Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 96

Page view stats tool is down
The page view stats tool seems to have stopped working on 23rd December. Does anyone know who to contact about this? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:11, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Having pinned down that it was not a problem with the tool itself but with the data the tool was importing, I forwarded your request onto the #wikimedia-tech IRC channel, where the problem was promptly [identified] and fixed. Looks like it was a simple slip, but one that has cost us 3.5 days' worth of statistics. - Jarry1250 [Weasel? Discuss.] 15:18, 26 December 2011 (UTC) Edited - Jarry1250 [Weasel? Discuss.] 15:59, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the prompt action. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 15:40, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Edit counter script from StrategyWiki not working on Vector Skin
Hi All. I'm hoping someone can help me with getting a script working on the Vector skin. That is the skin I'm using. I found out from User:Bility's user page that there is an edit counter script for displaying edit counts on a user page. I wanted to duplicate the exact same setup, so Itried following the exact instructions at to no avail. The linked page said "When you visit your main userpage, you will see an extra link in the Toolbox, right after the "User contributions" link. It will be labeled "Edit counter". Just click the button and the script will execute.", but there is nothing in between the "My contributions" link and the "Log out" link, as it should be. I copied the necessary code exactly from the "set up" section of the linked page. I am mainly running Safari 5.1.2 and I tried a copy of FireFox 5.0.1, also to no success. I updated FireFox to 9.0.1 to see if it would work. Nada. Can someone please tell me how I can get this working? Thanks in advance, Haseo9999 (talk) 17:53, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The script was made to work in Monobook. Without looking, I'd say it's probably due to a difference in how the toolbox is set up in Vector, but I'll look into it. For now, if you put the code in your common.js, you can switch to Monobook, then run it and switch back. Sorry for the inconvenience! — Bility (talk) 18:53, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
 * No problem, and thanks for the suggestion. I tried running it on Vector as well, and it turns out it does work. I should've looked at the toolbox on the Left side of my screen instead of the top-right corner where the log-out link is. I thought it would appear at the latter. Hope whoever else wants this script finds the above info useful. Haseo9999 (talk) 20:48, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, good to know. Thanks for the update. — Bility (talk) 23:37, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Toolserver idea: interwiki hub
Hello, folks! I wanted to propose a new toolserver service: some kind of interwiki hub. Given any page on any Wikipedia, it would show data about that page and the interwiki links it has. So if you enter en:Dog, it would list data about all articles about dogs in all Wikipedias. The data could include name, size, number of edits and editors, dates of first and last edit, number of views in the last month / year, etc. How can I contact somebody that can make this website? Thanks! --NaBUru38 (talk) 19:22, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Can someone fix this little bug?
I have used {welcomeg} several times and it seems to intend substituting the editors signature at the bottom of the first frame, but instead, leaves four tildes. --Greenmaven (talk) 03:44, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 * In this edit you didn't substitute the template. If you do so now, it'll replace the four tildes with your username. Killiondude (talk) 03:51, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Many thanks. --Greenmaven (talk) 04:46, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Shifting images
I am having an issue with the article GO Transit. All of the images are moved to the bottom of the page when the article is first displayed, but it is automatically corrected by changing the font size in the browser. I can confirm this has occured on at least two separate machines, both using a recent version of Mozilla Firefox (8.0.1). Can someone suggest what the problem might be? It seemed like a browser issue, but earlier versions of the article do not have this issue. --Natural R X 23:22, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It's apparently because of the "GO Train Lines" collapsible box. When the page gets displayed, that box is uncollapsed, pushing all the images to the bottom. Later, JavaScript comes in and collapses the collapsible box, but Firefox fails to move the images up accordingly. Ucucha (talk) 09:49, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Correct, . I don't like putting route diagram templates like this early in the article, even though that's often the logical place for them, because they won't allow both images and text to be placed as desired. The worst thing is that browsers are inconsistent - Firefox places the text correctly but forces images down the page, whereas in IE, images are placed correctly but the text is forced down the page, as here - that orange bit is the corner of an RDT.
 * Instead, I put the RDT lower down, at some point after the point where the bottom of the infobox is likely to be, taking into account different screen resolutions; and I make sure that any left-aligned images are above it.
 * In this particular case, I would first move the down the page, probably to the "Service" section. Then I would consider whether all of the images are necessary, and remove some or all of those that are already reachable via the "Commons category" box. Then I would see which of the remaining images could logically be moved to earlier sections, and left-align some of them, bearing in mind that if the infobox pushes the first right-aligned image down the page, subsequent images (left- or right-aligned) will also be pushed down. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:37, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks so much! I removed it entirely because it is actually for just 2 of the 7 lines, not the entire system. There are other appropriate articles it can be placed. Thanks again! --Natural R X 21:51, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Mobile WP/categories
Is there any reason why categories on the mobile interface don't appear? 212.183.128.189 (talk) 17:29, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Several.
 * How to display them effectively and unobtrusively at the same time.
 * There is not yet a mobile optimized interface for the Category namespace.
 * The idea for mobile is progressive optimization of the interface. There is already a feature request for it 22660 —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:56, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Enhanced edit tool bar
Did this get disabled or something? I'm seeing this tool bar now after both trying to disable/enable the Enhanced edit tool bar option from preferences and by passing my cache. It happened without making any changes to my scripts, and is still the same since yesterday... --lTopGunl (talk) 19:20, 27 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I still see it.  Hazard-SJ  ㋡   00:11, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * VectorEditorBasic-en.png("It" referring to the enhanced toolbar provided by Extension:WikiEditor).  Hazard-SJ  ㋡   00:15, 28 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, that one - but I had it without an extension (just from preferences). Any idea how it can disable? --lTopGunl (talk) 00:18, 28 December 2011 (UTC)


 * It's back now... thanks I guess. Though it'll be good to know what changed (since it went away on its own and got fixed while I was adding some new scripts). --lTopGunl (talk) 03:14, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Possible hacking
I believe that my UConn VPN account (I'm a student there but am home on break) was compromised and used to vandalize Wikipedia. It appears User:H8kct made edits to Wikipedia from my VPN IP address (which, although it changes every few days, is not likely to change at 2:00 in the afternoon) to my talk page and possibly my public computer alternate account talk page, User:Dumbyllama (I can't tell, since it was otherwise empty and thus deleted due to vandalism as I can tell from my watched pages). So now my VPN IP got auto-blocked and I'm just posting from my standard home IP. I will change the passwords on both accounts as well as the uconn vpn connecting password. Other than that, what should I do? Smartyllama (talk) 19:44, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 * WP:Autoblock maybe has some answers for you. Maile66 (talk) 21:09, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

wgCategories returns categories with underscores instead of spaces now?
Since about a week or so ago, mw.config.get('wgCategories') returns categories with underscores instead of spaces. It affect a large number of my scripts. Okay, no big deal, but I'm just curious, could someone link me to the diff for this change in the MediaWiki SVN? I'm having trouble finding it. I did find this that indicates that the change was actually made about a month ago, but only implemented on Wikipedia recently. Gary King ( talk  ·  scripts )  18:48, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
 * This seems weird and a mistake. I'll try to pintpoint what is causing it. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:58, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Confirmed. I have marked the change as requiring a fix, and Roan has promised to take a stab at fixing it. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:20, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I've deployed a workaround, which should take effect in 5-10 minutes. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. --Catrope (talk) 21:26, 27 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Any particular reason why and/or where this was broken? Or is it super-secret code that isn't part of the open sourced MediaWiki portion of things? Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  08:59, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It was the change that you had identified. Someone forgot that when you assign an array to a variable, you assign a reference to the original, instead of a copy. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:43, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Loaded editintro: second foldout does not work
When editing this page (by button), there is an editintro:. The editintro has two collapsed "Text to copy" blocks. Problem: I cannot open the second. Am I the only one? -DePiep (talk) 17:55, 28 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I only see one cot for "Text to copy" which begins with " {{subst:Arbitration enforcement appeal ". Is the second cot also supposed to appear here? Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  18:04, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmmm. What I see is the same editintro twice, and yes it is the one you refer to. Discovered: also when editing this VPT page right now, I see its editintro twice ("Welcome to the Village pump for technical issues"). I'm doing FF 7.0.1 on WinXP. Checked: double too in Safari 5.0.3 on WinXP. And: one is gone when I do Preview. -DePiep (talk) 18:57, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia talk:Editnotice ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  {{sup|talk}} 19:22, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I use WikEd. Since the notices are copies, no harm is done. For me, we could close this, I can live with it. And thanx Gadget850. -DePiep (talk) 19:40, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Deployment of Feedback Dashboard Update
Hi guy! I'm happy to report that we've deployed a new version of the Feedback Dashboard. This version has some new functionality:


 * 1) It includes a new extension, Mark as Helpful, designed to allow recipients of Feedback Dashboard responses the ability to indicate whether or not a response was helpful
 * 2) A new filter for the dashboard, "My Responses Only"
 * 3) A revised email request and confirmation function
 * 4) A new set of icons
 * 5) Various other small fixes

Thanks to Rob Moen and Benny Situ for their hard work in getting these fixes in, and to Roan Kattouw for doing code review and deployment.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 00:21, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Logging in for 30 days no longer works for me
I have been asked to log in when using a new computer or when my "30 days" has expired. This is fine, but lately, I have been asked to log in every time, even though I am on the same computer. What am I doing wrong? Student7 (talk) 22:22, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It is possible you are blocking the cookie. Or that for some other reason the cookie is either not being set or read. The method for identifying that possibility will depend on which browser you're using.  fredgandt  22:28, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * In some browsers it's possible to configure it to zap all cookies when you close the browser. But whichever way that it's being lost, the absence of a cookie will cause Wikipedia to assume that you're not logged in. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:33, 28 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Someone "helping" me accepted cookies, but deleted them when I closed Firefox! I have accepted cookies "until they expire." I'm guessing this will correct. Thanks. Student7 (talk) 22:23, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Whitespace caused by Template:Taxobox
Anyone know why I'm seeing whitespace at the top of Fraxinus (in IE9)? The text doesn't start until after the taxobox, next to the first image. Take the images away and the problem disappears. I thought this setup (infobox, images, text) usually worked all right.--Kotniski (talk) 12:47, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Firefox shows whitespace between the "Ecology" and "Threats" section instead. A good solution may be removing some images from that article—there are too many for too little text. Ucucha (talk) 12:52, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * You must have IE9 in compatibility mode. In my IE9, I only see that issue if I switch into compatibility mode. -- WOSlinker (talk) 13:08, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Hmm, yes, you're right. Don't know how that happened.--Kotniski (talk) 14:10, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The blank space in Firefox is correct behaviour: the "Ecology" section finishes with a which forces the next item (in this case the "Threats" section header) to appear below the last image which has so far been displayed. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:16, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Log in / create account
If one attempts to log in under a nonexistent username, the username is created (at least in IE8). Shouldn't it give an error saying "nonexistent username"? Double sharp (talk) 07:45, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Cannot reproduce. Prodego  talk  08:21, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * You should see something like this...

Login error

There is no user by the name "Allen4names". Usernames are case sensitive. Check your spelling, or create a new account.
 * If you don't please file a bug at Bugzilla. – Allen4names 09:08, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * This bug only seems to occur when one tries to log in using their old username after a rename. I tested it using a random username, and I got the "Login error" message. Double sharp (talk) 12:33, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * This is probably because you hold the SUL on your old username, so the server thinks you are coming to enwiki for the first time, and automatically creates the account for you. That's my guess, anyway. — This, that, and the other (talk) 01:34, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

"This user is currently blocked" message
Sometimes I get this message in a red box when I view my contributions even though I have been unblocked. The "latest entry" given is the latest entry in my block log, where I was unblocked. I think this is a bug, as I can edit normally even when this message is displayed. Double sharp (talk) 12:35, 29 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Is it possible for you to show an image (snapshot) of the problem?  Hazard-SJ  ㋡   06:56, 30 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I've seen this too sometimes as an admin; an expired block occasionally shows up in the contribs list as still active. When I have encountered it, it has usually been when viewing a formerly blocked IP address which is now under a range block.  My assumption has been that the software sees that the individual IP address is blocked, and eroneously displays the last individual block as still active, even if it has long expired, often because of a range block or autoblock which happens to be active at that IP address.  Perhaps (this is just a guess) the OP is editing from an IP address which is blocked, perhaps due to a soft range block or an autoblock of some sort.  If this were a soft block, it would not affect editing otherwise.  -- Jayron  32  07:15, 30 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I think Jayron32's guess is quite likely. It makes sense now. Double sharp (talk) 07:36, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Script User:Porchcorpter/rollbackSum.js working, not working, working, not working...
I have posted this before, a couple of months ago, but the issue has been reoccurring over and over again. The reason why I'm posting here is because the script essentially hasn't changed since 2009, yet, it is only intermittently working, usually for a few weeks, and then suddenly stops functioning for a few weeks. The last time this happened was about two or three weeks ago, until which time it was working just fine but now doesn't again. I only notice when I click on [rollback] and expect to enter an edit summary, but the popup doesn't appear. I was thinking that there might be some stupid interaction with Twinkle, though I wouldn't know which one that would be (and no, I didn't click on Twinkle's extra, redundant rollback link – btw, can't Twinkle be made more smart and not show its own rollback link when I have rollback rights? just found out Twinkle preferences ). Any help appreciated. Nageh (talk) 17:42, 30 December 2011 (UTC)


 * The most obvious issue is that wgServer MW variable (now "//en.wikipedia.org") lost "http:" prefix since MW 1.18. You can use the following "updated" script ( function was copied verbatim) or maybe ask some admin to replace the original script with this:


 * — AlexSm 19:15, 30 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Tried, doesn't work. Why do check for wgCanonicalNamespace == 'Special'? None of the pages I tried rollback on this variable was set to 'Special'. Nageh (talk) 19:30, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, I have removed the check. Works like a charm now. Thanks a lot! Nageh (talk) 19:48, 30 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Sorry, my bad, for some reason I was thinking only about contribs and RC/Watchlist pages. — AlexSm 19:49, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Related changes
I'm seeing anomalous results on "related changes" on categories. I use it at CAT:RFU. Right now, if I look at Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Requests for unblock, I see
 * 03:35 	User talk:Ariobarza‎ (diff | hist) . . (-6,843) . . FreshBeatRugrats (talk | contribs | block)

But a quick look at the history] there shows that there was another edit after the FreshBeatRugrats edit. Adjacent to that is a similar problem
 * 11:41 	User talk:TWFHCOM‎ (diff | hist) . . (+315) . . Mike Rosoft (talk | contribs | block)

but Mike Rosoft is not the last editor. Anyone seen other problems with "Related changes"? --jpgordon:==( o ) 17:45, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Note that the "recent changes" display shows all edits, unlike the standard watchlist which displays only the most recent change to the page. So for your two examples, I see the edits you point out and I also see the later edits further up the page. I also note the subsequent edits are both minor; do you have "Hide minor edits" activated? Anomie⚔ 18:07, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Er, I don't recall ever changing the setting "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" at, so since that's set for me, I believe that the default in the standard watchlist is to shows all edits. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:34, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Show minor edits took care of it. --jpgordon:==( o ) 19:14, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * OTOH, I checked my most-recently created bot account, and that shows that preference clear. The real thing to do, I guess, would be for someone to actually create a brand-new account and look. Anomie⚔ 19:27, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Creating a page should not demand an edit summary
Page creation generates an automatic summary, and yet I am prompted every time for one. Is this so that I justify every page I create to the angry WP gods? Or is this simply an oversight? ▫  Johnny Mr Nin ja  22:59, 29 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Do you have "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary" enabled in your preferences?  Hazard-SJ  ㋡   06:52, 30 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Presumably. I agree that it's worth considering whether that preference also needs to prompt for a summary when an automatic edit summary would otherwise be supplied, since the automatic edit summary is often informative enough (particularly when creating a redirect or a short page). Ucucha (talk) 07:14, 30 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, I have this enabled. The bizarre thing is, currently redirecting a page does not cause the prompt, but page creation does. I'm not sure where the other WP:AES types fall in. ▫  Johnny Mr Nin ja  11:28, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * You're right. I think it used to prompt for redirects too. The only related entry I've been able to find in Bugzilla is 17416. Ucucha (talk) 11:44, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, filed 33442. ▫  Johnny Mr Nin ja  08:13, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Less Random Random Article
Random articles are great, but certain types of articles are not. For example I'd like to filter out "people," "music," "sports," and other things I deem non-important. This is probably best implimented via categorys(?). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.47.247.28 (talk) 21:11, 30 December 2011 (UTC)


 * See WP:RANDOM. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 04:43, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

What happened to the GeoGroupTemplate?
BotMultichillT has been adding information to parameters to a large number of lists that I watch, including National Register of Historic Places listings in Jay County, Indiana. In this edit, it added information to most of the parameters, but it missed one, so the following edit fills in the hitherto empty parameter. However, you'll note that the GeoGroupTemplate disappears from view with the second edit, but my dummy edit restored it, even though I just removed one space character from a line of text. What happened here? An odd caching issue? I've never seen this bot's work have this effect on any other page; it seems to have been behaving quite properly. Nyttend (talk) 14:01, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Looks like [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:GeoGroup&diff=468234274&oldid=468127540 a bot screwed it up], which was [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:GeoGroup&diff=next&oldid=468237280 fixed a few hours later]. A purge would probably have fixed it as well. Anomie⚔ 16:55, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Donation site problem
If you go to donate money by credit/debit card, and get to where it asks for your CVV2 code, there's a problem. Clicking on the "What is a security code?" link brings up an external site's 404 error. 76.117.247.55 (talk) 15:41, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It works for me. The link brings up, , , or , depending on which credit card you select. Goodvac (talk) 18:02, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Update: I think the referring url has to be the payments.wikimedia.org donation page for it to work. In other words, you have to click on the link from the donation page. Since you did that, I don't know what's wrong. Goodvac (talk) 18:06, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Help with filling a reference
Hey people, I need help citing this page in cite video citation format (I need to provide ref for the awards), but it looks too complicated, and I got confused. Can someone help with that or is it the wrong place? Found the same info on worldcat as well. Shahid •  Talk 2 me  17:32, 31 December 2011 (UTC)


 * You would use cite video to cite a DVD or similar media that contains the film itself. You would use cite web to cite the Johns Hopkins site that states the film, or an actor in the film, won an award. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:41, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you. And would this particular page from JHU be considered reliable? I thought that's what actually appears on the back cover of the DVD and I'd need to cite an OCLC. Shahid  •  Talk 2 me  17:47, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Using the WorldCat link as a reference would be preferable to JHU. It's generally recognized as a reliable source for books (see ), whereas JHU, a college library database, copies the WorldCat content and is more obscure. Goodvac (talk) 18:22, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It is a library catalog entry, as is WorldCat. As noted at Template talk:Cite video, there has to be better sources for the awards. You can also discuss at Reliable sources/Noticeboard. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 23:40, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Remove and Reduce in Size the huge popup that appears first page after loading WikipediA
'''Please remove or greatly reduce in size the popup on top of WikipediA first page. It is annoying. Thanks. David''' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.119.210.117 (talk) 21:13, 31 December 2011 (UTC)


 * What pop-up is that? I don't get a pop-up. Are you sure this isn't being added by some malware on your computer? --DanielRigal (talk) 21:42, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the fundraising banner. Killiondude (talk) 21:46, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Line break for edit toolbar?
In early November I had a question about how to line break for the edit toolbar:

My real life got busy, and then i returned and could not figure out how to get the old toolbar back. Until I saw a posting today that said it was a preference

To answer Fred_Gandt old question, I am using Monobook.

None of the solutions have worked thus far :( any suggestions would be much appreciated. thank you! Igottheconch (talk) 17:29, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 * So just to get this straight; you're using Monobook with "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" unchecked in your prefs? Also, between which buttons would you like the "line break"? At this point I am assuming you want the row of buttons to be two rows of buttons (one above the other). is that correct?  fredgandt  18:00, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Fred, you are wonderful!
 * RE: you're using Monobook with "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" unchecked in your prefs
 * yes, that is correct.
 * RE: Also, between which buttons would you like the "line break"?
 * User:Igottheconch/monobook.js
 * {|class="wikitable collapsible collapsed"

!line break location mwCustomEditButtons[mwCustomEditButtons.length] = { "imageFile": "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Button_category.png", "speedTip": " cat", "tagOpen": "[[Category:]]", "tagClose": "", "sampleText": ""} HERE mwCustomEditButtons[mwCustomEditButtons.length] = { "imageFile": "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Button_ref_inscription.png", "speedTip": " R", "tagOpen": "==Notes==\n", "tagClose": "", "sampleText": ""}
 * }
 * RE: At this point I am assuming you want the row of buttons to be two rows of buttons (one above the other).
 * yes, that is correct, thank you :)
 * happy new year fred! Igottheconch (talk) 17:40, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. You too.
 * So you actually want a button that adds a reflist? I am getting more confused by this as time passes. Two rows of buttons (instead of one) is not quite the same thing as a button that adds text to the textarea (edit window). I'm sorry but I have to ask again; can you clarify (in plain English) what it is you want?
 * Related (possibly): Have you seen this thread at the proposals pump?  fred</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  08:32, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Massive jobqueue
Over the past couple of days the job queue has grown dramatically. Some files that I uploaded a few hours ago still aren't showing the proper file on the file page itself (the actual file works). Normally that just takes a minute or two. What's causing this? Mass template edits? &mdash; Train2104 (talk • contribs) 23:13, 30 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Would like to know this too. I moved a page about 24hrs ago and fixed the template redirects, but they've not been refreshed across all the articles.  Lugnuts  (talk) 17:21, 31 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Still not purged all the redirects...  Lugnuts  (talk) 09:55, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Internet explorer bug
IE 8 (Standards mode) on XP (SP3)

I just tried testing a script I wrote, to see if it worked with IE, but didn't get that far because other bugs on the page I was visiting prevented me from getting to the testing part.

Object doesn't support this property or method, line 14 character 48

The highlighted error was:

 f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  02:09, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I do not know why you get errors inside jQuery and how you get them "highlighted" but I tried to execute your common.js in IE8 and it shows errors in most of your scripts because you use addEventListener and document.getElementsByClassName. — AlexSm 01:04, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know why I get errors with IE either. Oh wait, yes I do *cough*. I don't write anything for that hunk of... The highlighted error was highlighted by the dimwitted IE, not by the extremely clever Google Chrome; a browser that actually works. I wasn't asking for a critique. I was posting a bug report that (as far as I can tell) has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with my scripts. If it was my scripting that caused the errors, surely that stupid heap of dung (IE) should have said so. It's not my fault it's error reports are (also) inaccurate.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  01:31, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Location of errors in IE8 is notoriously unreliable and with RL by default there is no separation between your scripts, and wiki or jquery scripts. So to get at least a little bit further, i'd advise to stick  after the /wiki/title to pinpoint the location of the script error a bit more reliable to at least one scriptfile. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:36, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that TheDJ. I won't be revisiting IE again for a very long time (or ever if I can help it), but I'll remember the hint. I've got so used to Chrome now (I love my Chromey-womey) I find it maddening to deal with IE. It took maybe 2 minutes to find the inspector, and another couple to figure out how it worked. Then I had to search for how to clear the cache (hold erm ctrl while refreshing I think). By the time I got the error report I was fuming, so this report is a bit slapdash (but I thought someone might like to know). I own and run 3 domains (not doing much (should pull my finger out really)) and got fed up to the back teeth dealing with IE compatibility, so I just stopped dealing with it (what a blessed relief that was). I now never write any code to pamper that retarded oaf. I knew some (most) of my scripts (here) wouldn't run, but just wondered if one would ('cause someone else here may have wanted it (turns out they didn't)). Now that saga's over and done with, I can get back to writing JavaScript and CSS that's completely standard and works in all proper browsers, and not give two hoots if IE can read it. MS should be ashamed.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  13:39, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * An oldie, but a goody Sums up my feelings on the subject quite perfectly.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  14:04, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Search box results
Hi, I'm experiencing some technical issue with the search box. When I put in a search term, I'm not getting any search results for it but just the usual line You may create the page [red link] but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered. Yet, there's no search results being displayed. Could anyone enlighten me as to what's going on? Thanks, Mar4d (talk) 09:28, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Could you provide a step by step description of the actions you take, including page addresses and search terms, so we can attempt to reproduce the searches you see the issues with? Thanks.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  09:33, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's happening for every single search term. Mar4d (talk) 09:36, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * What browser, skin, and operating system (in case there are known issues)? How do you initiate the search? What happens next? See Bugzilla guide on writing a bug report.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  09:41, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Aah sweet, it's working again. I use Google Chrome and just cleared my browsing history and "bypassed my cache" (CTRL + Shift + R). No idea what quiet happened. Mar4d (talk) 09:47, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I was having problems earlier too (Firefox/Classic skin). I decided to leave it to see if it resolved itself, and it seems ok now. <small style="white-space:nowrap;border:1px solid #A00000;padding:1px;"> An  optimist on the  run!  11:24, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Uploading pictures from smartphones/tablets - isn't it finally time?
It's 2012 now, and almost everyone, it seems, has a smartphone, a tablet computer, or both, and so many owners of these have long abandoned much of their computing on desktops and even laptops for one of these far more convenient devices. Most of these smaller devices can even snap photos and videos now. But Wikipedia is far behind the times, and the only way to upload a photo is to tranfer it onto a desktop or laptop (that in itself is a tedious process), and then access Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons on the desktop or laptop and upload it.

This is way behind the times. As I mentioned above, it is quite tedious. And besides, much editing by many is done now on the smartphones and tablets, all while access to the desktop or laptop is limited or not possible.

Many other sites are on par with the times. For example, on most social media sites, you can snap a shot, and seconds later, upload it there. On many blogs, you can take a photo from your photo library and place it on the blog. So what's keeping Wikipedia and other wikis from doing the same.

There should be a change made to Wikipedia ASAP. Users should be given the option of uploading not just from a directory on their good old fashioned desktop or laptop, but also from the photo library on their smartphone or tablet. This shall include iPhones and iPads, the most popular of each of these. It should be as simple as clicking on a link that is an option for that, browsing through one's photo library, selecting the image, and then continuing all the remaining steps to transfer it to Wikipedia and declaring the rights.

It's finally time. Let's do it ASAP. Sebwite (talk) 16:45, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I believe this was one of the aims of the Wikipedia app being developed for smart phones. See also WikiSnaps and Mobile Projects -- Chris 04:36, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think having an RFC will accomplish anything unless there is actually code written to allow it. You might be looking for bugzilla. Killiondude (talk) 07:18, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, i wrote wikisnaps in february and haven't had time to refine it since. Seems no one else has had the time either. Everyone is more than welcome to contribute. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:42, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Lots of really good work was done to get the community to rally around this with the recent Weekend of Code challenge. Developers were able to extend not only our current app but do really nice integration with Android share mechanism. We'll be able to re-use parts of this as we move forward with our mobile projects. Have you tried using any of those apps or Wiki Snaps? We'd love feedback about what works and what doesn't. And its a good thing that were attacking this with apps right now as iOS devices CANT upload anything natively through the browser. Apple chose NOT to implement the HTML file upload specification. Tfinc (talk) 06:44, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

External link issue
Hey everyone. How would I link to http://www.fultonhistory.com/Newspaper 14/New York NY Herald/New York NY Herald 1909/New York NY Herald 1909 - 2776.pdf with a title (ie. 14/New York NY Herald/New York NY Herald 1909/New York NY Herald 1909 - 2776.pdf England's Power on the Sea Safe)? Changing the spaces to underscores breaks the link, annoyingly. The article I am trying to link these on is South American dreadnought race. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 03:11, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * (EC) Like [this, changing the spaces to "%20". [[User:Graham87|Graham]] 87 03:16, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah, okay, thanks for the quick response! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 03:37, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The 'Insert Link' button in the ('new') toolbar does this escaping of the URL for you btw. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 11:44, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

URLs containing certain characters will display and link incorrectly unless those characters are encoded. For example, a space must be replaced by.
 * Single apostrophes do not need to be encoded; multiples will be parsed as italic or bold markup

The link button on the enhanced editing toolbar will encode a link.

The URL must start with a supported URI scheme. and  are always supported. ,,  ,  ,   and   will create a link and an icon but require an agent registered in the browser.require an agent registered in the browser. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 12:15, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

New user type: Nosy
There are many nosy wikipedians, most certainly including myself. How about introducing a new user type: "nosy". Nosy users would be able to view deleted edits/revisions (but not oversighted stuff, to prevent privacy implications). They may also get to see some kind of check user type info, but in a way that cannot identify users... for example, how about being able to see what browsers folk visiting a page are using, or who is looking at your user talk. And there will be read only access to the hidden edit filters and edit filter logs as well. Basically, info that they may not be trusted to, or have a need/want to, change or alter, but that the community feels will not use the information irresponsibly. Just for nosiness. Thoughts? Egg Centric 16:51, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * How will this benefit the encyclopedia or the community at large? ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 17:16, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Not going to happen, The foundation has specifically stated that for legal purposes they will not allow users who have not gone through an RFA to view deleted edits . And besides "nosiness" isn't going to benefit the project --<font color="Blue">Jac <font color="Green">16888 Talk 17:20, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It will hugely benefit the encyclopedia/community by encouraging more use of Wikipedia, and quite possibly it will stimulate academic and other research using these deleted edits, which could lead to wonderful things we can't even dream of.


 * As for the legal liabilities, that doesn't have to be a problem. Firstly, I envisage a procedure much like RFA, but with different standards, before a user gets their nosy bit. Secondly, even if this were a problem, this doesn't have to be retroactive - it would be possible to have it so that the "nosy" group may only be permitted to view revisions deleted after the feature was implemented - and there could be a new option to perform a super deletion (verging on oversight) for edits that needed it. Egg Centric 17:39, 2 January 2012 (UTC)#
 * It what way exactly will it encourage more use of the Wikipedia? Sounds like you're just grasping at straws. The idea of granting access to deleted edits and more purely to be able to look at them, because you're "nosy", is beyond ludicrous, even if the foundation would sign off on this, which they have absolutely said they will not, it serves no purpose for improving the project--<font color="Blue">Jac <font color="Green">16888 Talk 17:48, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, truth be told, I'm only interested because I'm nosy. However, there is no doubt that a case can be made that it will improve Wikipedia, but I'm not the right person to make it... I kinda lost my credibility when I made the naive mistake of telling the truth (plus I'm not one of the cool kids) . You can see said case made very well in that link you provided, which I repeat here for the benefit of others. I have already explained, in this thread, two different ways to get around the legal issues. So perhaps we should re-open the straw poll? Egg Centric 17:54, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Satisfying your nosiness doesn't benefit anybody except you, the whole purpose of every tool: sysop, rollback, file mover, etc, is to actually be of benefit to the project. And as the page makes absolutely clear, the foundation will not allow non-admins to view deleted edits, regardless of what solutions you may have dreamed up, or do you consider that your legal knowledge is superior to that of the projects legal counsel that you can think of something they didn't? This proposal is not going to happen. Period. Don't waste anymore time on it--<font color="Blue">Jac <font color="Green">16888 Talk 18:04, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Satisfying my nosiness benefits no one aside from me - although you never know, it may make me a more entertaining guest at dinner parties. But there are many situations in which being able to view deleted edits would help the project. You can see highly esteemed users led by FT2 mentioning some of them in that link. You can also see why the foundation is against it and if you read what I wrote you can see how I can address their concerns - primarily by making this non-retroactive. Any future libellous edits or whatever can be super-deleted, such that "nosy" users will not be able to see them. Pas de problem. And that's not even considering the potential request-for-nosiness (perhaps we could call it request to stick my nose in) safeguards which could also solve the problem. Egg Centric 18:19, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I read what you wrote, you want what is basically the creation of a brand new two-tiered deletion process alongside the current process, which does not exist and would therefore have to be comissioned and created at cost to the foundation, entirely so that you can be nosy. --<font color="Blue">Jac <font color="Green">16888 Talk 19:15, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You are still missing the point. It is irrelevant why I want it. It's perfectly clear that many other wikipedians want this ability for reasons which I am the first to admit are much better, from a project point of view, than pure nosiness. In the past they have been denied it by the foundation, for sound, if unimaginative reasons. But today I have proposed two measures, either or both of which solve the problems the foundation was having.
 * Clearly, then, it is worth once again revisiting the so-called perennial-proposal, as it was shut off at that time for reasons that no longer apply. Egg Centric 19:30, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't see how anybody could make this any clearer. This proposal has little benefit. It was vetoed explictly by the foundation. Your solutions to the foundation, the first one is adding what is basically a new RFA system when anybody trusted to view the deleted material would be trusted to be a sysop, the second involves a silly creation of an entirely new deletion system are both bad ideas, involving a great deal of cost and work to both the foundation and the community. And all of this is only covering deleted edits, the idea that there would be standard users would be able to have mini-checkuser abilities is beyond idiocy. Please stop wasting everyone's time with this pointless conversation, it is not going to happen.--<font color="Blue">Jac <font color="Green">16888 Talk 19:52, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * No one is forcing you to reply. If you feel your time is being wasted, stop reading now. If you have continued reading you only have yourself to blame and it is not up to you to declare this a waste of time for other participants.
 * Re RFAs: It is not the case that everyone trusted to view a deleted edit could also be trusted to be a sysop. Now, as it happens, I favour allowing any trustworthy - defined as (1. having the best of intentions 2. being willing to listen 3. being able to learn quickly) user to be an administrator, and I believe that those were close to the original standards. You know, adminship is not a big deal and all that? However, the fact is that the de facto community standards for becoming an admin now are very different - the community requires extreme competence and practically encyclopaedic knowledge of policy (and then wonders why a considerable proportion of the active admins are students, retired or have a personality problem) because of the damage that can be done if the admin presses the wrong button. Said damage is not a worry if the user is a "nosy". So the community as it stands will be perfectly happy to make people who would never pass an RFA "nosy"s.
 * Re Super-Deletions: I can't imagine implementing the new deletion system would be particularly difficult, actually. It's just an extra bit in the database.
 * Re the proposal having little benefit: So why did so many people support it the first time around then? What is wrong with re-running it? Egg Centric 20:07, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Then by all means continue wasting your time on this. So, point 1: blah blah blah about NOBIGDEAL then a completely nonsense suggestion that the community would "be perfectly happy to make people who would never pass an RFA "nosy"s", which I would call absolute rubbish and based on some random fantasy of yours. Point 2: are you particularly experienced with mediawiki coding then? because there does not appear to be an already existing extension for this and therefore a new one would have to be created, which would need to be paid for. Point 3: such as? Take a hint from the response of every user who has responded to this...it's not going to happen.--<font color="Blue">Jac <font color="Green">16888 Talk 20:20, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I haven't the tiniest doubt that were we chatting in person you would be coming across in such a witty and charming manner that not only would you have turned me gay but that while every word emanating from your mouth brought me closer to climax, I would still be willing for you to stop talking to me about this verbally and talk to me physically; good things come in threes and I would hope to hear only three things come out of your mouth in the next two hours: egg, centric, and MORE. In return, one thing comes in your mouth. Sadly, tis not to be. Tone is ever so hard to get right online, and what I perceive from you is condescension to the point of extreme rudeness. Perhaps it's the tension in the air. So I am not going to reply directly to your points as they are more or less the same ones you made last time:- except to once more point out that this is no longer about my "nosy" suggestion. It's about the suggestion from 2008. Which could work now. Let's re-open it. Egg Centric 21:55, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think it's safe to say that should such a tool exist, after that little tirade your chance of recieving it would be zero, and I doubted you would have got it before anyway. If I'm repeating myself its only because you have either ignored or failed to successfully address every single one of the many significant points raised against this frankly ludicrous idea. Go ahead and reopen it if you like, proposals is the place to go, I can assure you it will fail--<font color="Blue">Jac <font color="Green">16888 Talk 22:11, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Absolutely not, no - there is no justification at all for granting people access to deleted edits or to partial checkuser data just for the purpose of "nosiness" -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:43, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If you're that interested in deleted edits, why not try for WP:RFA? It's been said that we don't have enough admins at present (see Special:Statistics: we have admins, compared to  active users). -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:03, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * (e/c) The right to view deleted edits already exists, for a very few number of users, if you have a genuine need to do so (rather than just nosiness). See User access levels. However I think this right was only created for a specific purpose, and probably won't extended to general users. Most deleted pages are complete dross anyway, and not worth reading. Not even administrators have access to the sort of check-user data you're requesting, so that's a complete non-starter. <small style="white-space:nowrap;border:1px solid #A00000;padding:1px;"> An  optimist on the  run!  18:13, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I simply don't have the experience or time to perform any real number of admin actions; nor have I the indepth policy knowledge. I wouldn't mind being a read only administrator but alas such a thing doesn't exist - and I doubt the community would anoint me an administrator if I applied with the intention of doing it only to look at deleted things. Perhaps some people who do apply to become admins are actually doing it out of nosiness... still, they've probably got more sense than to admit it. Sadly, I would have to Egg Centric 18:19, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Utter nonsense. This should be closed on the grounds that it leaves a nasty smell behind it.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  18:28, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Oppose. I've supported and even made similar proposals in the past, but this won't solve any of our problems.Jasper Deng (talk) 20:24, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Support as long as User:Egg Centric is banned from acquiring this user right. — Bility (talk) 22:04, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Log for article move protection
Hi. Does anyone know how to find the log for the move-protection of an article? I tried Special:Logs but with no luck. Thank you. Δρ.Κ. <sup style="position:relative">λόγος<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.2ex;*left:-5.5ex">πράξις 22:32, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Here is the prot log for a page that I move-protected a couple of weeks back. Although it's now expired, the log entry is still there as a permanent record of what I did. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:35, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * All move protections are listed under Special:Log/protect with the rest of the protected pages. For each move protection,  for full-move protection or   for semi-move-protection is listed in the entry. Zzyzx11 (talk) 22:39, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's in the Protection log. For example, the most recent protection log entry for Barack Obama says
 * 18:06, 25 June 2010 Cenarium (talk | contribs | block) changed protection level of Barack Obama‎ [edit=autoconfirmed] (indefinite) [move=sysop] (indefinite) ‎ (Excessive vandalism)
 * The bolded part indicates the current level of move protection applied. Anomie⚔ 22:40, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much guys, but I tried that. I am talking about the protection from moving the article title to another name and which removes the "move" button from the article as in as seen here. Where can I find this log? Specifically Istanbul riots has been move-protected yet I cannot find this record here. If you check, the article does not have the "move" button, yet the protection log does not show it. Δρ.Κ. <sup style="position:relative">λόγος<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.2ex;*left:-5.5ex">πράξις  22:48, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The page has been moved since the prot was applied, so you need to look under the old name. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:53, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much. Take care and Happy New Year. :) Δρ.Κ. <sup style="position:relative">λόγος<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.2ex;*left:-5.5ex">πράξις 22:56, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Another block log issue
While following a thread at WP:AN, I went to look at Malcolm's contributions; his current block appears at that page, but when I went to look at his earliest contributions, it gave me the earliest entry from his block log. Is that supposed to happen? And if not, is there something we can do about it? Nyttend (talk) 00:41, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That is a bit odd. I tried looking at contribs from the last time he blocked himself and still got the most recent one. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:28, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * FYI - There is a bug report for this: Cheers. --Aude (talk) 03:27, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Improved look for display subcategories function
Hi. Over New Years it seems like the plus and minus signs for displaying or hiding subcategories got turned into cool rotating triangular icons. I like. But where would find the discussion about upcoming design changes and the like? I've checked in some of the more likely spots, and not found it. thanks, Shawn in Montreal (talk) 22:32, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * A couple of sections up from here.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  22:41, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Well, that's embarrassing. I'd scanned this page, but the meaning of the section header escaped me. Approve, fwiw. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 22:49, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I have mixed feeling about losing my pluses and minuses...<span style="font-family:Verdana,Arial,Helvetica;"><b style="color:#333333;">Res</b> Mar 02:19, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Ditto; I found the previous symbols [+] and [-] much more expressive. But I suspect that train has left the station. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:55, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

bunched links when viewing contribs
I've noticed that when I look at anyones contribs I get overlapping blue links at the top right of the page. It's worth noting that I have oversight access, which adds extra options for viewing oversighted contribs. After staring at it for a moment I can make out that the last two options, "Oversighted contribs" and "filter log" are overlapping the "Help:User contributions" link. I'm pretty sure this is something that has only been going on recently, and I have recently been forced by my laptop melting down to do my editing from an iPad2. Since I have to use my stubby fingers to click links this makes it rather difficult to use any of those options. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:24, 3 January 2012 (UTC)


 * You can put some CSS to your common.css
 * to hide the link:


 * or to move it below:


 * — AlexSm 18:07, 3 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Tried the first one, seems to get the job done. I suppose it is a very small segement of the wiki-populace (oversighters using tablet computers) so a more general fix is probably not needed. Thanks fo the tip. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:55, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Moving mobile full screen search out of beta
Hey All Tfinc (talk) here. The mobile team has had full screen search in beta for about a month now. We've gotten really positive responses about it and were eager to move it into production. I'm curious to find out what other technical tweaks the english wikipedia community would suggest for discussion before we move forward with it as the default experience on mobile. On my end i'm thinking that the design needs to be more tightly integrated in the look and feel of wikipedia but that the overall experience is significantly improved. Do let know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tfinc (talk • contribs) 06:51, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Question
Hello Wikipedia,

I have a new theory on innovation that was accepted in a peer review academic scholarly journal publication.

What is the process to have my theory published on Wikipedia web-site?

Please let me know how this works?

Thanks,

Lee — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ldemuth (talk • contribs) 18:12, 29 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Got a link to it? Maybe us editors could take a look at it and determine ourselves where it should go, so that there's no conflict of interest on your part. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  18:22, 29 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I doubt that it would be a suitable subject for Wikipedia, at least not until it has received substantial coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources. Wikipedia is not an outlet for the publication of new theories, it is a tertiary source that has articles about subjects that have already received substantial coverage elsewhere. See WP:NOT. – ukexpat (talk) 15:33, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

StringFunctions twitched on Bugzilla
Earlier today, 6455 was briefly re-opened. It got me thinking. I would be airing this discussion on Bugzilla, but I've decided to stop shooting myself in the foot over there (I said some rather stupid things in the past and I doubt anyone will take me seriously, but maybe here people will at least read it). Background: the contents of Category:String manipulation templates are a series of extremely evil hacks and kludges, which are actually used. The sysadmins have made it plain that they want to develop some sort of alternative to parser functions in general, or alternatively to develop for each need on a case-by-case basis. Since some of those templates are very widely used, the latter option will take a while to complete. The former option has not, as far as I'm aware, shown any substantial signs of life in years (I don't read wikitech, however, so I could be wrong, but nothing's been mentioned on either this bug or 26092, so presumably any proposals are still just that -- proposals, not working extensions or even significant progress towards extensions. I will note that the Lua extension is de facto dead as far as I know, and I've never seen or heard of any other actual, existing extensions in the same role.). I think that the current WONTFIX is a perfect solution fallacy. The sysadmins ought to implement StringFunctions as a temporary workaround, perhaps with a strong admonition to only use it within Category:String manipulation templates (i.e. the existing templates would be gutted and replaced with StringFunctions one-liners). That way, the effects on the template landscape would be small and limited to a performance boost. So if the former solution ever does get off the ground, it'll still be possible to implement it, without significant difficulty compared to a world without StringFunctions.

So to recap, here's what I think the sysadmins should do:
 * 1) REOPEN and FIX 6455 (enable StringFunctions).
 * 2) Place a note on-wiki stating that StringFunctions should only be used in Category:String manipulation templates, and that other uses should write a wrapper template.  This rule would be community-enforced, but enforced strictly.  If the developers are nervous about this, they could modify the extension to only work within a specified (in LocalSettings.php) category, but that's probably overkill.
 * 3) Someone, likely the community, would gut the templates in that category and replace them with SF one-liners.
 * 4) Eventually implement some alternative to parser functions, ParserFunctions, and/or StringFunctions (this will, if past performance is any indication, take years (it already has, actually, and we've nothing I'm aware of to show for it)).
 * 5) Someone, likely the community, would replace all the SF one-liners in said category with the new alternative.

It seems, to me, that this solves all the issues people were complaining about with the SF bug. But I think that the politics surrounding this are probably too thick for anything to be done, making the above post rather fantastical. Oh well. I needed to get that off my chest. If anyone's still listening, I could do with something more idealistic than real life right about now. -- N Y  Kevin  @323, i.e. 06:44, 31 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Having just read (due to general interest in the subject, and the prompt of this post) most of 6455, I am concerned that the StringFunctions (although at face value, attractive), are not up to the job they would be expected to do. I reckon we'd be better off not wasting time beating that dead horse, and ask the devs to concentrate fully on a simple WikiSscript replacement for template hotch-potchness. I see a kinda JSONesque UI calling on Node.js via a PHP API. But then I just said that 'cause I thought it sounded cool Face-wink.svg  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  07:15, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, there were some recent indications on the wikitech mailing list that the developers will be working soon on creating an onwiki scripting engine (using Lua, sever-side JavaScript, or some other language). That would be a much better alternative than StringFunctions. Ucucha (talk) 08:10, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * This has been said for years, in combination with the threat of the current hack-templates being diabled. Frankly, I'm tired of waiting. If there is going to be a new template language, it is probably going to debut in MediaWiki 2.0; who knows how long that will take... — Edokter  ( talk ) — 14:13, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Here is the recent discussion on wikitech-l. Anomie⚔ 16:52, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I can't help but notice that, in that (wikitech-l) thread at least, we still don't know what we're actually talking about. Sure, there will probably be some sort of server-side scripting, but we don't even know what language it will use; I had also heard that the developers wanted to create solutions on a case-by-case basis (e.g. "This template needs string manipulation to do X?  OK, here's a parser function that does X.") -- but that will obviously take a long time and AFAIK isn't off the ground yet.  Unless a lot has changed since December, I think the need for some interim solution is obvious; given that such a solution exists and has been tested, this seems like a no-brainer to me.  -- N  Y  Kevin  @935, i.e. 21:25, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Category page UI

 * A random example page: Category:Plasma_physics
 * I compared it's looks with those of this article: List of plasma (physics) articles

When looking at Category pages I cant help but notice the page clutter caused by the [+] the [x] and the [-] Until today I never bothered to click on any of those [+] "icons", today I clicked on them wondering what justifies having something this ugly on the page. It appears to fold out sub categories which is amazingly useful. I had the below ideas for the page design. Please vote and comment. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 04:48, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed: make category UI consistent with site UI
I propose the following changes be made to the category UI to make them match the menu on the left of every wikipedia page.


 * The [+] text (folded in) is replaced with the ▶ right pointing triangle
 * The [-] text (folded out) is replaced with the ▼ down pointing triangle
 * The • preceding each list item should be removed.
 * The [x] text (no function) is replaced with a dot or a blank space.


 * Support: UI should be consistent. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 04:48, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Support (even though this isn't the proposals page). The present x's and minus's are ugly. It is also a very easy fix. It looks like just three classes,  , and   would need to be changed.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  09:07, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The classes aren't much help: it's not normally possible to change page content from CSS. However the change would be fairly straightforward:
 * change MediaWiki:Categorytree-expand-bullet to ▶ or similar
 * change MediaWiki:Categorytree-collapse-bullet to ▼ or similar
 * change MediaWiki:Categorytree-empty-bullet to a space of the same width as the arrows
 * (These changes may conflict with the CategoryTree script, and would have to be tested.) As far as removing the bullet before each entry goes, this could be done using global CSS. However, the category-tree only works when JavaScript is enabled, so it would have to be done using global JavaScript:
 * Accessibility issues may still exist. — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:52, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Support. I'll start working on some CSS. I'm sure changing the messages doesn't mess with the script; living in MediaWiki space means they are ment to be changed. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 14:08, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Suggested look:
 * Suggested look:

▼ Expanded category ► Collapsed category ► Childless category
 * Blue denotes that it is clickable to expand. Comments? — Edokter  ( talk ) — 15:02, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Yup. Since the arrows would be in the page content, it would not be obvious they are clicky arrows without them being link colour. I like the light grey for empty too.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  17:58, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I made it live, for testing. Will revert is there are any issues. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 18:06, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Looks good, but it isn't setting on the children of expanded lists.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  18:12, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I noticed; they still show the old messages. I sure hope those aren't hardcoded in the Category Tree extension. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 18:14, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Something to do with the governance of ?  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  18:16, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah, apparently they are hardcoded. Clicking the arrow calls a script that delivers (something like) this -

<pre style="overflow:auto;">  <span class="CategoryTreeToggle" style="display: none;" onclick="if (this.href) this.href='javascript:void(0)'; categoryTreeExpandNode('Intergalactic_media',{"mode":0,"hideprefix":20,"showcount":true,"namespaces":false},this);" title="##LOAD##">[+]  <a class="CategoryTreeLabel  CategoryTreeLabelNs14 CategoryTreeLabelCategory" href="/wiki/Category:Intergalactic_media">Intergalactic media</a>‎ <span title="contains 1 subcategory, 8 pages, and 0 files" dir="ltr">(1 C, 8 P)                    <span class="CategoryTreeToggle" style="display: none;" onclick="if (this.href) this.href='javascript:void(0)'; categoryTreeExpandNode('Interstellar_media',{"mode":0,"hideprefix":20,"showcount":true,"namespaces":false},this);" title="##LOAD##">[+]  <a class="CategoryTreeLabel  CategoryTreeLabelNs14 CategoryTreeLabelCategory" href="/wiki/Category:Interstellar_media">Interstellar media</a>‎ <span title="contains 1 subcategory, 19 pages, and 0 files" dir="ltr">(1 C, 19 P)                    <span class="CategoryTreeToggle" style="display: none;" onclick="if (this.href) this.href='javascript:void(0)'; categoryTreeExpandNode('Nebulae',{"mode":0,"hideprefix":20,"showcount":true,"namespaces":false},this);" title="##LOAD##">[+]  <a class="CategoryTreeLabel  CategoryTreeLabelNs14 CategoryTreeLabelCategory" href="/wiki/Category:Nebulae">Nebulae</a>‎ <span title="contains 19 subcategories, 23 pages, and 0 files" dir="ltr">(19 C, 23 P)                    [×] <a class="CategoryTreeLabel  CategoryTreeLabelNs14 CategoryTreeLabelCategory" href="/wiki/Category:Space_physics">Space physics</a>‎ <span title="contains 0 subcategories, 5 pages, and 0 files" dir="ltr">(5 P)
 * I have to go out. Good luck.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  18:30, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I doubt it. The node does switch when collapsing. In other word, nodes with  have the triangles, those with   have to old old text showing. I think it's a caching issue. —  Edokter  ( talk ) — 18:36, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * It seems to be a quirk on that Category alone (and it's subcats). Other categories work fine, see Category:Glass art. The output you posted suggests it is a caching issue. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 18:50, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Can't remember template name for undenting


 * I really am going out but haven't got there yet. Nice job Edokter. You're probably right about the caching. I wonder if the script (server side) is delivering what it has calculated is correct, using a memorized version of the bullets?  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  19:00, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Upon some further snooping, I sometimes get mixed results on one page. Your code shows some unsubstituted variables, which means the extension or javascript fails to load the system message and shows the default instead. If this is persistent, we may have to revert, or get the script fixed ASAP. (BTW. It's outdent or od.) — Edokter  ( talk ) — 19:09, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Good snooping! If there's a default, there must be a reason for it. I can assume that it is in case of (as you say) scripts not loading or parsing correctly (or something technical like that (lots on my mind right now (might have to move house))), so the script's default would need to be changed to get around possible use of it showing the old toggles. Can you do that? Or do we need a friendly dev?  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  20:18, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * P.S. Thanks for the reminder of od.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i> 
 * Quirk: Go to Category:Glass art and click:
 * Glass architecture
 * Greenhouses
 * Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
 * Note that "Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew" has a comma, unlike all other node titles. No other expansions on that page exhibit the old bullets; just that and its children (until used. then the arrows show for active(ated) nodes). There are a couple with full stops (dots) in their titles, and at least one with an ampersand. So, my immediate thought that there might be an encoding issue gets squashed (I think).  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  20:40, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I can find no relation with full stops; I see some without them fail as well. I suspect the fault is in ext.categoryTree.js (line 106):


 * I don't know rexeg though, so someone needs to do a thorough lookover on this file. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 22:44, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The first regex means "replace all leading and trailing whitespace characters with nothing (i.e. "remove them")" and is properly written. the second means "replace all instances of  with the result of the call for  " (the "g" means "globally"), and is properly written. I'll do more looking into the script, but doubt there is anything wrong with it. nice to see no default values there though. Could still be a matter of waiting for all the servers to recache their copies of the scripts and files in play.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  23:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I see more and more pluses and minuses disappear, so luckily, it must be caching related. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 10:50, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Sweet! Best wishes for the coming year E.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  11:01, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Plus and minus icons were used for two very different cat-related functions (at least): hiding or displaying, or adding and subtracting in Hot Cat.   These functions are so distinct that I think it's much better to have removed their common use, and possible confusion. Good work. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 22:59, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed: inclusion of articles in category sub menu
Rather than folding out just the sub categories it would be awesome to also list the articles belonging to the sub category.

▼ category:Electric arcs
 * ▼ category:Arc welding
 * Arc welding


 * approve: it makes sense to have the complete tree or non at all. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 04:48, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose Way too much information per page. Some of those lists would be massive.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  09:07, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I was playing with the idea to provide a user selected sample. I'm not claiming it is a good idea but human intervention is the best way to make boring lists into tasty content. A sample could be as small as 3 items and a moar > link. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 09:19, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Approve. Our DAG categorisation structure implies by definition that a page in a subcategory is also a full member of the higher category. Opening the subcategory should be about detailing only, think zooming in. It should not be required to get the complete overview (as it is now), and then again it still does not give the complete overview. The nonexistent click "show all pages in this category" is a huge deficit, because it is the primary query, and so from the theory. It is an --the-- intuitive User question (reader not editor!) in categories. (In other words: the DAG theory and the Users expectations are two sides of the same coin). The problem of long lists should be solved subjected to the solution, it should not prohibit such a solution. -DePiep (talk) 18:44, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment: Using the concept and word "Tree" to describe the DAG Category system is incorrect, and will lead to wrong understanding of the DAG (or no understanding at all). Much better and not that difficult is the "family" concept. E.g.: a category can have multiple parents (agree, more than two is stretching it). Few tree-derived words can be used: "root" (for Adam & Eve, Category:Contents) and "leaf" (childless category). -DePiep (talk) 18:58, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Note that the category graph is not acyclic. Consider for example Category:Black Sea → Category:Black Sea countries → Category:Romania → Category:Geography of Romania → Category:Landforms of Romania → Category:Black Sea. And while one view is that members of a subcategory should also be full members of the parent category, in actual practice it's often just that the members of the subcategory "have something vaguely to do with" the parent category. Anomie⚔ 16:51, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Illegal Cat structure then, this example. CAT is a DAG. -DePiep (talk) 20:57, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Q: should this proposal be moved to a more suitable page? I think it is worth promoting. -DePiep (talk) 16:32, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * DAG is understandable for those with the background. The experts are right here on this page. Any statements elsewhere are going to bounce back here anyway. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 16:54, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * "DAG is understood by those who know"? Sure. Now will you tell our Readers where that button is, and I'll tell Wikimedia about . -DePiep (talk) 20:50, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed: suppress duplicate entries in sub categories
It should also suppress circular sub categories. Currently it does this:

[−] Electric arcs‎ (6 C, 15 P)
 * [×] Arc welding‎ (19 P)
 * [−] Electrical breakdown‎ (3 C, 34 P)
 * [−] Electrical discharge in gases‎ (2 C, 6 P)
 * [−] Electric arcs‎ (6 C, 15 P)


 * approve: it clutters. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 04:48, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * No, this would create an inaccurate category tree. — This, that, and the other (talk) 07:13, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * How would it be inaccurate? Trees don't grow in circles. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 08:41, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Oppose If it's there I want to see it.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  09:07, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Ok, agreed. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 09:17, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed: change page counter to small font
I think it would look more pretty if the page counts would be in a font.


 * Electric arcs‎ (6 C, 15 P)


 * approve: the information isn't so important. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 04:48, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Why? — This, that, and the other (talk) 07:14, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Because it would look cleaner. The information isn't very interesting but it does consume a lot text space. Gazing over the page I see nothing but page numbers. It could be that I'm missing the point, are they really that useful? 84.106.26.81 (talk) 08:35, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Oppose accomplishes too little to be worth doing. The information is important enough to remain full size.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  09:07, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Ok, if you say it is important it should stay. This proposal seems done for. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 09:16, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed: empty space reduction category pages
Lastly, I think the content on the category pages starts way to far down the page. For starters I think the info boxes (for example on Category:Plasma physics) can go side by side like so:


 * approve 84.106.26.81 (talk) 04:48, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment The category pages are laid out in the same way as normal pages, except for three additional sections which by default appear at the bottom, in the following order: (i) sub-categories; (ii) pages in the category; (iii) media in the category. The layout of any items which appear before the sub-categories is not controlled in any special way; and if you were to copy the contents of to the WP:SANDBOX and save it, you would see  - the commons category box, and the portal box (which BTW are not infoboxes) in exactly the same places as on the category page. Therefore to reorganise the way that the customisable content of the category page is laid out would mean editing the category page itself in the same way that you did above. Not every category page has a portal box, and not every category page has a commons category box. Many have neither, some have other stuff as well as or instead of those. You could propose that the behaviour of those two boxes be changed, but that would impact thousands of pages. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:17, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't know how hard it is to add selective behaviour to the portal boxes if it is easy it would sure clean up the pages. Ideally navigation pages have no scrollbar.


 * Changing it by hand shouldn't be to hard. I've changed this one to see if anyone objects: Category:Physics. It looks ok to me. All together it looks much better than a few days ago. :) 84.106.26.81 (talk) 06:11, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I added one more tweak to Category:Physics. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 06:20, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know what resolution you're viewing at, but for me at 1280x1024, any category with sufficient members to spill onto a second page (the threshold is presently 200+) will always show a scrollbar on the category page - even when the page content above the sub-categories is at an absolute minimum, as with . -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:24, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Category Table alignment bug
I'm no html table wizard but when I expand any item in the middle column here: Category:Plasma_physics the whole menu moves to the left. This is nice when the list is folded out so far it doesn't fit the data cell anymore but until that happens it should stay in place for good collapse/expand UI behaviour. The sidebar menu doesn't change the size of the sidebar either when you collapse or expand the ▶ toolbox. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 09:12, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * This is normal. The table cells have no sizes harcoded; it is the browser that determins how much space each column gets. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 16:52, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty sure UI buttons shouldn't be moving around the screen randomly. With Opera I just changed the into <td width="33%" align="left"> for the 3 table cells, especially the cell alignment fixes the jumping. If anyone knows where to find the code it shouldn't be hard to do. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 06:24, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The code is in CategoryViewer.php. I'll submit a patch to even out the cell widths. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 15:25, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * 33514. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 15:44, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't the cell width be in CSS? --Izno (talk) 21:49, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Removing buttons from edit toolbar
Currently, my edit toolbar looks like this. What do I need to add to my monobook.js to remove all the buttons except the #R and buttons? Thanks! Goodvac (talk) 20:02, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You may be able to do it with css. If each button has either a unique class (or set thereof) or better an id, you can state  and all done. Faster acting and easier to write. Use your browser inspection window to examine each button element, and if you like, post the details here, or better still, try it yourself. css is very forgiving, and previewing the css page shows the effect on the preview (including in this case the open edit window and buttons (or lack thereof!)).  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  20:17, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I successfully removed the first 11 buttons because they have IDs. Then the rest have only titles: "Strike" "Line break" "Superscript" "Subscript" "Small" "Insert hidden Comment" "Insert a picture gallery" "Insert block of quoted text" "Insert a table" "Insert a reference". What is the appropriate formatting to block these? Thank you! Goodvac (talk) 20:43, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * This is possible using CSS 3, but I'm not sure what browsers that this is supported in. --Izno (talk) 07:32, 3 January 2012 (UTC)


 * is CSS2 and supported even in IE7. The following code can be used to hide all standard edit buttons and then only show "#R". — AlexSm 18:03, 3 January 2012 (UTC)


 * It worked. Thanks! Goodvac (talk) 18:56, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Random choice not working
It looks as if is not varying its choice at present. Noticed with Portal:Disability, checked with Portal:Utah and Portal:Western Australia. --Mirokado (talk) 13:52, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * All three are working for me. When I click "Show new selections" or "Purge server cache" I see different content. -- John of Reading (talk) 14:17, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I was refreshing the browser cache but forgot about the server cache. CKI (chair-keyboard interface) problem! --Mirokado (talk) 14:26, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Fund raiser redirect
I was just in Commons, on This Page, ignoring the fund raiser banner at the top. While scrolling through the images, my browser suddenly redirected to This Redirect Page. Since when does Wikimedia start acting like a virus that redirects? It also does something else if I go to a select image. There is a white horizontal bar that runs once down the image, as if something is scanning the image. Once scanned, the fund raiser banner appears at the top of the page. It would seem Wikimedia is being a little more intrusive than it ought to be. Maile66 (talk) 14:16, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * It was probably your browser and not Wikimedia. If you (deliberately or accidentally) double click an image you are viewing then the first click goes to the image page and the second click may hit a banner at top of that page. There is also at least one browser add-on (don't remember the name) which automatically tries to bypass "intermediate" image pages like http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seminole_Canyon_Park2.JPG and go straight to the pure image, for example http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Seminole_Canyon_Park2.JPG/800px-Seminole_Canyon_Park2.JPG. Even if you only single-clicked, such an addon might be confused by the banner and pick an address from the banner instead of the real image. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:32, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Maybe. If you look at the details of the URL on that redirect, it would seem questionable. Your being a sysop, I'll take your word that you are more knowledgeable about this than I am. Maile66 (talk) 14:36, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

How to use Watchlist sorter
Hi,

I installed User:Misza13/watchlistSorter.js as suggested by today's "Tip of the Day". But I don't see how to use it. What to I do to use it? (I have bypassed my browser's cache, Firefox 8.01). Thanks, MathewTownsend (talk) 18:06, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * This script was designed to work only if you have unchecked "Enhanced recent changes" in preferences (might want to fix that tip of the day). With that condition the script runs automatially on Special:Watchlist and it seems to work. — AlexSm 18:45, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * If you use "еnhanced" RC/Watchlist and still want to sort watchlist items you could try my script User:Js/watchlist that has ↑↓ sorting button. — AlexSm 18:45, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * ok, it works. Thanks. (I guess there's no way not to have a confusing watchlist, except to keep it very, very short.) I didn't know about the "Enhanced recent changes" but it looks too confusing to be of use. Is there any way to set up more than one "watchlist"? (So that no one watchlist is too long to follow?)  MathewTownsend (talk) 19:57, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * No, otherwise we'd all have extra ones! This is one of those perennials that looks like a never-never. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:50, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * There is a near equivalent, though: link the pages you want to watch on a page in your userspace and use Special:Recentchangeslinked as a watchlist. Ucucha (talk) 21:09, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hey, thanks! MathewTownsend (talk) 22:04, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Call for Participation: Looking to Interview Bot Community Members
Greetings-

I am a graduate student at the University of Oregon, currently collecting data for my dissertation on Wikipedia editors who create and use bots and assisted editing tools, as well as editors involved in the initial and/or ongoing creation of bot policies on Wikipedia. I am looking for members of the bot community to interview regarding their experiences on Wikipedia and opinions of technical and governance issues on the site. The interview can be conducted in a manner convenient for you (via an IM client, email, Skype, telephone, or even in-person) and should take approximately 30-45 minutes.

Your participation will help online communication researchers like me to better understand the collaborations, challenges, and purposeful work of Wikipedia editors and programmers like you.

My dissertation project has been approved both by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the University of Oregon, and by the Research Committee at the Wikimedia Foundation. You can find more information on the project on my meta page.

If you would like to participate or have any questions, please contact me directly [mailto:livingst@uoregon.edu via email] or by leaving a message on my talk page. Thank you in advance for your interest.

Randall Livingstone

UOJComm (talk) 04:49, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Hello everyone. I am still looking for users from the bot community to interview regarding their experiences on the site.  If you are interested, please leave a message on my talk page or email me.  Thank you to those who have already participated!  Randall  UOJComm (talk) 23:11, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Log in / create account 2
This thread was created as a continuation of the earlier thread "Log in / create account". After a simple rename, the old username should no longer exist. However, when I get renamed, I can still log in using the old account (and the same password). What is going on? Double sharp (talk) 07:39, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Purely a guess; it's possible there is a temporary overlapping of the two accounts existence.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  07:44, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * But the global account still exists. So, you can log in, and when you did a new local account was automatically created. Ruslik_ Zero 09:54, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Now I understand! But shouldn't the account be globally renamed? Double sharp (talk) 11:23, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not currently possible to do that, I believe; you'll have to get all accounts on individual wikis renamed. Ucucha (talk) 08:18, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I can simply lock your old global account, so no new local accounts will created. Ruslik_ Zero 15:27, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think that would really be necessary because I never log in to my old account anymore, so it doesn't really matter. Double sharp (talk) 04:51, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Lookahead somehow diverted
Note that when you "look-ahead" to Lord's Prayer, you get a pov version/summary. If you link to Lord's Prayer or Lord's Prayer you get quite another, the "real" npov article. Someone with a "message" has somehow hijacked the lookahead feature. I don't quite understand how this happened. Student7 (talk) 16:05, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * By "lookahead", do you mean the WP:POPUPS gadget? Two of your links are the same; I think the issue your seeing most likely has to do with caching. Ucucha (talk) 16:12, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Yes. The "lookahead" feature I am referring to, is the one where you roll the mouse over the link and get a pop-up. It reads "The context of the prayer in Matthew is a discourse deploring people who pray ostentatiously: Jesus instructs his listeners to pray in the manner prescribed in the prayer. Taking into account its structure, flow of subject matter and emphases, one interpretation of the Lord's Prayer is as a guideline on how to pray rather than something to be learned and repeated by rote." The article lead is quite different. Student7 (talk) 16:20, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That is, in fact, the second paragraph of the lead. Ucucha (talk) 16:27, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You are right. But why the second paragraph and not the first paragraph which would certainly be the most descriptive in any article... or should be? Student7 (talk) 23:17, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Popups tries to skip over infoboxes and other templates to show the first paragraph, but it doesn't always get it right. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 23:35, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * In this case, the lead is sandwiched between templates and a section of non-standard formatting (i.e. the prayer itself). It's likely that this causes the template to skip ahead. I tried adding a blank line to fix it, to no avail - maybe one of the popups experts might have better luck? UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 16:37, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Should be fixed now. I used a proper hat note template. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 21:52, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That did it. Good work! UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 21:54, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks to Edokter and everyone else who clarified the problem. Student7 (talk) 18:42, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Categories - wrapping
I guess this is a tech question and may be in the wrong place but can long categories be made to start on line n and wrap onto the next line? Kittybrewster <font color="0000FF">&#9742;  02:46, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * They used to do exactly that. However, with the release of MediaWiki 1.18 (4-5 October 2011), the display of the category box was substantially changed, and no longer wraps. There was much debate about it on this page at the time, and as I recall, the main discussion and a workaround are at Village pump (technical)/Archive 94. -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:10, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Could use some input...
There's a deletion discussion at MfD that could use some input from a developer or other tech-savy person. See Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/ MediaWiki:Aboutsite/ko. Thanks. --Fyre2387 (talk • contribs) 22:39, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

text not being rendered
on Talk:Marvel_Cinematic_Universe there's a weird issue with text not being rendered there's even places where sigs are being left as ~'s Mark (talk) 03:31, 6 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Fixed in . There was an open . Such things are usually easy to track down by looking at the source near the last rendered text. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:56, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Scrolling references section Java workaround
I don't know if it has come up before, I can't find it in the archives, but I didn't search ALL of them, so please excuse me if this sort of thing has been suggested before. Can a history page be transcluded ?

These sort of pages archive fast, so please place (or echo) comments there if it is not TOO much trouble. Penyulap  talk 10:54, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The workaround is now in use in the article, with help from ZxxZxxZ who found solutions to copyright issues identified by Sparthorse as well as help with my original coding. This workaround helps make articles with large reference sections more readable by using a scrollable section, but allows a simple mirror without the box for users who are unable to use Java, or other issues as per scroll. Penyulap   talk 14:24, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, this has been suggested multiple times in multiple places, most often at Reflist. See Template:Reflist and a link to Help:Reference display customization which shows how to add scrolling with CSS. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 15:23, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I've reverted the mess on International Space Station and deleted the pseudo-article you created. When playing around with stuff like that, do it in a sandbox under your userspace instead of messing with live articles. As for your proposal, "better looking" is a matter of opinion (I for one disagree), "easier to navigate" is false (do you really mean "easier to ignore for people who don't care about references"?), and all references to "java" are completely incorrect. That leaves no compelling reason to bother with this mess. Anomie⚔ 17:59, 2 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Anomie, I took your ideas into account and reverted your revision, at the same time merging Fred's new code. I don't actually mean 'easier to ignore'. References to Java may well be incorrect as I'm not THAT technically skilled, and frankly do not wish to be, as technology changes rapidly rendering too much specialized knowledge obsolete. I do however interest myself sufficiently to 'do it myself' without relying on others. The original implementations are crude but workable, but many other editors are seeing the obvious idea and it's improvements and are striving to assist.


 * I flatly refuse to labor forever under the assumption that MOS:SCROLL is everlasting gospel. A more careful scan of that section reveals there is a difference between collapsible boxes and scrolling text. It points out a technical concern which is being dealt with. I find Gadget850 extremely helpful with links to other efforts to address these problems. It is blatantly obvious that MOS:SCROLL is outdated given the wide variety of workarounds to display of references. Time MOS:SCROLL was cleaned out and updated. Penyulap   talk 01:27, 3 January 2012 (UTC)


 * One elementary step in fixing the Scroll problem is identifying the specific problem, on the Mos page so far, nobody seems to know, I can't find specific information, any help in this regard would be appreciated. So far, there is a problem with some browsers that makes display of the scrolling sections difficult. That's about as far as it goes. Penyulap   talk 04:16, 3 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree with Anomie that implementing a scroll box for references must not be done unless WP:SCROLL is changed; further, I'm sure that a link to a non-scrolling version of an article in userspace violates several guidelines and principles. How are the two articles to be kept synchronised? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:06, 3 January 2012 (UTC)


 * (inserted text) Re "I'm sure that a link to a non-scrolling version of an article in userspace violates several guidelines and principles." -I am also sure too, that's why I never implemented it there in the first place. Someone thought a deletion template and deleted article was a better idea. I never saw, and still haven't seen, any evidence they read the rationale for such a move in the first place. The epic fail on GF makes this place untenable. Want a fix ? D.I.Y. I give up. and when you D.I.Y. you'll probably understand why. Penyulap   talk 12:46, 3 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Aesthetics aside, there is WP:ACCESS to consider as well: but if it is believed that MOS:SCROLL is outdated, it should be discussed at WT:MOS, not here (although a short note at WP:VP/P directing people to the WT:MOS thread would certainly be in order), and certainly not by deliberately making one article inconsistent with the rest of Wikipedia. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:14, 3 January 2012 (UTC)


 * WP:ACCESS is not simply for consideration, it is the point of the exercise, addressing the creep of scrollable references in long articles to improve readability. This has nothing to do with devastation caused by a rogue article. It provides a working example of a possible solution which requires no programming thinktank or workgroup. The possible solution was finished, sandboxed, implemented, polished up by other editors, killed in what I'd consider to be a drive by. Discussion at WT:MOS is (or was) concurrent (or was meant to be) to provide an illustration. Even the edit links in the new article pointed to the old, except for two, which was also addressed. This idea was not killed by poor implementation or lack of proper discussion, it's been killed by abandonment of GF and negligence to due regard for process. Clearly it's easier to just delete than it is to read and comment (before, during, or after). I regret having written it or having wasted my time making such an elegant fix, because it can be copied and examined now, so it's too late to rescind. I'll fully support anyone who wants to collapse this text and let it archive, I'd be glad to hear no more about this matter. Penyulap   talk 12:46, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry you feel there was a lack of WP:AGF. But on the other hand, you should understand that it is not considered appropriate to experiment in this way on live articles. It has been suggested to you several times that you copy (with attribution, of course) the article into a sandbox in your userspace in order to demonstrate your proposal. Anomie⚔ 15:03, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The workaround was sandboxed first, when it was found to be in working order, doing as it was meant to do, it was inserted. I'd appreciate a few diffs suggesting otherwise. The only concern was attribution, once that was addressed, it still didn't stop the deletion of the pages concerned, I'd like to know why, taking into account my comment at MOS pointing out the concerns that the workaround does address.  Penyulap   talk 16:02, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I see you still misunderstand. The advice that you sandbox it instead of trying it on live articles wasn't to iron out technical issues, it was so that this controversial proposal wouldn't be affecting live articles until after it was discussed. As for your "workaround" addressing the concerns, I find your workaround inadequate to the purpose. There shouldn't be need to make everyone else work around your personal preference to ignore reference sections. Anomie⚔ 17:47, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

A scrolling reference box should not be the default due to accesability issues. However, I could create a gadget that will let users have the option to show references in a scroll box if there is sufficient demand. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 16:24, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I quite object to being told what my as yet unstated personal preferences are. I'd ask that you expand on the comment "inadequate", indeed I would like to hear any proposal that indicates you AGF that the problems can actually be addressed at all. Because if this is simply a matter of belief that such issues are impossible to address, discussion is moot. As per the technical issues you've brought up at wp:mos every one has been addressed, and you've made no response to that.


 * Edokter, I would very much like to see such a code, or hear your ideas for it. The scrolling reference boxes are indeed in demand based upon their creep across wiki, and their stability in the articles. They aren't removed by new editors, and they are not removed by experienced editors either. IMHO it takes a careful misinterpretation of the last sentence in the current wp:scoll guide to come up with the idea that it's incorrect, and it is only that way that they are removed in my experience. I haven't had anyone unfamiliar with wp:scroll complain about them at all. I'd like to know who has a browser that can't display the scrolling section and I'd suggest that the readers here are all using browsers that can as I've had no answer to the contrary in response to my questions about that. The scroll box appears instead a very popular and stable addition to the article, I didn't code it myself, someone else coded it. Certainly they had a reason. I'm not getting any GF as you can see, I'm just getting Bureaucratic zealously for misinterpretation of wp:scroll. I'd sooner discuss the possible solutions and propose improvements to the wp:scroll than ...well, not sure how to describe it. Let's fix this issue, propose solutions at the very least. I'd rather put it in and obtain data from new readers because as I said, there has been no complaint from new readers. If there was a workaround which kept everyone happy, it would address the reasons for the box being coded and inserted initially, it's creep across wiki, and it's overwhelming stability.


 * Please, point me to one comment from one new user that suggests the box is a problem, because I'd hate to think there is simply no objection beyond Bureaucracy, I'd like at least one comment so I can go looking for positive comments and at least have a statistical analysis. Penyulap   talk 01:58, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Please understand that the current consensus has been formed from years of collaboration between long-term and shorter-term editors alike. You can't expect a new user to give an informed opinion, as they simply lack the knowledge of the reasons behind the current guidelines. In fact, much of the current guidelines stem from new-user complaints with accesibility issues. I haven't seen any article with a scrolling references box yet (on the English wikipedia), but I would remove them. Accesibility has priority, and in such a way users should not have to perform extra actions to get around any issues (like clicking a link to remove the scrollbox).
 * Now, a scrollbox-for-references gadget is easy enough to do, but only if there is demand to do so (in order to prevent a wild-growth of gadgets). And I must hear that from multiple users; there is no such thing as a 'silent majority'. That is how consensus is built. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 02:34, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I just want to state for the record that my brief involvement here, was purely an attempt to make an ugly scrollbox, slightly less ugly. I failed due to some bizarre formatting malfunction (as I saw it) that twisted the references up making them hard to read. I did preview, but didn't notice any issues, so saved. I should have either left it alone for more experienced editors to deal with, or removed the scrolling div, but didn't. My bad. Sometimes I rush at things, when I ought not.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  06:10, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Here, put:


 * in your common.css, and all reflists will be contained in scrolling divs.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  06:57, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Here's a revised (base) version that will not show a horizontal scrollbar and does not affect printing. Borders and background are optional. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 13:25, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Edokter, while I'd like to be able to find the decisions that lead to the mos, as searching archives doesn't always help, I think it would raise more problems than it'd solve. Primarily Bureaucratic thinking would be more stubborn as a result.

Now a year is a long time in changing technology, the march of the tablets and mobile phones, and so forth. Dialup is still very popular despite widespread views to the contrary. Accessibility IS my NUMBER ONE priority, so don't anyone here start throwing that at me. Now what I am getting at is there are different categories of articles and every kind has it's own particular flavor of mos. (Sorry I have to prefix some of this with mos discussion in the tech section)

The ISS is not a latest release DVD and it's not polyphase AC distribution or a list of moths, thank goodness. What suits one kind of article won't suit every article in existence. But I would like to know, and please point me in the direction of, the data that shows accessibility is a serious problem in this case. There are reasons why the External links section of this article, even after a clean-up, will still become overburdened because of the nature of the ISS project. In terms of management, the ISS is in it's own massive integration category, there is nothing simple about it in any way. Not everything can be split off into sub articles, there is still too much that can't go anywhere else eventually. The external links of this article, when completed (maybe 3-5times the size), even with the most aggressive cutting (double the present at least), will still be more important to most readers than the reference section. It's rather inevitable and will need addressing at some point. Just cutting at links and throwing out the guts of the whole thing on the premise that no solution will ever exist to scrolling just doesn't work for me. I want it understood I am not trying to sideline the reference section, but I can't see what can be done, except maybe putting it after the links and cats. I think a gadget would be appropriate in this kind of article, of which, well, there aren't too many (but then again, maybe there are others).

Fred, thank you for the useful code, but I am not concerned how the article reads for advanced users or people who have customized, I'm actually after a default behavior of the article that makes the external links harder to overlook for the first time reader, I'm worried they'll be missed entirely. It's separated by a growing ocean of refs. Is it easy / possible to use a button in the article that opens the refs out into the standard view from the scrolling box ? Just curious about that is all, as I can't see I have the stamina required to get the most stubborn to use gf and examine the problem with the idea that a solution is actually possible in this universe. Penyulap  talk 16:42, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I think what you're talking about there, is something Wikipedia has to face as an inevitable future. Articles will grow as the subjects are more fully understood and studied. Sure, some subjects are limited. We now know just about everything there is to know about Water, so it is unlikely that much more could be said about it. However, take an historical subject like World War II, and even though it is long since past, information about it is constantly being created. Even if there is an eventual upper limit to some articles, we must assume that a great many subjects will be almost infinitely expanded, as our knowledge expands. We know more each day about everything in the universe, and each discovery tends to lead to new understanding of old subjects. With this in mind, Wikipedia will almost certainly (at some point soon) have to start thinking about what constitutes an acceptable upper limit to page size. We can now create sub pages as basically separate articles, but not true sub pages. The immediate issues you are concerned about here, would be solved by MediaWiki allowing that an article could be created as a set of pages. A book of sorts. It would have its blurb, index, main pages, appendix, and addendum (where one would find the references and see-also's etc.). The idea that all the information about a subject must be categorised as either being specific enough to warrant its own page, or not (and thus crammed into ever expanding and loose pages), is going to get out of hand. maybe not so soon we should start worrying, but soon enough that we should start planning. However, building half cocked custom solutions for one page out of nearly 4 million, is simply not the way to go about solving the problem. Until the software is redeveloped to allow clean multi-paged articles, we just have to do the best with what we have. If info in the article cannot be considered notable enough (on its own) to have its own page, maybe consider that it's not notable enough to take up space on an already enormous page. Then later (either when or if), we can create clean multi-page articles, re-include the fluff.


 * This spewage was bought to you by a lack of tea and a need for the bathroom!  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  17:49, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, now that you know I appreciate your help and respect you, please allow me to bb and speak with candor. That idea is such a load of crap. I'm surprised it came from you. There is nothing new under the Sun ? we know all there is to know ? where have I heard that before. The article isn't finished, the style is not finished, Wikipedia's not finished, (although I can see and describe it's marginalization in great detail) it's all moving and changing. (I could be 'finished' though, if people take too much offense at my candor). I do like great detail to be given to each persons take on the situation, it's the people who delete without a word of explanation, on what IMO turns out to be a misinterpretation, if not downright ignoring a sentence of scroll.

Well, my position is this. The top of the MOS page says it will have occasional exceptions and I say to the bureaucratic thinkers show me an exception you'd tolerate in GF. There is no GF, and there is no exception they'd tolerate. Being on WP a while now, it no longer astounds me to see people stuff so much fuss and drama into such an incredibly small idea. My concern, well, you've brushed on how to deal with large articles, but I suggest this is not so much a large article it's a complex subject. A limit to size will turn the page into an index. The book idea, yes a good solution to be sure, that would address the issue, but who can push that uphill against the mass of status quo ? The MOS has a solution to this problem already, 'When using scrolling lists' and I was using a scrolling list, it clearly allows it. Certainly it shouldn't be used on every article, it would make a mess on many articles, but the strongest wording is not used in the mos, there is not just one exception, there is a whole sentence describing the exceptions. I'm wondering if the mos can link to a few of the exceptions to show you how to implement them with elegance. there are many ways to address the issue, and I'd like to see a few of them.

I made a proposal on the Mos page, as it certainly shouldn't be here, sorry, how did most of the mos talk end up here despite our combined efforts to the contrary ? discussion and Proposal. Penyulap  talk 03:43, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * WTH are you talking about? When did I say we knew everything? When did I say that ISS was finished? Jeeze! WP:TL;DR? Good luck.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  04:53, 6 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Sorry Fred, I think I focused on "We now know just about everything there is to know about Water," but missed the contrary point you were making. Penyulap   talk 08:40, 6 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I think TLDR connects up well with the reason the scrolling box was used, to help readers get past the pages and pages of refs, like as if on God's green earth anyone except rainman is going to sit and read the entire ref section sequentially. Then, TLDR is exactly why the scrollbox was removed, and the fix deleted, I mean who has time to take fixing these problems seriously ? I don't know what I was thinking when I tried. I still have no evidence the people who deleted it showed gf or examined it at all. I'm out too. Penyulap   talk 08:48, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Someone reported a glitch with the fundraiser messages
Someone posted the following message at WP:HD:


 * I can't access the msg from Sue Gardner at the top of my WP pages using IE. Both the "Read me" button and the "please read" message do nothing. I have tried on two PCs, with IE8 on one and IE9 on the other? I can access it with Firefox. 130.216.68.41 (talk) 01:43, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

I was going to see if I can repro it, but then I noticed that I don't have the message there myself anymore. (I had hidden it before, but there remained at least an unhide button, IIRC). Since it was about to be turned off; maybe that was a side effect of that. Maybe the OP clicked on the button a while after the page had been loaded, and it got turned off in the meantime. OTOH, that say ey tried it with more than one computer speaks against that. Anyway, I don't know if this is much to worry about, but I felt it's best to post it here so the right people know about it. &mdash; Sebastian 04:32, 4 January 2012 (UTC)


 * It also fails for me with IE9 in compatibility mode, but not in normal mode. In compatibility mode, the link goes to the url I'm currently on with '#' appended, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)# on this page. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:05, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If you click a link (or button) and all that happens is that a # gets appended to the present URL, this suggests to me that there is some faulty JavaScript on the page which is unable to generate a new URL. Perhaps the JavaScript concerned was written using some Microsoft package which assumes that everybody in the world uses the latest version of IE in full Microsoft mode. Wouldn't be the first time. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:26, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Pretty confident very few (if any) WMF developers use - or at least develop primarily in - Internet Explorer. That said, I agree that this is clearly some sort of JavaScript problem. How does one force the banner to appear? I haven't dismissed it to my knowledge. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 09:46, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't remember on which computer, but I've clicked on an X to get rid of the banner and been sent to the fundraising message. It wouldn't have been at home since I'm nearly always signed in and those messages don't appear when I am. If it was in the last two weeks it would have been some version of Internet Explorer, but before that probably Firefox as that's all I have at the one library.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 19:16, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Problem with requested moves template; proposal for new guideline
I just moved WVOC (AM) to WXBT (AM), not realizing that it was a requested move until I saw Requested moves in What links here. Now the template says it has been requested that WXBT (AM) be moved.

Of course, there should be a template in the article saying a move has been proposed. It never occurs to me to go to a talk page unless an article is tagged.<font color="Green">Vchimpanzee ·  talk  ·  contributions  · 21:52, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You may be interested in movenotice, which is currently being considered for deletion at TFD (see tag at the top of the template). — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:50, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Template:XfD close
I was wondering why we don't have bots do more to help mark pages that have survived AfD, and I realized one of the big impediments is that there is no standard way of formatting XfD closures. So I had an idea for a standardized template, with specific parameters, that can be applied to all AfD closures. It would have a field for result (keep, delete, merge, redirect, clean up, etc.) and comments. As it would be the most important part of the discussion, it would be stand out from the page. Bots could see this template, and use it to tag article talk pages, or whatever else bots like to do. I started Template:XfD close to get the basic idea down, but I have no clue what I'm doing with code and would like expert assistance. Thank you. ▫  Johnny Mr Nin ja  02:04, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Some weeks ago somebody attempted to harmonise the XfD closure templates, but the pages to which they had been applied were sufficiently different from the previous layout that some bots either screwed up the subsequent processing, or failed to recognise them at all. The template changes were soon reversed.
 * The main thing is that XfD processes vary. AFDs for example, have a separate page for each discussion, whereas CFDs have one page per day, containing one or more discussions. When closing a TFD, the goes after the section header, whereas when closing an AFD, the  goed at the very top of the page, before the header. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:20, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Watchlist
I'm looking for an easy way to copy my entire watchlist (very large) to wikitext. Want to start with a raw watchlist export (one plain-text article title per line) and end up with something like this:
 * Article 1
 * Article 2

I was wondering if regex's in WikEd would work, but I don't know if the "replace" box accepts placeholders or how to use them if it does. " " will select the first character of a line, but I can only replace that first character with " "; I don't know how to insert it—likewise with appending " ". —danhash (talk) 21:47, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Doesn't just ^ work? Like s/^/* Ucucha (talk) 22:00, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Fantastic. Both ^ and $ by themselves work. I don't quite understand the s/^/* danhash (talk) 22:09, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That's the syntax you'd use in sed or Perl. Sorry for making things more complex than necessary and good that you figured it out. Ucucha (talk) 22:17, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Special:MovePage instructions
The instructions that appear when using the Special:MovePage say:

"Using the form below will rename a page, moving all of its history to the new name. The old title will become a redirect page to the new title. Be sure to check for double or broken redirects. You are responsible for making sure that links continue to point where they are supposed to go."

but in practice User:AvicBot updates double redirects for the user. It seems like the instructions should be updated -- I don't know where the text/talk of the move instructions actually are. Nobody Ent (Gerardw) 11:25, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It's MediaWiki:Movepagetext-noredirectfixer ([//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MovePage/Adraspalle?uselang=qqx]). Ucucha (talk) 11:55, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Personally I would say "leave as is" - there are indeed bots which fix double redirects (AvicBot is not the only one), but there is always a delay in doing so, during which time page links won't work as intended, so the infrequent Wikipedia user may be confused on reaching a page which looks . It's not compulsory to clean up the double redirs, but it's courteous to do so. -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:07, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * According to the bot operator, AvicBot runs every three hours, so that'd be the longest the double redirect is in place. The cost to the reader is having to do an extra clip, whereas it's a fair amount of work for a first time editor figuring out what a "double redirect" is and how to fix them...I think software should do what software can do and humans can do what software can't.Nobody Ent (Gerardw) 03:04, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with Nobody Ent on this one --Greenmaven (talk) 03:35, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * When you move a page, you get this box. Notice the third bullet, particularly the first and third sentences: "Check what links here" gives a link to the list of any double redirects, and helpfully gives a link to a page describing what those are; the last sentence describes exactly how to fix them. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:06, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Note that current text is a default MediaWiki message and does not even have a link to Wikipedia help page since nobody bothered to do my request in February. — AlexSm 19:00, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * So still the question: what should all in the new text? Is there any proposed draft? <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> 09:28, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

403 response
About 32 hours ago, I tagged a link to http://www.tsweekly.com/outside/natural-world/cave-robber-case-closed-intrepid-forest-investigator-hunts-down-missing-lava-cave-formations.html - on Oregon High Desert Grotto - with Deadlink, as it was returning a 403 http  response. Another editor, apparently in the USA, remove the tag saying the link was working, but I'm still getting 403, as are three friends who just checked from other connections (we're all in the UK). Do we have an intermittent error, or a geographic restriction? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 01:32, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The link works for me (I'm in the US), FWIW. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 01:33, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * 403 for me in Australia just then. Same error on just http://www.tsweekly.com/ HiLo48 (talk) 01:40, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you, both. I have further reports of 403 responses for UK users; and no successful visits. How should we handle such a case, if it turns out that there is a geographical restriction (apart from applying a cluebat to the webmaster)? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 01:41, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * WP:DEADREF has information on dead links and how to repair them. If we can find an archive of the site and link to that, it should be visible all over the world. I tried searching wayback.archive.org. http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.tsweekly.com/outside/natural-world/cave-robber-case-closed-intrepid-forest-investigator-hunts-down-missing-lava-cave-formations.html locates one snapshot of the page, but alas, there is some sort of internal error and the pictures do not show. Perhaps try webcitation.org Richard-of-Earth (talk) 08:00, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm in Germany, and the page loads while I'm on a U.S. VPN, but not when I turn off the VPN. Ucucha (talk) 08:13, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I suggest that one of you contact the publisher to respond here. Here is the contact information.

Aaron Switzer 704 NW Georgia Ave. Bend, Oregon  97701

Telephone: 	541-383-0800 Fax: 	541-383-0088
 * If you want me to do it please leave a Please see on my talk page. – Allen4names 07:40, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Deployment (February)
Hi all, I would like to note that there are plans to perform deployment of mediawiki 1.19 on cluster in February, see 1.19. To avoid post deployment troubles we had during previous deployment we are setting up this site: http://deployment.wmflabs.org/ we are going to clone subset of some pages and configuration of several production wikis there, including english wikipedia, to test mediawiki before deploying it to production. The site should be fully operational in few days, for now you can of course create an account there to test various scripts or even import unlimited number of pages (for larger XML dump please step in ). In case you found any issue please use bugzilla to report it, or report it here. In case you have any questions or suggestions let us know! Thank you :) Petrb (talk) 21:11, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the notice. Now nobody can say that we weren't warned. (Although I assume you will tell us of a specific date, sooner to the rollout?) — This, that, and the other (talk) 09:18, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * User:Petrb and I are working on making the deployment deployment test site live on Monday, Jan 9. This is very much a “soft launch” since neither of us are Ops in Wikimedia athough we are working with Ops to do this. — ☠ MarkAHershberger ☢ (talk) ☣ 19:16, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Redirect templates not being rendered
The text from  templates no longer seems to be being rendered on redirect pages. Example R from alternate spelling: AK47]. Example: R from misspelling homogenous. I'm sure it used to render - I'm not imagining that am I?  Spinning Spark  14:47, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * They did use to render, but this has been changed for a while now. Ucucha (talk) 15:11, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't recall them showing on a normal page view. However, I've only been using these templates for about a year, so if it was changed, it was either the change to MediaWiki 1.17 (Feb 2011), or earlier than that, when they stopped. They do still show on page diffs though, see for example. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:26, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It has been a very long time. According to comments on, it stopped working in August 2004. Anomie⚔ 17:11, 7 January 2012 (UTC)


 * They are rendered, but they now trasclude hidden categories. Armbrust, B.Ed. <sup style="color:#E3A857;">Let's talk <sub style="color:#008000;">about my edits? 12:20, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The text of the template has not been rendered in your screenshot. I am sure I have seen this much more recently than 2004, I would not have been very interested in behind-the-scenes stuff on Wikipedia back then.  Possibly I saw the template subst'd in edit mode rather than rendered.  Spinning  Spark  12:40, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * There was some other text? Well at least the categorization works. Armbrust, B.Ed. <sup style="color:#E3A857;">Let's talk <sub style="color:#008000;">about my edits? 19:41, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It appears for me when looking at a diff, say Chris857 (talk) 19:46, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, I see it too in diff. That must be where I have seen it before.  Spinning  Spark  20:09, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Being logged out unexpectedly
I have found that I am being logged out unexpectedly, sometimes, seemingly, after only being logged in for a short time. I often have several browser windows with several tabs on each open simultaneously. - 220  of  Borg 01:14, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) Is there a maximum set time that the Wiki software(MediaWiki?) allows you to stay logged in for, and
 * 2) Does it log you out if inactive (not actually editing) for a certain time?
 * Browser: Google Chrome, version: "16.0.912.63 m"
 * O/S: Windows Home Premium, Version 6.1 (build 7600)
 * Do you have the little box checked at login? "Remember my login on this browser (for a maximum of 30 days)" It should have nothing to do with how much actual editing you do.
 * Sometimes it has to do with if your browser is set to accept the Wikipedia cookies.
 * That said, I think there are sometimes hiccups in the system. I can be logged in for months without being booted out.  And then I get booted out in the middle of an edit.

Hope this helped a little. Maile66 (talk) 01:44, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I do not have that box checked. In fact I was arbitrarily logged out just a few minutes ago. I usually find out when the pop-ups don't work. Very annoying.
 * Being logged in like that seems insecure. Can't anyone on my PC then use my account to edit WP?  (According to what I found  at FAQ/Technical,  Yes!)
 * I also found this statement: "It's not a bug, it's a feature. Logins expire after about 30 minutes on purpose". --cesarb 07:10, 4 February 2007 (UTC) here in the  Help desk/Archives.
 * The search I used was for "remember my login"
 * Is this correct?
 * Answering my own question, it seem YES:
 * " The time limit is half an hour. Yes, clicking preview regularly will restart the timer, but I got frustrated with such things long ago and decided that the security problems with associated "remember password" weren't really that bad. Do you think it would help if it were, say, an hour? There's a trade-off between convenience and security -- perhaps half an hour is a bit too far to the security end for our case. -- Tim Starling 10:59, Sep 20, 2003 (UTC)." Who is "employed by the Wikimedia Foundation as a developer and system administrator." (found HERE in Village pump/Archive M)
 * Thank you Maile66 for your assistance- 220  of  Borg 05:29, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Related: If we log in while using a secure connection (https); even if we check the "Remember me.." box; if we then visit a page without using a secure connection (http), we may find we are no longer logged in. Easy to forget. I will occasionally Google search for info, and follow a link back to WP, only to find the link was "http", and I'm suddenly missing all my scripts and show up as an IP. If it wasn't for my user scripts making my WP UI so different to the default, I probably wouldn't even notice.
 * The moral of this tale of woe is: log in on both a secure (https) and an insecure (http) connection to pick up cookies for both.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  05:44, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I thought the moral was "Install HTTPS Everywhere". Anomie⚔ 06:37, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Face-sad.svg Firefox extension. I'm Chrome plated. I'd have thought it would make sense (for WMF) to redirect to https (where available) on all page loads anyway. It's so easily done.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  07:25, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That comment by cesarb sounds like rubbish to me. I've often logged in, done nothing for several hours, and returned and am still logged in. What I have noticed is that if I have the edit window open, begin editing, do nothing for an hour or so, continue editing and attempt to save, it complains that my session data has been lost. This is not the same as being logged out.
 * A related thread was raised on 28 Dec 2011 which might help. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:46, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Glad to read your perspective, Redrose64. I was at a loss about the 30-minute time limit mentioned above.  I've been editing with Wikipedia for 5 years, and I'd never before heard of the time limit. There have been times when I've edited from a public computer and did not check the "remember me" box, but I don't think I got booted out for any reason while using the public computer.  Maile66 (talk) 19:10, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * There's hope for Chrome, at least. Anomie⚔ 22:36, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Request for Comment - Article Feedback Tool
Hey guys. We've just opened a Request for Comment on the Article Feedback Tool, version 5. Amongst other things, we're looking at anti-spam and anti-BLP vandalism measures, so as much participation as is possible would be most welcome :). Hope to see people there! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:13, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Rfc - "Automatically updated cited information" - at (idea lab)
Request for comment on technical feasibility and desire/horror etc. of idea in development.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  13:57, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Will this get fixed automatically?
I had to do this. Will all the pages pointing to the wrong name be automatically updated to the new one? If not, is there a tool for this? Maury Markowitz (talk) 22:01, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Your page move has left a redirect behind. Pages pointing to the old name will automatically link to the new: try clicking Claris Homepage and compare to clicking Claris Home Page. There are no double redirects, so no further action is necessary, either by yourself or a bot, see WP:NOTBROKEN. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:10, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Redrose is correct, but bear in mind, for the future, that there are some exceptions. One is redirects in navboxes, which should be replaced so that the link shows in bold on the relevant page (see WP:NOTBROKEN). Another is if the page moved is itself a disambiguation page, then this may leave links incorrectly pointing to a dab page, which must be cleaned up. --NSH001 (talk) 23:20, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The links will work with the redirect but the old text will continue to be displayed. If you want to display Claris Home Page instead of Claris Homepage in an article then the source of the article must be edited. There are semiautomated tools to make such tasks easier, for example AutoWikiBrowser. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:08, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Improved move functionality
This suggestion is prompted by an ANI section involving contentious moves: please stick to technical issues here.

When moving a page, normal mortals can move back to an existing redirect as long as it has not been edited. However, we are encouraged to add an appropriate  template if available when creating a redirect. This means that anyone doing the move conscientiously may end up with a status only an admin can revert.

I suggest extending the move function with the opportunity to edit and preview the new redirect before it is is saved. This would mean that the mover could specify the initial redirect contents without creating a barrier to a subsequent reversion.

Since moves are much less common that normal edits, the increase in complexity of the operation would not be an issue. --Mirokado (talk) 20:27, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Slightly alternate suggestion: Can a pull down/tick box be added for the common R templates to be added to the "old" page at the same time it is converted to a redirect?
 * - J Greb (talk) 20:47, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Another idea: would it be possible to have the move function recognize diacritical letters in either the "from" article name or the "to" article name, so that a page move ban could be applied to an editor, making it impossible for him to move articles in either direction (from a name using diacritical letters, or to such a name), but to allow other moves? HandsomeFella (talk) 20:57, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It would also be great if this function also could stop an editor with such ban from posting RMs for the same purpose. HandsomeFella (talk) 20:59, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That may be a bit too finely aimed. Especially since diacritics are not the only R related moves an editor may be banned from making. - J Greb (talk) 21:03, 1 January 2012 (UTC)


 * As it's such a rare instance, I'm having trouble seeing that this otherwise good idea really pays for the MediaWiki dev work needed in terms of the business value it gives afterwards. Is this really just the project's most dev-expensive single-editor topic ban?
 * OTOH, anything that encourages the prominence of appropriate categorization and the  templates is a good thing. I'm forever having to revert GF edits where edits have removed categorization from redirects, "because redirects shouldn't be categorized". Andy Dingley (talk) 16:08, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I strongly support the proposal. As a moderately active patroller of WP:RM and believer in the value of redirect tagging, I live in fear of being dragged off to ANI whenever I edit a newly created redirect. Favonian (talk) 15:33, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Toggle NOGALLERY
Is there a way (a script) to toggle  e.g. in subcategories of Category:Wikipedia files with the same name on Wikimedia Commons? --Leyo 14:33, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I just found User:Splarka/togglegallery.js (discussed here), but it does not work for me. --Leyo 12:56, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Construct wanted with optional &lt;ref> tag around
I want to create a template that produces a reference, and with the option: inline OR footnote. Footnote requires the .. tags (and more elsewhere on the article page), inline does without. So, to me first step, code should look like this:. But it doesn't work. Every ref-tag starts a reference literally from  on, or is not processed as a tag. I tried  and also subtemplate param pass-though. I can read & understand the three  things up to a level, but could not use them in this (tag <> brackets involved). I am familiar with a template stack (template T:A calls T:B calls T:C). Any ideas? Any good existing example templates in this? Use my my sandbox example) -DePiep (talk) 23:16, 6 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I tried  in User:PrimeHunter/sandbox. Repeating the whole cite web may not be elegant but it seems to work. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:37, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * re PrimeHunter. Actually, the code I wrote here is untested muckup (handwritten, hence the  mistake). I myself am developing in my home sandboxes /1 /2 /3 (and /10 as testcases) (see my base): the neighbourhood kids love it. -DePiep (talk) 00:54, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Me more to your point, PrimeHunter: a working solution, but entering the and all the params twice, indeed, may be too much. I'll try a different solution first. -DePiep (talk) 09:17, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * First, note that the closing tag is not  . Then, I would suggest using the   parser function - have a look at how  does it - that is essentially   with some clever stuff to merge duplicate refs. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:46, 6 January 2012 (UTC)


 * refn is a simpler example of #tag:ref. It also illustrates how you must handle an optional name for #tag:ref. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 00:09, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I will check this out. Interestingly, I expected stuff tricks, but this is really a new route to discover. -DePiep (talk) 00:54, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Concluding: answered into a working thing. Had to use the magic word  because of subtemplates (though nested references are not used), and had to use PrimeHunter's conditional   suggestion because the ref tag is optional (I could reduce the double code to an acceptable level). Thanks.-DePiep (talk) 11:08, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Please don't. It makes things more complicated for bots and scripts that try to process references in wikitext to have a profusion of templates that insert reference tags, as the bot/script can no longer just look for <ref ></ref> and  to find them but must take into account everyone's random template that saves them typing a handful of characters. Anomie⚔ 03:34, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Still I will. Producing good references is more important than greasing the bots. -DePiep (talk) 03:42, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Can't you just have it auto-subst? - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 14:07, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * is another complicated process to me. But if that were a solution, I'd surely research and try. This option and examples was not explicated here. -DePiep (talk) 21:23, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Anomie is right. DePiep, you usually talk a lot of sense, but I'm having great difficulty trying to understand what exactly is the point or benefit of this template. I really don't want to see this sort of template horror without a very good reason. --NSH001 (talk) 15:35, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The reasoning for such a template is not the topic here. T=Tech. Actually, I spend a lot of time to phrase the question right. I am proud of it, and it served getting good answers. NSH001, since you already support Anomiex's outcome, why should we discuss anything? -DePiep (talk) 21:12, 7 January 2012 (UTC) ce -DePiep (talk) 21:23, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I could be persuaded if a good enough reason is given. Trouble is, I can't even imagine how this template might be useful. In addition to Anomie's point, the cite templates are complicated enough already, and kill page loading times on pages with more than about 50 of them. They really need to be simplified (or re-written in some more efficient language), not have any more overhead added to them. --NSH001 (talk) 21:43, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, and I was shortwording to Anomie. Now, the reason or need for my baby template (which is not part of my Tech question here) is that it will help providing many and good references. Until now, in the topic I want to use it, I have not seen a single one complete reference, and inline/footnote workings are bad. Also, because of the numbers and situations involved, it is templateable. If bots don't get it -- sorry for them. Who is leading?
 * And, to show that I do know about bad automation: somewhere else I removed my own thing from a template. -DePiep (talk) 22:02, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Sometimes the best answer to "How do I do X?" is "Don't." It seems to me that it would be more clear all around for a template like the one you've described to be used as  rather than something like  . Anomie⚔ 06:35, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You mean footnote style only, and dropping the option to use the web cite inline? -DePiep (talk) 13:09, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * This is surely stating the obvious, but if you want it inline, just write  instead of  . You can easily find examples in the form of bulleted lists in many (most?) Featured Articles. --NSH001 (talk) 20:19, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That I got, but it would defy the purpose of my template. I wrote: "I want to make a template such and so", and your answer is "don't, it's template horror, unless you convince me". There is something in the reasoning that doesn't help this talk. -DePiep (talk) 09:03, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Quirky log in/log out
Has anyone else noticed that when logging in or out there are plus signs where you would expect underscores in the URLs? – Allen4names 07:45, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Any gadgets or user scripts active ? It might have something to do with Account_Creation_Improvement_Project, but then i think it is browser dependent, because I don't experience the problem I think. Which skin are you using, what browser ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:53, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I use Twinkle and HotCat. The browser I am using is Mozilla Firefox 3.6.24 and the log out URL is https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogout&returnto=Wikipedia%3AVillage+pump+%28technical%29 . Using Chromium 15.0.874.106 the log in URL is https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Main+Page&campaign=ACP3 . I use the default (Vector) skin. Does this help you figure out what is going on? – Allen4names 07:14, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Section linking does not work for me
You may need to look at this post in edit mode to see the coding issue I'm trying to illustrate

According to instructions,

displayed text

is supposed to link to the section with "displayed text"

But for me, it doesn't work as expected.

For instance,

If I copy the illustration, put double brackets and don't put in an extra space before "Health" ("| Health") the result is

[|Health effects of particle pollution]

It displays " effects of particle pollution"

as a link, but when clicked that link does not go to the "health effects" section, but only to the top level article "Particulates"

As an experiment,

| Health effects of particle pollution

Returns a link that looks as it should,

(It says "Health effects of particle pollution")

But when you click on it, it does not actually go to the health effects section. It goes to the general article, i.e., the same as if the link were just Particulates. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ocdnctx (talk • contribs) 02:49, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It looks like you're confusing external and internal link syntax. Both an external link like Health effects of particle pollution ( Health effects of particle pollution ) and an internal link like Health effects of particle pollution ( Health effects of particle pollution ) work for me; the second form is preferable. Ucucha (talk) 02:53, 9 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Just to clarify further, "page name" in wikilinks means the page heading and not the url. The article is linked with Particulates and the section with Particulates. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:00, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * There are two kinds of link: internal and external, see Help:Link.
 * Internal links have double square brackets, the page name not preceded by the  part, and use a pipe character to separate the link from the displayed text.; furthermore, the link target must be somewhere within the Wikimedia Foundation's projects (of which the English Wikipedia is one).
 * External links have single square brackets, a full URL (to almost anywhere), and use a space to separate the link from the displayed text.
 * If the two syntaxes are mixed, as with, the MediaWiki software does its best to resolve one way or the other. Primarily, the presence of a   immediately after a square bracket causes the external link syntax to be used, so that two things happen: (a) the URL is considered as extending up to the first space; and (b) the outer pair of square brackets are taken as plain text.
 * In an internal link, the displayed text is separated from the link target by a pipe, as in . But for a titled external link, the title is separated from the link by a space, so in a link constructed as , the first space is before the word "effects", so the link is to   - but on the page Particulates, there is no section whose name is exactly  , so in the absence of a matching section, it defaults to the top of the page. Such links should be formed without the pipe, i.e.  . However, as already noted, links to pages within Wikipedia should not be constructed using the external link syntax, so this one should be  , with double square brackets and a pipe. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:59, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Balatonf%C3%BCred's misuse of template Template:Convert/Dual/LoffAoffDxSoffT
Help needed from a clever technician, please.

Balatonf%C3%BCred is a mess (not my doing!).

Please could a whizz-kid correct it? I'll watchlist it, & learn from the correction.

Many thanks in advance, Trafford09 (talk) 16:41, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ after a few tries. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:18, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Cheers for that, John. Trafford09 (talk) 18:48, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Slow
Is the wiki slow for anyone else right now? Edits go through, but they don't bring me back to the page — it just stays at the edit window. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 23:48, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * look up one thread :) --<b style="color:Navy;">Jezebel's</b> Ponyo <sup style="color:Navy;">bons mots 23:50, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

The Find sources template is currently linking to the main Google News site, sans the search criterion
The Find sources template is currently linking to the main Google News site, sans the search criterion. Here's an example: Hopefully a solution can be found for this matter. Northamerica1000 (talk) 08:36, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, crap. Why must Google keep changing the query syntax? -- Red rose64 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:50, 6 January 2012 (UTC).
 * I've [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template_talk%3AFind_sources&diff=469939160 requested] a change of the template. If you could take care of it, that'd be great. Goodvac (talk) 18:57, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:51, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Find sources template – fixed, but includes PR press releases, announcements etc.

 * Comment - The template is functional again, but at this time doesn't automatically disinclude public relations press release coverage in searches as it did before. Is there any way to reinstate these parameters? Northamerica1000 (talk) 08:29, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The  portion of the query hasn't been working for a while. The link would always redirect to a url without the  ... portion. The only option I see is to add   directly to the query, yielding a link like this, which is rather clunky. In my opinion, it's not worth it, as it's not difficult to recognize newswire sources just by looking at the result snippet. Goodvac (talk) 08:48, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Many new and newer users may not be aware that public relations press releases and announcements are unsuitable for use as reliable sources, and then may unknowingly incorporate these types of sources into articles. I think that including the information above in the search parameters to omit PR sources is better than nothing, as this would function to significantly prevent this type of ongoing problem from recurring continuously. The "clunkiness" of the search criterion is outweighed, in my opinion, by the benefits of including these parameters in the search function of the Find sources template. Up to about 1-1/2 to 2 weeks ago, the Find sources template functioned in this manner, coded to help omit unreliable sources. Hopefully it won't continue to exist in a (now), unfortunately deprecated state. Northamerica1000 (talk) 13:22, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * As a blanket statement, "public relations press releases and announcements are unsuitable for use as reliable sources" is blatantly incorrect. These are entirely reliable as primary sources for the fact that the issuer made the statements contained in the press release. They may also be sufficiently reliable for uncontroversial facts and figures pertaining to the issuer. I have no opinion on whether "PR sources" should or should not be excluded from the default search to focus the results on sources that are more likely to be generally reliable and/or are more likely to support WP:N (which requires sources independent of the subject). Anomie⚔ 14:15, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * No, it stopped omitting press releases long before you started at AfD. Some of my comments above are faulty. Compare this regular search with . The extra exclusion terms have no effect on the search.  added to the new query syntax doesn't redirect (example: ), but it also has no effect on the search. I'll try to find another way. Goodvac (talk) 18:48, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Show contributions from CIDR range?
Expected this to exist, but archives/Google didn't do much for me:

Is there a tool that shows all contributions from a particular IP range / CIDR block (obviously pertaining only to unregistered users)? It seems this can be done for block history, but not edit histories. Conceptually its quite simple: Just enumerate all the IP addresses in the block, query the API for their individual contributions, then aggregate and visualize in some way. Would be a valuable for tool for anyone trying to audit the IP contributions of their organization. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 20:45, 7 January 2012 (UTC)


 * . PrimeHunter (talk) 22:22, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * For more info about this see Help:User contributions. This does work once you've enabled the gadget (ignore the "No changes were found matching these criteria." text), e.g. Special:Contributions/163.1.0.0%2F16. - Pointillist (talk) 22:34, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Toolserver has a better one not limited to multiples of 8, but it's been broken for a long time.Jasper Deng (talk) 22:27, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Pretty trivial to recreate if anyone wants me to. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 13:09, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Can't add to watchlist
Just tried to add 2 articles pages to my watchlist, got "An error occurred while changing your watchlist settings for "Elim Pentecostal Church".". I was able to add a user talkpage successfully. I've this problem before. Using Firefox 10. Dougweller (talk) 18:02, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think that there's some problem with the servers. When I access any page, it loads sufficient content to display the page properly - but the spinny thing never stops, and the status bar continues to show "Read en.wikipedia.org", until I click to something else, or hit Escape. Also, when saving, it takes a seemingly long time to go through. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:28, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I've just done eight (of a planned 18) - each one was merely a "click edit - paste in a ref - click save" but it still took 30 minutes. That's almost 4 mins per save. I might get the other 10 done by 22:00 UTC. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:25, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm also experiencing long lags when saving my edits (using Firefox). <b style="color:Navy;">Jezebel's</b> Ponyo <sup style="color:Navy;">bons mots 21:42, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Where are you located? US, Europe...? I noticed my edit to this page took a while to save, but not if I made an edit to my sandbox. Try making an edit there, and let me know if you experience slowness there. Prodego <sup style="color:darkgreen;">talk  21:45, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm on the West Coast of Canada and it's slow regardless of where I make the edit; that being said I cannot completely discount that the lag may be on my end as opposed to a wiki server issue. <b style="color:Navy;">Jezebel's</b> Ponyo <sup style="color:Navy;">bons mots 22:10, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia is deathly slow when saving an edit (West Coast US here). Killiondude (talk) 22:53, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * England. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:15, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I've noticed some slowness, but it seems to have improved for me somewhat in the last 10-15 minutes. --Bongwarrior (talk) 00:00, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * In northern Michigan, have not seen the slowness. Chris857 (talk) 03:41, 10 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Takes 4 minutes to save in Missouri. (Show me!) --64.85.214.19 (talk) 17:55, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Request for comment at Idea Lab
Over here I posted a suggestion for how we could improve oversighting by adding request for oversight functionality to MediaWiki. More comments and suggestions would be appreciated. causa sui (talk) 17:43, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Forced to enter a captcha each time I tag something for speedy deletion
Hi, I am having an issue where it is forcing me to enter a captcha each time I tag a page for speedy deletion. It's claiming that I've added an external link which is why it's forcing me to enter a captcha, except there are no external links being added. Take a look at Category:2012 United Nations Security Council resolutions, where literally my only edit was to add " " at the top. I looked through the template and all links appear to go to Wikipedia, so I'm not sure why it's claiming I'm adding an external link. This is hindering my speedy deletion tagging and highly discouraging me from doing any further speedy deletion work (I've done quite a bit, see my contribs and deleted contribs) if I have to enter a captcha each time. And yes, before anyone mentions it, I know that creating an account will fix this issue, however I prefer to edit anonymously. I'm not sure if there's a problem with the template or what, but it is very silly that I would have to enter a captcha for each speedy deletion tagging. The encyclopedia that anyone can edit, so long as their tolerance for captcha entering is extremely high. 69.59.200.77 (talk) 23:15, 10 January 2012 (UTC)


 * While I do not have a good solution based upon your stated preferences, I can explain where the external link is hiding. The template db-c1 calls upon another template, Db-meta.   in turn contains a line near the bottom instructing administrators to check links, page history, and logs before deletion.  The template then suggests using several search engines to check for additional information.  This suggestion contains embedded external links to Bing.  I am starting a discussion at Template talk:Db-meta to see what potential solutions are available. --Allen3 talk 23:45, 10 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I've reverted the addition of the Bing link as a temporary measure. <small style="white-space:nowrap;border:1px solid #A00000;padding:1px;"> An  optimist on the  run!  09:56, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Per my reply there, you would need to have an addition made to the interwiki map. Graham 87 10:41, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

User stats
Hi

I may have missed something here, but did the user stats links from the top tab drop-downs get removed?

I now only have:
 * User logs >
 * Blocks >
 * Contributions
 * SUL status
 * Userspace
 * E-mail user
 * User groups
 * Rights changes

Thanks Chaosdruid (talk) 02:11, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That is not the normal composition of those menu's. Are you perhaps using some sort of gadget or userscript ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 07:57, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Is it this that's missing? In which case, check . -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:39, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The list I have given is for only one tab, the User tab - I use Vector.
 * It appears on the right: Read|Edit|Heart-icon(Wikilove)|TW(Twinkle)|User|Page
 * I have a few scripts running, but not the Haza one, however this is the first time this has happened. Although I am not aware of exactly when it disappeared, I last used it around Christmas Eve.
 * Also, if I tick "Add page and user options to drop-down menus on the toolbar." in the appearance section of "Gadgets" I get no user tab but 2x Page tab: Read|Edit|Heart-icon(Wikilove)|TW(Twinkle)|Page|Page Chaosdruid (talk) 17:00, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It appears I was mistaken, when scrolling to the very top the Haza script is indeed the first one in my custom javascript list! Chaosdruid (talk) 17:09, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool office hours
Hey guys! As always, the AFT5 team will be holding an office hours session this Friday at 19:00 UTC in #wikimedia-office. Hope to see you all there :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:30, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation
Hello!

I would like a little bit of help regarding disambiguation pages. In case of Budapest there is a primary topic, and there is a separate disambiguation page. My question is, how can you disambiguate on the newly created pages (since the last major clean-up) without checking all the articles that link to the Budapest page? Thanks in advance--Istvánka (talk) 12:49, 11 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't know a way but you could try asking for tips at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:27, 11 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Done that!--Istvánka (talk) 14:45, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Migration of &#123;{gradient}} to &#123;{linear-gradient}}
With the release of Webkit2 (534) over six months ago, Safari (since 5.1) and Google Chrome (since 10) now support the CSS3 proposed parameter format, making all browser that support gradients parameter-compatible. In that light, I created linear-gradient that supercedes and will eventually deprecate gradient. This means that the old Safari and Chrome browsers that only support the legacy <tt>-webkit-gradient</tt> CSS property are not supported by &#123;{Linear-gradient}}. However the new template offers a great deal more flexibility then the old template, which was very limited by the legacy parameter format.

<div style="background-image: linear-gradient(to right, #fdd, #ffd, #dfd, #dff, #ddf, #888 88%, #ccc 92%, #888 96%, #ccc);">The new template makes it possible to have an unlimited number of color stops and specify any starting position.

The old template now maps to the new one to provide backward compatibility, but will be obsolete in the near future. This is a bit of a trade-off, but it is one that is future-proof which is the better option in the long run. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 13:21, 11 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Very nice.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  20:48, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool - additional test deployment
Hey guys,

Just keeping you in the loop; we're going to be testing another change to the Article Feedback Tool on starting today, January 11. So far, we've done a bit of small-scale experimentation with the actual design of the tool, as announced on the blog, the village pump, and on various mailing lists. This has all been on a tiny fraction of articles (~22k total articles, about 0.6% of the English Wikipedia), and a lot of really useful data has been gathered without bothering the vast majority of editors or readers. Ideally, that's what we'd aim for with all tests :).

Even with Wikipedia readership reaching half a billion users per month, the feedback form its current position (at the end of the article) doesn’t see a whole lot of activity. In this test, we’ll be experimenting with a more prominent way to access to tool. When a user loads the page with the test version of the Article Feedback Tool, they will see an “Improve this article” link docked on the bottom right hand corner of the page (please see for a mockup). Since this link is docked, it will stay with the reader while they’re reading the article. The introduction of this link will undoubtedly increase the amount of feedback. We need to, however, understand how it affects the quality of the feedback. We genuinely don't know what the impact will be, which is why we're doing these tests :). As with the last tests, it'll be on a very small subset of articles and probably won't be noticed by most people.

If you do encounter it, and it does bug you, you can turn it off just by going into Preferences > Appearance > Don't show me the article feedback widget on pages. If you've already ticked this option, the new link shouldn't appear at all; please do let me know if it does. We are working on a way to disable it "in-line" as well so you can simply dismiss the link without going to preferences.

We’ll also be doing some preliminary analysis on whether such a prominent link cannibalizes editing behavior. The team is very aware that the new link may compete with the edit tab and section edit links. Since the test version of the tool is deployed on a limited number of articles, we will only get a rough read on how much, if any, cannibalization takes place. Per our research plan, we’ll continue to monitor the tradeoff between giving feedback and editing.

If any of you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me or drop a note on the talkpage.

Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:25, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Feedback Dashboard Deployment, Jan. 11
Hi guys!

Just wanted to let you know that we have deployed a new version of MoodBar and the Feedback Dashboard. This version contains the following changes:


 * 1) MoodBar feedback posts are now listed within a user's contributions log
 * 2) We have added a "Top responders" leaderboard to the Dashboard
 * 3) There is now an "Unanswered" filter for feedback dashboard
 * 4) Minor feedback dashboard UI changes

We had planned to include technology to detect for concurrent editing of responses, but were forced to pull back on it due to the fact that MediaWiki 1.19 has been 'frozen' and the concurrency code requires changes in MediaWiki core. This feature is important to MoodBar feedback, we are considering migrating this feature into MoodBar extension temporarily then move it to core once 1.19 gets branched.

As always, your thanks should go to Rob Moen and Benny Situ for the coding and to Roan Kattouw for code review. Ian Baker wrote a lot of the concurrency code (not deployed, but soon).

Please direct any questions or comments to New editor feedback.

Thanks! --Jorm (WMF) (talk) 21:44, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Problem with sorting in wikitable
The article List of countries by external debt has a large wikitable that is sortable according to the fields. When I clicked the arrow beside "rank" in the left-most column, instead of rendering 1, 2, 3..., instead it gave back 1, 10, 100, 101, 102...109, then to 11, then to 110, 111, 112.... In short, it didn't sort it to ascending order. Descending order also doesn't work. The 5 other fields do work though. I tried purging the page but it didn't solve the problem. I'm using Internet Explorer 8. Can others use other browsers such as Firefox or Chrome to see if the problem still persists? Shuipzv3 (talk) 04:17, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The entries that are marked with rank "&#151;" switch the column to alphabetical sorting. Use nts to fix. Prodego  <sup style="color:darkgreen;">talk  04:22, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * So the trick is to tag the numbers with, like this:  ? Shuipzv3 (talk) 04:38, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, on every one but the dashes. That should fix it. Prodego  <sup style="color:darkgreen;">talk  04:45, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the help. Shuipzv3 (talk) 04:52, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You could be clever and do the dashes as well with ntsh. So for example, the EU is between ranks 1 and 2. So if you made it "&#151;" the dashes would sort correctly too. Prodego  <sup style="color:darkgreen;">talk  04:59, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I thought the dashes denote the state not being a country, and also the title of the article itself says it is about "countries". For example: EU - only a organisation, not a whole country; Hong Kong - part of China; West Bank - limited recognition in the world; Aruba - belongs to Holland; Greenland - Denmark. Shuipzv3 (talk) 05:08, 9 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Help:Sorting says sort mode is determined by the first row. This is not true currently and that's why the reported table at failed. All the first three tables at Help:Sorting also fail for me currently. They sort alphabetically every time instead of numerically. It appears that if any row has alphabetical sort mode then the whole column is sorted alphabetically. Here is a simpler example:
 * {|class="wikitable sortable"

!numbers
 * 10
 * 11 this text currently forces alphabetical sort no matter which row it is in
 * 12
 * 9
 * }
 * 12
 * 9
 * }
 * }


 * The same table without the text sorts correctly numerically :
 * {|class="wikitable sortable"

!numbers
 * 10
 * 11
 * 12
 * 9
 * }
 * 12
 * 9
 * }
 * }


 * Either sorting code is buggy or the documentation (and many existing tables in articles) should be changed. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:25, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Something is amiss. This table used to be sortable (I think), but is not now. --<font style="font-family: Copperplate Gothic Light "> SPhilbrick (Talk)  16:16, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it worked before, but the table is broken, since it didn't use actual tableheaders, but styled tablecells, which is also an accesibility issue. See fix. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:40, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the fix. I'm not quite following, but may not need to. I have other versions of similar tables, I'll try the fix myself in the other places. Thanks again.--<font style="font-family: Copperplate Gothic Light "> SPhilbrick (Talk)  16:44, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * In essence, the cells within table rows are of two types, "header cells" (in HTML terms, <th ></th> elements) - these are typically boldfaced and centred by default, and "data cells" (in HTML terms, <td ></td> elements) - these are typically normal weight and left-aligned by default. The two types of cell are declared using two slightly different methods: if an exclamation point is used, this creates a header cell; and if a pipe character is used, this creates a data cell. In the past (before MediaWiki 1.18) it was sometimes the practice to create something that looked like a header cell by actually declaring a data cell, and then applying the bold/centred styling to it, and the sorting would still work. As from MediaWiki 1.18 (October 2011), for a sortable table to work, the first row must consist entirely of header cells (whether styled or not). -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:13, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Correct, though I should mention that the 'practice' was a unadvised/bad and the fact that the old tablesorter worked with an 'accident of history' and not so much a feature :D —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 22:07, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * (e/c) The documentation is not up to date with the current behavior indeed. The cause is that the new method to fix sorting on table cells works with HTML5 data attributes, but Wikipedia has not yet been switched to HTML 5. This causes this deviance from the documented behavior. When 1.18 was launched, HTML5 was promised to follow suit, but this has again not yet come to fruition. Once HTML5 is finally enabled, the new method to force a sorting will be by using a data attribute on the columnheader. Most sort templates can then be removed and deprecated from all the articles. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:20, 9 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the explanation. I realize plans can change but does anybody know a current estimate of when this will happen? The timeline influences what should be done to the documentation and possibly done to identify and fix existing tables. PrimeHunter (talk) 16:47, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think that the behaviour of sortable tables (how it's decided whether a given column is to be sorted alphabetically or numerically) changed with MediaWiki 1.18, October 2011. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:13, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The intention of the new table sorter was always to change how sorting worked.
 * One of the primary reasons to introduce it in the first place, was the option to define for a column what type of content the sorter should expect there, making it possible to do away with the ugly hack of having to use those nts/dts etc sort templates.
 * A column with an 'undefined' sorttype, would then have 'autodetection', but this detection, unlike earlier, is always based on the detected type of the 1st row (Even after sorting the same column multiple times), falling back to alphanumeric sorting for all cells if one of the cells in the column, does not adhere to the detected type of the 1st row.
 * However because the HTML5 deploy was pulled, the new column datatype-setting doesn't work, and the documentation was therefore not yet corrected with the new information. This means that indeed the documentation is providing the information of the 'old' autodetection, not of the 'new' autodetection.
 * But really we should just get a move on with HTML5 mode. 27478. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 22:07, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, I expect to update Help:Sorting tomorrow if nobody beats me to it. By far the most common issue for editors is numeric versus alphabetic. Just to make sure I get it right: Until HTML5 is deployed at an unknown time, there is no method to achieve numerical sort if any of the sorted cells contain anything other than a number? PrimeHunter (talk) 23:55, 9 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Fixing Help:Sorting is more complicated than I thought. I have started a rewrite of sort modes at User:PrimeHunter/sandbox2 but experimentation shows it still has many things not matching current sorting. For example, after some confusion I noticed that empty cells are apparently allowed in numeric sorting if and only if there are at least 5 number cells:


 * PrimeHunter (talk) 03:15, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Inspection of the source code shows the following; The autodetection code looks at the first 5 rows. These first 5 rows need to be consistent in their type, otherwise the fallback type of "alphanumeric" sorting will be used. So that explains the effect you are pointing out above. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 22:45, 11 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Further testing indicates it is the first 5 rows with a non-empty cell in the column. Empty cells are allowed as long as 5 cells with the same sort mode are reached before the first non-empty cell with other sort mode. Some or all of the 5 rows can be hidden.


 * The new sort code only cares about the first 5 rows in the source and not where the current sorting has placed them, so it should always keep working after sorting. So we can just tell people to place 5 hidden rows at the start? It sounds ugly but I guess we could make templates to place the hidden rows, with parameters giving the number and sort mode of the columns. Any idea whether this hack with 5 hidden rows will be stable until HTML5 is deployed, or it could break at any time if the sort code is updated? PrimeHunter (talk) 00:14, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Euh, why not just continue using sort templates, until the HTML5 mode is introduced ? —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 22:35, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Where have the search by namespace options gone
When I do a search now, it has suddenly taken on the "dumber" appearance that is in use at Commons, and I am no longer able to check boxes to search various namespaces... Why has the search feature been rolled back to this older version? -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  18:46, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmm? I'm still seeing them. Special:Search and then you click on the "Advanced" tab. Unless I'm confusing it with something else. <font color="#FFCC66">elektrik <font color="#666666">SHOOS  (talk) 18:50, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * "Advanced" is the one you want (though "Everything" will also get the job done if you're sufficiently specific about what you want, I suppose). And the one at Commons looks the same to me...? --Izno (talk) 18:56, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * For some reason, it's reverted to the old behaviour: to get the namespace selector, you need to click "Advanced". I think "Advanced" became the default method in about October 2011 (MW 1.18?). However, I have noticed that is no longer used to fill in the "Advanced" selections. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:16, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Anomie⚔ 21:07, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Fix should be live now. Anomie⚔ 22:04, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Widescreen Margins
I tried searching, but couldn't find an answer to my question. I have a widescreen monitor, and want to adjust my personal CSS accordingly. How do I make the increase the size of the margins to make the site easier to read?

Gwsk55970 (talk) 00:31, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Everyone tends to have their own idea on how to accomplish this sort of thing. Here is my personal suggestion, which you can add to Special:MyPage/skin.css:
 * Adjust the percentages to suit. The "right" and "width" settings under "mw-head" should add up to 100% for best results. This will probably only work under Vector skin. — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:07, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Adjust the percentages to suit. The "right" and "width" settings under "mw-head" should add up to 100% for best results. This will probably only work under Vector skin. — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:07, 12 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Another possible way:
 * This creates a buffer around the whole body of the document (page) of  at the top,   at the right (clockwise) etc. Adding that it is   may not be required, but wouldn't hurt to add (just in case).  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  12:06, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * This creates a buffer around the whole body of the document (page) of  at the top,   at the right (clockwise) etc. Adding that it is   may not be required, but wouldn't hurt to add (just in case).  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  12:06, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

SVG translation
Hey all. I have some news that all of you familiar with SVGs will be interested in. Recently, I have worked on developing two related things:
 * A "lang=xx" syntax for SVG embeds (example: ). This would be passed to the renderer (in our case rsvg), and would result in the SVG's   property being set to that code.   is used for conditional rendering; a good example of its application for translating SVG files can be found here. Thus translations are stored within the SVG, but not in a hacky way-the spec was designed with this is mind. We already generate thumbs by size and (in the case of TIFFs and DjVu files) by page number, so this would be a minor addition in that regard.
 * A special page to allow for the easy translation of files within this system. An example of what it looks like at present can be found at File:TranslateSvg.ogv (note that the misalignment of the text is a problem with the underlying SVG and not with the translation).

Taken together, these would represent a massive improvement on our current system for SVG translation, which involves uploading a new file in each language; moving a graphic to improve the SVG then requires numerous different edits and uploads (one for each language). I welcome your comments (both technical and non-technical) - #2 in particular is still in the "hacky early prototype" stage. My current list of things to look into: default translations; different fonts for different character sets; whether the system could cope with supermassive SVGs. Regards, - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 11:11, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Weird weird template problem
My demo page for this is at User:Masem/vgtest.

In the vg infobox, we have a collapsable list template for the release dates. This appears to have recently broke (one member identified it working right in November, so we have a time frame), in that in for articles that have this (see Blaster Master for the staring example) dates will "fall out" of the collapsed list. This I can confirm looking at the HTML source generated from WP: the list is not part of the collapsable element div.

The above page is my attempt to distill down to the basic problem. There are five cases:
 * First, is basically what we use. Replicates the problem as described.
 * Second, replace the call of the video game release template with the actual HTML code generated (to my eyes, it appears completely balanced/proper HTML). The show/hide buttons no longer work, and looking for the code that should be there, shows it absent from the HTML.
 * Third, remove the CSS on the ul element generated by the above step: same problem as the second test
 * Fourth, remove the anchor from the linked element (but leaving the ul CSS code): same problem as second test
 * Fifth, remove both ul CSS and the anchor. Works as expected

I have no idea what's going on here. To confound that, when I tried debugging with Special:ExpandTemplates, the first case works as expected there; the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th case still fail, and the 5th case is fine.

Any idea what's going on here? --M ASEM (t) 14:52, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * (ec)And I just double checked, pulling the collapsible list calls out from the infobox, and get the same behavior on the page and at ExpandTemplates as described as if they were in the infobox. So it's nothing from the complex infobox template interfering with it. --M ASEM  (t) 15:09, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I see that the <a ></a> tag is being used in some examples. The MediaWiki parser will strip this straight away. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:07, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Ok, that's understandable (for security reasons), but there is still code outside the A tag (examples 2 and 3) that should be there that isn't in the HTML source, and this doesn't explain example 4 either where there's no A tag at all. --M ASEM (t) 15:09, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the behavior you see with Special:ExpandTemplates may be caused by HTML Tidy not being run on ExpandTemplates output. I notice that Template:Collapsible list opens two divs and closes only one; I wonder whether that might cause the HTML to become messed up, leading Tidy to attempt to correct it. Ucucha (talk) 15:20, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, the inner diff is closed. Ucucha (talk) 15:21, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yea, both divs are closed on collapsible. As well as ul and li elements. --M ASEM  (t) 15:23, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It turns out it was Template:Video game release, which was emitting a bare &lt;/li&gt;. . Ucucha (talk) 15:28, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yea, that got it, though the bare HTML version examples above are giving weird results still (not that I care specifically for this format, just want to make sure that's why). --M ASEM (t) 15:31, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That's because you have an = in the value of the unnamed parameter. You can fix it either by putting 1 or by replacing the bare equals sign with =. Ucucha (talk) 15:37, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Also  works, and doesn't add to template calls like =.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  16:01, 12 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Passing "=" in unnamed parameters: I changed User:Masem/vgtest and verified Example 2 will work okay now with "style{&#123;=}}" in the unnamed parameter. As noted above, it is safer to explicitly number the first unnamed parameter as "|1=NES..." rather than "|NES..." to allow an equal-sign "=" inside the parameter for the style=xx directive. -Wikid77 16:57, 12 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Keep it simple for WP:ACCESS: Although the question was about the CSS-styled show/hide collapsible sections, I want to remind people to avoid complex infoboxes, and just link to "(see: Releases )" (as a lower section of the article) with header "Releases" where each release, plus date, should be listed for WP:Accessibility of sight-impaired users, and to improve search-lookup where Google or Bing or wikisearch might not find the release-date info inside a collapsible section. I don't want to rant about these search/sight limitations, but just a reminder. -Wikid77 16:57, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * We're careful on that. The bulk of release date info borders on trivial but necessary data ("ok, it was released for the 360 in the US on this date, but on the 360 for europe 2 days later, and on the ps3 in the US a week later, and..."); if its simple, we don't recommend the collapsed list, and regardless, the general release period is to be repeated in the lead. --M ASEM (t) 17:03, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Fastest route to page move vandalism?
Suppose I'm an experienced troll, looking to run up a new sock for some page-move vandalism. This account: seems to have done it within a day. The edits, such as they were, consisted almost entirely of adding a negative "not" to sentences (so either manual, or a grammatically skilled 'bot); they were reverted and warned immediately.

I'm unfamiliar with the rights needed to permit page moves - but this one looks to have been premature. As we are AIUI, requiring an edit count before allowing this, does this mean that our count and account age limits are set too low? Or if this was a "trusted" account, by edit count, can we improve our definition of "edit" so as to exclude those with immediate reversio, such as here (the edit counter seems to do this much).

The fall out from page moves are more difficult to reverse than simple edit vandalism. Particularly in this case where the article talk page and associated redirects were then deleted as G8 too. I bet this particular vandal is laughing at the trouble he has caused. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:38, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Pages that are not move-protected merely need either the autoconfirmed right or the confirmed right; the former is automatic based on number of edits and a timespan, the latter merely requires you to convince an admin that you can't wait for four days. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:15, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Further: although the user made their first edit yesterday, the account was registered three months ago. By racking up four edits yesterday (one of which has been deleted), and a further eleven today, they gained the autoconfirmed right to allow a page move. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:24, 12 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Registered vandals are very rare: While any sneaky vandalism can be frustrating, the most-common vandalism is by IP-address editors (which unfairly taints all IPs as suspicious). So worrying about the registered-username vandals is like complaining about a leaking bathtub on the R.M.S. Titanic (which sank 100 years ago this April). The best clue with registered users has been the red-linked usernames (again another possible stereotype), so watch the contribs of any red-linked username. The bigger danger from the registered users is "registered advocates" who POV-push their agenda in numerous articles or talk-pages. Then, possible registered trolls have been questioned about making irritating comments to stir the drama when they get bored of simply writing an encyclopedia (yawn). So the people to beware are those with hundreds of edits which slant text or drive good editors to seek sanity elsewhere. If you see people get frustrated, then offer some support along the way. -Wikid77 17:43, 12 January 2012 (UTC)


 * They now appear to be IP-socking to repeat just the same edits . Note also the names "GermanSpeaker" and an Austrian ISP. If anyone here is an admin, feel free...   Andy Dingley (talk) 19:41, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Help with date format parameter in a ref within a template
Hello VP(t).

Could a template/parsing specialist help me with a problem that I've described on my talkpage?

Thanks

HandsomeFella (talk) 18:56, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I fixed it using a parser function. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:49, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

An IPv4 Risk During IPv6 Deployment?
I've been researching the state of IPv6 transition. I think I see a potential problem for WP, and after searching the VP archives I haven't seen it discussed, so I'm bringing it up here.

One of the deployment strategies being recommended is Large Scale NAT (LSN, formerly called Carrier-grade NAT and known as Stateful NAT64 to the IETF). Under this scheme, if a customer of an IPv6-only service provider wishes to access an IPv4-only server, or any server which cannot be reached via an all-IPv6 path, the service routes the connection through a NAT device which translates the IP headers between IPv6 and IPv4. Conceptually, this is similar to what currently happens in the NAT routers used by home or small office networks, except that the protocol header fields are translated as well as the addresses.

The problem I see is in the length of time an IPv4 address gets allocated to the customer's node. At present, most IP addresses are coming from home/small office routers which are normally allocated a WAN-side address by DHCP, and this allocation persists for days. (In fact, if I'm not mistaken many ISPs dedicate these IP addresses to their customers, since there's little opportunity for multiplexing them anyway.) In the LSN scheme, on the other hand, the address is allocated from an ISP's pool dedicated for this purpose, and persists only for the length of the TCP session, after which it is available for reallocation to another customer. Hundreds or thousands of people will be sharing this pool, and if any of them has to go through LSN to get to Wikipedia, they all will.

The implications for WP are that (1) we may see sudden jumps in the number of connections using dynamic IPv4 addresses as such ISPs switch over to IPv6, and (2) these addresses will be shared by huge numbers of people.

And the risk? Imagine the consequences of blocking a vandal at one of these addresses. Now imagine the consequences of chasing him through the pool, or of trying to rangeblock him.

Of course, this will only be a problem for providers that use LSN (dual-stack providers, like Comcast, don't need it) and only if they don't have a good all-IPv6 path to Wikipedia. It may also be possible to "tunnel" through IPv4 parts of the path; I'm fuzzy on that aspect. But if not, can we quantify this risk? How can we mitigate it? Unconventional (talk) 07:33, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * There's no doubt IPv6 will be a huge challenge for the Wikipedia community. As you mention, IPv6 addresses are vastly more dynamic than IPv4 addresses (even without LSN, I believe ISPs are being allocated huge address pools for allocation as dynamic IPs). Not only that, when Wikimedia itself switches to IPv6 (as it inevitably will), the entire namespace of IPv4 user talk pages will become obsolete on all 1000 or so Wikimedia projects, and administrators will have to learn how to use IPv6 range notation. The devs will have to weigh up whether IPv6 addresses are even worth using as a means of tracking anonymous edits (given how long they are, and how often most will change), although I don't see any obvious alternatives.
 * As for the more immediate problem this poses, WP:RBI is designed for this sort of situation. It requires vastly greater resources than "(range-)block and be done with it", but will probably become increasingly necessary, given the changes taking place in global networking. — This, that, and the other (talk) 09:54, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, I'm talking about hundreds or thousands of people (the entire customer base of certain ISPs) being crammed into relatively small blocks of IPv4 addresses (small because they're in short supply and highly reusable) — that is, a high ratio of anons to IPv4 addresses seen. No matter how dynamic IPv6 addresses may be, the corresponding ratio will be infinitesimal, so not the same problem — although it might cause the opposite problem, namely, that an IP block is completely ineffectual. (If that happens, we may as well forget about IP blocking at all, at least until the transition is over and end-to-end connectivity becomes the rule.) -- Unconventional (talk) 14:09, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the worst case scenario is a wider use of semi-protection. Of course, if a vandal is determined enough we could end up protecting half the site before they get bored and leave... I'm also a little worried about autoblocks, which will start to do a lot more collateral damage.  -- N  Y  Kevin  @900, i.e. 20:35, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * See my section below on IPv6.Jasper Deng (talk) 18:11, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Rangeblocking would still be possible, in my opinion. As for talk pages, I've proposed giving each subnet an individual talk page. The only real static parts of an IPv6 address are its routing prefix.Jasper Deng (talk) 06:22, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikitable sortable with tnavbar-header
Hello.

There seems to be a problem with the new sort ascending/descending design for wikitable sortable.

If you have a template with such a table within it, and place a tnavbar-header at the top in order to make view/discuss/edit of the template immediately available in articles transcluding the template, it does not work. When clicking any of the links, it only performs the sort.

See for example this template: Template:2008 Summer Olympics United States men's volleyball team roster.

Right-clicking works, however.

HandsomeFella (talk) 14:05, 13 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I have never seen this setup before... Navbar was never designed for stand-alone tables, but for navboxes and infoboxes. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 15:48, 13 January 2012 (UTC)


 * It worked before the change of the design of wikitable sortable. And the tnavbar-header template has a parameter that allows for a (column) heading. HandsomeFella (talk) 18:16, 13 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The name parameter can provide a caption on any block level element, including table headers and cells. I have just never seen one in combination with a sortable table before. Sortable headers look for click events on the entire header, capturing all clicks. That means it is incompatible with navbar. The only solution is to move it to a non-sortable cell, or outside the table. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 19:11, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Try adding a caption row, and putting the v-d-e links in there. Caption rows are typically placed between the table start  and the header row, thus:


 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:25, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That doesn't quite work either. Navbar is a block element; the table caption is not, so Tidy ends up kicking it out of the table. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 20:32, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the tip, but I'm contemplating using Template:View instead, putting it to the right of the "presentation sentence", like this:

The following is the American roster in the men's volleyball tournament of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

✅ Changed the template(s). HandsomeFella (talk) 16:00, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Problems with display of WP
Past few days, Chrome, Mac OS Lion, there have been increasing problems. Level 2 headings not bolded and small font-size. Sometimes thumbnails are tiny. Some buttons tiny. I've followed the instructions for clearing my browsing data. Still the same. Tony  (talk)  10:05, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * See one section below. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 17:09, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Good Articles
How are good articles linked to the language bar at the left. I have noticed that Macbeth is a good article in Latin, but it does not appear to show this on the link from the english page. Is this automated or can I change it?-- Gilderien Talk|Contribs 21:31, 14 January 2012 (UTC) (edit conflict twice)
 * This isn't automated. You would do it by adding just above the interwiki links at the foot of the article. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:39, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's the presence of a or, so if an article is a Good Article on the Latin Wikipedia, you'd expect to find a  on the English page. Some of the bots that maintain the interlanguage links also maintain these templates. If you are adding them manually, they should go after the categories but before the ILLs. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:44, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, will be doing in about ten seconds.-- Gilderien Talk|Contribs 21:45, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Recursive category search by title
I know I've seen this before, on toolserver or elsewhere, but I can't find it now. Say I want to search category "Physics" and it subcats, x levels deep (realizing that the recursion has to stop somewhere because categories aren't that pristine), for articles containing the word "theory". Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks, Riggr Mortis (talk) 21:36, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Edit summary section link character
The edit summary section link character seems to have been changed from the old arrow (→) to something that isn't rendering for me. I'm not overly concerned and know why it isn't rendering, but wonder if it might be better to choose a character that is more likely to render for all users (if it doesn't render for me, it follows that other users may see the same little box).  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  21:50, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Chrome? Restart it. Other browser? Restart it also. Not helping? Reboot. (The arrows are quite standard characters that should render for anyone.) — Edokter  ( talk ) — 22:00, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Not been changed? Just my Chromey having a bad day? Ah. Thanks E.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  22:03, 14 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Mhmm. Reboot while walking the dog fixed it. Computers eh!? Sassafrassarassa...  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  23:59, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Chrome has this sometimes. Its unicode component is slightly wonky. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 01:46, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Well this is only the second issue I've had with Chrome, so I'm nowhere near complaining. The other issue is that checkboxes vanish occasionally (the fix for which is to call up the same page using IE, toggle between the browsers, then close IE), but that only happens twice a year anyway. It's going to take more than an arrow not rendering to put me off. Face-smile.svg  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  02:11, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Alignment of infobox labels


I've recently switched from Windows XP/IE7 to Windows 7/IE9. Since the switch, I've noticed that the labels in many infoboxes (e.g. the instance of Infobox officeholder in Abraham Lincoln) are centred in the left-hand column of the infobox, rather than being left-aligned as they were previously. Questions: Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 02:51, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Does everyone else see the same thing, or am I just "special"?
 * Has it always been like this, and I'm only just seeing it now due to my change of OS/browser? or
 * Has there been some recent change to some underlying template which has caused this?
 * Yes they are centered in Vista/IE9, but the are still left-aligned in FF 9.0.1. This is probably a browser specific issue with IE. Ruslik_ Zero 17:16, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Double check compatibility mode would be my first guess. --Izno (talk) 20:24, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I've added some extra code in Mediawiki:Common.css to make the alignment work in IE9. Not sure why it wasn't working before but it is now. (May need to shift+resfesh once to see). -- WOSlinker (talk) 20:58, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Not fond of the 'solution'; the text is left-aligned inline, just to solve this problem in IE8(!). Oh well... It's time to restructure infobox anyway, as I have been meaning to do for years now. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 21:56, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, all. DH85868993 (talk) 23:15, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * This seems to have affected Infobox country. Reverting for now and have it fixed with the next infobox update. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 01:43, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

See also previous discussion at MediaWiki talk:Common.css/Archive 12, where AoV² proposed: — Richardguk (talk) 03:10, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, the problem seems to be that IE doesn't have TH or TD elements inherit the  from the table, but applying   to the TH directly in CSS overrides the HTML attribute   used in the infobox. A good fix would be to adjust the infobox to use inline CSS instead of the HTML attribute, or define a class to indicate a row or cell that should be centered and use that. But in the mean time, would browsers support something like this?


 * (and the same for, if anything uses that). Anomie⚔ 03:32, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Even if they did, a recent revision to mediawiki (not sure which) has made it so html presentational attributes render to the user as css inline styling. Not sure if that applies to "align" as I can't find the bug. --Izno (talk) 03:56, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Interesting, and does apply to "align", but not live here yet. Seems to have been added in and enabled in MediaWiki by default in . Also, according to the release notes, it depends on $wgHtml5 being enabled. Anomie⚔ 04:09, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I've fixed the specific issue with Infobox Officeholder by adding a load of inline style. Infobox country has the same issue though with everything centered. -- WOSlinker (talk) 10:15, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * All styling will have to be moved to Common.css eventually. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 11:05, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback tool is displayed when prompted to confirm a purge.
The Article Feedback tool is displayed when prompted to confirm a purge. I believe this is a bad idea, and furthermore, a minor bug that should be fixed, so it only is shown when a user is viewing the page itself. Any comments?  Hazard-SJ  ㋡   21:29, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Fortunately I dare say new users don't often end up on purge confirmation pages. On the other hand, I agree that it's a clear bug, so I filed it as #33742. (I may even take a look myself in the next few days if no-one else does.) Regards, - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 16:09, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Sortable table with header spanning several rows
On Global Hunger Index, the ranking table is sortable but the arrows on the header line do not sort the corresponding table. It seems to be because of the first two header cells spanning two lines and shifting the column index. Something like :

The arrows on column 2 sort according to the values of column 1, the arrows on column 3 sort according to column 2, and so on.

Is there an elegant solution or should the table layout be modified ? Koxinga (talk) 06:35, 15 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I think you have to modify the layout. This uses border coloring to effectively hide the border above "Column 1":
 * {| class="wikitable centered sortable" style="text-align:center; width:60%;"

! style="border-bottom: 1px solid #f2f2f2;" | !! colspan="3" style="width:8em;" | Other columns ! Column 1 !! Column 2 !! Column 3 !! Column 4
 * 1 || B ||4 || 11
 * 2 || C ||9 || 12
 * 3 || A ||2 || 21
 * }
 * PrimeHunter (talk) 12:52, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's generally a bad idea to do things like this from an accessibility standpoint. I would rejigger the table to remove the header cell with "Global Hunger Index". I'll note here that this should be something that the new script should handle, as that is a proper html table. /shrug --Izno (talk) 17:24, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'll see if I can find the exact cause of this problem —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:25, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * PrimeHunter (talk) 12:52, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's generally a bad idea to do things like this from an accessibility standpoint. I would rejigger the table to remove the header cell with "Global Hunger Index". I'll note here that this should be something that the new script should handle, as that is a proper html table. /shrug --Izno (talk) 17:24, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'll see if I can find the exact cause of this problem —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:25, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

ResourceLoader and user scripts
Once upon a time, there was <tt>importScript</tt>, and life was easy. Now we have ResourceLoader, and life becomes increasingly hard, as it promises that the old methods of loading userscript will someday be obsolete. In preparation for that day, it doesn't hurt to upgrade to the new methods.

But those new methods have dire shortcomings when it comes to usability. There is still no drop-in replacement for <tt>importScript</tt>, and with the upcoming 1.19 release, setting dependancies wil be mandatory and require that the entire script be wrapped in <tt>mw.loader.using</tt>. Would this have sufficed before: ...soon we will have to do the following: I'm afraid this might kill the user script culture. I am sure the ResourceLoader is a great tool for managing and delivery of javascript and CSS, but it sorely lacks transparency on the user side, and its developers have neglected to address this. So I would like to appeal to them to look at this issue and adapt RL to drop the wrapping requirement for dependancies (make mw.loader.using synchronous?), and to provide a (preferably) one-line command that will automatically register user scripts and its dependencies as a module on the fly, as this is currently only possible server-side.

I do predict that with the 1.19 release, a lot of userscripts that are already (partly) relying on RL in one way or another, will break, unless all script maintainers are educated and ready for the transition. So I'm just trying to get some form of discussion going so that everyone may know what's ahead. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 20:16, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * FYI. In the future (1.20) there will be GUIs around making a script, and it will be possible to share and manage gadgets much more easily then ever before. I have already seen the demo's of the work that Krinkle and Catrope have done on this. I think it would be a good idea to have the importScript call working like that as before, until that time arrives. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 21:21, 15 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Sounds exciting. I hope this feature doesn't rely on the GUI though (like LiquidThreads, where everything is hidden from view). — Edokter  ( talk ) — 21:48, 15 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank heaven someone has has the good sense to bring this up. Deprecations are all well and good, but the old functionality should always be maintained for perpetuity (if not forever), for backwards compatibility. The idea of letting upgrades break older scripts is just plain stupid. Allowing,  ,   etc. etc. to carry on working, whilst changing the core code behind them makes the greatest sense. These are (after all) function calls, and when upgrading any scripting language, we don't create all new functions, we simply upgrade the code that gets called by the function. That way, no one need be re-educated and all old scripts will carry on working.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  23:04, 15 January 2012 (UTC)


 * That wasn't exactly my point; I don't mind the breakage of some older deprecated functions per se; ResourceLoader is a good thing, but at this point it is just a bit too focussed on the back-end. What I am really pleading for in a user friendly front-end that doesn't require wrapping for dependencies. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 00:03, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

IPv6 complications
Contrary to what the page at Wikitech (search for "IPv6 deployment" on wikitech.wikimedia.org) says, we clearly are not ready for IPv6 enabling, in my opinion. My idea (talk page) shows that it'll be a lot of trouble. However, it'll at the same time solve a lot of our problems. Comments on the idea's talk page are welcome.Jasper Deng (talk) 04:50, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Could you insert the issues to bugzilla or here (no big essay just a list of real problems we need to deal with, prepare sw for) please Thank you Petrb (talk) 14:41, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know how to use Bugzilla; my particular issues are with CheckUser. See the bottom of the essay (User:Jasper Deng/IPv6).Jasper Deng (talk) 18:08, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * There is indeed a difference between being ready technologywise, vs. community-wise. Indeed the community would probably still lack some tools in order to deal with some management fallout that would ensue if IPv6 were enabled. I suggest you mail your suggestions and analysis to the wikitech-l mailinglist. Though in my experience people don't start working on stuff like this until it is actually needed. Sad but true. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 13:53, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Broken display in IE9
In Internet Explorer 9 standards mode, Tennis World Number Ones (women) is broken: when expanded, the text inside it does not wrap, but the browser does not take on a horizontal scrollbar. So it is impossible to read the tempalte beyond the first few items. It is true that each individual item shouldn't wrap, but not true that the entire navbox shouldn't wrap. This seems to be an issue in IE9: a space needs to be inserted between each nowrapped element in a list of this nature in order for the whole list to wrap. Could someone who understands all this please take a look? — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:56, 16 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Same in IE8, This should not happen, but it happens anyway. It is caused by the flagicons, which contain a non-breakable link. IE seems to treat the entire list as non-breakable when a list item starts with an non-breakable element. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 12:31, 16 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I see it too. Also, one of the links is highlighted as a phone number. Chris857 (talk) 17:57, 16 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I should have fixed that template by now. As for the phone number, that's the bug-ridden Skype toolbar. Nothing we can do about that. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 18:27, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You have the Skype browser plugin installed. This issue has been discussed multiple times and the only solution is to uninstall the plugin (not the Skype application). ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 18:31, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Edit count tool broken
Is anyone able to tell what's happening at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Transformers: Dark of the Moon/archive2? Thanks in advance, Sandy Georgia (Talk) 19:55, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's getting confused by the colon in the article title; you are seeing the history stats for Dark of the Moon, an unrelated article. This link works:, changing the colon to the equivalent %3A. A bug in the tool, I would say. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:19, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * ... that's an old one, I should have known that! Thank you so much, Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 21:04, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Global usage of Commons images
Shot in the dark here by putting this in Village Pump. I just created Friedrich Armand Strubberg. I find an on the German commons that I'd like to use. How to do that is my question. I know absolutiely nothing about putting images on Commons, or how to make them work globally. My only experience is linking to images on the English version of Commons. Can anyone assist me with this? I know this really is a question for Commons Village Pump, but finding my way through all that was a bit much. Maile66 (talk) 22:25, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That image is on the German Wikipedia - there's only one Commons, whose files can be used wherever. My inspection of it suggests that it is suitable for Commons, so it can be moved and posting on Commons is the right way to go - unless someone here could help Maile do that? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 22:31, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That would be terrific if someone could help post this image on Commons. Maile66 (talk) 22:38, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I've now transferred it, so you're free to use it just like any other image :) Happy editing, - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 22:45, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's now on Commons ---> Strubberg_Portrait.jpg. – ukexpat (talk) 22:46, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Thank you. Maile66 (talk) 22:46, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Just for future reference, now that I know this was to move an image to Commons, is there a defined procedure or form to be used if this ever comes up again? Should I have made the request on Commons? I'd like to note it somewhere, so I don't forget. Maile66 (talk) 00:51, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Moving files to the Commons. Nanonic (talk) 01:48, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Gadgets not working, all of a sudden
I'm using Firefox 8. All of a sudden, for some reason, Twinkle, pop-ups, and extra menus stopped loading on any page or diff. Clearing the browser cache did not fix it.Jasper Deng (talk) 21:00, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yep, I just posted about this here, although I didn't realize it was all gadgets. VegaDark (talk) 21:05, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's crapping up all of my CSS too. I don't have my UTC clock, either. Hurricanefan25  ( talk  ·  contribs ) 21:20, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * This may or may not be related to the upcoming MediaWiki 1.19 release. It seems that there is to be a major change in the way that scripts are loaded. See Wikipedia talk:Gadget and subsequent sections. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:28, 16 January 2012 (UTC)


 * MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition has had several updates today. This is the main page that loads the gadgets. -— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 21:32, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Not terribly likely, unless someone's making changes outside of version control: Special:Version says we're running which is dated 3 January 2012, so any effects from that should have been seen days ago. More likely is someone made a change in the site Javascript or in a gadget/script you all use that introduced a Javascript error. Check your error consoles. Anomie⚔ 21:37, 16 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Hmmm. Not getting an edit toolbar now. Edittools has defaulted to the non JS version. I'm thinking JavaScript has borked. -— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 21:38, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think this is related, but I'm not sure: the sort function on Wikitables seems to have stopped working. —WFC— 21:41, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Also might not be related, but all of a sudden, every template on a page is uncollapsed, and there doesn't seem to be a show/hide option anymore. I am also experiencing the gadget problem. Jeancey (talk) 21:43, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * All of that requires JavaScript. -— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 21:44, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Apparently, made some edits to that MediaWiki configuration page right about the time the gadgets became broken. What's more, he made the edits while not being an admin!Jasper Deng (talk) 21:46, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm noticing the same problem as well (on IE8, Windows 7). At first I thought the Advisor (in my JS tools) was the culprit... --Slgrandson (How's my egg-throwing coleslaw?) 21:52, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * (editconflict) I've tested my changes on labs and locally and in preview before saving. Sorry if something went wrong, I don't see errors here but I've reverted and debugging now. Can you report any specific errors? Krinkle (talk) 21:54, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Basically, every gadget failed to load.Jasper Deng (talk) 21:55, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Update: Krinkle has self-reverted.Jasper Deng (talk) 21:53, 16 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Some errors I encountered:

Hurricanefan25 ( talk  ·  contribs ) 21:56, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) No UTC clock in the upper-right corner
 * 2) My fixed-position sidebar went crazy, with the logo right over the "Main page/Contents/Featured...etc." part of the sidebar


 * Re Jasper Deng: Krinkle has Special global permissions. Anomie⚔ 22:53, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * So he's an authorised high tension tinkerer :). What he needs now is a pool of TESTERS who use different kit, and who will be on hand to report quickly when his next improvement b0rks things.  UAT - the secret to a successful implementation. Elen of the Roads (talk) 16:45, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

SOPA blackout
I've been seeing rumors of a blackout happening to the main page. Is this going to happen, and when? Does it affect the individual pages, or just the main page? If it's going to happen, shouldn't registered editors get some advance notice? Otherwise, we might think a worm/virus overtook Wikipedia. Maile66 (talk) 01:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * . There's a CentralNotice running now, but I'm guessing you still have anti-fundraiser measures deployed. MER-C 04:39, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think they are going to lock the database but they won't allow normal editing during the blackout. – Allen4names 05:12, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The plan is to restrict editing to stewards and staff only (in case of emergency). The blackout will happen with a full-screen central notice banner, no click through (I think), except for a handful of pages that will be available. (e.g. Stop Online Piracy Act). The blackout is scheduled to begin at 05:00 UTC (00:00 / midnight, Jan 18 Eastern Standard Time -- Washington DC time).  Other language Wikipedias are not affected, though each Wikipedia can do it's own thing if they wish.  Cheers. --Aude (talk) 06:17, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Why wasn't there a watchlist notice? — Dispenser 07:03, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Because it was a banner notice on all pages and a watchlist notice would be a duplicate. The decision to have it is very recent! Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:32, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * There's a banner on commons, which sometimes disappears almost immediately, reading as follows:


 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:33, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hundreds of users block  through monobook/vector CSS, over eight thousand (which 2,823 have logged in the past 30 days) have fundraising suppressor gadget enabled, an unknown block the "fundraiser ads" with AdBlock, and more simply click the tiny close button (50% smaller other close button) assuming its another annoying fundraiser message.  This is reenforced by similar complains around the pump, leaving only one conclusion, Central Notice is now only useful for fundraising.  So use the standard mechanism in the future even if it means doubling up.  — Dispenser 22:53, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

User page incorrectly categorised as semi-protected
My user page has suddenly been categorised into the hidden categories Category:Wikipedia pages with incorrect protection templates andCategory:Wikipedia semi-protected user and user talk pages. It isn't semi-protected, just fully move protected. I'm sure these categories have only just appeared, though the protection has remained unchanged for some time. A bug, or what? <small style="white-space:nowrap;border:1px solid #A00000;padding:1px;"> An  optimist on the  run!  11:58, 17 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Fixed. It transcluded a page with a pp-semi-indef I have now noincluded. It was added by Lowercase sigmabot in . PrimeHunter (talk) 12:10, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I have notified the operator at User talk:Σ/Archive/2012/January. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:18, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks - I should have thought of the transclusions! <small style="white-space:nowrap;border:1px solid #A00000;padding:1px;"> An  optimist on the  run!  12:33, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Blackout is good time to test developer changes and logs
The planned 24-hour blackout (at 05:00, 18 January 2012) is a good time to test system changes that would be more risky with all other users editing pages. This is also a good time to make further "sanity tests" of the system-logging functions, to confirm that usage statistics did drop substantially during the blackout. However, note during the Italian Wikipedia blackout, the pageviews of some common articles soared to double pageviews, such as "it:Roma" ("Rome") being accessed 2x more often, by users checking to see if major articles could not be read. However, the less-common Italian articles dropped drastically in pageviews, as there were no follow-on clicks of wikilinks, in article text or navboxes, to foster views of the more-rare articles. After the blackout, then logs can be checked by other users to judge what effects the 24-hour period had on system logs or Special:RecentChanges or Special:NewPages, etc. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:36, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

No banner
FYI - I had a banner last night and when I logged in this morning but when I logged in this afternoon it's gone. I run Safari - not sure which version. Will check. But am wondering if I don't have a banner whether others don't either. Oh forgot - monobook skin. Truthkeeper (talk) 20:11, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Nevermind - apparently is disappears permanently once it's been closed. Truthkeeper (talk) 20:28, 17 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The banner also won't appear if you hid the fundraiser notice a few months ago. I ended up deleting the centralNotice_fundraiser (or a similar name) cookie in order to see the banner properly. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  21:26, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Crosswikiness tool link
What is the link for the crosswikiness calculator on the toolserver? I have been unable to find it anywhere. —danhash (talk) 20:38, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Found it. Can we make these tools easier to find? —danhash (talk) 21:18, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Bizarre/frightening line inserted into an article I edited
I just made some changes to Woodstock, New York, including adding citations. I left untouched a few lines where the last editor (February 2011) had put "citation needed." When I saved my changes and viewed the article again, the words "HAIL HITLER" had replaced "citation needed." I am not tech-savvy enough to know how this hacking could have been engineered, but it was not part of the article prior to my edits. All I know is that I had to go back into the "edit" screen and delete "citation needed" in order to remove the offending lines. I'm not sure if  I'm reporting this to the right place, but felt it warranted mentioning and watching. Any questions, please contact me via my talk page. Thanks, Pastrychick (talk) 20:50, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmm, not sure how this happened. JavaScript injection, perhaps? The templates themselves were edited (since they are in fact protected). - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 20:58, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * No, just template vandalisme. The template is now protected. Thank you Pastrychick for reporting and sorry you had to encounter that. Luckily even though it was visible after your edit, know that the change is not linked to your name. Again, thank you for reporting. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 20:58, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * This is a good example of why we admins need to be more careful when protecting templates — we need to ensure that subpages of protected templates receive equal protection. I remember once being as surprised as you are: a page full of dates that were displayed through the partially protected dts template had absolutely no dates at all, and the template itself hadn't been touched.  I needed to come here before someone else found that Template:Dts/formmdy, which wasn't at all protected, had been blanked completely.  Nyttend (talk) 02:27, 18 January 2012 (UTC)
 * By the way, when something happens with the system that is substantially different from what you expected, there is no better place to come than this page. Thanks for your help!  Nyttend (talk) 02:35, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Problem with font size on WP
Today I am finding the font size of WP pages is much larger than for other pages from other sites. Although I can fix this problem by adjusting the font size on Firefox 9.0.1 using Tools/Options/Content, that is pretty inconvenient when you switch between sites. I've tried clearing the browser cache, but that changed nothing. What is my problem? Brews ohare (talk) 16:59, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You have zoomed the page while on Wikipedia. Firefox remebers this setting per site. Just press CTRL-0 (zero), or go to View > Zoom > Reset. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 17:06, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Just encountered the same problem and I am certain I didn't zoom the page whilst being on Wikipedia. However, your advice (CTRL-0 (zero)) worked. Thanks. Cheers, --Ekki01 (talk) 17:47, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Are you sure you didn't accidentally touch the scroll-wheel while honding down CTRL? Happens all the time... — Edokter  ( talk ) — 17:57, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I am pretty sure. But anyway, if it happens again I know how to fix it. --Ekki01 (talk) 18:03, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hey, thank you. CTRL-0 fixed the problem. I had no idea what had happened. Brews ohare (talk) 18:05, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * There are several ways of zooming in or out in Firefox - View menu → Zoom is one; Ctrl & + or Ctrl & - is another; rolling the mouse wheel when holding Ctrl is a third. There may be more tucked away. Ctrl & 0 always restores 100% zoom. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:29, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I was referred down here from the previous thread. Problems with Chrome persist. For example, the buttons "Save page", "Show preview", and "Show changes" under the edit-box are just minuscule. It's the extreme relationship between the size of the text and the icons, as well as the non-bolding and small font-size of level-two headings that is the problem. Same tininess for the person-icon next to my username right at the top. So I switched to Safari (this is all Mac Lion). That fixed the icon size problem. But on both browsers, some WP pages are just impossibly slow to download, especially since the blackout. I've cleaned out my cache on both browsers several times. No difference. It's so slow I'm going to have to give up editing for the time being. Also, no email notifications of changes to my talk page on en.WP (but on meta-wiki, yes). My prefs are unchanged in enabling this feature on en.WP. Any help appreciated. Tony   (talk)  15:05, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Browsers usually optimise for speed by keeping copies of images, CSS sheets, etc. locally, on your hard drive, so that a full set doesn't need to be brought back for every page that you visit which uses images, CSS, etc. in common with something else that you recently visited. Consider the Wikipedia puzzle ball upper left, this is 19K of data, and that is used on every single page. Keeping a local copy saves 19K from being downloaded with every page; these local copies are kept in the cache. Clearing your browser cache destroys all those local copies, so they all need to be brought back again, so your browser will always appear to run slow after clearing the cache. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:43, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Find sources template custom search not working for Google News
Looks like Google changed their parameters again. The custom search aspect of the Find sources template isn't working at this time for the Google news link on the template.
 * Example

Click on Google news link; the search criterion is only "Agriculture". Northamerica1000 (talk) 15:17, 17 January 2012 (UTC)


 * This appears to have been fixed. PrimeHunter (talk) 19:49, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I fixed it, and noted the fact at the template's talk page. I didn't go hunting for any other places where the problem may have been reported; per WP:MULTI i like to keep discussion in one place. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:58, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Want to redirect my wiki to Wikipedia during SOPA protest
I want to support this SOPA protest too, and I am trying to redirect my sites to wikipedia.

I added the javascript found at SOPA Strike to my MediaWiki:Common.js wiki page:



And it works today when I changed the 18 to a 17 (today's date). So now the BIG question, how in the world do I undue this edit now? :) Maybe change my wikis time to another day to turn this off?

What is the final version of http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/?banner=blackout so I can change http://sopastrike.com/strike in the javasript code to the wikipedia address?

Thank you! Igottheconch (talk) 19:55, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * What happens if you disable javascript? -- John of Reading (talk) 22:00, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You should be able to just disable javascript on your browser, and then remove the line (if you don't want people to be able to do this on the day, I suggest that you configure your webserver (Apache/etc.) to forward). In terms of a link for the enwp blackout, I imagine that simply linking to the main page should do the trick. SpitfireTally-ho! 22:03, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * smart John of Reading and Spitfire! Thank you. Genius actually. Really appreciate you helping me here! Igottheconch (talk) 22:05, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

code for the 'find your representatives' field used on blackout page
I assume this code is open source, and I could use that for a project of my own - can someone point me to it, either on Wikipedia or at it's original source? thanks. -- Ludwigs 2 05:27, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * See the page source for Special:CongressLookup. Goodvac (talk) 05:29, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmmm… That's not helping me.  The page source for that page has no code, no useful links, no javascript: even the action of the html form is blank.  the 'Learn More' link gives an external link to the House 'write your representative' website, which I knew about: I'm really looking for the PHP that does the legwork.  Am I missing something? -- Ludwigs 2  05:46, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I believe it's the CongressLookup extension. Ucucha (talk) 05:49, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Kill the SOPA banner
Why does it insist on popping up on every page despite clicking the X button? I have it enabled in preferences to hide the...wait a minute, htat gadget is gone too. I already called my reps, I don't want to be badgered again. hbdragon88 (talk) 07:35, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hopefully, Wikimedia will restore the "Suppress Fundraising Banner" gadget they removed in order to make sure we got notified of the blackout. Maile66 (talk) 13:32, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Gadget restored. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 15:20, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Stale pages
Hi, I wonder if the following thread could be brought to the attention of the developers in case it contains any useful diagnostic information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Reference_desk#Stale_pages

86.146.104.233 (talk) 14:04, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * See earlier thread above. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:21, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Conflating edits while or nearby Database lock

 * Your edit removed 11 Unicode non-breaking spaces. Some browsers do this (e.g. Firefox 1 and 2). Also could happen if you copied wikitext to and from some text editor. — AlexSm 18:50, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks AlexSM. I get it, mostly. So my browser does things with NBSP (me: FF 9.0.1. ontop WinXP). Also, Hans Adler noted me gently on effects. For me: I think it is not a though problem, just a browser &tc thing. It's not a bug really. I'd say its sub zero relevance and thank you for clarifying. Have a nice edit, -DePiep (talk) 23:04, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Article Feedback Tool
Hey guys; apologies for the belated nature of this notification; as you can probably imagine, the whole blackout thing kinda messed with our timetables :P. Just a quick reminder that we've got an office hours session tomorrow at 19:00 in #wikimedia-office, where we'll be discussing the results of the hand-coding and previewing some new changes. Hope to see you there :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:41, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Missing section edit links on a diff
Does anybody see section edit links here? Prior to today, a page diff where the current version was one of the two versions being compared would show section edit links, whereas a diff where neither revision was current would not show section edit links. At some point between 12:24 UTC and 17:24 UTC today, section edit links stopped being shown on all diffs. Within that timeframe, I made, preparatory to which I amended a setting in. I am pretty sure that I returned my settings to the previous state, but is there something I might have inadvertently altered and overlooked? -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:12, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * When I'm logged out, I see the edit links on my talk page, but not on this page. Ucucha (talk) 20:41, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Curious. I also get them for the first of your diff links but not the second - whether logged in or out. I note that your two links have slightly differing syntax ( vs.  ), but when I try adding or removing an "r" this makes no difference. My own talk page shows no section edit links, whether I use the form with cur or the form with curr (and right this minute I got an orange "You have new message" box, containing the form with cur), whether logged in or logged out. I guess that since logging out has no effect, it's not my prefs but something that's happened at system level. Where would I find a list of patches that went live today? -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:19, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Not sure what the easiest way is, but this at least shows the most recent change for each file and directory in 1.18wmf1. I suspect r108622 may have something to do with it. That cur/curr is also curious; I wonder whether it's intentional that MediaWiki apparently emits both forms. Ucucha (talk) 21:37, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, I'm not sure MediaWiki itself emits "curr" anywhere; at least I can't reproduce any place where it does. Ucucha (talk) 21:45, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * 33671. Ucucha (talk) 21:59, 11 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for reporting this. I came to ask about the same thing.   Will Beback    talk    05:47, 13 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I've noticed this too (and only just now noticed this thread as somehow I unwatched this page...). ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:53, 13 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank goodness others have noticed and reported this. Seems to have started happening about two to three days ago (like others have reported here). Really annoying that edit section links no longer appear for diffs on the current version of a page. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  18:55, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Just to 'bump' and keep this from archiving, this is still like this. It's really pretty annoying. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 03:09, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to add on-wiki reporting system for oversight
The process of submitting edits for oversight or revision deletion is complicated by the Streisand Effect: in order to obtain the fastest possible administrative action, users are tempted to post offensive or libelous revisions to public noticeboards such as WP:AN/I or the IRC channel. But this practice is discouraged since it draws more attention to the content we were trying to hide.
 * Problem

Additionally, we can safely assume that many Wikipedia editors do not know how to suggest that an edit be oversighted, or in high-speed recent changes patrolling, don't do it simply out of momentum and a desire to quickly move on to the next task.

The tension between the ease of reporting libellous/illegal content and not wanting to draw additional attention to it may lead to legally dubious content getting reverted but not deleted and additional legal liability for the Wikimedia Foundation.

Implement a flag where any autoconfirmed user can flag a revision for oversight and/or revision deletion. It would then be put into a queue visible only to oversighters / admins. Provided that the tool were sufficiently trafficked, this would achieve the goal of increasing visibility to those carrying the appropriate tools without encountering the Streisand effect.
 * Solution

I don't know what it would look like and haven't given it much thought past that. Thoughts? causa sui (talk) 23:50, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Discussion


 * Looks like a solid idea to me. --Izno (talk) 05:10, 7 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The idea seems good to me. Perhaps in addition to an "undo" button, there could be a "report for oversight" button.  It might be good enough to get this implemented in Huggle and Twinkle.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:37, 7 January 2012 (UTC)


 * That (a button like the "Undo" button) is pretty much what I had in mind. Huggle and Twinkle could implement the reporting more comfortably than MediaWiki could, but I'm not sure how the other half would work. Where would the reported revisions go? The purpose of the proposal is that the reported revisions would be visible only to oversighters / admins, but I don't think Twinkle and Huggle could make that happen. Anyway, what's the next step for this? I've never suggested a feature like this before. causa sui (talk) 18:51, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That's a good question. I think oversight requests are mostly sent in e-mail; perhaps the button could be basically a Special:EmailUser link (pre-filled with some sensible text and a diff).
 * As for making it happen, I think that I'd start with a note at WT:RFO, with invitations to both Twinkle and Huggle folks (on their main talk pages) to join in. The folks at WP:VPT might also be interested.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:27, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, WT:RFO is a redirect to WP:RFO, presumably to prevent people from posting requests for oversight to the talk page. I can post a request for comment to WP:VPT and see what happens. causa sui (talk) 17:39, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I should have checked. Another option is to post something to the talk page for the oversight policy.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:42, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think this is smart thinking. A one click solution to an otherwise complex issue. I've only requested oversight for a few edits, and each time have emailed the request (which was dealt with quickly). It would however be simpler and quicker if we could just click a flag button and have it all taken care of for us.
 * Potential problem would be the abuse of the button. Possible solution would be that only editors with a track record of say at least 500 edits would see the button. Those editors would by then know enough about the content and policies to use the button wisely.
 * How would it work? Maybe a simple solution could be to add the diff to a category that only oversighters can view. A better system would be to (by means of PHP) send an automated email, as if done by an editor making an email request.
 * If this were implemented well, I'd like to see the current system of reporting deprecated and eventually done away with completely, thus removing maintenance workload and some of the potential for Babs to get upset.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  10:04, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, I floated this in #wikimedia-dev and some idlers pointed me to Multimedia:Flows, which seems like a developer's version of the same idea. If we are reasonably confident that devs wouldn't be tarred and feathered for implementing this, it may just be a matter of finding one. causa sui (talk) 18:54, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * All changes to the MediaWiki software that surprise a power user result in users boiling the tar and collecting feathers. That's what always happens when power users discover that they aren't in control.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Moved
So far, I'm encouraged by the response; all of the feedback I've got on this proposal is positive. On the suggestion of a few people in #wikimedia-dev, I moved the discussion over here to get some more view points on if and how this could be concretely implemented. Some prior suggestions:
 * 1) Start with adding functionality to Huggle and Twinkle.
 * Doesn't work because of the critical need for the revisions reported for oversight to be visible only to users with the appropriate tools. Front-end solutions cannot accomplish this.
 * 1) Add a gadget.
 * Similar to above, this cannot be accomplished with Javascript.
 * 1) Implement a MediaWiki extension
 * Probably the best and only solution. Similar to the "undo" button, regular editors would be able to flag any revision for oversight and mediawiki will automatically notify the appropriate users.

Questions that linger for me are:
 * Questions
 * 1) We might need a way to know if the revision had been reported already, to prevent excessive re-reporting of the same revision.
 * 2) *This could be accomplished with software (the extension automatically declines to report it),
 * 3) *Or simply a warning that the revision has already been reported and asking for confirmation that the user really wants to submit a duplicate report.
 * 4) Oversighters might want a way to respond to the report (i.e., "Thanks, I suppressed this", "Go away, you're a troll").
 * 5) Once a user hits the button, how should the extension do the reporting?
 * 6) *It could send a form email with a link to a revision to oversight-en-wp@wikimedia.org as WP:RFO already indicates.
 * Or, the extension could include a ticketing system similar to Multimedia:Flows. Flows would also have potential uses outside of oversight.

Other questions or comments about implementation? Suggestions for how to move forward? causa sui (talk) 21:06, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment If the term "oversight" is shown as a link akin to "undo" on watchlists, history lists, etc. it will need clear and concise explanation because it's not at all obvious. The uninitiated may believe it to be synonymous with "review", i.e. "this edit needs the considered opinion of another editor", something like Pending Changes. If that belief is held, all sorts of edits will get so marked (I'm primarily thinking unsourced edits to BLPs here) which do not actually require WP:OS attention. There are not many oversighters - I count 35 - and they will not wish to be swamped with trivia that any editor - including the anons - can sort out. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:31, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Good point. Maybe it should be something like "Report abuse" with a boilerplate explanation shoved in the user's face briefly explaining what counts and what doesn't before they hit "Submit". Or better yet, there could be a list of radio buttons with preset acceptable rationales for oversight, and the user has to pick one before hitting "Submit." Finally, wherever we would be tempted to use "oversight" in a user-facing way, we should instead talk about "suppression" since that's less likely to be confused with editorial oversight. causa sui (talk) 21:38, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think it could be done in Huggle or in Javascript, actually; it seems plausible that a notification sent to the email list using Huggle/JS would be possible, but IANAProgrammer. Alternatively, a private wiki could be set up? Otherwise, I think an extension is probably going to be necessary. This is definitely an ability we would want to restrict to a certain user group, possibly rollback or otherwise. On the point of wording of the link, "oversight" is definitely not the word we'd use, and I'm not sure "abuse" comes across correctly. "Report" seems right, but I'm not sure how to specify that the edit needs to be flagged for copyvio or for underage editing or whatnot as opposed to content disputes and such ("Flows" looks like something that could handle that, but I suspect its a far way off). --Izno (talk) 23:14, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The big problem the proposal is trying to solve is that new(er) users don't know how to report, or might not remember to, or might not be able to remember/find WP:RFO, etc. Limiting it to rollbackers completely defeats the purpose. Originally, I'd suggested we restrict it to autoconfirmed users, but I can't get behind restricting it to the people who need it the least. If it's abused, the abusers can be blocked - and if the abuse is too widespread for the oversight team to handle (which I doubt), we can restrict it then, or just turn it off. causa sui (talk) 23:27, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Are we sure we want newer users able to report something like that? That's seems like a very serious question to me, and I would personally answer in the negative. There's a limit to the amount of information we can ask new(er) people to absorb, and I don't think that this would be an effective little bit for something to do. YMMV.
 * As a question, how many false positives does the list get currently? I would expect that number to be zero. How much would it go up by if we're letting the masses have at it? Just some thoughts. --Izno (talk) 00:03, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think this is something we would have to judge after we'd had some experience with it. This would doubtlessly increase the number of false positives, but it may also greatly increase the number of true positives. Only oversighters will know how many false positives are worth one true positive, and we'll only know what the actual results are once we get this implemented. I for one think it's worth a shot. FWIW, I shot an email to AUSC about this, which was then forwarded to oversight-l. Hopefully some oversighters will chime in with their opinions. causa sui (talk) 00:43, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't understand why using Huggle or Twinkle to send e-mail wouldn't work; it's basically just automation of what we're doing manually right now. Additionally, clicking the button could automatically undo the edit, which is a perfectly fine (and I believe normally recommended) temporary action to take (as it hides the information from casual readers while we're waiting for an oversighter to have a look).  Additionally, by tying it to automation tools like that, we've got extra leverage for preventing abuse:  casual editors don't use those tools, and we can revoke access to anyone who abuses them.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:18, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Adding this functionality to huggle and twinkle is probably a good, albeit independent, idea. Most people using those tools probably know what oversight is and how to use it, but they also edit very fast and might not report something unless Huggle had a button for it. There's no reason it shouldn't be in Twinkle either, just for convenience sake. But see above for my view on restricting casual editors from access. causa sui (talk) 23:27, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * All this will do is give the oversighters lot more crap to sort though. It would be a good idea, if users and administrators knew what should be oversighted and what shouldn't. But they don't. Prodego  <sup style="color:darkgreen;">talk  06:28, 15 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I have no objections to tools and scripts being created or enabled to automatically send an email to the Oversight OTRS queue with a link to the problem edit (and, I hope, a summary explaining *why* it is a problem); in fact, I think it's a brilliant idea and fully support it. I do, however, object to an on-wiki queue or list of such links that is visible to anyone other than oversighters. In my opinion, it will create the very Streisand effect that this is intended to reduce.  We really want to draw attention from the entire admin corps to edits requiring suppression?  I am really, really uncomfortable with that idea. Risker (talk) 06:32, 15 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I think the "oversighters/admins" and "queue" part may be inexperience about who should check oversighted material and how it works. (Hint to proposer: not admins). AGF this was attempting to be fair and inclusive in light of little direct experience of oversighting work, and easily fixed in the proposal. FT2 (Talk 07:25, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * In the original proposal, I was ambiguous about whether the button would report for revdel or oversight. I was persuaded that it should be for oversight only. In case I failed to clean something up somewhere, I absolutely am not proposing that all admins see a queue of edits proposed for oversight. In either case, only people who have the associated tools should see the reported revisions. I never suggested that the queue be on-Wiki, and in fact explicitly rejected some technical implementations on the grounds that they couldn't do much else. causa sui (talk) 20:35, 15 January 2012 (UTC)


 * In principle this would be nice - a wide range of users (of some kind) have a "report for oversight" button that pops up a warning/confirmation dialog, then if agreed, suppresses (=oversights) the edit and puts it in the usual process for oversighters. Oversighters may leave it oversighted or reinstate. The button would not allow any access to oversight, it just suppresses the item (which vanishes for them as well) and reports it for review.


 * The problem -- most users don't understand what is oversightable. Even if we tried to say "defamation and personally identifiable info" many users would misconceive the first part, and click the button on contentious but not defamatory posts, or legitimate personal information in articles. We can undo everything but in autoconfirmed hands this is too wide, would get very contentious and very disruptive, be used to play games, and start disputes. Autoconfirmed is no-go.


 * Such a button could be given to rollbackers/admins, because 1/ they probably have sufficient experience (or enough clue to read the relatively simple manual and understand the button), 2/ likely to "get" not to press it if they don't understand it, and 3/ their tools and trust are specifically granted to cover work such as antivandalism already, which this extends. The bit could be removed if someone insisted on repeatedly misusing it. On that basis it probably works. If not, Risker's idea where it's reported but not auto-suppressed is also workable. FT2 (Talk 07:15, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * FT2, I do not think you are talking about what is being proposed. There is nothing in the proposal that says that the edit will be suppressed; it says it will be flagged and go into a special queue visible to admins and oversighters.  I would absolutely oppose any proposal that gives anyone other than oversighters authority to suppress an edit. It is my personal opinion that revision-deletion is extremely overused already; there is no way I would support expanding the ability to make edits "invisible" any further than it already exists. Risker (talk) 07:48, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I agree with that bit - nobody should actually be able to oversight a revision unless they are an oversighter, let alone any autoconfirmed user. On the question of what should be oversighted, above I suggested that after hitting the button, the reporting user would be given a description of what suppression is and what it's for, and list of radio buttons or check-boxes prefilled with acceptable rationales for oversight, and the user would have to pick one before completing the report. That should help prevent accidental false-positives. causa sui (talk) 20:35, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

How would we go about getting this implemented? causa sui (talk) 02:35, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Implementation
 * Well, you could put in a Bugzilla, if there is evidence of a consensus discussion on a clear proposal that achieves support from the people who would be directly affected. I'm not sure you're really at that point yet; in fact, I'm the only oversighter who's commented, and you've revised the proposal since then. I guess I'm still trying to figure out exactly what problem this is intended to solve; the very rare posting on ANI or AN is usually promptly resolved by more experienced users removing it and sending an email to the Oversight OTRS queue. Just for perspective: at least 75% of suppressions now done relate to user page or user talk edits by self-identified minors, revealing personal confidential information. Most of these are caught by a handful of users who monitor two key areas. Probably less than 5% of suppressions involve article space, and that includes suppressions of personal-attack vandalism. I don't want to discourage you, but I think this needs to be worked out a little further. Risker (talk) 03:57, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'm just trying to stir the pot. ;) The problem this is mainly intended to solve is not that there are too many oversight requests on public noticeboards (although any number greater than zero is a problem), but that there are too few requests for oversight and many revisions that should have been oversighted in the article history. So while you seem to interpret the lack of suppression requests in article space as evidence that this may be unnecessary, I interpret it as a symptom of the problem. I don't have science to back this up - and I expect that if I tried to obtain it, this thing would definitely die on the vine - but in my anecdotal experience there are, for example, a lot of copyvios that just get reverted. Many more get deleted. According to WP:OVERSIGHT, WMF's lawyers say that neither is a sufficient remedy. They are out there, and they aren't getting reported, and that's a problem. So if you're with me so far, the next question is how to increase reporting of true positives without unacceptably increasing reporting of true negatives.
 * To recap, I identified three causes: (1) Insufficient knowledge of oversight, it's purpose, or even its availability - (2) Not knowing how to report a revision for suppression - (3) Simple laziness due to the difficulty, or momentum to continue RCP work. My idea is basically to add a button (and an API call for huggle etc) that shows a user an explanation of suppression, what it's for, and asks for an explanation of why this revision meets the narrow criteria defined before putting it in a queue or firing off a form email to oversight-l. I don't have technical specs or drawings, mainly because I don't want to draw them up until I know what devs expect/need.
 * As to sufficient discussion, I can only post here and hope others weigh in. You could do a better job of waking up other oversighters than I could, if you think it's worth it. :-) causa sui (talk) 02:53, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

New Improve This Page feature
I have just run across this new feature that has been under discussion and development for a while. I found it on Newt Gingrich in the lower right hand side of the screen. And clicking on it brings up a pop-up version of what is already at the bottom of the page. Perhaps this has been suggested before, but I'd like to at least see the little "X" giving the viewer the option of clicking it away if they don't want to see it. It does tend to be an obstruction of text if the viewer just wants a clear line of sight from left to right, without having to scroll the page upwards just to keep moving past "Improve This Page". Just a thought. Maile66 (talk) 23:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia_talk:Article_Feedback_Tool/Version_5 is the place to discuss this feature. Oliver Keyes is pretty responsive on that talk page. — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:11, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Appreciate the direction. Maile66 (talk) 11:36, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Table sorting
I have read a variety of articles discussing how to appropriately sort a table, but I appear to have come across a bug in the table sorting code. Try sorting these two tables, with the little arrow beside "Rank".

The first table sorts appropriately. The second table does not (it sorts alphabetically rather than numerically). As specified in the sorting help page, the first element is a numeric, and therefore the table should sort numerically. What is particularly odd about this combination is that adding one row appears to make the difference.

Nograpes (talk) 18:46, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * This came up in the last two weeks. See Village pump (technical)/Archive 96. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:55, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Custom css causing body tag to be displaced
Hi all. I have been working on a few css tweaks to the vector skin that allow the navigation elements (tabs, page title, sidebar) to remain fixed and thus always visible. It still has a few rough edges, but it's pretty much usable by now. What's puzzling me, though, is that something seems to be displacing the body tag, resulting in a scrollbar showing up even for very short pages. Are any css wizards able to pinpoint the source of this problem? The stylesheet's located at meta:User:Waldir/vector.css. Thanks in advance! --Waldir talk 05:05, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Log in at English Wikipedia only
I can't log in locally! Why not? How can I do it?--89.110.14.211 (talk) 21:25, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Are you saying that you can log in elsewhere? If so, where, and under what user name? -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:46, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I can log in at all Wikimedia projects together, but I can't log in at one of them only, being logged out at others, because there's not a box for it. Earlier, there were 2 boxes: the 1st was "Remember me (up to 30 days)", and the 2nd was for logging in locally. But now I can see the 1st one only.
 * I think, my username doesn't matter. Sorry for bad English.--89.110.14.211 (talk) 22:14, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If I remember correctly, the checkbox was titled something like "Log me in on all WikiMedia projects"; there certainly isn't anything resembling that any more. It seems as if Special:UserLogin has been altered. I'm afraid that I can't find how that page is built up, nor where the components are. All I can tell is that the components have names like . -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:59, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I really did talk about "Log me in on all WikiMedia projects" checkbox on Special:UserLogin. My English is not perfect:)
 * I want to know, is that a temporary bug, or a purposeful alternation? And if that's a purposeful alternation, could I see the relevant discussion on Meta?--89.110.14.211 (talk) 00:29, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, why do you want to log in locally? Is it helpful to be logged out when going to other sites? -- N Y  Kevin  @134, i.e. 02:12, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Potential Change Needed to GeoLocate Link on Anon Footer
On all anon contrib pages and talk pages, there is a "GeoLocate" link, that link goes to ip2location.com. A couple months back, ip2location.com started using a "credit" system for IP searches. They also took away the Google Map that was quite useful when trying to figure out where users were located in emergency situations. For any admin who uses the "GeoLocate" link often, the "credit" (of only 20 per day) would be used up quickly (it is not renewed for 24 hours). There is another and better option, infosniper.net. Gives all the information that ip2location.com once did, the useful Google Map and no "credit" system.

I would like to propose that the "GeoLocate" link on the contrib pages and talk pages of anon accounts be changed from ip2location.com to infosniper.net. - <small style="white-space:nowrap;border:1px solid #900;padding:1px;"> Neutralhomer •  Talk  • 18:37, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think WhatIsMyIPAddress.com would be better. It includes a proxy checker, which is useful (even though sometimes it's not right), and the focus is on the data rather than on the map. FYI: the page to change would be MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer-anon. I think this would be uncontroversial enough to request on the talk page. Goodvac (talk) 00:21, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Infosniper.net's map can be shrunk so you see more information and less map. I perfer the map when checking to see if I have an IP hopper in a certain area (plus I just like maps).  Since one offers proxy information (WhatIsMyAddress) and one offers technical information (InfoSniper), could we compromise and have a link for each?  Just mark one as "GeoLocate - Proxy" and one as "GeoLocate - Technical".  The user or admin could choose which one to use based on what information they need at that moment. - <small style="white-space:nowrap;border:1px solid #900;padding:1px;"> Neutralhomer  •  Talk  • 15:48, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * With the SOPA blackout now over, could the request raised here be acted upon? - <small style="white-space:nowrap;border:1px solid #900;padding:1px;"> Neutralhomer •  Talk  • 19:58, 19 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Got tired of waiting for responses, moved discussion to ANI for more eyeballs and faster responding ones. <small style="white-space:nowrap;border:1px solid #900;padding:1px;"> Neutralhomer •  Talk  • 12:06, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Seems that whatismyaddress returns no timezone (ditto for http://en.utrace.de ) while infosniper returns inaccurate timezones. We normally prefer zero information to inaccurate, right? LeadSongDog come howl!  17:15, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Might be important if we actually used timezones for anything. This is for GeoLocation by IP address and proxy information.  A correct timezone is the least of our needs...but if we really need one, it isn't tough to figure out. - <small style="white-space:nowrap;border:1px solid #900;padding:1px;"> Neutralhomer  •  Talk  • 19:46, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

whether redirecting asteroidette articles would relieve the server burden at all, or significantly
It has been stated that if all of the articles such as this one (10335) 1991 PG9 were moved to redirects such as this one: (10556) 1993 QS, it wouldn’t relieve the demands on the servers on Wikipedia. I don’t know how many they are, but there are many thousands of such articles. Imagine there are one, ten, or one hundred thousand such articles; would it lighten the load on the servers in any significant way? To give you an idea how many articles we’re talking about, have a look at this picture. Please click on it so you can see it full size:. The user was stopped before he completed the task of creating an article for each one. I can’t tell how far along he’d gotten. Actually, even just doing it once, given that “nothing is really lost”. as they say, wouldn’t it actually be ‘’adding’’ to the sever burden to convert any article into a redirect? I mean, the old article is stored there somewhere even after it’s been turned into a redirect to the chart, I gather, is that not the case? Suppose we deleted all of them instead. Would that relieve the burden on the servers, at all, minimally, or significantly, or would the servers still contain copies of the deleted articles, thereby actually adding to the server burden, if we deleted them all, or would it be pretty much the same because the server stores copies of the deleted articles?

Wondering, Chrisrus (talk) 07:22, 19 January 2012 (UTC)


 * There would be no appreciable impact on Wikipedia's servers by doing something like this. In any case WP:DWAP. A decision like this should only take in to account what would provide the highest quality reader experience. If we are proposing creating millions of articles about every rock in the solar system, you'd want to consider whether they could ever be more than 1 line stubs. Personally I lean towards the list form, unless the minor planet has particular notability. Prodego  <sup style="color:darkgreen;">talk  07:25, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you for answering my question. I think you've misunderstood, though, the context of the question.  They've already been created; we stopped him before he had finished, but he was pretty far along.  We are to turn them into redirects.  Just there was the claim that doing so wouldn't relieve the burden of the servers, and I wondered if that were true.  Anyway, here is not the place to discuss any but the techincal question, and you've done so: neither redirecting them nor deleting them, the options at this point, will it relieve the server to redirect or delete them, so thank you very much for answering.  I wonder now if I understand you correctly that the answer to an interesting question that I didn't ask, did user's creation of so many thousands of tiny articles in the first place add significantly to the server burdern, you've answered I understood, no, it didn't.  I gathered that from what you said, but that wasn't my original question because it's too late: that's already been done.  Now we can either leave them, turn them into redirects, or delete them.  The plan is to turn them all into chart redirects, somehow, see WP:NASTRO, "dealing with minor planets", for more information.  There is no plan to continue making them in violation of NASTRO.  So thanks again for having answered my question. Chrisrus (talk) 08:13, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * In general, don't worry about performance, as Prodego says—focus on what's best for the readers, and let the Wikimedia ops team figure out whether it'll hurt performance.
 * That said, I don't see how redirecting these articles could help performance. The mere existence of an article is not a significant burden on the server, and even if we were to redirect them, the content of the old versions would still be in the database. Edits to the database are relatively expensive, though, so realistically if you were to edit thousands of these articles to make them into redirects, that's what would hurt performance the most. But again, don't worry about it. Ucucha (talk) 13:35, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Incidentally, it seems that we're talking about some 20,000 articles—about 0.5% of Wikipedia's total. Ucucha (talk) 13:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Wow. I'm amazed.  That's huge!
 * It's a technical problem beyond me: how to automate WP:NASTRO. That section has been evolving and may need to be rethought given this information. 20K+ articles!  Here's something to watch while you think about it:  Chrisrus (talk) 05:54, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * As others have said above, I think either deleting or redirecting the articles won't significantly affect the storage load on the servers. But I think converting them to redirects would increase the runtime load on the server to a minor degree. Consider that currently, when a reader clicks on a link to (10335) 1991 PG9, Wikipedia's server sends the contents of the (10335) 1991 PG9 article to the reader's computer, which looks to me like roughly 1k bytes (including the transcluded templates). But if (10335) 1991 PG9 was redirected to List of minor planets: 10001–11000, then when the reader clicked on the link, the server would send the contents of List of minor planets: 10001–11000 to their computer, which looks to me more like 50k bytes. But, having said that, WP:DWAP. DH85868993 (talk) 15:54, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Progress in this area:Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Astronomical_objects.Chrisrus (talk) 00:38, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

The readonly parameter during edit conflicts and on protected pages
In a recent update to the backend over the past year, a change was made to the way the edit textboxes are treated when you can't save a page. Until this change, it was still possible to fiddle with the text box before copy and pasting where you needed to go. Now, the textbox is greyed out and you aren't allowed to touch it. This is especially annoying for someone like me that is denied the hopes of being an admin because of my use of expressive language (and this is not the time to start throwing around the pointless and meaningless WP:NOBIGDEAL, because it don't mean CRAP at RfA) yet am capable of reading and manipulating some of the most complicated templates we have. It is annoying when a page is locked temporarily and you want to write out an edit ahead of time. It is most annoying because it is ill-conceived as an html parameter rather than a css style that could be overridden by editors.

So, can the readonly=readonly lines be removed from the code never to be seen again? I don't remember any community input on implementing this, but feel free to point me to it if there was. The only people benefitting from them are the people that don't read and get annoyed when they can't save their edit because they aren't aware of their surroundings; we shouldn't cater to the lowest common denominator. -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  13:58, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * For protected pages, the readonlyness seems to go back much further than "the past year". As far as I can tell, viewing the source rather than being redirected to the rendered page when trying to edit a protected page was added in in December 2003, and even then the text box was displayed read-only. I may be missing something, of course.
 * For edit conflicts, the readonlyness of the second box was indeed changed recently: see and.
 * I doubt either of these will be changed at the code level, as the justification is that you can't do anything with the edited text so there's no point to edit it (and if you want to edit it for use elsewhere, you can copy it elsewhere first rather than last). A user script something like this might fix the problem for you (note, completely untested):


 * It could be made more user-friendly by setting styles to keep the greyed-out appearance, of course. HTH. Anomie⚔ 15:44, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Although the edit box is greyed out, in Windows browsers you can still click in it, mark a passage (with the mouse, not the keyboard) and copy that to clipboard. If a passage is bigger than the edit box, you can mark it by dragging the mouse below (or above) the box edge. To mark all of the edit box contents, click anywhere in it and go for Ctrl+A. -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:28, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I want to edit it with the wiki textbox, where I have access to the edit toolbar and the insert characters bar which I make regular use of. The warning that you cannot save should be enough. -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  17:13, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Presumably you want to reuse the code in a page for which the edit box is not greyed out. Go to the protected one, copy all relevant text to your clipboard, go to the one where you want to reuse it, paste it in at the very bottom, and then use normal editing methods to manipulate the bits you're interested in, finally delete the leftover odds and ends. -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:43, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Could have a small script that would make a red "→ Sandbox" link to load the (latest version of) wikitext into your own sandbox; something like   . — AlexSm 18:16, 20 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Always use edit-preview first and then go-back: I think the idea is to re-edit the attempted SAVE as easy ("one-window") as possible; so instead, get in the habit of always doing edit-preview, then upon an edit-conflict (or protected page), just go-back to the prior edit-preview version and fiddle the edit-buffer there, to later try another edit-preview before attempting a re-save. The extra edit-previews might seem like too much effort, but they are a lot easier than finding "Your text" of an edit-conflict to copy/paste in another window of re-editing the page. Instead, using the Go-back to edit-preview is <font color="#414141>much  easier most times (but DO NOT delete browser "temporary files" meanwhile, or there will be no edit-preview to go back to). Always edit-preview. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:07, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You cannot change text or do previews on protected pages, so this advice is misplaced. — AlexSm 18:16, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The "Show preview" button never throws an edit conflict, because no save is being requested. Clicking "Show changes" can show you (by examination of the diff) that you are about to revert something that was saved after you went for "Edit", but this can throw a false positive if that save was to a section different from the one that you're editing.
 * For protected pages, you can't even get that far because the "Save page", "Show preview" and "Show changes" buttons simply don't appear; nor can you alter the contents of the edit box in any way. When attempting to edit a protected page, you find out that it is protected in at least five ways: (i) the page has a "View source" tab instead of an "Edit" tab; (ii) when you click "View source" you get the message "This page is currently protected and can be edited only by administrators."; (iii) the edit box is grey instead of white; (iv) you can't change its contents; (v) the "Save page" buttons are absent. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:22, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Exactly. Since we can't stop stupid, lets get rid of two of those 5 ways - the edit protected textbox. Why are people coming up with these big fancy ways to get around it: Just disable the readonly mode on the textbox, no fancy way needed. Like I said, you can't stop stupid, and I bet those same people that would edit and then complain when they can't save would complain regardless when the page they want to edit is un-editable. -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  16:18, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Sort icons
I know this is a pretty random question, but is there any way to change the colour of sort icons in wikitable headers such as this?

Thanks in advance, —WFC— 13:55, 20 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The arrows are background images. It is possible to override those images in your personal CSS, but that means you would have to create your own images and upload them. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 14:42, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for clearing that up. —WFC— 03:53, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Different views with compatibilty view turned on and off
In East London line extension I'm noticing lots of white space (beside the route maps). This goes away and the text flows when I turn compatibility mode on. I'm using IE9 (9.0.4). Thanks Edgepedia (talk) 21:45, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * By "route maps", do you mean the RDTs or the maps like this one? -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:51, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem seems to have gone away. I'll come back if I find something out. Edgepedia (talk) 21:56, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * OK Weird. Thanks RedRose, I mean the RDTs. On this version, I'm seeing lots of white space to the left of the RDT. On the current version the text flows as I would expect. The only difference is the caption on the first image. Edgepedia (talk) 22:03, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * OK as this edit seems to break it (and that really doesn't make sense), I'm going to assume that something has been fixed and I'm having problems with cached versions. Edgepedia (talk) 22:10, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Haven't looked at this ye, but compatibility mode will break a lot of other things for you. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 22:38, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Isn't IE wonderful? "Erm....no."  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  22:41, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * OK I've found how to do this; it's to do with the balance of text (+ TOC) & images before the first section header and images after the header. I've a wide screen monitor; the other important piece of information in duplicating the problem. I'll set something up in a sandbox later. Edgepedia (talk) 08:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * This is probably not exactly related to the question raised in this thread, but problems with large unwanted chunks of whitespace are quite common when articles are viewed in IE. I've corrected dozens, perhaps even hundreds, over the years. It's to do with the different way that IE flows text and images, and tries to keep images next to the related text (different compared to what the editor who created the layout obviously saw on whatever browser they were using). In the common cases I've seen, IE is flowing the page in the logical way, given the source. However, because everyone (no reference to anyone in this thread) is so anti-IE, they automatically think that any difference in rendering between IE and other browsers is always a bug in IE. 86.181.206.213 (talk) 22:52, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Believe it or not, the way a browser is supposed to render floats is defined in the HTML specifications. And historically IE has not followed these rules (which carries over into newer versions' "compatibility view"), while Firefox and other browsers have. So quite often, the difference actually is a bug in IE.
 * The behavior in the revision linked above is an example of this misbehavior on IE's part; whether or not you consider it not "logical", the behavior defined in the HTML specifications is that shown by other browsers and by IE8+'s non-"compatibility view". Note that, should someone want the whitespace rather than the image being separated from the associated section, this is easy enough to accomplish in a standards-compliant browser (in wikitext, just use clear before the section header). Anomie⚔ 04:38, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Something going on?
Access is very slow and the interface is coming in raw and unformatted. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:26, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Ditto here. Maile66 (talk) 23:33, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Same, but it seems to be fine now. Jeancey (talk) 23:34, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Ditto, but only on my watchlist ... Chaosdruid (talk) 23:35, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Not here (England,Vector,Chrome,XP SP3). Sounds like stylesheets aren't loading. Try purging something Face-wink.svg  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  23:36, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Mine cleared. But it was whacked for a few minutes.  When I went into my browser View/Find Source, I saw messages advising someone to purge the server, so maybe someone did and cleared things.Maile66 (talk) 23:39, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Ditto here just now, I get completely blank rendered pages with Opera 11.60 browser unless I set style to user mode or accessibility layout, both logged out and in. The secure server works better. But problem cleared up once I tried with Firefox portable and returned to Opera. -84user (talk) 23:40, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
 * My watchlist looked like old school HTML with no CSS. I saved a dummy edit to the raw watchlist and it now appears normal. Other pages all look normal.  I use Firefox 9.0.1. Certes (talk) 23:44, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

There was a problem with the wikibits server (which serves the CSS) yesterday. A network configuration error (or rather, an attempt to fix it) caused it to develop a race condition and overload itself. It was quickly resolved. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 14:48, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Highlighting changed in edit differences window
A while back, perhaps a few weeks, I was pleased to see that a change of punctuation would also cause the adjacent word to be highlighted in red in the differences window. What a nice feature, I thought, why didn't someone think of that before, because it makes it so easy to see where a hyphen or comma was inserted or removed. Now that highlighting improvement has disappeared. I looked for a checkbox on "My preferences" that might control this feature, but there is none. What happened? <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  16:42, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't know whether the diff engine has changed or the behavior you describe were for specific diffs which would still look like that today due to the precise context of the punctuation. But there is an alternative User:Cacycle/wikEdDiff which usually makes it easier to see such things. It can be enabled at Special:Preferences. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:47, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I use wikEd most of the time, but I have to turn it off to run scripts, and that's when I really need to see what punctuation the script changed; if I make a change manually, I know what changed. I didn't know about the wikEd diffs window option when not running wikEd. Good tip. Another tip is to look for the Δ (delta) button below the standard diffs window. I finally figured out to press that. Cheers! <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller  <font color="#900">yack  18:46, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Nothing has changed, but it soon will. To preview the new diff display, try "Display diffs with the new yellow/blue color scheme that improves accessibility" under gadgets. One implovement is that even spaces are highlighted. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 17:56, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That's more good news. I will try it out. Thanks much! <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  18:46, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I for one am pleased that the red text highlighting in diffs has reverted to the behaviour that it had prior to MediaWiki 1.18 (October 2011), that is, changed text is delimited by either spaces or punctuation. For the three months where spaces alone were used as delimiter, a change of one character in a template would cause a sea of red and it was difficult to sort out the changed from the unchanged. For example, - there are two stretches of red text, and they are the bits that have been added. Under the version that was current from October 2011 until today, the three portions of text
 * would also be red, and it would be difficult to spot whether they had really changed or not. Amended URLs are often worth double-checking. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * would also be red, and it would be difficult to spot whether they had really changed or not. Amended URLs are often worth double-checking. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * would also be red, and it would be difficult to spot whether they had really changed or not. Amended URLs are often worth double-checking. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * would also be red, and it would be difficult to spot whether they had really changed or not. Amended URLs are often worth double-checking. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I think a checkbox on the preferences page would be helpful. Switching between the two behaviors might be desirable, not only for different user tastes, but also for the same user, depending on what kind of edits are being made. <font color="#C30">Chris <font color="#060">the speller <font color="#900">yack  01:58, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Editnotice of my talk page
Is there some to disable the "This is a talk page. Please respect the talk page guidelines, and remember to sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~ )." group notice on my talk page. I have a big talk page editnotice and it's redundant. Armbrust, B.Ed. <sup style="color:#E3A857;">Let's talk <sub style="color:#008000;">about my edits? 17:23, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The text is from MediaWiki:Talkpagetext. It is technically a system message and not an editnotice. I don't think it can be disabled. The same was asked at Village pump (technical)/Archive 45. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:37, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * You can remove it for yourself by adding  to Special:MyPage/common.css, but that won't remove it for other people. Ucucha (talk) 21:10, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the answers. At least I don't see it. Face-smile.svg Armbrust, B.Ed. <sup style="color:#E3A857;">Let's talk <sub style="color:#008000;">about my edits? 21:40, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Text wrapping
This is partially out of curiosity and partially to have a good userpage (In my opinion), so at my sandbox how would I make my "on technology" section wrap to the left of my userboxes? Best, -- Kangaroo  powah  05:06, 22 January 2012 (UTC) (Never mind, I found an alternative). -- Kangaroo  powah  05:08, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Search icon
Where is Wikipedia's search icon CSS located? A default installation of MediaWiki and the necessary extensions results in the search button being slightly lowered from the middle. Using Firebug, I've tracked the CSS to this page, but I don't know what the actual page to edit is, given that ResourceLoader has minifed everything.

Thanks. Cheers, — mc10 ( t / c ) 19:56, 19 January 2012 (UTC)


 * That's /skins/vector/screen.css, part of the core CSS. It cannot be edited. The search icon positioning has been fixed in the upcoming 1.19. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 20:29, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Excellent, thanks. I have access to the backend, so I'm able to edit it. Cheers, — mc10 ( t / c ) 22:30, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * You're welcome. To 'unminify' code, put <tt>?debug=true</tt> in the URL. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 14:43, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Copyright violations?
I see over 600 pages tagged, but I don't see how they were tagged or why. Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as copyright violations--<font style="font-family: Copperplate Gothic Light "> SPhilbrick (Talk)  13:51, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Most of the pages have images, such as Picture of the Day, or userboxes containing an image, is that what is going on?--<font style="font-family: Copperplate Gothic Light "> SPhilbrick (Talk)  13:56, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's because of Motto of the day/January 22, 2012, which contains a two-line quote from a copyrighted song and was therefore CSD'ed by someone. Ucucha (talk) 14:01, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I see it has been resolved.--<font style="font-family: Copperplate Gothic Light "> SPhilbrick (Talk)  14:27, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Weirdness at Help Desk
Folks, for about the last 10 minutes, every time I try to access the Help Desk I get automatically redirected to Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. Anyone else seeing this? If so I am guessing that there is a "problem" with one of the transcluded HD header templates, but I cannot access the page, even in edit mode, to troubleshoot. I have bypassed, purged, rebooted etc. Thanks. – ukexpat (talk) 16:44, 22 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Access is fine for me.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  16:54, 22 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Al was vandalized to make a page-size link. Vandal is blocked, template has been protected. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 16:58, 22 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Brilliant, thanks for the quick fix. – ukexpat (talk) 17:03, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

CSS not loading on the secure server
The Vector skin is not loading correctly when I access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. The only error I get from Firebug is

jQuery is not defined.

at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:BannerController&cache=/cn.js&303-4. Any ideas? — mc10 ( t / c ) 23:47, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Confirmation: I am observing the same thing, regardless of which page I view or browser I view it with. WBTtheFROG (talk) 23:52, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * This is wikipedia-wide (all languages). Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 23:54, 22 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Is working again. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 23:59, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

"Download as PDF" to print in Letter size instead of A4 size
Each time I use "Download as PDF" (under "Print/export" on the left margin of many Wikipedia pages), I get a pdf of paper size 8.27x11.69 inches (ISO A4 paper) I would like to get pdf files with paper size 8.5x11 inches (US Letter size). I believe that the pdf is created by a tool at Wikipedia, and is not associated with the local Acrobat program. I cannot find options or preferences on the Wikipedia site to change the tool to render the output in Letter size. Can someone help?

PS: I am not an experienced Wikipedian, but this topic was referred here from the new user Help Desk: Help_desk — Preceding unsigned comment added by PittsJD (talk • contribs) 16:08, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * A4 is standard in metric countries of which the US is not. I've filed a bug: .Smallman12q (talk) 17:07, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Symbol move vote.svg|20px]] Sharebox is a script that reorders your toolbox. It adds new buttons that make it easier to mail, print or share an article on Facebook or another linksharing service. You must have an account to add Sharebox to the sidebar. See User:TheDJ/Sharebox for more information. It also includes a PDF tool that should work for you. ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 12:22, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Talk pages as forum threads
Any reason why a Talk page cannot be implemented as a simple forum? Editor's can then create new "threads" (Sections), which have a proper "reply" button, that ensures they are properly and consistently formatted, and new threads appear at the top of the page, so that older threads are automatically "archived" on additional pages. --Iantresman (talk) 19:05, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * See WP:LiquidThreads. So far, it has had various problems that have resulted in lack of acceptance by the community, and is currently undergoing a rewrite. Anomie⚔ 20:14, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Some Wikimedia projects do have a "threaded discussion" feature, such as MediaWiki and the Hungarian Wikipedia - if you visit those, you should find an extra "my new messages" link upper right, between "my watchlist" and "my contributions"... at least, I do in MonoBook skin with interface language set to "en - English". The Preferences page should also have an extra "Threaded discussion" tab, plus two more options in other tabs: "E-mail me on replies to a thread I am watching" in "User profile", and "Watch threads that I create or reply to" in "Watchlist". -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:59, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Template include size is too large
On Bisphenol A the reflist and all templates below are not expanded. When I edit and preview, I get the message, “Warning: Template include size is too large. Some templates will not be included.” What can I do to see the references? —teb728 t c 20:45, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Try deleting the infobox and previewing again - that works for me, though obviously this is not a proper fix. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:51, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I fixed this by changing some of the citation templates to vcite journal and friends, which are lighter than their cite friends. However, that makes the citation style inconsistent, and in the long run it'll be better to fix up the article by making it read less like a news ticker. Perhaps some of the subtopics should be split off into their own articles. Ucucha (talk) 20:53, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

archiving talk pages
Hi,

Someone set up an archiving system on my talk page which works great. I'm wondering, does it automatically make another archive when needed? Or do I need to make one? (I don't understand the code or how it works.)

Thanks, MathewTownsend (talk) 21:00, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The bot will begin a new archive automatically when it sees that the first is full. See User:MiszaBot/Archive_HowTo. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:06, 23 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I looked around at archiving help pages, but didn't come across that one - the one I needed! Thanks again. MathewTownsend (talk) 21:10, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Edit history funny
Hi, at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page&action=history, the most recent entry that I currently see is:


 * 16:42, 23 January 2012‎ Fæ (talk | contribs)‎ m (14,634 bytes)

When I click on this, I get, as expected, taken to a page headed:


 * This is the current revision of this page, as edited by Fæ (talk | contribs) at 16:42, 23 January 2012. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this version.

However, included in this page is my edit of 22:43, 23 January 2012:


 * "In a referendum, Croatian voters back membership in the European Union." This does not seem like correct English to me. Shouldn't it at least be "membership of"? 81.159.111.139 (talk) 22:43, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

My edit does not, however, appear anywhere in the edit history. What's going on? 81.159.111.139 (talk) 01:06, 24 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The section of Talk:Main Page that you edited ("Errors in In the news") is actually a section of a separate Main Page subpage (Main Page/Errors) which is transcluded into Talk:Main Page. Your edit appears in the edit history of Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors. DH85868993 (talk) 01:36, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Aha, thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.159.111.139 (talk) 02:31, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Page titles with italics do not display in Firefox (9.01) - leave unsightly tags
Page titles that display in italics in IE (e.g Fever_Pitch_Soccer don't display in italics in Firefox (9.01) . They display as < i >article title< / i> (without the spaces in the tags, obviously)

Can this be fixed? DHooke1973 (talk) 02:43, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm also using Firefox 9.0.1 (on Mac OS X), and the title displays correctly. If I recall correctly, this issue is caused by some Firefox add-on, perhaps StumbleUpon. Ucucha (talk) 02:45, 24 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Ah! I disabled StumbleUpon and it went away. Thanks DHooke1973 (talk) 02:55, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

JS help
I'm trying to modify User:Apoc2400/refToolbarPlus.js so that (1) "archivedate" input box by default contains the current date (variable used is "newtime") (2) "archiveurl" and "archivedate" input boxes appear under "cite news" as well. I removed and the end } from the script, but it doesn't work. My attempts can be seen at the history of User:Goodvac/reftoolbar.js, and I believe I've correctly imported it to my monobook.js. Thanks in advance for any assistance, Goodvac (talk) 00:15, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * What exactly doesn't work? Have you looked at a JavaScript error console to see whether there are any syntax errors? I don't see anything obviously wrong. Ucucha (talk) 02:40, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmm, doesn't look like there are any syntax errors. Did you clear your cache fully? Ucucha (talk) 02:46, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I just tried it again, and to no avail. Goodvac (talk) 02:49, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * To be specific, both the things I want to accomplish aren't working. The current date isn't showing up in the archivedate box; when I click the "cite news" button, there are no "archiveurl" and "archivedate" fields. Goodvac (talk) 02:51, 24 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Just to be clear: The archive date is not usually the current date— it is the date that the web page was actually archived. ---—  Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 11:36, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * No, I'm aware of that. It's just that I usually archive the url for my citations (through WebCite) when I add them. Goodvac (talk) 17:17, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Either my browser cache is not being cleared or I'm not importing the script correctly. I [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Goodvac%2Freftoolbar.js&diff=473073977&oldid=473072385 removed] the word "Newspaper" from the script, but I'm still seeing it when viewing the "cite news" part of the tool. Any ideas? Goodvac (talk) 03:08, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I just found out that Reftoolbar is [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:RefToolbar&diff=418821307 no longer opt-in]; it's a built-in feature, so that's why it's been overriding my changes. Is there any code to disable the feature so I can use my own version? Goodvac (talk) 03:33, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Odd RevDel result
Curious, why can't I see the recently RevDel-ed edit in the history of Back to the Planet? I'm an admin, so I can see normal uses of RevDel, and the log says that the RevDel was done by Salvio giuliano, who isn't an oversighter. Nyttend (talk) 03:46, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It does seems that that edit has genuinely been put beyond admins; which, as you say, is not an ability Salvio has on paper. Perhaps he might know? - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 11:53, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The action you have requested is limited to users in the group: Oversighters. Maybe it has been oversighted after being revdeleted. Do oversights produce logs? -- Luk  talk 12:00, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I expect the edit was later oversighted. It's a fairly common use of revdel to temporarily apply it to revisions which are going to be oversighted. - Kingpin13 (talk) 12:00, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yep, I revdeleted a couple of edits there, because they contained potentially libellous bits of info and then I submitted an oversight request. More info here. Cheers. Salvio  Let's talk about it! 12:13, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I considered a later oversighting, but I'd completely forgotten we don't log oversights publicly. that would rather explain it! :) - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 12:48, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Strange typeface on editing pages
Suddenly, the appearance of any pages I open for editing has changed, to show a new typeface. This has never happened before, and I haven't (consciously) done anything that might have changed it. Any explanation? Or, how can I get back to my old style? I am using Firefox. Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:01, 24 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Does it help to clear your entire cache? Does it happen when you are logged out? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:17, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It seems to have cleared itself while I was logged out. Odd.  Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:01, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Removing external link icon for internal links
Full URLs to internal destinations and internal links generated by some templates (like newsec) have an icon indicating that they are external links (examples:, diff link). I believe I found a way some time ago to make links such as these appear internal, but I have not recently been able to find a way. How can you make links like these appear just like normal internal links? —danhash (talk) 19:35, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * See Template:Plainlinks . Naraht (talk) 19:43, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Arthur Cayley article
What is going on in the Arthur Cayley article in the Legacy section? It looks like its saying that Cayley diagrams are used for finding craters on the moon, but this is garbled rendering - look at it in edit mode. Firefox 3.6.25.  Spinning Spark  23:31, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The section includes a bunch of links in a multi-column setup, and then two separate links after it, which makes for odd layout. I've fixed it by including those links in the multi-column list. Of course, a "legacy" section should ideally not be a list. Ucucha (talk) 23:37, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Error with block logs in contribs
When I click this link to see user contribs, I see a pink box at the top about a block, but that block is from the distant past. Do other people see that too? What's up? &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 03:16, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think this is 32859. It's been reported before, but the devs don't seem very interested. Ucucha (talk) 03:22, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia MusicXML (or similar) interpretation?
Over on the Help page, someone noted that the last two notes on the score of the Washington Post March were wrong, and the response(correctly) was that the score on the page was an image, so it would have to be regenerated and reuploaded to fix. Given the Wikipedia support for LaTeX for match programs and Template:Chess diagram for Chess problems, would it be a reasonable expansion of Wikipedia to support a Music notation method such as MusicXML and output the results as a score? I'm sure there are those who understand whether MusicXML is free enough for Wikipedia usage (OGG is, but I don't understand that sort of stuff), but it is used by Wikifonia (which I don't believe to be part of WMF). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Naraht (talk • contribs) 19:39, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You may want to take a look at mw:Extension:Score, which is on review queue of MediaWiki extensions waiting for deployment. If you have a Bugzilla account, you can also [//bugzilla.wikimedia.org/page.cgi?id=voting/user.html&bug_id=33193#vote_33193 watch/vote] on bug #33193. Helder 20:40, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The score on Washington Post March is a JPEG, a format which is (almost) acceptable for photographs, but downright poor for monochrome diagrams where everything is supposed to have a sharp edge. I think that creating a SVG file would be a possible route to follow. -- Red rose64 (talk) 22:38, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Would MusicScore be of help? ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 22:46, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * MusicScore was closer to what I had in mind, but its clear when looking at how it is done that it is really only for single notes. More complex things like bridges connecting notes would require something closer to LaTeX.02:34, 25 January 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Naraht (talk • contribs)
 * At the least, if someone regenerates it using MusicML or some other standard that has a plain-text representation, would be great to put that text on file's talk-page or in a collapsed box. That would enhance its reusability and ability to be improved in the future. Raises a question though...what is the copyright situation for musical scores? Obviously this one's original by Sousa is expired, and I asume simple transcription of a recent sheet-music would be copyvio. What about fake books and other "here's the music that I hear, written out"? DMacks (talk) 23:46, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
 * In the US (which is all that matters in this case), basically if it was published 1923 or before it's ok, and 1924 and later it's not. There's potentially other reasons something might be ok, but it mostly holds true. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 01:06, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I found a PDF of the original in the Levy archives here. LeadSongDog come howl!  03:50, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * "Copyright 1889 by Harry Coleman 228 N. 9th St. Phila. Pa.". Brilliant! Create a file showing a short extract of the score (eight bars or so), upload to Commons, link to that PDF as a source, give it and  for good measure, no worries. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:39, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Maybe PD-old-80? (Harry Coleman died in 1918?) - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 16:50, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Coleman was the publisher, not the author. He'd have copyright by assignment, not droit d'auteur unless for the border illustration of the cover. I can't imagine his death-date being relevant. John Philip Sousa died in March 1932. The first page when enlarged sufficiently shows a legible but incomplete image of the review in the Washington Post (newspaper) of June 16, 1889 covering the debut performance of the piece: "Mr. Sousa's march, dedicated to THE POST, is a light and melodious composition and was heartily applauded. The enthusiasm with which Mr. Sousa and his musicians entered into the affair added largely to the success of the occasion. ..." Of course, the review might not have been entirely impartial, but it is a neat bit of self-referential publishing. It might be worth digging out a copy of that newspaper to get the whole review. LeadSongDog come howl!  18:09, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, fair play. I hadn't appreciated the more complex aspects of this case. Mea culpa. - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 23:17, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Reports of pornography where it ought not be
The help desk (not long ago) got two reports from two different IPs of two different articles displaying (or linking to) pornography. The two reports are here and here which were posted within minutes of each other. Was there any template vandalism or the like which might explain it?  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  04:21, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, probably related to this incident. Goodvac (talk) 04:39, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks Goodvac.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  06:50, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Avoiding edit conflicts when you submit twice
Our software seems to be in most instances pretty intelligent in avoiding edit conflicts... but there is one situtation it occurs where I have always wondered why it does it. When you try to submit something, then realize you forgot to say, sign the message. You stop the loading, add your signature, and submit. Edit conflict: The only difference is - ~

Can this be adjusted so that it doesn't produce an edit conflict when some text is appended and the previous edit was by the same user? -  ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ  <sup style="color:#3AAA3A;">τ <sub style="color:#3AAA3A;">¢  18:23, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Going for the "stop" button in your browser doesn't stop the submission going through, it just stops reload of the post-save version. Upon receipt by the MediaWiki software, the save is processed and the session ID is invalidated, so that when you then try to edit using the same session ID as previous, it doesn't like it. -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:49, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Template incorrectly adding a category
Please fix Italian North Africa presently (current revision) has Italian North Africa, Italy at the top of the page. In addition to the fact that this category text is at the beginning of the article, the article isn't categorized in it, the sortkey is nonsense, and the sortkey pipes the word "Italy" into a link for some reason... Can someone amend this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Koavf (talk • contribs) 19:05, 25 January 2012‎
 * I've made a change. The infobox template creates the category; one of the arguments used by the template was wikilinked by you, which broke it all. Let us know here if anything else is still broken (apart from your piped wikilink, which if you want to take it up should be discussed on the template's talk page.) --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:37, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * What? I didn't link anything in this article. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:07, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Wikilinked by someone. Calm down. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:15, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem was the use of  which is wikilinked, instead of   which isn't. The infobox expects to find a bare name here, because it uses that to construct the proper wikilink and also to add categories. If the category so added is misconstructed as a result of the unexpected wikilink, in this case   it falls out of the infobox. Since you can't nest wikilinks (except when adding an image), the outer double pair of square brackets appears as plain text: Italian North Africa, [[Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)|Italy]]. -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:06, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The bad link was added and amended  and . -- Red rose64 (talk) 00:12, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Spaces after pasting
I'm using Google Chrome at the moment (not my usual browser) and when I copy and paste most things (not everything, but I haven't decerned what circumstances) it pastes in prefixed space and a suffixed space. For example, I might copy "thing" and past " thing ". This is rather weary. Also, sometimes all's fine in the edit window, but after previewing there is a line break. It's certainly not just matching up with the end of the line: sometimes new items in lists seem to attract blank lines above and below them. This in the edit window * foo  * bar

becomes:
 * foo

Any suggestions (I apologise if this has come up before, but I certainly don't remember the spaces thing)? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 23:26, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * bar

Article not showing up in Articles Created - toolserver issues
On 01:23, 25 January 2012 I created a new Wikipedia article  Guylaine Saucier ‎ (←Created page with 'Guylaine Saucier, is a corporate director of the Bank of Montreal, Petro-Canada, AXA Assurances Areva, Groupe Dannone, and Wendel. She is a for...')

This article is still not showing up when I click "Articles created" at the bottom of my Contributions page. Is this a normal lag? Ottawahitech (talk) 20:46, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * yeah the toolserver is having issues. ΔT The only constant 20:47, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the response. Looks like the toolserver (whatever it is) is still having issues. I wonder if there is a place on Wikipedia where one can check on progress? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:43, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * [//toolserver.org/~bryan/stats/replag/ Toolserver replication lag graphs]. English Wikipedia is, I believe, on s1. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:11, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Preview blanks a section
When I preview a section, sometimes it is shown like I have blanked the section when I have not. When I then click "save" it blanks the section. This happened a minute ago on the section "Redworms and BSFL". It has happened before on this article. I'm using Chromium web browser. Rudork (talk) 21:34, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Sounds like something a broken browser extension, a gadget or a userscript would cause. disable them one by one (keep track on a piece of paper, because if you have a lot it's hard to keep track) until the problem no longer occurs. Once you have identified the culprit, report it here please. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 19:09, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Where is this week's Signpost?
Anybody know why this week's Signpost hasn't gone out? Maile66 (talk) 00:01, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the SOPA blackout may have disrupted it. Looking at the newsroom, the Discussion report hasn't been started yet.  -- N  Y  Kevin  @181, i.e. 03:21, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * More a lack of contributors for the centrepiece N&N and ITN reports than anything else... volunteers for that (or the now on hiatus discussion report) always welcome :) - Jarry1250 [Deliberation needed] 20:00, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Problem with file renaming
I've been doing a batch of file renames, and one particular file does not seem renameable.

File:NMS.PNG, which I'm trying to rename to "Northeast Middle School (Midland, Michigan).png" or some such. I keep getting "Target file name invalid".

I've tried variations on the name, with and without "File:" prepended (doesn't work). I've tried renaming other .png files (works fine). I've tried renaming other .png files from the same uploader (works fine). I've asked other admins to try renaming this file (3/3 admins were unable to do the rename).

Now, in and of itself, this is not a major problem, and it could probably be circumvented by just deleting and re-uploading. But I'm concerned that it could be a symptom of something larger. DS (talk) 15:17, 26 January 2012 (UTC)


 * My first instinct is that filenames may not be allowed to contain certain characters. Are commas legal in Wikipedia filenames? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:32, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Very much so. DS (talk) 15:38, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Problem resolved - Betacommand pointed out that the image history included an older, corrupt version. Once this version was deleted, the rename took hold. DS (talk) 16:09, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Question about revdelete/oversight and page moves
On 14 January 2012, Fæ moved User talk:Fæ to User talk:Fæ/2012/F. The logs for the current User talk:Fæ show revdeletions/oversights which were applied to the old page (now called User talk:Fæ/2012/F, if you're following). Conversely, the history for what was formerly the talk page show that certain diffs have been revdeleted or oversighted (see 16 November 2011, for example) but there is nothing in the logs for this page. It appears that the logs have not been correctly associated with the moved page. Is this a known problem? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:55, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Revdelete/oversight and page moves - part II
Possibly separate from the question above (but possibly related), the logs show that User:AGK revdeleted/oversighted some edits on 28 December 2011 but restored them on 29 December 2011. There are no other entries in the log, but those edits are revdeleted/oversighted in the page history. There is nothing in the logs for the page under its new name either. Is this related to the page move/log weirdness? If the edits were revdeleted/oversighted after the page move, why is there nothing in the logs? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:55, 26 January 2012 (UTC)


 * To clarify, there was no suppression action on this page at the time in question. I only revision-deleted the edits now at User talk:Fæ/2012/F, and the log of oversighted edits is not publicly viewable (in order to preserve privacy). Nevertheless, it does seem that the deletion log was not moved when the archive was created by pagemove, which I presume is indeed a bug. AGK   [</nowikI>• ]  22:55, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Odd bug with templates linked to in headers
Take a look at the mouseover text of the edit button of this section. The heading consists of this: "== talkback =="

which renders as expected. But the mouseover text of the section edit link transcludes the text of ANI-notice and appears as: "Edit section: ==Notice of discussion at the Administrators' Noticeboard ==&#10;Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved.  Thank you. talkback"

Seems like a pretty minor bug overall, although theoretically it might be able to be abused with malicious code. (Theoretically a BEANS issue too; if so, delete this notice.) —danhash (talk) 20:04, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Confirmed. That indeed looks like a MediaWiki bug; I'll see whether I can find the cause. Ucucha (talk) 20:22, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I've never seen the need to put templates like tl in headers. They often cause trouble there. If it's necessary to link to a template, use a normal wikilink, don't bother representing the double braces. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Regardless of that, this is a MediaWiki bug—the text apparently gets parsed twice. It turns out it's already been reported as 32802; I've submitted a patch. Ucucha (talk) 21:26, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Odd block log entry
Look at the fifth entry from the top here. How is it possible to get the system to display a number rather than a username? Nyttend (talk) 13:45, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * He was clearing an autoblock, which the MediaWiki software automatically adds to prevent the IP of the user just blocked from creating another account to continue vandalizing or spamming. You can see a large number of autoblocks at Special:BlockList. Hope this helps! Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:48, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Skin problem?
Can anyone throw some light on this thread at the New contributors' help page please? -- John of Reading (talk) 22:20, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Problem with Decade NavBox
The navbox for categories of “Decades in Italy” eg Category:2000s in Italy works ok to navigate to previous or subsequent decades but tries to refer to Category:20th-century in Italy when it should be Category:20th century in Italy with a gap not a dash. So a redlink in the box (though the category is avaliable below anyway) but where can this problem be referred to or fixed? Hugo999 (talk) 01:25, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The dash is added by BDDecadesInCentury, which is used by ItalyDecade. The problem may be that BDDecadesInCentury treats the century as an hyphenated adjective (e.g. 20th-century books) but the Italy pages treat it as a noun (20th century in Italy).  Perhaps BDDecadesInCentury could be changed to accept a new optional parameter to replace the dash by a space. Certes (talk) 02:46, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for fixing that; now I have a request for a new type of year navbox covering several years, to be like that used for Category:Terrorist incidents in India in 2010, but designed for year series similar to Category:Alaska elections, 2010 with a “comma and space” rather than “in” in the title before the year. With each US state now having an election by year category this would be quite a useful navbox! Hugo999 (talk) 03:49, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Aswn improved the template whilst I was looking at it, so there was nothing for me to fix. I have just created Cat topic year which is a bit more flexible, and added it to Category:Alaska elections, 2010 as a prototype.  I haven't attempted to roll it out to other years or states.  (If you wanted to use it on similar pages but not that one, please feel free to revert my change.) Certes (talk) 21:17, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the new navbox which can I see be adjusted to various spacings eg every two years (even years) for most US state elections, but occasionally for a special or local election an odd year eg Category:Alabama elections, 2009. Should its avaliability be notified on a US Politics project page? New Zealand has a three year election cycle so they can be in odd or even years. Hugo999 (talk) 22:45, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * For further discussion of Cat topic year, please see my talk page. Certes (talk) 12:21, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Disabling WP:LOCO on certain pages?
Does any code exist to exempt a given date/time from the WP:LOCO gadget? I ask because I was on the page WP:AUSC/2012 recently, and its countdown thing read "The current time and date is 6:07 pm, Today" for me, which is obviously not hugely helpful. Thanks in advance. <font color="#006600">It Is Me Here  <font color="#CC6600">t / <font color="#CC6600">c 18:12, 24 January 2012 (UTC)


 * No, but you could add some hidden code to "break" the timestamp so that the script doesn't process it. For instance, add an extra space, or some hidden code (I don't think you could add empty code like  because it wouldn't be processed, but something similar should work, such as bolding a single character such as the colon or something). Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  05:09, 25 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid I don't quite understand how I would do that since the relevant code uses magic words (no actual numbers/colons there):
 * <font color="#006600">It Is Me Here  <font color="#CC6600">t / <font color="#CC6600">c 12:03, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * <font color="#006600">It Is Me Here  <font color="#CC6600">t / <font color="#CC6600">c 12:03, 25 January 2012 (UTC)


 * You can still do it. The script just reads whatever is outputted by the page, not what the code is. HTML, on the other hand, generally appears the same when you type it and when it is outputted by the browser, so placing that in the middle of the magic words will work. It's not the prettiest solution, but this is the first or second time that I've heard about this request and so don't think the script really needs to implement this. I don't know how much slower the script would get if it had to check for certain code if it still has to work quickly, either. Gary King  ( talk  ·  scripts )  17:33, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If you hover over the timestamp, the tooltip will show the original UTC timestamp. Is that sufficient?  -- N  Y  Kevin  @139, i.e. 02:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that should be OK, actually. <font color="#006600">It Is Me Here  <font color="#CC6600">t / <font color="#CC6600">c 15:54, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Meaning and purpose of "action=clicktracking", "token=", and "articleFeedbackv5_click_tracking" in the edit links of some articles
Hello,

I have been doing a few minor edits in article HMS Titanic and found that the edit link's urls are extremely long with strings of characters including "action=clicktracking", "token=", and "articleFeedbackv5_click_tracking". Could you help me find answers to the following questions :
 * Is there a Help: page or a Wikipedia: page or a Mediawiki page where I could read further information about this?
 * Is this "articleFeedbackv5_click_tracking" thing connected with Article Feedback Tool ?
 * Is my small edit understood by the tool as a "feedback" ? Then what are the consequences of a small edit ?
 * Why do these long urls show up only on some articles but not on some others ?

Teofilo talk  17:42, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That is definitely connected to the Article Feedback Tool. See WP:AFT5, or ask on the talk page (WT:AFT5) if you have any questions about that tool. — This, that, and the other (talk) 23:29, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I will ask there. Teofilo talk  18:52, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

ERR_READ_TIMEOUT
I am trying to expand the Homologene2uniprot template to approximately 4X its present size (see the last indent of the thread started on User talk:A2-33 for a justification). I promise that this template will not grow any larger than 4X its present size. I receive a ERR_READ_TIMEOUT error message which is quite understandable given the size of the template. I have created and successfully used larger templates in the past (see Pfam2PDBsum as an example). I have two questions. First, have the timeout limits recently decreased? Second, assuming templates of this size are permitted, is there any alternative way of loading these large templates that circumvent the ERR_READ_TIMEOUT error? Boghog (talk) 20:33, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Where do you see that error message? All of the pages where the template is used load for me. Did it perhaps happen when you previewed the template with an increased size? I don't think there's a set limit on template size that triggers that error; it's probably rather the time it takes MediaWiki to parse the wikitext.
 * I'm not sure what made you think a 144 KB template is a good idea, much less a 600 KB one. Ucucha (talk) 20:55, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry for not being clearer. There is no problem with the use of the template.  The problem I am running into is trying to increase the size of the template by editing it. The current template is not complete and needs to be expanded 4X its current size. When I try to do so, the ERR_READ_TIMEOUT error is returned when I add the new text and press the "save page" button:


 * If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below.
 * Request: POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Homologene2uniprot&action=submit (redacted to remove my IP address).''
 * I totally agree that that a 600K template is not a good idea. A much better solution would be to convince the external Protein Data Bank to support Homologene queries, but I am in a much stronger position to do so, if I have a working Wikipedia template. (See for example this request and this and this response). Boghog (talk) 21:19, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That looks to me like the type of error thrown when there is a general problem with Wikimedia servers, and is not necessarily a consequence of the edit that you were making. Was this message on a background consisting of a horizontal white band between two pale blue bands? -- Red rose64 (talk) 16:29, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, the problem was probably that the edit was taking so long to save that the caching proxy layer gave up waiting for a response from the backend server, hence the ERR_READ_TIMEOUT error. The output would use the same template as any other error where the cache layer can't get content from the backend. Anomie⚔ 18:39, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, that is exactly the screen I saw. I tried repeatedly over the course of a week to add the full template with the same results, so it does not appear to be a temporary fluke.  In the mean time, I have found a work around by breaking up the template into a couple of smaller sub templates that are called by a master template.  These templates work well together so that problem is now essentially solved.  Thanks for everyones feedback. Boghog (talk) 19:07, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Category tree
If anybody has any thoughts regarding Bot requests/Archive 45, it will see that the line  is there, and assume that the link is also there already.
 * For good measure, I went around K8 and AMD K8 in all the languages that were involved, and checked individually: commenting out the bad links, manually adding good ones. Here's the Czech AMD K8 example, which I think was one of the worse cases. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:27, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, you need to remove all the bad interwiki links by hand (HTML comments are really ugly in this case IMO, and should be used as an absolute last resort). See User talk:Yurik/Interwiki Bot FAQ. Graham 87 03:33, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
 * BTW, I've removed all the offending interwiki links from the above-mentioned articles. Graham 87 03:35, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, the entry on that FAQ about removing a bad interwiki link seems to have been updated since the last time I checked it. Graham 87 03:41, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Actually, ru:Традукция = fr:Traductio = es:Traductio. You should not just remove links from Russian article, but to split all the mess to 2 clusters. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:40, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
 * ...which is what I meant by "case-by-case," above. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 20:05, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

help with enwiki_p data issue
There are four articles that, although they have been deleted, still have rows in enwiki_p.page. This is causing problems with some of my Toolserver reports. Can someone help me get the rows deleted? These are the articles:


 * Rob Shift
 * Summer Fun (2012 film)
 * The Adventures of Miranda O.
 * The Part of Awesome

Thanks, --<font color="#990000">Ja <font color="#000099">Ga <font color="#000000" size="-1">talk 19:59, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Check your email, DaB sent an email about the s1 cluster and data corruption see http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/toolserver-l/2012-January/004680.html ΔT The only constant 03:35, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That would explain it. Thanks for letting me know. --<font color="#990000">Ja <font color="#000099">Ga <font color="#000000" size="-1">talk 23:40, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Booted out of Log In
I just got booted out of my Log In by clicking on the "Help" link for Wikipedia Help. Odd thing. Maile66 (talk) 20:27, 28 January 2012 (UTC)


 * People often lose their login. See Help:Logging in or just blame the Cookie Monster. It's surely a coincidence it happened when you clicked that link. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:38, 28 January 2012 (UTC)


 * If you switched from http to https (or vice versa), that could explain it too - I can't say how many times I've clicked a link sending me to the wrong version of the website... --Philosopher Let us reason together. 20:03, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Collapsing references when editing
Would it be possible to have a gadget or option that would collapse the contents between the markup when editing. In some articled with extensive references it becomes difficult to find the section of text that one wants to edit. If its the actual reference that needs to be edited it could always be expanded as needed.--KTo288 (talk) 08:39, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * While not a complete solution, I use WP:LDR mainly to keep the edit window a little tidier. That said, such an option would be welcome, as LDR format is present in a decided minority of articles.--<font style="font-family: Copperplate Gothic Light "> SPhilbrick (Talk)  20:05, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I guess I have to start learning to use LDR, as I'm as guilty as anyone in how I add references, no point me showing irritation with things as they are if I'm not willing to change myself.--KTo288 (talk) 15:40, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * See User:PleaseStand/References segregator. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 15:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Disabling e-mail for IPs
What use is enabling the "e-mail blocked" parameter for blocking IPs when IPs aren't allowed to use Special:EmailUser anyway? Jasper Deng (talk) 22:57, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
 * While it's not configured that way here, it is possible to configure MediaWiki so that IP users can use Special:EmailUser. Anomie⚔ 03:15, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
 * How would that work? Don't you need an existing e-mail address to do it? Jasper Deng (talk) 05:17, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
 * D'oh, you're right. Anomie⚔ 17:43, 29 January 2012 (UTC)


 * This option prevents logged-in users from using email. It was added in 2009, see 18860. — AlexSm 18:42, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Wayward letter heading on category page
I'm baffled how Category:Serbian sport stubs appears under a second letter M heading on Category:Sport in Serbia. Is it some apparent bug as per this old VP discussion, or am I just not seeing something?--A bit iffy (talk) 12:20, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * No, see WP:SORTKEY, more specifically the entry near the bottom: To place entries after the main alphabetical list, use sort keys beginning with tilde ("~"). Other characters used for this purpose are "µ" (mu), used to place stub categories at the end of subcategory lists; "β" (beta) for Wikipedia books; "Ι" (iota) for images; "Ρ" (rho) for portals; "Τ" (tau) for templates; and "Ω" (omega) for WikiProjects. (Wierded me when I first say it as well)Naraht (talk) 12:26, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * See also: Template talk:Stub category. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 12:33, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, and if you copy the letter heading and paste it into your Wikipedia search box, you'll see that it is actually a Greek "Μ", capital mu, not a Latin "M". -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:45, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I have suggested a change from Μ to Σ at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:25, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Previously, category sorting was case-sensitive, so those categories would actually appear under the distinctive lowercase &mu;, not under uppercase &Mu; (which is pretty much identical to Latin M). Changing the letter to some more distinctive uppercase Greek letter seems like a good idea. Ucucha (talk) 13:47, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation people. I've responded to PrimeHunter's suggestion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting.--A bit iffy (talk) 16:30, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Two problems with a table
What's wrong with this table (permanent link here, last relevant change here) that causes the following two problems with it: --Theurgist (talk) 17:19, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * the table won't sort when the header of the last column ("Total apps") is clicked;
 * some (but not all) of the cells that are supposed to be enclosed by a red border have this border on three sides only?
 * I think that both problems are caused by the merged cells which are found in most rows. You might be better to use single cells; i.e. instead of this:
 * use this
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Parser cache not invalidated for redirect pages
This problem has been reported by anonymous editors on the RefDesks for at least a year now, but we have some better data now. When IP editors use redirecting links such as WP:RD/L or WP:RD/C, they receive an out-of-date copy of the target page. Here is the session data from IP 82.45.62.107 with a clear browser cache, accessing WP:RD/L:

Problem state:

After purge of RD/L redirect:

The current WT:RD thread is here, previous VP/T threads are here and here, a possibly related Bugzilla report is here. This is the first hard indication I've seen that the problem exists beyond individual users having local caching problems. Three different IPs (different ISPs, all in the UK) are seeing the problem in the current thread at WT:RD: anonymous editor accessing page through redirect gets stale copy from parser cache. This could all localize to a problem with an edge-caching service providing to the 3 different ISPs in the UK, or it could be a genuine problem with MW not properly invalidating cache for redirecting pages. The timestamps in the above example put it beyond just overloading of the job queue, so there is definitely something else happening. Can anyone seriously tech-inclined shed some light? Franamax (talk) 22:55, 17 January 2012 (UTC)


 * FYI, the problem is not confined to ref desk redirects (though it seems more regular there, and the pages can sometimes be stale by weeks). It is a fairly regular occurrence for me across the whole of Wikipedia: articles, talk pages, and very occasionally even edit history pages. Usually I notice it when I make an edit to an article, then go back the next day or whatever and see that my changes have gone, but actually I'm just seeing an old page.* The existence and documentation of the "purge cache" kludge indicates that this is a known bug, but, as I have mentioned a number of times before, no one in ten years seems to have been able to fix it. It really would be great if the developers could make a concerted effort to sort this out, rather than (as I get the impression) perpetually sweeping it under the carpet (no offence intended). Something is definitely not working correctly. 86.146.104.200 (talk) 12:26, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * * these are cases when I have previously successfully displayed the up-to-date page (after editing), there have been no further changes to the page, and yet some time later I revert back to seeing an older version. 86.146.104.200 (talk) 12:36, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I was under the impression that IPs always got cached pages. Is this not just another example of the typical and expected behaviour?  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  13:28, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, IPs get cached copies. The point is that WP:RD/L should be identical to Reference desk/Language, but it is not: the cached copy of the page accessed via a redirect is not the same as the cached copy of the true target page. If I log out, and access this particular page as WP:VPT, the bottom post is signed "Maile66 (talk) 23:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)"; if I access it as Village pump (technical), the bottom post is signed "PrimeHunter (talk) 17:37, 21 January 2012 (UTC)", a difference of 42 hours. For comparison, when logged in, the bottom post is signed "PrimeHunter (talk) 17:37, 21 January 2012 (UTC)" whether accessed directly or via redirect. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:44, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Just logged out and tried again - Village pump (technical) brought back a copy whose bottom post was signed "Edokter (talk) — 17:06, 14 January 2012 (UTC)" - over a week ago.
 * Hypothesis: there are several cached copies, and the one that you get is random. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:49, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually that wouldn't surprise me. An aside (although not that far aside) is that serving cached pages to users seeking help is likely to cause more confusion in many cases than it solves. It might be an idea for all help pages (categorization of some kind) to never serve cached copies. In the meantime, would always providing a index.php...&blah=purge (guess who can't remember the correct format) ?action=purge link to the final destination (not the shortcut) help? If that would ensure IPs were sent to the right place, at least it's a start.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  19:01, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * We have Purge whoot!  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  19:10, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Your hypothesis is correct, each server has it's own cached pages. Note that there are two different issues at play here. One is "normal" behaviour, when a underlying page or template or category is changed, all the redirects / pages calling the template / categories above are invalidated in cache, but this is done via the job queue, so there is a lag. Sometimes the job queue can get heavily backlogged (say someone has changed a hugely-used template) and this is what the ?action=purge is for, as the page in question is updated in the foreground. The other behaviour seems to be a problem, where the invalidation jobs seem to get dropped altogether. I asked about this on #wikimedia-tech yesterday but didn't really get any answers... Franamax (talk) 20:38, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * For info here are the servers, here is the number of jobs on the queue. Franamax (talk) 20:47, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If there isn't an easy way to fix this, how much would it hurt the servers to just turn off caching for everything except the article namespace? While the problem could still cause issues in the article namespace, it's probably not such a big issue (usually, seeing an out-of-date version of an article doesn't cause any serious problems - seeing an out-of-date version of a discussion page can be completely useless). --Tango (talk) 22:07, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I am still slightly confused. When (as is fairly regularly the case), I see stale pages that aren't redirects, and where the staleness has nothing to do with templates or other inclusions, then is that "expected behaviour" or is it a bug that should in theory never happen? Typically the pages are many hours or a day or two stale. For example, it is now 22:41, 21 January 2012 (UTC), and I just looked at Phobos program, an article that I have recently edited, and saw the version of 04:06, 21 January 2012‎. This is typical. 86.181.206.213 (talk) 22:41, 21 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It is expected behaviour if you are not logged in, see Purge. Users who are logged in will always receive the latest versions of a page. It's easy to register an account, and then you can log in. -- Red rose64 (talk) 23:34, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I have looked at that explanation before, and I still do not understand how it accounts for the behaviour that I see. To me it seems to be saying quite the opposite -- that everyone should always see up-to-date pages, except changes to transcluded items. It seems to be saying that this "purge" thing is only necessary in the case of transcluded items. That is definitely not the case. See also my old comment at Wikipedia_talk:Purge. There is a whole category of stale page problems that the docs do not seem to acknowledge exists. 86.181.206.213 (talk) 00:49, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

All pages are cached by the servers. All IPs are given the cached page that the server dealing with the request is holding. Each server may have a different version of each and every page. Purging, updates the cache of the page on the server dealing with the request (but not the cache of the page on any other server). Thus, being registered and logged in is the only way to guarantee that you will always get the up to date version of the page, without having to purge the page every time you visit it (whichever page it is). On top of that system we have a browser cache and a possible proxy cache imposed by our internet service provider. Caching is a pain in the butt, but without it Wikipedia would grind to a halt.  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  01:02, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I have never seen any similar "stale page" problems on any other sites with frequently updated content that I use (e.g. forums), so I'm assuming that the problem I see is purely a Wikipedia one. Ignoring the (possible) special cases of redirects and changes to transcluded items, under what circumstances are the cached versions of articles (or other pages) updated when the underlying article is edited? Is there a queue that some process grinds through that may take hours or days? Is that the cause of the staleness? I mean, eventually the cached version must be updated, right? 86.181.206.213 (talk) 01:13, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I've asked our WMF community liaison if she can find a heavyweight ops person to comment on this. There's not much us garden-cariety volunteers can do here. Might take a few days... Franamax (talk) 23:30, 21 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Can we have this? Have we already got this?  f<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">red</i>g<i style="color:#0dd;font-size:10px;">andt</i>  01:02, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I guess that extension is not yet ready for deployment on wmf clusters.  Srikanth (Logic)  18:49, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Bumping the timestamp as there is still a chance we could get comment from ops. Franamax (talk) 21:26, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Hello, it will be faster to get an input from someone with shell access who can examine this if you submit ticket to bugzilla. Regarding the extension, no it's not installed and it isn't even scheduled to be deployed. Can you also check if this issue is happening on deployment beta? Thank you Petrb (talk) 13:13, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Did you mean...?
To my surprise, searching for "Samuel Kenyon Doe" did not return one of those "Did you mean Samuel Kanyon Doe?" comments at the top. Any idea why not? Please note that I created Kenyon as a redirect after I performed this search. Nyttend (talk) 03:23, 27 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I get "Did you mean Samuel Kanyon Doe?" when I search without quotes but not with quotes . Did you use quotes? I don't know whether that is supposed to activate "Did you mean?". PrimeHunter (talk) 14:21, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the two are independent from one another. It still has "There is a page named "Samuel Kenyon Doe" on Wikipedia" below. --Anime Addict AA (talk) 00:37, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Free software portal link for articles has had generic "Portal-puzzle" image for too long
The Free software portal link in articles has had the generic "Portal-puzzle" image for too long. Here's how the link currently exists:

At the very least, the image used on the portal's header could be utilized –  (below):

The page to revise the image is indefinitely semi-protected, so it appears that only administrators can alter it: Link Here.

Rather than having this generic portal puzzle image, could an admin add the graphic? It sure would look better in articles this way. — Northamerica1000 (talk) 07:05, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It is cascade protected. The preferred method of requesting edits to protected pages is to use on the template talk page. — This, that, and the other (talk)  07:19, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the timely, helpful info. It would have taken a long time to find the information how to make the request. I've placed this request and the on the talk page for the image (link above). Northamerica1000 (talk) 20:31, 29 January 2012 (UTC)


 * This task has been ✅. Northamerica1000 (talk) 22:35, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Revert/rollback notification
Is there any tool or feature for being notified if one of your edits is reverted? —danhash (talk) 21:45, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Not really. As far as the system is concerned, it's just a normal edit - the only distinguishing feature is the edit summary. So, make sure that pages that you're interested in are on your watchlist.
 * Personally, I have all the settings from onward turned on, so that everything I do is watchlisted. I do take pages off my watchlist after a period though. -- Red rose64 (talk) 21:56, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That works fine for pages which I routinely edit or have an interest in keeping on my watchlist long-term. But a lot of my edits are simple fixes or technical edits and I have no interest in keeping some pages on my watchlist. I edit a large variety of pages and it is impractical to keep them all on my watchlist indefinitely. In any case, a reversion of an edit of mine is of more interest to me than constructive edits after mine. A tool such as the one I'm asking about would likely be best written as a toolserver script. I was pretty sure that most reverts were technically the same as any other edit (is this true of "real" rollbacks too?), but most reverts, including reverts made with Twinkle and some other tools, include "reverted" or "undid" in their edit summaries, and as there are tools for searching edit summaries, it doesn't seem like a stretch that a tool could be written which takes as its input a user's contributions and outputs a list of edits whose edit summaries seem to indicate reversion. If such a tool does not exist, would anyone care to code one? —danhash (talk) 22:17, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Since 21860 was fixed, once MediaWiki 1.19 is deployed to WMF wikis it will be possible to use Wikipedia's API to get checksums for each revision of a page, and that could be used to create a tool which checks the edit right before yours to determine if its checksum is identical to some of the edits made after you have edited the page (that would mean your edit was reverted, since the content of the two versions are the same). Someone could develop such a tool on Wikimedia Labs, where MW 1.19 is already installed for testing purposes. Helder 15:20, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Another useful tool is User:Markhurd/hidetopcontrib.js, which allows you to view pages you have edited recently but someone else has edited since.- gadfium 00:15, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If you have rollback, you can look at your contributions - those without the "rollback" link next to them have been changed since you edited last. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 04:37, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Even if you don't have rollback, you can look at your contributions - those without "(top)" next to them have been changed since you edited last. Note that new page creations with no subsequent edits will still show "(top)" but not "[]" -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:56, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Watchlist auto-expanding
Any way to make grouped-together edits to the same page on the watchlist show up auto-expanded? Seems like it should be simple, however I can't currently find a way. —danhash (talk) 19:01, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You could try a JS snippet like the following (adapted from pt:wikibooks:MediaWiki:Gadget-ExpandAllOnPrint.js):


 * Helder 21:21, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

JS question
At my custom RefToolbar, the image File:Arrow out condensed.png has an <tt> "onClick='pullURL'" </tt>. The pullURL function is supposed to set the <tt> |work= </tt> field to <tt> The New York Times </tt> if the url string contains "nytimes.com". However, when I click on the image, the page is saved. Any ideas about what is causing the problem? Thanks, Goodvac (talk) 00:03, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It thinks you are submitting the form. You need  I think. Ucucha (talk) 00:07, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That fixed it. Thank you! Goodvac (talk) 00:10, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Another question about the same script: When the image is clicked, it activates the pullURL function, which for NY Times urls sets the <tt> |work= </tt> field to <tt> The New York Times </tt>. At the end of pullURL, I added code that should set the <tt> |work= </tt> field to <tt> The New York Times </tt>. After I click on the image, <tt> The New York Times </tt> shows up briefly in the <tt> |work= </tt> field but then changes to <tt> The New York Times </tt>. How can I make <tt> The New York Times </tt> stay? Goodvac (talk) 02:25, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Nesting templates
I found general discussion when searching the archives, but nothing specific to my question. to Template:Copied multi/Copied effectively unsubsts diff, history, and no redirect. The nested templates include extra logic and redundant plainlinks (they should be enclosed within Copied multi, which uses tmbox). Using nested templates benefits from any improvements or updates to them, but I think that changing the basic index.php syntax is unlikely. Any input on whether I should revert the unsubsts? Thanks. Flatscan (talk) 05:32, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * My personal opinion is that basic templates should not utilize other basic templates if not necessary. It adds to the complexity of the template and adds unneeded transclusion depth which may cause problems. Since those templates add no functionality (and basically make them unsubstable), I think reverting those changes is the best option. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 11:25, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply. I have reverted the changes. Flatscan (talk) 05:07, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

User talk page
Please suggest how long a question/answer in one's user talk page should be kept before deletion? --Robert Fraser (talk) 06:54, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * How about moving stuff to an archive after, say, 31 days? This can happen automatically if you adapt the code from here. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:28, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It varies widely by user - I archive mine in groups of 20 sections, some just archive it when the page seems to be too long, etc. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 11:46, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * See also Help:Archiving a talk page. If there is low activity like your talk page then many users go by size instead of age. It's still so small that there is no need for archiving but you are free to do so. By the way, many users copy barnstars to their user page. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:13, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

The Flowers of War article's rating box
This article has a faulty rating box where it says "no ratings" in places where there have been substantial amounts of ratings. Can someone fix this, please? AnonymousAnimus (talk) 21:03, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I can see the ratings in my browser:


 * Current average ratings.
 * Trustworthy, 5.0, 51 ratings
 * Objective, 5.0, 46 ratings
 * Complete, 5.0, 50 ratings
 * Well-written, 5.0, 55 ratings


 * They are all suspiciously high, maybe there is something wrong with the rating system at the moment? jonkerz ♠talk 23:25, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Probably someone trying to game the system; although what you win is not clear to me here. I've seen this happen to AfD candidates. Josh Parris 07:46, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

New file upload wizard proposal
I believe we need a better file uploading mechanism, especially for new users. I have written a draft new upload wizard, implemented in Javascript. It is currently at User:Future Perfect at Sunrise/Upload forms draft. To test it, you will need to activate the Javascript, by adding

importScript('User:Future Perfect at Sunrise/uploadscript.js'); [update see below]

to your personal .js page (Special:Mypage/vector.js).

The idea is to have a wizard-style dialogue that guides the user through all the necessary decisions about copyright, sourcing and fair-use issues. For a number of reasons, I came to the conclusion that the new Commons upload wizard would not be easy to adapt to our needs on en-wiki, so I felt the Javascript solution might be a good alternative.

This is obviously still in alpha stage (but the basic functionality ought to be working). If all goes well and this thing can be brought into a stable working condition, I reckon it could be deployed as a Gadget, or through site-wide js.

All help in further developing, bugfixing, testing and feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Fut.Perf. ☼ 01:27, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Just so long as there is an option to disable it or use the old method. In Commons, the link in the left margin "Participate" → "Upload file" goes to an upload wizard which is so s-l-o-w that it times out (Firefox, Windows XP). I've never succeeded in using it, so I've pasted a link to the old upload page at my commons user page. It may not cover the minefield of copyright, but at least it works. -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:57, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * My draft is quick on my machine. Maybe that's an advantage of doing it in javascript, rather than as a php extension like the Commons wizard, because here all the wizard code runs locally on your machine, without additional server traffic. Wanna give it a try? And yes, I quite agree, the old Special:Upload should of course remain in place for experienced users. This new thing is meant more to replace the current hack at Upload and its subpages. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:35, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * THis form should also mention that it is better to upload typical free work to commons (except PD-US-only) Bulwersator (talk) 16:21, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It actually does, as soon as you click the "free work" option. It also offers a link for submitting the file at Commons directly with the information collected here. (Only I haven't yet included a check for the PD-US-only situation yet; thanks for reminding me of that.) Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:55, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Update: on advice from User:AlexSm, I have moved the script page to MediaWiki:UploadScriptDemo.js, so it can be tested even without changing one's personal .js. The new method of testing is now:
 * Either access the wizard page through the following "withJS" link: [ Reload with script]
 * or change the reference in your personal .js to importScript('MediaWiki:UploadScriptDemo.js');
 * Sorry for the inconvenience if you already edited your .js with the old value.

Barack Obama - too many templates
The article has its Post-expand include size exceeded (2048000/2048000 bytes), making templates fail. Any technically minded editors feel like trying to clean this up? — Edokter  ( talk ) — 11:00, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Not a technical problem... you need to gut or split the article. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 11:32, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * One thing that would help is to cut back on the number of references. Do you really need 8 references to support his christian faith (ref. 3) for instance? Plus for ref 252, 2 references would be fine for that statement rather than 4 it currently has. Also ref 91 has 5 refs when surely 2 or 3 should be sufficient?


 * You might want to think about using more book sources and/or use vcite news, see Elvis Presley to see how they have done this. The structure they have used there is well with the template limits. Mattg82 (talk) 17:03, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * is more than the one template. And you can't just switch from one to the other as parameters differ. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 18:41, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Post-expand include size: 399636/2048000 bytes
 * Template argument size: 170200/2048000 bytes


 * This version does not show any problem that is immediately obvious. How can you tell there is a problem? Jc3s5h (talk) 18:31, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Near the bottom of the page, templates do not render; instead, the template names show. ---— Gadget850 (Ed)  talk 18:35, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Atrocious loading speed, "Template:PersondataTemplate:Link GA Template:Link GA Template:Link FA Template:Link FA Template:Link FA Template:Link FA Template:Link FA Template:Link FA" on the bottom and hidden category "pages where template include size is exceeded"? Bulwersator (talk) 18:37, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Exactly. The page as it stands shows five navboxes followed by a bunch of bluelinks to templates, but if you edit the "External links" section, don't alter anything but go straight for "Show preview", you'll see six navboxes and an "Authority control" (plus the persondata if you have that enabled); and all the template links have disappeared. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:37, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Realy, we should have a Cleanup template for this (to be placed on top). -DePiep (talk) 14:19, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Check for duplicate references. They are may be a few of them. Ruslik_ Zero 14:56, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Zoom for Template:Coord and related
Having a possibility to the define a zoomlevel would be a nice to have for articles like Nizami Street. Here the bare toolserver link shows the entire city plus a lot of surrounding area instead of pointing direct to the street. -- Kr51-2 (talk) 23:49, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * See the scale and dim parameters at Template:Coord. Compare for example these: 40.37294°N, 49.8404°W 40.37294°N, 49.8404°W. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:17, 4 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Thank you. -- Kr51-2 (talk) 13:10, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

File:January 2012 Move to Commons drive statistics.pdf
What's going on here? Is the MediaWiki renderer misinterpreting the page dimensions? — This, that, and the other (talk) 23:55, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Looks like it may just be a extension:pdfhandler bug; thing apparently doesn't like non-standard aspect-ratios... is landscape as opposed to the other way non-standard?  — Isarra (talk)  02:55, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The renderer is either unaware of landscape A4, or unaware that 29.700 x 20.997 cm (the exact dimensions of the PDF page) is really the same as landscape A4. I'll have to reupload the image in some other format. — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:37, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Annoying box templates
Hi, I've encountered an annoying problem on many Wikipedia pages with box templates interfering with image placement, so that wherever one of this boxes is placed, all images on the opposite or same side of the page are moved down. A weird example can be seen here Hafez al-Assad The "Baathism box" pushes all images on right side way down. What can be done about such boxes? FunkMonk (talk) 13:34, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Not much. Any box or image placed on the right side of a page is a 'floating' element and they stack on top of each other. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 15:02, 4 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Browsers and other factors can affect what people see. I'm not sure what you mean by "way down". The image "a statue of Hafez Al-assad in Aleppo" is right below the "Part of a series on Ba'athism" box for me. It should either be right below the Ba'athism box or right below the "Presidency" heading, whichever of the two is lowest. Is it further down for you? Stack can change page layout in some cases. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:33, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Moving them down on the same side is normal, and intended, since otherwise they'll pile up and make an article nigh unreadable, but the stuff on the opposite side (in the example case, the left) shouldn't be affected at all, but for some reason it is trying to clear right. But it really shouldn't be doing that; the box seems to be formatted the same way as the image thumbs themselves, which as you're probably aware, only prevent piling up on whatever side they happen to be on - so either it's just too many things adding up and confusing browsers, or something else (another template?) in the article is probably forcing an unwanted clear. I couldn't find anything in the linked one, though.  — Isarra (talk)  17:09, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The layout of Hafez al-Assad appears normal to me in Firefox 10. As mentioned, browsers and other factors can affect what people see. If you think an image is displayed in the wrong place then please be specific about which image, where you see it and in which browser. PrimeHunter (talk) 18:29, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Left-aligned images that occur after right-aligned images in the wikicode will appear below, or level with, the right-aligned image which precedes it in the wikicode. They will not appear above. So if a right-aligned image is pushed down, for whatever reason, it will also push down left-aligned images. Kludges like apart, the only way to get a left-aligned image to appear above a right-aligned image is for it to also occur earlier in the wikicode. This behaviour is known, and has been mentioned many times on this page in the past. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:30, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Remove a category which seems to be included using a #babel tag
Please help me remove User:Altaïr from the speedy deleted Category:User simple-N. As far as I can tell, the category is included using a at the beginning of the page. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:25, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Why? The babel system categorises user pages by the languages that the user understands, and by the level of understanding. If you are looking for a translator, it's better to look for somebody in the lang-N category than in the lang-1 category. -- Red rose64 (talk) 11:05, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Not only that, but the babel system automatically re-created the category too. Unfortunately, since it appears to be impossible to override this (or any of the "default" babel templates or categories). Anomie⚔ 12:29, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The reason is CSD G4, per Categories for discussion/User/Archive/February 2008. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:49, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * G4 doesn't mean that the page must be deleted on sight for evermore. It allows change of circumstances, under which G4 will no longer apply; and the addition of the babel system to the various Wikiimedia projects (inc. English Wikipedia) in late September 2011 (see Babel extension) constitutes significantly changed circumstances.
 * Previous to this, the user language cats (such as ) were only added to user pages by use of userbox templates, each of which could be customisable individually; but now the #babel: parser function (e.g. ) will add the standard categories. I rather suspect that you'll need to get MediaWiki changed to permit exceptions. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:23, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

proposals to improve assessment of reliability of wikipedia articles- making a quantitative and visible index
Currently, assessing the reliability of a given wikipedia article is difficult.

Problems: 1.Some heuristic methods are intuitively developed by people to make this assessment (length of article, number/quality of references, etc..). However, this heuristic is not made by most people, who often remain confused on this matter. This erodes the overall credibility of the encyclopedia.

2. Articles are sometimes flagged, or put in some categories, (and on the other hand, very few articles are classified as "Featured/good articles). But it must be recognized that this organization is very rudimentary. More efficient tools are needed and possible.

Proposals:

1. build a quantitative index of assessment of the probable "reliability" of an article. This index includes: length of article, number/quality of references, people's judgment about the reliability, etc..

2. Improve visibility of this index: adopt a color code. Instead of a uniformly white article, color each article and/or each paragraph, and/or each sentence with (the "whiter", the more "possibly reliable" the information is). Page ratings are not widely used nor visible.

It will also give incentives to good participation, as their changes will be more visible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mokotillon (talk • contribs) 21:45, 31 January 2012 (UTC)


 * This sounds like WikiTrust. Graham 87 02:45, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * thank you. i feel like i reinvented the wheelMokotillon (talk) 20:21, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Interwiki links
Is it just me or has something gone really weird with interwiki links? Jenks24 (talk) 00:16, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Not just you, I see it too. It reads de:Players Tour Championship in the "Languages" panel instead of "German" and the turn red if I purge the cache. Armbrust, B.Ed. <sup style="color:#E3A857;">Let's talk <sub style="color:#008000;">about my edits? 00:19, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Same here. Also, newly added iw links will appear as redlinks at the bottom of the page. <FONT COLOR="#2F4F4F">Litho</FONT><FONT COLOR="#464646">derm</FONT> 00:19, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * All interwiki links are acting up, not just new ones. Jeancey (talk) 00:21, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Not just you. Interwiki links are shown just below TOC; and there is no interwikis at usual place (at some moment there was a list at usual place with text "lang_code:name_of_article" instead of usual "language name"). Every interwiki link just goes to the current wikipedia, like "en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fi:Wikipedia:Kahvihuone_(tekniikka)&action=edit&redlink=1". Seems to be bug of mediawiki. `a5b (talk) 00:22, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * This is wikipedia-wide, not just en. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 00:26, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * From Server admin log: "February 1. 00:05 logmsgbot: reedy synchronized php/cache/interwiki-pr.cdb 'Updating interwiki cache'". — AlexSm 00:27, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Meaning? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 00:28, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * According to meta:Wikimedia Forum, "Interwiki map was updated very recently, techs are working to see what has gone wrong." Jenks24 (talk) 00:35, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * After third update "00:33 logmsgbot: reedy synchronized php/cache/interwiki-pr.cdb 'Updating interwiki cache' " all works again. `a5b (talk) 00:36, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I can confirm this, it works again now. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 00:41, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

BTW I would say, this is a problem with interlanguage links, as commons: and wikt: work. Armbrust, B.Ed. <sup style="color:#E3A857;">Let's talk <sub style="color:#008000;">about my edits? 00:32, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, it's fixed. --Anime Addict AA (talk) 00:40, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I also confirm, that it works. Armbrust, B.Ed. <sup style="color:#E3A857;">Let's talk <sub style="color:#008000;">about my edits? 00:44, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Doesn't seem to be working for me - edited Bungotakada and the interwiki links still seem to be displaying incorrectly, Thanks, Maculosae tegmine lyncis (talk) 00:50, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I purged the page and now it seems to display correctly. Maybe it is an issue when the last edit was done during the time the cache was still updating? --FordPrefect42 (talk) 00:57, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the cache is still catching up. Template:Dts exhibited the same problem until a minute ago, when I went for the "[purge]" link top right of the green documentation box: that fixed it. -- Red rose64 (talk) 17:38, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Screwed up again. How many more updates will there be? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 19:48, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't know if this helps in the analysis. But both Reliability engineering‎ and Category:Reliability engineering showed this behaviour in previous revision when a not existing category was added (just before the interwikis). After reverting, the problem disappeared. -- SchreyP (messages) 20:18, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Interwiki on United States Department of Commerce
For some reason, the interwiki is showing up as in-page redlinks on United States Department of Commerce; I'm sure there's some incredibly simple explanation for this, but I can't figure out how to fix it. Anybody more technically minded care to take a look? -- Khazar (talk) 00:29, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * see above :) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 00:30, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Still fucked. Thanks.  Lugnuts  (talk) 19:35, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Cats too
Fucked for me, too - on cats, inc CAT:AFC and CAT:SD. All interwikis are showing as red-links within the body, instead of in the language bar.  Chzz  ► 19:37, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

MEOW? Ceiling Cat (talk) 19:44, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Fixed?
It looks like it's fixed, at least for now. <font color="#CC0000">J <font color="#00CC00">I <font color="#0000CC">P &#124; Talk 20:08, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

not quite
There must still be a glitch somewhere, in Languages. Have a look at this → Frederic Leighton: all languages now appear at bottom of article, in red but live - they have disappeared from left column. And when I navigate some other pages, on some they show at left (as usual) but with country initials in front (for instance nl:xxxx, fr:xxxxx, etc.). If I return to that page, they have gone back to normal!--Smintheus Fellin (talk) 20:19, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It looks OK to me. Perhaps the bug was fixed in the meantime? I hadn't heard of Frederic Leighton before, and hadn't visited the article, so I know it's not because of caching. <font color="#CC0000">J <font color="#00CC00">I <font color="#0000CC">P &#124; Talk 20:25, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * For me the problem persists when I am/was logged in and look at the pages, which I just opened for edition. 93.72.141.128 (talk) 20:48, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yep, gone now, JIP, thanks for the info.--Smintheus Fellin (talk) 21:18, 1 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Category:Wikipedia scripts still had the problem until I purged it a few minutes ago. Will all affected pages automatically be fixed by a job queue, or can they linger indefinitely until the page is rerendered for other reasons? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Snowball clause. --Anime Addict AA (talk) 23:59, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Hm, I purged and it displays. --Anime Addict AA (talk) 00:00, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Rika
Not fixed yet. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 19:56, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Try this. <font color="#CC0000">J <font color="#00CC00">I <font color="#0000CC">P &#124; Talk 21:00, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Creating an interwiki link as an article
Is this issue potentially related to the thread about "tr:In Bruges" at WP:ANI? A user created an article whose title included the prefix for the Turkish Wikipedia, and all of the admins who commented in an ANI thread about it noted that they couldn't modify, delete, or even nuke it. It's since been deleted, but I'm not sure how, since it doesn't have a log entry. Nyttend (talk) 06:44, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes. The bugzilla I entered for the tr: issue was closed as a duplicate of the other iw issue(s). Also, using my non-admin account I was unable to reproduce the tr: issue once the other iw issues were fixed. 28bytes (talk) 06:47, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You can see the deletion in Amalthea's log. 28bytes (talk) 06:50, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Problem with Interwiki links on Neon tetra
What's with the interwiki links on Neon tetra? They just appear as redlinks in the main body of the text, but at a glance there's nothing wrong with the markup. Lankiveil (speak to me) 06:47, 5 February 2012 (UTC).
 * There was a cockup in the database, see recent discussions. The problem is likely apparent or residual, try to purge your cache. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:29, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Don't purge *your* cache; purge *the server's* cache, as described in the link above. Graham 87 08:42, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah, purging worked, thankyou. It was the only page I saw that was affected so I assumed it was a template screwup or something.  Lankiveil (speak to me) 09:26, 5 February 2012 (UTC).

Killer whale: what has gone wrong with the interwikis on this page?
--eugrus (talk) 13:21, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * ok. It's a known issue. I see. --eugrus (talk) 13:23, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Purging fixed it here too. Ucucha (talk) 13:39, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

template assistance needed
I'd be grateful for some help with these template-related tasks, please, which are beyond my skills, (and require admin privileges):


 * Template talk:Infobox country
 * Template talk:Infobox settlement
 * Template talk:Geobox

Infobox settlement has code which could be adapted for the first of those. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:34, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Anyone? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:28, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Template magic for link text
Is there any template magic, similar to which will turn Wikimarkup in a parameter value into text. For instance for wibble it would return a value of "wibble" and for bar it would return "bar"? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:47, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think so, but without knowing exactly what you're trying to do, I'm not sure. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 00:14, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I want to use the text value as part of an external URL. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:37, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Not possible I'm afraid. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 13:00, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Exactly. And then you need to wait for someone inclined to writing it of course —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 14:11, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Bug raised: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34215 Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:34, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Counting number of sections on page
Hey. I was looking for something that would return the number of sections on a page. Is there any functionality that would do this? PuppyOnTheRadio (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 07:04, 3 February 2012 (UTC).
 * The table of contents box lists that (immediately after the opening section).Jasper Deng (talk) 07:07, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Useless for what I was after. I'm trying to set up so that I can return the value to a different page so that indivdual sections can be transposed into a different page. PuppyOnTheRadio (talk) 01:22, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

SharedIP user Newtalk notification is still broken
The "You have new messages" notification that we all know and love does work for SharedIP user talkpages, which breaks the whole idea of vandalism warnings for such users.

Consider that a school at {arbitrary ip address} may have many users accessing from the same IP, even if only one is editing. When (let's call him) Bart deletes content, someone posts a warning on User talk:{arbitrary ip address} to tell Bart not to do that. But at that moment in the next classroom, Lisa clicks on a wikilink only to see the orange banner. She follows the embedded link to User talk:{arbitrary ip address}, and sees the warning intended for Bart, subst:uw-delete. He, however, never sees even the banner, let alone the warning. Encouraged by the apparent lack of notice, he continues vandalizing...

There ought to be a way that this can be avoided. Perhaps by ensuring the Newtalk field isn't cleared on IP talkpages until one of the SharedIP users actually edits that usertalk page instead of just reading it. Even better (if somewhat harder) would be to drop a persistent cookie on the browser to stamp the last time that browser read the IP user talkpage and if that cookie is older than the talkpage, changing display on that basis. LeadSongDog come howl!  19:54, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * This is an interesting idea, but may not be fruitful. For one, most shared ips are filled with editors at schools who don't know or don't care about talk page messages.  That may be cycnical, but I think it's accurate.  If we implement such a change, it will simply keep the banner at the top of any article that is visited for the entire batch of editors.  That will likely annoy them, and not lead to the relevant individual seeing the message for them in a timely manner anyway.  I sadly think this is a problem that just doesn't have an easy solution.  It's part of the price we pay for allowing ip and shared ip editors.  I'm not sure if 'more banner' will do the trick.  Ocaasit 21:40, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Regarding "[…] drop a persistent cookie on the browser […]": less than two years ago, I had proposed a way to tie edits and warnings together using unique, one-hour tokens for this exact situation. PleaseStand (talk) 22:02, 3 February 2012 (UTC)


 * The fraction of IP users in a given hour who edit is fairly small, likely below 1%. Most just read (like Lisa in my example). Putting the orange bar atop their screen until someone edits the talkpage has positive effects. First, it may engage Lisas in editing, not just the Barts. Second, it may cue the Mr Skinners who are curious what Bart is smirking about in the back of the detention hall. Third, it lets Bart actually read the message intended for him. Who knows, it may even motivate some users to create an account! LeadSongDog come howl!  22:12, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I like your analogy, and the idea of bringing some of those ip editors into the fold, especially the Lisa's is intriguing. But there has to be some intelligent way for them to get rid of the banner, otherwise it breaks basic usability principles.  You shouldn't be harangued by warnings; you should be able to make them disappear once viewed.  At the least, an alternate banner would have to be designed just for shared ips which told them what to do to make it go away.  If that involves editing the talk page, then so be it, but at least they'll be informed.  I don't know if a special banner is technically feasible, but it seems the only way to maintain balance while aiming for better messaging. Ocaasit 22:30, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Well it would certainly better if it can be made automatic as per PleaseStand's earlier suggestion. The Newtalk fields already distinguish ipusers, it doesn't seem that big a reach. Even if that's a "just click here to dismiss" button, that would be an improvement on the present situation. LeadSongDog come howl!  06:34, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Usually, the organization learns its lesson after its first block, and then tries to educate its users on it. Schools, due to the natural immaturity schoolchildren have, are a constant source of vandalism, so their IPs are usually blocked regardless of whether a warning was given or not. I'd support this idea only for sessions that have been editing Wikipedia, since the cookie can just be for that particular session.Jasper Deng (talk) 06:38, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
 * So, set a session cookie when an IP's browser edits, and then have a message that is shown only to browsers from that IP which have that cookie set while remaining hidden from other browsers at that IP? It sounds like something that could be implemented by the wizards. It would ensure Bart can receive the message, and avoid annoying Lisa. LeadSongDog come howl!  02:47, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

MathML
This is a question asked at the help desk earlier. As suggested in a reply there, I'm asking the question here. I have set the math appearance setting to "MathML if possible". Although Firefox 9.0.1 supports MathML, all equations in Integral are rendered as PNG images. The caption line at the settings page has no URLs as to where the feature is described or developed. Is this feature a part of Texvc? Should I report a bug to MediaWiki bug tracker or somewhere else? Thank you in advance. Gryllida 00:04, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * This "feature" has been completely out of commission since around 2003 or 2004. Development on MediaWiki is pretty stagnant for the most part. There was a brief resurgence with the BlahTex plugin but last time I checked, no one was working on it. —Designate (talk) 02:31, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * See also Village pump (technical)/Archive 94. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:38, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
 * According to 25646, this was "fixed" on by removing the MathML option (and some other math options) on 104498 (and it seems this change will be live once MW 1.19 is deployed - check on Wikimedia labs). See also:
 * Requests for comment/Reduce math rendering preferences
 * Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Archive/2011/Jul
 * Helder 17:58, 5 February 2012 (UTC)