Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive AV

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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This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical).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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Diff pages and whitespace

The software that creates the diff pages seems very bad at identifying when a block of text has been unaltered but merely moved by the addition or removal of empty lines (example - scroll down a bit). This makes it very difficult to see at a glance if part of the text has been modified, as the entire block is highlighted as a change. Is there a bug fix in the works for this? — Swpb^talk|edits 15:35, 30 July 2007 (UTC) 22:51, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly how you would rather see this rendered. That's not simply the addition of an empty line, but a splitting of a line--that is, this was formerly one continuous line of text, and two linebreaks were added to the middle of it. If you have P1 \n P2 and you add another line in between those P's (P1 \n\n P2), it will treat P1 and P2 as context and indicate an addition of a line between them, but this cannot be done in the middle of a line, unless we move to something like eclipse's diff rendering method, which, IMO, is horribly illegible. (We are currently just making use of the unix utility Diff3). If you could mock up a sample image of how you would have rathered this be presented, that would be helpful. AmiDaniel (talk) 18:37, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

We do not use diff3 to generate regular diff pages; we use a fast diff implementation known as wikidiff2, developed by Tim Starling. 86.134.25.176 21:23, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

In the example I linked, take the paragraph that begins "In the two-stage design..." or the one that follows. Clearly, there have been some changes within these paragraphs, but the diff display isn't helpful in finding them, since the entire paragraphs are red, just as if they had been added or removed entirely. The handful of words that are not red in each seem to be arbitrary and unrelated to the actual changes. The yellow/green highlighting is helpful in showing where whole blocks have been moved, but the red bolding should still just show changes within those blocks, as it does when they haven't been moved around. It's tricker when two paragraphs have been merged or one has been split up (as in the paragraph that starts "Public safety diving and military diving"). This could still be displayed without red/bolding the unchanged text ("Scientific diving is used by..."). I would imagine a white gap cutting the green block in two between what were formerly separate paragraphs - but sort of a zig-zagged tetris-block style cut to account for the split or merge occuring in the middle of a line. I will try to mock this up. — Swpb^talk|edits 15:35, 30 July 2007 (UTC) 12:51, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok, here's what I mean: Image:Diff3.jpg. — Swpb^talk|edits 15:35, 30 July 2007 (UTC) 13:57, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

As I understand it, part of the reason why Wikipedia's diff rendering is sometimes suboptimal is that, to increase speed, the currently used diff engine works in two passes, first computing a crude paragraph-level (line-level, actually) diff and only then doing a word-level diff on pairs of differing paragraphs in similar positions. The problem is that the first pass is unable to distinguish between a single-word change in an otherwise unmodified paragraph and the replacement of an entire paragraph with a completely different one. Thus, it will not always be able to match the old and new paragraphs properly for the second pass. For example, consider the following change:

Old	New
Hello! This is a test.	This is a test.

In this case, the first pass diff engine will correctly identify the last paragraphs as identical, and produce the following output:

Old		New
-	Hello!
	This is a test.		This is a test.

However, if any change is made to the last paragraph, like this:

Old	New
Hello! This is test 1.	This is test 2.

then the first pass diff will not recognize them as the same, and will instead try to match the first paragraphs of both versions together, producing a diff like this:

Old		New
-	Hello!	+	This is test 2.
-	This is test 1.

The problem could be partially fixed by doing the second-pass diffs between entire blocks of non-matching paragraphs, but this might destroy the very advantage the two-pass system was originally devised for, which is increased performance for diffs with lots of changes, such as an entire article being overwritten. It also wouldn't help with the related problem where changing a paragraph slightly while moving an empty line from above it to below it or vice versa will cause the first-pass diff to match the empty lines and to consider the non-matching paragraphs to have been deleted and inserted instead. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:23, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that this is not an important area of performance optimization. The number of diffs must be less than 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of the number of page renders, for example. I'd like to see the diff be of better quality myself. Tempshill 20:11, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

So would this merit a bug report? I guess it would require making the line-level diff aware of when lines are mostly the same, to match up moved but slightly altered text. It seems to me that a good diff page is important enough to building the encyclopedia that it's an area where server performance could take a back seat. — Swpb^talk|edits 15:35, 30 July 2007 (UTC) 14:27, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Page moves don't show up in watch list?

Was it always the case that page moves do not show up in your watch list? I noticed this today. I would have expected they do, and seem to remember they used to. Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:10, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

See bugzilla:5546. --- RockMFR 06:26, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Watch this space. Srsly. 86.134.25.176 21:24, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Any problems yesterday with WP email?

Quick question, does anybody know if there has been any recent problems with sending/relaying emails through the WP interface, or where I need to look to find out? I played around last night sending myself emails; three emails sent over the course of a couple of hours arrived several hours later with the same timstamps. An email sent from a different account (off-wiki) arrived promptly. Or is this normal behaviour? -- Steve Hart 18:38, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

There was extra load on the mail server yesterday and mail was delivered late. --brion 20:26, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, do you know if there's anyplace I can see the current workload on the servers or is access limited? -- Steve Hart 20:33, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Special:Statistics shows the current job queue length which is an indication of server load. I have no idea if this has any relationship to load on the mail server though. I suspect not. —Moondyne 04:19, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Note: The job queue estimate (and it's a poor estimate, don't trust it at all) shown on Special:Statistics has nothing to do with "server load" - it's an estimate of the number of background processing jobs we've got queued up awaiting...processing. 86.134.25.176 21:26, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Nope. :) But you can peek at our nagios and ganglia monitoring systems if you like. --brion 18:31, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

PNG transparency Javascript "fix" option?

How do I turn off the PNG transparency Javascript code, which I strongly suspect is contributing to slower loading of pages with inline images, and significantly increasing the frequency of browser crashes on my system? I'm currently using "Classic" skin. Thanks. 02:42, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I would talk to Remember the dot (talk · contribs). He was the master architect of the recent changes. --MZMcBride 03:08, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

By the way, if possible, all IE5 and IE6 users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to IE7, which fixes this issue entirely. --MZMcBride 03:09, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Not anyone is running XP or later, you know? Some are 'stuck' with 2000, so upgrading to IE7 (or switching to Firefox) is not an option. Please stop advising this when someone has an issue with IE6, especially with regard to a script designed for IE6. — Edokter • Talk • 14:04, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Firefox will work on Windows 2000, and has no problems with PNG transparency. But like I said, I will work on the IE6 performance issues. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 20:21, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I'll echo the comment that pages are loading far slower with this fix than before. At first I thought it was a slow Internet connection (I was using WiFi in a hotel room on a business trip), but now that I am hooked up to my regular broadband pipe, I still see a noticeable delay.

I'll also echo the comments about IE6 vs. IE7. I remember reading (recently) that ~60% of page views are still with IE6, so Wikipedia really needs to take into account this "laggard majority". Andrwsc 18:08, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

My recollection is that we didn't bundle the 'fix' for general use because it is kind of problematic sometimes, but I haven't really looked into it in ages. --brion 19:45, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Please let me know if you find any specific, measurable problems as a result of the new code. A couple have been found and fixed already. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 20:21, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Remember the dot (talk · contribs) is currently working on fixing the speed issues. Please be patient, he expects to come up with a fix within 24 hours. — Edokter • Talk • 19:54, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The reason why it's so slow is (almost certainly) because it uses innerHTML. Gracenotes^T § 15:17, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

User Page Assistance

Hi! If someone could take a look at my user page, I would appreciate it. I would like my current tasks and membership under the left-hand column. If someone could tell me why my Monkeynoze box and Monkeynoze cartoon box don't line up horizontally, I would appreciate it. If you can fix it yourself or tell me how to do it, I would appreciate it. Thanks Monkeynoze 02:01, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Section adding feature

I just noticed this text:

"Subject/headline (because of a bug, do not use this section adding feature if the headline contains a link):"

For my money, if it's bugged, revert the "improvement" until it works without a bug.

If you must retain a bugged feature, the text needs some work:

It gives no suggestion if the problem is temporary or permanent
It's a bit rude - certainly abrupt
It's not very clear what you mean.
It gives no information about where more information about the bug can be found

I suggest you replace it with something along these lines: While we [[Wikilink to somewhere where the bug's being discussed|tackle a coding bug]], until further notice please do not use links in headlines.

Addresses all four issues. However, I reiterate, my preference would be to ditch a flawed enhancement of the coding. --Dweller 12:16, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

NB I wanted to link to this post at Bugzilla, but found it extraordinarily and offputtingly unuser friendly. How ironic. Can someone please point the (much appreciated) buggy people here for me. --Dweller 12:20, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

One can still put a link in a headline, but in that case one should not use the section adding feature, but apply the section editing feature to the previous section.--Patrick 12:58, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Eh? --Dweller 13:42, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Above it says "Seems to be fixed in the repo (rev:25598 and later)". If someone can confirm that this fixes it we can add something about this.--Patrick 13:02, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The offending text seems to have disappeared. --Dweller 13:45, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

It would be better if the bug had disappeared.--Patrick 13:51, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

lol! --Dweller 13:54, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

By amazing coincidence they've both disappeared! Wait, maybe it's not a coincidence. :) --brion 14:04, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!--Patrick 14:08, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Edit Button Overlap?

Is it normal to have two edit buttons right next to each other like this?--69.118.235.97 00:14, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

See WP:BUNCH. Adrian M. H. 00:19, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Do you think you could implement the {{FixHTML}} tags on google toolbar? I tried doing so myself, but the result was a mess.--69.118.235.97 01:30, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

That doesn't really need a bunch fix (only one infobox and one image). I just moved the image to a more appropriate place, so all the edit links now line up with their headings. Adrian M. H. 14:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Web hosting for MediaWiki

Hi there, does anyone know of any good free web hosts that support PHP 5, ImageMagick and command-line PHP so I can install MediaWiki 1.93 or 1.10 - I am setting up a new wiki which will have mw:Extension:Makesysop and mw:Extension:Checkuser on it.

I am going to be exporting some pages from here to the new wiki, per the terms of the GFDL - however, I need to find a free host first.

All advice is appreciated. Thanks, --SunStar Net ^talk 18:41, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

If the webhost can support more than 1 MySQL database, then so much the better... --SunStar Net ^talk 18:45, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
- It looks like 110mb meets those criterion. (Found via a brief Google search.) I've never used them, though. AFMU seems to do the trick if you can pay for domain registration, with a $27.95 annual cost. Gracenotes^T § 19:01, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Put article namespace items first in "what links here"

The usefulness of ~~"What links here"~~ "file links" on image pages is often severely compromised by the alternative-namespace links being mixed in with the actual encyclopedia content. For example, Image:Madame Grande.jpg has 208 links to it, but only one actual article (Catherine Grand). Would it be possible to put the actual articles at the top of the ~~"what links here" page~~ file links section? --Sean 20:59, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The filter is only a couple of clicks away. Adrian M. H. 22:00, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I misspoke: what I'm actually interested in is the "File links" section on that page, which is different to "what links here". "What links here" on that image page actually does not include articles containing the image. "File links" is (confusingly) the relevant "what links here" for image pages, and does not have a filtering capability, so it's that which I think should be sorted so articles come up first. --Sean 23:03, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I was not aware that "What links here" does not give the necessary results for image pages, but after testing it, I see that it does not. I doubt if that will ever be implemented unless the same solution from "What links here" is added to the "File links" option. It probably works on the same principle as "What links here" - ie, the list is likely to be in chronological order. That's why it appears to be arbitrary and it's why the filter was introduced to make searching a little easier. Adrian M. H. 23:20, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

The solution: userscript Sort Image Links ∴ Alex Smotrov 04:12, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Great, thanks! --Sean 19:45, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Special:Log/delete

Is there any way to filter image deletions from the deletion log?--VectorPotential^Talk 18:20, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I would say no, there is no way. Of course, you could filter them directly on the page using JavaScript ∴ Alex Smotrov 04:12, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Some javascript that can do that (and more). --Splarka (rant) 08:46, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Chinese template

I recently used a template for Chinese pop stars which have a Chinese name. The template was {{zh-st|s=|t=}} . However, once I finished using it and saved the page, the article's side bar of "Other languages" came up with a repeated link to this:한국어 . This is with the case of the article I was working on: Jane Zhang. Could you please have a look and see what is wrong? Thank you. σмgн gσмg 11:57, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

It was a problem in {{Zh-st}}. It's fixed now. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:24, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

The Spam filter as a barrier to reporting copyvios

I recently came across an article (Business Triage) that looked like it might be a copyvio: a lengthy, news-article style page in classic businessese and not much Wikimarkup, with only one contributor. I Googled a couple of sentences from it and, indeed, up came a web page that matched the entire article word-for-word (and had copyright notice at the bottom). After satisfying myself that this page was the original publisher of the article (i.e. it was not copied from a GFDL-compatible source), I tried to put a db-copyvio template on the article, specifying the url in question as the url= argument -- only to find myself confronted with:

Spam protection filter: The spam filter blocked your page save because it detected a blacklisted hyperlink. You may have added it yourself, the link may have been added by another editor before it was blacklisted, or you may be infected by spyware that adds links to wiki pages. You will need to remove all instances of the blacklisted URL before you can save.

So the copyvio is from a blacklisted page. Alright. But this means that anyone reporting the copyvio then has to then spend time working out how to obstuficate the URL to get past the spam filter, in order to tell the deleting administrator which page the article's a copyvio of! Is there no way to make the spamfilter selective (say, ignoring any urls inside {{template brackets}})? If not, then perhaps there needs to be a discussion on whether the status quo is an acceptable drawback to the advantage of being able to filter out spam links -- IANAL, but could there be potential legal issues here regarding the OCILLA and presenting barriers to "expedious action"? -- simxp (talk) 20:46, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I think this is easily overcome by reworking the URL (add a space or two in the domain) to 'fool' the spam filter + adding a note on how to make the link valid again. Admins can read :) — Edokter • Talk • 21:09, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, just a ctrl-f search of the source and add "_SPAM_" somewhere in the domain name. No technical fix that I know of. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 21:12, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Or even better, just include the problematic URL in <nowiki> tags. Anomie 21:22, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I didn't think of using nowiki tags since I assumed it was a plaintext search filter -- stupid of me. Thanks! EDokter's suggestion was what I ended up doing in the end. The nowiki solution should probably be documented somewhere for other people who run into the same problem in future to note as the best solution -- maybe on the spam filter information page. I'll bring it up on that talk page. -- simxp (talk) 22:06, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Image absence

It seems to me that lately icon like images from the commons (like the global for coordinats and the flag for ships) are not showing up. I switched from my home computer to my laptop and then my mothers laptop, but the result doesn't change. Did something happen to the images? TomStar81 (Talk) 03:51, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. You have to purge the images to see them. - BANG ! 04:27, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. I'm pretty sure this is a purging related problem, but so far I've discovered that users have tried purging with it not working and that it's a problem on multiple language wikipedias. Do the images in question really work for you right now? -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 05:52, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I have also seen some odd "missing image" problems. On List of Registered Historic Places in King County, Washington, the image associated with Broadway High School is not showing up on my browser, although it seems that all others are. As far as I can see, it is included exactly the same way as all other images; neither the wikisource nor "View source" on my Firefox browser suggest any difference. The image ultimately comes from Commons, but so do nearly all others on the page. No problem accessing the corresponding image page on Commons or on en:. Any clues? Can others replicate this problem? I'm pretty sure it's not a "purge" issue unique to one image. - Jmabel | Talk 05:57, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I see what you're talking about there, but for that case I'm also lost as to what's going on. The bigger problem, though, is that things like the Red pog.svg have stopped working on the normal wikipedia. So practically everything using Template:Location map has an error of not displaying the dots on the page, see Nuclear power in China for example. This is probably affecting a good deal of articles (I mean like a large percentage of all of Wikipedia). -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 06:11, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

A similar problem exists with the icons on railway line diagrams (example: Template:Esk Valley Line). Some aren't showing up at all which makes the diagram look "broken". -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 06:27, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Just for information, this problem is also affecting all articles including some chess diagrams, see for example Chess or Template:Chess diagram. That means most of the 2000 articles about chess cannot be read properly for now.

This image problem has been going on for more than 10 hours now and is affecting a huge number of images, so I would call it a major problem. Still worse: there is no error message warning the casual Joe that something is going wrong, so he may think this mess is a normal situation on Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SyG (talk • contribs) 07:09, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm having this problem too. None of the images in flag templates are working, e.g., the one in the Cloverfield infobox. Actually, it seems the problem is almost exclusively to do with images in templates. For me, anyway. --Closedmouth 09:25, 16 September 2007 (UTC) It's working again, hurrah --Closedmouth 15:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Multiple sections on this issue

I believe #What happened here?, #User talk:172.206.116.36, #Image:Locator Dot.svg, #Loads of images (particularly flag images) not showing, #Image:Flag of Canada.svg, #Is it just me, and #Images not showing are all this same issue; it's a little hard to tell, because some are only minimally described. - Jmabel | Talk 09:26, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Probably a separate problem

So mine is probably a separate problem. As mentioned above, on List of Registered Historic Places in King County, Washington, the image associated with Broadway High School is not showing up on my browser; neither, it turns out, is the image of the Cowen Park Bridge. There might be others, too, but these are the two I noticed. Anyone with insights? I take it from Theanphibian's remark above that my observation is, indeed, replicable. - Jmabel | Talk 08:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks like there's now four separate sections on this same issue. Anyway, the only remedy so far has been purging, but that doesn't seem to be a permanent fix, as some of the images I've purged ended up broken again after a period of time. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 08:07, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

TMF, I believe mine is a distinct issue (it lacks several of the characteristics discussed elsewhere). I started a separate sub-section here so that this distinct issue won't get lost in the shuffle. - Jmabel | Talk 09:16, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure? The image was not showing up for me either but I purged the commons and it fixed it as with the problem discussed above and elsewhere. What exactly is different between your problem and the one already discussed Nil Einne 09:22, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

My apologies: all the others seemed to be talking about the much-reproduced icons in articles, not "normal" images, but I guess that was a distinction without a difference. Yes, this appears to be the same problem. - Jmabel | Talk 09:37, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I had the problem with the FA image yesterday too, see #Loads of images (particularly flag images) not showing. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anything we can do other then purge and wait Nil Einne 11:45, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Just wait?

While not confirmed, from what I can tell the general idea appears to be that the problem is likely related to the high job que as a result of the template standardisation (which of course meant that everything else got back logged as well). I believe the template standardisation has finished so now we just have to wait a while for the job que to reach more resonable levels. For more info check out Wikipedia talk:Template standardisation/Archive 2#Overloading and Wikipedia talk:Template standardisation/Archive 2#Disappearing (default) images. I'm not 100% sure why purging commons helps but I guess purging commons must result in wikipedia getting a new version with high priority Nil Einne 09:22, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks like earlier speculation may be incorrect. The problem is occuring within the commons as wellCommons:Commons:Village pump#Image Problems and may have been originally related to a disk array running out of space. But this was fixed and the problem still seems to be occuring. The commons has a site notice about it, I suggest we do to Nil Einne 12:20, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Userpage Problems Cont.

Ok, I contacted another user to see if he could fix it and he said it looked fine. For some reason, the text on the left of my userpage is overlapping the right side, but it only does it on FireFox and not IE. I just downloaded FireFox yesterday so I haven't tweaked any options yet. Is there something I'm missing? Tyler Warren 22:50, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

You had a nowrap style defined for the text, meaning it didn't break across lines when it ran out out of space. It is likely that IE doesn't recognise the style type, so it didn't enforce any nowrap. Should work now [1]. matt br 08:13, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

"Automatically add .. protection templates"

Whatever happened to the bot that was supposed to start adding protection templates to protected articles with no protection templates? Did it fail its BOTREQ or did something else happen to it? I can't seem to find it in the BOTREQ archives.--69.118.235.97 11:22, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't follow BOTREQ, but for what it's worth, User:MadmanBot did this for a while in early August. —Cryptic 14:58, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_12#Automatically_adding_protection_templates, nothing much ever came of it though.--172.165.0.100 00:09, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Image:Locator Dot.svg

Can someone take look at why this image is not showing up? It initially looks odd, so I had reverted it. It is currently being used by many articles. Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 03:34, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

It's showing up now. I guess it just needed to be purged. - BANG ! 03:38, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Show/Hide

Hi. For the userpage I am trying to create, I would like to hide the bit at the top that says User:The dark lord trombonator. Does anybody know how to do this? In essence, I am trying to create a personalised version of the Main Page, and would prefer instructions rather than someone doing it for me. Cheers, THE DARK LORD TROMBONATOR 09:05, 9 September 2007 (UTC).

Check my userpage. The div class is "title override" I think... -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 09:08, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

The Main Page has special coding to remove the title, which you couldn't apply to your userpage. There's a piece of CSS code you can use to overwrite the title, though, which has a similar effect; see {{User:One/Title}}. (It's not perfect, though, so don't use it in articles!) Anonymous Dissident's userpage coding looks to me like a substed version of that user template. --ais523 14:03, 10 September 2007 (U T C)

Awesome, thanks for your combined efforts. Now, is there a way to shift the contents of the page up the X-amount of pixels I have blanked? THE DARK LORD TROMBONATOR 05:40, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

What happened here?

Screenshot, Firefox 2.0. See the strange text in the right corner.

article: Cory Maye. After logging in it was fine, but without being logged in, it looks like on the screenshot.

Taka 22:35, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Try purging your cache while logged out. The message only displays for anonymous users. --MZMcBride 22:39, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Hey, I don't have a problem with it, but non-logged in users might have. Would it help to redirect ~~non-logged in users~~ anonymous visitors to the purging page? Taka 22:43, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

No, you can't purge a user's browser cache remotely without hacking into their computer, as far as I know. The screenshot will only happen to anons who visited the site with the wrong timing, though, although it will persist until the next time their browser cache is bypassed. MZMcBride: I think you meant to link this page (about bypassing browser caches) rather than the one you linked (about bypassing server caches). (Bypassing the server cache whenever an anon visited is 'possible' in that it's theoretically possible to code, but it would cause the servers to collapse almost instantly, so it would never be done in practice.) --ais523 13:59, 10 September 2007 (U T C)

My mistake, you're absolutely right about WP:PURGE vs. WP:CACHE. For some reason, I thought it was all contained in one page. --MZMcBride 02:36, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Table viewed differently in IE and Firefox

Can anyone please help me with making this table look identital in Internet Explorer and Firefox? I spent a whole day to match the column widths with the positions of roller supports in Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7, but the table does not look the same in Firefox. Is there any way I can fix it?


	Joint	A		Joint	B		Joint	C		Joint	D
Distrib. factors	0	1		0.27	0.73		0.67	0.33		1	0
Fixed-end moments		14.7		-6.3	8.33		-8.33	12.5		-12.5
Step 1		-14.7	→	-7.35
Step 2				1.44	3.88	→	1.94
Step 3					-2.05	←	-4.09	-2.02	→	-1.01
Step 4				0.55	1.50	→	0.75
Step 5					-0.25	←	-0.50	-0.25	→	-0.13
Step 6				0.07	0.18	→	0.09
Step 7					-0.03	←	-0.06	-0.03	→	-0.02
Step 8				0.01	0.02
Sum of moments		0		-11.58	11.58		-10.20	10.20		-13.66

--Sjhan81 06:11, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Can you perchance provide an img of how the table is rendered in IE? I don't have IE on this machine, so it's rather difficult for me to test. In any case, the table looks fine for me in Firefox, but I'm not sure it's exactly as you want it. AmiDaniel (talk) 18:21, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I've got IE 7 and it looks fine. I don't know how it's supposed to look though--Pheonix15 23:13, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I've uploaded two screenshots here. They look different and I want to match the columns with the positions of the roller supports as viewed in IE. Will it be possible? --Sjhan81 02:59, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Make your Firefox window wider so the left column is wide enough for the text to fit on one line. (Or of course force the column wider, the way you force the other columns. :) --brion 05:47, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh the left column wasn't the real problem. (I should've uploaded another screenshot.) Anyway, thanks for your comment. --Sjhan81 09:26, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

It's worth pointing out that Wikipedia content (as different from it's rendered display) is just that; content. This is one of the fundamental reasons why it is written in it's own markup. By trying to optimise for any particular browser you miss the point, which is separation of content and delivery.

Just use the table markup to create the table, don't spend ages trying to optimise it for [insert browser name here] because fundamentally that is not our job. And if you think that by browser I mean 'IE or Firefox' you also miss a whole range of other devices that can access Wikipedia content. EasyTarget 10:08, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes I agree with your point, however it was just that I wanted to know why the table looked different and wanted to make the table look identical and better in both browsers. IE and Firefox are the most widely used browsers, I understand. If there isn't any way to make the table look identical (using wiki markup or anything), I won't mind anymore. Thanks anyway.--Sjhan81 10:52, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

You are of course right that other things being equal, the rendered page should look the same on both IE and FFox. This is really an issue with the wiki software/skin/CSS (eg [common.js]) itself, rather than something to do with how the markup is written. I poked around looking for the correct page where to post such bugs/questions and it's.. this page. So I'll get my coat now and leave it up to the experts. :-) EasyTarget 13:12, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Dear friend, 2 steps required. first change the image size to 700px. Second, add style padding:1px; to all cells except for first column. I've tested using the preview. It looks similar in IE as well as FF. I found that size of em is rendered more in FF. I assume IE is ignoring or calculating it differently. The table cells are inheriting the style for padding:0.2em from stylesheet. FF calculates it to 2.33px. I've not edited the table, but you can review it. thanks Jitendra

Thank you very much! That's exactly what I've been trying to do. I should learn more html and css things from now on :) --Sjhan81 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sjhan81 (talk • contribs) 01:04, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

The "New Messages" Bar Question

Is there a way to get that "New Messages" bar back? Because my talk page is archived by me and it won't appear!! -- PNiddy Go! 00:57, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Because you moved your User talk page to a subpage, it created a redirect at User talk:PNiddy. I've remove the redirect. When another user adds something to your talk page. It should bring up the new messages bar. Cheers. --MZMcBride 01:00, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

JavaScript PNG transparency fix

I've adapted pngfix.js to work (hopefully) with Wikipedia. If this works, it will fix PNG transparency issues for Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6 users. If you have a working copy of IE 5.5 or 6 and are willing to test this, please add the following code to your Special:Mypage/monobook.js:

/*

Correctly handle PNG transparency in Win IE 5.5 & 6.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola. Updated 18-Jan-2006.

Tweaked 8 Sep 2007 (UTC) by Remember_the_dot so that it works properly inside Common.js

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/pnginfo.htm states "This page contains more information for the curious or those who wish to amend the script for special needs", which I take as permission to modify or adapt this script freely. I release my changes into the public domain.

*/

function PngFix()
{
   if (document.body.filters)
   {
       for(var i=0; i<document.images.length; i++)
       {
          var img = document.images[i]
          var imgName = img.src.toUpperCase()
          if (imgName.substring(imgName.length-3, imgName.length) == "PNG")
          {
             var imgID = (img.id) ? "id='" + img.id + "' " : ""
             var imgClass = (img.className) ? "class='" + img.className + "' " : ""
             var imgTitle = (img.title) ? "title='" + img.title + "' " : "title='" + img.alt + "' "
             var imgStyle = "display:inline-block; vertical-align:middle;" + img.style.cssText 
             if (img.align == "left") imgStyle = "float:left;" + imgStyle
             if (img.align == "right") imgStyle = "float:right;" + imgStyle
             if (img.parentElement.href) imgStyle = "cursor:hand;" + imgStyle
             var strNewHTML = "<span " + imgID + imgClass + imgTitle
             + " style=\"" + "width:" + img.width + "px; height:" + img.height + "px;" + imgStyle + ";"
             + "filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader"
             + "(src=\'" + img.src + "\', sizingMethod='image');\"></span>" 
             img.outerHTML = strNewHTML
             i = i-1
          }
       }
   }
}

if (navigator.appName == "Microsoft Internet Explorer")
{
    var version = parseFloat(navigator.appVersion.split("MSIE")[1])
    if (version <= 6 && version >= 5.5)
    {
        window.attachEvent("onload", PngFix)
    }
}

Then visit a page such as Special:Upload and see if it displays transparency correctly. If this works, it would greatly improve the user experience for IE 5.5 and 6 users and reduce the need to keep both specially tweaked PNG images in addition to the original SVGs. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:05, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Remember to bypass your cache after adding the script. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:16, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I just updated the script to fix a bug. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 02:40, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

And here I was, just trying to put that script into my monobook.js, not working of course. But this does the trick quite nicely! This should go in common.js! (Only downside is, can't right-click and save inline PNG images anymore.) — Edokter • Talk • 21:10, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

That's no biggie - trying to save an image by right-clicking just gives you the thumbnail, which isn't very useful. IE6 users are of course encouraged to update to IE7 which resolves this issue and many others.

I'll go put in an edit request for common.js, now that someone other than me has confirmed that the script works. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:10, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Of course, any more "it works!" !votes would still be appreciated. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:14, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, as soon as M$ releases IE7 for Windows 2000, I will upgrade... — Edokter • Talk • 23:27, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

psst... —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:45, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Well then I wouldn't need this script, would I!

— Edokter • Talk • 12:11, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I see the script has made it to common.js. Congratulations! Now IE6 user can view PNG as they are meant to be seen. I've removed the script from my monobook.js, purged, and still see PNGs properly. One small change was made I see (one I was going to propose anyway); sizingMethod has been changed from 'scale' to 'image'. A logical step, as Mediawiki already does all the scaling (and icidentally fixed the border bug just below). I've made the same change to the script above, for those users on wiki's that do not have this script incorporated in their common.js yet (like nl.). Does this happen automatically, or is each wiki responsible for their own common.js? — Edokter • Talk • 12:11, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Common.js is local per project; if a change is going to happen on all projects, it needs a dev to set it directly in the software (which affects all MediaWiki wikis the next time they upgrade, even the non-Wikimedia ones), or in the configuration files (which only affects Wikimedia wikis). --ais523 13:56, 10 September 2007 (U T C)

Watchlists down?

My watchlist says that "Due to high database server lag, changes newer than 1268 seconds might not be shown in this list.". Ow! That's about 20 minutes.. Technical problems? Secretlondon 12:34, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I can reproduce, 1769 secs here. Navou ^banter 12:43, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

My last entry 12:04 UTC (still). The only change is the lag figure, which keeps going up. Secretlondon 12:57, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks like at 12.15 UTC the wiki went down. I'm guessing whatever runs the watchlists isn't up again. Secretlondon 13:03, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Nothing useful to contribute, other than the fact that it's still down at over an hour of "database lag". (ESkog)^(Talk) 13:17, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Watchlists are overrated anyway, and an undisputed source of stress. I predict a drop in edit and social conflicts for the duration. ←Ben^B4 13:20, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Heh... we can hope. BTW, it's now at 4654 seconds (pushing 78 minutes). --Ali'i 13:32, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Well I'm finding I can't check all the bureaucratic pages I need to.. Secretlondon 13:34, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Is there any way the lag warning can give a figure in minutes rather than seconds? 5484 seconds is effectively meaningless (reminds me of the roadworks warnings that say "delays for 104 weeks, instead of the 2 years they really mean!). DuncanHill 13:45, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

How many more tasks should the servers perform due to the servers being overloaded? (SEWilco 17:52, 7 September 2007 (UTC))

Would it be more work to give an output in minutes rather than seconds?DuncanHill 12:04, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

When I clicked the blue triangle in front of an item to see additional changes, I was redirected to an empty page called "RCI0". For the next item it was "RCI1", then "RCI2", "RCM2", "RCL2" etc. I use FF 2.0.0.6. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 15:36, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I've never heard of blue triangles, so you might want to take that up with one of the seven (!) extensions you have in your monobook.js. ←Ben^B4 15:39, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

No, it's a setting in your preferences, section "recent changes", tick "enhanced recent changes". Lupo 15:50, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I get blue triangles in recent changes, but not my watchlist. ←Ben^B4 16:13, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

They work now. And yes, there appear to have been technical problems. WP was inaccessible for a few minutes, then in a database lock as the slaves caught up to the master. At a wild guess, one of the servers reset. >Radiant< 16:17, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
- This might be relevant: Wikimedia projects downtime Thu Sept 6, 12:00 UTC; it's at about the time the problems were reported. --ais523 16:25, 6 September 2007 (U T C)

Ad Ben et al: section "watchlist", tick "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes". It's still disfunctional. --Eleassar ^{my talk}

Mine's fine. I'll go check again. --Pupster21 Talk To Me 12:06, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh shoot mine says this. "Below are the last 29 changes, as of 12:06, 10 September 2007." I think something's wrong. --Pupster21 Talk To Me 12:07, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

That sounds right. Ryan Postlethwaite 12:09, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I just realised that the watchlist time is GMT I'm US EDT. Still, I'm lagging one minute at least. --Pupster21 Talk To Me 12:13, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

My Userpage

This is my userpage. I made it in Internet Explorer and it looks beautiful. However, last night, after downloading Firefox just to use TWINKLE, I happened upon my userpage and it looks horrible. Can anyone help fix it so it looks good on Firefox AND Internet Explorer? Free barnstar to whoever fixes it. If you can fix it, please use my Sandbox and post the entire userpage , fixed in my sandbox. my sandbox Tyler Warren 21:03, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Tyler Warren. You should know that Microsoft's Internet Explorer does not render websites correctly. So, when you say "In Internet Explorer it looks beautiful", you're false: For an internet developer is your userpage horrible! - That, what Mozilla Firefox/Safari or eg. Opera you show, that is right. And nothing else. --194.208.72.24 11:00, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I would say that neither of them is always correct. --Kubanczyk 07:20, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Edit count in preferences?

Wait, when did that happen? I just noticed it while checking my Wikinews account... it apparently counts all edits, as it's quite a bit higher than what I'm used to seeing with wannabe kate. EVula // talk // ☯ // 23:50, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Goodness, I didn't notice that either. It looks as though it was added four weeks ago by Rob Church (see rev:24758). Cheers. --MZMcBride 01:10, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Note that that count is based upon this editcount field that is stored for each user, incremented each time the user makes an edit, but not decremented when a user's edit is deleted. Therefore, that count includes deleted edits, which contribs-scraping tools don't, and does not include moves, which other tools probably do. That should usually mean that the count shown in your preferences is higher than that reported by scraping tools. AmiDaniel (talk) 04:47, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

That would explain why there's not nearly the lag when opening my preferences as there is when I check wannabe kate. EVula // talk // ☯ // 15:55, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

How very convenient. Let's just hope it doesn't promote editcountitis too much, though it is useful. Now all we need is delete counters for admins (just kidding). :p Nihiltres^(t.l) 16:24, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:ADMINSTATS. --MZMcBride 03:15, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Defaultsorting double-barrelled, non-hyphenated name

Hi, how do I defaultsort Richard Carew Pole? He should sort under C, after the other Carews, but if I try {{DEFAULTSORT:Carew Pole, Richard}} he sorts to the beginning of the Carews. Anyone know how to fix this? DuncanHill 21:39, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, "Carew Pole" is less than "Carew, Richard", which is why it winds up where it does. A dirty hack would be to default sort him as "Carex" or "Carew, Rj". None's particularly perty though :) AmiDaniel (talk) 22:09, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I think I've got it to work now - I did DEFAULTSORT:CarewPole, Richard}}. DuncanHill 22:21, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Timestamp Wrong!!

Once I found some little mistake on the Block log, it says "8:15 12 September 2007". However, it's supposed to be "8:15 11 September 2007". Will you PLEASE fix that problem? -- PNiddy Go! 15:19, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

By chance are you looking at the expiration date in this line?

08:15, 11 September 2007, Wknight94 (Talk | contribs | block) blocked 68.153.118.241 (Talk) (expires 08:15, 12 September 2007, anon. only, account creation blocked) (Vandalism) (Unblock)

That looks quite legit. If you see it somewhere else, can you refer to the exact log line you see? --brion 15:33, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Evolution vandalisers

Is there any way we could have a bot that would automatically revert a massive, multi-account campaign to replace the contents of the Evolution page with the first two chapters of Genesis? Or just prohibit saving when that particular page is replaced with Genesis, or perhaps even better, all the ones in Category:Evolution to prevent overspill by annoyed idiots? Adam Cuerden ^talk 15:17, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe someone could set one of the anti-vandal bots to give special attention to this case of vandalism. Shouldn't be hard. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 15:27, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

PNGfix for all skins?

On projects that do not yet have the pngfix script incorporated in their common.js, I have placed the script in my monobook.js... but that only works when my skin is set to Monobook. To my dismay, I found there is no working equivilant like Special:Mypage/common.js or Special:Mypage/common.css for userspace tweaking that works under all skins. (You can create them, but they are not imported.) Might this be considered as a future upgrade? — Edokter • Talk • 13:46, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

You could go and talk to devs on the existing mediazilla:10183 («Add personal Common.css & Common.js»). Or you could simply create your common.js and start all your skin-specific .js files with importScript('User:Edokter/common.js') ∴ Alex Smotrov 14:04, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I've left a comment. Good to know I'm not the only one. — Edokter • Talk • 14:28, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

User talk:172.206.116.36

User:DerHexer has made two edits to this page. I can see both edits in the edit history, and I can see both edits when I attempt to edit the page myself. But when looking at "Current version", only one of the edits is showing up. Any ideas? Corvus cornix 18:57, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Seems fine for me. Adrian M. H. 20:52, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

How very strange. This is the only page I seem to be having a problem with. Corvus cornix 22:03, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I see both edits. Try to bypass your cache. PrimeHunter 22:15, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I did that already, several times. :) I'm going to shut down my PC and see if that makes a difference. Thanks. Corvus cornix 23:53, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Note: viewing websites on your PC will only get more problematic after you shut it down, unless you also start it back up afterwards. EVula // talk // ☯ // 00:01, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Now, why didn't I think of that? However: I am now on an entirely different computer, and still only see the first edit. I'm using IE7 on both. Corvus cornix 01:44, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried Wikipedia:Purge? Are the computers using the same ISP? Some ISP's make a cached copy which users cannot bypass. PrimeHunter 02:00, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, if Ctrl+F5 doesn't work, you have to purge the page. - BANG ! 02:33, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I can see it now! Happy dance! Corvus cornix 15:25, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Colored vandalism warnings

At User talk:212.219.90.77, and on at least one similar vandalism-dominated talk page I remember, when a user is blocked the message is colored. But when he's unblocked and lower-level vandalism warnings resume, they are also colored, even though the same template used on most pages shows as white. That is probably a bug. Art LaPella 18:21, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid I really don't follow -- can you try to explain the problem again? AmiDaniel (talk) 04:50, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I understand, and it was a result of the (then used) template for being blocked, not having a </div> to close it properly. You can go in and manually place the tag to close it and it fixes the rest of the page, as you'll see was done to the page you mentioned [2]. Here is what it looked like before the closing tag was added, [3]. Hope that helps explain it! (The template has since been fixed, this issue should not happen now). ^Ariel♥Gold 04:53, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Art LaPella 20:31, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

"border" option for image syntax seems to have gone away (or broken)

For example, [[Image:Flag of Japan.svg|22px|border]] → . This is a widely used and incredibly useful feature of MediaWiki syntax - what happened? Andrwsc 07:41, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Looks fine for me. --ST47Talk·Desk 21:28, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

You see a one pixel gray border around the flag? Hmm. It no longer appears when rendered by my browser (IE6, alas) and it did a couple of days ago. Andrwsc 22:28, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Don't know what's wrong then, but the image looks fine to me (IE 7 and Firefox). Valentinian ^{T / C} 22:42, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

This may just be a case of post hoc, ergo propter hoc, but MediaWiki:Common.js was just updated to try to resolve some issues regarding rendering images in IE5 and IE6. May be related. --MZMcBride 22:51, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm seeing the changed behaviour with SVG files, not just PNG, and the JavaScript code appears to only apply to PNG files. But the IE6-specific change to Common.js seems more than coincidental... The altered rendering I'm seeing is on every page that uses templates like {{flagicon}}, which are many tens of thousands of transclusions. Is there a way in which we can test to see if your PNG fix is to blame? Andrwsc 23:07, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I noticed one code fragment in the added function is sizingMethod='scale', and I haven't yet mentioned that I'm also seeing some distorted flag icons. For example, [[Image:Flag of Canada.svg|22x20px|border]] →

looks wierd now. The aspect ratio of the full size SVG (2:1) is no longer being respected - I see a 22x16 icon. I've got to think that the "scale" parameter is inappropriately being applied here. Andrwsc 23:20, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Please be patient. I've put in for a change at MediaWiki talk:Common.js#Bugfix. We may end up trying it a couple of different ways to see what works best. In the meantime, it would probably be best if you browsed with Mozilla Firefox. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 00:26, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I don't have that option on this particular PC (company-owned and maintained), but when I'm home from this business trip, I have IE7 and Safari on my home PC and Mac. Thanks for looking into this. Andrwsc 00:31, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

By the way, all SVGs are rendered as PNGs on this wiki; that's why I brought up the recent changes to Common.js. --MZMcBride 00:56, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Try purging your cache and the problem should be solved. --MZMcBride 04:29, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Yep, the span fix worked. Thanks! Andrwsc 06:17, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I ~~briefly~~ still ~~saw~~ see the image without the border too, ~~but that seems to have been fixed with the sizingMethod change from 'scale' to 'image (which I wanted to suggest anyway, as Mediawiki already does all the scaling).~~ Scrap that... at work, it looks OK (IE6/XP), but at home (IE6/W2K) there is no border and the image jumps up/left 1px. Investigating... — Edokter • Talk • 11:51, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

The code's been changing recently; try bypassing your cache to make sure your browser's using the most recent version of it. --ais523 16:33, 10 September 2007 (U T C)

The final code just went into common.js, so all problems should be fixed. Thanks got to Remember the dot. — Edokter • Talk • 08:33, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Login Problem with Microsft Internet Explorer (MSFT IE) - HELP!

Microsft Internet Explorer (MSFT IE) version: 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254

I have a problem. I had not done any editing on Wikipedia for a while. But, when I tried to strart up again, around May, I could not get Wikipedia to open (come up) if I was logged in.

If I deleted my cookie and re-booted, I could go to Wikipedia fine, surf around and make edits on some articles. But, if I logged in, "nope", the progress bar just sits there. It just sits there, says: "Login Successful," but the progress bar is just stuck. If I use "Secure Login" it logs in, is very slow (I am on dial-up), and then logs me out when I go to a new page. It never opens the page, any Wikipedia page. Delete the cookie and re-boot, can go to any page. Login seems to go fine, says that you're logged in, but doesn't open any pages.

So, after a week or so of frustration, I started using a different account. That worked fine until today (2007-08-25). Now it is doing the same thing. Logged in, nothing just a stuck progress bar. Delete cookie and re-boot, view articles.

I tried the things on the help page. But, they don't seem to work either.

I don't have problems with any other site. Just this one. It has to be something that the sever admin's did, made a change in the cookie or something. 90% sure of that. I can connect fine, I can be connected for six, eight, tweleve hours at a time, and surf around to a hundred sites. Of course with dial-up I do avoid sites like U-Tube and the like. I can't believe I am the only one having this issue..???

I think it must have something do with COOKIES? I did a search for "WIKI" on the hard drive and found 26 files (2 *.HTM and 24 *.TXT). I deleted all of them, rebooted, searched, "none", signed on this time it worked, but then when I went to the next page...LOCKUP... So, I searched again:

C:\Temporary Internet Files
- Cookie:don@en.wikipedia.org/

C:\Documents and Settings\Don\Cookies
- don@commons.wikimedia[1].txt
- don@en.wikipedia[1].txt
- don@en.wikipedia[2].txt
- don@en.wikiquote[1].txt
- don@en.wikisource[1].txt
- don@www.mediawiki[2].txt

With just ONE sign in I got SEVEN new files. And notice the "1"'s and "2"'s....this must have something to do with it?? I had to delete them all to get to this page. I have never seen a sight that gives you so many cookies (unless they are ads embeded in a webpage) with just ONE signin. It would also seem that having a "1" and a "2" might cause a conflit?

Is anybody else going to step up to help? I see questions in this forum being answered that don't even belong here, but my problem goes mostly ignored. Thanks

IE 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254
Windows XP - Home Edition - Version 2002 - Service Pack 2
Earthlink Total Access - Dial-Up

What is the deal?

207.69.139.157 00:49, 7 September 2007 (UTC) (WikiDon)

Have you tried logging in from another computer? --MZMcBride 00:55, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi. I can't help you solve it, but the cookies are normal. If you visited any wp sister sites, you have cookies. Many sites will give you multiple cookies, like google, which usually gives you three or more. Thanks. ~A H 1^(TCU) 00:59, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, it HAS to be something with the way that MSFT IE caches passwords/user names. I downloaded Mozilla Firefox and it is working fine. Of course I have not checked the box "Remember me" on the Wikipedia Sign in (log in) page, or do I say "Remember" to "Do you want Firefox to remember this password?" pop-up either. Choosing "Not Now" instead.

So, if I can login on the same computer, all else being the same, and work fine, it MUST be the way that Passwords and/or Usernames are being cached.

How do I clean out the MSFT IE and/or Wikipedia caching of Usernames and/or Passwords, besides clicking "Delete Files" and "Delete Cookies"? They must be hidden in there somewhere.

Please give suggestions. 207.69.139.149 15:33, 11 September 2007 (UTC) (WikiDon)

auto-filled formulas?

i speculated on this in talk on the barry bonds page, and it could apply to many, many articles that have statistical data on them that is frequently updated. is there any functionality in wikipedia for 'linking' data from one part of an article to another? for example, on the barry bonds page, the data for a dozen or more different statistics change every few days - he gets a walk, hits an RBI, etc - and since those data appear in more than one place/format in the article, some baseball stats wonk has to go in and update the numbers in a dozen different places. wikipedia lives in/on a database - this seems like something that a database should be able to handle automagically, that is, maintain one table of data - hidden at the top of the article - then use variable substitution in the article to represent the data, so they only have to be updated in the one place. if there is no such functionality....why not! it really seems so basic - to me at least - to the whole point of using databases. i'd think it wouldn't be all *that* difficult to implement, but then my opinion and $3.50 buys you a vente latte. or something like that....Anastrophe 16:54, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

It's possible for information on one page to be automatically copied into other pages, even into multiple places in some other page (see Wikipedia:Transclusion). However, this is normally discouraged in the case of articles, because it makes updating them more difficult for people who don't know what's going on. --ais523 16:57, 12 September 2007 (U T C)

thanks - but that's not what i was suggesting. i was talking about only data within the same page/article - in different places within that same page/article. data carried between different articles would indeed present a problem. however, data that appears in multiple places within the same article shouldn't have that problem, if variable substitition is clear, a la

hidden table at the top of page lists "RBI-VAL=447"

later on within the article, it has "bonds hit RBI {{$RBI-VAL}} on xyz date", which would be

replaced with "bond hit RBI 447 on xyz date" when the article is displayed.

and in a chart of his stats, in the RBI column it would simply list that variable again.

something along those lines. Anastrophe 17:30, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I think there is code written for this or something very like it; see mw:Extension:VariablesExtension. However, that extension isn't enabled on Wikimedia wikis (including Wikipedia) at the moment. --ais523 17:40, 12 September 2007 (U T C)

cool! thanks for finding that. hopefully it'll be ported some day. Anastrophe 19:30, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't seem likely. —Cryptic 19:59, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

About Sinter & Pellet

Dear Sir,

I would like to ask a question that What is the difference between Sintering & Pelletizing (Of Iron Ore Fines)?

Could you help me in this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.168.70.129 (talk) 04:01, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I am copying your question to the Science reference desk which is a better place for this type of question. DuncanHill 12:45, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Cite.php improvement request

Background:

The basic problem is that the inline citations that work so nicely for auto-numbered footnoted citation lists, make the article source very hard to read. Some workarounds that have been tried are to put the citations all together in their own section, between <includeonly> or tags. There are two problems with this type of solution:

The reference numbers are no longer guaranteed to be in numerical order (not so serious)
One backlink in each reference is now broken.

Apparently some people have started hacking at cite.php, but no definitive solution has yet arrived.

Please comment! --Slashme 15:36, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I think this is the "simple solution" to many of the problems discussed in the past. I have a system in place at M200G Volantor, that's an example of the basic idea. The only problem with this system is that there is a non-functional backlink on each reference. Otherwise this gives editors the option to combine references, or to continue to use them in the body of an article. This would not mandate either style and I firmly believe that neither system is necessarily more appropriate in any given article than another. Many editors would like to have this option and by finding a way to hide that non-functional backlink, the system would be more friendly to content contributors.--JayHenry 15:55, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Of the links provided, I find the first to be unhelpful as it is mainly just people complaining about the current system without a coherent proposal and the second unhelpful as it contains no proposal at all. The third is most useful as it contains an actual proposal; I note that the first point ("named references can be used before being defined") seems to have been realized since then. The second point, if implemented, would easily take care of Slashme's complaint.

Also, some way to see the text of a named reference when editing a section would be helpful; otherwise, on pages that use this new feature it will be a pain to find just what a reference is referencing. Anomie 18:19, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Slashme was just acknowledging that this problem has a history of discussion. Actually, seeing the text of a named reference is already a problem in articles. In an article that uses a reference 10 times, it's very difficult to find the original use. It would actually be easier to find named references with this system, than the system currently in use (but again, using this proposed system would be completely optional). --JayHenry 18:34, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Talking off the top of my head after looking at the cite.php code here, it seems to me that the <Ref name=whatever>...</Ref> tag pair could easily be extended to provide a mechanism allowing an editor to flag an instance where link/backlink generation by cite.php should be suppressed in the expansion of that tag pair.

It looks to me as if this could be implemented most easily in cite.php if the extension were to define alternate name for the "name" parameter (e.g. "namenl=") which would be used thusly: <Ref namnl=whatever>text to be later expanded</Ref>. In this example, using namenl instead of name would cause cite.php to generate neither a forward link at the point in the article text where this is encountered nor backlink to that point. It would probably be best (and would simplify implementation) to treat <Ref namenl=whatever/> as a synonym for <Ref name=whatever/> — that is, only suppress link/backlink generation on the <Ref namenl=whatever>...</Ref> pair which supplies the string to be expanded. -- Boracay Bill 04:17, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Probably more intuitive, a new tag name something like Refhide could be defined and used like <Refhide>...</Refhide>. Processing that, cite.php could set a variable like $mInRefhide TRUE inside that block and when processing <Ref name=whatever>...</Ref> occurrences while $mInRefhide is TRUE, cite.php could (1) not generate a link and (2) not stack backlink information. -- Boracay Bill 06:29, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I see this is "Idea Whose Time Has Come": See m:Talk:Cite/Cite.php#Forward_references_are_working. Maybe we should take further discussion to the cite.php discussion page? --Slashme 09:03, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

My knowledge is also fairly limited, but I think it seems fairly simple to implement as well. I'm not seeing any reason to object to this, right? --JayHenry 02:45, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I see this was raised at Meta -- I also copied the request onto mediawiki.org as I think this is where active discussion happens on the template. --JayHenry 00:59, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Userboxes/New_Userboxes not displaying properly

I just made my first userbox (yay,me!), I brought it here to share and ask for comment...and nothing at the bottom of this page is showing properly. It's just a bunch of broken templates and such. I tried to fix it, but it's not cooperating...it did show properly when I previews just the "September 13th" section, but it doesn't work when I try the whole page. Can someone please go over and help with it? NOTE: I mistakenly posteded this at WP:AN, and another user is also having issues with this. --UsaSatsui 02:14, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Fixed; it was due to Template limits. I archived July 2007 to fix the issue. Cheers. --MZMcBride 02:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh, awesome. Thanks!--UsaSatsui 02:47, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Undo

All of a sudden I'm getting edit conflicts when I attempt to undo an edit when another editor reverts the edit. This didn't used to happen, it's just started occurring in the last few minutes. Corvus cornix 21:58, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Hm. Now it seems to have stopped doing that. Corvus cornix 22:03, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm having a minor problem, which could be fixed in a tick.

The code below im my template:

{{#ifeq:{{{extended|}}}|yes| • | }}

Notice the two spaces either side of the •, well the spaces don't appear on the template. Any way of fixing this. SpecialWindler talk (currently offline) 21:08, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Replace them with  . EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:10, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Or   . --MZMcBride 22:22, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Infobox Settlement's titile appearing smaller without reason

{{Infobox Settlement}} is having its "official name" field (the one that is at the top of the infobox) suddenly appearing much smaller than normal. There doesn't appear to be any changes that would cause this with in the last few hours. Does anyone have a clue why this is happening? Infobox Settlement is transcluded on 14,607 pages, so fixing this is of high importance. —MJCdetroit 03:24, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be OK now. Whatever it was must have been fixed. Adrian M. H. 10:14, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Web Hosting Service

What web hosting service does WP use? Or does WikiMedia manage its own servers? Smaug 20:24, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia manages their own servers. See Wikimedia servers. — Edokter • Talk • 22:01, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

There has got to be about 200 of them, see here. Prodego ^talk 22:25, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Template:Geolinks-US-streetscale

Is everybody seeing a red box instead of an image when Template:Geolinks-US-streetscale is transcluded? Corvus cornix 22:51, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Looks like Commons:Image:Erioll world.svg needed to have its cache purged. It seems to be working fine now. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 23:39, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Ten things you didnt know about wikipedia etc.

Hi, if this is not the right place to discuss these, could someone point me in the right direction. For those who spend their entire time logged into Wikipedia, and thus wont have seen these; when you view Wikipedia anonymously, two sets of links appear at the top of the page. The first, at the very top right is a subtle link to the Wikimedia donations page, which is understandable; The second is a list of Wikipedia Essays and Help Pages and it appears at the top of the article space on the left. I would like to propose the removal of these left-hand links from Wikipedia:

They are scruffy, aligned to a random position at the top of the title bar, in a smaller, slanted font which is hard to read.
They are irritating, just like Google adverts, but not even targeted, and also repetitious.
They are inconsistent, The two essays in the list are targeted at semi-wikiholics, whilst the four help pages are targeted at new users.
They are hacked in, added by Javascript in an absolutely positioned div, which unsurprisingly makes the occasional mistakes, resulting in a garbled mess.

If the consensus is that Wikipedia is improved by these links, could they please be rendered tidily and legibly, targeted at a specific audience, and dismissable. Also, a few more than seven links would make it seem as though there was a point to this exercise; just because we have the technical ability to do something like this, does not make it a good idea. Conrad.Irwin —Preceding unsigned comment added by Conrad.Irwin (talk • contribs) 19:00, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks as though there was discussion a couple of days ago about merging the donation messages with the "tips" (see here). Hopefully that proposal goes through.... It may be a good idea to talk to Mets501 (talk · contribs) or leave a note on MediaWiki talk:Common.js. --MZMcBride 19:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Preferences - Math

What does the "Math" bit in preferences actually do? DuncanHill 15:30, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It changes how it renders the LaTeX equations. Try changing it and viewing this:

This^{changes}\,depending_{on}\,{\frac {your}{settings}}-\tau ry\,it.

x42bn6 Talk Mess 15:59, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! Just one more thing.... what's LaTeX? DuncanHill 16:02, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

LaTeX. It's a way of typing up documents, similar to HTML, but has nice little functions to type up mathematical equations, amongst others (bibliography, tables, nice fonts, etc.). x42bn6 Talk Mess 16:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you again :) DuncanHill 20:15, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist?

I'm currently unable to collapse my watchlist by closing any blue arrows. When I click on them to expand the list of edits, the arrows just disappear. Never saw this happen before, and I've purged various caches, but the problem continues. It kind of defeats the purpose of the collapsed list when the rest of the arrows flow off my screen the first time I click on the arrow for one article. Is this a new watchlist "feature"? Dekimasu よ! 13:19, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

What are these blue arrows of which you speak? DuncanHill 13:25, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Help:Enhanced recent changes. FWIW, when I turned that preference on temporarily it seems to work fine for me (Firefox 2.0.0.6). You say the arrows just disappear; if you click where the arrow should be, does it still collapse? Anomie 13:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have been more specific in my description, but I was just trying to jot down my problem while working on other pages. It doesn't collapse at all; there's just simply nothing to click anymore. Thanks for telling me it's not a feature change... I wonder what made it stop functioning on my IE. Dekimasu よ! 13:39, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to work for me (Safari on WXP), the arrows don't appear at all. DuncanHill 13:52, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Redirect change?

I typed in 'poetic form' into the search box and was surprised to land in a section rather than the top of the page. Can we redirect to a specific section of an article now? This is the URI I got to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetic_form#Poetic_form

--Ancheta Wis 10:47, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes. See this post. -- Tim Starling 10:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

PNG transparency Javascript "fix" option?

How do I turn off the PNG transparency Javascript code, which I strongly suspect is contributing to slower loading of pages with inline images, and significantly increasing the frequency of browser crashes on my system? I'm currently using "Classic" skin. Thanks. 02:42, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I would talk to Remember the dot (talk · contribs). He was the master architect of the recent changes. --MZMcBride 03:08, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

By the way, if possible, all IE5 and IE6 users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to IE7, which fixes this issue entirely. --MZMcBride 03:09, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Not anyone is running XP or later, you know? Some are 'stuck' with 2000, so upgrading to IE7 (or switching to Firefox) is not an option. Please stop advising this when someone has an issue with IE6, especially with regard to a script designed for IE6. — Edokter • Talk • 14:04, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Firefox will work on Windows 2000, and has no problems with PNG transparency. But like I said, I will work on the IE6 performance issues. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 20:21, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I'll echo the comment that pages are loading far slower with this fix than before. At first I thought it was a slow Internet connection (I was using WiFi in a hotel room on a business trip), but now that I am hooked up to my regular broadband pipe, I still see a noticeable delay.

I'll also echo the comments about IE6 vs. IE7. I remember reading (recently) that ~60% of page views are still with IE6, so Wikipedia really needs to take into account this "laggard majority". Andrwsc 18:08, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

My recollection is that we didn't bundle the 'fix' for general use because it is kind of problematic sometimes, but I haven't really looked into it in ages. --brion 19:45, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Please let me know if you find any specific, measurable problems as a result of the new code. A couple have been found and fixed already. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 20:21, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Remember the dot (talk · contribs) is currently working on fixing the speed issues. Please be patient, he expects to come up with a fix within 24 hours. — Edokter • Talk • 19:54, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

The reason why it's so slow is (almost certainly) because it uses innerHTML. Gracenotes^T § 15:17, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Ref convert

Does anyone know of a script to convert the footnotes at Stuttering to cite.php? Can anyone do it? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:51, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Some of the notes are missing, too; there's a footnote "41" without a corresponding citation in "Notes". Gimmetrow 16:00, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Gimmetrow; I suppose I could go way back in history and find it. I'll wait a few days to see if anyone has a script; otherwise, I'm looking at a chunk of manual work. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:47, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Never mind; I'm going to do it manually now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:18, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about any pre-existing script, but a one-off client-side python or perl script should obviate the need for (much if not all) of the manual change. I'll post a thread on your talk page if you want to work together to try and simplify the work a little bit. dr.ef.tymac 19:30, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Cyde/Ref converter should work. --Derlay 22:21, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

This article has html-coded refs. Gimmetrow 23:30, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

"Automatically add .. protection templates"

Whatever happened to the bot that was supposed to start adding protection templates to protected articles with no protection templates? Did it fail its BOTREQ or did something else happen to it? I can't seem to find it in the BOTREQ archives.--69.118.235.97 11:22, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't follow BOTREQ, but for what it's worth, User:MadmanBot did this for a while in early August. —Cryptic 14:58, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bot_requests/Archive_12#Automatically_adding_protection_templates, nothing much ever came of it though.--172.165.0.100 00:09, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

{{Cleanup}} & its friends {{Orphan}}, {{Unreferenced}}, {{inappropriate tone}} etc..

Did someone very recently change all the cleanup templates to include a yellow (sometimes red) line to the left of the box? Or was this an accident? The result of a recent template standardization?--69.118.235.97 10:34, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Template_standardisation. Though if it's to the right, there's probably some display issue that you're experiencing with your browser. --Sigma 7 10:44, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, is indeed to the left. The only reason I brought it here is because it looked like a formatting error, like an unclosed div tag, or a broken span. I think a lot of people are going to think the same thing when they see these changes.--69.118.235.97 10:45, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Have you tried bypassing your cache? Perhaps the CSS backing these changes has not yet arrived at your computer. —Remember the dot ^(talk) 03:27, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Detect a protected page

Is there a way for a template to detect if it is transcluded to a (semi-)protected page? — Edokter • Talk • 21:44, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Not currently. See bugzilla:9947. --Derlay 23:18, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Is it just me

My "Edits" icon on, User:The Random Editor/Menu is not showing up, is this one of the malfuntioning images, or is it just my computer. --Тhε Rαnδom Eδιτor 17:53, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Malfunctioning image. Purging the image page at commons seems to have fixed it. Anomie 19:06, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Image:Flag of Canada.svg

For some reason, the image is not always appearing on it's description page, and is it not appearing on my userpage where I have inserted it. I've heard from another user that others are experiencing this. Could someone look into this? Btw, this issue showed up on Sept 14, I believe. And I run Firefox and yes, I've bypassed the cache. -- Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 14:31, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Probably related to this topic. Garion96 (talk) 14:40, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Yup, probabaly! ;) It seems to be working now. Thanks! -- Flyguy649 ^talk _contribs 15:34, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

It's rendering very oddly - see The Sarah Jane Adventures for an instance.--Rambutan (talk) 14:05, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Try purging your browser cache. Harryboyles 14:53, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Fixed double transclusiuon (removed old code). — Edokter • Talk • 15:13, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Loads of images (particularly flag images) not showing

I've been browsing Wikipedia, and found that most flag icons and images are not showing (the link worked perfectly) despite using it on two different computers. Does anyone else have this problem?--Alasdair 09:53, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about other images, but many of the merge icons are not showing up here. I was thinking its a problem at my end! --soum ^talk 09:56, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The article Euro 2008 qualifying is an example of this, so many crossed boxes in the places where the flags ought to be.--Alasdair 09:59, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Example: Image:Flag_of_Canada.svg - large image works fine, smaller doesn't. I've also had problems with some of the other images not rendering in the same fashion - could simply be a server issue at the commons. --Sigma 7 10:02, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

It does look much cleaner now doesn't it. :) Garion96 (talk) 10:16, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Checking de: and fr:, it looks as though it is happening on all projects. Oldelpaso 10:30, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I assume that's why {{done}} now shows as Done... without the image? I was wondering what that was about, considering its changed only today and there don't appear to have been any changes to the template. --Deskana (talky) 10:36, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

It's happening on the main page for me, the George Cantor image is not showing. It doesn't seem to be a cache issue as I've tried to different browsers, clearing the cache and purging (as far as I'm aware my ISP doesn't use a transparent proxy). I also noticed this yesterday with another page but didn't think much of it at the time Nil Einne 11:11, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Developers are aware and are looking at it. ELIMINATORJR 11:44, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

- Some, I'm not the only one who is not seeing some images, right. --Тhε Rαnδom Eδιτor 12:31, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

[08:15] topic is db/image problems for some wikis, being looked at | Site operation issues - #wikimedia-tech. Additionally, see this thread and this one. ^Ariel♥Gold 12:35, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Edit Button Overlap?

Is it normal to have two edit buttons right next to each other like this?--69.118.235.97 00:14, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

See WP:BUNCH. Adrian M. H. 00:19, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Do you think you could implement the {{FixHTML}} tags on google toolbar? I tried doing so myself, but the result was a mess.--69.118.235.97 01:30, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

That doesn't really need a bunch fix (only one infobox and one image). I just moved the image to a more appropriate place, so all the edit links now line up with their headings. Adrian M. H. 14:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Spy cookies from Wikia

I found a tracking cookie from Wikia on my computer with the following path: C:\Documents and Settings\[my user name]\Cookies\[my user name]@wikia-ads.wikia[1].txt. I know that Wikipedia leaves cookies for the "Remember Me" checkbox, but isn't leaving spy cookies going a little too far?--Gnfgb2 07:14, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Well.. look at the wikia article to understand why it is not the same as wikipedia, and is a private company. As a commercial operation they are hardly unique in using adverts, and tracking them with cookies.

The real question is; Are you saying that you have only ever visited wikipedia, and somehow ended up with this cookie (which would be bad..)?

If you have also visited a wikia hosted wiki (there are lots), complete with ads, then it's not a surprise that you will end up with this cookie, and nothing evil is happening. EasyTarget 07:51, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I have visited a couple of Wikia sites, so that could be it. But, I disagree about spy cookies not being evil. I knew it was common, but I guess my expectations were too high for Wikimedia/Wikia.--Gnfgb2 08:09, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

As an employee of Wikia, I can tell you they are evil, but in a good way. But, try turning on "verify all cookies" or "ask me before setting cookies" option in your browser and try surfing the web. Eye opener.

Google doesn't use as many cookies because they have enough hard drive space to store your useragent, OS, IP, preferences, and search habits on their own machines. Is that less evil? ^_^ --Splarka (rant) 08:14, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Good call. I've blocked Wikia from sending any cookies to my machine.--Gnfgb2 10:51, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Despite the close connections in personnel, wikimedia and wikia are completely seperate. One is a not for profit foundation, the other one is a commercial entity. If you have any gripes about the way wikie operate, take it up with them. For that matter, if you have gripes with the way the foundation operates it's best to take it up in meta Nil Einne 11:15, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Renameuserlogentry

It is impossible to add a link to MediaWiki:Renameuserlogentry. Not sure why this would be. Edit: I was able to get it in with HTML. This message used to work with wikitext though, so question still stands. Prodego ^talk 23:04, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Certain MediaWiki pages seem to only accept HTML links; not sure why. -Amarkov moo! 23:10, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

The Spam filter as a barrier to reporting copyvios

I recently came across an article (Business Triage) that looked like it might be a copyvio: a lengthy, news-article style page in classic businessese and not much Wikimarkup, with only one contributor. I Googled a couple of sentences from it and, indeed, up came a web page that matched the entire article word-for-word (and had copyright notice at the bottom). After satisfying myself that this page was the original publisher of the article (i.e. it was not copied from a GFDL-compatible source), I tried to put a db-copyvio template on the article, specifying the url in question as the url= argument -- only to find myself confronted with:

Spam protection filter: The spam filter blocked your page save because it detected a blacklisted hyperlink. You may have added it yourself, the link may have been added by another editor before it was blacklisted, or you may be infected by spyware that adds links to wiki pages. You will need to remove all instances of the blacklisted URL before you can save.

So the copyvio is from a blacklisted page. Alright. But this means that anyone reporting the copyvio then has to then spend time working out how to obstuficate the URL to get past the spam filter, in order to tell the deleting administrator which page the article's a copyvio of! Is there no way to make the spamfilter selective (say, ignoring any urls inside {{template brackets}})? If not, then perhaps there needs to be a discussion on whether the status quo is an acceptable drawback to the advantage of being able to filter out spam links -- IANAL, but could there be potential legal issues here regarding the OCILLA and presenting barriers to "expedious action"? -- simxp (talk) 20:46, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I think this is easily overcome by reworking the URL (add a space or two in the domain) to 'fool' the spam filter + adding a note on how to make the link valid again. Admins can read :) — Edokter • Talk • 21:09, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, just a ctrl-f search of the source and add "_SPAM_" somewhere in the domain name. No technical fix that I know of. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 21:12, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Or even better, just include the problematic URL in <nowiki> tags. Anomie 21:22, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I didn't think of using nowiki tags since I assumed it was a plaintext search filter -- stupid of me. Thanks! EDokter's suggestion was what I ended up doing in the end. The nowiki solution should probably be documented somewhere for other people who run into the same problem in future to note as the best solution -- maybe on the spam filter information page. I'll bring it up on that talk page. -- simxp (talk) 22:06, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Articles with one or more images not showing

For the past 3-4 days, I have noticed that these articles have one or more images not showing (all that shows is a place holder):

The images are still present in Wikipedia and in Commons ... they have not been deleted or altered. Each of the images still shows in some articles but not in other articles. In other words, there is no problem with the images themselves ... but there is a random problem related to which articles show or don't show the same specific image. Also, some of the articles have some images that show and some that don't show.

Does anyone know what is going on? Or how long this problem may last? And has anyone alerted Wikipedia's technical gurus who handle such problems? I haven't the faintest clue as to whom to alert or how to alert them. Please help! - mbeychok 18:06, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

See above. --MZMcBride 18:07, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmm this was add to the sitenotice but then removed since sysadmins have decided the problem is minor or has now been fixed. I still seem to be seeing this though, e.g. Colin McRae. Yes purging helps but it seems to me even if the problem has been fixed, it's still appearing for some images, perhaps in a day or two when every image has been regenerated it'll be okay but until then we should still mention the problem. Perhaps change it to something like "the problem has been resolved but it may take a day or two for the changes to take complete effect" (could mention purging but that's likely to be too confusing)... What do others think? Nil Einne 20:06, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

The images in that article look okay to me now. WODUP 20:08, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Captchas and blind people

I am reposting this from the Administrators' Noticeboard:

Hi. I was trying to add links to two Internet standards I had written to my user page, but received a captcha. I'm blind and there's no way I can respond. Am I going to have to ask for help every time I add an external link to an article? --SamHartman 16:36, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Some sites solve this by using spoken captchas, but I am guessing they are not that easy to implement here... -- ReyBrujo 17:06, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

We need some exceptions-to-rules user-permission-classes that Bureaucrats or Stewards can assign people to.--Kim Bruning 18:44, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe a problem-solving captcha would be a better alternative? For example: "If Brian has {rand:X} apples and gives Jim {rand:Y} apples, how many apples does Brian have left?" - Assuming a dozen varieties and spelled-out random numbers it should be sufficient to stop spam-bots but still usable by blind users. ---J.S (T/C/WRE) 19:40, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I found a few freely-licensed speech-generation and audio-CAPTCHA softwares online. See this forum thread at webmasterworld.com and this search and Google Code Search. Now I suppose some knowledgeable techy needs to integrate one solution into the existing MediaWiki software. --Iamunknown 19:50, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Until we have a better fix, the following could serve: when encountered with a captcha, find the url of the image. Create a section on the admins' noticeboard, link the image, and ask someone to type out the correct alpha-numeric answer for you. Then copy and paste it back to the form you need to enter the captcha into. Obviously this is not optimal, but I suppose it is better than nothing. Are there any deficiencies in this temporary fix? Picaroon (t) 21:14, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki will not generate the same captcha image twice, so this method would only work if the screen reader software does not download images if it can't display them. There is also the problem that if someone looks at the picture on the admin noticeboard but does not take any action, the whole process fails and everyone has to start all over again. It might be easier to just ask someone else to make the desired edit. Tra (Talk) 23:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

But this doesn't involve leaving the page where the captcha is, meaning it won't have to be regenerated, right? Just opening up a new tab, asking your question, and leaving the form in the old tab sitting empty until someone gets back to you is what I'm proposing. This is easier for people who watch the administrators' noticeboard to do than making the edit, and the easier it is, the quicker it will be done (like closing afds - the complicated ones are always last.) Picaroon (t) 23:32, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

We could use a template similar to ({{request edit}}. Of course, this is just a workaround. I also like the idea of a "bit" that stewards can assign to prevent these captchas. We already have a spam team that will notice if someone is abusing it. While it may bring some discussion about preferred status or discrimination, it may be applicable to some other stuff (in example, a bot that is replacing an old link with a new one because of a domain change, etc). -- ReyBrujo 02:06, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Image absence

It seems to me that lately icon like images from the commons (like the global for coordinats and the flag for ships) are not showing up. I switched from my home computer to my laptop and then my mothers laptop, but the result doesn't change. Did something happen to the images? TomStar81 (Talk) 03:51, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah. You have to purge the images to see them. - BANG ! 04:27, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. I'm pretty sure this is a purging related problem, but so far I've discovered that users have tried purging with it not working and that it's a problem on multiple language wikipedias. Do the images in question really work for you right now? -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 05:52, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I have also seen some odd "missing image" problems. On List of Registered Historic Places in King County, Washington, the image associated with Broadway High School is not showing up on my browser, although it seems that all others are. As far as I can see, it is included exactly the same way as all other images; neither the wikisource nor "View source" on my Firefox browser suggest any difference. The image ultimately comes from Commons, but so do nearly all others on the page. No problem accessing the corresponding image page on Commons or on en:. Any clues? Can others replicate this problem? I'm pretty sure it's not a "purge" issue unique to one image. - Jmabel | Talk 05:57, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I see what you're talking about there, but for that case I'm also lost as to what's going on. The bigger problem, though, is that things like the Red pog.svg have stopped working on the normal wikipedia. So practically everything using Template:Location map has an error of not displaying the dots on the page, see Nuclear power in China for example. This is probably affecting a good deal of articles (I mean like a large percentage of all of Wikipedia). -Theanphibian ^{(talk • contribs)} 06:11, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

A similar problem exists with the icons on railway line diagrams (example: Template:Esk Valley Line). Some aren't showing up at all which makes the diagram look "broken". -=# Amos E Wolfe ^talk #=- 06:27, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Just for information, this problem is also affecting all articles including some chess diagrams, see for example Chess or Template:Chess diagram. That means most of the 2000 articles about chess cannot be read properly for now.

This image problem has been going on for more than 10 hours now and is affecting a huge number of images, so I would call it a major problem. Still worse: there is no error message warning the casual Joe that something is going wrong, so he may think this mess is a normal situation on Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SyG (talk • contribs) 07:09, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm having this problem too. None of the images in flag templates are working, e.g., the one in the Cloverfield infobox. Actually, it seems the problem is almost exclusively to do with images in templates. For me, anyway. --Closedmouth 09:25, 16 September 2007 (UTC) It's working again, hurrah --Closedmouth 15:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Multiple sections on this issue

I believe #What happened here?, #User talk:172.206.116.36, #Image:Locator Dot.svg, #Loads of images (particularly flag images) not showing, #Image:Flag of Canada.svg, #Is it just me, and #Images not showing are all this same issue; it's a little hard to tell, because some are only minimally described. - Jmabel | Talk 09:26, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Probably a separate problem

So mine is probably a separate problem. As mentioned above, on List of Registered Historic Places in King County, Washington, the image associated with Broadway High School is not showing up on my browser; neither, it turns out, is the image of the Cowen Park Bridge. There might be others, too, but these are the two I noticed. Anyone with insights? I take it from Theanphibian's remark above that my observation is, indeed, replicable. - Jmabel | Talk 08:02, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks like there's now four separate sections on this same issue. Anyway, the only remedy so far has been purging, but that doesn't seem to be a permanent fix, as some of the images I've purged ended up broken again after a period of time. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 08:07, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

TMF, I believe mine is a distinct issue (it lacks several of the characteristics discussed elsewhere). I started a separate sub-section here so that this distinct issue won't get lost in the shuffle. - Jmabel | Talk 09:16, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure? The image was not showing up for me either but I purged the commons and it fixed it as with the problem discussed above and elsewhere. What exactly is different between your problem and the one already discussed Nil Einne 09:22, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

My apologies: all the others seemed to be talking about the much-reproduced icons in articles, not "normal" images, but I guess that was a distinction without a difference. Yes, this appears to be the same problem. - Jmabel | Talk 09:37, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I had the problem with the FA image yesterday too, see #Loads of images (particularly flag images) not showing. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anything we can do other then purge and wait Nil Einne 11:45, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Just wait?

While not confirmed, from what I can tell the general idea appears to be that the problem is likely related to the high job que as a result of the template standardisation (which of course meant that everything else got back logged as well). I believe the template standardisation has finished so now we just have to wait a while for the job que to reach more resonable levels. For more info check out Wikipedia talk:Template standardisation/Archive 2#Overloading and Wikipedia talk:Template standardisation/Archive 2#Disappearing (default) images. I'm not 100% sure why purging commons helps but I guess purging commons must result in wikipedia getting a new version with high priority Nil Einne 09:22, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks like earlier speculation may be incorrect. The problem is occuring within the commons as wellCommons:Commons:Village pump#Image Problems and may have been originally related to a disk array running out of space. But this was fixed and the problem still seems to be occuring. The commons has a site notice about it, I suggest we do to Nil Einne 12:20, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Userpage Problems Cont.

Ok, I contacted another user to see if he could fix it and he said it looked fine. For some reason, the text on the left of my userpage is overlapping the right side, but it only does it on FireFox and not IE. I just downloaded FireFox yesterday so I haven't tweaked any options yet. Is there something I'm missing? Tyler Warren 22:50, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

You had a nowrap style defined for the text, meaning it didn't break across lines when it ran out out of space. It is likely that IE doesn't recognise the style type, so it didn't enforce any nowrap. Should work now [4]. matt br 08:13, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Table help

In the list List of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom I want to fix the section 21st century Prime Ministers since the layout of the table there is not the same as the table in other sections. However I can't see anything to fix, the code looks the same as in the other tables. Am I being blind here (always possible) or is it something else. Garion96 (talk) 21:45, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I can't see anything either. Wiki tables are a bit wonky like that. — Edokter • Talk • 22:21, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

It is strange alright, anyone else have any ideas? Garion96 (talk) 15:04, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Images not showing

I have a problem with this Web site, Wikipedia. I don't see many images on one page. When I view this page, Australia, there is some image showing. What should I do. Jet (talk) 21:16, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

It affects several pages. Northern Rock for one. Cache problem? Valentinian ^{T / C} 23:45, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I've seen this issue as well on numerous pages lately. After doing a few purges of the images in question (which have mostly been SVGs on the Commons) and regenerating the thumbnails, the images now work. Why all of this is now necessary, I don't know. --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 23:47, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Figures. See the post above "Loads of images not showing ...". Somebody is doing something that is increasing the job queue. (Special:Statistics). 1.9 million missing jobs certainly doesn't look like something healthy. Valentinian ^{T / C} 23:50, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

The disk was full, the source of the problem has been fixed so just a lot of purging is needed. Yonatan ^talk 03:24, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Even after purging, the images (see Template:Future road) end up broken again a few hours later anyway. Wish this would get cleared up... --TMF ^{Let's Go Mets - Stats} 06:58, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Special:Redirects is acting funny

Hi! While doing some maintenance I noticed that the Special:Redirects page (whose URI is something like http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Listredirects&limit=500&offset=0) is doing 2 funny things:

the "offset=" part of the URI for the "(next 500)" link has the current offset not the current + limit, so clicking it just gets you where you are;
even if I edit the URL in the address bar, I can't see past item 1000, which is only in the Bo's.

The 1st one is new-ish. The 2nd is not handy. Saintrain 20:31, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

A lot of Special: pages are limited to the first 1,000 entries; why, I'm not sure. Special:Unusedtemplates is the same way. --MZMcBride 20:38, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

My mistake: in the line "View (previous 500) (next 500) (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500)" the "Next 500" link has the correct "offset=" value. The "20", "50" etc. links have the offset value equal to the current offset. This redisplays that number of items at the current offset. I (mis-)interpreted them as "next 20", "next 50" etc. D'oh!

Still like to see the whole list, though. Saintrain 15:41, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Special:Suffixindex

There is a request on talk page of Special:Prefixindex for Special:Suffixindex. I have to second that request. This will be invaluable for finding the noun part of names that have various adjectives. I'm thinking "X logic," "X philosophy," etc.

I was recommended to this area. Be well and thanks for your work. Greg Bard 03:20, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Server difficulties banner

I posted this over at the Village pump (misc) but they are always slow to respond. The banner has gone away too, but I'm still looking for answers....

Hey, I read up about it on some disscussions, but there are so many threads with a lot of people saying the same thing that everything is broken and not saying anything useful. I just wanted to hear the whole story of what happened instead of link jumping across all the wikimedia projects. I've seen 5 explainations already and I've only been to WP:VPT , here, and the commons VPT. No rush, I'm sure I could read about it soon in the signpost, but if you don't have anything to do, would you respond? Thanks, - Hairchrm 04:58, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

This should be taken with a grain of salt.... One of the disks that holds image thumbnails filled up and subsequently, the servers began to generate empty thumbnails. The disk was fixed, however due to caching, the image thumbnails were still a problem, not only on en.wiki, but also on Commons. MediaWiki:Sitenotice was modified a couple of times to notify users. Eventually, Mark was able to purge the servers of most of the empty thumbnails and the problem was solved. Basically. --MZMcBride 05:09, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Basically meaning "look below at the next few disscussion points??". Oh. I get it. - Hairchrm 00:48, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Images not appearing on Wikipedia

A number of images are appearing as deleted or blank across wikipedia. However when you click on them and their own page appears they show up. Also some images show up on some pages but do not show up on others. On one page Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946) an image of the flag shows up in one part of a sidetable but the very same image does not show up on another part of it!?!? The images which show up or do not show up vary every day. It is a very confusing and serious problem which needs to be solved. I have also noticed a problem with the editing toolbar as mentioned in the section above. These problems have been going on for the past several days and need to be corrected. —Preceding unsigned comment added by R-41 (talk • contribs) 16:46, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Both are known problems; the developers are working on the image thumbnailing problem that's causing rescaled images to disappear at the moment. In the meantime, if you find an image that isn't working, you can often solve the problem by purging the server cache of the image description page of the affected image. (The thumbnail issue is entirely separate, and only happens on Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6.0, due to some script that was recently added to fix the display of alpha-transparent PNG images on those browsers.) --ais523 16:57, 17 September 2007 (U T C)

I think both of those issues are mentioned just a few sections above this one. If this sounds like it might be relevant, readers are invited to look a little further up. (SEWilco 19:41, 17 September 2007 (UTC))

Buttons not working?

The editing buttons like signature are not working for me. It really doesn't interfere with my edits but it is annoying. Pupster21 Talk To Me 12:32, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

IE6 right? Common.js needs a small update having to do with displaying PNG images. Currently PNG do not accept javascript click events. — Edokter • Talk • 12:45, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I came here to whine about the same thing. IE6, yes. For the more technically challenged among us, Edokter, does this mean I need to do something, or that I just need to wait patiently for something to happen? This is a really new problem, it was working fine last night. --barneca (talk) 14:18, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

No, you don't need to do anything, and unfortunately, I can't do anything but ping an admin to make the change. — Edokter • Talk • 14:30, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks. As Pupster says, it isn't a crisis, just annoying. --barneca (talk) 14:36, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm willing to make the change, but there are lots of possible 'correct' versions of the code on MediaWiki talk:Common.js. Could someone who understands what's going on there give some guidance as to which version the change should be made to? --ais523 15:09, 17 September 2007 (U T C)

The only (small) change required for now is applying the one-line patch (under the editprotected template) to the current code in common.js. That should fix the button problem. — Edokter • Talk • 17:51, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to Edokter, and (if I'm reading the talk page correctly) Remember the dot and Ilmari Karonen. It's working now. You don't know how much you use something until it's taken away! --barneca (talk) 20:57, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Chinese template

I recently used a template for Chinese pop stars which have a Chinese name. The template was {{zh-st|s=|t=}} . However, once I finished using it and saved the page, the article's side bar of "Other languages" came up with a repeated link to this:한국어 . This is with the case of the article I was working on: Jane Zhang. Could you please have a look and see what is wrong? Thank you. σмgн gσмg 11:57, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

It was a problem in {{Zh-st}}. It's fixed now. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:24, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

What is wrong with template parsing?

I just tried to post an AfD which went completely haywire. First the template wouldn't parse, then it wouldn't even subst at all. I had to do everyting manually. — Edokter • Talk • 11:53, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Co-ordinate links problem

Is there a problem accessing the geo-hack page from co-ordinate links? I am getting the following error -

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /~magnus/geo/geohack.php on this server. Apache Server at tools.wikimedia.de Port 80

Keith D 21:25, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm getting this also. For example in the Dallas, Texas article it links to http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/geo/geohack.php?pagename=Dallas%2C_Texas&params=32.78_N_-96.80_E_type:city_region:US and that link gets the error. - Bevo 23:29, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Magnus seems to have (perhaps accidentally) restricted http access to his public html:

amidaniel@hemlock:/home/magnus/public_html$ ls -la
total 636
drwxr-xr-- 7 magnus users  4096 2007-09-14 11:15 .
drwx--x--x 9 magnus users  4096 2007-08-19 16:45 ..

For the time being, I've copied his tools over to my dir, which you can access, for example, here: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~amidaniel/magnus/geo/geohack.php?pagename=Dallas%2C_Texas&params=32.78_N_-96.80_E_type:city_region:US . If someone would please e-mail to find out why his web dir is read-protected and ask him to perhaps reallow access. AmiDaniel (talk) 02:00, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I changed Template:Coor URL to your subdirectory for now. -- User:Docu

Thanks! - Bevo 05:59, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks like the former version is up again. -- User:Docu

Now it reads "En: This service is temporally unavailable." and the other one is gone. -- User:Docu

Yes, it appears that the tool exposed the toolserver to some form of DOS attack and was disabled by a sysadmin intentionally, not accidentally as I thought. So this tool will be down until the problem with it can be fixed. Sorry for the inconvenience. AmiDaniel (talk) 09:17, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok (BTW see also WP:GEO talk) -- User:Docu

A way to reduce such problems would be to use the NTP pool approach: Register a domain for the task and have the script running on many servers. The DNS entry would be controlled by a script which tests the servers regularly and alters the DNS entries to point only at functional servers. This might require HTTP servers with IP addresses dedicated to the geohack script. (SEWilco 17:41, 17 September 2007 (UTC))

Eventually Wikipedia's servers might have similar abilities through the <geo> extension. (SEWilco 17:41, 17 September 2007 (UTC))

Cite.php improvement request

Background:

The basic problem is that the inline citations that work so nicely for auto-numbered footnoted citation lists, make the article source very hard to read. Some workarounds that have been tried are to put the citations all together in their own section, between <includeonly> or tags. There are two problems with this type of solution:

The reference numbers are no longer guaranteed to be in numerical order (not so serious)
One backlink in each reference is now broken.

Apparently some people have started hacking at cite.php, but no definitive solution has yet arrived.

Please comment! --Slashme 15:36, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I think this is the "simple solution" to many of the problems discussed in the past. I have a system in place at M200G Volantor, that's an example of the basic idea. The only problem with this system is that there is a non-functional backlink on each reference. Otherwise this gives editors the option to combine references, or to continue to use them in the body of an article. This would not mandate either style and I firmly believe that neither system is necessarily more appropriate in any given article than another. Many editors would like to have this option and by finding a way to hide that non-functional backlink, the system would be more friendly to content contributors.--JayHenry 15:55, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Of the links provided, I find the first to be unhelpful as it is mainly just people complaining about the current system without a coherent proposal and the second unhelpful as it contains no proposal at all. The third is most useful as it contains an actual proposal; I note that the first point ("named references can be used before being defined") seems to have been realized since then. The second point, if implemented, would easily take care of Slashme's complaint.

Also, some way to see the text of a named reference when editing a section would be helpful; otherwise, on pages that use this new feature it will be a pain to find just what a reference is referencing. Anomie 18:19, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Slashme was just acknowledging that this problem has a history of discussion. Actually, seeing the text of a named reference is already a problem in articles. In an article that uses a reference 10 times, it's very difficult to find the original use. It would actually be easier to find named references with this system, than the system currently in use (but again, using this proposed system would be completely optional). --JayHenry 18:34, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Talking off the top of my head after looking at the cite.php code here, it seems to me that the <Ref name=whatever>...</Ref> tag pair could easily be extended to provide a mechanism allowing an editor to flag an instance where link/backlink generation by cite.php should be suppressed in the expansion of that tag pair.

It looks to me as if this could be implemented most easily in cite.php if the extension were to define alternate name for the "name" parameter (e.g. "namenl=") which would be used thusly: <Ref namnl=whatever>text to be later expanded</Ref>. In this example, using namenl instead of name would cause cite.php to generate neither a forward link at the point in the article text where this is encountered nor backlink to that point. It would probably be best (and would simplify implementation) to treat <Ref namenl=whatever/> as a synonym for <Ref name=whatever/> — that is, only suppress link/backlink generation on the <Ref namenl=whatever>...</Ref> pair which supplies the string to be expanded. -- Boracay Bill 04:17, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Probably more intuitive, a new tag name something like Refhide could be defined and used like <Refhide>...</Refhide>. Processing that, cite.php could set a variable like $mInRefhide TRUE inside that block and when processing <Ref name=whatever>...</Ref> occurrences while $mInRefhide is TRUE, cite.php could (1) not generate a link and (2) not stack backlink information. -- Boracay Bill 06:29, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I see this is "Idea Whose Time Has Come": See m:Talk:Cite/Cite.php#Forward_references_are_working. Maybe we should take further discussion to the cite.php discussion page? --Slashme 09:03, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

My knowledge is also fairly limited, but I think it seems fairly simple to implement as well. I'm not seeing any reason to object to this, right? --JayHenry 02:45, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I see this was raised at Meta -- I also copied the request onto mediawiki.org as I think this is where active discussion happens on the template. --JayHenry 00:59, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

My Userpage

This is my userpage. I made it in Internet Explorer and it looks beautiful. However, last night, after downloading Firefox just to use TWINKLE, I happened upon my userpage and it looks horrible. Can anyone help fix it so it looks good on Firefox AND Internet Explorer? Free barnstar to whoever fixes it. If you can fix it, please use my Sandbox and post the entire userpage , fixed in my sandbox. my sandbox Tyler Warren 21:03, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Tyler Warren. You should know that Microsoft's Internet Explorer does not render websites correctly. So, when you say "In Internet Explorer it looks beautiful", you're false: For an internet developer is your userpage horrible! - That, what Mozilla Firefox/Safari or eg. Opera you show, that is right. And nothing else. --194.208.72.24 11:00, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I would say that neither of them is always correct. --Kubanczyk 07:20, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

<renameuserlogpage> / <renameuserlogpagetext>

User rename log seems slightly broken. --VectorPotential^Talk 20:42, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Fixed, see bugzilla:11446 —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:30, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Categories and floating boxes

Have a look at Category:Fires. The Commons sisterlink is floating over the category bits. Any way to fix this? Carcharoth 22:11, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. Adrian M. H. 23:08, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, seriously, thanks for that. Now, no offence, but I meant a permanent fix. That layout only works because of the size of the boxes involved. In some skins and screen sizes that won't work. Stuff shouldn't be floating out over the category pages anyway. Anyone? Carcharoth 23:59, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

How's that? Now someone just has to write a bit more for a category description to fill up some of the whitespace. Anomie 01:56, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Perfect! I'd forgotten about {{clear}}. Thanks. Carcharoth 03:26, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Denial of access to tool.

A strange phenomenon I discovered recently is connected to Nickj's wikification tool known as Can We Link It (information on the tool is available within user space for those interested.)

Although I have been using this tool for a few weeks, I discovered late last month that access to the tool was withdrawn. I suspected that it was downtime-related, and simply decided to wait for it to eventually be restored; however, that never occurred.

This week, I happened to have access to a different computer, and discovered that I could use the tool without any problems. I tried using it from my regular machine again, but no such luck.

Is it possible that access to the tool from my account or the IP address for my regular machine has been throttled? If so, are there any suggestions on how I can get said access back (i.e. local install or on-Wiki access) to the tool? --Aarktica 20:47, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Something is wrong with the TfD section header linking

If you go to Abortion#Health effects, you see that the "{{No_consensus-section}}" template is up for deletion. However, if, when you are at Abortion#Health effects, you click on the link to the TfD discussion (which is in the bolded area of the sentence "See templates for deletion, it links incorrectly. It links to a nonexistent section header at TfD, that is given the name of the article in which the template is used. In this case, the nonexistent section is called Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Abortion, when what it should be linking to is Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:No_consensus-section. Why is this happening? Photouploaded 16:17, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. The TfD template wasn't used correctly; it needs the TfD'd template name as a parameter. — Edokter • Talk • 17:07, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Nice job! Thank you! Photouploaded 17:17, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Editing pages at school vs. home

I am having problems logging into my wikipedia account at my school. My school was recently banned from editing wikipedia for vandilism and I can contribute to wikipedia at school in my free time if I can edit pages, of course. The exact problem is as follows: I can log into my account at school, but I can't edit pages. I get the error message that says that my ip address has been banned from editing. When I am at home, I can edit pages with no problems. Any help?--Μ79_Šp€çíá∫íš†^{tell me about it} —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 23:31, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

What's the IP? It could conceivably be unblocked and reblocked so that it only affects anonymous editors, without interfering with people that have accounts. EVula // talk // ☯ // 01:57, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The very same thing happened to me back in April I think. It's terribly frustrating I know. It happens because the IP address that you are operating from has been used to create a number of vandalising accounts, although obviously not by yourself. All you have to do is request unblocking by the admin which imposed the block and explain that you're account is not operated by a vandal. It may take time, but you should never be blocked due to others' misbehaviour and it'll need sorting out quickly. Good luck ;-) Lra drama 12:46, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

undo.py bot

I undo all user:abcd's today edits.

How to? What is bot command?

undo.py -user:abcd -editdate:20070911 -all

undo.py -user:abcd -editdate:20070911 -edit_time_from:092555 -edit_time_to:233059 -all

undo.py -user:abcd -edit_date_from:20070911 -edit_date_to:20070921 -all

I want a bot like it.

now, undo.py is not exist.

I want to know bot commands for same effect.

HELP ME!! -- WonYong (talk • contribs • count • logs • email) 06:59, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

A bot to revert all the edits of another editor almost certainly wouldn't be approved. (Admins can use rollback on a contributions page to do something similar, however.) Except in cases of obvious high-volume vandalism, why would you want to revert all the contribs of another user? --ais523 16:44, 18 September 2007 (U T C)

Admins can rollback all? user:abcd date:20070301

Admins can all rollback autonomous? -- WonYong (talk • contribs • count • logs • email) 14:12, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Talking of edit counts.....

There seems to be a small discrepancy between the Wannabe Kate tool and the "official" tool that seems to affect mainspace count. It's not down to deleted edits (wrong figure for that) and it also reports a slightly different figure for the number of unique pages. Any ideas? Adrian M. H. 01:29, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe there's a delay in updating. The mainspace difference is 2 for me, and I've made 2 mainspace edits today. - BANG ! 03:21, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

replag on the toolserver's s1 db server (where enwiki is replicated) is currently about 11 hours, which could surely explain the discrepancy unless you can find a specific example where the difference in edit counts can be compensated for by disregarding the last 1/2-1 days' worth of edits. AmiDaniel (talk) 04:44, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, 11 hours between the two would be enough to explain it, if it affects one counter but not the other. Is that what you mean? If the lag affects both counters, then I'm not sure, because I viewed them side by side while comparing their figures with the new counter in preferences. Adrian M. H. 09:05, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

"Wannabe Kate," I believe, simply scrapes Special:Contributions (in other words, it pulls them from Wikipedia's live database) whereas river's tool (not sure why you denote this as the "official" tool) works off the toolserver's replicated database, which is, at times, lagged and incomplete. The benefit of the latter is that it is certainly faster and produces less load for Wikimedia's servers. AmiDaniel (talk) 00:01, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

He probably calls it official because it really does look more official than kate's one, as in as you open it up you are greeted "WIKIMEDIA" "user edit counter" which has a certain aura of authority to it. Well that's my take anyway. Phgao 03:36, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Add to that it proports to be the "original edit counter". Phgao 03:44, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I described it thus primarily to distinguish it from "Wannabe Kate", which I understood was based on the other counter. Not sure if that's right. Adrian M. H. 13:18, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I've done some probing and have discovered the lag on Kate's tool is quite large to make it a very unreliable edit counter as it usually lags by days if not weeks. Interoit's tool is far better when it comes to just scraping your Special:Contributions page. I shall call Interoit's count I. The 'official' count, O listed in your preferences counts all the times you've clicked the edit button, modified a page and then saved it. Therefore whereas I includes moved pages but not deleted pages, O counts all your edits including deleted ones but not your moves. So we have

I + No. edits to deleted pages - No. moves = O. For most people, I've found I > O due to few edits made to pages that eventually get deleted whilst large number of pages being eventually moved. Centy – reply• contribs – 21:26, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Override wikilink text color

I would like to use different colors than the default for my signature, but I can't figure out how. Using CSS or HTML color attributes doesn't seem to over-ride the link coloring. Can I do this? Eleland 16:16, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

The problem you're probably having is that some attributes only apply correctly when within a piped link. For example, [[User:Example|Example]] will apply the (imaginary) style "CSS:here;" to the text example. I use this in my signature to change the color, you can take a look at the code used. I used "font" tags, though, because they use less characters when color is the only change needed. Also, if you want a color change only visible to you, add a specific CSS class (say, class="Elelandsig") as given here and add some code applying to that class to your monobook.css. Nihiltres^(t.l) 16:34, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Yup, that was it. Thank you. < eleland // talkedits > 20:26, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Centralized use of measurements?

Is there a way to use a centralized value for some quantity across many pages? For instance suppose we are talking about the distance to the star Vega which is about 25.1 light-years away and that 20 different pages mention the distance to Vega but half of them use different numbers. Is there a way to use some template to reference a value? I have in mind, for example, something like {{distance-star-Vega|default|unitabbr}} where this template refers to a page that deals exclusively with the distance to the star Vega. On that page is defined a default value (there could be others for example specific groups or paper's measured values) and the unit light-years which the template should be able to abbreviate to lyrs on command. This would have enormous advantages for some topics and for the self-consistency of Wikipedia itself. If there's a true debate on the value of some quantity it would be appropriately delegated to the talk page of the template. Hopefully I'm posting this in the right spot. Please excuse any ignorance on the use of Wikipedia on my part. Jason Quinn 14:33, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Templates can be used for constant numerical values, certainly. See {{pokenum}}, or (better example) Category:Rail transport gauge templates. The degree of customization which you propose is also possible. If you delineate how you want it to work, you could request it at WP:RT (requested templates), and someone will create it for you. Gracenotes^T § 17:02, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. Jason Quinn 18:37, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Quick Question

Is there a way to add a link to the personal links when logged in (where it says my talk, my watchlist, etc.) ? I'd like to add a link to 'my sandbox'. --Dave the Rave (DTR)talk 19:43, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there is. Take a peak at my JS page. (Link on my user page) Adrian M. H. 19:48, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much, that's brilliant! One more thing, I added the JS and it placed the link at the end of the list, is there a way to change where in the llist the link is added?

BTW, thanks for the quick reply. --Dave the Rave (DTR)talk 20:05, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, not, which I think is probably due to the horizontal list format. I tried to change mine using the method for links that are placed in the toolbox/navigation box/etc. but it made no difference. That's what the 'pt-talk' entry at the end of the code was all about. Adrian M. H. 20:11, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

You have to specify nextnode as a dom object, like document.getElementById('pt-mytalk'). See example below. --Splarka (rant) 07:26, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

 addOnloadHook(function() { 
   addPortletLink('p-personal','/wiki/Main_Page','Main','pt-main','The main page','',document.getElementById('pt-mytalk')); 
 });

Ah, I see. Pity that wikibits.js doesn't make that clearer. Thanks, Splarka. Adrian M. H. 22:37, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks very much, that's perfect. --Dave the Rave (DTR)talk 15:01, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I think edit conflicts are broken

I've noticed that when I get an edit conflict of a section of a page, it then wants me to edit the entire page to resolve the conflict. This, of course, on a large busy page, makes it almost impossible to not get an edit conflict the second time, too. So, I (and, I imagine, others) just cut n paste my edit, reload the page, and try editing the section again. This works, but it's clumsy. Can this be fixed in the software? I'm pretty sure in the past it didn't work this way. I also notice, when I'm foolish enough to just try editing the entire page after getting a conflict, that it's very slow to save the page- as in, minutes sometimes. Sometimes my browser gives up before ever getting a response. Friday (talk) 17:31, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I've been annoyed with this as well-- if you're editing a section, then the edit conflict should only show that section -- but I think the problem is, what if the section no longer exists? Or has been re-named? Or something else that makes it very difficult to figure out what to do? But it would be nice if there was some sort of heuristic that gave you the section back when it could, and otherwise gave you the page. Gscshoyru 19:44, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

It's worked this way for as long as I can remember, and I think I can remember a time before we got the "resolve edit conflict" page --Random832 13:51, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

It should at least be smart enough that if the section name and number haven't changed, just give you the section, but it has always worked that way. It just gives you the whole page, which is an engraved invitation to cut and paste the whole page and blow away the other guy's edit. You could file a request at Bugzilla. — Randall Bart Talk 08:06, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Screen/Window Size

Resolved

hello, I have a monitor resolution of 768x1024. Wikipedia is displaying pages with a width of 1024, forcing me to scroll side to side to read an entire page. how do I get Wikipedia, and other pages that do this, to use my screen width, and not whatever the site uses for screen width? ++++ 16:41, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia uses a dynamic layout that works correctly in narrow viewports, so your comment surprises me. The issues that can occur are due to long unbroken lines of text in the edit windows and diffs (such as long URLs) which can force a horizontal scrollbar. Some poorly designed user pages can have the same effect, but regular WP pages should not be affected unless someone has made a technically problematic edit such as a very wide table. Adrian M. H. 16:53, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Works for me, also... Do you see that on all pages or only on some? -- lucasbfr ^talk 21:37, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I see this on all Wikipedia pages, but not on other websites.. actually, I just realized it might have been a script that I was running. I looked through greasemonkey and stylish, and stylish was the problem. I disabled the stylish script (wikipedia.org - grey lady look) and it works perfectly now —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jon joy 1999 (talk • contribs) 02:59, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm Glad to hear that! :) -- lucasbfr ^talk 07:05, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Help with buttons

Hi i need help to get my buttons to wrk again the buttons for internal link and bold text for example doesnt work at all. I wonder is it temporary or is it something wrong?thanks, cant sign this message since that button doesnt work either. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zingostar (talk • contribs) 15:06, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Why not just type the syntax manually? Adrian M. H. 16:55, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia window

Probably another strange question but how do i stop the Wikipedia window from taking priority? Whenever i park this or simply move onto another window, it immediately jumps back to this, I have to go through this numerous times until i can get the other window. Simply south 16:12, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like that is the fault of your browser, Wikipedia isn't giving itself any special priority. Check the settings. Prodego ^talk 20:23, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

The four tildes

Is it me, or has the ~~~~ button vanished from the features list when editing? I went to sign a post, realized the four tildes button wasn't there, and had to type them in rather than pressing the button. Does anyone know where it's gone? Acalamari 22:33, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Fine here. Not that I'm in the habit of using it, though. Adrian M. H. 22:35, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Strange, it's completely vanished from my list. I'm not sure what's going on. Acalamari 22:46, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Which browser are you using? Adrian M. H. 22:48, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Internet Explorer, but the four tildes button has always been there using this browser. In fact, it was there until about 10-15 minutes ago. Then it disappeared. Acalamari 22:50, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

That might be it then. Your description made me think of a thread a little way up entitled "Buttons not working". Apparently, there is a PNG display bug in the MediaWiki software, so that may be the cause of your issue. Adrian M. H. 22:55, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, thanks; it'll probably be fixed soon then. For the moment, I'll just have to remember to type the four tildes in! Thanks! Acalamari 22:59, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it's back now. Thanks again. Acalamari 01:55, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

The PNG display bugs are typically a result of using old versions of Internet Explorer (the Mediawiki software is probably not to blame). Have you upgraded to Internet Explorer 7? —Remember the dot ^(talk) 03:36, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I use Internet Explorer 7. Acalamari 16:25, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Problems with EXIF

This is really a matter to take to bugzilla, but I'd like some feedback before formulating the bug report. Basically, any links from metadata on image files are untraceable at this time. The lack of control over EXIF links detracts from encyclopedia building (see this RFD for an example) This is further complicated as EXIF links on Commons point to here.

There are two related problems above, both of which probably need technical not editorial solutions. The first is the untraceability of EXIFs and the second the potential for conflict between EXIF links and encyclopedic purposes. The following are possible solutions:

A new special page analogous to Special:Whatlinkshere to enable a degree of tracking for EXIF linkage. The fact that the Commons links are interwikis to Wikipedia complicates this somewhat, the Commons version of the page should be useful in its own right.
Giving EXIF links their own namespace. MediaWiki space would not be appropriate (Special:Allmessages would be insanely bloated then...), but giving it a full namespace and putting default values in the SVN trunk would enable all MediaWiki installations to benefit. This could mean SAMSUNG TECHWIN CO., LTD is superseded by something like Exifdata:SAMSUNG TECHWIN CO., LTD and exist as a redirect to Samsung Group on all current-build MW projects. The local MediaWiki:Exif-make-value could then define any appropriate interwiki for that project - such as pointing to Wikipedia from Wikinews. If implemented we could also remove {{R from EXIF}} as redundant.

Do both of the above sound reasonable as feature requests for to put on BZ- and if so should they be done as separate requests? I suspect that it needs clarification before it goes onto that system, but I think this would provide a solution to this issue as opposed to the extant haphazard one.--Nilf anion (talk) 14:47, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, the underlying longer term wishlist stuff I will put on bugzilla later; though further thoughts would be appreciated. For now a working solution to the immediate issues could be to implement a EXIF pseudonamespace - see WP:VPR#EXIF pseudonamespace for that.--Nilf anion (talk) 21:08, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Can't Log In!!

I can't log in because I got an error.

There is no user by the name "<your username>". User names are case sensitive. Please check your spelling, or use the link below to create a new user account.

Will you help me? 24.251.234.86 14:35, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

What is your username? Ryan Postlethwaite 23:55, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

LegoAxiom1007, I belive. Coaster geekperson 04 04:45, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Gah! I get it! You were banned! I am so stupid not finding out. Coaster geekperson 04 04:46, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

'Save and close' button to improve contributor's productivity

Save page reopens the page with saved data, for sure if save fails then the window should not be closed but if it saves perfectly then the page should close.on choosing 'save and close' option. Vjdchauhan 13:01, 29 September 2007 (UTC).

For all but the most minor edits, this could be a bad idea. Sometimes even the "preview" doesn't show you the full result of your edit, so it's a very good idea to look at the page after saving to see that you didn't mess something up. But I guess if you are making a minor edit, just changing a comma or spelling, maybe it might be good to have the option to just save the page, especially if you are paying per byte for your internet! --Slashme 13:40, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Navbox hide

I'm lost, how to make Navbox hide? such as Template:Survivor_contestants ▪◦▪≡ЅiREX≡^Talk 01:29, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

If you mean to ask how to made a navbox with that "hide" button on it, add the class "collapsible" to the table, as at the very beginning of that template. If you mean to ask how to make it collapsed by default, add "collapsible collapsed". Use "collapsible autocollapse" with navboxes to automatically collapse them by default if there are more than 2. Your example also uses Template:Tnavbar-collapsible in the table header, which is for left-justifying the "v d e" links so they don't conflict with the "hide" button. TCC (talk) (contribs) 01:49, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Csernica that did the trick, the template expanded was bit over bearing, thank you again!▪◦▪≡ЅiREX≡^Talk 03:17, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Ref convert

Does anyone know of a script to convert the footnotes at Stuttering to cite.php? Can anyone do it? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:51, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Some of the notes are missing, too; there's a footnote "41" without a corresponding citation in "Notes". Gimmetrow 16:00, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Gimmetrow; I suppose I could go way back in history and find it. I'll wait a few days to see if anyone has a script; otherwise, I'm looking at a chunk of manual work. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:47, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Never mind; I'm going to do it manually now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:18, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about any pre-existing script, but a one-off client-side python or perl script should obviate the need for (much if not all) of the manual change. I'll post a thread on your talk page if you want to work together to try and simplify the work a little bit. dr.ef.tymac 19:30, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Cyde/Ref converter should work. --Derlay 22:21, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

This article has html-coded refs. Gimmetrow 23:30, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

The "undo" in history

When there are multiple vandalisms in a row, is there a way to "undo" all of them at once? I have not been able to figure out how, except by doing them one at a time back to the unvandalized page. Or else go back to the last "good" page and edit that. I have seen edit summaries saying "undo last three edits by..." or something similar. Did the editor just do it by hand and report it that way in the edit summary? Thanks. Regards, --Mattisse 23:31, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

See WP:REVERT for more information on how to revert more than one revision at a time. In addition, many users use semi-automated tools such as TWINKLE to assist them in reverting vandals. Most of the edit summaries you see are from such tools. --Hdt83 ^Chat 23:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I am suspicious of such tools. Is that unwarranted? Are those tools something you have to download on to your browser? I use Firefox and have very happily for years. Would those tools screw anything up? I don't mind doing it by hand if that is the case. Regards, --Mattisse 00:05, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

The javascript tools are installed by adding the relevant code to your monobook.js which is a subpage in your userspace. In terms of security:

No programs are downloaded or installed, so your browser, operating system and documents are safe.
The /monobook.js subpage is automatically protected so that only you or an administrator can edit it, to stop people maliciously adding scripts without your consent.
It is possible to write a malicious script to access another user's account. Therefore, you should (if you understand javascript) read through the script first, see if you trust the author or ask at this page if you are unsure if a script is safe (e.g. TWINKLE that was mentioned previously is generally considered to be quite safe).
If a script does not work properly or causes problems, it can easily be removed by either yourself or an administrator by blanking your monobook.js. Tra (Talk) 00:49, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Use the "(edit)" link on the left column of the diff showing you vandalism. ←Ben^B4 07:29, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Note that that will undo every change after the shown diff, and not just the changes shown. Every diff also has an undo button that will (attempt to) undo only the changes shown, even if the diff consists of multiple edits. Either way, be careful that you don't revert legitimate edits along with the vandalism. Anomie 13:19, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for all the info. It is much appreciated. --Mattisse 16:11, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Difficulty with Template:Navbox

I was wondering if anyone knew why some of the links in Template:Saturday Night Live are exceeding the box's boundaries (besides the obvious fact that there are way too many SNL-related articles). Is it just my computer that is doing that? Does anyone think there is something wrong with Template:Navbox? I've tested different screen resolutions, and only 1152x864 resolution works. 1280x1024, 1024x768, and 800x600 doesn't display properly. Suggestions? Thanks in advance! If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 03:48, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and by "not displaying properly," I mean that the "sketches" section occasionally has links and text that goes outside of the navbox border. If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 03:49, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Seems to have something with quotation marks, which I just removed [5]. As to why, I hope someone else will explain. Duja► 10:35, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

...and, the problem is still visible on films, which have years in brackets along with the wikilink. Duja► 10:37, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! The films are working find on my 1280x1024 resolution, though. Any one else have some ideas? If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 21:42, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

On which browsers are you guys seeing this? --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:46, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Ooh, good point. I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.6 (one update behind). On Internet Explorer 7.5730.11, it appears fine on 1280x1024 resolution. Will try in a few minutes the other resolutions, and probably update to the next version of Firefox. If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 14:15, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay, it works on all resolutions (800x600, 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x1024) on IE7, but with the latest version of Firefox, it only works on 1152x864 and 1280x1024. Does that help? If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 15:11, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Discrepancy in vandalized pages

As you know, Wikipedia takes a very rigid stand against vandalism of the site. However, as I have discovered, two different kinds of vandalism are treated differently.

If a vandalized page is on a namespace that has not existed before, than all mention of the page is removed from the history file and placed in the deletion log. For example, clicking on this fake page of "Little Jill Horner" will result in you not seeing the page, but instead a notice that the page does not exist. You can then click on the deletion log to see that the page has indeed been deleted.

However, if the page is on a namespace that exists as a redirect of another page, and the redirect is vandalized, the page will stay in the history file even after the vandalism is discovered and corrected. An example of this is the redirect page called "Brittany Spears" (redirects to Britney Spears). This redirect page is also a vandalism, but it is in the file and anyone can click on it and view it. Never mind that this page is just as worthless as the Little Jill Horner page. The point is that remains on the Wikipedia server, taking up valuable server and hard-disk space that could better be used for legitimate edits.

If anyone in the technical staff can find a remedy for this problem to ensure that vandalized redirect pages are removed from the history just the same as their non-redirect counterparts, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. - Desmond Hobson 17:24, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Generally speaking, there's no significant performance hit just because a vandalized version of a page exists in the history. Don't worry about performance, though your concern is appreciated. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:28, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Deleted pages remain on the server too, at least for a while, so that a deletion can be undone if an administrator makes a mistake. --ais523 17:39, 18 September 2007 (U T C)

As far as I'm aware, at the current time every contribution remains on the server indefinitely. Even oversighted things remain on the server, they just aren't accessible to people without oversight powers. Of course, this is not guaranteed but it's how things are at the moment. Also, it is easily possible for admins to delete vandalism revisions, we just don't usually bother unless it's libelious or otherwise violates BLP in which case it will be oversighted Nil Einne 18:33, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

But the fact is, is that people can still access the previously undone re-direct. It may give vandals ideas. Plus it makes Wikipedia seem messy. Lra drama 18:42, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I dispute your claim of a relationship between vandals and ideas, but you are correct that Wikipedia is messy. It's less messy if you sit in the audience and just look at what is on the stage. But backstage some clutter is expected due to the nature of the production. (SEWilco 19:27, 18 September 2007 (UTC))

Your idea of deleting "bad" versions is equally messy; it just shifts the mess around, not really cleaning it up (as has been noted, even using oversight on something doesn't actually remove the information from the database). Fact of the matter is, this just isn't a problem. :) EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:31, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Technically deleted contributions are subject to permanent deletion at any point (by the developers), but this usually isn't a route that is frequently taken (obviously :P). --slakr^\ talk / 19:42, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

... which reminds me, I could have sworn that I saw someplace that really old and stale deleted things get weeded out (like a page that has been deleted and has had no undeletions/other activity for over a year), but I might just be imagining things. In any case, both serve as a deterrent to willy-nilly deletion, since there's always a danger that something deleted might not be able to be undeleted. --slakr^\ talk / 19:47, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Willy-nilly deletion is deterred by the fact that we're not allowed to delete willy-nilly (policy is quite clear on that). I'm unaware of any time-derived feature that permanently deletes content from the databases. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:50, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Policy or not, some wrongly-deleted articles sadly never find their way to deletion review; so again, it serves as a deterrent. One thinks twice before hitting delete. I'd argue that that's part of the reason there was an evil backlog (well, bear with me-- I read your thinggy on backlogs and I agree) on images; image undeletion came late as a feature. Before that, people were less likely to delete something unless they were 100% sure it should be deleted. --slakr^\ talk / 20:00, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Before hitting "Delete page" actually. Prodego ^talk 01:15, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

In June 2004, there was a major belch on the server(s) running the 'pedia. This led to a loss of earlier deleted revisions. In December 2003 the database also got cleaned, for reasons I've never been clear on. (See [6] for example). Splash - tk 17:55, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Filter choices

In using my watchlist, and my (and others) contributions lists, among other things, I think that adding 2 lines to the "Namespace" filter choices would be most helpful:

All pages (no talk)
All talk pages (only)

(If anyone can think of a better way to phrase them, that would be welcome : )

There are times when it would be helpful to just view an editor's talk page edits, and sometimes, to just view an editor's edits that aren't talk edits. - jc37 08:15, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

A filter that would combine results from the 1st, 3rd, etc. options in the list, to show all non-talk edits from all namespaces? Yes, I can see how that might be useful, but it doesn't take much to add up the numbers from an edit counter (the two best are the River tool and Wannabe Kate, though the River tool is always out of date). There is a JS script that allows you to right-click any user name (or user page, can't remember which) and view an edit count result for that user. Adrian M. H. 12:11, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

It's not for counting edits, but viewing the edits as a clickable list. - jc37 20:19, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

If all that you want is links, then I fail to see what is so bad about the current filtering options. You can only click one link at a time, so it matters not a jot whether the displayed list is all non-talk edits or just one namespace. The only advantage in your request is the ability to judge quantity because it does not improve one's chances of finding specific entries or types of entry. Adrian M. H. 20:38, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I would find it helpful. There are something like 9 different namespaces (and 9 talk namespaces). When looking at my watchlist (for example) it would be much easier to look at all talk namespaces to see if any talk page discussions have continued. It also helps when going through someone's contributions list to see what what discussions they are or have been involved in. (Which is very useful when trying to track a multi talk page discussion. There have been discussions which have wound through template talk, category talk, image talk, several Wikipedia talk pages, and many user talk pages. And that's just a single incidence.)

On the converse, it would be useful to see what edits a user may have made, without the distraction of a myriad of talk pace edits. Tracking vandalism is just one application. It also would help when trying to undo a slew of POV edits from a user. And for my watchlist, it would make it much easier to check watched pages (such as articles, categories, templates, Wikipedia policy pages, etc), without the distraction of a myriad of talk page discussions.

One typically only views so many edit instances on a single page. This would also aid in page by page viewing of edits (such as for the applications above, for example). Etc.

Hope this helps clarify. - jc37 21:05, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Now listed as bugzilla 11499. - jc37 04:26, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

CommonSettings.php

Browsing through http://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/ I found CommonSettings.php.

I've installed MediaWiki 1.11 on WAMP, Windows XP Home Edition, and am planning to add several more installations.

How would I get CommonSettings.php to work and where would I add it in the directory so all MediaWiki installations have the same extensions (Makesysop, Makebot, Checkuser, Wikihiero, Renameuser, Deletedcontributions)??

I don't want to have to add the extension to each individual wiki, but use the CommonSettings.php.

How would I do this?? Thanks, --Solumeiras ^talk 11:33, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I also plan to add mw:Extension:Duplicator, but for certain wikis, not all of them on my wiki-farm when I get it running. --Solumeiras ^talk 11:35, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

This question is better asked over at mediawiki: Mediawiki:Project:Support_desk Grymwulf 04:59, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Diff pages and whitespace

Page moves don't show up in watch list?

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PNG transparency Javascript "fix" option?

User Page Assistance

Section adding feature

Edit Button Overlap?

Web hosting for MediaWiki

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Image:Locator Dot.svg

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Login Problem with Microsft Internet Explorer (MSFT IE) - HELP!

auto-filled formulas?

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Undo

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Detect a protected page

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Loads of images (particularly flag images) not showing

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Spy cookies from Wikia

MediaWiki:Renameuserlogentry

The Spam filter as a barrier to reporting copyvios

Articles with one or more images not showing

Captchas and blind people

Image absence

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Just wait?

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Special:Redirects is acting funny

Special:Suffixindex

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Images not appearing on Wikipedia

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Chinese template

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My Userpage