Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 4

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Village pump (technical) archive

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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

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help! Template:Infobox isotope

Would someone who understands templates please explain why this change to {{Infobox isotope}} caused images (e.g. on Uranium-238) to become gigantic? And please, what is the correct template syntax for adding an image_caption? Biochem67 15:59, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

That change broke part of the code, including the part that specified the image size. This caused the image to be displayed at its original (huge) size. The image_caption field should now work properly. If nothing is given for this field, the article name will instead appear as the caption by default. - 52 Pickup 16:37, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Reversing Deletion

An editor has been deleting articles on my watch list and I have received no notice of the proposed. I wish to know about such proposed deletion, since they appear to be ideologically based and I wish to dispute them. How can I assure that I will get notification. Also, is there some way I can reverse these inappropriate deletions?Richard Dates 22:48, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

What articles were they? If they were speedily deleted, there's no notice. If it's prodded, the edit summary should say that it is being prodded, and that is your notice. If it was sent through Articles for Deletion, the adding of the AfD template to the article was also the notice (though sometimes the nominating editor will alert major contributors to a page). EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:52, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

The edit adding the proposed deletion / AfD / Speedy deletion tag will be on your watchlist. As for reversing the deletion, there is WP:DRV, and if the page was WP:PRODed, then you can have it undone at once. Are you talking about the page "Rational mysticism"? Prodego ^talk 22:54, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Awkward formatting with diagram and runaround text

The current version of the article Quintinshill rail crash begins with "[[Image:Quintinshill rail crash.svg|thumb|600px|right|Diagram of the tracks and signals just prior to the accident]]", followed by text describing the accident.

Using Firefox, if I open it in a wide window or with a small screen font, the text flows down the left side of the diagram until it gets past it, something like this:

The Quintinshill rail crash        +-------------------------------------+
occurred on 22 May 1915, at        |                                     |
Quintinshill, an intermediate      |                                     |
block station on a double line     |            DIAGRAM HERE             |
with refuge loops on the           |                                     |
Caledonian Railway near Gretna     |                                     |
Green in Scotland. Involving five  +-------------------------------------+
separate trains, the crash killed 227 people and in terms of casualties ...

Okay, that layout looks reasonable. And in a narrow window with larger text, the diagram appears at the top and the text follows. That also looks reasonable.

But the transition between those two layouts is very awkward, and that happens to be what I saw when I first went to the page. The window size and the text size just happened to be such that this was the layout I got:

The        +------------------------------------------------------------------+
           |                                                                  |
           |                            DIAGRAM HERE                          |
           |                                                                  |
           |      (I have drawn the box wider this time to express            |
           |      the fact that the text is smaller in relation to it)        |
           |                                                                  |
           |                                                                  |
           +------------------------------------------------------------------+

Quintinshill rail crash occurred on 22 May 1915, at Quintinshill, an intermediate
block station on a double line with refuge loops on the Caledonian Railway near
Gretna Green in Scotland ...

which is horrendous.

Now it's clear enough what happened: the column width available to the left of the diagram was sufficient for the word "The" but not for the word "Quintinshill". In book or magazine publication "Quintinshill" would simply have been hyphenated, but Firefox can't or won't do that, so it gives up and waits to output the long word until it gets down to a place where it will fit.

Clearly the effect could be avoided for this page by choosing a different layout option for the diagram, or by replacing "The " with "The ". (I'm going to make the latter change as soon as I finish posting this.) But in order to think of doing such a thing, the author of that part of the page would have had to anticipate the problem, which it's not really reasonable to expect.

The question is, can something simple be done, either in the HTML or the style sheets generated by Wikipedia's software, to prevent this sort of effect?

--207.176.159.90 09:21, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

This isn't usually a problem, because we rarely specify an image size this large. Ideally, most images should not have a size specified at all but should be thumbnailed, in which they default to the size in the user's preferences, which has a maximum of 320 px. Where an image absolutely has to be large to have any benefit to the article, tricks with layout as you suggest may be necessary and the solution is unlikely to be optimal on all resolutions.-gadfium 18:38, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

A slightly nicer workaround than replacing spaces with   might be to write "{{nowrap| The Quintinshill }} rail crash occurred ...". In fact, I'd even be tempted to make that "{{nowrap| The Quintinshill rail crash }} occurred ...", since there's little point in having a column that's only a few words wide. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:00, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I didn't know about nowrap. I see someone else has applied a different fix, moving the diagram down below the first section heading and making it centered. --207.176.159.90 23:13, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Userpage problems

Nevermind, fixed it. Tyler Warren ^{(talk/contribs)} 07:18, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Can this be overridden? ie. hide the + on a talk page? – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 04:16, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Add...

#ca-addsection {display: none}

...to your monobook.css. MER-C 09:04, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

That'll hide it for me when I look at talk pages. I meant hide it on a talk page for everyone. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 16:23, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

If you're asking if the "+" tab can be hidden from everyone, on a talk page, why in the world would you want that to happen? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:32, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

You might want to do this if the nature of the page requires that people not click on the "+" tab to make a new comment, for example if people need to instead click a link to insert some preloaded text. Tra (Talk) 17:07, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

That's exactly right. It uses inputbox to create a subpage which will be transcluded onto the talk page; hiding the + is to keep people from commenting on the talk page itself. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 19:47, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

With the current sotware, there is no way to hide the "+" tab from a talk page neatly (you could always use CSS to put a div that covers up the tab but that would probably fail badly for a lot of people due to differences in skins etc so this would generally only be used in userpages). The only other options would be to either make the instructions on the correct way to add the subpage more prominant or to move the page concerned out of talk space (which may or may not be an option depending on the namespace and other factors). Which page is it that you are referring to? Tra (Talk) 20:30, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

K. Thanks for your efforts. It's not a problem right now; this is preventative. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 20:37, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Permanently hiding the geonotice

How do you permanently hide the geonotice using CSS? The one I've got is currently 1) really ugly and 2) irrelevant by some 5000 km. The trail has gone cold and possibly led off-wiki. I did not find anything in the page source. MER-C 09:12, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Try:

#WN_GEON { display: none; }

Dragons flight 09:27, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that did work. Thanks. MER-C 10:24, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

What's that? A message based on your IP location? -- lucasbfr ^talk 11:16, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Geonotice. Dragons flight 19:24, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Image problem

Am I the only person for whom Image:Fidlerhead.jpg is not appearing? (It's nonfree, so I'm inlining it instead of trying to display it.) I've tried purging and bypassing my cache, but it still doesn't show up properly. If other people can't see it either, should I go ahead and delete it under WP:CSD#I2? —An gr 16:04, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Seems corrupt; IE6 can't display it, Firefox says it has errors. Irfanview shows the image. I'd say delete it. — Edokter • Talk • 16:12, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

This IE7 school computer displays it, and I've seen a similar problem with some JPEGs created by Photoshop (which the metadata for the image shows it was made with.) If someone who can see the image opens the image and re-saves (and re-uploads) it, it might work, or at least that's the solution I found last time I saw a similar problem. Nihiltres^(t.l) 16:42, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

And I see someone has. Thanks! —An gr 18:18, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Coordinates have been moved again

I noticed that the coordinates in the title have been moved again. Now they are covering up Jimbo's smiling face in the video. They were much better below the line below the title, to the right of the text that says "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". Or at least they were until they were slid off to the left a bit - not any improvement. They need to be put back below the line. See for example Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant. 199.125.109.56 05:17, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Problem has been pointed out on Talk page of WP:GEO, where there are ongoing discussions about coordinate formatting. (SEWilco 15:36, 1 November 2007 (UTC))

The coordinates have not moved. CSS uses absolute positioning to place the coordinates there. The fundraising banner has moved the article content down below the coordinate location. (SEWilco 20:14, 1 November 2007 (UTC))

It is the absolute positioning that is the problem. Is there any way to change it to a relative position in relationship to the title of the article which is already relative and moves with the size of the banner above it. Dbiel ^(Talk) 09:57, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Custom skin and CSS files

Hi, I'd originally asked this question at the Help Desk and was redirected here. I'm in the process of creating my own skin, for which the UI elements are quite a bit different from Monobook, so I am basing it on the (empty) "MySkin" files. Now, while I want the UI elements to be different, I'd like the way articles look to be identical to the monobook skin. I'd have expected the rules for "UI elements" and "article elements" to be in separate css files, but it seems (from WP:CSS) that they are lumped together in monobook/main.css, MediaWiki:Monobook.css etc.

So do I have to manually search out and copy the specific rules for article text that I want to my skin file, or is there something I'm missing? Thanks! -- DatRoot 18:02, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

You could always use Special:Mypage/monobook.css to override whatever CSS you wanted to override, and let everything else default to the monobook settings. I don't know if that's what you're going for, though. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 20:26, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, although yeah that didn't really help. I'm sorry, my problem's a bit hard to explain, though I think customizing the monobook skin is going to have to be the way I go. -- DatRoot 17:50, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I believe you have to copy the specific rules for article text. (disclaimer: I am not a fluent programmer) ~user:orngjce223 how am I typing? 02:33, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, yeah that's what I figured, although in the end I decided to base my skin on monobook, to make sure I didn't miss anything and that everything stays up-to-date. I've just got loads of "!important"s in my code now :) -- DatRoot 14:04, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I can't see info that has been loaded

Help! I have loaded information regarding a recent theory I learned and I cannot find it when I search wiki! I know its there and has not been deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr. E.D. Johnson, Author (talk • contribs) 22:10, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Why do you believe that it has not been deleted? We delete articles all the time for violation of our policy against posting original research and ideas. In any case, if it was an article, it would be helpful if you posted the actual name of the article that is now missing. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:13, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

If it was Slavery never existed then it was deleted as spam. PrimeHunter 14:54, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Imagemap without imagemap - linking images

So I work on another wiki; we'd like a template providing an image which could be clicked on to go to a particular hyperlink/internal-link, but imagemap simply isn't installed and would be difficult to get installed. Is there any work-around whereby we could accomplish this goal? --Gwern (contribs) 21:56 6 November 2007 (GMT)

See Template:Click. Andrwsc 22:01, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Also, if you have external images enabled there, you can use, <span class="plainlinks">[http://fulllinkurl http://fullimageurl]</span>. Also, if you have sysop access and this is only for a limited number of images, you can set (in common.css) an object class with a background image on the child link, like .imagelink1 a { display:block; width: 123px; height:123px; background-image: url(http://fullimageurl);text-decoration:none; } and then <span class="imagelink1">[[Foo| ]]</span>. These might work a bit better than Template:click in older browsers. --Splarka (rant) 08:24, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

What links here?

The current version of Bay Street contains three images, the little street sign and two photos. I'm going to improve the caption of the first photo, and I wanted to see if it was also used on any other pages. I clicked on the photo, which took me to Image:TorontoTall.jpg. Then I clicked on What links here, and it said:

← Image:TorontoTall.jpg

No pages link to Image:TorontoTall.jpg

And the results are similar for each of the other two images. It claims nothing links to them.

Is this a temporary glitch, or a problem affecting all image links, or did I do something wrong? --207.176.159.90 23:23, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Check this and you will see some links from here, and that's the difference. A colon link to the image description page is a link, but the display of an image is not. You will see file links listed at the bottom of each image description page. Adrian M. H. 23:29, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay, if the display of an image is not the same as a link, is there a way to find out what pages display an image? As I said, my interest is in checking the captions. --207.176.159.90 23:50, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

The list is just at the bottom of the image's page -- DatRoot 00:37, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Which I had already mentioned; perhaps I should start using more bold text. Adrian M. H. 15:05, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh! That was simple! It still seems weird to me to have the information reported in two different ways, but no big deal. Thanks, folks. --207.176.159.90 07:38, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

It would be nice if MediaWiki could treat pages that display an image the same way as pages that transclude a template - by showing "PAGENAME (transclusion)" in whatlinkshere, instead of "hiding" the list of pages that display the image elsewhere. That said I don't believe it's going to happen anytime soon. Resurgent insurgent 05:33, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Internal Link

I've noticed a hiccup in the coding of internal links. For example... This link to the Articles to be linked page is normal[1] However this one, executed with the Wiki toolbar at the top, leaves ghasltly brackets infront and behind.[[2]].

Not being an administrator or whatever, I can't recode. Someone needs to come to the rescue. Much Love —Preceding unsigned comment added by No Brainer (talk • contribs) 12:02, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

That's because you're supposed to use [] for external links (URLs for diffs and old revisions etc are considered 'external' for these purposes - any URL is) and [[]] for internal links (ie the title of any page within the project). This is a software feature, not a problem. See m:Help:Link for more. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 14:00, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

If you want a normal wikilink to a category instead of adding the page to the category, then write [[:Category:Articles to be merged]] with : in front to produce Category:Articles to be merged. PrimeHunter 14:45, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Browsers

I think it would be useful to see this updated. —Random832 15:54, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I suspect we no longer gather the statistics used to generate such reports. Wikipedia uses a lot more caching than it did a few years ago.-gadfium 20:02, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Well we have the Wikicharts thing based on a JavaScript that has a low random change of sending a request to the toolserver every time a page is loaded. It should be possible to fish out some rough user agent trends from that data too. --Sherool (talk) 00:00, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikicharts can't be used for that, actually. For privacy reasons the only data it collects is the fact that a page was viewed.

We do have global data of useragents. I'll update the page sometime soon. --Gmaxwell 00:50, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Special:Movepage error

When moving a page just now I noticed that after moving to or from a name including spaces; the links to Special:Whatlinkshere contain pluses in the page name where there should be spaces, so you end up with links like Special:Whatlinkshere/Marist+F.C. when it should be Special:Whatlinkshere/Marist F.C.

This probably means there's a MediaWiki: page somewhere that needs fixing. - MTC 16:56, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, that was my fault. I thought I'd tested it in my user space, but apparently I was bitten by some DWIMmery in MediaWiki's title parsing. (It worked just fine for links that contain spaces and slashes, or anything else that gets escaped by URL-encoding.) Should be fixed now. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:58, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

image_caption in Template:Infobox isotope again

Thanks to 52 Pickup above, but {{Infobox isotope}} is still not displaying image captions. Would someone please take another look at it and fix it so that the image_caption in Uranium-238 appears? I am baffled by this. Biochem67 17:52, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

As per Wikipedia:Extended image syntax, the caption is only displayed if thumb or frame is also specified. Otherwise, it is used as an alt attribute only. On Uranium-238, most browsers will show "10 gram sample" if you hover the mouse over the image. Andrwsc 20:39, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. Why are you trying to put the caption in the image instead of below? That way you don't have to use thumb, and get rid of the ugly border. — Edokter • Talk • 21:15, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I didn't know a better way to do it, which is why I asked here. Biochem67 22:19, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Parental control

I just saw saw this WP:HD#Wikidrama, where a parent is concerned about userboxes being used to solicit sexual contacts. I don't think I'd be concerned about that here, but I think we need to take that concern serious. Would it technically be possible to allow parents to hide certain userboxes? I know it certainly not easy, but I'd rather be safe than sorry about this. Another idea might be to allow disabling the e-mail feature, but I don't know if that would address the concern. — Sebastian 19:35, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's anything we need to concern ourselves about. The person had a userbox saying he wish he had a boyfriend. How is that soliciting sex? Furthermore, Wikipedia is not censored. I don't think we should change that policy and start trying to protect everyone that comes here. Wikipedia is and always has been uncensored. If you don't like that, don't let your kids wander around here (or the Internet at large, for that matter). — Frecklefσσt | Talk 20:08, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't see that userbox as "soliciting sex", either, but that's how I understand the parent's concern. Obviously, it is conceivable that such a userbox can lead to two people finding together. — Sebastian 20:37, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Adding to the above... Wikipedia is not censored but if it's not MySpace either. If someone is actually using their userpage which causes problems we shouldn't worry about 'parental control' ... we should ask them to keep their userpage related to their work on Wikipedia. Also, there is no private messaging internal to our site, this openness can help prevent misuse. Incidentally, you can already disable email-this-user through your user prefs. --Gmaxwell 20:14, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about the confusion, I meant the opposite: "disable email from this to other users". But that was just an idea; it probably wouldn't address the parent's concern anyway. (Also, I don't think the prefs are sufficient, since there is no parental control over them, either, AFAIK.) — Sebastian 20:37, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

The fix is easy: disable wikipedia. I suppose to be sure, we'd also have to disable telephones, newspapers, two way radios, and all the media. Then, instigate a full time curfew so that people can't wander around and talk to other people. Would the benefit of "protecting" children be worth it? —EncMstr 20:18, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Disabling userboxes? Uh... no. Parents need to parent. EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:24, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

You're missing the point. The question here is not what other people should or shouldn't do. Like it or not, there are some parents who are concerned. I think we have a moral, if not legal, obligation to take that seriously. The reason why I posted this here is to ask if there are technical ways to solve this. — Sebastian 20:41, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

One technical solution would be wrap every userbox in a CSS class, and put display:none for that class in the user's own monobook.css file. However, this is extraordinarily impractical because most userboxes tend to be hard-coded HTML/wiki code instead of being "children" of a generic userbox meta-template where such a CSS class wrapper could be installed. You'd have to go and edit every userbox, in multiple namespaces and on multiple user pages, to accomplish this. Andrwsc 20:49, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it looks like this already has been implemented, at least for userboxes constructed using Template:Userbox. Just put .wikipediauserbox { display:none; } in your own monobook.css file, bypass your cache, and away you go. Of course, my disclaimer above still holds: there are many, many userboxes not built on top of {{Userbox}}, so this won't hide them. Andrwsc 21:02, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! So it is at least in principle possible to base all §§ Motion picture rating system and restricted templates on one (or a number of) templates that could be disabled. But how could we ensure that only parents can change it? — Sebastian 21:20, 7 November 2007 (UTC) (I won't be able to reply for about a day - sorry.)

You can't. Like EVula said, parents need to parent. We don't need to change the software and do all these other little things just because parents can't teach their kids not to contact random people on the internet for sex. Mr.Z-man 21:29, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. There is no way we can make sure the child won't change it, or simply log out. Furthermore, articles about sexuality are more likely to upset parents than a (completely innocent) userbox. As it has been pointed out above, it is the responsibilty of the parent to protect their child, not of Wikipedia.
Perhaps we should inform parents about the Wikipedia for schools. Despite its name, it can be downloaded by anyone. The Wikipedia for schools is built around the UK national curriculum, only includes the article namespace, and only includes articles that have been screened to ensure that there are not topics inappropriate for this age group, or that the article was not vandalised. Puchiko (Talk-email) 21:43, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Odd location for floating TOC

In the article Russian Civil War, I'm seeing the floating TOC appear quite far down in the article, well below where I'd expect to see it - in fact, it looks like it is positioning itself to be just above the third section, "Geography and chronology". It looks like the standard {{TOCleft}}, and it's where it should be (bottom of the lead section), so why I am seeing such an odd location? (I'm using Firefox 2.0, latest version, Windows XP, if that helps any, and I've been looking at other TOClefts, which all are behaving as expected.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:30, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

It has to do with {{History of Russia}} and the specification of floats in CSS. In particular,

5. The outer top of a floating box may not be higher than the outer top of any block or floated box generated by an element earlier in the source document.

Since the float for {{History of Russia}} appears in the source before the float for the TOC, the top of the floated TOC box must not be above the top of the {{History of Russia}} box (IE doesn't follow the specification on this, IIRC, so it looks "right" to people using that browser). Is there a reason the TOC needs to be floated in this article? Removing the {{TOCleft}} seems to work fine here. You could also try the fixes detailed at WP:BUNCH. Anomie 14:27, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Fixed, by writing "__TOC__" after the first paragraph. - Erik Baas 21:26, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you both for the help and information. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:07, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

What happened?

Hi. After coming back to wiki to log in, I had to re-type my username, whereas before I only had to type my password. Also, at the same time, where the bar at the top used to be invisible, it is now visible and I actually have to login and shrink it. I didn't change anything, and suddenly, withought even turning off my computer, one visit it's normal and now it's like this. What happened? Did java turn itself on or something? Thanks. ~A H 1^(TCU) 01:10, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like you purged your cookies. Likely you or someone else using your computer cleared your cookies (good practice to do every once in a while), or it's also possible that your computer deleted them automatically after a certain amount of time. It shouldn't be anything to worry about. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:39, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I've had a couple of wikis blink out on my remembered login too. I just attributed it to all my cookies expiring, though. EVula // talk // ☯ // 03:42, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Huh? All my cookies are still there. That also doesn't explain the bar at the top. What do you think happened? Thanks. ~A H 1^(TCU) 21:14, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

The hiding of the "bar" (I presume you're referring to the donation banner) at the top of the page is also done using cookies. When you click "Hide this message," a cookie is attached to your session to save this preference between page views. It's likely the case that your cookies have either been deleted or have expired, or your browser has been configured to reject cookies from Wikipedia. AmiDaniel (talk) 21:28, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Does the hiding of the donation bar expire after a couple of days? I keep having to hide it even though my cookies are enabled and my login is still cookie-enabled. Corvus cornix 00:21, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

No, this has nothing to do with "hiding" the bar. Before yesterday, the bar did not appear at all, not when logged in, not when logged out. I did not have to click anything to hide it, it simply wasn't there. Now, starting yesterday, the bar suddenly appeared. I actually have to log in to hide it, and even then the progress bar still shows. Someone suggested earlier on Main page talk that it had to do with java. That was before this bar appeared. Could it be that some cookie was turning off java and it expired? I don't even know if I have java on my computer. Thanks. ~A H 1^(TCU) 01:49, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea where you're getting "Java" from, and it simply makes absolutely no sense. The donation banner was added a couple of weeks ago as part of the donation drive; it's possible that your browser had cached the former sitenotice and that this cache first expired yesterday. The reason that you had to type in username is because your browser dumped its cache of stored usernames / passwords. If I may be frank, you don't seem to be reporting a problem but rather some observations of correct behavior of the site, and I have no idea what what question you want us to answer. AmiDaniel (talk) 04:42, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Optimization of work of the site

Dear Wikipedia

I find you the best web-site I've ever known. Thank you.

In order to enhance the work of Wikipedia web site I think it would be good to do the following: When one enter the main page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page, the cursor should be in the search field so that one could start typing his request without an additional click of a mouse on a search field.

Comparing to what is happening now: one shold click with a mouse to search field and only then typing, thus producing a rudundant (in my opinion) action. Taking into account that most of users go to Wikepedia to find some article (rather than read some info on the main page) it would be appreciated if the cursor will be straight in the search field, like it is done at Google for example.

Thank you so much. Sergey, Russia, Moscow. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sergey mipt (talk • contribs) 15:17, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Hello, an thank you for your suggestion. However, we have decide not to do this. Further information can be found in the links below:

Main Page FAQ
A current discussion where you can voice your opinion

212.71.160.50 15:34, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

obscure css question

Is there a way to stop a specific inline element, which contains text with spaces in it, from being "stretched" in a block element whose text-align is set to justify? —Random832 15:35, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Put that element in your monobook.css with "text-align: left;". — Edokter • Talk • 17:32, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Missing AfD headers

Not sure if anyone else is having this problem, but the {{AfDM}} templates are not showing on articles for me. Any suggestions? -- Satori Son 16:23, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Purge your cache. All boxes with "metadata" class were accidentally hidden for a few seconds in Common.css. — Edokter • Talk • 17:30, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Worked great - thanks. -- Satori Son 17:36, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to tweak Template:cite web

There is currently a proposal at Template talk:Cite web#Automatic date wikilinking to tweak Template:cite web for automatic date wikilinking. Any thoughts? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 20:31, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

HELP!!! VERY URGENT!!!

Hi. I was on a page that wasn't loading very quickly, and I tried to scroll down. Suddenly, all the text has exploded in size and stayed that way. What can I do to reverse this? I use Windows and Internet Explorer, what can I do to fix this? I need help immediately!!! Thanks. ~A H 1^(TCU) 21:12, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

You probably held down the ctrl key while scrolling. This will adjust the font size. You should find a menu item called "Text size" or the like under view which will let you restore the size to the default. Alternatively, you can hold down ctrl and scroll in the opposite direction until it's back to a normal size. AmiDaniel (talk) 21:22, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Stuck on my first template

I'm trying to create a template to do date-link boxes for a series of 200+ articles. It takes one parameter: y (the year). I can get the template to evaluate y, but I can't figure out how to do maths with the parameter, for example if y= 1900 I need 1900 1901 1902. (No link to the template in question because I want to learn how to fix it rather than someone fixing it for me. dramatic 22:51, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, in the spirit of figuring it out for yourself, read up about #expr on m:ParserFunctions and then let us know if your figured it out! Good luck, Andrwsc 22:55, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

That page doesn't say enything about how to parse variables in #expr though. {{{y}}}+1 — Edokter • Talk • 23:11, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, after my message above, I looked at the template in question and saw that was the issue, and I couldn't help myself and just fixed it... Sorry! Andrwsc 23:16, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Mutter mutter! :-) I broke it again before reverting, trying to understand why the expression errors unless the parameter used has a piped default value. Oh and you were right- I had already found m:ParserFunctions and failed to be enlightened. dramatic 23:30, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

If a parameter doesn't have a piped default value, it will still work — unless you try to view it on its own page instead of on a page in which the template is transcluded. The default only exists to help you view the template page itself. Andrwsc 23:34, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Layout change

The way the pages from Wikipedia display has drastically changed for me. Instead of having my tool bar at the top of the page, it's shifted to the bottom and the font is significantly larger. Can anyone give me reasons for these changes? AniMate 21:32, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you have changed skin in Special:Preferences. Try selecting MonoBook if you don't have it now. PrimeHunter 12:36, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Problem with List of current NBA team rosters

Does anyone understand what's going on at List of current NBA team rosters? The page looks fine until you scroll down to the Toronto Raptors, and then none of the team templates appear as they're supposed to. Is this just a problem at my end? Zagalejo^^^ 08:59, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

The article has hit its template maximum (I believe it's put in there to prevent circular templates from crashing a server). Basically, some substitutions of templates will have to be used, or the page will have to be split (which defeats the purpose of the article, I guess). x42bn6 Talk Mess 09:31, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I see. Thanks for the response! Zagalejo^^^ 18:56, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

"32 intermediate revisions not shown."?!

On Wikipedia:Historical Wikipedia pages/Talk/Gamefoolz, when I click on the diff link between Brion VIBBER's last edit and the immediately preceding edit, the diff says "32 intermediate revisions not shown" even though I'm sure it is only one revision apart. I wonder why??? (Page history for reference sake.) Resurgent insurgent (as admin) 10:15, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

They're probably deleted revisions. —Random832 14:56, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm rather more inclined to think it involves the way early page histories are fairly mucked-up generally. Certainly something rather odd is going on. See this view of the same history :/ Skittle 15:10, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... that is even stranger than I thought. And BTW the history of this page is identical to the deleted history of Talk:Gamefoolz - I can only conclude that once upon a time our developers were crazier than they are now. o.O Resurgent insurgent (as admin) 15:56, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

See my response at ## of revisions on history page. Basically the page history sorts entries by date and the diffs are by revision ID. I don't know what happened in this case but page moves and undeletions were quite different in September 2002 to the way they are now. Graham87 04:14, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Germany's Next Topmodel

Why isn't the Barbara Meier image in Germany's Next Topmodel clickable? Corvus cornix 23:39, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

It was for me. Do all the other images on the page work? What browser are you using? Can you think of any more relevant info?-Andrew c ^[talk] 23:53, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm using IE7, and this is the first time I've had this problem. The other images work. When I came here to post this concern, I tried to highlight her name in the caption so that I could copy and paste it here, and I couldn't even highlight the name. Corvus cornix 00:01, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Hah, something I just discovered. If I put my cursor in the very top of the image, it's clickable, but anywhere in the middle or the bottom, it isn't, and if I double click, the "Second Cycle" header gets highlighted. Corvus cornix 00:02, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I have IE7 and everything works. I can click the image everywhere, and highlight and copy the name. PrimeHunter 02:05, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm on another computer now, also using IE7, and it's working. Oh, well. Corvus cornix 02:53, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

# of revisions on history page

Is there some way of getting the total number of revisions for an article placed on the history page? I ask because it would be highly useful for admins on other projects which import WP content for several cases:

If import fails completely, to tell us how much work we have ahead if bringing over the history manually
If import fails partially (which isn't always clear), so we know if we got all the revisions

Any way of doing this is probably acceptable since I don't forsee it being used often, even by admins who are very busy importing from WP such as myself. – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 21:27, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Go to the earliest page in the history and click "cur" on the last edit to see the difference between the last edit and the most recent one. Above the diff table, there is the number of intermediate revisions given - add 2 to that number and you have the number of revisions in the history. Here's an example from this page at the time of writing. This will work in all but the most obscure cases where a page was deleted before the revision ID field was added to the Wikipedia database (June 2005) and then the page was subsequently restored. An example of where the trick doesn't work is here. The history page orders entries by time, while the number of revisions counter orders them by revision ID. Graham87 04:05, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Good call on that workaround. That'll do nicely. Thanks! – Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 02:16, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Selective template-based inclusion in categories

I know one uses <includeonly> elements to allow templates to include their using pages in a category without adding the template itself to the category. But I can't figure out the solution to a common problem: an instruction page (e.g., Help:, /doc, or just a project page with usage examples) that suppresses the inclusion even though it displays the template content. For instance, Wikipedia:WikiProject Paranormal currently has a table of convenient templates that includes the following:

{{urbanlegend}}	{{urbanlegend\|categories=no}}

In order to display the template in situ, it must transclude the template. But that adds the project page to a category that's supposed to include only examples of the category. (And now this WP:VP page is in that category as well.)

Is there some kind of general mechanism to suppress the inclusion of a transcluded template's containing page in a category? (Don't ask me to say that three times fast. ☺) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:39, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Um, I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for, but either of the following might help:

<noinclude>, which stops something from being included where the template is placed but appears at the template itself
Category suppression in templates

Does that help? Nihiltres^(t.l) 19:43, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

<noinclude> doesn't work because the requirement is selective inclusion; i.e., the template use, not its design, must decide whether its containing page should be included in the category. (In other words, an urban legend like the five-second rule would be categorized, but the WP:PARA project page displaying the template's content would not.)

I was hoping for something that didn't require modifying the template, as it's both a huge maintenance effort to add such a feature to many templates, and some may be protected. But in this case, the template tweaking described by Category suppression supporting templates, which appears to be a common and logical practice, looks like it might do the trick. Thanks for the suggestion! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:58, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Hey, that works beautifully! I've edited my original post above to incorporate the new "categories=no" parameter to the {{urbanlegend}} template usage so that WP:VPT is no longer considered an urban legend. (My apologies for those reading this long after I post it, who may find the implicitly answered question confusing.) Thanks again, Nihiltres, for the pointer! ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:08, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Uploaded image not showing up

It seems like the thumbnail for Image:SaintAgurCheese.jpg is not appearing after I uploaded it. I tried reloading my cache, purging and accessing the url with a ?1, but its not showing up, the full image seems to be available, but when I add the thumbnail to an article, it doesn't show up. --Micah2 18:28, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

It appears properly for me (in Saint Agur Blue). Maybe go directly to the thumbnail image and force a reload there? —Cryptic 18:48, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Now of course it appears fine for me as well. I had tried multiple browsers and had waited a couple of days, I dont know what caused it to finally appear! --Micah2 17:24, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Someone's just borked the thumbnailing algorithm

File:Emperor Tamarin portrait 2.jpg

Local borked image

Purging an image currently generates a borked thumbnail, both locally and at commons. The pictures themselves are fine. MER-C 09:49, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Just to confirm it's a server-side problem. MER-C 09:59, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

It's now working. Never mind. MER-C 10:41, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Template problem?

We seem to have a problem with the templates for Project Freemasonry... When you place a template such as {{WikiProject Freemasonry|class=Stub}} or {{WikiProject Freemasonry|class=Start}} on the talk page, it hides the talk page's discussion text. For an example of the problem, see Talk:List of Freemasons. Would someone help me to fix this. Also posted to VP (Assistance). Blueboar 15:18, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

It's been fixed... thanks. Blueboar 15:24, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Tra fixed it. There were closing table tags missing in Wikipedia:WikiProject Freemasonry/ToDo.. — Edokter • Talk • 15:25, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Firefox Add-on

I've written an add-on for Firefox that automatically generates wikicode for inline citations. When viewing any web page, the pressing the right mouse button and selecting WPCITE will capture the URL, title, publisher and accessdate and output a properly formatted reference using {{CITE WEB}}. A window pops up with the citation code that can be copied and pasted into an article. This add-on will be released as free open source software. I need beta testers. If you would like to volunteer, please contact me. - Jehochman ^Talk 06:07, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Is it possible to add the author field, the date of the publication....? Someone would need to re-retrieve them in a citation without them. -Susanlesch 06:33, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

The author and date of publication aren't presented in a standard way, so those need to be added manually. This tool will reduce the work by perhaps 60%. If you want to try it, you can email me for a link. - Jehochman ^Talk 20:56, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer but no I think I would need to add attribution to the author, and the date of the publication, at the time of making the citation (otherwise I would be asking someone else later to come back and do that work). Good luck. -Susanlesch 11:43, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Articles in 2 categories

Is there any way to see a list of articles which are in two selected categories? Thanks. --HUB es 02:24, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

m:CatScan ∴ AlexSm 02:30, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. It is possible to see this for other languages (for example Spanish)?--HUB es 02:54, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Just change "en" to "es", that should do the trick. EVula // talk // ☯ // 07:23, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I can change "en" to "es" here, but I can't do it here. Thanks.--HUB es 10:06, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Meta is a multi-language project, so it ignores the "en" in it; it's only relevant in projects that are divided by language (like Wikipedia and Wikinews), but not the multi-language projects (like Commons and Wikispecies). EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:12, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I am experiencing a major problem with Firefox

I hope someone can help me with this. Whenever, I edit any big pages on Wikipedia, a message comes up which states that the Connection was reset. The page you are trying to view contains POSTDATA. If you resend the data, any action the form carried out (such as a search or online purchase) will be repeated. To resend the data, click OK. Otherwise, click Cancel. The browser which I am using is Firefox and the processing power of my PC is a Pentium II 300Mhz. This problem does not appear when I use a different PC. What should I do to remedy this problem? --S iva1979^{Talk to me} 14:42, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

My guess is that the connection to send the data lasts so long that your browser, the servers, or something in between gives up and cuts the connection; the error message implies that the connection was lost at some point, and the symptoms you describe sound like a timeout (big pages only, only on one computer); how long does it take before the error comes up? Does the error happen if you section edit? Clicking on OK to retry the connection may help in some cases; saving the same edit twice is unlikely to be harmful (it will either not do anything or cause you to edit-conflict). --ais523 14:46, 12 November 2007 (U T C)

It takes about 30 seconds for the error message to appear. Moreover, I have also increased the length of timeout in my browser but this problem still persists. Will the problem be gone if I re-install Firefox to my PC? --S iva1979^{Talk to me} 14:55, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea. You might want to ask at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing. --ais523 15:01, 12 November 2007 (U T C)