Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 51

Deletion of dates and other numbers when I edit
I have an unusual bug that is messing up edits on wikipedia. Intermittently, but recurrently, when I edit, there is an uwanted and unobservable (at the time) stripping away of dates and numbers thoughout a Wikipedia article. As an example is woth 1K words, see what happened on Nov 7 when I edited Ann Dunham (Barack's mother, fwiw). Fortunately, User:Tvoz was also watching this article and re-inserted the deleted dates.

This has happened several times before, over a month+. Here is what a helpful user reported to me, but I couldn't figure out what to do from his comments:

Hello. I must point out that in many of your recent edits long strings of numerals have been deleted, for some reason.

As a result, many web addresses have been broken and become useless. For instance, in this edit (diff), the original (valid) weblink http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/01/AR2008100103169.html became a broken link http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/01/AR.html because the string of numerals in AR2008100103169.html was deleted.

Additionally, in that same edit, the string "accessdate=2008-10-09" was also changed to "accessdate=" (that is, the date was deleted). Access dates are essential information and should be preserved especially when websites are used as sources of reference, because the same website accessed in different dates may yield different information.

Here are some other of your recent edits that truncated strings of numerals: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] --many of which I have already fixed.

Since I don't think such changes were intentional (since they don't make sense), I'll leave it to you to figure out what kind of (software?) glitch have caused those problems. Until then, I'd suggest you double check your edits after they are done. Thanks for your attention on this matter. --76.202.61.72 (talk) 11:33, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Yours is a very unusual bug, but I don't think that using another account would solve the problem if it originates in your browser setting or add-ons (or even malware?). It has just happened again in one of your latest edits today,[9] which I already fixed again.

I would suggest you to do some tests to identify where the problems come from by editing this paragraph and see if the following numbers would disappear: like id=1142862090121 or date 2008-11-01 and Pi=3.1415926 etc.

May I suggest you test with (1) different browsers (Firefox, Safari, Opera, or Google Chrome, to see whether the problem resides in your browser, or (2) logging in and out of your Wikipedia account, to eliminate the possibility that it is the setting of your account, or (3) use some other computer, to see if it is caused by your Operating system. Hope this may help you zero in your problem. --76.202.61.72 (talk) 20:44, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your help and tips. It's strange because I checked the Giulani edit after I did it, and I didn't see any problem. I've used Firefox with XP for years, now at 3.0, but will try with another browser. It might be the computer. I have run Spybot and Zonealarm for Malwear, but didn't find anything. This has happened once before, and I assumed it was a OTO gremlin. Obviously not. Bellagio99 (talk) 21:09, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I am restoring the missing numbers caused by your last edit on this section. In any case, the test was "successful" in that it showed that your edit did truncate all the long numbers three paragraphs above (except for the number "3" before the dot). It also showed that the paragraph is an adequate model to duplicate and test your bug. I also wonder if you can write and post long numbers such as those, to create similar tests for yourself. But if not, you can always restore your own edits as you did here -- in which the long numbers came back after you reverted yourself. A sandbox page could be of help if you don't want to clog your history with too many tests, though. Good luck. --76.202.61.72 (talk) 23:09, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you should put this question to developer User:Brion VIBBER. He knows all there is to know about the wiki code and he may have an idea what causes it. Be sure to mention the test above. - Mgm|(talk) 01:01, 2 November 2008 (UTC) [Bellagio99's reponse: I did post to User: Brion Vibber, but didn't get a response] You could also try clearing User:Bellagio99/monobook.js and posting to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). PrimeHunter (talk) 02:48, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

←It apparently affected my talk page too after you edited there - makes no sense. Thanks to the IP for fixing. Tvoz/talk 08:34, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

End of copied message from my talk page. I am reluctant to thrash about without know what to do. I can't restore my own edits, because going on to do the edits and the reversions seems to cause them.

With humble thanks in advance. A diagnosis would be the start of the solution.

Bellagio99 (talk) 02:05, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Edit notices for deletion pages
A discussion about the edit notice for the admin noticeboard took a turn away from that noticeboard, and towards the edit notices that are in place for disambiguation pages, how those are acheived, and whether a similar set of notices would be useful for various deletion systems. Since, if implemented, IMHO it would be best to set up something that functions for all the various deletion systems, instead of just doing, say, AFD, I figured a centralized discussion of the idea in general would be useful first. So here I am.

For those not familiar with them, Edit Notices are a fairly recent addition to the project code-base. They are notices that display above the edit box whenever in edit mode. The notices on Disambiguation pages are set up to trigger off of the disambig template's presence on the page, so the various deletion systems could easily have similar messages set up.

The idea would be to have different messages for the different systems. AFD tagged pages, AFD discussions, CSD tagged pages, PROD tagged pages, CFD, RFD, MFD, IFD, etc. It could even be granularized to specific CSD criteria if we wanted to go that far, based on the different CSD templates.

I guess I'm here for two purposes at the moment. 1) Evaluating whether this is a good idea overall, and 2) wondering if people think this is the best place for this discussion, or if anyone can think of a better place for it. I would think the discussion location should be fairlt centralized, since this would effect a number of deletion systems, but I don't really want it hidden away somewhere like Wikipedia talk:Deletion discussions, where noone goes. - TexasAndroid (talk) 22:17, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Deletion process is being overhauled technically in a few months. &mdash; Werdna  &bull;  talk  12:08, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Heh. So I assume you are implying I should wait and see what happens in the overhaul?  Sigh.  So be it.  It'll be interesting to see what such an overhaul will involve. - TexasAndroid (talk) 14:07, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Where is this being discussed?  Little Red Riding Hood  talk  00:10, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The edit notes, or the overhaul? If the edit note, at the moment, nowhere, as the "discussion" here has fizzled.  If the overhaul, Werdna will need to answer that one.  His talk about "a few months" makes me think something may be coming down the pipe in the code base to shake things up, but that's just a guess on my part.  - TexasAndroid (talk) 14:36, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'm talking about software changes, which will be discussed in due time (i.e. when they're ready). &mdash; Werdna  &bull;  talk  14:42, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

bug in addOnloadHook
When I try to use "addOnloadHook" from a different window, it doesn't work. I need a way to wait for an opened window to be loaded completely. Manish Earth Talk 15:26, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It's not a bug. In the code above  is simply not defined when another page just started loading. Use   instead. This works in Firefox, not sure about other browsers. P.S. I suggest using Wikipedia talk:WikiProject User scripts for such questions. —AlexSm 15:53, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I think  ought to work (assuming that you're doing this from another MediaWiki page, and thus have   defined), and be more reliable than assigning to  .  Neither does quite the same thing as , though.  If you really wanted to copy its behavior exactly, you'd need to duplicate the relevant code from wikibits.js, something like this:


 * Mind you, I've never tried actually doing this, and it seems at least plausible that such poking around in other windows might run afoul of security restrictions designed to stop cross-site scripting attacks. Still, you can try it and see if it works.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:43, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * actually, I found an easy way to do it:

It works! (Of course, in my script, all of the newly opened windows are manipulated from the parent window, so there is no need for me to write "newWin.something". Thanks! Manish  Earth Talk 14:14, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Geohack issues
Has anyone else noticed that this is not working? I just got a ton of foreign characters when trying to load a map, and then "No parameters given, aborting." when I go to http://stable.toolserver.org/geohack/geohack.php. Not sure who I should tell about this. Maybe someone should contact User:Magnus. Calliopejen1 (talk) 19:02, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I get a new popup map rather than going to the usual site when clicking the coord link at the top of a page. Some testing is happening, I assume. Sswonk (talk) 21:15, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I get the same as . D.M.N. (talk) 21:53, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any foreign characters, I see Title 		Neve_Eitan (Edit | All coordinates | Report inaccuracies) Coordinate 	32° 29′ 31.91″ N, 35° 31′ 54.84″ E 	Decimal 	32.492197,35.5319 etc. etc. But if something does need fixing, be sure to ask Magnus Manske not Magnus Forrester-Barker. Probably you just need to set your browser to UTF-8 (or upgrade it if that's not an option). — CharlotteWebb 22:54, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Capitalisation
Should the headings for the navigation bar on the left side of the page...

<- (over there)

...be capitalised? The links are already capitalised, so it would make sense that the headings would be too. It's kind of weird and sort of unprofessional to see:

navigation
 * Main page
 * Contents
 * Etc...

And it would be a lot better to have:

Navigation
 * Main page
 * Contents
 * Etc...

Or even:

Navigation For added emphasis.
 * Main page
 * Contents
 * Etc...

This applies also to the navigation tabs at the top of the page/article/discussion/whatever, like having "Edit this page" instead of "edit this page". The current format is just bothering the inner perfectionist in me. What do you guys think? Kortaggio (talk) 02:11, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll let you in on a secret. They are capitalized.

Navigation Search Interaction etc
 * If you look at monobook/main.css you might notice (edited for brevity):


 * --Splarka (rant) 06:15, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * In other words, if you want to see capitalization, just add


 * to your monobook.css page, and once you update your cache, you'll see the pretty capitals you desire. :) { { Nihiltres | talk | log } } 18:08, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Wow! That was so easy. Thanks! Kortaggio (talk) 18:34, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Possible issue with NOINDEX
Okay, most people know that Wikipedia articles usually rank highly in web searches. For example, a Google Search for Ailurus fulgens, the scientific name for the Red Panda, turns up the Wikipedia article Red Panda, which Ailurus fulgens is a redirect to. Now, once upon a time, back in the bad old days, a Google search for Gavia immer used to turn up our article Great Northern Diver, which Gavia immer redirects to, as the first search result. It also used to turn up my userpage (User:Gavia immer) as the third result, well before any other useful sites were listed. If you check that Google search link, however, you'll see that Great Northern Diver is no longer listed in search results at all; the best Wikipedia result is for Loon.

What happened? Well, because my userpage was basically a big inconvenience to people actually looking for the bird species, I tagged my main userpage with __NOINDEX__ (later changed to ) to stop my userpage from being listed in web searches. That isn't supposed to have any effect on the article-space page, and article-space pages aren't supposed to be able to be affected by __NOINDEX__ anyways, and in any case it shouldn't be possible for a redirect to affect its target in this way, but there seems to be some bug that does just that.

Before I write up a bugzilla bug on this, though, can anyone else replicate the problem? I can't quite prove that my theory is the correct one, though it seems the most likely one, and if it is, I doubt that this is the only occurence, but I wouldn't know where to start looking for another one. Without multiple examples, it might be tough to fix. Meanwhile, be aware that this seems to be happening. I don't personally know how many people search on "Gavia immer" on Google hoping to find the Wikipedia article, but there could be worse effects. — Gavia immer (talk) 19:35, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Great Northern Diver is the second result for me in your Google search. Users sometimes report that articles disappear from Google, but they usually come back soon. I don't know the inner workings of Google but it's a pretty big and complicated machinery. I don't believe your user page can be the cause. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:47, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * So it is O_o. Take my word for it, before I posted this, it hadn't been appearing for at least a week prior (when I first noticed this). Now, immediately after I posted, it does appear approximately where it used to. So, apparently, the issue is just Google deliberately trying to mess with my brain. I guess I need to wrap my head in the extra-thick tinfoil or something. — Gavia immer (talk) 20:14, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Any search for my nom de guerre should favor a redirect pointing to this eminently notable British actress rather than my user page. Reasonable people can disagree about whether there's any reason to index user-pages to begin with, but I think we all agree they should be considered less significant than articles or article redirects. I would suggest contacting Google directly, as it's mostly their problem. — CharlotteWebb 19:52, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * For the record, I have no issue with indexing user pages by default, because I've used Google search to find user pages before. It would be nice if they didn't obsucure other useful content on the Web, that's all. — Gavia immer (talk) 20:14, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Google indexing user pages means that deleted articles can be kept up, users can use their pages for advertising, you name it. dougweller (talk) 22:12, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It also means that people can find useful stuff like User:NE2/valuations/Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. The bad stuff can be deleted if found. --NE2 22:20, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * But still if there was an article with that title or something similar, it should appear first. — CharlotteWebb 22:39, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Of course, but that's an issue that Google has to deal with (since the searcher will generally want the article). It's only our problem if there's something possibly harmful on the page. --NE2 00:01, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * No, users aren't supposed to use their pages that way and they get dealt with when located. Some temporary abuse does not a global problem make.  Dragons flight (talk) 22:43, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

You can also use Template:Thisuser. The documentation is at Template talk:Thisuser. I personally use a handwritten hatnote on my user page. The relevant Google search brings up the article first, but with the user page directly below it. Carcharoth (talk) 23:58, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Show preview / what's this
Using IE7/monobook, sometimes when I get over-excited and hit "Show Preview", I miss and hit the "(what's this?)" link just above the button. This takes me to Help:Minor edit and when I hit Back, my changes are gone, and I lose more of what little hair I still have left.

Does anyone else have this happen, and do you find it annoying? Is there a workaround to retrieve my changes? (I realize that "be more careful" and "don't use preview" are solutions, too) Is there a chance we could get that help link moved somewhere a little farther away from Preview? Franamax (talk) 21:26, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Or not, I fixed it for myself with "#minoredit_helplink {display:none;}" in my CSS. Still an interesting question for the general-case user though. Franamax (talk) 21:30, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * A user script could make use of the onbeforeunload event to prompt leaving the page. It would probably also want to hook the form's onsubmit event to avoid prompting when the button are used. Anomie⚔ 21:44, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

See also Village pump (technical)/Archive 42. Includes scripts. — CharlotteWebb 22:44, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

changing the logo
Hi, we want to change the logo of gileki Wikipedia, what can we do? I upload our logo with name of glk:Image:Wiki.png but these logo not change. —Preceding unsigned comment added by AminSanaei (talk • contribs) 11:09, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * See Logo. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:36, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * thank you but What is our LocalSettings.php file address?--AminSanaei (talk) 19:27, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Open a request at Bugzilla (Open a bug => Wikimedia => Site Requests) including a link to the community consensus for the new logo. ^demon[omg plz] 20:30, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I create this https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16271 but they don’t change anything--AminSanaei (talk) 08:48, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if everyone responding is aware the question is about a logo for Gileki Wikipedia (which does not have its own custom logo), not English Wikipedia. To AminSanaei: A major change cannot occur without agreement from the user community, and in this case, probably agreement from the administrators at GWP.  It won't be changed overnight.  The logo may also have to be approved by English Wikipedia's administration, since it is a variation on their logo (and I'm not sure if they would approve a coloured-in version).  Your best next move is to present it to everyone at the Gileki site; we probably can't (and shouldn't) provide much influence from here. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 11:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi “A Knight Who Says Ni”, because our Wikipedia nearly have over 1000 article, therefore we want to change it for many days not forever! And our “agreement from the user community” is in talk of main page in this address, thank you--AminSanaei (talk) 14:14, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Our problem doesn’t solve!--AminSanaei (talk) 09:42, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The logo needs to be changed by a developer. You already made the request in BugZilla, so all that has to happen is for them to get around to do it, or to give a reason why they declined the request. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 06:47, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Stubborn error message
In the External links section of Hilary Duff, there's an error message that reads Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "[". I've tried, but I can't track down the source of the error.&mdash;Kww(talk) 14:11, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Answering at Wikipedia_talk:Persondata. --Splarka (rant) 15:57, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It looks to be an incomplete expression, and since the comment mentions Persondata, it was likely supposed to go immediately before that template. The comment says "see WP:Persondata" but that page does not say anything about why this bit of code is necessary.  I'm guessing someone intended the metadata to generate only if the subject's age falls in a certain range.  Maybe this has something to do with protecting the privacy of minors?  But the age ranges (12 and 20) don't seem appropriate for that.  Since the logical expression is broken and incomplete, I'm going to just take it out.  BTW, that error is on old versions of the page going back over a year (though it's possible a recent change is causing errors on old versions, so it doesn't mean it always displayed as an error); I went back at least 1500 edits and didn't find where the coding was introduced. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 16:03, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The error is in age introduced about a month ago which categorizes the age results, causing them to be useless for use in expression. --Splarka (rant) 16:10, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It has been deleted which seems best. If anyone is curious about what the deal was I searched through the history for the original addition - It was added two years ago  seems to have been intended to automatically include the correct category (category:living child actor/category:living teen actor/category:former child actor) based on age.  Since all of the categories have since been deleted there is no use for the code at all that I can see.  -- SiobhanHansa 01:21, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for telling me about this. I am the original author of the {age} template, and I was hoping to make a category that would automatically move a person into a new category on their birthday. For example, a twelve year old becomes a teenager when they turn 13. Sorry for any technical difficulty I may have created there. --Uncle Ed (talk) 12:58, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Remove "edit this page" link
I know that _NEWSECTIONLINK_ can add a "new section" link at the top (such as on this VPT page). But how do I to remove the "edit this page" link from a page? I want to do that on my talk page, where many people (especially complaining IPs) have posted without using section headers (which help to organize the page into sections). That can be prevented by forcing them to use the "new section" link, which makes you give the comment a headline. -- King of &hearts;   &diams;   &clubs;  &spades; 06:29, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think you can. Algebraist 13:12, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think this would be desirable under any circumstances. Just put a prominent banner at the top with a "new section" link: [ HEY YOU, CLICK HERE TO TALK] Or something like that. [[Image:Smiley.svg|15px|]] — CharlotteWebb 13:59, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Or just add a long and unmissable comment to the top of the page, saying something like:


 * Of course, this can be combined with CharlotteWebb's suggestion. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:59, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
 * An Editnotice might also be a good idea. Algebraist 18:12, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

If I reboot, does it clear my cache?
If I reboot, does it clear my cache? Lightmouse (talk) 12:29, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * No, not necessarily, unless you have your browser set to clear temprorary files when it exits. There is also the complication of proxy servers which may have their own caches. Graham 87 13:49, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. That is a helpful answer. Lightmouse (talk) 13:51, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

User Page Redux
This is probably a simple question but I can't find an answer in the info pages and appreciate any help. I created an article in my user page and moved it to the main space. Simple enough. I now want to write a second article but my user page still has all of the info from the first article. How do I create a second user page (I tried the Subpage instructions to no avail) or remove the existing info without doing anything to the article in the main space? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Writerejm (talk • contribs) 20:17, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
 * When you move a page, the old page gets a redirect to the new name. I have removed the redirect from your userpage. Also, as a note, you might want to consider adding some more sources to that article. This basically looks like the results of one research, and as such is the "theory" of one person. Until something like that sees wider acceptation in the professional field (by being quoted and used in other research papers), i usually isn't very suited for Wikipedia. --Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:42, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The best way to deal with this is not to create articles directly in your user page, but as a subpage of your user page, something like User:Writerejm/Newarticle1 (replacing  Newarticle1 with the name of your new article).  Then when the page is  moved to the main space, the entire subpage can be deleted.  – ukexpat (talk) 21:53, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Search criteria
I did a search for "Aerobee 170" and "Aerobee 350" (rockets) and received the standard response no such article.

However under an existing article there were subheadings exactly on-topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobee

I claim there is a search criterion error on wikipedia that results in a failed search where a successful one is not only possible but exactly on-topic.

I use my own experience as an example, but this propogates accross all subject matters.

Wikipedia should also search for way back machine content by some means, such as "offsite references". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.254.135.17 (talk) 03:30, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Which exact response did you get? On the two searches I get "No article title matches" which means there is no article with that in the title, but the Aerobee article is listed in both search results. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:36, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I know I've had the Special:Search feature fail to work even when I had previously gotten valid results for the same query, then tried again in a few hours and had it work again. Some kind of server issue surely. That's only one of the ways in which the search mechanism is unreliable. As for the Aerobee rocket numbers, these should redirect to the section which discusses them (the redirect can later be over-written with a proper article if desired), so that the "Go" button directly accesses the article rather than defaulting to "search" (the latter of which our readers should ideally never see unless searching for something which doesn't exist, in which case it should be empty anyway—make sense?). — CharlotteWebb 04:50, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The search page messages are misleading and unnecessary long. As a result, when there is only a couple of search results, the user, even if scrolls down, can easily overlook the search results. As for search downtime, please do report these. We had some problems about a month ago, when search was fairly unstable for about a week, but we shouldn't have any downtime now. --rainman (talk) 09:45, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Adding dateformat
In the discussion at Template_talk:Cite_web a proposal has been outlined on how to standardize and show the dates in cite web by applying the following change. The change has been worked out in a test template cite web3 with examples, by using DATEtoMOS. Is this something we should applied to this template and or all other Citation templates? Nsaa (talk) 13:43, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

error in article
The article Tone displays a closing onlyinclude tag at its top. Thought I'd post here about it in lieu of any other idea. 86.44.21.224 (talk) 22:03, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This was an error in, which has now been fixed. Happy‑melon 22:19, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Excellent. 86.44.21.224 (talk) 22:37, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Error at MediaWiki:Longpagewarning
See MediaWiki talk:Longpagewarning. Looks like an #expr: or two are getting very upset when their input is large enough to have a comma or two. I'm not aware of any elegant way around this, personally, so would appreciate a few eyes. – Luna Santin  (talk) 00:46, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I think I've fixed it: see MediaWiki_talk:Longpagewarning for details. { { Nihiltres | talk | log } } 03:04, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

My preferences -- Gadgets
If there is a more appropriate place to ask this, please point me that way. I have rollback and use Firefox 2.0.0.17. Under my preferences, gadgets, User interface gadgets, is the selection "After rolling back an edit, automatically open the contributions of the user rolled back." This opens the contributions in the same tab over the page I just rolledback. Is there any way to make the contributions open in a new tab? Rgrds. --Tombstone (talk) 12:36, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The gadget script could presumably be modified to use, which, depending on your browser settings, will open either a new window or a new tab.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way for normal JavaScript to control which of these happens.  If one were to turn the gadget into a Greasemonkey user script, though, one could use  .  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 18:20, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I just took a closer look at the gadget, and it seems to do its trick in a rather peculiar way. Rather than try to write something based on that, may I suggest that you add the following code into your monobook.js:


 * (Or just use .)  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:37, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Shouldn't that be ? – ukexpat (talk) 17:01, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Works either way. You can also spell my username with either a space or an underscore.  The end result is the same.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:22, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Cool! – ukexpat (talk) 14:08, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Problems with category page counts?
Currently, says at the top "The following 200 pages are in this category, out of 603 total." - following that is a list of all 290 articles that are currently shown in the category. I realise there can be a database lag, especially in categories like this which use templates to add articles, but I've never seen it differentially affect the number of articles shown and the article count. is there a glitch at the moment? Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  22:57, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I see exactly 200 pages listed and a link saying "next 200" to the next page which starts with Sanaksar monastery. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:10, 10 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You misunderstand (my fault) - if you click on that "next 200" link, you only get a further 90 articles displayed, which is all that the ctegory seems to contain. Yet the note above the list clearly says it contains about 600 articles. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  00:32, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I get 204 with a count of 520 - I don't know wha the problem is, unless the count includes subcategories.... <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue">Den <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:red">dodge  Talk Contribs 00:09, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

The difference between your numbers and mine are simply caused by the sorting of about 80 stubs from this category. As for subcats, it doesn't have any. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  01:03, 13 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I encountered similar problems before. See Village pump (technical)/Archive 50 Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}<sub style="margin-left:-3.5ex;">κοντριβς – WP Physics} 01:45, 13 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks - looks like exactly the same thing. Whatlinkshere clearly shows that all the articles that are meant to be there are there, but the 500+ number is wrong. Still no clue as to what causes it, though. Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  05:14, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Unexpected search results
How do you explain this? The first search result does not contain the queried text, so... why is it the 1st result?--Sidsel Sørendatter (talk) 14:28, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Good question. The name appears to have been googlebombed: but that shouldn't affect us... --NE2 14:32, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It's probably anchor text in a link like julie moult somewhere. These kind of anchors texts are then attached to the target article as meta descriptors, this usually helps for rare acronyms, significant parts of the title, etc.. But also has some negative effects, like in this case. --rainman (talk) 14:39, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You're right. This is rather sneaky vandalism; I'm going to bring it up at WP:BLPN. --NE2 16:19, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * That was it, Idiot is now no longer in search results for julie moult. --rainman (talk) 09:04, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Display error in article
When loading up Evolution (Dove), ref 39, the external links section, and the page categories are cut off (see this screenshot). Clicking any of the ref links fixes the issue (after clicking the link to ref 38), but I'd rather it be correct from the start. Browser used is FireFox 3.0.3. I'm looking to push the article through another Peer Review soon, so any ideas on what's causing the issue, or how to fix it, would be appreciated. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) &bull; 18:34, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Looks OK to me in FF 2.0.0.18. – ukexpat (talk) 20:01, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * No issues with FF 2.0.0.17 or IE 6. Could be a cache issue. Maybe purge the server cache and your temporary internet cache and try again?  Thanks AreJay (talk) 20:17, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It's a bug in Firefox 3. Often, resizing your window will fix it, and I've found that sometimes hitting "tab" a few times will also fix it. Anomie⚔ 00:00, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Odd behaviour of locator map images
I've noticed on Kromdraai fossil site, Northfield, Illinois and Overberg Test Range that the images showing the location of a place move around when I float the mouse pointer over them and sometimes just disappear altogether if I maximise my browser window. I'm using IE6.--A bit iffy (talk) 15:15, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't have that problem: PC, XP, MSIE7 -- SGBailey (talk) 18:58, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Not happening any more for me (though I'm now on PC-XP2/FF2), and the lack of other reports indicates it was just some glitch.--A bit iffy (talk) 20:47, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * is quite possibly related to this. --Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 22:24, 7 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I use IE7 and I'm finding the image disappearing upon resizing the browser window in the first two articles named, though not the last one.
 * On the Kromdraai article, I also notice that if, after making the image disappear, I click back and then click forward, the infobox is sometimes off position a bit to the left, by about an em or so, and the image is still missing. Once I have gone to another page and back, moving the mouse over where the image should be causes the infobox to shift back to its usual position, and the image to reappear. The same also occurs in the Northfield article, minus the weird infobox positioning.
 * I also noticed something potentially related in another article: in articles with taxoboxes (such as Tyranni), if the mouse is not positioned over the page when the page is loaded, moving the mouse over the page causes the taxobox (which starts out in its normal position) to shift about an em to the left (somewhat like with Kromdraai). Lucky Wizard (talk) 08:55, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * This shifting seems to happen with most taxoboxes but not all. Gruiformes isn't affected, for instance. Also, the Wiktionary box in Play shifts like the taxoboxes, as does the image and Commons box in Play (animal behaviour) (but not on most other pages); on Neomura, the taxobox, the later image, and the "other project" boxes shift -- it would seem that, if something shifts on a page, everything does. In General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (but not in President of the People's Republic of China) the PRC government sidebar shifts. Lucky Wizard (talk) 08:58, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Anyone?
 * Anyway, just noticed that, on the Kromdraai article, if you open the page while the cursor is not over the page, the image does not initially show, but if you then move the cursor over the page, it shows. Also, the right-hand images on Lesser Antilles shift if I access it directly via that title, but not if I access it through the Caribbees redirect. Hope all this data on this issue helps someone figure it out and fix it. Lucky Wizard (talk) 08:15, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Maritime disaster article - history problem
When this article is edited, the person editing it is not being recorded in the history. Sometimes it will not allow you to "undo" history either. It says there are "temporary edits". Help! Wallie (talk) 16:37, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

PS: When someone edits a section in the article Maritime disaster, it changes the user name to an ip address. This seems quite strange. Wallie (talk) 16:43, 13 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Section editing in that article works OK for me. – ukexpat (talk) 17:22, 13 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Sounds like your browser is messing up, rather than an actual problem with the article. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 17:30, 13 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It should say "The edit could not be undone due to conflicting intermediate edits". This is common. It means the same or nearby text has been edited since the edit you want to undo, so it is not clear for the software how to handle it. See Help:Logging in for tips on how to remain logged in. If a user is logged out before saving an edit then the edit is attributed to their IP address instead. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:17, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Need help with password in Russian Wikipedia
I have forgotten my password for my Russian Wikipedia account. Unfortunately, I cannot have a new one e-mailed to me, because I did not enable the e-mail option there. However, my e-mail option is enabled here in the English Wikipedia. Is it possible to have a new password e-mailed to my Russian account via my address here?--Crustaceanguy (talk) 01:16, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Is your account globalized(you can do it in Preferences- the first page). Wait no... global accounts have one password. Unfortunately, there is no way to recover your password unless Wikipedia has your email. Manish  <I>Earth</I> Talk 13:55, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I could give my e-mail address to the administrators responsible for e-mailing new passwords, but which specific administrator(s) would I need to talk to?--Crustaceanguy (talk) 20:51, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You could, but how will the admin know that you are the genuine owner of that account? Manish  <I>Earth</I> Talk 03:24, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Administrators do not handle password-emailing: the MediaWiki software itself handles it without any human intervention (for privacy reasons), so you cannot "give it" your email unless you have already done so in Special:Preferences over there. Calvin 1998 (t·c) 04:09, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

You might talk to a Systems administrator if it's a well-used account. &mdash; Werdna  &bull;  talk  13:24, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you, everyone!--Crustaceanguy (talk) 14:55, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

How do you actually delete a page?
No. I'm not looking to vandalize a page here in Wikipedia. But I've been working in a private Wiki and ended up with some extra pages. They are cluttering up the Special:Allpages list and I'd like to get rid of them.

I've read everything I could find about deleting, and seen the process you're supposed to go through to decide if a page is to be deleted. But what then? How do you actually make the page go away? Do I have to go in and mess with the database? I'm a little nervous about that. Bgoldnyxnet (talk) 21:49, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * In the English Wikipedia, administrator accounts (and some others) have a "delete" tab next to the "history" tab. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:02, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Why not sift around in the Wikibits js file (or some other file) to find the code for the delete tab. Then simply copy it into your common.js page. Manish  <I>Earth</I> Talk 15:03, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Mediawiki error project
Heyo. Many of our default MW error messages are pretty lousy. I've never had any trouble getting an admin to answer editprotected requests for these, but I do have a terrible time finding the damn things. Perhaps we could wrap all of these messages in some kind of purdy mbox with v-d-e links, like our fancy article templates. Hi DrNick ! 21:23, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Special:AllMessages can help find messages. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:36, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

You should have any changes you make to the wording pushed upstream into MediaWiki. &mdash; Werdna  &bull;  talk  06:32, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes please -- we like pretty. :D --brion (talk) 18:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Template error
Could anyone tell please tell me why the template User:Msgj/ISOtoMONTH is displaying an error even though it works correctly? For example produces, without any error. Thanks, MSGJ 14:46, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
 * When you view User:Msgj/ISOtoMONTH, you see the result of calling the template without specifying any parameters. Thus it calls User:Msgj/ExtractPlaceValue with first parameter, second parameter 8, and third parameter 9. User:Msgj/ExtractPlaceValue then attempts to apply mathematical operations to , which causes the error. When calling User:Msgj/ISOtoMONTH with , you specify the value of the parameter 1, and since you've specified a number, the operations can be applied to it without errors. Algebraist 14:58, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
 * What I was going to say. Wrap the code in <includeonly ></includeonly> to keep it from displaying on the template page.--—— Gadget850 (Ed)  <sup style="color:darkblue;">talk  -  15:37, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Note that it would be easier to extract the month using the function:  gives . For the moment it will fail for dates before 1970, but once  is scapped it will work for all dates with 4-digit years. Anomie⚔ 22:31, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your help. I didn't know about the #time function so will use this one instead. MSGJ 11:14, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Messages
Anyone knows where the 'insert' toolbar underneath an edit window is retrieved from? I searched Special:AllMessages but couldn't find anything relevant. Just want to notify someone that a comment saying "click on the character or tag to insert it into edit window" should have a 'the' before edit window, I guess (it's read by hovering the cursor on the insert toolbar). O_o -- Menti  sock  11:15, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You might like to read Help:Edit toolbar. It's not a Wikipedia thing, so the master is probably at MediaWiki. MSGJ 11:37, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It's in MediaWiki:Edittools.js See also MediaWiki talk:Edittools --Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:56, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, just a plain MW page... is there any easy way to find out what's brought from where? (MW pages can sometimes not be intuitively named either). -- Menti  sock  12:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If you're looking for a specific string, you can go to the "advanced search" form on Special:Search and select the "MediaWiki" namespace to search in. This may not work if the message has not been changed from its default value: in that case, try Special:Allmessages (warning: long page).  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:50, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * And by the way do people agree with the grammar change? If so could an admin make the change, please? -- Menti  sock  13:07, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree and I've made the change. definite articles are strange beasts in English. Graham 87 13:43, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks! -- Menti  sock  13:54, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Usergroup: uploader
In Special:ListGroupRights, there is a new user group, 'uploader', with only one member. Does anyone know what is this user group and where it come from ? <font color="#000080">Cenarium <font color="#000090"> Talk 17:00, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * There was a request somewhere to let admins grant brand new users "auto-confirm" rights before the normal waiting period. I can't yet grant the right via UserRights, but I assume this is the first stage of that feature.  MBisanz  talk 17:03, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It seems coherent, according to the user log, User:Brion VIBBER has granted this right per request. <font color="#000080">Cenarium <font color="#000090"> Talk 17:05, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I see the discussion is here. We need more discussion on the issue before a full-scale implementation (allow admins to grant it). <font color="#000080">Cenarium <font color="#000090"> Talk 17:12, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Software updated
I've updated our live MediaWiki to the current development version; this should smooth out a few older bugs that have been fixed, and hopefully not break anything else. :)

Do let us know if anything's behaving wonky that wasn't previously. --brion (talk) 00:39, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Internal shortcuts to other wikis
I have seen various internal shortcuts (like, de:, ...) to other wikis not related to WMF, or not even to Wikia. If there is an accessible list of those, I think we should discuss the relevance of each item. I was recently reviewing Category:Wikipedia soft redirects and found the page Peachtree Corners (now a redirect to Peachtree Corners, Georgia), it was a soft redirect which used the shortcut ourpeachtreecorners:, which links to creekstone.net (google search), this site is identified as harmful by google and another security software I use. I deleted the page and was wondering why a harmful site is linked as a shortcut like this ? <font color="#000080">Cenarium <font color="#000090"> Talk 01:40, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The directory for interwiki prefixes is housed at Interwiki map. Additions and removals can be discussed on the talk page. Icewedge (talk) 01:56, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I have filed a removal request on the basis of your comments, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Interwiki_map#OurPeachtreeCorners Icewedge (talk) 02:01, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I think we should have a local directory, though, as our needs differ. <font color="#000080">Cenarium <font color="#000090"> Talk 02:05, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * For information, I am copying the comment I left to meta, ":I hope there are no other links like that, there are tools that allow to check weblinks in a page, it may be worthwhile to do that and review manually the suspect ones. I see that this one has been added there on 17 Nov. 2005 by an IP. The same day, User:Rbrightwell created the (now deleted and recreated) page Peachtree Corners (admin link) with a soft redirect using the interwiki link prefix that links to the dangerous site. It was visibly an elaborated vandalism, that lasted (almost) 3 years." <font color="#000080">Cenarium <font color="#000090"> Talk 02:31, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

A trivial question about pageID and a challenging problem
I've just begun learning the API, which seems very useful, and I'm wondering how the pageid variables are assigned. As an example, consider the results of |DNA|13706971 this query.

At first I guessed that pageid's represented the order in which articles were added to the WP database; for example, carmofur is near the end and was created very recently. But I would be surprised if the English Wikipedia had >20 million pages; also, the pageID for Phil Spector is near the end, an article that was created in 2002. Here's an interesting problem for people who like a challenge...

I'd like to write a script that guesses appropriate categories for a target article. (Assume for now that the target article has not yet been assigned to a category.) For example, could a script recognize that oxidative phosphorylation might fit well in the category Category:Cellular respiration? If the article title is itself a category (as DNA is), the problem is easy, but otherwise how would one do it?

One fruitful approach might be to examine the categories of the articles linked to from the target article as well as the categories of its backlinks. Pooling those categories together and clustering them by distance in the category tree might be one approach. The script could perhaps give extra weight to links in certain sections, such as the lead and "See also". Conversely, we might examine the members of the link-categories, and see whether those members have a similar profile of links as the target article.

It's still early days for this script and I'd be curious to hear other people's ideas. Thanks! Proteins (talk) 03:00, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * When a page title is deleted and then undeleted, as sometimes happens with vandalism fixes and history merges, the title gets a new PageID. This can also be seen with the what links here tool, which orders entries by PageID. You can find the logs of deletions, moves and so forth of a page by clicking on the link entitled "View logs for this page" in the history, but be careful when clicking on links, because they can be quite nasty. As for finding categories for a page, you might want to check out CommonSense which categorises images for Wikimedia Commons. Graham 87 03:53, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Graham! That's very helpful to understand, and I'll avoid that giant nastiness.  For practice with the Api.php, I was thinking of writing a script to organize the output of Special:Whatlinkshere, which always seemed mysterious to me.  But perhaps that's been done already?  I'll also check out CommonSense.  I'm thinking of using the script to help newbies and perhaps in categorization sweeps to generate a shortlist of candidates for humans to consider.   Proteins (talk) 04:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

List of uniquely edited pages
When I run an edit counter like Wannabe Kate it shows me a statistic of "unique articles edited" I assume that includes all unique articles, unique wikipedia name space pages, etc. Is there a way for me to get a list of unique main space articles that I've edited? Wannabe Kate will show me the top 10 in each category, but I'd like to see a full list of all unique main space articles.--Crossmr (talk) 04:09, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Possible problem with page: Dwight Shultz
First, try using the Search field at left to search for Dwight Shultz. If you get there, then it must be something wrong with my browser or some such. What happens with me is, I get a 'no such page' page, and a message saying, "did you mean dwight shultz? with the emphasis exactly as shown. I tried capitalized first letters, no caps, his first name William in front, the whole bit. linking to the page from a Wikia gaming page with template wikipedia:dwight shultz works fine, and is how I know his first name is William :o) Anarchangel (talk) 01:56, 14 November 2008 (UTC)


 * There is a page at Dwight Schultz with a 'c' but not at Dwight Shultz. Are you sure the problem isn't that you made a typo in the name both when you searched for it in Wikipedia and wrote it here, but you spelled it correctly when you were at Wikia? Your alleged wikipedia:dwight shultz from Wikia is the wrong spelling and shouldn't have found the page. When I search for Dwight Shultz in Wikipedia it correctly says "No page with that title exists" and later "Did you mean: Dwight Schultz" which is in fact the name of a page. Everything seems to work as it should to me. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:23, 14 November 2008 (UTC)


 * This is why we have redirects. I've created one at Dwight Shultz, which strikes me as a plausible misspelling. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 10:31, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Why is this in the WP: namespace?
Why is Uploaders in the WP: namespace? There is a link to it from here (click upload), and some stuff about Glenn Galiza (who's that?) comes up. The history has only one edit (page creation). I wonder how the link to the page wormed itself into the usergroup members page. Could someone check it? Thanks, Manish  <I>Earth</I> Talk 09:59, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It was deleted, then recreated in its current form. <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue">Den <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:red">dodge  Talk Contribs 10:08, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The user group was recently created by brion, and apparently no-one's got around to creating a proper description page for it yet. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:50, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

History missing from redirects page
The article on the "Perdicalis Incident" has been deleted, & replaced with a redirect to a short paragraph in the "Perdicalis" article. The deleted article is missing from history, & the redirect is given an incorrect date. (The long article was there about a month ago). How can I access the correct history? (I would like the information from the complete article, & the revision history.)    MoFromMelb (talk) 15:21, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * There is, and never was, a page with the title "Perdicalis". Judging by this edit, you probably mean Ion Perdicaris, but I can't find anything that has been deleted previously in the list of the redirects to that page and I can't find any deletion discussion with the word "Perdicaris" in it. So I can't find anything that matches what you're talking about. Graham 87 17:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Help
Why did everything below the references disappear from Garfield? All I did was remove some spam links. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP) 21:52, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It's there for me... Calvin 1998 (t·c) 21:58, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Me too. – ukexpat (talk) 17:47, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Broken math images
The image generated by &lt;math&gt;n^2&lt;/math&gt; seems to be broken: $$n^2$$. A similar problem apparently happened a few days ago with the subset symbol: Reference desk/Computing. —Bkell (talk) 19:46, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It might just be me, but I don't see a problem. It looks a bit like n2 to me. <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue">Den <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:red">dodge  Talk Contribs 20:15, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the example looks fine. Calvin 1998 (t·c) 20:45, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You have to set your preferences to "always display PNG" to see the problem, which is that this is another 0 byte math image. The other settings render it as HTML instead. Apparently the cause of these blank images is not yet known, although the server admins know that they are sometimes created. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 20:55, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I selected "Always render PNG" and it displays fine for me. It's 19x19 pixels and 249 bytes. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:24, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * That's because a server admin deleted the old one. The image really was broken; it's just that nobody seems to know what's causing the problem. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 21:34, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

What's wrong with $$P$$ ??
$$P$$ works as it should in equations and in tables and if it has a subscript. But by itself, embedded in a line of text, it results in an image place holder as here ==> $$P$$

It only happens for upper case. If lower case as here ==> $$p$$, it works.

It has been that way for a number of days. Has no one noticed it? mbeychok (talk) 23:52, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * See the above section. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:17, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your response, but it doesn't really help if one wants to use LaTeX math. Do you know if anyone is working to solve the problem? mbeychok (talk) 00:33, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Template:Otheruses
While leaving a message on someone's talk page, I observed a link to the article B.o.B. In the current edition, there's a hatnote "For other uses, see bob." with "bob" in blue, but it's basically blue text: it's not a link. The coding for the hatnote reads simply, which (as far as I can see) seems totally reasonable, and should produce some sort of link. Anyone have an idea what's wrong? Nyttend (talk) 03:03, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The link seems to work for me. <font face="Broadway">Mr.Z-man 03:34, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Link works here too lucideer 03:39, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Works for me as well; sure it wasn't just a momentary browser glitch? EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 17:32, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Moving search box to the top of the sidebar
Additional input is sought. Please see this discussion:
 * MediaWiki talk:Sidebar --Timeshifter (talk) 07:49, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Problems with map-thing
All the pages regarding places in Derbyshire eg. Matlock, Derbyshire have problems where the map of the county with the red dot for the location should be, can somebody please look at it and help solve it, it's problematic for every location in the county so could it be a template/image error? <font face="Batik Regular">Highfields (talk, contribs, review) 16:55, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Fixed. A broken bot had incorrectly added a interwiki link to Location map United Kingdom Derbyshire. Anomie⚔ 17:52, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

External tools for page histories
Every history page contains links to three external tools. The "Revision history statistics" link was recently changed to point to a different tool than it used to. Does anyone know where the old tool is located? I think the domain ended in  but I'm not sure. Thanks. --Andrew Kelly (talk) 17:05, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * A lot of stuff used to be hosted on tools.wikimedia.de, which is now redirected to toolserver.org. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 17:18, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think it was on the toolserver. I think it was an independent site.  I remember it had banner ads at the top of every page. --Andrew Kelly (talk) 17:23, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Which is the reason it has been removed. See the history of MediaWiki:Histlegend and this discussion (with the link to the site). <font color="#000080">Cenarium <font color="#000090"> Talk 17:50, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * That's what I wanted to know. Thank you for showing me where the site is! --Andrew Kelly (talk) 19:03, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Edit disappeared
Has anyone here ever actually had an edit completely disappear? I edited User:Martinp23/NPWatcher/Checkpage earlier today and added my name, but my edit doesn't show up in the history or on the page - usually I would assume that I simply did not save, but I have the saved page in another tab. I wasn't edit conflicted, so I have no idea what is going on. Anyone got an explanation to offer? <font face="Trebuchet MS">&mdash; neuro(talk) 23:13, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Worked it out, I actually edited User:Martinp23/NPWatcher/Checkpage/Requests, and the page needed purging. <font face="Trebuchet MS">&mdash; neuro(talk) 23:16, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Need More Comments on My Page!
How can I get other users to talk more often on my talk page? I would like to know how they could do that, and that I can get them to talk more often. Thanks. -- <font face="Brush Script MT" color="red" size="4">MISTER ALCOHOL TC 05:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * With respect, your talk page's background colour is not very attractive imo. That could cause users to keep away from your page. If you keep doing lots of work around the project, eventually people will respond to your work. Anyway, if you're not getting many comments, at least you know you're not doing anything wrong. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 09:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You might want to kill the way that image half-covers 'From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia', too. Algebraist 12:16, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Also, though this may seem a bit harsh, see WP:NOTBLOG - the talk pages are tools used to contact other editors, but if no other editors need to contact you, then so be it. <font color="DarkGray">Talk<font color="Blue">Islander 16:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. -- <font face="Brush Script MT" color="red" size="4">MISTER ALCOHOL TC 05:35, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I know I'd hesitate to post, or even read, your pages, with that eye-watering coloration. <font family="Arial"> Little Red Riding Hood  talk  22:12, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Absolutely agree - blue links on that hideous shade of red are very hard to read and tiring on the eyes. – ukexpat (talk) 15:42, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * And white text on AliceBlue background is entirely unreadable. Algebraist 15:45, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

TOC Transclusion
Is there a way to pull a TOC from one page and display on another? --Pair O&#39; Dimes (talk) 13:37, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Don't think so. The TOC is generated automatically. Of course, you could copy the HTML and modify it a bit, or you could just make a wikitable from it. Why do you need to transclude a TOC? Manish  <I>Earth</I> Talk 14:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * One of the portals on Intellipedia acts as an integrator for highlights from various divisions of a program. The "more..." link navigates readers to the full details of each highlight.  The highlights section is manually updated and transcluded from the details page.  I would like to automate the process and reduce manual dependency.  This could be achieved by transluding the TOC.  However, when I transcluded the TOC to the portal, it generated a TOC for the portal, not the details page.  Hope that makes sense?  --Pair O&#39; Dimes (talk) 16:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * TOCs are dynamically generated from the heading on the current page. There is not way to transcluded just the TOC.  Your best option is to get a bot to update it for you.  — Dispenser 09:42, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks Dispenser, I'll look into that. -- <font color="#EBEFFF">&bull; <font color="#BEC1FF">&bull; <font color="#8E90FF">&bull; <font color="#5E60FF">&bull; <font color="#2F2FFF">&bull; &bull;  Pair  2005 Dime Obv Unc P.png '  Dimes  21:56, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Numbers of images in a category
Hello... In Category:Presumed GFDL images it states there are 473 files that fall into this category, but if you actually count the number of images there are only 365 (197 on page 1 and 168 on page 2); where are the missing 108 files? I am sure its not earth shattering and likely has a very reasonable answer, but I really know nothing about categories here on WP. Thanks.--Jordan 1972 (talk) 01:59, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Are you sure that they are not in a subcategory within the category itself? Also, which category is it? <font face="Trebuchet MS">&mdash; neuro(talk) 11:16, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I have changed  to   in the post by Jordan 1972. The former adds the page to the category. The latter creates a link to it. This issue has been reported before at Village pump (technical)/Archive 51. I don't know the cause. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:26, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * First, thanks for the fix of the category link -- and yeah it has been discussed, and very recently in the link you provided and in the link in the link. The fact it came up three times in three weeks is very interesting to me.  At this point, I won't worry about it, I just figured there were 100+ images hidden somewhere that could use some attention.  Thanks also for the tip on the ":" for categories; I knew it for images.  --Jordan 1972 (talk) 13:42, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

GIF resizing
There have been a few recent complaints at the Help Desk about the quality of resized GIF images; this seems to be a recent phenomenon. Has something been disabled for performance? --—— Gadget850 (Ed)  <sup style="color:darkblue;">talk  -  14:38, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I can't remember where I read it, but GIF resizing was disabled, because large animated gifs were taking down the server that does the thumbnailing. The developers thought it would be less obtrusive to temporarily disable GIF resizing, so until they have found the cause and a way around it, it is disabled. --Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:18, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * For non-animated images, try using PNG - it was designed to replace GIF and has a number of technical advantages over it (aside from thumbnailing properly). —Remember the dot (talk) 06:42, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Category intersections
Hello, I've been thinking that the Wikiproject assessment tables aren't as helpful as they could be since for example you can't click on the 3 in the Unnassessed Mid importance here and find out what articles are in that intersection. I also tried searching for talk pages in the two categories and got no results. I tried searching for incategory:"Low-importance education articles" incategory:"Unassessed education articles" in article talk pages with this search

Two questions. 1) Did I make a simple mistake and that's why I got no results? 2) What would it take for all of these Wikiproject summary tables to link to the appropriate search results? This would be really helpful in identifying articles to work on. Thanks. - Taxman Talk 15:25, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I was just thinking exactly the same thing! it would be incredibly useful in prioritizing work. DuncanHill (talk) 15:29, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * This is in the works, see User:WP 1.0 bot/Second generation. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 18:52, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Ahh, that will be good news when that is finished, but do you have any idea why the category intersection search I tried doesn't work? It seems to work for articles but not talk pages. It seems the mediawiki category search doesn't work when categories are added by a template. Is that worth filing a bug? - Taxman Talk 20:40, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Seeing the page behind a Special page?
Is there a .js gadget out there somewhere which adds a tab to  pages (called "page" or something) which links to the   page which the   page is based on (for the purposes of discussing / editing it, say)? Thanks in advance. It Is Me Here (talk) 09:19, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, it's not that simple. The first example I looked at, Special:Statistics, incorporates at least 15 Mediawiki: pages. Algebraist 13:06, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Could the related  pages be listed at the bottom, then? <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue">Den <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:red">dodge  Talk Contribs 13:07, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
 * My usual technique is to load Special:Allmessages (warning: large page) and search that for the content of the message I'm looking for. Is that helpful? { { Nihiltres | talk | log } } 18:52, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

If you have a specific page in mind, it might be faster/easier to look at the source code. — CharlotteWebb 19:06, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks for the replies, people. It Is Me Here (talk) 19:55, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Random Article Improvements
I'm just curious if someone has ever thought of changing the distribution used by the Random Article link. I love using this to serendipitously find interesting articles, but a disproportionate number of articles are about geographic locations, etc. It would be neat if there was some type of Random Article link that picked based on a weighted distribution, like how often the page is viewed, how long it is, or how often it has been edited. That would probably make it more likely to get interesting articles (although interesting is subjective). Thanks bdodson (talk) 05:11, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I think there's more geographic articles than any other kind, hence why they come back more often. There was a bot discussion sometime back about creating (literally) millions of these geographical articles.  Lugnuts  (talk) 09:38, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I think bdodson is aware of why geographical articles come up more often than most, but that doesn't answer the question. Maybe first randomly selecting a top-level category and only then randomly picking an article within would work? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:27, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It might be a good idea to check whether Random Article really does return a disproportionate number of articles are about geographic locations. I just tried Random Article 6 times running, and got zero geography articles. OTOH some readers may prefer a random selection within specified categories. If so, an extension of Chris Cunningham (not at work)'s proposal might be good: a "totally random" option and a "pick a category" option.
 * Do we have any poll mechanism for researching users' thoughts on issues like this and other possible improvements to WP as a whole?--Philcha (talk) 12:41, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * As of a year and a half ago, about 10% of Wikipedia's articles were about geographic locations. It's not too unlikely that you'll hit "random article" ten times and get ten locations.  Far more likely is that you'll hit it ten times and get ten biographies, since those made up 30% of Wikipedia's content. --Carnildo (talk) 21:15, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I recently wrote a script that takes you to a random link on any page. It's useful for sampling random Featured or Good Articles, or for randomly diffusing through Wikipedia.  Comments and suggestions are welcome, Proteins (talk) 03:44, 20 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It sounds like you don't want a random article button, but an interesting article button. That's a whole different kettle of fish, and there are several possible avenues to explore in deciding how to create such a feature... but alas, we don't have one currently. :( --brion (talk) 16:24, 20 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I just hit Special:Random six times, and got Singyahi Maidan, Kotorydz, Kachin Theological College, Aphelenchoides fragariae, Castle Roogna, and United States men's national water polo team (in that order). Given the proportionate number of geography articles we have, I think that's an appropriate spread. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 18:25, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

knowledge sharing
Dear friends, We are conducting a study on the motivation of the knowledge sharing on Wikipedia. Your experience of the read from and write to Wikipedia is very important to the design and management of this knowledge platform. The survey will take about three minutes. We deeply appreciate your help on answering the following questions.

After the survey is done, we will randomly select twenty persons and present them with USB 2GB Flash Drives. Besides, with each valid questionnaire, we will donate US $1 dollar to the Wikimedia Foundation. The result of this survey is analyzed in an anonymous way and is only regarded as the academic use. Please feel free to fill out the questionnaire. Thanks again for your time and valuable input.

May happiness and health be with you everyday!

★    On-line Questionnaire:  http://140.119.19.152:8080/wiki/

Shari S. C. Shang

Eldon Y. Li

Professor,

Department of Management Information Systems,

National Chengchi University

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 吳雅玲 (talk • contribs) 13:26, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Answered, this isn't the appropriate section though. <font face="Trebuchet MS">&mdash; neuro(talk) 14:29, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Boo! [[Image:718smiley.svg|20px]] --NE2 16:17, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Categories disappearing
If I edit a page of a certain length that has a reflist in it, that edit makes the categories disappear, even though the coding for the categories is still there. Any idea what is causing this? It just happened to me on Walden Galleria. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (Broken clamshells • Otter chirps • HELP) 03:36, 20 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not seeing that when I look through the diffs; all categories are still visible at the bottom of each diff. Nor do I see the problem when I look at prior revisions of the page. -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 14:50, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Show us a diff. A reference tag might not have been closed, so everything after that was placed in the reference. Gary King  ( talk ) 19:04, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

moving sandbox header to Mediawiki namespace
Is this possible? It seems like more of an elegant solution than having the template in the sandbox for newbies to mistakenly delete and/or mess with every few hours.--Aervanath lives in <b style="color:green;">the Orphanage</b> 06:03, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Not allowing people to edit stuff in the sandbox sort of defeats the entire purpose of having a sandbox... besides, it isn't part of the site interface; we could just make it a template and fully-protect it if we wanted to prevent it from being edited. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 18:19, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I guess the post is about preventing users from messing with Template:Please leave this line alone (sandbox heading) on Sandbox. The template page is protected so it cannot be changed by non-administrators, but they can remove it from the sandbox (and often do). As far as I know, the software currently gives no good way to avoid that. It would be possible to let Sandbox be protected and transclude an editable sandbox but I don't think that would be good. A bot periodically restores the header if it has been removed and continuing with that seems better to me. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:50, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the OP was suggesting we should have an editnotice for the sandbox? If so, we already have one. Algebraist 22:07, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * See what Gurch said. The idea is to get the header we currently use out of the edit window with it still on the page, with edits appearing below it, or onto the edit page replacing that editnotice. Comment here also. Clark89 (talk) 23:48, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Adding a colour icon to the toolbar.
I would like to add a button to the toolbar.: ie. the toolbar when you edit a page. (see images bellow)

.........

This button would open up (like a flash button) and allow you to chose what colour of text you would like to insert. How can I add this for just my account? monobook.js perhaps? What if we wanted to do this for everyone's account? --CyclePat (talk) 17:12, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Considering that we don't really use colored text anywhere in the encyclopedia itself (and most all those tools are for editing the encyclopedia), I don't think there will ever be a button for color. Kinda glad about that; I don't want Wikipedia talk pages to devolve into the average web forum with random colors everywhere... EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 18:13, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Definitely not; anything that can't be emphasised enough with regular text, italics and bold, doesn't deserve to be heard. Of course no one can stop you adding it to your own edit toolbar, but be aware that many people will not particularly appreciate you using it extensively. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 18:20, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I can't think of any use for font colors in an article, but I use them to highlight content reviews and similar discussions. --—— Gadget850 (Ed)  <sup style="color:darkblue;">talk  -  19:29, 20 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Found-out how to add it to my own toolbar. In fact here's an image of the button (ie.:[[image:Button_font_color.png]]) (See my discussion about buttons for more details). Best regards. Thank you for your concerns regarding the unrelated and "un-written" wikipedia rules on users preferences or in this case, lack thereof interest, for coloured text or maybe even Big, bold, italic and/or UPPER CASE text.(sarcastically) --CyclePat (talk) 19:05, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Ibox template help please...
Folks, I need the assistance of someone who knows more about template coding than I do (which means pretty much anyone). At the moment Infobox Rowing Club does not appear to contain the appropriate coding to enable a resized display of the club's emblem image. When I tried to add the club's emblem to the ibox I added to Agecroft Rowing Club, it was scaled up way too large causing jaggies and other distortion. Would someone please take a look at the template and suggest/implement the appropriate coding? Thanks. – ukexpat (talk) 17:14, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I've added a parameter called Emblemsize which, when defined, overrides the default 200px. Algebraist 18:56, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * that's perfect! – ukexpat (talk) 19:18, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Please help me with my signature
I am currently trying to customise my signature but am encountering technical difficulties. I want my signature to look like this:

 It Is Me Here  ''' t / c

... but when I paste the relevant code -  - into the box in my Preferences page, and then type   on a page, it renders it in the following way:

&lt;span style=&quot;font-family:Arial&quot;&gt;&#39;&#39;&#39;&#91;&#91;User:It Is Me Here&#124;&lt;span style=&quot;color:#006600;&quot;&gt;It Is Me Here&lt;/span&gt;&#93;&#93;&#39;&#39;&#39; &lt;sup&gt;&#39;&#39;&#39;&#91;&#91;User_talk:It Is Me Here&#124;&lt;span style=&quot;color:#CC6600;&quot;&gt;t&lt;/span&gt;&#93;&#93; / &#91;&#91;Special:Contributions/It Is Me Here&#124;&lt;span style=&quot;color:#CC6600;&quot; (talk)

Please help! It Is Me Here (talk) 20:30, 20 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Edit: it turns out that I had needed to tick the "raw signatures" box and close a few tags.  It Is Me Here   t / c 20:34, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Captchas and the blind
Fellow Wikipedians;

It has come to my attention that the captchas we have for account registration are not utilizable by the blind. While we have a account creation group, this is a major inconvenience for blind potential users and many might just give up and leave. I am suggesting that we add a audible captcha or work towards adding one. If this is not possible, maybe we could add a note to that effect to the create account page, apologizing for the inconvenience and asking blind users to email the Account Creation Group. Geoff Plourde (talk) 03:51, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Such a note already exists: 'Unable to see the image? An administrator can create an account for you.' Algebraist 04:11, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't believe that administrators should have to create accounts for blind people. It would appear to be unfair to an otherwise good contributor to force him/her to wait for assistance. Also, this would be a PR shiny. Geoff Plourde (talk) 01:32, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

An audible CAPTCHA may indeed be nice, if we could generate the requisite audio clips. &mdash; Werdna  &bull;  talk  06:38, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I've always wondered - don't audible CAPCHAs defeat the whole point? I know that they do something with background noise... but surely it is much easier for a bot to get through than a standard one? As a programmer, I am utterly stumped as to how a well coded bot could not get through an audible CAPTCHA. I don't really see what is wrong with ACC, as an account creator we get most accounts dealt with within about an hour or so of them being requested. <font face="Trebuchet MS">&mdash; neuro(talk) 11:19, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

—<span style="color: rgb(5, 85, 5);">Apis (<span style="color: rgb(5, 85, 5);">talk ) 02:45, 21 November 2008 (UTC
 * "The whole point" is simply to reduce the number of non-human accounts created. Most spambots do not have the facilities required to successfully complete an audio captcha (not least because it is less effort to simply do a better job at visual ones), thus serving the captcha's purpose just fine. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:25, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * By the way, audible CAPTCHAs are quite hard to hack. Its not just background noise, they 'warp' the sound, add pauses, and do lots of other things. Try using the audible CAPTCHA when you create an account on Gmail and you'll see what I mean. Manish  <I>Earth</I> Talk -  Stalk 13:09, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I must have been on a site with an outdated build, then, because I distinctly remember it simply being audio files combined to read a number. Hm. <font face="Trebuchet MS">&mdash; neuro(talk) 14:25, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Not really. Just as with image captchas, it depends on the quality of the implementation. As recently as May 2008 gmail's audio captcha was extremely weak. Anomie⚔ 17:34, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * If an audio captcha system already exist that could be implemented in WP then it would be a small effort to include that as an alternative to visual captchas. Agree that audio captchas would be at least as hard to crack as the visual ones, but it would depend on the implementation of course. If it turns out to be too weak, it would be even easier to disable it until fixed. I can't see any downside to it?
 * Maybe this is interesting for the discussion as well: http://blind.wikia.com/wiki/Mediawiki_and_Accessibility#CAPTCHA -- Lalue (talk) 08:23, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * So the extension is already available, all we need to do is have it implemented. Geoff Plourde (talk) 18:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Special:Statistics
The page seems a bit redundantly long. Can some of the stats maybe be tabled side by side (kind of like Special:SpecialPages)?

Also, aren't many stats using useless? Like, who cares about experimental user group uploader and about the 1 user it contains? And worse than that... why the ones that are just 0? This is supposed to be stats for the public... now it *may* be interested in the number of admins or such, maybe not so much about the crats, but certainly not the obsolete empty groups. -- Menti  sock  17:26, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This page is dynamically created by the software, as such it has no idea which statistics people "care about" or even what each statistic means. They are just numbers from log tables that it is instructed to put onto the page in a sensible order.  Remember that MediaWiki, the software which runs wikipedia, is also used to run thousands of websites that have a huge range of purposes; on some of those sites, the number of users in each category might be vitally important.  It's not a simple as saying that because en.wiki doesn't care about a particular statistic, it should be removed. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 18:55, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
 * In what possible cases could stats be vital? O_o -- Menti  sock  10:19, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Imagine a site which takes a paper role-playing game online; the transparency and accountability of a wiki is ideally suited to keeping track of movements and activities in such a game. Pages in namespaces could represent events or objects in the game; users in various groups could represent players in various factions or with particular skills. On a wiki like this, accurate numbers for the number of users in a group and pages in a namespace are utterly invaluable to the game.  This is just one example: MediaWiki is such a powerful and flexible platform for website development that the sky really is the limit for possible applications.  <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 11:17, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, well, it's still arguably not absolutely 'vitally important'... besides, they can generate them manually on a more suitable page maybe, as well. WP isn't an RPG though... or is it? :-p -- Menti  sock  12:48, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Of course we're not an rpg site, the point is that regardless of how the statistics are generated and where they are displayed, they will be important to some users of MediaWiki. It is therefore inappropriate for us on en.wiki, just because we are the most prominent users of MediaWiki, to cause extra work for those other users to suit our own style preferences.  We're far and away the biggest kid in the playground; we must be careful not to turn into the school bully. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 16:56, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Just because you don't care about something doesn't mean that nobody else does either... EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 18:22, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You're honestly interested in how many stewards there are on en.wiki? :-p -- Menti  sock  19:52, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * No, because I know how many local stewards there are without looking. However, I also realize that it's just a "grab every usergroup and spit out the number of people in each" type of page. The number of users, oversighters, articles, et al? Yes, that is interesting. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 22:00, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Certainly. I'm just saying that the special page could be tidied up more. -- Menti  sock  09:57, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Headings
OK, I have no idea what's up with this; whether its just me or everybody. Somehow or other, the tabs (article/discussion/edit this page/history etc) have been replaced by shorter versions (article/talk/edit/history). I'm confident that this is reversible as I when I load a page the originals pop up, and then switch to the shorter version. I preferred it with the extended version; is there a way I can get this back? -- THE <b style="color:black;">DARK LORD</b> TROMBONATOR  03:33, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * THe long versions are there for me... Try purging your cache (Click on the link or press Shift+refresh in Firefox) Manish <i style="color:green;">Earth</i>Talk •  Stalk 06:14, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * No change. Would it be something in preferences? I looked but could not find anything. -- THE <b style="color:black;">DARK LORD</b> TROMBONATOR  06:20, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Are you using any gadgets? If so, try disabling them one at a time to find the one doing it (theoretically). Also, whatever you have at User:The dark lord trombonator/monobook.js is just wrong, you should blank that (that is a bit of CSS and importing of a non-existing unprotected page). --Splarka (rant) 08:48, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Did you change your default language setting? I know that the tab labels are different in the British English version. – ukexpat (talk) 16:03, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks guys, but Splaka takes the cake. It was my gadget version of friendly, which I have since disabled since I never used it. Also thanks for the heads-up about the potential security hazard in that page that passed for a monobook (seriously, I have no idea what was even meant to be happening in there!) -- THE <b style="color:black;">DARK LORD</b> TROMBONATOR  20:58, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Organizing wachlist?
Is there any way of organizing your watchlist by adding different watch categories, which youi can easily show or hide. For example, if you are patrolling heavily vandalized pages, then you don't want the edits cluttering up your watchlist. I'm looking for a feature which allows you to add watch pages with categories. Is this possible? Thanks, Manish <i style="color:green;">Earth</i>Talk •  Stalk 06:08, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * One of the watchlist scripts at WikiProject User scripts/Scripts may help, or if you use Firefox and Greasemonkey - Tools/Greasemonkey user scripts. – ukexpat (talk) 16:01, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Overlap in lead section edit
If you have ticked the box for an edit tab for lead section editing (Special:Preferences > Gadgets > User interface gadgets--The box:"Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page"), and go to this page: Virus, then thelead section edit link covers the semi-protected padlock link. Could an admin fix the positioning? Thank you, Manish <i style="color:green;">Earth</i>Talk •  Stalk 06:21, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I think thats a screen resolution problem. I don't see an overlap when viewing at 1280x1024. In any event I don't think it's an admin fix, it would have to be a mediawiki software fix or an edit to the default .css. – ukexpat (talk) 15:56, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Sematic Wikipedia
I am interested in Semantic Wikipedia, but I can't seem to find any concrete information anywhere other than proposal from a few years ago. Are there any discussions about it? Are upper levels of the foundation considering using the Semantic Mediawiki extension in the near future? If not, what are the reservations? Is there some list of things they want to be implemented? Is there anything we can do while waiting, like preparing the ontology lists, writing automation bots etc.? So in short, is there a coordinated effort somewhere in Wikipedia, if not, why not? -- þħɥʂıɕıʄʈʝɘɖı 20:51, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It's on our list to consider, but we're a bit leery by default -- performance and markup complexity implications need to be considered. We may end up doing something that's a little more limited but still provides many of the neat extras. --brion (talk) 21:07, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I think extra Semantic MediaWiki markup is simple enough, i can't imagine how simpler it can be. If editors can deal with brackets they can handle those extra semicolons as well. But I certainly understand that there can be performance issues. May be we can start by using their markup but not do any realtime processing, reasoning, search etc. instead export rdf offline. When the performance becomes good enough we can turn on other features as well. -- þħɥʂıɕıʄʈʝɘɖı 03:00, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Upload File size limit raised
Hey everyone, the file size upload limit has been raised to 100MB by Brion Vibber. See here and here for the mailing list posts. Also, files uploaded are on new file servers now. Techman224 Talk  01:22, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Good news. Videos are the main file that the limit presents problems for. Not sure about the bandwidth issue, though I guess people will still watch them even if they are split into five parts. Richard001 (talk) 06:21, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Shutting down a noncompliant mirror which uses ReflectionScript
A noncomplianat mirror refuses to respond to any emails, and has ignored a DMTF takedown notice. I notified Jimbo, who directed me to Mike Godwin. He, in turn, suggested that we shut them down technically. It appears that they use ReflectionScript, although I don't know how to stop them from accessing Wikipedia with it. It was suggested that I begin a Village Pump discussion, so I have. <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue">Den <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:red">dodge  Talk Contribs 16:13, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean a DTMF take-down notice? BEEP BEEP BEEEP! &mdash; Werdna  &bull;  talk  02:19, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, whatever - I sent one. <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue">Den <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:red">dodge  Talk Contribs 17:01, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I would think, as a starting point, we should find out bugs in the script and then do someone to the Wikipedia interface to make the mirror break. Does anyone know how this could be done? I think the devs added the +\ to edittokens to break crappy proxies, can we find something that will have the same effect on ReflectionScript? Foxy Loxy  Pounce! 02:29, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

was added to break crappy proxies which broke our page text. This is different because it's not causing direct damage to Wikipedia, and blocking can be done much more easily by IP address. &mdash; Werdna  &bull;  talk  23:34, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Revision history align
Revision history looses alignment after username of the editor, due to length of user name. Some style tag to make sure that (25,910 bytes) (Edit Summary here) come exactly one below another. Revison history page would look far tidier if done so.

Example current:
 * (cur) (last) 03:53, 21 November 2008 Raise lkblr (Talk | contribs) (25,910 bytes) (→Ulsoor lake photo) (undo)
 * (cur) (last) 22:37, 20 November 2008 Lihaas (Talk | contribs) (25,663 bytes) (→The name-change debate, again) (undo)

Example suggested:
 * (cur) (last) 03:53, 21 November 2008 Raise lkblr (Talk | contribs) (25,910 bytes) (→Ulsoor lake photo) (undo)
 * (cur) (last) 22:37, 20 November 2008 Lihaas (Talk | contribs) [---] (25,663 bytes) (→The name-change debate, again) (undo)

If that byte info come exactly below one another, notice [---] is blank space in above example so that "bytes" come exactly one below another, the history page will become tidy and more legible. Give your suggestions! Raise lkblr (talk) 04:27, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 *  Span style=minwidth:150px UserName(talk|contribs) /span  - Spanning username with minimum width would be one good solution. Raise lkblr (talk) 04:37, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You can't just give it a minimum width; it'd still break whenever one line was longer than the other. Basically, the entire history layout would have to be converted into a table, something which is much, much grander than what you may have initially thought you were suggesting. :) EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 04:38, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply, that table would tidy up overflowed edit summaries too. But some user names are too long, this has to be taken into consideration. Raise lkblr (talk) 10:15, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You could try adding something like this to your monobook.css or other skin-specific CSS file. This seems to work for me in FF3, anyway.


 * "width:10ex" and "display:inline-block" tell the browser to use a specific width box to contain the username, and "vertical-align:top" tells it to align the box with the top of the containing box (the default, baseline, makes it appear superscripted). "white-space:nowrap" tells it to not wrap lines, and "overflow:hidden" tells it to not let the rest of the username flop out of the box. Anomie⚔ 12:50, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
 * That did not help much. Showing minor edit m after "bytes" would also help tidying. Raise lkblr (talk) 15:36, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

page view stats
Hi, I know about this page for getting page view data for a single page on Wikipedia. Is this the best way to do so (besides working with the raw data from Domas?) Are there any other similar tools? Thanks! -- phoebe / (talk to me) 07:35, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I've been assigned to work on a special page for checking page-view stats right on-wiki. I've got a prototype running at home, but it only works for 14 articles and isn't public :-). &mdash; Werdna  &bull;  talk  07:38, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Please help me with .CSS / .JS message blockers
I am somewhat at a loss regarding message blockers on Wikipedia. When I log out, every page's History tab has a series of links which are called things like "Revision history statistics" and "Page view statistics". However, when logged in, that line disappears for me and line below it changes to read " ". I have tried removing other message blockers on my .CSS and although they have worked (the GFDL messages came back, for instance), nothing I did seemed to make the new line in page histories appear for me. Is there anything else sitting in my .CSS or .JS that is blocking that line? Is there some code I could add to either page to force those links to appear?

Also, is there a line of code I could add to my .CSS to block the "WARNING: This page is 154 kilobytes long; some browsers may have problems editing pages approaching or longer than 32kb. Please consider breaking the page into smaller sections" line?

Thanks in advance. <font color="#006600;">It Is Me Here  <font color="#CC6600;">t / <font color="#CC6600;">c 10:06, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * For the latter:

display:none; }
 * 1) mw-edit-longpagewarning {


 * You have a lot of javascript, and possibly have gadgets selected that we can't see. Try disabling javascript in your browser to quickly see if it is causing that. If so, then try disabling any gadgets you have, and your monobook.js scripts. The long page warning is #longpagewarning. --Splarka (rant) 11:05, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, the Longpagewarning blocker worked but I need more information regarding history page links. Namely, how do I disable Javascript in my browser? <font color="#006600;">It Is Me Here  <font color="#CC6600;">t / <font color="#CC6600;">c 11:41, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Discussion to talk
A couple days ago the tabs at the top of each page that normally read  'discussion'  and  'new section'  now read  'talk'  an  '+' , respectively. I don't recall changing any preferences (and the preference that reads "change the 'new section' tab text to instead display the much narrower '+'," remains unchecked). Did this happen to anyone else, and does anyone know who why? Thanks,  α Яβ ιτ Я α Я ι ŁΨθ  ( talk ) 14:11, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Also,  'edit this page'  has become  'edit' .  α Яβ ιτ Я α Я ι ŁΨθ  ( talk ) 15:24, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I also have that problem. I have no idea of what happened, since I don't know the MediaWiki messages that got edited. Alexius08 (talk) 16:31, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Apparently, it's Friendly - it can be disabled. <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue">Den <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:red">dodge  Talk Contribs 21:00, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Problem displaying formula
Sometimes some formulas don't display. Not permanently. See  $$\sum_{i=1}^{\infty}{1 \over i^2}$$ and   $$(1-\frac{2}{n})\times 180$$. What can be done? Bean49 (talk) 19:19, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I have noticed this problem on a lot of pages too. From time to time, this happens (I don't remember the reason), but usually it only lasts a few hours.  This has been  going on for days, and well-intentioned (but new and confused) editors are trying to make all kinds of futile edits to fix it when the formulas in an article don't display.  I for one would like to know if there is any effort being made to fix the problem.  Is a server down or something?  <font color="#c00000">siℓℓy rabbit  ( <font color="#c00000">talk ) 19:25, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Until this is fixed, note that you can fix any given formula by changing it in any way, such as adding superfluous braces:  $$\sum_{i=1}^{\infty}{1 \over i^2}{}$$ and   $$(1-\frac{2}{n})\times 180{}$$. Algebraist 19:32, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

The D: Prefix
There is an article titled 'd:tour 1997 live at Southampton' (an album) which has recently become unreachable due to the nature of the d: prefix, which now links the page straight to wiktionary, where the page is obviously absent. Is there any way that this could be resolved? Possibly by changing the title to 'd tour' or 'd-tour'. Whilst it would be slightly incorrect, at least it would allow the page to be accessed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JALEXANDER06 (talk • contribs) 20:54, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Need to ask the devs to move it: <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 22:05, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Aww shucks I was hoping to see what Brion had hidden on his <tt>D:\</tt> drive. Seriously though false positives will be inevitable when using single-letter prefixes. — CharlotteWebb 22:12, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

cite causes only half of text to show
On Right- and left-hand traffic (and other pages too) (in Classic skin on MSIE on XP) the hidden "show boxes" titles ...generally keeping to the right (left) have a reference in the title. Because the reference is superscripted, the net effect is that the body text is pushed down the page, however the line height is not matchingly increased, so the bottom half of the title text is cropped making it ugly and hard to read. (a) is this just classic skin (b) is this just MSIE (c) is it fixable - and if so how? -- SGBailey (talk) 21:32, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Looks OK in monobook/Firefox. I will edit the page to move the ref within the box. – ukexpat (talk) 22:14, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * ✅ How does it look now? – ukexpat (talk) 22:17, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Lovely. Thanks. -- SGBailey (talk) 22:26, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Help with template error
I'm trying to create a new template for referencing, but am getting the error Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "{"

Current source:

What have I done wrong? An alternative logic would be to force the use of parameter 1 by displaying a nice red error message if it is missing. dramatic (talk) 21:49, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * That source should work fine as long as the parameter 1 is defined. If 1 is not defined, it'll break. If the purpose of the #ifexpr is to check whether or not 1 is defined, you should replace it with #if: . Algebraist 22:02, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes— it should work properly when used. To keep it from looking ugly on the template page, enclose it in <includeonly ></includeonly>. --—— Gadget850 (Ed)  <sup style="color:darkblue;">talk  -  22:03, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks - done and documented at TKI dramatic (talk) 22:28, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * At present, the template will not function as documented: it will return an expression error if is undefined. As I said, for this purpose, you should use #if. Algebraist 22:32, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

But unlike #ifexpr, <tt> </tt> will return "true" for any non-blank parameter, including zero which would have been "false" in the old code, so this might not be what you want. — CharlotteWebb 20:59, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Articles
1) Does the article count include redirects? (A redirect might be considered a link.) And, by the way, if you answer this, please tell me how you knew.

2) I read somewhere that all wikipedia articles are numbered. Can I access the list of numbers and then retreive an article using its number? -- User:La la ooh, 20 November —Preceding undated comment was added at 00:59, 21 November 2008 (UTC).


 * 1) As it says on Size of Wikipedia in the "data set" section, redirects are not counted.


 * 2) Articles are numbered two different ways, one a simple indexing, and the other designed for the "random article" feature. You can't access either of them, and there's not really any use for doing so.
 * --Carnildo (talk) 03:03, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually the value of <tt>page_id</tt> is public and also available to javascripts as <tt>wgArticleId</tt>. — CharlotteWebb 20:47, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * As a followup, you could get the <tt>page_random</tt> information too, you'd just have to comb the enwiki dump. Not really useful though in a practical sense. ^demon

Spacing not working in Tex
Why is it that a variable with spacing such as $$ \ f \ $$ does not work with some letters such as $$ \ k \ $$. I am seeing the "f" rendered in png but the "k" is rendered in html and the code for the spaces is also showing. I noticed this problem at WikiProject Electronics/Standard symbols but there may be other things broken as well.  Sp in ni ng  Spark  09:29, 23 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I just tried this in IE6 to see if it is a browser problem as I have started using Firefox relatively recently. IE is just rendering a blank space for the k.  Sp in ni  ng  Spark  09:34, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This seems to be the TeX-is-broken bug again. This instance seems to have been fixed. Algebraist 12:51, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * That looks good to me too now. What was that all about?  Sp in ni  ng  Spark  16:31, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * 16440. Algebraist 16:46, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Interwiki links - the default code is not a good option
At Commons I link to en.wikipedia all the time. To do so you simply type 'w:' at the beginning of the link and then just leave the rest as normal, e.g. Wikipedia (this works here too, though it's not necessary of course). Unfortunately, and as you can see, this is displayed as "w:Wikipedia" and not simply "Wikipedia". It's almost never the case that you actually want it to say 'w:whatever', but this remains the default. To display it normally you have to type 'w:word|word', which wastes at least a second and adds frustration every time you have to do that. Surely the preferable default would be just be showing the text after the prefix and letting people type in '|w:word' if they actually want that to be shown. Surely it would be a simple matter to change this?

The problem is that this code is so widely used. Anything that people did want to read 'prefix:word' would become 'word' anyway (perhaps they said 'type in the following code', taking advantage of the fact that you can see the prefix code by default. Is there any way we can get around this? The only thing I can think of is to create a new prefix which does the same thing, e.g. wx:Word would work the same as word, but would default to 'word' and not 'w:word'. The same could be used for all other prefixes, i.e. just add an x on the end to the existing ones (I know from another wiki that adding new prefixes to other wikis is a fairly simple matter). So word would become wiktx:word, and you wouldn't have to type out/copy + paste '|word' every time you used it. I'm sure I'm not the only person who has become a bit frustrated with this technicality. I suppose I should propose such a change at Bugzilla. Would anyone support it? And, as I have assumed, is it actually possible for the software to ignore the prefix by default? Richard001 (talk) 06:18, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * WP:PIPETRICK - If you just type Foo, its automatically expanded to Foo when you save the page. <font face="Broadway">Mr.Z-man 06:26, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, cool. I feel like quite the newb for not knowing that, perhaps I should have asked if there was already a way to do it. Richard001 (talk) 06:02, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

More broken math images
Similar to previous issues (1, 2, 3), the images generated by &lt;math&gt;p&lt;/math&gt; and &lt;math&gt;E\,\!&lt;/math&gt; are broken: $$p$$, $$E\,\!$$. —Bkell (talk) 05:32, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Are combined watchlists possible?
Hi all -

I regularly contribute to en:Wiki, and am also an occasional contributor to commons and to a couple of other language Wikipedias. Unfortunately, I'm only on those other WPs and Commons once every couple of weeks or so... is there any way of adding the few items I have on my watchlist on those projects to my watchlist at en:Wiki? Grutness...<small style="color:#008822;">wha?  00:00, 23 November 2008 (UTC)


 * No, not yet. However you can set up MediaWiki to email you when something is changed on your watchlist, on some of the smaller projects, including Commons. It's in the preferences with the other email options. Graham 87 04:20, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Right now if you are logged in you can use something like:
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=watchlist&wllimit=50

to check your local watchlist, but as far as I know the only way to get the same data for another wiki is to change the domain name in the url (I don't see any way to set a "site" parameter to access it from the local API):
 * http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=watchlist&wllimit=50

Cross-site AJAX which tries to get data from the API of another domain (that is, to import data from sites other than where the script is run) will fail in most browsers unless the security settings can somehow be over-ridden. (edit: this may or may not be configurable in the yet unreleased Firefox 3.1, I'd have to read further)

For slightly related reasons this wouldn't work on the toolserver either unless they make an SUL login for it. Unlike the API the toolserver has no way to know which wiki user you are. If a toolserver script did try to check for the cookies set by sites this would also be denied by the security settings of most browsers. Obviously showing your watchlist without confirming identity would make watchlist data visible to everyone and be totally unacceptable (and arguably in violation of the foundation policy on "non-public data").

This might be a good feature for a mediawiki-specific client application—something akin to AWB, Huggle, or any (other?) bot software. — CharlotteWebb 20:04, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah. Normally, you could use a JavaScript callback for JSON data, like this...
 * http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=watchlist&wllimit=50&format=jsonfm&callback=callme
 * However, any request with the "callback" parameter fake-logs-you-out before querying for the information (for security reasons), so checking one's watchlist in this way is effectively useless. As you mention, making it useful would create a bit of a security hole :/ Grace notes T <span title="Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)">§ 23:42, 23 November 2008 (UTC)


 * A toolserver tool that implements combined watchlists could use TUSC to confirm the users' identity. Graham 87 23:38, 23 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't believe the watchlist table is available to toolserver tools/users, for obvious privacy reasons. The only way for such a tool to work would be to log in as you on every project, which would require your wiki password, so it would violate toolserver rules. Short of doing cross-site AJAX, creating a tool entirely, or mostly, separate from the web browser, or a change to the software to add cross-site watchlists, the only way to do this is with the RSS feeds and an aggregator. <font face="Broadway">Mr.Z-man 00:39, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

This'd be easy (with a user subpage of links on each project) if there was a method for Recentchangeslinked in the API (per 14869). --Splarka (rant) 08:27, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * That would require, in effect, the use of public watchlists, which may not be in anyone's better interest. Plus for that a toolserver script could handle the combining and chronological sorting if it knew where to look. What would really help is a way to do a multi-project query from within the API of one wiki. Ideally this would be built into the main software at whatever stage of SUL at which local account data is phased out (assuming this is even part of the long-term plan, that is). — CharlotteWebb 20:29, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

"page" tabs
Hi, every time I load a page, the "page" bit of the tabs ("project page", "user page", "talk page", "special page") blinks away almost instantly, like there's a java-thing supressing it. Does anyone know how I can get it back, I like it? Thanks! ╟─ Treasury Tag ► contribs ─╢ 12:26, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * TT, are you by chance using the "Friendly" script? If so, I think that it has recently introduced a new feature that reduces the text on tabs in order to allow more room for extra tabs. (See WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Friendly) I think there is also a configuration option to allow for the standard text. Hope this helps. --Ckatz <sup style="color:green;">chat <sub style="color:red;">spy  19:39, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Ooh, yes, thanks, I'm sure that's it - do you know how to disable it? The Friendly page isn't that clear... Thanks! ╟─ Treasury Tag ► contribs ─╢ 11:30, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Winter
The article about the season, Winter, is not loading correctly and the tabs (discussion, edit, history) and the entire left side of the page have vanished. Could be a problem on my end but other pages are loading correctly. 144.92.84.206 (talk) 16:56, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Fine here. Have you tried bypassing your cache, restarting your browser, and restarting your computer (in that order)? Algebraist 17:00, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Everything looks okay to me on that article... EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 23:23, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

GIF scaling problems
Is anyone looking into the GIF scaling problems? Anyone know if/when this will be fixed? It's making quite a few articles look like a dog's dinner, so I'd hate for it to be ignored. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.156.127.116 (talk) 14:24, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I do concur that scaled GIF images look like crap now. I also see why; the GIFs are no longer scaled(!) All GIF images now have the original image as the source. This can get quite problematic for large images. — Edokter  •  Talk  • 15:20, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * See #GIF resizing. This Bugzilla report may be related. --—— Gadget850 (Ed)  <sup style="color:darkblue;">talk  -  15:58, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * May I recommend a different web browser? I know Opera does high-quality image resizing. --Carnildo (talk) 23:02, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * You're right, it's partly the fault of IE, which does a really rubbish job of scaling GIFs. However, recommending that people don't use IE to view Wikipedia is not an option. Similarly, the suggestion "for non-animated images, try using PNG" at the discussion linked above is not a satisfactory solution -- unless someone is prepared to go through and convert the thousands of existing GIF images. The thing that puzzles me is why server-side scaling of PNG images still seems to work OK. I gather that GIF scaling was turned off for performance reasons, but I don't understand why PNG scaling should be any less of a load. Matt 12:33, 22 November 2008 (UTC). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.146.47.118 (talk)


 * Because PNGs aren't animated, and animated GIFs seem to be the reason GIF scaling was turned off? A very bad decision IMO; There are many large, I mean LARGE, GIF images (even non-animated) take take up quite a bit of bandwidth when loaded. So while server performance may have been reduced, it is negated by increased bandwidth usage. Another aspect is that while scaled GIF images may look bad in IE, animated client scaled GIF images show very distorted or not at all in IE. This decision was not thought through properly. And since images are scaled only once (per usage), I think the stated performance savings is a misnomer. — Edokter  •  Talk  • 15:57, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * If the image scaler servers crash because of overloading, you won't see any images at all. Even if they just run slow, it'll still slow down page loads for any page with an image not at full resolution. <font face="Broadway">Mr.Z-man 17:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * So does downloading unscaled full resolution images. I find it strange how the image scalers could be overloaded, as each scaled image is cached on multiple levels, or at least should be. — Edokter  •  Talk  • 17:46, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) See also commons:Commons:File types. PNG scaling is a more serious problem. Converting all GIF images to PNG images is not a good idea. I thought scaled images were cached. I don't understand this problem at all. The servers shouldn't need to scale images on-the-fly each time a page loads. That is because they should be pulling up the already-scaled images from a cache. Am I missing something here? GIF image scaling is normally faster in most image editors than PNG image scaling, so I don't understand this problem from any angle. I use freeware IrfanView for simple, fast image editing of both GIF and PNG images. PNG image scaling is more complicated to do well. GIF images are low-color images and scale instantly always. I don't know about animated GIF images. Would it be possible to just turn off scaling of problematic animated GIF images? And why aren't those scaled animated GIF images cached? --Timeshifter (talk) 18:16, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Move succeeded message
Something odd seems afoot with the Move succeeded page (the page that appears after you have moved an article to a new name). What appears in the first line after I moved a priori and a posteriori (philosophy) to a priori and a posteriori is this:


 * The page "A priori and a posteriori (philosophy)" (links) (priori and a posteriori (philosophy)&action=delete delete) has been moved to "A priori and a posteriori" (links). (revert · log)

It seems to me that the second ex link (beginning "priori and...") is broken and should have its spaces replaced by underscores:


 * The page "A priori and a posteriori (philosophy)" (links) (delete) has been moved to "A priori and a posteriori" (links). (revert · log)

Is this just me or do others see a difference between the two? the skomorokh 12:06, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Look better now? { { Nihiltres  | talk | log } } 13:27, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It would look even better with fullurl since some people use secure server. By the way, the "delete" link was already present at the bottom of that message. —AlexSm 15:02, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Fullurl magic enabled . :) { { Nihiltres | talk | log } } 16:28, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I can't tell if this has worked until I see a fresh movesucceeded page, but I trust that you chaps have addressed the matter appropriately. Thanks! the skomorokh  14:04, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Two technical discussions
There are two discussions taking place at WP:VPR at the moment that may be of interest to technically-minded editors. Both of them suggest configuration changes, so wide participation and affirmations of support or opposition would be greatly appreciated. The first, P: and T: Pseudospaces, is to create two new namespace aliases for the Template: and Portal: namespaces. The second, Change default category sortkeys, is to change the default method of categorisation used here. Input to both would be greatly appreciated. <b style="color:forestgreen;">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange;">melon</b> 14:57, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * What's wrong with people that they can't type "Template" and "Portal"? Are their fingers crippled? :) --brion (talk) 21:35, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Good thing neither of these namespaces happened to start with a "D", or we'd have real problems, see above . — CharlotteWebb 14:46, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Search result, poses a question
Why does this search appear to lead to “(section Naval service in World War II)”, rather than to where it is mentioned in Gerald Ford? This question was previously asked here, but answer seemed inconclusive. CasualObserver&#39;48 (talk) 02:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
 * How it works now is to just match section names to the query ... but we should have it look at content as well... --rainman (talk) 18:06, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Template talk:Sample box end
The protected template Sample box end causes typesetting problems in articles like S.H.E. I think it is misses out the parameter "  ". Any administrators can confirm the causes and fix this problem? Weltanschauung&#x262f;Ĥòĭnäþbåķtšýñ 06:00, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You're correct. I've added an editprotected request on the template's talk page. Anomie⚔ 11:56, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Reference Desk
Do other folk see "&lt;i>Search Wikipedia:&lt;/i> &lt;!-- NewPP limit report Preprocessor node count: 19/1000000 Post-expand include size: 1274/2048000 bytes Template argument size: 0/2048000 bytes Expensive parser function count: 0/500 -->" when they look at WP:RD? Should it be there? -- SGBailey (talk) 16:30, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, looks to be from the, and you'll have to ask the appropriate CSS be copied from the local MediaWiki:Common.css. --Splarka (rant) 08:56, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Waw, it works perfectly. Now one last thing. Is it possible to write a different word instead of Contetnts, let's say Chapters? That would be even more wonderful. --Janezdrilc (talk) 12:00, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You'd have to change s:MediaWiki:toc. --Splarka (rant) 12:34, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

See Village pump (technical)/Archive 10.

Or, concisely, add this code to your monobook.css: /* Hide the ToC number and show bullets instead */ .tocnumber {display: none} -- Quiddity (talk) 23:05, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) toc ul {list-style-image:url(/skins-1.5/monobook/bullet.gif); list-style-type:square; margin:0.3em 0 0 1.5em;}

Copying articles that end in a bracket
I want to email an article to somebody, but if the page name ends in a closing parenthesis, eg. Laches (equity), it won't copy because the closing bracket stays outside the filename. Can't this be fixed? JohnClarknew (talk) 22:03, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You asked the same question on the Help desk in August. I think I understand the problem now. What you see in the "location bar", is a "readable" url, but it is not the "safe" version of the url. When you copy it into an email, and send it, most email programs try to create a link that you can click. This usually goes without trouble, but when the URL ends in " or ), this often fails (because it is not the urlencoded "safe" version of the url). There is no good solution to this unfortunately. If you URLencode the brackets yourself before sending, then it will work, but that is very cumbersome. The easiest way to prevent this is the following:
 * Click the Edit tab for the article
 * Copy this url instead
 * Paste the url
 * Where it says: "action=edit" in the url, change it to "action=view"
 * Send and there should be no problems.
 * --Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 22:34, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Adding ?action=view to the end of the normal url will probably also work for you. Actually, just adding ?a should also work because unrecognized endings after ? are simply ignored, but it may confuse the recipient. Note that the treatment of url's depends on the used mail software. Some people use software that never gives a clickable link when they read mail. They may not see the same as you when you send the mail. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:54, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Alternatively, you could use a service such as TinyURL to change a Wikipedia URL into a shorter one with no funny characters. This has the additional advantage of preventing a long Wikipedia URL from being split across lines by your e-mail program (or the recipient's e-mail program), which can often mess up links too. On the other hand, it has the disadvantage that the link is not at all clear about what it links to, because it looks like " http://tiny url.com/2unsh". —Bkell (talk) 01:59, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Also see Help:URL. --—— Gadget850 (Ed)  <sup style="color:darkblue;">talk  -  13:00, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I find that the easiest solution is to add ?a before sending, it works. So thanks for your suggestions to solve this very irritating problem. JohnClarknew (talk) 18:31, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks from me too. I was looking for a solution to this last year (See 11056). (Mozilla Thunderbird trips over these urls, but Gmail and Claws Mail (the only other programs I was able to test) understood that the ")" was part of the url.) -- Quiddity (talk) 23:15, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorting bug with N/A elements
Sorting a table by a column seems to have problems if there are N/A elements in the table. For example, try sorting this one (click the little box near "Col"): Does that work strangely or is it just my computer? Seems to work differently depending on whether I use Firefox or Konqueror, but wrong in both cases. (84.250.144.242)

Fails for me also. The code for sorting tables is at:
 * http://upload.wikimedia.org/skins/common/wikibits.js

Don't ask me why it's on the image server. Rather than having to edit every table in every article, it might be easier to add a special case for the following html: <td style="background: #ececec; color: grey;" class="table-na"> N/A For whatever column we are sorting by would probably want the rows which have "N/A" cells in that column to move to the bottom (regardless of whether we are sorting "up" or "down")

Since the same javascript is now being shared by all wikis we would also want to standardize any "N/A" templates on other sites so they also use <tt>class="table-na"</tt>, but fixing it for us wouldn't break anything for them that wasn't already broken.

On a side note, the color and background for N/A cells should be an attribute of the css class (thus user-configurable) rather than forced. — CharlotteWebb 20:59, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
 * This is a bit messy. What fails and how does it fail? Did you try making a sorting template of some kind that would fix this ? --Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:19, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * To explain this a bit. The "type" of columnsorting applied (numeric vs. alphanumeric), is determined by the contents of the first row. So because the first row in the code is 3, numeric sorting is likely applied and breaking on the alphanumeric n/a. If you need this working "right now", you can do the following: N/A --Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:49, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

For me it sorts in the order "N/A", 1, 3, 4, "N/A", 2 but I haven't confirmed the previous user's claim of different orders in different browsers. The solution I suggested is to, when sorting, temporarily disregard anything with the standard N/A value, sort the others, then put the N/A's at the bottom (in their original order relative to each other). Unless there is some reason to do it differently I will try to get some code which does that. — CharlotteWebb 16:39, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Server breakages?
When I use &maxlag=5, I'm getting back: Waiting for 10.0.6.22: 12620 seconds lagged

That's a lot of seconds, isn't it? Is it a problem that unplugging something would fix, preferably at the NOC, as opposed to my own system? Franamax (talk) 01:45, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * PS I don't use 10.0.0.0 on my internal net. Franamax (talk) 01:46, 27 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It appears to be db12. I pinged a few sysadmins on IRC, we'll see if any bite. <font face="Broadway">Mr.Z-man 04:40, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The problem was apparently fixed. Lag seems to be going back down, it'll take a while to catch up. <font face="Broadway">Mr.Z-man 05:57, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks Z. Would I be right in thinking that many, many bots timed out over the last four hours, or was I just bound to the faulting server along with some subset of users? Franamax (talk) 06:03, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * No, maxlag should return the server with the maximum lag for all requests, hence the name (though it probably only affected the English Wikipedia).`<font face="Broadway">Mr.Z-man 06:52, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Getting old pages from the cache
Hi all,

Myself and one of the other editors seem to be getting old pages from the cache. It's really annoying. Is this replication lag? Shift-reload isn't fixing it. - Richard Cavell (talk) 06:35, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * With ref to the thread immediately above, it looks like one of the servers coughed up a big fur-ball over the last several hours and is only now catching up. Many times you can see after the fact what happened at the server admin log, but I haven't seen anything there yet. This may be a "wait a few hours, try again" thing. Franamax (talk) 07:13, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Adding ?action=purge to the page request should get you the up-to-date page no matter what. example Franamax (talk) 07:21, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Signpost/2008-11-17/Features and admins
What's wrong with the Austins Ferry image? <font family="Arial"> Little Red Riding Hood  talk  19:29, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the file size is just way to big; the resolution is 12,919 × 1,892. Icewedge (talk) 20:38, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Problems printing articles with blank pages
Recently I have had problems printing articles from Wikipedia. Large parts of text disappear and all that gets printed instead are blank pages. I am using Microsoft Office 2007 both at home & work and it happens in both places. Has anyone encountered this problem and have a solution ?

--Pgcohen (talk) 01:00, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * What procedure, exactly, are you using to print Wikipedia articles? Algebraist 01:01, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I use the print button - it also happens when I try to print the printable version. --Pgcohen (talk) 01:03, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The print button in which program? You mentioned Microsoft Office 2007 but a web browser, for example Internet Explorer, is usually used to view and print articles. If you try to copy an article to Microsoft Word then different problems can occur. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:12, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * OK - good point - I use IE 7.0. Actually, I recently copied part of an article into MS Word to print missing pages (which worked).--Pgcohen (talk) 01:18, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Search
High (very high), I am Janezdrilc, admin on sl:. I have a proposal how to improve a Wikipedia Search options. As admin I miss an option to search within erased articles, so I thing it would be very handy to have a one little square more on the site where you can select Erased articles. And there is one other thing: select all and deselect all options. Ok, those are just two ideas I am expecting to be realised :) Have fun. --Janezdrilc (talk) 13:40, 27 November 2008 (UTC)


 * This belongs on the Village pump proposals page (and we call them "deleted articles", not "erased articles"). Also, this is two separate ideas, I think; not so good to discuss them in the same topic.   -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 11:32, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Special:RecentChanges filtering
Is there an internal wiki link for filtering by namespace (I tried /mediawiki, /ns8 etc.) without turning it into an external link? -- Menti  sock  17:27, 27 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Not really, but you can get close by using and class="plainlinks", [ like this] .  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:45, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Avoid having it in printable version
Those huge images in Reference_ranges_for_blood_tests have a separate, vertical, image for printing: Image:Blood values for print.png

However, how to avoid these images to appear in the usual printable version of the article (where they are of little use when they are horizontal)? I know there is a tag for it, since fix-tags, such as "" use it. Mikael Häggström (talk) 10:03, 28 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Wrap it in . Algebraist 15:13, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Fix requested (IAItoc)
What is Category:IAItoc? It is empty and undescribed. Used in 3 articles and one template. Could not find the cause. Please fix, thanks, --77.4.55.167 (talk) 22:02, 28 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It comes from TOCnestright when certain parameters are used. I've posted a query at Template talk:TOCnestright asking if there is any point to keeping the categories, or if they should be removed from that template. Anomie⚔ 22:21, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Page editing issues
Directly editing a page through the edit button nearly duplicates the page. This is particularly troublesome and annoying for long pages. Anyone knows why do this happens and how to fix it? Alexius08 (talk) 11:32, 22 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Which edit button are you referring to and what do you mean by nearly duplicates the page? PrimeHunter (talk) 02:08, 23 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The one at the top. Look at what happened when I tried here. Alexius08 (talk) 08:56, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Do you mean you clicked the "edit this page" tab, made a small change in the edit box, saved the page, and then the near duplicate showed by your diff was saved? I have never heard of such behaviour before. Does it happen each time? Have you installed something special in your browser or account? PrimeHunter (talk) 23:13, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * What browser (and OS) are you using? EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 23:18, 25 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm using Firefox 3.0.4 on Microsoft Windows XP. Installed plugins include Alexa Sparky 1.3.0 and Web of Trust 20081111. Alexius08 (talk) 08:03, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Does it happen each time? Can you try with another browser? Can you try while logged out? PrimeHunter (talk) 17:24, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * It happens on some pages while I'm logged in and logged out. I think it's isolated on my userpage. Alexius08 (talk) 01:53, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Reference desk
Will someone please look at Reference desk? There is some information being shown in html rather than the wiki code. Please help. Thanks. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 11:49, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I have reported this on IRC to devs, but I guess they have more important stuff atm. I created a bug ticket so that you can track the issue. In the mean time, an admin can fix this by removing the "labeltext" line from Reference_desk/RD_header. The label will no longer be present, but it should be less confusing to the users than what you see atm. --Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:07, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you. The header is only semiprotected so I removed that line like you suggested. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 12:15, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Fixed now in the source. --Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:50, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

== Need help with yields "63" (or verified via actual expansion: "63").

The invocation  yields "63" (or verified via actual expansion: "").

However, the nested invocation yields "&Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "["Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "["Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "["Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "["Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "["Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "["Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "["Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "["Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "["Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "["Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "["Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "["Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "["Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "["Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "["Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "[".Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "["63" (or verified via actual expansion: ("").

The only reason these errors aren't normally seen is that they're hidden by the  which nts emits. You can see this in action by viewing the page List of longest reigning monarchs of the United Kingdom in Lynx, or in a graphical browser with styles disabled (e.g. View/Page Style &rarr; No Style in Firefox). —Steve Summit (talk) 01:20, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The problem is that  doesn't yield '63'. Checking the source code shows, and Special:ExpandTemplates confirms, that it yields '63' or '63', depending on namespace. Since nts requires a numerical input, this causes breakage. Algebraist 01:57, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Aha! Makes sense.  Thanks.  (Next question: who can fix?) —Steve Summit (talk) 03:11, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The optimal solution would be for to somehow strip non-numerical characters from its input, but I don't think that's possible. The obvious thing to do is to add a 'don't include the category' parameter to  and use that, but someone might be able to come up with a more elegant solution. Algebraist 03:15, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Deja vu. --Splarka (rant) 08:47, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Huh. And in that discussion, user SiobhanHansa claimed on November 9 to have fixed something. Perhaps that was a different code path.  (And see also Wikipedia talk:Persondata.) —Steve Summit (talk) 12:48, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Why do we need the category? &mdash; Werdna  &bull;  talk  06:34, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed, seems a pointless category. How much is it different than "What links here"? What purpose does it serve? Franamax (talk) 12:30, 29 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I was wondering that, too -- some of those implementational categorization categories do get excessive some times.


 * Further to Algebraist's suggestions above, yet another solution would to refactor the age template(s) into a new  template which subtracts two dates but does not add any category, and a stripped-down   template which calls   to do the work and then adds the category.  Then Age in years and days could call   instead of  . —Steve Summit (talk) 12:48, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Category removed in. &mdash; Werdna  &bull;  talk  13:11, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks much. Next question: where's the right place to discuss the tradeoff between the enhanced numeric sortability enabled by nts at all, versus legibility of Wikipedia pages on non-stylesheet-enabled browsers?  (That is, in Lynx, or in a graphical browser with stylesheets disabled, pages like List of longest reigning monarchs of the United Kingdom still look strange, though at least the barrage of error messages is now gone.) —Steve Summit (talk) 14:34, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Surely the correct solution is to remove punctuation from numbers found in tables when sorting them, rather than some awful hack like nts. &mdash; Werdna  &bull;  talk  06:08, 30 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Good point. Anybody know what/where the sorting code in question is? —Steve Summit (talk) 03:05, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to barge in, but can any of you guys have a look at my issue above? Hytar (talk) 22:21, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Now here. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:05, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for telling me that it's archived. Now, is my issue a little too technical? Hytar (talk) 20:29, 2 December 2008 (UTC)