Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Village pumps: Policy • Technical • Proposals (persistent) • Assistance • Miscellaneous

Skip to: Table of contents | First discussion | Bottom of page

Village pump technical post

The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bugs and feature requests should be made at the BugZilla because there is no guarantee developers will read this page. Problems with user scripts should not be reported here, but rather to their developers (unless the bug needs immediate attention).

Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk.

Shortcuts: WP:VPT WP:VP/T

edit Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) (see also: Wikipedia:Technical FAQ)

Click "[show]" to the right of each point to see more details.

If something looks wrong, purge the server's cache, then bypass your browser's cache.
This tends to solve most issues, including improper display of images, user-preferences not loading, and old versions of pages being shown.

No, we will not use Javascript to set focus on the search box
This would interfere with usability, accessibility, keyboard navigation and standard forms. See b1864. There is an `accesskey` property on it (default to `accesskey="f"` in English), and for logged in users there is a gadget available in your preferences.

Wikipedia often runs very slowly – either live with it, or buy us a new server.
Intermittent database lags can make new articles take some minutes to appear, and cause the watchlist, contributions, and page history/old views sometimes not show the very latest changes. The search index is often out of date, sometimes taking weeks before it's updated. Because of that, recent changes are not immediately reflected on the search.

No, we will not add a spell-checker, or spell-checking bot.
Spell checking has been disabled on the Wikipedia search engine for performance reasons, and also because it is impossible to prevent it 'fixing' legitimate errors (see Teh). You can use search engines like Google to search Wikipedia and correct mistakes in searches: include "site:en.wikipedia.org" with your searches.

If you have problems making your fancy signature work, check Wikipedia:How to fix your signature.

If you changed to another skin and cannot change back, use this link.
Alternatively, you can press Tab until the "Save" button is highlighted, and press Enter. Using Mozilla Firefox also seems to solve the problem.

If an image thumbnail is not showing, try purging its image description page.

If the image is from Wikimedia Commons, you might have to purge there too. If it doesn't work, try again before doing anything else. Some ad blockers, proxies, or firewalls block URLs containing /ad/ or ending in common executable suffixes. This can cause some images or articles to not appear. Also, it's surprisingly common for people to accidentally block the image server (upload.wikimedia.org) on Firefox.

If the section edit links are being pushed down by floated images, check Wikipedia:How to fix bunched-up edit links.

Problems loading the edit page:
If you are asked to download a file (`index.php`) when trying to edit, or your browser launches an image editor when trying to edit, disable "Use external editor" on your MediaWiki user preferences. On the most recent version of MediaWiki (as of 21-May-2007), this is found under the "Editing" tab.

Some ISPs use transparent proxies which cause problems logging in.
If you find that you are automatically logged out just after you have logged in, and removing all your Wikipedia cookies does not fix the issue, try using the secure server (much slower) to bypass the proxy. This happens most often with some satellite ISPs (particularly HughesNet/DirecWay/DirecPC).

Numbers listed in parentheses in the "Recent changes" section and in your watchlist are the number of added or removed bytes.

Questions and suggestions related to www.wikipedia.org portal should go to Meta.

Please sign and date your post (by typing ~~~~ or clicking the signature icon in the edit toolbar). Please add new topics to the bottom of this page.

« Older discussions | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40

1 m:WikiMiniAtlas disabled?
2 What happened to the fraction "buttons"?
3 Watchlist troubles
4 Page move bug
5 Tool for finding diffs
6 Nie tłomačtie metek dla kratek do vypełniania na ięzyk narodovy
- 6.1 Problem description
- 6.2 Recommendation
- 6.3 Discussion
7 Tooltip mania
8 Sections generated by templates, and the section "edit" link
- 8.1 Section
9 Format issue
10 GeoHack
11 Recursive page moves (rev:33565) is a great tool for vandals
12 Wikipedia logo font
13 Unified watchlist
14 i have an illegal hacker block
15 Strange problem: I'm 'half-blocked'
16 Tring to find <.math.> coding error
17 Tools: link target
18 ANNOYING PROBLEM WITH EDITING
19 Baseball Card Adventure
20 Image:King JesusII.jpg
21 Watchlist auto-refreshing...
22 RfA counter
23 Can you collapse/hide content other than tables?
24 Article / editor intersection
25 one to any mathematical formula
26 Text lost in simple edit
27 How to get a random non-article page?
28 Template for edit-mode-only in dab pages
29 Redirect
30 MediaWiki:Linkstoimage
31 Chicago

[edit] m:WikiMiniAtlas disabled?

Resolved.

It looks like the m:WikiMiniAtlas has been disabled or is otherwise broken in the English Wikipedia. It no longer appears on any coordinate pages at all. There's no mention of its removal on the {{coord}} template talk page, the m:WikiMiniAtlas page, or the wiki project. Anyone know what's up? There's also a discussion on this at the help desk -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 22:20, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this change to MediaWiki:Common.js [1]. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 22:33, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Good catch! I didn't even think to look there! After looking at the talk page, it might well have this this change -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 22:46, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

It is the same change— we are just looking at it differently. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 22:53, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

No, they are different diffs, but I'll move it off of the secure server. -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 22:59, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I really don't think either of those changes should be causing the problem: mine is to a completely unrelated part of the code, while Brion's shouldn't have any effect unless you're using the secure server. (And no, the globe icon doesn't appear on the secure server, either.) Besides, I think we can usually assume Brion knows what he's doing. :-) The problem might be in m:MediaWiki:Wikiminiatlas.js too, although that page doesn't seem to have changed since April. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:31, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I would guess that it may be related to the domain change of the toolserver, but I really have no idea. --- RockMFR 00:17, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Fixed it at least for the URL form I see at San Francisco. There might be others. --brion (talk) 00:28, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Gee, one week of vacation and suddenly something exciting is happening. Thanks for adding the new toolserver.org URL. That should be it. --Dschwen 16:46, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Is this related to the fact that suddenly all coordinate URL's are now rendering as gibberish in my browser (Firefox)? Nibios (talk) 15:13, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Same thing on another machine using IE 7. Nibios (talk) 15:19, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What happened to the fraction "buttons"?

What happened to the fraction "buttons" (1/2, 1/3, 2/3, etc.) below the article text edit window? They were very handy to insert the symbols into an article. Should I take their removal as a Wikipedia WP:MOS "rule" they should not be used in articles? — X96lee15 (talk) 16:58, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the history for MediaWiki:Edittools, "Please don't use Unicode superscripts, subscripts, and fractions in article text - it creates accessibility problems. Use the and tags instead, or TeX for formulas." I don't see anything in Wikipedia:Accessibility on this, so I'm not sure what the problem is. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 17:12, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

And by doing this the editor has made it impossible to enter for example fractions of an inch, and suggests installing software (i.e. :LaTeX) to allow you to continue to edit. So much for the "Encylopedia Anybody Can Edit" - well anybody if they are willing and able to install software items on their computer and edit off line. The arrogance of some users is amazing.Nigel Ish (talk) 17:43, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

With superscript and subscript one can type 11/2" and get 1¹/₂", but it is far from ideal - too many clicks. DuncanHill (talk) 17:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

No... LaTeX is software installed here, on Wikipedia. You can use it to insert formula using the <math> tags. See WP:MATH. — Edokter • Talk • 17:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

So typing 1<math>\frac{1}{2}</math>" gives 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ ", which looks crap. DuncanHill (talk) 18:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Or try this 1<math>\tfrac{1}{2}</math> which gives 1 $\tfrac{1}{2}$ ", which also looks crap. DuncanHill (talk) 18:04, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I strongly agree. Pages like 1959 Ryder Cup would look terrible without the ½ character. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:20, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

They have been restored - ½⅓⅔¼¾⅛⅜⅝⅞woohoo! Thank you. DuncanHill (talk) 18:33, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

That was me, because there is clearly no consensus for their removal. This needs more discussion at WT:MOS or somewhere. Happy‑melon 18:35, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, thank you very much!!! — X96lee15 (talk) 19:00, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

What's wrong with 1¹⁄₂″ ? --Random832 (contribs) 20:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Looks ugly (the 2 goes below the line), and where did you find out how to type it? DuncanHill (talk) 20:19, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

{{frac}}. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:30, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, but how did you find it? DuncanHill (talk) 20:33, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

That is a very good question. We have a lot of good templates, but the organization stinks. If I have a job that needs a template I've never used before, I use Special:PrefixIndex and look in template space for a logical name— this really works a lot of times. Other times, I use a template because I saw it used somewhere else. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, the template documentation page itself for {{frac}} shows problems in my brower (IE7), with truncated text. I stopped using frac for simple fractions (like ½) long ago for this reason. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Random832 asks, "What's wrong with 1¹⁄₂?″ The apparent grounds for rremoving the fraction "buttons" is "Please don't use Unicode superscripts, subscripts, and fractions in article text - it creates accessibility problems". 1½ (Unicode) is a lot more accessible than 1¹⁄₂ (using the frac template) because:

Decent screen reader programs can handle Unicode, which has been the dominant character encoding since about a year after the launch of Windows XP.
+¹⁄₂ (using the frac template) generates the following HTML (which I got by using my browser's "View source" facility on this page):

<s style="display:none">+</s>1<big>⁄</big>2

which produces an adequate visual representation of the fraction ½ but which no screen reader software is ever likely to interpret as a fraction. Philcha (talk) 21:17, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't be so sure about that, though of course real evidence can only be obtained by testing various screen readers, which I haven't done. Still, stripping away the HTML markup, that boils down to "+1⁄2", where the "⁄" is a Unicode fraction slash. I seems at least reasonable that a screen reader should read that as "one half", or at least "one slash two". Certainly it's less ambiguous that just plain "1/2" using an ordinary slash. (Oh, and on the other hand, "¼", "½" and "¾" are long-established ISO Latin 1 characters, so it seems at least misleading, even if technically correct, to label them "Unicode fractions".) —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:39, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

The only screen reader I am slightly familiar with is JAWS, and it seems quite popular. Checking their support page,[2] it supports all of the Unicode characters, including fractions. Not an exhaustive study. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 23:55, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

½, ¼, and ¾ work if you don't want to scroll down for those three. --NE2 00:08, 3 June 2008 (UTC) (Ampersands escaped to allow the entities to display as intended. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:44, 3 June 2008 (UTC))

Sorry to be the cause of so much trouble...the fractions are fine really, and I shouldn't have removed them. My problem is with the Unicode superscript characters.

HTML superscript: E=mc²

Unicode superscript: E=mc²

As you can see the HTML superscript is much easier to read. Also, if you're trying to search for a number in a superscript, you can't if the Unicode superscript character was used unless you copy-and-paste it into the search box. Searching is easier if the tag is used instead because you can search for "2" instead of "²". —Remember the dot ^(talk) 00:51, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes it's true that JAWS, the screen reader I use, supports Unicode characters, and has done so for a while now. The problem is that the pronunciation for almost all unicode characters outside Latin 1 and the users Windows code page is undefined because of memory limitations. The only Unicode characters that have defined pronunciations by default are some letters of the Arabic alphabet and arrow symbols. I use the default settings and only ½, ¼, and ¾ speak properly for me with JAWS 8 - not the most recent version but IMO a representative sample. Graham87 09:52, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Superscript 1, 2, and 3 are in ISO Latin-1 (8859-1) and available as ¹ ² ³. In Firefox I find expressions like E=mc² or "g = 9.8 m/s²" more legible when they are used; HTML superscripts come out too large and cause the line spacing to be irregular. And all the more so when I use lynx, which I sometimes do. --207.176.159.90 (talk) 22:26, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Watchlist troubles

Has anyone else been having problems with their watchlist in the last day or two? Recently, sometimes when I've refreshed my watchlist, my browser locks up completely and crashes: this happened to me several times yesterday, and just once now. Is this a problem with me, or are other people having this? It only seems to be locking up when refreshing my watchlist. Thanks. Acalamari 16:24, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

What browser/operating system are you using? Algebraist 17:06, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Internet Explorer 7. Acalamari 17:10, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

You might check out the FAQ section at http://www.ie7.com

. — CharlotteWebb 17:21, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Heh, well, I already do have Firefox, but it simply looks terrible on my monitor, and therefore, I don't use it. I'm actually confused by the watchlist crashing, as it's never happened before until yesterday: I'm trying to work out what's going on. Acalamari 17:27, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

More importantly, how many pages do you have watch-listed, and what settings to you have in the "Watchlist" section of Special:Preferences. — CharlotteWebb 17:37, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

151 pages, and none of the settings in preferences have been ticked. Acalamari 17:47, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

My suggestion: use Firefox, then pick a theme that looks better on your monitor. MyFireFox looks virtually identical to IE7, so it'll look the same but resolve the crashing issues. Pyrospirit (talk · contribs) 17:54, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

No thanks: I'd rather find out what the problem is rather than just change browsers. After all, the problem may not be limited to me, and it's better to find out what's wrong. Acalamari 18:05, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I was referring more to the numbers for maximum days and edits. My watchlist is over 9,000 but I have it set to only go back one day, by default, so it never crashes. Also I don't use IE. How much does it load before crashing, or can you tell? Also if you have any kind of javascripts or "gadgets" that affect the appearance of the watchlist (the "(unwatch)" button comes to mind) IE's ability to handle them might be suspect. — CharlotteWebb 17:59, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't load anything: the entire screen just goes white, and I'm told that it's "not responding". In addition, I don't use any gadgets that affect editing or the watchlist, so they're not the problem either. Acalamari 18:05, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I should note, however, that it doesn't crash every time I refresh my watchlist: only occasionally, but frequently enough that it's extremely annoying getting logged out and having to log back in again. Acalamari 18:09, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Do you see an error message that looks like this or something else? If something else, what exactly does it say? --brion (talk) 18:13, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

No, I can log in perfectly. It's just that, when updating the watchlist sometimes, it doesn't open anything: the browser locks up, and most of the screen goes white, and the bar at the top of the screen says that it's "not responding". After that, I have to use "control, alt, delete" to exit the browser. Acalamari 18:19, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I've actually had this happen in IE when attempting to refresh WP:AN or WP:ANI. My solution was to simply click on "Project page" at the top of the page, next to "discussion". In essence, it's what you'd click to get from the talk page to the project page; the fact that you're already at the project page is immaterial, as the browser treats it as a new request and a new page. This works for the watchlist as well, except that you click "special page" to reload. UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 17:20, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Page move bug

Screenshot of move confirmation page

While moving Talk:University of Missouri–Columbia to Talk:University of Missouri for a requested move, I checked the button to automatically move subpages. The subpages were moved to the User: namespace instead of the Talk: namespace. Please see the above screenshot. --B (talk) 18:23, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Fixed about half an hour ago. rev:35870. Mr.Z-man 18:30, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, it was a maximum of 25 minutes ago ... it happened at 14:05 eastern / 18:05 GMT. --B (talk) 18:32, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I installed the fix at 11:05 Pacific time, you got in just under the wire. :) --brion (talk) 19:14, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

The issue I discussed at #Subpage moves appears to be resolved as well. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 19:22, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Anyone know if this bug is still outstanding? Should someone knock at bugzilla? Happy‑melon 21:07, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

bug 14356, WONTFIX. It's not a bug, it's completely intended. The feature would be nonfunctional if the throttle applied per page rather than per action. Restricting the action to sysop only would be the appropriate thing to do here if it's a problem. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:10, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Er, did anyone think about writing it such that the throttle is updated after the page moves are done? My thoughts were that if you've got at least one pagemove left in your allowance you're allowed to move the page, but then it adds however many pages to your count so the next time you try and move something it finds you're way over. Basically, you'll always be allowed to move all the subpages, but in many cases that will put you over the throttle limit so you can't move anything else. Is there a reason that wasnt' considered in the bug thread? Happy‑melon 10:17, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Why should that be treated differently, though? I explained my thoughts on the purpose of throttles in the commit message for r35897: "Rate limits should be applied per user action, not based on how large the effect of each action is. Note that moving a page with its talk page only counts as one move for rate limits; this is the same principle. The only point of rate limits (as far as I can think of) is to prevent unauthorized automated scripts from creating a mess in 30 seconds that it will take 10 hours to clean up by hand. Since a move with subpages is no harder to clean up (i.e., revert) than a move without subpages, they should count the same for rate limits." —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, is there a button to delete the hundreds of redirects left behind by page-move vandalism in a single click, too? —Cryptic 21:31, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Admittedly, no, not yet, as I mentioned in that revision comment. It might be a good idea to add an additional permission for this, and restrict it to only sysops on enwiki for the time being. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 13:41, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tool for finding diffs

Are there any tools for finding the diff URL for a certain piece of text? It's really a lot of work to search through the history manually if there are many edits.

(And on a tangent, I wish we could just overhaul the entire talk page system into something more like a web forum - with full wikisyntax and communal-editable spaces in each thread, of course - but with thread formatting, usernames, timestamps, meta-links, archiving, and so on taken care of automatically.) — Omegatron (talk) 02:54, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Are you looking for WikiBlame?-gadfium 06:27, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

That looks like a really cool tool. Bookmarked! Regarding improvements to the talk page, it will most likely not happen because the whole point of a wiki is to be as flexible as possible, so it's how it is right now. Gary King (talk) 07:07, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually, improvements to the talk page interface are in the works - see mw:Extension:LiquidThreads. Graham87 09:06, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

In the works does not guarantee implementation, however. It hasn't been touched for four months. Also, I'm sure there will be some disagreements over whether it should be implemented or not. Gary King (talk) 17:09, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I've used WikiBlame. It's not that useful for this kind of thing. The user has made more than 1000 edits to the talk page, and it's about 10x as much work to find each individual diff and copy and paste it. I have the username and timestamp, but not the URL. — Omegatron (talk) 00:50, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Can the URL be generated directly from the timestamp of the comment? — Omegatron (talk) 00:51, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes! There is a tool, different from Wikiblame called wpW5. User:Franamax developed it. Look on his userpage, and ask him and he'll email you a copy. -- penubag (talk) 01:06, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

This is an external software tool? For what operating system? — Omegatron (talk) 01:27, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's an external tool exclusively for Windows, unless you know of another operating system that can read .exe's. It is really useful and I recommend it. -- penubag (talk) 01:45, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm in Linux, though I might be able to run it with WINE. Is it kind of the same functionality as WikiBlame, though? — Omegatron (talk) 01:48, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I haven't used wikiblame yet but what wpW5 does is searche for when a diff was first inputed and tells you who and when it happened. For example, I tell the tool to look on the article, Dog and then I input a sting of text from the article (or was) that I want the tool to find when it first appeared. It then tells me User:Example wrote that sentence on this date. -- penubag (talk) 01:54, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what WikiBlame does, though the interface is kind of confusing. This tool goes through the edit history diff by diff to find it?

Does anyone know if there's a way to generate diffs directly from datestamps? It seems the diff URL is just a sequential number for every single edit on any page. — Omegatron (talk) 01:57, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

You can go to the action=history of the page and use the &offset parameter (which takes a timestamp of the format &offset=yyyymmddhhmmss) ... for example, if you know the timestamp of an edit made to the Main Page was "15:34, 20 March 2008" you could find the diff thusly: title=Main_Page&action=history&dir=prev&limit=1&offset=20080320153400. --Splarka (rant) 07:16, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah, that's helpful. Could probably write a javascript for that.

I was originally digging through the talk page's history, but discovered that it was easier to go to the user's contributions, list 500, and then Ctrl-F search for the time of the edit in question. — Omegatron (talk) 17:16, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Nie tłomačtie metek dla kratek do vypełniania na ięzyk narodovy

[edit] Problem description

Preferring a language different from English causes the labels of text input controls to be translated, which in turn causes the user thus solicited to fill the fields in the preferred language. As a result, the information entered there is unavailable to users whose preferred language is different, which disrupts the collaborative character of Wikipedia.

[edit] Recommendation

Please make these labels an exemption from localisation. See my talk page for an extensive discussion of the subject.

--Yecril (talk) 16:17, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

That would make it very difficult to log in and work with a site whose primary language is not one you speak, so that's not a good idea. --brion (talk) 00:10, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Yecril's position is that, because the input fields for edit comments and section headers (see above) is in the user's localized language, he is obligated to enter that information in his language. Hence, he has insisted on going around making edits with comments in Polish, and adding Talk sections (like this) with headers in Polish, despite the fact that he is obviously capable of writing in English.

To me, this obstinate behavior defies common sense (and common courtesy) on an English-language wiki.

However, as far as the UI is concerned, it does seem like a reasonable (if minor) improvement to label input fields with the site's language if a response in the site's language is expected—if the user knows enough English to enter an English edit comment, they should know enough English to understand "Edit summary". (How is the user supposed to "work" on the site otherwise?) Other UI elements that are read-only should of course be localized.

—Steven G. Johnson (talk) 01:44, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

All in all, does this request apply to Wikipedia or to Wikimedia or to MediaWiki? I am not good at discerning the layers involved. I would like to file a feature request and I am not sure where to do it. --Yecril (talk) 11:19, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

MediaWiki. The proper place to request the change is Bugzilla. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 13:44, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki link, vandalism cleanup, style & layout comments and questions, etc etc. --brion (talk) 16:28, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tooltip mania

Is anyone else finding the tooltips with every wikilink excessive and annoying, or am I the only conservative fool? Whereever I'm placing the cursor a tooltip is blocking the text I'm trying to read. Is there a way to shut them off? Arman ^(Talk) 07:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if you're the only one, but I find them quite useful. OTOH, I have a script that makes the tooltip on redirects rather more useful (e.g. it tells me WP:DIE points to Wikipedia:No personal attacks). Anomie ⚔ 10:51, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sections generated by templates, and the section "edit" link

Can anyone tell me why User:Pharos/Sandbox doesn't have a section "edit" link, and how I can fix it so that it does have one? Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 15:53, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

There are no sections; see Help:Section. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 15:59, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Is there any way to fix it so there are sections?--Pharos (talk) 16:02, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

You create sections by using the "=" character, thus "==== Section ====" gives

[edit] Section

I'm not sure how this would work in your template. You can add an edit-like template with {{edit}}. What are you trying to do? --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 16:22, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Well if a "section edit" link did appear, it would point to a section of the transcluded page (which in this case doesn't exist unless the parameter is filled in). There isn't any way to have a "section edit" link on a template properly link to a section of the page where the template is being used, unless you spoof the edit link and add an extra parameter for the section number (something like /index.php?title={{FULLPAGENAME}}&action=edit&section={{{2}}}, the last part being necessary because there's no way for a template to know how many times it has been used on a page, or how many sections are above it) if that's what you meant. — CharlotteWebb 16:30, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Is there any way to specify the section name rather than the section number?--Pharos (talk) 17:53, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I am trying to make a template that will create a new section if a certain variables are inputted, but that will create nothing if other variables are inputted. The name of the new section, if it is created, would be based on the inputted variable. I hope this makes sense. Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 16:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)--Pharos (talk) 16:37, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I think this has to do with the (new) preprocessor. meta:Migration to the new preprocessor has more. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:05, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

The reason there is no link is because you are using <h2>. Soxred 93 17:32, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Nope. It's just folks playing in my sandbox (which I'm totally cool with).--Pharos (talk) 17:56, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, I've given up on the first idea. Is there any way to create a new section if certain variables are inputted, but that create nothing if other variables are inputted (supposing that the code was on the page itself, not a template)? So far, this seems to be impossible too.--Pharos (talk) 02:28, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Format issue

The article on MARK STEYN display improperly but I cannot understand why that is. The "AWARD" section should follow that about the Canadian Human Rights. It seems correct in the edit window but, close the edit, and the article page shows the two sections running together. --Interactbiz (Norm, Vancouver Canada) (talk) 20:05, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. See Wikipedia:FAQ/Editing#Why does part of an article not appear, although it's there in the edit screen?. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk - 20:34, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GeoHack

GeoHack isn't working. That is, if you click the latitude and longitude at the upper right corner of Venice for instance, it shows a page of garbage instead of links to maps. The same problem occurs with other links to GeoHack such as The Bronx and Athens, and on both Flock and Explorer browsers. Art LaPella (talk) 22:03, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Problem also occurs in FireFox 2.0.0.14 WinXp. Algebraist 22:07, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Something is screwed up at Template:GeoTemplate. I reverted to an old revision and it's working now... still looking into what caused it. --- RockMFR 02:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

That was bizarre. There was nothing wrong at the template, but effectively null editing it fixed the issue. Whatever. --- RockMFR 02:42, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Recursive page moves (rev:33565) is a great tool for vandals

A recent wiki enhancement, rev:33565, allows autoconfirmed users to move not only a page, but every subpage under it. Not surprisingly, this has become a fantastic tool for vandals like Fuzzmetlacker (talk • contribs • logs) and AV-THE-3RD (talk • contribs • logs) and Matt the barber (talk • contribs • logs). I imagine we could recursively revert the moves (although I haven't tried recursive move-over-redirect) but there is no way to recursively delete the leftover redirects. Luckily, today's attacks stopped (WP:ANI#User:Fuzzmetlacker) but zillions of other pages - mostly user talk pages - are perfect vandal targets and just a few recursive moves take a very long time to completely undo. A few ideas:

Turn off the feature entirely here.
Allow only administrators to use the feature.
Allow only bureaucrats to use the feature (it is most useful for renaming users and all of their subpages).
Implement recursive deletes.

Any other ideas? Opinions? I personally vote for 2 or even 3. I've never had a need for recursive moves. 4 - which isn't exclusive to the rest - has some appeal to me for vanishing users, etc. Hopefully we can expedite this to the developer folks before a full scale move war breaks out. (BTW, feel free to move this to a more appropriate venue like WP:VPP). —Wknight94 (talk) 23:17, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I would agree with restricting it. The code is already built into the user renaming extension, bureaucrats have had that ability for a while. But besides renaming users, there really aren't a whole lot of uses for it here as we don't use subpages too heavily (I'm sure its great on Wikibooks though). Brion is pretty adamant about not allowing the automatic suppression of redirect on page moves through the normal interface (admins and bots already have the right to do so, but it can only be done though the editing API, which isn't enabled here yet) so I doubt automatic deletion of the redirects, which is basically the same thing but less efficient, will be allowed. Due to the limited usage, I would support limiting it to admins though. Mr.Z-man 23:25, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree with restricting it only to admins+. It does work over redirect (when I did it for PhilKnight). Except today most admins deleted the main talk page first so there was no way to use the feature. When all the admins get used to the feature though all that will be left is deleting and/or protecting. Now only if d-batch and p-batch worked when looking at someone's contributions. --ÐeadΣyeДrrow (Talk - Contribs) 01:41, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Per the devs (Werdna), it's reatelimited to the same ammount as for normal moves. _→AzaToth 23:54, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

It's ratelimited to the same number of actions per minute as normal moves. I.e., a vandal can only move, what is it? Six top-level pages plus however many hundreds of subpages they have per minute. This is an exceedingly poorly thought-out feature that's imposing hours of work for administrators to clean up one click by a vandal, whose legitimate uses are not remotely frequent enough to justify it. —Cryptic 00:52, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Werdna told me that each page was counted, so an autoconfirmed can move say one top page, and five subpages per limit. _→AzaToth 01:10, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Inspection of the contributions of the vandals already linked above, or the comments of the developer who actually programmed this misfeature, is enough to show that Werdna, politely, has no idea what he's talking about. —Cryptic 03:56, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Werdna did make the change exactly as he said, but I reverted it, agreeing with Brion that it didn't make sense. It would have basically made the feature non-functional for non-sysops/bots/bureaucrats on all wikis; if that were desired, it would be best done through a separate permission. Apparently Werdna didn't notice that his commit had been reverted. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:00, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Is that new? One of the vandals I mentioned above did 100 page moves from 19:25 to 19:26 today. I alone spent the better part of a half-hour reverting what it took the three of them about four minutes to do - and they were being merciful in stopping. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:22, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Same here, precious time that I could have been using better. I mean I understand the good it can do, but I think the possibility of abuse and use by vandals far outweighs the positives. I say make available to admins+. Tiptoety ^talk 02:11, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

How about an alternate possibility? Is it possible to simply prevent non-admins from moving user-space pages not belonging to them? That would get rid of a lot of these shock value moves. --B (talk) 04:11, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm absolutely in favor of that, B. There is no reason for any user other than an admin to be moving someone else's userpage or its subpages. NawlinWiki (talk) 04:14, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

But what if someone finds someone else's abandoned sandbox page (via Google or whatnot) and wants to move it into article space? Rare yes, but could happen. Besides, then the vandals would go elsewhere and recursively move WT:TV-NC, etc. The problematic issue is still recursive moves in general. —Wknight94 (talk) 04:26, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree that recursive moves should also be limited. But I think the need to move someone else's user page is rare enough that it shouldn't be a problem to ask an admin to do it. NawlinWiki (talk) 04:51, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I can go along with that - as a separate issue. —Wknight94 (talk) 05:00, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I just spent the last hour or so move-protecting some of the bigger targets, so hopefully any vandal moves are limited to just a few hundred subpages at a time. *rolls eyes* --- RockMFR 05:18, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I've written a program to find a list of pages outside the article namespace which have 10 or more subpages, and it reckons there's about 8,000. If this vandal knew what he was doing he could have caused serious damage by moving User:UBX (3984 subpages and not protected until a few minutes ago). We need to either restrict the use of this tool or get an adminbot to move protect thousands of pages. Hut 8.5 10:43, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, there was a bug in the program. The actual figure of pages with more than 10 subpages is nearly 12000. Hut 8.5 12:13, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

From looking at the recent autoconfirmed reform, it looks like the devs like polls, if only because it's easy to see how widely supported/attended they were. Is it time to adjourn to WP:VPP with a strawpoll along the lines of "the recursive pagemove feature should be restricted to administrators. Support/oppose"?? Happy‑melon 13:27, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm all for it. Unless you think the devs would be impressed with the damage that's already been done and the potential for more. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:25, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

What would happen, performance wise, if an admin moved all the ~150000 subpages of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion? --- RockMFR 17:22, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

The feature is limited to 100 subpages. Though, I'm not sure if that's just for non-admins or for everyone. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:23, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Then test it to find out :) _→AzaToth 23:22, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good to me :D --- RockMFR 00:05, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

The default limit of 100 pages is for 1) performance, 2) log spam. It applies to admins as much as anyone. In the future, this feature might be refined to do all the operations in a single query, and/or some method of dealing with the huge number of log entries (bot flagging?) might be used. In this case the default limit could be greatly raised. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:00, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

If anyone is still wondering recursive is limited to 100 page moves for admins. 1 for the mainpage 99 for subpages. Just take a look at my contribs. My apologies to the server and any patrollers. --ÐeadΣyeДrrow (Talk - Contribs) 01:05, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

In r36038 I added a new right that can be used to restrict moving subpages. It seems very sensible to disable subpage moving for the English Wikipedia at least, maybe for all Wikipedias. I wrote the feature for Wikibooks. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:00, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

(Incidentally, "recursive move" is a fairly silly name for it, since there's nothing recursive about the process. "Moving with subpages" is the name used in the software and makes considerably more sense. You wouldn't call mving a directory "recursive" because it happens to move all subdirectories as well, would you? Things like cp -r actually do recursively traverse the directory tree and so deserve the name. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:03, 8 June 2008 (UTC))

Thanks Simetrical. Let's bounce this back over to WP:VPR and get a consensus. All rise and adjourn to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Restrict the "move subpages" feature to admins :D. Happy‑melon 19:56, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

There are a few general possibilities for page move stuff which should be considered. --brion (talk) 17:01, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Such as? We're all ears (not literally of course, it would make typing near-impossible :D). Happy‑melon 17:20, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, for the moment the subpage moves are restricted to sysops.

As a general issue, I'd consider a nice queuing system for relatively disruptive actions such as page moves, where users who aren't quite trusted to do everything immediately can initiate a delayed action, which can be reviewed and canceled by other users before it goes through. (Something like this has been kicking around as an idea for deletion for years, but we've just never gotten round to it.)

This should be a decent compromise between keeping basic maintenance functions open to all contributors, while reducing the damage that can be done with it by giving an opportunity to review and accept or cancel before, instead of after, the hard-to-clean-up action is finalized. --brion (talk) 21:06, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah of course, the deletion queue - I remember seeing that on a todo/wishlist somewhere on svn or mediawiki. It does sound like a good idea... in the meantime, though, thanks for doing the shell change. Happy‑melon 15:47, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia logo font

What is the name of the font used in the Wikipedia logo?

Is it available anywhere?

The Transhumanist 01:00, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Try asking Nohat (talk · contribs) since he designed it. MBisanz ^talk 01:16, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Good idea! The Transhumanist 01:51, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

You can also ask User:Equazcion I know he knows, although I haven't seen him online for a few weeks. -- penubag (talk) 01:55, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

It's Hoefler Text. (roman, smallcaps, italic, 13px, are all mentioned, at meta:Logo and this and this and this and this, but I'm not sure which style each element is). It's apparently available if you have an Apple computer (and possibly adobe programs?), or pay Hoefler & Frere-Jones US$299 for a single cpu licence. -- Quiddity (talk) 03:47, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Unified watchlist

Now that we have unified login, we can access watchlists on other Wikimedia sites without logging in from our browsers. Has anyone written a javascript to scrape the watchlists off other wikis and display them all on the same page? If not, can we? — Omegatron (talk) 17:18, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Great idea! I'd like an other project new messages banner too:

You have new messages on the English Wikipedia.

and that could use a similar system...... Dendodge .. Talk^Help 17:45, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

That would be sweet. Gary King (talk) 15:51, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Obviously with the coloured background. We ought to post this at bugzilla (I'll do that now)...... Dendodge .. Talk^Help 19:08, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

bug 14488 filed...... Dendodge .. Talk^Help 19:17, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] i have an illegal hacker block

i can not access to this talk page. i think a fascist Spanish hacker has blocked my access. Please, could some checkuser check it and see what is happening there with my IP?

i don't know where to leave this message so if anyone know what i have to do a little help i would thank it very much. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sclua (talk • contribs) 17:31, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I mediated a case involving you and this article a while back, and when I was dealing with it there was no mention of topic-banning you or anything - obviously this is worse than a topic ban (and is not permitted by WP policy). I doubt it's a hacker (remember WP:AGF) so it was probably a problem with your internet. We (Wikipedia) can't do anything so you could try again, or leave it...... Dendodge .. Talk^Help 17:39, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Also suggesting that 'Spanish fascists' are responsible is disruptive, and makes your question much less legitimate. Please try to state your problems clearly and objectively, rather then blindly accusing 'fascists' for your problem. Thanks, Prodego ^talk 22:52, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Problem solved i would like to thank the anonymous expert for solving my problem. If he leaves a messsage like "hello" on my page talk i will call him if i have this problem again, if not, i will try to come back here (i am saying "try" because i was unabled to access to these Village pump sections too, only post. Many thanks. (i will try to moderate my vocabulary). --Sclua (talk) 11:25, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Strange problem: I'm 'half-blocked'

A few days ago, I started getting a message telling me that my IP or IP range was blocked whenever I went to a page-editing screen whilst not logged in. (Not that I ever edit without logging in first anyway, but I sometimes go to edit screens whilst not logged in so that I can see a page's code).

I can still edit when I am logged in. What's going on? Have I been 'caught in the crossfire' between some other user and the admins? --The Machine (talk) 00:45, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Apparently, your IP is blocked. But that's a feature to MediaWiki, unless autobloc kis enabled, logged-in users can still edit. Soxred 93 01:46, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Actually this will prevent other people's auto-blocks from affecting you, and also prevent you from forgetting to log in before editing. Might be a blessing in disguise. — CharlotteWebb 11:00, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

It seems like someone's softblocked your IP, or a range containing it. Most commonly this is because there's vandals on the same IP range as you, but legitimate contributors (such as you) there too. The only inconvenience to you should be that you're forced to log in to edit, so the software can tell that you're one of the legitimate users (generally speaking, creating accounts from inside such ranges is prevented, and vandal accounts which are inside the range are blocked, so only legitimate users inside the range have unblocked accounts to log in with. This sort of softblocking is especially common on school IPs (where there are often many vandals and a few legitimate users editing from the same IP), but can happen elsewhere. --ais523 16:14, 8 June 2008 (U T C)

Okay; thanks folks. So what do I do, then - just carry on as normal and let this thing run it's course? --The Machine (talk) 19:03, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Nothing bad will happen if you just edit logged-in as usual. If you are very concerned about the IP block and have some time to spend you may be able to find out by writing to unblock-en-l what administrator issued it. This doesn't guarantee the block would be lifted, because it could be there for a good reason. EdJohnston (talk) 15:45, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tring to find <.math.> coding error

Resolved.

I'm trying to see where I'm making a mistake

Failed to parse (lexing error): \ x'=ax+by+k_1

$\ y'=cx+dy+k_2$
$\ x'=ax+by+k_1$
Failed to parse (lexing error): \ x'=ax+by+k_1

These code as

*<math>\ x'=ax+by+k_1</math>
*<math>\ y'=cx+dy+k_2</math>
*<math>\ x'=ax+by+k_1</math>
*<math>\ x'=ax+by+k_1</math>

Any help would be appreciated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmckeon ie (talk • contribs) 00:47, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I can confirm the first and fourth formulae contain a symbol () which doesn't render in LaTeX, apparently. x42bn6 Talk Mess 03:10, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

The first and fourth expressions have a bogus byte "", 0x81. This is invalid UTF-8 (I think, haven't calculated it out) and makes no sense to have in LaTeX formulas in any event. I don't know how it got there, but try manually retyping the bad formulas instead of copy-pasting, and it should go away. Like this:

$\ x'=ax+by+k_1$
$\ y'=cx+dy+k_2$
$\ x'=ax+by+k_1$
$\ x'=ax+by+k_1$

—Simetrical (talk • contribs) 19:08, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

cheersJmckeon ie (talk) 20:21, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

It's valid UTF-8 encoding, it's just not for a useful character -- it's in a control character block, but isn't assigned to any... control... :) --brion (talk) 16:44, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Not that it's really relevant to the question, but 0x81 isn't valid UTF-8. Bytes 0x80 and up don't have meanings on their own; they have to be used in combinations of two or more to form extended characters. You're probably thinking of Latin-1. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 08:12, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, never mind that, I'm at the wrong level of abstraction. Since Wikipedia presumably contains only valid UTF-8, the formulae probably actually contain the bytes 0xc2 0x81, which encode U+0081, the useless control character you were referring to. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 08:20, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tools: link target

When is the tools: interwiki-like link going to be targeted to point to toolserver.org instead of tools.wikimedia.de? — Dispenser 05:38, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Its been updated on the Interwiki map, so it will be updated once the script is run to update the database. Mr.Z-man 06:40, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ANNOYING PROBLEM WITH EDITING

Help me! Whenever i click edit on a page or Edit this Page, i get a download box asking for me to download 'index.php PHP file from wikipedia.org'. I have found that adding &internaledit=true to the URL of the edit page (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TITLE&action=edit&internaledit=true ). But now i have to do that all the time so i can go to the edit page. This is very annoying. Can you please help promptly.....Juggernaut0102 (talk) 09:47, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Did you accidentally check "[x] Use external editor by default" in the "Editing" tab of Special:Preferences? — CharlotteWebb 10:56, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Even if you didn't, that box has been known to be checked by gremlins. Algebraist 12:37, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! it worked!! Juggernaut0102 (talk) 07:24, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Baseball Card Adventure

This is really puzzling me. {{Baseball Card Adventure}} has the Category:Novel series templates cat with two noinclude tags wrapped around it. Yet despite this...on the article Joe "Stosh" Stoshack it still shows that Novel series template category. How can this be fixed? hbdragon88 (talk) 23:28, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

It didn't transclude the template; it was either substed or copied. Fixed now. —Cryptic 00:01, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image:King JesusII.jpg

This image page suffers from a strange problem. There is no history but the page clearly exists. There is no associated file. I can't edit the page to tag it for deletion because I always get an edit conflict, apparently with nobody. The length of the page is (allegedly) 0 but when I view the page source, it is not empty. It probably isn't worth bugging the devs at this point, we might be able to find a resolution to this problem here. MER-C 09:01, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Solved by deletion[3]. Wasn't used anywhere anyway. MaxSem^{(Han shot first!)} 09:35, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I thought that was the case. Thanks. MER-C 12:29, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Watchlist auto-refreshing...

This has only recently started to happen -- maybe in the past two days or so. Basically, the way it has worked is that the watchlist page (and any other WP page, not sure if it's affected elsewhere) would stay at the last it was last on, like most pages. There's some pages on the web that will automaticallyr refresh whenever you switch pages (which can be annoying as it also tends to put you back up top), but here it seems that it's only doing it if I move two pages deep (like click "older edit" twice) or more. Anyone else notice this, and is there a way to fix it...or perhaps it's a bug? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 16:10, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Well assuming you don't have some javascript set up to automatically refresh a browser window or tab which contains your watchlist (Brion would probably kill you for that), you probably mean that you are clicking the "back" button in your browser (to go back to your watchlist) and finding a newer list of edits than when you last saw it. That would mean that your browser is for whatever reason no longer caching the watchlist page (maybe caching is disabled now, or maybe you changed browsers), or that your browser did cache the page but it has been removed from your cache as "too old" or to clear space to cache something else. So you might start by adjusting the page-caching settings in your browser. — CharlotteWebb 17:19, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

That's just it, I haven't changed any settings, nor has it ever happened like this before. The only difference is the updating of two plugins (I use Firefox) but nothing beyond that has changed. I can't imagine either of those plugins affecting it. I figured something in WP's software changed recently since it seems to only be affecting things here that I've noticed. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 19:08, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

And now I can determine it's happening at more than one computer (and this one has no FF plugins), so it's almost surely something that's changed on WP or the wiki software itself. Perhaps I should submit to bugzilla? I dunno how to word things really, but I'd like to know if anyone else has noticed this... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:37, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Is the watchlist just sitting open in its own window or tab, and you just notice that it's changed at some point? Or are you navigating away from it by clicking links within that window/tab, and later returning to the watchlist in that window/tab you've been looking at other pages in, and now it's different from when it was last up?

If it's just sitting there in a window/tab, it should never change. I see no automatic refresh code snuck into the site JS, and you have no custom user JS, so there is nothing that should cause it to change while it's sitting open.

If you navigate away within the window/tab and then return to the watchlist by clicking a "watchlist" link, following a bookmark, etc, then it will certainly be loaded anew, with a fresh, current list of changed pages.

If you navigate away and then return to the watchlist by clicking the "back" button, then the behavior may depend on the browser, and the browser's caching settings, and whether you're logged in through the secure.wikimedia.org SSL interface. In most cases it will probably give you the version you had open previously... unless it's fallen out of the browser's cache... or the browser decides it shouldn't cache it. (The page is marked as not cacheable and must be reloaded every time it's visited, but 'back/forward' button navigation often is a little different.) --brion (talk) 22:40, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

It's from navigating away (but still on WP, using "older edit" links), and then back. It seems to happen randomly now, if at all the past few hours...could have been already fixed or who knows. But as I said, it's not a setting I changed since it happened on two seperate computers (in two completely seperate locations). ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 00:25, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] RfA counter

I've noticed an interesting bug on the RfA Analysis counter. If looking at a current (as of 2008) Rfa, e.g. Epbr123's 2nd, the end date shows 2008. However, if looking at my own RfA (I'm not an admin) for lack of trying to find another example, shows the end date as end of 1999. Can someone explain this? This does not seem to happened to many others. Simply south (talk) 21:52, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

If you have seen this before, i moved this from WikiProject edit counters

Fixed now. The RfA Analysis tool looks for "ended" rather than "closed". --- RockMFR 22:20, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Can you collapse/hide content other than tables?

I fear this section in Penn State Nittany Lions volleyball is much too long (if worth keeping at all). While I've found how we can collapse tables to save visual space, is there a similar way to collapse/hide a simple list, providing means for a user to expand it if s/he really wants to know? Thanks. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 02:13, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

See {{Hidden archive top}} and {{hab}}. —EncMstr (talk) 02:17, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 12:22, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

A related question: do these uncollapse by default during print view, and if not, can that be made possible? --MASEM 02:24, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't look like it does. You could substitute the template, and the edit the class to one which does show—though that's seriously yucky. Maybe there's a friendlier template. I poked around briefly, but didn't see one. —EncMstr (talk) 02:29, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

It would be great if we could figure this out; there's some rather detailed infoboxes that could use collapsing in sections but should really autoprint full --MASEM 02:42, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Additional query: since this is meant to be for hiding debates, the note when you expand it says "The following is an archived debate. Please do not modify it." Is there a way to change that? (I know you can change the "Reason"). --ZimZalaBim ^talk 12:28, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

The short answer is that this template should not be used in the mainspace at all. --- RockMFR 14:19, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Totally agree with RockMFR. You could split the problematic section into its own article and link to it. Corvus cornix_talk 16:31, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok. Thanks. --ZimZalaBim ^talk 17:14, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article / editor intersection

This may be a dumb question, but is there an existing facility to list the edits one single editor has made to one single article? Ideally, this would be a special page ('cause it would return clickable diffs), next a toolserver page, last-best an API call (which I could use though). Thanks! Franamax (talk) 07:07, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Last time this came up, API was the only solution offered. Algebraist 08:20, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] one to any mathematical formula

Please dose any one know mathematical formula one to any

Cheers

Michael —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.195.121.190 (talk) 06:16, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure anyone quite understands what you mean. --M1ss1ontomars2k4 (talk) 06:18, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

What are the diferrences between E1 and PRI? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Darshashish (talk • contribs) 07:19, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Text lost in simple edit

In this diff [4] the only change I introduced into the editing box was the addition of a time and date on a comment, yet the result was the loss of a significant amount of text, and of the class and importance parameters from the Wikiproject template. What happened? DuncanHill (talk) 14:45, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Looks like you accidentally edited an old revision when you went back to find the timestamp. --- RockMFR 15:16, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, yes I see what you mean - usually I just view the diff in pop-ups, must have clicked on something without meaning to! DuncanHill (talk) 15:20, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How to get a random non-article page?

Is there a way to use Special:Random to get random page from talk pages, user pages, wikipedia namespace pages, and so on? For example, I would like to generate a random list of 100 or 1000 users. Can this be easily done? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:38, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Special:Random/user, Special:Random/image, Special:Random/portal, Special:Random/category, etc. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:41, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template for edit-mode-only in dab pages

example wording:

This is a disambiguation page. Please respect the disambiguation page style guideline. Remember:

Each bulleted entry should, in almost every case, have exactly one navigable (blue) link
The link being disambiguated should be the first word or phrase in each entry

I'd like to create a template, that only appears in edit-mode, at the top of any page tagged with a disambig template (over 100,000 articles) e.g. A Wonderful Life. Something like the MediaWiki:Talkpagetext box that appears when you edit talkpages. It would contain 2 or 3 lines cautioning against the most frequent MOS:DAB mistakes, such as "Each bulleted entry should, in almost every case, have exactly one navigable (blue) link", and a link to the style guideline.

Is such a thing possible (without having to bug the devs ;) ? Thanks. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Technically yes. With javascript, it should be possible to detect the presence of the disambig template on a page (using the disambig id, which hopefully is only used in that template). If it is detected, the javascript could append an editintro parameter to the edit link that would translude a message on the edit page. The difficult part would be gaining consensus for this change :) --- RockMFR 21:32, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Add importScript("User:RockMFR/disambigeditintro.js"); to Special:Mypage/monobook.js, hard refresh, and visit a disambiguation page. --- RockMFR 21:56, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Perfect.

Where would consensus be best developed/discovered for this, the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation page, or WP:VPR, or MediaWiki:Common.js, or elsewhere?

I've added an example above, to provide argument fodder. -- Quiddity (talk) 22:07, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

This is a pretty good idea. By any chance, do we already have bots that mark messy dabs with {{disambig-cleanup}}? Thought it would be worth noting. Lord Sesshomaru (talk • edits) 23:00, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Very nice. Nitpick: Should 2nd bullet read "The link being disambiguated should be ..." since, in the case where an entry has a redlink and a bluelink, the redlink goes at the beginning? --AndrewHowse (talk) 00:51, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure, example changed. Feel free to update it yourselves, it's mainly for demonstration purposes at this point. I've also updated RockMFR's sandbox, so his implementation displays the same thing. -- Quiddity (talk) 01:30, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Redirect

Just wondering, how come Wikipedia:AfD/LOG doesn't work properly as a redirect? Guest9999 (talk) 22:02, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] MediaWiki:Linkstoimage

What gives? The div tags are showing up at the bottom of every image page:

<div class="linkstoimage" id="linkstoimage">The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed):</div>

—Fvasconcellos (t·c) 00:17, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I've temporarily removed the div from MediaWiki:Linkstoimage. --- RockMFR 00:30, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Got broken again by an attempt to add plural support (totally unnecessary, probably, since it should work correctly in wikitext form). I've reverted the change. --brion (talk) 01:58, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Chicago

For some reason I can't load this page, and only this page. Grand master ka 01:43, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Now it works. Weird. Grand master ka 01:44, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Probably due to some recent code changes' affect on reported memory usage. Tim's looking into it. --brion (talk) 02:07, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Categories: Wikipedia noticeboards | Wikipedia features

Hidden category: Non-talk pages that are automatically signed

See also ebooksgratis.com: no banners, no cookies, totally FREE.