Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 94

Problem in User:Ladsgroup/election.js
Hello, I wrote a tool for elections but I have problem. When I use this tool it gives me "leave-Edit warning message" I don't want it. How can I submit edits of everyone using the tool without this warning? —Preceding undated comment added 21:41, 13 October 2011 (UTC).

No more line graphs
The Edit History: Revision History Statistics pages of Wikipedia articles no longer display the line graphs normally shown under the "Edits over Time" and "Article size over time" headings. Instead, the areas load notices stating "Error loading file: [long web address]". Is it possible to know when/if this issue might be fixed?Ferox Seneca (talk) 23:27, 13 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The PageStats tool is located at http://stats.grok.se, which in turn pulls the stats from http://dammit.lt/wikistats, which appears to be down. Looks like this is maintained by User:Henrik and there are discussions on his talk page about problems over the last week. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 10:13, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The Page Stats Tool can be accesses from the link  on  any  page history, works  very  fast,  provides information  just  the way  it  should. I've never known it to let me down. An indispensable tooL --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:26, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks!Ferox Seneca (talk) 01:21, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

TeX issues
When I'm logged in, using MathJax, this table looks OK:

\begin{array}{l||r|r|r||r|r|r} \hline \\   \hline L' & \Omicron & \lambda\alpha & \kappa\varepsilon & \Omicron & \alpha & \beta & \nu \\ \alpha & \alpha & \beta & \nu & \Omicron & \alpha & \beta & \nu \\ \alpha L' & \alpha & \lambda\delta & \iota\varepsilon & \Omicron & \alpha & \beta & \nu \\ \hline \\ \beta & \beta & \varepsilon & \mu & \Omicron & \alpha & \beta & \nu \\ \beta L' & \beta & \lambda\zeta & \delta & \Omicron & \alpha & \beta & \mu\eta \\ \gamma & \gamma & \eta & \kappa\eta & \Omicron & \alpha & \beta & \mu\eta \\ \end{array} $$

While not logged in and viewing it, all I see is error messages saying something failed to parse. Why? It's at User:Michael Hardy/Greek.chord.table.

Notice the format of one line:
 * \begin{array}{l||r|r|r||r|r|r}

I had hoped that would result in two parallel vertical lines close together in two places. That actually works when LaTeX is used in a normal way on the Linux machine I'm typing this on. It doesn't work here. Is there some way to get that two work here, or, failing that, to get a thicker vertical line than in those places where one sees only a single vertical slash? Michael Hardy (talk) 23:57, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, someone has pointed out that I'm trying to use more columns than what I've provided for.
 * (Some day error messages will say something other than just that something is wrong somewhere.)
 * Michael Hardy (talk) 03:09, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Michael Hardy (talk) 03:09, 14 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I tried compiling this in TeXnicCenter and it gave me 13 errors, so probably a problem with your source ... -- King of &hearts;   &diams;   &clubs;  &spades; 06:53, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Two technical requests
There's two outstanding requests to edit template pages;


 * Template_talk:Uir
 * Template talk:Jct

Due to the technical nature of them, I'm seeking help here. Thanks.  Chzz  ► 03:14, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Neither look particularly technical to me, just lacking in obviousness and evidence of consensus. The second even has a sandbox version to copy. Anomie⚔ 03:33, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * ✅ -- WOSlinker (talk) 06:53, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Compare Selected Revisions Problem
Since auto update to Firefox 7.0.1 (been a while), whenever I try to Compare Selected Revisions (hit the button), my system doesn't know what to do with the return index.php, and asks whether to save it or select the program to open it. I suspected was Firefox, but checking on IE 8.0.6001.18702 returning same error. I'm running on XP - Service Pack 3.Not a show stopper, but quite frustrating. Any suggestions for settings / installations gratefully received. Best wishes Haruth (talk) 20:55, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Works for me on this very page. FF 7.01, Ubuntu Linux 11.04 64-bit. Sometimes I have that issue when working on my localhost, but almost never on a live website. Weird. –Drilnoth (T/C) 21:00, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Drilnoth, you are a genius! Localhost was the key! I realised that as it also fails using my work computer, then it isn't any of the local settings, so had a trawl through the preferences tab, and was a bit concerned at some of the random changes that have appeared there. For some reason Use external diff by default (for experts only) was ticked, and as I amn't an expert, unticked it. Voila! Thank you kindly... (I know - scares me how it works sometimes too...:~D) Haruth (talk) 21:12, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Image URLs and version numbers
I just found out I can link to MediaWiki images like http://bits.wikimedia.org/skins-1.18/vector/images/user-icon.png without the embedded version number; http://bits.wikimedia.org/skins/vector/images/user-icon.png. But it turns out that URL still point to the old version: http://bits.wikimedia.org/skins-1.17/vector/images/user-icon.png. I don't know the mechanics behind the URL rewrites (config?), but it seems the version-less URLs needs to be updated to point to the 1.18 branch.  — Edokter  ( talk ) — 08:33, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * 31711.  — Edokter  ( talk ) — 09:56, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Mouseover text on interwiki links
I just noticed that when hovering with the mouse over the interwiki links for an article (in this specific case Tort) there is no mouseover text for the interwiki links. I thought this feature was there in the past, so has it been disabled recently? Is this an issue of my browser (Safari 5.1)? Any ideas? Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 21:53, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The title attributes are definitely missing. There was some talk about changing them (forgot where) to display the language in English, but this seems to be in error.  — Edokter  ( talk ) — 22:34, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Known issue 31505. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:03, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Huggle
Hi all, this isn't a request for support I just hope someone who is technically able watch this page, so I decided to spam here a bit, instead of mediawiki irc, Huggle is a tool for dealing with vandals which is just as mediawiki completely created by volunteers. Unfortunatelly there are only 2 - 3 active developers, so I would like to notice that if there are people who understand c#, php and mediawiki and would like to participate on wikipedia dev project, we'd be happy if you join us! Please let me know in e-mail or feedback page in case you would like to join the team! Petrb (talk) 07:04, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Reference count
Any chance there is a tool which counts the number of references wikipedia currently has and the average per article etc?♦ Dr. Blofeld  12:50, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * With the number of ways to include a citation, this is going to be difficult. Database reports/Templates transcluded on the most pages shows that Citation/core is used on 1,378,239 pages; this probably includes the 941,236 uses of cite web and the rest. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 13:40, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Based on that, it would probably be a low number, as in less than 1. That's what I would have predicted as well, anyway. Not that surprising considering how many random unreferenced stubs we have. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  17:34, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * A crude method using AWB database scanner is to count the number of  or   in articles dump.  That includes the numerous short-long footnote style but doesn't include plain text or Harvard citation}} citations.  — Dispenser 18:58, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The average per article isn't going to be helpful, I think. We're going to see a severe skew, with a small number of articles with large numbers of references and a large number with a small number of a references. In such cases the median is the more useful data point. --Izno (talk) 19:00, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Reftoolbar 2.0
I'm using Reftoolbar 2.0, with the enhanced dialogues for tables, etc. enabled, on IE7. The named references and error check normally have pictures of clipboards, but they now show up as white boxes with red x's. All other images display fine, which leads me to believe the problem is with the toolbar, or the images themselves. I believe this issue started when 1.18 was implemented.  Bramble  claw  x   21:15, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

"Page" menu letters filled in?
My drop-down menu is still visually broken after the upgrade, Help! For some reason the letter "P" and "e" are filled in (??) -- &oelig; &trade; 04:56, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Which gadget has the “page” menu? — ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 23:35, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It is MediaWiki:Gadget-dropdown-menus.js. I proposed a change at User talk:Haza-w/cactions.js (another copy of the same script), but the admin who answered it said it was broken. I would appreciate if some other script-savvy users could find out what is wrong with that fix, since it works for me. — This, that, and the other (talk) 09:41, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, here's a screenshot of what I'm seeing: Notice the letters on the 'User' and 'Page' menus. That happened immediately after the upgrade and has never happened before, so it must be related somehow. Someone please tell me I'm not the only one seeing this. --  &oelig; &trade; 03:44, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, I just realized the "filled in" effect is because there's extra down arrows. -- &oelig; &trade; 03:46, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * My suggestion is to switch back to MonoBook skin, which will move the Search box into the left-hand side and so allow more room for tabs, [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:OlEnglish&action=history&useskin=monobook see here]. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:21, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I finally got used to Vector and now I should switch back to Monobook? .. Wasn't exactly the solution I was looking for.. -- &oelig; &trade; 13:34, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I think I see what is happening... "User" and "Page" should normally not be visible. One thing that did change with 1.18 is that the down-arrow icon was updated (it now inludes two icons). I don't know why the captions are shown, but I suspect that the tabs may be too wide because it may be conflicting with Twinkle's tab. Try turing off Twinkle to see if that resolves the problem. If so, it is indeed clashing with Twinkle.  — Edokter  ( talk ) — 14:14, 13 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Interesting.. disabling then re-enabling Twinkle in my preferences did indeed solve the problem. Thank you. -- &oelig; &trade; 00:59, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Remove this page from your watchlist?
When removing a page from the watchlist, we now get "Remove this page from your watchlist?" and an OK button. Any way to disable this? ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 12:24, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Er. I thought this might be a new feature in Vector, because I still use Monobook; but I just switched to Vector, and I don't get the question: it just spins the blue star and then unwatches as normal. -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:45, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * A security enhancement to watching/unwatching pages was introduced; this change broke the User:Js/watchlist user script and probably was mentioned in a previous thread here. The author seems to have fixed the script (although I have not verified that by testing it myself), so please try bypassing or clearing your web browser's cache. PleaseStand (talk) 12:56, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Aha! This happens when in Monobook when is enabled. User:Js/watchlist was 'fixed' by removing the unwatch feature. ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 13:31, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The script user:js/watchlist still has ajax unwatch links: your have to activate them by clicking x in the "Watchlist options" first. Or use  parameter in your common.js. — AlexSm 16:47, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The gadget is User:Haza-w/Drop-down menus. The new messages are MediaWiki:Confirm-unwatch-top and MediaWiki:Confirm-unwatch-button. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 15:55, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm in Modern skin, and I just got the "Remove?" button, as I have been since the change over. As you mentioned up on Gadgets, the "Add page and user options to drop-down menus " wasn't checked on mine in the first place. Other than that, I'm not familiar enough with scripts to understand what you are advising. --Maile66 (talk) 20:59, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm glad I am not the only one confused when reading this thread. I use Monobook, and am getting the question and button. I would like to get rid of that. Can you tell me in simple instructions what I need to do? Lady  of  Shalott  13:37, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Seems to me, the folks who brought us 1.18 should just push out a global remedy, rather than it being left up to the individual to figure out. If you go into "View and Edit Watchlist", you can remove from your watchlist without that message popping up. So, why would we need it to pop up when we mean to Unwatch from an individual page? --Maile66 (talk) 17:56, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I use the Monobook skin and have enabled. This creates a Page tab with drop-dwn selections including Watch page/Unwatch page. When selecting Unwatch page, then the message appears. Without the gadget enable, the Unwatch tab works without the message. The gadget is User:Haza-w/Drop-down menus, and I reported the issue there.
 * On Modern skin, is not enabled.  Nonetheless, I have the drop down menus with the Watch/Unwatch.  That's exactly where I get the message if I want to Unwatch. --Maile66 (talk) 18:30, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You have User:Haza-w/cactions.js in User:Maile66/modern.js which adds exactly the same feature via script rather than as a gadget. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 18:38, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

If someone is experiencing this differently, please provide details. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 18:23, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Copying pro-forma templates
Here's a page with a button which copies the main contents of the page to the user's clipboard. Could we have the some thing on template documentation, for copying blank or part-completed templates? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:18, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It's a chunk of javascript:


 * The at the end is the marker for the start of the text to copy (the marker for the end of the text to copy being the matching  later on in the page), and the  actually displays the button. Not sure what the  is for. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:44, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I prefer manipulating the template myself, so I just have a script that converts template examples to PRE forms so that they are easier to copy. Here is the script. The description I have for the script is: "Converts template examples in tags to so they can be more easily copied. Simply click anywhere in the box, then right-click and choose "Select All" (or use the keyboard shortcut). Then copy the text."  Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  20:55, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you, but the joy of that script is it's a single click - with a prominent button for newbies to aim at. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:37, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you, too, but I'm not a coder, so can't do anything with that; I'm hoping someone else can implement it. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:37, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If you want to include that JS code on a specific template so that it's easy for newbies to use, then that probably won't be possible because you'd have to include it into the global JavaScript file, and I am doubtful that consensus would allow it to be included in there. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  05:53, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * While I'd use a local version if that's all that's available, a global version is what I'm asking for - we're supposed to be on a drive to make the editing interface easier for people to use, and this is one thing we could do to make a step in that direction. What makes you think others would oppose it? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 09:37, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I guess, depends on a few things that would need to be discussed first in detail. For instance, once it's implemented in the global JS, do you plan on automatically including a button along with every template example? Or does the button have to be implemented manually, with a template for instance? And if with a template, then will a bot do it automatically to all the thousands of existing templates, or will humans do them all, perhaps only for the most common templates? And so on.


 * In theory, the idea sounds pretty good. However, personally I dislike buttons like these, since they delete whatever you had in your clipboard previously. Any JavaScript that messes with my system, such as one that creates a new popup window, or resizes my browser, or manipulates my system's clipboard, or creates an animation that I did not initiate, I really dislike. And, I realize that if I don't want to clear my clipboard, then I don't have to press the button. Still, there's something about just pressing a button on a webpage that's enough to access my clipboard that bothers me; kind of similar to having a button on my watchlist that would empty my watchlist, or some people even want to hide the rollback button because they're worried of clicking it by mistake—I would never click it, but it would still bother me. In my opinion, Wikipedia is meant to be a static webpage, where as few animations and such take place. I don't know, just my two cents. I ultimately don't feel too strongly about this since if I really disliked something I'd hide it for myself with CSS, but a lot of people don't have that ability. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  16:42, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Problem with pdf files cited as source
There is a problem with citing pdf files from the Airports Authority of Indi website for air traffic figures on Madurai Airport and Tiruchirapalli Airport. Instead of the ref number appearing the text UNIQ97b50af97f34cc-ref-00,000,000-QINU is visible. The problem seems to be only on these two airport articles. In other articles like Bengaluru International Airport, Chennai International Airport, Cochin International Airport, Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, etc where the same pdf file is cited, there is no problem at all. &mdash;  Abhishek  Talk  05:57, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Observation: The two pages where the citation is garbled use cite web, while the others don't. I don't have a clue as to how to fix it though. Goodvac (talk) 06:07, 16 October 2011
 * I removed and changed it to (the way it is in the articles that do not pose this problem). But when previewed, the same problem exists. &mdash;  Abhishek   Talk  06:18, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Infobox airport formats those fields using the  magic word. This causes the references to bork and expose the strip marker that you are seeing.  The only way to fix this is to not include  tags or ask that the template be updated to not use   or to add an unformatted column for references. ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 11:18, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Back to Nostalgia for me
Over the last day, the English Wikipedia has been displaying as if I'm at nost:, not at the present-day form of Wikipedia. Everything is fine at other languages' Wikipedias (I've checked German, French, Latin, and whatever tt:wp is) and at Commons, and less than an hour ago, everything was fine on a different computer with my public sock, but I can't figure out what's happened with my computer on this website. I'm running whatever the latest sub-version is of Internet Explorer 8 in Windows Vista; my intended skin is Monobook. I know that I've not accidentally changed the skin, because when I log in through the secure server, everything appears just as it should. Nyttend (talk) 07:38, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Check your skin setting anyway; you may still be using the "old" secure url.  —  Edokter  ( talk ) — 09:41, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You can also try to clear your entire cache. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:43, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * tt is, apparently, the Wikipedia. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:05, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, if I clear my cache, the page appears better, but as soon as I go to another page, it's back to Nostalgia. Coming to edit this section, I cleared the cache of the edit page to make it appear correctly.  I needed to see the preview, and it was back to Nostalgia; I copied the text that I'd just written and used the back button to return to the original edit page, and again back to Nostalgia, even though I'd just cleared my cache.  It's not a problem with the secure server, by the way — I'm having trouble on the normal one, and the secure server displays everything properly.  Nyttend (talk) 17:43, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Are you clearing the entire browser cache as described at Bypass your cache? Does the same happen when you are logged out? PrimeHunter (talk) 23:28, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, sorry, forgot totally to dump the entire cache; I've done that, and it's working much better. Sorry for wasting everyone's time on this issue; I'd thought to clear the cache of a single page, but I didn't know that dumping the entire cache could help with pages that I'd never before visited.  Nyttend (talk) 03:14, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

What's the matter with this article?

 * Evenk Autonomous Banner ––虞海 ( Yú Hǎi )  ✍  09:09, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Some of the fields required numerical data, and you supplied them with prose; also, it failed to put a pushpin onto the map because no coordinates were supplied, but it was still looking for them. I've commented out troublesome sections (although one or two may not be troublesome, I wasn't exactly sure). Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 09:16, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you! ––虞海 ( Yú Hǎi )  ✍  10:07, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Mediawiki losing old file versions upon undeletion in MW 1.18
Since the most recent MW version upgrade, I've now had Mediawiki lose two different old versions of a file while in the process of deletion. Let me explain:


 * User uploads version A to Myfile.jpg.
 * The same user or a different user uploads version B to Myfile.jpg, overwriting the old version.
 * I delete Myfile.jpg.
 * I go to undelete version A, but when I undelete the file, version B pops up. Looking in the file history, version B is now version A, even though the resolution information (and IIRC the sha1 information) are still different. Thus version A is forever gone.

You can see this occur at two files:
 * Special:Undelete/File:University.JPG: in this case, only one deleted version appears in the history because I was trying to perform a history split. See . However, you'll notice the deleted revision is inexplicably identitical to File:Sindh Agriculture University.JPG.
 * Special:Undelete/File:Kolkata Tipu Sultan's Mosque3.jpg: you'll notice that the software lists two different files at two different resolutions. However, if you actually click both of the old versions, you'll get the same file (445x387: the newer one uploaded).

Do I need to file a bug for this? Or is there already a bug filed? Magog the Ogre (talk) 19:40, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Filing a bug would probably be the best course of action. Peachey88 (T &middot; &#32; C) 05:32, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Page View Statistics
The "Page View Statistics" function has not been updated in at least five days. I check page view statistics daily; the page view tallies have been the same now since last Friday on every article.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 23:06, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This one is up to date. Is there another one that you are looking at? — ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 01:48, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes. The one that's available in the history section of every article. Dr.K. λogos<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.2ex;*left:-5.5ex">πraxis  03:16, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I think you mean stats.grok.se. If so, that's truly not a WMF service, and - sorry - but questions should go to the creator of it.  Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 09:24, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, thanks. That's the url of the link you press. It goes on and off at times. Is there another equivalent service supported by WMF that can be used? Dr.K. <sup style="position:relative">λogos<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.2ex;*left:-5.5ex">πraxis  13:30, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * User:Dr.K., If you see stats.wikimedia.org off, then Bugzilla is the right place to report it. If you see a problem with stats.grok.se, then it should be reported to User:Henrik or User:Domas.


 * Thank you Mark. Dr.K. <sup style="position:relative">λogos<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.2ex;*left:-5.5ex">πraxis  00:26, 13 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you Mark also. I think the Wikimedia Foundation should be more active in helping contributors get Page View statistics. These numbers are important for contributors because it tells us that we're being read and that what information we add to Wikipedia is valuable. This link which appeared above offers summary statistics; what people such as myself really need to know is how many people are looking at a specific article within the last day; ideally I would like to have a tally of readers (past day, last hour, last week perhaps?) appearing on the face of the article somewhere in a corner. Better: I'd love to have a table showing how many people are reading (and have cumulatively read) my contributions to specific articles so I could say to somebody (or think to myself) 15 million people have read my contributions to Wikipedia. Numerous contributors have written on User talk:Henrik's page asking why the Page View statistics tool (via History section) has not been updated for about a week now, and it is probably unfair for everybody here to expect Henrik to do all the hard work here of maintaining this valuable tool. The only alternate tool I've come across is Page View Statistics (alternate tool) but it's clumsy and slow and the graph is hard to read. I encourage WMF to please pay more attention to traffic statistics, that is, WMF should provide a service similar to stats.grok.se.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 10:49, 14 October 2011 (UTC)


 * While it's simple to create a tool to show how many people have looked at a particular article, I would imagine that it would be very, very difficult to create one which shows how many people have looked at any specific contribution to that article. 92.6.89.247 (talk) 17:52, 14 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Why would anyone  want  to know?  Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:01, 14 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I would love to know how many people read my contributions here at Wikipedia. It tells me that my unpaid effort is appreciated on some level, that other people elsewhere in the world have looked at what I've done, and possibly benefited from it, and have greater knowledge, wisdom, perspectives than they had before. The prospect that readers might enjoy my contributions I find extremely motivating here at Wikipedia since, as you know, we're unpaid volunteers, almost always unthanked for our contributions. Traffic statistics, in a sense, is the only pay we get. It's important to me. I realize it would be difficult to assess which particular parts of an article were read. But there might be other data points which could rather easily be isolated -- how long (on average) a particular article was viewed, or whether somebody clicked on it, then clicked away; or whether on average people tended to scroll down the page, or did they only look at the first paragraph. That information can help all of us figure out which articles need improving, or whether there might be any problems (or turnoffs) based on readership patterns.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 18:57, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's possible to find out how long an article is viewed for, because no signal is sent that somebody is leaving the page (whether by clicking on a link or hitting the "back" button). Yes, if editing in Vector skin you may get an "Are you sure you want to leave this page?" warning, but that is generated locally by your browser based upon javascript sent when you first go for the [edit] link; if you select the "Leave Page" button, no corresponding signal is sent back. Certainly it is not possible to find out whether the page was scrolled and even less possible to find out what they actually read. Page view statistics are based upon which URLs were retrieved, not on what was done with those after retrieval.
 * Also difficult is the task of analysing whether your edits to this page are more popular than, say, mine. Consider that your edit of 18:57 14 October 2011 is covered by the URL
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&diff=455574354&oldid=455566566
 * but there are other URLs covering exactly the same change:
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&diff=prev&oldid=455574354
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)&diff=next&oldid=455566566
 * are just two of them. Whilst the number of people going for any specific URL may well be logged, the number of people interested in that particular diff is likely to be small, and since they have (at least) three different ways of obtaining it, the figures will be spread out. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:30, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Henrik email
As you may know, there is a feature on Henrik's page to allow a user to email him. I did, and his reply is that he's had server issues, is currently on vacation without a computer to fix the problem, but will attend to it upon his return. --Maile66 (talk)
 * For my money this is exactly why the Foundation should take on support for the tool. It's very unsatisfactory that such an important bit of functionality is entirely dependent on one editor. No matter how good Henrik is, he's still only one person. Prioryman (talk) 23:39, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree. There have been several similar requests on Henrik's talk page, for example here and here. —Bruce1eetalk 05:22, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Now it is working again. Dr.K. <sup style="position:relative">λogos<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.2ex;*left:-5.5ex">πraxis  21:37, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Problem with RefToolbar
I'm having a big problem with the RefToolbar. When I hit the autocomplete button for the URL, it reacts as if I'd hit "Save page". I'm using Firefox 7.0.1 and Windows 7. Lampman (talk) 22:03, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This sounds related to a thread from a few days ago, now archived at Village pump (technical)/Archive 93. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:10, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks; I did a quick search, but did not see that entry. Hopefully the fix will "propagate" to me before too long. Lampman (talk) 12:16, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I orignally reported the problem. It was fixed for me as of some time last week, but this morning, it has become unfixed and is happening again. -- Whpq (talk) 13:34, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

“Templates used on this page” list
Hello,

I was at the page en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Infobox_writer&action=edit, and I wanted to go to the Template:URL. Alas, the list of the “templates used on this page” forgets the Template:URL. But the Template:URL is used, I see it in the source. It has to be shown in the list.

--Nnemo (talk) 06:11, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It's not used on that page, as it is only used when the website parameter is given to the template. Which isn't done in the standard page view (no parameters are). Anomie⚔ 13:23, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Also note that the list actually says: "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page." Template:URL is not transcluded. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:40, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * From my window, I see exactly “Templates used on this page:”. The Template:URL is used, although not in all cases. Should we understand that the templates listed are only the ones which are used when displaying the page of the template, that is without any parameter ?
 * --Nnemo (talk) 15:07, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * --Nnemo (talk) 15:07, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I see "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page" in the default Vector skin at your url en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Infobox_writer&action=edit. If I click Show preview then I see "Templates used in this preview". Whatever the heading, such lists are generated automatically and always show what is actually transcluded (including indirect transclusions via other transclusions), and not what is mentioned somewhere in the source code. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:24, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Nnemo is probably using "British English" in user preferences: only local "english" MediaWiki:Templatesused was reworded to say "transcluded". — AlexSm 15:36, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, that would do it. The default English has said transcluded since 2006. The "en-GB - British English" option at Special:Preferences should come with a warning that the user interface may display obsolete messages. I wonder how many users have selected British English without knowing what they lose and that the only gain is probably to avoid a few spellings they may be less used to. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:53, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Since this comes up from time to time, I wrote User:Gadget850/FAQ/Language. The linked database report shows 16,959 es, 8,995 en-gb, 8,995 fr and so on. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 00:24, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
 * What about adding a link to 31015 and/or to this user script to your subpage? Helder 18:06, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Ipad paste problems
Lately I've been having problems copying text into the article edit screen (particularly url addresses), and cutting and copying text that is already in the article. When I try and paste the text in nothing happens when I press Paste. It happens when I use my ipad2 (not every time I try, but increasingly so), whereas copy/paste works fine elsewhere on the Ipad. Anyone having similar problems? Eldumpo (talk) 22:37, 16 October 2011 (UTC)


 * If you have any editor enhancements such as wikEd or the new editor toolbar, try turning all those off first. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  05:21, 17 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't know what WikiEd is but in My Preferences/Editing I have the 'Enable enhanced editing toolbar' ticked. Are you suggesting I should de-select that, and if I do, what toolbar editing features would I lose. Thanks.Eldumpo (talk) 13:06, 17 October 2011 (UTC)


 * You can try disabling it to see what you will lose. You can re-enable it again whenever you want. I personally have all toolbars disabled since they just get in the way of typing. I suggest disabling it temporarily just so you can test if it fixes your iPad problems, then at least you know what the problem is. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  18:11, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

1.18 issue with subst'ing magic words
I don't know if people are still reading the section above, so I just wanted to leave a note that I added an issue at. Thanks, <b class="IPA">r<font color="#8B0000">ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 16:21, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

My sig breaks AA
Through the prod templates, the effects are messy. I reported it to Wikipedia_talk:Article_alerts, but in case this is not widely watched, I am also posting here - maybe somebody can figure out what's wrong. My sig doesn't usually break things, but if it is a problem with it, let me know if something needs to be changed. If it is a problem with AA, well, that's out of my league - but perhaps one of the experts here can trace and fix the issue. It affected the WP:POLAND project page, where the AA page is included, and I wonder how many other pages? --<sub style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; talk to me 21:57, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Only half you signature was copied to that page, and I think it shouldn't even be there. I removed it and the page looks OK now. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 22:07, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Piotrus, has your sig changed since I offered this advice? -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:22, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
 * From the look of it he did exactly as you suggested. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 22:24, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
 * In Piotrus made a signed prod. In  AAlertBot shortened it in a report, cutting it off after 250 characters so it ended abruptly in the middle of the signature with  . AAlertBot replaced the remaining part with "...". The cut off point left open tags. Prods are not supposed to be signed (signatures should not be seen in article space) but it also sounds problematic for AAlertBot to cut off something which may leave open tags. It could be discussed at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts/Bugs. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:42, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quick reaction. I'll try to remember not to sign prods. --<sub style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; talk to me 22:45, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Hiding the Help Desk edit notice
Can someone provide the CSS magic that will hide the usual edit notice for Help desk? I'd like to use that screen space for answering people's questions. Does it need a named "div" to be added at Template:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Help desk? -- John of Reading (talk) 20:54, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * This:


 * will do the trick. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  20:58, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * And it's gone! Excellent, thank you. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:06, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Malicioius code on a script?
Would someone please look at User:Maile66/modern.js. I don't even remember when I set up this page, or why. But probably sometime in 2011, I added the DYK part. Scripts aren't my thing. But there is this strange scary message that pops up on it. "Code that you insert on this page could contain malicious content capable of compromising your account." I've never seen a message like this on Wikipedia. --Maile66 (talk) 21:16, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * That's just a generic warning to be cautious when adding javascript to your .js file, nothing to be concerned about. Malleus Fatuorum 21:20, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * See Village pump (technical)/Archive 57 and MediaWiki talk:Jswarning for more info. Goodvac (talk) 21:21, 15 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Maile66 (talk) 21:22, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Special:Export providing outdated/cached article text?
I use Special:Export quite a lot to export the latest revision of a list of articles to an XML file. All fine, but I find that exports including pages that I've recently edited don't seem to export the very latest page revision, maybe a cache that's a day or two old. Is this a known feature/limitation of Special:Export? The Help for it doesn't mention anything. Thanks Rjwilmsi  18:03, 17 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Just tested a few pages. I went to Recent Changes and checked a few pages that were edited just a few seconds ago, entered them into Export, and Export did indeed grab the most recent edit that was made only seconds ago. Therefore, it appears as though it should indeed grab the very latest revision. Perhaps try shortening your list of articles to see if the latest revision of each article is grabbed? Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  18:10, 17 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It could be a temporary database overload, or you hit the 1000 revisions limit, see mw:Manual:Parameters_to_Special:Export. Nemo 13:11, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Help! Piped link in a table using template parameters won't display
Ok, I'm stumped. I can't for the life of me figure out why this won't work. The old version of CFB Standings Start had the wikitable formatting, and displays the piped link just fine. I'm in the process of standardizing the standings templates via a meta-template (Standings Table Start) to put all the table formatting in one common place. Somehow, this is breaking the sandboxed version. If it was just the pipe being misinterpreted as a table column break, that would be fine, but the double link brackets aren't being interpreted either. Any ideas? De Fault  Ryan  04:53, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * fixed it. Before my edit the piped link got a newline before the pipe like this which doesn't work:

[[link
 * title]]
 * PrimeHunter (talk) 05:49, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * See also the third bullet at Help:Template. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:51, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the help. No newlines/whitespace in unnamed parameters? Who knew? De  Fault  Ryan  14:01, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * See Help:Template, third bullet. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:19, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Help link for Preferences
Some Preferences settings are not self-explanatory. It would be good if MediaWiki:Preferences-summary was updated to include a link to meta:Help:Preferences (possibly floating right, or even absolutely positioned, to avoid wasted vertical space). I can think of no good reason not to add such a link, as there is currently no obvious way of getting help on preferences. What do you think? — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:48, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Support. See de:Spezial:Einstellungen for how de:MediaWiki:Preferences-summary looks in German. I wonder whether new users will get confused by the English help page being at meta. They may not realize they are at another wiki and if they click My preferences at meta then they change meta preferences. There are also a few differences to the preferences at the English Wikipedia. Perhaps Help:Preferences would be a better target if it was expanded a little but still referred to meta for the main help. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:41, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Link [ de:Special:Preferences?uselang=de] will work for those who changed interface language on dewiki. — AlexSm 14:55, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Support linking to a local page Help:Preferences. — AlexSm 14:55, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Monobook errors
Every once in awhile, I see an error that appears in the top and side when using the Monobook display. I'm using IE (Internet Explorer). IE Version 8.0.6001.18702. It errors and everythink is in prenthesis, so it looks as if it is a decoding problem. Contact me! Larsona (talk) 22:04, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Please quote some of the error text you see. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Village_pump_%28technical%29?uselang=qqx creates a page with message names in parentheses instead of displaying the messages. Does it look like that? PrimeHunter (talk) 23:21, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Time display
Originally posted at the Help desk: I am using on my userpage, but somehow I feel there is a discrepancy. It constantly seems to display the same time and even refreshing the page / clearing my browser cache seems to have no effect. Can somebody help with that or perhaps explain what I am doing wrong (if anything)? My time zone is CEST, so according to this page it should display as ca 12:48 right now, but constantly displays as 10:59 for me. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 10:49, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia pages are heavily cached at multiple levels to reduce server load, so that template and others like it will only display the current time as of when the page was last parsed. Perhaps the template documentation should be updated to clearly state this. Anomie⚔ 11:22, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I added a note to the documentation. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 12:06, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You can purge to make it update. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:12, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I added a purge link to the page. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 13:28, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

JavaScript workaround to mark edits as minor not working
Back in March of this year, consensus was reached that the preferences option to "mark all edits minor by default" should be removed. A workaround script was offered to established users who wanted to maintain that setting. I added that script to my monobook.js in March, and it worked when I edited back then (i.e. my edits were marked minor by default). I've just started editing again after several months, and I've found that the JavaScript workaround is no longer functioning. I had a short discussion with User:Jarry1250 (who first notified me that the preference setting was being phased out), and he tweaked the script and suggested that I clear my cache and try editing in different browsers. He also suggested that if that didn't work (and it didn't), I come to WP:VPT. I should note that 99% of my edits correct typographical errors, which is why this setting is so useful for me. Thank you for your help! Cheers, Wrelwser43 (talk) 18:01, 19 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Most likely the same issue as above, your script will work once MediaWiki:RefToolbarLegacy.js is fixed. P.S. Next time please also confirm that you'r still using monobook skin; that's why it's better to use skin-independent common.js now. — AlexSm 18:19, 19 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Sorry about that. I'm not very familiar with scripts and skins.  Are you saying I can create User:Wrelwser43/common.js and copy everything in User:Wrelwser43/monobook.js into it?  And then once MediaWiki:RefToolbarLegacy.js is fixed, the script will work?  What's an approximate timeframe on it being fixed?  Thanks again! Wrelwser43 (talk) 18:27, 19 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't know when RefToolbarLegacy will be fixed (need a sysop to do that). You do not have to move your code to common.js but if you ever chane your skin in preferences your monobook.js will not be used anymore; see Preferences→Appearance for a list of all personal css/js files. — AlexSm 18:53, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Here's a (slightly) modernized version of the script: Cheers, — mc10 ( t / c ) 20:16, 19 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Actually, that should be:


 * to avoid a "TypeError: [...] is null" error occurring if the "minor edit" option is not available thanks to MediaWiki 1.18 changes. PleaseStand (talk) 20:47, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Colons in article titles
Article Book A Novel states But many article have colons in the title, for example Aliens: Earth Hive So is this statement a special example or a mistake ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 21:38, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Book A Novel is actually an example at Naming conventions (technical restrictions). Book: is the namespace prefix for books. Goodvac (talk) 21:48, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Aha! Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 21:53, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Empty math markup gives UNIQ...QINU
Typing  gives: $$$$ (i'm seeing UNIQ54cc78e41e963350-math-00000004-QINU there in case others don't see the same). Granted an empty  pair is pointless, but one had somehow got into the wikitext of 'Central limit theorem' — see Talk:Central limit theorem. Qwfp (talk) 10:23, 19 October 2011 (UTC)


 * See the new Help:Strip markers ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 12:11, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * <b style="color:forestgreen">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange">melon</b> 15:27, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks both. (Bugzilla is beyond me.) Qwfp (talk) 17:26, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Languages
Since not all pages display all languages I suggest to have drop down menu for languages selection. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.182.113.47 (talk) 21:55, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This is the English Wikipedia. What other languages do you expect to see? -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:14, 20 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Articles that are available in a language besides English are available by clicking on the corresponding language name in the left-hand column of every article. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  03:03, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, you can't have a menu for things that don't exist. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 03:17, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Problems with search results
Recently, there have been an increasing number of problems with search results, which as a WikiGnome, I use heavily to help find spelling mistakes. These problems do not appear every time, which will make tracing them more difficult

Having opened up a search and found there are say 6 matches, having corrected one of them and returned to the search, the number of matches sometimes goes up, or down, and sometimes shows no matches at all. The refresh button can change the number of matches, to a different selection. This makes evaluation much more difficult, and much slower, as numerous mis-spellings have to stay e.g. those in URLs, with sic after them, in foreign languages etc. I cannot simply work down a list, as after correcting a few errors the results appear more and more randomised, requiring repeated searches through the results pages to find uncorrected errors. This is particularly irksome when searching lists such as which has about 310 matches, almost all of which are the correct use of the French word réponse. I go down the list, ignoring the French uses and correcting the English uses. The articles I have corrected display in a different colour, but I do not access the 280 French uses, so they are not highlit, however the entries I have deliberately ignored are all mixed up with those I have not looked at There are an increasing number of false matches i.e. articles which always appear in the list, but never have the typo, although they probably have had it in the past. e.g. will almost certainly include List of awards and nominations received by Def Leppard, Detroit Receiving Hospital, The Receiving End of Sirens none of which include recieve (ie)
 * 1) The number of matches varies, and matches disappear
 * 1) Some matches only show the article title, with no detail
 * 1) Matches move about
 * 1) False matches

If this is the wrong place for this please direct me to where I should be reporting this increasing problem. - Arjayay (talk) 17:23, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for reporting. The problem was with search9 which had a stale version of one of search index slices. It is updated now, and should give consistent results. --rainman (talk) 22:18, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks - that seems to have dealt with points 1 & 2 - but 3 & 4 remain albeit that they are longer-term problems. Arjayay (talk) 08:08, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, those are harder to address, and I'm afraid are going to stay like that until there is someone in the developer team actively looking at search. --rainman (talk) 10:59, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I spoke too soon - problem 2 has returned with significant numbers of title only results. Arjayay (talk) 16:10, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * And just for the record, problem 1 has returned again as well - Arjayay (talk) 17:05, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

JavaScript problems in IE8
I'm using Vector skin with IE8 v8.0.6001 on Vista, and am experiencing a number of different problems on every page in WP that I have examined. I am not experiencing any of these problems when using another browser - so far I've tried Chrome, Safari and Firefox. Advice please. Pdfpdf (talk) 05:42, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * On any page containing a class="wikitable sortable", the table looks & behaves identically to a class=wikitable.
 * On any page, hovering over a link either displays nothing, or only displays a box with the link name - depending on the link, IE8 used to, and other browsers still do, display the page, or the edit history or other information
 * While typing into the search box (on any page with a search box), it does not provide an "auto complete" list of candidate terms.
 * My talk page top-of-page list of menus displays
 * "Read, Edit, Add topic, View history, (heart), (star), (triangle)" rather than
 * "Read, Edit, +, (heart), (star), (triangle), (triangle), (triangle)"
 * When editing a page, none of the "editing shortcuts" that appear below the Save page/Show preview/etc line appear as links - they all appear only as static text.
 * Etc.


 * Per your first point, how do the unstyled sortable tables at Help:Sorting look? Have you tried testing while not logged in, to eliminate any preferences/gadgets issues? --Lexein (talk) 09:33, 19 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Have you checked that you have JavaScript enabled? For example, at the top of this page is a box labelled "Frequently Asked Questions". Do you see it with a working "Show/Hide" link? -- John of Reading (talk) 10:14, 19 October 2011 (UTC)


 * When I'm logged in, all tables on all pages look the same.
 * No, I hadn't tried logging out. I see that things behave like they should when I'm logged out(!)
 * Yes, I have checked if Javascript is enabled. It says it is. (i.e. Tools / Internet options / Advanced / Java / Use JRE 1.6.0_24 is checked.)
 * When I'm not logged in, show/hide is visible; when I'm logged in, it's not visible.
 * Pdfpdf (talk) 07:56, 20 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It can't be a browser setting if it is working when logged out, AFAIK, and has no .JS subpages. Does that mean it must be a preference setting? Do you have "My preferences" > Gadgets > Compatibility > "JavaScript Standard Library" ticked? You could try flipping that checkbox and trying again. This is just a guess. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:39, 20 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Given that things work fine when logged out, agree that it can't be a browser setting per se.
 * Also, given everything works fine in other browsers when logged in, it's not obviously some account setting per se.
 * Yes, the "JavaScript Standard Library" box was checked. I unchecked it, saved, logged out, closed browser, opened browser, looked around (all behaving nicely), logged in (all now misbehaving), preferences, tick box, save. All still misbehaving.
 * It's a pretty strange combination:
 * When logged in & using IE8, JavaScript is not working
 * When using any other browser, JavaScript is working
 * When not logged in, JavaScript is working
 * I can't think of what else I could try. Pdfpdf (talk) 21:39, 20 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I dug out an old laptop running IE7 v7.0.5730 under XP - same misbehaviour.
 * It's beginning to look like it might have more to do with my account settings than with IE8. When they get home, I'll get one of the kids to log on to my machine and see what they experience. Pdfpdf (talk) 23:17, 20 October 2011 (UTC)


 * More data:
 * When User:pdfpdf logged in & using IE8 under Vista, JavaScript is not working
 * When User:pdfpdf logged in & using IE7 under XP, JavaScript is not working
 * When User:pdfpdf logged in & using Chrome, Safari and/or Firefox under Vista, JavaScript is working
 * When not logged in & using any browser (including IE7 & IE8), JavaScript is working
 * When another User is logged in & using IE8 under Vista, JavaScript is working
 * What now? Pdfpdf (talk) 01:52, 21 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Uncheck "Change UTC-based times and dates ... to local time" in your gadgets, save preferences and refresh Help:Sorting. If it doens't help disable all other gadgets and try Help:Sorting again. — AlexSm 04:16, 21 October 2011 (UTC)


 * "Uncheck ... " - Yep! That solves it!! And all the other problems too!!!
 * I would never have thought to try that. Many thanks! Pdfpdf (talk) 06:11, 21 October 2011 (UTC)


 * new thread
 * Please notice that Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is not the same as JavaScript.
 * The sortable tables on Help:Sorting works for me, on IE 8. Helder 11:28, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * a) Yes, JRE is not JavaScript. I didn't say it was. What I said was: "Yes, I have checked if Javascript is enabled. It says it is. (i.e. Tools / Internet options / Advanced / Java / Use JRE 1.6.0_24 is checked.)" Is there some other indicator in IE8 that JavaScript is enabled? If so, please advise.
 * b) Which version of IE8 are you using, and which operating system? Pdfpdf (talk) 22:36, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That option in Internet Options would be for which version of the JRE to use for Java applets, I believe. JavaScript is a seperate system from Java, so I do not think that setting has anything to do with JavaScript. Regards, &mdash;{&#124;Retro00064&#124;&#9742;talk&#124;&#x270D;contribs&#124;} 03:03, 21 October 2011 (UTC).
 * In which case I repeat the implied question: How do you tell if JavaScript is enabled? Pdfpdf (talk) 06:11, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If JavaScript is enabled/working on your browser, and you type
 * in the address bar, you will get a message saying it works. Helder 11:21, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * in the address bar, you will get a message saying it works. Helder 11:21, 21 October 2011 (UTC)


 * new thread
 * “On any page, hovering over a link either displays nothing, or only displays a box with the link name - depending on the link, IE8 used to, and other browsers still do, display the page, or the edit history or other information”
 * With some crazy gadget in your browser or in your Wikipedia. On a normal Wikipedia, a normal browser never does that, happily.
 * --Nnemo (talk) 19:28, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Page top tabs
Someone e-mailed me because he had difficulty understanding user talk pages - see this thread. It occurred to me that one small aid might be on a user page to change the tab at the top of the page from "Discussion" to "Talk" and change the associated mouse-over text from "Discussion about the content page" to "Leave a message for this user". My questions: a) where would I go to make this change? I have searched the MediaWiki namespace without success. b) can I make this change just for the User namespace. I note that the top left tab on this page says "Project page" rather than "Wikipedia" so there is some scope for namespace-specific text. &mdash; RHaworth (talk · contribs) 10:13, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The message for the 'User talk' tab is at MediaWiki:Nstab-user talk ([//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AAllMessages&prefix=Nstab&filter=all&lang=en&limit=50 not defined]), so it can be changed per namespace. The tooltip is at MediaWiki:Tooltip-ca-talk, but is generic for all namespaces. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 16:17, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I think I am beginning to understand the significance of the colours in Special:AllMessages and here. I believe you are mistaken: $messages['nstab-user talk'] is not defined in MessagesEn.php of the MediaWiki software. You could create MediaWiki:Nstab-user-talk but it would have absolutely no effect. The word "Discussion" comes from MediaWiki:talk, or more precisely from $messages['talk'] defined in MessagesEn.php since MediaWiki:talk has not been created as an override. So both "Discussion" and "Discussion about the content page" are generic to all namespaces. I will drop my suggestion. &mdash; RHaworth (talk · contribs) 18:57, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The fact that MediaWiki:Nstab-user talk is not in MessagesEn.php is not important; Mediawiki will look for a substitute message on that location. See [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:RHaworth?uselang=qqx your talk page] with the message names displayed. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 19:44, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I am still feeling my way a bit in this area so someone please confirm that I have got the following correct. $messages['nstab-main'] is defined but MediaWiki:nstab-main is also defined so the software uses MediaWiki:nstab-main as an override for this wiki only. $messages['nstab-template'] is defined but MediaWiki:nstab-template is not defined - the blue link is a special usage to confirm that this title corresponds to an element in $messages[] - so the software uses $messages['nstab-template']. The fact that $messages['nstab-user talk'] is not defined is all important . If it does not exist in $messages[] how is the MediaWiki software going to find MediaWiki:Nstab-user talk - note the red link in this case? &mdash; RHaworth (talk · contribs) 11:20, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, I'm going to put this to the test and put "Talk" in MediaWiki:Nstab-user talk. If the tab changes to "Talk", then $messages is not the only place where messages are stored. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 12:07, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * As I expected, MediaWiki:Nstab-user talk does indeed work. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 12:09, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I would support changing that system message, but to what, I don't know. I would also support changing the title of "New section" tab on user talk pages to read "Leave a message" (or something similar), since "New section" is not really very meaningful for user talk pages; however, I'm not sure of the technical feasability of this suggestion. — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:31, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * As discussed above, it cannot be done by a few edits in the MediaWiki namespace; it would require a change to the Wikimedia software to support a series of nstab-main-talk, nstab-user-talk, nstab-image-talk, etc. messages and a corresponding set of tooltip-ca-main-talk, tooltip-ca-user-talk, etc. messages. I don't think it is worth it. &mdash; RHaworth (talk · contribs) 11:20, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * As I have shown above, all nstab- entries have corresponding talk tab messages. These mesage names are generated on the fly by adding " talk" to the name and are not stored in $messages (which only contains the base "Discussion" name). <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 12:20, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It can be done by editing MediaWiki:Vector-action-addsection. In fact, it already has been changed from the original "Add topic" to "New section". <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 12:20, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, presumably it could be changed for just the User talk namespace by using a parser function (assuming that parser functions work in that situation...) — This, that, and the other (talk) 00:02, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That would be likely to bring the wrath of Domas upon us.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Nstab-main&diff=217955007&oldid=215091279] Anomie⚔ 00:12, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That was in 2008... and, besides, user talk pages get far fewer views than articles do. — This, that, and the other (talk) 01:18, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh... the message is displayed on all talk pages. So it would likely require a new system message, and therefore some code changes. Bleurgh. — This, that, and the other (talk) 01:20, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

MediaWiki stylesheets location
Looks like the main and skin stylesheets are loading from a long URL at //bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/. I can view the page source and follow it, but it displays as one line, which is difficult to follow. Is there a formatted version somewhere? ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 01:17, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Are you talking about the problem that is solved by adding  (or  ) to the end of the page url? Anomie⚔ 01:29, 21 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks. The stylesheet is:
 * http://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&amp;lang=en&amp;modules=ext.wikihiero%7Cmediawiki.legacy.commonPrint%2Cshared%7Cskins.monobook&amp;only=styles&amp;skin=monobook&amp;*
 * Changing  renders it in a readable format. ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 01:40, 21 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Also can find them at svn.wikimedia.org/.../skins/; and CSS for special pages is in /resources/. — AlexSm 04:22, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Though that is for the "trunk" branch of MediaWiki; if you want to see the version actually deployed here, you want to examine the 1.18wmf1 branch. PleaseStand (talk) 11:41, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I guess it's branches/wmf/1.18wmf1/ at the moment. — AlexSm 03:42, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Move of toolserver.org to toolserver.wikimedia.org
Please see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Move_of_toolserver.org_to_toolserver.wikimedia.org Petrb (talk) 15:08, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Protected titles message box
According to Why was my page deleted? there should be a message box on protected titles, but this is not appearing; instead there is a box with "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name" with no edit link and nothing to say how to create the page. The protection log can be found via the deletion log, or by changing the URL, but this is not obvious. For example, Blackout Crew (which should redirect to The Blackout Crew), there is nothing about protection and no link to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Blackout_Crew&action=edit which has the "protected" message. This could probably be improved by adding something to MediaWiki:Noarticletext-nopermission or Template:No article text, where the "nopermission" parameter exists but only removes the line with the link for creating the article. Peter E. James (talk) 20:33, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This is a fairly important problem: perhaps it needs to be raised at a higher-traffic noticeboard. — This, that, and the other (talk) 00:01, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * You could create the code and use on the talk page. By the way, default short message has a link to the logs. — AlexSm 03:42, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Bot visibility on watchlists
Is there any way (gadget, etc.) to make only certain bots visible on the watchlist? I would like, say, ClueBot NG's edits to show up on my watchlist, but not, say, Misza Bot II, SineBot, or AWBCPBot. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 20:37, 21 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think there is an easy way. However, it looks like ClueBot NG doesn't mark its edits as "bot edits". — AlexSm 03:42, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Buttons on editing toolbar
Why don't the buttons on my editing toolbar work? (I have not enabled "enhanced editing" or "dialogs for inserting links".) Wahrmund (talk) 15:42, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Same here. They haven't worked since the 1.18 came out. I brought this up before and supposedly this had been fixed. I use IE7 on Windows Vista with a Vector skin. Voceditenore (talk) 15:50, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If your problem is one of the following, they are not fixed:
 * 
 * #Parts of the toolbar seem shy
 * For the second one, I suggested that a possible fix would be to translate the gadget from de.wp back to English. Helder 16:33, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This is a different problem: old (bluish) toolbar buttons appear but nothing happens when you click them. I see this in IE8 as well. — AlexSm 17:30, 19 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The problem is in the MediaWiki:RefToolbarLegacy.js in the line : which destroys all attached events. Before MW1.18 either toolbar wasn't part of editform or the execution order was different. — AlexSm 17:50, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I made a request at Common.js talk. — AlexSm 03:42, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I tried to [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki%3ARefToolbarLegacy.js&action=historysubmit&diff=456800428&oldid=454771907 fix this], so clear your caches, and hope it helps :D —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 08:53, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

No longer any way to give a non-standard block explanation
On Special:Block, if "Other" was selected in the drop-down list of reasons, there used to be another box where one could enter a non-standard explanation. It is no longer there - I don't know if this is another 1.18 problem? (Vector, Firefox 7.01). JohnCD (talk) 22:00, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * WorksForMe... do you have any custom CSS/JS that could be hiding it?  <b style="color:forestgreen">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange">melon</b> 23:45, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Ditto for me; it's there in both Firefox 7.1 and IE8 Skier Dude  ( talk ) 01:38, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I've still got that, but I've lost the ability to add my own reason when tagging with twinkle. Not sure when that happened, could be a twinkle issue. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:42, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Correction to OP: "reason" text input is always visible, the one that's hiding is "other time" input. — AlexSm 02:31, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * "Other time" and "Other reason" boxes are both there for me this morning - don't know what happened yesterday. Thanks, JohnCD (talk) 07:29, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Paged contributions lists
When I look at an editor's contributions list (including my own), the list is split into pages at various intervals. There's a line and then "Page 2:", "Page 3:", and so on. Each one is a link. I'm not sure of the purpose, but what I do know is that it causes the list to jump around as I'm scrolling down. It's a time-consuming distraction. Is there any way of turning it off?  Will Beback   talk    04:13, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't know this feature. Perhaps it is something in your settings or browser. Does it happen if you log out? Which browser is it? Can you try another? PrimeHunter (talk) 04:47, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply. I think it found it - it was apparently caused by a funky extension in my browser.    Will Beback    talk    05:25, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Language support group for English
The Wikimedia Foundation has brought together a new team of developers who are dedicated to language support. This team is to support all the languages and consequently it is not realistic to expect that the team members can provide proper support for your language. It is for this reason that we are looking for volunteers who will make up a language support team.

This language support team will be asked to provide us with information about their language. Such information may need to be provided either to us or on a website that we will indicate to you. Another activity will be to test software that will likely have an effect on the running of the MediaWiki software. We are looking for people who clearly identify their ability. Formal knowledge is definitely appreciated.

As much of the activity will be concentrated on translatewiki.net, it will be a plus when team members know how to localise at translatewiki.net. Thanks, Gmeijssen (talk) 12:33, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * LOL. I guess all other languages are getting the same message, and the fact that we are also getting it is just an oversight... Hans Adler 12:58, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Let's hope that the devs understand English... Nyttend (talk) 20:26, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Is there a bot doctor in the house?
Could you have a conversation at User_talk:Reza1615. I've outrun my small store of understanding here. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 21:12, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I am pretty sure the bug is not by the bot but from one wrong initial interwiki link leading to a subpage and interwiki bots may distribute wron links. Xqt (talk) 06:34, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for responding. This is why it needed someone more knowledgeable than me. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 12:33, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Entries partially missing from log
According to his block log, Are You The Cow Of Pain? has been blocked three times: once each on 28 August 2010, 25 September 2010, and 28 September 2010. When I look at his contributions page, it tells me that the August block (24 hours) is the current one, rather than the indef blocks that were levied in September. Any idea what's wrong here? Nyttend (talk) 04:28, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I see the most recent (September 28) block on his Special:Contributions page. It might be a page caching issue. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  04:46, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If you look at a previous page in the contributions history, it shows the block in force at that time, not the current block. Don't ask me why, but I've noticed it before. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 12:32, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Weird. I've never before observed it.  At least I understand what's going on; thanks.  Nyttend (talk) 20:23, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Twinkle
Hi, I just activated Twinkle and cleared my cache, but I don't know how to open Twinkle or use it! Please help! Thank you, <font color="#004730" face="Trebuchet MS">Beluga <font color="#004730" face="Trebuchet MS">boy ''cup of tea? 12:56, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm assuming you're using the default MediaWiki skin (vector). Look to the immediate left of the search bar for something labeled "TW" with a dropdown arrow.  If you can see that, then just read the instructions on its documentation.  -- N  Y  Kevin  @812, i.e. 18:29, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Template:Neologism inline
There is a problem with Template:Neologism inline and I can't figure it out. It breaks formatting on all pages that include it. --Ysangkok (talk) 21:48, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I think I found the problem, being that a wikilink was trying to be in a hover-text, which I fixed. Chris857 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:54, 23 October 2011 (UTC).

Padlock icons
When I use the secure server, every link has a padlock icon next to it to indicate HTTPS. I understand why those are there, but it looks cluttered and annoying. Can I hide them? -- N Y  Kevin  @910, i.e. 20:50, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I started Help:External link icons yesterday. Give me a bit to do some experimentation. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 20:57, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
 * See Help:External link icons. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 21:56, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

. Any idea why this CSS is getting loaded? Can I override it? Should it be loading at all? -- N Y  Kevin  @217, i.e. 04:12, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You're not supposed to see every link with a padlock; could you share the link to the page where it happens and your browser? — AlexSm 03:42, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * On this page, every section link in the ToC has a padlock. I'm using this:  .  That's Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric) latest stable  to be precise.  Also, the padlocks I'm seeing everywhere look different from the standard padlock that MW adds.  They're smaller and yellow.  Maybe Canonical added some sort of HTTPS detector???  -- N  Y  Kevin  @209, i.e. 04:00, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, Firebug says that the offending CSS is coming from here and the offending rule begins like this  .  It then contains a   value of

Padlocks are shown on all absolute https links. Edit links in sections are not supposed to be absolute, they are always relative. You are probably using some sort of gadget or user script that is doing something to links on pages and has a bug that rewrites the relative urls to absolute. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 08:59, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The CSS is the main stylesheet and is very much needed. If you are seeing the yellow padlock icon http://bits.wikimedia.org/skins-1.18/vector/images/lock-icon.png, then you have the Vector skin selected. TheDJ is right in that section links should never show a padlock, only external links. You might try wiping your CSS/JS, bypass the cache and see what happens. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 10:46, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I am not experiencing the problem on Windows... I did just [ change something], but I don't know if that fixed it, or if there's some sort of difference between Firefox for Ubuntu and Firefox for Windows. I'll assume the problem is fixed for both, at least for now.  -- N  Y  Kevin  @737, i.e. 16:41, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Now I am confused as to how you were seeing the yellow padlock. There are two stylesheets for Vector. The first stylesheet defines the yellow padlock, but the second stylesheet defines the blue padlock. I added links to Help:External link icons to show the various skins. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 17:47, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The second link would be MediaWiki:Vector.css. Near the bottom, the default yellow padlock is changed to the blue one. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 21:10, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks like is is actually MediaWiki:Common.css + MediaWiki:Vector.css. Regardless, I don't see how he would have gotten the yellow padlock. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 21:47, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Fixed the padlock icons on the Search page in 100530. That might not be deployed for the next major release though... If you see this anywhere else, please report. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 08:19, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The problem returned. Apparently it's Linux only.  I tried faking my user agent string to IE8 on Windows 7, but that didn't change anything.  So perhaps this is a rendering issue.  I'm guessing that this version of Firefox is automatically rewriting all links to absolute URLs, or something.  I tried pointing Firefox at this test file:

<!DOCTYPE HTML> <meta charset="utf-8"> a{ 	font-weight:bold; } <a href="foo.html">Relative</a> <a href="file:///home/kevin/foo.html">Absolute</a>


 * Oddly enough, the results are exactly as expected: the relative link is not bold and the absolute link is. OTOH maybe Firefox only rewrites links when they're being served from an actual server, which I'm not prepared to set up right now.  -- N  Y  Kevin  @799, i.e. 18:10, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I have determined that this is most likely an issue with an extension, although I currently don't know which extension it might be. I'll figure it out eventually.  -- N  Y  Kevin  @815, i.e. 18:33, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

mw-rollback link
Why isn't my link disappearing? I did this recommendation by Evula: Village pump (technical)/Archive 93. Keep in mind I speak more Klingon than I do CSS. Magog the Ogre (talk) 02:50, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Possibly you aren't using Monobook (it's generally better to place this stuff on Special:MyPage/common.css, where it will be applied regardless of your skin), or you need to bypass your cache more aggressively. Ucucha (talk) 02:52, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

That is so odd... it worked... even though I'm definitely using Monobook. Thanks. Magog the Ogre (talk) 06:31, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

banners causing vertical shakes?
Complaints about banners and messages may be due less to content and more to their causing pages to jump if they're being added serially. I sometimes have to tolerate slow downloading via WiFi bottlenecks I don't control (this probably also affects users with slow connections worldwide). I'll try to click a link or fill in a field only to find the link or field jumping up and down until it eventually settles on a position. I usually can't see the top of the page when that happens, but I often notice that your banners show up after the rest of the page. Suggestion: Try to have all of your banners load all at once. If each one is based on different conditionality tests, see if the testing can be done one step earlier, so the banners that will be displayed for me will be assembled before transmission across the Internet to a user and then transmit them as one block or, when nonadjacent, in immediate succession. Nick Levinson (talk) 07:28, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I can confirm this observation. It has to do less with banners, and more to do with browser rerendering in general.  Banner templates like Norefs are loaded synchronously, and so usually don't move around. The article title and "class" text are Ajax-loaded asynchronously, which can cause a rewrite at a random time. I've certainly noticed rerendering while the top toolbar is loaded, which I hate because I am forced to wait until the bar settles down to be able to reliably click on History. The Table of Contents fully draws first, then collapses, causing more shifting around.  I had to turn off "Enable collapsing of items in the navigation menu in Vector skin" in Preferences/Appearance. I may yet have to turn off "Show table of contents (for pages with more than 3 headings)", it's so annoying... When visiting a particular #section of a page, the whole page must load before the browser "jumps" to the section. Since you have a unique testing configuration, it would be very helpful if you could document some of these jumpy renders (3-4 seconds) on video, and upload them somewhere.  In Firefox, ctrl-F5 forces a full page reload, so you don't have to edit video. (My conjecture - either CSS is being loaded late, or dynamically, or content is. Either is bad.) --Lexein (talk) 09:17, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't have video capability. One WiFi location I use, which can be slow or block altogether, probably because it's a low-cost connection, often results in no CSS; sometimes I have to reload several times to get the styling. Elsewhere I've noticed that downloading from a wikimedia.org server and with geoiplookup is usually seconds long and occasionally quite a few minutes slow, although what's missing before finishing I don't know. Article content does not seem to matter for this problem; my understanding is that transmission of the content is top-down and browsers render in that order, so scrolling to the bottom is unlikely to show bottom-of-article text before article images or sizes load. The problem discussed here seems to be with the nonarticle parts of an article page. Nick Levinson (talk) 10:31, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Office Hours on the Article Feedback Tool
Hey all; brief introduction, I'm Oliver Keyes and I'm the new Community Liason, Product Development, although I usually edit as User:Ironholds. You can find a general description of who I am, what I'm here to do and how to contact me on my user page, of course. One of the things I'm working on at the moment is getting editors to provide input on the Article Feedback Tool, mainly because we plan on blowing it out of the water and replacing it with something that actually provides useful data for editors.

As such, we'll be holding an Office Hours session with myself, Howie Fung and Fabrice Florin to discuss what the Foundation's ideas are and how editors can get involved. This will be in the usual channel at 19:00 UTC this Thursday; if you're interested in reforming the AFT, whether it's because you love it or hate it, I hope to see you there :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:44, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

1.18 issues
Interwiki(s):
 * commons:Commons:Village pump ( Removed "_".   Ebe 123   (+) $<small style="color:#0000FF">talk Contribs$ 19:26, 10 October 2011 (UTC) )
 * incubator:Incubator:Community portal (  Ebe 123   (+) $<small style="color:#0000FF">talk Contribs$ 19:26, 10 October 2011 (UTC) )

We've gone 1.18 (yay!). Unfortunately, not without any hickups that are sure to be fixed very soon. Please list your issues here. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 09:08, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Wasn't there any testing done on this release? It's certainly introduced a load of problems that ought to have been caught by any proper test plan. Malleus Fatuorum 22:04, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, see this discussion — ☠ MarkAHershberger ☣ 18:45, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Special:PrefixIndex
Issue reported here: 31362 -- ☠MarkAHershberger☣ (talk) 20:35, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

When transluded on a page, <tt>Special:PrefixIndex</tt> is broken in that it displays in a table that no longer has it's width set to 98%, resulting in the links being cramped together like so:

But on it's own page (Special:PrefixIndex/User:Edokter), display is OK. It seems when transcluded, the CSS for <tt>#mw-prefixindex-list-table</tt> doesn't seem to get picked up. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 09:08, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I see the CSS for the prefindex table is loaded trough the <tt>mediawiki.special</tt> module, which apparently is not loaded if you are not viewing a special page. That means that any special content transcluded on a normal page will not have it's accociated CSS loaded at all. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 09:13, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * A fix for this was requested on 31362. Helder 13:24, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Down-arrow in dropdown menu
The down arrow on top of the drop down menu (in Vector) is one pixel off (to the left). The arrow icon has been changed to enable highlighting, but some CSS may not have been updated. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 12:14, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * off-by-one error on down arrow — ☠MarkAHershberger☣ (talk) 04:58, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * New image uploaded to bugzilla. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 16:47, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Improved diff view not working
This gadget is no longer working (preferences/gadgets/editing), at least in Monobook. Very annoying. --NSH001 (talk) 10:13, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Likewise for me, in Vector (Firefox). There is more information about this problem at User talk:Cacycle/wikEd. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:19, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Me too. Vector, IE9. → Dynamic&#124;cimanyD ← (contact me) 12:03, 7 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I fixed wikEdDiff. This change needs to be made. You guys can either wait for an admin or Cacycle to make the edit, or just import my version for now. wikEd is also broken, but I haven't looked at it because I don't use it, and it's probably a more complicated problem, anyway. Although it's also very likely going to be merely a problem with finding the right classes, because a lot of new classes and DIVs have been added in the latest MediaWiki update. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  19:44, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Additional possibly useful information on a fix is at User_talk:Cacycle/wikEdDiff. I cried when this got broken; finding a changed period/full stop in WP's default diff view is nearly impossible. - Dank (push to talk) 15:32, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
 * What about using something like  instead of that loop? Helder 15:48, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Gary's fix worked for me, thanks very much Gary! For people like me who are less than fluent with this kind of thing, the way to do it is to go to Gary's link, and select and copy just the part between "START INSTALLATION CODE" and "END INSTALLATION CODE". Then open either your monobook.js file or your vector.js file (depending on whether you use monobook or vector), and you can find these quickly by going to your own user contributions and clicking "subpages" at the bottom of the screen, then edit the file by pasting the material at the end. You might have to clear your browser cache for it to take effect, but I didn't have to, and as I said, it works fine. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:40, 8 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The official version has now been updated to include the fix. For future reference, all you have to do is put the following in Special:MyPage/skin.js: importScript('User:Gary King/wikEdDiff.js'); Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  01:25, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

External link icon

 * Filed as Missing external link problem on IE6

I know I mentioned this above already... and I'm really not as concerned about the return of the EL icon as I am the double space it's leaving before punctuation. This is bad form that I'll never get used to looking at. (see screen-cap at Image Shack). -- WikHead (talk) 10:42, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The icon displays perfectly for me, in both Monobook and Vector, so I suspect the problem may be something other than the upgrade. --NSH001 (talk) 10:56, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Try clearing your browser cache. That can help to refresh the style files. — This, that, and the other (talk) 11:16, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * My cache has been cleared several times, along with several [ctrl] + [F5] refresh(es) and reboots, and even well before I posted, but still no change with this at all. That routine was needed to resolve other issues I was having, but has done nothing to fix this one. -- WikHead (talk) 18:49, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Browser and version? --brion (talk) 01:51, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * As a note, no problems with EL icons here. - The Bushranger One ping only 01:59, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * If most everyone else can see the icon but I can't, and I'm being asked my browser-type, I can pretty much guess where the problem lies. I would assume that the icon may have been reworked, and some of us aren't able to deal with the latest PNG encoding. I had a similar problem with "no transparency" in the Wikipedia logo when it was updated, but its PNG encoding was altered and has worked fine ever since. I believe they described it as "64-bit compatibility for PNG". -- WikHead (talk) 03:00, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Does this mean you are using IE6 ? Please try to be specific. it takes a lot of the back and forth questions out of the discussion, and results in less confusion and faster resolution of problems. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:47, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * My apologies, as it was never my intent to confuse. Troubleshooting for this issue should indeed be based on "IE6". When I first reported this, I was under the impression that the icon had been entirely removed, lost, or simply forgotten about... as I see no indication that an image is even attempting to load into the empty space. I'm assuming at this point (after digging up the details of a previous image-related problem), that my specific issue may be in relation to having no PNG-24 support... and if so, it could be resolved if the icon image was saved as PNG-8. If I'm the only user on the project having this problem, feel free to simply dismiss it and close the thread. While the issue is an annoyance to "me" personally, I don't want it becomming an unnecessary annoyance to others. -- WikHead (talk) 23:16, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Related: No sort arrows
There are no sorting arrow buttons in at least some lists, including List of songs in Green Day: Rock Band and List of Rock Band Network songs, although the text is indented as though they were present, and clicking anywhere in the header sorts the table. –Drilnoth (T/C) 13:11, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * that is caused by the background on the title cells. I don't know if this worked before. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 13:16, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It certainly did. –Drilnoth (T/C) 13:24, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm using IE8, and clicking anywhere in the header does not sort the table for me. - David Biddulph (talk) 14:46, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * 31196. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:46, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Fix deployed. --Catrope (talk) 13:39, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Still not seeing any icons. Yes, I purged my cache. –Drilnoth (T/C) 14:53, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Same here. No sort arrows, so not resolved. - David Biddulph (talk) 15:00, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It said eleviated... Problem still exists if people set the individual tablecell background (instead of the background-color). I'm not sure what to do with that... perhaps we should !important the sort elements.... I generally dislike that approach, but here it might be required.... —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:54, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah,  instead of  . That is manageable, at least, but I don't like it. Why, exactly, did the dev team decide to make such a breaking change in the first place? –Drilnoth (T/C) 15:59, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * We wanted a tablesorter that had actually working sorting. Something we could build from and was more efficient than the old code and wouldn't require all those sort templates that are now required for almost every tablecell. So we switched the entire implementation around to the http://tablesorter.com implementation. That came with a bit different layout and some other details, that most people didn't even notice (like it uses the shift key to do multi column sortkey sorting). —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:44, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Solved with 99307. Still needs to be deployed. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:02, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
 * We need to get some help page updates on this. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 13:15, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

I have no sort arrows, period, in Opera - regardless of background colors. The above table has no sort arrows at all for me unless I use a different browser. <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis @ 06:05, 12 Tishrei 5772 / 06:05, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Which version of opera ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 06:35, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The latest - Version 11.51, Build 1087, on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis @ 08:07, 12 Tishrei 5772 / 08:07, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I also have that version of Opera - specifically Version 11.51, Build 1087, Platform Win32, System Windows XP, XHTML+Voice Plug-in not loaded, Browser identification Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en) Presto/2.9.168 Version/11.51 - but it under both Monobook and Vector. Could it be something specific to the Windows version? -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:49, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Strange. Now that I check back here for replies, I can see/use the sort errors. Perhaps an intermittent issue? (Or one of the numerous scripts I use might have hiccuped?) <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis @ 10:33, 12 Tishrei 5772 / 10:33, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I fixed one of the user javascripts you were using. You have a few more broken scripts installed, but apparently this was enough to make sure that the script for the sortable tables could run for you. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:14, 10 October 2011 (UTC)


 * We're also having the same issue at WikiProject Canada Roads/Assessment/Live and WikiProject U.S. Roads/Assessment/Live. There is no other code to interfere in this case so I'm baffled as to where the issue lies. -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  15:19, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The problem here is buried inside - it transcludes, which creates a table cell by means of the <td ></td> element. For a sortable table to work, the top row must consist entirely of <th ></th> elements (the exclamation mark at the start of the cell data, as in  does this. I do have an idea for a fix though... -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:58, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Fixed... but the heading for the "Stub" column still lacks the arrows, even though the column is sortable. -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:16, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I figured that stub column was the culprit. Thank you :) -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  17:21, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Related: Sort arrows make columns too wide
I would like to register a complaint about the new position of the sort arrows, which used to be placed at the center bottom of the cell and are now placed at the center right. This means that for short column headers, the column may be twice as wide as before, wasting a lot of space and just plain looking bad: User:TheDJ says above: ''We wanted a tablesorter that had actually working sorting....So we switched the entire implementation around to the http://tablesorter.com implementation. That came with a bit different layout and some other details, that most people didn't even notice....''

First, it's not necessarily true that most people didn't even notice the changes to table layout, or that they wouldn't object if they did notice. This sort of thing does not show up on an article watchlist so it takes time for people to realize that the tables suddenly look different, especially in stable articles, and then it is not that obvious where to complain about it. (In fact at least one other person did complain, with little apparent effect: .)

Second, I appreciate that there may be sound technical reasons to switch over to a presumably more robust implementation, and that the tradeoff may be a less aesthetic layout during a temporary transition period. But aesthetics do matter when presenting information, so I hope this aesthetic bug can be addressed before the next release. - Morinao (talk) 20:02, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I think this is one that is not going to be changed. Aesthetics is very subjective, and no doubt the folks from tablesorter.com will have considered the layout, and decided on a horizontal placement. Yes, it looks different (and in my opinion, better), but it is not something that needs to be 'fixed'. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 20:59, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I was being charitable by assuming this is an unintended and temporary consequence of moving to a better under-the-hood implementation. If this is to be a permanent change, it should be discussed in the relevant forum (e.g. Help_talk:Sorting) first. As you say, aesthetics is very subjective, and people have strong opinions when a breaking change to an existing article's layout is rolled out unannounced like this. - Morinao (talk) 21:10, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * As far as i'm concerned, WP:BIKESHED :D, but you are welcome to open a bug report. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 22:18, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but as far as I'm concerned, whatever it is you made better is something I can't see, and the feature you made worse (IMO) is something everyone can see. I guess we'll have to disagree on which of these features was the bikeshed. - Morinao (talk) 22:33, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Some JS tools broken
A couple javascript tools (User:Dr pda/prosesize.js, User:Dr pda/prosesizebytes.js, User:Shubinator/DYKcheck.js) are no longer working on Firefox. <b class="IPA">r<font color="#8B0000">ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 13:04, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * These three should now be working properly... Shubinator (talk) 03:32, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Okay, Twinkle is down for me. No little 'TW' in the corner; just tried to revert an edit using Twinkle but the usual [ROLLBACK (AGF)] [ROLLBACK] [ROLLBACK (VANDAL)] buttons didn't appear.  HurricaneFan 25  11:56, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Same issue here. –Drilnoth (T/C) 13:15, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Same here. For Twinkle, see WT:TW. Regards  So Why  13:56, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Ditto. Only found out when went to give an IP a vandal warning. The drop down just doesn't appear. (Firefox) Haruth (talk) 18:46, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Fixed now. (Thanks you back room guys, wherever you are... ;-)) Haruth (talk) 12:40, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It's been working all along for me, for the record. (Firefox 5.0, Monobook). - The Bushranger One ping only 02:00, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm using Firefox 7.0.1 with the Vector skin. I've already completely cleared the cache and restarted the browser. The Appearance Gadget "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page" is not working. (I wasn't sure if this could go under the earlier "Some JS tools broken" section, if that applies to Gadgets.) Thanks, -- Gyrofrog (talk) 17:55, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Gadgets are JS tools. –Drilnoth (T/C) 17:56, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, that explains it. Same deal with the Gadget "Moves edit links next to the section headers". -- Gyrofrog (talk) 17:59, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not having an issue with that one. Firefox 7.01, Ubuntu 11.04, 64-bit. –Drilnoth (T/C) 18:01, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Apparently it's intermittent. I was about to reply that it just started working again (but I got an edit conflict). Now it's not working. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 18:04, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

User:Ale_jrb/Scripts/csdhelper.js
When displaying an article which has a speedy tag on it, the "Speedy" tab, probably provided by the CSDHelper script User:Ale_jrb/Scripts/csdhelper.js, which used to appear to the right of the "Discussion" tab, now appears below it, obscuring the article title. (Vector, Firefox 7.0.1) JohnCD (talk) 18:00, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * When I wrote the above, I hadn't actually tried to use CSDHelper. On trying to delete a page with it, I got a message: "Forbidden You don't have permission to access /w/ on this server" - but the page was actually deleted. JohnCD (talk) 22:04, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

User:Plastikspork/admindash.js
The "admin dashboard" tab provided by User:Plastikspork/admindash.js no longer appears on "My contributions" page, though it is still there on "My talk" and "My watchlist" (Vector, Firefox 7.0.1) JohnCD (talk) 18:00, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This one has been fixed. JohnCD (talk) 22:26, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

User:Pyrospirit/metadata
I don't fully understand all this stuff, and didn't want to create yet another subsection unless necessary. Would User:Pyrospirit/metadata not working belong in this section? —WFC— 21:55, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Gary King ( talk  ·  scripts )  17:14, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

User:MarkS/extraeditbuttons.js
User:MarkS/extraeditbuttons.js doesn't seem to work anymore and unfortunate the author is fairly inactive. Any javascript wizards available to take a look? – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 13:18, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Same problem on ptwiki. The Portuguese version of the script was updated recently on Portuguese Wikipedia, but there are some unresolved issues (see 31511). Helder 01:00, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The script may work again once someone updates it as suggested on its talk page. Helder 13:55, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

User:Ais523/watchlistnotifier.js
User:Ais523/watchlistnotifier.js is no longer working.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:22, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
 * 31526 —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:40, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
 * So does that mean the script needs to be modified, or is a fix being worked on? I'm not an expert at bugzilla.--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 22:04, 8 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Someone said it's already fixed, so I guess we have to wait for the next time that new code is pushed onto the Wikipedia servers. I don't know how often that is, but I thought it wasn't very often, as in every few months, since the code's gotta be tested, etc. Personally, I'd really love for this particular code to be pushed ASAP since I've got my own scripts that depend on it. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  15:59, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Well why the hell wasn't it tested before this big push-out then? Everyone and their mother is finding bugs in the system, so why not revert to the old code and wait until at least someone beta tests this crap?--Dudemanfellabra (talk) 19:09, 9 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Fix is now active, and problem does indeed appear to be resolved. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  20:44, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Editing "insert" box not showing


In Vector. The box with special symbols, emdashes, signatures, foreign characters, etc. isn't showing for me. –Drilnoth (T/C) 13:19, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It is now showing the "Copy-paste" (non-JavaScript) box. Better, but still not right. –Drilnoth (T/C) 16:08, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It is working fine for me on this page (e.g.: ) using Google Chrome 14.0.835.186 and vector skin. What browser/skin are you using? Helder 16:34, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It is now working for me. Vector, Firefox 7.01, Ubuntu Linux 11.04, 64-bit. –Drilnoth (T/C) 13:08, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

"Special characters" section of (enhanced) edittoolbar not showing
Special characters is still not working with Vector XP IE8 - it just runs the loading symbol (lines round a ring) - left it running for 30 minutes - no change. Arjayay (talk) 12:47, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Special characters are still not working. Anywhere else I should report this? - Arjayay (talk) 17:51, 11 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Previously I tested the "insert" box (which is below the edit box) not the "Special characters" (which is above it). But your recent comment is about the "Special characters" section of (enhanced) edittoolbar, and this is indeed not working on IE 8. I've reported it on bug #31673 with additional information about the error. Helder 17:53, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Links are underlined where they shouldn't be
The links to my user page, talk, and all of the links in the tabs ("edit this page", "history", etc.) are now underlined; they weren't previously. I'm using monobook skin.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 5, 2011; 13:22 (UTC)


 * Using monobook as well but I don't experience this. Have you tried force-reloading? Regards  So Why  13:54, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Happens for as well as I mentioned above (also on monobook). It's not a cache issue. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:01, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I've experienced this on two different computers today (Opera/Win7 and Firefox/WinXP). SoWhy, what browser are you using? Also, the option to underline links is turned on for me&mdash;before the rollout everything was underlined as it was supposed to with the exception of the links in the tabs and in the upper right corner (which was fine, too).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 5, 2011; 14:38 (UTC)


 * I'm using Firefox 9.0a2 but I loaded Wikipedia in IE7/WinXP, IE8/Win7 and Chrome/Win7 today and I did not experience this is any of them. Where have you enabled underlining of links? Regards  So Why  15:38, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * In a drop-down box in "My Preferences" under "Appearance"&rarr;"Advanced options".—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 5, 2011; 15:49 (UTC)
 * I see. That said, the change makes sense. If you select links to be underlined, you usually expect all of them to be underlined, so I'm guessing this is not a bug but a fix. You can probably change it back by using Special:Mypage/monobook.css but you probably have to manually add every CSS id in the file (e.g. <tt>#ca-nstab-user { text-decoration: none !important; }</tt>). Regards  So Why  16:32, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the suggestion. If it's indeed a fix and not a bug, I'll "re-fix" it in my monobook.css in a few days. It's a bit annoying, but nothing to cry about. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 5, 2011; 17:29 (UTC)

SoWhy, is there an easier way of doing this? I'm using Vector, btw... Jared Preston (talk) 23:27, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Sorry for the late reply. Edokter posted a workaround at below. See if this fixes it for you. Regards  So  Why  09:48, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * He was able to fix it for me. Thanks very much to everyone concerned! :) Jared Preston (talk) 16:44, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Categories are surrounded by much more space, and they don't wrap from line to line

 * Reported as 31547 and 31551

See Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh for an example of how this results in categories taking up much more space than they should. There may have been desire to allow a little more space between categories, but I doubt this much extra space was intended. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 13:44, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I noticed this too. Also in my watchlist minor/bot edits have got that annoying .... line underneath them, and I recall that being switched off. Who fucked up and when is it going to be fixed?  Lugnuts  (talk) 14:55, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The dotted underlines have always been there. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 14:57, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * In Vector maybe, but not in Monobook. These weren't dotted-underlined until today. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:43, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The extra space around the categories is caused by the vertical line between them. This used to be a pipe character, but is now something created in CSS. The relevant tags are, and  but I have no idea which CSS file sets up these ids and classes. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:04, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Having the links not wrap looks useful, we do that manually in navboxes all the time. However, the gobs of extra spacing is useless, I also think it needs to be toned down, maybe not to how it was before but certainly somewhat. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 17:50, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * From http://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.wikihiero%7Cmediawiki.legacy.commonPrint%2Cshared%7Cskins.vector&only=styles&skin=vector&* I'm getting #catlinks li { [...] line-height: 1.35em; [...] } . It should simply be 1em. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 18:15, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I totally concur that the categories having the extra space is a problem. The not-wrapping is a Good Thing, but the extra space...especially in Monobook...er...well...I'll just point everyone to the category table at the bottom of AIM-120 AMRAAM as Exhibit A as to why the extra spacing is Not Of The Good. o.o - The Bushranger One ping only 19:33, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The space itself is not as bad as the | character appearing from line 2 onward. It didn't show there before, or did it? NVO (talk) 11:46, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It was there before, but the text didn't wrap the same way so you didn't notice it. If we're going to be using this nowraplinks-like style for categories, we might as well make the separator work like middot. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 12:50, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * CSS code for users' monobook.css/vector.css/common.css is listed (and works) at de:Wikipedia:Fragen_zur_Wikipedia. Although I am tempted to suggest that this CSS code should be for everyone by default - especially in monoboook. Cheers --Saibo ( Δ ) 00:44, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
 * For those who don't speak German, try adding this to either Special:MyPage/common.css or Special:MyPage/skin.css:


 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:33, 7 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the code. I'm agreeing with Saibo though, can we put this in Mediawiki:Common.css? Regards  So Why  11:51, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Hurrah, thank you! - The Bushranger One ping only 15:25, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

The :before pseudo-element is not supported by IE6 and IE7, which still account for about 11% of traffic. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 11:49, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Another code option by de:Benutzer:✓ (style: somthing between the current and the code mentioned above):   Maybe it even should be a bug report. ;) At least for Monobook (my favorite skin) the big spacing is not fitting to the rest of the skin...   Cheers --Saibo ( Δ ) 14:15, 8 October 2011 (UTC)


 * See . ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 02:44, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

None of the above solutions fix the excessive spacing between the lines in my testing, just the spacing around the separator (which IMO is far less annoying). I'd go for something like this to fix that: Or, if we don't care about keeping the no-wrapping of the individual categories, Anomie⚔ 04:03, 9 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I suggested we fix the line height above, and in the meantime someone seems to have applied that fix. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 20:37, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Suggestions in search box have "seperator" entry
Reported: 31429

See this screenshot. Regards  So Why  14:00, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * What browser & browser version? --brion (talk) 01:46, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Firefox 9.0a2 / Win7x64. It might be browser-related though since it appears between the auto-fill suggestions by the browser and the ones by the script (see this screenshot). Also, I cannot reproduce this with Firefox 7.0.1. Regards  So Why  13:20, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Article Feedback tool
Reported at 31543 — ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 22:07, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

IE9 in compatibility view mode: ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 14:04, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Text "I am highly knowledgeable about this topic (optional)" does not show; after checking the box, other checkboxes show without accompanying text
 * Submit rating button is blank

As advised, copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk#Ratings_panel_problems. Using IE 8 with Win XP:


 * Hi, recently the ratings panel at the bottom of articles has been broken for me. I used to be able to see the current rating averages (via a "display ratings" link or something ... don't remember precisely what it was called). Now that has gone, there is a cryptic green arrow and blue box whose purposes are completely unclear, and when I assign a rating some unlabelled checkboxes and an email address, again all of unknown purpose, also appear. Basically it's all in a very broken-looking state, as if someone's currently in the middle of playing around with coding some new features but hasn't yet finished. 86.179.0.153 (talk) 02:43, 8 October 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.104.186 (talk)

"Minor" checkbox is missing on new pages
When a new page is being created, there is no longer the "this is a minor edit" checkbox; only the "watch this page" checkbox.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 5, 2011; 15:07 (UTC)
 * I would guess this is by design. Making a new page is not really a minor action. Update: I could be wrong though, see 5754 – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 15:11, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * True, normally it's not a minor action, but I use it all the time when creating redirects.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 5, 2011; 15:16 (UTC)
 * It is indeed by design. The bug you linked to is very old (2006). I can't find the latest bug report though. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 15:44, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It's also missing when creating a new section. Regards  So Why  17:12, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I see the This is a minor edit checkbox. FF7. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 18:54, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Suggestion: if a new page is created, have the system automatically tag it as a Minor Edit if the only content in the new page is #REDIRECT Foo Bar . That aside, I agree completely with this change, no hitting 'minor' when creating a new page or section, which isn't (redirects aside). - The Bushranger One ping only 02:02, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * There are actually multiple times when creating a new page can be minor. If I make a template with several subpages (Template:Foo/core, Template:Foo/categories, et cetera), those subpage creations could be said to be minor; or, if you create a talk page with only a project banner on it - those aren't really substantial edits. <sup style="color:red;">Avic <sub style="color:blue;">ennasis @ 06:12, 12 Tishrei 5772 / 06:12, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

This is filed as 27860. Nemo 12:05, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Special:Blocklist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BlockList?wpTarget=%233617969 should show (in this case) the autoblock information; I don't see any way to lift an autoblock any more. --jpgordon:==( o ) 15:19, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I believe you can still do it via the Unblock form. I have a fix for the BlockList in SVN.  Aar on Sc  hulz  03:48, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

All Preferences not visible
I'm signed in, but my visuals look as though I'm not. What I have selected in my Preferences are not showing, including the Tabs at the top of any page, the "Class" of an article, and the cite options on the Edit Toolbar. Could be more, but I just opened up Wikipedia. I'm on Firefox 3.6.23, with Windows XP. Maile66 (talk) 15:30, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This sounds like it is because of many user scripts not working, already reported above. –Drilnoth (T/C) 16:07, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Classic skin categories
Spacing on the categories displayed in articles has become messed up.©Geni 17:07, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It isn't real pretty in Vector at the moment, either. I think there is a section above about that. –Drilnoth (T/C) 17:10, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * See for a chunk of CSS to restore something like the old behaviour. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:37, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Dab solver
In Dab solver, I can no longer get (sign in) to work. The output from "Get my credentials" seems to have changed today, to a more verbose format which "Use credentials" does not accept. Dab solver informed. Certes (talk) 17:33, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The YAML formatter was switch to JSON (since it's technically a superset of it) in 86302. I didn’t want write a thousand lines for YAML in JS so I just used regular expressions.  — Dispenser 03:10, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Autoblock screwiness
Reported: 31403 — ☠ MarkAHershberger ☣ 15:33, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

We're seeing autoblocks pop up in cases where the blocked user hasn't edited in a Very Long Time. For instance, at User talk:Esoglou, we see he was hit by an autoblock from an account blocked in late 2009. I've seen several other such today. --jpgordon:==( o ) 19:06, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree, there's definitely something borked with autoblocks. --<b style="color:Navy;">Jezebel's</b> Ponyo <sup style="color:Navy;">bons mots 19:14, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Any other cases? I'm at a loss for now.  Aar on Sc  hulz  03:48, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Here's another: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:BlockList&action=search&ip=%233620311 -- note that the actual block happened 13 November 2009. Hm. Same timeframe.... --jpgordon:==( o ) 15:02, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, if someone lifts the autoblock, it looked like this:

14:39, 6 October 2011	Autoblock #3620311	14:39, 7 October 2011 (unblock)	Jpgordon (talk | contribs | block)	account creation blocked	(Autoblocked because your IP address was recently used by "Jpotts15". The reason given for Jpotts15's block is: "Vandalism-only account".) --jpgordon:==( o ) 15:04, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Here's another: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:BlockList&action=search&ip=%233619641 -- this time the block was in 2010. --jpgordon:==( o ) 15:06, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Just had another. was blocked in 2005. The real person by this name came along, so the account was moved to, and the block settings along with it. The glorious new software moved the block settings back to the first account, and now I've had to unblock him and apologize for the fact that our new software is a jerk that likes to block people for no good reason. This is about the third or fourth time I've felt compelled to apologize to a user for something idiotic action of this supposedly improved software, it's getting a bit old. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:05, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Font size in AfD close/relist boxes
The 1.18 change has made the text in the boxes that appear when you click the "Close" or "Relist" tabs in an AfD render in small text like this. I can kinda see the reasoning, but at the same time, it's really hard on the eyes (at least for me, and I'd bet others). Is there any way that (assuming this is a feature and not a bug) there could be a checkbox added to 'Preferences' to allow users to select 'Normal size text in AfD maintiance tabs' or somesuch? - The Bushranger One ping only 19:43, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It'd been so long I'd completely forgotten that was a .css script and not part of the site coding. Posted on the creating user's talk page about it. Sorry for the bother! :) - The Bushranger One ping only 20:04, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I also noticed that in the AfChelper script (based on AfD helper). The font size is much smaller after the update. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)    20:47, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't remember position in edit box
Reported: 31404 — ☠ MarkAHershberger ☣ 17:56, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

After a "show preview" or "show changes", the vertical position in the edit box isn't remembered anymore. Od1n (talk) 20:07, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Reproducible only on fr: wiki, when I'm logged. Should be due to a script of mine. Will look into that... Od1n (talk) 20:10, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The issue was relevant to a script I use, fixed. However, even without using any user script, there is a "flickering" when the scroll position is restored, which wasn't happening before... Od1n (talk) 22:53, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Old block reason doesn't pre-load
Reported: 31405 — ☠ MarkAHershberger ☣ 17:53, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

When changing a block, the block reason used to pre-load into the "reason" box on Special:Block. This seems to have been changed – now the reason box remains blank when you wish to change a block. (e.g. ) Could this be changed back? — G FOLEY   F OUR!  — 22:11, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

IE8
Reported: 1.18 Causes IE8 to crash — ☠ MarkAHershberger ☣ 15:33, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I've had two primary issues in IE8 on XP. One, often times when I go to a page (usually clicking on Login) the tab will refresh along with a second, possibly unrelated tab. Also, I am frequently getting errors where IE can't restore/return the page. Chris857 (talk) 00:15, 6 October 2011 (UTC) Sometimes, also, when I try to log in, it takes about three times for it to succeed. Chris857 (talk) 00:30, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If you find a way to reliably reproduce this, please let me know — ☠MarkAHershberger☣ (talk) 02:50, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes to confirm I've been having simular problems with IE8 on XP where the tab will refresh often amd sometimes drop out to an error page. This has happened on two systems. However, I've haven't had the problem in the last few minutes; will report back if I see the problem again. Edgepedia (talk) 08:07, 6 October 2011 (UTC) (UTC + 1)

I've had this problem about a dozen times in the last two days. It's affected two different machines, both of which run IE 8. This one is running version 8.0. I do not have the ability to change or upgrade browser. I'd call this frequent browser crashing, but I'm not technical. The fact that this is the only website affected, combined with the fact it's on two different machines and just after a software 'upgrade' leads me to conclude it's definitely a Wikipedia issue. I'm rather disappointed that the upgrade has been rolled out and we're experiencing so many bugs. --Dweller (talk) 12:31, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm getting this on IE 8 with XP whether I run in compatibility mode or not. I use the Monobook skin. 95% of the time when I hit refresh on my Watchlist IE loses the tab and then recovers it. I don't get the error when navigating to (or refreshing) other pages, and I don't get it the first time I open my browser and navigate to watchlist. Karanacs (talk) 15:03, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * When I look at the error info collected by MS, it says this is error code 0xc000005. Karanacs (talk) 15:07, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Pressing "refresh" on this page helpfully caused it to crash [yet again] and generated the following Microsoft goobledigook:
 * The instruction at 0x3fa07b98 referenced memory at “0x00000008”. The memory could not be “read”.
 * I may have included too many or too few zeros in that address - counting them made me dizzy. --Dweller (talk) 15:14, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

No prompt when entering a blank edit summary in my user space
Reported: No prompt when entering a blank edit summary in my user space — ☠MarkAHershberger☣ (talk) 05:57, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I have "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary" checked in my edit preferences. I am no longer getting the prompt when I try to enter a blank edit summary for an edit in my user space. I get the prompt with other edits, as before. Is this an accident or an intentional feature? --Orlady (talk) 04:40, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Change in behavior of browser "Back" button
Reported: Changed behavior of back button — ☠ MarkAHershberger ☣ 17:50, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

[Firefox browser 3.6.x under various operating systems, Monobook skin.]

While editing, I am accustomed to being able to go to a new browser destination in the open tab, then use the back button to return to the open edit window to resume my work. I am accustomed to doing the same thing when I encounter an edit conflict or error message after pushing "Save Page" (that is, I return to the previous page in the history to retrieve my work).

With the advent of 1.18, this behavior has changed, After seeing the edit conflict message or a message prompting me to add an edit summary, if I step back into the history using the back button, the edit window reverts to its condition before I started my edit.

I have not tested every possible variation of this situation, but I have replicated it with the edit conflict error and with he "no summary" message, and I think I've seen it in other situations. It's annoying, as I have become very accustomed to the old behavior! --Orlady (talk) 04:54, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Me too. It would be very annoying to not be able to do this any more. Carcharoth (talk) 05:15, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This is happening for me as well, very annoying. - The Bushranger One ping only 23:23, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

It's still happening. —Anomalocaris (talk) 20:43, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Changed appearance of Special:Block
This is not a big deal, but does anybody know why the order of the tickboxes on Special:Block was changed? Not worth a Bugzilla or anything, but it seems a strange thing to do. HJ Mitchell &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   11:06, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * According to the release notes: "The options on the block form have been standardised such that checking a box makes the block 'more serious'; so while "check to prevent account creation" and "check to enable autoblock" remain the same, "check to allow user-talk edit" is reversed to "check to *disable* user-talk edit", and "check to block anon-only" becomes "check to block logged-in users too". The default settings remain the same." MrBlueSky (talk) 16:59, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The block form also no longer pre-fills with the existing block reason during block modification. This was desirable behaviour, as it made it easy to make small annotations to the original block reason when modifying it. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 03:45, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
 * A bugreport has been made about that: 31405. MrBlueSky (talk) 12:45, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing that out, commented there. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 12:53, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

So why was this done
Where was the discussion before deployment and can it be rolled back?  Lugnuts  (talk) 07:08, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * See for “why”  — Preceding unsigned comment added by MarkAHershberger (talk • contribs) 18:09, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Simple explanation of the enhancements 1.18 brings
I tried, honestly I tried, to understand this, but most of it didn't make any sense to me, as a non-techie. Where can I find a simple explanation of the enhancements? --Dweller (talk) 12:50, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Try What's new? — ☠MarkAHershberger☣ (talk) 12:59, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Perfect, thanks --Dweller (talk) 13:41, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Specifically for bureaucrats, 1.18 means that the suppress redirect tickbox during the first step of usurp requests gets automatically checked, and it also brings auto-fill capability for userrights changes rationales (which has [ already been put to good use] at WP:BRFAA). – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 13:09, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Nice --Dweller (talk) 13:41, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Status Check js
It's broken; doesn't work on contrib pages, works on userpages for some reason; but it worked correctly yesterday.  HurricaneFan 25  14:59, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This is the talkpage of it's author and maintainer, you'd best ask him. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:17, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Another bug with Special:EditWatchlist/raw
Opened the page in Firefox 9.0a2 as well as Chrome 16 just now and the contents appear for a millisecond and then the form is empty. The entries are still in the HTML source though: screenshot. Regards  So Why  21:20, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Submitted as . Regards  So Why  16:38, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Toolbox missing "Contributions" at user pages/talk pages
When reading/editing a user or user talk page, we used to have a toolbox link to the user's contributions. That seems to have gone AWOL; it's a frequently used tool. Noted on both WinXP/IE7 and WinXP/FF7.0.1. Risker (talk) 16:48, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I still see it on my browser (Win7/FF5.0). - The Bushranger One ping only 18:48, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I have the same problem, the user contributions shows up in the toolbox for about 1 second and then it disappears. Same problem in IE9 and FF 6.0.2. However, user contributions does show up as "Contributions" under one of the down arrows in the tabs at the top of page. --Funandtrvl (talk) 20:34, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That is the "Add page and user options to drop-down menus on the toolbar" gadget doing that; it moves all user and page related options to those menus. Not a bug. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 20:57, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I just realized that now by resetting "my preferences" back to default. Thanks! --Funandtrvl (talk) 21:01, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You're right; I see it's ticked on my preferences too. Strange, since I'd set my prefs to default yesterday when testing something else, but at this point I'm just glad to get rid of this. Thanks all!  Risker (talk) 23:42, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You mean you didn't see the internet gollum that went and changed back your preferences last night??!! --Funandtrvl (talk) 00:17, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Dang cybergnomes! - The Bushranger One ping only 00:31, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

"File links" on media files not updating?
I think that somehow 1.18 has fixed things so that the "File links" section isn't updating on media files' pages. For instance, I added an image to this page last night, but the File: page for the image in question still insists that "No pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file." - The Bushranger One ping only 18:47, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This may be working now. - The Bushranger One ping only 22:23, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It appears to still be a problem. See Help desk, which relates to the insistence of this file that it is not in use anywhere, when it is in use at Ballad.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:41, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Solved, for Ballad anyways. The file was renamed in March this year but the usage in the article was not changed - Reference_desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2011_October_10. Slight  Smile  17:41, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Not really a bug, if I understand correctly. Should be 27621. Nemo 12:40, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

View and edit watchlist page
Is it possible for the table of contents to be put back onto the 'view and edit watchlist' page? Otherwise, those of us with long watchlists have to keep scrolling and scrolling to get to the Category namespace group of watched pages. Thanks, --Funandtrvl (talk) 21:05, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Filed as 31502. Nemo 12:43, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Math/Latex
Some strange math-LaTeX errors in MW1.18:

1:$$f_n:(\Omega,\Sigma,\mu)\rightarrow(\overline\mathbb R,B), n\in\mathbb N $$ Example article in de-wp

2:$$\dot \vec B$$ Example article in de-wp

3:$$\text{rot}\vec E = \dot \vec B =0$$ (The arrow and the dot is not over the letter B. If you remove the "\text{rot}" at the beginning, the parser will fail like in example 2) --wdwd (talk) 22:13, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The fix is to add extra braces to clarify what \overline or \dot is over
 * 1$$f_n:(\Omega,\Sigma,\mu)\rightarrow(\overline{\mathbb R},B), n\in\mathbb N $$
 * 2$$\dot {\vec B}$$
 * 3$$\text{rot}\vec E = \dot {\vec B} =0$$
 * This seems to be an issue for everything that goes over or under the following text: it now needs braces, perhaps if followed by something more complex than a single symbol. I fixed a bunch of them at Möbius transformation and it was noted by another editor at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics. These are easy to fix, the problem is finding pages where this is now a issue.-- JohnBlackburne words<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">deeds 22:34, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Maybe it would be easier to fix the latex/dvipng installation instead of finding of all these pages? In older mediawiki versions/installations all these expressions worked without extra braces.--wdwd (talk) 22:44, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It seems like the MediaWiki plugin is trying to conform more to how (La)TeX works. I suspect you might get an error there too. Time to be less sloppy in writing TeX code, folks. ;) Nageh (talk) 18:14, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I sort of agree: stuff like this happens all the time when you deal with programming languages. But usually you get a warning in the release notes/documentation and of course when building code you're told straight away what's wrong where. The problem here is you need to load the page, and scroll through all of it, to find the problem. Even if an editor spots it they might not know how to fix it (I checked Möbius transformation after noticing some odd edits by an IP editor trying but failing to fix the problem, and it took me a few trials to work out how to fix it). So failing a fix/rollback someway to find all the pages with parser errors would be very useful (and not just for this).-- JohnBlackburne words<sub style="margin-left:-2.0ex;">deeds 23:35, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Reported as 31442. Dragons flight (talk) 22:50, 6 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I added the help pages for cite errors and did a lot of work with cite error categories. We can do the same with math errors. Replied at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics.

Javascript error in Watchlist
Using Firefox 7.0.1, I get the following error on opening watchlist (following 1.18 release): Error: item.revisions is undefined Source File: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:M/reword.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript Line: 143

So the customized features of watchlist do not work. -- Redtigerxyz Talk 05:37, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You are using a local modification written by User:M. Suggest to ask him if he can help fix the script. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:41, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Monobook Sidebar has spaces between boxes
Using IE8. Now there are big spaces betreen the boxes of the sidebar. (Example: File:MW118 Monobook Bug.jpg) --Trigonomie (talk) 08:34, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm seeing this as well. Lady  of  Shalott  23:42, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I have had the same problem for the past couple of days. Starting to really anoy me.--Yankees10 22:56, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm also having this problem. My sidebar looks just like yours Trigonomie. ~Asarlaí 05:40, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Are we gonna get a response on how to fix this?--Yankees10 16:57, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It doesn't happen with Firefox or Chromium for me. Can you reproduce it with other browsers? Nemo 13:18, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * No. The problem appears as soon as IE8 switches into the "Compatibility mode". Ich think, older versions of IE should have the same problems.--Trigonomie (talk) 08:04, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It also happens in IE7. DH85868993 (talk) 14:00, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't see it in IE6, whether logged-in or not. Lupo 15:49, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Extra arrows over page/user menus
I use this gadget, and there are extra down-pointing arrows over them. Incidentally, earlier Twinkle had the same problem, but now the arrow for TW works right. → Dynamic&#124;cimanyD ← (contact me) 21:49, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Ditto. C628 (talk) 04:45, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

No minor edit tag in watchlist
I can see N and b tags on my watchlist, but not m for minor edit. All three tags appear in article history and my contributions listings. Running Firefox 7.0 on openSUSE. Vector skin with the updates for bold N, b, m tags in common.css. Page reloaded with shift-reload, still happens. --Mirokado (talk) 15:01, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Just to verify: You do have your watchlist set to show minor edits, right? –Drilnoth (T/C) 20:24, 8 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I've just looked, "Hide minor edits from the watchlist" is unchecked so I expect to see minor edits. A minor edit which is still the top edit appears in the watchlist without its "m" tag (this one for example). --Mirokado (talk) 00:46, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Reported as 31408, should be fixed now here. Nemo 13:33, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I have found the cause and made a fix. I'm not sure if the fix will be pushed anytime soon however. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:53, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks both for the fix and investigations in the bug report. Nice if the fix can appear when convenient, but it is not urgent. --Mirokado (talk) 19:56, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Editing toolbar and banners
The buttons in my editing toolbar haven't worked for three or four days, in any article that I try to edit. My broweser is IE 8. For example, here is a link to Physics Today.

The banners issue -> How can I choose not to see the banners when I open a page. I don't mind once per editing session, but the other day the banners showed up frequently whenever I opened a new page. However, this no longer seems to be a problem at the moment. Thanks.

I have moved this to the bottom of the list where it probably belongs. Steve Quinn (talk) 03:57, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Redirects to sections/anchors not working without JavaScript
I noticed that redirects to section headers or anchors do not work if JavaScript is disabled. Instead, with JavaScript disabled, the browser just jumps to the start of the destination article. This appears to be independent of article names, section names, and browsers. Example:  should bring user to "section" in "article", but works as if the redirect would have been coded as   instead. It seems easy to fix by just not stripping of the #hashed-appendage from the link (in the non-JavaScript case) and URL-encode the link.--Matthiaspaul (talk) 11:21, 9 October 2011 (UTC)
 * To make testing easier, here's an example: Digital ISO speed redirects to an embedded anquor in the film speed article: . So, clicking the above link should bring you to the Film speed anchor in the article's Film Speed section. This works fine with JavaScript, but does not work, if JavaScript is disabled. Interestingly, if you then click the back-link "(Redirected from Digital ISO speed)" below the article header (which will bring you to the redirection page itself) and then click on the Film speed link in there, it will work fine even without JavaScript. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 20:59, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

class="nounderlines" has no effect
Some character sets are wrapped in the class="nounderlines" to prevent the wikilinking underline disturb the view of the character. It worked ok earlier. At the moment the underline is shown. Example: &rarr;. Also Letters with diacritics, Punctuation, currency signs and Currency signs. Possibly related issue: above, about tabs. I checked with WinXP using both Firefox 5.0.1 and Safari 5.0.3. -DePiep (talk) 17:43, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Just curious: why is there no response on this post? -DePiep (talk) 20:52, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not seeing the problem as reported. As I understand it, the "m" after the arrow should not have an underline when hovering. It is the case that I do not see such an underline. Have I misunderstood? I'm running Vista with Fx 7.0 myself. --Izno (talk) 22:31, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Your understanding is correct. I do see the underline (cache cleared, Vector skin). Essentially, I expect this one to be without underline: Main page -DePiep (talk) 15:45, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

I think this is caused by 96261. I tried fixing our local "nounderlines"-class, but since the "Always underline" option now uses !important, i'm not entirely sure how that should be done.. How do you override an !important rule ?... —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 23:14, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * For me, it shows OK now, all tests. Thanks TheDJ (whatever yours did). Consider done. -DePiep (talk) 23:27, 15 October 2011 (UTC) Must say, I do not know about !unimportancy -- though I see & like the funny part of it. -DePiep (talk) 23:41, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Just like regular CSS, the last encountered !important takes the cake. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 09:25, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Category contents summary changed
Previously, the number of subcategories and pages a category contained were displayed in parentheses after the category name (e.g. "CatName (2C, 4P)"). Now, only the number of subcategories is displayed (e.g. "CatName (2)"). I believe this change occurred when 1.18 was introduced. I'm using MonoBook, IE7, WinXP BTW. DH85868993 (talk) 06:00, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * When I look at Wikipedia help forums I see “Wikipedia Adopt-a-user‎ (2 C, 31 P)” Is this — (2C, 31P) — what you're saying you saw before?
 * Yes. But what I see now is "Wikipedia Adopt-a-user (2)". DH85868993 (talk) 10:30, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This sounds like a bug that has afflicted Commons for well over a year (see commons:Commons:Village pump/Archive/2010/06) - but it doesn't affect all category pages, and for some affected pages, the problem comes and goes. -- Red rose64 (talk) 09:15, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That sounds like it. Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 10:30, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Special:EditWatchlist clicking versus checking
I regularly use Special:EditWatchlist to check watchlisted pages by opening and viewing multiple tabs. I've noticed recently that when I click on a title, the box next to it is checked. This means that if I click on 15 titles and want to remove five of them from my watchlist, I have to first uncheck 10 boxes. The more serious problem is forgetting that step and accidentally removing titles which I wanted to keep on my watchlist. I'm not sure whether this is a bug or a feature, but is there an option to fix or disable it? I'm using Vector and the issue presents on IE8, but not Firefox. Thank you, -- Black Falcon (talk) 16:25, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Block logs from renamed accounts being moved back to their original accounts
I'm not entirely sure I understand this, but from what Beeblebrox explained to me, User talk:John Henry DeJong was blocked in 2005 for sockpuppetry. Following that block, that account was renamed to something else, to allow another person - the current operator - to create that account. Now, following the update we all love so very much, the software evidently moved those block settings back to the original account name, causing the new John Henry DeJong to be blocked, and appear as though he'd been blocked since 2005. This confused the hell of out him and me, and fortunately Beeblebrox was able to figure out what happened. We should probably look through other blocked-then-renamed accounts to see if this problem has occurred elsewhere. <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue">Hers <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:gold">fold  (t/a/c) 02:29, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Subst'ing magic words broken?
produces 2011 (you can try it in a sandbox). now produces nothing. I have also noticed this behavior on several similar magic words (with the exception of {subst:REVISIONMONTH1}, which produces 0 rather than nothing). On the other hand, the CURRENTMONTH/CURRENTDAY/CURRENTYEAR family of magic words still works fine. <b class="IPA">r<font color="#8B0000">ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 16:20, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a duplicate of  not working all the sudden. See also  and . In short, that that ever worked was considered a bug and has been fixed. Anomie⚔ 17:05, 17 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Makes sense. After this happened I realized {CURRENTMONTH}/etc. were more appropriate for my particular application than {REVISIONMONTH}/etc. anyway. Thanks, <b class="IPA">r<font color="#8B0000">ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 17:53, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Vertical bar separating the categories
Hello,

In the article Missak Manouchian, I am disturbed by the vertical bar separating the categories when it begins a line. It should end the previous line, there is plenty of splace, so that would save space on the second line. The vertical bar is like a slash, it separates two entries, so it should be at the right of the entry, not at the left of the next entry.

The same problem appears on the French Wikipedia.

--Nnemo (talk) 22:44, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * That is by design. Categories are now displayed using a vertical list using pipe seperators instead of bullets. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 20:32, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think that is what he means.

Categories: one | two
 * three | four
 * five
 * While he expects:

Categories: one | two | three | four | five
 * I sort of agree with that actualy. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:41, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I gathered that much. It would actually not save any space when considered as a whole. The reason why the pipes are to the left (using <tt>first-child</tt> CSS selector) is because IE does not understand the <tt>last-child</tt> selector, which would leave a pipe dangling after the last category. So the reason is broader compatibility. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 20:46, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, i knew what the reason was, but that doesn't make the expectation of the original poster any less valid. :D —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:49, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Heh... Expectations need to be feasable. I also agree having the seperators behind the items, but it is not possible without breaking IE, or resorting to JS hacks. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 20:54, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * We could change the border from the left to the right, and filter out the border for the last item with CSS for compliant browser and a little helper script for IE. I already have a that fixes the <tt>.hlist</tt> class that can also be employed in this case. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> —  Edokter  ( talk ) — 18:54, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Probably not a good idea if you consider that HotCat and also ajaxCategories/InlineCategorizer (or whatever, if it ever gets done in core) modify the category bar and may even add new "last items". That JS hack for IE is static; it doesn't deal with dynamic DOM modifications. Lupo 09:11, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Problem saving edits
For the last three days I've been getting the Wikimedia Error message when saving edits. This has happened of two separate computers using two separate IP addresses. The edits always save the second time, but it's getting tedious! Mjroots (talk) 09:57, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Making over the air connection to Mjroots eyes. Extracting information. Running optical character recognition. Extracting error information from computer screen of mjroots.(Does this sound impossible ? in that case, please add the exact error you are getting. "Wikimedia Error" is rather vague. ) —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:33, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I think WP was just really busy the last few days. I was also unable to save a time or two, and got the "server lag" message on my watchlist at least once. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:11, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I have a general impression that operations requiring access to an article's past states slowed down substantially at approximately the time 1.18 was deployed, especially for large articles. Of course it could just be a natural change in usage levels related to the school year, but I wonder if there is any quantitative data on the speed of database operations in the new version. Looie496 (talk) 17:49, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmmm. Looie may have the answer, as the list I'm currently working on is very large, and will get larger before I'm in a position to split it into twelve smaller lists. I do get messages the indicate the edit is timing out, so that could be it. Mjroots (talk) 18:01, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I have several times had "The connection has timed out The server at en.wikipedia.org is taking too long to respond. The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments. If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network connection. If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web." plus a variation on that suggesting that the server was unrecognised. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:02, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The server will always say this after submit, if it takes longer than 20 seconds to parse and produce a new version of the article. So if you work on long articles, you will see this a lot.. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:37, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Timed Text
For timed text on the commons, would the following format be supported, or should it be converted to the SubRip format? (I'm asking here as the Commons page hasn't been touched in a year.Smallman12q (talk) 20:58, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It only supports subrip. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:34, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Layout is screwed up with compatibility mode (on IE9 at least)
Less than an hour ago, I encountered an error with the page layout. (see here, here, and here) I would assume that this edit (which was later reverted) would be the cause of it. I also noticed that Twinkle has ceased working, minus the "page" tab. (and the "user" tab if on a userpage)

Turning compatibility mode off seem to fix this, which also enables Twinkle to work properly. I have been using Wikipedia on IE9 with compatibility mode on for quite a while, and it never happened to me up until today. Anyone want to see if they can find the root of the problem? LikeLakers2 (talk &#124; Sign my guestbook!) 00:07, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I also just noticed this complete fail. Look to the right of the edit box, and look below it as well. It seems that, if I type some stuff, then scroll the text that is below the textbox "off screen", then scroll it back, it seems to have "updated". LikeLakers2 (talk &#124; Sign my guestbook!) 00:11, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * My edit to common.js is not related; it should not even affect IE9. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 07:56, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * If you're referring to the space between the boxes in the sidebar, see above. Lupo 15:48, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I note that there is actually some text ( the letter 'S' ) just to the right of the 'navigation' block. That should be there at all. It seems some content is being inserted at totally the wrong spot. It's probably a Gadget or Userscript. Suggest turning of gadgets one by one, till you find the culprit. If that doesn't work, it's probably one of your userscripts. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:32, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Syntax Highlighting
I've had this problem for a while now (so probably not related to 1.18) where syntax highlighting for computer code snippets doesn't always display. I particularly see it in Hello world program examples. There the snippets ActionScript through D and Opa display correctly, but none of the others. When it doesn't properly highlight, the code is surrounded by a double dashed box -

Similar to this but surrounded by another box.

This only occurs (as far as I know) on my XP with IE8. Using Linux with Firefox works correctly for all the language snippets. Chris857 (talk) 03:11, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It appears that IE8/IE9 can only handle around 15 different LANGUAGENAME in . Hello world program examples has   which has already occurred before so that works. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:51, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds like IE's limit of (IIRC) 31 CSS files per page. If there isn't one already, someone should file a bug. Anomie⚔ 11:04, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Was already filed as 31676. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:29, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Submitted article created in user space; it went to wrong place
I may be in the wrong place, but several weeks ago I created an article in userspace because I didn't feel I had enough sources or enough information to guarantee the article wouldn't be threatened with deletion. Once I felt comfortable, I moved it, and the article was moved. I did the same thing last week, but the article wasn't moved to the right place. I'm not really sure where it went as there were directions for what to do next (it wasn't recorded in the history as a move but treated like a preview), and a strong recommendation that I move the article to Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Mr. Joe White Avenue. Not knowing what else to do, I did that. User:Chzz recognized I was an established editor and moved the article to the proper place. I haven't received a response from this person on why this was necessary, but it doesn't matter because he/she is not the expert on what happened in the first place.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 19:57, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Not sure what your question is. If you are asking "where has Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Mr. Joe White Avenue gone?" try clicking that link, which is a redirect. If you are asking "why did Chzz not inform me?", you should ask at User talk:Chzz. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:26, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * No, what I want to know is why it didn't move for me the way it did for User:Chzz, and I did ask him/her.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 20:31, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It appears that you clicked the "submit article for review" button instead of moving the article. You submitted the article for review at Articles for Creation. Chzz then reviewed the submission, and accepted it, moving it to mainspace. "Clicking the submit for review" button sends the article to Articles for Creation. Using the "move" button next to the "edit" button will move the article. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  20:34, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Could be. I thought I clicked on a button to move it.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 20:35, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, as a test I did the same thing with User:Vchimpanzee/LIFT FM that I did with Mr. Joe White Avenue.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 20:38, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Yep, you are using the "submit article" button. Try this link. To move userspace drafts, you can click on the move button (image of button location}. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  20:41, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

That's right. I must have done that before. Thanks.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 20:42, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * @Redrose - I did inform the user .  Chzz  ► 01:48, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry Chzz - didn't realise that - my suggestion was based on the phrase in the OP "User:Chzz ... moved the article to the proper place. I haven't received a response from this person on why this was necessary". -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:00, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Chzz informed me this was done, but not why it was necessary. Alpha Quadrant explained above what I did wrong. Thanks.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 17:18, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Thumbnail... incorrectly rotated?
Can someone explain to me what's going on with File:StrawberryCake.jpg. I have a bot that I've written, and I am testing, and it generated a thumbnail of the first version of that file:. This, in the meantime, is the non-thumb version:. You will notice it is incorrectly rotated by 90 degrees. Why is this happening? Is it a MW bug or a problem inside the JPG itself? Most oddly, you will note that at 120px (the default for MW thumbnails shown on file pages), is the only version with the currect rotation. At 119px and 121px, it shows incorrectly. Magog the Ogre (talk) 06:31, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I can't figure out the whole story, but here's a major clue: the first uploaded version of the file contains an Exif tag specifying a non-default orientation. That's probably the camera detected that it was being held sideways. Somewhere along the way, a thumbnail generator ignored that tag. 67.162.90.113 (talk) 06:59, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * One of the features added with MediaWiki 1.18 is the ability to detect the orientation, see MediaWiki 1.18. -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:08, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * We're probably going to be seeing a lot of this, unfortunately. (I wrote the code in GIMP that deals with EXIF rotation, so I have a pretty good understanding of the issues.)  The basic problem is that there are a number of popular image editing programs that do not handle EXIF orientation tags correctly (including GIMP before I fixed it), and any time one of those programs is used to edit a rotated image before uploading it to Commons, the result will be wrong. Looie496 (talk) 16:09, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The rotatebot on commons actually is pretty good at correcting for problems like this. Some folks did a lot of work on it, specifically to deal with some problems after this got deployed.. But yeah, it's a problem for some images, in the long run though, I expect rotation support to be quite beneficial. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:22, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, I notice from the screenshot that you are using compatibility mode. Try turning that off - it should be unnecessary for Wikipedia. — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:56, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

<span class="outdent-template" style="font-family:DejaVu Sans, sans-serif;color:#808080;">┌─────────────────────────────────┘ Wait, what? Did you mean that for this thread? What screenshot? Magog the Ogre (talk) 18:00, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, wrong thread. Sorry about that. — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:12, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

User online status
Hi, I've seen that many users use a template indicating status if they are online, it seems to me like many pointless revisions when they replace the template with status everytime they login, logout. For this reason I started working on Extension:OnlineStatusBar (it's on mediawiki wiki), example can be tested on http://hub.tm-irc.org/test/wiki where this testing version is now available, it does the same as current status template but it doesn't need revisions to be updated, I understand that many people wouldn't like to have such a thing on wikipedia because it would break some sort of privacy, for this reason this feature will be available in preferences only for those who would like to use that. I want to ask what do you think about it, if it's a good idea / support it, or not, if it should be enabled for all people as default or not. it's still in early dev phase so it can be heavily modified. I appeciate any feedback, even negative :) Petrb (talk) 11:20, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi, this sounds like a good idea. I'm all for it if you can do this!  - Benzband (talk) 11:48, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * As an optional gadget with a clear warning as to how this works (tracking etc) -- seems OK. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 11:58, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Absolutely not as a default; otherwise, sure. Bielle (talk) 22:21, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I say, about time someone finished that extension. :D Good work. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 06:55, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

What's different about these two numbers?
For some reason, these two numbers are considered different by JavaScript and the built-in diff tool. The first number I typed, the second I copied from a History page:


 * 2011
 * 2011‎

You can test this by entering one into a page, then replacing it with the second one, and it'll be picked up as a change. Does it have something to do with encoding, etc.? How would I be able to spot something like this, using a tool, or what? Gary King ( talk  ·  scripts )  20:48, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I copy-pasted to the "Characters" field at http://rishida.net/tools/conversion/ and clicked "View names". It says the second 2011 is followed by the Unicode character U+200E LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:02, 25 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Ah yes, this can be confirmed by hitting Backspace at the end of the second number. It's essentially one of those freaky, invisible characters. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  21:05, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * See also Left-to-right mark. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:06, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * These type of characters show up when editing with wikEd, and mousing over them provides a tooltip with what they are. —danhash (talk) 21:17, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This kind of character also causes problems such as 29794. Helder 21:56, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * FYI that left to right character has caused more problems for me in my bots than almost anything else. Magog the Ogre (talk) 04:25, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

TOC collapsed?
Is it just me or the TOC is now automatically collapsed on articles? Was there a community discussion on that, and if so, where is it? Thanks — CharlieEchoTango  — 06:02, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks like it's not collapsed anymore... (???) — CharlieEchoTango  — 06:10, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The state of the last TOC you viewed is remembered. If you collapse one then they will all be collapsed until you expand one. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:14, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Technical problem?
Hi all there is a problem with citation displaying as a uni-code on an article and I/we do not know how to fix it. Its discussed here Featured topic candidates/1st Airborne Division (United Kingdom)/archive1 which is probably the best place to see what I mean. If anyone can assist many thanks.Jim Sweeney (talk) 11:30, 26 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It seems to have been resolved. I couldn't see the problem, not even when logging out and viewing the page history. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:09, 26 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes fixed now thanks Jim Sweeney (talk) 12:13, 26 October 2011 (UTC)


 * See Help:Strip markers. I went through the article history and don't see anything that would expose strip markers. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 12:53, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Blocklogentry

 * Moved from Administrators' noticeboard ​—DoRD (talk)​ 11:43, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Hello. I'm trying to report with a CVN bot the blocks of every wikis, essentially for stewards to check blocked people to know if there is cross-wiki vandalism or only local vandalism. But what is reported on irc.wikimedia.org is translated, so there are different patterns for each projects.

For enwiki, the MediaWiki message is <tt> blocked $1 $3 with an expiry time of $2 </tt>, so I have no possibility to distinguish $1 and $3... If you could change it to <tt> blocked $1 $3 with an expiry time of $2 </tt>, <tt> blocked «$1» $3 with an expiry time of $2 </tt>, or at least <tt> blocked $1 with an expiry time of $2 $3 </tt> (which is really a minor change), it would be very helpful.

Thanks by advance. -- Quentinv57 (talk) 08:19, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, $1 is in the form  Foo (talk)  for logged in users, and  1.1.1.1 (talk)  for anons; while #3 is in the form of (details). Does this help you? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 21:19, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm thinking about an other way to match these informations that won't require a change. But is there a page that specify the value of $1, $2 and $3, that you described in your message ? Or is it something by default ? Thanks -- Quentinv57 (talk) 09:21, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That's okay, I solved it using a method based on the system messages. Thanks anyway. -- Quentinv57 (talk) 12:31, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Ratings panel still broken
It's embarrassing that the ratings panel is still totally broken in IE (well, IE 8 at least). That's an awful lot of users. Is there any chance that someone could look at this?

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31543 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.159.105.217 (talk) 13:14, 26 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It is going to take a developer to fix this. Not sure of the priority, since it looks like the Article Feedback Tool is going to be replaced. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 16:29, 26 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Oh, OK, thanks, if it's going to be replaced soon then I suppose there's no point fixing the current incarnation. Just so long as everyone is aware that it is completely unusable in IE, and, since it appears on every single page, this obviously looks pretty bad. 86.160.209.119 (talk) 17:35, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * If you register an account, you can set a preference "Don't show the Article feedback widget on pages", which will hide these. I set it several weeks ago, because I found the article feedback thing annoying. -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:44, 26 October 2011 (UTC)


 * This should have been escalated sooner, sorry for overlooking it. We'll look at it.--Eloquence* 02:09, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Navboxes and preferences
Same issue as happened a few weeks ago and reported here. The little show/hide is missing in the tables. Also 'My Preferences' doesn't appear as tabs any more, they are all in one long page with basic information at the top and gadgets at the bottom. As well as this the little tools above the edit page have disappeared (add ref, add image, insert signature and such). I am using Firefox and the problem does not occur in IE. I tried using Private Browsing (so my cache was cleared and I wasn't logged in) and the problems still occurred. Problems have been here all afternoon, after a few hours of normal editing and without me changing my preferences.EchetusXe 22:30, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It sounds like your browser's JavaScript support has gone AWOL. In Firefox, check Firefox menu > Options/Preferences > Content tab > Enable JavaScript. — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:11, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Nope, it is enabled. There might have been a Javascript update recently though that is a bit screwed up, I automatically have the latest version.EchetusXe 10:27, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, I tried opening firefox in safe mode and it is back to normal. Does this mean I should try disabling add-ons one-by-one until it works? I can't see the toolbars, bookmarks, user preferences, or search engines making any difference?--EchetusXe 10:46, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * hehe, godamn 'No Script' was causing the problem. Apparently it forbid the site from using javascript. Of course I told it to allow the site when I first installed it but it decided to forget I told it that for whatever reason.--EchetusXe 10:58, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Where does this CSS come from?
When I go to Paul Kane and open the HTML source, I see on line 26 the following: I have no idea where this comes from, but it seems to be configurable for each wiki. The German Wikipedia doesn't have that "text-decoration" in this script.

Does anybody know where this bit of CSS comes from? (It's not added by some JS, then it wouldn't be in the original page HTML.) The script appears to be included on all pages, and in all skins. Lupo 07:06, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Viewing the source (on Firefox with Vector), my line 19 is the closest thing to what you posted; here's what I see.


 * Either someone fixed it already or it isn't there for everyone or something (I don't know that much about CSS, hope this is helpful.) --Philosopher Let us reason together. 08:03, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Strange. Still there for me (FF3.6.4/monobook), also after clearing the browser's cache. Actually, the above was with "?debug=true" in the URL; without, I get the same contents (except that it's minified), plus the comment "/* cache key: enwiki:resourceloader:filter:minify-css:4:35ba3471f3157156679c44f257bc1d39 */". The question remains: where does this come from? Lupo 08:18, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * All right, found it. It's a style sheet generated from Special:Preferences; so it's not configurable per wiki, but per user account. If you select there "Appearance/AdvancedOptions/Underline links/Always", MW 1.18 will generate that "a { text-decoration: underline !important; }" in that script. The "!important" bit was added here and is therefore new in MW1.18.
 * This may cause unexpected behavior in JavaScripts. If a JS has hold of a link DOM node, changing the "text-decoration" style may be ignored if the script simply does  . A work-around is.
 * I'm not convinced, though, that this "!important" in the generated script from revision 96261 should really be there. It apparently serves only to ensure that the user preference works even in languages where links are normally not underlined:.
 * Other problems this change has caused were reported above as and.
 * Lupo 12:23, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

This is the CSS that implements your user preferences. You've both got the option "format links to nonexistent pages like this" option selected; and Lupo additionally has the "underline links always" option. I have an additional  because I have the "textarea font: monospaced" option selected. There are a couple of other preferences which can be implemented via stylesheets. Why the CSS is embedded directly into the page rather than being loaded via load.php, I'm not entirely sure; I think it might have something to do with cross-domain authentication (RL styles are loaded from bits.wikimedia.org which won't be sent your en.wikipedia.org login cookies). <b style="color:forestgreen">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange">melon</b> 12:10, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Why did I not get an edit conflict for my edit above, which I started before Happy-melon's response? Lupo 12:24, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Help:Edit conflict says: "New since v.1.3 is CVS-style edit conflict merging, based on the diff3 utility. This feature will only trigger an edit conflict if users attempt to edit the same few lines." If Happy-melon had not started with a blank line then I think you would have gotten an edit conflict. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:35, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Live and learn... thanks! Lupo 13:51, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * First of all, the options have to be handled separately in the core, due to caching reasons. The second reason it's there like this, is because this part of the preferences has basically worked like that since the creation of mediawiki. Integrating it 'properly' is rather difficult at this moment. With regards to !important: "It apparently serves only to ensure that the user preference works even in languages where links are normally not underlined" assessment by Lupo 100% correct. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:32, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Status of the "Image:" prefix
Do articles still use this? (I don't have the know-how to search effectively for it.) Is there any use in acknowledging its existence if not used? [This is in preparation for a proposal, this is not it.] Is it possible to deprecate it? [Again, ignoring the pros/cons of doing so unless technical in nature.] Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 09:06, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * In order: Probably; old revisions certainly do. Why not, especially since it is used in old revisions. "Deprecate" sure (that's just documentation), but not to remove it because it would break all those old revisions. Anomie⚔ 10:50, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The main argument to introduce "File:" was that "Image:" had to be used for non-image files. I don't see harm in using "Image:" for images. It is still used in many articles. See for example a search on "Image:Flag". PrimeHunter (talk) 11:24, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Definitely in use for a large number of articles; an incredibly rough guestimate, but perhaps 40% of articles that have media files are using it. I come across it fairly often. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  18:37, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * There is nothing inherently "wrong" with Image: - the MediaWiki parser treats it as an alias for the File: namespace, in exactly the same way that WP: is an alias for Wikipedia:, see Namespace. It is unlikely that Image: will suddenly stop working, because its use is so widespread. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:50, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * There might be some slight performance issues with using Image instead of File. Especially with those heavily used and templated flag images. I'm not sure, but I'll try to figure that out. In the grand scheme of things however the answer is 'don't worry about it'. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:16, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The performance impact of the Image: alias existing is infintessimally nonzero; probably not even a single microsecond. Given that the alias will not be removed from MW for the forseeable future (indeed there are no plans to ever remove it), the further performance impact of the Image: alias being used is zero (or rather, the performance of analysing an Image: link is computationally identical to the performance of analysing a File: link).  <b style="color:forestgreen">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange">melon</b> 21:26, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Don't bother changing  to   - the time you waste doing this will always be greater than the sum of the times that MediWiki spends translating it on the fly. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:44, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Adopting template:internal link helper from Chinese Wikipedia
In Chinese Wikipedia we have a very handy js gadget zh:template:internal link helper that helps enhancing the functionality of red link. The whole thing was created by user:PhiLiP and is being heavily applied in zh.wp.

For example, if an article is not available in our home Wikipedia but already exists in Russian Wikipedia, we apply the template like this:. This way when the user enabled js and clicked on the red link, a popup message will inform that the page Kozhukhovskaya Line does not exist. The corresponding page in Russian Wikipedia is Кожуховская линия. PhiLiP also created a bot for checking if the page has already been created and removing the template periodically. The major benefit from linking the article of remote WP is that the link will remain in red so editor can tell the page does not exist. If they want to create that page they know which remote page they should reference.

This requires sysop to create MediaWiki:Gadget-internalLinkHelper.js (zh) and modify MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition (zh) to allow registered user to toggle the gadget. Please express your opinion even if you oppose the idea. Thx -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 02:00, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * This seems like it could be a good idea. For editors, they can see where material for an article can come from. For multilingual readers, they can read about articles not in en wiki, and monolingual readers can use google translate to get some understanding. Chris857 (talk) 02:15, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I have translated the internal link helper doc just so you have a better idea of how this gadget works. You may do some proofreading since English is not my native language. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk) 09:41, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Interwiki links in the mobile version
Hello, I'd like to suggest being able to see the links to the foreign language article versions in the mobile version. The mobile version itself looks fine for me, but I often have to jump into interwiki links, and they aren't present there. The only disadvantage for me, I think. Thanks. --StepS (talk) 13:00, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * As of yesterday, this is a feature of the new mobile beta. You can read more about it here.--Eloquence* 17:02, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

The new improved Article Feedback Tool
Hey guys. So, the WMF has started developing a new version of the Article Feedback Tool to correct a lot of the flaws in the existing one. They're really interested in letting users shape, to some degree, the way the tool develops (which is why I'm here). If anyone wants to see the tool improved, take a look at WP:AFT5 and drop any comments, criticisms or suggestions you have on the talkpage - I'd be very grateful to hear your opinions, and will pass them on to the devs. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:47, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Extra space between penultimate and last item in infoboxes
I just changed the infobox at Omnia (band) removing one band member. Between the penultimate and last listed band member there is a space. AFAIKS this not caused by any coding in the infobox. Furthermore I noticed this in many other infoboxes. Is there a way to fix this? SpeakFree (talk)(contribs) 00:50, 29 October 2011 (UTC)


 * The last name did not have a break before it. I used ubl to formate it as an unbulleted list. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 01:13, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you for helping and for teaching me a new trick. SpeakFree (talk)(contribs) 06:24, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Space
hello,

why is there such a huge space at the bottom? It appeared after the update. Can you please fix that? Thanks.-- ♫GoP♫ <sub style="color:red;">T <sup style="color:red;">C <sub style="color:red;">N 21:09, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * If you mean around categories then it's discussed above at . If you mean something else then please clarify. Other users may not see the same as you depending on skin, browser and other factors. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:34, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I think that is something different. I have a relative big space at the very bottom, not just around the cats. It is about three-quarters so big as my screen. It is only on the English Wikipedia, and oddly it is only on pages with categories (on special pages for example there is no such space). It is under the yellow-framed box.-- ♫GoP♫ <sub style="color:red;">T <sup style="color:red;">C <sub style="color:red;">N 22:26, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * What is your skin and browser? Does it happen when you log out? What is the yellow-framed box you refer to? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:47, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * ✅ I removed the peer reviewer and there is no space anymore :P-- ♫GoP♫ <sub style="color:red;">T <sup style="color:red;">C <sub style="color:red;">N 11:38, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Problem with "Userspace draft" template
The template Userspace draft is producing a red error message "Expression error: Missing operand for - " JohnCD (talk) 15:35, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It appears to only generate that error when previewed, but not when saved as a transclusion. Still should fix it to avoid confusion. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  15:54, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The problem is not with the template, it is with previews and REVISION based magic words. They are not generating anything when previewed like they used to, which is breaking the template in preview. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  15:58, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Bug at bugzilla but someone is objecting to the fix for the problem at mediawiki. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  16:03, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks - at least I'm able to use it now; but others will be confused too. JohnCD (talk) 16:09, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I think I have a fix for it, Userspace draft/sandbox - change unfortunately, the template is full protected, so I've submitted an edit request for it. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  16:39, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Minor template glitch in Infobox Officeholder or me being stupid
I noticed a leading open bracket ("["} for and entry in the that did not link in an infobox and tried to fix it. I added a missing bracket and the link piped correctly, but the leading bracket remained. I think the problem lies in the infobox, but I am not at all sure. The template is  and the field is "successor".Novangelis (talk) 16:23, 29 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Fixed in . The template call had an extra leading bracket after the pipe. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:56, 29 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Me being stupid. Thanks.Novangelis (talk) 17:32, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Help search box, cannot type into it!
Hi, I tried typing into the search box but no text appears! This has been for a while. Has no one noticed?! Mistakefinder (talk) 18:22, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Nope, must be something your end. <font color="#7026DF"> Rcsprinter  (speak)  20:17, 29 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Do you mean Wikipedia's normal search box on every page or the search box under "Wikipedia Help" at Help:Contents? What is your browser and skin? Does it happen when you log out? Can you try another browser? PrimeHunter (talk) 20:48, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Link weirdness
I'm sure someone's already aware of this, but you can't link directly to //; you can only link to // (with an initial colon to specify mainspace). Is that because it's possible for me to make pages like this one? Or is it an oversight? -- N Y  Kevin  @183, i.e. 03:23, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki doesn't allow normal wikilinks to page titles that begin with a recognized external link protocol. So for example, [] will be parsed as an external link surrounded by brackets rather than an internal link to a page named " http://www.example.com/ ". And now that MediaWiki recognizes protocol-relative links, all pages starting with "//" have this problem. And as you've already observed, the colon trick works around it. Anomie⚔ 04:16, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, it just struck me as odd that // is left completely unparsed... Either it's an external link or it's not, but either way it should be turned into something else, right? -- N Y  Kevin  @233, i.e. 04:36, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Since the internal link parser thinks it looks too much like an external link, it doesn't mess with it. But the external link parser doesn't recognize it as a valid external link either. So it winds up being output as text. Anomie⚔ 05:12, 30 October 2011 (UTC)


 * External links are identified by the URI scheme; see Help:External link icons which touches on the subject. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 13:46, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Table note clicking
I'm working on a table at User:Albacore/Sandbox. I have a conversion note on the square miles column. When I click on the note in the square miles column it doesn't go to the note ref under the "notes" column. However, when I click on the note at the bottom it takes me to the associated note in the column. Is this something on me or is it something with the table? Albacore (talk) 14:11, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You have the templates backwards: it should be ref label in-text and note label in the reference list. I updated using Footnotes, but use whichever system you desire. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 14:34, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

HTML visible in article titles
For some reason I am seeing html tags in article titles. For example, when I go to Blonde on Blonde, the main article title shows as Blonde on Blonde. This is the same for any article look at with the Italic title template. I have seen other html tags than <i>, but I can't think of an example offhand. This has been going on for a few weeks. I'm using the monobook skin, and Firefox 7. Anyone any idea what's going on? -- Beloved Freak  16:06, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Do you see this if logged out? ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 16:43, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * This sounds very like the issue described at Help desk/Archives/2011 October 15 and Help desk/Archives/2011 October 16 -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:00, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks Redrose, I checked this page but hadn't thought to check the helpdesk. It sounds like it's an issue with Firefox's Stumbleupon extension. Yes, it's still a problem when logged out.-- Beloved Freak  17:18, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Prod question
On Slipp — The prod template is yelling at me for a previous AFD, even though the Slipp article that was deleted via AFD was on an entirely unrelated subject that had nothing to do with Redwall. Is there a way to override the false positive the prod template's showing? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 17:22, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * There are no parameters that recognises that would suppress than message, other than yes, which you really don't want to do. I suspect that you may need to move Articles for deletion/Slipp somewhere else, without leaving a redirect behind. Moving the old AFD may itself be against policy... -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:30, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I suggest moving Slipp to Slipp (Redwall), which I suspect it should be named anyways. The move will create a redirect, which is fine, and will tidily stop the yelling. --Lexein (talk) 17:44, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Category search can not find names in category titles
Search for "incarceration in" via Special:Search. First uncheck everything except categories. The search results do not show any category names with "incarceration in".

On the other hand start typing in "incarceration in" using the search form at the top of every page, or in the search form at Special:Search. 4 categories show up in the dropdown menu:


 * Incarceration in the United States
 * Incarceration in Ukraine
 * Incarceration in Panama
 * Incarceration in the United Kingdom

Search that can not find words in titles is a serious problem. I sometimes need a list of results, and not just the dropdown menu. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:31, 30 October 2011 (UTC)


 * No categories exist according to Special:PrefixIndex - there are two with the prefix "Incarceration", and one is a new category which has not been added to the search index yet. The articles can be found by searching in article namespace. Peter E. James (talk) 18:46, 30 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Nevermind. I experienced a brain fart :) - I have been editing a lot in the Commons where a lot of my work has been in categorization. Feel free to delete this talk section. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:18, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

More attention needed for a gadget proposal
Hey folks, there's a standing proposal for a WMF-developed, opt-in gadget that needs some more attention. See Gadget/proposals. Thanks, <span style="font-family:Palatino, Georgia, serif;">Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   18:57, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

one talk post hiding other posts unintentionally: ok for a bot?
After I posted about a display failure, another editor discovered that a talk post had content that technically prevented other posts from displaying. Other posts shouldn't be affected like that. I wonder if a bot could catch those cases and encourage or force a rewrite (adding a bot sig to forced rewrites). Nick Levinson (talk) 22:14, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Global watchlist
Hello to everyone! I wanted to ask is there such thing as global watchlist (like global contributions tool)? If not I think that this could be a good idea for creating. Thanks! --<font color="FF6600">Edgars2007  (Talk/Contributions) 13:26, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not aware of one, but agree that it would be a great idea! --Philosopher Let us reason together. 13:46, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Try ~luxo/gwatch/ on toolserver. — AlexSm 13:52, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * See WP:Integrated watchlist or this newly-created redirect: WP:Global watchlist. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:07, 30 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Userbox added. Incidentally, the toolserver link isn't working for me, is it down? --Philosopher Let us reason together. 22:20, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, guys!--<font color="FF6600">Edgars2007  (Talk/Contributions) 13:11, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyright and simple skin
I was just previewing the different skins and noticed that MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyright doesn't appear on the "Simple" skin. (See [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Koala&useskin=simple "Koala" in the simple skin]). This can't be intentional, so ... any idea how to fix this? --Philosopher Let us reason together. 00:16, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * A quick kludge would be to add a  onto Mediawiki:Simple.js, but that's not a long-term solution (actually, it's quite messy and I don't recommend it unless this is considered an emergency).  I think you need to file a bug for this one.  It's not a problem with Mediawiki:Simple.css, so I don't see why it's missing.  Probably the skin never had it included, due to an oversight.  -- N  Y  Kevin  @238, i.e. 04:42, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Reported as bug 32105. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 23:23, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

403 error using CSDH
When I use CSDH to delete pages I get a 403 forbidden error once the page has been deleted when I should be redirected to CAT:SD. I end up here and it says "You don't have permission to access /w/ on this server." I'm using the secure server in firefox 7.0.1 on ubuntu. I've used CSDH in the same setup before and it has worked properly. Any idea what's going on? Thanks SmartSE (talk) 13:19, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I get that, too; also, when viewing an article which has a speedy template on it, the "Speedy" tab provided by CSDhelper, which used to be to the right of the "Discussion" tab, now appears below it, obscuring part of the article title, which is extremely inconvenient. These bugs appeared with Mediawiki 1.18 and were reported further up this page. (Vector, Firefox 7.01) JohnCD (talk) 15:44, 29 October 2011 (UTC)


 * 1) Switch from deprecated secure.wikimedia.org to the new secure interface at https://en.wikipedia.org. 2) If the problem persist, notify author directly at User talk:Ale jrb. — AlexSm 16:33, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I wasn't using the secure interface; and the problem, at least the tab obscuring the article title, is still there on the new one. I'll consult Ale jrb. JohnCD (talk) 16:39, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the replies, I've tried using all the different servers and it still happens. Hopefully Ale jrb can come up with something. SmartSE (talk) 17:11, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * These issues are now fixed. For the future, keep in mind that I'm only likely to see bug reports if you put them on my talk page. Cheers. A le_Jrb <sup style="color:blue;">talk  18:38, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Sharing a large Wikipedia-related text file
Hello! I have two large (~30M) Wikipedia-related text files that I want to share with other Wikipedians (for those who wonder, they are lists of page titles with their interwikis, sorted by number of interwikis, for use by people from Wikipedia in other languages to see what subjects might be important omissions in their language). What I would like to know, is there a possibility to put it somewhere on the Wikimedia servers, or, if not, some other place that is less obnoxious than run-of-the-mill filesharing site (perhaps even open source/open content related?) - Andre Engels (talk) 12:33, 30 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Oh, how times have changed &mdash; 30 MB, while 'large', isn't large like it used to be. It's not unusual anymore for consumer digital cameras to generate images in the 5-10 MB range, and Commons hosts those by the thousands.  At a guess, I'd say that meta is the most appropriate place, but depending on their level of prickliness this week the admins at Commons would probably let it slide as well.  Honestly, I doubt that you'd have problems with hosting it here on enwiki; it's clearly a project-related item. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:29, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The problem with that is that .txt is not an allowed file type to upload on Mediawiki. Uploading it as some other file type seems shaky at best, so I'd be left with putting it on a page (with pre and nowiki and whatever), but then 30M is large - the largest article is measured in hundreds of kilobytes, not dozens of megabytes. - Andre Engels (talk) 20:09, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You could use Scribd or Google Sites. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 22:01, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you could upload it to the Toolserver, but it would be a good idea to compress it first. Graham 87 02:08, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I think Gadget's idea of setting up a Google group is a good one. --Kumioko (talk) 02:22, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * My advice: 1. Compress them with 7-Zip. 2. Set up an Amazon S3 account. 3. Using S3's web interface, upload the files, then right-click on them and Make Public. 4. Hand out the link to the file in its Properties. You will pay for the S3 space, and for the bandwidth, but it's extremely cheap (12 cents per gig per month, and your first gigabyte of bandwidth is free). Dcoetzee 05:20, 31 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Email me the files and I can toss them up on the toolserver. ΔT The only constant 05:31, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * that address would be ΔT The only constant 05:35, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks; check your mail. - Andre Engels (talk) 17:55, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry, failed: "Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 552 552 5.3.4 Error: message file too big (state 18)." - Andre Engels (talk) 18:56, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Try compressing it and sending it to @gmail.com this time. ΔT The only constant 18:57, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Caching?
How long should an "old" article stay in the wikipedia cacheing system (for want of the technical term)? I just saw a (vandalised) version of optometry that had been replaced 18 hours earlier. 86.174.111.59 (talk) 17:38, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Users that are not logged in (or don't have an account) receive old versions of pages and must purge them to see the current version. I don't recall why, but I'm sure somebody more knowledgable will stop by and fill us in. - Hydroxonium (T•C• [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListUsers&limit=1&amp;username=Hydroxonium V] ) 22:51, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * AFAIK unregistered users get cached versions of pages to optimise Wikipedia's performance, because the vast majority of Wikipedia's traffic comes from users who are not logged in. For registered users, pages are cached depending on the user's preferences (for date format, underlining of links, etc). Graham 87 02:00, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The problem of Wikipedia serving stale pages has annoyed me for years. There is just no way of knowing if the page you're looking at is current, a day old, or sometimes a week or more old. In my view this is just a design bug, nothing more. I wish it would be fixed. 86.161.61.172 (talk) 14:45, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Theoretically you can look at the bottom of the page where it says "This page was last modified on at ", or you can go to the page history and click on the top revision to make sure you're seeing the latest edit. However neither of these solutions are obvious or optimal. Graham 87 15:45, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe I'm being slow, but I don't understand how the timestamp, by itself, is any help. Note also that the history page is not guaranteed up to date. I have seen occasions when the latest edits are not shown, though this seems rarer than stale article pages. 86.179.112.74 (talk) 19:55, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Something's wrong with the block page...
^ What the header says. I tried blocking a vandal, but another admin beat me to it...and I got this.

...looks like something broke somewhere to me... - The Bushranger One ping only 09:41, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That looks exactly like MediaWiki:Ipb already blocked, but it's been like that for 2 years and no one has complained. I think MediaWiki:Ipb-needreblock has replaced it. Goodvac (talk) 09:53, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I got the same page (MediaWiki:Ipb already blocked) a few days ago when conflicting on the block. I've conflicted on blocks in the past and have not got that message. Anyway, anchor tags are not permitted by the software, so I've edited the MediaWiki:Ipb already blocked page to no longer use them. - Kingpin13 (talk) 11:07, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Playing sound files
Hi, using Win XP / IE 8, I used to be able to play Wikipedia sound files using Java somehow. It just used to work. Now it doesn't. I also used to get a message "trying to run QuickTime plug-in" or similar. I have reinstalled QuickTime (I previously had an ancient and possible never properly installed version). Now I do not get any message about QuickTime. When I click on the "play" button on Wikipedia sound files, nothing happens. No sound, no messages, nothing. Anyone got any clues what is going on? Should I be able to play the files using Java or QuickTime? (I am aware of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Media_help_(Ogg), so I'm not asking about other possible methods. I'm just asking about the methods I've mentioned.) 86.161.61.172 (talk) 14:17, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Toolserver beta test
You may be familiar with my toolserver tool which allows you to search through a user's contributions to a particular page, or through a range of pages (using wildcards). I have recently created a version of the tool which works on more than just the English Wikipedia. This involved some major changes with the way the tool works, and may have introduced some bugs. If you're interested in the "interwiki" version of the tool, please feel free to test it out at http://toolserver.org/~snottywong/usersearch-interwiki.html and let me know if you find any problems. Please report any bugs to my talk page. Once I'm sufficiently confident that it is bug-free, I'll make it the live version. Thanks! <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#0a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#0a0 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> confer 21:41, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Cool! --Philosopher Let us reason together. 23:33, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Is there any way to watchlist a special page?
Is there a way to watchlist (or simulate watchlisting) Special:FeedbackDashboard using a script or some other method? Monty <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  19:06, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * See Watchlist. <b style="white-space:nowrap;text-shadow:#000 0em 0em 0.4em,#5a0 -0.2em -0.2em 0.4em,#a00 0.2em 0.2em 0.4em;color:#ddd">&mdash;SW&mdash;</b> chatter 23:28, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The related changes suggestion on that page does not seem to work for Special:FeedbackDashboard. Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  16:22, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Since the watchlist tracks edits to pages, and special pages are not edited, it makes no sense to watchlist a special page. I suppose it would be possible to create JavaScript that processes that page into a watchlist-like form. Ucucha (talk) 16:30, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It is possible to write a userscript to request for example 10 last feedbacks every time you update your watchlist and then show only new ones using a cookie. — AlexSm 17:37, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Changing buttons: old toolbar

 * == Script malfunction ==

Folks, I have some javascript in my monobook.js file that used to insert a dash along with the tildes when I clicked on the signature button in the old editing toolbar. For some reason it has recently stopped working. Can anyone suggest a fix please? The code is:

Thanks. ukexpat (talk) 18:18, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * This code might work. — AlexSm 20:37, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Brilliant, thanks! – ukexpat (talk) 20:44, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Search for a symbol in the title
How do you search for a symbol in the title of a page, such as a colon or a dash? "intitle:" has been unhelpful. —danhash (talk) 18:30, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Use Grep on toolserver; it's listed on Help:Searching. — AlexSm 19:34, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Office Hours on the Article Feedback Tool
Hey guys. Brandon Harris, Howie Fung, Fabrice Florin and I will be holding a second Office Hours session on IRC in #wikimedia-office on Thursday, 3 November at 24:00 UTC. This unusually late time is aimed at permitting East Coast editors, who would normally be at work, to attend. We will be discussing the new Article Feedback Tool designs; if anyone has any questions about Office Hours, or how to get on IRC, feel free to leave me a message on my talkpage. I hope to see you all there :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:18, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Are all the templates backed up somewhere?
It is said that if Wikipedia ever ceases to exist anyone can recreated it using a database backup and the MediaWiki software. But wouldn't most pages be broken severely without the templates which have been created over the years by many users? One could do without the many images on Commons to recreate a text only encyclopedia but without the templates it would be a mammoth task to present most articles in a readable fashion. So are they backed up somewhere? SpeakFree (talk)(contribs) 20:41, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The templates are also pages, therefore are backed up along with the articles, user pages, categories etc. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:48, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * OK thanks for clearing that up. SpeakFree (talk)(contribs) 21:52, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Watchlist glitches
I've confirmed that it's not my imagination. Some of the pages on my watchlist are not being 'watched'. I've accessed at least one page that was edited (several times) without any notification on my watchlist page. Is there a glitch? Does this happen occasionally? A fix?   Wikipelli <sup style="color:#7b68ee;">Talk   21:16, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * What edits do you have selected in your preferences that don't appear on your watchlist? Maybe it's one of those. — Bility (talk) 21:55, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I have "hide minor; hide bots; hide mine" and that's about it. I looked back just now and 2 of the 3 edits were tagged minor, but another wasn't and it didn't show up on my watchlist. Not a huge concern, but just wanted to point it up in case others were seeing the same thing and/or if there was a known glitch.   Wikipelli  <sup style="color:#7b68ee;">Talk   22:17, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia speed
In about the last two weeks, Wikipedia will start up normally and work at the regular speed for about ten minutes. After that, it will start to get progressively slower and slower on a very consistent basis. I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, and if this is the result of yet another brilliant technical change instituted somewhere? I am not a fan of this "ten minute window". All Hallow&#39;s Wraith (talk) 23:11, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Edit tokens and DAB solver
How do I find my edit token and use it to configure DAB solver to let me make edits directly from the tool? —danhash (talk) 16:16, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * On any Wikipedia page paste this into browser address bar and press Enter:  . The proper place to ask was here: User talk:Dispenser/Dab solver. — AlexSm 17:07, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Alright, thanks! —danhash (talk) 18:12, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * There's a little "Sign in" area in the top-right of every page which streamlines the entire process retrieving the edit and watchlist tokens. I've also tweaked the wording to (hopefully) make clearer that this isn't required for using the tool and removed stuff that 1.18 broke.  — Dispenser 07:21, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Note to Firefox users: a browser security measure (introduced in version 6 and meant to render copied and pasted malicious code ineffective) does not allow the code access to your Wikipedia account when used as described above. Instead, you need to use Ctrl-Shift-K to open the "Web Console" and paste the code into there. PleaseStand (talk) 22:58, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

kml template broken
Does anyone know what has happened to the kml template? It used to provide a number of named pins on a Google map or Bing map, but now they all have names like #1 and #4. Bob1960evens (talk) 21:21, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Works fine to google, for me, from Arctic Circle. Maybe the page(s) you followed a kml link from have incomplete or borked coords? --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:25, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It seems to affect all pages which use the PoIgb template to display points of interest. I have found out that User:Pigsonthewing altered both the PoIgb and kml template on 24 October, so have raised it with him. Thanks. Bob1960evens (talk) 22:54, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Category name letters missing their tails
Since about the time of the change in the display of category names at the bottom of articles and categories, lower-case letters in the names are missing their tails: 'y' looks like 'v'; 'g' looks like an 'a'; 'j' looks like 'i'; and so on. This really ought to be fixed; the words are hard to read. Hmains (talk) 02:45, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * This must be a problem at your end with the way your browser is rendering the page; I have no such problem. -- Jayron  32  03:58, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I also see it on IE7/WinXP, and have done since "the change". DH85868993 (talk) 05:10, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Me too (IE9).--Kotniski (talk) 16:16, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Seems to me categories use the same font as the rest of wikipedia. By way of example, Jayron's y has its tail "lost" in the underline. I'm not convinced there's a new issue here, but I could be wrong. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:36, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It's certainly something I've been noticing since The Change.--Kotniski (talk) 17:07, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * You are referring to the descender. The descenders are cut off if I switch IE9 to compatibility view. Test at User:Gadget850/t10. The catlinks class is defined in MediaWiki:Common.css at . We have seen problems with IE and  . ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 18:59, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Reported at MediaWiki talk:Common.css. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 19:10, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Should be fixed. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 20:41, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Can someone please make a ticket of this as well, seems like something that should be fixed in core as well. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:45, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * 31547. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 21:18, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It appears that the category name tails have been found. Thanks Hmains (talk) 02:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Strange phenomena since last code update
I'm running MSIE (version 7.0.5730.13) on Windows XP/Professional (from work!) version 2002, service pack 3, and since the last code change, there are some problems.


 * The various menus on the left side on separated too much vertically, so you have to scroll down to find the toolbox for instance.
 * In the search box, you get no help (suggested existing articles) while typing.
 * In the category area, the lower part of letters such as g, j, p, q and y are not visible if they are on the last line in the area.

I should mention that I have "monobook" as preferred appearance.

Would someone please look at this?

Thanks

HandsomeFella (talk) 14:27, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

The first issue (large spacing in monobook sidebar) is known and already fixed (see 31993); now the fix just needs to be deployed. The last one has been reported also just above. Lupo 15:03, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The funny thing is that at home, running Windows XP/Home (MSIE 8.0.6001.18702), the pages look perfectly good, still using monobook. HandsomeFella (talk) 17:54, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Categories not listing all pages
The category contains  pages, and the category  contains  pages. Every single one of these pages shows at the bottom; however,  contains only  pages. I have tried purging the latter category page, also purging the pages that should be in this category, and it is making no difference. How can the category be made to populate properly? -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:36, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * A null edit is required, not simply a purge. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:42, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * To expand on that: A purge flushes the front-end and parser caches, but does not update the various "links" tables in the database (e.g. categorylinks which controls what shows up at the bottom of the Category pages, imagelinks that controls what shows up at the bottom of the File page, and so on). To get these tables updated, an actual edit is required. This manifests most often when #if is used with variables/functions that return information external to the page (e.g. the current time or the number of pages in a category), or when #ifexist's target page is created/deleted. Anomie⚔ 15:34, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Quick reference gadget
Someone should invent this: WP:QUICKREF. It'd be super handy. <strong style="color:#0033CC">Nathan <strong style="color:#0033CC"> T 21:33, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * How does this differ from RefToolbar 1.0, RefToolbar 2.0, ProveIt, or SnipManager? ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 21:39, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Well. It has a cooler name? And, it's intended to show up on the article page in the main body of the text. Ideally, I'd like to see something like it enabled for all readers. <strong style="color:#0033CC">Nathan <strong style="color:#0033CC"> T 21:42, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Expanded the page to more clearly differentiate the idea from existing tools. <strong style="color:#0033CC">Nathan <strong style="color:#0033CC"> T 22:02, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Bottom buttons are not working
As I was just about to make a comment at Featured article candidates/Persoonia lanceolata/archive1, I added the following:

*Question

...then I clicked the "—" button, but it rendered like this on the screen:

Any reason why? HurricaneFan25 &#124;  talk  22:04, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It works for me. It seems you are saying that the character '—' was placed at the start of the line instead of the location of the cursor. Does it happen every time? If it was only that once then I guess you had accidentally moved the cursor to the start of the line, for example by clicking there or hitting the Home key. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:18, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Deployment of Feedback Dashboard
Hey guys!

Just wanted to let you know that we have deployed the first iteration of the Feedback Dashboard, a tool designed to surface feedback from new editors. You can find it at Special:FeedbackDashboard.

The first iteration of the tool is read only with one small exception: users with sysop rights will be able to "hide" individual feedback links (and re-show hidden ones).

If the Dashboard proves useful, future iterations will likely include easy-to-use response systems. You can read more about it on the design page.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. --Jorm (WMF) (talk) 21:02, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Just wanted to add that the reason for letting admins have the hide button is to remove any comments that are purely spam or are abusive. If you scan the current list, you can see that real abuse isn't exactly flooding the dashboard, so it's not really a big issue, more of a "just in case" feature. I think tech staff are also exploring the possibility of making sure that the AbuseFilter is applied to MoodBar feedback. <span style="font-family:Palatino, Georgia, serif;">Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   21:49, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, and one more note that is important: the feature that allows people to leave feedback only appears to logged in editors who have clicked the edit button at least once. <span style="font-family:Palatino, Georgia, serif;">Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   21:55, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Nice, but I have one complaint.  HurricaneFan 25  22:58, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Looking at the existing ones, it's pretty clear that the first response will almost always be the same: "What are you trying to do?".  I wonder if there's some way of asking that at the start. Looie496 (talk) 23:17, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Are blocked users supposed to be able to use this? I notice one comment from a user who was apparently blocked at the time.  --Philosopher Let us reason together. 00:07, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, is there any way to display the time messages were left in UTC (for those of us used to the Wikipedia-way of telling time). --Philosopher Let us reason together. 00:11, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't know if it was intentional, but I actually think it's a good thing that we don't exclude blocked users. The tool is not just supposed to be a way for new users to get help; it's actually meant to be an aggregated measurement of the overall mood of editors. So even if the block was justified, as long as it's not abusive content it's valid for there to be sad or confused comments from blocked users. It is probably a good idea to add a checkbox in the blocking interface that includes both MoodBar and Article Feedback Tool. <span style="font-family:Palatino, Georgia, serif;">Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   00:54, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

See New editor feedback for further information as well.--Eloquence* 01:53, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * A quick scan of the Dashboard page shows that the biggest problem is that people have difficulty understanding how to create a new article (which they can't, since they aren't yet confirmed). The rest of the comments are pretty entertaining. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  02:45, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Posted some comments at the Mediawiki design page. However, I'll post this here:  when looking at Special:FeedbackDashboard/5396 to consider "unhiding" the comment, I got an error message. I left the page, returned, and the error seemed to clear itself, and I was then able to review the hidden comment and unhide it.  Not sure if this is a feature or a bug.  Risker (talk) 04:56, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:FeedbackDashboard/5339 has no contributions when I check the user's contributions. What happened ? Would it not be better to enable the tool only after the user has clicked "save" ? Are users warned that this feedback is publicly available to anybody, and will remain online forever, and they might regret to have written those comments, for privacy or m:Right to vanish reasons, and yet remain unable to erase them ? What are the license terms of those messages ? What are the license terms of the icons being used ? Without an explicit permission, the publication of those comments is a breach of confidentiality of private correspondence. If there is an explicit permissions, what are the terms of that permission ? Where is the log of the sysop's hiding operations ? Who gave you the right to "deploy" your gadget ? Where is the community decision allowing this tool to be "deployed" ("normally Wikipedia is a self-governing project run by its community" : Policies and guidelines) ? Why use a special page to publish the comments instead of using a normal talk page such as wikt:Wiktionary:Feedback and make Wikipedia even more complicated by adding a new feature with yet another special instruction manual, create additional tasks for sysops, and for users in general ? Was that discussed with the community beforehand ? Teofilo talk  21:22, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Hello Teofilo, with regard to licensing, see Feedback privacy statement, which is linked from the tool, and Feedback data, which is linked from that page.--Eloquence* 22:10, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I suspect there's gonna be a brouhaha about WP:NPAs and stuff like that once people discover that those comments can be read by anyone. Did anyone get blocked for giving feedback like this? They are also kept for a pretty long time. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 19:28, 30 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Which is why, if the tool allows blocked users to post, as Steve Walling suggests (and which I think is a very bad idea considering the reasons many users are blocked in the first place), we need someone to code us that new checkmark for Special:Block soonest. On the other hand, between this concern and the one Teofilo brings up about it being a new, apparently undiscussed feature, perhaps we need to bring it up at the main VP for discussion about whether there's even consensus to use the tool?
 * Personal thoughts: I like it, but I don't see it as being terribly useful, while there are several clear downsides. It should at least be disabled until a mechanism for watchlisting, edit-filtering, bot-patrolling, and oversighting it can be implemented.  (And that's as close to WP:BEANS as I'm going to go for the time being, but the unstated corollary concerns should be obvious.) I'm not bringing it up there myself only because I'm not certain if there was a prior discussion or not.
 * Ed. I won't insist all of (or only) those options for control, of course, but you get the point. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 22:07, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * (I'm pinging Jorm (WMF) for his response to these concerns.) --Philosopher Let us reason together. 21:56, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The blocked users issue is one that we should probably have a conversation about. Like Steven, I'm on the fence as to its ultimate benefit or detriment. I can see value in an additional "no, you can't complain" checkbox, but also I'm not sure that there's enough reason to warrant spending developer resources on it.
 * As far as the "consensus" issue, I'll let Erik answer that.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 22:17, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I actually used my (volunteer sysop) account to hide that feedback and give the user a notice about why it wasn't okay. <font style="font-family:Palatino, Georgia, serif;">Steven Walling &bull; talk   22:45, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Sure, but right now we have no means of controlling other than asking the Vandals to please not sack Rome. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 22:51, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * There problem with that approach is there's absolutely no warning that the feedback is subject to Wikipedia community policies, nor are most readers aware that anyone can read their feedback and spank them for it. Most sites that have a "leave feedback" button do not make the feedback public. I'd like to see a much more prominent warning than simply linking to the fine print. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 23:11, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * (e/c)It just occurred to me that there may be an easy solution to most of the abuse concerns. What if, instead of having users create and transcluding sub-pages in the Special: namespace, it created and transcluded sub-pages in the Wikipedia: or User: namespace (of, say, User:Feedback Dashboard)? I don't know how difficult that would make it operate in that fashion, but if that could be done, we already have bot-, oversight-, block-, etc. options available for those namespaces. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 22:48, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Update
There was a bug-fix deployment this afternoon that has addressed some known issues (most particularly the way that filtering works and fixing the "click on a username and it filters" bug). Check it out and let me know if there are any problems.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Hiding needed
This, this, and this. HurricaneFan25 &#124;  talk  17:27, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Why are deleted pages always invisible?
It seems to me that between a horrible article that should probably be deleted and a deleted article there should be pages worth of page blanking without deleting all history of the page. Something like voting KEEP, DELETE, BLANK.

I took a random example that had some sources listed on the deletion debate. I could easily find A second Wired article and some other sources. I wouldn't know enough about the subject to judge if there should be an article nor am I the one to write it. I just need the history and the talk page to be able to post links to (what I currently think are) additional sources. Expecting me to start from scratch and write a better article than the one I'm not allowed to see is unreasonable. I just want to list some sources so that others can do the same until there are enough to justify asking an admin to help restore the page.84.106.26.81 (talk) 23:35, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Users are expected, in general, to draft in their userspace.Jasper Deng (talk) 23:37, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I know but that makes little sense. The page history isn't preserved, the talk page vanishes. It begs to question what we are hiding from who. Why do crappy articles have to mature in the main space? Lets first see a good list of sources before any "articles" are made. And lets all see how horrible the deleted article really was. How the contributions are distributed over time really says a lot. Some get deleted with hoards of people on the page, some have no edits for years, some have crappy sources. I'm most interested in those that almost have enough sources. Those should not be in the main space of course but the mechanism of deletion should not prevent users from developing an article together that does meets the standards. I don't see the universal benefit of hidden histories. I'd say it is a useful feature for hiding trash from public view but the mechanism is to greedy. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 00:12, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
 * See Perennial proposals. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:01, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Ah thanks, thats what I was looking for. The details on the Legal panic. Now I see....


 * Deleted pages should be visible - I'm not suggesting all deleted pages should be visible, only the borderline cases with limited sources.
 * Proposed blanking - Suggests something called "speedy blanking" in stead of a deletion debate. It's a very different idea.
 * Viewing deleted content - Tells us there already are 2 levels of "viewdelete".
 * If an article is deleted for being a copyvio it obviously shouldn't be restored. We can trust administrators to get this right 100% of the time. For anything in between obvious KEEP and obvious DELETE the closing admin could be allowed to chose to blank the page if it is fair to allow people to continue to work on the article. Without such option we get more bad articles in the main space while work on potentially good articles is prevented. When closing the AFD and in doubt just blank the article and list the issues on it's talk page.


 * To prove it wouldn't do any harm: Redirects generally do have the history preserved. Technically those articles have also been deleted. No one really cares about it. I don't believe in protecting people from seeing the history of the Krusty Krab article. At one time we had a whole article about this, we don't have to be ashamed of it. It is perfectly fine, no one really cares if the history of the redirect page has the whole article in it.


 * The way it works now some crappy articles may stick around and wait to be improved for 10 years in the main space (of all places) while other crappy articles may not stick around, may not be improved and may not be seen? There is no real difference between the 2 kinds, they are both crappy. Lets limit the scope to articles that do have a bunch of good sources just not enough to establish notability at this moment in time. If it is a non-article it shouldn't be in the wiki. Some one should work on them. How else will those non-articles become good articles? 84.106.26.81 (talk) 03:57, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Perennial proposals also links the failed proposals Trash namespace and Wikipedia:Soft deletion. They seem similar to your suggestion. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:35, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure if it a good idea - I've seen far too many redirects that have been tried to be quietly rolled back by some editor with a particular POV. There are plenty of admins who will be quite happy to restore any deleted article to a user's space, where they can view and hopefully improve it - there's even a list at Category:Wikipedia administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles  Ron h jones (Talk) 19:58, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Zero
Where is the best place to discuss and contribute to the development of Wikipedia Zero (see announcement)? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 12:21, 2 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The only place so far is the blog post here. I asked Kul and Amit and they said there will be on-wiki documentation once deals actually emerge. <span style="font-family:Palatino, Georgia, serif;">Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   18:24, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Who wants to help me fix my userpage?
Sigh It gets all loopy toward the end, with some userboxes displaying as links (?) and then paragraphs of text contained in a div. Does someone want to trawl through it for me and figure out what I've done wrong? Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:43, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * User page design center/Help and collaboration may also be a place to ask for help... -- Jayron  32  05:46, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Just a guess based on a quick look: The last templates (rather than the substituted resulting divs) are the ones that don't show up. There are a lot of templates and I have a feeling (since reading it in another convo somewhere) that pages have a template number restriction. So my guess is that the you have maxed out your template allocation and the WM software converts the template to a link to the page instead of the transclusion from it. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 05:53, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I think that's it. When I edit the page, down the bottom it says:
 * This page is a member of 1 hidden category:
 * Category:Pages where template include size is exceeded
 * DH85868993 (talk) 05:56, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I took the liberty of fixing it. Hope it worked. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 06:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Although you'll still need to fix some bits yourself. I don't feel right about editing other peoples user pages. They should all respond perfectly well to substitution. i.e. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c  07:15, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Your template User:Koavf/Template:Contributions is using 1936637 of the 2048000-byte limit on template post-expand include size. Shrink it down! Anomie⚔ 13:47, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Templates Are there too many templates in sum or are there too many kilobytes of templates? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Template_limits <-- It's very complex and I am very sleepy. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 18:36, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Get rid of these - • - each dot expands to non-breaking space+dot+space. This is not the first template to fall foul. See the code in Components of opium for one I fixed last year.  Ron h jones (Talk) 19:45, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Redirects acting strange
I currently have my CSS setupt to display a.redirect as green. Today I noticed that they stopped working and that I had to change it to a.mw-redirect. However, more importantly, I notice that now when you hover over a link that is a redirect, it no longer shows the target article as the hover text. What was recently changed wikimedia wise that could do this? -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  07:35, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I see you have User:Anomie/linkclassifier.js in your monobook.js; I don't think standard MediaWiki ever set a class "redirect" on redirects or displayed the title of the target article in the hover text. Try bypassing your cache, and then see if you are getting any Javascript errors in your browser. Anomie⚔ 13:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Lots of unknown properties.... But oddly enough bypassing my cache made everything go back to normal. I should try that first next time now that I think about it. Thanks! -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  15:26, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Older version of edit toolbar - cite web
I recently switched to the older version of the toolbar by de-selecting the 'Enable enhanced editing toolbar' in My Preferences. This was as a result of advice posted here in relation to problems I was having with copy and paste when trying to edit using an ipad. Whilst the problems have gone, I now have a different version of the Cite icon within editing (the icon appears as black text with a grey background, on the far right of the other icons). Only certain fields come up when I click on Web in comparison to the later version, and the field I would like is 'author' rather than having to use first/last name. Is there any way this can be added, or is this unlikely because I am effectively using an old edit toolbar? Thanks. Eldumpo (talk) 11:48, 3 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The edit toolbar and the enhanced edit toolbar uses different version of RefToolbar. I am not sure that RefToolbar 1.0 is being further developed. Regardless, you can use last in place of author as they feed into the same meta-parameter and present the same display and meta-data. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 11:57, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

does not render correctly in edit summaries
I edited my signature page a few moments ago with the edit summary " x 2 " but it actually "processed" the code in the edit summary. See.

HurricaneFan25 &#124;  talk  15:44, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Use &amp;nbsp; (inserted as ). <span style="background:#00ae00;white-space:nowrap;padding:3px;color:black;font:600 1em 'Gentium Book Basic', serif">― A. di M.​   16:52, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure that this is normal behaviour for the  (non-breaking space) entity. To get it to show the markup, you need to use a technique which separates the   from the rest, as I did in my first sentence. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:54, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki didn't process anything; it outputs the same code you input (&amp;nbsp;), and your browser correctly renders that code as a space. Ucucha (talk) 20:21, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * But  does get replaced by &lt;code&gt;this&lt;/code&gt; in edit summaries, so it was a deliberate decision not to treat the ampersand the same way as the less-than sign. <span style="background:#00ae00;white-space:nowrap;padding:3px;color:black;font:600 1em 'Gentium Book Basic', serif">― A. di M.​   20:59, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * No, it's the other way around. less-than is deliberately escaped to &amp;lt; in order to disable HTML tags, that's for security reasons.  There are no security implications involved with allowing HTML entities, so they are not escaped; there aren't AFAIK any places in wikitext where they are (there are some special cases in CSS and style normalisation where entities can be used to circumvent security checks, so they are disabled there). <b style="color:forestgreen">Happy</b>‑<b style="color:darkorange">melon</b> 23:51, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Filling out the upload form with the description template on page load
For some background see MediaWiki talk:Uploadtext

I'm wondering if its possible for us to replicate the Commons basic file uploader in automatically placing the description template on the form when the page is loaded? This would help discourage descriptionless uploads and would give new uploaders an idea of what should be there. For experienced editors, it provides the benefit of have the form better filled out and encouraging consistency across files. -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  22:08, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You don't have to go so far as to duplicate the whole Commons basic file uploader. The relevant code to pre-fill the summary field with information is in commons:MediaWiki:Upload.js, function, which could be significantly simplified for use here at the English Wikipedia. Lupo 22:23, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * You can create a upload link like this:

{{pre2| http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&uselang=en-nonfree-logo&wpUploadDescription={{logo%20fur%0A%7CArticle+++++++++++=%0A%7CUse+++++++++++++++=Infobox%0A%7CSource++++++++++++=%0A%7CUsed%20for++++++++++=%0A%7COwner+++++++++++++=%0A%7CWebsite+++++++++++=%0A%7CHistory+++++++++++=%0A%7CCommentary++++++++=%0A%7CDescription+++++++=%0A%7CPortion+++++++++++=%0A%7CLow_resolution++++=%0A%7CPurpose+++++++++++=%0A%7CReplaceability++++=%0A%7Cother_information+=%0A }}
 * You have to percent encode newlines and pipes and convert spaces to +. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  {{sup|talk}} 11:40, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That helps me certainly, but other users could really stand to benefit from having the fields set up to go. I wouldn't even go as far as their form pointing out when you didn't fill in one of the fields. It seems like it would be pretty easily implemented / technically feasible. -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  18:06, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Anybody? -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  04:53, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Gonna keep bumping until somebody who knows what needs to be changed in the wikipedia back end to make this possible. -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  20:57, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * For the technical village pump, there are relatively few wikitechies. -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  21:34, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

CURRENTTIME broken?
For the last few days I've noticed that a number of template pages which include the current date, like Template:Cite news and Template:Currenttime, are showing a date several days in the past. It looks like isn't being kept up to date. e.g. you're reading this at. (03 Nov 2011 when I wrote this). It should change when the clock rolls over in about three hours, but I don't think it will. Does anyone know what the problem is? Pburka (talk) 20:54, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * This is due to caching. Purging a page will update the time. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 20:57, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Until about a week ago these pages (e.g. Template:Cite news) always seemed to be up to date. Perhaps there was a bot or a background process purging them periodically which has stopped? Pburka (talk) 22:15, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not aware of any such background process; see my comments at Template talk:Start date and age. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:33, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Is it possible that the caching has been improved recently, so that more people are noticing problems with stale pages? -- John of Reading (talk) 08:03, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Our CAPTCHAs are toast, but reCAPTCHA isn't broken
So IIRC the main reason for us not using reCAPTCHA is because it's weak. Well, I think that may not actually be true. So can we consider switching? -- N Y  Kevin  @137, i.e. 02:16, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * See WP:PERENNIAL, reCAPTCHA is proprietary, hence we can't use it. According to the survey you linked, out of the top 15 websites tested, our CAPTCHA was fifth strongest. According to the data, the test was only able to break our CAPTCHA 25% of the time. I don't really see a problem. Alpha_Quadrant    (talk)  02:59, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Captcha's are not a method to protect the site, they are just a method to add another stepping stone for people who mean ill. They don't really matter, we have many tools to protect the site and that's is what makes it secure. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:01, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * If protection is not among the purposes of the stepping stone, what are the purposes? Jim.henderson (talk) 12:11, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I think perhaps TheDJ wrote in too much of a hurry. Captchas are of course a method to protect the site, it's just that they are only one of several mutually reinforcing methods, so there is no requirement for them to be perfect. Looie496 (talk) 15:44, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Exactly. Having a lock on your door is useless if you leave open a window. It's the collective set of measures that creates security, not 1 thing. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:44, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Citation template style on accessdate
When using the Citation templates, there is a blank for Accessdate. Does anyone know how to code this so that the date will automatically become the current date when someone views the document? Where it becomes a stickler, is when a person is creating a document in their sandbox. The cite templates input the date when the citation was put there. If the article is worked in the sandbox over a period of time, by the time of actual article creation, the editor must first go in and update all the accessdate information. Is there a shortcut? Maile66 (talk) 14:29, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The accessdate (note capitalisation) is not intended to be the date that the page was last viewed. It is the date that the information in the Wikipedia article was verified against the external resource. External resources can (and do) change with time, and having the date change automatically defeats the object. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:45, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Good to know. Thanks for your time. Maile66 (talk) 21:38, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

CSS for 'icon' class and id 'ca-wikilove'
I am using user CSS and JS (see WP:US) to customise the watch and WikiLove links at the top of the page, but I have had some problems using JavaScript to do this. I am considering using CSS instead.

Please could someone tell me the CSS properties for elements with id 'ca-wikilove' and elements with class 'icon', because I don't know how to get this information.

Browser: Internet Explorer 8, OS: Windows XP Home SP3.

GKFX 17:24, 4 November 2011 (UTC) [talk]


 * The CSS is quite intricate, but here's the rundown (taken from Chrome's web inspector):


 * <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 20:23, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Block notices not posted
When blocking with the User:Animum/easyblock.js script, the block is made but a message "Error: The modification you tried to make was aborted by an extension hook" appears and no block notice is posted to the user's talk page. (Vector, Firefox 7.0.1) JohnCD (talk) 19:06, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It worked fine for me just now on . Is it specific to Vector, or to a particular user? Anomie⚔ 21:52, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Problem seems to have gone away. JohnCD (talk) 22:48, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I wonder if it had to do with this. Anomie⚔ 23:41, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

looks like it has a bug
On places the template appears, it either has a link to the person who added it [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:TheAx7-! (like here)] or it has nothing (like here). On the first link, it says

"Welcome TheAx7-!"

and on the second one, it says, in big letters,

"Attention, ! This article is on probation. Do not edit until you've read the notice below. (yes, that means you,, the person trying to edit right now!)"

with nothing between the comma and exclamation point and nothing between the two commas. My username doesn't appear in either location. The template used at that second link is Template:Editnotices/Page/Tea Party movement. The template was added there by User:Avenue X at Cicero; when I look at that page, it says

"Attention, Avenue X at Cicero! This article is on probation. Do not edit until you've read the notice below. (yes, that means you, Avenue X at Cicero, the person trying to edit right now!)"

I reported this to Avenue X, who guessed that " has a glitch in the newest version of meta."  City O  f Silver  20:20, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Your first example is working as intended, as shows who last revised the page. When looking at a regular page, it will not show the user viewing it. When the user previews an edit, THEN it will show their name, and if saved, will display their name until someone else edits. Why it stopped working on the edit notice is a totally separate issue, and beyond the scope of my knowledge.  Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  20:25, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Why, when I go to TheAx7's page, would he want to greet himself?  City O f Silver  20:30, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, the previous behaviour was what was the glitch, allowing for the popular REVISIONUSER hack. See 19006. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 20:27, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm just curious: shutting down Wikipedia temporarily?
The recent flap with the edit filter that warned everyone (see User talk:Master of Puppets) makes me wonder: would it be possible to set up a filter to revert every single edit from everyone? FYI, I'm not planning to do this, even if it is possible, and also I won't grant editfiltermanager rights to anyone who wants to do this. Nyttend (talk) 21:00, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * From WP:EDITFILTER: "To protect the wiki against poorly configured filters, a technical limit is imposed on the maximum percentage of actions that will trigger a given filter. Other technical limits are in the process of being written." So, no, but it would be extremely disruptive. Also, WP:BEANS Monty  <sub style="color:#A3BFBF;">845  22:12, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Diacritics on the English Wikipedia
There's a long-standing debate at WT:EN concerning the use of diacitics on the English Wikipedia. During the most recent dispute, an editor raised an interesting idea: Is it possible to create a widget/preference that automatically strips all diacritics when the page is displayed? I'm copying the question here, as I assume this is a more suitable venue for this question and I would like to get an opinion of a more general audience. You can find the discussion and some related comments here. The initial comment was made by User:Boson. Thanks for any constructive feedback. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 12:41, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * That should be easy to do with JavaScript, simply running a bunch of search-and-replaces for each diacritic. Ucucha (talk) 12:53, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Ucucha. Could we discuss the pros and cons of a possible new preference? In my opinion it could be arranged in a similar way as this proposal. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 14:03, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * A preference is not something that we could introduce here without developer intervention; however, we could have a gadget that does this. Ucucha (talk) 14:37, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, I'm a technical illiterate. I'm talking about a preference that would enable to choose the preferred setting to our readers. From what I've seen, the accent marks are detested by a part of the en:wiki editors [it is not just a matter of the past few months, but a long-standing problem]. I assume that the accents [generally] are unacceptable for some English speaking readers and this looks like a sensible idea of how to preserve correct encyclopedic information and give a choice to people who don't want to read in English and see the accent marks. I'm well aware it would be a significant intervention to this project, I just want to see this alternative properly discussed/approved/rejected etc. It is in my opinion a better option than splitting the articles in accordance with some bizzare GNews-search comparisons. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 15:13, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Why are we wasting time on things like this ? If everyone just wrote articles instead of complaining about letters, we would have a more fruitful website. Diacritics can and should be used where ever there use is proper. Do not tailor towards those that can't get their head around how to write a name or word. It's like the ENGVAR discussion, there can and will be no winner, and writing special preferences for the 20 or so people that complain about this specific thing, is simply not worth the effort. Think of the millions of users who could be reading the words you could write in that period of development and realize the complete waste of time such tailoring is. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:41, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * You have a good point. I'm not here to waste my time with stupid stuff, I'm trying to find a solution, and it's not about winning or losing. The sad thing is that the 20 or so people decide what would read millions of readers and they do it in a way that has nothing to do with consistency or with the readers, it's just a malevolent and disruptive fight of domination. But you are right that any attempts to find a harmless and effective solution are probably doomed to fail. I still can't accept that. Thanks for your opinion, TheDJ. Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 07:18, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Appearance
I am having a problem with the appearance. In My preferences it says I have MonoBook selected, but all the pages (even in My preferences) look as if it were Vector or any other. Please try to give me an answer. 1969 (talk) 00:56, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Try to clear your entire cache. Each wiki has its own preferences. Are you both referring to the look of pages here at the English Wikipedia, and the English Wikipedia preferences at Special:Preferences? Skin has screenshots of various skins. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:05, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * No, it is impossible. I have done it all, but it happens in English and Spanish Wikipedia, and in Google Chrome and in Mozilla Firefox. It happens also in My preferences; that is what I can't get. If someone can solve me this, I will thank you, but thanks PrimeHunter after all. 1969 (talk) 15:21, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Can you view these preview links properly? The first is in vector, the second in monobook. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 15:51, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * And just to make sure you know what Vector and Monobook is supposed to look like, the Vector example at Skin is File:Wikipedia screenshot.png, and File:Monobook.css.png is in Monobook. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:08, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It got solved finally and magically. Thanks to all of you. 1969 (talk) 22:06, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

auto-generated global account userbox
I don't really object to it, but it says my main account is on wikipedia -- I'd actually consider that to be wikimedia, actually. It's a small whine and may not be worth the trouble it takes to fix it, but I found it annoying, if only because I then felt the need to create a user page on wikipedia also.

If there's a way to edit this, could someone let me know?

Thanks Elinruby (talk) 05:25, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Are you referring to the text inside your fourth user box? You can change that; see the documentation at Template:User SUL Box. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:08, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, I believe that by "Wikimedia", you are referring to Wikimedia Commons. This is normally known as Commons, because there are other projects with the word Wikimedia in their names (such as Wikimedia Meta-Wiki, normally known as Meta). Please note that the English Wikipedia (where you are now) is itself a [//wikimediafoundation.org/ Wikimedia] project. -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:04, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
 * You're both right. I plead sleep deprivation. That's my story and I am sticking to it ;) Elinruby (talk) 07:12, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Global login
Don't know if this is related to any recent upgrades or not. In my Preferences,/User profile/Manage your global account, it tells me I am active on 24 project sites. If I change the screen to Commons, I see that I am logged in - no problem. Yet, with Wikisource - same account name of Maile66 - when I shut down my computer, I get logged off and have to re-login next time I boot up. And, yes, I click the box that says to remember me for 30 days. Since I have not been all that active on Wikisource, I cannot say if this is recent or not. But it's curious, and I wonder if there is an explanation. Maile66 (talk) 22:22, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I've seen various oddities with the "Also log me in to other wikis of the Wikimedia Foundation". And the 24 you see isn't the wikis where you are currently logged on, but the wikis where you currently have the global account. (Note that this information probably has little relevance to you - as sson as you log in, with your global username and password, to any other wiki, your account there is automatily created.) עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 10:11, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Sometimes your account on other projects is created automatically even if you've never visited them: one method (not the only one) of doing this is to visit Special:MergeAccount. When I do this, it lists 91 different Wikipedia, plus 3 Wiktionary, 3 Wikisource, 2 Wikibooks and 8 others - 107 in total. Of these, I've probably only visited about 40 in all. Sometimes you merely need to visit any page in that language for your account to be created. Upon account creation, some (but not all) of these projects will send you either an email, or a message to your User talk: page on that project (see for example an:Descusión usuario:Redrose64), or both. -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:12, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

This has been enlightening. I guess the real kink is specific to Wikisource and why it doesn't remember my login for 30 days like it's supposed to. Thanks for the input. Maile66 (talk) 14:56, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Chrome and the edit function
I've been having some issues with Chrome (currently version 15.0.874.106). I previously used IE, and had no problems. Specifically, when I try to edit pages the browser will lock up and my entire computer will slow to a crawl. (For a specific example, attempting this edit caused the problem. This PC is fairly new, running Windows 7 Home Premium.  I don't have this issue with IE.  Is this a known issue or is it likely something about my particular setup?  edited to add this last line I have not had this issue with any other web page.  SDY (talk) 08:50, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm running XP on a dinosaur of an AMD with 512mb of ram (Hoover would be proud if their cleaners sucked this hard). I use Chrome 99% exclusively and haven't experienced anything I can't attribute to either ram or ram*CPU*bandwidth (my bandwidth is usually pretty good but if it dips the ram and slow processor are shown at their worst) issues. I do get the occasional hang-up but only on very large pages. I would expect the same behaviour using any browser with this amount of memory. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 09:04, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
 * No issue here either. Check if any of your editing-related gadgets or user scripts may be causing the problem. Browser-specific issues are not uncommon with these scripts. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 09:20, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Advanced diff view
Advanced diff view is broken again — I click the delta and it doesn't do anything. Using Firefox 3 for Mac at a 1200 x 800 resolution.  HurricaneFan 25  13:45, 6 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It works for me when wikEd is enabled in Gadgets but not when only Improved diff view is enabled. You can post to User talk:Cacycle/wikEd. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:03, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Detecting whether a page has been marked as patrolled
I've got a question at User talk:Tedder about how to generate a list of pages that


 * 1) includes a particular keyword (this step is done)
 * 2) includes link to those pages that adds the "Mark page as patrolled" button (adding "&redirect=no&rcid=1" should do it), and
 * 3) have not previously been marked as patrolled.

It's the the last bit that seems to be the challenge. Any ideas? (Javascript, maybe? I don't know anything about these things.)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:17, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * If  returns any results the page it is searching is un-patrolled. I can try and build something later if you like. I envisage a part manual search by visiting the MedSearch results page, clicking a button and having the script http request its way through the listed pages. The hits (not yet patrolled) would be offered as a new list. I am inches from sleep right now so I can't even explain properly, let alone try and make it. Comment here if I have got the wrong idea or need more info etc. before starting. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c  19:53, 5 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Assuming I've understood your plan, then this is exactly what I want.
 * My goal is to be able to find the pages listed at User:AlexNewArtBot/MedicineSearchResult that need to be patrolled. Then I want to dump that (short) list on the folks at WP:MED, so that they can patrol them and fix them up.  I hope that it will simultaneously reduce the load on the NPPers (by maybe 0.1%, but every drop in the bucket...) and significantly increase the attention that these new articles get from folks who know something about the subject.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:51, 6 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Okies. I am new to scripting on Wikipedia but will give it a go. I may fail. It took me hours to work out why event listeners weren't working (seems they don't take kindly to be imported) so I can't promise anything. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 02:38, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * This is a very interesting  thread and thank you  to  WhatamIdoing  for bringing  it  up. Some of the discussion  on  WT:NPP  might  be of help, and there are some first class NPP bot  handlers who  are watching  the page and may  already  have scripts that  do  some of the work. Don't  hesitate to  contact  them or to  post  on  the NPP  talk  page, and pool  your ideas. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:46, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the heads-up Kudpung. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 04:48, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

All done. I've posted the code you need at your talk page. Any experts may want to check it over and may be able to improve it for you. As I say, I'm new to scripting on Wikipedia and haven't worked out a few things yet. Drop me a message if you need more help. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 06:31, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Scratch that. More complex than I originally thought and I am working on the update. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 16:33, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Ok. Seems to be working correctly now. Let me know if I'm wrong. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 20:07, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

CSS: Relative visual prominence of h2 and h3 headings
The visual hierarchy of h2 and h3 headings in Wikipedia articles works the wrong way round: due to their boldfacing, h3 headings have a greater visual prominence than the h2 headings, thus seeming more important than h2 headings. Could this issue be referred to a designer? ARK (talk) 20:45, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
 * We've definitely been here before, there's a consensus for the status quo I think, could you possibly dig out the previous discussion? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 20:58, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Enough discussions that I created User:Gadget850/FAQ/Headings. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 21:11, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Would you have a link to the earlier discussions themselves as well, Gadget850? ARK (talk) 12:02, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with ARK. I have got used to it but, it still looks/feels wrong. Thanks Gadget850 for the .css fix. Although great for those who find it, I wonder if WMF might want to reconsider too/also. Perhaps something in a lighter shade sir? <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 21:44, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Email domain blacklist
There's recently been a problem with harrassment via email, made by editors who register accounts using Mailinator disposable email addresses. There's a discussion over at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents describing the problem in more detail. Briefly, is there anyway to prevent the registration of email addresses associated with specific domains? That is, is there an email blacklist? And if not, how difficult would it be to create? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:45, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not a real programmer, but I believe that it would just be a matter of extending the current abuse filter extension to cover emails and then using regular expressions.Jasper Deng (talk) 23:48, 6 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I never heard of a blacklist similar to the MediaWiki:Titleblacklist. But if a dev would create such a list, it wouldn't be so hard to create it/to improve the existing blacklist. <b style="font-family:Courier New; display:inline; border:#009 1px dashed; padding:1px 6px 2px 7px; white-space:nowrap; color:#000000; font-size:smaller;">mabdul</b> 13:06, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Line break for edit toolbar?
Is there a way to create a line break for my own personal edit toolbar, Creating two lines for my edit buttons?

I found http://us3.php.net/nl2br the php paragraph break, but adding this makes all of my personal buttons disappear.

Thank you. Igottheconch (talk) 03:52, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I personally don't know which buttons you are referring to. Can you give an element id or class name? On which pages and under what conditions? It may seem that it should be obvious, but it isn't to me. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 04:20, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps he is using the old toolbar ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:50, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I think he wants the actual set of edit buttons to be formatted in two lines? ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 21:09, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * "Save page", "Show preview" and "Show changes"? am I being dim? <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 06:51, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Just a bit... he means the buttons above the edit box. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 18:26, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Ahhhh. I'll take a look and see what's what. Should be simple enough but I can't imaging the results being very pleasant. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 20:10, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

There's a start. Get's the bulk of the work done but might get messy under unusual circumstances. Window size, operating system, browser etc. I dunno. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 20:47, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * sorry if I wasn't clear. It is the edit buttons above the edit box. The old version, not the vector version. Here is a picture from wikicommons:


 * I will try out your solution and let you know! Thank you Fred!
 * Igottheconch (talk) 21:44, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Which skin are you using? <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 21:58, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * reposted question on december 27, 2011. Igottheconch (talk) 17:23, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

German Wikipedia search inconsistencies
On en.wp, the API and GUI search results are synchronized:. Repeating the same query on the German Wikipedia results in zero results. The GUI search has two results. I'm not familiar with de.wp configuration, so I'm posting this here before bugging the devs. MER-C 11:44, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, something seems to be broken. You might consider filling in a bug report. --rainman (talk) 16:18, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Filed bug 32256. MER-C 05:20, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

inlineAdmedialink markup?
Sorry if this is off-topic, but I need some assistance in identifying whatever software is causing this issue. I reported a week ago or so to Edit filter/Requested at Extraneous formatting that a new editor made some edits with extraneous HTML markup that appears to be adding inline code for advertising tagging certain keywords. The code looks like this:

<a class="inlineAdmedialink" href="#">save</a>

The keywords I've seen linked include "category", "code", "save", and "content".

The issue first came up with, but I have also tracked the issue down to multiple IPs such as:

I tracked down all of the stray markup using the Wikipedia search and Google.

Does anybody recognize the software/adware that is being used? -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 06:23, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks like http://intextual.com/ uses that class. View the source of this thing (rather, see the cached/deminified copy) which seems to be some badly written JS delivered text/html. It contains references to that class, and the comment at the top has an author. --Splarka (rant) 09:52, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Yup, that's them. Thanks for figuring it out.  You can see the code in their "Try it" link.  I'll work on an EditFilter to tag/block these edits. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 21:41, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

helpbox edits
A recent change to helpbox which significantly improves both the template's code footprint and the readaibility of said code is in discussion at Template talk:Helpbox. Some fresh eyes would be much appreciated. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 10:46, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

infobox display
All the infoboxes seem to have jumped to the left side, and text no longer wraps around them. I'm using Firefox 7.0.1 on Windows 7 64-bit. Anyone else seeing this?&mdash;Kww(talk) 12:34, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Not happening here. FF 7.0.1 on Win XP. Cleared the browser / server cache? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 13:03, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I saw this once yesterday, but it fixed itself. Firefox 7.0.1 on Windows 7 64-bit. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:12, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm. Working on my laptop, and won't be back at my desktop until tonight. I'll have to check it out this evening.&mdash;Kww(talk) 13:38, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

PDF thumbnails
Is there any way to make PDF thumbnails such as File:SplinesTilburg.pdf render as PNG? The JPEG rendering of even the small version of it as seen on B-spline is absolutely atrocious. —danhash (talk) 18:28, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Shouldn't graphics like this be in svg format in the first place, precisely to avoid problems like this? – ukexpat (talk) 19:10, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * If someone could extract and convert it to SVG, that would be great. But PDFs should almost never be rendered as JPEGs anyway, since they often involve lots of text and formatting, which is terrible looking in JPEG format. If PDFs can be rendered to a raster format and compressed as JPEG, it should be essentially just as simple from a configuration standpoint to compress them as PNG. I've tagged the image for conversion to SVG, but that is a separate issue. —danhash (talk) 21:58, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

js or gadget bug
For the last 48 hours I've been getting  a greyed out  window and a strange message when opening up  pages in  edit  mode, and again when the page reloads after saving edits. This alert doesn't seem  to  do  anything  and goes away when OK is clicked. It's rather annoying, and interrupts the work flow. The response from Bugzilla was: This is a local JS or Gadget issue, not a bug in the MW software, so it should be discussed on-wiki, not here. See screenshot at File:Page loading alert.gif. I'm using  FF 7.0.1 on  OS 10.6.8 and I  have not  recently  changed my  vector prefs or js scripts. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:57, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks indeed like a local script problem. Try disabling any enabled gadget and user script one by one until the problem goes away. Then you will have found the cause of the problem. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 20:16, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It appears to be coming from the script User:Quarl/wikipage.js that you have imported. That script appears to not handle use via https correctly. Anomie⚔ 20:48, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks Anomie, script removed,  problem appears to  be solved. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:17, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Question about improved handling of Edit Conflicts
This has bugged me for years, and I've finally gotten annoyed enough to ask if this is possible to fix. Whenever I am editing a section of a page, and there is an edit conflict, the editing window doesn't merely show me the section I was working on, instead it dumps the entire page at me. This can make continued editing difficult, and while I can work around this (by copying my intended text and using the "back" button on my browser to go back to section editing), it seems that this should be something that can be improved. Why is it that, after an edit conflict, the software doesn't return you to editing the section you were editing, why does it dump the whole page at you? It would seem to me that the software can recognize sectional editing (for example, it will only return an edit conflict if the specific section I was working on is edited; someone editing a different section won't edit conflict with me, even if we interlace our editing). It should be able to give me back the changed section with the new edits, and allow me to edit just the same section I was previously working on. What would it take to implement this, and is it even possible? -- Jayron  32  06:06, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I would assume it's just in case the section you are editing was modified by someone else so that they removed the section header. Although in that case, you could argue that the software should first check if the section heading was removed, and if not, then jump you to only edit that section, as you are suggesting. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  07:07, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * This is not just when they remove the dection header. It has happened to me numerous times with ClueBotNG.-- Gilderien Talk|Contribs 21:58, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I didn't say it only happens when the section header is removed. I'm just providing a possible explanation of why it might return you the entire article's text rather than just the section you are editing. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  02:47, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I think you're right. It's also important to remember that the conflicting edit could have added headers as well, and MW isn't smart enough to do header arithmetic. Sounds like a pretty hairy problem. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 15:31, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * When you edit a section, the section is identified by number, not by name; for example, the URL I see right now is http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29&action=edit&section=12 - the section name isn't in there, but the number 12 is.
 * If you edit a section, and you get an edit conflict on save, and the section you were editing wasn't altered by the other editor, the most likely explanation is that they had selected the "Edit" (Vector)/"edit this page" (Monobook) tab at the top, so that they were editing the entire page not a specific section. Such cases can be legitimate, such as changing the order of sections; and so the section numbers before and after may differ. -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:57, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * That's well and good, Redrose, but that's not the problem I think needs fixing. Here is the sequence of events that is the problem.
 * I edit section Foo of page "Bar".
 * I get an edit conflict for any reason at all (the reason why is inconsequential to my problem, so we don't need to consider it)
 * The edit window, which used to contain only text from the Foo section now has ALL of the text from the entire article "Bar".
 * What I am asking for to be fixed is when I get an edit conflict while editing only section Foo, I want the next page to put only the text of section Foo in my edit window. I don't want to see all of "Bar".  Now, I do understand that there may be times when this is not possible, for example, if sections are added or removed, but in cases where such a problem does not exist, why cannot the software do what I want it to?  -- Jayron  32  19:38, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * If the software were able to do that, we wouldn't have edit conflicts. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 19:53, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Sure it would. If it can send me the text of a section when I click the "edit" link in a section, I don't see why it cannot send me the text of a section after the edit conflict.  I don't understand what stops the software from doing that, or if the software can be changed so that it can do that.  -- Jayron  32  20:56, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Because the section number may have changed. This is presently section 12; I'll warrant that after 07:00 UTC tomorrow (by which time will have been along), this is no longer section 12. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:42, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * This is now section 9. It was section 10 for about 45 minutes, until Cobaltcigs moved the section down the page. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:03, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, but can't the software recognize when there is an event which causes the section numbering to change, and in those limited cases it may need to dump the whole article at me post edit conflict. However, most of the time that won't happen, so when it doesn't, why doesn't it just give me the same section back again?  -- Jayron  32  07:33, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I found it in Bugzilla. It has 30 votes, and is the 11th-highested voted "bug/feature request" for MediaWiki, so you aren't alone. Of course, I had no doubts that this would be a popular feature, same as the others, since this discussion above was mostly about the technical limitations, just as the bug report is as well. Essentially, this has been discussed since January 2006 and was last updated in June 2011, with "Low" importance (I suppose as opposed to, say, a critical security flaw in the software, for instance). Gary King ( talk  ·  scripts )  07:57, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

How to hide all fundraising banners on all Wikimedia wikis until next year
The annual Wikimedia fundraiser is about to start. We're planning on keeping it short for logged in users this year, but if you'd rather not see any fundraising banners at all, just go to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Thank_You/en. That page will set cookies for you for all the projects to hide the fundraising banners until next year. You'll still be able to see non-fundraising banners, however. If you change your mind and want to see the fundraising banners again, just delete the cookies called "centralnotice_fundraising". Either way, you can still donate by clicking the "Donate to Wikipedia" link in the sidebar. Kaldari (talk) 17:18, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Could I suggest putting a "hide" link on the banner for logged-in users which leads to that page (Or another one setup to say "Yer banners be suppressed" or something more professional, but to clue users in that they have done what they need to do). Inevitably this post will disappear or become lost in the shuffle, at which point you can queue the daily complaints. -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  17:44, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid having 2 different hide functions in the banner would be confusing, but maybe we could do something to that effect... Kaldari (talk) 18:19, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Perhaps after clicking hide, two buttons appear, one that says "Hide" and the other says "Hide for all wikis" or something? I don't even recall how the fundraising banner looks like, though, since I haven't seen it in a while, so I don't know if this would fit in well, from a design standpoint. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  18:44, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Or just have the first (already existing) hide link lead to this page. -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  05:46, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Misbehaviour
The Vietnamese version of the Wikipedia misbehaves for me. I am using Firefox running on Ubuntu. The page loads, then shortly thereafter it goes blank as though it were loading again but never really loads. -- Brothernight (talk) 22:26, 8 November 2011 (UTC)


 * http://vi.wikipedia.org works for me in Firefox on Windows Vista. Try to clear your entire cache. If you have a Vietnamese account then try to log out. Does it still happen? PrimeHunter (talk) 01:22, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It fails for me in Firefox 3.6.23 and 3.6.24 (Windows XP), and has done for some weeks now: the main page loads, and almost immediately blanks again while something tries to load, but never seems to finish. Whatever this is also breaks the browser's "back" button. This has been reported before at helpdesk, see Help desk/Archives/2011 October 13 (and also indirectly at Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive725). It loads OK in IE7, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera (11.52). The results are the same regardless of: page which I'm attempting to view; whether the skin is set to Vector or Monobook; or whether I'm logged in or logged out. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:37, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Works on Firefox 8.0 on Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:58, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Redirect "secure.wikimedia/wikipedia" to "https **.wikipedia"
I've noticed that many search engines give a "secure.wikimedia/wikipedia" result rather than "http **.wikipedia" or "https **.wikipedia".

Unfortunately, almost all ancillary content on the secure wikimedia is served from insecure servers, thus diluting the benefits of a secure website, AND it turns my K-Meleon address bar an unpleasant red colour.

Please can we have all "secure.wikimedia" requests automatically redirected to "https **.wikipedia", which will enhance the usefulness of that initiative, and give better security for those that do not need to be monitored on the internet. This should be something a bot can handle very quickly and easily -- it's what computers were designed for. 122.200.166.167 (talk) 03:21, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * https support is still buggy for a direct https request to Wikipedia.Jasper Deng (talk) 03:51, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * How so? I've been using it for a month now with no issues. Anomie⚔ 04:16, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Basing that statement off of previous threads here about when it was first enabled, but it may have been fixed.Jasper Deng (talk) 04:18, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/10/03/native-https-support-enabled-for-all-wikimedia-foundation-wikis/ says: "What will happen to secure.wikimedia.org? Links pointing to secure.wikimedia.org will continue to work. The plan is to make URLs on secure.wikimedia.org redirect to the proper HTTPS URLs. secure.wikimedia.org will no longer act as a proxy for the sites." PrimeHunter (talk) 03:55, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Aaahhhh... When will this happen? And does this mean that requests to secure.wikimedia will be redirected?  (Rather than making URLs in secure.wikimedia redirect?)  122.200.166.167 (talk) 07:13, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * There is no date yet, nor is there a rush to execute that move. It will happen, but yes, all of secure.wikimedia.org will be redirected to the new urls at some point in the future. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:19, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Tables and frameless
Hello, I am essentially trying to create a table utilizing the "frameless" parameter used in files. I would like for the width of the table to be variable, (just like the user preference for file width) based off of what the user has selected off of their "frameless" thumbnail width settings. Is there a way to do this? - Theornamentalist (talk) 03:29, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

For example: this image can be set to "frameless":



yields



which can be modified in size per user preference via "My preferences" -> "Appearance" -> "Thumbnail size"

My question is, can we create a table which is also bound by the "frameless" parameter so that

{|width:frameless

(well, something other than that...) can actually work? - Theornamentalist (talk) 04:35, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * No idea. I suspect "no". If you could, it would probably be a magic word found here, I'd imagine. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  04:41, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * You could do it with a JavaScript. It would get the value of your thumnail setting  option from Special:Preferences via http request. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c  04:54, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry the rest of that then goes: All tables built with a particular identifier (a template could provide that) would render according to the javascript fetched thumbnail parameter. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c


 * For sure, can be done in JS. I assume OP wanted this done for all users, though, and I doubt this would be implemented in global JS. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  06:11, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Cool thanks, but as an extremely topical amateur of js, what kind of script would I need to basically build the table calling from this identifier? I'm working with:

'#text-container':"width:220px;margin:0px auto;" ,

Don't know how to apply your suggestions... - Theornamentalist (talk) 11:09, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Just woke up. I'll give it my best shot later. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 16:40, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * As fg said, you'd need to actually call your Preferences page to get this info. I'd think that this would pretty significantly slow down page load times, unless you don't mind tables resizing themselves right in front of your eyes after background calls have completed (which I assume is the best way to go about it ultimately). Unless, of course, if there's a variable in mw that holds this info, then you're good to go with that. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  18:11, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It's okay if it reframes; this is simply to capture text width per line the same as some predefined thumbnail size. Currently, it is sitting in my common.js page for reframing the whole page. - Theornamentalist (talk) 19:18, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The table below has an id "thumb-table" and is resized according to ones thumb size selection on ones prefs page. To make this work add  to the right place in your common.js. As for the template part (in order to add the required id to a wiki-mark-up table): I'll have to work on that later. Bare in mind that only users who have imported the script will see the table rendered at the width of their thumbs. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 22:09, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * P.S. I just thought (need more tea) that this will only work on the first table on the page. I'll add the fix to affect all tables (with the right id) if this is what is wanted (no point doing the work if nobody wants the result). <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c
 * It works! Awesome, but how would I call it into '#text-container':"width:220px;margin:0px auto;", portion? As far as multiple tables, I dont think it is necessary because I plan on wrapping the whole page with
 * Once a contemporary image is found, I would put the recent image at the top of the Circumstances section, right aligned, and don't worry about the infobox pushing it down the page for narrower screen widths. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:56, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I've put the existing image into the infobox. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:17, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, that does it nicely. Thanks!  (Original poster now using a different IP address) --70.48.228.210 (talk) 07:13, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, that does it nicely. Thanks!  (Original poster now using a different IP address) --70.48.228.210 (talk) 07:13, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Tools for making and checking references
Are there any tools for making/reviewing references available. We are asked to reference things but doing so is an extreme pain having to chase down publisher, dates, isbn, doi, etc. What I would like is a tool where I can access and type in something like 'Jackson' while editing an electricity and magnetism page and have the tool search related pages or perhaps a master page for that topic then give me suggestions based on what similar pages have. Does something like this exist or is there at least some way I can simplify the process a little?

Second, is anyone working on a deal where confirmed editors of wikipedia can get limited web access to reference books and papers that need a subscription if that access was for the sole purpose of confirming the links. I may even be willing to pony up a small amount of money for it.

I am a little worried that these are too 'pie in the sky', but any help that can be given would be greatly appreciated and would in my opinion be of a great benefit to the project. TStein (talk) 23:37, 10 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Check Citation tools. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 00:33, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the link. Some of those might reduce the pain a little once I get used to them. I didn't see any thing for books which is my largest use case, though. It does give me a much better idea of possible solutions. TStein (talk) 17:58, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * For books with ISBN's, you can use the Universal Reference Formatter. Graham 87 06:08, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Scrolling left column?
Something I'd like to see, but it just happened at Template talk:Did you know and not at any other pages. Is this a glitch from the number of pages transcluded, or something else? Thanks.  HurricaneFan 25  00:05, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Why would it be scrolling? It isn't even that long. Is it still doing it? Sounds like a glitch. It isn't doing it for me at the moment, in either Firefox or Chrome. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  16:45, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I am using Firefox 3 for Mac at a 1200 x 800 resolution.  HurricaneFan 25  19:15, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Is it possible to upgrade your browser? Or are you at work or something? The latest Firefox version is Firefox 8. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  19:17, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Location map templates
I designed two location map templates: Template:Location map Romania Buzău and Template:Location map Romania Bistriţa-Năsăud. Though they are similar, the first one works, the second does not. What did I do wrong?Afil (talk) 07:17, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * There was an empty line at the end of the template, which I've removed - the first one has the noinclude tag after the brackets with no space between. I also removed the extra noinclude tags in the middle of the noinclude section. Peter E. James (talk) 09:28, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It still wasn't fixed - I've removed the space after the name and it seems to be working now. Peter E. James (talk) 09:33, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Your first fix was entirely correct. The puzzler for me is why the second was necessary: the presence of a trailing space should not have made a difference, because the MediaWiki template parser strips both leading and trailing spaces from named parameters when processing the template. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:12, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the assistance. Afil (talk) 22:21, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Merging duplicate references
Do we have a tool which will merge multiple references to the same source, like those on Charles Walton? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 13:03, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I do, Im running it for you as we speak. ΔT The only constant 13:09, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you, but that doesn't answer my question. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 13:14, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

In general this is a violation of WP:CITEVAR: if an article is well established without the use of named references, editors should maintain the established style unless there is clear consensus for a change. A simple preference for one type of referencing over another is not a valid reason to make the change. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 13:18, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I can't read anything of the sort in WP:CITEVAR. What Andy is asking is a way to consolidate duplicate references. No policy or guideline forbids or discourages that. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 13:23, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I invite you to view the article as it was before today's changes, and explain how displaying ~20 copies of the same reference in that manner benefits either the encyclopedia or its readers.  Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 14:02, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Taking Andy up on his invitation, here's the references section before and after. Carl, did you look at the article before you responded here?  The original formatting was ridiculous, with 35 (or so) identical, sequentially-numbered footnotes. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:19, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Previous discussion on this topic: Village pump (proposals)/Archive 72, Bot owners' noticeboard/Archive 6. In short, there are some editors who strongly oppose the use of named refs for various reasons, and find TenOfAllTrades's [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Walton&oldid=458535311#References "before"] highly preferable to [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Walton&oldid=459795781#References "after"] (as odd as that may seem to most of us). Anomie⚔ 16:42, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I cannot imagine why editors dislike named references. It's only pupose is to reduce repeated information. What is the point of having a list that reads "Johnson, page 42" 26 times over? It's clutter. The only reason those lists still exist is because named references are a relatively new feature, and not all editors know how to name references. It is certainly not a conscious stylistic choice. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 17:10, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * IIRC, their reasoning included "too hard to edit" and the use of an academic style where each reference number is used once, sequentially, even if it repeats an earlier reference. See the linked discussions for much more detail. Anomie⚔ 19:24, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Bitter experience has taught me that it's possible to find one or another bunch of editors opposed to every useful feature of Wikipedia; that's why I asked "how displaying ~20 copies of the same reference in that manner benefits either the encyclopedia or its readers" and not merely whether some people didn't like it.  Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 18:41, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Anomie is right— there are those adamantly opposed to named footnotes and will refer to them as an "abomination." The only problem I see is in list articles where the same reference is used a myriad of times, creating an unwieldy string of backlinks, but there are workarounds for that. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 21:07, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Is there such a tool, avaialable to editors in general? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:30, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

"Wikipedia article traffic statistics" (grok) dead?
http://stats.grok.se/en/201111/cow

Is the Wikipedia stats page dead? I can't seem to get stats for any page, for the last few days. -- Zanimum (talk) 16:18, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Curious. http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/cow works OK. Your link is only missing a couple of days anyway. --NSH001 (talk) 16:38, 9 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The site seems to have caught up. Generally, I could log on to Wikipedia early in the day, eastern timezone, and see the stats for the previous day. For a few days, it was stuck on the 4th or 5th, and wasn't adding in the new days. (The old stats were accessible, if it sounded otherwise from my question, but I was hoping for next day stats on a particular page.) --  Zanimum (talk) 13:53, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

The data source for this and other pageview stat generators has recently moved from http://dammit.lt/wikistats/ to http://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/pagecounts-raw/. Henrik had to update his script, and we had to finalize some automation. It should be catching up now. We've also requested the source code from Henrik and we hope that we can either host his script or an alternative version on WMF infrastructure soon.-Eloquence* 19:18, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Please review my first template
Hello. I made my first template. It is rather simple and it seems to work, but I spent a long time figuring out how it works and I would appreciate another person checking it before I use it. Could someone be so kind as to visit it, test it, and post feedback on its talk page? I want to confirm that other people can make it work and that the documentation is clear. Also I am not sure that I included all documentation which it should have, because the help files were difficult to get through. Thank you for your attention. My template is here Template:Invite.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   19:23, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I can see no faults, but I have one remark: Templated messages to user talk pages are usually substituted. This avoids confusion when a user tries to edit or remove the message; the editor then see the full text instead of some template. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 19:28, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Looks pretty good. The documentation is very nice and clean compared to most docs. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  19:37, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your feedback. I put the notice in that the template is to be substituted and I made the documentation even cleaner and more thorough.  I appreciate your help.   Blue Rasberry    (talk)   17:35, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Feature request
Adding a tooltip to the languages (on the left side of an article), showing the corresponding country in "my" language would be nice... 93.132.78.150 (talk) 20:54, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes I agree this would be nice. And you would think this would be quite easy ... &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:56, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't know… where would it get the name to put in the tooltip? I think Names.php has the names of the languages in comments, but even if you could get to them they aren't very clean. I agree it would be nice though. — Bility (talk) 21:33, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * See User:Tra/sidebartranslate.js, Help desk/Archives/2011 August 24, Village pump (proposals)/Archive 78, 5231. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:30, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * User:Manishearth/sidebartranslinks is based on User:Tra/sidebartranslate.js and adds Google Translate links. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 22:42, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * There is also that currently, 31505 is still live on the production install of the wikimedia sites. That fix has not yet been deployed. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:14, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Editing toolbar trouble, error messages when logged into Wikipedia
Hello. I find that whenever I edit, I do not see a toolbar anywhere. This is odd, and I have my toolbar-showing option checked, clear my browser and everything every time I log off the net, so it is none of those issues. I also see an error message each time I log on to Wikipedia (that never occurs anyplace else). Any ideas? I've checked everything and tried everything. No solutions present themselves. Djathink imacowboy  06:28, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * What is your browser and version? What does the error message say? -- John of Reading (talk) 10:06, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Infobox formatting inconsistency between IE and Firefox
For an example, see Template:Infobox Chinese. Text in <tt>&lt;th&gt;</tt> in each row is centered in IE instead of left-aligned like in Firefox. Seemingly IE has a built-in <tt>text-align: center</tt> for <tt>&lt;th&gt;</tt> that overrides the <tt>text-align: left</tt> for <tt>table.infobox</tt> from an autoloaded stylesheet. Manually injecting an <tt>.infobox th { text-align: left }</tt> into the stylesheet fixes the problem. Kxx (talk &#124; contribs) 17:19, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * They show centered for me in IE, Chrome and Firefox. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 17:23, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Well that is strange. I logged out in Firefox to ensure that no user styles are interfering. I got the source of that <tt>text-align: left</tt> wrong, though. I pointed Firebug to the first "Literal meaning", it says that <tt>text-align: left</tt> comes from the <tt>style</tt> attribute of the <tt>&lt;table&gt;</tt>. Kxx (talk &#124; contribs) 17:33, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, you mean the headers in the left column. My bad. Yes, they show centered in IE, but left in Chrome and Firefox. IE apparently requires the align directive applied directly to the TH. <span style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif"> — Edokter  ( talk ) — 17:35, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Protocol missing from Wikipedia page URLs in external links
The external links in Timeline-links are broken; it seems that the protocol is not being passed as part of the Wikipedia page URL; how can this be fixed, please? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:57, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I've made an edit. Any good? -- John of Reading (talk) 21:39, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * After a bit of tweaking; yes, thank you. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:53, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Making better use of Template: pages
Before making a proposal I am asking here for feedback regarding the possibility of making better use of space.

At present it seems that the transclusion of templates is limited to transcluding only the whole page. I was thinking that being able to transclude only a section would make it possible to have multiple related templates on one page.

So and  could live together on the same page.

I did try this by attempting to transclude a section of a sub page of my sandbox and it failed. If it would be or already is possible, could I be told how? Thanks. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c 14:35, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * If you only want to transclude one section from a page, you can wrap it in <onlyinclude ></onlyinclude> tags. Otherwise I think you'd have to transclude all the transcludable parts and deal with what part to display at the target page. Most templates accomplish this by using magic words to match the page title to conditional logic in the template. I think what you're suggesting would require at least an extension to the wiki. — Bility (talk) 15:18, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks Bility. I'll look into the option before pursuing this any further. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">fg</b><sup style="margin-left:3px;color:#0aa;">t <sub style="margin-left:-5px;color:#0aa;">c  15:23, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * In any case, it seems more confusing to break a single template into sections than to create several child templates, such as Template:Example/First, Template:Example/Second, etc. which is commonly done. Yes, onlyinclude/includeonly/noinclude are probably your best bet here; they are probably a bit too confusing for an average editor, though, which is I normally suggest to just use child templates. (I'm not referring to you as an average editor since you seem to know what you're doing with code, but I'm talking about editors that might come across your templates and not know how to edit it because it's too confusing.)


 * If you really want to do what you want, though, it is quite easily done (for a coder). I actually am doing it right now on my userpage, essentially. Go to my user page, edit one of the sections (like "Featured topics") then you'll see  . Then I can get whatever is inside the conditional—in this case just the "2"—by putting this on a page:  . In reality, since I've got about half a dozen onlyincludes on the same page, this code is read in a more complex manner in this page.  Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  16:41, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much Gary for explaining so clearly. I can see how to accomplish what I had in mind would be quite possible this way but as you say would lead to a quite impressively complex mess of code for another editor to deal with later. Child templates are indeed a way around it but my thought was simply to keep everything on one page and just use the section needed. I will experiment with the onlyinclude tags and see if the raw presentation (for future editors) can be clean enough for this potential proposal to be considered moot. Really, thank you for taking the time to explain. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 17:50, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Note: I linked to the wrong page (the last link in my last comment). It should be User:Gary King/header/top. If you see the code, you'll see exactly what I mean. With regards to making things readable for editors, now that I think about it, I guess it isn't all that hard. Example:


 * ,, and  now produce different subtemplates. Note: The section1=1 can equal anything, as long as it's set to something. So section1=true also works, etc.


 * The reason I squished them all on the same line rather than neaten it up and put one on each line, is because I believe the extra line break will add lines breaks to whatever page you add these templates—unless you wrap each one in an onlyinclude. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  18:03, 11 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I suppose you could use the extension Labeled Section Transclusion for this purpose, but it isn't enabled on this wiki. Graham 87 06:05, 12 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Since that is already available and would just need switching on, that would certainly be a method. It does seem rather complex compared with simply allowing hashed sections to be called though. Thanks Graham. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 10:28, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The tags in this section were screwing up WP:VPA, even though they were 'hidden' inside <nowiki ></nowiki>, so I've reconstructed them using the  function, which makes them ineffective. -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:04, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Ooops. Thanks for fixing and educating. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 13:23, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Pre-cached images
I recently uploaded a new version of an animated gif with fine grid lines in the background. At full size the image looks fine, but where it's used at less than full size (such as the thumbnail on the article page) there's a faint ghost image of the first frame on all subsequent frames. I assume that this is a fault in the software that converts full size images into smaller cached sizes. Can this be fixed? nagualdesign (talk) 00:29, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I hardly see the problem... But GIFs are notoriously bad at being resized, I advise you to either create a movie of the same, thus eliminating the inline rendering at reduced resolution, to render an animated gif at thumbnail size, or to remove the grid lines. The software that does the GIF resizing will not become much better at it in the future, the format is as good as deprecated and again, very badly suited for resizing without too much quality loss. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:07, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the reply. I assume that by "I hardly see the problem" you mean that you can hardly make out the ghost image. The problem, of course, is that the moving grid lines are meant to represent the movement of the reference frame through space, but the ghost image is static. And the problem will no doubt affect the quality of other animated gifs, too. What filetype do you mean when you say "movie"? Seems like the best solution as the other 2 suggestions would only detract from the diagram. The animated gif format is perhaps becoming deprecated but surely this problem is worth a mention to the programmers? If this isn't the place to mention it, where should I go? nagualdesign (talk) 19:30, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * "you mean that you can hardly make out the ghost image" Correct. "What filetype do you mean when you say movie?" I mean the only movie type that WMF supports and that is Ogg Theora. With regard to gif scaling; the problem is almost unsolvable. GIF was never made for the purpose of resizing. It is also actually VERY bad at being resized. On the other side, we HAVE to resize, because otherwise, people can have way too large files coming down the pipes. Translated: "GIF is great if you know what you are doing, and is terrible if you let users upload it to random places where other people will get it." But if you really want to figure out where the ghost is coming from, ImageMagick is the tool used by Wikipedia, and their developers will have to fix it. But as far as i'm aware, the last person who was working on animated gif resizing filed his last patch about 5 years ago now. The source is a readily available, so perhaps you can pick up where he left off :D —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:38, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Good reply. Thanks again. I think I'll resize the image myself and upload it as another version, so that if somebody clicks on it they will be sent to the full size version. I'll take a look at all the links you've provided. I'm a programmer myself - but don't hold your breath! Kind regards, nagualdesign (talk) 00:14, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Hiding ProcseeBot in the block log
Most of the block log entries made by are not very useful when browsing the block log. There should be a way to hide the bot's entries just like we can hide bots in Special:Recentchanges and our watchlists.Jasper Deng (talk) 20:15, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Looking towards the future of mobile
Might be interesting for people here: File:Athena-brownbag-brandon-harris-2011-11-04-small.ogv A video of a brainstorm/design ideas around the mobile interface for Wikimedia. Also note how Brandon basically says "The desktop is dead" and worse "Trying to change WMF wikis on the desktop is almost impossible because of the community". —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:23, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm not buying a mobile device just so that someone else can steal it. Besides: "Stick close to your desks and never go to sea/And you all may be rulers of the Queen's Navy" (W. S. Gilbert, H.M.S. Pinafore, 1878). -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:50, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * You also don't buy/rent a house because someone could break into it ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:20, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I am eager to see what comes. My cheap little Samsung M910 Intercept smartphone is always with me.  For example, one day this spring in exotic West Orange, New Jersey and Montclair, New Jersey I kept stopping in the shade of a tree, pulling out the phone, and turning my handlebars towards the next W on Google Maps.  Most articles with coordinates were unillustrated, and I snapped their pictures except where our Wikicoordinates were inaccurate.  For those, at home at my desk, I corrected the coordinates for next time.  Great fun, and even better if they improve the software to allow easy Wikirepairs in the field.  And no, nobody stole the phone hanging from my belt, or my bike as it slept, folded under the table at the pizza place where hunger caught up with me.  Jim.henderson (talk) 22:26, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Did I break the AIV bot?
This massive stream of vandal reports from a vandal flood evidently overwhelmed the bot, which evidently broke down because admins right after had to manually remove the blocked IPs and user.Jasper Deng (talk) 20:45, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Don't think it's your fault, the bots have been having trouble lately. <b style="color:#FF0000;">Hut 8.5</b> 21:15, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Noeditsection bug
I've just noticed that the sections on my user page have edit links beside them, despite the page having a tag. Doing some testing, it seems to be the tags that are causing this. I think this is fairly new, as I haven't particulary noticed it before. Has anyone else noticed this, and if so has it been reported? An  optimist on the run! 22:25, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks like ; see Village pump (technical)/Archive 93 for more discussion. Not sure why it's not even working on purge for your page, but when I copy your userpage to my local MediaWiki instance it has links in and doesn't in . Anomie⚔ 23:32, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * One of the changes with MediaWiki 1.18 did concern, and a problem with this was reported at Village pump (technical)/Archive 93. At the time, all my talk page archives suddenly sprouted [edit] links for the sections (they shouldn't have done, because  contains a  ). Later on, they went away: but I have just checked, and those without refs are fine; but those with refs have the [edit] links as you describe. Perhaps   is ignored when the page is read from the parser cache should be reopened. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:42, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The fix for the bug is not live here yet. Someone could always ask that it be synced, as it does represent a regression. Anomie⚔ 23:59, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

TOC for edit watchlist
Just a thank you for adding back the TOC for the "View and edit watchlist" page. It makes it much easier to navigate, especially when one is watching a lot of pages for WP:CVU. --Funandtrvl (talk) 23:29, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

No more page size on article sections
How do you delete individual scripts from your .js page? I recently installed a duplicate-links tool which may be interfering with a word-count tool I rely on. Both scripts are listed below (the same problem exists in both Firefox 8.0 and Google Chrome 15.0.874.120 m). --Miniapolis (talk) 02:47, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

importScript('User:Dr_pda/prosesize.js'); //User:Dr_pda/prosesize.js importScript('User:Ucucha/duplinks.js');


 * Just remove the corresponding line in User:Miniapolis/vector.js. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  07:22, 13 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks!--Miniapolis (talk) 14:21, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I just updated duplinks, which may remove some problems. However, I see the issue you're experiencing. Duplinks wraps a &lt;div id="lead"&gt; around the lead in order to check for duplicate links in the lead and the rest of the article separately. Pagesize apparently works by counting only paragraphs that are directly inside the article text, and therefore no longer counts paragraphs in the lead when Duplinks has added its div. I'll try to find a way to avoid having Duplinks insert that div; on the other hand it may be useful for other purposes to have the lead marked as a separate element. Ucucha (talk) 20:38, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh wow, thanks very much. Wish I had your expertise!--Miniapolis (talk) 18:18, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The page-size script is now working again for section edits. Thanks again!--Miniapolis (talk) 18:52, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Redirect and new page.
Hi I just created a new wikipedia article, unfortunately shortly after I created the article I noticed the title was wrong written. I used the move option and I renamed the article's title. Now i have the page with the wrong title and the new page with the correct title. I know i can't delete pages myself. I searched on the help page about deleting pages, but I had some problem on finding what should I do. - What should I do to delete the old page with the wrong title? - If I delete the old page, the new page will be affected? Thank you and sorry for my bad english. --89Slh (talk) 11:48, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I see that you asked exactly the same question at Help desk Per WP:MULTI, I will answer there. -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:44, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * You can put a 'speedy' tag on the old page, in this case db-r3. The new page will not be affected. (I already deleted it for you.) — Edokter  ( talk ) — 12:49, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Mobile site?
I have been editing Wikipedia all morning without any problems. But now I seem to be redirected to the mobile site layout? Why would this be? doktorb wordsdeeds 12:01, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I had the same problem which went away at about 12:15. Perhaps there was a change to a common .css file and someone reverted it. Edgepedia (talk) 14:01, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Quite possible. There are changes to Common.css several times a day at the moment. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:28, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * How would a change to css redirect users to the mobile site...? - Kingpin13 (talk) 15:32, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The mobile redirect used to be done with a JavaScript file, but now it's done via a PHP extension, MobileFrontend. It might have been changed recently, then. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  17:08, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Many thanks for the responses. All seemed to repair itself after an hour or so. Having to search something without suggestions felt very odd :) ;)  doktorb wordsdeeds 17:13, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

General comment about the new "Upgrade" of Wikipedia
Prior to the upgrade of Wikipedia I was very active and Wikipedia seemed to work very fast. Ever since the new "Upgrade" was done though the site is extremely laggy, tends to crash frequently and often take a long time (as much as several minutes) to load some tools and pages (like the Watchlist or Contributions). Additionally, many of the helpful tools and applications either don't work or are buggy. I have found it extremely difficult and frustrating to continue to contribute in the same volume because the site is so slow. --Kumioko (talk) 15:41, 12 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It's working fine for me with Windows Vista and MSIE 9, all this month. What day did it start giving you these problems?  Jim.henderson (talk) 16:34, 12 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Site has also been fast as usual for me. I'm on here pretty frequently as you can tell from my contributions, and I have to say that I have experienced less problems lately than I used to. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  16:53, 12 November 2011 (UTC)


 * What upgrade? Last update I was aware of was the Mediawiki 1.17 installation that created backlogs for a few days, but since then everything has been gravy for me. -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  17:08, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

I suspect that this has more to do with gadget and script inflation. Your User:Kumioko/monobook.js is very bloated and contains invalid JavaScript syntax. Why don't you clear that page for a while, deactivate all gadgets, and see if performance improves? I know, these things are useful, but they also can contain their own performance issues, they have their own separate upgrade cycles, and they certainly add up in terms of your per-page payload.--Eloquence* 19:12, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It only started with since the 1.17 upgrade, I agree that the problems are probably associated to Java somehow. I use IE, Mozilla, Windows XP, Vista and Linux and 4 different computers and the problem still remains. I even tried to create a new account (which didn't have any gadgets) to see if that made it better but that didn't work either. You might be right that all the gadgets might be a factor but since it worked before the upgrade but has been dodgey since it makes me think its at least partly from the upgrade. --Kumioko (talk) 20:36, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Um. The 1.17 upgrade was February 2011... since then there has been the upgrade to MediaWiki 1.18 (4 October 2011). There are dozens of threads on this (and related topics) in the VPT archives. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:53, 12 November 2011 (UTC)


 * He's probably referring to the recent one, the 1.18, then, if he says that it only started happening recently. And yeah, your JS is really bloated. When you're using a new account with no scripts, perhaps try hard refreshing, clearing cache, etc. so that none of the JS from before is cached (see WP:BYPASS). I've got a lot of JS as well (see User:Gary King/monobook.js) but the code is updated often and have no conflicts with 1.18, so pages load really quickly for me. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  01:14, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe it wasn't the 1.17 upgrade. It was the one that went a month or so ago. I'll try cleaning out my monobook when I get some time. Like I said though it even happened with a newly created account so I'm not sure if the monobook thing is the problem, bloating aside. It just took me like 2 and a half minutes to load this page when I came here to leave this comment. I just don't have the time to spend hours trying to figure out why I can't make an edit. I am sure others have the same problem and feelings too. --Kumioko (talk) 04:10, 13 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Do you still encounter these problems when you are logged out? That's probably the best place to start. If Wikipedia still loads slowly for you while you're logged out (after clearing your cache, etc.) then there's probably something wrong with your computer. If it loads quickly, as it should, then there might be a preference or something interfering with your computer's settings. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  07:25, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Truthfully I thought I might have been a problem with my computer but since I have tried 4 different ones with different operating systems and used different browsers I pretty much discounted that as being the issue. That's also why I tried using a different account and being logged out too. Cause I thought it might be something with my account like the monobook or something. There is one thing that might be useful to know. I prefer to use the old look and feel over the new one (the old ones used to load much faster than the new one and is easier to use. So it might be partly due to that. Although when I tried editing while logged out and with a different account I used the new look and feel. --Kumioko (talk) 14:19, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * If you tried all that, then the only thing left that I can think of is that perhaps your Internet Service Provider is having a problem reaching Wikipedia, but that is VERY difficult to determine properly for people trying to help you here. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:21, 13 November 2011 (UTC)


 * A traceroute might be a good place to start. Might want to hide the first few nodes though... Regarding using the old skin, I'm also using the old one (Monobook) and it has been fast. I assume using Vector is even faster, but like you I am used to the old one. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  19:13, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Its not the interent service provider because I have the same trouble at work that uses a different one that the one I use at home. So after all this, regardless of how hard it may to believe I am still left with the conclusion that something in the upgrade went wrong. I realize that this may be hard to believe for those of you who are pushing the outer limits of technical prowess but thats what I am left with. Since I am pretty familiar with the inner workings of WP and how it functions and I can't get it to work I can only assume that there are others, perhaps just readers, that are having the same troubles. --Kumioko (talk) 15:08, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * You're right that it is hard to believe; since everyone else who has chipped in says they do not have such a problem. And you'd kinda assume that if 1.18 was borked, we'd all notice. As it is only you - albeit on a few different machines with different ISPs - who is seeing the problem, the common point appears to be you and your environments. Frankly I do not see how you reachthe conclusion that "you can only assume there are others" rather than, for instance, assuming that there must yet be a factor in your environments that is leading you to see a problem that other cannot. --Tagishsimon (talk) 15:20, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Indeed... I don't think that most unregistered users (which make up the vast majority of visitors) are having load problems on Wikipedia, since pages are cached and all pages appear the same to all unregistered users. Any other problems would be related to their environments. So as long as their experience is pretty smooth, then problems for 99% of visitors are resolved. Of course, the experience for us editors is also important, but at least we know where to go when there are problems. In your case, I'd still suggest testing on a number of machines—while you are logged out, as a regular visitor like most people—until you find a computer that doesn't load slowly on Wikipedia. Places like the library, etc. are good to test. Maybe there's a common Internet bottleneck that all the computers you've tested lead to? Also, for the different computers, I assume they aren't too old? And the browsers are the latest version? Perhaps try using a different browser like Google Chrome, since you said you use IE and Mozilla browsers. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  17:17, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Well my conclusion was simple, it worked before the upgrade and now it does not. I may well be the only one in the world having the problem, but I doubt it just as I doubt that an unregistered user would find this page to complain. They would just simply not use it. I understand the skepticism and in the end I have no way to prove my hypothesis but in the end I can't do too many updates when it takes upwards of a couple minutes just to open this page, let alone larger and more complex ones. I tried to open up the Template:WikiProject United States earlier and my Firefox just crashed after a couple minutes. I find it annoying and a shame but I have faith that it will get worked out eventually. It just means that one of the other members of WPUS will have to help WikiProject United States do the newsletter, collaboration and other tasks or they'll just not get done. Cause I can't do it at the moment while this is going on. I'll keep poking around and checking back. Maybe itll just work itself out. --Kumioko (talk)
 * You appear to have three .js files: User:Kumioko/modern.js, User:Kumioko/monobook.js and User:Kumioko/vector.js. Have you tried clearing out the one which is relevant to the skin that you use (and maybe re-adding one item at a time)? I realise that some users above have already suggested this: but you don't say whether doing this makes any difference. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:17, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Also, is it all pages that load slowly or just the big ones like WP:VPT and WP:ANI? It seems like you can still use AWB pretty rapidly, so each page seems to load fairly quickly for you then. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  17:42, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * They are all pretty laggy but in particular its pages with lots of java type stuff like the Watchlist and contributions for examples. When i open my watchlist it expands everything and then shrinks them eventually. Again, I realize my watchlist is huge beyond huge and that may be part of the problem but again prior to the upgrade it worked just fine. Its only since the upgrade that I have had problems. I will clear out those pages but I don't think thats the problem since it does it even when I am using a new account with nothing on it. --Kumioko (talk) 00:18, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * You can also decrease the default number of days to show on Watchlist to make it load faster. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  08:47, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I only see the last day anyway. Since I login very frequently I don't really need to see beyond that and even then I typically factor it down to a namespace. If there was a way to fix the coding of the watchlist so that the Mediawiki software didn't expand and then collapse every single page when it tries to load the page I suspect that would be a great improvement. I have also blanked all my .js pages and eliminated all of the helpful gadgets that were there to try and make this work and still it loads slowly. Again though since this has only been occuring since the upgrade I find it puzzling that there is so much objection that its simply something in the upgrade. I do not know all of the things that were done in the upgrade nor do I understand how that code interacts with the display of the information. But it seems that if someone is familiar with this things and read this there would probably be a couple of things in the code that would come to mind that might be causing this kind of behavior. Some snippet of java code, some CSS setting, some server setting that doesn't like something. I don't know but after investigating all the things mentioned above and a variety of other things (java settings, verifying it wasn't my account, using a different machine, using a differnt operating system, using a different Internet browser, using a different network/ISP, checking the settings in my internet browswer, etc. I am left with, what I suspected all along, that it was somethingn the upgrade. --Kumioko (talk) 14:43, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Section links on mouseover
Is there a script to enable the display of a link to the current section when hovering the mouse over a section header? I have seen this on other websites and it seems like I may have seen it here a long time ago, but I can't remember. Usually it's done by showing a pilcrow (¶) as a hyperlink next to the heading when the mouse is hovered over the heading text. —danhash (talk) 19:19, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * You can enable certain preferences to add extra ways of editing a section:
 * You're probably not interested, but you can also turn off the normal [edit] links:
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:47, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks redrose, however what I'm looking for is a way to display links to a subsection of a page, which would show up next to the [edit] links as a pilcrow. —danhash (talk) 21:02, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * You're probably not interested, but you can also turn off the normal [edit] links:
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:47, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks redrose, however what I'm looking for is a way to display links to a subsection of a page, which would show up next to the [edit] links as a pilcrow. —danhash (talk) 21:02, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks redrose, however what I'm looking for is a way to display links to a subsection of a page, which would show up next to the [edit] links as a pilcrow. —danhash (talk) 21:02, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * When I need a link to a section, I just copy-paste them, since Article name is the form of a link to a section. No idea if anyone's made the script that you're requesting, though. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 20:39, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I do this too, but with spaces and especially with non-alphanumeric characters, this doesn't work (most characters are encoded to be URL-friendly). A link would help as I could copy the URL of the link. —danhash (talk) 21:02, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * MediaWiki_talk:Common.css and MediaWiki_talk:Common.css both go to the same place ok. The encoding can be done in JavaScript but it gets done automatically anyway (by Chrome at least). <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 21:42, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm... This seemed to not work for me earlier today on Chrome, even just with spaces. Perhaps I missed something, but it would still be easier to have an actual section hyperlink, which would also remove the need of having to copy/paste the last part of the URL, add a pound sign, and copy/paste the section title. —danhash (talk) 21:49, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Script from Fred Gandt
Import this quick demo tester into your common.js and let me know if you want me to carry on building it: It will only add a link to the first section it finds but that's just because I haven't done anything terribly clever yet <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 22:14, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It doesn't do anything for me at the moment, though I saw you were still fiddling with it when I tried it. What browser(s) is it targeted for? I'm currently using Chrome. I certainly would appreciate a script like this if you have time/energy to keep working on it. —danhash (talk) 22:57, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Sorry try now. I was as you say "fiddling with it". <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 23:06, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * It's basically finished now. Let me know what you like or don't (or if it breaks!). <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 23:31, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * This is what I currently get for the section heading of this section of this page:


 * Seems like a bug in the link syntax. The two [edit] links are partially linked (all except the closing bracket) but (AFAIK) Chrome lacks a "view rendered source" option so I copy/pasted the plain text. It seemed to show up correctly for a second, but I pretty much missed it. —danhash (talk) 23:46, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not really sure where you're getting that from. There shouldn't be any "[edit]"'s involved at all. You should see two links at the right of each section. One is "W" and the other "www". The first is the link we would use for wikilinking and the second is a full URL for pasting elsewhere.
 * As for "rendered source": In Chrome; Right click anywhere on the page (or on a specific element (like a heading or picture)) and click "Inspect element". There are shed loads of tools in there and the source that is shown is the rendered source (not the page source (missing post creation additions)).
 * And it seems you have another (possibly/probably better) script to play with anyway so, no worries one way or the other. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 00:09, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * P.S. The  w  link supplier only seems to work on certain (uncertain) pages. If I figure out a way to stop the relative url becoming absolute, I'll correct the script. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 10:49, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * That sounds like it'd be really useful; I wonder why my Chrome isn't executing it correctly? —danhash (talk) 15:33, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * As the script stands: you should see a slightly rounded light grey and dark green capsule at the end of the section title (Same spot as Bility's pilcrow) containing the two links as previously described. there are three possible reasons for you seeing something odd: 1) I am using the vector skin and you are not? 2) For some reason Chrome's cache isn't clearing 3) Your ISP sends you cached pages (unlikely or editing WP would be nightmarish). While reading this: Right click anywhere and select "Inspect element". At the bottom right of the resulting window you'll see a little cog icon: Click that. You should then have a slightly transparent black pane with some option checkboxes on it. Check "Disable cache" and reload the page. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 18:43, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Here's what it looks like in Firefox for reference: image. It only does that when viewing pages normally. When you go into edit mode the links display correctly. Something to do with "/wiki/" vs "/w/"? Of course when you're editing, the link goes to "Editing Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)" instead of "Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)". — Bility (talk) 18:59, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

← Here's Chrome using the WP vector skin on normal (not editing) pages. What skin is your image showing? Are there any other scripts imported that might be affecting it? <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 21:26, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * That was on the monobook skin. I don't think I have any conflicting scripts (I turned mine off when I tested yours). — Bility (talk) 22:41, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Monobook. OK thanks. Testing now. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 22:43, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Urgh! Long live Vector! Anyway: All my section links worked perfectly (other than the relative/absolute url issue), so I have no idea why other people are having problems. However, it doesn't seem to matter since Danhash appears quite happy with yours. Thanks for the replies. If anyone cares to get to the bottom of it I suggest taking it to my talk page (no point carrying on here). <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 22:52, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

My last here on this subject: I have seen the issue now and so can fix it. I just visited Edocter's talk page to thank him for his work on Mediawiki:Common.css and BAM!! nasty corrupted links everywhere. Turns out there is span styles embedded in the headings (dunno where from) which get picked up as raw text. All hell breaks lose and big mess. So the fix is just a matter of tying and testing. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 00:34, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Script from Bility
Here's one from me too: — Bility (talk) 23:35, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Wow that's pretty awesome. Can you make the displayed text a hyperlink or link the pilcrow itself? —danhash (talk) 23:50, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * What would it link to? — Bility (talk) 00:08, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Well my original idea was to only show the pilcrow next to the heading when the mouse was hovering over the heading. The pilcrow that appears would be a link to that section. Your code is very similar to that idea, except that the pilcrow always shows, and when it is moused over, PageTitle#SectionTitle shows up in plaintext. It wouldn't take too much I don't think to adjust the code to fit my idea, however your script is already useful and if you like it how it is I can try to make a working fork adapted to my idea. —danhash (talk) 15:31, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, I see what you were after. The script is updated to add a linked pilcrow on mouse-over now. Cheers, — Bility (talk) 17:29, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Awesome!! This is exactly what I wanted! Thanks :) You should list it at the user scripts WikiProject or something. This would be very useful as a gadget. It's really nice how you can either middle-click/ctrl-click the link to open it in a new tab, right-click to copy the link address, or just click the link normally to scroll to that heading, which also appends the section to the URL without reloading the page so the URL, or part of it, can be copied. —danhash (talk) 21:00, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Bility: Since your imported stylesheet hasn't got a relative URI it made nasty colours in my browsers address bar! Face-wink.svg <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 00:21, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, sorry about that, didn't even cross my mind! — Bility (talk) 17:29, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * No worries. I'm having url troubles of my own. All good fun though ;-) <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 18:25, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

urldecoder
If you needed this functionality to paste links while editing other pages you can also try my script user:js/urldecoder which can convert URL into internal link. — AlexSm 04:25, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * That'd be a useful feature; any plans to update it to work with wikEd? I saw an old comment on the talk page but didn't know if your plans had changed. —danhash (talk) 15:36, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Advert Banner
Not sure if this is the right place to put this. When I click on the 'advert' at the top, Please read: A personal appeal from. . . etc. It goes to a dead page. I don;t get any message at all, just a blank Wikimedia page. Is this just me? Is it working for other people? AndrewJFulker (talk) 13:14, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Worked for me. I visited 3: Jimbo, erm, Programmer guy and five hundred and umptibump article lady. All pages resolved just fine yesterday. Using Chrome and XP. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 04:23, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Fine for me as well. Have you cleared your cache? (Ctrl F5 for IE 9)-- Gilderien Talk|Contribs 16:05, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * "Programmer guy". --Jorm (WMF) (talk) 20:32, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * \o/ Programmer guy!! Face-wink.svg. I don't sleep enough. Sorry. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 21:50, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi Andrew, could you paste the url of the blank page you get to please? Also what country are you in? This will help us track down the problem. Pcoombe (WMF) (talk) 18:50, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks like he's probably in the UK. Kaldari (talk) 07:52, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Right, I think this was due to a UK-specific issue that I fixed yesterday. Have emailed Andrew to confirm. Pcoombe (WMF) (talk) 12:17, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you, yes. The problem is fixed! It seems that it was because I was foolishly living in the UK, I must move somewhere warmer. Thank you all for your help. AndrewJFulker (talk) 23:37, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Upgraded to Firefox 8 and now no custom js
Anyone have any idea why after upgrading to Firefox 8.0, none of my custom .js is working anymore? – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 20:46, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * 1st thing that strikes me is that you appear to not have a common.js file. I dunno my way around MediaWiki very well yet but I can imagine that might cause a stink (or no stink). <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 21:48, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, I have all my javascript declarations in User:Xeno/monobook.js (as that is the only skin I use). – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 21:58, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * 2 things to try would be 1) Use your common.js as your first line of attack with a 2) initialization function called only after the DOM content is loaded. So something like this should do the trick (maybe):


 * Perhaps sometimes I should reserve my twisted sense of humour. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 22:08, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * P.S. Sorry I see you have a few addOnloadHook's in there and if it was working before I may be talking out my... If you adopt the method I prescribe above you may find things get worse if you keep the addOnloadHook's. I don't know enough about MediaWiki yet (to be certain) but I can see how there might be a problem with more than 1 addOnloadHook in the first place. It's a bit like saying "GO!" twice. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 22:15, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Are you getting any JavaScript errors in Firefox's Error Console? (Tools -> Web Developer -> Error COnsole). Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  08:45, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm, yes - check it out. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk  13:30, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Error: illegal character Source File: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=user%7Cuser.groups&only=scripts&skin=monobook&user=Xeno&version=20111116T132844Z&* Line: 2, Column: 43 Source Code: showUploadDeletionLogs.linkToFileEdit=true;​
 * Can you try locating the JS file that refers to? (Setting  should help.) Perhaps there's some crazy character that ended up there. Ucucha (talk) 14:14, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm, how do I set debug to true? It is probably User:Gary King/show upload deletion logs.js, but all my stuff works fine on a different PC with an earlier version of Firefox. Maybe I'll just downgrade back to 7. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 14:25, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Just add "?debug=true" to any Wikipedia URL. The line of code is actually in your monobook.js, though, not in Gary's script. I have Firefox 8 too, and it doesn't seem to have any problems with that line. Not sure what the issue is. Ucucha (talk) 14:31, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Those silly little invisible characters ! – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 14:35, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It's a Zero-width space at the beginning of line 48 (the one following that line containing "showUploadDeletionLogs.linkToFileEdit=true;") in User:Xeno/monobook.js, which is otherwise empty. To fix this, select everything from the end of line 47 to the beginning of line 49, delete, hit return twice and save. Lupo 14:28, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Ha! I never would have figured that out. Everything is copacetic now. Thank you, and thanks to everyone else for their suggestions. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 14:35, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Often get no bottom tabs (save/preview) upon "editing"
1. I am using Firefox 8. I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but often the bottom of the "page" is missing when "edit" has been selected in the article - the vital save/preview and edit summary is simply not there. I right click and "reload" and it displays. I can "work around this" by copying what I just edited, then reloading and pasting it back to the new page. I would appreciate a suggestion to fix this.

2. I get a monster "help" file at the top of the page for every edit. "B", "I", world (external link), chain (internal link), formatting, links, heading, bold and italic, etc. Back in the good old days this was a file "below" where I was editing, that I could reference "if necessary." Now occupies the top half of my screen whether I want it or not. This I can live with, but I hope I don't have to. Thanks. Student7 (talk) 23:31, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Re (2): in your editing preferences, switch off "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" and "Enable dialogs for inserting links, tables and more". Lupo 10:09, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks. That took care of 1. I did not have "Enable dialogs for inserting links etc." selected. I did not see any difference when I toggled it, but left it unselected. Problem 2 is diminished by having a smaller (2 inches?) "help" box at the top. I can live with that. Student7 (talk) 12:39, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

New collapsible code

 * Since we can animate the size of divs, could we put the tables in divs and have the divs shrink (overflow:hidden;) around the table as its content fades? Something like that anyway. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 22:22, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Since the header must remain visible, we can't put the entire table in a div. It is the rows that need to be animated. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 13:51, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * My first thought is that  are top left meaning that if a div was retracted with:

<pre style="margin-left:5em;"> transition:height 2s; -moz-transition:height 2s; -webkit-transition:height 2s; -o-transition:height 2s;
 * the top header would remain intact. As long as the final height is correct for the table header, problem solved (I reckon). <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 16:34, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Like that (save as .html in notepad or whatever). Obviously that's just a simple demo. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 16:53, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * very nice (just too much indenting;). funny user page, too. Alarbus (talk) 19:02, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Tabbed code, parenthesized concatenation, lots of mugs of strong, sweet Tetley tea, hand rolled cigarettes and Sci-fi. Mhmmm Face-smile.svg <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 19:15, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm from the tabs-are-evil school (as are K&R curlies). About to have me some of those others. Pleased, Alarbus (talk) 19:21, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Allman for me. The above is me being polite since WikiMedia prefers K&R. It seems I got it wrong. Fixed. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 20:02, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Allman for me, too. Them Unix guys are stuck on K&R.
 * I've not followed most of this collapse/animate talk, but go for the best form (and just why are the so many tables left? Alarbus (talk) 20:37, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

← Tables are a very easy way to organize data compared with getting the same result with divs (all that positioning and floating can get quite brutal). I personally prefer divs but MediaWiki would need a total redesign to do away with tables. Lets not even go there (yet). As I understand it: This thread is about Edokter hoping to find a way to improve the collapsible table (top of thread) so that it doesn't jump at the end of the jQuery text fade or slam back open. A noble quest. <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 20:48, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I know we're off topic. Wiki-text fails to wrap elements like div, thus holding everything back ten years. I gotta go. Alarbus (talk) 20:55, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Why did we deliberately choose to animate one of the main features?--it's very difficult for many people visually.  DGG ( talk ) 22:56, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Another bravo; this is going to align well with the initiatives being discussed here: Alarbus (talk) 13:58, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia Signpost/2011-11-14/Technology report
 * Athena


 * I didn't write this one... Krinkle did. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 14:02, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Bravo to Krinkle, then; more importantly, bravo to this enhancement; live, please. Alarbus (talk) 14:27, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I was recently looking for a way to replace the predefined [show]/[hide] (here, [collapse]/[expand]) buttons by custom text. I think this would be a really useful feature. Nageh (talk) 20:44, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The new MW plugin provides that functionality, but IIRC it will only work after HTML5 is enabled on Wikimedia wikis. Helder 22:56, 15 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Good to know! Nageh (talk) 00:21, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure that functionality is already available and is the same thing as what Edokter is discussing above. Kaldari (talk) 08:16, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * By "that functionality" I mean the feature of redefining the text of the buttons. It doesn't works currently:


 * results in:

Test
 * Helder 12:34, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * ^ I tested the code above, and when I made a list, it would indent during the collapse. Example:


 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.
 * This is a list.

 HurricaneFan 25  18:01, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Can something be done to stop the header text jumping left/right when you click the button. Keith D (talk) 22:44, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * See Bug 30402. Helder 20:34, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

To be brutal, animation is the last thing I want. Things are slow enough already. If there is coding resource to spend on collapse/uncollapse issues the two that really break stuff are: Rich Farmbrough, 11:10, 20 November 2011 (UTC).
 * 1) Everything displaying uncollapsed for a bit until the collapse code gets processed
 * 2) Most importantly - images (notably fund-raisers, toolbar) not having reserved space so the page moves around, causing misclicks (including many of the insertions of [[File:Example.jpg]] ) etc.. This is a long standing problem.

Edit conflicts
Sometimes if I make two edits in rapid succession, the edit will go through, but I'll get a message that I edit conflicted myself. This is only happening to me since I switched to Google Chrome. Is anyone else having this problem? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 20:23, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Never seen this before, and I sometimes make a ton of edits in a row (most of these edits are made on my own sandbox, since I'm usually testing something). Sounds like the server might be slow in receiving your first edit at the time? Also, since when you go to the edit page, the edit form has a token that indicates when you began editing, perhaps this token isn't updated because Chrome is grabbing the edit page from cache rather than getting a new token, so when you hit submit it conflicts with the previous edit, which also used the same token. A bit strange, but would explain what's going on. Not sure why Chrome would be doing that though; I think Chrome is a pretty great browser. I use Firefox myself though, most of the time, for development purposes, but will also occasionally use Chrome as well.


 * You can use Chrome's inspect tools to check if the edit token is really updated or not. Right click on the edit form, choose "Inspect element", then scroll up a bit and you should see HTML code for "wpStarttime" and "wpEdittime". The former indicates when you started editing the page, and the latter indicates when the last edit to the page was, to watch out for edit conflicts. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  20:59, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't see it anywhere. Where is it? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 23:14, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Found it, but how do I fix it? (Also, I got a self-edit-conflict on LoCash Cowboys despite the edits being over a month apart, but my last post here didn't self-edit-conflict.) Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 23:17, 16 November 2011 (UTC)


 * All the relevant info is here. Essentially, wpEdittime should small or equal to wpStarttime; if it's greater, than be sure to expect a conflict. I suggest that the next time you get a self-conflict, you hit the Back button and check these numbers to see if the former is greater than the latter. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  05:54, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * But how do I CHANGE the numbers? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 21:23, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * You can't. So you're saying that wpEdittime is greater than wpStarttime? Then yeah that's a serious problem, and I don't know why it's happening. Perhaps server hiccups, browser problem, dunno. I've never experienced this. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  22:07, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Too many templates?
At List of United States tornadoes in April 2011, some templates appear to be "raw" — it's showing things like "Template:Coord" and "Template:Convert". Is this caused by the number of templates transcluded on this page (which is a few hundred, maybe close to 800?) or something else? How can it be fixed? Thanks!  HurricaneFan 25  19:54, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Very possible. Take a look at WP:Template limits for how to spot it and what you might be able to do.  <b style="color:darkred;">Ravensfire</b> ( talk ) 20:12, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Correction - that is absolutely the problem. Looking at the HTML source for the page, I can see several WARNING messages about omitting templates because the post-expand include size is too large.  <b style="color:darkred;">Ravensfire</b> ( talk ) 20:16, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Substituting all the 'convert' templates would probably be a good start, but that would require adding 'safesubst support' to convert. – xeno <sup style="color:black;">talk 20:20, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * 400×Storm colour has got to be expensive. Transclusion of Tornadoes of 2011, too. Alarbus (talk) 20:46, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * NewPP:

NewPP limit report Preprocessor node count: 340652/1000000 Post-expand include size: 2048000/2048000 bytes Template argument size: 801027/2048000 bytes Expensive parser function count: 1/500  HurricaneFan 25  20:50, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I suspect the coord template may be to blame, it is insanely clever. Rich Farmbrough, 23:13, 17 November 2011 (UTC).


 * I pulled a bunch of the converts, seems to have done the trick. Rich Farmbrough, 23:49, 17 November 2011 (UTC).


 * It's apparently the coord templates. Removing those templates from the page (before Rich's edit) brings the post-expand include size down to only 223048; removing everything except those templates gives a post-expand include size of 1877797. The coord templates are almost 90% of the total!
 * We could cut the total page post-expand include size to 1450547 by using coord/input/dec directly (and bringing back the convert templates); currently it is at 2008366, very close to the maximum. Anomie⚔ 02:05, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Collapsable wikitables
These tables: class="wikitable collapsible collapsed", are not collapsing today. They seem to stay open. JMK (talk) 15:37, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * They are collapsing for me; I just made one here. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  21:02, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * How about the show/hide links in the "FAQ" section of the header at the top of this page? If they are not working either, you may have disabled Javascript somehow. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:26, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't see the show/hide links in the "FAQ" section at the top of this page (in fact I'm not seeing show/hide links on any collapsible items on any pages). I don't think I've done anything to disable Javascript - it just started happening all of a sudden a couple of hours ago (while I was editing pages). I'm using IE7 on WinXP. DH85868993 (talk) 04:02, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Perhaps try a different browser, like IE9 (the current version) or the latest Firefox. If that works, then at least we know that the problem is with IE7. If that doesn't work, then at least we can eliminate one variable. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  05:55, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The show/hide links are also absent on my tables. I did update java? to see some youtube videos, and I use an older version of Explorer. JMK (talk) 08:53, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * All back to normal for me now. DH85868993 (talk) 23:16, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, resolved. Thanks. JMK (talk) 13:35, 18 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Related to below. A bug in jQuery caused a valid script to crash javascript anyway. —  Edokter  ( talk ) — 13:58, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

"errors on page"
Hi, I've noticed that every Wikipedia page I open now flags up a problem on the status line: "Done, but with errors on page". I do not see any visible problems, but I suppose something must be going wrong behind the scenes. Anyway, here are the error details, which seem to be the same for every page: Webpage error details

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; YPC 3.0.2; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) Timestamp: Thu, 17 Nov 2011 02:28:15 UTC

Message: Exception thrown and not caught Line: 60 Char: 254 Code: 0 URI: http://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki&only=scripts&skin=vector&version=20111007T213533Z 109.153.234.114 (talk) 02:34, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I've lodged complaints here on and off since many months ago. The scripts on bits.wikimedia.org persistently fail to load for me, regardless of what browser I use. As a result, everything in my vector.js file fails to work. At times it seems to depend on the time of day, like it's more reliable in the morning.
 * See
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 90
 * Village pump (technical)/Archive 92
 * ~Amatulić (talk) 03:03, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Although I am not seeing the problem myself it seems the line causing the immediate problem is . <b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">f</b><b style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:#003e3e;">g</b> 03:11, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm also seeing "Done, but with errors on page" on every page I visit (using IE7 on WinXP). Plus all the navboxes on every page are showing in expanded format, with no "hide" link visible (which is possibly the same problem as described in above?) I first noticed this a couple of hours ago. DH85868993 (talk) 03:57, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * That's been happening to me for a long, long time. Sometimes the collapsible boxes work, usually they don't. ~Amatulić (talk) 04:22, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Perhaps related to this then. It seems like most people don't have load problems most of the time, but a small number do, which includes problems with load times, JavaScript files, etc. I'm around here most times of the day and I haven't experienced problems in months, whether it be load times, JS errors, etc. I recall a few months ago when load times were really bad, but I really have no complaints lately. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  05:52, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * This has got nothing to do with loading problems. It indicates that there is some JavaScript that has an error in it somewhere. I tracked this down to this bug. I would presume that this will be corrected soon. Lupo 10:52, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm getting a second error on IE8(Compatibility mode) from the article feedback thingy, which should be disabled on IE7 and IE8 in compatibility mode, but is so only partially. Reported in bug 31543. Lupo 11:20, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * For me, today, the JavaScript error is no longer appearing, so I guess someone has fixed something! Thanks! On a slightly different topic, does "article feedback thingy" above mean the ratings panel that used to be at the bottom of every article -- the one where you could choose 1 to 5 stars for reliability, objectivity, and whatever else it was? I no longer see that, and I assumed it had been removed completely, but from the above I'm now wondering if I am in this IE8 "compatibility mode". How do I tell if I am? 86.179.7.93 (talk) 12:21, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * IE8 has a "broken document" icon to the right of the address bar that shows the URL of the web page visible in the currently active tab. If that icon has a dark gray background, you'd be visiting Wikipedia in "compatibility mode" (which means, IE8 behaves like IE7). If it's light, you're not. If you're not sure, click that icon. If you weren't in "compatibility mode", IE8 will pop up a notice telling you that from now on, it'll use "compatibility mode" for en.wikipedia.org. (That is, until you click that icon again.) If no such notice pops up, you were in "compatibility mode" and are now no longer. Lupo 12:31, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I do not see that "broken document" icon at all for Wikipedia. I have noticed it before for some other sites, but never Wikipedia, as far as I recall. Any idea what that means? 86.179.7.93 (talk) 12:44, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * No idea. If you don't have that icon, try looking under the "Tools" menu; there should be an entry "Compatibility view" there. Clicking it toggles the mode on or off. If you don't have that menu item, I don't know what browser you have... Lupo 13:12, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I've discovered that the key to this is "Include updated website lists from Microsoft" in "Compatibility View Settings". When I uncheck that I get the "Compatibility view" button on Wikipedia pages, and can choose whether to switch it on or off. With it checked I do not get to choose. 86.179.7.93 (talk) 13:57, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks to Lupo, the error was tracked back to a line of jQuery in Common.js that should not crash javascript, but did anyway. This was due to a bug in jQuery, for which I reported a bug and which has subsequently been fixed by the jQuery developers. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 14:02, 18 November 2011 (UTC)