User talk:Happy-melon/Archive 10

Adoption
Hello, Happy-melon! I am a new user looking to broaden my horizons. I was browsing the list of adopters, and was wondering if you'd be willing to take me in, as you looked like someone who shares the same interests as me. If not that's OK too! Thanks, regardless of your decision. 12Keyblade (talk) 19:47, 17 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Certainly, if you're interested in becoming a Wikipedia editor, I'd be delighted to give you a helping hand. Do you have an idea what areas of Wikipedia might interest you? Happy‑melon 10:05, 18 April 2009 (UTC)


 * For the most part, I'm a detail/grammar Nazi, so basic copyediting. Not so much creating articles either, more just fixing the ones people created/expanding short ones.12Keyblade (talk) 10:14, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Oops, sorry for adding two messages! I also just want to get a feel for how the project works, ie certain bizarre conventions, how to "make pages pretty", etc.12Keyblade (talk) 10:15, 18 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Not to worry, keeps me on my toes :D I'll reply here from now on, to keep the conversation in one place.
 * Well Wikipedia certainly needs people like that to tidy up and keep it looking professional. Have you thought about joining a WikiProject?  They're groups of editors that share a common interest and work on groups of articles with a similar theme.  So if you were interested in molecular biology, you could join the appropriate WikiProject.  There's a directory of projects you could browse if that interests you. You do need to be careful, however, in that many of the WikiProjects are not very active; you could easily join one only to find that you're the only active member, which is a bit depressing.  But some WikiProjects, like WP:FILM, WP:WPBIO and WP:MILHIST, are extremely active and well-coordinated, so they have a really welcoming atmosphere.
 * In terms of bizarre conventions, we certainly have our fair share, the most important of which is that there are no rules. Notwithstanding that, there are quite a few rules that you might want to have a look at :D. Most of them are not particularly relevant if you're interested mainly in expanding existing articles; probably the most important is WP:Verifiability - all material that is likely to be challenged should be sourced.  If you're interested in 'tidying' and improving articles, probably the most useful thing you could do is find and add references to reliable sources, or to format existing references into the proper format (per WP:CITE).  Incidentally, don't worry about people throwing acronyms like that all over the place, it happens all the time.  They're redirects to the proper policy or guideline, so if you hover over the link, you can see the proper target.  So if you hover over WP:5P, you see that it links to Five pillars, which is our most fundamental policy.
 * Hope that's not too much information to start off with, there's really no substitute for having a wander around and seeing what you can do. Get stuck in! :D Happy‑melon 10:30, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Ireland WikiProject assessment template is still a mess
Thanks for trying but it is still an ungodly mess. See Template talk:WikiProject Ireland for details. Please revert to before the problems unless you really know how to fix it. Cheers ww2censor (talk) 16:32, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for sorting out my mistake! For some reason it was "priority" in the sandbox and I didn't notice it. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:09, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * All seems well now. Thanks for fixing it so quickly. It really looked like everything was screwed up royally. The stats l;ook fine now; just a few extra new ones here and there. Thanks ww2censor (talk) 01:15, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Protection
I guess WPBannerMeta/hooks/article todolist should be protected, as you note on Template:WPBannerMeta/hooks—it's being used on a few thousand pages now. —Ms2ger (talk) 17:29, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ Well spotted, thanks! Happy‑melon 17:37, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you—it wasn't that hard to spot it, I created it myself. —Ms2ger (talk) 17:56, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Talkback
-- IRP ☎ 22:01, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Again, that page is on my watchlist. I do have to sleep at some point :P Happy‑melon 09:42, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Cite web
Could you take a look at the request on Template talk:Cite web as I can't see what needs to be done there. Thanks, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 06:26, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

1= is required!
Concerning this edit of yours I have to tell you that the removal of "1=" causes AWB/KingbotK to crash. I have reported the bug but moreover the removal of the parameter causes confusion between the included template and blp=yes if it exists. Thanks, Magioladitis (talk) 23:18, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Lol oops! <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 09:10, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

can you help me with cite web on my wikia?
Dear Happy-melon

I am trying to copy wikipedia's cite web template over to my little wikia at habbushletter dot wikia dot com. I have copied quite a bit of template code from wikipedia however I am having a slight proble with 'cite web'.

On wikipedia, 'cite web' will produce a citation with the title rendered as a lovely blue bit of text, which one can click on to take one to the 'url='. But on my wikia, when I use cite web, the full url is produced as well. It is a bit unsightly. I would appreciate if you could point me in the right direction, of where I need to dig to figure out what is happening and how to fix it.

Is there any easy way to debug template code? It is hard for me to understand exactly what is happening, with the WorkURL, WorkTitle, and so forth and so on.

An example of the problem is here:


 * http://habbushletter.wikia.com/wiki/Michael_Dunleavy
 * http://habbushletter.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Billmoyersjournal20080509

Thank you very much if you can give me any little smidgen of help it is greatly appreciated.

Decora (talk) 13:24, 22 April 2009 (UTC)


 * You're missing this block of CSS code that's in our MediaWiki:Common.css:

If you copy that to the CSS files on your local wiki, it will hide the urls except when printed. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 14:29, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * thank you very much i appreciate your help

Warnings
Hey, I've reverted you. istemplate is not what we want there. I'm sure we can do it better than currently, but that's not the way because category=no doesn't stop the warning. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:26, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Oops, really? I'll have another think. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 19:33, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Wasn't it simpler before? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:08, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It does the job and is fairly clear once you get your head around it. The truth table in the new doc certainly helps. The reason it's a Good IdeaTM to have them in one place is that if we do decide to make exceptions for things like /testcases subpages, we need to be consistent. It's also semantically clearer: both the locwarning and the templatepage bumph are both triggered by the position on or off a "templatey" page, and by the absence of a "go away" override. I agree that the logic is not as clear as it could be given the parts of the truth table we're looking for; perhaps that can be improved.  <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 20:29, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Only you could break something, and then fix it by adding 5 levels of complexity to the template :P Anyway, the question is, can we use it to display sample comments on templatepage?? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:38, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Guilty as charged, I'm afraid! I think I can actually make it much simpler but I've got distracted into your bet with Dino; I love the code on Template:WikiProject Anime and manga/class... but why the hell did you choose -9?? :D <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 20:40, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not mine! I just copied it from his template. That template is his playground I think :) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:45, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see, I'd better give this template-coders' cookie to someone else then... :P I've simplified it a fair bit, avoid the wholly-unnecessary negation at the end. Better? <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 20:51, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That code was mine (see the hsitory of Template:WikiProject Anime and manga/B check), but don't ask me why I chose -9. -10 does make much more sense, but it never crossed my mind when I was first thinking about how to code that (which is a bit surprising, because I put a lot of thought into it). And yeah, I guess you could say that WikiProject Anime and manga and its subtemplates are kind of my playground (though I've now moved all of my playing to its sandbox, since I got tired of breaking 9,000+ transclusions). =) 「ダイノ ガイ 千 ？！」(Dinoguy1000) 21:39, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

User:MelonBot/WikiProject banners
Just wanted to let you know that this page's documentation: User:MelonBot/WikiProject banners needs to be updated because User:BetacommandBot has been blocked indefinitely, so the reference to it should probably be removed. :) --Funandtrvl (talk) 21:52, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point, thanks for pointing that out. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 22:00, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Discussion
I have started a discussion that you will probably be able to help in. It is located at Village pump (proposals). -- IRP ☎ 21:31, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I have replied to your post on the discussion. I would recommend adding Village pump (proposals) to your watchlist if you haven't already. -- IRP ☎ 20:43, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Excontent
is there any way for me to personally bypass this change? –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b> <sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 14:18, 25 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Is that the "content was..." autosummary? Not explicitly, there was a recent dicsussion at VPT that came up with a JS script you could use. I stand by my comment at the end of it, though, the autofill was removed for a reason, and note that there is no longer any code at MediaWiki:Sysop.js to catch attack pages.  But if you want to live dangerously, I expect that script will do the job. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 14:35, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I just want to more easily point to the new location of userfied content, without having to c&p a lot. Thanks for pointing me to the script, I knew I remembered seeing it but couldn't find it. –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b> <sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 15:17, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Small md to Template:WPFOOD
Could you make it so the |Foodservice= will accept both the capitalized and lower case version of this parameter? Right now if you type |foodservice=yes, the template does nothing. Currently almost all of the articles use the uppercase version, and just changing the template to use the lower case would invalidate those hundreds of instances where the capitalized version is already being used. --Jeremy (blah blah) 07:35, 25 April 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:17, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. --Jeremy (blah blah) 00:53, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Your user log
I am curious why you have never blocked a user. -- IRP ☎ 00:43, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I have never needed to. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:19, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Deletion of Public Intelligence
Hi! On August 15th, 2008 you deleted Public Intelligence because of advertising in this article. Can you still tell for which product or service this advertising was? Thanks. -- Gamgee (talk) 07:16, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The given reason in the template was "Blatant self-promotion by User:RobertDavidSteeleVivas and related sockpuppets".  The deleted content wasn't advertising for a specific company or product so much as an attempt to use Wikipedia to give undue legitimacy to a neologism, as put forward by an editor who was indef-blocked for POV-pushing said concept onto a range of articles.  I guess it was "self-promotion" as much as outright spam. Hope this clarifies. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:18, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

FULLBASEPAGENAME and friends
Hi Melon. Should FULLBASEPAGENAME, ROOTPAGENAME and other similar templates try to mimic the BASEPAGENAME way of handling subpages, i.e. work correctly in namespaces with subpages disabled (correctly as in: not split at slashes), or is this something we explicitly don't want to have, so that we can work around the missing subpage functionality with Help, Help talk and Category talk? They are currently not widely used (mostly through WikiProject Computing/Userbox, which should actually use ) so if we want to change it, we should do it now. I think we should aim for consistency. My motivation is that I was about to work on the editnotice loading functionality where I would have used/created templates from that family now, and where I quite certainly don't want a false subpage handling in article space. What do you think? We could also hardcode the namespaces in Is subpage namespace to pretend to have subpages in Help, Help talk and Category talk until that is fixed. Cheers, Amalthea  17:43, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that we should be improving these templates to not return subpages in those namespaces where we neither have nor want subpages (Article, File, MediaWiki and Category). Whether to 'fake' subpages in Category_talk, Help_talk and Help until we get them for real is a trickier question; my instinct is to say yes: the more clear it is that we're needing and using this functionality, the more likely they are to provide it, IMO.  So yes, I think we should hardcode the namespaces in that template (and nice idea to split it into one template like that, although I'm not sure about the name). That will also make it easier to fix the bug you note on the /doc. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 18:17, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm not particularly happy with the name either. The only decent alternatives I have are "subpages enabled" and "namespace has subpages". Maybe one of those is better, and I was only blinded by OO naming conventions. I'm as always very open to suggestions. Or just move it as you please :) If we make them behave differently than BASEPAGENAME it's going to be hard using both magic word and template at the same time though (not that I'd know where one wanted to. Do we even have any archive pages there?). Amalthea  08:16, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd lean towards . If there are compatibility issues with BASEPAGENAME then we can just create a template with the functionality we want the magic word to have, and continue to use that until the behaviours are synchronised.  Then we only need to go through replacing one pipe with a colon to 'swap in' the magic word when it becomes usable.  I expect there are some controversial categories that have archived discussion pages. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:22, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, that would have to be called differently, else the magic word has precedence over the parameter-less template, I believe? Oh, I heard you have asked for svn commit privileges. Have you heard back on that? I've got a couple of ideas that would need committing ... ;-) Amalthea  13:26, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * ,  and   call the magic word.    or   would call the template.  So it would still be possible to use the template version without passing an explicit parameter (and equally easy to switch back again).
 * Emailing anything to Brion feels a lot like talking in the wind, but he occasionally has a clear-out, and Tim also sometimes does SVN access requests. Theoretically any sysadmin could set themselves up with SVN admin, but currently it's only Tim and Brion that do requests.  Brion was talking in wikitech-l earlier this month about setting someone else up as an SVN admin to handle requests, so who knows. I'll just keep gently poking until something drops out.  What ideas were you thinking of? <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 15:02, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The one that was most recently going through my head was that I'd like to have one or to magic parameters in templates. I'd mostly like one called or something which contains "subst:" if the template is just being substed in the PST phase. Although it's fairly easy to figure out whether a template is being substituted or not (through   for example) that can't be used to subst away other templates or parser functions, so there is no clean way to branch on substitution, and a template always has to be either prepared for transclusion or substitution (if it doesn't want to use a stupid "subst" parameter). If there were a magic parameter this could be helped, and would be very useful to guard templates that should never be substituted (and if they are, they just subst to their own transclusion). Another magic parameter that would be useful (also for the beforementioned use) would be  or something containing the current template's full page name (actually one containing the title pre-redirect would also be useful, but I can only think of a few use cases). That way we wouldn't have to tell navboxes their names anymore, which they need to construct their v•d•e links. Then, I have opened a bug a while ago about inconsistencies in anchor encoding (apparently there are 4 different ways MediaWiki creates an anchor at the five places there are), which is a bit annoying in NAVPOP and elsewhere. Of course I'm not sure if I could write a patch for those that would be accepted anyway, I have very little knowledge of the MediaWiki source, so they would probably turn out rather hackish.
 * Anyway. I see you changed Ns has subpages to also accept page names. I did that actually on purpose, to prevent the ambiguities you mention on the /doc. One could have used to work correctly both with pagenames and namespaces, except on Template, File, Talk, ... . Do you find it that inconvenient to only pass a namespace? A template obviously still can only work with namespaces if it expects to be used on any of those articles, but I would usually try to prevent such unexpected ambiguities.  Amalthea  21:39, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I see your point; I was aiming for maximum utility (and for it to at least not break when passed a page name). There are only eight pages out of nearly 13 million that are affected, though (Talk, User, Wikipedia, File, MediaWiki, Template, Help, Category). I guess it's a question of utility: if the template is intended mainly to be called by other templates (which can be more selective about what they pass to it) then perhaps it is better to go with the more restrictive but unambiguous method.
 * Those are some interesting ideas there, although the page parser is, in my experience, too delicate to be touched by 'newbie' devs. Any changes that don't pass the seven-thousand-line ParserTests debugger are usually reverted immediately <tt>:S</tt> The anchor stuff, however, is probably something that needs to be fixed. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 22:17, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Creating a seperate db-hoax
Hi there. As you are usually working on db-templates, I wondered whether I could ask you for a favor: db-hoax currently redirects to db-g3. I think it would be better if this were a seperate template, like db-move or db-band. As the deletion reason is pre-filled from the template, tagging blatant hoaxes leads to G3: Vandalism just like other vandalism articles. I think it should rather be more elaborate in such cases, maybe with a deletion reason like G3: Blatant and obvious misinformation/hoax. Also, the deletion template could elaborate on this as well, just like {tl|db-move}} or db-band do (something like "This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion as blatant and obvious misinformation (...)". Do you think you could create a seperate template at that location that prefills such a deletion reason and use such wording instead of the normal G3 one? Regards  So Why  09:35, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 09:49, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

<div style="border-style:solid; border-color:blue; background-color:AliceBlue; border-width:1px; text-align:left; padding:8px;" class="plainlinks">

 So Why  has given you a cookie! Cookies promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a cookie, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Happy munching! Thanks for the very quick reaction and doing what I just couldn't figure out how to do correctly (at least not without having to dig deep into the world of db-meta^^). So, for your troubles, have a cookie.

Spread the goodness of cookies by adding {{subst:Cookie}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message, or eat this cookie on the giver's talk page with {{subst:munch}}!


 * Sorry to bother you again, a little problem: the new db-hoax is now listed in CAT:CSD. Could you take a look? Regards  So Why  10:08, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * . I'll help myself to a bite of that cookie now, Melon. ;) -- Amalthea 12:44, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You're welcome to it :D. Thanks for fixing that. I was curious as to why the template link was highlighed as marked for deletion (I have the linkclassifier JS script that highlights such pages in pink), but couldn't find the category even after null-editing the page.  Are the CSD categories now hidden cats? <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 12:56, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Apparently. You don't have "Show hidden categories" activated in your Preferences? Amalthea  13:19, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Mistake
It looks like you made a mistake in this edit, accidentally linking to WP:VPT rather than WP:VPR. -- IRP ☎ 21:38, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Whoops :D thanks for pointing that out, although it doesn't seem to have ruffled any feathers anyway. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 22:08, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Standardization
I'd appreciate if you could take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Xeno/sandbox&oldid=286968756. I've standardized all the members of Category:Interwiki translation templates and would like to replace at least some of the lesser used ones (perhaps everything with under 200 transclusions) with Template:Iw-ref and T3 them afterwards. Thoughts? –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b> <sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 04:51, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * That's great work. Consolidating them would definitely have my support.  Although perhaps the better way to to this would be by making  a meta-template and then 'constructing' all the other templates using it? The less-used templates, however, could certainly be T3'd. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 07:48, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what I've done (replaced all the other templates with the requisite iw-ref code). I agree that perhaps the more used (like DE, French, etc) ones could remain in place for ease of use. The ones with less than 200 uses I will be replacing with Iw-ref directly. –<b style="font-family:verdana; color:black;">xeno</b> <sup style="color:black; font-family:verdana;">talk 15:55, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

/class
Hi. Can I revert your B_CHECKLIST to BCHK change on Template:WPBannerMeta/class because I think a lot of the hooks depend on it being B_CHECKLIST? I am thinking that we should maybe start an agreement whereby at least one of us checks the others edits before they are implemented. There have been a few errors recently (I am certainly not faultless) which probably would have been prevented by a double check. If projects start noticing these errors they make take the view that they can manage their templates better themselves and it could bring the whole initiative down. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:00, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmn, not sure about the BCHECK, that was the result of some considerable discussion and compromise on the talk; I think it would be better to fix the hooks. However, I do fully agree with a 'two man rule'; you're absolutely right that we're both liable to make silly mistakes on updates, simply due to over-familiarity with the structures we're working on, which leads to a loss of caution.  I'm not sure how it's easiest to arrange it, though; using the sandboxes might work but we'll have to be a bit more careful about keeping them synchronised. And of course remembering to remove all the "/sandbox" bits when saving! <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:23, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Well could I leave you to fix the BCHK then, one way or the other? I couldn't see the logic in changing it to be honest, but I wasn't really following that thread. It would certainly be easier to fix by changing those two instances though ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:31, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That would break it in the main template :D <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 09:49, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I've gone through the hooks, I think I've fixed all the cases (you were right, there were several). <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 09:57, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay thanks. But I've just reviewed the entire thread where you were talking to Tothwolf about this change, and I'm still failing to see the logic behind it. The only benefit seems to be that it will help prevent people from copying the default mask to use as a custom mask. Well it won't really, because it's only one parameter that has changed. And I can't think that this has been a problem anyway. In fact the only person that I have known to try this is you on Template:WPAFC/class! And it was quickly noticed and fixed anyway. Far more harmful and less easy to spot though are the problems with hook coding, and having a mixture BCHK and B_CHECKLIST will almost certainly cause confusion there. So in conclusion I still think we should revert and make them all the same. (This is what the whole COMMENT/COMMENTS thing was all about, wasn't it?) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:31, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Ouch, don't pull any punches there :D... My thinking was that we could use the fact that the normal parameters are defined in WPBM/class but not in FooBanner/class to incorporate a warning message or category; while you did indeed notice and fix my error there quickly, most people seeing an edit like that pop up on their watchlist wouldn't have a clue that it was a Bad ThingTM. It's not designed to stop people who copy the default mask but know enough about what they're doing to make the necessary changes; there's nothing wrong with them doing so, and they understand what the mask is for and why it's needed.  It's designed to stop people who don't know any better from using a custom mask when it's providing exactly the same functionality as the default mask; from using a custom mask when they don't need to, that is. Because doing so is definitely a Bad Thing; I expect there would be template loops from the custom mask code quite apart from the issues of unnecessary decentralisation.  <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 13:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, a warning message sounds like a good idea. But surely BCHK is not the best way to do this?? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:30, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * What do you suggest? It has the advantage that the counterintuitive behaviour is more likely to prompt people to ask on the talk, which brings the (mis)use of the class mask to our attention. It's not something I'd dig my heels in over, but I certainly do feel it's an overall benefit to the system. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 14:46, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for correcting my mistakes on qualimp. I had a little question for you on Template talk:yesno. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:56, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Okay I've been thinking and here is my suggestion. Strip Template:WPBannerMeta/class of all code except the mask itself. (Therefore copying the default mask is unnecessary but won't break anything.) Then, the existence-checking code can be simplified to something like the following and put on a different page (I'll think of a good name) Template:WPBannerMeta itself. If you are still worried about people using the default mask unnecessarily (although I can't imagine this will be done much) we can put a check on templatepage, which looks to see if the bytecount of the two masks is the same. Needless to say, we keep all parameter names standardised :) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:23, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmn, yes that should work. I love the bytecount check idea. Needs a bit of logic to 'protect' the #ifexist from being run on all pages regardless of whether they use quality scale, but that can be done. I like it! <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:01, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok I've thrown something together in WPBM/sandbox and /class/sandbox. Does it look ok? <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:10, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Question: I appeciate that you are trying avoid some parser functions when the quality scale is not being used. But are you sure that putting them inside the if: prevents this? My understanding (which may be completely wrong) is that all the parser functions on a page are calculated when the page is rendered, rather than just the ones which are needed. Anyway, the majority of banners do use the quality scale (about 900 vs 300) so it might be simpler to leave this check out. Apart from this question I like it. (I still think we can control custom masks better with the QUALITY_SCALE parameter rather than using PAGESIZE, but this is still to be discussed ...) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:30, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * No, since Tim rewrote the parser preprocessor in 2008 only logical branches that are followed are evaluated. I agree that QUALITY_SCALE should be our main point of control, but we still need to work that out, and even then we still need the PAGESIZE sanity check so that non-admins can stop an unprotected banner from using a custom mask without having to post a CSD request (from the same discussion). <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:38, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Well that depends on how we implement QUALITY_SCALE = custom, but enough of that for now :) By the way, PAGESIZE returns 0 for non-existent pages, so we can simplify a bit. Other than that, great. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:47, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * But PAGESIZE also adds the target to the templatelinks table, which means it appears (usually redlinked) in the list of "templates transcluded on this page" at the bottom of the edit window. #ifexist: only adds the target to the pagelinks table, so it appears (somewhat bizzarrely) in WhatLinksHere, but that's much less overt, and less annoying.  Hence the requirement for both checks. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:51, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Can you double-check that? It seems that redlinked non-existant class masks are currently listed in "templates transcluded" (random example: WPRocketry). So having the extra check doesn't seem to fix this. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:04, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * That's from somewhere on /templatepage, not on the main banner code; it doesn't appear on real banners. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 12:11, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, you are right. This buggy behaviour in the links tables is another reason to sort out the parameter. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:26, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not really a bug, it's necessary to ensure cache integrity: when the existence of an #ifexist-linked page changes, the calling page needs to be rerendered, in the same way that all linking page need to be rerendered to change red/blue links. Similarly, if the content of a PAGESIZE-included page changes, all calling pages need to be rerendered, in the same way that all pages transcluding the target would need to be rerendered.  In each case the inclusion in the links table is appropriate; it's just that they shouldn't really appear in the related lists.  But since the lists are constructed from the links tables, it's no surprise that they include these unusual entries.  <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 12:33, 3 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I see, thanks for the explanation. I'll keep thinking about the code change above - it needs a bit more thought because of all the hooks which call the class mask. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:30, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Template:Search archives
Hi, I noticed you created this template and specifically changed it to use instead of. Does this mean it didn't work properly with fullpagename? The reason I asked is because I recently found searching talk pages wasn't working. I asked on IRC and User:Rainman noticed and fix the problem but mentioned prefixs with a underscore won't work (one of my examples did use an underscore). E.g. vs. This is a problem obviously because fullpagenamee results in an underscore, e.g. Talk:Global warming. Using fullpagename obviously fixes the problem, e.g. vs  but if it breaks something else this isn't a solution so I'm just wondering if you remember why you choose fullpagenamee. Nil Einne (talk) 19:57, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Because when the feature was first added, pagelinks with spaces didn't work! I have no idea if the problem has been fixed; I would hope it has, in which case FULLPAGENAME would be all that's needed.  I can only suggest that you try it out and see if it now works! <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 10:58, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Expense of parser functions
Hi, could I ask you to comment on Template talk:Lang, because it seems that a switch statement (albeit a big one) is taking much longer to process than an ifexist statement. Perhaps you can explain this and help us find the most efficient way to code that template. Thanks, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:29, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Editprotected
I started working on Category:Cite web templates using unusual accessdate parameters and fixed all templates, template talk pages, user talk pages, files, Wikipedia and Portal namespace.

But I have a problem with User talk:Homer slips., which is editprotected. Could you please change accessdaymonth=17 January | accessyear=2007 to accessdate=17 january 2007

Thanks, Debresser (talk) 15:16, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * ✅ Wow, that's seriously good work there, kudos for being prepared to take it on! <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 15:24, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, if you ask me, it's botwork. I'll still do the userpages tomorrow, but almost 2000 articles is too much. Debresser (talk) 15:52, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Indeed it is, and I even run a bot that does it; but it's grounded atm along with anything else automated that goes anywhere near dates. It's probably only tangentially connected to the injunction, but better safe than sorry.  <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 16:02, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I see. Talking about Bureaucracy... Anyway, I'll do the userpages, and I'll keep an eye on new additions, but the article namespace will have to wait for the bot. Debresser (talk) 17:57, 2 May 2009 (UTC) Done, apart from 2 userpages. Debresser (talk) 00:00, 3 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I started doing articles anyway, as you can read on my talk page. Did you notice that the articles don't sort alfabetically? Press a letter in the CategoryTOC and you'll see what I mean. My guess is you'll have to add somewhere. Debresser (talk) 01:20, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Ten ways to crash a Wiki
Ten unrelated ones? To really prevent all editing, or just a huge deal of it? Gimme. I can certainly think of more than ten pages that could be disrupted to prevent almost all edits, but spontaneously only about eight fundamentally different ways (and of course, preventing people to edit wouldn't be the worst thing an admin could do by far). Amalthea 14:38, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I ended up settling for "almost all". Since a lot of them involved javascript I set myself the requirement that they had to not only be fundamentally different approaches but also to come from different locations. Some of the things I came up with were rather entertaining! Of course, you're right, preventing editing is far from the most disruptive thing an admin can do... <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 17:02, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, but .js and .css are easy. The worst one I can think of could not be resolved without developer intervention, the way I see it. Haven't tested it, of course. :) Amalthea  20:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Confusion
Haha, confusing yourself now? :) Honestly, we should have two templates istemplate and isarticle, otherwise there's no hope. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:50, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmn... The thing is, they're not really inverses of each other, which is what two templates would suggest. They're both about suppression: either suppressing a feature on the template page, or suppressing a feature when on pages.  But sometimes the feature we're suppressing is suppression of categories!  This is where the confusion really lies; we always want setting no to force the suppression, but where we want the suppression to activate by default (and what the suppresion is actually suppressing) varies. That's the real source of confusion. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:09, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes. We have three types of banner instances:
 * template page
 * articles (well, this includes all normal usages)
 * demonstrations (which may be on the template page!)
 * and I think the two types of test that we need are "is template page?" and "is article?" &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:55, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * But demonstrations can occur on templates or on articles; this is main source of confusion. We have features that need to be suppressed on templates and on demonstrations (categories), and features that need to be suppressed on articles and on demonstrations (the whole templatepage expose).  What we're testing is "activate by default on template pages" or "activate by default on articles".  I agree that the /istemplate test currently doesn't convey that distinction very clearly, hence the capacity for confusion. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 22:03, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think we're disagreeing on anything here really. I'm just proposing that
 * There are only two logical tests which are needed.
 * "isarticle" is more intuitive than "istemplate|and not".
 * But no big deal. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:20, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Me neither; although I don't think that the semantic distinction is between "is article" and "istemplate", hence two templates are not necessarily an improvement, but the current method has no semantic meaning at all. There's definitely scope for improvement. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 10:24, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Cite messages
User:Gadget850/Cite messages: Now that I went through the trouble of writing this up, what should I do with it? ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 17:44, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Now I shamelessly pinch it and import it over to mw.org! Very nice job. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 07:32, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Navbox margin
Can you chime in at Common.css? — Edokter  •  Talk  • 11:26, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

RfD nomination of Wikipedia:Main Page/Special:Statistics
I have nominated for discussion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at the discussion page. Thank you. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (Many otters • One hammer • HELP) 14:25, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Notice

 * Lol for the talkback, but again I did read your message. I have no useful comment to make; I'm not a WMF employee so I'm in no position to tell you either how much would make a difference, nor how much difference it would make.  And on bugzilla, since every post results in an email being sent to every person subscribed to the bug, and to every subscriber of wikibugs-l, if one has nothing to say, one says nothing; empty or useless posts are frowned upon.  Maybe someone will provide a useful answer, maybe not.  If not, you'll just have to try it and see what effect it has. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:18, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I have sent a question to info@undefinedwikimedia.org and I got a response saying that they do not provide service in return for a donation. -- IRP ☎ 22:40, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * info@wikimedia.org is (I think) an OTRS address: the respondant is just another Wikimedia editor like you or I. They could be right, of course, but money can buy most things; and while the WMF can't be bought per se, if you're offering them money to do something they would have done eventually anyway, they might well listen.  Exactly how much would be needed to interest them is, of course, another question (your original!). <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 22:54, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I have posted about this at Help desk. -- IRP ☎ 00:22, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I need your help to write a thesis.
Dear Happy-melon,

I am a student in Seoul National University in South Korea doing a research project on Wikipedia. I am very impressed about your insight and active contributions. I thought you could provide some opinions really worthwhile. So, would it be possible for you to take some time off and give an online interview via E-mail? It would provide my project a lively voice of an actual administrator. And this will be of a great meaning; your experience, concerns, opinions and ideas would add a lot to my project. Actually I'm in real need of something concrete; for my project is about the mechanism a biased version of explanation is settled, and as you will probably guess, understanding such things involves a lot more than just watching explicit process. Again, I would really, really appreciate your help.

It will not take that long; in fact everything will depend completely upon your will. If you are willing to give some help, would you mind mailing me swiftly? Thanks a lot. I also leave this message to other administrators' user talk for my research. I have to interview administrators as many as possible. And further I'm a starter so I couldn't find your e-mail address. Please don't be upset about that.

bongeun319@hanmail.net

Sincerely, Bongeun Myarchives (talk) 06:00, 11 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm sure the Seoul National University has its own e-mail domain. @hanmail.net doesn't really cut it. I will respond to a suitable e-mail address. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 07:36, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Help! :-|
I was wondering if you could help me.... I'm working on User:Killiondude/template test based off of Template:Protected Areas of California. I'm trying to make it better. Anyways, I've been asking around for help with it, since I know hardly anything of template stuff. I am pretty proud of the work I've done so far. Anyways, If you look at any drop down box from the 2nd one onward, you'll notice the first and last wikilink in each subsection have a line break near them separating them from a whole mass of wikilinks. I solved this in the first drop down box by having the wikilinks all "side-by-side". I much rather the list, but I figured "Oh well" and went ahead and started doing the rest. I did the rest as the mass of wikilinks in the template, but it broke the template so I didn't click save. I tried again with just the second drop down box, but again, it broke the template. I was wondering if you could help me? Or find someone who can? I've spent hours and hours on this thing just tonight, and I'm a bit frazzled. Thanks for anything help you could offer. Killiondude (talk) 08:34, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I had a look and tidied up the National Forest group. Just putting them in one line is probably the simplest, but if you want to maintain the readability you could use HTML comments as I did in the third subsection of that group. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:51, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Unwatched pages
Hey, I'm trying to file a bug report for the recent changes proposal at VPP. You mentioned that an rc_watched column might help performance, and I was wondering how it would do so (and how to say that in the bug report). I just realized that it might be more appropriate to ask you about it over there, though since I don't know if you're still tracking that one, I thought leaving this as a notification might be ok. <b style="position:relative;border:1px solid #bbb"> M </b> 20:42, 13 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure how much you know about the way MediaWiki works; so forgive me if I'm stating the obvious. MediaWiki stores all its data in (by default) SQL databases, which are organised into a number of tables. There are about forty different tables in all; each table has a number of columns which contain specific bits of data.  So for instance, there is a "page" table, which has an entry for every page on a wiki; it has columns for the page's id, a unique number which identifies it to the software; its title, namespace, a link to the id of the most recent revision of the page, and various other bits of useful data.  Each revision has an entry in the "revision" table, which stores the unique id of the revision, the id of the text entry that is associated with the revision (the text itself is stored in a separate table again), the user id and name of whoever made the edit, the timestamp the edit was made, and various other bits and pieces.  Log actions (deletions, protections, moves, etc) are stored in yet another table, files, categories, users, tags, all have their own tables, which are designed to make it as easy as possible for the software to quickly get the data it requires to build particular pages.  So for example, Special:WhatLinksHere only has to query one table, the "pagelinks" table, to get its data; similarly for category displays (the categorylinks table), etc etc.  If required, the software can amalgamate data from several different tables (called "joining"), but it's much less efficient, especially when the tables are large.  And given that the enwiki revision table contains 306 million entries, we can safely say that all of enwiki's tables qualify as "large"...
 * As you can guess, compiling the RecentChanges display is potentially a hugely expensive operation; if the data was gathered from the 'normal' sources it would probably require joining together four or five separate tables. To avoid this, the data is actually duplicated: when you save an edit, a row is added permanently to the revision table, and various other things are updated, but an entry containing most of the same data is also added to a completely separate table, the recentchanges table.  You can see at that link the data that is stored in the recentchanges table; the RecentChanges feed is built entirely from that data.  Unlike the other tables, however, the recentchanges table is transient: rows are deleted after 30 days.
 * So if we wanted to filter the RecentChanges feed to unwatched pages, the software would need to know at least approximately how many users were watching the page. This data is stored in the watchlist table, where each row contains the id of the watching user, and the namespace and title of the page being watched (essentially, everyone's watchlists are stored together, and the software filters out your pages when you click on Special:Watchlist).  So what the software would normally have to do would be to get a list of all the pages it's interested in (that might be being displayed on the RecentChanges feed), go to the watchlist table, and look for those pages in the list of entries. That's expensive. If there was instead a column in the revision table that stored the state of whether the page in question is being watched or not, then the software could quickly filter the entries without having to look in a separate table.
 * However, it is then necessary to populate that column entry whenever an entry is added to the recentchanges table. That is, whenever someone makes an edit or log entry, the software would have to check if the page that's being edited is watched, in exactly the same way. It's a very tough question which method is likely to result in heavier load on the database: looking up just one page whenever an edit is made, or looking up many pages whenever someone loads RecentChanges with the filter in place.  I don't know the answer; Brion Vibber, the WMF CTO, has to approve all schema changes (changing the structure of the database, like adding a column to a table), so the decision is ultimately his.
 * I hope this clarifies what I meant. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:12, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep, I am familiar with most of this (good explanation, by the way). I was thinking it might somehow increase performance above what recentchanges (decreased load due to fewer requests due to a slower moving recent unwatched page - dunno). Thanks for the explanation.    <b style="position:relative;border:1px solid #bbb"> M </b>  21:39, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Barn

 * Thanks! <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 12:55, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Heads up
In light of this discussion were you aware of the ongoing debate here? Tothwolf (talk) 23:20, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
 * ...Which someone just closed as delete even though it probably needs wider discussion. We are probably going to start seeing a lot more redirects turned into piped links now :/ Tothwolf (talk) 03:05, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * No, all that discussion does is say the template should be removed from redirects and deleted. The redirects themselves will not be affected. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 07:33, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * That's not quite it either. Initially those involved in the discussion just wanted the category gone. Then there was talk of the template, then using R unprintworthy instead... As you can see from the bot edits (before it stopped) that isn't what it was doing. The problem I see with getting rid of this template is editors will no longer see the information that tells  them not to replace these redirects with piped links. That's the whole point of having a number of these  templates anyway. The discussion has moved to here now. Tothwolf (talk) 07:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
 * None of that affects the substance of WP:REDIRECT. Redirects that are not broken should not be fixed, no matter what templates and categories are on the redirect page. Editors realistically do not use this metadata in day-to-day editing anyway. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 07:53, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I clarified it over there, originally these redirect pages had the text from the template transcluded onto them, but it doesn't look like that is functional now. Tothwolf (talk) 08:06, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I find some irony in that you had already reopened the bugzilla report for redirect page not rendering text issue and attached a patch months ago. I had not seen the bugzilla report until much later :) Tothwolf (talk) 21:45, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Re Bugzilla # 14323, you'll also need to modify getPreviewText in EditPage.php to get it to render the text when previewing a redirect. Tothwolf (talk) 10:51, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I've found that, but for some reason just adding the same code (with variables changed) does sod all. As noted in, EditPage.php is a total mess; there should never be any need for such duplication.  The whole file needs to be totally rewritten.  <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 10:54, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Indeed. is also related to this. The section of code I had been looking at was this:


 * --Tothwolf (talk) 11:14, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Indeed, but changing it to something like this:


 * Does not result in proper output, which is bizzarre to say the least. Reintegrating this display with Article::view somehow would resolve several such inconsistencies between preview and normal display; but that function is probably too monolithic to call directly. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 12:37, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe the code could be moved into the 'else' block below?


 * Not sure if that would work but just a thought anyway. Tothwolf (talk) 06:11, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * That's not the problem. The code is executed, it just doesn't have the expected effect. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 08:28, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Food and drink
I was wondering, is there a way to edit the template so that when one of the associated projects is chosen the portal will will change?

Basically when I add the Beer Project using the |beer=yes switch, is there some way the portal option could automatically be changed to the Beer Portal? Here is what I need fully:
 * When the |beer= switch is set, the portal will be the Beer Portal
 * When the |wine= switch is set, the portal will be the Wine Portal
 * When either the |mix=, |coffee=, |soda= or |spirits= switches are set, the portal will be the Drink Portal
 * The others will default to the Food Portal

I have created a Sandbox at Template:WikiProject_Food_and_drink/Sandbox in which to play, if it helps.

Thanks, --Jeremy (blah blah) 16:48, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I've put a 'reverse switch' in, which is a clever way of testing many parameters against one value, rather than one parameter against many values. It's a bit delicate - it will only recognise yes - but it should do the job.  Of course you can tweak it to make it a bit more reliable, but you get the idea.  <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 17:05, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Will that work on the image too? --Jeremy (blah blah) 17:07, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * You can apply the same logic, yes, although you'd need to do it separately, naturally. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 17:08, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

It worked rather well, thank you... --Jeremy (blah blah) 00:33, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Korean name
If you have the time, could you do me a favour and have a look at this template? It has looked fine to me up until now having used IE7 (and previous versions), but now I'm on IE8 I can see the thicker borders and I assume it looks this way for users on other browsers as well. I suspect the problem stems from having a table within a table, but I have no idea how to code around it. Cheers! PC78 (talk) 15:49, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions/es
I'm not sure I had understood you. Did you asked for me to translate the page in the namespace: "Help"??

I have just moved it here (mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions/es). . Is this what you asked me for??

My english is not too good... ;) Forgive me you to. PS: I don't attend this acount, so I can't watch this discussion page. Please: notify me there, when you write me here. --Rizome (discusión) 22:06 16 May 2009 – (in this en.Wikipedia, I'm: Rizome2) —Preceding undated comment added 22:06, 16 May 2009 (UTC).

WikiProject Melanesia template
Just wondering if you could also remove  from the WikiProject Melanesia template that you recently converted. -- WOSlinker (talk) 06:29, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅ Good point! <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 07:35, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Selected article
Hello again, another contrib made some changes to this template and now there is no padding around the image - the text bumps right up against it when it used to have a little clearance between the the two elements. This involves the |side= switch, if it is not included, the image has no padding around it; if it is included there is no problem. Is there any way you can fix this so that if the switch is left out, the padding will be visible? --Jeremy (blah blah) 09:05, 18 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Is that right? <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:51, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes it is, thank you. --Jeremy (blah blah) 14:18, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Simplify policy RfC
FYI, I am drafting an RfC at the above page. If you would like to add your own statement, or indicate your support for an existing statement, please feel free to do so now. I would also strongly recommend that we avoid replying to other statements, since we would be likely to repeat what was already said on the CSD talk page, and that we should try to keep the background/proposal/objections section as concise as possible; we should not begin to pack these sections, but we should leave that for our own statements. Once we have some more contributions here, I'll see about posting it to the relevant noticeboards. Thanks! --Ryan Delaney talk 21:06, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Article classification
Hello again. I am working on this template, created by User:Willscrlt, and it is doing some thing weird with the documentation subpage when it is transcluded to the main template page. On the template's page, after the example is displayed, everything after it is out of the blue box. Looking at the Example section, you will see what I mean.

I looked at this on two computers on three browsers (IE, FF and Opera) and it is doing this in all examples.

Could you please take a look at this for me? Thanks yet again. --Jeremy (blah blah) 18:38, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Too many closing div tags. Tidy eats the last one in the content to stop it 'attacking' the rest of the skin, but it ended up prematurely closing the documentation div, and then the div that normally ends the doc is the one that got eaten. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 22:17, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Gracias. --Jeremy (blah blah) 00:24, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Need help
These 3 templates are not categorizing correctly into Category:Speedy deletion templates, they're at the end, sorted under "{". When the move was made, maybe the cats didn't get updated to the right sortkeys? I tried fixing it, but couldn't get to work right. Need your help!


 * Template:CSD R2-warn, Template:Db-f7/doc, Template:Db-g6/doc --Funandtrvl (talk) 01:49, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

WPBannerMeta
Just a note, the |small=yes switch does the same thing that the Article classification was doing. That is the in the documentation, when you demonstrate the function in a template using WPBM, it does not display the documentation properly or at all in some cases. This was from a week or three ago, and this was on the WikiProject Food and Drink template. It may have been corrected or been due to an error in the coding of this template, which is extremely large with large amounts of variables.

Another note, when using the |small parameter with the |TF parameter, the TF image is not reduced in size, making for an interesting layout. You can see an example of this at the WikiProject Food and Drink page.

--Jeremy (blah blah) 18:08, 21 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Could you clarify, "does not display the documentation properly or not at all"?? I'm not sure exactly what the expected behaviour is. I'm aware of the image size issue; that's an issue we need to look at with images generally (probably we'll end up stripping the "px" from the sizes and using parser functions to rescale images automatically). <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:37, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

When I set up the documentation page for the WikiProject Food and Drink template, I had included a |small= version of each example. When the template page was refreshed, parts of it did not display the documentation subpage. The solution was to delete the small versions and only show one example. see this diff. --Jeremy (blah blah) 06:08, 24 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmm, I don't see anything particularly out-of-place in that version. Maybe I'm just being thick, or perhaps it's a browser issue: which parts, specifically, are problematic? I note that the post-expand include size of that page is over a megabyte, halfway to the hard limit... maybe that's relevant? <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 08:58, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Sam Blacketer
See my reply to your comment. My comment was addressed to Versageek, who I mistakenly thought was an Arbitrator. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 20:04, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

To Happy-melon: Well said! Thanks! Pretty much what I meant, but you expressed it better. ☺ Coppertwig (talk) 15:49, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Slamming the door in my face?
Haha. I submitted my comment on Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2009 May 4/template:R from other capitalisation at the same time you were closing it, and I lost the edit conflict. I hope that you don't mind that I scooted my edit back within the archive tag, since it would have been there if I had been a little faster and less fussy about my spelling. ;-) Either way, have a good day! &mdash; Will scrlt ( “Talk” ) 13:48, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Lol, no worries, it's not like you were bringing to light earth-shattering new arguments that would have totally reversed my closure! :D <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 13:50, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow. That would be quite something, wouldn't it? Nothing so exciting as that, I'm afraid. &mdash; Will scrlt ( “Talk” ) 14:01, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Protected template advice
On another topic, Jerem43 recommended that I talk to you about how to go about editing the new meta template for stubs. It's in use all over the place, so it's been fully protected. We want to edit it to recognize the standard category suppression attributes. I've started working on that, but I have no clue how I need to go about getting it implemented. I'm used to making the edits to templates directly, and on templates that aren't so widely used. I was thinking of setting it up in my userspace perhaps, and then an admin could do a copy/paste once it's debugged. Or is it better to do that as a subpage in template space? Or is there some other way to go about it? Thanks in advance for the advice. Please reply on my talk page so I can keep your suggestions for future reference. &mdash; Will scrlt ( “Talk” ) 14:01, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Search archives template
Happy-Melon, I see that you are the creator of the. I just wanted to let you know that I replaced with  so that this template will work with topic names of more than one word. The search doesn't like the "_" characters in the URL form of a multiple word title. It is a nice template - sure makes it easier to search topics with many archive! So much easier. --<span style="color:#AF0AAB;background:#FFFFbb;font-family:Viner Hand ITC; margin-right:0;padding:2px 5px 1px">stmrlbs | talk 04:57, 24 May 2009 (UTC)


 * hey, you could use it here! --<span style="color:#AF0AAB;background:#FFFFbb;font-family:Viner Hand ITC; margin-right:0;padding:2px 5px 1px">stmrlbs | talk  18:48, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Re: Alternate account use
Already done. I'm surprised that nobody has bothered to ask before, apparently. Kirill [talk] [pf] 14:28, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

ping
I emailed you. Tony  (talk)  14:30, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Received and responded. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 14:37, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

WP:CSD and anchor links
Why are they not inside the edit section, or at least in the title? This is counter-intuitive... --Izno (talk) 21:57, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * So that when you scroll to them, the section header is visible rather than being off the top of the screen. When there are thirty anchors, it becomes unmanageable to put them all inside the header (plus it screws up the ToC IIRC). <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 22:15, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Few questions
Hi! How are you? I have a few questions for you, if you don't mind. Thanks, &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:09, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Why didn't this substitute the template instead of just adding "subst:" to the code?
 * 2) Is there any way of specifying the style for all cells in a column of a table, without defining it separately for each cell? If so, could you give me an example?
 * 3) How can I put a table inside another table so that there is no space or padding around the inner table?
 * 4) When designing a template for use on articles (i.e. an outward facing template for general use) with a few parameters, would you recommend any of the following:
 * 5) *using unnamed parameters?
 * 6) *using named parameters?
 * 7) *accepting both?


 * I have no immediate idea, it seems rather wierd.
 * The colgroup attribute does this, but it's not whitelisted in the MediaWiki parser, and isn't universally supported browser-wise. For now, no, you have to do it for each cell individually.
 * Using <tt>style="border-collapse:collapse"</tt> on the outer table usually works, might need to explicitly set padding=0, and margin=0 on the inner table, for completeness
 * It depends entirely on the expected use; in general unnamed parameters are good only when there is no deviation in the number of parameters that need to be specified., for instance, is suboptimal because you can often want to define param 4 and 5 (author and source) without needing to define param 2 and 3.  If the template always needs the same data, it can be put in unnamed parameters, but also remember that their whitespace stripping is odd; I'd usually go with named parameters.
 * <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 12:35, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * You didn't answer question 0 ;) About question 2, so there is no way to define the style in the table definition and then, in each cell, say "use that style"? Sorry, I'm pretty ignorant with CSS. Thanks for the other answers; yeah number 1 is crazy. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:15, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm good, thanks! I have a huge amount of other stuff to do, none of which is at all interesting, so here I am!! :D
 * That is pretty much exactly what colgroup does (google for it, should be fairly easy to find). There's a bug somewhere to get it enabled, can't remember what's happening with it. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 13:18, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Template:WikiProject Korea
Can you check your recent edits to this banner? Task forces are not appearing collapsed (as they should be), e.g. Talk:Yodok Stories. Cheers! PC78 (talk) 10:01, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Through some new mystic voodoo, WPBM now automagically collapses notes when more than a threshold number are triggered on a page. So if you add a couple more notes/taskforces to those banners, you'd notice them collapsing.  The threshold number is completely customisable, so you can set it to 0 if you want them always to collapse; currently the default threshold is four or more.  Do you want me to do this for WPKorea? Now of course, if you were an admin, you could do it yourself... :P <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 10:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Please. Notes 1 & 2 should not be collapsed, though. PC78 (talk) 10:09, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, so maybe the notes will have to be hooked to HOOK_IMPORTANCE to achieve the desired effect? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:13, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Oooh, pernickety! :D The 'correct' way is probably to put the TFs in a hook/collapsed and remove the hook/notecounter. I see the effect that you want to achieve. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 10:41, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, I've made the change. I Don't Like the way I've had to use hooks/notecounter; do you think it would be a good idea to build a trigger parameter into hooks/collapsed, Martin? The way the notes always collapse on the template example is also slightly worrying, although I've checked that they don't actually do so in the 'real world', mysteriously enough... <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 10:49, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think the counter is necessary at all, as the section won't display unless the output is non-empty. I've also the templatepage display, by actually passing the COLLAPSED parameter to /core ;) &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:08, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh good, that's what it was guarding against, nice to see that it's auto-triggered. And well done for finding the bug in /templatepage! <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 12:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

MiszaBot @ mw.org
Ohai! I've set it up, so you can begin to configure pages for archiving while I try to grab a 'crat to +bot it. Cheers, Миша 13 16:11, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yay! Thanks Misza!  I've set it up on the Support desk over there, so you can see if everything's working ok. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 16:24, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * First run complete. I'm keeping the barnstar. :P Миша 13 16:45, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Reply

 * You can now verify that I have been identified to the Foundation. --Vassyana (talk) 04:14, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Here
<div style="border-style:solid; border-color:blue; background-color:AliceBlue; border-width:1px; text-align:left; padding:8px;" class="plainlinks">

<font color="2f4f4f" size="5pt" face="French Script MT">Damërung ...ÏìíÏ...<font color="66CDAA">_ ΞΞΞ_       . has given you a WikiCake! WikiCakes promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day a little better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a cake, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Bon appetit!

Spread the tastiness of cakes by adding {{subst:GiveCake}} to their talk page with a friendly message. I give you wiki-cake because I think your username (and it´s signature) is very funny and/or cheerful. lol - <font color="2f4f4f" size="5pt" face="French Script MT">Damërung ...ÏìíÏ...<font color="66CDAA">_ ΞΞΞ_       .  --  17:55, 29 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Mmmm, thanks! <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 17:57, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

IE bug
The problem only seems to occur when the class is Unassessed. I'm wondering if it might have something to do with the code on Template:Class? &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:23, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * No, scratch that; it would affect all classes except FA/A/GA. But I think it is likely to be something related to class because that is the only row which seems to affect the behaviour. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:41, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, well spotted. class changes so many things on WPBM it's hard to know where to start looking for annoying bugs like this! <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 08:58, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

A request for template editing
If you have a moment, would you mind checking out this? Thank you.--Rockfang (talk) 20:32, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Tables talk
I left a comment in the discussion at MediaWiki talk:Common.css regarding eye surgery I'm having tomorrow and my need to continue discussion after I've had that and at least a couple days to recover. Tracking through lengthy talk page discussions without developing migraines is difficult at best. I also wanted to say that I'm not sure who the IP is or his/her goal in the discussion, but it doesn't necessarily represent or reflect my questions/comments. It was sort of odd to me that someone has popped into the discussion from an IP to lobby on behalf of WP:ACTOR or anything else since I've never seen the series of IPs involved in anything regarding articles connected to WP:ACTOR. In any case, I'd appreciate the postponement. Wildhartlivie (talk) 21:11, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure thing, the discussion isn't going anywhere. Best wishes for a speedy recovery. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:48, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

! usage problem
Hi there - I was referred to you by after asking this question: "if you go to my page and look on the right where my programming languages are, why can't I put a box in there that requires a parameter by using ! ?" Thanks in advance - I hope you have an idea of how I can correct this. -Garrett W. (Talk / Contribs / PM) 17:40, 2 June 2009 (UTC) A diff? Like... this one? (Note: this diff will show t|1 instead of t|2.) (Incidentally, I think I recently saw a way to make links like that last one look like internal wiki links... do you know what I'm talking about and how to do it?) -Garrett W. (Talk / Contribs / PM) 04:48, 3 June 2009 (UTC) -Garrett W. (Talk / Contribs / PM) 12:26, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * What, exactly, are you trying to do? Can you show me a diff? <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 22:37, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm trying to add the userbox to my Babel sidebar, and from what I've read (I forgot where), it's supposed to be possible if I sub in ! for the pipe character.
 * Ah, I see. No, unfortunately that won't work, and hasn't since Tim Starling redesigned the MediaWiki preprocessor in January 2008. Templates are now broken up into parameters before the blocks are evaluated, so the whole thing, including the pipe and parameter, are sent to be evaluated as the title of the template; since pipe characters are illegal in page titles, an error occurs and no template is rendered at all.  I don't think there is any way to achieve this without changing the  template.
 * You can use the "plainlinks" class to remove the external link icon from a section:  &rarr;  http://www.example.com . Or the template  might be easier:   &rarr; . <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 08:32, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks a bunch!

Template:Time ago and Template:LastEditedBy
Hello, I would like to request that Template:Time ago be reduced to semi-protection because there does not seem to be alot of vandalism to Template:LastEditedBy, which is an unprotected template that appears to be the only wrapper for Time ago. I agree about the visibility of the template, which is also why I would like to request that Template:LastEditedBy be given semi-protection. I have no more changes planned but my slothing has brought me around to this area. Since it is on my watchlist now I can contribute to checking it for vandalism. ZabMilenko 04:36, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Sure can. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 15:02, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

For future reference
"#default" has to go last in the switch, so this broke the template. I didn't know either. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:25, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Yuck, that's horrible., and I've added (yet another!) warning to the documentation at mw.org.  Well spotted! <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 15:11, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Straw poll on displaying time since last edit
Hi, you weighed in on the "display time since last edit on article" discussion at the Village pump. I have now started a straw poll on the subject at WP:Village pump (proposals). Your opinion would be appreciated. --Cybercobra (talk) 04:50, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorting Problem (Since you appear to know more about how templates work than anyone)
Because of a minor brouhaha at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography raised by members of the newly resurrected Composers Project I found Category:WikiProject Composers articles. They are all sorted incorrectly.

I checked a sample of the ones on the first page and found that they all had listas parameters in the Biog banner. I tried putting the same value in the Compsers banner, to no avail. Aaron Copland even has a DEFAULTSORT tag and the value is correct. How can this happen and how can it happen without generating a DEFAULTSORT conflict error message?

Thank you!
 * JimCubb (talk) 18:55, 10 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The short answer is because the listas functionality in WPBM is comprehensively broken, and does not work at all. This is something that can be corrected the easy way: by the developers changing one line of the site config, running a maintenance script, and thereby resolving .  Or it can be done the hard way, by us hacking stuff into the banner code manually.  I've put off taking the latter approach for some time now; but if we are seriously thinking about converting, it will have to be fixed one way or another.  <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 21:22, 10 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I guess you haven't seen comment 9 yet, then? =D 「 ダイノ ガイ 千？！ 」? · <small style=font-weight:normal>Talk⇒Dinoguy1000 22:06, 10 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Hadn't, no, as it says above, I was hopelessly busy for the past week (I only logged in twice!). That's a tremendously heartening development, but the maintenance script is the killer; IIRC the enwiki categorylinks table has about 40 million entries in it.  I will look into how we can make use of this new dose of sanity for WPBM as quickly as possible, however. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 22:29, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Either I don't know enough about the subject or I did not make myself clear. The problem seemed to be category specific. When I first saw the problem at Category:WikiProject Composers articles I checked a few articles for the other categories they were in. Everywhere but Composers had them correct. Was that because the bug took a long time to hit them? Talk:Aaron Copland is where he belongs in the category. Is that because the page has a DEFAULTSORT with a correct value?

I am adding a value for listas for those Biog pages that lack one. Should I add a value to all the banners rather than restricting myself to Biog?

More important, should Mike get DefaultsortBot to do the same with all the pages in Category:Biography articles with listas parameter and copy to Biog value to all the other banners? I think his original bot approval would cover this.

Welcome back!
 * JimCubb (talk) 18:13, 12 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The categorylinks updates are propagating much faster than I expected them to; I don't know if that's because Tim's started running the maintenance script, or if the job queue is just feeling supercharged today, but things are realigning themselves very quickly. I removed the hardcoded sortkeys from WPBM this morning, and already most of the pages using it have been recategorised.  Are you sure that only the Composers category was affected?  More importantly, are you aware of any categories that are still not sorting properly?  Bear in mind that you may need to do null edits on category members to ensure they get the latest sortkeys.
 * Only one banner on a page needs to specify a listas value; adding them to other banners won't do any harm, but certainly isn't necessary. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 18:39, 12 June 2009 (UTC)