Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 76

Help pages need updating
There are a few help pages which needs to be updated after the changes, Help:Searching for example. Cenarium (talk) 13:21, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Keyboard shortcuts as well. -- &oelig; &trade; 02:40, 15 May 2010 (UTC)


 * ✅ keyboard shortcuts. But there's likely still many pages in project space that need updating, and quite frankly I'm annoyed about the little attention and low priority this is being given. Obsolete and irrelevant Wikipedia help pages don't do much to help the Usability Initiative's goal in making the site easier to use. -- &oelig; &trade; 00:46, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

See my gripe at the feedback page for the Usability Team. Tee hee. -- &oelig; &trade; 01:32, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Seriously ? I remember a time we all used to be so enthousiastic that we CREATED documentation, now we are too lazy to update it after some people invested a lot of time writing software ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 01:35, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I hope not. -- &oelig; &trade; 02:25, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Determining who removes an item from a category
I'm working on depopulating Category:Requests to move a userspace draft. When I update the page, I note that someone else is as well. (Removing the template accomplishes this). Is there a way to find out who else may be working on this list?-- SPhilbrick  T  15:44, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You can watch removals from that category on . For the last few hours, excluding your edits and one user that removed that template from his own draft, the only edit remaining is by User:Jfr999 on The Magician of Lhasa. Svick (talk) 03:27, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that is extremely helpful. (I'll add it to my list if useful tools.) Did you have a clever way to see who did the removal, or did you manually checked the history on each one?-- SPhilbrick  T  15:11, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * For tasks like this, I write simple scripts (using PowerShell) that use the Wikipedia API and in this case also Category Watchlist API. The script read the list of removed pages from that category and for each of of them determined the last user that edited it. Svick (talk) 12:01, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

So you need a special status to move something from the user space into the article space? Where can I read about that? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:37, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * WP:AUTOCONFIRM. Rd232 talk 21:01, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

hacked domain
The front page of the website royalcliff.com appears to have been hacked, and tries to install malware for the reader. We have a few links to this website at Special:LinkSearch/www.royalcliff.com. Commons has more commons:Special:LinkSearch/www.royalcliff.com. Do we normally remove links to protect our readers? John Vandenberg (chat) 02:47, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes - if a link is harmful for the reader, it should be removed per WP:ELNO; "Sites containing malware, malicious scripts, trojan exploits [...]" ~Super Hamster  Talk Contribs 02:50, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Since its probably temporary I'd suggest commenting it out until its fixed. Prodego  talk  02:51, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I just checked and it is still dangerous. I'm going to remove the links for now and they can be readded when all is well. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 17:48, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I've commented them out, and someone did the same on commons anonymously. John Vandenberg (chat) 03:28, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Font change in edit box
Okay, so I got auto switched to Vector when the site wide change was implemented. I tried it out and didn't like a few things about it and changed back to MonoBook. Well, today I noticed that whenever I edit a page, the font in the edit box is like point 20+ and in bold. How do I get back to the normal font? RedWolf (talk) 20:11, 15 May 2010 (UTC). I am using FF 3.6.3 on OS X. If I use Safari 4.0.5, the edit font is fine. RedWolf (talk) 20:32, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Do you have WikiEd installed? AGK   23:43, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia "log in" related technical trouble
I have noticed Wikipedia "log in" related technical trouble. When I try to search for a topic after logging in or navigate to different pages, it is showing my status as signed out. I have noticed this problem from the time appearance and navigation related new features are added to Wikipedia. Hope this problem will be resolved soon. My User name is Kandula Venkateswara Reddy —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.195.140.105 (talk) 05:52, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Try the secure server. -- &oelig; &trade; 09:54, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Reflist shortcut does not seem to work
Since the the layout changes when I try and insert the 'reflist' shortcut from the Wiki markup drop-down (when editing) a box comes up asking if I want to navigate away from this page, and thus I need to type it in instead. Anyone else having this problem? Eldumpo (talk) 08:51, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Which browser are you using and which gadgets do you have enabled in your preferences ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:07, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm on IE8. I don't have any of the gadgets ticked in My Preferences - I couldn't see one of them that specifically related to this issue Eldumpo (talk) 21:28, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

The same user between different Wikis
I just opened today user on another Wikipedia, when then after I came to log in here (i.e., English Wikipedia)it automaticaly loged me with the user from the other Wikipedia (although I didn't open any new account here), in fact, I didn't even have to log in...I don't want to edit with the same account here and there. As far as I can tell, once if one had account in E wikipedia and in G wikipedia, these were two different accounts. Have it changed? Does it mean that now if I'm blocked in one wiki then I'm blocked also in another? Just for instance, I'm sure it doesn't tell that if one is admin there he's also admin here.--Gilisa (talk) 14:05, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * See WP:SUL – you have the same username and (generally) password, but blocks don't usually affect other wikis. I can't see any reason why you should not "want to edit with the same account here and there" ? ╟─TreasuryTag► Counsellor of State ─╢ 14:07, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Edit mode cite templates missing and vector skin
In the edit mode that just magically appeared, when you click on cite templates several are missing that used to be there, such as journal. Currently only web, book, and news appear. Can I somehow go to the old display - which is much better - and get all the templates back? So yes, I don't like the new interface. I also hate the new vector skin and immediately went back to monobook.  — Rlevse • Talk  • 15:40, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * . Apparently, there is a trick that works for some users, but not for me unfortunately. I stick with the old toolbar for that reason, but I am not satisfied since I want that search and replace feature of the new toolbar, too. Skäpperöd (talk) 15:45, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure why the new version doesn't have journal. Perhaps you should ask that on RefToolbar_2.0. ?? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:50, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think you only get that with RefToolbar 1.0 and I think it is not compatible with Vector yet. I haven't had time to look into it in depth. If RefToolbar is enabled as a Gadget, then the proper version is loaded depending on the skin. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 16:34, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * To disable the new editing toolbar go to Preferences --> Editing --> Beta Features --> Uncheck the box that says "Enable enhanced editing toolbar". The next time you click edit it will use the old editing toolbar. The faster was to do this is just click the "Take me back" link at the top of the page as this does the same thing. I personally like the new toolbar, but not the new navigation, so I unchecked the box below Enable Enhanced editing toolbar. --Alpha Quadrant (talk) 16:51, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yea, thanks! Lordy I hate this new vector stuff. I don't like the layout and it seems they didn't think through a lot of it, very buggy. For search and replace I load the text into MS Word, which is more full featured anyway.  — Rlevse • Talk  • 17:02, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Sigh. Password issue.
My usual, handy-dandy, always-use-it password for Wikipedia has tanked. No idea why, maybe because I haven't logged in in over a year.

I want to use my account to add more information to some articles I've authored.

I try having Wikipedia send the email to my account (to reset the password) and no email comes through -- not in the spam folder, not anything. It's the email account I've always used. Not sure if it's been the one I signed up to Wikipedia with, but it's a very high probability it is.

What do I do?

I have ways of proving this is 'me'. :)

Formerly (still?) Theoriste on Wikipedia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.109.75.187 (talk) 18:03, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Best to just create another account and link it back to your old one with User Alternate Acct.Smallman12q (talk) 02:03, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

New search box problem
Initially, when I entered a topic in the search box, at the top, it would list articles but then, in dark blue, gave me the option for searching for text. That latter option doesn't now happen and the magnifying glass just takes me to the first page. How do I do a full text search, please? Bridgeplayer (talk) 18:06, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It is broken, hopefully this will be one of the first issues tackled when people get into the office on monday again. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 18:10, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * To do a full text search don't write anything; just click on the search icon to go to Special:Search. --Virgolette (talk) 22:16, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

SecurePoll edit count?
According to SecurePoll, I must have 150 mainspace edits to vote on the May 2010 CheckUser & Oversight Elections. I have 202 (see here), but I still can't vote. Why?

A p 3 rson ‽   18:21, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Very strange—that link says you have over 600 edits! ╟─TreasuryTag► consulate ─╢ 18:24, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The requirement is "150 mainspace edits by March 31, 2010". Unfortunately you don't. -- zzuuzz (talk) 18:26, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * (Reply to TreasuryTag) It's 150 mainspace edits, not total edits. He has over 600 total edits, but not 600 mainspace edits. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  03:24, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

e-mail logs
Is there any log kept as to when e-mail was enabled or disabled for a particular user? Who can access it?&mdash;Kww(talk) 18:59, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If such information is logged, then I suspect that only system administrators can access that information. Release of such information might be limited by the Privacy policy of the Foundation. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:02, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Are you talking about a user preventing other users from contacting them (Special:Preferences), or about an admin disabling an editor's ability to email others? Because the latter is only possible via blocking... ╟─TreasuryTag► assemblyman ─╢ 19:03, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * A user preventing others from contacting them via Special:Preferences. In the case in question, a user has claimed to have lost his password. After making that claim, it appears that he logged in and disabled his e-mail address. I have no documentary evidence that it was enabled in the past, but I'm willing to bet it was. Hence, I'm seeking someone that can confirm or refute that the change was made, and need to know where to look or who to ask.&mdash;Kww(talk) 19:08, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * User preference changes are not logged AFIAK. User to user emails are logged and some information (date and sending user) is available to checkusers. Mr.Z-man 19:22, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia just logged me out
Was browsing around while logged in, clicked on my watchlist, and got told I had to log in. DuncanHill (talk) 19:18, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That's normal. Unless you check the "remember for 30 days" box at login, your cookie expires after ~24hrs and you must re-login. --Cyber cobra (talk) 19:22, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I always tick that box. DuncanHill (talk) 19:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Might you have reached the end of your thirty days? AGK   00:03, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Where's the "search" box??
I enter a word in what should be the search box, and I should be offered a choice: "go to" or "search". But only "go to" seems to be there after the recent changes. Is this yet another thing that I have to accidentally find? Michael Hardy (talk) 20:57, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * See . Bridgeplayer (talk) 21:57, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The "AJAX search suggestions" have been deactivated (23498) because of this problem. --Virgolette (talk) 22:02, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Unable to log out
I'm worried because I am finding it impossible to fully log out of Wikipedia (or Wikimedia Commons) in my usual browser, Safari (version 4). The first evidence of a problem – a few hours ago – was when my edits in Safari wouldn't save, and instead I got a message referring to loss of session data and suggesting I log out. I logged out, but when I then went to the log in page, I was already logged in. This happened every time, so in addition to just refreshing the page, I emptied the Safari cache, cleared the history, shut down Safari and relaunched, cleared Wikipedia-related autofill forms in my browser, even restarted my computer, and yet every time I go to any Wikipedia page it shows me logged in. As I mentioned, when I then click "log out" it appears as though I've logged out, but then when I click on "Log in/Create new account", it takes me to the login page but with my user name already (again) showing at the top of the page, already logged in. When I click on "E-mail new password" there I get a message, "Login error - There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking. Please hit "back" and reload the page you came from, then try again." When I follow those instructions, I continue to get pages showing me as already logged in. The only other browser on my computer is Firefox, and I checked it and I am logged out of Wikipedia there. No matter what I try, I cannot log out of Wikipedia in Safari now. (In more than a year of editing, I've never experienced this problem before.) I just tried posting this in Safari and got the same message, as with my attempted edits earlier today, "We could not process your edit due to a loss of session data," so I've now opened Firefox and logged in there, and will try to post this message via that browser. What do you suggest? SJ Morg (talk) 03:14, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Have you tried purging? — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  03:19, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No, I had not heard of that. However, the problem has somehow been fixed without that.  I copied the URL for the purge info. page to my clipboard, opened Safari and pasted it into the address window (intending to then follow the instructions, to purge), but when the page opened I was not shown as logged in – the first Wikipedia page I had opened all day that had not shown me as logged in already. I really thought I had tried everything before posting here, and now I don't know why doing that finally allowed me to be logged out in Safari. Anyway, thanks for your help, and I'll make a note of the purge function as another thing to try if this happens again (even though I didn't need it this time). SJ Morg (talk) 03:39, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

collapsible menu does not work in new Vector skin
Hi, I am using Firefox 3.6.3 and none of the collapsible menus on the left side ("interaction", "toolbox", etc.) work. It works like magic in Internet Explorer. Ideas? Renata (talk) 04:34, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Nevermind. It somehow resolved itself. Renata (talk) 06:03, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Template assistance

 * Moved from WP:AN

I just made Template:Missouri county elected officials. This is designed to have a uniform template for all Missouri county articles. I would like it to have a spot to list the political party of the incumbent along with the incumbent's name - and for it also to automatically shade the appropriate color (blue for Democrats, red for Republicans, gray for independents). See the table at Washington County, Missouri.

Can anyone lend a hand? Been trying to work on a solution but have been encountering difficulty. Neutralitytalk 01:12, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Try copying the instructions from another template for a quick fix if that is possible because that's likely all that is needed. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 02:48, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I've done it; you might want to check my work for typos. Shubinator (talk) 02:51, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:24, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

New logo
The logo in the top left seems to have been replaced with this new one, which is smaller and less well defined than previously (at least in Classic skin). Is there any reason for this? —  Tivedshambo   (t/c) 08:14, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The logo has been replaced in the Vector skin too. I would also like to see the old logo back! This new logo is tiny and lacks the clear lines of the previous version. —Lowellian (reply) 08:21, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Um, if you prefer the old logo, add this to your personal CSS file: -- Prince Kassad (talk) 08:49, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Why was the logo changed in the first place, though? We should just revert the logo to the previous one so that everyone doesn't have to make such a change. Looking at User:Dragons flight's side-by-side comparisons below, it's even more obvious how much smaller and blurrier the new logo is. —Lowellian (reply) 11:22, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * See . The partial, short version is that the old logo contained errors (bad glyphs) that we've known about for years but had not bothered to fix. In addition, they wanted to replace the commercial font used with a open source alternative, and produce a new version of the logo that would print better at large sizes, high resolutions. (I don't know that those explanations really explain all the changes, but that's the gist of what they said.) Dragons flight (talk) 11:40, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * There's one other thing: The new logo is based on an actual 3D model of all the pieces, fitted together into a ball. This is in contrast to the old logo, which was basically a bitmap image, like a drawing.  (I guess it was originally rendered, but that seems to have been lost along the way.)  One could bring the new 3D model into an viewer and revolve the view around it, spin it, animate it, etc.  This is why the new logo can be scaled and will render well at any size -- a computer model is an abstract description of how to make something, rather than a picture.  This also means that touch-ups (especially PNGs) are unlikely to be viewed as acceptable.  Modifications to the original 3D model are in order.  Fortunately, I think that's quite doable, and in keeping with the spirit of the new logo effort.  — DragonHawk (talk|hist) 17:13, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Having worked with the SVG, I'm not sure there actually is a full 3D model. The way gradients were used (e.g. a single radial gradient for the whole surface texture), the way the edges between pieces were filled with continuous fills, and the use of solid tones in the lettering, suggests to me that someone may have created a full 3D wire frame but then flattened it and painted it in 2D.  Actually, it would be pretty hard in general to have a 3D model with a light source and diffuse reflection and have that come up with a vectorized image.  Generally the surface textures would need to render as bitmaps rather than gradients.  Of course, if someone can produce a full model they could prove me wrong.  My guess though is that this is a hybrid that started as a wire frame but then was colorized as a flat vector object to provide greater ease of scaling in the final product.  Dragons flight (talk) 19:11, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I also found the new logo to be rather blah, so I've attempted to create a bolder version, shown above. Dragons flight (talk) 11:07, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yours looks much better. I like the original logo the best though, mainly because of the better font and the better 3D effect on the indentations between puzzle pieces. But if we must go with the new logo your version is definitely better. We should switch to it.  Equazcion ( talk ) 11:25, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * For the record, I welcome people improving it further (one of the advantages of SVG). What I've done is really only a crude first pass.  I agree that the tile edge effects on the original are definitely the best of the bunch.  Dragons flight (talk) 11:31, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * (ec) I agree that your version looks better than the current one (which somehow reminds me of Uncyclopedia's potato). I do wonder if something with the high contrast of your version, but size closer to the current one, might not work even better, though.  (Also, your version has a glitch in the tile borders to the right of the "И" tile.  I added an image note to the commons image page.)  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:32, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I gotta say that the middle logo in the example above is WAY better. I recommend that you propose them to change it to that in light of the concerns about the blurriness of the new one. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 15:58, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I fixed the glitch. (I'm not actually sure how that happened, or why I didn't notice.)  Dragons flight (talk) 11:47, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The personal CSS fix does not work for me. It seems that Wikipedia overrides my setting and shows the new logo anyway. Clearing cache en refreshing did not work either.—Totie (talk) 11:50, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Just wanted to comment that I really don't like the new logo, especially because it's significantly smaller than the old logo. To me, shrinking the logo communicates that Wikipedia itself is shrinking. I would strongly support any redesign that got the logo back up to its original size. –Grondemar 11:52, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

When I looked at Wikipedia today, I almost took my contacts out - the logo can't be that blurry! Maybe if the new logo were the size of the old one, and the characters were darker, the fuzziness would go away. --Magnus Manske (talk) 12:09, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I really agree on the new logo - why is it so small and blurry, with no illusion of depth? I understand the purpose of some of the fixes, but it really is horrible. Warofdreams talk 12:23, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I think that the new logo looks sort of irregular. I can't quite put my finger on the problem, but I think that bringing the "W" and "Ω" back into alignment helps. My gut feeling about the "bolder" version above is positive, too. Paul (Stansifer) 12:28, 13 May 2010 (UTC) (edited to add a boldenated version, too)
 * I also have to agree that the new logo is subpar. I'm not sure why it was changed at all, to be honest. However I came looking for some code to fix it and that's what I got (thanks!) :) – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 12:54, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I too found the logo to be a bit disappointing, particularly that it lacked contrast/definition. The improvement above is a good step, but more can probably be done. I understand that it's now a render from a complete 3d model. Anyone know where the 3d models are of the new logo? The definitions of the puzzle edges can probably be improved with a bump map. --Gmaxwell (talk) 13:24, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * oh, it actually has individual pieces, I guess we can forget bump mapping it. --Gmaxwell (talk) 13:57, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The new logo is bleh. Thanks, Prince Kassad. – xeno talk 13:33, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The old was a POV-ray model I believe, just that they've lost the sources. It misleading to call the old one 2d though.  — Dispenser 13:56, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, it was only kind of a 3d model, I thought. E.g. I thought the characters had been painted on after the render, etc. --Gmaxwell (talk) 13:59, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Agree with all of the above. Fixing the errors in the logo is important, and these changes should be kept, but there was no reason to make it so tiny and unremarkable.--Danaman5 (talk) 14:14, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the change in size and definition were due to corporate thinking. If you take a look at our article on logos, simplicity is apparently a virtue, ie. less complex edges and color ranges. I think ours was simple enough as it was though -- and highly successful. Everyone loved our logo. It weren't broke, so it shouldna' been fixed. <font face="Century Gothic"> Equazcion ( talk ) 14:59, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I also think that the new logo is terrible, have mentioned it in the feedback form. Wish that the old logo would be brought back. --<font color="Green">Footyfanatic3000 (<font color="Green">talk  · <font color="Green">contribs )  15:31, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

We seem to have unanimous consensus... File:Wiki.png can simply be reverted to an earlier version if needed. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 15:48, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Change it back to how it was! Out of interest, how was User:Catrope able to change it all? They don't seem to be an admin, and only have just over 100 edits... <font color="#00ACF4">╟─TreasuryTag► constablewick ─╢ 15:52, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Apparently he's a bigshot. <font face="Century Gothic"> Equazcion ( talk ) 15:59, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No, Juliancolton, you may not change it back. . Prodego  <sup style="color:darkgreen;">talk  16:33, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The refreshing of the logo is welcome and i thank the volunteers for the improvements, but the version that is currently displayed is not optimal. Of the versions presented in this discussion File:Wikipedia-logo-bolder2.svg looks the best to me.
 * Regards. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 16:39, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Here's my take on things: User:DragonHawk/2010 logo. Briefly: I think there are objective reasons why some people are reacting negatively to the new logo. (1) ball is slightly smaller compared to the text, (2) puzzle edges less distinct, (3) lower contrast between symbols and background. These may or may not be "problems" if one is not comparing to the old logo. If they are considered to be worth "correcting", I think that can be done on the 3D model, not just by touching up the image (PNG/SVG). — DragonHawk (talk|hist) 17:06, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I strongly agree with DragonHawk and all others above. To the list I would add: (4) The off-center characters (within each puzzle piece) makes it appear unbalanced (especially at the angle we use). Please fix these common complaints, people in charge of this who didn't ask for preliminary feedback anywhere prominent. -- Quiddity (talk) 17:28, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Come up with a consensus on which improved version is wanted, drop it into PNG format and any admin can change it (well unless certian other changes go ahead then any commons admin can change it). In short we need a fairly definative "fixed" version rather than appeals to foundation bods.©Geni 18:52, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * We need the foundation bods on board, in order to get the logo for all the Wikipedias fixed. See Wikipedia/2.0 for the expanding sphere of problem. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:12, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep in mind that the Wikipedia logos are somewhat "special". The WMF excludes the logo from the usual GFDL/CC license grants.  I think it's even a registered trademark.  So "anyone can edit" may not apply -- unilaterally changing the image that's displayed for en.wikipedia.org may not sit well with the WMF.  I suspect the WMF would be quite open to comments/changes/etc., but they may want to do it in an orderly, all-sites-at-once fashion.  Or they may not care.  Point being, be wary of assumptions. — DragonHawk (talk|hist) 21:03, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree 1000% with DragonHawks' reasons for why the new logo sucks. Perhaps this should be taken to a non-technical pump as a petition to the Foundation to do an overhaul? --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 01:47, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * For the record: I never said the new logo "sucks", nor is that my intention or feeling. As far as petitions go, WP:DEMO, WP:CON, and WP:PETHARM.  Discuss, don't vote. — DragonHawk (talk|hist) 04:19, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I think it's important that The Powers That Be on this logo issue are aware of how disappointed folks are about the new logo. You can register your support for the old Wikipedia logo on Facebook. nohat (talk) 16:23, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

New logo is awful
This new logo is awful. It's smaller, poorly defined, and lacks the old italicized typface. The new logo is a punified version of the old logo. I also don't recall any consensus as to changing to this logo.

There is a glitch in which switching back to the old view will still leave you with the new distasteful logo.

Anybody else think this new logo is just bad?Smallman12q (talk) 17:55, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I just want to chime in on the new logo. The previous logo, which I created, was certainly not without its flaws, but the new logo suffers greatly on an aesthetic level: it is too small, the anti-aliasing is very low quality, and most importantly, the sense of texture created by the edges of the pieces is completely lost. Finally, I am rather disappointed I was not included in the process to revamp the logo. No attempt was made to reach out to me to let me know this process was even being undertaken. Very poor job on all accounts. nohat (talk) 18:05, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

I've posted a blog entry expanding on my objections to the new logo. Please read it if you care to know more of my thoughts. nohat (talk) 18:30, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I did wonder if you were a part of the process - the Commons files just credit "<tt>Author:Wikimedia Foundation</tt>", without any clue that this is a derivative work. Having said that, while I have my problems with the new logo, I am quite glad that the Devanagari text (and the other quibbles) got fixed in this version. Hopefully someday we can get a logo with the better parts of both versions. — Gavia immer (talk) 21:13, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with Smallman12q above. Consensus should have been sought before any logo change. This change should be reverted until consensus can be found over a new logo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Footyfanatic3000 (talk • contribs) 22:08, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Er... why should the Wikimedia Foundation ask us about their logo? I'm sorry, but I really do think that we (as a community) think too highly of ourselves at times; in matters specifically dealing with the encyclopedia and its content, yes, the community should have final say. The logo, however, is a matter of corporate branding, and I can honestly say that no good has ever come from design-by-committee. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 14:38, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Feel free to make snarky HTML contents all you want if that will make you feel better, but it's totally unwarranted, and not especially appreciated. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 04:24, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Given that you're a bureaucrat, I'm rather surprised by your remarks. As can be seen at Logo history, the original Wikipedia logo design was the result of a contest/collaboration and was subject to debate and subsequently consensus. The new logo was pushed top-down from the Wikimedia Foundation onto Wikipedia. Also, your statement is ambiguous in that that this is their logo...this is the logo owned by the Wikimedia Foundation for Wikipedia. The new logo is not the new logo for the WMF which evidently has not yet "enhanced" their logo.
 * I've also pointed out several quotes out of Jimbo Wales "Statement of principles" for what they're worth. Smallman12q (talk) 21:43, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Eh? What does me being a bureaucrat have to do with anything? I'm just remarking that corporate branding is an area that I think the Foundation overriding community consensus on. Perhaps I'm mistakenly assuming that the new logo is the new "official" logo for the project, but it doesn't change the fact that the logos are Foundation-level matters that I think the WMF is well within its bounds to ignore peoples' comments over. (similar to the reaction that some people had at a recent MediaWiki software change that flipped the 'hist' and 'diff' links; I recall seeing people being in a "we weren't asked for our opinion!" mini-uproar, despite the fact that local consensus doesn't matter in regards to the software in the slightest).

The rendering The 3D work is admirable, and I'm glad we finally fixed the language problems. But the rendering is awful. I don't know who approved this, but I'm going to guess he's never met a graphic designer in his entire life. It's 1990s-style work. The contrast is absolutely too low for a logo. Logos should have clear high-contrast objects and subtle gradients. This is the opposite: it has low contrast between objects but a very extreme gradient. Any gradients should be subtle, not consume the entire object. The globe should be much lighter, it's too dark and so you have dark gray letters on a dark gray ball. And the texture of the letters and cracks is completely gone. Dragon flight's "bolder" version above is a tremendous improvement, but we can still do better.

Here's the other problem with this logo: It looks blatantly like an SVG image. Vector format is great for normal logos (one- or two-color vector images), but our project's logo isn't a normal logo, it's a photographic-style image. SVG doesn't work for it, and shoehorning a photographic-style image into a vector format will never look right. Why does the logo even need to be a server-side SVG if you can't click on it? Use the 3D software to render an actual PNG that looks right, with actual cracks between the pieces and actual gloss on the letters. The site's logo should look good: it should look like this sign.

I understand there's always a need for a vector version for professional publishing, etc. That's totally fine, but keep it internal. Don't use it as the site's header if there's no vector functionality in the header itself.

Here's a question: Who made the logo decision and how do we make absolutely sure they get in touch with this discussion? Step 1 is to replace it with a brighter, higher-contrast image. Step 2 is to render it properly. —Noisalt (talk) 22:13, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Striking my comments, as a very good discussion is going on at Commons:Talk:Wikipedia/2.0 and I like the new proposal. —Noisalt (talk) 00:05, 15 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Agreed; keep the vector version internal and put a PNG on the main page. Experienced Wikipedians will change it back to the old version and forget the new one, but what about all the casual and anonymous users? They deserve a more attractive logo.--Albany NY (talk) 16:34, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Boldify it, 3D the lines better, line up the letters, fix any bad letters, add an Elvish character (inside is OK), I don't care about the size, and make the puzzle pieces different colors . . . and I'll be happy. Not that I'm unhappy now. kcylsnavS (kalt) 12:34, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

I think the problems are these: N4m3 (talk) 14:33, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The highlight is too small, meaning it looks less realistic. It should be rendered with wider, less strong lighting.
 * The joins between pieces look flat. On the old logo, there was a slight indent between two pieces.


 * The new logo looks terrible on the iPhone. Why don't we just put the old logo back? It was far superior in almost every way. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 14:34, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Is there a way to have the vector skin editor include the "cite" button?
I miss the "cite" button in the editor toolbar, which in the monobook skin used to pop up a -template-family-editor for quick adding of reference information. Can this feature be made available in the vector skin?

We need to encourage editors to add references, and we need gadgets which make it easy doing so. The new "reference wizard" does nothing to enhance adding of proper references, neither for regular content contributors (bad) nor for "drive-by"-contributors (very bad!) and should be modified to include the buttons you got when you clicked "cite" in the monobook skin toolbar.

Related questions to think about, though less important to me: Skäpperöd (talk) 09:39, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Is a book icon appropriate to symbolize the "add references" option? Will one-time or irregular contributors who use a website, a (news)paper or television as a source identify it as such?
 * Should an icon be used at all to symbolize the "add references" option or shouldn't it rather be spelled out as to make it appear more prominent? Many one-time or irregular contributors add unsourced content, I guess because they are unaware of WP:V.
 * Shouldn't the reference wizard include a "help" button linking to WP:CITE or some similar page? Once you opened the reference editor, you can't access the page you are editing, including the "Help" menu in the editor toolbar. (Which wouldn't be of any use for someone who doesn't know what reference information he is supposed to include anyway).


 * You should take this to Wikipedia talk:RefToolbar. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 10:36, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It seems that the tick against refTools in My preferences -> Gadgets doesn't work in the vector skin. But adding "importScript('User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar.js');" to your vector.js file brings it back. See RefToolbar. --Bruce1eetalk 10:42, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That brings back the old toolbar, but doesn't include the cite button with the new one. Skäpperöd (talk) 11:15, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well it worked for me. My vector editor toolbar now has (from left to right): bold icon, italic icon, link icon, embedded file icon, reference icon, "Advanced", "Special characters", "Help" and "Cite". The "Cite" is a dropdown which lets you choose cite web/news/book as before. --Bruce1eetalk 11:38, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hm. I have created User:Skäpperöd/vector.js‎, copied "importScript('User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar.js');" to it, and nothing changed (still standard new toolbar without "cite"). I then checked out the "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" box in "My preferences", and then I got back the old (enhanced) toolbar which includes the "cite" button. I contribute via FF. Skäpperöd (talk) 11:57, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm also using Firefox. Did you refresh your vector.js page after changing it (using Ctrl-Shift-R)? --Bruce1eetalk 12:04, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I did press Ctrl+Shift+R very often. On the vector.js page too. Skäpperöd (talk) 12:09, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Works fine for me, thanks Bruce1ee. Maybe the problem is that you have enclosed the line of code in quotation marks, have you tried it without? - Dumelow (talk) 12:17, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I have tried without. I probably need to disable/enable something in my preferences? Skäpperöd (talk) 12:22, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If you have refTools ticked in My preferences -> Gadgets, try unticking it. --Bruce1eetalk 12:32, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I did now, refreshed everything, still the old toolbar. In "My preferences/Gadgets", I have checked Navigation popups, Friendly, Twinkle, "After rolling back an edit...", and "Compatibility function to run scripts". In "My preferences/Editing", I have checked "Show preview before edit box", "Show edit toolbar (requires JavaScript)", "Warn me when I leave an edit page with unsaved changes", and "Enable dialogs for inserting ...". Nothing else is selected on these pages. Skäpperöd (talk) 12:48, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't have the cite button on the new toolbar despite trying all of the above. I've noticed that when I go to edit a page, Internet Explorer notes that one item is still remaining to be downloaded (it appears to be an image of a bracket) so perhaps this has something to do with it? Cordless Larry (talk) 12:38, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

It might be that there is an issue with IE and refToolbar. IE requires a special mode of the script, and that wasn't really tested I think. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:44, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

The new UI for the edit box seems to have been a mess: I'm thinking of setting up an RFC about getting refTools reinstated. Any comments? --Philcha (talk) 13:30, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * How were WP editors included in discussions?
 * IMO the new UI is less easy to use than the old one. In the old UI, all the edit box facilities
 * Changing UIs forces users to re-learn, i.e. it has a cost in time and effort. Jakob Nielsen has written about how he was critised for changing a UI that was working well.
 * Disabling refTools was disastrous. I won't hard-coding citations, so I won't edit articles until refTools is back. And I mean via Preferences, not by messing with obscure bits of JavaScript - we're editors, and most are not programmers.
 * Reftools works just fine for me, using it as a Gadget, Safari 4. Now please can everyone when reporting bugs, for once just name what browser and OS they are using ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:33, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I can do it from here. You are not using reftoolbar as a gadget, nor have you transferred your scripts in your monobook.js to your User:Philcha/vector.js. Just install the gadget and remove  from you monobook.js and move   to your vector.js. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:36, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Reftools certainly isn't working for me (using IE). I have been using the cite button in Vector skin with no problems until this morning. Now I can see the toolbar, but when I choose the "cite web" or "cite news" bottons, nothing happens. I've imported the script to my vector.js page and the reftools box is checked in my preferences. The signature button has also stopped working and I've had to revert to the old school method of typing four tildes. <b style="color:#FFB521;">Jezebel's</b> Ponyo <sup style="color:navy;">shhh 14:10, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I think I've fixed the refToolbar gadget. I've confirmed my fix in IE8 and FF 3.6.3. The problem was that Gadgets and user scripts are loaded in different places in the, gadgets are loaded before some of the UsabilityInitiative scripts that refToolbar depends on. It also appears that the dialogs have been re-enabled in IE (IE 8 at least), so anyone using the new toolbar with the dialogs enabled in preferences should be using the new script - User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar 2.0. Users using the new toolbar with dialogs disabled will be using a modified version of the old script and users using the old toolbar will be using an updated version of the old script - refToolPlus. Mr.Z-man 19:32, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm using Firefox 3.6.3 on Win XP.
 * I tried disabling refTools in the Gadgets tab of my Prefs, then shown an article and CTRL+F5 to force refresh, then re-enabling refTools in the Gadgets and then forced refresh of article. I see no refTools. Even if there is a workround that requires only Gadgets, how many editors need to be informed. The UI development was not thoroughly regression tested. --Philcha (talk) 20:23, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Is there anything in the Javascript error console? (Tools->Error Console). Mr.Z-man 20:31, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I cleared the Javascript error console then opened this edit box (VP tech) and got 10+ If I knew how to paste the list in 1 lump here, I'd do that. As it is, I suggest one of the vector devs with FF replicated the list. --Philcha (talk) 10:30, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I've tried all of the above, but I still don't get a Cite button. Using Firefox 3.6.3 on Windows 7. There are plenty of messages in the error console, how do I tell what is relevant? Most are warnings; one error "mw.usability is undefined"; expanding this, the following is highlighted: mw.usability.addMessages( { "cite-section-label" : "Cite", RolandR (talk) 22:44, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you, this is VERY useful. Looking for a solution now. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:14, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Please bypass your browsercache and try again ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:29, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No, I've tried that, and it makes no difference. RolandR (talk) 00:00, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Going back to the top of this section about the new 'basic' reference icon in the enhanced toolbar, I agree that it's a bad idea because it makes it too easy to add references and other what-nots with absolutely no attention at all to proper citation formatting, being totally oblivious to WP:CITE. It's already a pain to cleanup refs in articles as it is, now the icon makes it an even bigger headache for anyone dedicated to WP:CLEANUP. --Funandtrvl (talk) 04:39, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Amen. How can we get the technical staff to do something about that? Skäpperöd (talk) 04:53, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I've lost the Cite button (it was there yesterday under vector - see above). This my setup: Firefox3.6.3 on Win7; new toolbar with dialogs enabled in preferences; refTools in gadgets disabled; importScript('User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar 2.0.js'); in my vector.js file; there are some css java console warnings, but nothing relating to refToolbar that I can see. I hope this helps. --Bruce1eetalk 06:16, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Oops, it's working now – I cleared my browser cache! --Bruce1eetalk 06:30, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I switched to version 2.0 and, while it didn't work at first, it now is. I presume the delay was something to do with my browser cache. Thanks for the help and advice. Cordless Larry (talk) 07:55, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, copying Brucelee's example above, I now have this working -- thanks, Bruce. But the buttton still seems to offer fewer options than before; have some of the templates been removed? RolandR (talk) 10:10, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I see now that the Toolbar itself has been modified, ad this has nothing to do with the new look. RolandR (talk) 10:13, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I had the same problem, but followed the instructions above and now it's working. I have a new problem though: I had recently started using refToolPlus, which has some really cool new features. I guess there's no way to incorporate this into the enhanced editing toolbox? Lampman (talk) 14:54, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

New font size
...is too small. Seriously, this impacts usability in a big way. /wangi (talk) 10:03, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I have been using Vector for some time now and I do not believe the font size (even for content) is any smaller. In fact, the font size of the text on the tabs looks bigger than the size used for Monobook. PleaseStand (talk) 10:58, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what the original poster is seeing (maybe you used to use some skin other than the previous default of Monobook?). I only started using Vector today. The font size is the same everywhere, except in blockquotes and references, wherein it got bigger (to my annoyance; I would prefer text in blockquotes and references to be smaller, as it used to be and as is currently being discussed above). —Lowellian (reply) 11:14, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Ok; compare:

I'm not aware of anything out of the ordinary in my browser setup (FF 3.6.4, Windows). Thanks/wangi (talk) 11:21, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Font sizes in watchlist etc. are also smaller. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 11:23, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The time in the watchlist is ridiculously small. Even with my reading glasses I find it a strain to read. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:34, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I have changed to Monobook instead of Vector largely because of this font issue. Yes, it is smaller in Vector, and unpleasantly so. Lady  of  Shalott  00:24, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Results seems to vary depending on the browser and OS, so please provide these details.
 * When one report a bug, one should always provide as many details about the issue as one can. If the developers can't reproduce the bug, they won't be able to know where the problem is and won't be able to fix it. For your sake as a user, please always state you browser and OS. So the devs will be able to fix you bugs, and you'll be happier. ;-) Dodoïste (talk) 18:29, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I noticed today that the font size is smaller than it was last week, although I'm using the same browser and haven't manually changed any preferences. After some trial and error I've found that going to my preferences page and changing the skin from Vector to Monobook seems to restore the previous appearance.  It would be nice if this were documented somewhere.Jowa fan (talk) 03:54, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Dodoïste - as mentioned above the screen shots are from Firefox 3.6.4 running on Windows XP - let me know if there is any further detail required. Thanks/wangi (talk) 09:48, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

How to enlarge the Vector search box
Posting this in case anyone wants to know how: User:PleaseStand/vector.css. PleaseStand (talk) 11:32, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks a bunch. Now my search bar is HUEG for widescreen goodness and pasting long page names into it. Nifboy (talk) 23:38, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * .css and .js tweaks are great for experienced users, but what about the thousands of readers who are unregistered or have an account but feel uncomfortable editing their .js files? Also, what about Wikipedians who are using public computers and prefer not to login? They deserve a sufficiently wide search box, a visually appealing logo, and a readable font size. I fear that once users with authority on Wikipedia change these UI settings in their .js pages, they will forget about the problems, which will remain and make the encyclopedia less usable for its readers.--Albany NY (talk) 03:33, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I know nothing about these things, but why can't the drop-down box simply expand towards the left once the text gets too long? That way this wouldn't be a problem. Lampman (talk) 15:11, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah I've also found the new search box annoying for typing long names. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 16:06, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

URL shortener for wikipedia.org e.g. http://wi.ki/ to use on social networking sites such as twitter.com
A friendly Keegan Peterzell from the Wikipedia Information Team on email told me to try posting this idea here. I hope that's okay!

It was just to mention creating a URL shortener for others to use when linking to wikipedia.org or another relevant page, when posting messages for their friends and followers on social networking sites. I notice other organistation cleverly shortening their domains for this purpose e.g. foursquare http://4sq.com, Yahoo http://y.ahoo & Youtube http://youtu.be.

I'm not sure how this would all come together with the purchasing of a Kiribati domain as an example, and unfortunately I'm not skilled enough yet to know or aid in the technicalities but I thought of the following URL which might work! http://wi.ki/

Here's a tweet that I directed at Jimbo and Wikipedia on Twitter a few days back. @Wikipedia @jimmy_wales it would be nice to see a http://wi.ki URL shortner -some links: http://to./437k http://to./3zyd http://www.nic.ki/

I'm more than happy to do any running around, basic web stuff or documentation as that's about my skill limit in helping with this should it be needed! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hassan Yate (talk • contribs) 07:16, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Far easier if you get bit.ly to buy the wi.ki domain instead. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 11:52, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Easier perhaps, but do we really want every query going through one commercial service provider? At a bare minimum WMF should pursue the domain registration to ward off domain squatters, via the Kiribati national registrar. See also the relevant IANA page. LeadSongDog come howl!  16:16, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I like the wi.ki idea (and the Foundation really ought to be involved in domain purchasing stuff); in the meantime, there's already http://enwp.org, which I believe is run by some Wikipedian or other. I've been using that on Twitter (as @wikinihiltres) already. {&#123; Nihiltres &#124;talk&#124;edits&#124;⚡}&#125; 19:14, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * You can see all Wikimedia wikis at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix. -- Wavelength (talk) 19:30, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There's been similar discussion on the possibility of registering a TLD here at the Wikimedia Strategy wiki. I fear though that few have bothered to even visit that wiki, let alone that discussion. LeadSongDog come howl!  19:37, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia isn't "wiki". The Wikimedia Foundation didn't invent the wiki concept, didn't start the first wiki, doesn't control all wikis, and doesn't have a trademark on the word "wiki". To claim wi.ki for Wikipedia use would be ridiculous. If wi.ki redirects to anything it should be c2.com. -- BenRG (talk) 22:25, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Whether we like it or not, "wiki" is nearly synonymous with Wikipedia. There are dozens of people out there who don't realize that Wikipedia is not the first wiki, not the only wiki, even, to the point where we have an essay against it at Don't abbreviate Wikipedia as Wiki. While I do think it is, broadly speaking, better if we educate people on that point, for the purposes of URL-shortening, wi.ki is about as good as it gets. Since we can't prevent people from using "wiki" inappropriately to describe Wikipedia, I don't see using "wiki" for Wikipedia as very problematic in a case—like this—where it's advantageous to do so. {&#123; Nihiltres &#124;talk&#124;edits&#124;⚡}&#125; 23:40, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I actually looked into buying wi.ki once. IIRC, they were charging completely unreasonable amounts for the .ki domain (at least for me to pay for it :p) <b style="color:#c22">^</b><b style="color:#000">demon</b><sup style="color:#c22">[omg plz] <em style="font-size:10px;">12:58, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I had an idea for this that would make it work even better I think. It would cost money to have the shortening domain. Wi.ki is decidedly more expensive than wiki.to or wiki.us or whatever. However, Wikimedia is used on several sites. If other sites using it wanted to use the url shortener themselves, they'd pay maybe a few dollars a month for it. Together, collectively, those who wish to use it would help subsidize the cost of keeping it so Wiki themselves wont have to pay it. They use it too of course, but anyone using the platform would have access to it. 75.110.90.85 (talk) 14:32, 2 June 2014 (UTC)

Where is Search button in Vector?
If you try to search for (not go to) something, you are automatically redirected to the page with such name if it exists. In Commons Vector there was a Go button, here it was displayed in the bottom row of suggestions, but now it's gone. The magnifying glass, despite its traditional meaning, does not lead to search page. It's pretty annoying to click on the magnifying glass, go to Special:Search and type a query there every time, is there any easier way to do it in Vector? — NickK (talk) 19:40, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Surely you're not suggesting that the new features should have enhanced, rather than reduced, functionality? – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 19:47, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe i am missing the sarcasm in xeno's reply, but I agree with Nick UA - i, too, want the search button back.
 * I don't mind if it doesn't appear by default, by i would like to have a way to enable it. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 19:50, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I would suggest clicking the handy "Take me back" button. (And yes, forgive the jaded sarcasm) – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 19:52, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I already did that. There are worse things in Vector than this, for example the hiding of interlanguage links by default.
 * But i don't want to stray too far away from the eligible issue that Nick UA raised. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 20:14, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the new suggestions code was disabled because of a few bugs. However the old suggestions code doesn't have the "Search pages containing ..." entry, which the new code offers as a replacement for the "Search" button basically. So since 9 hours, the Search page is almost totally unreachable... This is being looked into now. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:30, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Next time, please beta-test major updates to core site features. I mean it in a good way, really. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 20:58, 15 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Er, they were beta tested for at least a couple of months. Do you remember seeing the "Try Beta" link where the "New Features" link is now, up there near your user links? – ukexpat (talk) 17:12, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * From where I stand, the 'opt-in' beta appears to have just been a precursor to the current public beta we have had foisted upon us. (But I give thanks for the blessed "Take me back" button) – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 17:17, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Nope, ukexpat, they were not beta-tested. The new location of the search box was tested, but the new search box without the Go and Search buttons was not tested.
 * xeno is right: the current phase is the real beta. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 18:15, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

&lt;s>
As most here know &lt;s>, &lt;u>, &lt;b>, etc. are deprecated in HTML. I read here that &lt;s> is redundant to wiki markup. Doubt that these tags have anything to do with our markup and are just passed into HTML. Am I right?&ensp;– droll  &#91;chat&#93;  21:12, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well you could say that because we allow them, they are part of the wikimarkup, which partly overlaps with HTML. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:23, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I misrepresented the discussion I referred to above. The statement was the now deleted strike was redundant to wiki markup. Sorry.&ensp;– droll  &#91;chat&#93;  21:51, 15 May 2010 (UTC)


 * , <b>, <i>, and others are redundant., however, is not. AGK   15:49, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Dead Article Alert Bot
The very useful article alert bot has been dead for over a month now, apparently over some login issues. This is quite absurd. FIX the problem now so that we can be aware of what's going on in our project, and not just come across things by chance when it's all too late. The-Pope (talk) 11:49, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Did you not know that volunteers like to receive demands preceded by the word "please" once in a while? <font color="#C4112F">╟─TreasuryTag► UK EYES ONLY ─╢ 12:00, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Why does everyone on these pages think any requests are personally aimed at them? I'm assuming that the 5th biggest website in the world might actually pay some professionals to run it's servers.  I'm assuming that they were the ones who changed the settings or whatever that changed.  I have no idea if they read this board, but other than Jimbo's talk page I don't know where else to raise a technical issue.  But, yes frustration doesn't come across well in text, so let me try again.

The very useful User:ArticleAlertbot has been dead since early April, apparently due to a change in the API login requirements. The original bot owner is no longer active, and others who have tried to get it running again, have had problems getting the appropriate logins. See User_talk:Legoktm/April_2010 for some discussions. Can someone with the appropriate knowledge, access and power please re-enable the bot, either by doing it directly or by talking with the Legoktm or Headbomb or Tedder or someone listed on that talk page. Thank you. The-Pope (talk) 15:49, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Irrespective of whether "the 5th biggest website in the world might actually pay some professionals to run it's servers.", a "please" and a "thank you" go a long way... – ukexpat (talk) 17:18, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hence my comments re frustration and text, the strikeout and the rephrasing. Is anyone able to help with anything other than civility lessons, or know on which board/email/talk page this more polite request should be made?The-Pope (talk) 18:20, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Photo credit
I failed to input the photo credit into my initial photo upload, File:Stafne's defect.JPG. I'd like to say that the photo was provided for any and all use by Richard Holiday, DMD. Thanks.  DRosenbach  ( Talk 20:59, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I am afraid that's not enough. The copyright owner must follow the process set out at WP:IOWN to release the copyright appropriately. The copyright status of the image is also incorrect - you are not the copyright owner so you cannot claim it as "own work", nor release it under any license. – ukexpat (talk) 17:29, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Monobook scripts in vector
Hi all. I had a script running in my monobook.js file which added to the sidebar on the left some links to pages I commonly used. When I moved to Vector (and yes, moved my .js file to /vector.js), I find that the script no longer works. Is the script salvagable for use with the new skin? If not, are there any alternatives? The script in question is at the very bottom of User:AGK/vector.js. AGK  00:02, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Vector changed some of the underlying HTML. No idea why. Specifically class="portlet" is now class="portal" and id="column-one" is dead. I got halfway to fixing the problem, but I need to focus on other things. I could swear there's also a cleaner function for doing things like this, addPortletLink or something. Not sure if you can specify a different box with that, though. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:23, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't have the time to fix your script right now, to make it exactly the way you want. But in order to create new sidebar sections, there is some code in User:TheJosh/Scripts/NewPagePatrol.js, which does that. In the meantime, i'll convert your script to just add it all to the toolbox section. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 00:56, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Done, please WP:BYPASS your browsercache, and you can find all your links under the Toolbox set. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 01:13, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hrm, that doesn't seem to have fixed the problem. AGK   13:03, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Your browser has a Javascript error console. Please use it to note down the errors, so that I can help you further. I presume the remaining error however is because you partly copypasted twinkle code in your vector.js, and twinkle needs vector updates in order to run properly I think. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:34, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

<tt>ReferenceError: Can't find variable: FriendlyConfig prototype.wikimedia.org/s-2/js/mwEmbed/jsScriptLoader.php?class=mwEmbed,mw.EmbedPlayer,ctrlBuilder,$j.ui.slider,kskinConfig,mw.style.kskin,$j.fn.menu,mw.style.jquerymenu,mw.TimedText&uselang=en&urid=r121:136mwCheckForGadget prototype.wikimedia.org/s-2/js/mwEmbed/jsScriptLoader.php?class=mwEmbed,mw.EmbedPlayer,ctrlBuilder,$j.ui.slider,kskinConfig,mw.style.kskin,$j.fn.menu,mw.style.jquerymenu,mw.TimedText&uselang=en&urid=r121:136gadget already installed: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-mwEmbed.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&278z63</tt> AGK   13:49, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Nothing seems to be related to the toolbox or sidebar, but here you go anyhow:
 * Try now, friendly was generating an error. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:03, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That's done it! Thank you very much! AGK   14:05, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Logged out
Often, when I come back to edit a page having been off doing other things I find myself logged out. How long without editing before you get logged out, please? Bridgeplayer (talk) 02:47, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * ~24 hours I think. 30 days if you check the checkbox when logging in. --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 02:55, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If you don't have cookies enabled then you cannot stay logged in. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  03:19, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Depending on your browser, you should be able to decide whether to enable cookies on a per-site basis—see HTTP cookie for more information. - Pointillist (talk) 21:03, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Dolgoprudny
Dolgoprudny

Can someone fix the white space at the top?174.3.123.220 (talk) 09:17, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Veliky Novgorod has the same problem.174.3.123.220 (talk) 09:18, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

.
 * I have analysed this problem, and this is how far I got:
 * The HTML code delivered by the server contains an extra
 * The problem is caused by Template:Infobox Russian inhabited locality.
 * The problem occurs only if a flag and/or a coat of arms is set.
 * The problem does not occur if a flag and/or coat of arms is set, but an anthem and/or holiday is also set.
 * I have looked at the source code for the template but can't see why it happens. Hans Adler 11:34, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think I've fixed this by removing some newlines from the template code; please see the infobox talk page.--Kotniski (talk) 12:12, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Making a tree of sub-pages portable
First, if this is the wrong place for this question, please tells me where I can get the information I need.

It's easiest to explain with an example, User:Philcha/Sandbox/Reference_methods, which has 3 lower-level sub-pages, User:Philcha/Sandbox/Reference_methods/Sfn, User:Philcha/Sandbox/Reference_methods/Harvard and User:Philcha/Sandbox/Reference_methods/List-defined references. If the whole structure is copied (not moved)to e.g. a Wikiproject Project, I'd like a facility that automatically update in the copied pages to that the "root" "User:Philcha" part of all these wikilinks now show the Wikiproject Project like Wikiproject/Sandbox/Reference_methods ,  Wikiproject/Sandbox/Reference_methods/Sfn  , etc. --Philcha (talk) 09:59, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I am not sure if that is what you want, but you can use relative wikilinks. E.g. you can link from User:Philcha/Sandbox/Reference_methods to User:Philcha/Sandbox/Reference_methods/Sfn using the link /Sfn, and back using the link ../. You still have to use a family of such pages individually to the right places, but once you have done that the links work again. (Unless you move into mainspace, where subpages are disabled.) Hans Adler 11:42, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

"Over the next few weeks, the new interface will cascade to all language Wikipedias"...
Hello everyone. I might be asking this in the wrong place, but anyway... Since the latest Wikimedia blog post states that, "Over the next few weeks, the new interface will cascade to all language Wikipedias", I just wanted to clarify some things here: <span style="background:#dedede;border:1px solid black;color:black;font-family:serif;font-variant:small-caps;padding:2px 4px 2px 4px;text-shadow:white 0em .1em"> Flagellvm·De i 17:07, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Is that forthcoming interface switch in all other Wikipedias compulsory? and
 * Are there any dates yet?


 * No it's just the default skin, so it's not compulsory if you have a user account - you can easily change back to the "old" monobook skin via your preferences. – ukexpat (talk) 17:48, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If you mean, "are all Wikipedias going to have to switch over?" then yes. It would be a bit ludicrous to have some with monobook and some with vector, no? Well, it doesn't really matter what you think, that's what the Foundation thinks and they're going to make it happen :P


 * I very much doubt it given the number of bugs outstanding, and, if there had been one (as there was for en.wp when only commons had switched over) it would have doubtless been pushed back. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 18:02, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I think Jarry1250 mostly has that right. It was always the plan to see what would happen after deploy on en.wp, go trough another round of bugfixes, and then take on the rest of the wikis. It is probably not compulsory, but you would have to get consensus on keeping the old skin, and make a bugzilla request in order to prevent it, or to switch back the default skin. If you want to be informed, it is probably best to keep an eye on the the foundation blog. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 18:16, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you, guys. I've got one more question though: is there any easy way to customise the default palette of the new theme? I want tabs and the like to appear yellowish instead of light blue on our Wiki. <span style="background:#dedede;border:1px solid black;color:black;font-family:serif;font-variant:small-caps;padding:2px 4px 2px 4px;text-shadow:white 0em .1em"> Flagellvm·De i 20:03, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It took a bit of searching, but here is the red skin that someone did for vector. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:14, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much for your help! :-) <span style="background:#dedede;border:1px solid black;color:black;font-family:serif;font-variant:small-caps;padding:2px 4px 2px 4px;text-shadow:white 0em .1em"> Flagellvm·De i 04:16, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Category not updating
Why doesn't Category:Roads opened in 1936 show up in Category:1936 in road transport? It's been more than two hours since the first one was created and half an hour since the latter. I have purged both category pages. __meco (talk) 22:22, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Just gave it a null edit and works fine now. It's a matter of waiting for the job queue to get to it, or just reloading the page/editing them/purging :). - Kingpin13 (talk) 22:28, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Good. I've experienced this also in the past but not having to wait this long. __meco (talk) 06:10, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Pop-ups - intermittent fault
I've been having an intermittent fault with pop-ups. Sometimes instead of the preview coming up, a tiny little square box (in appearance similar to the normal box that pop-ups appear in) with no text in it appears. I am using the old-stylee Wikipedia & Chrome on Win-XP. As far as I can recall, this has only happened since the change to the new-style default skin (which obviously I discarded almost immediately). DuncanHill (talk) 23:28, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Where's the "move" button????
The only practical effect so far of the "improvements" in the way we view Wikipedia pages is that there's no "move" button. We can no longer change the title of Wikipedia articles, as far as I can tell. Did whoever thought of these changes know that that might matter? Can someone tell me how to do that? Michael Hardy (talk) 04:20, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The move button is hiding under the arrow where the purge button is if you have that turned on in your preferences. --Funandtrvl (talk) 04:22, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

What in Hell does the designer of such a thing use for brains?? How irresponsible can you get? Michael Hardy (talk) 05:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think tidying the move button away makes sense - it's not the sort of thing the average editor ought to be doing every day. (It should be renamed "Rename" though.) --Kotniski (talk) 06:02, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * So complete abolition = "tidying"? Michael Hardy (talk) 10:43, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Nothing has been abolished, completely or otherwise. Obviously changes like this will take a little getting used to. (Remember that most editors will never rename a page in their lives. And even if they do, they're hardly likely to interpret a button that says "move" as being the way to do it - that's the real brainlessness here, and it's nothing to do with the recent changes.)--Kotniski (talk) 10:51, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If you're telling me the "move" button was not abolished, why didn't you also tell me where it is, since that's what I asked? Why should I believe it exists at all if I can't find it?  (I've found it now; I don't think it was there at the time I asked the question above.)
 * The obvious danger of not finding the "move" button is that people will do copy-and-paste moves, losing the edit histories. Michael Hardy (talk) 19:01, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There have been several discussions (the most recent is probably this one) about changing “Move” to “Rename” and AFAIK usually coming to the consensus that status quo is better. Svick (talk) 14:03, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This change is the main reason why I don't use the Vector skin (the other is that it wastes so much screen space). Worse than the "move" button, the "delete" button is also hidden in a submenu. I'll try again when there is an option to show the buttons I want, not those decided by the usability team. Until then, I'll continue using Modern. —Кузьма討論 06:11, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Adding  to your vector.js should do the trick. Svick (talk) 14:07, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I'll try that for a while. —Кузьма討論 09:47, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Funandtrvl wrote: "The move button is hiding under the arrow where the purge button is if you have that turned on in your preferences." I never suspected there was such a thing as a "purge" button. I use the "move" button every day. How was I expected to find the "move" button? There wasn't anything to click on to seek such information, as far as I know. Michael Hardy (talk) 10:31, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * ....and is there any way to tell who decided on these changes? Were any of them ever discussed by anyone? Michael Hardy (talk) 10:32, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The purge button can be enabled in the gadgets section of your preferences ('Add a "*" tab to the top of the page, which purges the page's cache ...' is the gadget being referred to, I think). The new skin has been discussed at usability.wikimedia.org, among other places. I agree that hiding the page move function is a bad idea; it will probably cause more cut and paste moves, among other things. Graham 87 12:53, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

The down arrow and dropdown menu are awful. Please give us a way to get rid of it and flatten them into tabs without having to import a JS script. —Lowellian (reply) 17:04, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Apparently now the move button can be found without enabling a "purge" button. After someone above said you use an arrow where the "purge" button is, I looked and didn't find any arrow. Later I looked and an arrow was there. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:58, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm glad you finally found it. I've been frustrated too about the new "ref tools" which I still can't get to work in IE8's compatibility mode, so I turned off the enhanced toolbar option until somebody figures out how to stop the JS errors in my browser. (sigh!) --Funandtrvl (talk) 19:09, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Talk pages of some articles not showing the TOC when comments are present
Why is the TOC not shown at either Talk:Franz Schubert or Talk:György Ligeti, even though they both have more than four headings? I've figured out that it has something to do with the presence of a "/Comments" subpage, but even using Special:ExpandTemplates doesn't help me figure out why the TOC doesn't show on those pages. Can the problem be rectified, and if so, how? Graham 87 10:12, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Certain project templates transclude the discussion in /Comments in a hidden area. The discussion contains section headings. The first of them triggers display of the TOC in the hidden area, right before the first section heading.
 * The project tags transclude the /Comments section automatically. On Talk:György Ligeti there are three project tags with this feature, so the page is transcluded three times and appears three times in the TOC. When you click any of these in the TOC without opening the Comments section of the correct WikiProject you can't access it. This is badly broken, but I am not sure where to complain. Probably some meta-template. Hans Adler 10:31, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * WPBannerMeta. 「 ダイノ ガイ 千？！ 」? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000 19:24, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Rollyo website blacklisted
Why is the website http://rollyo.com/ blacklisted at MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist when the article Rollyo has an external link to it under "External links"? -- Wavelength (talk) 18:28, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It may be whitelisted for that specific article. Or perhaps it was added before it was blacklisted (I'm not sure of the details of how blacklisting works). --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 18:42, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I believe edits are checked if they contain any blacklisted URLs. If they do, then the specific section is checked to see if it contained any blacklisted terms before your edit. If it did, then all blacklisted URLs in that section are ignored. It makes it possible to add new blacklisted items to a section that already contains a blacklisted item. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 21:24, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you both for your answers, although I am still waiting for information which is more certain and more specific.
 * -- Wavelength (talk) 15:22, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Uploading locally over Commons image
Why does Wikipedia not let me upload File:CCKLogo.gif over the Commons file? I am trying to do this because I know that because of copyright reasons it should be deleted at Commons and re-uploaded locally. Do I really have to wait until Commons deletes the file unless I use a different name? To make matters worse, the "Upload warning" cannot be ignored with the checkbox, and it seems to be broken, including the text "File:$1". PleaseStand (talk) 01:12, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You just had to check "ignore warnings" in the Upload form. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:50, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I did. It didn't work; that's why I posted here. PleaseStand (talk) 19:40, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe only admins can override a local Commons file? Dunno, but that'd make sense from a security point of view. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 19:51, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to softblock toolserver IPs
Because it is against both toolserver and enwiki policy for bots to edit while logged out, a proposal to permanently soft-block the toolserver IPs has begun at Wikipedia talk:Bot policy. Pcap ping  08:44, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Tutorial sandboxes not being cleaned
Anyone know why the bots aren't regularly cleaning the Tutorial sandboxes anymore? I reported this back in April but it seems nothing was done. See User_talk:ClueBot_Commons/Archives/2010/April for the full report.

I'm thinking this bot issue may have something to do with the "change in the API login requirements" mentioned in the post- above. -- &oelig; &trade; 09:48, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Page title issue
Could someone please be so kind and explain what is going on with this page in my userspace? Notice where it's located. Now notice the title being shown. And what's all that UNIQ stuff? The page is still usable, but I've never seen a more weird bug (?). Thanks.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 18, 2010; 15:28 (UTC)
 * Seems to happen on any page that transcludes WikiProject Russia changes. Jafeluv (talk) 16:46, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, OK. Can someone help with fixing WikiProject Russia changes then?  I know I was the one who created it in the first place, but if I remember correctly, I simply mindlessly stole it from some other project.  It did work correctly then.  Any recommendations would be appreciated as well.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 18, 2010; 17:50 (UTC)
 * You can use Title override. (Without parameters) Ruslik_ Zero 18:39, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think that'll make things much better (I had experience with in the past, and it wasn't pretty).  It's not a big deal for a page in my userspace, but the template being transcluded is also transcluded by WP:RUSSIA, the title of which is also being overridden.  That's a serious problem.  Does anyone know why the title is being overridden in the first place?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 18, 2010; 18:59 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure it's related to strictly WikiProject Russia changes but rather something to do with transcluding RecentChanges itself. Because ever since I did that, my dashboard page has also been getting those same type of "UNIQ" character strings, however only intermittently. Usually all it takes is a page refresh and they go away. -- &oelig; &trade; 19:35, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I, too, noticed that the problem is intermittent. However, never before did this affect the page title (it seems this started only after the switch to Vector; although I myself am still using monobook).  Nor does a simple refresh fix this for me.  Could this be a bug of some sort related to transcluding Special pages?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); May 18, 2010; 20:15 (UTC)


 * It's likely. See 16129 and 14562. -- &oelig; &trade; —Preceding undated comment added 22:04, 18 May 2010 (UTC).

Odd results for What links here
I ran What links here for redirects on WP:MOS. It is giving some weird results such as Private military company, User talk:Niki K, and Indian Posse. The page are indeed redirects, but not to the MoS. Can someone please explain this behavior? —Ost (talk) 18:31, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It is no doubt the "hidden content" lying beneath the redirect that actually links to the page. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk  18:33, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Good call! Now I see that Indian Posse also appears as a redirect to Cleanup, which is also linked from cleanup. Is there a bug for there?  It's not the behavior that I expect, although maybe it's documented to work this way.  For now, I'm going to remove the cleanup tag; it doesn't have much use on a redirect, especially when the article has the same tag. —Ost (talk) 18:44, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well they are redirects that link to the page. What you are really looking for is a "Special:WhatRedirectsHere", what that WhatLinksHere only provides a usually-accurate hack for through hiding non-redirect links and transclusions. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 18:48, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That is a very valid point; I just assumed that shutting off links and transclusions meant that it only found pages referenced in the redirect syntax. I figured it filtered out articles referred to in braces and brackets for links and transclusions respectively.  I essentially thought that WhatLinksHere was a page that provided WhatRedirectsHere, WhatTranscludesHere, and WhatLinksHere and their unions. —Ost (talk) 19:01, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately not =\ – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 19:04, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This problem is filed as bug 7304. Graham 87 05:33, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Do we support #replace in templates?
My test page at User:Grover cleveland/IPATest copies an example of #replace directly from http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Parser_functions_in_templates but it doesn't seem to work. Am I doing something wrong, or is #replace not supported? And, if not, is there any way to do text substitution on a string within templates? Thanks! Grover cleveland (talk) 22:20, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I've never heard of #replace, nor do I see it anywhere on the linked page. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 22:23, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry! I meant to link here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:StringFunctions   So is there any way to perform substitution on a string:  e.g. replacing A -> C so that "ABABAB" becomes "CBCBCB"? Thanks. Grover cleveland (talk) 22:27, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No, that extension is not installed/enabled en.wiki. (And judging from comments in 6455, never will be) – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 22:31, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * So, just to confirm, there is NO way to do search/replace on a string within a template? Thanks! Grover cleveland (talk) 22:48, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Not without a tool such as WP:AWB. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 00:41, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Search box on the left, old logo and bigger text
Hi, I've fixed my main problems: User:Virgolette/vector.css Advantages: There is also a way to reduce the wasted space on top of the page (see User:Dragons flight/vector.css for example), but I suggest to wait until the 2 extra links "Take me back" and "New features" will disappear. Please, I need a feedback, especially from Safari and Chrome users. Thanks! --Virgolette (talk) 21:29, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * the search box is on the left, under the logo
 * the old logo is back
 * the text in articles is bigger, 0.9em instead of 0.8em (you should try 1em too)
 * the search box works fine with long titles
 * there is now a lot of space for tabs, so:
 * you can put back the "move" tab and the "watch/unwatch" tab instead of the puzzling star and/or drop-down menu; you can also shift the right group of tabs close to the first two (it can be done with JavaScript I think, search previous messages)
 * you are more free to resize the browser window if you have to split the screen with other applications, e.g. a text editor
 * admins will have more space for their own tabs
 * foreign languages wikies will have space for long tabs names
 * New version with the right tabs moved to the left, and the drop-down menu (it can contain 4 tabs: "new section", "view history", "move" and the "purge" gadget). It works with Firefox 3.6.3, not tested in other browsers. --Virgolette (talk) 19:46, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Please note: I've updated both my CSS and JS pages; I'm "almost" very satisfied by the results (with Firefox). Please, comments should be posted here, in this way the User Experience Team can read them. Thanks, and sorry if I've posted all this stuff in the wrong place. --Virgolette (talk) 06:53, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Special characters
Copied from Requests for comment/May 2010 skin change, which may soon be canceled.

In the new Vector skin, the special characters and wiki markup listed under the edit box can be inserted into the edit box by simply left-clicking on them in Firefox 3.6.3. However, this procedure will not work using IE8 in Vector. But a much more laborious procedure using the clipboard will work in IE8/Vector. Move the cursor to a position immediately to the right of the special character where the "hand" changes to a vertical bar, left-click and hold while dragging the cursor over the special character to highlight it, then use ctrl-C and ctrl-V to transfer it to and from the clipboard to the position of the cursor in the edit box. Clicking worked fine in both browsers under Monobook. Also, the warning message that you may lose unsaved edits appears even while left-clicking on a special character in both browsers, which seems counter-intuitive because this is part of the editing process. — Joe Kress (talk) 08:45, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Which gadgets do you have enabled ? It sounds like a Javascript error occurs when you are using IE8, and that this is halting other scripts. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:06, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I had no gadgets enabled until I added * (Purge) to recover Move due to the discussion above. But even after removing that gadget (leaving no gadgets enabled), special characters cannot be clicked in IE8 using Vector. — Joe Kress (talk) 09:09, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

See also WP:Requests for comment/May 2010 skin change/Bug reports. Amalthea 21:43, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * By editing both anonymously and logged-in at both a random library computer and my personal computer (both with IE8), I determined that the problem was with my Wikipedia account (clicking worked anonymously). Even after your 'fix' the problem persisted when logged-in. After noting my settings mentally, which were few, I clicked "Restore all default settings" in My preferences, which fixed the problem. I then restored those features which I wanted, which were few, and the problem did not recur. So I do not know exactly what 'feature' was causing the problem. I believe that logged-in users should experience Wikipedia in the same way that the majority of Wikipedia users (anonymous readers) do (date format, etc.). — Joe Kress (talk) 22:50, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

SVG rendering problem
Why is that my svg at File:ISS_components.svg doesn't seem to be thumbnailed correctly, but when I click on it, firefox 3.6 correctly renders it?Smallman12q (talk) 02:05, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia uses the RSVG renderer, which is a lot worse than Batik, Inkscape, and others. When you click on the file, Firefox, rather than RSVG, renders it. If you are creating an SVG illustration, it is best to keep it as simple as possible&mdash;unnecessary complexity increases the chance of it not working. PleaseStand (talk) 02:42, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Seems to be caused by the  attribute of the   elements having a list of values for each label character, instead of a single value, causing RSVG to treat the value as zero. Perhaps deleting the extra values would fix this. For example:   — Richardguk (talk) 07:43, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * And what program did you use to convert from PDF to SVG? With free software it is difficult, if not impossible, to do so. PleaseStand (talk) 03:09, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Should've been specific...I used Inkscape. Could somebody upload a version that correctly renders?Smallman12q (talk) 11:36, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If you don't get an offer here, you could ask at Graphic Lab/Illustration workshop-- SPhilbrick  T  12:42, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll look at it in about 6 hrs. For anyone else who has problems, I have been keeping tabs on SVG issues at SVG Help. User A1 (talk) 15:22, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Done User A1 (talk) 20:54, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks!Smallman12q (talk) 21:22, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I, in fact, just used Inkscape to extract a logo out of a PDF annual report, but that PDF file you provided crashes the program on my computer, to clarify my above statement about the "difficulty" of such a conversion. PleaseStand (talk) 01:19, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to add it to Assembly of the International Space Station but it doesn't seem to thumbnail correctly...Smallman12q (talk) 21:25, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I've filed a bug report due to the text not being shrunken properly in the thumbnail.Smallman12q (talk) 00:33, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

The Wikimedia SVG renderer frequently has this resizing problem with fonts like Times and Helvetica. Try replacing them with Liberation Serif and Liberation Sans (fonts that are present by default on the renderer and have the same metrics as Times and Helvetica respectively) and it should work much better. Your image doesn't use Times but it does use Helvetica; I'm pretty sure that's the problem. You don't even have to do any redrawing: just substitute the string "Liberation Sans" for "Helvetica" wherever it appears in your file. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:14, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ta-da! I did a find-and-replace job as described above, and the text now scales down properly. It is quite blocky though. PleaseStand (talk) 01:29, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

The text is very blocky...compare how the png version would scale down to the svg...Smallman12q (talk) 14:39, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The "Tr" in the .svg seems to be merged together, as opposed to the .png version. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  03:16, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I didn't say Wikipedia's rasterization would perfectly match Inkscape's: compare the preview of File:Creating an article with AfC.svg to File:Creating an article with AfC.png for example. That one uses DejaVu Sans Bold. PleaseStand (talk) 03:28, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Clickable maps
Hi. There has recently been some debate over maps in infoboxes and a lot of people who think maps in infoboxes bloat the table. There is also often a disgreement in which scale map is better, e.g Mobile, Alabama some people would find simply the local census map too localised, two maps with the state locator too bloated and others way even wish to see Mobile on a US map. Given this I was wondering if a technical genius on here could look into the mapping feature presented in the infobox at here (click where it says Voir situation) (a little understanding of French might also help) and draw up some coding which can be added to Template:Infobox settlement or any other infobox with a pushpin map option. This would be of enormous benefit to wikipedia given the diversity of preferences and demands and would seemingly solve a long-term argument over which map to use when the choice can be there for whatever scale the reader wishes to see. This will become increasingly needed into the future too as more localised maps of places are made and may often be at the expense of wider maps and may confuse a lot of people. If we could import this feature then there will be no arguments over bloated infoboxes and which map is more appropriate. The reader can choose his preference by clicking it.

It has something to do with Modèle:Géolocalisation on french wiki. I wonder if a genius also with a little understanding of French could look into this. Dr. Blofeld       White cat 15:15, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I concur that this option would be beneficial to the reader.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 15:37, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I also agree that this would be a very useful option to have in Infoboxes, Geoboxes, and the like. Ruhrfisch <sub style="color:green;">&gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 16:16, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the best way to make this happen is to create a multilevel "location map" template, if there isn't one already. It would work exactly like "location map", and could be backwards compatible, but if there is a second location map, then it would provide this toggling option?  Once something is working, it could be added to infoboxes using location map.  Or, do we just need a gelocalisation hierarchy that determines the higher level from the sublevel and automatically provides the map?  I haven't looked into the technical details in the French template. Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk)  16:22, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I narrowed down the code and made a simplified example on toggling the image in the french sandbox, here. However, the same setup over here does not accomplish the same thing, so I think there might be something different between the two sites. ​​​​​​ ​​<font color=#5E2109>Niagara ​​<font color=#090931>Don't give up the ship 16:44, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks Niagara. Is it possible somebody could understand the technical way it is programmed and create own version? Would anybody here have the technical know-how to code up what is required from scratch? Something that Plastik said sounds good. This really would be an important feature as it would also do a lot to decongest our current infoboxes when we often hav e alot of maps within the infobox and it is extremely long not to mention solving countless arguments that will occur over map scales.  Dr. Blofeld       White cat 16:47, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It's JavaScript—there's a toggle function in frwiki's Common.js. I don't think that we should implement it on enwiki, because it's a headache on several levels:
 * If JavaScript is not available, the result looks odd. While JavaScript should be available in most modern browsers, there are many use-cases for Wikipedia where it is not.
 * Non-interactive modes (like printouts) will miss the information hidden through JavaScript
 * The behaviour I see in that example is unintuitive
 * I feel that it's not our, well, style to put in these kinds of bells and whistles—there's something to be said for the simplicity of a document that doesn't unexpectedly change.
 * Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favour of using JavaScript functions judiciously: I apply all sorts of little customizations to Wikipedia through my enabled Gadgets and my user scripts, but I strongly believe that most of the JS hacks we apply should either be a) obvious, unobtrusive, and gracefully-failing, like the show/hide script used for the TOC and navboxes, or b) custom scripts or Gadgets that people must consciously choose. {&#123; Nihiltres &#124;talk&#124;edits&#124;⚡}&#125; 19:39, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * This would probably violate image licenses unless the maps are PD. Stifle (talk) 10:58, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, what going to come is draggable maps using OpenStreetMap. There are some working demo and I have a handful of hacks that we could implement right now.  — Dispenser 16:25, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah we should just wait for the OSM maps. It is very near to becoming so functional that we can begin to think about how to use it in Wikipedia in my opinion. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 17:16, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Contacting amazon.com ?
Is there no way at all to send an email to amazon.com? I had trouble ordering something and wanted to ask for assistance. I went through their contact interface and was told I couldn't contact them because I didn't have an order number. That seems really really rude. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:02, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Uhhh. . . what? 7  03:03, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * A bit surprised you are asking here, but in any case - - click the email tab - filling in your order number is optional.   7  03:10, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

No, it's not optional. You can't contact them at all without a valid order number. The page you're pointing to is the same one I tried before posting here. It is precisely because of my experience with the particular page you're linking to that I posted here.

I actually intended this for the computing reference desk and posted here by mistake, and then there. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:55, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Are you logged in? I was able to post a test question to them using the link that I sent and the second tab just fine.   7  05:59, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Sigh.......

Yes. I was logged in. I could not contact amazon because I didn't have a valid order number. The reason why I wanted to contact them was that I didn't have a valid order number because I was unable to buy something because my billing address is in the USA. Michael Hardy (talk) 06:02, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Replied on your talk page. Suggest we leave it there, since its not relevant to this page.  I can honestly say that this is one of the least civil conversations, including your talk page comments, that I have ever had on WP.  This includes conversations with vandals and socks.  Not what I would have expected from a 145k editor, let alone an admin, in replying to someone who has freely given their time (albeit only 10 min or so) to try to help you.  If someone else is able to provide you with a more appropriate link or email address I hope that you will treat them a little bit better.  Regards.   7  06:28, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Script issue - User:Markhurd/hidetopcontrib.js
Have there been any changes in the past eight hours that might have affected the script User:Markhurd/hidetopcontrib.js? (It's a very useful script that hides pages in your "Contributions" list for which you are the most recent editor.) I know for a fact that it was working when I was previously on, but when I try to use it today it removes all edits, not just the "top" ones. The script itself was last changed over two weeks ago, and has been working for me since then. Anyone have any ideas on this? --Ckatz <sup style="color:green;">chat <sub style="color:red;">spy  16:48, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Script, have you tried bypassing your cache? It may be dependent on this change... – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk  16:54, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, I'm using Firefox via "private browsing", so (as far as I know) the cache shouldn't be the issue. (Ctrl-F5 to reload, right?) The script was working just fine when I was editing eight or so hours ago, and I've closed and restarted Firefox in the interim. There are no changes to the script, my monobook, or my computer in that time period. Any suggestions? --Ckatz <sup style="color:green;">chat <sub style="color:red;">spy   17:00, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Try Ctrl-Shift-R. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 17:03, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hm - mine just stopped working too. For me it's not removing all edits, for some strange reason it removes about 181 edits (of max 500) regardless of their "top" status... – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 17:05, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It doesn't work for me either, if I understand correctly what it's supposed to do. I tried commenting out all my other scripts and hard-refreshing the cache, and it still doesn't work. I'm also on Firefox. <font face="Century Gothic"> Equazcion ( talk ) 17:02, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Strange. Maybe User:TheDJ can help. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 17:03, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Xeno, I tried Ctrl-Shift-R. Now, instead of removing all the entries (including the pages where I'm not the most recent contributor), it doesn't remove any of them. Stranger and stranger... --Ckatz <sup style="color:green;">chat <sub style="color:red;">spy  17:07, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I have strange behaviour now too. My best guess is because of . – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 17:07, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Probably. User:Superm401/Compare link.js is also incompatible with RevDel, as I discovered.  ~  Amory ( u  •  t  •  c ) 17:17, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah - that looks eminently useful (once it's fixed). – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 17:20, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, yes, there's an extra link that it isn't expecting that now exists. Of course, this link probably doesn't exist for non-admins, so the script will now have to adjust based on whether the person has sysop rights. I can fix it, or someone else can... A le_Jrb <sup style="color:blue;">talk 17:40, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I have a fix in my sandbox.js that people are welcome to fork. Or you can wait for Markhurd to update his script. A le_Jrb <sup style="color:blue;">talk  17:49, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If the basic functionality hasn't changed and it works again, why not edit it in directly? – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk  17:52, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Cranky script developers? Insufficient testing? Meh, will do, can be reverted. A le_Jrb <sup style="color:blue;">talk  17:56, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks =) – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk  17:58, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, thanks - it appears to be functioning properly now. I really appreciate the fast repair work. Cheers. --Ckatz <sup style="color:green;">chat <sub style="color:red;">spy  18:31, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thankyou Ale_jrb -- I am not an Admin so I would have needed someone else to test any changes anyway Mark Hurd (talk) 15:31, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

I didn't think that this script was working last week; I had posted on the talk page about it when I was having trouble with other Special:Contributions scripts and I hadn't seen this one get updated so I didn't uncomment it in my skin. Was it just me having problems with it until today? —Ost (talk) 17:52, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It wasn't working last week but then TheDJ apparently fixed it... by editing some other script (not sure how that works). – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 17:53, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It should always have been working - the Ais version wasn'tm but TheDJ made no changes to this one. A le_Jrb <sup style="color:blue;">talk  17:56, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * @Ost316 it's working for me now, so if you are still having trouble after clearing your cache, you should make another note... Also try importing popups - rather than using gadget - at the bottom of your monobook. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 18:01, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I hadn't realize that topcontribs was screwing this script up before TheDJ made the changes, so I had left it commented out of my skin. I'm still having issues where the links aren't showing up, so I guess I'll have to disable a few more scripts to see if I can isolate my problem. —Ost (talk) 18:25, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Heh, I didn't know that this script existed, and coded my own. It's interesting to see the differences: the approach is similar, but the style is slightly different and my version fades to opacity 0.25 instead of setting. But in either case, I think that the obvious problems are the following: history entries, log entries, and contribution entries ("HLC" entries, let's shorten it to) are a) not quite a consistent standard b) HLC entries are mostly contextually opaque to JavaScript (e.g. try picking a random log entry and trying to extract the page it refers to, in a way that would still work reliably if the log entry were rearranged), c) we keep duplicating the effort of parsing them for our scripts and d) we don't clearly identify for scripts what assumptions they make about the content (my inner logician talking :P). I think we ought to take a look at some of these problems and how they might be solved. {&#123; Nihiltres &#124;talk&#124;edits&#124;⚡}&#125; 21:49, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

File:Google notebook.png
File:Google notebook.png doesn't render even if I re-render the image in GIMP and re-upload it. What's wrong? --Beao 19:08, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * What browser and operating system are you using? The image is rendering fine for me. —Ost (talk) 19:27, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Rendering just fine for me as well. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 19:52, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I do not see the most recent upload in Firefox 3.6.3 with Windows XP. File:Googlelabsimageproblem.png is what I see in my browser when I click your file link. Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:16, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I suspect this is a problem with the adblock application on Firefox. When an image is placed into the /ad subdirectory (which is assigned on upload) adblock mistakes it for an advert and blocks it (in this case the image is in http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/ad/Google_notebook.png/120px-Google_notebook.png).  I re-enabled adblock on my browser and it hid the image (I saw the same as the screenshot you uploaded), you might want to try disabling adblock (for en.wikipedia) to see if that works - Dumelow (talk) 23:43, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that's it. --Beao 11:22, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Red link on Book sources page
There is a red link that doesn't work on the special page for book ISBN searches. For example, Special:BookSources/082121750X. It's under the link for "Learn how to bypass this page and go to the same book source every time." Jason Quinn (talk) 23:49, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Fixed. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:02, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Better. But actually, that page is rather confusing to users, especially newer ones that might interpret some of the instructions literally. Wouldn't this be better as a dedicated instructions page not linked to Lunchbox's user account? Jason Quinn (talk) 00:45, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Such things can be discussed at Wikipedia talk:Book sources. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:11, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Researcher right
What's the "researcher" userright all about? Stifle (talk) 10:55, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The Foundation gave User:DarTar the ability to view deleted revisions because he's doing some kind of research project and isn't already an admin. OrangeDog  (τ • ε) 11:20, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * To be clear, he can view deleted history entries, but not the content. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 14:01, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Watchlist buggy?
My watchlist isn't showing anything More than 1 day of edits, even if I select "show last 3/7/all days". Any solution? Thx, Manish Earth Talk •  Stalk 15:15, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Without any more information, there is little we can do. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 19:05, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Do you have it set to "show all changes, not just the most recent"? The default limit of how many revisions to display is only 250, and this applies even if you have "enhanced recent changes" turned on. To fix it, you can set your "maximum number of changes to show in expanded watchlist" to the limit of 1000, and that should work if you do not have too many pages on your watchlist. PleaseStand (talk) 19:56, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Also, what pages are in your watchlist? Some pages aren't edited very often, and so they aren't listed in the watchlist. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  01:24, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Main page Search Bar
Wikipedia users,

I propose that, on the main page (en.wikipedia.org), as soon as a visitor enters, the search bar is automatically selected (i.e. he/she does not have to click on it to insert text.

Furthermore, seeing as the search is the most important part of the site, I propose that the search bar be lengthened to fit the entire horizontal width of the website, or at least a larger length than it currently is. The bar can retain its original length when the user navigates away from the main page, e.g. to an article.

The search bar on www.wikipedia.org has the right idea. However I prefer to enter en.wikipedia.org as I enjoy reading the articles and headlines on the front page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.78.159.96 (talk) 18:34, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * This has been discussed before. There is a Gadget that users can enable to add the feature that you are requesting. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 19:03, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * There is no need to multipost the same thing to different village pump sections. See my post on WP:VPR. PleaseStand (talk) 19:58, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Page notices on diffs?
Is this a bug or a feature:

In this diff various userbox-like symbols are visible above the diff made by the IP. But it is actually the user's talk page that contains the edit notice. The reasons why this bothers me are:


 * The edit notice looks as if it is associated with the person making the edit rather than the page being edited.


 * The edit notice appears retroactively on a diff from a time when it didn't yet exist. Because of this the diff page is no longer a "safe" page whose content can be predicted in advance.

However it doesn't seem to be present on historical versions of a page. Wnt (talk) 23:08, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It's not an edit notice. It's the rendered page displayed "below" the diff but some of it appearing above the diff in this case because of the used code. The page contains  which transcludes User talk:DIREKTOR/Talk header which transcludes User:DIREKTOR/Icons which uses absolute position to render outside the normal area. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:24, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * By the way, adding  to a diff url like  will omit rendering the page. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:36, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This can also be achieved for all pages by checking the box that says "Do not show page content below diffs" in the misc section of your preferences Graham 87 01:07, 20 May 2010 (UTC).
 * OOPS... I should have checked the code more closely. Sorry for the false alarm. Good catch, PrimeHunter. Wnt (talk) 02:40, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Search bar suggestions
What allows suggestions to show up in searches in the search bar? Is it an extension or a change to LocalSettings.php? — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  01:28, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * LocalSettings.php. See mw:Manual:$wgEnableMWSuggest. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:37, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Is the Tor block extension working?
Over the past couple of months I've been blocking Tor exit nodes, and I don't think I'm the only one who's been seeing them around again. The latest example today is. Is the Tor extension working OK? Does anyone have a link to the cached list of blocked IPs? -- zzuuzz (talk) 14:06, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Answering my own question, it looks like the Tor extension and 23321 are still buggy. -- zzuuzz (talk) 13:28, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Spam filter
I was following the afd page’s instructions on how to add a page to the afd log, but when I tried to save, the spam filter stopped me, saying I was trying to insert a blacklisted link: I believe it was examiner.com, examiner.org, or somesuch. However, I did not insert any link of this sort. I was trying to add the afd for Twilight: The Musical Help!  Bramble  claw  x   01:47, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I did not have a problem when I tried listing the article for you. PleaseStand (talk) 01:52, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * There's a possibility that the link was in the page prior to its being blacklisted, and when you edited, the blacklist now caught it. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 19:28, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

moving revisions around?
I brought this up on Template talk:Importance and Wikipedia talk:Oversight, but nobody watching had an efficient idea, so I'll run this by everyone here. There are 118 deleted edits in Template:Importance's history that would be much better placed, undeleted, in the history of Template:Cleanup-importance, since the template was re-purposed. The change itself should not be controversial, but the poor man's process to get them there sounds pretty disruptive to me because the templates are transcluded in millions of articles. Is it still safe to do that? --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 07:45, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This question is a bit more specific than the one you asked at WT:Oversight. To the specific question you are asking here, I guess you could do the following: Move Template:Importance elsewhere, protect the redirect, and then copy the content from the template over the redirect. Do the same with Template:Cleanup-importance. At this point the two pages with history will be totally unused; if anything goes wrong mainspace will not be affected. Once you have finished your operation, move each of the two templates back to its old position, over the fork.
 * I don't really know what I am talking about, as I am not even an admin on any MediaWiki installation, so don't take my word for it but think whether this makes sense and perhaps get advice from someone else. Hans Adler 08:28, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Good idea, that could work, unless there's some triggered background process that will be annoyed by that bit of shifting. There shouldn't be, right? --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 12:50, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Good question. I have no idea. Hans Adler 12:53, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Permanently expanding the toolbox
Is there a way to permanently expand the toolbox ? Surely we shouldn't have to expand it every time we check what links here or user contributions. Cenarium (talk) 14:43, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Uncheck Special:Preferences → Appearance → Enable collapsible left navigation menu (in Advanced options).—Emil J. 16:49, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Interestingly enough, it closes back up on the editing screen. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 17:03, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I've observed it for a few days and it closed back occasionally in an unpredictable manner. Cenarium (talk) 17:55, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

TFA editnotice
I've proposed another way of displaying the TFA editnotice using the editnotice loader and TFA title. I'd like to make sure that it's technically ok. Cenarium (talk) 18:02, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

New skin
Section renamed from "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhh!" &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk)

Everything's changed! Unofficial kvetching thread. 86.41.61.203 (talk) 06:39, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, it sucks. To get a non-crappy version back you'll have to register. Q  T C 06:40, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh god it was awful. I really, really appreciate the intention behind it - to make Wikipedia more intuitive, newcomer friendly, and in line with other web applications like blogs and Facebook - but the implementation was just horrid.  Functions represented by icons inexplicably different from the standards in other applications?  "Watch this page" turned into a star, for no apparent reason, on a toolbar otherwise made up of words?  "Move page" the only item on a dropdown list with no indication that that's where you'll find it?  "Edit this page" shuffled off the top right and made significantly smaller and less obvious?  I was open to relearning things in the name of making Wikipedia more accessible but not so much to a seemingly arbitrary reshuffle of key functions with no clear rationale for the changes. Someone let me know when it's fixed. - DustFormsWords (talk) 06:53, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't mind putting the search bar at the top so much...but dear god, the entire interface is ugly now. I liked how it looked before. After I post this, i'm heading to my preferences to switch it back. Silver  seren C 06:55, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Speaking of search, has anyone worked out how to search for text under the new interface? (Rather than "jump to page with this title")? - DustFormsWords (talk) 07:06, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Click the very last line in the drop down that says "Containing" Q  T C 07:15, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There was a drop down??? - DustFormsWords (talk) 07:22, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There were drop downs all over the place, it was like playing Chutes and Ladders, man. Silver  seren C 07:25, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Jebus, you have to type into the search box and THEN the drop down appears? So the motion is mouse move/click/keyboard/mouse move/click?  With the space you're moving over filled with up to 10 mostly unhelpful autosuggestions?  With the result that the screen position for "containing text" and the mouse move needed to reach it varies from search to search?  Why would you DESIGN that?  Also the rollover text on the magnifying glass is incorrect; it suggest the default option is text search rather than title search.  This is basic UI design stuff, people. - DustFormsWords (talk) 08:30, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Reading back over the research supporting this it's pretty clear that they're trying to make the search function and the autosuggestions work like Google (as that's how most casual visitors get to the project) but I think it misses some pretty basic things about what makes the Google search function work (central location rather than shuffled off to the side, frikkin' huge text size, bolding in autosuggestions to highlight difference, and search functionality buttons being AROUND the search box instead of in it). - DustFormsWords (talk) 08:46, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Just to buck the trend, I think the new interface is pretty cool actually. You'll get used to it. (Though there still doesn't seem to be a direct link to the article history from the discussion page, etc. And I would move the "current-page-related" links like What Links Here from the toolbox to the drop-down list at the top with Move and Purge, now we have such a list.)--Kotniski (talk) 07:29, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, on the whole I am sure it will be fine. I can barely tell the blues apart with the new shading though: ordinary link, interwiki link. 86.41.61.203 (talk) 07:32, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that. I'd just been trying to puzzle out why somone had used a load of external links, and now I understand what was really going on. 86.177.125.182 (talk) 17:46, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

The links on the left don't show on Konqueror -- where do I report that? Niels E (talk) 08:00, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Agreed that this new skin is hideous. The most annoying thing about it for me is the large gap of whitespace between the top two rows, which was never there in the old skin (see next topic below, where I ask for a solution; I would prefer for them to kill it entirely in the base skin, but for now I'll settle for someone helping me find a way to reduce it via my user CSS). This whitespace is not only ugly in and of itself but also shoves down the layout of the entire page, significantly reducing the amount of text seen onscreen on small resolutions. —Lowellian (reply) 08:16, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Why have the font sizes of reflist and block quotes been altered to 100% (as opposed to 90?)? —<font face="Baskerville Old Face"> Ed  (talk  •  majestic titan)  08:27, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Based on the research driving these changes I'm guessing it's because small text gives off the impressions of "complicated", "academic" and "not for you". Large text suggests accessibility.  Not defending it, just answering the question. - DustFormsWords (talk) 08:37, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia should continue to follow its own previous practice of setting references and blockquotes at a reduced size. Look at any scholarly paper or book. Block quotes, footnotes, endnotes, and references are almost invariably in a smaller font than the main prose of the text. Otherwise, especially in articles with a large number of citations, the citations overwhelm the space of the article. —Lowellian (reply) 08:43, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Honestly, forcing references to 100% is one of the things the got slam-bang right. Function over form, always - and decreasing font sizes never increases functionality. Now, if they had only used this principle elsewhere, the skin might be better in general. — Gavia immer (talk) 11:31, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * On the contrary, decreasing font sizes does increase functionality when it helps distinguish block quotes from main prose and prevent the references list from being as big as or bigger (space-wise) than the actual article prose. That's precisely why printed books and papers reduce the size of blockquotes and footnotes. —Lowellian (reply) 22:24, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * 100% is good. I have normal short-sightedness, and the smaller text is awkward even for me, for many it must be a major accessibility issue. Block quotes are set off from the normal text I believe. It doesn't matter if the references are bigger than the article. WP is not paper. There have been repeated calls to dump the 90% and they sort of get half hearted consensus then get forgotten. Rich Farmbrough, 10:39, 14 May 2010 (UTC).
 * Jumping in here real quick. Reflist still uses 90%. That is an English Wikipedia setting that has not changed. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:44, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, kids. Nice attempt. Put on a new users hat then just look at this page. The one thing they want is a searchbox- so that needs to be as near to the top left hand corner as possible and visible. When designing a page like this you have to factor in the clutter that is added to every page. Using a GA star to mean Watch is perverse, and do IP users get to play with the drop arrow (that has now just disappeared) to do renames. If they do find the About button- they are directed to Help:About- a page with a disgustingly obtuse lede..work needs to be done there! Ok- now the editor- two clicks where one once did. Then there is the text size change- a teenagers approach to eyesight! --ClemRutter (talk) 08:45, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Just switched back to the old skin after putting up with the new one for about an hour today. Old skin looks much better. Whitespace at top of page gone. Search returned to left side. From a visual and usability point of view the new skin has no advantages for me. Is there any agreement to force the new skin on passing visitors? Regards, SunCreator (talk) 23:07, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Of course. The new skin is presented to anyone not logged in. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 23:10, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * So I understand, but why? Regards, SunCreator (talk) 23:17, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Last I heard, the reason was "because we paid $$$ for it". ;-) Regards  So Why  10:52, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Looking at my response and your message again, I'm not exactly sure what I was trying to say. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 14:55, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I've actually been against Vector for a while, but now that I've been using it for a couple days, I've come to quite like it. I find text much easier on the eyes to read now, and the dropdown tabs make it possible for me to have the full version of Twinkle (finally!) without the tabs running off the side of the page. Juliancolton  &#124;  Talk  12:55, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Activated Single-Revision Deletion
Hi all,

So I remembered that I intended to activate single-revision deletion a few weeks ago. I (finally) got around to it this evening. Enjoy it, and as always, if there are any problems, please mail wikitech-l, file a bug, throw rocks at me or something.

&mdash; Andrew Garrett  &bull;  talk  14:19, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for this. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 14:21, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Werdna, were the previously identified bugs addressed before activation? I mean, if we were noticing issues on the Oversight team with the extremely small number of revisions that were deleted/suppressed, it's going to be a much bigger mess now that another thousand people will be using this tool. Risker (talk) 14:43, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I can't comment on any bugs without knowing which bugs you're talking about. &mdash; Andrew Garrett  &bull;  talk  14:46, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I believe she is referring to 21279. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 14:49, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Xeno, yes that is the one. This is a problem as it is, and makes it difficult to reconstruct actions and identify accountabilities. I don't have a problem in principle with admins having access to this tool, but we really can't afford to get the deletion logs messed up any more than they already are. It would also be helpful to know exactly which of the actions associated with the revdelete tool are provided in the admin version, and which are restricted to oversighters. Edit: From the note below, it appears they've got access to log deletion and hideusername, which were only ever intended to be restricted to oversighters. Risker (talk) 15:01, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'm curious about what regular admins have access to versus oversighters. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 15:06, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete revision text; Delete edit comment; Delete editor's username/IP and yes, it seems it can be done on log actions. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 15:07, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Looks fantastic, really very smooth. I wonder if the link at the end of a log item couldn't be changed to something more descriptive. The deletion log has "view/restore," blocking has "unblock|change block," whereas "more..." seems to imply a set of other options, not "change." ~ Amory ( u  •  t  •  c ) 14:58, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * FYI this change may have broken some scripts that tool around with the watchlist, contributions, or history screen. See . – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 17:23, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Scripts will need to update to take account of the new links for admins. A le_Jrb <sup style="color:blue;">talk  17:47, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I think a useful script would allow hiding of non-RD deletions or RD deletions from the delete log. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 20:07, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I'll take a look into doing something like that. I already have a script that filters (top) edits on Special:Contributions… can't be that hard, right? {&#123; Nihiltres &#124;talk&#124;edits&#124;⚡}&#125; 05:50, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I just wish we had more defined classes for each part of each log/contribution/history line so that we could use less hackish methods to get data for each line. {&#123; Nihiltres &#124;talk&#124;edits&#124;⚡}&#125; 05:50, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * While log data is still mostly contextually opaque to JavaScript, it looks like seeing if the title of the last link in a log entry is "Special:RevisionDelete" should reliably identify log entries which are revision deletions. I haven't implemented anything yet because I'm unsure where and when I should make the interface for toggling such entries appear. {&#123; Nihiltres &#124;talk&#124;edits&#124;⚡}&#125; 20:41, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest right beside the (20 | 50 | 100 | 250 | 500) line. Something like (full deletions only | revision deletions only) or something. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 20:44, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I just noticed this (after posting at Bugzilla). Does single revision delete avoid the log issue? Will head off and test this a bit..... back in a few. FT2 (Talk 20:12, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I suspect that what Werdna calls "single revision delete" is what we call RevDel. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 20:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Update for admins - see post at WP:AN. FT2 (Talk 22:05, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I had no idea this was going to be implemented, and it made me panic for a second and think I had gotten oversight access accidentally. Steven Walling 04:37, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Heh. I had the exact same thought, until I found this thread. Someguy1221 (talk) 05:35, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Me too: I was so startled that I pinged the stewards. There ought to be a better way to notify people about significant WM-wide rollouts—it's not like everybody has the time or inclination to continually monitor all the discussions where such things might be announced. ~ Ningauble (talk) 15:00, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * A call to a script-writer (or maybe this can be done with css): Several admins have asked for a way to hide the RevDel facilities (c.f. Wikipedia talk:REVDEL). Any bright ideas? – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 15:37, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Add <tt>.mw-revdelundel-link {display:none}</tt> in your monobook.css, or I suppose vector.css if you have one of those. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:56, 20 May 2010 (UTC) (copied from WT:REVDEL by – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk, slight copy-editing)

User pages in Categories
I have noticed some user pages appearing on important categories, e.g. User:Cr2pr/cybrarian on Category:India (now removed). One only needs to edit their own user page for this to happen. There needs to be a way to prevent such listing of user pages on categories of articles. Geeteshgadkari (talk) 13:46, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hm... I wonder if some way could be devised to flag a category for acceptable namespaces. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 13:58, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No. And it probably isn't a good idea to only allow certain namespaces in a category; sounds far too limiting. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 19:07, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * What do you mean 'No' - of course some way could be devised (though whether it is a good idea is another question). Personally I don't see an issue with having a __NOUSERPAGES__ magic word or something on a mainspace category that would exclude user and user talk pages. I can't think of any possible reason we would want to allow user pages in mainspace cats. It would be a pain in the ass to put it on every category -mind you. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 19:09, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There is a list of categories that contain pages both in the main and User namespaces. Svick (talk) 19:44, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Far less effort than my way. Cheers =) – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 19:46, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No, meaning the feature doesn't currently exist. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 04:30, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Is it possible to design a bot which will search the phrase "user:" in categories and make correction in the user pages? I am not aware of the technical issues involved, and the idea may be naive. --Geeteshgadkari (talk) 08:34, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There is a discussion about creating such bot at Wikipedia talk:Categorization. Svick (talk) 19:04, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Interwiki problems?
Are the two de links here showing up for anyone? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 21:02, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Strange. Fixed, but this may be a bug. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 21:05, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Could someone else file it; I don't like bugzilla and its lack of psudonymity. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 21:09, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * They're interlanguage links; appearing in the left sidebar rather than inline is their expected behaviour. Happy ‑ melon  21:33, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, of course. I'd forgotten about that. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 21:45, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, that is true—not a bug, at least. Categories have the same feature, except that they display at the bottom of the page. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  01:22, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * See WP:COLON. – ukexpat (talk) 16:36, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Side effect in signatur coloring
When I switched from monobook to vector, I got an unpleasant side effect: The coloring defined in my .css (the content of monobook.css is identical to vector.css) file now also effects the top right links (id: pt-userpage, pt-mytalk, pt-mycontris). How can that be disabled? --Leyo 19:10, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I recommend you look at WP:SIG and use their code, changing the color if you want to. PleaseStand (talk) 23:19, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Is that supposed to be working for the vector skin, too? --Leyo 00:00, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You're right: it didn't work anymore (neither on Vector nor on Monobook). I have fixed the code for you (the fixed code is located in the same place). I also have a script that usually can highlight the entire comment, but it does not do so automatically and it needs a bit more work (hopefully I will get the time to do so soon). PleaseStand (talk) 00:17, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That worked, thanks. Just the coloring of the already visited links (diffs or history) in the watchlist still does not work. --Leyo 17:41, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Reference Desk search
I typed sox vlc in the RD search field at Reference desk/Computing and the first line of output was:


 * You may create the page "Sox vlc prefix:Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives", but consider checking the search results below to see whether it is already covered. 

The line seems to occur on every search. Could it be removed please? Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:30, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * This is 21102. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:36, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Comet Tuttle (talk) 20:11, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

"Firefox can't find the server at stats.grok.se." (page view statistics down?)
Sad face. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 23:13, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

(P.S. How hard would it be to css or otherwise tweak the page view link to default (or provide an additional link) to last month? – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 23:15, 20 May 2010 (UTC))


 * Removed from histlegend, please revert when fixed (or if it's just me). – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 23:42, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It isn't just you. I was using it yesterday, but this afternoon it has been down. --RL0919 (talk) 23:46, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * @xeno P.S.: To link directly to statistics for the previous month, I guess you'd need to edit MediaWiki:Histlegend to have something like:
 * which renders as:
 * Page view statistics this month · last month
 * Perhaps could be reworded to take up less space.
 * — Richardguk (talk) 01:00, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I was thinking something more along the lines of a personal javascript that would add the link - I'm not sure if people will agree with having two links for the one tool. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 03:26, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Seems to be working again? mgiganteus1 (talk) 09:28, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yep - put it back in... Thanks. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 17:24, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yep - put it back in... Thanks. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 17:24, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

What is up with the page view stats tab?
The page view stats button is missing on the history page... Will it be back? And if not why not??--Oracleofottawa (talk) 02:17, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * See above. The tool is down for now, we don't have much other info. {&#123; Nihiltres &#124;talk&#124;edits&#124;⚡}&#125; 02:21, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * 'tis back now. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 17:24, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Clicking on minor help edit by mistake
When I go to preview an article I'm editing I sometimes click on the minor help box by mistake, and when you click on it your edit is lost. Is there any way it could be re-positioned or else a way for the preview edit to remain? Eldumpo (talk) 08:11, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Adding the following to Special:MyPage/skin.css will hide that link, if you want to do that:


 * <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 08:20, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Add “Insert link” button to “Search” form
This is an idea about checking the references during editing the article. You find reference to existing article (if the referenced notion does not need new article), and insert its, mistakes expelled. uk:Вікіпедія:Кнайпа_(технічні_питання) --W.M.drossel (talk) 08:44, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Title for the article "AOL" is MediaWiki talk:AOL?
If you go to the article AOL, the title is MediaWiki talk:AOL? What's up with that? I got a feeling that one of the transcluded templates has messed up its use of <font face="Verdana"> Gary King  ( talk ) 17:20, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Fixed, just needed a null edit after Graham87's nost. history import. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 17:21, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah yeah, I should have checked the article history. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 17:46, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Is there any way to access the current user's preferences from inside a template?
I am working on a template that I would like to behave differently based on the current user's language preferences. E.g. if it's "en" do A; but if it's "en-GB" do B. Is there any way to do this? Thanks! Grover cleveland (talk) 19:29, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the only thing that is accessible out of a user's prefs is their gender. On an unrelated note, please see WP:NEWSECTION. Thanks! – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 19:35, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry about the newsection. Can you tell me how to access the current user's gender?  I can see how to access the gender of a specific named user using the  template, but how do I find the gender of the current logged in user, whoever that may be?  Thanks for your help! Grover cleveland (talk) 19:49, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The syntax is:
 * See mw:Help:Magic words for more information.
 * The same help page describes, which is related to what you originally requested. But instead of returning the user's language tag itself, this returns the contents of MediaWiki:message name/language-tag.
 * Admins can create and edit custom messages, with internationalised versions as subpages of each message. But as a hacky workaround, I think you could test a suitable existing message to see whether it matches the British variant.
 * For example:
 * = Color space
 * = Colour space
 * = (this is determined by your user preference language).
 * So:
 * produces
 * — Richardguk (talk) 20:41, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This is great -- exactly what I wanted! And if I can convince an admin to help, maybe I can get around the hacks too.  Thanks!   Grover cleveland (talk) 20:57, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * On most wikis the message for this is called Mediawiki:Lang (commons, dewiki, ...) Merlissimo 23:01, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Has anyone heard that int (along with transclusions of "current time" functions) is problematic for "what links here"? PleaseStand (talk) 23:41, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This is great -- exactly what I wanted! And if I can convince an admin to help, maybe I can get around the hacks too.  Thanks!   Grover cleveland (talk) 20:57, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * On most wikis the message for this is called Mediawiki:Lang (commons, dewiki, ...) Merlissimo 23:01, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Has anyone heard that int (along with transclusions of "current time" functions) is problematic for "what links here"? PleaseStand (talk) 23:41, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Dealing With an Interwiki and Article Title Conflict
The novel, Lad: A Dog, is properly written in that fashion, however because Lad: is the prefix for the Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish), Wikipedia, an article here can't have the name of Lad: A Dog. You can't even write it without prefixing it with a colon. So the article was created at Lad, A Dog instead, per Naming conventions (technical restrictions). In its current FAC, an article has questioned whether there is not some way to "fix" it so the article is at the correct title. Reading over the technical restrictions guideline again, it seemed like there was not, but I added Namespace conflict template to help clarify it. However, the same editor felt a definitive answer was needed one way or another, so this seemed to be the best place to ask the question. Is it possible to make the article have the title Lad: A Dog without it going over to the non-existent "A Dog" article at lad.wikipedia.org? -- AnmaFinotera  (talk · contribs) 03:33, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Plastering over the title is all I can think of. Looks retarded at times, works only for one skin (in this case Vector), and all links to the article will have to be Lad: A Dog  since the title hasn't actually been changed (there's merely a "wallpaper" over it. Feel free to revert. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 04:20, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Had to revert, it looked horrible in Monobook :-) There is a template for doing something like that, but from what I read at the guidelines, it shouldn't be used in this case unless the actual Lad: A Dog pointed to it (which I don't think is possible?). -- AnmaFinotera  (talk · contribs) 04:27, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Another possibility is replacing the Latin "a" with a Russian "а": Lаd: A Dog. But that would most likely confuse people trying to link to the article. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 04:26, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, yeah, I'd suspect most folks wouldn't realize they were different (I can't see any visible differences in them at all LOL) -- AnmaFinotera  (talk · contribs) 04:37, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I left a note at your FA-review. It'd be ridiculous if this was the only concern that'd make it fail. Seriously. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 04:50, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


 * No, because it breaks the copy and paste rule. You should be able to link to any article simply by copying its title and pasting as the link target.  While you might be able to workaround it by selecting similar Unicode characters (such as U+2236 &#x2236; [Mathematical Operators] or U+A789 &#xa789; [Latin Extended-D]) they have different meanings, may cause problems for speech synthesizers, and often render incorrectly in Internet Explorer.  — Dispenser 04:58, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Lad, A Dog is the best we can do, and it does show up in the search box's list of choices (although clicking on the suggestion is required to get to the article). For a similar example, see Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, in which q: is the interwiki prefix for Wikiquote. For a while, there was a soft redirect called Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! on Wikiquote, but it got deleted several times in 2008 and 2009. If the Ladino Wikipedia would create a soft redirect called A Dog... PleaseStand (talk) 05:00, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I created a redirect at the Ladino Wikipedia with a note explaining why. -- AnmaFinotera  (talk · contribs) 05:10, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Never use Unicode substitution to fix this problem. It would make the article title sound like "L question mark d: A Dog" in a speech synthesizer, which is horribly confusing. Graham 87 05:09, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


 * And also we need the lowercase form lad:A dog to cover all-lowercase searches. Honestly, I think that sooner or later, the redirects will get deleted anyways; if the English Wikiquote deleted a soft redirect and they speak the same language... PleaseStand (talk) 05:16, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There should be Wikimedia-wide guidelines with respect to namespace clashes with article titles. PleaseStand (talk) 05:17, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Help tagging redirects automatically
Another user has generated a list of untagged derm-related redirects. I wanted to know if someone could help tag these redirect talk pages with ? Perhaps there is an automated way to do this? Thanks in advance for your help! ---kilbad (talk) 17:27, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You could use WP:AWB to accomplish this; the alternative would be to ask someone who runs bots to do this for you. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 19:04, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Is there someone who uses AWB regularly who could help me with this? ---kilbad (talk) 00:15, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Since nobody is answering here, you may want to post this request to AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks. Svick (talk) 14:01, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Faulty diff
I added quotes to one word and this is what the diff looks like. __meco (talk) 08:49, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that happens sometimes. Diff algorithms can't be perfect in every case. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:18, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It is obviously a bug then which significantly hampers editors' ability to edit articles. Has this been reported to the MediaWiki developers? __meco (talk) 12:22, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * a) It in no way significantly hampers anything - or a very rare occasion, a whole paragraph will be highlighted, which isn't really a collosal problem. b) For their speed and computational requirements, the wikipedia diffs are actually very good. If you wish to do your PhD on writing a more efficient, effective and reliable diff algorithm, feel free to do so, but until then I think it's unlikely to significantly change. See diff and file comparison for more on diffs in general. A le_Jrb <sup style="color:blue;">talk  14:14, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that is a rather nonchalant response. __meco (talk) 17:32, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * User:Cacycle/wikEdDiff does a much better job than the standard WP diff in this and similar cases (e.g. here it highlights just the two quote characters).—Emil J. 16:34, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I appreciate this. I wonder why this cannot be implemented by MediaWiki which obviously hasn't sorted this out to satisfaction yet. __meco (talk) 17:32, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Because it's slower and worse in other areas. Don't assume that every problem can be easily solved by computer programmers - we're not magic. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 18:19, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Let's be honest. The reason that diffs aren't better is that no one wants to put in the hassle and time to A) understand the difference engine (whose logic is little changed from that of phpwiki 10 years ago), B) design an improved system, and C) demonstrate to the community that the improvements really are better on both qualitative and technical grounds.  Each of these steps is hard which discourages people from even trying.  Frankly, our difference engine does do some stupid things.  Some of the stupid things it does shouldn't be hard to fix, but the barrier to making improvements is very high.  Dragons flight (talk) 18:46, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, yes, no one wants to put in the time is sort of the point. That's because it's really, really hard, which is sort of the point I was making earlier. The longest common subsequence problem is generally NP-hard (there's much more detail in the article) making diff engines generally complex. I consider myself a reasonably competent programmer, and I couldn't do it without much more effort than I have to spare - it's the sort of thing, like the usability stuff, that is (in my opinion) only likely to drastically change if (quite a lot of?) money is thrown at it. Which was sort of what I said originally. A le_Jrb <sup style="color:blue;">talk  18:57, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Suggestion: Write to WikiMedia Norway. They have a drinking straw into the Norwegian treasury. I'm sure they would be happy to give you a grant for this job. Their leader, Jarle Vines, is very enthusiastic about technical solutions that can improve the projects. __meco (talk) 20:19, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, but wikEd does much, much worse in some cases, and is far slower in nearly all cases. A le_Jrb <sup style="color:blue;">talk  18:57, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Even popups just highlights the two quotation marks does a better job, though it still removes and readds the word between the quotation marks (changed 05:32, 21 May 2010 (UTC)) in the diff. — MC10  ( T • C • GB •L)  05:30, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Never seen that happen. Could you give a specific example?—Emil J. 12:31, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, and do you never notice when popups truncates the diff "for performance reasons", yet when you look at the MediaWiki diff, it was just a single comma change or similar? Unless you have the time, funding, and genius to embark on a PhD or research fellowship to solve the problem, don't complain about lack of optimality in diff generation. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 21:55, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Toolserver problems
Neither PleaseStand nor the Wikipedia edit counter work for me. I can, however, connect to the Commons edit counter. PleaseStand (talk) 06:00, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm having the same issue with X!'s edit counter. Does anyone know what's going on?  SCΛRECROW <font color="#007400">CrossCom 07:08, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Fortunately, it works now. PleaseStand (talk) 21:36, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Request for comment on flagged revisions trial
I have created a request for comment on the flagged revisions trial, motivated by an unexpected, unannounced and publicly undiscussed change of configuration removing the reviewer usergroup. Please weigh in there. Cenarium (talk) 12:58, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Namespace question
I'm sorry to post a question that with some searching or digging into code I would probably answer but I imagine it would be simpler and quicker to ask it here. (And the result of the question will be put to a Wikipedia-related purpose so it's not totally off-topic.)

Can namespace 14 be reliably trusted to always be the Category namespace (not only on Wikipedia or WikiMedia installations but across all MediaWiki installations)? I suppose there are two answers that for my purposes would be sufficient for a 'yes': an absolute 'always yes' or 'no, but in practice always yes'.

Is it the same for all the default namespaces?

Many thanks, --RA (talk) 18:20, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * In theory, no. In practice, yes. However, if you're writing something in PHP for MediaWiki, you should use the  constant, and if its JavaScript, there is a   variable that will always be the default English namespace name (assuming there is one). Mr.Z-man 18:32, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much. The API calls would be off-site so on-site variables wouldn't be useful but your post led me to a probable solution on search the API page. Using  the |namespaces|namespacealiases|statistics number and canonical name of each namespace can be gotten at. Presumably that is reliable (in theory as much as in practice). Do you think that's right? --RA (talk) 18:41, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's basically what I did in my Python framework to handle namespaces. Mr.Z-man 18:54, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

incategory: search and subcategories
Is there a good reason why a search such as doesn't traverse subcategories? If not, I'm going to report that at BugZilla. A. di M. (talk) 19:15, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If categories could be forced to form a tree (no, a directed acyclic graph - the point is there mustn't be loops), and if we stopped putting categories into inappropriate parents (on the illogical grounds that "if X is a member of category Y, then [Category:X] is a subcategory of category Y"), then it might make sense to extend search and other functionality to traverse the subcat tree.--Kotniski (talk) 19:39, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

User:ArticleAlertbot may need to be fixed
ArticleAlertbot has been down since early April. It appears that there have been API issues or something to do with logins, or somesuch. (I am not very fluent in all this tech-y stuff). Anyways, it appears that other users who have tried to repair the bot have had problems as well (such as User:Tedder not having a toolserver account or something like that). The bot's programmer, user:B. Wolterding has been fairly inactive lately, popping in occasionally. Is there anyone here that could please try to repair the bot?  Bramble  claw  x   15:06, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Looking for template
I'm trying to find or build a template, a thumbnail, or ? I want to display both wiki and commons pic of the day, but control the size and float, can this be done. It would be nice to be able to add or work with the captions and/or text. but if this requires something like java or any kind of script then that would be beyond my knowledge. Mlpearc  pull my chain   Trib's  16:23, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * See the explanation at Picture of the day. Svick (talk) 22:10, 23 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanx Mlpearc   pull my chain   Trib's  02:31, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Plain text list of uploads
Hi, does anyone know how, or could help me with, getting a plain text list of a particular user's Commons uploads which still exist (as in, are not red links)? It should ideally look like:
 * <tt>File:this one.jpg</tt>
 * <tt>File:this one.jpg</tt>
 * <tt>File:this one.jpg</tt>
 * <tt>File:this one.jpg</tt>
 * <tt>File:this one.jpg</tt>
 * <tt>File:this one.jpg</tt>

...etcetera. Thanks! <font color="#A20846">╟─TreasuryTag► directorate ─╢ 17:09, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * As a one-off, or a permanent tool? I'll start having a play, I can't call such a thing existing. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 17:11, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This might work, you just change the URL to suit whatever user you want the uploads of... it keeps telling me I've only uploaded 10 things, though, so it might not be working perfectly; I've spent the last 15 minutes trying to work out why, and to fix it, but no luck, and now I have go eat. But have fun in the meantime. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 17:35, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, I think I know where this is going is your AWB-friendly link. Have fun with them :) - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 19:01, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Excellent—thanks so much! <font color="#A20846">╟─TreasuryTag► constablewick ─╢ 21:02, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

External Links Captcha
Someone should take a look at the external link detection code. On a number of occasions I've had a Captcha thrown up with the statement "Your edit contains external links", despite the fact that there were no external links added in the edit (Example edit where this happened - I've seen it primarily on the Reference Desk, and primarily when the "edit section" link is used to initiate editing). I'm guessing that there is an external link somewhere else in the section that the detection code isn't smart enough to realize is pre-existing, despite the fact that the diff generation code has no problem figuring out what is and is not new. -- 174.24.200.38 (talk) 17:56, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Common.css
Could someone check out the discussion at MediaWiki talk:Common.css? Thanks, --The Evil IP address (talk) 19:32, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Collapsing Sections
Is there a way to collapse sections on my talk and user pages - if so, what is the code for it? ~<i style="color:#666990;">Qwerp</i> Qwertus  |_Talk_| |_Contribs_| 20:46, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Are you trying to do something like this?

Tisane (talk) 21:15, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes. ~<i style="color:#666990;">Qwerp</i> Qwertus  |_Talk_| |_Contribs_| 21:43, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I got the code from it. ~<i style="color:#666990;">Qwerp</i> Qwertus  |_Talk_| |_Contribs_| 21:46, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Random page in category disabled
I added a link to several maintenance categories, (e.g. Category:Uncategorized pages), that goes to a random page in that category. It uses the tool "Random page in category". I found it very helpful, allowing me to get pages to categorize without always starting at the beginning of the alphabet or scrolling through endless lists. Bu yesterday it stopped working. I now get a message that says "Fatal Error: Sorry, this tool has been disabled for the English Wikipedia." Anyone know why or where to complain?--agr (talk) 22:01, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the best way is contacting the author of the tool: User:Erwin. Svick (talk) 22:22, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Transliteration error
The romanisation of the Bulgarian word for "search" has been mistaken at wikipedia.org. Where can I report that? (And what is really the point of romanising all non-Latin alphabet words?) --Магьосник (talk) 01:49, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You can report that to meta:Talk:www.wikipedia.org template. Wikipedia itself has no control over that portal. <font style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> Intelligent  sium  02:00, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

iPad mobile safari browsing peculiarity
IPad mobile safari handles section anchors poorly. If I navigate to a page (not a hash marked subsection) I can scroll up or down the page at will, but if I navigate to a specific section and scroll up or down the browser will lurch back to the anchored link. I don't know why this happens or whose fault it is, so I'm coming here for some feedback or comments. Does anyone see this behavior on the iPhone? On their iPad? Do they see the behavior on other sites which use the same page anchoring techniques? Protonk (talk) 00:08, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * On my iPod touch (should be essentially the same as the iPhone) I see this behaviour mainly while the page is still loading—I can scroll the page, and then when the page finishes loading, it "lurches back" to the anchored link. Otherwise, I haven't had any problems. I haven't yet tried an iPad. {&#123; Nihiltres &#124;talk&#124;edits&#124;⚡}&#125; 01:06, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I believe that this erratic jumping also happens in web browsers like Firefox. The browser loads the page first, then when it's done, it jumps you to the anchor; it does this AFTER the page loads since some elements may move the anchored section down, such as a big image before it, etc. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 17:05, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I trust your experience with firefox, but I can not recall that happening to me on my PC. Could also be that the ipad is dumping portions of long pages which are not in the frame and messing up the reload, but that doesn't feel like what is happening. Protonk (talk) 20:30, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There are two branches for that code. IIRC, Internet Explorer jumps to the section immediately (during loading) while the other browsers wait for the onload event before jumping.  — Dispenser 01:10, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Edit conflict not happening?
Please see this edit history. My db tag was placed at the same time as the previous one, but mine overrode the other. I got no edit conflict warning. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 22:13, 23 May 2010 (UTC)


 * This happened to me earlier on WP:ANI.
 * 21:24 User:FeydHuxtable made this edit.
 * 21:25 I made this edit. It removed the previous edit and I didn't get an edit conflict.  I only noticed it when clicking my watchlist and noting that the edit was showing a reduction of the number of bytes in the article. Black Kite (t) (c) 23:28, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hm, looking at the archives it appears this is a regular, but uncommon, bug. I note it also happened today here - see 21:36 - 21:58.  All three events were in the same hour; presumably some condition arises that makes the bug more likely. Black Kite (t) (c) 23:52, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This error was reported a few days ago when the new vector skin came out. Are perhaps the things connected? Regards, SunCreator (talk) 23:56, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * See also this discussion. <font style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> Intelligent  sium  01:06, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * @SunCreator, it is VERY unlikely that this is related to Vector and other usability enhancements. If this is a new issue, then it is much more likely related to the deployment of MediaWiki 1.16 beta a few weeks earlier. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:35, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm certain that this has been happening for quite some time - but I'm also sure that it is happening more and more frequently, despite the lower total number of edits I'm seeing on my watchlists. DuncanHill (talk) 13:38, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * P.S. I think I remember again when this occurs. The problem often occurs when many people at once contribute to a page. The edittimes are so close together that the software starts to make mistakes in editconflict detection. What the exact cause is, i'm not sure, but i suspect it has to do with identical times of opening the editwindow. I'll see if there is a bugreport on this. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:41, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Reversed image?
Go to the Alaskan Klee Kai article, please. Then click on the image in the infobox. Notice how the dog in the image is reversed between the article and the file page? Why does that happen? Dismas |(talk) 14:08, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Image looks the same for me on both pages. --Onorem♠Dil 14:14, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It could be some strange caching issue, the image was reversed on 15 September. Have you tried bypassing your cache? (And it looks the same for me too.) Svick (talk) 14:18, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Heh! I replied at the help desk and directed Dismas here. I looked earlier and something was definitely awry. All looks good now, though. Cheers, <b style="color:#000">TFOWR</b>propaganda 14:50, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't see how it could have been a cache issue since I had never read that article before... Either way, it's fixed now.  Thanks,  Dismas |(talk) 21:23, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There is caching at the Wikipedia side of the connection as well :D —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:59, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Category trouble
Could someone remove Template messages/Translation from Category:Wikipedia articles needing translation please. I know its down to Source need translation and Inline need translation but I can't figure out how to stop it appearing in the category. Thanks--<font color="Blue">Jac <font color="Green">16888 Talk 17:29, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * error message when using Hot Cat . Pohick2 (talk) 00:41, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I had one of these too, earlier. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 00:44, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It was both, apparently. Fixed now. It is still part of the hidden category Articles needing translation from Spanish Wikipedia, but that can be fixed easily as well. <font style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> Intelligent  sium  02:51, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Skin bug
Sometimes when I go to my watchlist, the skin changes from vector to monobook without me doing anything to make it appear in monobook. Is there anything wrong? ~ Nerdy Science Dude  (✉ • ✐) 23:42, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This has been happening all day to me! I spend three pages in vector, then a few in mono, then a few in vector, but have it set to vector and I'm not doing it. Plus, I have been getting edit conflicts for no apparent reason - I was the only one editing it! I've tried everything I can think of! And I lose my unsaved changes each time!~<i style="color:#666990;">Qwerp</i> Qwertus  |_Talk_| |_Contribs_| 02:43, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I've been experiencing the same problem. I can live with the skins temporarily going back and forth, but when it somehow causes me to run into an edit conflict, even if no other user edits the page, it gets downright annoying. — ξ <sup style="color:#000000;">xplicit  02:51, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I hope they're doing something about it. ~<i style="color:#666990;">Qwerp</i> Qwertus  |_Talk_| |_Contribs_| 03:18, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Edit Notice
I made a new edit notice Here and when I edit my user talk space the notice is shown twice Here what's wrong ? Mlpearc  pull my chain   Trib's  02:37, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I tried editing your talk page and the notice only shows up once for me. <font face="Century Gothic"> Equazcion ( talk ) 02:48, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * PS I'm not quite sure why your talk page says "group notice" while most people's talk pages usually say "page notice", as the edit notice's link. Yours goes to a template subpage of Template:Editnotices rather than the usual User talk:Username/Editnotice. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but maybe it has something to do with your problem. <font face="Century Gothic"> Equazcion ( talk ) 02:59, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It says "Group notice" because it appears on that page and all subpages. It shouldn't be related to the problem; by the way, I only see one copy, too. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 05:04, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Probably because you're using wikEd. Ucucha 09:19, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanx that was it. but I guess I'm going to have to put up with it, editing without it sucks. But thanx that was it. Mlpearc  pull my chain   Trib's  09:29, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Add this to Special:Mypage/skin.js and purge: ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 12:34, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I woke up this morning on a mission: to get this fixed, and to my surprise I see this .js patch and I think YEAH ! but it didn't work :-( Mlpearc   pull my chain   Trib's  14:27, 24 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Still looking the above Java patch didn't work, there must be a patch for this override ? Mlpearc   pull my chain   'Tribs  17:54, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Extended edit bar malarky
I've got the extended edit bar (with the buttons for easy redirects, ref, cite, etc), but have noticed that when I go to edit it doesn't shew up first time, I have to reload the edit screen. I use the old default skin, with Chrome on WinXP. DuncanHill (talk) 14:56, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I also use Chrome in XP and often have this problem with wikEd. It seems to be Chrome's behavior.  Other scripts such as Advisor.js seem to have a similar issue, and frequently I have to initiate Anomie's linkclassifier.js manually.—Ost (talk) 15:43, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Do you have any errors in your JavaScript error console? Svick (talk) 19:18, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know, where would I find a Javascript error console? DuncanHill (talk) 22:06, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * In Chrome, on the "page" icon menu, Developer > JavaScript console and it's the output at the bottom - maybe filter for just errors though. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 22:09, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * At the bottom (under the thing that looks like a magnifying glass) is a > followed by a flashing cursor. DuncanHill (talk) 22:29, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I also don't have an errors that appear—except when I have linkclassifier.js loaded, but I'm going to notify Anomie. Curiously, if I enter enable Resource Tracking, wikEd always seems to load. —Ost (talk) 18:30, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Documentation of infobox template
Start infobox page is used in Infobox tennis biography and the page becomes too wide. The content in  of /doc may cause the problem. <tt>style="overflow: auto"</tt> should fix it but it doesn't. Please help me. --Quest for Truth (talk) 17:09, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know why  didn't work there (it showed up correctly on the /doc page), but   works – it allows line breaks. Besides, I think it's better this way. Svick (talk) 19:25, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Perhaps it is a bug in CSS. --Quest for Truth (talk) 14:11, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Halfway between vector and monobook?
After hitting the site tonight, I just noticed that I'm somewhere halfway between the vector and monobook skins. The main layout is vector, but my toolbar on the edit page just reverted to the old monobook style. I've done several full refreshes, edited my preferences, and still nothing. For what it's worth, I'm not using wikEd. Anyone else having this issue tonight? Maybe it's a sitewide thing... —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 02:19, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This has been happening all day to me! I spend three pages in vector, then a few in mono, then a few in vector, but have it set to vector and I'm not doing it. Plus, I have been getting edit conflicts for no apparent reason - I was the only one editing it! I've tried everything I can think of! And I lose my unsaved changes each time! ~<i style="color:#666990;">Qwerp</i> Qwertus  |_Talk_| |_Contribs_| 02:43, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I also get monobook unexpectedly from time to time. Cenarium (talk) 04:16, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The user experience tech team at Wikimedia Foundation is investigating why the problem is happening. The new toolbar is also disappearing and the old toolbar is coming back. We hope to restore the stability as soon as possible.  Naoko Komura (User Experience Programs @ WMF) Shuhari (talk) 04:33, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Just to update, this issue appears to be resolved for me (for now, at least). Thanks. —  Hello Annyong  (say whaaat?!) 18:22, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The cause of the problem was identified! It was the old server which was put in rotation, which happened to have the old software, and it caused the old js and css files to creep into the cache system. The problem has been addressed.  If you continue to encounter the issue, please try to shift+refresh.--Shuhari (talk) 18:35, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Somewhat less than random articles?
Is there some way to have the random article link so it is not quite so random?

Do not show me any pages...
 * With the phrase "(album)" in the title
 * With the phrase "(artist)" in the title
 * With the phrase "(singer)" in the title
 * With the phrase "(song)" in the title
 * With the phrase "(band)" in the title
 * With the phrase "(rapper)" in the title

DMahalko (talk) 04:28, 25 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I doubt it, as it chooses a random article, but you could ask someone who knows a bit more JavaScript to help you. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  04:53, 25 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm actually working on a script to do just this. I'll respond back when I'm done. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 02:50, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Database error
I got this error:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:

(SQL query hidden)

from within function "Revision::insertOn". Database returned error "1290: The MySQL server is running with the --read-only option so it cannot execute this statement (10.0.6.26)".

Anyone else experiencing this? It doesn't seem like very friendly behavior; when I hit "Back," I had lost my edit. Should I submit this to Bugzilla? Tisane (talk) 06:04, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If you hit "reload", you won't lose your edit. Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk) 08:25, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Two servers were put back in rotation, but they had an outdated configuration, which was causing this problem. Domas resynced them and everything should be back to normal. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:29, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Indexing in progress?
I’m wondering if the indexing routine is “stuck”. Last evening, pages created before 23:00 19 May were indexed, and those after were not. This morning, the same is true, suggesting that not a single page has been indexed in the last 12 hours. I do realize it takes some time to index new pages, but the process is rarely this far behind, and it looks to me like it is not progressing. SPhilbrick T  12:11, 25 May 2010 (UTC)


 * You are right. We ran out of space on the indexer during the weekend. I've freed up some space and restarted it, so by tomorrow it should catch up. --rainman (talk) 12:25, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks SPhilbrick  T  16:52, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Help with US officer ranks template
I noticed that there are two different templates for US officer ranks: Template:US officer ranks and Template:US Officer ranks collapsed. The only difference between them is supposed to be that the one is collapsed and the other is not. (See the talk page.) Because of code duplication the templates have diverged. Is there a way to have Template:US officer ranks passed a parameter that collapses it? By default it should be open. This would allow us to delete the other template. I will take care of the other changes to sync the templates again. I just need help with the collapsible navbox part. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:23, 25 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Sure, I just added it. Just pass it |collapse=collapsed. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 16:18, 25 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your help. Jason Quinn (talk) 17:53, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Popups
Hi. This probably has been asked already, but ever since the switch to the new Beta Wikipedia version, my Popups function no longer works. Now when I mouse over a link or diff that would normally provide a popup, no such popup appears. To fix this problem, do I need to go to my monobook script or is it something in my preferences? Thanks. ~ A H  1 (TCU) 02:28, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You should copy the contents of Special:Mypage/monobook.js to Special:Mypage/skin.js, or simply add the line

importScript('User:AstroHurricane001/monobook.js');
 * to that page (likely Special:Mypage/vector.js). – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 02:31, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It works now, thanks. :) ~ A H  1 (TCU) 02:35, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

"more..." button for revision deletions to show on watchlist?
Is it possible? Kind of a pain to have to go to the page logs. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 12:24, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Accessibility - archives
Wikipedia talk:Accessibility to Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia:Manual of Style (accessibility)/ Where did the former's archives go? Andy Mabbett (User: Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 16:10, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Fixed. This problem exists in dozens of other pages; see here. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 16:24, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you. The archive search still doesn't seem to be working though - is it just lag? Andy Mabbett (User: Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 16:51, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The search index can be a day or so behind. That is normal. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 17:53, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

List mark-up in templates
We have a vast number of templates, such as Areas of Birmingham which have a list, rendered as text, separated by in-line bullet characters. These would be better rendered as HTML lists, styled horizontally and with the bullets hidden or rendered as CSS background images. A template, flatlist, exists for this purpose, but is disliked by some editors for its use of a CSS border as as separating character. Please can anyone suggest improvements, which might result in its uptake? Andy Mabbett (User: Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 16:47, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the problem, as per previous discussions, is the rendering as a vertical bar if it could be done as a dot/bullet or was user configurable then you may have some success. Keith D (talk) 21:59, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Non-displaying image
See WP:Help desk Anyone have an idea why the image in question isn't viewable for at least two of us users? Deor (talk) 18:02, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

contributions syndication
Ive already asked this at the computing ref desk, but got no reply:. I've read WP:Syndication and the pages about rss and atom, but basically don't understand the topic and I dont have the experience to tell what's going on. Here's my question:

"I am (attempting) to watch someone's Special:Contributions with atom. I have the appropriate feed in Google reader. I am having a few problems with it, and I don't know if it's me, the feed, the reader, or just how Wikipedia works. First, it takes hours to update, which kind of misses the point of a "feed" in my opinion. Six hours until another update seems like an excruciatingly long time to wait, but maybe this delay is normal. Second, it sometimes won't update at all: I once waited 3 days for a single entry to show up but another is still missing in action. Third, it bizarrely keeps trying to show me the same contributions over and over and over and over again. Sometimes an edit from last month will randomly pop up as a new entry, or a recent edit will just come up as new, repeatedly, for days. With all of these things combined, I'm finding the whole thing rather useless. I don't use atom for anything else so I don't know if this is typical of web feeds in general. Can someone more knowledgeable please tell me what's going on? Differentially (talk) 06:38, 12 May 2010 (UTC)"

I would have left it at that, but I saw a few more comments about how syndication is "easier" for watching things. sorry, I don't see how something that doesn't work can be easier than have a favourite to someone's contributions (or your own watchlist, or an article, or whatever). Id really appreciate someone filling me on whether this is how WP does it, how google reader does it, how i've set it up, etc. Thanks, Differentially (talk) 09:32, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wikistalking much? --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 10:15, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Perhaps instead of automatically assuming a negative you could think of all the positive, constructive, necessary or genuinely useful reasons why I might want to watch someone's contributions. Seeing what someone is up to does not mean "harassment".  Maybe I just admire their work.  Maybe I'm waiting for someone to do something for me.  Maybe I'm a parent with a kid who won't do his homework.  Maybe its a bitter sweet link to an ex-gf.  All sorts of things.  Thanks for thinking the best, anyway...Differentially (talk) 10:39, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, should have indicated it was meant half-jokingly; one of the problems with textual media. --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 00:23, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, sorry for jumping on you. Differentially (talk) 10:26, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think Google Reader updates less frequently updated feeds less frequently, but six hours seems like too much. I started wikistalking User:Svick (I hope he doesn't mind) and see if I encounter the same problems. Svick (talk) 22:45, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think I might know why some edits show up repeatedly. It could be because each edit should have its own id in the feed, but doesn't. I think this should be fixed, so I filed . Svick (talk) 01:45, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Display summary on WikiLink Hover
When a user hovers their mouse on a wiki link, the first 255 or so characters of the link's summary paragraph can display in a small box. The box disappears when the mouse is removed from the link. It would then be easier to read an article without following every wiki link that one is unsure of.--Brylie (talk) 06:19, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * (Cross-posted to Village_pump_(idea_lab).) Tisane (talk) 06:31, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Like WP:POPUPS but for all users and not just those who have registered and ticked the box in my preferences? - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 08:01, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If we were to enable it by default, then I think we should also program it to say, for new users, "Click here to disable," or else we will probably get questions from people saying, "Hey, what's this popup thing? I don't like it; how do I get rid of it?" Tisane (talk) 10:14, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Strange and unpleasant change
Sorry for my stupid question, I'm a complete technical idiot. Suddenly, my browser Mozilla - I don't know what version - displays strange things: the bolded (top) at the top edited pages in my contributions is not bolded anymore, the yellow highlight at unpatrolled new pages is not yellow anymore, the displaying of articles is unusual - the [edit] button is placed on the left side instead of usual right, the link for edit summaries is moved to the right side... etc. It all happened out of the blue, just now. What's wrong here? Could anybody help/explain please, I want my comfortable editing back. Thanks in advance. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 07:41, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Such a shame I forgot to check the FAQ above. Now it is confirmed: I'm a birdbrain :) --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 10:10, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Full Page History Download
I am trying to download a few wikipedia pages for a research project, but have found some of them are clipped. I am most interested in Featured Articles and Good Articles, since they have been through the full gauntlet of wikipedia review, but they often have long histories. Special:Export cuts these off after 1000 to 1500 entries (it says 1000, but i get more for some articles). I haven't been able to get cURL to work (never used it before) and don't even know what "ruby script" is, so I was hoping there was some way to get the more recent history through Special:Export or something similar (user friendly for noobs like me). I asked over at the helpdesk and someone there kindly told be about this page. If it isn't the right place, please let me know. Thanks in advance. --Nobboddoddy (talk) 09:17, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I suspect ruby refers to Ruby (programming language) --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 11:02, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You can probably use the API. These things cannot be downloaded in one go, because that would put enormous strain on the servers, so there are safeties in place. The api allows you to make a good application to access this kind of information. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:33, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I will check out the API approach. It doesn't look like many pages have histories that long, but a few are *really* long.  I was looking at one with over 2000 edits.  whew...  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nobboddoddy (talk • contribs) 16:15, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect thumbnail being displayed
For a couple of days now, the wrong image appears in the thumbnail for File:Southern Star Complete.jpg - but clicking on the thumbnail takes you to the correct image. Any suggestions? 92.11.238.139 (talk) 12:22, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the prompt fix. 92.11.238.139 (talk) 12:33, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

The Edit Box
Every time I go to edit a page, when I start typing the screen automatically sends me to the bottom of the box so that I cannot see any lines below where I am typing. This just happened with the latest "update" to Wikipedia. Is there a way to turn this off, because often I am looking at things said that are in the box. In addition, it seems that if I click off the screen (e.g., if I'm looking at a source in another tab) and come back it will shoot me to the top of the edit box and I'll have to scroll down and find where I left off. It's just very frustrating when I'm trying to edit.  BIGNOLE     (Contact me)  13:57, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Can you state which browser you are experiencing this problem with ? Then I will file a bugreport. Also if you can state which gadgets you have enabled, that might be helpful as well. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:58, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I have always used Internet Explorer (and I have the most recent version). The only gadgets that I have turned on are "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page" and "Allow up to 50 more characters in each of your edit summaries".   BIGNOLE     (Contact me)  15:02, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok, can you check if this is in the compatibility view of IE8 or in the normal view ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:29, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It's in both. I just went to one of the pages I edit and when I opened it up (I typically run all websites in normal view by default) I turned on compatibility view and then tried to edit after it reloaded. It did the same thing and start forcing the text to the bottom of the edit box.   BIGNOLE     (Contact me)  15:38, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This issue sounds a lot like 19334, which really should be fixed already. Strange... —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:18, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Anyone have any thoughts on how to handle this?   BIGNOLE     (Contact me)  03:02, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Announcement: Unbulleted list template
The template Unbulleted list is now available for use in infoboxes; it takes up to nine items. For example, see these changes Andy Mabbett (User: Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 16:51, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Capitalizing differently leads to red link
Before adding something to a disambiguation page, I made sure that the link I intended to add would actually go where I wanted, typing in the search box exactly the way the link would appear on the disambiguation page. It did. Then I put the link on the disambiguation page and it was red, so I had to create a new redirect. If it wasn't going to go, it should have just not gone, but even though one letter was capitalized differently, it went, as it often does when I type in search terms without doing any capitalizing. It wasn't that hard to create a redirect, but why would it do that?<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 17:37, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The search box is case-insensitive, while links are not. I think a more important question is: why are you using that capitalization at the disambiguation page? If that is how it should be spelled, you should move the page there, not redirect. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 17:39, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't even remember now. I believe it was a case where the redirect was made necessary by the specific topic not being notable enough for its own article. I think it was New Directions. In which case the red link would have been on the redirect page, now that I think of it, but I had not saved yet. <font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 18:28, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Then you must have originally arrived there by way of New directions (Glee) (small d), which would have been accessed had you typed "New Directions (Glee)" before the creation of that page. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 18:37, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That's what happened. And amazingly, the page was created only two days earlier, with the wrong capitalization, unless they actually do spell their name with lowercase.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 19:51, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Expression error in infobox for Wabag
I think I tried to fix this but wasn't successful.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 19:54, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * - Kingpin13 (talk) 19:56, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

categorytree
Not sure if its just me, but the cattrees are not working anymore --> ....This is currently affecting hundreds of our Portals like -->Portal:Music of Australia and Portal:History of Canada..and let alone the Categories.. Moxy (talk) 20:11, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Next time try searching this page before posting to it. Algebraist 20:18, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * well thanks for the BITE...this is what you find in a search, hope this is not the tone always used here. Moxy (talk) 20:22, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia's search index takes some time to update. For a current issue you can search a page with your browser, probably Ctrl+F, or look at the table of contents. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:39, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you PrimeHunter that does work well..next time that is what i will do!!Moxy (talk) 20:43, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Thinking about making a Rails-based front-end for editors
Basically, a MediaWiki API client that will look something like the Wordpress Dashboard. If Wikipedia were to become an OpenID provider, then users could authenticate without ever supplying private info. If not web-based, I'd make this as a Mac OS X app. It'd be hosted at GitHub. Dogweather (talk) 22:34, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think many people would welcome it. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:03, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm glad to hear it. I've created the GitHub repository.  Anyone who might want to help with it can 'watch' the project there. Dogweather (talk) 00:53, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Transclusion limit on number of transclusions?
Is there a transclusion limit?

See List of Biblical names - where after a while, transcludes become regular wikilinks, and no longer displays templates.

Would this be a bug or a "feature" ?

76.66.193.224 (talk) 22:43, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There are several such limits see: Template limits. It is a feature in that it keeps the servers from melting down. (Translated, not having these limits requires so much overhead in server capacity that it is not economical viable for a non-profit organization, and there will always be SOME limits). —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:06, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't the conversion from transclude to wikilink link to the template, instead of to an NS:0 page with the template's name? 76.66.193.224 (talk) 23:39, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * At any rate, I don't see why you would need so many cn. It would probably be more efficient simply to replace them all with a single morefootnotes tag at the top of the article (though ideally, uncited information should not appear in an article at all). <font style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> Intelligent  sium  00:19, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I made a similar suggestion on the talk page. 76.66.193.224 (talk) 04:41, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Why does it link to the article space rather than the actual template that would be transcluded (i.e. when a template is transcluded but doesn't exist). PleaseStand (talk) 00:44, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * All the templates exist, but their articlespace namesakes do not always exist. ie citation needed exists, as does . However, compactTOC7body exists but does not. 76.66.193.224 (talk) 04:44, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Why the watchlist "token" / "secret key"?
I don't understand why there's security applied here (for reading one's watchlist rss feed). The watchlist doesn't seem to contain any private information. All the info in it is redundant, actually: It can be duplicated from a user's contributions page. (?) Dogweather (talk) 02:08, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Which pages are on a user's watchlist is private information. Checking one's watchlist naturally shows some of the pages that are on there, so the function needs to have *some* security behind it. The watchlist cannot be duplicated using the user contributions page, since it is quite possible for people to watch articles that they've never contributed to. Did you mean to say that it was redundant because of Special:RelatedChanges? That special page can be used to make public watchlists. Graham 87 02:22, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah hah. No, I'd forgotten that a user can watch a page they haven't edited.  Ok, I see the reason for keeping it private.  Thanks for the tip about Related Changes.  Dogweather (talk) 02:33, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

GIF not animating
The animated GIF at square wheel doesn't animate in the thumbnail within the article. Is this a bug or by design? (Firefox 3.6.3, Windows XP.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:27, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Recently, GIF scaling was switched on. For the thumbnail to render animated, there is a limit of 12.5 megapixels per image. I'm calculating nearly double that for the image in question, so I think that this is the correct behavior. —Ost (talk) 19:25, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the info. This sucks.  I just added "Click the image for an animation of..." to the image's caption.  :-(   Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:13, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I really have to complain about this. Go to the Giant impact hypothesis article and look at the image that used to be an animated GIF.  Currently it is not animating.  Even telling the user "Click to see the animation" won't work, because clicking it brings the user to File:Big splash 3d.gif, which again shows a single frame out of the animated GIF.  The user has to click a second time.  So now in the caption, how are we supposed to tell the user to view the animation?  "Click twice to see..." doesn't work because all computer laymen out there have been trained to double-click.  "Click the image, then click the image you see on the next page, to see..." makes me want to leap out of a window.  Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:43, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You can use a link of the form [[Media:Big splash 3d.gif]] to link to the image file (e.g. from the caption) until it is converted to a Theora format video. PleaseStand (talk) 23:01, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Those kind of simple graphics wouldn't suit video compression very well. What can be done is to manually re-scale the gif, as it is rather over-large. Ideally, it could do with some 3d cues as well so you can tell what's going on. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:23, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * If you want it to animate within the article, simply upload a new version of the gif, resized to the resolution you want it to be in the article and change to "frame" from "thumb", as I did here. Not perfect, but at least it avoids the click-throughs. You can still include a link to the larger gif on the image page of the resized one. Best, Steve  T • C 12:58, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Disable GIF scaling?
This thread appears to be the reason why scaling was turned on it was just before the one cited by Ost which I participated, as a latecomer in the original discussion. In short an editor complained that static gifs weren't resizing properly, so a developer turned scaling on.

Since the only gifs here are supposed to be animations, could a developer please turn GIF scaling off again? It was turned on to improve static gif viewing based on a user complaint and now has the unintended cost of disabling high resolution gifs. (I'm guessing this is why it was turned off in the first place, to facilitate larger gifs.) From what I see above this has affected more than one user. (PS for documents, the only static gif I could kinda sorta understand, why don't we encourage folks to upload 2 color tifs? Anything else could be converted to a svg or at worst a png.) Anynobody(?) 00:08, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Please see Village pump (technical)/Archive 75. See also commons:Category:Animated gifs exceeding the 12.5MP limit, and commons:Commons:Animated image resources. There is also a proposed WikiProject: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Images and Media. --Timeshifter (talk) 17:07, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

CSS to unbullet lists
I could do with some CSS help at Template talk:Br separated entries, please - to use CSS to display a list without bullets. Andy Mabbett (User: Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 16:38, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * <ul style="list-style:none">...</ul> . However, it's still indented.—Emil J. 16:48, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * ... which can be remedied by <ul style="list-style:none;padding:0px;margin:0px">...</ul> .—Emil J. 16:52, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Perfect; thank you - see Template:Br separated entries/testcases. Andy Mabbett (User: Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 17:05, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Still has bullets on my browser (elinks). Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk) 22:36, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Then I assume the 'some support of CSS' referenced in the article effectively means 'no real support for CSS'. Which may be no big deal, depends what you're using it for. A le_Jrb <sup style="color:blue;">talk  23:41, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Right, the only real CSS support in elinks I ever noticed is for colours. It's true that most of CSS simply does not make much sense for a text-based browser, however they do not implement even trivial CSS features like "display:none". For practical purposes elinks is a non-CSS browser.—Emil J. 15:50, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

What's happened to "categorytree"?
See categorytree and e.g. Category:Music. The extension also seems to be broken at mw:Extension:CategoryTree. BencherliteTalk 11:55, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't see it listed at Special:Version, so it looks like it is not installed. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 12:04, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * That's odd, then, because it's been working fine until very recently. Who would I need to talk to about getting it reinstalled, or finding out why it was uninstalled? BencherliteTalk 12:06, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with Bencherlite, it was certainly working fine until at least February. It really is a useful thing and needs to be returned. DuncanHill (talk) 12:18, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Hear hear, please install it. Does this help? Wikipedia talk:Special:CategoryTree - Fayenatic (talk) 13:50, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It was working earlier this week. It is used at WP:ARS to include a list of tagged articles. VernoWhitney (talk) 13:52, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm mainly active in the Esperanto Wikipedia, and it stopped working there as well. --WinstonSmith (talk) 14:10, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

(indent) The 2nd post at 23682 says "this feature has been disabled today". — AlexSm 15:03, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed, just confirmed with domas, disable due to performance issues. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:28, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I have changed Category tree and Category tree all to create more understandable output for users. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:44, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The category page counts aren't showing up either, is this a related problem? --Funandtrvl (talk) 19:08, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Must be. Also, you can no longer expand a sub-category to see whether it has sub-categories - i.e. when on the page Category:Music, you can see that it has a subcategory called Category:Musical compositions and you used to be able to click "+" to see whether Category:Musical compositions had sub-categories.  Now, you can't.  Instead you have to open Category:Musical compositions, and so on down the chain.  This makes category navigation much, much more difficult and time-consuming.  Great.  BencherliteTalk 19:15, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I was about to complain about the exact same thing above. As a user who works extensively with categories and WP:CFD, this is a pain. — ξ <sup style="color:#000000;">xplicit  19:27, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Cat tree not working is bad, not being able to expand sub-cats is downright disruptive. DuncanHill (talk) 22:06, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I just complained about this over at Commons; apparently a few people at Bugzilla decided here that it was a bad thing and removed it. Why do eight people there get to decide what's good here?  I get the impression that not everyone at Bugzilla is a developer or on the Foundation.  Nyttend (talk) 00:11, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Damn, the "not showing page counts" thing is a real pain. At places like Category:United Kingdom articles missing geocoordinate data, it allowed one to see which subcats were empty and which contained articles needing attention. Has anyone raised hell about this? Deor (talk) 00:51, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I think it's a completely ridiculous decision, and they need to bring it back right away. It's like downgrading Mediawiki. Going backwards, they removed a good and useful feature and effectively impaired the browseability of the category system because of some negligible performance issues. The improved functionality of the category tree I think far outweighs whatever performance issues there might be, and I don't even know what issues because I haven't ever perceived any. What I do perceive now is the annoying state of the category system compared to how it once was. -- &oelig; &trade; 00:54, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Rejoice: it's back to normal! Nyttend (talk) 01:31, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Regardless, you may judge it as ridiculous, but it isn't our decision as editors to agree with or make demands about. Domas as a maintainer of our databases judged that this facility had bypassed normal quality review long in the past and that it's performance was considerably affecting the serverpark. He had stipulated this multiple times before towards developers. Yesterday he saw a reason to disable this functionality because of those issues. That is his prerogative. It is his (volunteer) job to make decisions about the health of our serverpark. He can take the entire website offline if he thinks that is needed to protect our databases and thus all our content. Just because something has worked for a long time does not mean it will work forever. Changes are made all the time, problems are fixed all the time. Usually before the problem occurs, at times only after the problem occurs. It is how the system works and as long as our content doesn't disappear, it really isn't that big of a deal. So please lighten up. Also dear OlEnglish, domas is a database engineer for Facebook, I think his qualifications to judge this problem are somewhat more credible than yours. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:13, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I understand. It wasn't a ridiculous decision, I was just upset and reacted at that moment. And you're right, I for damn sure ain't no technician! --  &oelig; &trade; 00:00, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Unviewed watchlist changes in bold
Wikimedia Commons views pages that have been changed since last visited in bold in the watchlist. Could Wikipedia do the same? ~ Nerdy Science Dude  (✉ • ✐) 00:29, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * No, because tracking which changes have been viewed is disabled here for performance reasons. Graham 87 02:17, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * On a related note is there a quick way to view changes since you last edited a page? I've just tried WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Changes since I last edited but the "Since" tab doesn't appear. Fences  &amp;  Windows  15:09, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, now the tab does appear but the script seems broken: it tells me I've never edited pages I have edited ("You have not edited this page! (recently).")
 * A related script to add allows you to reload your watchlist to see changes since you last viewed your watchlist: importScript('Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Watchlist since'); Fences  &amp;  Windows  15:25, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Add the following to Special:MyPage/skin.js to mark unread items in your watchlist as bold:


 * Add the following to the same page to see which pages in a contributions page have been edited since the user, such as yourself, last edited the page:


 * There we go. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 00:19, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Checklinks
The toolserver checklinks functionality is unable to check all the links on Loggerhead sea turtle page. I can't work out if there is some issue with the article or if the checklinks is the issue. Could someone find out and advise how all the links on the article could be checked. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 01:13, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * You should post to WT:CHECKLINKS next time. It is a limitation of the regex template parser, it treated   part as though it was a single citation template, this was done so you could include templates like  .  I've now implemented a workaround so sub-templates cannot contain a URL which fixes this problem.  — Dispenser 15:50, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Statistics tracking WikiProject growth
Currently at WP:DERM we have a small section providing links to various data, but I wanted to know if someone would help us expand that section to provide more types of interesting data that people can use? Any help creating regularly and automatically generated types of project data would be great. Overall, I would love to provide readers with data that be be used to track the project growth/development. I am not sure if automatically generated and updated graphs are possible on wikipedia, but, if so, trending data with charts would be very cool. Perhaps someone could help create a "Dermatology task force bot" to perform tasks like this? Regardless, thank you all for your work on Wikipedia. ---kilbad (talk) 17:19, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It would be cool if there was a bot or toolserver thingy that would graph the monthly change in number of X-class articles for a project. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 17:22, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Disabling the stupid "do you want to go leave this page" message
How do I turn this off? I can understand that it's helpful for newbie editors, but it gets in my way far, far more frequently than it saves me trouble. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 19:01, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Preferences -> Editing. Should be the last tick under "Advanced editing". --Izno (talk) 19:14, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Many, many thanks. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 19:51, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Extra space, Infobox NRHP to do with it?
There is extra space at Serpent Mound. What's wrong? Could someone fix it please or teach me.174.3.121.27 (talk) 03:39, 29 May 2010 (UTC)


 * by deleting the blank line between the About and Infobox NRHP templates. — Richardguk (talk) 04:12, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Script to uncollapse everything on a page, perhaps even doing so automatically when page title contains the word "Archive"
Further to Template talk:Hat. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 12:57, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

New script: Expand Hidden Templates
Okay done. What this script does is it adds a link to the toolbox in the left-hand panel called "Expand templates". When clicked on, it expands all hidden templates, including hidden, hidden archive top, and their derivatives. After expanding the templates, the link in the toolbox can then be used to collapse all hidden templates again. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 15:49, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's great! It's still slightly buggy, but that should be easy to fix, and it's already useful as it is. Here is the problem: Each time you click the toolbox link the text of the toolbox link and the state of each hidden archive are all toggled separately. E.g. if you manually open all archives and then click "Expand templates" it closes them, and if you then click "Collapse templates" it opens them. Also, if one archive is open and one is closed, then when you click the toolbox link they just swap states. Hans Adler 12:28, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for catching that. Fixed. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 18:25, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Citation tool not working after site redesign
While the site redesign looks cool and all, it doesn't work properly and obviously hasn't been tested very well. Whenever I use the citation tool in the editing window (click on the 'cite' button at the top), I can add one citation, and it works fine. But if I go to another page and try and use that citation tool again to add another citation, the little 'templates' drop-down appears BEHIND the text box where you make your edits! So I can't select a template! The ONLY way to fix this is to close the browser entirely and open it again and relogin. It does the exact same thing in Firefox and Chrome (don't ask me to even think about using IE). WTF? (talk) 04:23, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This is 23541. Mr.Z-man 14:46, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Article for deletion
I have just created an AfD at Articles for deletion/Juan Antonio Rodriguez but something has gone wrong in the set-up. Can someone correct it and tell me what I've done wrong. Thanks Eldumpo (talk) 09:15, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The final step of the process is to add it to today's AfD page. You can use the links provided in 'Step 3' of the AfD template on the article at insertion time to do this. Or, you can do it manually by editing today's AfD page and adding a transclusion of the deletion nomination page &mdash; which I've just done for you. Splash - tk 10:38, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Remove
Japan_Self-Defense_Forces

Why is there extra space at the end of the section?174.3.121.27 (talk) 09:31, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There isn't? Splash - tk 10:39, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Not any more there isn't. Algebraist 10:42, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Category redirection
Article redirects are commonly used to enable article name variations to point towards the correct place. Is there an equivalent facility for categories? Folks at 137 (talk) 09:40, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No, the software does not permit that. Use instead, and a bot will come along and move the articles into the target category. Splash - tk 10:34, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

CSS styles

 * thumb|freshly cleaned cache
 * thumb|after logging in

It appears that some CSS styles (such as the text containers on my userpage) ceased working this morning. Does anyone know what happened? —  C M B J  19:58, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, the problem only happens after I log in. Any ideas? —  C M B J   08:55, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * What exactly is the problem? Can you take a screenshot of what it looks like to you, and how it's supposed to look? It looks the same for me in Firefox and Chrome, no matter whether I'm logged in or out. The page does look pretty messed up, though; the flags in the top-left corner are covering the "Viva la Wikipedia!", and the images at the bottom are covering the "Media" text. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 20:09, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Screenshots added. Try using Chrome's incognito feature--you should see it as well. —  C M B J   00:22, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Fixed. The code I removed is considered "insecure" by MediaWiki for logged-in users. Don't use it. The change was made on May 28. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 02:38, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

User cannot see preview
Re. help request, User_talk:Muslim_Editor

I've given some generic advice there, asking for more details and to try reset/other browser, and asking for more info.

Posting here in case someone recognizes the problem and can help at all. Best,  Chzz  ►  12:34, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

No home wiki
According to the SUL utility, my home wiki is "???", although it says it's enwiki_p at the bottom. However, if I check Download's stats, it says that his home wiki is enwiki. Is this a problem with my accounts, or is this the utility's problem? — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  01:19, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm... probably a utility glitch - it works fine for me as well on the SUL utility. It could also be your account name (just guessing here), which has numbers in it. Airplaneman   ✈  01:54, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, definitely not the number problem. User 21655 works as well. I think there's just a problem with my username. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  02:33, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It also says my home wiki is "unable to determine" at meta's Special:CentralAuth. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  02:36, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Could it be that your old home wiki is now deleted? 22638 Merlissimo 15:04, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No, unless enwiki was deleted, as it was definitely my home wiki. I notice that I've been around here since 2006, if that may affect anything. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  05:26, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No, your home wiki is the wiki with the "most" user rights. At the moment this would be flaggedrevs_labswikimedia because of sysop status. So perhaps you were sysop at another testwiki that was deleted. Merlissimo 11:25, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, that would make some more sense. Is it possible for someone to reset my home wiki? — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  02:56, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Or should I ask on Meta? — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  20:20, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * At the moment the only possibility would be to asked a steward for deletion of your global account. After that you can remerge your accounts to a new global account. The home wiki is calculated during the global account creation process. Merlissimo 23:34, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
 * How curious... looking at my own page it seems that the two "home wikis" in that SUL utility are really different. The top one seems to be the oldest account (in my case, enwiki from Dec '04), while the bottom one is the account with highest user rights (for me, enwikibooks). --Duplode (talk) 19:39, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

<- Reply to Merlissimo: Does that mean I have to delete my username "MC10", or just the fact that the global account exists? If it's the latter, then I'm fine with that.

Reply to Duplode: enwiki should be your home wiki, as "Editor" isn't really a user right. (If it is, and does take precedence over edit count, correct me.) "Sysop" status does take priority over edit count, so if you were sysop on a wiki, that would be your home wiki. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  17:24, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The global account 'MC10' has to be deleted. Then all the local accounts 'MC10' will remain but unconnected and you can create a new global account 'MC10'. The global account is just a meta account which connects all your local accounts. When you edit on this wiki your edit belongs to your local enwiki account. Merlissimo 20:50, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks. I'll go ask a steward if they can do so. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  21:25, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

A bot for meta-edition
Consider the following scenario: I have a set of long and complex tables to create for a group of articles, which require very delicate and fragile formatting. The complications are large enough to make me want to abuse meta-templating for handling intricate tag and link patterns in order to preserve my sanity. Meta-templating, however, incurs in a number of annoyances, the one which concerns me most being the sheer ugliness of the multiple curly brackets syntax, which can easily cause pages to become unreadable and unmaintainable. Such difficulties led me to wonder if a bot could help by allowing me to sidestep templates and Wiki markup. The strategy I'm thinking about goes more or less like this:


 * 1) Designing an alternate markup specific to the set of tables I want to create;
 * 2) Coding a parser in whatever language (let's assume Python for convenience) which converts my markup into MediaWiki syntax;
 * 3) Creating a bot which uses the MediaWiki API to read the source for the tables in my markup language from a subpage of the article, then converts it to Wiki code and updates the actual article with the parsed table code;
 * 4) Having the bot update the article from the source subpage on demand, either on user request or by automatically updating pages from a list daily.

I would like to ask for comments on whether this strategy or variations of it are feasible, as well as advice and recommendations on the best course of action to make it work. Additional considerations:


 * Forgive me for any eventual nonsensical ideas, for I never created a bot and thus pretty much all that I know about the proceedings on the MediaWiki side of bot operation is what the help pages told me.
 * Even if you believe such a bot would never be approved please don't shy away from providing technical advice, for I see potential uses for it not only here but also in places such as Wikibooks.

Thanks in advance, Duplode (talk) 05:47, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * All sounds feasible but necessarily easy, except for if you update a wiki page from a sub-page, how will you avoid removing user edits to the page. Rjwilmsi  11:30, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * A single use of transclusion. MyArticle contains, alongside with the rest of the article, MyArticle/BigTable which the bot generates from MyArticle/TableSource, where editions are actually made and contribution history is preserved. --Duplode (talk) 14:42, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
 * A slightly more specific question: would it be feasible to have the bot monitoring the changes to the "source" page so that it can make the updates in near real-time? (if it isn't viable I would be fine with daily updates for a queue of pages, but it would be nice if real-rime was possible) I am planning to upload the bot to the toolserver, BTW. --Duplode (talk) 19:31, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, provided you create an IRC component to follow irc://irc.wikimedia.org/#en.wikipedia, which contains a live feed of edits; you could have the bot watch the edit stream for when the "source" page is edited, then have it update the table. &mdash; The Earwig   (talk)  21:45, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

AfD closing
Hi. The new layout of the WP makes some of the css-based tools not work anymore. Especially, I miss the tools for fast closing of AfDs. As this has probably been discussed before, could someone please direct me to the instructions how to get them back working without switching back to the old layout every time? Thanks a lot. --Tone 16:48, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Copy paste: Special:Mypage/monobook.js to Special:MyPage/vector.js. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:43, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Or do this:
 * Add the following to User:Tone/vector.js:
 * Now, all you have to edit is User:Tone/monobook.js, and the vector.js file updates with it. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  17:32, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot! By the way, is there an option to put the links (delete, protect etc.) back in the tabs instead of having them in a drop menu? --Tone 19:00, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * See 3 headers up. ^^^^^^ —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:57, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Brilliant :-) --Tone 22:42, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Brilliant :-) --Tone 22:42, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Cite link labels
The ability to customize the cite link labels has been added to the extension; this version is not yet installed. For more info on this feature, see Manual of Style (footnotes)/Cite link labels. And no, I have no idea if or when this will be installed. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 16:14, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia-Turnkey ?
I am an older and fairly skilled programmer but not very well skilled on systems administration. I would like to experiment with creating (non-editing) bots that could do statistical analysis of Wikipedia articles but so as to be respectful and non-disruptive to the project I would like to work off-line. Is there any sort of a Wikipedia turnkey setup (some might call this "Wikipedia-In-A-Box" in good humor) which contains (A) a running version of Wikipedia software and (B) a decent sampling (maybe a few thousand articles complete with talk pages and histories et cetera) of the Wikipedia database? My LINUX skills are minimal but I could install this on my webhost's server if such a package is available. Failing all that is there any kind of online sandbox (a dummy/duplicate Wikipedia) for the same purpose? 66.102.198.179 (talk) 16:51, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * You can run you own installation, such as mw:Manual:Wiki on a stick. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 17:32, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks Gadget850, that takes care of (A) above but what about (B) ? 66.102.198.179 (talk) 03:21, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * You can try one of the smaller backup dumps. (See Database download.) – allen四names 03:57, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Userspace moves
In light of the recent Grawp attacks, I was wondering... wouldn't it be easier to make it so that only the user who the userspace belongs to, admins, and bots can only move pages in one's userspaces across the user/user talk namespace? Unless I'm missing something, I see no good reason for anyone but those users I mentioned to move those pages. The Thing That Should Not Be (talk) 18:15, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This would certainly be possible to implement with an edit filter. I'd rather not do it without some discussion on whether or not it's a good idea, though. -- Sh i r ik ( Questions or Comments? ) 18:20, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Possible logic would be, preventing moves of 1/ a top-level user page or user talk page to anywhere, and 2/ any subpage other than to another subpage of the same user, except by owner/admin/bot. Any move would at least not be so "in your face" to other than the userspace owner. But would it really help much? Or just push vandalism on to the next target? But yes, seems valid, just unclear if it'll make a worthwhile difference. FT2 (Talk 18:29, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * As proposed, this is a lousy idea, since it would allow a page move vandal to implement effective move protection on their vandalized pages simply by sending them to userspace. The obvious further development - disallow moving articles to userspace except by admins - would seriously interfere with casual userfication, and also with some kinds of of new article cleanup when the article is at an improper title. Any serious proposal to do this needs to not have these problems. — Gavia immer (talk) 18:42, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposed change to article tagline
At WikiProject Usability and Willage pump (proposals) I'm proposing the following sentence be added to the tagline of articles that are not protected or semiprotected: "You can edit this article." Followed by a button marked "EDIT". Is this technically doable? Anthony (talk) 19:30, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Only with Javascript probably. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:48, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking whatever process adds the "protected" or "semi-protected" text to an article page could hide the "You can edit this article" sentence and button. Anthony (talk) 21:55, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

After Revision delete, default action changed for pressing "enter" on history talk page
Prior to revision delete if one pressed "enter" on the history talk page, the default action would be to compare the revisions selected - now the default action is to try and delete them. Can this be swapped? – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 18:33, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 13:37, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 23747 —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:43, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Much obliged. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 14:45, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Retired users
I notice that retired users (even retired for years) still get messages about possible deletion. They're most likely not going to respond to it, so there should be a way to keep it away from the talk page (perhaps e-mail would be a better solution). <font color="#0000FF">mechamind <font color="#009900">9 <font color="#FF0000">0 00:02, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * So should Twinkle automatically check if the user's last contribution was over a year ago, and if so, not give the deletion notice? Twinkle already allows the user to disable notification of the original contributor. PleaseStand (talk) 01:09, 30 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I have the user page for several inactive or retired editors on my watchlist and react to such messages as needed. Indeed, I just left a message on a user page and someone notified me that he was not active. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 02:03, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * User:Phaedriel probably gets more messages than any retired user and she left almost 3 years ago. <span style="font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> — <b style="color:#060;">Rlevse</b> • Talk  • 02:08, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Editors come and go. If I wrote an article, and then came back a year later and found it gone, it would be helpful if there were a link on my talk page to the AfD so that I wouldn't think it happened by mistake and recreate it. There's no harm in placing such notices. OTOH, subscriptions to newsletters should prbably be stopped if the editors haven't been active in a few months.     Will Beback    talk    02:17, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Indeed, other users can see those messages and respond to the actionable talk page messages, but newsletters can be dropped. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 14:55, 1 June 2010 (UTC)