set up one, checked the Russian sports task force, but did not manage to understand how it works correctly and could not simply adopt in. Is there a subst template that would create the table if the values are given, or does it work some other way? Thanks for the answer, Thehoboclown (talk) 14:59, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot. You were already waiting on step 4. I clicked on the link on that page to get the bot to do a manual run and your table is now at User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Hungarian sports. -- WOSlinker (talk) 15:14, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Thank you! I really should have seen it in the FAQ, missed it. Thanks for your time and your help! — Thehoboclown (talk) 15:28, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

I am not able to access talk, edit and other links at the top of articles as they all appear overlapping and messy. But the main page, diff pages and a select few articles look fine just like in a desktop. I have the web version of Wikipedia enabled and am browsing using opera mobile in my HTC Explorer. I also tried disabling twinkle and other gadgets without effect. Is there any way to correct this problem?

And I am trying to find a suitable image host to have the screenshots of the problem hosted.Suraj T 19:50, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Try Wikipedia or Commons. Rich Farmbrough, 17:40, 3 June 2012 (UTC).

More watchlist problems...

Anomalous result

See the picture, note the second change. According to the history, that was a null edit.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 20:39, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

It is this edit where 120,894 bytes is the page size. See #Diff/watchlist difficulties above. This is the fourth section about it on this page. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:18, 3 June 2012 (UTC)


Oh, ok, I didn't see that, thanks.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 09:49, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Twinkle welcome?

When I use Twinkle "welcome" feature from a diff view showing the contribution of a new user,[8] I get results like this. Basically, a sig and nothing more. This has happened to me several times over the last few months. So, the question is, should the welcome button be removed from diff view or fixed? Note, the welcome button disappears after you edit a red linked user talk page. Viriditas (talk) 00:23, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

The best place to report Twinkle-related issues is at Wikipedia talk:Twinkle. Still, this perhaps indicates something wrong with Twinkle, and I will investigate. — This, that, and the other (talk) 03:45, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
I was able to welcome via diff just a few minutes ago with Firefox 12. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 08:22, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
And I tried it again just now, also with Firefox 12 but from a different network, and I got exactly the symptoms that Viriditas described. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 18:48, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

2012 IPv6 Day announcement

Just to give everybody the heads up about 2012 IPv6 Day announcement. – Allen4names 13:38, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive236#IPv6 surprise!.--Jasper Deng (talk) 21:25, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
It seems we are on IPv6 now. And Special:RecentChanges lists severals edits made by IPv6 anon users. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:45, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Uncontrolled edits

Over the last few weeks, I have experienced a very rare but also extremely strange problem. Sometimes, when I edit a page, the result of my editing differs from what it was supposed to be. In a very recent edit, I wanted to have the title of a piece of music in italics instead of having it surrounded by straight quotation marks. What this resulted in, however, was not just that, but also the distortion of the table I was working with. Has anybody else experienced a comparable sort of bug? --Toccata quarta (talk) 07:50, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like you have a script installed that is using document.write(). That should not be used, it's not safe. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:18, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
I suspect it's likely to be the slow and piecemeal way that edit pages load now. A whole bunch of keystrokes or mouseclicks can appear not to do anything, then suddenly get invoked and throw you to the end of the article, the page layout jumping around all the while. Rich Farmbrough, 17:38, 3 June 2012 (UTC).
Yes, I've had a similar problem, particularly with text seemingly moving to the start of sections or similar. Fortunately I catch most of them when checking my edit, but a couple have slipped through.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 18:06, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
Does turning off the edit toolbar and enhanced editing toolbar help? -— Isarra ༆ 14:36, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Size of an edit

I have noticed that sometimes, in my watchlist, the field that provides the size of an edit to an article in bytes changes and provides the size of the article instead. For example this edit:

(diff) (hist) . . Not Afraid‎; 22:39 . . (+83,164)‎ . . ‎68.209.138.123 (talk)‎

In that case "(+83,164)" is the size of the article not the size of the IP edit. How does that switch happen? Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 00:01, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

shaking display

Hi, I've notice twice in the past couple of days that a few displays shake savagely and relentlessly, like about 10 to 20 times a second. Here's one. Safari, Mac, all latest. Tony (talk) 03:07, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

No shaking for me, just the usual steady display. (Safari, Mac, Tiger holdout.) Are you on a fault line? Rivertorch (talk) 03:25, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
No idea what you mean by "a few displays shake savagely and relentlessly." What exactly happens? And does it happen with a particular computer monitor that you use? All computer monitors that you use? With just Wikipedia or with any Web site? --MZMcBride (talk) 17:37, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Is there a custom tool or gadget involved? If I had to guess, it sounds like a hover-related UI error. As in, place the mouse over a button, hovering causes that button to change something, that change moves the button so that it is no longer under the mouse, the change reverts, the button is now under the mouse again, and so on. This causes a rapid fluttering as the UI keeps going through the loop. If the UI-related change is related to screen size or position, it could look like the screen is shaking that fast. Just a guess. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 18:31, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Now my watchlist is shaking uncontrollably. Is it to do with the presence of the mediawiki icons at the bottom? Can't use the watchlist. Tony (talk) 08:57, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Whatever it is, you are the only one reporting it so it's probably something in your settings or computer. I don't know your skin but User:Tony1/monobook.js and User:Tony1/vector.js are both complicated and I'm not trying to analyse them. If you can switch between shaking and non-shaking tabs/url's then I guess it's your settings. Try another skin or logging out. If it's not consistently tied to certain url's then here is a wild guess: If a certain key causing display changes like F11 in many Windows browsers (toggle full screen, I don't know Mac) is permanently pressed down, or permanently registered as pressed down due to some error, then it can look like the browser window is shaking. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:25, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

It is could be a rendering issue, something doesn't fit so needs re-arranging, then needs rearranging back. The example Johnny gave above is very similar. It's a peril of not following KISS and having so much crap. By the same token, until I scroll this screen I have a grand total of 10 editing lines available - and that's with a maximised browser. My CBM 64 had more than double that. Rich Farmbrough, 15:07, 5 June 2012 (UTC).

I had a problem like this and it ended up that my graphics card was on the fritz. Maybe that's the problem for you too Tony. Kumioko (talk) 15:11, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Oh yes, one more cause... badly behaved java scripts, notably from Jagex can screw with your display - generally far worse than that though. Rich Farmbrough, 16:03, 5 June 2012 (UTC).

Retro-fitting of article history byte counts

As noted earlier, the history-log of article "Germany" now shows byte counts back to revision 1, on 9 November 2001, but we know the article sizes were not displayed until 2006. Have people been running database-bots to retro-fit the byte counts on old articles? Also, article "Germany" shows it was created by subtracting "(-126,892)" bytes to reach original size "(2,210 bytes)". Perhaps more people need to get involved in setting (correcting) the byte-count history of popular articles. Otherwise, it looks like the old days, back when the database storage of revisions was not reliable, which is even scarier than IP editing (just kidding about IPs). MediaWiki version: {{subst:CURRENTVERSION}} = 1.20wmf3 (d8d5322). -Wikid77 (talk) 12:43, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

There has been some work on SHA-1 generation of old revisions (and/or broken revisions).[9] Perhaps as a side effect, byte counts have been recorded for those revisions now ? Someone will have to ask ops if you want to be sure (IRC probably the best way). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:05, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
This isn't particularly new. It was tracked by bugzilla:12188. revision.rev_len is totally different from revision.rev_sha1 (which is being tracked by bugzilla:36081). Hope that helps. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:35, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

wp:User creation log now useless for anti-vandal work

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T39343
Resolved

Up until today the User creation log has been my number one resource for observing the intent of new users. However, at some point today the (talk|contribs) links for each name have been removed, and now it is impossible to see which new users have done anything past creating the account (typically less than 5% will edit at all before their name falls off the bottom of the 500 name list). Any chance we can have those links back? Thanks. --| Uncle Milty | talk | 00:40, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

→File a bug?. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:02, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Bugzilla. I tried tweaking the MediaWiki namespace and it didn't work. MBisanz talk 03:13, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't have a bugzilla account. Perhaps someone who does can do that for me. --| Uncle Milty | talk | 10:47, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Alternatively, you could use something like popups which show the contrib count, contribs, and diffs all via hovering the mouse over the linked username. Killiondude (talk) 05:38, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Because time is of the essence on that list (and I'm lazy), it would be better for the links to be out on the page. That way a person can just scan the list looking for blue links. --| Uncle Milty | talk | 10:47, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
The page is normal on ptwiki. My first suggestion would be using MediaWiki:Logentry-newusers-create and MediaWiki:Logentry-newusers-autocreate, but MBisanz already tried that. Since each wiki is running a different version of MW, I think it is a regression, so I reported Bug 37343. Helder 11:28, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Thank you. --| Uncle Milty | talk | 11:44, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Until it's fixed you can set "Enhanced recent changes" in preferences and then expand "(User creation log)"‎ in Recent Changes: . — AlexSm 14:27, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
It's now fixed (courtesy of WMF dev Aaron Schulz) and the fix deployed :) - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 17:22, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks to all for their help. --| Uncle Milty | talk | 20:19, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Deleted contribs

I have been unable for some time to get my deleted contribs list up, as the WMF servers respond with a "time out, give us money" message. Would anyone be able to run such a query on my behalf, using the tool-server or other magic? Rich Farmbrough, 02:53, 5 June 2012 (UTC).

Please see http://dpaste.com/755482/plain/ -- A Certain White Cat chi? 12:03, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. That shows the size of my contribs, and the number that are deleted I suppose. Maybe you are saying both numbers are big so I should forget about it, but I am interested in finding which pages I created have been deleted (with or without my knowledge) and I think I should be able to do this, however even requesting the last 5 deleted contribs causes a timeout. Rich Farmbrough, 15:44, 5 June 2012 (UTC).
<evil> See now why having different accounts for bot activities and normal edits? </evil> mabdul 16:22, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Editing problem

I can read Wikipedia but I can't write to it. I keep getting timed out. This has now been a problem for about 24 hours. Biscuittin (talk) 07:52, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

It only seems to affect some pages because this message has appeared. Biscuittin (talk) 07:53, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Problem has now been solved. Thank you. Biscuittin (talk) 08:08, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Problem has recurred. I am not having any trouble viewing large pages but I keep getting timed out when trying to edit them. Could this be due to slowness of my own internet connection? Biscuittin (talk) 11:36, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Sometimes, my edit is actually successful, even though I have received a message telling me I have been timed out. Biscuittin (talk) 11:55, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes Wikipedia lies about that, and several other things. If I get a time-out I always check history in a new tab before re-submitting. Rich Farmbrough, 15:16, 5 June 2012 (UTC).
Incidentally my strongly held belief is that in those cases while the wikitext is saved, the (server side) rendering simply takes too long, and that's why the time-out is reported, not distinguishing a failed save from a timed out render (or indeed "our servers having trouble"). Rich Farmbrough, 15:19, 5 June 2012 (UTC).

AOLblock

I'm not exactly sure where to put this. I've looking at a blocking appeal and their range has been blocked since 2006 with Template:AOLblock. Wikipedia:AOL says that AOL doesn't have open proxies like this any more - so why do we have 64.12.0.0/16 blocked? Has this been forgotten? Thanks Secretlondon (talk) 13:14, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Is it okay to add video to your own wiki page?

Yes or no?! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shaniack77 (talk • contribs) 16:14, 5 June 2012 (UTC) Added by Shaniack77 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shaniack77 (talk • contribs) 16:15, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Where is the video from? Secretlondon (talk) 16:21, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
If by "wiki page" you mean your user page then see Wikipedia:User pages. You are allowed a certain amount of liberty with regards to what you post there, but please keep in mind that storage space is purchased and maintained with donated funds. Killiondude (talk) 16:24, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Something funny with 0 diff size

I just noticed inconsistently reported diff sizes. I was watching recent changes and saw this, notice the Albanifriedhod article diffs with summary "RF". Going to the article history, things looked like this. Weird, eh? Palosirkka (talk) 16:26, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

See #Diff/watchlist difficulties above. --NeilN talk to me 16:29, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Round 1 of the Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year competition is now open banner on watchlist

How do I hide this horrible banner that appears on the watchlist page? Thanks. Lugnuts (talk) 17:15, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive236#MediaWiki:Sitenotice:POTY2011 round 1 banner. Hopefully it should now have a dismiss link again. Dpmuk (talk) 17:18, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject watchlist @ Watchlist

Hey guys! I found one interesting tool in some other user's js page and I copied to my own js page. It's a WikiProject watchlist includer at Watchlist page (here). But also there are those popups, which I really don't need. I tried to delete them (from js page) but then something came wrong with the wikiproject watchlist (my knowlegde at programming isn't so good). So could somebody help to delete right rows? --Edgars2007 (Talk/Contributions) 07:26, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

That is a good script the problem however is that the WikiProject Watchlist is updated by Femtobot, which is run by Rich Farmbrough, who was banned from automation recently by Arbcom. So unless some bot operator wants to take on the responsibility of running another bot to do that task, the script is all but useless. There has been some discussion on the Bot request page for a replacement bot but so far no one seems interested. Kumioko (talk) 11:19, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Edit toolbar - adding a warning dialog for adding images

We're discussing some problems with how to educate users about NFC at WT:NFC. Among the points hit is that in the current editing toolbar that appears, while we provide a special dialog for something like citations, clicking the insert image simply drops [[Example.jpg]] into the edit box.

Would it be possible to have a dialog that appears on use of the embed image tool to point readers to the various image policies (at least WP:IUP and WP:NFC) simply to make them aware that image use does have several cavaets they should be aware of. As I'm sure experienced editors don't want to see this dialog every single time, it would be a good idea that reg'ged users have the option of disabling the dialog after clicking a checkbox in this dialog; IP users would have to see it every time.

In this same vein, it would probably be good for this dialog to include edit fields for "captain", to use "thumb" or a fixed size, if the image if upright (more vertical), and possibly alttext, following what the cite templates give.

It's not a perfect means of education (a reader that already knows how to use the link style to add images can bypass this) --MASEM (t) 13:55, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Clicking the Talk page tab on a redirect should not also redirect the reader

When looking at a redirect page (with &redirect=no in the URL), or its logs, history, etc., clicking on the "Talk" tab or "Article" tab shouldn't redirect you. Is there any way to change this behavior locally? ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 19:19, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Only by using Javascript to rewrite the links, it looks like. You could file a bug requesting that tabs include "&redirect=no" if the current URL does. Anomie⚔ 19:41, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Purge cache

Hi, when purging the Wikipedia cache, is there any way to suppress that rather pointless "Clear the cache of this page?" prompt? More to the point, does anyone know why this prompt appears at all? Is there any situation in which someone wouldn't click OK? The docs for that feature say "Anonymous users will have to confirm purging", implying, I suppose, that logged-on users don't. Why would there be a difference? 81.159.111.3 (talk) 19:39, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Looking at the history, it appears that there was a problem with bots (presumably search engine bots such as GoogleBot) hitting action=purge links, so on 7 November 2005 they made action=purge require an HTTP POST action. On 21 November 2005, they then changed this to allow logged-in users to purge with a GET action. Then on 13 January 2007 they changed it to depend on a "purge" user right rather than hard-coding an "is logged in?" check. It would be certainly be possible to grant all users this right, but I doubt the sysadmins would considering the reason it was removed from non-logged-in users in the first place. Anomie⚔ 19:57, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Edit box problems

I'm using IE9, and about a month ago I started having problems seeing the top few lines of text when editing a section, it appears to be hidden by the "advanced" toolbar above the edit box. Also, the buttons on that toolbar don't work, including the 'Special characters" and "Help" links. What do I need to do to fix this? Thanks! Dreadstar ☥ 00:55, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

For example, this is what it looks like when I try to edit this section.deleted Dreadstar ☥ 01:03, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
Try opening edit page in a diferent skin to bypass your monobook.js, e.g. ...&action=edit&useskin=vector. If it still happens then try opening edit page while being logged out. If the problem goes away then log in again and try to disable some gadgets. — AlexSm 01:20, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
I disabled every gadget, deleted every js page and cleared the cache. The problem went away for a minute, then came right back. Guess I'll just live with it until the next code change. Thanks for the help. Dreadstar ☥ 01:49, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm not able to reproduce this in IE9; if anyone else is, please post here. I'm noticing in your screenshot that there's a "Preview" and a "Changes" button above the edit box; is this some kind of gadget?--Eloquence* 08:07, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
It must have been a gadget or js code because those buttons are not there now. And this particular edit is actually working, so maybe it just took time for my changes to work. I'll work with no gadgets for a while to make sure the edit box is showing up correctly for me, then slowly activate them one at a time to see if I can track down what may have caused the problem. Thanks for your help! I'll post testing results here after I've reintroduced all the gadgets and js scripts. Dreadstar ☥ 19:13, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
Hah! I spoke too soon, on this edit the section heading and the first few lines of text in the edit box are hidden under the toolbar again. Comes and goes, it seems...hmmm Dreadstar ☥ 19:14, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
Seems to be an intermittent problem, sometimes it works as designed, sometimes it doesn't. And even when the box shows all the text, the toolbar buttons still don't work. Strange. Dreadstar ☥ 04:55, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

Anyone know how I can get rid of the edit box toolbar altogether? It doesn't work for me and just causes problems. And I don't want it or need it. Thanks! Dreadstar ☥ 05:31, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

source lang="css"

I really wish to change the font that the following text is displayed with 

.script-arabic {
    font-size: 105% !important;
    font-family: 'Droid Arabic Naskh', Arial, sans-serif !important;
}

(which is also there). It is displayed with the default monospace font of my browser, which is Courier New. I failed to change the font by my custom CSS. The only thing which changed it was changing the default monospace font of my browser, but I need to keep the default monospace font of my browser to stay as it is. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 20:26, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Here you go (this will affect JS source views as well, I hope that's ok for you):
div.mw-geshi div, div.mw-geshi div pre, span.mw-geshi, pre.source-css, pre.source-javascript {
    font-family: sans-serif !important;
}

- Hoo man (talk) 20:51, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Wow! Your code worked just like magic :) Thank you. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 10:02, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Article Class

I am using the gadget "Display an assessment of an article's quality as part of the page header for each article. (documentation)" and it normally works very well, displaying an article's quality rating underneath the title, but Church of Saint Oswald, King and Martyr, Oswaldkirk is now a Good Article, but is listed in the header as "start-class, currently a Good Article Nominee". Any ideas? (Chrome) --Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 15:36, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

Article Feedback testing

Hey guys :)

Just a heads-up to let you know that, over the weekend, the QA people at the Foundation are going to be testing the new Article Feedback Tool; as I understand it, this mostly consists of poking it with sticks until it explodes, and then noting down what made it explode ;p. If you're technically-minded and want to help out, you can sign up; otherwise, this is just a heads-up to make sure everyone knows that if something AFT-related goes wrong this weekend, that's a possible source.

Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:18, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

When you click the banner on the top of pages that says: "Celebrate the Great American Wiknic in 20+ cities around June 23", it takes you to http://http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiknic (note the doubled "http//"). That causes a "can't find the server" error, because there is no server "http". I am using Safari 5.1.7 on a MacBook Air. David1217 00:14, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Has already been resolved (1) - Hoo man (talk) 00:48, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Okay, great. David1217 00:52, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

"Null"/double edit in history?

Usually, on pages, diffs would show no changes between consecutive revisions of the page if one or both of the revisions contain a log action. However, with only editing, there is not usually a such thing. However, I notice CommonsDelinker has done so: doing this, then this. Is it as a result on a close margin of time between sending two edits, with which it didn't get an edit conflict with itself?  Hazard-SJ  ✈  01:44, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

During the Hackathon Xqt told me, that edit conflicts with the same user are accepted by the API (even if basetimestamp is set) but I have no idea why that is. - Hoo man (talk) 01:48, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
This has been occurring regularly since 30 May 2012 and reported as a bug.
See #Diff/watchlist difficulties above.
— Richardguk (talk) 02:43, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It's not just the API, the same happens if you edit the same page (without doing a section edit) from multiple tabs. The edit-conflict-detection code explicitly skips conflicts with yourself in this case. The recent showing of "null" edits seems to be something else, though. Anomie⚔ 02:51, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

twinkle: Gateway Time-out occurred while contacting the API.

Been getting these in the last hour. Anyone else? Know what the cause is? tedder (talk) 01:56, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Me too. Tried to report a user to AIV but the same error happened twice. David1217 02:01, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Its the API in general. AWB doesn't even work. If we give it a few minutes it usually starts working again. Kumioko (talk) 02:03, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Been getting it without using Twinkle or AWB. Whenever I click on a link from my watchlist. I'm using a MacBook running 10.5.8 and Safari. Dismas|(talk) 02:06, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
The message will likely generate for most gadgets, scripts and applications if they use the Wikipedia API. They probably had a server crash or something and it usually gets fixed pretty quick...there probably running around in circles in the server room right now. Kumioko (talk) 02:10, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Just had it happen to me, running only the prose counter script. Chris857 (talk) 02:36, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

It appears to have been due to the "Editor engagement experiments" extension, it was posting back to the API on every page view. The API should be working again shortly, if it's not already working now. Anomie⚔ 04:08, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Did something change?

Suddenly Anomie's linkclassifier isn't working. Was there a change made somewhere that broke it? - The Bushranger One ping only 03:01, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

API is b0rken. Sysadmins are investigating. Anomie⚔ 03:05, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Someone probably did something to Willow or Nightshade...Is the power still on?:-) Kumioko (talk) 03:13, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Display bug: overlapping infobox and navbox

I have found a display bug (on Hamilton West railway station), as can be seen at http://twitpic.com/9tpai2 - note that the navbox overlaps the infobox. This could be prevented by applying a clear before the navbox; if we did so as part of that template, would it break anything else? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:13, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

It's not really a navbox but a succession box; this one begins with {{rail start}}, which is used on hundreds (thousands?) of Great Britain railway stations. I have worked with such articles for over three years, and have never seen that particular issue before.
I don't see a problem in Firefox 12 - the succ box moves left, centring itself between the left margin and the infobox. What browser are you using? Do you see a similar problem with other stations, such as Blantyre railway station or Hamilton Central railway station? These use a similar construct. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:42, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
If rail start doesn't clear float objects and that is undesirable, than add "clear:both; to it's style. Will also clear sister portal links and other left or right floating content of course. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:52, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Have now checked in Google Chrome 19, Microsoft IE7, Opera 11 and Safari 5.1 - these all behave properly. The {{rail start}} template purposely doesn't have a clear:both; style to avoid forcing a huge blank space above it. It's not a full-width object - it's a table built using the wikitable class, and normally, when space is tight, it successfully narrows itself down in order to fit alongside an infobox, such as at the page in question. The only styling in the table which might force a non-standard width is margin: 0.5em auto; the net effect of which is small compared to the natural width of the longer words. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:11, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
"I don't see a problem" is nether a solution nor an adequate repsonse. I (using Chrome), and inevitably others, do. We're not all using your setup, nor your size of window, monitor or font. In both of the other artcies you mention, there is much more text, which serves to push the succession box below the infobox. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:47, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
What would you have me write? That I get the same problem (when in reality I don't)? That I sympathise but there's nothing that I can do? Or would you prefer that I ignore this thread entirely? It helps those of us who intend to find a solution to know what the circumstances are; we gather sample data of both failures and successes, and determine the similarities and differences. So far, it is only you who has spotted a problem, and on only one article, and (apparently) in just one browser. My post of "I don't see a problem in Firefox 12" was neither my entire post nor intended to be my final comment - it was the opening observation, following which I invited the supply of further details. Many behaviour problems have been traced to the peculiarities of one browser (often IE), and
Anyway, try Merryton railway station. That has the routebox almost as high up the page as Hamilton West railway station. Does this exhibit the same issue? Does changing the window size affect it? How about zooming out or in (it's Ctrl+- and Ctrl++ in Chrome) --Redrose64 (talk) 15:32, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Redrose64: I apologise. I completely misinterpreted the tone of what you were saying; and the tone of my repose was therefore inappropriate. But yes, I see the same problem with Merryton. its resolved by reducing the text size a couple of steps, but by that point the body text is almost unreadable (I use a fairly small font as default). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:28, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
OK, thanks. I've upgraded my Chrome to version 19.0.1084.52 and tried various zoom levels, and have replicated the problem. To try and find a solution I have played about with some CSS styling tweaks. I have come to the conclusion that there is a bug in Chrome: the presence of the infobox (which is a table floated right) is being ignored when Chrome is deciding where to put the routebox (which is a non-floated table). In other words, the routebox is supposed to be centred in the space available, but instead is centered in the space which would have been available if the infobox were not present.
See User:Redrose64/Sandbox12 where there are three routeboxes, which differ slightly in how they're invoked. The first two are essentially the same, but in the second I've exposed the wikicode inside {{rail start}}. The third is like the second but with some extras. In most browsers, these three routeboxes are aligned vertically, and are centred in the space available. But if the page is viewed in Chrome, only the third one is correctly centred - the first two exhibit the bug in question. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:27, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Cite 'button'

I lost this for a while this week, and just noticed WP:HD#Cite Button where someone else is asking abut this. Dougweller (talk) 16:38, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Is this the same as the issues described at Wikipedia talk:RefToolbar 1.0#Cite button or Wikipedia talk:RefToolbar 2.0#Cite button? --Redrose64 (talk) 17:12, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, thanks. It comes and goes - had it last night, not there this morning. Dougweller (talk) 10:51, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Password

I created User:jc377 awhile back to play with awb. I confirmed it was me back when I requested awb.

Never did much of anything with it. (Which includes obviously never setting the email - facepalm)

Is there some process somewhere to request a lost password? - jc37 00:07, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

It's unlikely to be worth the hassle if you've forgotten the password and not set a recovery email. Just register a new account, I should say. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 00:09, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Well, I specifically wanted the name. What is the "hassle" process you allude to? - jc37 00:18, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Well, to recover the password would require you to prove you operated the account to the satisfaction of a system administrator, and then for them to do a hard password reset from the database directly. That could be awkward - but it might be possible to usurp the account name, should you particularly want that name rather than jc373, say. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 01:22, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I think the only way to have the password reset is to convince a sysadmin to do it for you, if you don't have an email address set (or you lost access to it). Or you could see if you can convince a 'crat to rename the account out of the way so you can recreate a new one. Anomie⚔ 01:28, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
It all depends upon whether you set an email address or not. See Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical#How do I recover a password I have forgotten?. --Redrose64 (talk) 08:36, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

IP query

Not sure whether to raise this here or on RDC. Anyway, the last couple of days I have seen Usernames with 1234:5:678:901:2:3:4:5 or some variation (please note this example was made up). Is this a new form of IP? Simply south...... always punctual, no matter how late for just 6 years 00:38, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, see IPv6 and wp:IPv6 ;) - Hoo man (talk) 00:40, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Cheers. Simply south...... always punctual, no matter how late for just 6 years 17:25, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Feedback facility

I just tried for the first time the "Help improve this page" feedback feature. Having made the effort to compose my message about a system error (namely being served a page 8 days out of date), I clicked "Post your feedback" only to be told "Form submission error". Being hit by a second system error while answering the question "How can we make it better for you?" is pretty far from ideal. The expression "adding insult to injury" comes to mind. 86.183.3.0 (talk) 02:24, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

See section immediately above for the answer. David1217 02:25, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Hey there :). Yeah, there is a bug with the way the tool is cached that is making it appear on articles it isn't actually enabled on (hence the error message). Apologies for the confusion! It should be cleared up quite soon. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:48, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Watchlist script bugging

http://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki&only=scripts&skin=monobook&version=20120528T141202Z:106 shows up with an error message when I attempt to view my watchlist. My system is Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; nb-NO; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13. It started just now. __meco (talk) 11:17, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Was there a specific error message given to you? - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 11:34, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't remember. It hasn't happened again. __meco (talk) 19:00, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Anomalous Edit Summary

In my contributions, at the top of the page, is an edit summary, in which words appear far to the right of the (top) [rollback] icons, but disappear if I highlight the end ) of the summary and the first ( of (top). Any explanations?--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 11:53, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Okay, so you can't see this in Firefox very easily, but it's obvious in Chrome. I'm guessing it's simply some sort of Unicode control character (a very rare kind of character used to give layout instructions). Did you copy and paste it into the edit summary, per chance? - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 21:02, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
The edit summary "rmv extraneous spaces in mid dle of word" has a curious gap in the middle of the word "middle". This gap is small in Firefox 12, but in Chrome 19 is so large that it displaces the following portion of edit summary off to the right-hand edge of the screen. Curiously, the text ") (top) [rollback]" remains where it should have been in Chrome, but follows the words "of word" in Firefox. In both browsers, if you use the mouse to highlight from "mid" to "[rollback]", and copy&paste that to somewhere else, the words are in the right order but the gap goes with it. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:57, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
The html source shows there are actually 83 spaces in the middle of "mid dle".
This apparently causes problems for Chrome. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:01, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) The curious gap is just 83 space characters, nothing exotic. It looks at first glance like Chrome (and Chromium) has a bug where the span with dir=auto gets treated in some ways (but not others) as if it has white-space: pre-wrap applied in CSS. Anomie⚔ 00:05, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Oh, quite right. (Apologies, I couldn't believe Chrome would be as silly as that, but you're clearly right.) Note sure what the best fix is here? - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 10:39, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Hmm, well, I didn't put 83 spaces into the edit summary box, I think it was about 3 or 4. Interesting....I could just not use Chrome I guess.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 12:55, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Copy and paste or typed manually? - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 15:54, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Typed.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 15:58, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

In a similar vein, I use Chrome and have seen cases where the edit summary text is aligned so that the closing parenthesis is over the final word, like: "( upd)ate". I don't have any good information on when it occurs or any examples at hand. Chris857 (talk) 00:08, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Possible problem with the Article Feedback tool

I think there might be a problem with the Article feedback tool thats affecting categorization. It seems that there has been a big increase to Category:Pages where expansion depth is exceeded and after reviewing about 20 or so articles every one has the Article feedback tool on it. Kumioko (talk) 01:05, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

I'd guess it's more likely string manipulation templates in the infoboxes or other templates. Anomie⚔ 03:11, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Just 80 articles are both tagged for ArticleFeedback 5 and exceeded page depth, out of 16,000 articles in the latter and 20,000 in the former category. So yeah, just coincidence. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 09:32, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
As far as I know, all articles have some version of the article feedback tool, most of them the "Rate this page" version. There are earlier discussions about the real cause at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 99#Raising issue again: Page exceeded the expansion depth and Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 99#Page exceeded the expansion depth? Sampling of Category:Pages where expansion depth is exceeded shows the main culprits are now {{Infobox German location}} (whenever the image_plan/Lageplan parameter is set) and species using one of several templates (even without parameters), for example {{Automatic taxobox}}, {{Speciesbox}}, {{Ichnobox}} or {{virusbox}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:46, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

"example?" inline template?

Does anyone know of an inline request template (similar to {{who}}, {{fact}}, etc.) that can be used to request an example be added to an article to illustrate a specific point?example? (anyone get the irony here?) //Blaxthos ( t / c ) 17:12, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

{{Example needed}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:42, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Obsolete Shortcuts: Are they immortal?

WP:RFCU used to sent you to Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser, but that page is is dead and now redirects to Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations.

At first glance, one would think that WP:RFCU could be repurposed by pointing it to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct, but what about the large number of pages that link to WP:RFCU? Breaking all of those links would be undesirable.

Which brings me to my question: are popular shortcuts immortal? Do they live on long after the page they used to redirect to has been renamed or merged, making the shortcut make no sense? If so, does this imply that, over time, Wikipedia will have more and more shortcuts like that? Or is it feasible to have WP:RFCU send the user to a disambiguation page? Like this:

"RFCU may refer to:

  • Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct
  • Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations (formerly Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser"

Or is there another solution? --Guy Macon (talk) 17:20, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Redirects are certainly not immortal. In this specific case I would leave it alone as it got a fair number of hits in 2011 and still does in 2012 (though recent months have declined). If it gets to a point where people aren't using it, old links can be changed (using a bot or AWB) and it can point somewhere new, but imho it should stay if it is being used currently. Why don't you use WP:RFC/UC or the currently existing WP:RFC/U? Killiondude (talk) 18:56, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
I already do. I was just curious about how we handle aging shortcuts. This is about learning how the system works, not about solving a specific problem.
May I assume that the reason that the hits decline is because older talk page entries get read less and because old mainspace links to RFCU are going away without any new ones being created?
If so, if I was inclined to hurry up the decline in hits a bit, I could change the link at Template:Sockpuppetry to go to WP:SPI instead of WP:RFCU and remove the link to RFCU from CU, right? (not that I particularly want to do that - I am just trying to better understand the system.) --Guy Macon (talk) 23:26, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
The "shortcuts" listed should only ever be logical abbreviations, and in a case like this they should not be displayed at the target page (we don't need to list every redirect). So what you are saying is a logical step, deprecate its use by removing any non-discussion usage of the redirect in favor of a more accurate one. Then at some point down the road, once everyone has forgotten what it used to mean, it can be hijacked for a more useful target (assuming there is a consensus at WP:RFD). ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 00:39, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
The direct answer is no they are not immortal however, there are too many editors who would rather Wikipedia retain crap like this forever because it "doesn't hurt anything" or because it doesn't render a change to the page. Kumioko (talk) 00:50, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
@Kumioko, My "bitterness" sensor is going off the charts! I think you're conflating a few issues. We don't normally bypass redirects when it doesn't make a difference in the rendered version of the page, but we do in cases where the redirect is not useful (in this case the target page was moved and the shortcut doesn't make much sense now). Also, redirects hardly seem like something to get wound up about.
I agree with what Johnny says above, Guy. I suppose I'm mostly concerned with page hits where people manually type in the shortcut (out of habit). If you change the links elsewhere we can get a feel for how many were clicking the links through templates and other messages and how many were typing it in manually. Killiondude (talk) 01:07, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
Not bitter, just realizm. Doing stuff like this ranks among the tasks that I have done and been scalded on in the past because it didn't do something or another (depending on who's arguing it). I completely agree this is something that should be done, the problem is that there are editors in Wikipedia who oppose just about anything and will be more than happy to comment if someone tries to do any cleanup of something that they think should be left until the end of time (or the page is deleted). whichever comes first. Kumioko (talk) 03:00, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
As I said, I am just interested in the mechanics of it all. I already get my daily abuse volunteering at WP:DRN (smile). --Guy Macon (talk) 03:21, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
It's certainly been done before. WP:EA used to point to Wikipedia:Esperanza but was then re-targetted to Wikipedia:Editor assistance (and all the links were fixed, including those in talk pages) after this RFD. I think RFD would be the best way to enshrine a consensus to retarget the RFCU redirect and then somebody can fix all the links with AWB or a similar tool. Graham87 04:22, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Page titles indented

I guess it's conceivable this isn't new and I just hadn't noticed before, but I don't think so. All page title headings (e.g., the one for the page I'm editing now, which reads "Editing Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) (new section)") are indented by about 50 pixels. It looks strange and not at all good. This is present using either Safari or Firefox but perhaps only with Monobook; when I log out and view in Vector or whatever the default now is, it's fine. I suspect it's something to do with the Wiknic banner because the indentation isn't there when the page first renders; instead, the banner pops up and the page title pops over about a second after the page loads. Rivertorch (talk) 17:44, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

It is due to that banner. Specifically, the left-floated logo apparently hangs just enough outside the bottom of the banner to shove the line box over. Anomie⚔ 19:33, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Ugh. And the Wiknic is two weeks away . . . oh well. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't much matter. Thanks for the confirmation. Rivertorch (talk) 20:33, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Improving Documentation on Handling Bug Reports

After having spent some time at least weekend's Wikimedia Hackathon investigating how to get into bug management/triaging, I (AndreKlapper) propose some changes in order to streamline, harmonize and centralize documentation in order to make it easier to get involved. Currently there are sometimes three places covering the same topic.

Current situation as per pages and their content

Proposed pages (not clear which namespace yet), categorized by target group:

  • Everybody's business:
    • Basic introduction: Bug triaging
    • Basic introduction: Bugzilla
      • Bugzilla Registration
      • Hiding your email address
      • Explanation of Fields (all of them)
      • Prefix linkification in bug report comments
      • Voting; Etiquette
    • One list of some useful queries
  • Users/Bug Reporters:
    • How to write a good bug report
  • Bug Triagers:
    • Bugsquad Community page (existing)
    • Triaging guide
    • Recurring tasks and tasks how to help
    • Triage meetings: General info; list of logs
  • Bugmeister/Bug Wrangler:
    • Status reports etc
    • List of past and current activities/tasks in Bugzilla (for Bugmeister)
  • Developers:
    • Info for project/package maintainer, e.g. how to get a new product listed
  • Deeper knowledge / advanced stuff:
    • Statistics
      • Weekly data reports etc
    • "Other features" etc from Wikipedia:Bug_reports#Other_features
    • Future plans / proposals
    • "See Also" from Wikipedia:Bug_reports#See_Also

I currently miss a Triage guide, as "Triage rules can't be just in one person's head" (Luis Villa). For examples see https://wiki.maemo.org/Bugs:Triage_guide or https://live.gnome.org/Bugsquad/TriageGuide . It should be specific to Wikimedia (wild examples: describe when to set the "ops" keyword and who is expected to file a request in RT?; describe anything specific with regard to triaging extensions bug reports in general; how is the "Version" field used or not used; etc.)

-- AndreKlapper 18:49, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

The enwiki community has no control over what is done with MediaWiki pages; the people to speak to about this would be the devs. I'm going to give the Volunteer Development Coordinator and Bugmeister a heads-up so they can give this a looksee, but if we're talking about MediaWiki.org the decision doesn't lie with the enwiki community. Ironholds (talk) 06:17, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
Just for the records, before I posted this (and asked on wikitech-l mailing list for feedback) I was explicitly asked to post it also on the Village Pump to get wider feedback, so I was aware of it. -- AndreKlapper 18:49, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

After the IPv6 roll out today, I noticed that some of the tools linked within the Template:Anontools which is used on MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer-anon and on MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext aren't working with IPv6. Now there are two ways in which we could get that fixed, both would require a switch to differ IPv4 and IPv6 addresses (maybe {{Strfind short|$1|:|1}}), one would be to create a separate Anontools6 template for IPv6 addresses, the other one to differ that within the current template. The following tools don't work with IPv6 as far as I can see it now: Geolocate, it's Alternate and the Traceroute tool. For the traceroute tool various alternatives can be found on the Internet, but I didn't manage to find one which is fast and can take get parameters (maybe we should create one on the toolserver). Example IPv6 Special:Contributions: Special:Contributions/2A02:2F02:D021:F007:0:0:BC18:F6BC, Special:Contributions/2001:980:1451:1:7149:688C:F192:3318, Special:Contributions/2602:306:CE65:5740:D956:A711:C1AC:A893 - Hoo man (talk) 16:29, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

 Done I decided to make {{anontools}} itself handle the detection of IPv4 versus IPv6, so any other uses besides MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer-anon don't have to care about the difference either. If you do find geolocation or traceroute tools that work for IPv6, please do add them (or request they be added) to Template:Anontools/ipv6. Anomie⚔ 19:31, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
Tracking a sock puppet from Imperial College, I am pretty sure that I've found another, but the Anontools don't seem to be working for[10] although I just found them on two other IPv6 addresses. Dougweller (talk) 09:12, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Ah, found it on the contributions page, but not when creating talk page, although I've found it with other IPv6 addresses. Dougweller (talk) 09:22, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
The problem there appears to be in MediaWiki:Newarticletext, it uses a hack to try to detect if it's on an IP talk page versus a non-IP talk page, but of course the hack only works for IPv4 addresses. I'm not sure how to fix it, though. Anomie⚔ 11:55, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

May statistics gone?

I have checked the May data of random page, and I see the May 2012 data vanished without explanation. What is that? --George Ho (talk) 01:18, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

I can confirm that they aren't showing, including on different articles. Chris857 (talk) 01:52, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Hmm, it seems (fortunately) that it's just a problem with the tool and not with the underlying data, since the files themselves are not zero bytes long (which would indicate a generation problem). Thus, it's worth poking Henrik, but I'm not sure how best to get in touch with him. I vaguely recall some lurkers on here having a contact address (or am I making that up?) - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 09:28, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
The classic version seems to have no issues. Someone poked me about issues in the first half of May. I responded that they should email him. He reads (or used to read) his emails somewhat regularly and fix the issues, even if he didn't respond. Killiondude (talk) 19:01, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

This appears to be fixed. Chris857 (talk) 01:31, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Logged Out

A few months ago there was a wide spread issue of people being logged out mid session after a software update. This has started happening again for me, most often when opening new windows. It can be three or four times a session rather frustrating. Is this still happening for anyone else. Edinburgh Wanderer 13:46, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Username with trailing wildcard

I just came across the following user:

(note: this is not a discussion of that user's behavior or edits at all, just the username). Special:Contributions/*telugumoviefan*, in addition to giving me this specific user's edit-history, also gives me a tree-list of editors matching that given account as a wildcard pattern. This is a result of my enabling MediaWiki:Gadget-contribsrange.js, which is a pretty useful vandal-tracking gadget for its CIDR function (and especially as we all come up to speed on IPv6 ranges, etc). We already prohibit "actual account" usernames that mimic system-user and anon names. Should we expand that to include trailing wildcard? I can't see any value to users to allowing it and it seems prone to causing problems. I've also filed this as a bug against the gadget, but it's a technical concern.

As an accompanying question, is there an API way to find out if a given user is "real" vs anon? There have already been several discussions of ways of flagging anon accounts in histories (the most recent one was within the past few days but I can't find it) given we're not all familiar with the exact "legal" specifier for IPv6. That would at least allow separate controls of wildcard for anon accounts vs exact match (maybe with a toggle in the .js interface) for named accounts that might contain special characters. DMacks (talk) 18:45, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Re: Your second question, I don't know of a way to determine whether an editor is anonymous using the API, but most users whose names don't have a "contribs" link attached in the edit history (and therefore have a user ID of 0) will be anonymous. The exceptions are users from 2001/2002 and edits that were imported from other places (e.g. other language versions of Wikipedia). Graham87 01:45, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
An asterisk is a perfectly valid page title character (except with bugzilla:12974 making it a bit awkward at times) so it is fine in a user name. I used it in contribsrange simply because it was a quick way of indicating a wildcard search (and the collisions would be very rare). If anything, it is just a bug feature in contribsrange. As for the other question, you can query the API with list=users. If the name matches the internal regex for an IP (IPv4 or IPv6, the regex however are not perfect, see 1.2.3.999), it shows "invalid", if it doesn't match it either shows "missing" if unregistered or gives a "userid" if registered. Edit: Added .xxx anon IP, and it works as expected. I don't have an example of a missing imported edit though. --Splarka (rant) 07:28, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
The script that imported the 2001 edits into the current Wikipedia database operated in September 2002, and if a username for one of those edits wasn't registered, it would make its user ID 0 like an IP address. I've registered almost all of these accounts as I've discovered them, but there were a couple that I could not register due to SUL; an example is Jaime Gonzalez (talk · contribs), who comes up in the API as missing. Graham87 01:46, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

The Ghost Ship

Hi. Can somebody figure out why when you click the harvard notes it doesn't take you to the books in the bibliography?♦ Dr. Blofeld 08:00, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

(Mostly) resolved, see my edit summary. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 09:15, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. I didn't add the dates to the refs, the other editor did, that explains why it was working yesterday but not today!♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:13, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
The {{harvid}} template is designed so that the surname(s) and year go into different parameters, and no parentheses are used. When this is done, it will link to a {{citation}} with no |ref= parameter, or to a {{cite book}} which specifies |ref=harv, provided that such template uses |lastn=/|firstn= pairs not |authorn=, and that it correctly uses the |date= and |year= parameters.
So, instead of {{harvnb|Hutchings (2009)|p=201}} you should put {{harvnb|Hutchings|2009}}. To link from this you need to make two amendments to the
  • {{cite book|last=Hutchings |first=Peter |title=The A to Z of Horror Cinema |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=gMiDnJrnE6MC&pg=PA201 |year=30 September 2009 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-8108-6887-8 |ref={{harvid|Hutchings (2009)}}}}
(i) amend |year=30 September 2009 to |date=30 September 2009, or alternatively amend it to |year=2009; (ii) amend |ref={{harvid|Hutchings (2009)}} to |ref=harv. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:14, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Automated signature on talk page generates bogus edit conflict

I just now had a strange experience while posting a comment on an article talk page. After I hit "submit", I got an "edit conflict" notice. The comparison between the two versions showed that I was supposedly in conflict with myself. The only difference between the two versions was that the existing page showed "--~~~~" after my comment where my edit would have had "--Orlady (talk) 21:47, 3 June 2012 (UTC)". I hope this was an isolated event -- implementation of automated signatures (and template substitutions) should not be interpreted as separate edits that create edit conflicts. --Orlady (talk) 21:55, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

What happened here was that you double clicked the Save page button. The first click saved your edit and substituted your signature, while the second tried to do the same thing (except that the signature was gong back to how it looked in the edit window: 4 tildes). You can confirm this by doing it again. Make a comment, add tildes, hit save page and then hit save page again before the first edit has fully gone through. You'll edit conflict, and the only different content will be in your sig. Hope this helped :) Nolelover Talk·Contribs 01:07, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
I will stick up for Orlady's steady hand (and by implication my own) and suggest that this is actually a software issue. (Even if double clicking is happening the software should compare the post-post-save-transform text with the existing text.) Rich Farmbrough, 16:07, 5 June 2012 (UTC).
Incidentally I see this error, and I am fairly sure I almost always press alt-shift-s. Rich Farmbrough, 14:47, 6 June 2012 (UTC).
I believe this is a software issue. This doesn't happen when I double-click save, and it does not happen every time I add my signature and single-click save. It did, however, happen to me again just a few minutes ago. --Orlady (talk) 13:58, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Need some help with a template question

On Wikipedia:Database reports/Unused templates/11 starting at 10290 there are a pile of template subpages as can be seen here pertaining to subatomic particles. I have looked through some of them and they do not appear to be needed. Could someone who knows more about templates mind double checking to see if these are needed before I submit them all for deletion? Kumioko (talk) 00:38, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

I think they're all needed. Template:Subatomic particle calls on those subtemplates when a user inputs certain parameters; e.g., {{subatomic particle|charmed b*}} calls on Template:Subatomic particle/symbol/charmed b* even though that one isn't currently being used anywhere. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:07, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, so just 2 more questions. Is there a way we can code this template to not need so many of these unused subpages or is there a way we can use some of them? I'm not the greatest template programmer but this doesn't seem like the best way to do this. Kumioko (talk) 03:10, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, see note below: "Combining small templates". -Wikid77 11:26, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Well, since these subtemplates are not used (even though they may be useful in future), it would make sense to have them on the unused templates list. — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:06, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Combining small templates: All of those hundreds/thousands of small templates could be combined into 2 quick templates using #switch to branch by particle name. It would be easy to do, by editing the list of template names into a #switch, where each name becomes a branch entry in the #switch (which can have more than 4,000 branches). Then complete the markup by merely wp:substing each value in the #switch. Create 2 new subtemplates:
For each #switch branch ("="), put the subst'ed current template name:
charmed b* = {{subst:Subatomic particle/symbol/charmed b*}}
charmed x* = {{subst:Subatomic particle/symbol/charmed x*}}
Then edit Template:Subatomic_particle to invoke those 2 new subtemplates, rather than hashing the particle name into 2 separate special templates (for each particle name). This is a common problem, as several people have been using the Wikipedia pagename database(s) to hash name values for thousands of entries. It would be like creating templates of the form "Template:Initials/John_Smith" to show "J.S." for each of a million people, by creating a million template names to hash by name "John_Smith", rather than have one template "{{Initials|John Smith}}" to pass the name as parameter {{{1}}} and deduce "J.S." from the character string "John Smith". -Wikid77 (talk) 11:26/12:17, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Could you give me an example of a template that does this? I would be happy to go in and build one and see if I can solve this puzzle. Kumioko (talk) 12:03, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Okay Kumioko, I will create Template:Subatomic_particle/getlink, and then perhaps you could create the other subtemplate, based on that example. Give me a few hours, and I will contact your user-talk page when ready. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:17, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Ok thanks, if you could even get it started with the first 5 or 6 I would be happy to finish it once I see how its done. Kumioko (talk) 12:21, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Before we create the other subpage "getsymbol" it would make sense to me to simply use Template:Subatomic particle/link and Template:Subatomic particle/symbol. I've also created a sandbox at Template:Subatomic particle/sandbox. --Izno (talk) 13:48, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Ok thanks, should we also build a sandbox for the other 2 temporarily until we can get the logic working so we don't break the existing template in the process? Kumioko (talk) 13:51, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
/link and /symbol aren't actually used by anything except the sandbox. I started those as I thought Wikid was off sleeping or something (confused by UTC for once!). /getlink could be merged to /link. --Izno (talk) 14:06, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Oh ok I see that Wikid77 has created the 2 subpages above that he suggested so its fine with me either way. I don't really care what the subpage logic name is I just knew there was a better way to do this than several hundred subpages. Kumioko (talk) 14:16, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Outdent: I actually bumped into a parallel set, which I'm not sure if it's being used more or not at Template:SubatomicParticle, and it's already implemented in the way that Wikid has noted is probably the better way to deal with it. --Izno (talk) 14:17, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Returning to those older subtemplates would be another option, where Template:SubatomicParticle/link gets the corresponding article name for a particle name. That provides the anchor text in a wikilink "[[anchor|particle symbol]]", so perhaps create a Template:SubatomicParticle/sandbox to use an old version, and see how it functions. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:33, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Ah. Slightly different functionality. --Izno (talk) 14:37, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
New subtemplates ready for use in sandbox version: I created both of them, due to 345 subst'ed parameters before saving. Use these in the testing of Template:Subatomic particle/sandbox:
Meanwhile, submit the old 345+345 prior subtemplates to WP:TFD, while testing the new version, which I am confident can be done within the day. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:20, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Would you mind copying /getlink and /getsymbol to /link and /symbol? Makes more sense in my head. --Izno (talk) 14:37, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
We have not TFD-discussed replacing existing templates, yet. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:48, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for the help guys. I will submit the MFD in a few minutes and drop a link here in case someone wants to review it. Kumioko (talk) 14:39, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I meant "TFD" to discuss the prior 690 subtemplates. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:48, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
I knew what you meant. I submitted a separate one for the Link and Symbolk subpage groups here. I do notice that including redirects there are 565 Link subpages and 590 Symbol subpages so if there are only 345 on the new pages you created there might need to be some adjustments. Kumioko (talk) 14:58, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
I am updating those #switch structures (of 345) to handle the full 589 particle names, using 589 subst'ed template calls, and then we can get both lists to support the same 589, or note the differences. -Wikid77 17:29, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Awesome thanks. Kumioko (talk) 17:30, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Massive switch statements are very inefficient. Rich Farmbrough, 15:00, 5 June 2012 (UTC).

Sorry Rich I should have been more descriptive in the TFD for what my perception of inefficient is. I'm not just speaking from a system efficiency standpoint but also usability from a user perspective. For one, having about 1100 subpages makes it rather hard to check for problems when you have to switch back and forth (at least to me in my limited technical mind). Also, hundreds of these subpages are showing up in places like Database reports/unused templates so IMO if we are going to keep the functionality, which I believe we need, we should do so without having a huge number of templates. Of course this is just my opinion from a limited technical viewpoint and there may well be valid reasons why it needs to be kept as is but I can't see it. Kumioko (talk) 15:08, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
When you say "check for problems" do you mean "seeing a problem, to check where it lies" or "hey! let's check for problems!"
And as to the database report, I have some issues with that. The main reason to delete templates is to free up their names, name-space pollution is a significant problem that we should be addressing, but the no-brains stop us. These templates live in their own corner of the template namespace, where they harm no-one (the same is true of most of the other systemic template names, possible excepting the element infoboxes). Deleting all templates that are "unused" is rather like going into a workshop and throwing away all the tools that are unused, within a few minutes nothing will be made.
Nontheless I have provided dummy uses of all those templates, and so they will be absent from the next run of the report.
Now as far as the use of the template and rendering time are concerned, it was a long time ago that I re-organised the subatomic particle templates, (and I was very busy catching up with 20 years progress in the field) so I don't remember exactly how they work, but the way to test is to produce a page that calls, say 200 subatomic entities symbols, and another page that uses the proposed method. The rendered pages contain embedded html comments (i.e. we force all users of our projects to download waste bytes) that give the rendering time.
All the best, as ever,
Rich Farmbrough, 15:58, 5 June 2012 (UTC).
  • Allow for subst'ing of particle symbols: I think an acceptable improvement would be to instruct editors to use wp:subst'ed template calls, to use prefix "subst:" to evaluate the large 590-branch #switch and just store the direct symbol template in an article:
  • User types: {{subst:Subatomic particle|alpha++|link=yes}}
  • Text shows: [[Alpha particle|{{Physics particle|α|TR=++}}]]
Using the efficiency tactic of the 80/20 Rule, then only the 20% of the most-read of those subatomic articles would need to use subst'ed templates. If we really want to get efficient, remove overhead from articles such as "Main_Page" (read 7.3 million times per day); removing any unneeded templates or shrinking images, there, would produce a benefit 7.3 million times per day, 51 million times per week. And you know there are always inefficiencies in something like "Main Page". -Wikid77 (talk) 16:22, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
There are some good points here and I really didn't mean to turn this into a verbal snowball fight. I agree Rich that there is no "harm" in these templates sitting there unused however using the garage analogy you did my garage is fairly small and will only hold so much so after a while I need to clean up some of the clutter and get rid of some of the stuff I haven't used or probably won't. Same principle applies here. After several years of operation Wikipedia is building up a lot of clutter in areas like the Template and Category namespaces and things like the template/subtemplate structure above with hundreds of unused templates and subpages going unused (and many just uneeded) make things messy and confusing. You are correct there are some editors that would let this crud pile up in perpetuity but if there is a way to make this mess a little less messy then I am all for it. Of course I am ok with the decision to leave things as is if thats what happens but I think, in this case, that using the #switch logic that Wikid came up with is better than 1100+ subpages. Thats 1100 subpages that potentially have to be changed, maintained and understand by mere mortals who might attempt to use them. In reply to Wikid I agree if there are efficiencies that would help the main page we should try and use them. The site needs all the help it can get and even though we don't need to "worry" about server/harddrive space management per sey if there are better ways to do things that help those then we should IMO. These things are a finite resource and although the cost is minimal the cost does exist. Kumioko (talk) 17:29, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Of course subst:ing is an efficient solution (and may have already happened in many cases). My only tiny reservation is that it may be a smidgen less translate friendly. Rich Farmbrough, 14:51, 6 June 2012 (UTC).
Sorry Rich I'm not sure what you mean by translate friendly. Could you explain?Kumioko (talk) 15:02, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
Sure. Should we wish to translate some articles into another language, as happens from time to time, the links and any names in the templates will only need to be translated once.
On size etc: every 8 edits to this page cost about 1M headline database storage, which probably compares unfavourably with the {{Subatomic particle}} system as a whole.
On performance I created a page to compare with the serving time of {{Subatomic particle/link}} (.3 - .5 seconds) with a switch based equivalent. The page refuses to save so badly it does not even generate an error message. It is of course pretty large, I will attempt other strategies.
Rich Farmbrough, 15:21, 6 June 2012 (UTC).
OK 10.175 seconds is the serve time for the test page at [[11]] -which, incidentally, is doing much less than {{Subatomic particle/link}} i.e. it is not generating links, running "lcase" or anything just doing the simplest switch processing, an yet takes about 20-30 times as long. Rich Farmbrough, 15:29, 6 June 2012 (UTC).
That does make sense but I still think that eventhough we take a performance hit in the sense of server load, the positive of having to try and keep the 1200 pages maintained and used is less. I also think that the template logic is more understandable and easy to follow and modify (add/remove.change) as needed. I also think that the adverse of your argument is that given the space it takes for the 1200 subpages we probably balance out and maybe even gain some by not having all the subpages. I do understand what you are saying though. Kumioko (talk) 16:31, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Optimizing speed and anti-vandalism: Obviously, the 2 large combined templates will be easier to check for hacked edits, by diff comparison, rather than scanning all 1,156 subtemplates for improper changes. Many people forget about the nightmare of how minor changes are dropped somewhere into a thousand pages which people rarely watch. Meanwhile, I am working to make the large #switch structures faster, based on what Rich Farmbrough has noted above, in testing 347 runs of a template containing a large #switch. So far, the /getsymbol template seems to run only twice (2x) as slow, compared to loading the current 589 {Subatomic_particle/symbol/...} subtemplates. I noticed that the "mw" servers seem to process the page faster, when checking load times by browser View-Source of each run of the formatted page. Of course, the load time does not evaluate how other users are affected when a page loads 589 templates, while they are trying to load and format articles which they want to view. As Kumioko noted above, when comparing the overhead to load, view or anti-vandal check those 1,156 subtemplates, then overall, the system might use less resources to just process the large #switch structures, while not having the 1,156 active subtemplates in operation any longer. However, I too have noted the warnings from Rich about slow processing of large #switch structures, so I am working to calculate an accurate impact estimate on the run-time data, rather than ignore potential performance problems. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:00, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
  • The anti-vandal thing is, of course, a good point. They will show up on my watchlist, I suppose, or related changes of the page Subatomic particles/links. I don't think they are particular vandal targets. We could really do with some metrics on this sort of thing. I have also been thinking (in any case) of some other mechanisms, on and off wiki, which may help, but to avoid WP:BEANS I won't describe them right now. Rich Farmbrough, 19:29, 6 June 2012 (UTC).
  • Tests show Subatomic_particle/sandbox 50% slower: After running several tests against the prior Template:Subatomic_particle, the sandbox version seems to run only 50% slower, on average, to process 500 subatomic particle names. I have a page of test cases:
When running performance benchmarks, the minimum run times compared as 13.5 seconds for the sandbox 500 cases versus minimum 8.9 seconds for the original 500 testcases, or 1.51% longer. However, due to various server delays, the processing often ran over 16 seconds for the sandbox 500 cases, which might be more representative of actual response time: a longer template will be subjected to longer delays in server overhead. Gone are the days when a loop of 100,000 iterations would run the same length every time on a similar machine! I will run some tests, later at night, to see if the benchmark minimum of 13.5 seconds goes any lower. The original template is limited to the "500 expensive parser functions" due to using #ifexist (which has run extremely fast in the actual testing). Hence, the full 589 testcases could be run for the sandbox version, but not with the original template. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:27, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Small tests show sandbox template often 2x faster: As I suspected, with moderate usage of the template, then the new sandbox version can run much faster than the original. I ran a test of the following 11 particle names:
  • positron = {{Subatomic particle/sandbox|positron}}
  • electron = {{Subatomic particle/sandbox|electron}}
  • neutron = {{Subatomic particle/sandbox|neutron}}
  • muon = {{Subatomic particle/sandbox|muon}}
  • kaon = {{Subatomic particle/sandbox|kaon}}
  • proton = {{Subatomic particle/sandbox|proton}}
  • sigma = {{Subatomic particle/sandbox|sigma}}
  • gluon = {{Subatomic particle/sandbox|gluon}}
  • photon = {{Subatomic particle/sandbox|photon}}
  • rho = {{Subatomic particle/sandbox|rho}}
  • gluon0 = {{Subatomic particle/sandbox|gluon0}}
The results showed a minimum benchmark time of 0.439 seconds for running those 11 sandbox cases, whereas the original template in 11 cases often ran as 0.7, 0.8 or even 1.1 seconds, as double the time of the new sandbox version, which uses the giant #switch structures (with 589 branches each). I think this example clearly illustrates that even a large #switch structure, when run only "11 times" per page, could run much faster than special, tiny templates tediously optimized to just one-line each. The most likely explanation is that the fluctuating overhead in the server processing just completely overshadows the time needed to process "11 times" through a large #switch structure of 589 cases. As shown with the 500-testcase example, above, the large #switch structures can be 50% slower when used 500x times per page. However, in typical usage of just "11 times" per page, a large #switch can run twice (2x) as fast as the optimized, special, tiny templates of 1-line each. Hence, the sandbox version of Template:Subatomic_particle was able to run twice as fast as the original template, when not pushed as an extreme case of 500 transclusions on one page. Caveat: This test only applies to occasional articles with "11 times" running a large #switch structure; if most articles began using huge #switch logic, then overall results might slow by 1-5%, as articles began to compete more for time. -Wikid77 (talk) 21:40, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

It seems to me that there are good points on either side of this debate. Rich is right, #switches are ineffient. The further down the #switch you have to go the more inefficient they get; hence Wikid's placement of the more commonly needed symbols at the top. This shows up in the preprocessor node count (which can be seen when you view the page's source code). For particles toward the top of the list the live version and the sandbox version are roughly on par with respect to this count. As you go down the list they diverge. For particles towards the end of the list the sandbox preprocessor node count has grown to about nine times that of the live version. On the other hand, using a #switch does remove the "need" for the #ifexist (another expensive piece of code limiting the number of calls to 500 per page). The #ifexist allows the template to crash gracefully, i.e. give an error message if the input is not supported (so we don't completely need it, if it becomes a problem, it could be ditched and let the template crach ungracefully). As for maintaining & protecting the subtemplates from vandalism, Rich notes that they're on his watch list (but what if, Heaven forbid, he should die), they could be protected & do we expect them to need maintaining (are particle symbols going to be changed anytime soon? perhaps the articles on them may evolve (merge/split/move), though). I think Rich has solved the problem of their showing up on the unused template lists (it would be nice if there were another way to do this). One thing puzzling me about both approaches is why you're calling {{physics particle}}. Why, for example, use {{Physics particle|p}} when p would do? JIMp talk·cont 07:36, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Rich doesn't need to die for him to be unable to act on his watchlist. The Arbs have twitchy fingers. Rich can't even correct a spelling mistake without somebody calling "foul".
Anyway, {{physics particle|p}} doesn't do much apart from wrapping the letter "p" in a <span class="unicode;" style="white-space:nowrap;">...</span>. But this is a minimal example: the template takes several parameters |anti= |BL= |BR= |link= |TL= |TR=, five of which add various symbols, the other allows a wikilink. For example: {{physics particle|p|link=proton|TR=+}} →
p+
 --Redrose64 (talk) 13:19, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, the proton example is minimal but the principle remains the same. If speed is a concern, we could speed things up by using plain code. I'll try elaborate below. JIMp talk·cont 05:01, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
It should be noted that Rich is currently blocked for a month and without delving to deep into the many problems I have with the ruling, the vagueness of its written inclines me to believe that this will not be a singular event. Aside from that I don't like relying on a single point of failure (in this case Rich's watchlist) for a deterrant for vandals not to alter a template for a few laughs. Kumioko (talk) 13:23, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
I have never understood the ruling that a "30-day block" is needed when most people will change tactics after a 24-hour block, and do things differently afterward. However, I have tried to reduce other blocks and then get accused of "meat puppet" so I will let others decide that issue. -Wikid77 19:13, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
No, well, a block would also prevent his fixing vandalism (as would an number of other things, his going camping, getting lost at sea, going to gaol, going on a mission to Mars, ...). Protection might work but it does have the disadvantage of making positive edits more difficult (Rich, being desysopped, wouldn't be able to work on them if they are fully protected). And, of course, there's no way of stopping vandals from adding subtemplates for bogus particles and then using the template to disguise vandalism (hope I'm not giving them any ideas). JIMp talk·cont 00:09, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Note also, of course, that whilst he's blocked he can't defend his version of the template here nor at the TDF. JIMp talk·cont 00:21, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Optimizing Template:Subatomic_particle for speed and portability: Now that tests have confirmed the sandbox version can run faster than the original Template:Subatomic_particle, for limited use as "11 times" per article, I have continued to optimize the #switch structure to speed the top 80 particle names. At this point, we can move ahead with further benefits. The most obvious will be:
  • Reducing the 1,156 templates to 2 templates, for all known cases.
  • Fixing missing cases, or mismatched names.
  • Easier proofreading of formatting all "589" particle names.
  • Easier removal of unlikely "artificial" names in the list.
  • Easier reformatting all "589" particle names for a future format.
  • Automatic counts of linked versus non-linked symbols as 2 template names.
  • Easier interwiki translation (Spanish?, Swedish?) as 2 templates, not 1,180 projected.
Already, I have proofread most of the 589 entries to ensure the correct wikilink format. Also, I have pinpointed 26 formatting errors, among the current 589 particle names. The heaviest usage of particle symbols is made by Template:Particles, being transcluded into over 140 pages. The usage of symbols is currently "forced" in the sense that only some atomic articles show symbols, at all, and hence, the symbols are not "required" to describe issues in particle physics. For example, common articles "Gluon" and "Hadron" did not use the template, at all, while "Pion" contained 66 transclusions of pion particles and related. From that standpoint, this template has catered to a limited use of symbols, rather than being a "workhorse template", and instead it is a specialized-symbol template, currently in limited use. Based on this background, I have noted these issues in Template_talk:Subatomic particle/getsymbol. -Wikid77 (talk) 19:13, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Because Rich created these templates, was part of the discussion before his block and because he is intimately familiar with how they function and why I am going to say, in case he is watching, that I would be glad to post his comments if they were to show up in my Email for this discussion. :-) I do believe that this is in keeping with the intent of the block and IMO still allows us to proceed without jeopardizing any potential unintended consequences. If anyone has a problem with this, please let me know so that we can mitigate any concerns. Kumioko (talk) 01:55, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
That sounds fair. JIMp talk·cont 06:25, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
A couple of suggestions which apply to both versions.

Both Rich's version and Wikid's version start out with an #ifeq to check whether or not to link. What if we saved the #ifeq till later, till after we've figured out what the particle is? By doing so we wouldn't need one subtemplate or six hundred subtemplates for linked particle symbols and another or another fifty dozen for unlinked ones. Instead we could put the #ifeq on each particle subtemplate or each line of the #switch. Of course, that's a lot more #ifeqs to type but only one will need to be evaluated at a time so there'd be no effect on the template's speed. Rich's version would then need only thirty score subtemplates and Wikid's wouldn't even need any. On the other hand, we could eliminate this #ifeq altogether and make the value of the linking parameter part of the subtemplate name (e.g. Template:Subatomic particle/blahblah/linkyes vs Template:Subatomic particle/blahblah/linkno) but we'd keep the same number of subtemplates. JIMp talk·cont 06:25, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Both Rich's version and Wikid's version use {{physics particle}}. As mentioned above, in the case of {{subatomic particle|p}} this does nothing useful. So we're better off just using p. Yes, this is a minimal example, though. So what about the case of {{subatomic particle|proton+|link=yes}}? Here {{physics particle|p|link=proton|TR=+}} is used. What happens next?

{{physics particle}}

  • builts the particle symbol
    • checking whether any superscripts or subscripts are needed to the left,
    • checking whether an overline is needed (for antiparticles) and
    • checking whether any superscripts or subscripts are needed to the right
      • and since a superscript is needed it calls {{su}} which adds the superscript "+" using
        <span style="display:inline-block; margin-bottom:-0.3em; vertical-align:0.8em; line-height:1.2em; font-size:85%; text-align:left;"><!--
          -->+<br /><!--
          --></span>
        (note the <br/>, unnecessary in this case since there is no subscript),
  • sends the symbol and link along to {{OptionalLink}} and
  • puts the whole lot within a <span class="unicode;" style="white-space:nowrap;">...</span>.

{{OptionalLink}}

  • checks (again) whether to link the symbol
    • and since a link is desired it calls {{InternalLink}}.

{{InternalLink}}

  • produces the link and adds an unecessary <span></span> (this is intended to stop any connected text from also being linked but is redundant since the thing is already in a span).

In the end we have the following code. 

<span class="unicode;" style="white-space:nowrap;">[[proton|p<span style="display:inline-block; margin-bottom:-0.3em; vertical-align:0.8em; line-height:1.2em;  font-size:85%; text-align:left;"><!--
  -->+<br /><!--
  --></span>]]<span></span></span>

Which could be cleaned up like this. 

<span class="unicode;" style="white-space:nowrap;">[[proton|p<span style="display:inline-block; margin-bottom:-0.3em; vertical-align:0.8em; line-height:1.2em;  font-size:85%; text-align:left;">+</span>]]</span>

The following is the NewPP limit report for the above code.

Preprocessor node count: 3/1000000
Post-expand include size: 0/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 0/2048000 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 1/40
Expensive parser function count: 0/500

Compare this to the NewPP limit report for {{physics particle|p|link=proton|TR=+}}

Preprocessor node count: 66/1000000
Post-expand include size: 1044/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 323/2048000 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 11/40
Expensive parser function count: 0/500

It seems that almost all of (Rich's) {{subatomic particle|proton+|link=yes}}'s preprocessor node count, post-expand include size, template argument size and highest expansion depth is due to the use of {{physics particle}}.

Here's the NewPP limit report for {{subatomic particle|proton+|link=yes}}.

Preprocessor node count: 75/1000000
Post-expand include size: 1682/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 169/2048000 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 13/40
Expensive parser function count: 1/500

Compare that to the NewPP limit report for {{subatomic particle|proton+/sandbox|link=yes}} which currently calls {{Subatomic particle/link/proton+/sandbox}} which has the plain code instead of the {{physics particle}} call.

Preprocessor node count: 21/1000000
Post-expand include size: 873/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 33/2048000 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 6/40
Expensive parser function count: 1/500

JIMp talk·cont 06:25, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

With usage likely to remain below 100 template symbols per article, then the node count seems acceptable as it has been, without changes there. -Wikid77 22:15, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
True, but if we're looking for speed, the more we simplify the template, the quicker it should get. Here's a single-page version based on the double switch (mentioned below), on moving the #ifeq and on using plain code. I think this will prove to be faster still. Here are the NewPP limit reports for 500 particles using these three versions.
NewPP limit report for {{subatomic particle}} (live version)
Preprocessor node count: 34596/1000000
Post-expand include size: 792249/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 93125/2048000 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 13/40
Expensive parser function count: 500/500
NewPP limit report for {{subatomic particle/sandbox}}
Preprocessor node count: 73630/1000000
Post-expand include size: 886469/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 98839/2048000 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 14/40
Expensive parser function count: 0/500
NewPP limit report for {{subatomic particle/sandbox2}}
Preprocessor node count: 45354/1000000
Post-expand include size: 313660/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 11428/2048000 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 6/40
Expensive parser function count: 0/500
JIMp talk·cont 06:53, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
I have created another sandbox version sort of half-way between {{subatomic particle/sandbox}} and {{subatomic particle/sandbox2}} in the sense that it doesn't use other {{physics particle}} (and all the other templates which that subsequently calls) but does call its own subtemplates. As expected it fairs somewhere between {{subatomic particle/sandbox}} and {{subatomic particle/sandbox2}} in terms of template limits.
NewPP limit report for {{subatomic particle/sandbox3}}
Preprocessor node count: 57676/1000000
Post-expand include size: 468799/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 19987/2048000 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 7/40
Expensive parser function count: 0/500
Of course, eliminating {{physics particle}} goes completely in the opposite direction to what's suggested below. 06:15, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
If we want to get {{physics particle}} when we subst {{subatomic particle}}, here's an idea. We could still eliminate all subtemplates of {{subatomic particle}} by putting the #ifeq on the main page (as I've been sugesting) and use the link parameter in the {{physics particle}} call. I've replaced the direct code in {{subatomic particle/sandbox2}} with an example of what I'm talking about.
NewPP limit report for the new {{subatomic particle/sandbox2}}
Preprocessor node count: 69458/1000000
Post-expand include size: 693315/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 93125/2048000 bytes
Highest expansion depth: 13/40
Expensive parser function count: 0/500
We are, of course, back to the kind of numbers we have with {{subatomic particle/sandbox}} (a very slight improvement) but much of this is probably due to inefficencies in {{physics particle}}. JIMp talk·cont 08:22, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Speed is even faster with subst'ed names: Although template {Subatomic_particle} would be somewhat faster when replacing all uses of "{Physics particle|B}" with the plain span-tags (for class="unicode;" style="white-space:nowrap"), the fastest results come from wp:subst'ing to keep the "{Physics particle|B}" in the article text. Using Template:Physics_particle, directly, is faster than optimizing {Subatomic_particle}, so when speed is an issue, then the tactic is to use subst'ing or direct coding to have "{Physics particle|B}" in the article text, as twice as fast (2x) as optimizing {Subatomic_particle}. Again, using "{Physics particle|B}" has been the best method, and using other templates has been a forced, artificial change in writing those articles. -Wikid77 00:01, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, substing {{subatomic particle}} such to leave {{physics particle}} in the text would be preferable. JIMp talk·cont 06:15, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
  • New sandbox version optimized 20% faster than original: I have further modified the Template:Subatomic_particle/getsymbol and /getlink subtemplates, to further speed the search, by hashing on the 1st letter of the particle name, to then branch to a smaller #switch for each major letter: b, c, d, s, t or others. That reduces the worst-case search to nearly 589/6, as only about 98 names to search, or roughly 6x times faster there, almost 2x faster overall, which is even 20% faster than the original. Because the initial speed difference was an issue, in perhaps keeping the prior 1,156 subtemplates if the sandbox version was much slower, the recent optimization for the sandbox to run now 20% faster, than the original 1,156 tiny subtemplates, tilts the decision clearly in favor to use the 2 quicker, updated subtemplates, rather than maintain the 1,156 slower, unfinished, undocumented subtemplates. Meanwhile, the analysis of this situation has revealed how #switch structures of 100 branches, each, can outperform 1,200 one-line templates to display a symbol selected by name, as split into 2 groups of 600 names, with 6-way #switches into sub-switches of 100-branch groups. Extension of this tactic, to process problems of 2,000 names, seems like an efficient strategy, rather than have 2,000 tiny templates to maintain, or copy when porting for interwiki translation. -Wikid77 22:15, 9 June 2012, revised 01:46, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Implications for improving Template:Physics_particle: As noted above, the best tactic, for articles on particle physics, has been to continue using "{Physics particle|B}" which has been the fastest method, and using other templates has been a forced, artificial change in writing those articles. Although {Subatomic_particle} will be greatly improved by combining all 1,156 subtemplates into 1 or 2, the optimization of {Physics_particle} should also be sought. In particular, dropping the nowrapping (rarely needed) would be an easy improvement, where an option could be added to "w=n" (for wrap=no) when a user wanted the template to nowrap results, in the very, very rare cases when needed. Otherwise, users could just force {nowrap|xx} (or {j|xx} to join) text, as another alternative. So, I think drop the extra markup:
  • Unless option w=n, omit: <span class="unicode;" style="white-space:nowrap;"> </span>
Omitting that nowrap text would make using "{Physics particle|B}" about twice as compact, such as in large tables which could list extensive combinations of atomic particles. -Wikid77 00:01, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure that the no wrap is rarely needed. Super/subscripts seem to wrap. But there are plenty of other places where {{physics particle}} could be sped up. JIMp talk·cont 06:15, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

User talk:Jereemy

Hello,

May you delete the page User talk:Jereemy ?

Thank you very much. --Jereemy (talk) 18:23, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

You're not normally allowed delete your principle talk page. It's for people to contact you regarding your edits. What do you want to delete it? — Blue-Haired Lawyer t 18:46, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
See WP:DELTALK. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:56, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Database error screwed up my move!

I got a database error while I was in the middle of performing a move for a move request, and the edit history has screwed up. Per the move request, the intended moves should have been moving Bruno Müller (a dab page) to Bruno Müller (disambiguation), and Bruno Müller (Nazi) to Bruno Müller. Currently the edit history for the former Bruno Müller (Nazi) no longer appears. To make matters worse I need to step out and won't be able to deal with this until later, so assistance would be much appreciated.--Cúchullain t/c 21:16, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Ugh, what were you trying to do there? There shouldn't have been any need to delete anything there except possibly a redirect or two. Anyway, I think I can sort it out. Anomie⚔ 03:20, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Oh, that should sort things out. Anomie⚔ 03:26, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Thank you. I have no clue know what happened; when was able to see the pages again, the disambiguation page had not been moved, and Bruno Müller (Nazi) was at Bruno Müller with all edits deleted. Unfortunately I had to step away and couldn't return for several hours. When I got back I'd gotten several "wtf" messages, so I undeleted the article so it was at least visible. Thanks a lot for sorting it out.Cúchullain t/c 03:45, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

IPv6 schoolblock question

Mikemikev (talk · contribs) is a prolific sockpuppet from Imperial College, frequently attacking other editors. Imperial College is now using IPv6 and we are blocking individual addresses such as 2001:630:12:1072:EC7D:4743:C486:6971 (talk · contribs) and 2001:630:12:100E:FC57:7302:D227:CD50 (talk · contribs) but should we be using range blocks instead? Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 09:26, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Probably, but you'd need to careful consider the amount of collateral damage and strike the right balance. See meta:User:Jonathan_de_Boyne_Pollard/Guide_to_blocking_IP_version_6_addresses for more. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 09:56, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, I understand most of that except actually the bit about range blocking. Is there any more detailed guidance on how to do with, maybe with examples? I doubt that I'm the only Admin that will need this. Dougweller (talk) 14:37, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
With IPv6, you want to block the smallest administrative entity you can find that corresponds to that IP address. This is typically a /48 (for organizations) or a /56 (for individuals). Allocations to administrative entities on /64 boundaries are I believe, very rare: /64s should generally correspond to individual LANs inside an organization. For the address in question, whois returns the following:
inet6num: 2001:0630:0012::/48
netname: ICV6NET1
descr: Imperial College London
Since there's nothing to suggest any finer granularity of address assignment, I suggest you should schoolblock the entire IP range 2001:0630:0012::/48, and let the IC sysadmins sort the issue out internally. -- The Anome (talk) 14:48, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Update: I've just discovered that range blocks with prefixes shorter than /64 are apparently currently not allowed. This is bad news -- in theory, blocking an organization with a /48 allocation would require up to 65536 different blocks. However, I think it's reasonable to assume in this case that Imperial know what they are doing, and are being reasonably parsimonious with subnet allocation. In which case, we should be blocking just the two /64 subnets: 2001:630:12:1072::/64 and 2001:630:12:100E::/64. -- The Anome (talk) 14:57, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Subnets 2001:630:12:1072::/64 and 2001:630:12:100E::/64 now schoolblocked. -- The Anome (talk) 15:02, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) In a couple of weeks (with the deployment of MediaWiki 1.20wmf5), you'll be able to block much larger ranges of IPv6 space than the existing limit of /64 (specifically up to /32). Alternatively the change could be made immediately if there was good cause for it. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 15:07, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes please, since the expected problems have already started, can we have it sooner rather than later? We should probably be blocking /56s as our standard IPv6 block -- most ISPs seem to have selected /48 for companies, and either /48 or /56 for consumer connections. (See RFC 6177 for more on this.) Only large companies with multiple sites should need an allocation larger than a /48, and this should show up on whois.

Moreover, except for very, very, rare cases, given the way that IPv6 address assignment works, I can't see that blocking any block smaller than a /64, let alone an individual address, makes any sense at all. Perhaps we should have IPv6 blocks block a minimum of /64 by default? -- The Anome (talk) 15:16, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for all this. Should we be letting people at WP:AN know about this discussion? Dougweller (talk) 15:33, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, definitely. If we get our procedures sorted out now, while IPv6 isn't yet much of a problem, we will be ahead of the game. -- The Anome (talk) 15:51, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Johnathan's guide on Meta is somewhat erroneous on the topic of rangeblocks. The very reason why IPv6 came into existence on wikis is to avoid collateral damage when one IPv4 address=1 LAN. It is therefore important that we don't rangeblock unless we have a school (people can register at home), a moving proxy, or an active IP hopper within the range. As Jarry1250 said, the rangeblock limit will be lifted when MediaWiki 1.20wmf5 is deployed, allowing up to /32 rangeblocks.--Jasper Deng (talk) 15:59, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
IPv6 came into existence to deal with the IPv4 address exhaustion problem, and, as a solution to that problem, is indifferent to our blocking issues. In general, we need to block the smallest administrative entity which is not under the end-user's direct control. Unfortunately, blocking on a LAN-by-LAN basis is just what we have to do: someone with access to a IPv6 LAN has in principle up to 264 IP addresses at their disposal, and in many cases will have their network configured in such a way that they will only need to bring an interface up and down to get a new one. Moreover, someone with a /56 IPv6 allocation under their control (ie. most home IPv6 users) will have up to 256 such LANs at their disposal. -- The Anome (talk) 16:21, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
What if the user is in an office building where its not his own address set? Or if he/she lives with a good-faith contributor? In either case there'd be collateral damage. This is why at most I'd restrict such rangeblocking to home users only, or if it's clear a range is being abused.--Jasper Deng (talk) 16:26, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Then their colleagues and housemates will, alas, have a problem. The alternative is not to be able to block IP-hoppin users at all, since they will be able to IP-hop to their heart's content as much as they like within that range. It may be an idea to give them the benefit of the doubt just the once, if their block is not followed by IP-hopping, but given that IP hopping can be as simple a matter as taking an interface up and down without even realising it, I'm not hopeful about this. -- The Anome (talk) 16:31, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Not everyone knows how to IP-hop. So therefore a rangeblock should be only done when they demonstrate that they do know how to hop.--Jasper Deng (talk) 16:43, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, you're right. I propose the following blocking seqence: first, a /128 individual address; if that doesn't work, the covering /64, and if that doesn't work, either a /56 or a /48 block, as appropriate. We can skip the intermediate /64 if circumstances suggest it would be ineffective. -- The Anome (talk) 17:12, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
I half-agree on that. This escalating ranges system should only be used when we are uncertain of the kind of allocation the ISP uses. If we do know that then we should just block the default allocation size.--Jasper Deng (talk) 17:14, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Best practice currently seems to be issuing /56 or /48 allocations to customers, although I have heard anecdotal reports of /64s being handed out to home users by ISPs. -- 17:24, 11 June 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by The Anome (talk • contribs)
Even if users get more than /64, in any case most don't use more than one /64.--Jasper Deng (talk) 17:26, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Agreed. We have three tiers: non-IP-hopping users, non-technical IP-hopping users who will generally stay on a single LAN, or at most a few LANs (muiltiple WLANs in a single house, for example), and technically proficient malicious IP-hopping users, the last of which we should assume can hop anywhere within any allocation they can get their hands on. -- The Anome (talk) 17:45, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
There's also the mobile device user jumping on a large Wifi network with more than one /64 subnet.--Jasper Deng (talk) 18:10, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Mikemikev is still socking from Imperial College, see [12] from 2001:630:12:1073:3038:610A:F533:DFC1 (talk · contribs). Dougweller (talk) 08:46, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Block the /64, and next Monday when 1.20wmf5 comes out, the /48. A college has the right to deny that person access to its network if it wishes to be able to edit anonymously here.--Jasper Deng (talk) 16:48, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
You can now block ranges up to /19, I backported the relevant change. -- Tim Starling (talk) 01:13, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

{{S-line}} doesn't work

See the article Fenhu Road Station. I have provided the parameters and created templates it needs. I compared them with other railways, but found nothing wrong. --MakecatTalk 00:56, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I have never liked the {{s-line}} method for producing railway station routeboxes, primarily because of the myriad of bespoke subtemplates that it requires, and the hoops that you have to jump through to get it to work. As far as I can tell, subtemplate {{SZRT stations}} expects there to be a positional parameter {{{1}}}, but {{S-line/side cell}} passes only named parameters into {{SZRT stations}}. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:55, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
[13] seems to have fixed Fenhu Road Station. Many other stations still need previous and next parameters. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:00, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks.--MakecatTalk 23:54, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Template inclusion limit?

Hey there, so I broke up Wikipedia:Userboxes/Games/Video games/Genres into a number of smaller pages located at Wikipedia:Userboxes/Games/Video games/Puzzle, Wikipedia:Userboxes/Games/Video games/Racing, etc. But when I try to include the sub-pages using the double curly braces syntax, the last include (the one at the bottom of the page) doesn't go through. I get the message "Warning: Template include size is too large. Some templates will not be included." I looked on Wikipedia:Template limits for help, but it's not exactly written in the most accessible language. I'm not sure if this is a pre-include or post-include issue.. or what it is.

Can you explain what's going on in this case? And what should I do to remedy the situation, so Wikipedia:Userboxes/Games/Video games/Genres displays all the userboxes that I'm trying to include? I've considered doing substs and doing away with the sub-pages, but I do think it's convenient to have the sub-pages. And even if I include all the userboxes on the same page, wouldn't I run into the same problem? Thanks for your help. CaseyPenk (talk) 20:26, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

The problem is obviously that you're including too many templates on a page, the solution is obviously not to include so many templates on a single page. Why not just make the main pages link to the subpages?
If you subst the subpages, it may still work, because you're doing away with one level of template expansion. With a few more userboxes, you're likely to again hit the limit, though. Ucucha (talk) 20:44, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
I've been resisting using the parent as a landing page, because most userbox types are self-contained without any sub-pages (e.g. Health. ethnic groups) Thanks for letting me know. CaseyPenk (talk) 21:07, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

possibility to search files local

Hi, I was searching for images locally, but sadly (e.g. searching for 'flickr') there popping up 'too many' commons images. Is there a possibility to include only the local images? mabdul 11:01, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't know a way with Wikipedia's search. With Google you can try flickr -"This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons" site:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:13, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, good idea, but sadly doesn't work in my case: I wanted to search at en.wikibooks, but google, Y! and big don't seem to index the images there :/ (search term: 'flickr http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/' works but only for text, 'flickr http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/F' no hit) mabdul 12:00, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
I get 470 Google hits on -"This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons" site:en.wikibooks.org/wiki/File:, but it's not much when wikibooks:Special:Statistics says there are 7460 uploaded files. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:30, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Although I only 440 hits, the first 5 hits are from Commons, but I do want files from en.wikibooks... Somehow this search is not working... mabdul 13:50, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion for Dynamic List

I am working on a wiki that tries to overcome the problem of too much time wasted navigating through the different levels of hierarchies when browsing for an interesting article. One solution is to put all the links on a single page and use indented lists (* and # markup) in a tree hierarchy so as to save the viewer the time and effort of navigating through the links. It would be really useful to have a markup syntax so that sub-levels are hidden until clicked open. For example, in the sample markup below, it would be really useful to have a [+] next to Vegetables so that Root Vegetables and everything under are hidden from view until clicked upon. Similarly, there would also be a [+] next to Root Vegetables when it becomes visible.
+ Vegetables
++ Root Vegetables
+++ Carrots
Is there already such a facility or something similar? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Me0815 (talk • contribs) 07:26, 13 June 2012‎

That would be the category system. Go to Category:Vegetables and you'll see that the page is divided into three. The bottom section shows those articles directly included in that category, and the middle section shows the subcategories. Each subcategory has a blue or grey triangle to its left; if you click on any blue triangle, it will expand to show a further level of subcategorisation. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:02, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
See also mw:Manual:Collapsible elements. Helder 14:20, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
If I wanted to display just the link to the category with a blue arrow beside it, is there a parameter I can use such as "show-arrow" in the category link, as in [[:Category:Vegetables|Vegetables|show-arrow]]? Me0815 04:52, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
The blue arrow is a characteristic of the way that category pages are built. No special coding is provided (or even needed). If the wikicode [[Category:Vegetables]] is placed on a category page, this category appears on Category:Vegetables under the 'Subcategories' heading (with a grey or blue arrow alongside); if the same wikicode is placed on a file description page, this file appears on Category:Vegetables under the 'Media in category "Vegetables"' heading (in a gallery); and if the same wikicode is placed on any other page, this page appears on Category:Vegetables under the 'Pages in category "Vegetables"' heading (with a bullet alongside). --Redrose64 (talk) 09:43, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
Ok, thanks for all the above information, it helped me understand categories a great deal Me0815 09:41, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Custom colours in My Watchlist, and possibly other pages

Is there a way I can customise the colours of text and/or background in specific places on Wikipedia? For example, I have trouble distinguishing between the "link not yet followed' blue and the "link has been followed" purple when both appear on the light blue background of My Watchlist. (I use those colours to determine which diffs I've reviewed and which have not.) I'm using MonoBook skin and Mozilla Firefox. Setting colours in Firefox and telling it not to let the website override them solves the problem - but then I lose all background colours which makes page version diffs useless. I presume I can put something in my Custom CSS to set specific colours in specific circumstance, but I don't know how. An example would be helpful, in the first instance for foreground of links-followed and links-not-yet-followed and background of My Watchlist, but hints as to what other pages I can change would also be good. Thanks, Mitch Ames (talk) 12:32, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Hey Mitch. Okay, so I'm not sure how familiar you are with CSS, but to change the display of things on your watchlist only you prepend the selector name with ".mw-special-Watchlist ", where "mw-special-Watchlist" is listed as one of the classes of the body tag when you do right-click > View Source. For example to change the background of Special:Watchlist to white, you add to you custom CSS:
.mw-special-Watchlist div#content{ background: white; }
and to change the colour of visited links (to black, for example) you can use:
.mw-special-Watchlist div#content a:visited{ background: black; }
Hope that helps, - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 12:49, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
That did the trick. Thanks. Mitch Ames (talk) 11:48, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

fill in citation from ISBN, DOI, etc.

What Wikipedia script/gadget/toolserver item allows me to enter only {{cite book|isbn=1234}} and have the tool fill in the rest using available databases on the web? I thought User:Citation bot did this, but apparently not. Riggr Mortis (talk) 02:37, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

I've usually used the various incarnations of RefTools, which work slightly siffernetly, you hit ref, then for (say) a cite book you put in an ISBN (or in another incarnation, a Google Books URL), for a cite journal you put in a DOI -- and there's a button next to those fields which fill in the rest. This section shows you the three available versions and what settings to use to get each, I actually find 1.0 easier to use than teh rest. Not quite what you wanted, but maybe good enough. --j⚛e deckertalk 02:42, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
[ec] That is what I wanted, thanks. I'm so old school I never look at toolbars and friendly UI add-ons. However, it's not working either, for me: it simply "throbs" forever. Previous to this post I found [14] which does the same thing (won't complete). Admittedly I'm trying it for a single ISBN, Oh well. Riggr Mortis (talk) 03:01, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
Riggr Mortis, you can try User:Δ/Google Books.js.  Hazard-SJ  ✈  02:56, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia incredibly slow

What's going on? Loading a page takes like 20 seconds and when the page finally comes up it doesn't render correctly. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 11:49, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Seems to be okay again. Perhaps it was just my internet connection. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 12:06, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

I just had the full page skin come out and it stall, its not just you. OK now though.♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:07, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Same here but things still look bad here (assuming scarlet "critical"s are a bad thing!). Thincat (talk) 13:19, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Anchor doesn't work right

For some reason, Egyptian parliamentary election, 2011–2012#Dissolution doesn't work properly in Firefox. Instead of opening to the correct section, it goes midway through the refs (after briefly) going to the right place. I assume one of the tables or piecharts is messing things up, but I am at a loss as to which one and why.

Link is currently on the mainpage, so a fix would be nice if possible. --ThaddeusB (talk) 15:01, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

It's caused by the collapsed table in Egyptian parliamentary election, 2011–2012#PR per governorate and district. It changes size after the browser has computed where to place you. It's a common issue with section links from other pages. You can click in the address bar and press Enter to make the browser recompute where to place you. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:14, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Editor-save&edit

I see that additional buttons are being added to the Edit page User interface- so while minds are focus can I propose additional fuctionality. I would like a Save& Edit button- that would savethe page I am working on and take me back into the &action=edit mode- rather than the display mode. The reason is that when I am working on a flaky internet connection, doing a major edit to a page it is good practice to save-early save often however pragmatism tells me that it better to just make one save as the line will be invariably down, and I will have to wait for reconnection (or the server will be overloaded). At the moment I need one window of opportunity to do a preview, one to do a save and one to reconnect in editing mode- I can become 50% more productive with a new button- and if the button would allow an edit with rollback- I could omit the preview (but that is another day!). Apologies if this has been discussed before. --ClemRutter (talk) 14:07, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

This can be done with JavaScript, I think. Ruslik_Zero 19:50, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, so can time travel, resurrection of the dead and reversing global warming, I think- but I would like to see a demo in sandbox. So if it can be done, would anyone like to accept the challenge? I am too busy trying to turn_copper_into_gold.js ;) --ClemRutter (talk) 22:07, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
I just created the tool for you. You can find it at User:Mabdul/saveandedit.js and you can simply 'install' it by adding following line to you Special:MyPage/skin.js:
importScript('User:Mabdul/saveandedit.js'); //adding a new button next to the
Regards, mabdul 01:18, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
Just what I was looking for. Thanks. I am giving it a spin right now. I let you know if I find any six legged things. :)--ClemRutter (talk) 13:36, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
I will fix that bug... o.O mabdul 13:39, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

{{Wide template}} with extra scrollbar above?

{{Wide template}} adds a scrollbar below the too-wide template. When the template is high, this bar can be out of sight (below screen) in regular page reading. Example: see Periodic table (large version). Is it possible to add (optionally), an extra scrollbar above the wide template? -DePiep (talk) 12:07, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

No, not easily anyway. The template merely prompts the browser to add scrollbars using the CSS overflow property; the browser chooses where to put them (or to not put them). Thus it would be quite an endeavour to add them at the top. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 12:20, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Thank you, very clear & clarifying. I read & learn. Any other routes, someone? -DePiep (talk) 20:24, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
it is possible, but would probably require some extra javascript (see [15]). 198.102.153.2 (talk) 23:53, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Good working examples in the link. Is it a feature I could ask, or is that a user-side thing? -DePiep (talk) 12:20, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
I'd be concerned that using a JS-based trick in a template might start to interfere with usability/accessibility of the site, though that's just me. It's probably best to leave it as a user-side option, either via a browser extension like GreaseMonkey or some custom trickery in vector.js. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 22:14, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

IDEA : Automate DEFAULT Disambiguation on (internal wikipedia) links based on ARTICLE CONTEXT

If I am adding to an article on economics and I say "/[/["depression"/]/]", I am probably refering to an article economic depressions like the great depression. If I'm adding to an article on psychology, I'm probably refering to the mood disorder. This obviously isn't always the case, but it'd be nice if "[[" links in articles could have CONTEXT BASED DEFAULT DISAMBIGUATION (rather than by default sending you to a disambiguation page). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.96.107.58 (talk) 18:52, 15 June 2012‎

The great difficulty here would be "how should context be determined"? --Redrose64 (talk) 22:38, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
As an example, say I'm editing an article on a type of stone. Part of the article will be about geology, so depression (geology) might be relevant. However, another section may be about the industry surrounding it, so depression (economics) would be appropriate. It becomes quite difficult to guess exactly what context should be used without a human being in the loop. Chris857 (talk) 16:14, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Sysadmin

I asked this at WP:BN (because I thought hopefully someone there might know), but it just occurred to me that asking here might be a good idea.

How would one contact a sysadmin? - jc37 01:05, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Every time I've seen this asked at VPT the response has been IRC is the way to go. If you don't use IRC, then I don't know ... maybe one of the mailing lists? Jenks24 (talk) 01:20, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
You could leave a comment at one of the posts on http://blog.wikimedia.org/c/technology/. I think the sysadmins reply to those. Equazcion (talk) 01:56, 16 Jun 2012 (UTC)
You could also leave a user talk message for a user at http://wikitech.wikimedia.org. Also see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum. Equazcion (talk) 02:01, 16 Jun 2012 (UTC)
If you don't use IRC, use iRC. It really is the best way. Specifically, use http://webchat.freenode.net and connection channel #wikimedia-tech, then ask away. Be prepared to have to wait and/or come back and ask again; if it's urgent, prefix with !sysadmin and people should come running. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 13:52, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
Thank you. I managed to finally figure out how to get there (irc).
And thank you for the advice, I appreciate it : ) - jc37 14:26, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Edit Counter

I'm wondering how to safely make this page: User:TruPepitoM/EditCounterOptIn.js without any malicious content. Thank you. TruPepitoM (talk) 03:03, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Just write anything you like in it. That warning is only for pre-existing scripts that you received from an unknown source. Graham87 04:15, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
The warning is applied to any page ending in .js, whether it's malicious or not. Chris857 (talk) 16:16, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

.wiki top-level domain

For your information, the CEO of AboutUs.org has applied for the .wiki top-level domain.[16] I would have expected Wikia to apply as well, but apparently they didn't. —Ruud 10:16, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

New feature experiment

The current timestamp
The experimental new timestamp

Hi everyone! I just wanted to give a heads up that the new editor engagement experiments team at the Foundation is starting our first user interface test today.

The purpose of this experiment is to more prominently show when an article was last edited, in order to provide greater transparency about revision histories to both readers and editors. The new timestamp will look like the mockup to the right, and it will be in addition to the current timestamp at the bottom of every article, not a replacement. The key differences are that:

  • it will be in a more human-readable format, e.g. "Last updated one hour ago", instead of in UTC
  • it will appear in the upper righthand corner of articles, to the left of any top icons like the FA star
  • it will link to the history, so you can see the diff if you want (we might test linking to the diff directly in a second round)

For one week, we're going to try presenting the new timestamp to 50% of viewers on a random sample of just under 3,000 articles. This test will exclude redirects, anything with the AFT5 on it, and will not appear to anyone who has checked Preferences → Appearance → Exclude me from feature experiments.

As you can see this pretty small, but there might still be some edge cases we haven't thought of that will produce bugs or conflicts with other elements of an article. In particular, the rare article title that is extremely long (like Fundamental Rights, Directive Principles and Fundamental Duties of India) might overlap at certain sizes of browser window. Please do point out here any replicable errors you find, keeping in mind that this is only running for a week.

Thanks! Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 20:58, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, and I like the idea. Looks nice. I barely ever noticed the timestamp before. Equazcion (talk) 21:23, 7 Jun 2012 (UTC)
Glad you like it! P.S. if anyone's interested, there's more documentation on mediawiki.org and Meta. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:25, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Would you be so kind to explain me why this is an improvement? Sorry, I am too unimaginative to dream up a usecase in which this is useful. The rationale and hypothesis found on mw:Timestamp Position Modification are not very convincing. Arcandam (talk) 21:33, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
'Pends on what it links to. The edit window? If so, then it would actually encourage more people to edit. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 21:47, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
@Arcandam: The "last update" timestamp was always there. There are a bunch of reasons to defend it, but it isn't a new feature. This change just makes it more visible and readable, so whatever good it did, it'll do it more now. Why is it good to show when an article was last updated? While not necessarily an indicator of how current the information is, it does indicate how old the information is -- ie. if the article hasn't been edited in 3 months, then it definitely won't reflect anything that happened in the last 3 months. Equazcion (talk) 21:55, 7 Jun 2012 (UTC)
Equazcion explains our point of view perfectly. :) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:58, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
You guys must've forgotten the reason why the text was small, gray and located in the bottom-left corner in the first place: because almost no one gives a flying cat about that information. It is just not important. This change is not an improvement. You wrote: "whatever good it did, it'll do it more now", but previously it was useful for a tiny minority of users and it did not clutter the interface for those who do not need it. By moving this to the space used for top icons we get an even messier interface, noobs have more stuff to stare at and scratch their heads, and this change is only an improvement for the tiny minority of Wikipedia users who are actually interested in this info; the rest of us are worse off than we were. Arcandam (talk) 22:13, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Was it small, gray, and in the bottom-left because no-one gave a flying cat, or did no-one given a flying cat because it was small, gray, and in the bottom-left? The interaction with top icons is a valid concern though. I'm sure it'll be dealt with through testing. Equazcion (talk) 22:21, 7 Jun 2012 (UTC)
Both. I hope so. Arcandam (talk) 23:33, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Actually I see the mockup already shows the interaction with top icons. Looks okay to me. Equazcion (talk) 22:27, 7 Jun 2012 (UTC)
The great thing about running an A/B test with the software is that we will get to have data that helps us answer this question. No one at the Foundation or in the community at large can speak for the hundreds of millions of visitors to Wikipedia and declare that all people care or don't. What we can do is run a test and then share the results, and then have a conversation about what we want to do as a project. Since this is only a seven day test, not a permanent new feature, we don't need to have a large argument yet. ;) Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:38, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
I think its actually a great improvement.Edinburgh Wanderer 22:50, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Well, I hope I am wrong, but I rarely look at that info because it is rarely important to me. I've reverted vandalism that was more than a year old. It may be more useful to actually help people understand the way Wikipedia works (e.g. displaying the info: "Click the 'View history' tab at the top of the page to see the time and date of the latest edit") instead of duplicating a tiny subset of the page history functionality. If it links to the latest diff it may be useful, but I don't like the idea of duplicating a link to the history tab. This modification would not remove the timestamp from the footer. This suggestion is in addition to the existing timestamp. Why? Arcandam (talk) 23:08, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
It's an experiment, Arcandam. There are metrics by which it will be judged. It may work. It may not. It's not obvisouly harmful. What more do we need to know? Why? Because one or more of the team that is charged with improving user engagement thinks it is worth investigating. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:35, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
You did not answer my question. Arcandam (talk) 15:17, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Hear, hear! We should be thanking the WMF team for letting us know about this experiment before it started, and for actually testing new interface elements before they are introduced generally. IMHO, this is the exactly the way that significant new features should be introduced. To me, this looks like an improvement, but it would be kind of silly to base the design of one of the world's most popular websites on the personal esthetic opinions of a half-dozen self-selected critics. This experiment is a great way to further the evolution of Wikipedia, and we should be commending those who are conducting it, not questioning them. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 12:48, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
I recommend moving to a country with a dictatorship. Welcome to Wikipedia, where we have a bit more freedom to ask questions. Arcandam (talk) 15:15, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
You don't think that's a bit over the top? Of course we have freedom to ask questions. We also have the freedom to tell the person who asked the question that they are being unreasonable. Or does freedom end when it is contrary to your opinion? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 19:27, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
I wasn't entirely serious; I guess I should've used a sarcasm emoticon or something like that. Arcandam (talk) 01:25, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

One of the other differences I notice, apart from the location change, is that it now specified 'how long ago' the last edit was rather than merely giving the current revision timestamp. I personally think this is a fantastic example of a small change with big positive consequences as our readers will 'get' the idea that WP is being constantly updated much more obviously. So many people ask me in presentations I give how old the info is - this lets me say '2 hours' rather than pull up diffs. Nice work. Wittylama 23:13, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

IP editors are fed rather old versions of the page (or at least I am, sometimes). Just musing, but what will be the effect here? Mr Stephen (talk) 23:41, 7 June 2012 (UTC)

I think the new timestamp is a great idea. Could we have that for users too? I very frequently find it useful to know if I am about to leave a comment on a users page that has been inactive for the last 3 years. I would highly recommend this be an optional thing though, some users may not like it and I believe they should have the option to turn it off. Kumioko (talk) 01:48, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
It is currently on for logged in users as well, it just appears only on a small subset of articles, and since it's a randomized experiment, you might get put into the control group that sees nothing. Thank you for the vote of confidence though! When the test is done, we'll share the results and if folks would like to see this become a permanent feature then we can talk about how to do that. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 01:56, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
If I understand this correctly and its for random articles and users then I would recommend making it random for Articles and the editors opt in to be a part of it. If it randomly works for some editors and not others its likely to irritate and confuse them and open a lot of unwanted negative discussion. Some in the community don't cotton to outsiders so to speak and don't like it when things abruptly change with no notice. Kumioko (talk) 02:07, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Kumioko - to clarify, are you talking about potentially adding this system to userpages, as in, the user namespace? If so, then I can see the value to this too (on an optional basis), also in some cases for article talkpages. Wittylama 03:56, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
No, I think he's suggesting that the experiment should be done only for anonymous users on the basis that registered users are more likely to jump to conclusions whilst shooting the messenger in a spiderman costume from the top of the Reichstag. I would say that excluding them from the experiment is not solving the underlying issue, which is how to stop people being so recalcitrant in the first place. Happy‑melon 10:26, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
That is not what he's suggesting. At least some of the people who work for the WMF are pretty smart; they know why they get criticised once in a while and they know what to do to reduce the amount of criticism in the future. Please be polite. Arcandam (talk) 15:26, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Actually your both right. I think that doing something like this on user pages as well so that if someone goes to a user page they can, if they choose, see a message that says this users last edited on X. That way if they haven't edited in four years I don't need to waste my time leaving them a message in some cases. Its also useful for verifying WikiProject activity andn for a variety of other reasons. I also think that if they randomly allow some editors the capabaility to see the last time an article was edited while others cannot and it works in a random way its going to be confusing (they will think its broken or something) and will invite comments. I also agree that too many people are too sensitive to change. Kumioko (talk) 11:21, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Well, actually it is the other way around. The WMF has been rather insensitive to the community in the past. The current AFT is a great example. Arcandam (talk) 16:08, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Well thats certainly true but in general I think thats ok as long as when they are testing things like this is optional. If they later decide to implement it full spectrum as a "development initiative" then thats different and they should have the authority to do that. We as a community should be able to have some say in being used as guinea pigs for something that may or may not work out but the WMF should have the authority to implement development decisions that affect the "business" of Wikipedia and associated projects. Again to clarify I personally do like this new feature and would happily be a tester but not all would and IMO they should be allowed to opt out. I just noticed that if the individual unchecks the box "exclude me from Feature experiments" that they won't be contacted so that problem is solved. Kumioko (talk) 17:08, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
True, unwanted stuff is easy to hide with CSS. BTW the good news is that the AFTv5 is a good idea, I hope it will be deployed soon. Arcandam (talk) 01:28, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Another recommendation I would have would be to develop a basic test plan that we can use to test these new features rather than the method we have been using were we just though it out and see what happens. It will help to identify and document problems and make the testing look a little less like amateur hour (no offense intended). Something that checks it in different namespaces, using other tools and common scripts, does it affect things like the watchlist or my contribs? Etc. Kumioko (talk) 17:14, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

There is already a detailed test plan on Meta. All our experimental methodologies and analysis requirements will be documented in detail in the Research namespace there. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:22, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

I have noticed that since yesterday and this test Wikipedia has been responding extremely slowly when using scripts and apps that use the API such as Twinkly and AWB. I think there might be an issue with performance that might need to be looked at. Kumioko (talk) 13:57, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Quote: It appears to have been due to the "Editor engagement experiments" extension, it was posting back to the API on every page view. The API should be working again shortly, if it's not already working now. Anomie 04:08, 8 June 2012 (UTC) Arcandam (talk) 15:33, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, the extension has been disabled for now. It was hitting the API at an unusually high rate, which combined with the AFT verson 5 testing, overloaded it. Everything should be back to normal now, and it won't get reenabled until we figure out a reliable fix. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:22, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
the moockups look not bad (at least the top stuff... I don't like the footer and have it 'turned off' with a CSS hack). I can happily confirm: finally after asking many times: the WMF is communicating before they the start doing stuff. +1 mabdul 11:50, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Okay, just a heads up that this issue has been fixed and the timestamp experiment is now redeployed for a seven day test. I'll be online for some time if there are any problems, and watching VPT. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 23:31, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Feedback

I'm not a native speaker, but to me "This page was last modified on XXX" means something different than "Last updated XXX days ago". With the first, my impression is "whatever, boring version info" but with the other "wow, the info in this article is pretty much up-to-date and probably reliable". I think "last modified" is far more accurate. This may be just my perception, or a misinterpretation by a majority of readers, but you will never know from the experiment, will you? The other thing is, I don't think the Justification and Research questions for the experiment are very convincing. I don't see why you "expect this experiment to have a minor, indirect impact on editing" - just a highly visible link to the article history will convert readers to editors, really? And "Does a more prominently visible timestamp of the last revision produce a significant increase in clickthrough rates to the history of an article?" just means that you want to collect clickthrough-rates for prominently placed links. Okay, but if you have collected those, and have found out that there is no significant impact on editing (as I presume) - will you then leave it at that, and not continue with your Ideas for next iterations? --Atlasowa (talk) 18:57, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

The way to A/B test copy differences is try changing it to another version but leaving all other functionality and placement the same. If people generally think the copy needs improvement, then we'd be happy to discuss options for a future A/B test of new text. To answer your last question: since we said up front that we don't expect to show a significant direct impact on editing, that's not the only measure for whether the feature is useful or not. As for the notes placed on the talk page: they were just spur of the moment ideas, not concrete plans for next tests. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:03, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Is there any way to explicitly opt-in so I can see this in action (when it gets re-enabled, if it hasn't already)? Equazcion (talk) 21:18, 9 Jun 2012 (UTC)
You can see it right now on test.wikipedia.org at the page Test12217. Feel free to edit that page up a storm to see the timestamp change as well. If you don't see it, you were bucketed in the control group; clear your cookies to try again. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 22:04, 9 June 2012 (UTC)
Do we need to know the exact number of seconds? Is "less than a minute ago" good enough? Arcandam (talk) 08:07, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
I never understood the recent trend toward fuzzy lengths of time. How the hell is "1 day ago" worthwhile when it was 46 hours? Or "three months ago" without stating the actual date (which might have been 3 months and 29 days)? Etc. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 13:33, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
Well, the reason is that human beings naturally think of time as "how long ago" or "how far in the future". Doing timestamp math in your head is awful, even if it's your own timezone (let alone trying to convert from UTC to your local time, and then doing the "how long ago" math). In the examples you've given, however, I'd say you're dealing with a buggy implementation of a natural language timestamp system. "46 hours" should translate to "about two days ago" (or even "46 hours ago" - it's generally acceptable to provide time "in hours" to 48), and the second should have either "about four moths ago" or "four months ago", depending on how lenient the parser is. As time gets longer, humans get more forgiving about round off times. "A year ago" is okay when we're talking about "360 days".--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 00:19, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Oddly enough, I think I agree. "modified" is definitely more accurate (though less positive) that "updated". In other words, the latter would get more click-throughs, but it's less truthful and should probably be avoided nonetheless. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 11:56, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
Less truthful? That's a stretch. It's only less accurate if you assume the adjective "updated" is not true of the last modification, which is an assumption of bad faith. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:49, 10 June 2012 (UTC)
It is not bad faith to suggest that not all modifications are updates. Adding a comma to a grossly out-of-date article is not an update, for instance, nor is it bad faith to suggest it is not: I think everyone would acknowledge that. Using "Updated" thus implies a false level of security that the article is indeed up-to-date IMHO. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 11:14, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
Well, I disagree, but as I said above, we'd be happy to talk about A/B tests of different language in future iterations. Once a baseline is established, it's quite easy to run future tests comparing "updated" to any other turn of phrase. It's likely that changing that word alone would have an impact on clickthroughs to the history. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:05, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
I guess my point was that the effect I'm talking about won't show up in A/B clickthrough rates, it'll only show up if you actually talk to readers. If I thought it would show up I would just let you test it :) - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 19:41, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
For the record, I agree with Jarry1250. The overwhelming percentage of edits to articles are not updates; they are, at best, housekeeping, such as categorizations, AWB swaps, template changes, or similar minor tweaks that have no actual bearing on the content. Only a small percentage of the edits to this project actually updates articles. You guys should go back and look at that study done by a former WMF Board of Trustees candidate that showed this, even back in 2006 or 2007. It's probably time to revisit it. Risker (talk) 01:01, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
I assume you're referring to Aaron Swartz's 2006 study? His research was not about the whether most article edits were of a certain qualitative kind or not, but rather him trying to prove that most work (as measured by characters added) on the 'pedia was not done by the core community. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 02:19, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Personally, I think "modified" is better than "updated" simply for accuracy's sake. But I think both should be tested.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 02:43, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
This seems to be a useful feature, but I don't think you're ever going to get anyone to agree that all edits are "updates". That word will only lead to disappointment when new readers look at the edit itself. There's no "bad faith" about it; Wikipedia is, for the most part, a holding pan. Nothing revolutionary is going to happen to William Howard Taft that is going to require "updating", just modification and maintenance. If it makes WMF feel better to test it, go ahead, but the majority of the time "update" is false advertising. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 04:24, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Well, I've passed on the feedback to the entire team, since it seems clear I'm in the minority in disagreeing. In general, I think we're not limited to just those two choices, so before any further iterations or any discussion of permanent deployment, we should give anyone interested a chance to contribute alternative copy. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 18:52, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
I think the timestamp might signal something different to new editors, drawing their attention not to the last revision, but to the dynamism and mutability of content. Although the experiment is modest in scope, it will scrutinize a common intuition, which is that we won't get more contributors unless we jostle people out of a mode of passive content consumption. Tinkering with the copy is fine (I don't think anyone feels deeply attached to the current wording), but I worry that it only further obscures the primary objective of the experiment: to enrich community discussions about direction and strategy with evidence such that they increase in wisdom and effect. --Ori.livneh (talk) 09:55, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Possible bug

It looks like this might be breaking the View History link on some pages (see this discussion below). 82.132.139.10 (talk) 13:58, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Strange IP address

Last night, I reverted an edit by a user with what seemed to be a very strange user name. When I went to the user's talk page to leave a message, the only options I was given were automated messages for anonymous users, since WP apparently interprets this as an IP address, but this is like no IP address I have ever seen: 2607:FB90:BEEF:CAFE:0:5EFE:A53:7A62. Can anyone make sense of this? ---RepublicanJacobiteTheFortyFive 14:13, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

It's the new IPv6 protocol. Reaper Eternal (talk) 14:15, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
BEEF CAFE, eh? I wonder if "vanity" IP's with words like that are going to be common. There aren't very many words you can spell with just ABCDEF, so space is limited. ☮Soap☮ 01:56, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Years ago IBM mainframe programs used to fill unused memory with the hexadecimal characters DEADBEEF so that any useful information that was inserted later could be distinguished from how the memory was when the program started. This required, of course, that the programmer be examining the contents of memory using a debugger. Nowadays programs are usually too big for that to be a useful technique. Jc3s5h (talk) 02:04, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
Huh. Ya learn somethin' new every day! Thanks for all the responses. ---RepublicanJacobiteTheFortyFive 02:58, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't know how common, but Facebook's IPv6 addresses contain "face:b00c". Anomie⚔ 03:02, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
We have an IPv6 Test wiki, which shows that people can indeed get creative with IPv6 addresses. Avicennasis @ 05:34, 28 Sivan 5772 / 05:34, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Very weird Wikimedia Traffic Analysis Report - Operating Systems

Hi. The page http://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports/2011-12/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm Seems to give an estimated market share of operating systems as they access Wikimedia. However, how reliable is it? What is the meaning of "Linux Other"? And since Linux Other has more share than the most popular Linux distro, it seems that the margin of error is huge... for all we know, maybe all Linux Other boxes are Fedora, and therefore Fedora is more popular than Ubuntu... What's more, the usage of Mint, Debian and Kubuntu are listed as 0.01% each, which is 67 times lower than Ubuntu. Ubuntu may be popular, but not so much. If you can answer my questions, I could perhaps use these numbers in the articles for each Linux distro. -- Jorge (talk) 02:32, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Presumably the "Other" row contains user agents like "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0": no distro specified. Anomie⚔ 03:51, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
But which distros use that generic UA?
And how useful are the Wikimedia OS stats with so much uncertainty?
I ask because because those stats are used in Ubuntu_(operating_system)#Critical_reception -- Jorge (talk) 13:44, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
Remember also that an end user might get their browser direct from upstream rather from their distro, and that some might spoof their user agent to appear to be a more mainstream browser/OS for various reasons. A quick glance at http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/wikistats/ also indicates that those stats just look for the literal distro name, e.g. they don't bother to try to count Iceweasel as being (most likely) Debian. Anomie⚔ 16:41, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Error in parser function

OK, aren't parser functions supposed to trim the output? And even if not, I can't figure out why I'm getting an extra carriage return in the output. This is causing major problems for a template I'm writing on Commons, because a carriage return interrupts a link. Let me show you:

  • Take this parser function: [[{{#ifeq:{{{1}}}|:|Main Page|{{{1}}}}}]] (that is, if parameter 1 is equal to simply a colon, then display "Main Page", otherwise display parameter 1).
  • Now, for {{{1}}} = :wiktionary:, it generates [[{{#ifeq::wiktionary:|:|Main Page|:wiktionary:}}]]. This is interpreted to [[
wiktionary:]] (notice the carriage return), when it should be interpreted to [[:wiktionary:]], i.e., wiktionary:.

Am I reading this, wrong, or is there a bug? Why is it adding an extra carriage return in the ifeq function? Magog the Ogre (talk) 08:17, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Advanced template coding#MediaWiki wiki-formats the clauses inside #if and bugzilla:12974. Your example could move the link brackets into the parameters to avoid the leading colon: {{#ifeq:{{{1}}}|:|[[Main Page]]|[[{{{1}}}]]}}. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:57, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
The text at that link is impossibly thick to read. I'll simply have to make use of your solution and move along. Or will it also cause the link to be moved down by a line as well? We can't have the link on the next line. Magog the Ogre (talk) 10:17, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
My solution doesn't move down a line. The trick is to avoid that the parser function parameters can start with any of *#:;. My solution always starts with [. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:08, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
Note: It's OK to start with these characters in the input parameters, in your case {{#ifeq:{{{1}}}|:|. The problem is in the return parameters. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:19, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Transcluding a magic word

I used magic word {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP}} in a template. As documented, mw:Help:Magic words, when transcluded it takes the value of the receiving page, not the template's page. Is there a way to change that (so as to reflect in transclusion: This template was last edited on ...)? Details & example here. -DePiep (talk) 16:12, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Oh, if only. A related problem is that of {{PAGENAME}} meaning that any template which has {{navbar}} links must be told what its own name is, in order for those links to work. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:30, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Delinking dates

I was asked to post this notice here and several other places. I have started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Delinking dates on delinking dates using an AWB bot. Input is always appreciated. Hmains (talk) 19:33, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Reference desk archive search function broken?

Hey, is the Ref Desk archive search function broken or something? I can't get it to work. Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives and type a common term in the search box, and it doesn't search. It tries to make me create a page instead. Any clue as to what happened? This worked up until a few weeks ago. --Jayron32 01:39, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

It's not working because all prefix: searches aren't working at the moment, it seems. I'm not sure why that is though. Equazcion (talk) 02:09, 18 Jun 2012 (UTC)
Scrap that, only some prefix: searches aren't working right now. this one doesn't work, but this one does. Equazcion (talk) 02:11, 18 Jun 2012 (UTC)
Okay now they all seem to work, including the reference desk archive search. Equazcion (talk) 02:13, 18 Jun 2012 (UTC)

Search function for books returns null or incorrect result

I've created several Wikipedia:Books, and notice that in my latest addition (Medici, with "Renaissance" and "Italian Renaissance" categories), when I search for the book I get a null result. Is there a structural issue with how the search functions searches books?

Example: from Wikipedia:Books, search on "Medici", (without the quotes), and see that the returned results do not include the desired book. I note that the search function appears to search the Book namespace, so to double-check, I do an advanced search, unchecking all boxes except "Book", which returns the same result — so the search algorithm appears the same in both instances, but it does not return the book I want.

I check the category Wikipedia books: community books with errors list (it was saved in the community namespace), and the book is not listed there, a good thing.

Next, I return to Wikipedia:Books and search again, this time for "Renaissance", with the idea the search should return all books with that keyword in the title or in that category, and the result does not include the book needed. (It does appear if I look specifically in Category:Renaissance or Category:Italian Renaissance.)

So I return to Wikipedia:Books and click on Browse all 9,231 Wikipedia books and am directed to a category list, which does not include the assigned book category (Renaissance, or Italian Renaissance), so I can't find it this way either.

Next, I return to Wikipedia:Books and instead of searching, I select the All 2,546 community-maintained books link, navigate to "M", and there I finally see the book.

A general user would have an extraordinarily difficult time trying to find a book by any of these methods, since general users are likely not inclined to click on a link that would, by its own description, return thousands of results. Users should be able to find books more easily than this. Thanks — Sctechlaw (talk) 00:13, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Book:Medici was created 15 hours ago and hasn't been indexed by the search function yet. See Help:Searching#Delay in updating the search index. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:45, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
It's indexed now. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:58, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads up, I didn't know about the delayed indexing. — Sctechlaw (talk) 23:20, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

API question relating to recent uploads

What is the best way to get a list of all the uploaded files in a certain time range in the API? Currently, my bot is using the logevents action (e.g., [17]), but to my dismay, I realized that it is not including bot uploads, which is a deal-breaker.

Is there a way to do this?

PS. It would be nice if the this method were able to look back further than logevents (i.e., ~1 month on Commons), but currently that is second in importance.

Magog the Ogre (talk) 02:57, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Two comments:
  1. Why do you think it is ignoring bots? For example, the sixth item in the query you link (commons:File:Lsuaerial.jpg) appears to be an upload by commons:User:File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske), which seems to be a bot.
  2. You are not using logevents, you are using recentchanges. A logevents query would be something like [18], and can go back very far indeed.
HTH. Anomie⚔ 03:40, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Well, it wasn't showing up in my initial readings, but maybe I'd typed the timestamp wrong or something silly like that. Thanks though. Magog the Ogre (talk) 23:43, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm looking for a download of some of Wikipedia as plain text.

I'd like to download some of the best (featured for example) English Wikipedia articles as plain text, such that I get just the text part of the article without image descriptions or markup such as XML. Also idearly without the contents list at the top of most articles either and totalling a GB or so in size, it can be for example devided into separate files or be a single longer document.

I've seen pages on Wikipedia about this but can't work out how to proceed. Alan2here (talk) 14:16, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

The only way to really get articles into formated plain text I can think about at the moment is to use lynx -dump URI > foo.txt. If you do that with the printable versions, you get an acceptable output. With a custom stylesheat and maybe some more tweaking you can get exactly what you want, but I'm not aware of an out of the box method to get articles into readable plain text. - Hoo man (talk) 15:43, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Would it allow mass download of all the articles specified? Alan2here (talk) 18:17, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
I believe that you have to repeat the operation for each individual page. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:43, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Then I suspect the joke could have been on me with 'Hoo man's answer Alan2here (talk) 19:37, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
I've never seen any mass download feature aside from the dumps, which give you coding as well as text. My best suggestion is to edit the page, remove the headers and the images, preview without saving, and copy/paste the text into Notepad or a comparable file. You'll still need to remove the [1] and [2] characters where the references are, but unless you're doing this with a page that uses {{rp}}, you can get rid of them with a simple find-and-replace. Nyttend backup (talk) 02:59, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Edit counter that didn't get updated

Several months ago after SoxRed (?) retired the various edit counters tied to it stopped working. I know one of you was kind enough to fix them. Today I cam across this one File:60px-Counter.gif and when I clicked on it I got the 403 error message so it may not have been part of that fix. It is on several editors user pages here is one example User:Coolcat64 so if it can be fixed that would be great but if it can't no one else seems to have noticed it so it might not be a big deal. Thanks for your time in checking this. MarnetteD | Talk 16:25, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

It's not an inherent feature of that image: each individual link needs fixing manually, like this. The fix is simple - wherever you see //toolserver.org/~soxred93/ alter that to //toolserver.org/~tparis/ --Redrose64 (talk) 16:51, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for letting me know. I am glad that it is something so easy. You are the best Redrose!! MarnetteD | Talk 20:15, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Noticing that when I'm logged out, it says "Create account [image] Login" instead of "Login [image] Create account", while it wasn't doing this some hours ago. Is that part of the MW installation? I didn't know that we were putting in a new installation until I saw the "MediaWiki 1.20wmf5 deployment complete" section just now. Nyttend backup (talk) 03:02, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that was deployed with 1.20wmf5, see bugzilla:37211 - Hoo man (talk) 06:40, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

RfC concerning template space

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Protecting template space and creating a user right

More and more concerns seem to be coming up concerning the template namespace.

I look at a random sampling of templates, and most are at least semi-protected, if not fully protected. This has happened I think due to various concerns about vandalism across many pages by simply editing a particular template.

So with that in mind, I'd like to suggest two things:

1.) that like MediaWiki space, template space be fully protected. We might as well accept that this is the current state of affairs.

2.) the creation of a new userright (template editor or some such) which allows editing in this now-protected template space. This user-right could be given out by admins through whatever process the community subsequently decides.

This also would have the added benefit that I have seen many template coders ask for for YEARS. That while they have no interest in becoming admins, it would be greatly helpful for them to at least be able to edit protected templates. This would do that but without also giving them the ability to edit any protected page, just merely those in templatespace. - jc37 12:13, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Support

  1. Me - obviously : ) - jc37 12:13, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  2. Conditional support: I support the continued unpacking of the administrator user-right, for those who have no desire to take on the full toolset and to blur the excessive boundaries between non-sysops and sysops. Given that there is some genuine need for a 'template-editor' user right, I am happy to support this proposal. However, I do not see a need for the blanket protection of the template namespace. AGK [•] 17:34, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  3. Conditional support - Personally I think people have gone way overboard with protecting and semi-protecting every template they can get their hands on. Since I do not see this changing and in fact only getting worse I feel myself compelled to agree with this proposal. Kumioko (talk) 22:50, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  4. Support - There are many templates that just need maintenance. As the project grows and changes so does the need to update and maintain templates. I would go as far as to suggest a Wikiproject to go along with the user right, a GOCE for templates if you will. Mlpearc (powwow) 17:11, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Oppose

  1. There are plenty of regular templates, that are either incomplete or have mistakes. A lot IP-based editors edit and help us increase content [proper content]. Protecting high risk templates is fine, but all, isn't good. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 13:25, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  2. Even more: I see IP editors submitting templates through AFC, moreover the majority of templates are either infoboxes or navigation templates and thus not really complex (in the programming) which can be easily created by 'the average editor' which really don't need any more bureaucratic! mabdul 14:39, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
    Except that infoboxes and navboxes are types of templates which are likely to be protected in some way due to widespread use across many pages. - jc37 14:50, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
    Check your watchlist and give me 5 protected nav templates. I only know two! Navigation templates are normally transcluded 3 to ~30 pages and thus protection is only granted because of edit warring and high vandalism (like Template:HTTP) - many infoboxes are also not that often transcluded, yes there are a few big ones, and Thumperward (sry if I misspelled your nick Chris, sry if I miss somebody) was cleaning up them (by TfD') the last few months, but the majority is still unprotected and I also see no reason why they should be protected by default only for the sake of 10 transclusions. mabdul 17:12, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  3. If we give the Template: space a protection mechanism similar to that of the MediaWiki: namespace, this will remove the possibility of unprotecting selected pages (if you are an admin, try unprotecting any MediaWiki: page to see what options are available). People without the necessary access level would not just be prevented from editing "regular" template pages, they would no longer be able to edit the subpages in Template: space. This includes the documentation pages, which are rarely protected (I have seen one or two cases of a semi-protected /doc page); and the sandbox and testcases pages, which I have never seen to be protected. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:57, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
    Maybe. but consider: those who might be the ones to edit such pages might be the ones who could easily ask for the userright. Compare this to the prevalence of rollbacker. - jc37 19:55, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
    They might be foreign-language editors who only occasionally visit English Wikipedia for the purpose of adding or amending an interlanguage link (as here). Turn it around: would I have been able to contribute to the беларуская Wikipedia as easily, if that Wikipedia had been set up so that I had to jump through the hoops proposed here? I don't speak Belarusian at all, and can barely read a few words (I only know that беларуская means Belarusian because I stuck it through a translator). What chance would I have of requesting a user right, or even of submitting their equivalent of {{editprotected}}? --Redrose64 (talk) 20:37, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
    Ok, the interlanguage links are tough to argue. (No fair introducing calm logic and reason in a discussion, I thought we were on Wikipedia...lol) - jc37 21:17, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  4. If Happymelon's figures below (5% currently protected) are correct, this seems like overkill. You'd effectively be protecting ~400k pages, many of which are currently either wrong, or will soon be out of date. WormTT(talk) 15:04, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  5. I wouldn't want to see the entire namespace protected or even semi-protected, but if a new user right for editing protected templates (for non-admin obviously) was proposed I'd support that. — Bility (talk) 15:13, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  6. I agree with Bility, as protecting the entire template namespace would be complete overkill.--yutsi Talk/ Contributions 17:10, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  7. Oppose as overkill. The idea of creating a user right to edit at least a subset of protected templates does appear worth exploring. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 18:00, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  8. Oppose. There's no good reason to protect the entire namespace. Support the creation of a new user right, with the caveat that it is to be used only for editing protected templates and is not meant to be a hurdle to editing the template namespace in general. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 18:56, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  9. Oppose, but agree with Bility that there might be room for a non-admin template editor permission. See updated proposal, below. VanIsaacWScontribs 19:58, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  10. Oppose - & agree with OSS above, the idea of the user right only for protected templates is a good idea. Skier Dude (talk) 23:33, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  11. Oppose - while requiring autoconfirmed to edit base templates (that is, non-subpage Template: namespace pages) is probably a good idea, requiring any higher level as a necessity to editing templates, or including the /documentation pages in the rule, is a problem. A large number of base templates may need full protection (either because of high visibility or because they're very complicated nd easy to mess up by mistake), but most probably don't. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:33, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
  12. Oppose as most, if not all, navbox templates and low-visibility template have little need to be protected. This would also bother deletion nominations, if even the junk templates were given full protection. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:25, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
  13. Oppose low visibility templates have little need for this. Miyagawa (talk) 18:15, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
  14. Oppose I've edited literally thousands of templates, and except for a few high-visibility ones, none have been even semiprotected. If the premises for this proposal were accurate, I'd support, but good reasoning needs good data to produce a good argument. Nyttend (talk) 03:48, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
  15. Oppose, un-wiki. We should attempt to be an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and so we should never protect any page that doesn't really really need to be protected. —Kusma (t·c) 18:58, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
  16. Oppose Highly visible templates can be semi-protected or fully-protected, but protecting the whole namespace doesn't seems right. ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ Talk Email 09:44, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
  17. Oppose I do not normally edit templates. However, there was an occasion when I discovered that a template (about positrons, if I remember correctly) had been corrupted. It was used in many articles, but no one had fixed it because the nature of the corruption blocked the usual editing process. I found a way around that and reverted to an earlier version which was acceptable. If this proposal was implemented, I doubt that I would have been able to do that. JRSpriggs (talk) 12:21, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
  18. Oppose I don't see how one could judge whether a person was fitted to be an editor of templates. Deb (talk) 17:17, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
  19. Oppose seems like overdoing it to protect the entire namespace. — MrDolomite • Talk 17:19, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
  20. Oppose To many templates are already protected, this would make things worse not better. A root-and-branch review of templatology would be of more use, sprawling infoboxes, navboxes, portals on every page, project links in mainspace (tsk tsk) and so forth, citations in a knot. Rich Farmbrough, 14:44, 6 June 2012 (UTC).
  21. Oppose. The mechanism to resolve these concerns exists, and is far less draconian than fully protecting a namespace which, in many instances, a non-expert could create a legitimate new template in by copying markup from an existing one. I believe the correct mechanism is to implement Flagged Revisions for the Template: namespace. This works perfectly well on enWN, and no amount of template vandalism can result in things like Featured Articles linked-to from the main page containing vandalism being displayed to non-logged in users. --Brian McNeil /talk 16:05, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
  22. Oppose snowball? Arcandam (talk) 16:17, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
  23. Per Kusma. Rcsprinter (orate) 15:55, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
  24. Oppose. I don't see any reason to believe that the current system of protecting high-impact templates and allowing edits on others is not working and needs to be adjusted. This is a solution in search of a problem. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 03:04, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
  25. Oppose This restricts the ability for someone to create a template in order to transclude a chart or graph onto an article that would otherwise create unnecessary source code. I am referring to templates such as {{Graduate schools of the University of Pennsylvania}}. I like the idea of a creation of a new userright for editing protected templates.16:15, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

RfC - proposal for template editor user-right

Ok, based on the above, it sounds like there might be a fair amount of support for the user-right - template-editor

This would allow the ability to edit full or semi protected pages, but limiting it to only in template space.

This would give the user-right:

  • allows to edit protected pages (without cascading protection). (editprotected)

This user-right could be given out by admins through whatever process the community subsequently decides.

This also would have the added benefit that I have seen many template coders ask for for YEARS. That while they have no interest in becoming admins, it would be greatly helpful for them to at least be able to edit protected templates. This would do that but without also giving them the ability to edit any protected page (a named concern in the past), just merely those in templatespace. - jc37 20:09, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Also, I'd be interested in what you all think about this user-right also having:
  • Edit other users' CSS files (editusercss)
  • Edit other users' JavaScript files (edituserjs)
As helpful coders, that just makes sense to me. But I'm of course open to others' thoughts on this. - jc37 20:24, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Struck a line, and added the user-right description, based upon information gained in the discussion. - jc37 09:39, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Support

  • Me (again) of course : ) - jc37 20:09, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  • I agree, but I would also support template editors being able to set the protection level in the template namespace as well. My only concern is that template editors should not prematurely deny access by the original template creator(s). If the goal is to help protect the most intricate and arcane namespace in WP, then protection for pages not involved in content disputes (which should always be handled by admins) would probably best be handled by people who really understand the intricacy and arcana. VanIsaacWScontribs 20:16, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
    While at first blush I might agree, from long experience, I think that giving out the ability to protect a page - any page, even if just templates - is a drama fest waiting to happen : ) - jc37 20:22, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
    That's a fair point. I just think that the template namespace is the kind of area where it might be hard to find admins who really understand the pages in the first place. How many of the current templates were protected at the request of a template editor - both the general meaning, and someone who would qualify for the new permission - getting an admin who has no clue to do it for them? If we are going to have users that we trust with the keys anyway, it's probably best if they can lock up the place when they're done. VanIsaacWScontribs 20:39, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Support per my comments above in the previous discussion. Kumioko (talk) 22:54, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Support unbundling of all user rights as well as the implementation of this specific proposal. A note of caution though, these templates are fully protected for a reason, and there is potential for abuse when editing user .js and .css pages, so this right should only be assigned to trusted users, not just anyone who is technically capable of coding templates/javascript/css. And although the ability to protect/unprotect may technically go hand-in-hand with editing, I think this should still only be done by admin. Basically there should be a lot of honor code restrictions to the point where you might as well just make these candidates admin, but I'll still support because it's a good idea in theory, even though I don't think MediaWiki is currently sophisticated enough for the nuanced restrictions this would need. — Bility (talk) 23:23, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Support anything that puts more tools in the hands of users who will use them to better the wiki. While most users who would qualify for this would qualify for higher positions, this is better suited for those with no interest in getting into the political side of things. -- LWG talk 04:36, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Support - per my comment in the section above. Mlpearc (powwow) 17:13, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Oppose

  • Quick note; please don't take the lack of interest in discussing this proposal (or its duplicate) as approval. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 20:58, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose Given that there is not only a technical expertise needed for this, but also a relatively wide level of knowledge of policy (protection & else-wise), my thought is that anyone given this right would be a person that fits the qualifications of a sysop. I do see the problem, however, of someone who has the skills for this specific area possibly being put off by the wikidrama & stress of RFA. (OK, not just someone who has the tech skills, but anyone with a modicum of sanity :-o) Skier Dude (talk) 23:45, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
    I'm confused. You supported this idea in the above proposal, why do you oppose it here? - jc37 08:55, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Especially the editing other users' css and javascript files. There is no need to give out the right to editors to edit protected pages only in Template space; they can copy the code to user space to tinker with it. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:22, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
    Was that a promise to be active in processing edit protected requests should your RfA pass then? :P — Bility (talk) 16:03, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
    This is wholly unfeasible for templates that are the slightest bit complex and which often require bits of minor troubleshooting after changes are made. The edit protection process is far too timely. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 21:51, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose. There may be some merit in the idea of some sort of trusted "senior editor" group but (1) it is a policy question, the technical issues would follow, and (2) I don't like proliferating breakouts for "rollbackers", FlaggedRev "reviewers", "template editors", "protection exemption", etc. There are a few individual rights that make sense to me because they involve technical means for massive action (e.g. bots, importers) and/or non-public information (e.g. edit filter); but in an encyclopedia that anyone can edit there ought to be at most one level of general trust between "confirmed user" and "administrator". ~ Ningauble (talk) 12:42, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
    Administrators are expected to be temperless drones that represent the maturity of the encyclopedia, a trait that many coders lack, myself included. Getting through an RFA is like holding a public consultation meeting in a NIMBY neighbourhood - pile on. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 21:51, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
    I agree about RfA, but my point is that I do not support creating 16 different kinds of editors. I have only made a few edits in template space, but if I had to ask for special permission, even in a less onerous process than RfA, I would have made none at all. ~ Ningauble (talk) 19:07, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Support in spirit, oppose in reality On one hand I see this as a symptom of the admin bit becoming far more important than it ever was supposed to be. On the other hand, breaking another user right out of it would help both dilute the "power" of adminship, as well as strengthen it. Another concern is that I think that this user right being broken out would encourage even more wide spread protection of templates than there already is, which goes against the spirit of a wiki. So I'm not entirely opposed to this in that I think it addresses a real problem, I'm afraid of the additional problems it creates. The cascading problem brought up below is a technical matter that needs to be addressed as well for a proposal like this. Gigs (talk) 14:01, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose per above. I believe that this will result in many template created/hacked in a new "mainspace" like Madonna/navtemplate and then transcluded. This won't solve anything! There is always a workaround! mabdul 18:58, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
    I'm not positive, but I think your comments apply to the nom directly above this nom. This one is merely about creating the user-right template-editor. - jc37 11:26, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
    Why do we need this? Do you often do RC work and recognize vandalism in T-space (or better saying unrecognized v in T space)? mabdul 20:38, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
    Because many editors that are exceptionally good at coding templates, including many of the ones which have since become fully protected under WP:HTA, are not considered worthy of the mop and the additional responsibilities it brings. Protecting pages, banning users, acting as mediators and judges, etc. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 21:51, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
    jc, for me at least, I think that this latter proposal would end in a de-facto situation of all of template space being protected, even if it's not technically part of the proposal. The user right being broken out would mean that people would apply protection far more liberally. Gigs (talk) 12:53, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
    Hi Gigs. The whole point of this particular proposal was merely to allow some editors to be able to edit protected templates. But we're finding that the software does not currently allow for editing protected, without being able to protect a page. and also limiting to a particular namespace (though there are apparently workarounds). - jc37 14:32, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose for the same reasoning as with full-protection. The requisite functionality exists within Flagged Revisions, logged-in users can see changes, and IPs not. The ability to set review levels, and have these as userrights, allows more control. There's been extensive discussion on the WM-UK mailing list after template vandalism hit Elizabeth II during the Jubilee weekend. I know the debate on FlaggedRevs in main namespace will rage for a long, long time; in the case of the Template: namespace it seems far more sensible. --Brian McNeil /talk 16:10, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose Arcandam (talk) 16:18, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose as stated above: I don't see any evidence to suggest that the current system is broken and needs to be fixed. This is a solution in search of a problem. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 03:09, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

There are about 17,590 protected pages in the template namespace, out of 424,000 pages in total, although that includes documentation, sandbox and testcase pages. So the fraction of pages in the template namespace that are protected is actually very low, maybe 5%, although that is still higher than any other namespace. I wouldn't be adverse to having the template namespace semi-protected, but I think full protection is overkill. Happy‑melon 12:35, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I have no idea how MediaWiki namespace is protected. But basically my goal was to simplify things for the devs and just have template space done the same way.
That said, I suppose I would be fine with semi- too. Though when I look how many people uncontroversially have various other admin-given userrights, I don't think that this would be any sort of great hindrance to editing. - jc37 12:44, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
The mechanism is the same as I mention below for how the template namespace could be protected, but it cannot be overridden in the wiki configuration ($wgNamespaceProtection[NS_MEDIAWIKI] is overridden after the configuration is read). Anomie⚔ 16:40, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't think this particular proposal is going to go anywhere, for the reasons Redrose64 has already pointed out. But for the sake of argument, it would be easy to create a new "template-edit" user right and protect the entire namespace so only users with that right could edit the template namespace. All that would need to be done would be to make a shell request to add something like this to the configuration for enwiki: 

$wgNamespaceProtection[NS_TEMPLATE] = array( 'template-edit' );
$wgGroupPermissions['template-editors']['template-edit'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['template-edit'] = true;

And then create a handful of MediaWiki-namespace pages so a correct description shows up on Special:ListGroupRights and so on. And maybe edit some of the messages/templates that display the protection notices, and probably also update some bots (or just give the "template-edit" right to all bots).

It's even easier to semi-protect or fully-protect the entire namespace, all that's needed in the shell request is $wgNamespaceProtection[NS_TEMPLATE] = array( 'autoconfirmed' ); or 'sysop'. Anomie⚔ 16:40, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

For that matter, if you wanted to propose creating a level of protection in between "autoconfirmed" and "sysop", you might have trouble with WP:PEREN#Hierarchical structures or the same logic that killed WP:ACTRIAL, but it's still easy enough technically: 

$wgRestrictionLevels[] = 'template-edit';
$wgGroupPermissions['template-editors']['template-edit'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['template-edit'] = true;

It would probably be even more essential here to update messages and templates, as many currently check for either "autoconfirmed" or "sysop" and assume if it's not the one it must be the other. Anomie⚔ 16:40, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks you much for the info! : ) - jc37 19:42, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I think a fair amount of ink would be saved if you introduced these proposals as the discussions that they ought to be rather than the invitations to jump straight to a polarising vote that they are. It would allow people to note, for instance, that this has been discussed numerous times before, always with a negative outcome. An important consideration is that it is not technically possible to give users the ability to edit templates that have been cascade-protected without also giving them the ability to implement such protection (otherwise they could just edit the cascade-protected page to transclude whatever template they wanted protected, and achieve the same effect). Happy‑melon 20:36, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm more than happy to discuss (as I know you know : )
Honestly, the main reason I set the above up this way is I had just come from the arbcom RfCs.
Anyway, as far as protection - I noticed the the ability to edit and the ability to protect a page seem to be the same user-right:
  • Change protection levels and edit protected pages (protect)
And I also don't know if it's possible to limit this to a single namespace (though from the above, I "think" it's possible).
I also still think the first proposal is a good idea. it's just looking at things from another direction. People are so used to "autoconfirmed" happening automatically, they don't think about the fact that it's actually a bestowed user-right package. - jc37 20:55, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Arbcom's methods are so unlike Wikipedia's that it might as well be some other project. It's darned near impossible to follow a discussion there, because you're not allowed to post a response directly below the post that you're responding to - it will always be in a different section, maybe on a different subpage. Anyway - if this and the previous threads are RFCs, why don't I see any {{rfc}} at the top? --Redrose64 (talk) 21:08, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
ROFL Um right, the template. Well to be honest, I played with it, but the switches seemed to be for various RfC subpages and not the VP, so I didn't. That said, I'll happily claim ignorance, and would welcome help : ) - jc37 21:22, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I think you misunderstood slightly. It's not possible (without recoding MediaWiki) to create a right for "can edit pages protected 'sysop' in X namespace". It is possible to limit editing of an entire namespace to people with a particular right, and it is possible to create a new protection level (which could be used on any page) with a corresponding new right to edit any page protected at that level, and then create an enwiki policy that the new protection level may only be used in the Template namespace. Anomie⚔ 21:19, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Ahhh, thank you for the clarification. Let's focus on the latter option for a minute. How would this affect semi-protection? would these template-protectors be able to semi-protect a page as well? - jc37 21:30, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
There wouldn't be any "template-protectors", just "template-editors". It's not possible to give someone the ability to protect pages without giving them the ability to edit fully-protected pages, due to the way the "protect" right is also used as the right for editing pages protected for 'sysop'. Anomie⚔ 01:33, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
That's why I started calling them protectors above. just wasn't sure how the "levels" of protection worked. Thanks for clearing that up : ) - jc37 08:55, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
Sorry Happy, but I went through a lot of the pages you linked to above, and it looks like this has really only been seriously discussed once, in May of last year, and it was a much less formal sort of request. I think with a more clear discussion and proposal that we might be able to hash out an acceptable solution. My question to the peanut gallery is whether there is a way of allowing users to edit protect templates, but not cascade protected? VanIsaacWScontribs 21:12, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
It's well-trodden ground because, as noted above, it is not possible to restrict these editing permissions to a single namespace. As such it's no different to creating an "edit protected pages group" or adding a new layer of protection for all pages, both of which have had their own set of discussions (to the point of making WP:PEREN). So the answer 'from the peanut gallery' is as Anomie says: it is possible to create a group which can edit all fully-protected pages that are not cascade-protected, in any namespace; or it is possible to create a protection level and corresponding group, which could technically be implemented on all pages; but there is no way to technically restrict either of these to one namespace. Happy‑melon 21:59, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
As for the right to edit JS/CSS, it may be worth looking into the new user rights which will be available with mw:Gadgets 2.0. Helder 23:52, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Interesting read. But for now, just trying to make this as simple as possible and just suggesting existing user-rights as listed at Special:ListGroupRights. - jc37 08:55, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I raised a similar proposal on Commons recently (here), to create a new usergroup with editinterface and editprotected rights. I don't think we need to worry too much about limiting editprotected by namespace; abuse of the right tends to be pretty public and getting kicked out of such a new usergroup will be like removing rollback, not desysopping. So the question becomes more about trusting users to edit potentially dangerous areas (interface, JS, gadgets), which is really down to the procedure for handing out the user right (it was this concern which kiboshed the proposal on Commons). In short, all this stuff about the template namespace is just over-complicating things; the issue is, do we want a "technician"-type usergroup for people who are technically capable but either unable to pass RFA or unwilling to try or unwilling to take on the broader responsibility of adminship? I think it would be helpful - but that's not what's being discussed. PS Why is this at VPT and not WP:VPR? Rd232 talk 00:02, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

The reason it's here is I'm asking about the user-right, not how it will be given out. That's obviously a separate discussion, as I noted above. - jc37 08:55, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
You're not asking for technical help or information, you're making a proposal which happens to require a change in the software. That's VPR territory, not VPT. Rd232 talk 09:42, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't know if this whole thing should have been on Village Pump or not, but I have a couple of thoughts overall:
  • About 90% (est) of what I see popping up as new articles by unregistered editors should have never made it past a screening process (which I'm assuming does not exist). I'm just completely amazed by how easy it is to use the "spaghetti cooking method" of creating new articles - throw it against the wall and see if it sticks. Maybe there's a similiar phenomenon happening on new templates. Maybe not. New templates and new articles by unregistered editors should probably have identical screening processes in place. And along those lines, I see little difference between vandalizing articles and vandalizing templates. Protect the ones that need it, just like it is now.
  • If such a new Template Editor right happens, then I hope some admin thinks I should have that. Templates are a valuable editing tool. Whether or not Template Editor should exist, I'm up in the air about. Maile66 (talk) 12:59, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
  • I think that's part of the problem right there. While it is easy for just about anyone to notice and correct vandalism of articles, it requires an amount of skill and knowledge to necessarilly recognize the same in a complex template. Unless someone in the know has a particular template on their watchlist, a template vandalism - accidental or otherwise - may not be recognized for what it is, especially if it will only show up in a subset of transcluding pages. By restricting editing of certain complex templates to people who have demonstrated a level of knowledge, that both helps fight vandalism, and enables template upgrades. As for CSS/JS editing, I don't know enough about it to say one way or the other whether that is necessary or even desirable, so my gut says "no" on that. VanIsaacWScontribs 00:51, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
  • That logic is backwards. Because only experts can recognize vandalism, only experts should edit? Maybe you mean that we should have more experts. Everyone knows how to undo, and experts aren't made by removing access. How exactly do these editors learn enough to gain the right? Huge surprise this hasn't been "seriously" discussed before. This proposal is contrary to the entire point of this website. I shouldn't need to beg an admin to let me edit a goddamn template when I've been doing fine for years. Fuck that. I understand that this was proposed as a well-intentioned benefit to WP, but the deliberate removal of the rights of editors is not a "fun idea" to be bandied around without reason. Stop trying to limit the rights of new users in unnecessary ways, or if there are valid reasons, please list them in an exact and clear way so they can be addressed. People that deliberately vandalize templates already know their way around WP. Navboxes aren't so precious that they are worth driving away new editors. Most templates are not protected, just the most visible, which is why you're seeing them in the first place. Most of those templates were protected as a preventative measure, and not based on any actual vandalism. Nothing on WP has pissed me off more than creating/expanding a template only to come back and find that I can't edit it, thanks to a proactive paranoid admin. Also, it's pretty bad form to make a proposal on VPT, especially one that will only benefit people that frequent VPT. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 10:58, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Alternative: FlaggedRevs on Template: namespace

With both of the above votes going poorly, why don't you simply enable FlaggedRevs on the template namespace? Doesn't stop editing, just means it needs approved—a simple enough process.

For those not aware, there was template vandalism associated with Elizabeth II during the Jubilee celebrations, when the article was featured. Had FlaggedRevs been on templates, this would not have been possible. --Brian McNeil /talk 15:02, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Considering how much of a clusterf**k the previous sitewide discussion on flagged revisions was, I'm not sure proposing the same idea for a different namespace would be much more successful. But it might be worth a shot anyway. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 03:13, 13 June 2012 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Stupid bug to fix in the Wikipedia home page

Hello folks !

Please see and hear that bug in the Wikipedia home page.

Can someone fix that stupid bug, caused by stupid JavaScript I guess ?

Thanks,

--Nnemo (talk) 17:25, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

You entered SYRIZA and were redirected to Coalition of the Radical Left. What's wrong with that? --Redrose64 (talk) 18:13, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
Finish watching the cast. --Izno (talk) 18:15, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
This is recreatable on Windows as well with the appropriate keyboard shortcut. I wonder why the shortcut and the back button exhibit different behaviours? - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 18:21, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
No. Absolutely no idea what I'm supposed to be watching for here. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:33, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
Special Search is loaded via javascript when the user never desired to go there. How did you miss that part...? --Izno (talk) 18:35, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
As below. I know that pressing Alt+⇧ Shift+F then ↵ Enter will invoke Special:Search. But I have no idea what keys are being pressed by Nnemo; I see a mouse pointer which is largely stationary, but occasionally moves to click on e.g. the puzzleball. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:01, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
Nnemo's video has speech which states that only back is pressed. Including "and hear" in the link name was a weak indicator that sound is needed. Lots of people (including me) usually have sound turned off when they browse. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:36, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
It doesn't happen to me in any of five tested browsers: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Google Chrome, Safari. It looks like your browser sends an Enter key signal after you go back. Pressing Enter in the search box with no content goes to the search page your video displays. Pressing Enter was the last thing you did before leaving the Main page. Perhaps your browser remembers that and for some reason automatically sends an Enter signal when you go back? Which browser is it? Do you go back with a keyboard shortcut? PrimeHunter (talk) 18:37, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, if you listen to the audio Nnemo's using the keyboard shortcut Alt+Shift+<- (or the Mac equivalent, rather). As I posted above, only if you use the keyboard shortcut can you recreate this. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 20:51, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
IBM PC keyboard (Windows, ANSI US layout)
Esc F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 F10 F11 F12 PrtScn/
SysRq 		Scroll
Lock 		Pause/
Break
TildeExclamation markAt signNumber signDollar signPercent signCaretAmpersandAsteriskParenthesisParenthesisUnderscorePlus signBackspaceBacktick1 (number)2 (number)3 (number)4 (number)5 (number)6 (number)7 (number)8 (number)9 (number)0Hyphen-minusEquals signBackspaceTab keyQWERTYUIOPCurly bracketCurly bracketVertical barTab keyQWERTYUIOPSquare bracketSquare bracketBackslashCaps lockASDFGHJKLColon (punctuation)Quotation markEnter keyCaps lockASDFGHJKLSemicolonApostropheEnter keyShift keyZXCVBNMBracketBracketQuestion markShift keyShift keyZXCVBNMComma (punctuation)Full stopSlash (punctuation)Shift keyControl keyWindows keyAlt keySpace barAlt keyWindows keyMenu keyControl key
 Insert Home PgUp Num
Lock 		∕ ∗ −
Delete End PgDn 7 8 9 +
4 5 6
↑ 1 2 3 Enter
← ↓ →    0
   Ins 		 . 
Del
There is still nobody reporting this problem who have said which browser they use. I have a Windows PC with the 5 largest browsers and a normal IBM-like keyboard similar to the above. All 5 browsers go back on Alt+← or ← Backspace, as listed at Table of keyboard shortcuts#Browsers / Go menu. After testing all 5 with several different key shortcuts I have finally been able to reproduce the problem. All 5 work with ← Backspace. All 5 work with Alt+← when the "normal" left arrow to the right of the right side Ctrl is used. 3 of them work with Alt+← when the left arrow on the 4 on the numeric keypad is used: IE, Chrome, Opera. 2 of them give the reported problem with Alt+← when that key is used: Firefox and Safari. It's apparently because the key combination is an Alt code which is not disabled by the browser when it goes back. So the affected browsers perform two actions on the same key combination: First they go back and then they write the Alt code in the search field and trigger a search. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:57, 16 June 2012 (UTC)
Apologies, I meant to imply that I tested Windows+Safari, and could reproduce. I cannot reproduce this in Windows+Firefox, however. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 01:31, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
Nothing wrong with that. But, afterwards, things get worse. --Nnemo (talk) 20:19, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
I can reproduce the bug in Safari 5.1.7 under OS X Lion. In the video, he was using Safari on either Leopard or Snow Leopard. For some reason, when using the standard keyboard shortcut (⌘ Cmd+←) to go back, occasionally it will briefly load the home page, but then redirect to Special:Search. Curiously, it doesn't exist in either Chrome 20 or Firefox 14, so it appears to be Safari on Mac-specific. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 22:28, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for taking interest in the problem.

I am using Safari on Mac, this is pretty recognizable in my film.

For going back I press ⌘ ← (Apple Left). This is the (very) standard keyboard equivalent of pressing the Back button in a Web browser. On Linux or Windows, I would instead press Ctrl ← or Alt ←.

When I have JavaScript turned off, the problem does not occur. This confims my hypothesis.

Cheers,

--Nnemo (talk) 20:33, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Spontaneous page blanking

This is kind of a hard problem to describe, so bear with me. My problem is basically that, whenever I've tried to edit a page in Firefox (in roughly the past week), the editing page will load up just fine, but after a few seconds the editing field will spontaneously delete itself, with no kind of input from me via keyboard or mouse. In order to stop this from happening, I have to wait until the editing page is only partially loaded, and manually stop my browser from loading the rest of it. Once that's done I can usually edit it fine, but it still occasionally goes screwy shortly after I click "Save Page" (I've blanked at least two pages so far because of this problem).

I can easily solve this problem by editing in Internet Explorer, and I guess that's what I'll be doing for now, but Internet Explorer is also, you know, Internet Explorer. I'm running 64-bit Windows 7 on a new-ish HP laptop, if any of that matters. Evanh2008 (talk|contribs) 06:08, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi, I'm not an expert on this but I suggest clearing your Firefox cache, and if that doesn't work try using Google Chrome. Hope this helps! TravellerQLD (talk) 13:54, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Do you have any funky Firefox extensions installed that alter the display of a page e.g. GreaseMonkey? Does Chrome work? - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 14:11, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
It only happened once or twice for me today, so it is getting rarer; still ongoing, though. Cache-clearing has no effect. I tried disabling Twinkle, thinking that that may have had something to do with it, but no changes there either. No extensions. I'll try Chrome tomorrow and let you know. Thanks. Evanh2008 (talk|contribs) 07:02, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
Chrome doesn't seem to have the same problem, but Firefox hasn't done it to me in a while, either. Will keep Chrome on hand in the event of the unforeseen. Thanks for the suggestions. Evanh2008 (talk|contribs) 21:13, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Book output tool: render server errors

There are several reports of people with the inability to get WP Books to output, since about May this year. See Error, et seq.. I also got this error with the Medici book trying to output to PDF. — Sctechlaw (talk) 23:15, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Tried to output the Medici book again today (no luck), and the first and last lines of the render error dump are:
An error occurred on the render server: RuntimeError: command failed with returncode 9: ['mw-render', '-w', 'rl', '-c', 'cache/12/1262ec135a985ad5/collection.zip', '-o', 'cache/12/1262ec135a985ad5/output.rl', '--status', 'qserve://localhost:14311/1262ec135a985ad5:render-rl', '--template-blacklist', 'MediaWiki:PDF Template Blacklist', '--template-exclusion-category', 'Exclude in print', '--print-template-prefix', 'Print', '--print-template-pattern', '$1/Print', '--language', 'en'] Last Output: 'Center' 2012-06-19T18:18:07 rlwriter.warning >> ImageLink ' contained block element: ' 'Center' 2012-06-19T18:18:07
...
rendering: 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=492973492' 77.0151187905% laying out Amongst the Medici77.0151187905% laying out Amongst the Medici in function system, file /home/pp/local/bin/nslave.py, line 63
if that's of help to the troubleshooters. Today's browser occurrence is in Firefox 13.01 on Win7 64bit, with WP Monobook skin in use. — Sctechlaw (talk) 18:34, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Slow page update

I am experiencing slow downloads/updates of Wikipedia pages, and wonder whether this is a general problem for some group (e.g. those with particular some internet routing), or whether it is the result of some individual settings on my part. If it is a more general problem than just for me, and it could be improved by some configuration of Wikipedia (e.g. by parallelizing what are now serial transactions by the browser), this may be of interest to this community even if it does not affect everyone.

Nageh has been very helpful, which alows me to start by giving context and some symptoms.

  • I am connecting to en.wikipedia.org from South Africa.
  • It is roughly 07:30 UTC.
  • My internet connection is nominally 2.4 Mbps incoming, 0.6 Mbps outgoing
  • I'm using Firefox 8 (IE9 does not show the "loading font", "formatting" etc. messages, but otherwise similar times).
  • My WP preferences are set to enable caching. The only caching option I see with Firefox is clearing offline cache.
  • Pinging en.wikipedia.org: 370 ms round trip average
  • Clearing offline cache in firefox, then loading Speed of light: 32 seconds (the first 20 sec: "Waiting for wikipedia.org", no visible activity, almost no data being transferred)
  • Refreshing the page: 8 seconds each time (the initial "waiting for" seems to be skipped)
  • Closing and reopening the page (without clearing cache): 9 seconds
  • When choosing MathJax in my WP math preferences, quite a bit of time is added to reload of TEX-rich pages, even on refresh, while Firefox indicates that it is loading fonts, formatting etc. (plus fairly high CPU load during this time: up to one Intel i5 core at 2.27 GHz). Example: Ricci calculus cleared, reloaded, close&open respectively (rough times):
    With PNG – 20 seconds, 13 seconds, 8 seconds
    With MathJax – 32 seconds, 15 seconds, 8 seconds (note: faster opening than reloading page)

Any ideas what is happening here? — Quondum☏ 07:56, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

I think everyone is having this problem (I certainly am). I get intermittent slow page loads. They seem to fix it every once in a while, saying it was some router or server, but it keeps recurring. I used to report it but tend not to bother anymore. Equazcion (talk) 08:02, 19 Jun 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. What initially triggered the query was that MathJax was taking markedly longer than PNG, but I suppose then no-one is going to be interested in a problem (the MathJax increment) that is probably only significant when another (the general slowness) manifests. — Quondum☏ 12:59, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Tab "history" doesn't work

On the article Das Käthchen von Heilbronn, the tab "history" doesn't work; it produces the message "Bad title". The tabs "talk" and "edit this page" work. I can get to the history by manually entering the URL https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Das_Käthchen_von_Heilbronn&action=history to the URL (click here). The same action works on a very similar page, Das Käthchen von Heilbronn (opera). Why is it so, and how can it be fixed? Baffled, Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:16, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

It works for me. Which url do you get by clicking history? I get http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Das_K%C3%A4thchen_von_Heilbronn&action=history. Does that work for you? What is your skin? Try it when you are logged out. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:13, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
Works in Chrome, Mozilla and IE, Vector.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 11:16, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
I may not have made myself clear. The "click here" link above works; I included it as a clickable link of the preceding text which I entered manually into the browser. What doesn't work is the tab "history"; it produced the URL https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Das_K%25C3%25A4thchen_von_Heilbronn&action=history (click here). This is here true for Firefox and IE, logged in or not; Chrome (21.0.1171.0) works -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:40, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
Oh right, ok, sorry, mis-read that.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 12:02, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
Okay, so it seems to be a bug in the LastModified extension, which is double-percent-encoding its input title. I'll bug someone on IRC. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 13:34, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
The article Das Käthchen von Heilbronn seems to be part of the new experimental time stamp test described above as the interface has the new timestamp in the top right corner. However Das Käthchen von Heilbronn (opera) doesn't appear to be part of the test. Don't know if it's relevant but seems a bit of a coincidence if not. 82.132.139.73 (talk) 13:46, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
No, it's definitely relevant: as I say, it's a problem with the LastModified extension that powers the "experimental time stamp test". - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 14:45, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
The history tab on Das Käthchen von Heilbronn worked for me in three tested browsers but I didn't have the new timestamp. #New feature experiment above says "we're going to try presenting the new timestamp to 50% of viewers". The bug apparently only affects those 50%. I don't know how the 50% are chosen but I have now tried a fourth browser and then I got the time stamp and bug. The bug (and the time stamp) disappeared when I enabled "Exclude me from feature experiments" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:05, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
Same here; all the problems go away with that box unticked. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:49, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
This is a strange bug, since I can replicate the error when visiting that page, but not on other pages with the timestamp experiment on them, like Ryu and Goldberg Variations. I will pass on the bug report regardless of course. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 03:57, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
It's happening because of the special characters in the page name (in this case, the dotted "a"). The code is double-encoding the URL, which makes it a bad title - which is why you won't see it on pages that are "straight" ascii.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 04:41, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
The "ä" in the title of Das Käthchen von Heilbronn alone does note explain why the same faulty behaviour does not occur with Das Käthchen von Heilbronn (opera). -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:33, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
According to anon Das Käthchen von Heilbronn is part of the test, Das Käthchen von Heilbronn (opera) is not. Taemyr (talk) 10:37, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Right, I can confirm this. I don't know how to find articles with the test so I cannot test others with special characters. If I reload Das Käthchen von Heilbronn and click history during loading before the time stamp appears then the history link works and goes to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Das_K%C3%A4thchen_von_Heilbronn&action=history. A moment later the link changes to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Das_K%25C3%25A4thchen_von_Heilbronn&action=history. As Jarry1250 says, it is double percent-encoding: Each '%' in the url is replaced by the percent-encoding of '%' which is '%25'. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:45, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Patch submitted and waiting to be merged. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:31, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

It looks like this has been  Fixed Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 17:34, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Strange category sort

In Category:Foreign relations stubs, Template:Foreignrelations-stub is sorting between the last "A" and the first "B". It's not sorting among the "A"s: there is a clear gap above it, after Azerbaijan–United Kingdom relations. The template concerned is built using {{asbox}}, so should sort above the "A"s. I've both purged and null-edited the template and also the cat, but the template won't shift to its proper place. Any ideas? --Redrose64 (talk) 20:20, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

It's being parsed (via {{Asbox}} and {{Asbox/templatepage}}) to produce [[Category:Foreign relations stubs| ]], which should sort as " " (space) or "" (blank). That in turn is generating a categorypage <h3>...</h3> "initial letter section" element containing nothing (or possibly containing a single space eliminated by HTML Tidy). But that doesn't explain why the section would itself sort alphabetically between A and B. — Richardguk (talk) 21:36, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
It looks like it actually has something to do with Argentina–Russia relations. Somehow or other it's getting a sortkey as if it had [[Category:Foreign relations stubs| ]], but the sortkey prefix is empty so it still gets "A" instead of " " displayed as the category header (see [19]). And since it comes before Template:Foreignrelations-stub's sortkey, it pulls all the other "A"s along with it. Anomie⚔ 02:11, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, Argentina–Russia relations was the cause. I don't why it went wrong and I don't know what fixed it but it works now. Anomie's link looks as expected now but earlier it started with
{
	"query": {
		"categorymembers": [
			{
				"ns": 0,
				"title": "Argentina\u2013Russia relations",
				"sortkey": "200a415247454e54494e41e280935255535349412052454c4154494f4e53",
				"sortkeyprefix": "",
				"type": "page"
			},
			{
				"ns": 10,
				"title": "Template:Foreignrelations-stub",
				"sortkey": "20464f524549474e52454c4154494f4e532d535455420a464f524549474e52454c4154494f4e532d53545542",
				"sortkeyprefix": " Foreignrelations-stub",
				"type": "page"
			},
			{
				"ns": 0,
				"title": "Afghanistan\u2013Norway relations",
				"sortkey": "41464748414e495354414ee280934e4f525741592052454c4154494f4e53",
				"sortkeyprefix": "",
				"type": "page"
			},
At the time Category:Foreign relations stubs started with "A" where Argentina–Russia relations came first below "A" and Template:Foreignrelations-stub came last, after an empty line. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Foreign_relations_stubs?pagefrom=A displayed neither Argentina–Russia relations nor Template:Foreignrelations-stub. I made some tests on Argentina–Russia relations. Replacing {{foreignrelations-stub}} by [[Category:Foreign relations stubs|Argentina–Russia relations]] in [20] worked. It also worked with [[Category:Foreign relations stubs]]. A little later I tried returning to {{foreignrelations-stub}} in [21]. To my surprise, that also worked now even though it was exactly the same code which did not work earlier. According to Special:ExpandTemplates, {{foreignrelations-stub}} produces the expected [[Category:Foreign relations stubs]] with no sortkey when Context title is "Argentina–Russia relations". It also said so when the sorting problem existed. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:44, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Well, it's sorting correctly now, thanks. I've looked at the diffs of the various articles and templates mentioned here - and almost all edits seem to have been undone, bar one: this is the one not undone. But that edit was some hours earlier than the observations about Argentina–Russia relations, so I assume that the various edits to that article got the relevant database entry to be rebuilt properly, and that Template:Asbox/templatepage had nothing to do with it. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:49, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
But Argentina–Russia relations is still sorting incorrectly at Category:Articles containing Spanish language text: it is listed there at the beginning on its own under A (followed by the usual sections 0 to 9 then A to Z in the expected order). As a result, there are two (non-adjacent) sections headed A.
The categorymembers API listing again shows the article sortkey having "200a" prepended to the expected article title hex, implying that at some stage the database treated the article title as having <space><linefeed> in front of the actual title text.
— Richardguk (talk) 23:38, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
OK, Argentina–Russia relations is in that category because {{Foreign relations of Argentina}} uses {{lang-es}}. I hid that transclusion, and then unhid it again, and Category:Articles containing Spanish language text now sorts correctly. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:56, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia Page Not Showing Up in Google or Bing Search

This wikipedia page is not showing up in Google or Bing search when you type in 

Bobby Smith Jr Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Smith,_Jr. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bobbysmithjr47 (talk • contribs) 04:39, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Bobbysmithjr27, this is entirely out of our control, as Bing and Google use automated processes to index content for their search engines which are under their control. While Wikipedia articles often place near the top in search results, they don't always due to a myriad of factors, most of which we can't control.
I also noticed that your username is strikingly similar to the name of the article. Have you looked at our conflict of interest guideline? elektrikSHOOS (talk) 04:41, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Actually this is somewhat under our control. We are moving to a system whereby new articles start off marked as NoIndex so we can decide whether they are appropriate before they get picked up by the search engines and the mirrors. As this is a very new article perhaps this feature has already gone live. If so then if it survives the current deletion discussion it will doubtless cease to be NoIndex and will be picked up by the search engines. ϢereSpielChequers 17:08, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Problem with Wikipedia Page Not Appearing in Google or Bing Search Engines

When you type in the following search in Google or Bing, Bobby Smith Jr Wikipedia, the following page does not show up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Smith,_Jr. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gmscheimer (talk • contribs) 04:59, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

See above. It's not something we control. If you have concerns about how a particular search engine rates results, contact that search engine. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 05:09, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Actually yes we do have some control. Look for <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" /> in the page source. I am sure there was an RfC about this but I am not going to take the time to look for it now. – Allen4names (IPv6 contributions) 15:42, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Noindex and nofollow tags, however, are atypical for articlespace. (See the source for foo, example, etc.) Why are they showing up on this page? Is it because it's currently tagged for deletion? elektrikSHOOS (talk) 15:49, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't believe AFD noindexes a page, and in any case it was not indexed prior to the AFD tag. My only assumption is that it is somehow related to one of the sources. I can't find anything else in the article that could possibly be doing it. Ryan Vesey Review me! 15:53, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Weird, too, since none of the references would appear to be problematic. (They're all to Variety, New York Magazine or the New York Times, with one to a TCM database.) I'm going to currently embark on a references cleanup to fix the bare links in a (possibly vain) effort to see if they're the problem. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 15:57, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Alright, I'm stumped. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 16:21, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
The RFC in question is Wikipedia:Requests for comment/NOINDEX. You can check to see if the noindex features have been turned on yet. – Allen4names as 2001:470:B:53:0:0:0:65 (talk) 21:03, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Ah, that makes sense. I wasn't aware of that RfC, and as of yet that feature hasn't been noted at WP:NOINDEX, hence the confusion on my part. Carry on, all. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 17:41, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Hey guys; we're going to temporarily turn off this feature until the issue is resolved. I'll have a precise ETA in a couple hours; note that it will also index all pages currently in the system :). Many thanks to Ryan and Allen for bringing this to my attention! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

pre-populating new sections

I sometimes participate in WP:ITN/C and have noticed that some noms are done without the header. Kindly consider a way to pre-populate new sections with pre-definied content (ie the header template). This could apply to ITN/C, AN and AN/I, TFA, FPC, DYK, OTD, etc etc etc etc. Prefer a non-javascript solution since I use ABP to kill most JS from WP. Maybe it's a terrible idea. Just a suggestion/comment anyway. --IP98 (talk) 16:49, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

It's certainly possible using existing non-Javascript techniques. You would need an edit link which includes ?action=edit&section=new&preload=Template:Foo, where [[Template:Foo]] contains the wikicode that you want to be preloaded. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:49, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Wait, pre-load already exists?? --IP98 (talk) 19:00, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, but we can't automatically implement it for all newly created sections. It needs to be specified as part of a link. Many noticeboards' "new discussion" buttons do this. See WP:AN3 for example. Equazcion (talk) 19:16, 20 Jun 2012 (UTC)
The problem with the ITN candidates page is that new nominations aren't added using new sections, but by editing existing sections, so I don't think preload can be implemented there (at least as far as I know...) Equazcion (talk) 19:27, 20 Jun 2012 (UTC)
Rigt, the bot creates the date specific heading then editors manually add subsections. Bummer. Thanks though. Would be nice if you could add a "&parent=" to the edit link. --IP98 (talk) 16:18, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Slow wiki is slow

Is Wikipedia ungodly slow for anyone else right now? It's sometimes taking me as long as a minute to save an edit. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 20:56, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

It is slow for me too. Thanks. With regards, Oleg. Y. (talk). 21:02, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, slow, timing out, looking like a sick dog QU TalkQu 21:02, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
Slow for me as well. Chris857 (talk) 21:04, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
It's been reported and should be resolved soon. AndrewN talk 21:05, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
The issue was overload on a caching server. It's being investigated as I speak.--Jasper Deng (talk) 21:07, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
^Understatement of the century. I get an error after every edit too. It's not the biggest issue because my edits still appear except when it is combined with an edit conflict. Ryan Vesey Review me! 21:06, 20 June 2012 (UTC)

Annoying false positive notices from edit filter

Hello.

I have had, on several occasions, the edit filter warn me (inaccurately) that I am adding a protection template to an unprotected page when in fact the edit filter is triggering a false message. I have noticed that it is falsely notifying me of doing this when I attempt to edit move-protected pages which have the move protection template. It detects that I am saving the page with the protection template (which already exists), and that the page is not protected in a traditional manner, such as semi-protection, which it is evidently programmed to spot. In that case, this filter needs to be adjusted to recognize pages that are move-protected as well. Thank you. 70.248.186.239 (talk) 02:04, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the filter can't see if the page is protected. It's only triggering because you are adding a protection template despite being an unconfirmed user (which is this sense, means you have no power to protect pages). In that sense, it's actually that the warning template is misrepresenting what the filter actually looks for. So anyway, it's unfortunate that the AbuseFilter extension is inherently limited as to what it can see. It can't tell if a page is protected, and it can't tell if the previous edit to the page was vandalism, as it was in your case. As for fixes, the template could be reworded, or the filter can be made to excuse anyone who puts "rv" in their edit summary, or excuse additions of pp-move (which would actually cause the filter to suddenly do what it claims to). I'm not sure what the best fix is, but this thread may belong more at WT:EF than here. Someguy1221 (talk) 02:19, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Early test of new Visual Editor test now live on mediawiki.org

Hello everyone,

Today, I'm delighted to say that we at the Wikimedia Foundation have launched a new prototype “visual editor” for MediaWiki. The visual editor will be a new editing environment that won’t require everyone to learn our special markup language in order to contribute to our projects.

Though it’s possible to learn what wikitext means and use it powerfully, many of our editors, and especially new editors, want to contribute content, not learn technical formatting. We identified the difficulty in learning wikitext as a key inhibitor to growing our editor community in the Wikimedia movement’s strategic plan.

We want the process of learning how to edit to be trivial, so our volunteers, both new and experienced, can devote themselves to what they edit. That’s why we’re building the visual editor, so that contributing to a wiki is as easy and natural as other modern editing systems, and new editors are not dissuaded from making their changes.

You may remember a similar announcement in December 2011, when we revealed a developer prototype of our “visual editor", but after a great deal of feedback, we've reworked it so that it's more useful to our our community of users.

We learned a lot from building our first prototype. It was great how many of you helped with feedback, bug reports and comments about how we were doing. In the months since then, based on your feedback and technical issues we encountered, we’ve overhauled the entire editor. We changed the technical design and how it works, rewriting its components so that we can support more editors more easily. We’ve also integrated it into the MediaWiki platform, so now it can load and edit wiki articles, and not just sit separately.

To build this iteration of our open source visual editor, we have been working with some of the team from Wikia, a collaborative publisher that operates the largest network of video game, entertainment and lifestyle wikis in the world. We both believe that this kind of tool should be built not just for the Wikimedia wiki projects, but for everyone using MediaWiki software, and when it’s done we look forward to including the visual editor “out of the box” for anyone setting up a wiki with our software.

Thanks to all this, our new prototype is now live on mediawiki.org. This is just a demonstration, and very far from a finished product — for example, we haven’t yet added image or table handling. It’s currently locked down to only work on a self-contained area of the wiki, so that it doesn’t encounter any unsupported content or break anything else. We intend to work on small pieces of the overall story, releasing a new version every two weeks or so, and adding features one-by-one until the editor is good enough to deploy for everyone (and release in MediaWiki’s core).

Over the next few weeks and months, we will be working with you in the community to find bugs, to focus on what our priorities should be, and most importantly, to make sure that what we’re building is right for you and that it supports your “workflow”.

So please, try out the prototype, see our frequently-asked questions, and tell us what you think.

On behalf of the Visual Editor Team: Trevor Parscal, Inez Korczyński, Roan Kattouw, Rob Moen, Subramanya Sastry, Brion Vibber, Gabriel Wicke, Christian Williams.

Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 21:33, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Toolserver and Tim1357

Toolserver Version WikiProject Texas Recent Changes is down. A similar one for Texas A & M is also down. I contacted User Tim1357 who runs that on Toolserver, on June 14, and later emailed the editor, but nothing happened. This editor has not been very active since March 2012. With Rich Farmbrough being sidelined, this was the only way to get that particular information. Any suggestions? Maile66 (talk) 22:12, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Works for me, can you be more specific about the fault? Sfan00 IMG (talk) 22:17, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
The problem w.r.t. Texas may be that {{WikiProject Texas}} is deprecated and so exists on very few pages. I'm not sure that Tim1357's Wikiproject Watchlist can give you a report on articles tagged with {{WikiProject United States}} and having the parameter TX=yes. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:24, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
The category can be used: Watchlist for Category:WikiProject Texas articles. Peter E. James (talk) 22:28, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
Hey, that's it! I'll just use the link you provided. Thanks. Maile66 (talk) 22:31, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
It worked fine until mid-June, just spewing out pages of information. Are you seeing only 4 lines of results? It should be in the hundreds, and was prior to mid-June. For contrast, here's a much smaller project Hawaii Toolserver changes. Or heres the one for Museums. Maile66 (talk) 22:30, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.20wmf5 deployment complete

Hi everyone! Yet another deployment in our bi-weekly deployment cycle was just completed (at 18:15 UTC). See mw:MediaWiki 1.20/wmf5 for a full list of changes. Let us know if you encounter problems caused by this deployment. Thanks! -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 18:19, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Might have nothing to do with this, but I've noticed some inter-wiki links are shown in lower-case (eg dansk instead of Dansk). See this article for an example. Lugnuts (talk) 19:20, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
See, er, WP:VPT for another. Seems to be widespread, but not universal: Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates has català; dansk; Deutsch; Esperanto; eesti. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:37, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
I guess it's bugzilla:36819 "Make language names first letter lowercase where usual". — AlexSm 20:23, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
Yup, my understanding from that bug and the conversation around it is that the change was intentional. Siebrand can probably answer any questions you have about this change. -- RobLa-WMF (talk) 22:12, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
I complained about this change here: Help talk:Interlanguage links#Capitalization of language names. Intentional or not, I think the change is not an improvement.  --Lambiam 20:20, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
The lowercase language names should remain like that in general, but it can be capitalized for the interwiki sidebar specifically, see bug 37705 for that. SPQRobin (talk) 23:27, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

That was a terrible decision to use lowercase. Or if use it then for all the interwiki links. Now "English", "Esperanto" are with capital letters others are in lowercase. Just look at "беларуская" and "Беларуская (тарашкевіца)‬". That's a total mess. I propose that old order with capital letters should be returned. Hugo.arg (talk) 07:26, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

I notice the change has been propagated to other wikis. The move has recieved criticisms on fr.wiki too. Bouchecl (talk) 17:25, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
As per a suggestion on the fr.wiki Bistro, add this line to your common.css, to get rid of this erratic behavior (and to bring the initial caps back). Bouchecl (talk) 22:48, 21 June 2012 (UTC)\
Tut-tut. We Russians are less than happy with being relegated to lowercase. Does this mean that our wikipedia is less important than the others? --Ghirla-трёп- 05:35, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
#p-lang li a {text-transform: capitalize !important;}

It's been fixed in this change and will be deployed with wmf6 at the latest.--Eloquence* 17:26, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Blocked Whitelist

Would it be technically possible to create some sort of whitelist of pages that can be edited by a specific blocked user? There is currently a proposal in the idea lab about a reform program for sockpuppeteers. I'm not sure if it will go anywhere, but the concept made me think, could you make pages in Wikipedia:Sock Puppet Reform/ open to editors who were approved for the program if one got created? On another note, would it be possible to create a page other than his talk page, where I can run my adoption program with User:Dannyboy1209? Ryan Vesey Review me! 18:38, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

Block users cannot edit anything other than their own User talk: pages (and some are even blocked from doing that). Other pages cannot be made editable by blocked users other than by unblocking. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:07, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
My question is, would it be technically possible to modify the current block settings in the software in order to make this possible. Ryan Vesey Review me! 19:09, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
Technically possible, yes. Feasible? You'd have to ask a sysadmin, or someone experienced in MediaWiki hacking.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 19:11, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
With the current set up, the only way to do that would be to unblock the users and then create a special edit filter which disallows them to edit all pages except the white listed ones. - Hoo man (talk) 19:10, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
That seems to be much more work than the value. It was worth an asking. I do wish there was some way to work in a more structured way with blocked users who have potential but shouldn't be unblocked. Ryan Vesey Review me! 19:13, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
Something I do when I want to avoid edit collisions while making multiple changes to an article is to work on a copy (or a sub-component) of the article in user space. Perhaps a blocked editor could be allowed to do something similar, then present it as a proposed change. But if the editor was undisciplined enough to get blocked, [s]he may not have the patience for this approach. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:33, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
Have you ever seen {{2nd chance}}? That is very similar to your comment. I wonder when the last time an admin has used that has been. Ryan Vesey Review me! 19:40, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Template:Archive list alpha not working properly

The transclusion of {{Archive list alpha|root=Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)}} gives this:

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, AJ, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AQ, AR, AS, AT, AU, AV, AW, AX, AY, AZ, BA, BB, BC, BD, BE, BF, BG, BH, BI, BJ, BK, BL, BM, BN, BO.

However, there are many more alpha-named archive pages:

AG, AH, AI, AK, AL, AM, AN, AO, AP, AR, AT, AV, AX, AY, AZ.

I guess this is related to the gap at AF, but I couldn't figure out from the code why the enumeration would break off then; in any case, it shouldn't.  --Lambiam 16:32, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Boldly created Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive AF as a redirect to .../Archive AG, which seems more efficient than rewriting the template to check the existence of every possible non-consecutive alpha archive subpage, so AG to AI are now also listed above, but the missing AJ still blocks the listing of subsequent subpages. If you agree that creating redirects is a sound approach, you could similarly create redirects for AJ, AQ, AS, AU and AW to complete the sequence. — Richardguk (talk) 22:20, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't think that's a good idea. I tried moving the pages so they would have consecutive lettering (kmoving AG to AF, AH to AG and so on) and then realised that there are huge gaps in the timestamps in the missing archive. For example, the last discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive AI finished on the 12th of April while the first one at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive AK finished on the 26th of April. I'll ping Jarry1250 (talk · contribs), the owner of the bot that created the archives. Graham87 12:51, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, I think these'll be archives blocked by the spam filter... annoying. I might get round to recreating them with the lost data - but it's not high on my priority list at the moment I'm afraid, sorry. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 22:19, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

I have a problem with Rollback links. There have been multiple times that when I was on my tablet that I accidentally hit the Rollback link on the watchlist. I don't use it normally is there any way to remove it from my watchlist? GB fan 04:07, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Customizing watchlists#Remove or modify the .5Brollback.5D link. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:22, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks that fixed it. GB fan 14:46, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Edit summary tool

Is there a tool or gadget, or some other method, of saving a few custom edit summaries for easy selection from a drop-down list? AutoWikiBrowser, for example, allows users to specify and save custom edit summaries (see Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/User manual#Options). I also know that the wikEd tool has something similar – I don't know if it can be customized – but I'm not quite comfortable with its other aspects or with Mozilla Firefox. Thank you, -- Black Falcon (talk) 22:13, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

I just whipped this up by tweaking the current gadget that offers some preset edit summaries. It still has those presets left over, but it wouldn't be a big deal to create another copy of this that omits them, if anyone wants something that only lists the custom summaries. Add this to your skin's .js page or your common.js page:
importScript('User:Equazcion/CustomSummaries.js'); //User:Equazcion/CustomSummaries.js
var customsum1 = "My first custom edit summary";
var customsum2 = "My second custom edit summary";
...
It supports up to 10 custom summaries right now. A drop-down menu will appear below the edit summary line, and the custom summaries will appear below the "leftover" presets in the list. Tested in Vector but I think it works in all skins. Equazcion (talk) 22:51, 22 Jun 2012 (UTC)
Wow, thank you! Would you please create the copy without the preset summaries? I don't mind typing short summaries such as "clean up" and I prefer to use more specific summaries than "Adding/improving reference(s)", but there are some long summaries that I use quite often and this tool will surely prove to be quite helpful. -- Black Falcon (talk) 23:40, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
No problem :) I created the copy. Use the same instructions, just change User:Equazcion/CustomSummaries.js to User:Equazcion/CustomSummariesOnly.js. Equazcion (talk) 00:40, 23 Jun 2012 (UTC)
See User:Equazcion/CustomSummaryPresets for the "official" documentation :) "CustomSummariesOnly.js" will still work, as it redirects to the new script name. Equazcion (talk) 02:41, 23 Jun 2012 (UTC)
Perfect! Thank you so much for your quick and effective assistance. -- Black Falcon (talk) 19:08, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Template:R from merge

Wonky business with this template? It's purpose, ostensibly, is to keep people from inadvertently deleting redirects where content has been moved elsewhere, since attribution issues require that we keep them. But the text cautioning of this seems to be visible only when reviewing the "diff" where it was placed.

Compare: [22]; [23].

Didn't that text used to be visible on the redirect itself? Is there something that it could do to make itself a bit more obtrusive so that editors don't inadvertently flag these redirects for deletion and, more importantly, admins who aren't paying attention don't delete them? Otherwise, is there really a lot of value to the template?

I'm listing this here in the presumption that something about the code is at issue. If not, please let me know, and I'll move it. :) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:43, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

That's normal behavior for any text beneath the #redirect [[Link]] and has been for so long as I've been using MediaWiki for my editing. --Izno (talk) 14:05, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
So, if it hasn't changed, is there any way to fix that or to make it obvious to editors to aid its function? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 14:07, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't believe so (through editing of the template), though you might want to ask the developers of the various scripts which aid in deletion tagging to add a note about it in their software. --Izno (talk) 14:13, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't see why we can't have the text appear when you navigate to the redirect page outside of diffs. That seems like a MediaWiki bug if it appears on a diff but not on the direct page, but if that's by design it should be changed; the info from all these redirect templates is useful to have right on the redirect page itself. --MASEM (t) 14:22, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
Ok, I found mention of why this happens in {{This is a redirect}}'s doc that points to this bugzilla report [24] that appears to state that to avoid extra parsing, redirect pages like this only show the redirect and categories, but nothing's been done to fix up the bug for a couple years now. --MASEM (t) 14:30, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
It doesn't avoid extra parsing since January 2006. Anomie⚔ 15:57, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Old deletion logs

Hi. I'm not sure if this is the right place to discuss this so please point me to somewhere more appropriate, if appropriate. Just now, I came across Wikipedia:Deletion_log_archive/November_2004_(3) -- a bunch of deletion logs were removed in September 2006 because of concerns about libellous content in the summaries. The admin who removed them said that they'd be restored "soon", without the summaries but that never happened. Will they ever be restored? (The admin in question is no longer an admin and is now largely inactive, with only four edits so far in 2012.) Dricherby (talk) 21:30, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Is this needed for anything at this point? - jc37 21:41, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
Probably not, to be honest. I came across it because it includes an article that was deleted at AfD and recreated several years later, before being AfDed again. Dricherby (talk) 21:55, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
Well, as an old deletion log it probably shouldn't be restored for various reasons. (copy-vio/privacy/etc.)
However, I don't think it will be a problem showing you this individual line in this case.
Hope this helps. - jc37 22:09, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, pretty much what could be inferred from the first AfD. :-) Thanks for taking the time to deal with my curiosity. Dricherby (talk) 22:52, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
IMO they should be restored intact with noindex applied to all the deletion log pages, so they can be searchable onwiki. They're useful for people tracking old page histories on Wikipedia to find out what happened to old edits. For now they can be accessed through the Wayback Machine. Graham87 06:30, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Sneaky vandalism on a TFA

While it was Today's Featured Article (yesterday), there was a hijack code in place for a short time that took anyone who clicked on anything in Petrified Forest National Parkto a Shutterfly page. The highjack code was in one of the transcluded templates - see diff (and thanks to Little Mountain 5 for finding and fixing the problem). Anything we can do to prevent such occurrences in the future? Ruhrfisch ><>°° 03:21, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

This is an LTA issue. I think we have a filter for this. It probably needs to be updated. Elockid (Talk) 03:27, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks - how is this a WP:LTA issue? Is there an idea who is behind this? Ruhrfisch ><>°° 13:52, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
This is supposedly Meepsheep and he's been vandalizing a number of projects for awhile. You can also find some more info here. Elockid (Talk) 01:34, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks - is there anything else I need to do / anywhere else I should post this? Ruhrfisch ><>°° 03:13, 24 June 2012 (UTC)
Not at the moment. But for future reference, it's a good idea to revdelete the diff(s) that contains the vandalism. Some admins also protect the template which has been vandalized. You can also report the account(s) to me so I can block whatever proxies they were editing from. Elockid (Talk) 17:20, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Cite book ISBN retrieval

The cite tool for books has a field where you can plug in the ISBN and retrieve the book info (I assume). Is that working for anyone? My browser just sits there after I click the retrieve button. --NeilN talk to me 04:31, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Please discuss at Wikipedia:RefToolbar. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) talk 16:30, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Creating a new user-right group

New proposal. - jc37 17:08, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

  • Support. Thanks Jc37 for a very well-written proposal. It is obvious that you have studied these issues for a long time. A moderator-admin (mod) without the ability to block or protect separates moderation from the hammer. Anything that puts the focus more on neutral content moderation earlier on, rather than user behavior is a good thing. See related discussion: Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-06-18/Investigative report‎. Mods will be able to close content-related discussions such as RM; DRV; AfD/CfD/FfD/TfD/MfD/etc.. Mods will be a separate group away from trigger-happy admins who oftentimes block without warning when implementing WP:Edit warring. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:08, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
Note that I am copying the above comment to the talk page for the proposal. Ryan Vesey Review me! 18:13, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Crat can't see code properly

Please see Wikipedia:Bureaucrats'_noticeboard#Renaming. Can anyone help me to see the code properly? Thanks --Dweller (talk) 22:22, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Dweller's been asking about this for awhile, It would be nice if he could get some serious help : ) - jc37 22:29, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
It has been resolved by Dweller changing language from en-GB to en in preferences. PrimeHunter (talk) 09:53, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

I have long had the useful option "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page" ticked in my preferences (under "Gadgets"), but suddenly it doesn't seem to be working any more. What happen? Bishonen | talk 11:56, 25 June 2012 (UTC).

It works for me. Try to clear your entire cache. If it still doesn't work: Do other gadgets work? Is it missing on all pages? What is your browser and skin? PrimeHunter (talk) 12:02, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
Confirm working in Firefox 13.0.1 under Monobook and Vector. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:17, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Strange. Yeah, I've cleared my cache; anyway, I've had this enabled for a long time without problems. It happens on all pages now. I use Mac OSX 10.6.8, SeaMonkey 2.10, and Monobook. I don't have any problems, that I've noticed, with any other gadgets. Bishonen | talk 12:25, 25 June 2012 (UTC).
It works for me in both Vector and MonoBook with Firefox on Windows Vista. I don't have a Mac. Is the [edit] link missing or is it visible but doesn't work? Does Vector work, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bishonen?useskin=vector? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:33, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
The link is missing for me in Monobook. Yes, Vector does work. Do you think I should change to Vector? I'll hardly do that just because of this issue, but is it better (as being the default skin) in some other ways? The reason I'm not using Vector now is that I actively dislike the placement of the Read, Edit, and View history links, top right, and especially the placement of the Search box. I've tried to get used to these features, but they're just… not friendly. ;/ To put it another way, it's undoubtedly because of rampant old fogeyism. I wonder if I'm the only wikipedian in the world using mac, mozilla, and monobook? :-( Bishonen | talk 15:00, 25 June 2012 (UTC).
I'm not suggesting a permanent switch to Vector. I'm just narrowing down the cause of the problem. Maybe it's something in User:Bishonen/monobook.js. Can you try another browser? PrimeHunter (talk) 15:53, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
Bishonen, there's a couple of things you could check for. Go to any page with more than one section; then use your browser's "View page source" (or equivalent) function. I'm afraid I don't know how to get that in SeaMonkey, but in Firefox it's Ctrl+U. Having obtained the page source, search for
"gadget-edittop":"1"
then search for
<script src="/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-edittop.js
If either of these are absent, try going to Preferences → Gadgets and turn off the "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page" gadget, save, then turn it back on and save. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:18, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
Experimentation shows it's caused by this from User:Bishonen/monobook.js:
document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' 
             + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Zocky/LinkComplete.js' 
             + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');
User:Zocky/LinkComplete.js hasn't been edited since 2007. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:30, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
I've had Zocky's LinkComplete in my monobook.js for donkey's years, and now it starts to cause trouble? Well, I don't profess to understand these things. I'll remove it. Thanks very much for checking it out, PrimeHunter, and you too, Redrose. You say I could try turning off the edittop gadget, then turning it back on? Sounds manageable, I'll try that first, before I throw out Zocky's script. Very kind of you both to look into the problem. Bishonen | talk 18:55, 25 June 2012 (UTC).
P.S. Report: removing the script had the desired effect. Holmes, this is amazing, how did you know? Thank you both again. Bishonen | talk 19:03, 25 June 2012 (UTC).
Elementary: the mud on your shoes is of a colour and texture found only in that part of the world, and there are slight scuff marks on the left of your hat brim where you raised it to scratch your head. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:09, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
I did say "Experimentation shows ...". PrimeHunter (talk) 01:06, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

New editor feedback

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T39947

Newer editors are asked how Wikipedia makes them feel (happy, sad, etc.) It is a prompt at the top of the page. I have disabled this feature multiple times, but whenever I log in to a new IP, it prompts me for my feedback again. Can someone please ask the right someone to please fix this? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 00:00, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

This should indeed be fixed. Right now the disabling is done via cookie (with an expiry to 365 days, so it should only come back after that time period, or if you're using a different browser, or not permitting cookies to be set, or clearing your cookies). But it should be done as a user preference, which is now pretty straightforward to integrate into the UI thanks to the recently deployed preferences API.--Eloquence* 03:27, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Adding a new feature to Wikipedia

Who do I talk to about potentially adding a new feature to Wikipedia?

It would be such a dramatic new way of viewing Wikipedia that I would like to start a dialog about it.

I have a demonstration website, but I do not want to reveal it here, as we are still testing and debugging it.

But there is enough there (on the demo website) that the right people will get the idea very quickly.

In other words, I don't want to give the URL out, here (publicly), and have it go viral before everything is sorted out.

Jroehl (talk) 15:07, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

You are in the right place. How about a hint? :) --Timeshifter (talk) 18:12, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Timelines, done right. Automatically derived from Wikipedia articles. All configurable. With pictures.

Anybody who sends me and email to jroehl [at] yahoo.com I will send you a link to the demonstration website.

Jroehl (talk) 18:47, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Why not just post the link here? If you are happy to give people the address via email then I don't see how the reasons that you give above apply. Or are you trying to harvest email addresses? Phil Bridger (talk) 13:57, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

An AFD button on my Talk Page Watchlist page

Now, the AFD pages are something I like to hop to and visit fairly often, and to do it manually is rather tedious (type afd into wikipedia, click on link to Wikipedia:AFD, lcick on "today"). Yes, I know that this is a major first world problem, but if it;s possible for you guys to put an AFD button on my talk page watchlist page that links me to the current AFD page every day (i.e. it automatically updates), that would be awesome, and might also be of use to others. :D--Coin945 (talk) 22:30, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

I put the link on your talk page. Copy the code to wherever you want, it'll always link to "today's" discussions. Equazcion (talk) 22:36, 25 Jun 2012 (UTC)
PS. It's [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/{{#time:Y F j}}]] Equazcion (talk) 22:37, 25 Jun 2012 (UTC)
Cheers :) I actually meant my watchlist page (oops)... a blatant typo. That's why I said "button". While I appreciate what you did for me, is it possible to do what I had intended my proposal to be: a button on the watchlist page that links to the current afd page?--Coin945 (talk) 23:27, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
You could bookmark Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/Today in your browser? -- John of Reading (talk) 06:44, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Or type WP:AFD/TODAY into the search box. Graham87 11:35, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Thankyou very much. :D I went with your idea, John of Reading, but I'll def keep that in mind 87 - very handy.. :) (although now there's a new problem - although the page is on my watchlist, it doesn't really help unless its regularly updated - otherwise it falls through the cracks until it's off my watchlist... I;m guessing this is because it merely compiles info from other wiki pages, much like the XFD page.--Coin945 (talk) 16:34, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Taking away a particular user right. Or deleting the auoconfirmed status.

Shouldn't administrators be able to takeout a specific right of a user? Some users have very good intentions. But due to some flaws of them, their edits become destructive and finally gets blocked. Here is an example of such a user, User:Alvaro Filbert. The only problem with him is that he creates large number of articles with less content which are circular, not notable and unsourced. But the edits that he has done are all intended to be constructive. Many users warned him but he didn't respond to it. The reply he made against block was very polite as he apologize but this doesn't no change was found in his nature of article creation. Due to the disruptive nature of articles created by them (though they are intended to be constructive) got him blocked (initially a 24 hour one and then, when he continued the same without any change, got permanently blocked). (You can see the discussions here on 1, 2 and his talk page). Suppose that we have a possibility to take his right of creating articles, then he would have been a completely constructive editor.

The same applies to those good users who edits constructively but uploads copyrighted or badquality images (ignoring warnings) and gets blocked. So if we were able to take away such user rights (for a specific period of time), then these users will start editing constructively. It appears strange to me to know that we can take away user packages such as autoreviewer, rollbacker, etc. and even adminshp but not the simplest autoconfirmed status! Also note that it is very hard to convert a vandal to a good faith editor. At the same time a real good faith editor seldom becomes a vandal even if he is extremely disappointed, rather he may stop editing. So instead of trying a block, why not let him edit without causing trouble to 'pedia? When he gains experience, he becomes a responsible editor and at that time if he get the rights back, he will do it without any disruptive nature. Vanischenu mTalk 14:21, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Autoconfirmed isn't a "right" that can be set or removed: it's checked automatically whenever a non-confiremed user retrieves a page. If they have 10 edits and 4 days, they're autoconfirmed, otherwise not.
Admins have the right to grant and remove the "confirmed user" right, but this is ineffective if the user concerned is already autoconfirmed.
Admins can grant or remove any of the following: reviewer; autochecked user; account creator; IP block exempt; rollbacker; confirmed user; autopatrolled; file mover; edit filter manager. The following rights may be altered, but not by admins: bot; administrator; bureaucrat; steward; importer; transwiki importer; oversight; founder; researcher; checkuser; afttest; afttest-hide.
Please note that users don't need to be autoconfirmed in order to create pages: they merely need to be registered. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:02, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Thank you Redrose64. It's a mistake from me to think that new users can't create a page. Sorry for thinking like that. But if we were able to take out autoconfirmed status, then, it would have provided a solution for those users who with contributes with good intentions but uploads copyrighted images even after many warnings. What about making these rights to the user blockable so that. instead of completely blocking them, we can block specific problamatic rights of good users.Vanischenu mTalk 16:35, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

Script kiddies wanted

I have a task that I want to carry out but I need the expertise of some sort of script or bot. Template:ASIN links directly to an article fro sale at Amazon.com. I DONT LIKE THIS. I have asked for the templates to be deleted. See Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2012_June_25#Template:ASIN. If I do manage to get the template deleted we need to get the references changed to another source. When the tempate parameter bigins with a numeral the parameter is actually an ISBN. It should be easy to turn these cases into the {{cite book}} references. Not sure what to do with other uses. Anyone up for sorting this out? Cheers. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 03:25, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, there's no reason why a citation to a book should be using {{ASIN}} in lieu of {{cite book}} if the ASIN value equals the ISBN. Are you sure that's what you're dealing with? Sometimes it has been used to cite Amazon's webpage about a book, video, or other. If indeed it is a citation to the book itself, there should be no cause for objection to providing the proper link. LeadSongDog come howl! 03:50, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Have a look at George Harrison. Two amazon links that go to books. And that was about the first one I looked at! -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:11, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Single transclusion templates still deleted?

Some times ago I experienced that, when a Template was used only once (transcluded only once), it could be deleted by TfD for that single reason (no sound reasoning pro/con needed). Does this still apply? And if yes: where to kill it? -DePiep (talk) 23:21, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

It's not an automatic reason for deletion. If the template is unlikely to get more uses then it can be an argument in a discussion at WP:TFD, but there may not be consensus for deletion. I don't know which past discussion you refer to but it may simply have been one where the participants saw no reason to keep that particular template. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:38, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
I won't do past examples for now. The problem is, these purists can still pop up in the future. Feels like I am supposed to prove beforehand, to someone unknown, that it will be Great and multi-use. For this reason, I am withholding otherwise OK new template now: fear that I must go to TfD 2nd step.
Why must I prepare for another 3/4 page of standard arguments (yes I can make a T for that -- would not be deleted) when I start a template?
Why is it even an argument in itself? It better be banned like the "we should mind server load" thing. -DePiep (talk) 00:11, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
I second this. I've been watching a slew of templates being deleted as "unused". Why? Is there suddenly some server space storage limitation that we didn't hear about? - jc37 01:00, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Over 120 single-use templates survived TfD in April this year. No names, but there are some on a mission to delete as many templates as possible, regardless of the inconvenience caused. A stock reason for deletion is "redundant". Infoboxes are a prime target; if all these TfDs closed "delete" we'd have just three left - {{Infobox person}}, {{Infobox settlement}}, and, er, {{Infobox}} for everything else.
It should be remembered that because we retain all history, the TfD page itself will probably occupy more database space than the template under discussion. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:09, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Static IP users and IPv6

Another discussion prompted me to think about this. We have some great IP editors who work from static IPs. However, the shift towards IPv6 means they will likely be switched to the new identifier once that happens.

Which means their userpage (if any) and contributions will reside on the "old" IPv4 listing, divorced from the new IPv6 "account." IP editors in general will get a clean slate whenever their ISP switches to IPv6.

I'm guessing IP editors in good standing could request their user pages moved to the new IPv6 "account," but contributions would be a problem. And even making sure it's the same person could be an issue.

I don't know what we could do to fix this, but I think it needs some community discussion, to see if we have reasonable options. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 13:48, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

We actually have a system in place to handle changing IPs. It's called registering an account :) But seriously, yes, that's the answer. Any IP that wishes to not have their contribs and "userspace" at the mercy of their ISP's IP deployment whims should register an account; if they choose not to for whatever reason, I don't think it's "on us" to spend time and effort accommodating them. The tools are there already, should they care to use them. Equazcion (talk) 13:52, 27 Jun 2012 (UTC)
Comment "Which means their userpage (if any) and contributions will reside on the "old" IPv4 listing, divorced from the new IPv6 "account." "
Well, it's not their userpage, nor their contributions, since anyone who is assigned that IP may make contributions under that IP. On the other hand CC-BY-SA 3.0 also applies to IP contributions. -- Toshio Yamaguchi (tlk−ctb) 14:35, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

"Last updated" feature

I have the pref enabled to display an edit tab at the top-right for editing the lead section of an article. On pages where the "Last updated" thing appears, it overlaps with that extra edit tab, meaning whenever I try to edit the lead I end up viewing the page history instead. Is there any way to either disable or move the "last updated", or otherwise fix this issue? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:55, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I think if you check "Exclude me from feature experiments" in Preferences -> Appearance -> Advanced, "last updated" should disappear. Equazcion (talk) 14:59, 27 Jun 2012 (UTC)
Nikkimaria, which pages are you getting this on? I thought that the seven-day test was over. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:38, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
There was a bug in the initial code, so we had to disable it and reboot a few days later, but this should be taken down in the next day or so. I'll check in with Ori.livneh about that ASAP.
Also, Nikkimaria, does it really overlap? I have that lead edit feature enabled as well, and the timestamp shows up okay for me – it gets awful close but doesn't touch. Which browser are you using? Maryana (WMF) (talk) 15:57, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Looks like Nikkimaria is using Monobook, FYI. S/he also seems to be referring to a tab rather than an edit link, not sure if that's what happens in Monobook when you check the gadget, or how that would get placed. Equazcion (talk) 16:00, 27 Jun 2012 (UTC)
Monoboooook! (in the Wrath of Khan voice, naturally.)
Kidding, kidding :) I just tried it out on Monobook and it looked fine to me, so I guess that wasn't the pref I was thinking of – any idea what that edit tab thingy is called and where in preferences it lives (appearance? editing?)? Sorry it's being buggy for you, but thank you for your help with debugging! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 16:40, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Not Monobook, Modern with Firefox. Here's a screenshot, if it helps (from United States) - if I click on the line under "Edit" I can edit the lead, click anywhere else on the edit button and I get the page history. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:55, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Thank you! Yes, that's very helpful. These days, it's virtually impossible to account for all permutations of user preferences/gadgets/scripts when adding a new feature. Luckily, doing short tests like this surfaces the problems and lets us know what to look out for in the future. Will add this to the list of things that might conflict with the top right above-the-bar element placement. Thanks again, and sorry to hassle you – I hope you won't opt out of all our experiments permanently, though, because it would be extremely useful to have your user experience on hand for this very reason! Maryana (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
At Preferences → Appearance, I've tried most combinations of Monobook/Vector; Exclude me from feature experiments; Don't show the Article feedback widget on pages, but I can't get this Last Updated thing to show on United States at all. Is it on any other pages? --Redrose64 (talk) 18:33, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
It's an A/B test, so you probably ended up in the control bucket. We've been using Goldberg Variations as our test page (so we don't pollute our data too much) – if you clear your cache and try again, you might have better luck seeing LastModified in action there. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 19:24, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
  • Update – double-checked with my team, and it looks like the test will end tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon SF time. Thanks again for your bug reports and your patience :) Maryana (WMF) (talk) 19:57, 27 June 2012 (UTC) ... actually, should be turned off nowish (had an open deployment window and figured we'd go for it). Maryana (WMF) (talk) 20:00, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Content encoding error?

Firefox 13.0.1 error message

I got this when trying to load my watchlist, and now it won't load at all. Other pages are loading fine. I'm sure this is just a temporary glitch of some kind, but wanted to post anyway -- especially because of this "Content encoding error" that I've never (literally never, from any site) seen before. Though it could just be the latest Firefox's new way to report an old problem... Equazcion (talk) 15:53, 27 Jun 2012 (UTC)

And now my watchlist started loading again. It was down for about 10 minutes, give or take. Equazcion (talk) 15:56, 27 Jun 2012 (UTC)
I got this error also but it only lasted a second. Elockid (Talk) 16:00, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I recently noticed that conditional expressions are allowed now inside wikilinks. For years, I had tried similar use of #ifexpr inside "[[ ]]" but it never worked. I wonder when this was first allowed:

Try: [[temperature|{{#ifexpr: {{{1|97}}} > 85|hot|else mild}}]] → hot

Try: 

[[{{#ifeq:FREEZE|T|temperature|freezer}}|{{
  #switch: {{{1|-4}}}
  | 86|87|88|89|90|91|92|93|94|95|96|97|98|99|100|101 = hot
  | 10|9|8|7|6|5|4|3|2|1|0 = cold
  | -1|-2|-3|-4|-5|-6|-7|-8|-9|-10|-11 = very cold
  | #default = mild
  }}]]

→ very cold

Does anyone know when expressions (#ifeq & #switch) inside wikilinks were first allowed, or has it been possible for a long time now? -Wikid77 (talk) 19:36, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

No idea. What I'd like to know is, what possible use model does this have? I hope people will keep it out of mainspace. It sounds like a great way to confuse readers, with really no upside that I can think of. --Trovatore (talk) 19:38, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
There are numerous possible uses, with calculated values, such as if result=1 then link "thing" else link "things" (plural). The efficiency is best in cases where the contents of the link are being generated from multiple parameters, so that one link is formatted for all cases, rather than having a list of links depending on each set of parameter values. Formerly, we repeated the entire link for each combination of possible values. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:33, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
In what context would you do that in mainspace? When you're writing an article, hopefully you always know exactly what you want to link to. --Trovatore (talk) 21:07, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Note that if you want plural handling, there is both the {{plural}} parser function and the {{plural}} template. I don't see much use for this in mainspace, but in templates it can be very useful. Anomie⚔ 01:56, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
I think that's actually been around for quite some time – a year at the very least. One handy thing it allowed for was A/B testing user warning templates and deletion notices :) but I'm not sure what the original use-case was. Maryana (WMF) (talk) 20:12, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Why is the table forced to the end of the article?

In the Bajan's list, the table is displayed below references, even through it is above template reflist. Any idea why? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 19:53, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

It looks like the table wasn't closed correctly. I have fixed it. Chris857 (talk) 20:16, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

No WP images displaying

Hi. I've woken this morning (in Australia) to find no images displaying in any WP article. I've tried various articles via Chrome (logged-in) and IE (not logged-in)—but no images show in either configuration. I therefore don't believe the problem is related to browser or account settings. I'm seeing images displayed in non-WP pages. I also notice that toolserver.org is not resolving. I thought that I'd flag this in case anyone is noticing similar issues. Cheers. GFHandel ♬  22:16, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

It works for me. Images are hosted at wikimedia.org, for example http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a9/Example.jpg. Does that resolve for you? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:35, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes I can see that example image, but I still can't see any image on any WP page (including the WP logo on the main page). GFHandel ♬  22:42, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
That sounds like a setting at your end although it's odd that two browsers are affected. Can you see an image at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Example.jpg which should display http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a9/Example.jpg? How about http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Example.jpg which should display http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Example.jpg? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:58, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm not resolving any of those images any more. Oh well, if no one else reports problems, then I'll wait to see what develops at my end. Thanks for helping. GFHandel ♬  23:22, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
An update: without changing a single thing at my end, all pictures suddenly started displaying normally (about ten minutes ago). GFHandel ♬  23:56, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Has WP's default font changed?

I have not changed my browser or it's settings, but wikipedia's font is appearing very small, thin, and jagged – as opposed to the strong Arial font that I'm used to. Can anyone explain this? – Confession0791 talk 03:43, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

File:RC font.PNG
Wikipedia's font is controlled by your own computer. Are you having this problem on any other sites? I had a similar problem years ago, and it turned out that a number of fonts had simply disappeared off my computer's hard drive, and I had to reinstall them. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:40, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Problem solved. It was my browser's settings. – Confession0791 talk 04:54, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Bots adding incorrect interwiki

The article Hantavirus has an interwiki link to mg:Hanta, which is about a Malagasy musician. A few years ago I tried removing the link, but various bots helpfully restore them. As long as the link is made on some language's Wikipedia, it will be propagated by bots to all of them. On one occasion, I even tried to remove it from the article in each language, but it doesn't seem to have been enough. Perhaps an editor on one of those Wikipedias added it back in. How can I prevent bots from equating hemorrhagic fever with a practitioner of traditional music from Madagascar? Shouldn't they be smart enough to avoid re-adding something that's been repeatedly removed by a human editor? --Amble (talk) 14:20, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Would it be reasonable to add {{bots|deny=HRoestBot}} to the various pages as you remove mg:Hanta from each one? Then removing the tag once that has occurred? It would be a decent amount of work, but should solve the problem. Did you remember to remove all of the interwiki's form mg:Hanta the first time you did it? On second thought, bots like AvicBot also do interwiki links. It might be necessary to add {{nobots}} while you are in the process. Ryan Vesey Review me! 14:32, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
I believe I successfully removed them all several years ago. I base this conclusion on the fact that the incorrect interlanguage links didn't reappear for about a year. Yes, I certainly removed all the interlanguage links from mg:Hanta. However, it somehow crept back in after a year. The point of my question is that removing all the inappropriate interlanguage links, across all Wikipedias, did not permanently solve the problem. --Amble (talk) 14:45, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Rather than remove them, comment them out. That is, when you see
[[mg:Hanta]]
alter this to
<!-- [[mg:Hanta]] -->
That will fool the bots into thinking that the link is present (when in fact it isn't), so they won't attempt to re-add it. It's best to go around all the foreign-language pages doing the same thing: this will stop the bots from even coming here to check. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:51, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Interestingly enough, I just finished doing that to the English wiki page as you wrote it and came to comment. It would be great if somebody could come up with a more intelligent bot, rather than making it necessary to fool the bots though. Ryan Vesey Review me! 14:53, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
The problem with naming specific bots, as in {{bots|deny=HRoestBot,AvicBot}}, is that there are simply dozens of bots which maintain the interlanguage links, and if one or two are prevented, one or another of the others will surely do the same bad edit.
{{nobots}} is rather drastic because it'll stop the nice helpful bots too. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:59, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Thank you, Redrose, that solves the problem for our article on Hantavirus. Looking through the history on the various languages, I find that the spurious interlanguage links started to reappear on September 10, 2009, and all of them claim to have been added by various bots! I haven't been able to tell which one came first, but one of these bot edits re-made an interwiki link that didn't currently exist on any language's Wikipedia. That seems to be a bit of misbehavior.
More generally, when I look at the talk pages for the interwiki bots, I see various people asking about the same thing, and being given bad advice. They are often told to go through the articles in each language and remove the offending links. That doesn't work, and we shouldn't send people on a fool's errand. (Not to mention that it's quite a daunting task to go through articles in a list of unfamiliar languages, determine whether the topic is the same, and make an edit in each.) Wouldn't it be reasonable to ask that bots adding interwiki links should have (1) an edit summary including a link to advice for cleaning up spurious additions; and (2) similar information on the bot user page? --Amble (talk) 15:25, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't actually handle any bots; I merely hand out some advice that I found somewhere a year or so back, and have found to be effective. Thus, I can't change bot behaviour: you could post at WP:BON, but bear in mind that many interlanguage link maintenance bots are based on the Wikipedia of another language, so they might not visit our WP:BON. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:52, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, understood. I have posted at WP:BON as well. --Amble (talk) 16:11, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

It seems that a while back the dab page at Hanta was erroneously replaced by a redirect to Hantavirus. I've restored it to passify the bots, but it would help if the trio described at mg:Hanta had a rather cleaner article, with a major-language translation.LeadSongDog come howl! 19:29, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

In the future, all interwiki links will be stored on Wikidata, which sounds much more sane than the current setup. Graham87 06:23, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Can someone please explain why we need a long list of different poorly-documented interwiki bots, and with global permissions? Having them wheelwar as they did in this case is just daft. At minimum, they should all be exclusion compliant, but that doesn't seem to be the case. They should also be checking to see if they are repeating a previously-reverted edit, but that too seems not to be the case. They should all have links to their approval pages, but no, that isn't the case either. Who's running this farce? LeadSongDog come howl! 17:30, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
You could ask at WP:BON - but looking at the discussion going on there as a result of the last time that I suggested it (yesterday, 15:52, 27 June 2012), any replies to a new thread could be interesting. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:04, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Done. How about we close off this discussion here and just continue there at Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard. It's getting very confusing.LeadSongDog come howl! 18:55, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Unbundling delete and undelete

Here is a question for the developers:

Over Wikipedia talk:Village pump (technical)/Proposal by Jc37 the question came up of giving a user the delete user right without the undelete user right (undelete requires viewing deleted pages, and the WMF wants to minimize the number of users who can do that). This, of course would make deletion "one-way" - the user could not undo a mistaken deletion.

My question is whether the above assumption is necessarily true. Would it be possible to allow a user see his own just-deleted page without letting him see all the other pages that were deleted by other users? --Guy Macon (talk) 16:37, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Without weighing in on the merits of unbundling, if we were to carve out a delete role, I would support allowing a user who deleted a file to be able to see that file. I'd go further and allow undeletion of that file, in order to help ensure that an accidental deletion could be fixed without needing to track down an admin. I would only allow this if the user in question were the most recent one to delete the file. --SPhilbrick(Talk) 18:06, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
I oppose such unbundling (for reasons that I've conveyed in the past and probably needn't repeat here and now), but if it were to occur, it's my opinion that users' ability to view and restore files that they deleted (assuming that no one else did in the interim, as Sphilbrick noted) is an absolute must. —David Levy 18:18, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
I realize, of course, that you're inquiring as to whether such a setup is technically feasible (and I have no idea). —David Levy 18:18, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
  • "...the WMF wants to minimize the number of users who can do that)" - To clarify (and I asked for clarification on this), that is not what was said at all. They said that the standard for giving out the ability to see undeleted material to moderators must be the same standard as giving the ability to see deleted material to administrators. That the standards must be the same. - jc37 19:11, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
I apologize for my poor paraphrasing. Sorry about that, and thanks for the clarification. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:13, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
With enough programming man power and more importantly enough people asking for something, anything is possible! However this sounds like something that would be quite tricky to do and end up being hacky and lots of work. Which user deleted what currently is only stored in the logging table, in the current schema which revision got deleted by which user is not stored. Keep in mind that multiple people can delete a page, pages can be partially undeleted, etc. (You can go by timestamp of when user deleted the page, but that's not accurate as things can get partially undeleted. I suppose you could say let person who deleted view only the top revision that was deleted if they were the last person to delete that page, which kind of works, but undeletion would still be an issue). To do what is suggested in any sort of sane way would need a schema change (imho), which would probably be problamatic, especially for such a minor feature. So I would answer the original question with a No. (This is of course just my personal opinion). Bawolff (talk) 19:47, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks! I really dislike things that are "quite tricky to do and end up being hacky and lots of work". The times I have seen that sort of thing pushed through have not ended well. I was hoping for an answer like "No problem! Just flip the DoWhatGuyAskedAbout bit" (smile). --Guy Macon (talk) 20:13, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm not grasping the technical problem. I'm assuming that if we create the new right, there would be admins, with the general ability to delete and undelete, and moderators with the general ability to delete, and a limited ability to undelete and see deleted material. If someone comes along and attempts to view or undelete "Deleted_Article" the software would follow the rule: If admin allow. If moderator, allow only if the most recent deletion was performed by that user. I believe all deleted files carry with them the name of the user who deleted the file. What information is missing in order to implement this rule?
I'll also point out what may be obvious, but is relevant -- such a right, even if given to thousands, does not materially affect the WMF goal of keeping access to deleted material to a minimum. By definition, if a moderator deletes a file, they saw it assuming they would never delete without looking at it). So allowing this moderator (along with admins), the right to see the file, doesn't increase by a single person the number of people who can view the file. At the very extreme, if you argue that being able to see the file you saw before, but now see it later is an extension of the number of people who can see it, that still means the number who could see it before this right existed is 1468, and would be, with this new right 1469, even if we grant the right to 1000 moderators. We expand the right by this much every time we promote an admin.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 23:46, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
The technical problem is that the ability to give some group the right to view only deleted material that they themselves deleted does not currently exist, and in fact the ability to effectively track just who it was that deleted a particular revision does not currently exist either. Someone would need to write the code, debug it, plan the necessary changes to the database, and get it reviewed and merged. Anomie⚔ 01:50, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Re Sphilbrick: Multiple people can delete a page. (Someone could create a page, then delete it, then recreate it, etc). So in your suggested scheme, a moderator could gain access to any page's deleted content by simply creating a page with the same name as the deleted one, then deleting what they just created, which would give them access to all the previous deleted revisions. (I suppose one could look at the ar_page_id field to try to determine if someone is doing that, but that seems really really hacky). Bawolff (talk) 12:46, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

IPv6 is now enabled but broken

Wikipedia has started to be terribly slow (30 seconds for each request - IPv6 timeout of my Squid). This is because en.wikipedia.org has AAAA record now but its connectivity does not work: 

$ tcptraceroute6 -q1 en.wikipedia.org

traceroute to wikipedia-lb.esams.wikimedia.org (2620:0:862:ed1a::1) from 2a02:2b88:2:1::270:2, port 80, from port 42569, 30 hops max, 60 bytes packets

1  vps.jankratochvil.net (2a02:2b88:2:1::270:0)  68.706 ms

2  rv2-gw-ipv6.wedos.net (2a02:2b88:2:1::1)  74.828 ms

3  r4-b.wedos.net (2a02:2b88:0:2::10)  90.764 ms

4  gw-wedos.kaora.cz (2a00:1790:0:f034::1)  77.829 ms

5  10gigabitethernet1-3.core1.prg1.he.net (2001:7f8:14::6e:1)  115.619 ms

6  10gigabitethernet5-2.core1.fra1.he.net (2001:470:0:213::1)  83.468 ms

7  10gigabitethernet1-4.core1.ams1.he.net (2001:470:0:47::1)  68.247 ms

8  xe-1-1-0.cr2-knams.wikimedia.org (2001:7f8:1::a504:3821:1)  115.254 ms

9  *

Normal traceroute6 (UDP6) behaves the same (it is also broken). Other IPv6 connectivity incl. http://ipv6.google.com works for me great. IPv4 for Wikipedia works for me. OS is updated Fedora 16 x86_64. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jankratochvil (talk • contribs) 21:07, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

This is probably your ISP, because it works perfectly fine for me. You seem to be suffering IPv6 brokenness.--Jasper Deng (talk) 21:16, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
As you can see the connectivity is OK till the wikimedia.org domain. Sure the packets may be dropped only while returning through my ISP but I doubt that; going to bugreport it to my local ISP anyway.--Jankratochvil (talk) 21:22, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
I don't know, though. It may be an issue with that particular cluster, the one serving Europe; I use one of the US clusters.--Jasper Deng (talk) 21:34, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Whose side? I'm not following. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:17, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Basically the problem is with your ISP or your home network configuration.--Jasper Deng (talk) 22:24, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Jankratochvil's ISP. But thanks ... I mistook you for the OP. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:33, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Could you suggest more the reason? I cannot debug it when the packets get lost in WMF. I understand IPv6, I am providing IPv6 via openvpn tunnel from my own server (=vps). Through more than a year I have successfully bugreported various servers behaving this way which got fixed.--Jankratochvil (talk) 22:45, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Something's wrong with routing or something, that's what it appears. It may be possible that your packets got discarded by the Wikimedia routers for some reason.--Jasper Deng (talk) 00:03, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
FYI it has started to work today, I do not know why.--Jankratochvil (talk) 13:01, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Odd userspace markup

I found this widget on the internet and thought I'd add it to User:Ryan Vesey/Flag to transclude onto my user page. For some reason it appears on my userpage as markup language. Why is this? Is it possible for this to work? Ryan Vesey Review me! 21:25, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

You can't transclude content from other websites on Wikipedia. That would be a huge security risk, especially for JavaScript. Additionally <a> tags are not permitted in wikitext, see Help:HTML in wikitext for the selection of tags which are allowed. the wub "?!" 21:39, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
For the record: anchor tags will be allowed once a fix for bug 33886 gets reviewed. Helder 21:22, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Odd template glitch

Why isn't the word "Agency" showing before the word "executive" in the infobox in this article? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 09:19, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Because |type= is present, but blank. That parameter should either be filled in or removed. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:46, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Fixed — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:06, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

Image software

There is an image (here) about African religions which omits mention of the irreligious community in Africa. Does anyone know of software or a website where i can modify the map to add an "irreligious" section? Pass a Method talk 09:31, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

You could use Paint.Net. However the current image came from sources listed here: File:Religion distribution.png#Summary. If you make changes you'll probably need to source them too. Equazcion (talk) 09:55, 28 Jun 2012 (UTC)

Watchlist with no collapsed entries

I often like to post welcome messages on new users' talk pages. I do that as part of working through recent changes on my watchlist. This would be easier if there was some way that I could simultaneously expand all collapsed entries on the list. Is there some way I can achieve this? __meco (talk) 13:22, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

What collapsed entries? there's nothing on my watchlist with show/hide links, or equivalent, other than the [dismiss] thing for the notices at the top. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:53, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
That's because you evidently have not checked the box for "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" on Special:Preferences, while meco apparently has. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 14:42, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I have: it was one of the first prefs that I altered, over three years ago. There are, at present, 26 rows linking to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) dated 28 June 2012, and not the single one that I would expect if I didn't have that preference set. There is no facility for collapsing these down to a single one, other than unsetting that preference. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:55, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
R'n'B's explanation was incomplete. After enabling "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent", also enabling Preferences → Recent changes → Enhanced recent changes (requires JavaScript) gives the grouping-and-collapsing. Anomie⚔ 19:45, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
I've always ignored that setting because I never use the Recent changes feature. Checking, I see that "Enhanced recent changes (requires JavaScript)" is turned off: and I'm certain that I've never switched it on. Having now turned it on, I see that it does add a number of blue expand/collapse triangles to the watchlist (note to devs: pls update documentation). It also causes Firefox to complain about high memory usage... --Redrose64 (talk) 20:02, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
See also bugzilla:35768. Helder 21:15, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
@meco, if you add the following lines to the end of your Special:MyPage/skin.js, it will add an "Expand all changes" link to the "Toolbox" section on your Watchlist:
 if ( mw.config.get('wgPageName') === "Special:Watchlist" ) {
    mw.util.addPortletLink( 'p-tb', '#', 'Expand all changes', 'wl-expand-all' );
    $('#wl-expand-all').click( function (e) {
        e.preventDefault();
        $('.mw-collapsible-toggle').click();
    });
 }
(More correctly, it should say "Toggle all changes", since it will expand them if they are collapsed, and collapse them if they are expanded.) Good luck! --R'n'B (call me Russ) 15:35, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
I did as you've suggested but no changes. __meco (talk) 21:56, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Did you follow the instructions when you saved the .js page to refresh your cache? If so, what's your browser? I've tested this successfully on Chrome, Firefox, and IE 8 (the latter was quite slow but did work). --R'n'B (call me Russ) 00:37, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
I use Firefox 13.0 and I've done as instructed. I use the Monobook skin if that makes a difference. __meco (talk) 08:02, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
The skin shouldn't make a difference. When you go to your watchlist, what happens? (a) There is no "Expand all changes" link in the toolbox area on the left. (b) there is an "Expand all changes" link but nothing happens when you click on it. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 10:07, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
I found it now! I was looking in the wrong place. And it works. Much appreciated! __meco (talk) 12:23, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Email from IPs

How much tech would be involved to add an option in preferences that would allow users to accept email from IPs? I was toying with the idea as a proposal if it hasn't been shot down before. Another option would be email from blocked IPs as well, but that may get shot down fast.--Canoe1967 (talk) 17:39, 28 June 2012 (UTC)

I'd like that too. I'd be open to accepting email from IPs as long as there was a way for me to immediately shut it down. Ryan Vesey Review me! 18:13, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
Yes, most may wish it off most of the time. The scenario I was thinking is 1) IP leaves message on talk page. 2) User turns email on from IPs and gets email. 3) User turns off again in preferences. This way IPs could contact users about sensitive subjects and remain anon.--Canoe1967 (talk) 18:26, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
I think that would be a mess logistically. Where would the reply-to email address come from? Anons can't set an email address in preferences, and letting them isn't feasible. Unless they were allowed to input one just for a single email, which would have to be verified... It doesn't seem worth it. Anyone who wants to email can register an account and have that ability pretty quickly anyway, and as it's been pointed out before, people actually end up being far more anonymous when they do register an account. Doesn't seem worth the effort, even if it were feasible. Equazcion (talk) 10:12, 29 Jun 2012 (UTC)

Okay. I will mark this section resolved then.

Resolved

--Canoe1967 (talk) 13:59, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

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