Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 77

Questions about Vector skin
Hello, so I haven't really explored the vector skin, but I wonder if someone can either tell me these answers, or point me to a FAQ: Thanks, Splash - tk 10:31, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Is it possible to have the 'admin' (ish) dropdown next to the watchlisting star expanded permanently, preferably horizontally a la how it used to be?
 * 2) Is it possible to always have the 'Toolbox' in the left sidebar expanded?
 * 3) Can I move my monobook.js to vector.js and recover the things in there?
 * Well, the answer to no. 3 is 'yes'. Most things seem to work. Splash - tk 16:18, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * 1: install User:Svick/DropDownToTabs.js
 * 2 in your preferences, Appearance section, uncheck "Enable collapsible left navigation menu" —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:46, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:46, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Turns out I've a bit of work to do updating my rather old .js stuff. Splash - tk 00:19, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Search input automatically redirecting to external site
Really odd one here. Entering  (colon included) into the search box redirects one to the German Wikipedia (sensible enough; so does de:). However, entering  takes one straight to this external page, which isn't a WikiMedia site. What gives? Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:26, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Help:Interwiki linking states "These target projects need not use MediaWiki and need not even be a wiki." See Interwiki map. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 18:39, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * dict should probably be changed so that it directs to Wiktionary, just as d was. --Izno (talk) 20:13, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * D'oh, didn't even think of checking what dict: did because I simply assumed it went to Wiktionary. Is this really something that any Meta admin can change at will? Wow. Nevertheless, this prefix has been in place for over five years so I don't imagine changing it now would be sensible. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 20:51, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Sure. That said, maybe it would be prudent to change the definition to point to the associated wiki (as they seem to have one), since it is an "interwiki table"? I myself would definitely rather see it point to an internal page, but if it's to remain&hellip; --Izno (talk) 22:00, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, it may be confusing, but it's still there. In a similar fashion, links to a Google search (http://www.google.com/?q=). — MC10  ( T • C • GB •L)  22:13, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Before changing dict: to point to Wictionary: (A) are there any articles, talk or WP pages currently using a link to dict.org that would be broken by such a change? and (B) why not create a link wict: which would be a more accurate abbreviation anyways. 66.102.198.179 (talk) 03:30, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, while it's easy to search normal internal links (using Special:Whatlinkshere) and normal external links (using Special:Linksearch), there isn't an equivalent tool to search for links that use the interwiki map, at least not that I'm aware of. — Gavia immer (talk) 03:45, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * wikt: is what we use to link to Wiktionary. Fences  &amp;  Windows  16:01, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Notes cited to multiple locations in text?
I'm working on List of Presidents of Washington & Jefferson College, which will have separate explanatory notes and reference sections. I'm defining the explanatory notes with the function (per WP:REFNEST). So, here's my question: Can I construct it so that the same explanatory note can be used to refer to two points in the text? Put another way: is there a way to make that explanatory note work similar to the references? I'm asking because I have two entries on the list that would be easily explained by a single note. Any help would be appreciated.--GrapedApe (talk) 04:03, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * A named #tag:ref construct may be invoked multiple times by using . ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 04:30, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Boy, I'm confused. I tried it a few times on my scratch paper.  Would you be able to look at that to see what I'm doing wrong?--GrapedApe (talk) 04:44, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I changed it to what I think you wanted...Let me know if I was wrong. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:46, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * If you want to reuse the outer #tag:ref and it has a group, then you need . ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 11:19, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Does this work for you? (I've provided a couple different ways to do it, depending on your preferences.) TheFeds 23:17, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * YES! Thank you!--GrapedApe (talk) 01:06, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Extra Space
Karelo-Finnish_Soviet_Socialist_Republic There is extra space at the top. Could someone fix? Thanks174.3.121.27 (talk) 07:38, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * You've repeatedly asked for people here to do the same thing, and every time you have been shown how to do it yourself. One would think you shouldn't have to keep asking. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:05, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Email this user
My toolbox is no longer displaying this option, yes I do have email checked in my preferences, could it be a script interfering ? Mlpearc  pull my chain   'Tribs  18:02, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Are you sure the user you are looking at has email enabled? Try on my page. – xeno talk 18:03, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Hey, xeno: yeah, your page doesn't show it, that's first thing I went to editors I knew would have the email option on their user page. I think it's a script I loaded, (maybe) but I don't know how to find out which one  :-(    Mlpearc   pull my chain   'Tribs  20:58, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Remove them all and add them back one by one =) It's probably one of the ones adding portlet links. – xeno talk 21:00, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I guess I could make a list of the scripts I most use, and blank the page and re-load one by one.  Mlpearc   pull my chain   'Tribs  21:00, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Just cut and paste your monobook.js into a notepad and then start adding them back one by one. – xeno talk 21:01, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * xeno your reading my mind is that a prerequisite for 'cratmanship ? lol  Mlpearc   pull my chain   'Tribs  21:11, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Symantec reports Wikipedia as a possibly compromised website
See. -  F ASTILY  (T ALK ) 18:23, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I saw something like that but my noscript redirect me to an error page. After I allowed norton, I got "Norton Safe Web found no issues with this site." --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 18:29, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It's gone. I think some Symantec techie just hit a "what the f*** do you think you're doing you stupid computer?" button :D  Happy ‑ melon  18:30, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * There are a couple of mentions of this issue at the help desk, too. I've referred editors to here, since I is clueless. TFOWRidle vapourings of a mind diseased 18:30, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Looks like they already fixed it. Prodego  talk  18:31, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It looks like it's reporting one diff on the Malayalam Wikipedia as potentially compromised. I frankly don't know whether it is, because I can't make heads or tails of Malayalam in the first place, but if this is being reported as a problem with all subdomains of wikipedia.org, that's a problem on Symantec's end, not a problem with the English Wikipedia. — Gavia immer (talk) 18:33, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Now I see that as well. I'll see what can be done about it. Prodego  talk  18:34, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It switched back and forth just two minutes ago, again with "HTTP Misleading Application Detection" linked to ml-wiki. First call was green, then a refresh showed red. East of Borschov (talk) 19:07, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * And its gone again... Prodego  talk  18:38, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

I do not get the warning at commons and on secure login. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 18:43, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It is rapidly changing back and forth. If you repeatedly do hard refreshes you will see it. Prodego  talk  18:51, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * You mean the Symantec page? Yes, I can see that it changes. And now the warning stopped popping up when visiting wikipedia via conventional log in. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 18:57, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * And a hard drive scan comes out clean. Seems like problem is solved now. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 19:00, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, and now it is back again on conventional log in. I will stick for secure log in for the time being. Talk/♥фĩłдωəß♥\Work 19:22, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

FYI, you might want to use WebCite, SnagIt, Snipping Tool or Print screen to capture this sort of output before it changes. AFAIK the Symantec pages allow archiving. - Pointillist (talk) 23:08, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps the Malayalam Wikipedia should be notified at their Embassy? They may have some insight what's going on. Or not...maybe it's irrelevant to them. Robert Skyhawk (T C B) 03:20, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I am an admin in ml.wiki. Could someone please point out which is the diff in ml.wiki that Symantec has highlighted? We could review that.. --Jacob.jose (talk) 02:12, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Adding the Main Page to Cat handler/blacklist
Currently, the Main Page is within and, because some template of it uses Lang. I think we should add it to the exempt blacklist and then use Cat handler within Lang. What do you think? --The Evil IP address (talk) 20:11, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

EXTREME HELP NEEDED
O.K. I just made an article called Elyon (novel) on a subpage, and in my attempt to move it, it became a redirect, I'm angry that the work that I had just put into it was deleted. Can someone tell me how to fix this? Tetobigbro (talk) 04:07, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * For future reference, this is exactly the reason why new-page patrolling just minutes after article creation can be a problem (an IP redirected it, calling it non-notable because you did not cite a third-party source). Your work is not lost. Click on Elyon (novel). Click on the line below "Ted Dekker" that says "Redirected from Elyon (novel)". View the history, click on the correct date, and you can see the old revision (from before the IP turned it into a redirect) and also choose Edit to get the original code you typed in or move it back. PleaseStand (talk) 04:17, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I was moving things while PleaseStand was editing. It didn't turn into a redirect, an anonymous editor converted it a few minutes after you moved it, claiming it didn't pass Notability (books). At first review, I tend to agree. I've restored the text of the article at User:Tetobigbro/Elyon (novel). See if you can demonstrate how it passes Notability (books), and try again.&mdash;Kww(talk) 04:20, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Is this correct - anonymous IP's have move rights? kcylsnavS 18:29, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It was redirected by the anonymous user. Anons don't have move rights. Reach Out to the Truth 16:48, 2 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Tetobigbro, I see you registered on 20 May 2010. I'm working on a project User:Philcha/Essays/Advice for new Wikipedia editors to guide newcomers' first steps as they work on articles. The guide: use a "lite" presentation of WP's policies and guidelines, hoping 20% of the words will cover over 90% of the situations, and make it easier to identify the more difficult cases; include techniques and tools that can help newcomers.
 * I'd be grateful if you could comment about this at User talk:Philcha/Essays/Advice for new Wikipedia editors - others may imagine how a situation for a newcomer, but you know! --Philcha (talk) 18:18, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Redlinked files now send to Wikipedia:Upload - is this new?
I could've sworn that in the past, a redlinked image would send you to the non-existent media description page where the convenient deletion log would be shown (when it exists), now it seems to send one to Wikipedia:Upload. Can this be changed back, either globally, or through personal .js/.css? – xeno talk 15:44, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * They always sent one to the upload form with the former filename as its name, which you can see at the "?wpDestFile=" within the url. Either the developers have now changed the target to the url specified in MediaWiki:Upload-url or someone has changed some system message. --The Evil IP address (talk) 15:56, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Really? Guess I'm getting old (or maybe I've never actually clicked a redlinked image before). – xeno talk 16:07, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I started noticing that a few months (several months?) back. But it doesn't seem to always work that way. Initially I assumed that happened when Commons files were deleted, but recently I noticed it for a file that I'm pretty sure was here. Guettarda (talk) 16:19, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You are correct Xeno, it used to do this. I liked it that way, too.  Gary King ( talk ) 16:25, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for confirming that I am not, in fact, going senile. =) You're a .js-whiz, any personal-workaround for now? Alternatively, we could add the log excerpt(s) to WP:UPLOAD (if possible) as suggested at the bugzilla. – xeno talk 16:27, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * User:Gary King/show upload deletion logs.js  Gary King ( talk ) 18:27, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Awesome. Thanks again =) – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 19:59, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

help to fix diff horizontal size on AWB CSS style
The default AWB style causes diffs with a long string without whitespace (involving long URLs for example) to stretch the horizontal size of the diff, which is not what's wanted. Is there a CSS trick we can apply to prevent this? Thanks Rjwilmsi  12:58, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Setting "word-wrap: break-word;" might help. It is CSS3, so it isn't supported by all browsers. http://www.css3.info/preview/word-wrap/ —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:47, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but it would seem the .NET WebControl that AWB uses doesn't support it. Rjwilmsi  18:47, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Then you are out of luck I think. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:18, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

How to add a task force to a WikiProject assessment template?
Thread moved to Template_talk:WPBannerMeta. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) Timestamp for archival. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 12:59, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Lost my login
All of a sudden, my logged in status went away while I was working just now. Not only was my login lost, but so was my User name and my password. Is this a bug? Everard Proudfoot (talk) 23:04, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * No, it's intentional. Wikipedia cookies last only 30 days or until you log on with another computer. —<font color="228B22">Jeremy <font color="00008B">(v^_^v Dittobori) 23:06, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * In the middle of a session? And I just checked, I haven't been here 30 days yet.  Everard Proudfoot (talk) 23:12, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * A login can be lost for different reasons and is not uncommon. See Help:Logging in for tips on staying logged in. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:10, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It happens often to me, I blame switching between different comps :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 23:28, 1 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Did you futz around with your computer's clock? – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 23:20, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Nope. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 18:27, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It happened to me recently, in the middle of a session. I don't know that it was or was not the 30 day thing, but it was recently, so maybe coincidence, or maybe some glitch occurred 1 June.-- SPhilbrick  T  12:57, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

New script: Show Article Subject's Age from Year
Short explanation: Make years in articles appear like this (hover over the year): <abbr title="10 years old">2009

Long explanation: I'm looking for some people to test this script out. What it does is, when you visit an article that has a definite "creation" date, such as a person (their birthday), a company (its founding date), or a piece of artwork (its creation date), all years that appear in the text will be "hoverable"—meaning, if you hover your mouse cursor over a year in the article, then the article's subject's "age" will appear in a tooltip (i.e. the year that you're hovering over minus the birth/creation year of the article's subject, whether it be a person, object, or event).

If you use this script and find a page that doesn't make mark years when they should be, the let me know (this script only works if the subject's birth/creation date is explicitly stated in one of the article's categories—if it doesn't exist, then add it; and years are only marked in the article's body, meaning years in tables, bolded terms, links, etc. are not marked). Unfortunately, I can't attach a screenshot since tooltips disappear when hitting a key on the keyboard, but I can tell you that years appear like this: <abbr title="10 years old">2009, which would appear in an article about a person who was born in 1999.

To install:

Copy the following to Special:MyPage/skin.js:

I've got a bunch of other scripts that I've written lately, but I feel that this one might have the widest appeal at the moment. Have fun! <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 20:53, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Nice work. Incidentally, ALT+PrintScreen (on Windows, it probably has its equivalents) does screenshot the tooltip as well. Not that we need a screenshot when we have a working example :) - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 14:04, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Character list under edit box
I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but is it possible to add a new character list to the drop menu under the edit box (where the Arabic, Hebrew, Greek etc. are)? In Hungarian Wikipedia we have lots of these, and they are very useful. I'd love to have these characters there:

3 ỉ w ˁ b p m n r f h ḥ ḫ ẖ z s š q k g t ṯ d ḏ

this is an alphabet for transliterating ancient Egyptian words. – Alensha   talk  16:29, 3 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I think you need to raise this at MediaWiki talk:Edittools. — Richardguk (talk) 17:33, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

edit notices for templates
I tried to create an edit notice for singlechart, but when I edited the pagenotice link it created Template:Editnotices/Page/Template:Editnotices/Page/Template:Singlechart, which doesn't appear when you attempt to edit. Anyone know where it should have been and how to fix the link so these get created in the right place?&mdash;Kww(talk) 17:13, 3 June 2010 (UTC)


 * You need to move the editnotice to Template:Editnotices/Page/Template:Singlechart. — Richardguk (talk) 17:32, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That fixed it so the template works. Any idea how to fix it so the pagenotice link on templates links to the right place?&mdash;Kww(talk) 19:08, 3 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The wikitext for the link is defined via MediaWiki:Editnotice-10, Editnotice load and Editnotice load/core as expanding to:
 * which should link to Template:Editnotices/Page/Template:Singlechart from as required.
 * Are you sure the link was broken?
 * — Richardguk (talk) 20:21, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Weird, when I click the 'pagenotice' link in the editwindow for that template, i'm taken to the correct page. How and with what browser did you try to create this template notice ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:22, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Weird, when I click the 'pagenotice' link in the editwindow for that template, i'm taken to the correct page. How and with what browser did you try to create this template notice ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:22, 3 June 2010 (UTC)


 * To be fair, the wikitext for a redlink is slightly different from the wikitext for an existing editnotice. But both code paths seem OK to me.
 * Could it just be confusion over the instructions at Editnotice?
 * — Richardguk (talk) 20:38, 3 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Can't reproduce it now, but all I did was click the redlink for the page notice. I'll keep an eye out for this and see if I can find a pattern. I'm using Firefox 3.6.3.&mdash;Kww(talk) 20:42, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Parsing Wiki XML Dumps ver0.4 just got tough
Hello, I am trying to parse Wikipedia XML Dump using "Parse-MediaWikiDump-1.0.4" along with "Wikiprep.pl" script. I guess this script works fine with ver0.3 Wiki XML Dumps but not with the latest ver0.4 Dumps. I get the following error.

Can't locate object method "page" via package "Parse::MediaWikiDump::Pages" at wikiprep.pl line 390.

Also, under the "Parse-MediaWikiDump-1.0.4" documentation @ http://search.cpan.org/~triddle/Parse-MediaWikiDump-1.0.4/lib/Parse/MediaWikiDump/Pages.pm, I read "LIMITATIONS Version 0.4 This class was updated to support version 0.4 dump files from a MediaWiki instance but it does not currently support any of the new information available in those files."

Any work arounds would help me get to the next level. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.167.71.155 (talk • contribs) 20:12, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Does SineBot have a timing issue that can cause an edit to be lost?
I am looking at a diff page which seems to show SineBot adding attribution to an edit, but not basing its edit on the latest version of the page. Instead its edit was based on the just-prior version of the page: the effect was to revert the prior edit. It seems SineBot may create a timing window between starting an edit and posting the completed edit, during which any other edit that is posted gets lost. In the case of this example, SineBot stepped on itself. The previous edit was a SineBot edit, which got reverted. But if this timing window exists, it could step on any edit that happens to get posted while the window is open. Not the fault of the poster of the lost edit—the edit that is lost is not the edit that is being signed by SineBot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Malamanteau&diff=next&oldid=361925161

Cheers, MetaEd (talk) 20:57, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I am not sure how exactly SineBot works (it is closed source), but the timing went like this (used api.php to find the seconds of the timestamps):
 * 71.80.39.10 posted an unsigned comment at 17:40:58
 * 24.86.178.47 posted an unsigned comment at 17:41:24
 * SineBot signed 71's comment at 17:41:43 (45 s after 71's edit, 19 s after last edit)
 * SineBot signed 24's comment at 17:41:59 (35 s after 24's edit, 16 s after last edit)
 * According to User:SineBot/ChangeLog, SineBot does have some form of edit queuing. I also have no idea why the second comment was signed after 35 s instead of after 45 s. PleaseStand (talk) 21:31, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

en.m.wikipedia.org not responding
The http://en.m.wikipedia.org sub-domain keeps timing out with no connection. Is this a temporary problem, or has this sub-domain (for enhanced mobile devices and the default domain for access via the Amazon Kindle) been changed or discontinued? —Preceding unsigned comment added by NogDog (talk • contribs) 21:50, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

- It appears to be back up now, so I guess that answers my question. —Preceding unsigned comment added by NogDog (talk • contribs) 22:53, 3 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Due to load issues on the server, there were a load of problems. A new server was put in production, but it takes a while before everything is updated and back online. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 00:23, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

highlight color of selected ref
When one clicks on a ref in an article one is taken automatically to that ref at the bottom and the text is highlighted. I'm not sure how this highlighting is accomplished. I assumed that it was just part of html but i seem to have been wrong about that. Anyway, how would I change the color of the background of the highlighted text? What would I add to my css page? Lemmiwinks2 (talk) 06:30, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * See the "/* Highlight clicked reference in blue to help navigation */" section in MediaWiki:Common.css. If you add similar rules with your own color to your skin file, then you can change the used color. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:54, 4 June 2010 (UTC)


 * See Help:Reference display customization ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 17:23, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

WYSIWYG table editor
Is anyone working on a WYSIWYG table editor? I've found creating and editing tables to be quite frustrating -- it's hard to go between raw text and a two-dimensional chart. I see someone suggested this at Bugzilla but the enhancement request was not acted upon. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:06, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Usability is working on WYSIWYG in general and I believe this was a feature mentioned. --Izno (talk) 23:08, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Thumbnail AWOL
The thumbnail for File:CosmoClock21 2006-05-21.JPG isn't displaying.

How to fix/purge/whatever? 92.1.90.14 (talk) 23:56, 4 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Is this something I could have fixed myself, if I knew how? 92.1.90.14 (talk) 00:02, 5 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Purge (and in particular Purge) is intended to explain how to fix problems such as this. — Richardguk (talk) 02:42, 5 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. 92.1.90.14 (talk) 06:08, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Template parameter question
I have just discovered that urls that contain an equals sign, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Spinningspark?action=edit cannot succesfully be passed as a template parameter. Is there any kind of workaraound to this?  Sp in ni ng  Spark  00:54, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * "1=" should work. You need to use named parameters when there are equals signs in the argument. --Izno (talk) 01:28, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ta  Sp in ni ng  Spark  01:40, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Or you could urlencode the equals sign, like so:, which produces . <font style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> Intelligent  sium  01:49, 5 June 2010 (UTC)


 * There's also a special template designed for just that purpose: = . you can use that anywhere you need an equals sign.  you should read help:template which discusses problems like this.  -- Ludwigs 2  02:00, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

No longer redirecting to en.m.wikipedia.org on Android 2.1 (Nexus One)
I have a Nexus One running Android 2.1. Usually when I navigate to a Wikipedia page on it, I am redirected to a lightweight, mobile optimized version, on en.m.wikipedia.org. That redirect stopped working today; now I just get the full version, which is usable, but a little harder to navigate on my phone. I've tried clearing my cache and cookies, but the redirect still does not happen. I can navigate directly to en.m.wikipedia.org and it works fine, but the redirect is convenient for when I do a google search or get a link from someone else. Some other users on other phones, such as the iPhone, have reported the same issue. &mdash; λ (talk | contribs) 21:16, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I have noticed the mention above of en.m.wikipedia.org being overloaded. Is this issue related? Has the redirect to en.m.wikipedia.org been disabled because of the load? &mdash; λ (talk | contribs) 21:19, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes it has. Should hopefully be fixed somewhere this week. There is some testing of the new setup going on atm. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:32, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Edit conflicts
A recent edit conflict at AN reminded me that something called "liquid threads" was just-around-the-corner a few years ago. Any news on that front? Or indeed on anything else that might actually be able to cope with busy discussions? DuncanHill (talk) 00:55, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It's closer than "just-around-the-corner a few years ago" but further than "coming soon". See http://liquidthreads.labs.wikimedia.org/ where Werdna was soliciting feedback earlier in the year. Not sure quite what's going over there anymore. --Izno (talk) 01:35, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It is currently deployed on the strategy and a few other small wiki's that center on discussion. I'm guessing feedback there is being used to prepare for any type of wider deployment. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:36, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Standard barnstar doesn't animate
File:Tireless Contributor Barnstar.gif This barnstar doesn't animate on user pages. Is there something wrong? ~ Nerdy Science Dude  (✉ • ✐) 04:01, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I did a little bit of experimenting, and found that an animation (at least, the one we're looking at) only works when the size in not defined. Take a look at my sandbox; you'll find the barnstar without the size defined moving, and the one with the size defined as 100px not moving. ~<i style="color:#07517C;">Super</i> Hamster  Talk Contribs 04:08, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Both appear to move to me (IE8 running under Windows XP).Nigel Ish (talk) 09:56, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * No problem here either (FF3 +xp). Perhaps there was a very old version in the caches somewhere that was static. If there was, then it seems gone now. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:20, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, you're right about the cache - I bypassed my cache and reloaded the page while using Chrome, and it worked fine. So NSD, all you need to do is bypass your cache (I'm assuming you use FF3 based off of your userpage), and that'll fix the problem. ~<i style="color:#07517C;">Super</i> Hamster  Talk Contribs 14:51, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Unsigned comment template
Is it possible to create an unsigned comment template that: In recent months, I have seen unsigned comments to talk pages that are not signed by SineBot and am wondering if there is any easier way to sign them other than using unsigned2 and inserting  between the timestamp and username. PleaseStand (talk) 06:16, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Accepts code of the form  or   (as found in revision histories)
 * Transforms it into or
 * Well, there's a way to determine if someone is an IP or a user that works AFAIK and we could add the (UTC) automatically if it's not there (though that won't be easy), but to remove the need for two parameters we would need stuff like the RegexFunctions extension (which would also be nice for other things). --The Evil IP address (talk) 17:53, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Timeline
Is it possible to specify alternative text for the images generated by <timeline ></timeline>? Thanks! Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk) 08:42, 5 June 2010 (UTC)


 * No / not at the moment, I read somewhere (WP:ALT?). - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 09:03, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks for the link to WP:ALT. I will work on an alternative solution, probably using overlays. Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk) 18:25, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Complex template
jct needs fixed so that if an image doesn't exist it shouldn't show the image. Its causing about 15 errors on New Brunswick Route 2 alone. βcommand 23:20, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Can you fix it in the sandbox? ⇌ Jake   Wartenberg  02:07, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
 * See Template talk:Jct/shield. --Izno (talk) 03:16, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

{{#tag: options
I am editing a template (not here, on hu.wiki, but perhaps will create the same here) and I have a question: what can I add with {{#tag:ref ? I need to put it in a group. Thanks, Enbéká {{sup| talk  }} 16:04, 6 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I solved my problem. Enbéká {{sup| talk  }} 16:19, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Help:Newlines and spaces
Help:Newlines and spaces is copied form Meta - or rather it was in 2008. Unfortunately it makes extensive use of Meta templates. Fortunately we can now (I think?) transclude these. Anyoen feel up to updating the page and fixing the templates? Rich Farmbrough, 01:56, 7 June 2010 (UTC).

Favicon missing
I'm using the vector skin on Firefox 3.6.3 with Mac OS X and am getting no W alongside the article title in my tabs. 86.45.130.146 (talk) 18:34, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Perhaps this would be a better query for the Computing and IT reference desk. This problem does not seem to be coming from Wikipedia's sign, as I can see the favicon with the same browser (though admittedly not the same OS, I run Vista). <font style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> Intelligent  sium  20:30, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Go here. If you see the icon, then the favicon should work. If you don't see it, try bypassing your cache. If that still doesn't fix it, then your Internet connection cannot access the favicon at all, and you therefore have a serious connection problem. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 05:53, 6 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks to you both, 86.45.130.146 (talk) 14:42, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Reduced size image not being listed after 7 days
Hello. This image was reduced in size, but the historical images weren't deleted. I have no qualms with this because backlogs exist, but I was confused in this case since the Category:Rescaled fairuse images shows that "more than 7 days old" is empty. Did a bot miss this or something? –  Ker αun oςc op ia◁ <sub style="color:#5E1FFF;">galaxies  21:57, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Fixed, so nevermind! –  Ker αun oςc op ia◁ <sub style="color:#5E1FFF;">galaxies  22:35, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Those date based categories have large delays. It can take more than a week before those things are updated. It has been like this for a while. Doing a null edit on the template in question usually speedies the detection of new pages that should fall into the category. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:12, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
 * For that reason, I'll sometimes go into the category that contains all reduced nonfree images and delete ones that were tagged more than a week ago. Nyttend (talk) 06:12, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Measuring "Progress" at Wikipedia
'I know this might be a controversial topic but my question is purely technical ... what I want to know is can'' this be done with WikiMedia software? The discussion of should this be done is for another day in another forum.'''

I have seen various "progress templates" that track (count and list) articles of certain categories. A good example is Template:Notability progress. Right now these templates only measure progress by noting how many articles (or tags) are left to do versus how many are eliminated. Sadly this simple measure of progress, while certainly of real value, is ripe to be abused as an unofficial scoreboard for deletionists and does not represent an accurate impression of what it takes to improve the encyclopedia. Those of us who have been here for a while know that making such improvements can require many other things besides just "reducing the count" ... in the above example an article in the problematic Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability might vanish off that list by (A) being merged, (B) being redirected, (C) validating the article by establishing notability, or (D) being deleted. Other categories have similar ways of making progress yet all we are counting is the number of "bad" articles that "went away" striving for a "zero count" and calling that progress.

What would it take, TECHNICALLY, to create a new kind of progress template that would generate a "result" column showing one of the above four outcomes for an article as it is removed from the list? I envision something like this:

One idea (and I am sure there are other ways to do this) I am thinking of is have a mandatory (reply-to-proceed) screen that shows when a specifically tagged article is redirected or deleted saying "This article contains the 'XYZ' Wikipedia Progress Template. Please identify the editorial action taken to measure progress (check one of the 4 boxes below)." The same screen could be applied (I think) if the triggering tag was edited out of the article during the save process.

'''So again ... without the wikipolitics of right or wrong I simply want to know IF this is technically feasable?''' 66.102.198.98 (talk) 20:42, 7 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It doesn't sound so difficult. A rough sketch would be a bot process that could list the members of the category in Month 1. Then in Month 2 it could indivudally check each of those articles to test:
 * Does it no longer exist (i.e. has it been "deleted")?
 * If not, then is the article now a redirect page? (Establishing if the article has been "merged" or "redirected" in this case would be more difficult and probably would require manual examination.)
 * If not, then is it still in the category (thereby establishing whether it has been "validated")?
 * If not, then it is in the "current count".
 * The same process could be repeated month on month. --RA (talk) 20:59, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Disappear the "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" again
Can someone give me the code for my vector.css so I don't see the "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" on any pages but mainspace ones (or however it used to be)? Thanks,  — fetch ·  comms   02:58, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * TheDJ says he made the change to MediaWiki:Vector.css to make the top icons work more consistently. You can use visibility: hidden to hide the siteSub, but there will be an empty space above the "breadcrumbs" to parent pages of subpages. PleaseStand (talk) 03:15, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Or you make the changes to your own Vector.css of course. This is the diff.
 * Basically showing it only on mainspace, was some unilateral decision I made a couple of months ago in the beta period of Vector. It works pretty well, unless a page outside mainspace uses a contentSub (user contributions/redirect pages). In those cases the topicons, coordinates etc would break. I have therefore returned to the old monobook behavior for now. We can further discuss it and see what people prefer. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:35, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I was just asking for the vector.css code... that would be

body #siteSub { visibility: hidden; } body.ns-0 #siteSub, body.ns-1 #siteSub { visibility: visible; } Correct?  — fetch ·  comms   19:37, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * If you prefer brevity and don't mind a blank space, yes. If you want it to look just how it did, the correct code (based on the diff) is: PleaseStand (talk) 23:55, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

top: -1em; } div.topicon { top: -3em; } div#title-override { top: -2em !important; }  display: none; } body.ns-0 #siteSub, body.ns-1 #siteSub { display: inline; } body.ns-0 div.topicon, body.ns-1 div.topicon { top: -2em; } body.ns-0 #coordinates, body.ns-1 #coordinates { top: 0em; }
 * 1) coordinates {
 * 1) siteSub {

Str function weirdness
, result:

, result: (expected "Oct").

Any ideas? – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 13:32, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Seems to work if you replace the "9" with a "10"; probably something to do with the fact that the "9" result actually starts with a space, which is probably html encoded somewhere and for some reason.--Kotniski (talk) 14:21, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Like in Template:Str_index/logic (second line). --Kotniski (talk) 14:32, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm... Back to the drawing board I guess... Thanks! – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 14:35, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

edittools has stopped working in IE8
Edittools appears to have stopped working yesterday for me (7 June) when using IE8 on Win XP, with an inability to actually insert the character when I click on it. Problem occurs both when I'm logged on (Monobook) and when not. Edittools seems to work normally when using Firefox.Nigel Ish (talk) 17:07, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Don't worry, you're not alone. They're still working on it, see: Requests for comment/May 2010 skin change/Bug reports. Regards, --Funandtrvl (talk) 18:01, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

File: namespace redirects buggy
I'm unable to view individual diffs of redirects in the File: namespace for some reason. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Covernt1.jpg&diff=366854323&oldid=366852966 It just takes you to the most recent diff.

See the version history and try clicking on an individual diff.

Also, categories do not show up either. This happens in vector and monobook and I have "Show hidden categories" enabled in my preferences.

I think 23204 may be related but I'm not sure. I'm not all that familiar with bugzilla and don't have an account there so if someone could report this there for me that would be appreciated. -- &oelig; &trade; 19:58, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for reporting, now logged as 23851. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:51, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

search box and creating new windows
Prior to the shift to the new GUI, I could enter a term in the search box, and get the search to open up in a new window/tab by holding down the command key (that's on a Mac - I'm not sure what the windows equivalent is). This was useful when I wanted to open up a reference page while I was creating a post (or otherwise open a page without losing the one I was looking at). Now, however, nothing I do seems to make that work; the search box insists on opening the new page in the active window. It's Vector specific: if I go back to monobook the old behavior works fine. it also appears in both Safari and Firefox on my mac (both the most up-to-date versions). I like the new vector look, so I don't want to switch back, but this is really annoying. any idea why it's happening? -- Ludwigs 2 16:58, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Just type something, and then middleclick or command click the search icon. That works for me with Safari and Firefox. Suggestions were never command-clickable btw. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:19, 6 June 2010 (UTC)


 * ok, that does work - odd, because I could have sworn I tried that. also I don't believe you're right about suggestions not being command clickable, because I could have sworn I done that dozens of times. I'll have to reload monobook later and confirm. Possibly I'm losing my mind, or more likely I've just slipped into a different quantum universe...  -- Ludwigs 2  14:25, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

I suppose there is no similar solution for my case: Shift-Enter in Opera, which opens results in new tab, however in Vector the old tab goes to the results page as well. — AlexSm 14:50, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I filed a bugreport for this 23866 —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 18:25, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Image protection on Commons for use here
One of my pictures is to be the DYK lead image in a day or two, and a Commons admin just protected it. Forgive me if I'm missing something, but how does that help prevent vandalism here? Couldn't someone upload a shock image to en:wp under the same name as the Commons image that's currently at that name? Or are we just assuming that vandals aren't smart enough to do that? Nyttend (talk) 06:20, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Only local admins can locally override images from the Commons. However, I think it's possible for vandals to edit the local file description page (unless that is protected, too). Lupo 09:42, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * So if I log in with my non-admin account for use with public computers, I can't upload a new file with a name already used by a file on Commons? Nyttend (talk) 14:02, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I would think you could. In any case, just salt the local page temporarily and that should be fine. But don't we upload MP images locally anyways?  — fetch ·  comms   19:38, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The main page is cascade protected. Killiondude (talk) 05:56, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, yes, the image is protected, so I can't edit the description. I also tried to upload a modified version of the file (don't worry, I just cut one row of pixels from the original) locally and wasn't able to do that either.  I didn't know that cascade protection would protect images that are on the Main Page; I thought it just protected templates.  Because images on the Main Page are cascade protected, why do we routinely upload the image from Commons?  Nyttend backup (talk) 12:55, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * This is the fifth image I've uploaded that made it to the Main Page; three of the other four had local uploads before they were protected. The fourth was protected at Commons, although an admin uploaded it locally before it went onto the Main Page.  Nyttend (talk) 13:02, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Because the cascading protection only protects local images, not the ones on Commons. Otherwise, every wiki would have the option to protect images on Commons, which shouldn't be possible. --The Evil IP address (talk) 13:18, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Preventing substitution
Is there a simple way to prevent a page from being substituted elsewhere? A serial suckpuppeteer has twice now created accounts with very similar names to mine and subst'd my user and talk pages to his and I'd like to find a simple way to stop it without having to wrap everything with noinclude, which doesn't really work for a talkpage because of autoarchiving and new messages. Thanks in advance. —DoRD (talk) 23:39, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Put an unclosed at the beginning of your page, perhaps? This will prevent anything below it from being transcluded or substituted. <font style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> Intelligent  sium  23:42, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ahh, yes, why didn't I think of that? Thanks! —DoRD (talk) 01:15, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The unclosed appears to work but there is also the rarely used Help:Template which could be closed with nothing inside. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:46, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The <onlyinclude ></onlyinclude> is a great idea. Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk) 06:12, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * would be yet another way to do it. PleaseStand (talk) 19:04, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, or put in there db-u1. Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk) 19:56, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Very nice, it works like a charm! —DoRD (talk) 20:16, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Until your admirer finds the cut and paste button ;> – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 20:17, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * True, and this method will only work once, but it should be worth a chuckle at least. —DoRD (talk) 20:25, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

There is always the possibility of using the search feature (takes a day to update) or WhatLinksHere (should stay up-to-date) to locate the impersonator's accounts. PleaseStand (talk) 21:09, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Flashing cursor?
I just noticed this while using Wikipedia (and WP only), that when I have multiple tabs open at once (5 different recent changes changes, and user talk pages), when I hover over a link, or anything that changes the cursor, it flashes from normal to whatever it should be. I'm not sure if this has any thing to do with WP, or and gadgets inside of it, but it is annoying when attempting to use drop down TW menus. A p 3 rson ‽   02:08, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I've noticed that too. I thought it had more to do with a bug in Firefox than Wikipedia. If, however, you don't use FF, then I might be wrong. :-) Killiondude (talk) 05:53, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It's a Firefox bug, and only specific to the current window. Meaning, if it happens, then open a new window and the problem disappears in that new window. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 19:54, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Two images within one frame?
Is it possible to place two images, side by side, within the same thumbnail frame? In such a way as to allow them to be described by a single caption?--GrapedApe (talk) 02:24, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * See image frame --M ASEM (t) 02:40, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Or multiple image of course. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:26, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks!-GrapedApe (talk) 21:41, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Allowable protocols/schemes for URL linking
Is there a place where I can find the list of allowable URL types for external links (e.g., http, https, ftp, ...). I started a ifurl function (or perhaps it should be ifuri?) to test to see if an input can be wrapped inside brackets and provide a link. So far I just have http and https in there. I probably don't need every single possible protocol, just the common ones that are allowable. Thanks! Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk) 06:08, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The allowed protocols are shown in the HTML sourcecode of Wikipedia pages as the values listed in the  javascript variable. For en.wikipedia.org, the current list is:
 * More generally, the current default MediaWiki installation settings are defined by the value of  in   as:
 * Note the two extra protocols at the end. See also Help:URL for less formal (and less accurate) information.
 * — Richardguk (talk) 09:04, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Note the two extra protocols at the end. See also Help:URL for less formal (and less accurate) information.
 * — Richardguk (talk) 09:04, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Redlinked files linking to upload page
Is this a new thing? I'm sure they used to link to the description page so you could see why they had been deleted. It is very unhelpful not to be able to see this now. DuncanHill (talk) 09:13, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * See [[File:Death - Back From The Dead-1-.jpg]] for an example. I also find the change annoying although there are ways to see the deletion info with a little extra work. Here are some: 1) Enter the name in the Title field at Special:Log. 2) Preview a file link with a colon in front and click that: File:Death - Back From The Dead-1-.jpg. 3) Enter the name in the search box and click the resulting redlink.
 * If it was deleted at commons then these don't work here but I think you always had to go to commons to find the deletion log. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:35, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I too find this annoying, especially since I'm an admin who sometimes needs to undelete these files. However, I don't remember a time when clicking on the file name didn't take you to the upload form.  Nyttend (talk) 12:42, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * This is 23140 —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:23, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Use this script to revert to the way it used to work: User:Gary King/show upload deletion logs.js <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 19:53, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Bias Random Article page results
--vgmddg (look &#124; talk &#124; do) 22:42, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * For everyone:
 * Make it so that Disambiguation pages don't show up as results.
 * For readers (anonymous visitors with ≤≈5 edits):
 * Bias article results towards good articles (although not necessarily good articles). Articles that are interesting and/or well written that show the good parts of Wikipedia.
 * For regular editors (anonymous users with >≈5 edits and users with accounts):
 * Show articles that may need some more attention edit-wise (i.e. articles that have cleanup templates at the top).
 * For account holders:
 * Make a section in the preferences for how users want the random article generator to be biased (if at all), and whether or not to include other namespaces.
 * Good/interesting articles
 * Articles needing work
 * (If including other namespaces):
 * Backlogs and maintenance pages
 * Wikipedia essays
 * etc.


 * Been discussed many times before. The developers don't consider it worth doing because it requires an unnecessary amount of resources to select a random page that meets all these criteria. I've got a script called Enhanced Random Article that, when installed, skips disambiguation and stub pages for random pages. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 23:02, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Load time
I'm looking for some advice, if possible from a developer. I'm noticing increasing difficulty in getting well-developed articles to load because of the number of citation templates they use. I'd like to propose adding something to the featured-article criteria that nominators should check that the load times of featured articles is reasonable&mdash;regardless of what might be causing the problems: whether length, templates, number of images etc&mdash;but I don't know how load time is measured objectively. Whenever the issue is raised, we're left with anecdotal evidence: some people can load an article within five seconds, for others it takes 30 or more.

I'm assuming there must be an objective standard that Web developers use to measure that pages are opening within an acceptable time. Can anyone direct me to where I might learn about that so we can develop such a standard for WP articles? SlimVirgin talk  contribs 03:03, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * For any given Wikipedia page, append "?action=purge" to the url, i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington?action=purge. After the page loads, open the HTML (usually, by using a browser option labeled "view source" or something similar).  Look for a line reading "  " near the very bottom of the article source.  This will report the time that Wikimedia servers spent building the page.  Generally it is good to repeat ~5 or so times and average the results since servers vary in response and load.  The "?action=purge" has the function of forcing the servers to render from scratch (more or less) rather than relying on caches, so it is a more reliable estimate of render and edit time.  Most readers (and especially not logged-in accounts) will usually receive a cached version of the page which gives a much faster response though.  Dragons flight (talk) 04:02, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * SlimV, it is worth noting that logged-in editors will also get the cached version of the page, and hence short load times, when reading unless they set non-standard preferences, such as stub link formatting, non-220px thumbnails, etc. Editors using certain settings require the page to be re-rendered on every read, which leads to much longer load times on average.  I suspect that you are seeing long loads because your preference settings require re-rendering each page.  Restoring default settings may make your experience more pleasant when visiting large pages.  Dragons flight (talk) 04:22, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, DF, both of these points are very helpful. Regarding my own load times, I can't see anything that might be problematic. I have mostly the default settings, plus things like Twinkle, Hotcat, section editing for leads. SlimVirgin  talk| contribs 04:58, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * As I mentioned here in response to SV's edit summary in that article (and as others have mentioned here), pages are cached. A long page like Deepwater Horizon oil spill will not load slowly for most users (e.g. users who don't have an account and are therefore not logged in). Just log out, and browse around, and you'll see that pages load really quickly. If pages, such as United States (a pretty long page), are taking more than 5 seconds to load before any text appears on your page, then you probably have settings that are not the default settings for most users so the page needs to rebuild the cache for you specifically. It's best to change these particular settings to the default ones so that pages load much more quickly for you. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 05:13, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Trancluding multiple defined parts of a page to several pages
Hi! Is it possible to transclude multiple, defined parts of a page to several pages? For example, let's take the article Wikipedia. Hypothetically (as I understand that mainspace pages don't really transclude), if I only wanted to transclude the License and language editions section of the article, I would just place tags around the rest of the article, effectively only transcluding that section to anywhere I place. However, let's say that I wanted to tranclude only the License and language editions section to one page, and only the Cultural significance section to another? Is there any way to separately identify two parts of a page as to make it so that only specific parts are transcluded to specific pages, using something like an ID-system? I experimented with using the section-wikilinking feature (e.g. ), but this doesn't seem to work. Hope this makes sense. Thanks, ~<i style="color:#07517C;">Super</i> Hamster  Talk Contribs 05:42, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes; use #if around the part you want to transclude and when transcluding, specify which part you want to show. Feel free to dissect my header page, which if you check the code, makes several transclusions from User:Gary King. Dissect the latter page to see how the #if tags are used. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 05:49, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah, I see - I had previously checked out the #if function before, but I wasn't sure if I could apply it the way I wanted it. Your userpage helped me out though. Thanks, ~<i style="color:#07517C;">Super</i> Hamster  Talk Contribs 05:54, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Download of Wikipedia (English) dump Fails
I have attempted downloading Wikipedia English dump (current pages only, ~5GB) several times. Each time it the download stops at around 1.7 GB.

Tried downloading with: 1. wget 2. firefox 3. python script (http://blog.prashanthellina.com/2007/10/17/ways-to-process-and-use-wikipedia-dumps/)

Tried downloading from two different ISPs using fast broadband connections, at least one with no monthly download limit and second with fairly large limit to be causing the issue. I am able to download large files (>3GB) from other locations without any issue.

Have done extensive Google searches with no avail. Please help. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.35.129.178 (talk • contribs) 00:00, 6 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The dumps for the English Wikipedia are still being created apparently, since May 14. Not really surprising; this is pretty typical. Yeah, it's usually hard to grab a copy of it. I think there was an announcement a few months ago where Wikimedia was going to get more servers to speed up the backup process, so that mirrors could benefit, or something? <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 05:52, 6 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks Gary. I tried downloading even older dumps (> Jan 2010 but < May 14), still with the same issue.  While Wikimedia gets more servers, what is the solution to download for the time being?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.35.129.178 (talk) 08:11, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You could download the Wikipedia dump with BitTorrent. There's one floating around that's from October 2009, which is fairly recent, if that's good enough. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 16:19, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Are you sure it isn't some trivial issue like not enough free space or using FAT (although that wouldn't stop the download at 1.7 GB)? Does it look like the download is finished or is it aborted? (Aborted downloads can be resumed, I think wget can do this). What file are you downloading? The latest dump of current versions of articles is http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20100312/enwiki-20100312-pages-articles.xml.bz2 and it worked fine for me when I downloaded it (but that was about a month ago). Svick (talk) 14:17, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * XML dumps for English Wikipedia were stalled. The dumps are missing pages, etc. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 18:52, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Bug?
Some pages are unstructured. What's happen? (ex:Ceratosoma brevicaudatum)--92.132.216.187 (talk) 09:14, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Looks fine to me. What do you see? Someguy1221 (talk) 09:49, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yup, for me too. The bar with discussion - edit - search box etc is distorted, half of it in place and the rest at the bottom of the page; and the left menu is in larger font and begins only after the body of the article. Appending ?action=purge solves this, so hopefully this is temporal. 94.29.51.13 (talk) 10:09, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Look this screenshot. It's strange, only few pages have this bug, with all my navigators.--92.132.216.187 (talk) 10:21, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I get this on both SeaMonkey on PuppyLinux and Firefox on Windows/XP. It is triggered by using the Search box in Wikipedia. After that, any new pages lose the Search box, the left menus, munge together the article heading with the Tabs for Article/Discussion, and hide the Read/Edit tabs that should show on the right. 86.185.63.251 (talk) 11:52, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * (Not posting from my usual computer) I noticed this in IE8 and IE6 on Windows XP, often when pressing the "Random page" link. If a page is distorted, purging the page (in IE, press Ctrl+F5) solves the problem. Oddly, I can produce this problem when logged out, but not when logged in. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 12:53, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Later note: I also noticed this distortion on articles at English Wikinews. Could be a skin issue. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 13:09, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Appears to be confirmed as 23881. 1ForTheMoney (talk) 15:17, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It's not fine on Firefox on XP - that's what I'm using, and it started happening to me today. Seems to be on all articles, just like in the screenshot above, until I ctrl-F5. 81.131.0.252 (talk) 17:46, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Broken pages are now being purged from cache as people visit them, so this problem should start to disappear now. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:04, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia to use WebM video format?
Does Wikipedia have plans to use the free WebM format? Obviously, I don't see this being implemented anytime soon, but has there been any discussion on this? Is there a bug or extension where this is being tracked? 129.120.86.77 (talk) 18:51, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * There are no direct plans to support it in Wikipedia, but I have opened 23888 because I presume we will want it supported in the MediaWiki software at the very least. There was some discussion on the Commons and wikitech mailinglists and there are still some slight concerns, but mostly it is just software engineering work that is needed. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:02, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Change size of image dependent on what word the editor adds in the template
I want to create a template slightly similar to the mediawiki template for extensions:
 * http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Template:Extension

This template uses the parser function "switch", when an editor:
 * 1) adds the word "experimental" the template changes color to red.
 * 2) adds the word "stable", the template changes green

I would like to create a switch that when an editor adds the word "help" to the field "status", the image size will only be 100px, otherwise the image size is default size.

Here is what I tried:

| image =

| status =

Any suggestion, thank you so much in advance.
 * Examples

158.70.145.156 (talk) 20:51, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Looking at Template:NBA_color maybe I could change the imagewidth field?
 * | imagewidth =
 * 158.70.145.156 (talk) 21:18, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Editnotice for all pages
I want to put an editnotice above the editing textbox for all pages on a private MediaWiki-based wiki that I run. The problem is that I can't find any system message that works for this. None of the following work, for the reasons given:


 * MediaWiki:Sitenotice — appears when viewing pages, not just when editing them
 * MediaWiki:Newarticletext — only appears above uncreated articles
 * MediaWiki:Talkpagetext — only appears above talk pages
 * MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning — appears below rather than above editing box, and also, I'd rather not mix my editnotice with a copyright warning
 * MediaWiki:Edittools — appears below rather than above editing box, and also, I'd rather not mix my editnotice with the editing tools
 * namespace editnotices — only appear for a specific namespace rather than all namespaces

I've checked Template:MediaWiki messages, and none of those messages seem to do it. Does anyone know the name of the system message that I want?

—Lowellian (reply) 16:26, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * You need to use Editnotices. They are indeed per namespace, but you will either have to copy your message to all of them, or you have to use transclusion to put the same (template/mediawiki) message into each of them. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 17:02, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

The namespace editnotices don't seem to work on a default installation of MediaWiki using Monobook. For example, I edited MediaWiki:Editnotice-0 and MediaWiki:Editnotice-2 and noticed no messages showing up when I edited main or user pages, not even after I purged the cache. What am I missing? —Lowellian (reply) 18:27, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Perhaps you are using an outdated version of the mediawiki software ? This is a 1.14 feature. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:30, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah, okay, thanks, that explains it. The wiki was 1.13. —Lowellian (reply) 19:36, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I think you just have to edit MediaWiki:Editnotice if you want it on all pages in every namespace. No need to copy our complicated editnotice system for your own wiki. --The Evil IP address (talk) 18:26, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

'''On a separate but related note, why does MediaWiki provide two different copyright warning messages? What is the difference in function between MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning and MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning2?''' —Lowellian (reply) 20:01, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Warning1 takes into account wgRightsText Mediawiki configuration option, and warning2 does not. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:14, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, could you clarify what you mean by that? I just read http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:$wgRightsText and it doesn't say anything about how it relates to those two copyright notices. —Lowellian (reply) 16:23, 2 June 2010 (UTC)


 * No one answered, perhaps because the question was overlooked and mistaken as an already-answered question, so I'll boldface the unanswered question and leave it boldfaced until someone answers. —Lowellian (reply) 22:20, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Map making tool
I saw a map making tool written in flash which would fill in blank maps made by a user who has since left wikipedia. Does anyone have a link to that tool? (The tool also had its own category for maps). It would be much appreciated!!!Smallman12q (talk) 22:30, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Found the link at http://gunn.co.nz/map/ 22:34, 10 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Smallman12q (talk • contribs)

Globe logo thingy
The Globe logo seems to have disappeared. Doesn't particularly bother me, but I expect that it matters somewhere to someone. Am on the old look Wikipedia, and Chrome on WinXP. DuncanHill (talk) 17:35, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I cannot replicate your results. I am using Windows 7, and I can see the globe show up with Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  17:54, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It wasn't there this morning either, so computer has been rebooted in between. DuncanHill (talk) 18:16, 31 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Still not there. DuncanHill (talk) 10:30, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Try purging your browser cache? --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 10:34, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * As I said, it doesn't bother me, so I'd rather not waste the time and bandwidth. DuncanHill (talk) 10:40, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it disappeared briefly for me too. Can't replicate it, though, so I guess that's the end of it unless it reoccurs. Tisane (talk) 10:49, 2 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It's re-appeared this afternoon. I have noticed that when the globe thingy isn't there, the suggestions in the search box work much more quickly than when it is there. DuncanHill (talk) 17:14, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Different globe logo thingy issue
For some reason with Vector on IE6/XP Pro the background of the logo renders dark grey, with the balance of the left side column light grey. Vector on IE8/Vista has the background the same light grey as the left side column. Trivial, but consistent.LeadSongDog come howl!  15:41, 2 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The problem is that you're using IE6. <b style="color:#222222">FinalRapture</b> - <b style="color:#222222;">†</b> <b style="color:#222222;">☪</b> 20:02, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * See Requests for comment/May 2010 skin change/Bug reports for my observations. The problem also affects Monobook. PleaseStand (talk) 18:36, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm on IE6 right now and solid grey back looks better than transparent (the grey block somewhat masks the anorexia of the new ball). East of Borschov (talk) 11:36, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It seems to have changed. It now has a look consistent with the IE8/Vista appearance. The light grey background is consistent throughout the left sidebar, including under the globe. Thanks to whoever fixed it.LeadSongDog come howl!  21:26, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You're welcome LeadSongDog! All I did was match the grey colors. You can see the gradient at the top does not match, and that it has a grey box around it in the Monobook skin. We should be able to fix it completely, but there is a bug with the IE6 compatilbility script. I have opened bug 23825 to address this. Cheers! --Svgalbertian (talk) 16:57, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Change a font size or something to differentiate different section levels
A "third level down" (4 equal signs) looks the same as a "2nd level down" (3 equal signs), making the hierarchy invisible. In other words:

This heading
Looks the same as. Looks the same as. Looks the same as. Looks the same as. Looks the same as. Looks the same as. Looks the same as. Looks the same as. Looks the same as. Looks the same as. Looks the same as. Looks the same as.

This heading
Which is one level below it.

Suggest changing a font size or something to differentiate them.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 11:07, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * They look different to me. DuncanHill (talk) 11:11, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Likewise. The "4 equals" heading is about 75% the size of the "3 equals" heading. It's not maybe a browser issue? Try increasing and decreasing font-size ( or in Firefox, YMMV). <b style="color:#000">TFOWR</b>idle vapourings 11:14, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

I know that they are slightly different. One is 89% of the height of the other. Checked on Firefox and dusted off Internet Explorer, and blew them up with magnifier and measured. I meant that that they are so close together that at first glance, many don't notice that one is a sub-heading of the other. I have to look a little harder to see it.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 13:17, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * There isn't much space for us to manipulate in. Fifth level heading (5 equal signs) is the same size as normal text. If we made 4th level heading (currently 116% of normal size) smaller, it would make it difficult to differentiate between the two. So it wouldn't solve the problem, just move it. Making 3rd level heading (132% of normal size) bigger would similarly make it too close to 2nd level (150%). For the record 1st level heading (used for page title) is 188% of normal text size. Svick (talk) 03:04, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

RevDel bug persists with page history comparison
The recent introduction of RevDel renders version comparison inoperative on the history pages. Upon selecting radio buttons to compare two page versions on the History page, "compare selected revisions" defaults to "del/undel selected revisions", resulting in error message "Invalid target revision". The only workaround is a tedious logout (thus removing Rev/Del admin tool) to get page history version comparison to function normally and then login again. This was previously complained about by others at VP (see this VP archive), but remains unresolved as mentioned here.  JGHowes   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  18:49, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You can click "Compare selected revisions" at the top or bottom of the page as a workaround, but I much preferred simply being able to hit "enter". Vote for the 23747. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 19:19, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Wait - are you saying that when you did click "compare selected revisions", it instead tried to delete the revisions? That would be a horse of a different colour. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 19:20, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's right. After clicking "compare selected versions", it instead tries to delete, which results in the aforementioned "Invalid target revision" error message.  JGHowes   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  19:44, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Peculiar. What is your browser & version? The following script may help as a workaround in the meantime. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 19:46, 9 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, <font face="verdana" color="black">xeno, that workaround fixed the problem nicely (using IE6).  JGHowes   <sup style="color:blue;">talk  22:36, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

New Wikipedia format
Hi,

Just wanted to tell that the previous format was far better than the new one. With the new one I can't see other editors contributions and when I sign my posts it almost always divert the signiture to other palce in my or in others posts. Also, it's harder to edit with this format. How can I return to the old one? --Gilisa (talk) 18:28, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Click the handy-dandy "Take me back" button, and rejoice. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 18:34, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * <span class="plainlinks" style="font-size:1.78em; font-weight: bold; width:100%; height: 100px; line-height: 25px; font-weight: bold; font-family: helvetica, impact, sans-serif; text-decoration: none; "><font color="#6e98c2">MONOBOOK Wikipedia-logo.png <font color="#6e98c2">FOREVER Killiondude (talk) 06:26, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I thinks that logo could benefit from being oldified. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 15:31, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I noticed that as well. I'll have to update the code. Killiondude (talk) 20:03, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Pending Changes (nee Flagged Protection): update for June 10
As requested, here's the weekly Pending Changes update.

We proceed boldly toward launch. The main update is that we have pushed the English Wikipedia launch back one day to Tuesday, June 15. That will let us avoid stepping on the WP Academy Israel event, and it means Jimmy Wales will be available to talk to the press, which in turn will yield a better public understanding of Pending Changes.

However, we will still be rolling the new FlaggedRevs code into production on Monday, June 14th (circa 4 pm Pacific, or 23:00 GMT). We hope that this, aside from some minor UI improvements, will pass unnoticed on the project currently using FlaggedRevs. If there are bugs, we look forward to hearing about them via the usual channels, including #wikimedia-tech. Minor bugs will be fixed in place; any major issues will result in a quick rollback to the existing code.

More prosaically, we had a number of bits of work verified complete this week, including a number of little bugs. Our thanks to the German community for their diligent testing of a labs instance of the German configuration.

If you'd like once last chance to see what's coming, try the latest code updates on our labs site.

To see the upcoming work, it's listed in our tracker, under Current and Backlog.

Thanks, William Pietri (talk) 23:58, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

(Cross-posted from Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous). Cenarium (talk) 03:26, 11 June 2010 (UTC))

In addition, there are a few remaining issues to settle, such as usage of flagged protection/pending changes, please see Requests for comment/Flagged revisions trial. We also need to finalize documentation pages among other things, any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Cenarium (talk) 03:26, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Really what would be useful is some explanation of how this is going to work. It seems it will create temporal drag - for example when SmackBot dates an Unreferenced template, the act of dating it removes it from the category the invokes the updating.  Presumably this will not now happen until the revision is flagged?  Which means SmackBot might be running against pages it actually fixed  days, weeks, months or even years ago.  (In case it's not clear why this might be a problem, a typical daily run currently takes a number of hours, and consumes a fair amount resource, also it is not a good idea to have a bot revisit pages on a daily basis.)  Similarly if an image is deleted as copyvio will the "Whatlinkshere" function apply to the flagged revision or the current revision? Rich Farmbrough, 13:14, 11 June 2010 (UTC).
 * While the category links shown at the bottom of the page (to anonymous users) reflect the current approved revision, the category and what links here listings always correspond to the latest revision. PleaseStand (talk) 18:36, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * For my purposes that is probably best, but I can see it could be the other way around for some (E.g. in the copyvio case). Thanks for the information. Rich Farmbrough, 22:21, 11 June 2010 (UTC).

Image problem
I am having a weird problem with an image which works fine as a thumbnail, but if I try to put it in a gallery it is rotated by 90°. It appears to be using an old upload from the file history, but distorted to the new aspect ratio. Compare the two below.

Actually, I take it back that it works ok in thumbnail, I just noticed I can get the same effect in thumbnail by setting the size to 120px. Likewise the gallery image can be fixed by playing with the height parameter. As I said, weird. This was the only image in the gallery with the problem, so I'm confused.  Sp in ni ng  Spark  15:28, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Image purged. You might need to bypass your browser cache to get the updated image. Amalthea  15:40, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Weird, I thought I had done all that already. Fine now, thanks.  Sp in ni  ng  Spark  17:36, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * At commons? Amalthea  19:06, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I thought I did, but I'm an old man, easily confused.  Sp in ni ng  Spark  20:23, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

Message on non-existent pages of usurped accounts
If I go to create a non-existent page in my userspace (eg User:B/dfgasdfgsdfgsdfg), I see a message that I have been renamed that refers to when I usurped this name three years ago. Is there any particular reason for this message to be displayed all throughout userspace, rather than only on the main user page and main user talk page, (if they don't exist)? It seems odd to put them all over userspace - if there had been a page there, the move would show up in the log move anyway (see User:BigDT/416 for an example) so I don't see a need in printing the rename log too (except on the top-level user page and talk page). Thoughts? --B (talk) 16:08, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't see any message. Could you copy&paste the text here? Amalthea  16:16, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok ... it doesn't show up if you click on a redlink and have action=edit ... go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:B/asdfasdfasdf and you will see it. The message is this:

This user has been renamed. The rename log is provided below for reference.
 * (del/undel) 19:38, 12 July 2007 Andrevan (talk | contribs | block) renamed User:B to "$2" ‎ (Renamed the user "B" (who had 0 edits) to "B (usurped)")
 * --B (talk) 16:22, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I agree, would suffice to only show it on the base pages. The functionality was added (56318, 56321) by, so you could ask him about it. Amalthea  16:45, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I would agree it is mainly relevant where a page has been, but not just for the root pages. Rich Farmbrough, 17:59, 11 June 2010 (UTC).
 * As I said above, if you go to where a page used to exist, for example User:BigDT/416, which at one point in time did exist, the log entry is displayed anyway apart from this feature. --B (talk) 18:13, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Hm, but it is possible to undelete this page, move it, leaving no redirect, and then the audit trail is lost. Not sure the best behaviour. Rich Farmbrough, 22:31, 11 June 2010 (UTC).
 * I don't see why that would affect the audit trail? But in any case, nobody proposes to remove the log entry, just the automatic display if you view a non-existant user subpage of a user that has been renamed. If you expect a page there from the previous user, you'll still get the move log entry. If there's a new page there you already don't get any log at all. Amalthea  23:59, 11 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Here's the point though. If you go to create a page that does not and never did exist for either me or the person who previously held this user name, you see a confusing message that makes you think I have been renamed.  My contention is that for a page that did not and never did exist, you should see no such message.  The other logs (delete and move log) are both sufficient for the case where a user did exist with that name and was renamed - the move log will tell you where the page is now. --B (talk) 02:11, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Based on Mr.Zman's commit message for 56318, it looks like the user rename log was intended to be shown for non-existent users. B certainly exists, so is the log excerpt even supposed to be shown at all? —Preceding unsigned comment added by &#32;Reach&#32;Out&#32;to&#32;the&#32;Truth (talk • contribs) 02:05, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Internet explorer and table height
It seems that Internet explorer doesnt recognize style="height:100%;" for tables. Is there a way to get around this? just-emery (talk) 17:55, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You could stop using Internet Exploder. Other than that, I don't know. IE doesn't support a lot of html stuff.  — fetch ·  comms   21:21, 12 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Way ahead of you. Lemmiwinks2 (talk) 03:06, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Question on sitenotice
Is it possible to selectively display the sitenotice for unregistered users: visible only in edit mode and in namespaces other than main, file, portal, category and book ? Failing that can the sitenotice be showed to anonymous users only in edit mode, or somehow a message in the same place using the editnotice system ? The idea is to show a message to all registered users (which can be done with the sitnotice for registered users) and unregistered editors, though not all readers. Or do we need developer intervention ? This would be for the pending changes trial. Cenarium (talk) 01:59, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think that is possible without some Javascript, or making actual changes to the PHP code. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 02:01, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Cenarium. You may be looking for editnotice. Parser Functions may be useful. – allen四names 02:34, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The notice should be displayed at the place of the sitenotice to unregistered users when editing. I don't know how to do that with the editnotice system. Cenarium (talk) 16:59, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * What does "at the place of the sitenotice" exactly imply? IP detection in editnotices is possible through . Proper version can probably be built with some iffy Category:string manipulation templates use. Poor man's version is  which will have some false positives, but should suffice.  Amalthea  22:10, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * An alternative would be to use MediaWiki:Anoneditwarning. Killiondude (talk) 22:20, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I mean at the position of the sitenotice, above the tabs, I tried with position:fixed on the testing wiki on the Anoneditwarning and the editnotice, the text appears but links don't work, so it seems it can't be done. Though the message can be placed right above the Anoneditwarning, as here. To display the message on talk pages, we could also use Mediawiki:Talkpageheader, but likewise it would be below the tabs, not above. Cenarium (talk) 01:10, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Slow Wikipedia Connection
I don't know if this issue belongs here. I've noticed in the last few months that Wikipedia has slowed down. I'm not sure whether it dates from the user interface changes. In particular, I notice more instances where my (Firefox) status bar says it's "waiting" or "connecting," even some instances where it is unable to connect before timing out. Wikipedia (for me) used to be very crisp and quick. I'm wondering if this is a problem others are experiencing (whether they are editors like me or just plain users) and, if so, whether the problem is being addressed.

(If there's a better place to have this discussion, please tell me.)--Bbb23 (talk) 16:40, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Does this happen even when you are logged out? Do you have some non-standard preferences like formatting or default image size? This can affect page loading time, because each page is cached, but only for the combinations of preferences that visited it recently. But the slowdown should be noticeable only on very big or complex pages. Svick (talk) 22:05, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty much logged in all the time. I could try it at work where I don't log in at all. As far as I can tell, I have no non-standard preferences (I looked). The problem isn't transferring data (meaning the size of the data - I have a very fast connection, at least 10Mbps) - it's the length of time Wikipedia takes to respond at all, implying that Wikipedia is the problem. Although it doesn't happen all the time, it happens with some regularity.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:13, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Bugzilla question
How do I relate the information in a Bugzilla report to the real world? If I look at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Code/MediaWiki/64726 it shows that a bug I am desperate to see fixed, https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22474 is included. If I look at WP:About, it shows that we are running r66620. Silly me: I would think that since 66620 is bigger than 64726, we'd already have the fix. Alas, no. How do I find out when we will?&mdash;Kww(talk) 06:35, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Wikimedia does not always run the latest version of the software. It runs the software that is in the WMF branch, specifically the 1.16wmf4 branch. The number you see in About, refers to the latest revision that was deployed from that specific branch. Almost all changes are made initially in trunk. When a change is prioritized and copied to the branch, this is usually listed BELOW the revision diff in the CodeReview system. See for instance this revision. At the bottom it says that this revision was copied to 1.16wmf4 in a 2nd revision (67753). —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:50, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * P.S. in this specific case, i would call this change a new feature. It is for the 1.17 release (1.16 is almost final now, but not yet released). That means that before you see this on Wikipedia, probably a few more months will pass. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:53, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Line through Image
Hi Everyone, I’m relatively new to editing Wikipedia, and I think I’ve run into a site-wide problem already (sorry). I’ve made extensive changes to the Burnley page, including nesting the infobox in a single column wikitable to create an easy to manage vertical image gallery. While (I think) it works well, I’ve run into the following problem: The section lines run through the images from the third section onwards (even though the edit link is in the correct place). The one tiny reference that I was able to find, leads me to think that a change may be required to common.css which I can’t do myself.

Any suggestions? (Apologies if I’ve missed something obvious). IE8 on Win7 pro --Trappedinburnley (talk) 13:22, 13 June 2010 (UTC)


 * This looks similar to . Svick (talk) 14:00, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree, sort of (IE dosn't seem to want to let me turn on compatibility view for wikipedia, and switching to monobook didn't seem to do much either). I've installed Firefox and it's fine, so if this is limited to ie8 I care a fair amount less. --Trappedinburnley (talk) 14:53, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

help with titleparts
There's an unfortunate piece of strange behaviour at musicline.de: it expects internal "/" characters to be encoded with %A5. I built a template to compensate for it at singlechart/germanencode. It works fine, with one nasty glitch: it outputs an extra space at the end of the string. There's a simple test case at Template talk:singlechart/germanencode that demonstrates. That extra space is fatal: it breaks the URL in the caller at the wrong place. I can't figure out where the space comes from. Can anyone else?&mdash;Kww(talk) 16:17, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Fixed it. Don't know how, but it's repaired.&mdash;Kww(talk) 16:30, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Browsers crashing upon accessing Wkipedia main page (en.wikipedia.org)
All browsers netscape 7.0 and mozilla in Solaris and Linux are crashing upon accessing Wikipedia main pages as of yesterday. Wikipedia can now be accessed only through Windows browsers (i.e., Windows Explorer, etc.). —Preceding unsigned comment added by &#32;Vescalant (talk • contribs) 04:17, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Reported as 23926 by someone else. Voted "normal" (!!!!) This is a total crash bug (should be marked "serious") caused by a recently added javascript that is not integral to the look of the site, possibly the new edit menu which presumably uses updated drop-down graphics and whatever. This is a huge problem for those of us who have it.
 * Observation: Turn off javascript and the page (including new skin and edit functions) loads fine on Netscape, although the script causing the problem probably turns on and off some pop-up menus that wouldn't work on those broswers anyway and should therefore have a global browser test for those scripts.
 * Vector (is that the name of the new skin?) also looks fine with javascript turn off, so the source of the crash one of the controllers for a special feature that only recently got ported over in the last week or two, AFTER the new skin was implemented, since the skin is not the source of the crash, a Wikimedia script is.
 * I believe the problem is a javascript controller (perhaps for the advanced edit features?) since it started on Wikimedia, then all Wikimedia pages using Vector beta, started crashing older browsers when they hit the same script, and when the new skin has imported to the main site, it initially worked just fine on older browsers. up till the past week or day or so. While only a "small number" of people have older (2004) browsers, this renders Wikipedia completely inaccessible to them.
 * The site still works on Netscape 7 when javascript is turned off, it only turns off the advanced edit menu, and such things, one of which is presumably the source of the error. So this seems like a fixable bug even if the fix is to revert to monobook for those (of us) users, or simply tell the browser to ignore the script in question.
 * I don't yet have a logon id (although I plan to, but why take the trouble if the site is inaccessible to me on my regular computer?) but people shouldn't have to log on to a site that they can't access in order to submit a bug report or set their preferences to traditional view.
 * At the very least, set the default skin to monobook for all older browser users until the problem is fixed.
 * Although I think the problem is easily fixable since it's not inherent to the new look. And fixing the problem would fix the problem for Wikimedia too, which has been crashing the same pages on selected features that used Vector beta since last fall. Sincerely, --berr 216.15.63.67 (talk) 05:00, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Almost all bugs are 'normal'. Serious and critical bugs are bugs that affect ALL users. This problem affects just 0.2% or something of our audience. The most significant problem with fixing this issue, is probably going to find the hardware to test it on. It may take a while. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:06, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't it be a browser (software) issue? The problem can be fixed, at least temporarily: set the default layout to "monobook" for all those of us users in question who are on older browsers.
 * You could even display the current layout on older browsers by telling older browser users to ignore javascript emanating from Wikimedia, which should cause the new Vector layout (is that what it's called?) to display and function normally, with perhaps some minimal loss of functionality.
 * I would recommend either approach as a quick and easy stopgap. (my case I investigated a little bit by turning javascript off, thereby causing the new layout to display and edit normally).
 * If you want, you (or whoever knows) can post the global javascript files on the bugzilla page (the ones that every page calls), and I can run them thru the javascript console on my older browser (on an example of older hardware in question) and let me know what to look for.
 * (i.e. assuming every page is now calling a Wikimedia gadget that older browsers can't read, since the Wikimedia pages that use Vector were already crashing said browsers, whereas the new skin was not crashing said browsers until some script or other got ported over recently from Vector beta). That might help you diagnose? Thanks, --berr 216.15.63.67 (talk) 15:39, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes it is a browser problem. The issue is much more complicated than that however. Non registered users all get exactly the same version of the HTML. There is no way around that, as we would have to increase the number of servers multiple times. We can also not work around this issue with Javascript, because it is the javascript FILE that makes the browser crash, not the executing of the Javascript code. But I and Roan have spent multiple hours on this problem today, and it seems as we might have found a workaround for the problem. The solution however also needs to be tested on the other 99.8% of the browser market, so it will take a little more time to verify that our fix won't break anything else. All aside, old browsers have an end of life, especially when they tend to crash. Consider upgrading to SeaMonkey or if you are on MacOS 9, Classila. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 17:09, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

This issue should now be fixed. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:24, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

"Maximum" function for comparison
Hey folks,

Got a bit of a tricky problem at multiple image/sandbox. I need a way to find the greatest value out of ten different possible widths. Comparing them one by one doesn't seem to work, and this is backed up by the suggestion in max that it only works for a maximum of three different values. Is there an obscure parser function which might work here, or does anyone have any suggestions? The present code (which errors out unless exactly 10 widths are given) is as follows:

<pre style="overflow: auto">
 * vertical  =

Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 11:20, 14 June 2010 (UTC)


 * How about nesting the maxes? 10 seems to work. --McGeddon (talk) 12:10, 14 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Awww yeah. Perfect. Cheers! :) Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:25, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Safari 5.0, monobook skin, my watchlist
Howdy all. I recently updated from Safari 4.x to 5.0. I use Windows XP SP 3. After the update, anytime I have the monobook skin selected, and try to view my watchlist in Safari 5.0, I get a message from Windows saying that it needs to close Safari due to an error. It also happens on occasion when I just try to bring up the main page. I used to have code in my monobook.js, but I emptied it out, refreshed, and even emptied Safari's cache. The error still comes up. A portion of the error message can be seen here. I tried to pastebin the error report contents, but it won't let me copy/paste. I tried using this link, and still got the error. So far, I can browse perfectly fine when logged into my RockfangBot account. I'm about to try reinstalling java. I asked in the help chat room, and they suggested I bring it up here. If anyone has any advice, please share. :) Rockfang (talk) 21:33, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * If your Safari crashes, it is a bug in Safari, not Wikipedia's fault. You could report it to Apple: have a look at the Safari support site and maybe this topic. Svick (talk) 22:12, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for replying. I understand that at least part of the blame is in Safari, but this error only has shown up for me while using wikipedia.  I've tried a number of other websites.  I will try the second link you provided.  Thank you.--Rockfang (talk) 22:45, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * First of all, JAVA and JavaScript are totally not related, so reinstalling JAVA will definetly not help you. Beyond this, I have no idea. I think it is a bug in Safari windows and Apple probably will have to take care of it. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 22:53, 12 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the tip. I understand they aren't the exact same thing.  My purpose in sharing that information was to provide steps that have already been taken.--Rockfang (talk) 00:22, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, Safari 5 on OSX 10.6 loads both my watchlist and the main page without error. I also tried the Windows version on XP SP3 (virtualized) and had no errors, so it may be something with your particular installation. —DoRD (talk) 13:58, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for replying. I tried repairing, and remove and reinstall, but it still happens.  And only on wikipedia.  I guess I'll just wait until an update comes out for Safari and hopes that fixes it.--Rockfang (talk) 17:54, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You could try asking at Reference desk/Computing: someone there might have some advice. Gwinva (talk) 02:11, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Drop down menu underneath edit summary
First, if you could solve this problem it would be greatly appreciated. Second, I did a quick search through the Pump technical archives but didn't find anything that addresses this problem. This could partly be, because I wouldn't know what the title is of such a problem or how it would be described, except as I might describe it here.

Third, I went to Bugzilla, but I am not inclined to give my email address as it appears that email addresses will be visible to the public. And I don't have a secondary account or free web email service because I wouldn't use it on a regular basis. OK now the problem...

When I try to enter a character into the edit box using the drop down menu underneath the edit summary, instead of entering the character, the entire page rapidly scrolls (or jumps) to the top of the article. Alongside the drop down menu is a set of characters that comes with each setting. The settings are titled: Insert, Wiki-markup, Symbols, Latin, etc. etc. It is when I click on any one of these characters that the entire page rapidly scrolls upward, actually to the title of the article. This happens instead of entering the character into the edit box, as part of the article being edited. Thanks in advance for looking into this Steve Quinn (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 00:18, 13 June 2010 (UTC).
 * Yes this is a known issue. I will fix it later in the week, it requires some coordination with the developers in order to repair this problem properly. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:58, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I have the same problem and will add two details. 1. The same problem occurs with ~ and . 2. The problem occurs with Internet Explorer 7.0, but all these insertions work correctly with Firefox 6.0. Dirac66 (talk) 22:44, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I am glad this is a known issue, and can be fixed. BTW I am in no rush, I have been working around it, and can continue to do so. Perhaps, I should have mentioned that I have Internet Explorer 7.0. Thanks for your responses. Steve Quinn (talk) 00:38, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * This is being tracked as one of the issues at but may have been mentioned in other bugs as well, as it comes up at Requests for comment/May 2010 skin change/Bug reports‎ in a variety of contexts. ~ Ningauble (talk) 00:40, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Not working for me on Chrome on WinXP. DuncanHill (talk) 13:14, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * OK now for me on IE 7.0 and WinXP Home. Thanks. Dirac66 (talk) 01:45, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Error when trying to edit or compare edit differences on article
Article in question is List of Wales national rugby union players and it is eventually going to a blue Wikimedia Foundation error page with the following error in various languages: "'Our servers are currently experiencing a technical problem. This is probably temporary and should be fixed soon. Please try again in a few minutes.'" Whilst it's a fairly long page, there are others that are longer and which don't have the problem, and it used to work fine before. I'm on IE, and this error has happened on numerous occasions over the last week or so. Please note I also posted this query to the relevant WikiProject page but no response yet. Eldumpo (talk) 21:00, 14 June 2010 (UTC)


 * A server error isn't going to be IE's problem. I'd fancy that this is a temporary glitch; it's working fine here now. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 21:27, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It's still not working for me, and when I try and compare edits it takes ages to load and then eventually comes up with the error page. Is anyone else having problems, else it's something to do with my settings? Eldumpo (talk) 07:21, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It's certainly taking a stupidly long time to load. I would hazard a guess that this might be due to the thousands (literally) of dts templates and the like it transcludes. It's not something you're doing; it's a server-side problem. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:53, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I've encountered similar errors when trying to edit extremely long sublists of United States National Register of Historic Places listings, such as National Register of Historic Places listings in Denver, Colorado before we split it into several pieces for navigability purposes. The page is simply so long and so complex, with so many templates, that the server has trouble processing the edit or loading the page or something like that.  Nyttend (talk) 13:54, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Monobook insert characters dropdown
Is the insert characters dropdown no longer supported for Monobook? -- I haven't changed to Vector because I dislike the new format, but today I've found the insert characters dropdown is replaced by a limited list of items which require copy and paste, thus making it much slower to edit using special characters such as en rules. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:01, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It has been fixed again. I think it was temporary. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  01:34, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Still not working for me :( Espresso Addict (talk) 01:42, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Seems to be fixed now. Excellent, thanks! Espresso Addict (talk) 17:34, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Not working for me. Monobook, Chrome, WinXP. DuncanHill (talk) 13:12, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Problem with pop-ups and en-dashes
When a page title contains an en-dash (an obscure and untypeable symbol beloved of the MoS), pop-ups shew the page as empty. DuncanHill (talk) 13:00, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That is because Internet Explorer is not supported in Navigation popups. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:10, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Who said anything about IE? I use Chrome. DuncanHill (talk) 17:21, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Exactly, if you don't say things, I start making assumptions :D —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 17:32, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That may be true, but as I have pointed out before, it is not the only case. I don't know why it can't be reproduced, but I have still problems in Chrome with en-dashes; hovering over List of Pokémon (341–360) shows a page title of List of Pokémon (341â360) and content as empty. I can usually view a diff in a popup for similarly titled pages, but not the history or the page itself. —Ost (talk) 16:49, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Well I cannot reproduce that issue, so I cannot help you. Perhaps someone else can find the problem ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 17:32, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * In case anyone is reading here and not at WT:POP, it appears that the gadget causing conflicts with popups is the final one for JavaScript compatibility; disabling fixes en-dashes in Chrome for me. —Ost (talk) 20:51, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Fixes it for me too, thanks Ost. DuncanHill (talk) 22:29, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

'MY' character set
I can't get pages on my.wikipedia.org, like http://my.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E1%80%90%E1%80%AC%E1%80%B7%E1%80%82%E1%80%BB%E1%80%BA%E1%80%99%E1%80%9F%E1%80%AC%E1%80%9B%E1%80%BA, to show; nor the transwiki links on en.wikpeida in that language. What font/ character set do I need to install? (I'm using various browsers under Windows XP) Andy Mabbett (User: Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 14:15, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * See Malayalam_script and Help:Multilingual_support_(Indic). —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:16, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * See this link: http://my.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Font It has links to free fonts at the end of the page. Morn (talk) 15:19, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * A good first step to extend font coverage is to install Code2000. It covers a range of things you will encounter, including Myanmar. It is not however (let me point this out before I get hit over the head ;-) the best font for a number of languages, and some people think, with some reason, that parts of it are fairly ugly. One can install it, and then look for specific fonts for languages to improve the presentation if needed. (for some ideas on preferred fonts, see wikt:MediaWiki:Common.css where we set default preferences for the wiktionary, for example Mymr is Padauk, Myanmar3, Myanmar2, Myanmar1, ParabaikSans, MyMyanmar) Robert Ullmann (talk) 17:24, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Template:Alr
I recently created Template:Alr (ALR = "Article Length Rating") for use with WP:NRHP and really anyone else that wants to use it. It gets the size of an article and rates it on a 0-10 scale based on the size of the article. We use it for our new articles to see which ones could use more work, and which ones are satisfactory. I just added the template to WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/New articles/2009, and I've run into an issue. Because the template uses the parser function, when many of them are transcluded on a single page, it breaks the limit and puts the page into Category:Pages with too many expensive parser function calls.

The only way around this is to either not transclude as many times on the same page or optimize the code to use less expensive parser functions. Currently it uses twice – once to see if the length is more than 20,000 bytes (in which case the article receives a "10" rating), and once more to rate the article if it isn't a 10. My question is can this code be optimized to only call once? The code is copied below:

<pre style="overflow-x:scroll"> |

Thanks!--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:20, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You seem to have a reasonable range of values. You could try a  instead, like so:

<pre style="overflow-x:scroll">

There's probably a mistake somewhere in there; I look back when I'm not in a hurry. <font style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> Intelligent  sium  20:58, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Found the error (shouldn't have truncated the second time). This does have the minor disadvantage of changing your layout, however: the rating scale will be 0-1,999; 2,000-3,999; and so forth. The 15 is an arbitrary large number to make sure all the decimals are gone, because I don't remember at the moment the place at which  rounds. <font style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> Intelligent  sium  21:05, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah, awesome! I didn't even think about using #switch. I used a different variation though.. I stuck with "floor" instead of "trunc" (code below), which works the same way. No problem with changing the limits; I'll just update the doc. I was wondering what you were doing when you were truncating a second time haha.. here's the code I ended up using:

<pre style="overflow-x:scroll">


 * Unfortunately, this still doesn't save the 2009 page from the category. Apparently there are over 500 template calls on the page anyway, so it still brings up an error. Thanks for your help! --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 21:26, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Link FA and Link GA look horrible in Vector
It's simply uncommon to have bullets there, and with Link GA, there's whitespace visible within the icon. I think this template needs a redesign for Vector. --The Evil IP address (talk) 14:55, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Why is the Link GA code using an image with a white background in the first place. Doesn't seem very handy :D —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:52, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * File:Monobook-bullet-star.png and File:Monobook-bullet-ga.png should both be changed to have transparent backgrounds. They should probably be vectorized, too. Algebraist 16:44, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, someone whip up an SVG version of the two? Also, on Vector, I think that perhaps more padding should be added between the images and the text, similar to how it is on Monobook. It seems too squished at the moment. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 16:59, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure we should actually use bullets in Vector. Since the developers have removed them in there, it looks unusual to see them there. However, I must admit that I have no better idea what to do instead. --The Evil IP address (talk) 18:10, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * To avoid an unnecesary work to whoever is making the new images, is in discussion if it's right to use Link GA or not --by Màñüé£†¹5 talk 02:16, 8 June 2010 (UTC)


 * One possible option is to have the stars on the right, see example here in ruwiki. — AlexSm 14:33, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Chinese Wikipedia has also put it on the right, See here.--DS - fax 09:56, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The problem with stars on the right is of course that they are visually harder to match to the language they apply to, due to the large horizontal space between language and star. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:23, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Mysterious Wikipedia traffic drop
I'm noticing a rather steep drop in Wikipedia traffic lately, e.g. for the EN main page (http://stats.grok.se/en/201006/Main_Page). Other projects like WP-DE show the same trend (http://stats.grok.se/de/201006/Hauptseite). What's going on, is the stats tool broken or is this real? And what is causing this decline? Morn (talk) 10:05, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * School is out for the summer? —DoRD (talk) 13:16, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe, or is it due to the Soccer World Cup? (Since the drop is the same on the German Wiki.) I think WP also had a minor technical glitch on the 11th, but hopefully that's been fixed... Morn (talk) 13:20, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * P.S. I also notice that last year around this time, there was no drop in viewership. So it can't be the schools. The WP main page always seems to get millions of hits daily, no matter what time of year. Even on Dec. 25th, 2009 there were 3.1M hits! That's about as low as it goes normally. Morn (talk) 13:25, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks like it's a technical issue with the stats tools after all, see User_talk:Henrik. Hopefully the stats will be back to normal tomorrow. Morn (talk) 13:34, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Good. I've been wondering about this as well; it's good that we have an answer.  A pity that Henrik isn't really around anymore to help with this sort of thing.  Nyttend (talk) 17:33, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, i figured it had to be a problem with the stats tool because the Google Insights shows no equivalent change on topics such as Lady Gaga (compare with Google Insights), Barack Obama (compare with Google Insights), Eckhart Tolle (compare with Google Insights). Gregcaletta (talk) 04:16, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * stats.grok.se would have appear to have gone AWOL last nite. No statistics at all for June 15.    Maile66 (talk) 17:44, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Collapse option seems dead?
I've noticed that all the templates depending on some code to allow for collapsing are not collapsed. There must be something wrong with the behind-the-scenes code, but I'm not qualified to fix it, let alone identify it. Can this be fixed?  upstate NYer  23:23, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, my mistake. Fixed now. I tested it, but apparently the change hadn't propagated to all the servers yet. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:28, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, was noticing the same problem  Tommy2010   [message]  23:51, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah sorry for the disruption. I was catering to our Internet Explorer users trying to fix the bugs with the bottom inserttools and a few other elements in the new Vector interface. Path of avoidance of these kinds of problems is in my opinion blocking access to all Internet Explorer users and telling them to get a proper browser. I now spent 1 month on this issue, and if it still doesn't work after all this, i'm gonna be very angry with my IE voodoo dolls, they will not survive. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:54, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Surprised people still use IE.... Chrome's the way to go!  Tommy2010   [message]  00:04, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I was wondering why the collapse boxes didn't work in Firefox. Bypassing the cache worked. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  01:18, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Here's something I just determined:
 * Chrome 5.0.375.55 works as expected; Hide/Show links are there and things are collapsible.
 * Chrome 5.0.375.70 does not work; and has the error described here.
 * My two cents. &mdash; Timneu22 · &#32; talk 20:33, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Diffs out of order
I discovered a glitch while tinkering with the MediaWiki API. This diff appears out of order relative to other diffs. Notice that the "previous" edit is a year later than the "current" diff. The timestamps appear to be correct -- the 2001 version is clearly an earlier revision than the 2002 version -- it's the revision id which seems wrong. I understand the revid to be sequential in time, but is not in this case, and it seems that also messes up the diff view. If you traverse backwards in diffs, the revids decline as they should, but that one diff appears to be out of place.

Does anyone know if this is a bug with the software, or perhaps some database glitch from the early days? Should I report it to MediaWiki as a bug? ATren (talk) 03:50, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * If I recall correctly, some time in the distant past numerous old revisions were lost. Some of them were later restored somehow, but with new IDs. That's why the ID of the oldest revision is greater than those that come after it. Hopefully someone more familiar with MediaWiki and the history of Wikipedia can provide some more information on what happened. Reach Out to the Truth 04:08, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * This is mostly correct. Some revisions were lost, but still present on http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org. It took years, but now these old 'missing' changes can be imported into wikipedia, to restore history sort of speak. The only problem is the effect noticed by ATren. I don't believe it is possible to fix this. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:18, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks, that makes sense. The software doesn't seem to handle it too well, but I'm not sure if that can be fixed. The assumption in the software seems to be "sequential revid == forward in time", but that's clearly not true in these diffs. The MediaWiki API also makes that assumption, because the continuation parameter of API queries returns the next revid even for timestamp queries (that's how I found this glitch). To work around this glitch, the API should return a timestamp-based continuation, not a revid-based one. In any case, it's not a major concern for me; I can work around it. I just wanted to get some input from others. Thanks. ATren (talk) 11:51, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The diff linked above does not contain an edit that was imported from the Nostalgia Wikipedia. About 90% of edits from 2001 were imported in September 2002, and hence their revision ID's indicate that fact; see Usemod article histories. Graham 87 06:34, 16 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I've also imported an edit from the Nostalgia Wikipedia to Eiffel, to make things more interesting. :-) Graham 87 09:03, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Languages panel title tooltip for links
Languages panel links in the left navigation panel currently dont have tooltip (also called alt text or title) which show up on mouseOver that link. But all the links in wikipedia article show the title of linked article as that tooltip. Same feature should be implemented in language panel links too which are very helpful to see the title of the different language article. Currently the article title shows up in status bar of the browser, but that is full url not only title. So showing up target article title will look beautiful and consistent with wikilinks in the article beside. Noted trip3 (talk) 08:56, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * For example see article India where wikilinks in article show tooltip when mouse pointed over link, while same page when mouse pointed on other language links on left navigation panel tooltip doen't show up. Noted trip3 (talk) 09:02, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I have implemented this change in revision 68079 of the software. It will take a few months, before you will see it in wikipages probably. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:09, 15 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that was fast! This change can hardly cause any bugs. Noted trip3 (talk) 05:57, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Flagged-revisions menulet rendering bug
The "accepted v" menulet overwrites the GA insignia. This is with the vector skin, with no user-level css or other local modifications. The only nonstandard display setting is that I have the "[edit] for lede section" gadget enabled. DMacks (talk) 00:56, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for reporting this. We have a long-term fix in the works, and we'll see if there are some short-term fixes to improve things for this case. William Pietri (talk) 06:26, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Gadget adapted. But this really requires a more sensible approach at some point :D —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:50, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

In Monobook, for me at least, it's appearing about half way down the explanatory banner, and not where the padlock used to be. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 15:43, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The CSS was only added yesterday, you probably have a cached version of Monobook.css and thus the change has not reached you yet... —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:53, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I have done some more CSS cleanup on this. The element should now pretty much behave like the protection lock position wise. Bypass of your cache required of course. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 18:36, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It's probably just me, as I already have a custom shift-up for .topicon and #coordinates. What's the css selector for the doodad? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:41, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * div.flaggedrevs_short or #mw-fr-revisiontag. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:00, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorted. Thanks. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 21:48, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Seems to be working. Thanks! DMacks (talk) 00:01, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Editors user group
I noticed something strange in the user rights log; "# (del/undel) 02:52, 16 June 2010 Ser Amantio di Nicolao (talk | contribs | block) changed rights for User:Ser Amantio di Nicolao from Autoreviewers and Reviewers to Autoreviewers, Reviewers and Editors ‎ (autopromoted)" There's a few more, but not many. Going to User Rights management I see the log entry again, and a list of groups this user is in, including "Editors" linking to Editor... but no check box to modify this right, whatever it is. Special:ListGroupRights also makes no mention of an "editors" group.... so... can anyone enlighten me? Courcelles (talk) 05:05, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It's related to the flagged revisions implementation, now known [in doublespeak] as Pending changes. Shadowjams (talk) 05:18, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I know about flagged revs, and I've been handing out the reviewer flag like it was day old newspaper, but the editor group was new to me, as was seeing an autopromotion in the logs- when a new user hits autoconfirmed, there's no log entry for that. Is "editor" going to end up superfluous to "reviewer"? Courcelles (talk) 05:23, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh I'm sorry. You're right. Actually, you assigned me the reviewer flag (thanks :)). Yeah, what is this? Shadowjams (talk) 05:31, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Weird. Special:ListGroupRights doesn't list this group. Ucucha 06:13, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * We currently have four editors. Ucucha 06:30, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That is weird. Afaik the only wiki where you can assign yourself rights is en.labs.wikimedia.org. Is this editor right related to the editor right on Wikinews and such-like? {&#123;<font color="#CC0099">Sonia &#124;ping&#124;enlist}&#125; 06:38, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Perhaps this is a question for Starling, or one of them technical fellas Shadowjams (talk) 06:57, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Moved from ANI

Apparently the editors group permissions are not set/used for the English Wikipedia, but it seems the group is added somehow regardless. Being looked into by sysadmins and when they wake up by Pending Changes experts. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:10, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The Editor group was disabled yes (which is why you didn't see it on UserRights, ListUsers, etc). However, the setting to autopromote the user into the Editor group wasn't shut off. This has been fixed and no more editors should be created. <b style="color:#c22">^</b><b style="color:#000">demon</b><sup style="color:#c22">[omg plz] <em style="font-size:10px;">14:45, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Editing bar when not editing?
When I click on some text while not editing, a flashing bar like you'd see in a word processor, or our edit window, is displayed.How did that get there? Is it just me?--Patton123 (talk) 13:54, 16 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I imagine it's standard for whatever browser you're using. OrangeDog  (τ • ε) 19:33, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Reflist & Safari
Safari 5 and Chrome 5 have fixed the bug that caused us to remove WebKit column support from reflist. Would anyone running those browsers please test Template:Reflist/Safari testcase and give feedback at Template talk:Reflist. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 14:55, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I would if Template:Reflist/Safari testcases was blue. Stifle (talk) 15:09, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Fixed link. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:13, 16 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I can verify it works correctly in Google Chrome 5.0.375. However, it might be some years before we can actually use it since there will be people using old web browser.  BTW, does anyone know the status with safari mobile and the old iPhone OS devices? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dispenser (talk • contribs) 15:17, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

stats.grok.se
stats.grok.se has been limping along below par for days. Now it seems totally kaput - nothing on individual page history stats for June 15. Did this happen because of changes implemented in the system yesterday? Can this be fixed? Maile66 (talk) 17:17, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Collapsible archive box
Could anyone explain why the archive box on my talk page is no longer collapsing? Thanks, Sandy Georgia (Talk) 01:37, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It is for me... Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 01:39, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Tito: I checked other browsers. It's collapsing in Firefox and Safari, but not in IE8.  This is new (not sure since when, but I can't find any recent changes to the template).  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 01:52, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It might have something to do with bug 23570. Maybe trying the procedure there helps? Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 02:10, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Tito-- ah, ha, I did install a new version of Java today, so that was probably it. Clearing my cache fixed it.  Thanks again!  Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 02:16, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Those big "The use of this file is permitted only on Wikipedia." notices
How does one cause one's image to be tagged with the big "The use of this file is permitted only on Wikipedia." that includes an F3 speedy deletion? I always assumed that it was a case of the uploader not providing a license, but File:Sizan Ronaldo.JPG had such a notice despite being tagged at upload with GFDL-self and PD-self. Moreover, the same individual had earlier uploaded a similar image with just GFDL-self, but it was deleted because it had the same notice. Nyttend (talk) 13:13, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * If, under the License option on the upload form, you choose the option that only Wikipedia can use the file, this is automatically applied. The option exists in order to identify the people who are uploading that sort of file so it can be deleted - if the option didn't exist, they would still upload the file, but may choose a license that they didn't actually mean/want/have permission for. A le_Jrb <sup style="color:blue;">talk  13:34, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I just looked, and now I realise that it's at Special:Upload. I'd seen the  line on these pages, but I couldn't figure out how to select "permission" anywhere at Upload, and I'd assumed that it was there, not Special:, that this originated.  Now that I know how it happens, I'm curious — would there be any way to cause "permission" not to appear if there's a valid license template on the image as well?  As I said, the Ronaldo image was deleted because it had the "permission" template, despite having the GFDL template as well.  Nyttend (talk) 01:25, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * There probably is, but I would think (from what Ale_jrb said) the whole system is designed to prevent people from unwittingly licensing an image under, say, the GFDL, without knowing that this means anyone can use it for any purpose. It's a service to them. (Plus if the don't understand that, they might be the sort of person to be uploading files they don't have the rights to at all.) - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 08:53, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Airline doesn't work
The Template:Infobox Airline doesn't work in the article Thai Airways International.
 * Input: Founded      = 1960
 * Output: Founded

--Scriberius (talk) 15:54, 17 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Fixed. Thai Airways had "Founded", not "founded". &mdash; Timneu22 · &#32; talk 15:56, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Stupid title is unlinkable?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Post_Deployment/Mobilization_Respite_Absence_(PARMA); which is an AFD for a title with ''' at the end of it. How can an article like that be "linked-to"? &mdash; Timneu22 · &#32; talk 15:53, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/%27%27%27Post_Deployment/Mobilization_Respite_Absence_%28PARMA%29%27%27%27 βcommand 15:58, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry... WIKIlink? &mdash; Timneu22 · &#32; talk 15:59, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You can Url encode the apostrophes:  produces %27%27%27Post Deployment/Mobilization Respite Absence (PARMA)%27%27%27. Svick (talk) 16:14, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yikes. Ok. Anyway we moved the article because the AFD template had issues. Thanks. &mdash; Timneu22 · &#32; talk 16:16, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Due to MW bug 8932. Rjwilmsi  16:48, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Could we somehow global blacklist titles with double apostrophies until the bug is resolved, possibly with a friendly error message? — Dispenser 00:15, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * If we blacklist multiple apostrophes, we ought to do it permanently, because they cause plenty of other issues. — Gavia immer (talk) 00:21, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikimedia Mobile extension
Hello. Just saw a global sysop removing a Javascript redirect for mobile users in all wikis. I'd like to learn more about this change. What is the default websites for mobile now and why was it changed? And what is this extension? Thanks in advance. Yours, Dodoïste (talk) 22:50, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * A mediawiki extension now directly includes the script to the HTML. This was done to make it simpler to manage the redirect and to enable and disable it when the mobile service is up/down for maintenance or whatever. In Common.js, it isn't centrally managed and most of all, it is clientside cached for 30 days, which in the case of downtime, isn't very handy. The extension is managed like any other extension and located here. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:07, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * PS. the change was not by a global sysop, it was done by a WMF system administrator, who have full final control of the WMF technical infrastructure. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:12, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks TheDJ ! :-) Sure, it's a good practice to make it easier to maintain that way. Nice job ! ^_^ Dodoïste (talk) 23:21, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I've been having 404 errors everywhere while using Wikipedia on my phone. Whatever was supposed to redirect no longer does so. Killiondude (talk) 06:34, 17 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Can you post more details? What phone (exact OS version would be good), steps to reproduce?--Eloquence* 06:38, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I have an Android phone running version 1.5. Now that I've tried to reproduce the steps in my phone, I see that it was only trying to encode a <tt>/</tt> in the URL as <tt>%2F</tt> which kept leading to 404 pages. It no longer seems to be doing that. However, when I try to disable the mobile site permanently, the page that's brought up says "Invalid target." Killiondude (talk) 06:50, 17 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm getting an error 403 after clicking "disable" on my BB, but it does seem to work regardless. Do you get to the page with the "Disable" button? Does it have the intended effect? I'll forward the bug to the developer.--Eloquence* 07:17, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * There is a bug there. I have already fixed it, but the code is not yet deployed. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:05, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * What code? If you mean r67853 then I'm pretty sure that didn't fix any 403 error. -- Tim Starling (talk) 01:12, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * No, it was a bug in the form of the disable page. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:31, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

2 questions for sortable lists
I'm wanting to make a sortable list modeled after Video game table for use with a listing of english translated visual novels currently being worked on at User:Jinnai/VN, however I am coming across 2 major issues.
 * 1) Making the subheadings sortable. I can make the main ones sortable, but I cannot seem to do so for the subsections, such as in the above as indivisual release dates.
 * 2) I am wondering if there is a way to add the notes section that is available in the template without creating a second template as the item will likely only be used on that page. See List of Dragon Quest media for an example of how it might be used. 陣 内 Jinnai 19:08, 17 June 2010 (UTC)


 * In response to your questions:
 * To be sortable, the rows of the table all need to have the same number of columns as each other. There is a complicated workaround described at Help:Sorting; essentially, if you hide table cells instead of spanning them, and ensure that each cell begins with appropriate alphabetical content (which can itself be hidden if not what you want displayed), you can get the javascript sorting to work. But this might make the page hard to maintain so you might want to choose between having a simpler grid (with no spanned columns or rows) or else abandoning sortable columns. Remember, even if you work out how to create the perfect table, it may confuse subsequent editors if it is very complicated!
 * I assume you are trying to avoid creating a new template equivalent to Video game table item. This template simply adds the following wikitext for each item in the list (where, , , , and (optionally) , are the items you choose to specify, so you could instead manually add the code into the main page if you preferred (replacing the   text as appropriate for each item):


 * - bgcolor="#F2F2F2" align="center"
 * colspan="4" style="border: none; vertical-align: top;" |
 * colspan="4" style="border: none; vertical-align: top;" |
 * colspan="4" style="border: none; vertical-align: top;" |
 * colspan="4" style="border: none; vertical-align: top;" |
 * colspan="4" style="border: none; vertical-align: top;" |
 * colspan="4" style="border: none; vertical-align: top;" |
 * Hope that's of some help.
 * — Richardguk (talk) 05:26, 18 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the help. It looks like I'll have to create a template or 2 for the page anyway as I need both the sortable aspect and the column spanning aspect (the lists will be too large with multiple possible ways of sorting to not valuate sortability when its possible and I need a notes section for most of those pages that'll span the entire width below the basic info and your right that it could become unweildy for inexperienced users as this is meant to be an ongoing list. I'm not really sure how to design such template(s) though since the video game table one isn't sortable. 陣 内 Jinnai 19:10, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I've tried implimenting it on the test page and I'm having trouble with making so that the second row, the Japanese/English divisions are made sortable, not the top row, and are next to each other. 陣 内 Jinnai 22:59, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Was Wikipedia used in Watson
Does anyone know if Wikipedia is used in Watson (artificial intelligence software)?Smallman12q (talk) 20:31, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I doubt it. At the very least, Wikipedia is usually used as a last resort for information for systems such as this (another example is Wolfram Alpha), since Wikipedia is still prone to incorrect information. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 19:23, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Table not displaying where it should
Any idea why the table at Tripartite_classification_of_authority is at the bottom of the page, even through the code is under a dedicated section? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:04, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The most common cause of this is omitting the closing, which I have placed for you. Incidentally, could the information be presented in a table using wiki-syntax rather than HTML? <font style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> Intelligent  sium  20:12, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I notified the editor who added the table to the article of this discussion. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:16, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Swapped to wikitable. --Izno (talk) 02:08, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Help
Would someone be able to help us with this? Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine ---kilbad (talk) 04:07, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Indentations
Hello. Any idea how to indent properly the 2nd and 3rd paragraph of the entry on Greek fire at the List of Byzantine inventions? Thanks in advance. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 18:29, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Don't use bullet points... OrangeDog  (τ • ε) 19:32, 16 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Use double bullet points ( ** ) or use indented bullet points ( :* ). The former shows a bullet point, the latter does not but still indents correctly. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 20:00, 16 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I put the two paragraphs in a div with margin-left:20px, which makes the two paragraphs line up with the preceding one. This is a messy fix, but I couldn't figure out how to set this list style to "list-style-type:none", which would make the bullets disappear. I can't seem to find where Wikipedia controls its ul/li styles, and I don't know why it won't accept a direct style. This should work for now. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:12, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually I figured out what was wrong with my CSS. Not only do you have to set "list-style-type" to none but you have to set "list-style-image" to none as well. Wikipedia apparently sets both (in case users have images turned off?), so they both need to be taken care of. This fix is less messy, and should be a permanent fix. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 20:28, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah; I misread the question and didn't realize that they wanted the paragraphs aligned, but only wanted the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs aligned with each other. This is a common problem with multi-paragraph bullet points (such as The_Dark_Knight_(film)), which is why they aren't really recommended. Another option is to use the following method:

;Greek fire
 * First paragraph
 * Second paragraph


 * <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 20:31, 16 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Gary King's option is probably the best to take, but I've taken the slightly more semantic route to forcing the css on the <li> : Use  instead. --Izno (talk) 20:38, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * On a side note, I wonder why we don't have p's injected when we have li's. Obviously, not all lists should have paragraphs, but still, that leaves me confused. --Izno (talk) 20:41, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Seeing as this is a list article, and Greek fire has its own (comprehensive) article, why not just cut it back to one paragraph? That article's becoming quite a mishmash of list and prose. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 08:57, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Embedded box is running over
If you notice: User:AxG/box/3

Shown here:

Although the bottom embedded blue content box fits within the main template, the top embedded orange title box runs past the main template on the right. How can this be fixed? Adamtheclown (talk) 15:24, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
 * How is that? I put a div inside of the table, which is what was being used for the content part.  Not sure how it will look on other browsers, but it looks fine in Firefox.  I find that mixing tables and divs is not generally a good idea, and it's better to go with all divs. Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk)  21:12, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Sortable wikitables
How does one make a sortable wikitable sort numerically rather than asciibetically? In this case I refer to FIFA World Cup qualification - click "Pld" more than once. -- SGBailey (talk) 17:14, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * See template sort and friends. (Hint, N/A is not a number). —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 17:31, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * (ec) That looks generally glitchy; Why are there four states of sort for the column? —Ost (talk) 17:33, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks DJ; I think that link pointed me to my answer, too, as m:Help:Sorting describes that "[t]he way items are sorted depends on the data type of the item currently in the first row." —Ost (talk) 17:39, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Question, why can't we force a sort mode without resorting to these template hack? Something like class="unsortable" but with sortnumerical, and sortdate.  — Dispenser 21:28, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It's beyond what I can do. If anyone understands what DJ is saying, please go fix it. I replaced the first N/A with 0 and it seemed to sort ok. I relaced it with curly((sort|0|N/A)) and it didn't. -- SGBailey (talk) 22:04, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It is very simple. Don't mix types. If you do mix them, you have to add hidden sortkeys (using the sort template or one of it's siblings), to ALL values in the column. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 02:37, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You mean in order to change 6 entires to curly((sort|0|N/A)) I have to also change the other 1,200 entries to curly((sort|123|123)) style! Search and replace should be able to do it, but that sounds incredibly clunky and naff. I'll give it a go when I've long time to spare. -- SGBailey (talk) 07:11, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I did that and it now sorts everything asciibetically - even the first click. -- SGBailey (talk) 07:46, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You can use the style 123, 45 . The & is for forcing alphabetic sort mode, the leading zeros for making this equivalent with numeric sorting.--Patrick (talk) 08:47, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Too much like hard work. I ended up changing the N/As to -1. -- SGBailey (talk) 18:02, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Just a note: does this automatically. Svick (talk) 18:45, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

css problem
your site is suddenly forcing small fonts on everything. i can't seem to make the larger fonts persist across pages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.215.156.6 (talk) 20:45, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The problem is not in Wikipedia's site CSS, as the font appears normal to me. Try holding Ctrl and scrolling your mouse wheel, or going to your browser's options and enlarging the font. <font style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> Intelligent  sium  23:42, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You can also try [CTRL]+[+], which I tested to work on both Firefox and Internet Explorer. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  01:44, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Reverted edits not showing up in editors' contributions
I thought I was imagining it the first time, but see where an edit by  was reverted, an edit which does not show up in his contributions. Dougweller (talk) 08:16, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * No problem here. I see both edits in both of the users contributions. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:05, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * , it's his first edit in his contributions for me. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  01:43, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * And I can see it now also, odd. This is the second time it's happened to me, but who knows, maybe I've gone blind. :-) Dougweller (talk) 05:56, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Double Bold
When bold is used in table headers, it's redundant. But that seems to cause some VERY odd text including missing characters, etc. I seem to have that problem with Navboxes whose titles link back to the article I'm reading.

For example, when I look at USSenMajLead in the article, Party leaders of the United States Senate, the title of the Navbox comes out looking like this: "======ç======ç======ç======ìç======" instead of "United States Senate Majority Leaders"

Is this a problem with the interface or am I missing a crucial font? I suspect it's a font problem, but I can't figure out which one.—Markles 13:16, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I see no such problem. Does anyone else see it ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:09, 19 June 2010 (UTC)


 * In other look, it comes out as: "U i         S      s  S              jo  i                             s", which seems like the right title with a whole lot of letters missing.—Markles  15:11, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm using Mac OS 10.6.4. It happens in Safari and Chrome but not Firefox.—Markles 19:42, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Unable to reproduce with Safari 5.0, same OS. --<b style="color:#3773A5;">Cyber</b> cobra (talk) 20:17, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Cybercobra. Then it must be an installed-font problem.  Any idea which one or or to fix it?—Markles  21:03, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Try going into TextEdit and put that text. Select that text. Now go to the Font panel (Under menu "Format"->"Font..."). Make sure "All fonts" are selected and "Bold", now go through all the fonts until you see the same problem in TextEdit. No guarantee that it will work, but it's a place to start. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:33, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ta-da! You put your finger on the solution.  I had two old fonts that were corrupted: Helvetica Black and Helvetica Compressed.  Once I disabled them, everything worked fine.  Thank you!—Markles  01:08, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Coordinate processing template
Does anyone know of a template that does this Infobox Burg/coord? I created this to deal with conversion of coordinates copied from the German Wikipedia. If there is no other template that does this, I was thinking of promoting it to something other than a subtemplate. If there is another template, I could merge the one I created. There seem to be quite a few coordinate processing templates scattered about, and the naming conventions aren't always the most obvious. Thanks! Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk) 20:53, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It's similar to what does, but not for the format you're using. I have never seen degrees, minutes and seconds delimited with slashes, is this format usual? If yes, then it might be useful to make it a subtemplate of  and use it in  too. Svick (talk) 21:16, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Currently is setup to help convert articles transwiki'd from the German Wikipedia.  There was consensus to standardize to just this one so the previous functional version was axed.  It might be best to transwiki some of the sub routines here.  — Dispenser 21:26, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The format comes primarily from de:Vorlage:Coordinate. Now that I think about it, I probably should just have my template convert the coordinates to dms, rather than converting them to dec.  Although, having a feature to convert these to dec is useful as well, I suppose.  Thanks! Plastikspork <sub style="font-size: 60%">―Œ <sup style="margin-left:-3ex">(talk)  23:24, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Job queue length
Is taking an age to go down, again. It was six days since I moved an article to make a disambig page (Henri Guérin). I corrected the redirects in the templates on the footballer's article, but they still point to the disambig page. Fix please!  Lugnuts  (talk) 14:12, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The links seem to point to the correct page for me now. If this happens in the future, you can purge the article. (But that doesn't solve the job queue problem, if you're right that that is the problem.) Svick (talk) 14:52, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Database error
When undoing a pending change to Deepwater Horizon oil spill through the secure gateway, I got a proxy error. Reloading causes the following error: <pre style="white-space: pre-wrap"> Database error From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search 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 "RecentChange::save". Database returned error "1213: Deadlock found when trying to get lock; try restarting transaction (10.0.6.46)". Reloading again, the edit saved normally. Why did this happen? PleaseStand (talk) 21:18, 20 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The "deadlock when trying to get a lock" and "lock wait timeout exceeded" messages are both signs of high database load: there are briefly too many people trying to do things to the database at the same time.  Happy ‑ melon  21:23, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia signed me out
I guess this happens after 30 days, though the weird thing is I appeared to be signed in on the first couple of pages I went to.

Now it could be said I still had the pages in my history, except on this computer, if I do CTRL-H, I only get today and yesterday. I wasn't on the computer the day before this happened, so there was supposedly no history.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 20:33, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * This was answered here, sort of.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 15:35, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, basically your browser still holds the old version of the page in the browser cache. See Bypass your cache to see how you can clear your cache. — MC10 ( T • C • GB •L)  01:46, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I used to do that. I learned it from there, and made sure to do it because of the time my uncle had to clear out a bunch of stuff I did. I just figured if it wasn't in the history, it wasn't there period.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 19:56, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Category:Articles containing non-English-language text
I spotted this was a red-link, which is odd as it is populated with over 1000 articles, presumably from templates. See Category:Articles containing non-English-language text. I tried to create it but I seem to have failed. What's going on with this? Fences &amp;  Windows  01:58, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It allowed me to create it this time, but some eyes on why it was a red link would be good. Fences  &amp;  Windows  01:59, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * This is due to a recent (2 hours old now) change in following discussion at Categories for discussion/Log/2010 June 3. The change was from the form Category:Articles containing non-English language text to Category:Articles containing non-English-language text (not the hyphen before “language”). This change affects all the 230 subcategories too and I think the categories should have been created before doing this change. Svick (talk) 02:36, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * A change in a hyphen was worth breaking all these categories? Wikipedians, gotta love em. Fences  &amp;  Windows  19:20, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Wrapping of rendered refs
I noticed this on the Michelle Malkin article -- the window displaying the rendered text just happened to be the right width to show the problem on the first line of the article, and I happened to notice it. I at first thought that it was a WP:REFPUNC problem in the wikitext, but that's not it. Note the two lines of text below:

Michelle Malkin (née Maglalang; born October 20, 1970) is an American conservative blogger, political commentator, and author.

Text-Text Text-Text Text-Text Text-Text Text-Text.

When I narrow the window so that the refs wrap, the ones on the line from the Malkin article don't remain attached to the text string which they follow (the two rendered refs wrap independently as a unit) but the ones on the example text below that do remain attached. I see this with both Firefox 3.6.3 and IE8. Wierd. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 04:53, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Interestingly, on Firefox 3.5.9 if you change "Text" to "author" in your sample, or even "iiiii", it exhibits the same problematic wrapping behavior, while changing "Text" to "wwww" keeps together:

Text-Text Text-Text Text-Text Text-Text Textiiiii.

Text-Text Text-Text Text-Text Text-Text Textwwww.


 * In other words, it seems to depend on the length (in letters) of the last word whether they're kept together. Anomie⚔ 05:50, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * That's all very interesting, but so what? There isn't going to be anything we can do about it. OrangeDog  (τ • ε) 21:56, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Vector & Pending Changes
I see from press releases, that people will directed to a "small magnifying glass" "on the upper right corner of the article". Now I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed that there's already a magnifying glass there for the Vector search. Now we'll have two different star icons and two different magnifying glass icons, all in the top right, all meaning different things.

Who should be complained at more, the "usability" team or the Pending Changes people? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:18, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * This was only finally changed yesterday, I believe. Not entirely sure what the purpose was. I guess a lock conflicts with the "open" idea Pending Changes. But yeah, you are right, this isn't optimal either. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:31, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's got pages behind it, this one. And its own box, with accompanying text, not sure how confusing it would be a casual visitor. I would say probably little impact though, as long as PC remains only on a handful of pages. If we see an expansion, then maybe not. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 14:07, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Pending-changes-magnifying.svg Pending changes clock.svg
 * I made a first draft for another icon. I wanted to use a better clock for it, but the licences were not compatible. So I uploaded the other draft at imageshack. I chose the clock symbol to indicate a "delay" or a "wait", as pending changes are waiting for approval. I believe it makes more sense than a magnifying glass.
 * I hope someone can make a better icon out of it. When it's finished, please convert it to PNG. This file weights more than 2 Mo because it contains plenty of letters. Yours, Dodoïste (talk) 01:29, 18 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Pls see also the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Reviewing. Gwen Gale (talk) 13:05, 18 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You are talking about another kind of icon. This section was not clear enough, so I added the original image with the magnifying glass. Dodoïste (talk) 01:20, 19 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Also please see the discussion at http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Pending_Changes_issues#New_icon_to_avoid_confusion_with_search . We'd like to come up with a new icon, but have many requirements we'd like to get some feedback on. -- RobLa (talk) 22:52, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

File uplaod for non-free fair use image jumps to Wiki Commons
When attempting to upload a non-free, fair use image on Wikipedia, the link jumps to Wiki commons. Non-free fair use images are not allowed on Wiki commons. Hence, I am unable to upload my image onto Wikipedia at this time. If you need more information, please contact me on my talk page, or say so here. Steve Quinn (talk) 04:47, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Someone changed the upload page to have two sections. The first with Commons links and the second with local links. I think it is more confusing now than ever.... I really don't see why it is a good idea. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:42, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I reverted the change. Personally I don't care for non-free content. But the average user will click on the first link and then will get the message you can't upload non-free content. Not practical. Garion96 (talk) 12:18, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for reverting the change. Steve Quinn (talk) 14:39, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * A user not being able to see (and use) the Wikipedia non-free upload link is really not a reason for that revert. I will just remove the non-free link to Commons and put that version back...--Kozuch (talk) 10:26, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually it is. Plus the whole new layout was not much of an improvement, it made the page more confusing. More input and discussion about a change wouldn't be a bad thing. Garion96 (talk) 17:58, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with Garion96. We should probably just wait for that UploadWizard that is currently being developed. It allows for seamless uploading to Commons I believe. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 18:35, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Asian Characters

 * moved from Wikipedia talk:Village pump

Hi，

I哈ve 阿Major 批.

I have a major problem. As you see above, after editing a while my browser starts turning english text into some kind of Asian characters. This happens in BOTH FireFox and Chrome. Can anyone tell me what might be happening??? It stops for a while when I restart my browsers, but it is putting a real crimp in my editing. Thanks Becritical (talk) 16:54, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * For firefox, the keycombo to enable/disable foreign script like this, is shift-alt I believe. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 22:53, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I was using alt/shift/s to save the wiki pages, which activated it.  Becritical (talk) 14:59, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

centralnotice.js showing a banner for a brief moment on every page load
It looks like centralnotice.js was added to load on every page just recently, probably today. What it seems to be doing is making a banner appear (it explains that Wikipedia is getting a new look), which seems to disappear a split-second later after the page finishes loading—this happens in Firefox 3.6, but not in Chrome. It's all from the JavaScript, so it essentially seems to be creating the banner, then after checking the user's cookie, hides the banner accordingly. Since it flashes the banner ad for a split-second or more while a page loads, it's somewhat annoying, and since it only started happening today, is there anything that can be done about it? Such as, change the way it works? <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 00:57, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Nevermind; what I did was load a page, then canceled the page load so that I saw the banner and nothing else. Then I just hit "Hide". This is pretty much just a hack, though. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 01:11, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It always happens to me, and I can't make it stop. It shows this... Wiki-Sreen-Shot.jpg (you should probably click on it to see it well). It's really annoying because it stays on that screen for as much as five seconds sometimes - I'll try clicking hide, but someone might want to do something about that. ~ <i style="font-size:small; font-family:Arial; color:#666990;">Qwerp</i> Qwertus ·  Contact Me  · 04:03, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that's exactly what I saw. It was quite annoying, as I said. Clicking "Hide" should fix it, if you can pause it quickly enough before it disappears. <font face="Verdana"> Gary King ( talk ) 04:09, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, it worked - thanks! ~ <i style="font-size:small; font-family:Arial; color:#666990;">Qwerp</i> Qwertus ·  Contact Me  · 04:51, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Currently, the centralnotice tool doesn't have a useful way to broadcast to "all projects except the following:...", so it's being run on all projects and JS is being used to hide it on the ones that it's not necessary. It'll only be around for a while, but if it's an issue, user-level (or site-level) CSS saying  should do the trick Nimish Gautam (talk) 17:36, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * A bigger problem is that this citenotice breaks on IE6. See 24083. Lupo 22:49, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Accepted edit on top of pending edit
Can somebody explain why I just got an accepted edit on top of a pending edit on World War I? It has resolved itself now, the history isn't showing any pending edits any more, but it also wasn't a brief glitch, a reload of the page didn't initially fix it (Screenshot). Is that supposed to happen? Amalthea 09:40, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Seen that a few times as well. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 22:03, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Pretty sure it's just the wiki catching up to the accepted edit on the watchlist/history. I've been thrown by it as well. --Izno (talk) 01:22, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Yesterday's POTD
Template:POTD/2010-06-22 is not showing the picture for that date. There is a link to File:Palazzo_Cavalli-Franchetti_WB.jpg, and if I click on that link, it does show the picture but also says "This page has been deleted"! The reason is given as "Image is no longer on Main Page". This combination of things does not make sense to me. If old POTDs are supposed to remain available through the template, it would seem they should not be deleted; if they are deleted, it would seem they should not be visible; and if they are visible at the File: link, they should be visible via the POTD template! (Okay, I can see there could be some confusion due to images in Commons vs. images in Wikipedia, but still...)

This doesn't seem like it could be a browser-specific quirk, but in case it matters, I'm using Firefox 3.6.3 on Linux. --70.48.231.219 (talk) 04:47, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It was just temporary. As I understand it, the images which are going to be on the main page are moved here so we can give them full protection, to prevent a defacement to the main page, and once it's no longer on the main page we delete the image here, and start using the Commons image again. Which has now happened, and you can see the image at Template:POTD/2010-06-22 again - Kingpin13 (talk) 05:26, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

sister project xrefs on main article: execute templates to automatically include redirects to article
A Wikipedia article already cross-references the article's title to entries in Wikimedia's other projects, given a template such as.

I proposed an expansion at Village Pump proposals and an "OK, a cautious yes" was provided. The hope is that someone will know a way to program this.

The expansion proposed is to include redirects.

Sometimes, a WP article is supported by WP redirects from similar titles, mispellings, and so on. The main WP article should similarly cross-reference sister project entries that correspond to titles the WP redirects support.

Example: WP has an article titled "Feminism" and a redirect to it titled "Feminist". The article, via a Wiktionary template, now tells us that Wiktionary has a definition for feminism. But Wiktionary also has a definition for feminist and, because of the redirect, the Feminism article should offer both definitions.

A Wikipedia redirect representing a misspelling or other error doesn't matter, nor does any reason for the redirect's existence, because if the redirect's title isn't also a destination title, entry, or some such in a sister project then this procedure should not generate anything in the Wikipedia article display. If it is an entry or such, presumably there's a good reason for that and it should be displayed.

Redirects at a sister project should be ignored. As a hypothetical example, if a WP article is titled "Monday" and a redirect to it is "Munday" and Wiktionary has a redirect from "Munday" into Wiktionary, the latter redirect should be ignored for this purpose. But if Wiktionary has a destination entry for "Munday" and not just a redirect for it, then the WP article should say that Wiktionary has entries for "Monday" and "Munday".

The default, if no parameters are specified, should be to display the results of redirects. A parameter to suppress the cross-referential effect for redirects (e.g., "noredirect") could be considered.

The same should apply to a Sisterlinks template and to related templates.

This should not apply to an article cross-referencing another other than by a redirect.

For a method, note that WP allows searching for what links to an article and hiding everything but redirects, thus generating a list of redirects only. That suggests a procedure that will automatically identify all the redirects for any article title.

While an article editor could add templates for every redirect, it's difficult to anticipate all the redirects in the future (e.g., new slang), adding lots of parameters and/or templates is cumbersome, I don't think I've seen an article where that's been done, if a redirect is abandoned (e.g., replacing it with a disambiguation page) someone would have to edit the former destination, and server-side processing can handle this efficiently.

Thank you.

Nick Levinson (talk) 19:32, 20 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Wiktionary generally creates a page for common misspellings rather than a redirect. You need to consider what to do in those cases.  Sp in ni  ng  Spark  21:58, 20 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Where the article title and a redirect or two redirects match the same destination entry in another Wikimedia project, only one match should be claimed. For example (these are untested hypothetical examples only), if ox is a WP article title and oxen is a WP redirect title and both point to the same Wiktionary destination entry, the cross-reference may mention only that Wiktionary has an entry for ox. On the other hand, if Wiktionary has separate entries for fish and fishes (because the former is for any fish while the latter is only for multiple species of fish) and an WP article is for fish and a WP redirect is for fishes, then the cross-reference would say that Wiktionary has entries for both fish and fishes. Nick Levinson (talk) 23:49, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Problem printing with "New Features" on Wikipedia

 * Operating system: Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2
 * Processor: Intel Pentium III
 * Internet browser: Mozilla Firefox 3.6.3 (latest version)
 * Printer: HP DeskJet 840C
 * RAM: 256 MB
 * Hard Drive space: 15.36 GB

My printer is a 9-year-old HP DeskJet 840C, my operating system is Windows XP, and my internet browser is Mozilla Firefox 3.6.3, the latest version. Last week, I switched on the "New features", and the other day, I tried printing a Wikipedia article, using the browser File → Print, and my printer couldn't print it, I tried printing both the printable version and the default version, it didn't print, I thought it might be a problem with the connection to my computer, and so I bought a new USB cable for my printer, and I tried printing the article again, it didn't print, then I thought it might be my computer, so I tried printing the Wikipedia article on my laptop, but it didn't print at all. I tried to "Print Test Page", that was provided in the Printers and Faxes section, and it printed fine on both my computer and my laptop, I even tried printing on other websites, my printer printed fine on other websites, and so I tried printing the Wikipedia article again on both computers, it didn't print at all. So I decided to experiment, I switched back to the previous version of Wikipedia, by clicking on "Take me back", then I tried to print a Wikipedia article and it printed fine, without the "New features". I think there is something wrong with the "New features" on Wikipedia, particularly in printing, maybe the "New features" are not compatible with older printers, like my 9-year-old HP DeskJet 840C, I don't really know, since I'm no expert. In any case, I have switched back to the previous version of Wikipedia, because I'm unable to print with the "New features" on. I hope this can be resolved, thank you... Gregorynovella (talk) 13:50, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * If you turn the new features off again, does it then print properly? OrangeDog  (τ • ε) 19:17, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Isn't that what he just said happened?  Sp in ni ng  Spark  19:29, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, tl;dr so I skimmed it. By "didn't print at all" do you mean the page was blank or that nothing came out? Have you checked for error messages from your printer? OrangeDog  (τ • ε) 20:06, 22 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply, yes, nothing came out of the printer, and when I checked my printer status on the Printers and Faxes section, my printer didn't record the print job at all, it was only when I switched back to the previous version of Wikipedia that my printer recorded the print job and printed... Gregorynovella (talk) 07:35, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I just updated to the newest version of Mozilla Firefox, version 3.6.4, and I tried printing with the "New features" on, and it printed okay, so it was just a browser problem, anyway, I will report again, if another printing problem happens again, thanks... Gregorynovella (talk) 07:59, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Pending changes
I'm not sure if this only happens to me (apparently, lots of weird things happen to me, and no one else), but on Twilight (2008 film), The little box saying "accepted (latest)" is covering the green lock top-icon. I'm using IE 7.0, and screen res. 1440x1050.  Bramble  claw  x   21:26, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm using Chrome, on XP, in 1152x864 and it appears the same as you describe. Perhaps Page Move protection wasn't considered when the PC box was designed (since the other icons should be be removed if PC is in place on the page). —Ost (talk) 21:35, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * For article pages, there are only 3 reserved spots. The FA icon (right 10px), the spoken article icon (right 30px) and the 'lock' icon (right 55px). The pp menulet occupies the lockicon spot. Apparently pagemove vandalism has since seen its own template and separate icon position (right 80px). The menulet position will thus overwrite the pagemoveprotection lock. These are the limits of topicons you could say. We could start reordering them with Javascript, but in the past people have always been against that solution. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 00:06, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You know, I don't why we manually insert the locks ourselves when we could have the software add them. Is there a reason or is that just something so far-fetched that no-one's though of it?… --Izno (talk) 01:20, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Was requested, kind of implemented and then reverted in 10347. As for top icons in general, there is 23796. — AlexSm 02:55, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * . Not sure why it was using some experimental pp-tag. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 12:43, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Accept button
I am unable to click the "accept" button due to it being permanently greyed out. Entering a comment in the associated box makes no difference then button remains greyed. Note: I expect this is a JS problem, I don't run JS so perhaps there is JS to re-enable the button? Anyhow, I currently find it impossible to accept any changes. HumphreyW (talk) 10:27, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Are you sure you were reviewing an edit that wasn't already accepted? Have you tried testing the feature on testing pages? Svick (talk) 10:52, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, I get the exact same problem with the testing pages. here the accept button is dead no matter what I do. HumphreyW (talk) 11:26, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't reproduce your problem – I have the accept button enabled here even without JS and I tried it Internet Explorer too. What browser do you use? Svick (talk) 12:21, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I tried your link and this time the "unaccept" button is greyed. Perhaps I misunderstood what is happening here. Is it that an accepted revision still has an "accept" button, but the button is disabled? If so, that is really confusing, and irritating. Wouldn't it be less confusing just to show only one button with whatever action is allowed? How do I know if a revision has already been accepted or not, am I supposed to see which button is grey and from that determine what has happened? For people with limited vision, or different browser colours, this can be really hard to distinguish properly. Anyhow, I think I was just thoroughly confused by how it has been implemented, so I guess it was all my mistake. Sorry to bother you folks here. HumphreyW (talk) 12:35, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Well I took some time to look into this a bit more and it seems the button is just displayed and disabled without any way to activate it. But I don't want to treat my browser like a local Windows dialog box. The usage scenario is different. The idea of disabled buttons is more in the paradigm of a local interaction dialog box with fixed places for buttons and other controls. A browser page should be more adept at button placements and not require anything disabled, it simply uses space for no apparent gain in readability or usability. This is what confused me, there was a button and I expected it to be able to do something since it was being displayed to me. It seems to me that there is not a good reason to show me a disabled button that remains disabled no matter what action is taken on the page. Is this some sort of simplification in the Wiki software? Or is it someone trying to make the Wiki pages look like a Windows dialog box? Either way, please don't clutter the pages with buttons that do nothing. HumphreyW (talk) 12:58, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I linked to this discussion on the Pending Changes wiki, so the authors of Pending Changes should look into this. Svick (talk) 16:07, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, sounds good. My login doesn't seem to work over there so I'll just kind of stand in the sidelines for this in the meantime. HumphreyW (talk) 17:15, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It is a very common behavior to grey out an inactive part of the interface. In fact, it's so common that it has it's own article : Grayed out. I guess you were confused because you didn't see this behavior elsewhere before. But I believe most users understood it. Dodoïste (talk) 18:21, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * It is common in a local dialog box, like I mentioned above. But it is not common in a webpage, unless that button can be enabled by some action. An action like entering text in the proper format, or some other action, that JS will detect and then enable the button so the user can continue. But to have an always-dead button in a webpage is just wasteful and confusing. Why have it when it does absolutely nothing and can never ever do anything? HumphreyW (talk) 01:22, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Home wiki
Hello there, today I unified my global account and mediawikiwiki was assigned as my home wiki because "sysop status takes higher precedence than edit count." How can I assign en.wp (or another) as my home wiki? Thanks. –BruTe Talk 07:39, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * No, you can not. The primary reason of such a function not being implemented is the fact that "home wiki" shown at Special:CentralAuth or SUL util is not really used anywhere. vvvt 18:34, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * All right, thanks. –BruTe Talk 05:36, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Slowness and Pending Changes
A common complaint about pending changes is that it's very slow. After some sampling of render times (see WT:Pending changes) I don't actually think that page rendering got any slower, only that you now need to look at more uncached, old revisions.

However, there are a couple of operations where I don't understand why they are slow on template-heavy articles. Amalthea 10:40, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki rollback: It shouldn't have to render anything on my time. Yet I just spent 26 seconds waiting for a rollback to complete on a template-heavy article, both if unprotected or PC-protected. Why is that, and was that always so? I think rollback used to be pretty much instantaneous.
 * Accepting a pending change: Again, it shouldn't have to render on my time, but it takes the 17 or 26 seconds on my template-heavy test article.
 * Looking at [ a diff to the current revision] of a template-heavy article shouldn't have to render anything since the latest revision is typically cached somewhere. Why does it, and was that always so?


 * A WP-buddy suggested that WP's standard HTML/CSS boxes, i.e. the outer ones to apply to all pages, should be combined as each box is a file to sent down the line. If so: for IE, use the old border box model, as some readers use IE 6 and don't upgrade; include all the skins, e.g. I use Modern. --Philcha (talk) 12:20, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You can compare the loading speed of Wikipedia's pages using Firefox's Firebug Add-on, see the dedicated help page.
 * Using Firebug, you can understand what is taking a long time to load. Is it some heavy JavaScript, a lot of images, or... From what I understand, the servers needs a huge lot of time to start sending the page (about 15-20 seconds). Once it actually starts downloading it seems to be fine.
 * Tip for those who want to optimize loading speed (unrelated to this issue though): Once you have Firebug, download the page speed add-on. Now you can optimize your code to make the page loading faster. Dodoïste (talk) 16:42, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Embedded template
I am trying to use the information in one template inside two different templates. So that way, information will change on several pages at one.

I have done this before, but never with template:infobox.

For example, I create Template:Infobox Videogame using infobox:

I then create a second template, Template:L4D only with this information on the template page:


 * type = fast
 * color= red

This way, the changes on this template about Left 4 Dead change on more than one page.

If I type:

The result is:


 * type = fast | color = red

I have tried, Template:!, Template:= but with no success. It appears the Template:Infobox Videogame is recognizing the information in Template:Left4Dead as text only.

Any suggestions? Thank you so much! Adamtheclown (talk) 14:50, 24 June 2010 (UTC)


 * This may have worked at one point. However, that incorrect behavior not longer works with the  new preprocessor.  You can get similar behavior by doing something like  .  — Dispenser 16:28, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Dispenser, it started to work! THANK YOU! Here are my three template now:

The result in a pretty, functioning infobox is:

Any suggestions? Thanks again! Adamtheclown (talk) 21:05, 24 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Change the contents of "Template:L4D" to:


 * See Help:Magic words and mw:Help:Extension:ParserFunctions for a fuller explanation of how  works.
 * — Richardguk (talk) 22:45, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It worked, barnstars to both of you! Adamtheclown (talk) 02:05, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Wiki Publisher
Anyone knows how to use it? I installed the extension into OpenOffice.org, set the prefs to anonymous EN wiki URL but am stuck here...--Kozuch (talk) 18:58, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Issue with an .svg file, error generating thumbnail
Hi. A few hours ago I uploaded. MediaWiki seems to have trouble to make a .png out of it. When I try to view the SVG in png, I get a magnificent error page : Error generating thumbnail

Error creating thumbnail:
 * (rsvg-convert:32653): CRITICAL **: cr_parser_new_from_buf: assertion `a_buf && a_len' failed


 * (rsvg-convert:32653): CRITICAL **: cr_parser_set_sac_handler: assertion `a_this' failed

(rsvg-convert:32653): librsvg-WARNING **: Error setting CSS SAC handler


 * (rsvg-convert:32653): CRITICAL **: cr_parser_destroy: assertion `a_this && PRIVATE (a_this)' failed

librsvg-ERROR **: _rsvg_acquire_xlink_href_resource called for external resource: " base: (null)

aborting... Is it a known issue? Is there already a bug about this issue at Bugzilla? Dodoïste (talk) 23:34, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The SVG contains a reference to, probably the original image, on the harddrive of the person who create the SVG. That is not allowed for security reasons and thus the thumbnailing software will report an error. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:38, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Huh? I'm not sure I understand your answer. Am I meant to fix something as the author of the SVG? Did I do something wrong? If so, you might want to provide instructions understandable by an end-user in the error report.
 * The most strange thing is that I can view the .svg by clicking on the link of the file. The SVG seems to be fine. Maybe the issue lies in the conversion to PNG? Yours, Dodoïste (talk) 00:08, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * TheDJ, the SVG doesn't seem to contain any references to external resources (only one PNG included through  URI). Also, if the problem was with external resources, I think the error message would mention it ( does).
 * Dodoïste, I think you should ask at SVG Help. Svick (talk) 02:17, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Svick. :-) Dodoïste (talk) 03:12, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That image needs some serious optimization. The embedded PNG mentioned above is displayed with an opacity of 0.1, so it's basically invisible and may as well be removed. And is there really a need for the image to contain lorem ipsum with letters converted to paths, when the image is unlikely to ever be used large enough for it to be legible? Especially in the back sheet of paper where most of it will never even be visible? Greeking would be useful, but even embedding the text as text would probably give a significant size savings. Anomie⚔ 02:39, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm well aware that it need optimization. 2Mo is way too large for an icon. But it's only to work on a draft for the Pending Changes icon. It's easier to edit .svg drafts than .png. Since it didn't work, I made File:Pending changes needing review.png.
 * File:Pending-changes-magnifying.svg is already in use on en.wiki, and it needs optimization badly. Your help is welcome. Dodoïste (talk) 03:12, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Signature of User:Nvvchar
My signature is not getting registered properly, as you can see it here. Can some one rectify it please. The problem is persisting for quite some days. Thanks.--Nvvchar 10:38, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * No one has the technical ability to edit other user's signatures (except maybe the server admins with their direct access to the database, but I doubt they would ever do that) on Wikipedia. We might be able to help you fix it yourself if you tell us what is in your "Signature" box on Special:Preferences and if you checked the "Sign my name using the provided wikitext" box directly below it. Fun  Pika  10:45, 25 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Clear the text box, uncheck the check box, and your signature will return to the working default. PleaseStand (talk) 17:18, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Dusty Articles (WP:DUSTY) needs to be updated
Hi everyone, I was just wondering why the Dusty articles page hasn't been updated since 15 Feb 2010. I used to check that page all the time, and I found it a very useful function for cleaning up Wikipedia articles. (cross-posted at Village pump (miscellaneous)) -- Eastlaw  talk ⁄ contribs 04:46, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

location of "edit"
In the article THEMIS (as with many others), the info box on the right causes the "edit" for the first two sections (Launch and Mission status) to be pushed way down. Is there a way the software could handle this and put "edit" on the same line as the section header? Bubba73 (You talkin' to me?), 02:52, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You have run into the bunch effect. It is actually caused by the right floating images that follow the infobox. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:14, 25 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I just tried that on THEMIS but it didn't work. Did I do it correctly?  Bubba73 (You talkin' to me?), 15:02, 25 June 2010 (UTC)


 * No, you didn't, in the case you encountered, it should be used like this:




 * But I think that this problem should be often fixed in some other way like moving images around and floating some of them to the left (like I did on that article), or removing some images completely. Svick (talk) 20:19, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Alternatively, move the position of the edit links - Preferences->Gadgets->User interface gadgets: editing->Moves edit links next to the section headers. OrangeDog  (τ • ε) 17:32, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That works OK for me. Thinking of other editors, it might be good if that option was on by default.  I am more used to "edit" being over at the right, but I really dislike "edit" being many lines away.  Bubba73 (You talkin' to me?), 19:22, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Query: Deletion of unnecessary outdated versions of figures
What is the mechanism for deletion of outmoded copies of figures? For example, a number of figures I have created went through several versions that are still kept in the edit history, but so far as I am concerned could be removed. How can I flag these old versions in the edit history for removal? These old copies are not the current version, so it would appear that editing the file for the current version won't work. Brews ohare (talk) 16:15, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You mean for example to delete the three old versions of File:Compensation capacitance.png? I don't think there is any process established to do that, because there is no need to delete them. There is no harm in having them and deleting them would only waste the time of administrators. But if you really want to delete them, I guess you could contact an administrator, maybe using . Svick (talk) 17:27, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

At the end of the WikiPages, Timezone could be added to the time at whcih the page was edited
Hi

At the bottom of the page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals#cite_note-Cajori-13

it is mentioned that

This page was last modified on 9 June 2010 at 18:36

It will be useful, if the time zone is added to the time stamp.

John : June 26 2010 IST --Johntrivolta (talk) 16:15, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The time zone is whatever you have set at Special:Preferences. Usually all system-generated times (like in page histories or user contribution pages) are based on a user's preferences, though it defaults to UTC (and time stamps for signatures are UTC, which is clearly marked (both in your comment and in mine). EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 16:20, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Destroyed file history
In the file upload log I saw being uploaded. I edited the file and uploaded the new version, and now I don't see the original uploader in the file history? Why not? PleaseStand (talk) 00:05, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Now I see it. Why did it not appear before though? PleaseStand (talk) 00:21, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Slow servers. Everard Proudfoot (talk) 20:57, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Extra edit buttons
User:MarkS, now sadly inactive for some years, developed a very nice script that allowed customization of editing toolbar: User:MarkS/extraeditbuttons.js. The script has been mostly broken for few months. I wonder if anybody would be interested in updating it (and writing a proper documentation page)? Alternatively, if anybody knows of a script that does this (for new or old toolbar) please let me know. I prefer to keep my toolbars uncluttured, with only a few buttons I really need. Mark also promised the ability to add favorite templates to some buttons, that never got implemented before he went away - perhaps somebody knows how to do this? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:02, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Scripting
In Javascript, is there a way to add text to the Clipboard (ready to paste somewhere else)? (not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I couldn't think of anywhere else) --Smaug123 (talk) 18:34, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Google provides some useful results... otherwise try WP:RD/C. - Jarry1250 [Humorous? Discuss.] 19:12, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah... :) What sanity lapse prevented me looking through Google? *facepalm* Thanks! --Smaug123 (talk) 19:56, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Difference between copyright warning messages
Why does MediaWiki provide two different copyright warning messages? What is the difference in function between MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning and MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning2? —Lowellian (reply) 02:29, 24 June 2010 (UTC)


 * You missed the third one! MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyrightwarning. The first one you linked was the old location, while the second one is a very old version. Copyrightwarning2 is obsolete, and is no longer called by any other MediaWiki page or special page. I'm pretty sure MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning is in the same boat. Someguy1221 (talk) 06:05, 24 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I have no idea why, but this isn't the place to ask. This is a technical support forum for using Wikipedia, not for using MediaWiki. Try asking http://mediawiki.org —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:41, 24 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Those messages are also part of Wikipedia, and I am partially asking about them as they relate to Wikipedia. This was also a fairly simple question, not some complex, involved question about some deep intricacy of MediaWiki's codebase. Asking on http://mediawiki.org is often useless; many, perhaps even most, questions on their support desk go unanswered. There just aren't very many people answering questions, in contrast to the Wikipedia technical village pump. —Lowellian (reply) 06:18, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the support desk is pretty dead. You could probably get an answer on the mediawiki-l mailing list though. I don't quite understand the deal with the two copyright messages myself. But I know that wikimedia-copyrightwarning is one of the messages included in the WikimediaMessages extension, a package of Wikimedia-specific messages. Reach Out to the Truth 20:50, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Tricky question (or not?)
Would it be possible to use in a URL without it breaking the code if said article's page name had spaces in it?

I.e if you were to place this code:   on Bill Gates' page the code would break due to there being a space between "Bill" and "Gates", is there a way around this? 92.15.89.110 (talk) 19:36, 26 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Use in the URL.  Dragons flight (talk) 20:11, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I knoew there had to be a way, thanks very much. 92.15.89.110 (talk) 20:32, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * See also the existing template Google and, more generally, Category:Google search templates. — Richardguk (talk) 20:41, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The magic word provides a URL-encoded pagename. Graham 87  03:27, 27 June 2010 (UTC)


 * No it doesn't. PAGENAMEE provides encoding for Mediawiki style URLs that can be used internally, e.g.  = .  In particular, it transforms spaces to underscores.  For general external URLs, such as Google, you still need urlencode to express spaces and other restricted characters according to the traditional web standards.  Dragons flight (talk) 11:20, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and updated the documentation (here and at mw) to no longer incorrectly claim et al. are URL-encoded. Anomie⚔ 15:11, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Stats.grok.se kaput again
http://stats.grok.se seems to be down again, as of June 26. Stats aren't there. Please pass this along to whoever can fix it. And can someone please change the notation that comments go to User:Henrik, since that person obviously is not around anymore. Users need a contact, as this happens more frequently. Maile66 (talk) 12:01, 27 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Also, if Henrik is really no longer with Wikipedia, can't someone deactivate his account, or put a notice on the Talk page, so users don't post there in anticipation of a response. Thanks. Maile66 (talk) 15:29, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * No. Killiondude (talk) 16:49, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks like the thingee missed the June 26 stats, but otherwise is working fine. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 15:14, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

CSS punctuation
Lets say I have a title called: Jacob's War

How would I code this in CSS correctly? Anytime a title has any punctuation (a bracket, an apostrophe, a colon) CSS does not recognize it and ignores the title.

Thank you in advance! Adamtheclown (talk) 00:06, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * is an example that turns the background of that page pink (to insert into your skin CSS file). Is that what you want to do? PleaseStand (talk) 00:13, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * wow, that is awesome and SO easy thank you. Barnstar for you! What is so easy for you, was so complex and incredibly difficult to figure out for me. :) Adamtheclown (talk) 00:19, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It is not difficult, you always should look at the HTML source before creating any CSS. — AlexSm 14:39, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Database error
When I hit the first of the below, I get a database error, but not when I hit the second: The only difference is that the first uses "tags" as an rvprop and the second doesn't. But it appears from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php that "tags" is a legitimate rvprop. So I guess this should go to bugzilla? Even if it's some sort of user error, the error message could be made more helpful. Thanks, <font color="#008000">Tisane  talk/stalk 17:02, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&title=User:Tisane/Test1&rvprop=ids|flags|timestamp|user|size|comment|content|tags|flagged&revids=370622948
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&prop=revisions&title=User:Tisane/Test1&rvprop=ids|flags|timestamp|user|size|comment|content|flagged&revids=370622948
 * bugticket opened —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:07, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Image won't scale
File:Barnstar of Reversion Hires.png won't scale when a caption is used. See this and this. ~ Nerdy Science Dude  (✉ • ✐) 17:55, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The issue is with the image syntax rather than the image itself: you need to use, not  .   does not allow scaling at all, which is why it is deprecated in favour of  . <font style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> Intelligent  sock  18:05, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Font used in formulas, in images
(I first posted this question in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics, but there hasn't been any discussion on that page in over a year).

I was wondering if we should aim to use a similar font as the LaTeX output in images that reproduce formulas from the body of the article. For instance, most of the images in HSL and HSV that use a Sans Serif font. It's kind of hard to identify in the images what is a formula, and what are merely labels. Using a Latin font might help to distinguish between the two types. Thanks. SharkD  Talk  18:23, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You actually posted it in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Graphics, which is something I've never heard of before. The real Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics is fairly active.—Emil J. 18:43, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Article Creation From Wizard, Userspace, Or Otherwise?
When articles are created, the disambiguation template otheruses4 is still being used instead of about. Is this the problem of article wizard, or some bot? This needs to be fixed. (otheruses4 is deprecated)198.161.203.6 (talk) 21:21, 28 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Otheruses4 redirects to about, so it isn't a huge issue. I don't see that otheruses4 is used on the Article Wizard— what makes you think so? ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 21:48, 28 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The above post was made by indef banned editor and should be ignored (and probably just removed). --  AnmaFinotera  (talk · contribs) 22:30, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Safari 5 reader
I just noticed that many (though not all) pages get the new 'reader' button in Safari 5. this is actually very cool, but it leaves me with two technical questions: Super-low priority, but if someone knows anything about it... -- Ludwigs 2 22:11, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Why some pages and not others?  for instance, Reference_desk and Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk do not get the reader option, but normal articles so, as do user talk pages.
 * 2) Is there some code that can be added to suppress or reposition the [Edit] links for pages viewed in the reader?  reading wikipedia pages in the reader is actually nice (you lose the graphics, but for straight reading it rocks) but the edit links spoil the flow.
 * That Reader function is actually the open source Readability plugin that Apple has integrated. It's just JS + CSS styling, so it's probably easy to customize if you start looking into it. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 22:58, 28 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah - you know, I knew that, and it just didn't occur to me. I'll look into it; thanks.  -- Ludwigs 2  23:41, 28 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Knowing a little about the plugin, and using it myself, the problem has to do with the obvious presence of a single main text area on a page. Readability extracts the core part of an article, ignoring all of the sidebars, advertising, headers, and miscellaneous junk around it.  Go look at the RefDesk compared to a standard article page and you'll understand.  Ref Desk and Community Portal, for example, don't have a single coherent field, but rather multiple small boxes.  In short, Readability doesn't know which one to pick, and I don't think it's designed to handle multiple fields.


 * It might be worth sending a note to the guys at arc90, the readability creators, if you still have questions. 69.142.154.10 (talk) 06:42, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Revert stats
A while ago I published edit trends for each Wikipedia. At Wikimania I will talk about revert stats, and blog about it soon after. It's still work in progress. e.g. I'm hoping to add trend lines (using R), after filtering seasonal influences. Here is a preview: English, German and Dutch revert stats. As you will see there is very distinct seasonal pattern in reverts, in absolute numbers, but also relative to total number of anon edits, less so in registered edits. So it seems there really is less vandalism in summers. School holidays? The pattern is less distinct on the German Wikipedia. I would appreciate any feedback on the stats: are they clear, too much, something missing, etc. Thanks Erik Zachte (talk) 10:05, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Winter, especially January appears to have spikes, at least for the German wikipedia in editing. Any pattern you might see in the English wikipedia however, isn't going to be quite as obvious, because down in the Southern hemisphere our seasons are reversed, so therefore the time for edits are inverse if there is a link. Not that there are really enough of us to make a difference, but it will have an effect, making it less obvious at a glance. Shadowmaster13 (talk) 13:21, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Sure, it is even more visible in Spanish and Portuguese Wikipedias, which are viewed more from Americas than from Europe. This also explains the strong seasonality in wp:es and wp:pt in monthly page view stats. Erik Zachte (talk) 00:32, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Stats under-reporting again
Check any high-traffic page for June 27 stats. Serious drop. Maile66 (talk) 01:09, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Probably related to - seems to have missed all of June 26 and probably part of June 27. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk  15:15, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * http://dammit.lt/wikistats hourly page view count files were empty due to server problem. stats.grok.se parses those files but was not directly responsible for outage. Erik Zachte (talk) 00:27, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Default with switch
Richardguk and Dispenser introduced me to the real power of #switch above. Thanks guys!

I am wondering how to use a default setting with a switch template.

How do I create:
 * 1)  or

in a template which pulls from a switch template:
 * 1) {{#if:{{{{{1}}}|out=image}}
 * 2) {{#if:{{{{{1}}}|out=imagewidth}}

In example 1, if there is no image, the line is ignored.

In example 2, if there is no imagewidth, the default image width is 250.

Thanks in advance. Adamtheclown (talk) 17:49, 28 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not entirely sure what you meant to do with that code; you at least have mismatched brackets. To answer your underlying question, though: you can specify a default case by specifying a "#default" case as the last entry in the switch function. {&#123; Nihiltres &#124;talk&#124;edits&#124;⚡}&#125; 22:23, 28 June 2010 (UTC) (iPod edit)

{{outdent|1}} Referring back to Adamtheclown's draft templates at above: {{Infobox Videogame }} In your original example, Template:L4d and Template:Left4Dead are entirely interdependent. If that remains so, and you have no particular reasons for keeping them separated, you might want to simplify things by combining them into one template: {{Infobox Videogame }} — Richardguk (talk) 03:06, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * will produce a blank result if there is no match and no final or  value specified, so the advice of Nihiltres in the previous comment might not be relevant, just add   similarly to the way you have created   and.
 * The combination of three templates should already produce a blank where there is no image specified, so if I am not mistaken, the standard method should work with no special changes.
 * To have the image width default to  where this is not specified, you could use   (documented here) by changing Template:Left4Dead to something like this:
 * type     = {{L4d|out=type}}
 * color    = {{L4d|out=color}}
 * image    = {{L4d|out=image}}
 * imagewidth= {{#if:{{L4d|out=image}}|{{L4d|out=image}}|250}}
 * type     = fast
 * color    = green
 * image    = image_name_here.jpg
 * imagewidth= image_width_here_or_else_just_type_250
 * I got it to work with this:
 * {{#if:{{{{{1}}}|out=image}}|{{{{{1}}}}}
 * Thanks a million! Adamtheclown (talk) 17:52, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Am I punished? [scrolling when editing]
Having problems to scroll when editing, does not work anymore, I tried nearly everything. (_;) --The Nut (talk) 13:58, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Does it happen only on Wikipedia? Svick (talk) 15:00, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It sounds like the OP is talking about a problem similar to one that I have with IE and WP. When editing, you scroll the section you want to edit to the middle of the edit window for ease of use. As soon as you start typing the edit cursor and the window move so that the editing is taking place at the very bottom of the window. - X201 (talk) 15:24, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Project-Class
Hello, I've attempted to change the talk header, located here, from NA-Class to Project-Class, similar in manner to the page in the Doctor Who WikiProject, located here. I've used AWB in an attempt to alter the class, but it won't change from NA for some reason. Any help? Gage (talk) 18:01, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Family Guy's assessment scale doesn't have the project class, so you can't assign that class to a page. If you are member of that WikiProject and want to change that, you have to edit Template:Family Guy WikiProject/class (see the documentation of on how to do it). Svick (talk) 18:12, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I am a member of the project. I've attempted to look at both those pages, but I'm a little confused as to what I should add and where. Is there any way you could help me add the info to the class page? Gage (talk) 18:22, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Done. Svick (talk) 18:37, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Gage (talk) 19:01, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia Questionnaire June 2010
Shouldn't Wikimedia Surveys list the "Wikipedia Questionnaire June 2010" survey? Also, it'd be nice if you offered a secure version.Smallman12q (talk) 20:57, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I keep seeing the "help improve Wikipedia" site notice at the top of my watchlist, but can't click it. Is it supposed to link somewhere?  Bramble  claw  x   21:13, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Lovely banner
Sometimes the hide button doesn't work, and when it does, it often reappears on half the pages I visit. Can we just get rid of it?  — fetch ·  comms   21:22, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Same thing is happening to me, including on this edit page. Nyttend (talk) 21:26, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

(ec)


 * "Lovely" is not the adjective I would choose. "Help Improve Wikipedia"? I'm trying to, but I am hampered by the damn great big banner that is in the way, and 'hide' does not work. Why does this keep happening? Spam. Please try testing these things before inflicting them on us.  Chzz  ► 21:27, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Lovely was sarcasm. but I wholly agree that they are a blight and do not help keep the site free. This is ridiculous and I would start yet another RfC on them if I had more time right now (stuck in a library closing soon).  — fetch ·  comms   21:32, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * On a technical note, this being "Village pump (technical)" and all, it seems that if and when the banner re-appears, the "hide" link does not work. It does not re-appear every time. (This is after answering the survey to which the banner links.) -- Gyrofrog  (talk) 21:36, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * (from the wikitech irc channel) The person who created the central notice made an error (yes again). However the notice will only be online for a few hours anyways. Not sure if the error will be corrected in the mean time. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:38, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * As a matter of fact, it has already been disabled apparently. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:40, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank heavens.  — fetch ·  comms   21:43, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
 * They really should test the banner before deploying it...virtually all of them seem to be glitched.=(Smallman12q (talk) 21:57, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

resizing jpeg for article
I have experienced for a long time, problems with sizing some images, in order to put them into articles. Similiar images with the same name-syntax have no problem. I am leaving no white space around or within the link. For example - I can't shrink this image to 100px.


 * px100|thumb|left|Ted hughes and Plath married in 1956. Portrait by Rob Lycett (1993).

Thanks Spanglej (talk) 02:55, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't know why you have  instead of the correct   there, but with that change, it seems to work. See the image on the left, produced by the code   Svick (talk) 03:26, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Template that needs fixed
This is way over my head, but Infobox National football team is spewing red-linked images across many pages see for example Tahiti national football team and I need someone to fix it. βcommand 16:03, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The template does what it is told. The pattern was changed in this edit to one using nonexistent images (a description like "pattern_b1=_tai09a" needs File:Kit body tai09a.png). I have no idea why the user has done it or what colours does the team use, but I reverted the article to the last working version for now.—Emil J. 16:34, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Out of curiosity, BC, are you from Iowa? That's the only place I've heard the construction "needs fixed", instead of "needs to be fixed". --Golbez (talk) 21:23, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Search bar
I hope this is the right place...but I use to be able to type just 'Ctjf83' in the search bar, and the suggestions would come up with 'User:Ctjf83', 'User talk:Ctjf83', 'User:Ctjf83/Sandbox', etc, but now it only comes with article suggestions. In the preferences I have search in all namespaces checked, how can I make it search in all, and provide suggestions for all namespaces? <font face="Kristen ITC"><font color="#ff0000">C <font color="#ff6600">T <font color="#ffff00">J <font color="#009900">F <font color="#0000ff">8 <font color="#6600cc">3 chat 19:16, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I can confirm this bug. Nothing changed on the backend recently, so it must be a recently introduce MediaWiki bug. It appears to happen only in Vector skin, works fine in Monobook. --rainman (talk) 19:55, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh yep, you're right. So is that something that will be fixed on Vector? <font face="Kristen ITC"><font color="#ff0000">C <font color="#ff6600">T <font color="#ffff00">J <font color="#009900">F <font color="#0000ff">8 <font color="#6600cc">3 chat 20:06, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Looking at the SimpleSearch.js, particularly the line, I have a feeling that "search suggestions" script in Vector is simply ignoring these checkboxes and the poster recently switched from some other skin (other skins use "old" mwsuggest.js script). — AlexSm 20:54, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Use the "take me back" button to return to normality. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 20:56, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You can also seperately disable SimpleSearch in your preferences (under the the Search options tab). —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:13, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * What's interesing, unchecking "Enable enhanced search suggestions (Vector)" only hides the drop-down box, the suggestions are still there (use ↑ or ↓ on keyboard to see them); I doubt this is intended behaviour. You need to also check "Disable AJAX suggestions" to disable this completely. — AlexSm 21:22, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I have been using vector for a while, and it use to work vector. I like the suggestions, but I guess I can stop being lazy and type 5 characters (User:) and then type in the user name, Alex, are you able to fix it so it works again? <font face="Kristen ITC"><font color="#ff0000">C <font color="#ff6600">T <font color="#ffff00">J <font color="#009900">F <font color="#0000ff">8 <font color="#6600cc">3 chat 21:47, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Filed as 24214. --rainman (talk) 23:31, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Russian text appears in a narrow font
For some reason, Russian text appears in a narrow font, which can be seen at Russia as an example. ~ Nerdy<font color="#0F0">Science <font color="#8d7">Dude  (✉ • ✐ • ✍) 00:24, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * It's what lang does when set to "ru" (for Russian). Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  00:40, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * No such problem here. It's just the font that you browser/Operating system picks to display russian script. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:54, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Simplification Template
Is there a template that would typographically simplify a given string? Ie. "héñbZù" would become "henbZu". Thanks, 90.41.69.86 (talk) 10:33, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * This sounds like you want to collapse the Unicode character-set down to ASCII-7 encoding, as in, turn this into something I could type on my English-language keyboard. I'm not aware of any computationally simple way to achieve that, if you look at the Unicode character set it seems rather complex, i.e. must be done on a character by character basis. In getting on three years here, I've never seen such a template, and it would be a pretty big one if it existed. But maybe you should examine your original assumption: why would you want to do such a thing? If you want to de-foreignize Wikipedia, I predict you will run into a world of trouble here. And in any event, I think the human visual system would be much more efficient at stripping off the extraneous umlauts to arrive at the Latin-1 character set representation than any template we could argue about endlessly. Franamax (talk) 20:56, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Skin Bugs
Text in templates commonly has incorrect color. The color of the background is specified and the color of foreground is not. If the user default foreground color is white, text is often illegible as the background color in the template is white or bright. Since the purpose of these skins is to use the users default colors, using a border rather than background for the templates would be better. An example can be seen at example. Does this belong on bugzilla.mediawiki? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eshouthe (talk • contribs) 03:12, July 1, 2010
 * Can you be more specific about which parts ? For instance, the warning templates are part of this single project, where the tables is a mediawiki element. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:21, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * It looks like the bugs are in Common.css, which specifies many background colors without specifying foreground colors.

Large history kills my PC
I learned the trick a long time ago that you can put your own parameters into the URL that brings up revision history for a page and retrieve up to 5000 entries at once. My problem is that lately (say, the last six months) if I try this my CPU-usage meter starts banging against the top of the cabinet and stays that way forever. When I checked into this a while ago, it seems that onerous DB queries now get shuffled into a "slow" queue. That's fine, I can beat it easily enough by finding the cut-point for the slow queue - but why does my CPU usage go over the top? It's not page-thrashing and it's not network-limited, it is pure CPU. I would paste in the URL but the window is in a state of torpor and my room is heating up. It seems to be any revision history where you change the &limit parameter to 5000, though I haven't fully profiled the problem.

I'm running WinXP MCE up-to-date, IE8 up-to-date, default skin, no custom JS, and this has been happening since before the change in default skins anyway, so all my site js will be up-to-date (and I've cleared my cache more than once). Thanks for any insight on this! Franamax (talk) 19:48, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The CPU usage shows that this is a problem with your browser. IE8 is extremely slow at rendering large pages (and javascript or add-ons can exacerbate this).
 * Consider creating a temporary link to the URL (eg in a sandbox article preview) then downloading the page to your PC as a file (right-click the link then choose "Save target as..."). Then open the file in a text editor instead of IE8 (by renaming the file extension to  or by right-clicking and using "Open with..."). Alternatively, consider using an alternative browser to view such pages online.
 * — Richardguk (talk) 22:56, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

All joking aside, it probably is just Internet Explorer choking on a rather sizable page. Richardguk's suggestion to try a different browser is a good one; Chrome or Safari would probably be able to handle it better (though I've never used either on a PC). EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 23:13, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * If it's a browser problem and IE... well, there ya go. ;)

Indenting sentences with images

 * If you used a table, putting the image and sentence in separate cells, it would force the text to apparently stay away from the image. It's not a proper use of an HTML table, but it'll get the job done. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 23:14, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Specifically, you could nest a table within each cell, with a fixed-width column for the graphic:


 * which renders as:


 * The sub-tables need to be made invisible by overriding the "wikitable" class styles. As far as I know, the only sure way to do this is to use inline styles for border, padding and background-color. (Perhaps something like class="none" would have the same result.) The non-breaking space helps with vertical alignment.
 * — Richardguk (talk) 00:36, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Problem with singles table
Could someone take a look at this singles table? For some reason, if I have the full name of "Sunshine (Everybody Needs a Little)" spelled out, it causes the rightmost line on the table to disappear (the line against the "albums" column). But if I shorten it to just "Sunshine," everything's fine. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • (Many otters • One bat • One hammer) 21:09, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, the table looks normal to me on IE8 with Vista.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 21:19, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Same here with Chrome 5 in XP. —Ost (talk) 22:02, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Everything looks fine for me with Safari 5 on a Mac running 10.6.4. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 23:16, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

My edits are not automatically accepted
On Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill I noticed in the history one of my edits was pending review, and after a later edit which was approved, my edits were being automatically accepted. All the accepted edits are marked in blue, but that first edit is not. It is THERE in the "latest accepted version", though.

But all my previous edits to that page were "automatically accepted" after the review process began. Maybe this is a policy question, but apparently something is weird with the software that I don't understand.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 21:17, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * If you (or anyone with the reviewer right) edit a revision that is not already marked as reviewed, your edit is not automatically marked as reviewed. This is intentional: it means you do not have to worry about reviewing every single edit that you make. But if the revision you edit is already reviewed, you edit is marked as automatically reviewed, because we can assume you will not add problematic content that would fail review. If you notice that one of your own edits is not reviewed, it is perfectly fine for you to look at the diff to the last reviewed version and then mark it reviewed yourself. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 21:33, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, it's still not blue, but it doesn't come up when I click on "pending revisions" And I don't feel comfortable with the addition "pending review". It may be perfectly all right, but it's not a judgment I can make. The content of that one edit I made seems to be in the article.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 21:47, 1 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Every edit becomes part of the article, even if it is not individually reviewed. Unless the changes of an edit are undone in some way, those changes will be in every later version. This image may help clarify how the system works. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 01:23, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

"You have new messages"
You know that yellow box that appears on any page when you have a new message in your talk page. Will it be possible to have that yellow box appear when there's a new message on any other talk page or WP page which the user can specify (like at a Special:Alerts" page). This will be very helpful for everyone to keep track of discussions.  <font color="#039">Feed     <font color="#008000">back     (talk)  17:51, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm, so like a watchlist/talk page notification hybrid, eh? It's been suggested that users be able to maintain more than one watchlist; I guess one of those watchlists could be configured to display such a message when one of its pages is updated, if someone wants to develop the code to implement it. Not sure how much demand there would be for that feature, though. <font color="#008000">Tisane  talk/stalk 18:04, 28 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Not quite what you want, but I've found that the following script has helped me keep track of discussions that have been updated since I contributed to them. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 18:06, 28 June 2010 (UTC)


 * You can also look at the following script, which shows the top item on your watchlist every time a new page is loaded. I find it very convenient to follow changes to discussions I'm participating in. — Gavia immer (talk) 18:23, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you, but I don't find it nearly as helpful as the big yellow box every time someone edits my user talk page. I'm pretty sure the community would find a second watch list with a big yellow alert REALLY helpful. Special:Alerts or Special:Alertlist would be nice to have. <font color="#039">Feed    <font color="#008000">back     (talk)  18:30, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Your request is certainly not a new one, and I'm sure it's about time for someone to chime in that liquidThreads will solve all of this. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 18:33, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, liquidThreads absolutely will solve everything. That's why it's delayed; the developers need a list of everything for feature testing. — Gavia immer (talk) 18:39, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I also have a script called Mark Edits After My Own that highlights pages in contributions pages that have been edited since you last edited it. It works for the contributions page of any user, it doesn't have to be just you. It will not highlight pages already on your watchlist since you're already watching those. Also, it will only highlight pages once so it doesn't duplicate the highlighting on the same page. Gary King  ( talk ·  scripts )  20:19, 28 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Though it's not a big yellow box, this script alerts you by placing a text notification under the article title of the page you're on. It always brings my attention to the watchlist. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 10:20, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Screen resolution
I know that WP:ACCESS is the appropriate place to pursue this, but I have a technical question beforehand.

If memory serves me right, 1024 by 768 pixels became the most commonly supported screen resolution in about 2001 or 2002. But as far as I'm aware, new monitors had the ability to display that resolution for a long time before that. XGA states that it was introduced in 1990, but can anyone give a rough idea of when monitors that supported 1024x768 became the standard? I'm pretty sure that it was around the start of the Windows '95 era, but I have no way of verifying that. Also, are there any considerations that would need to be taken into account before deciding what resolutions wikipedia articles should support? Thanks in advance, WFCforLife (talk) 14:30, 29 June 2010 (UTC)


 * That greatly depends on who is viewing the page: people with older or cheaper computers will tend to have lower resolution monitors, and this varies with demographic and geography, so there is no universal benchmark. The expectations of 1995 Windows customers are no longer relevant to most internet users around the globe. And display sizes have not simply increased over time; now even the richest and geekiest viewers could be browsing at lower resolutions, using new mobile devices. So the situation is more complicated than ever. I think the only firm rule is "degrade gracefully": keep article layout flexible so that there is no gratuitous impairment at lower screen sizes. — Richardguk (talk) 01:07, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia (or more precisely MediaWiki with the provided skins) takes care of most of this for you, so long as you stick to using the styling provided by Wikitext and don't do anything silly with tables or images. But as Richardguk says, it's not true that "modern" automatically means "high-resolution"; there are plenty of modern browsing devices which browse pages at far lower than 1024x768, so whether or not it's a baseline for desktop PC monitors we shouldn't regard it as a baseline for everybody. As for when 1024x768 became standard, it was roughly 50-50 in 2001, while by 2006 it was 3:1 in favour of 1024x768. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 09:30, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the help guys. WFCforLife (talk) 22:37, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Javascript woes
I'm trying to modify User:Gary King/minutes later for diff.js (which doesn't work for me) to work for times over one hour. I've developed the following script, which also doesn't work. Can anyone figure out what I've done wrong? When I added it to my vector.js, all my other scripts stop working as well.

--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 05:08, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Do you use Firefox? If so, selecting Tools => Error console will locate the error (clear it first then reload the page). MER-C 06:27, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Hmm.. I didn't know Firefox would do that for you haha.. Wow. This is the error I received:

Warning: Unknown pseudo-class or pseudo-element 'first'. Dangling combinator. Source File: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dudemanfellabra/vector.js Line: 0 --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 07:13, 2 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Lines like  are invalid, JS is expecting variable on the left of "=" and some expression on the right. Install Firebug and then you can test each line manually in Firebug's console. P.S. In case you switch back to Monobook: redirecting monobook.js to vector.js will not work, you need to put   there. — AlexSm 15:01, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah thanks. I'm getting my languages mixed together haha. I fixed the two math lines, but it still doesn't work. I'm completely baffled. :\ (btw, thanks for the bit about monobook. I don't plan on switching back, but if I do, this is very helpful.)--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 18:30, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * This time you have  without preceding   on the line 47; but really, tech village is not the best way to findJS errors, using error console is much easier and faster. — AlexSm 18:58, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Error console wasn't finding anything for me. Thanks though. I had left out an ending bracket. Sorry about the annoyance. --Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:39, 2 July 2010 (UTC)