Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive AE

Getting a list of pages I've edited?
Is there an easy way to get a list of the pages I've edited? Special:Contributions shows all my edits, but many of them are to the same pages over and over again. I want just a list of uniqe pages I've edited. I managed to get what I need by asking for the last 500 edits (close enough for my purposes), then saving the page as a text file, grepping all the lines with "title=", and running it through sed | sort | uniq, but that's hardly elegant. Is there some way within the MediaWiki software to do what I want? It seems like this would boil down to something like "select uniq pageName from whatever where userName = 'RoySmith'" query against the database. -- RoySmith (talk) 18:00, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I tried checking Query, but there's nothing useful there. This would seem like a perfect fit for the toolserver, except that it doesn't work on en.wikipedia at the moment. --ais523 18:05, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * There is a relatively easy way, at least for the pages you have put the most work into. You want Interiot's "wannabe kate" edit counter tool. You can find it at WP:TOOL. It will give you a bunch of editing stats including the 15 pages you've made the most edits to in each namespace.—WAvegetarian&bull;(talk) 20:22, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I've looked through your contributions list and here's a list of every page you've edited, along with the number of edits to that page. I've put the table in a show/hide box because it's a bit big. Tra (Talk) 21:40, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Cool, thanks! How did you generate that list?  -- RoySmith (talk) 01:28, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I opened your user contributions, set it to show the last 5000 edits (this caused it to show all your edits since you have less than that), then went to view source, copied the HTML from the actual list (not the top and bottom of the page or the sidebar) then pasted it into Excel, then wrote a formula to extract from each line the name of the page, then with this list of page names generated, I pasted it into Access as a table, then made a query and switched on Totals, added the page name field twice into the query, once as group by, once as count, then ran the query and pasted the results back into Excel, then wrote a formula to turn each line into table syntax, then pasted this into the edit box, added the top and bottom of the table, put it in a show/hide box and posted it. Tra (Talk) 21:40, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

IP blocking vs registered users
Is there a way to blcok an IP without blocking registered accounts that use the IP? I know we can autoblock the IP when specifying a registered account but what about the other way?

The particular case I am interested in involves an anonymous vandal that targets a single page. His actions trigger semi-protection whichdeprives all non-registered editors from editing it. What I would like is a way to block the IP but allow a user to register an account and edit with the account while the IP is blocked. Then we could leave a "Please Register" message on the IP page but implement long blcoks without fear of depriving legitimate users access. --Tbeatty 04:30, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, it is possible. There are three settings that can be changed when users are blocked. When an IP address is blocked, either all users or just anonymous users of that address can be blocked. In fact the default behaviour is only to block anonymous users. Account creation can also be enabled or disabled for an IP address. (The third option is to enable or disable autoblocks, which applies only when blocking a registered user). An administrator will take all of these things into account when blocking a user, so there's no need to worry – Gurch 07:40, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Category:Determinists
Category:Determinists comes up as a totally blank page for me. What's up? Rfrisbietalk 01:15, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I guess all I had to do was ask a pointless question about it here. Nevermind! :-) Rfrisbietalk 01:20, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Blind Wikipedia editors - optimised skins for their assistance
Hello! I am trying to help an blind user edit an installation of MediaWiki at work. The available skins are identical to those on this Wikipedia but it causes some screen reader problems with finding the article text first rather than reading down the columns in the navigation sidebar. Contributing to article edits is also problematic in that it is hard to locate the tabs at the top of each page and the save and preview buttons at the bottom. Two questions - are there any blind editors/tech support for blind editors and 2) can I see a copy of their monobook.css/custom skins to see if it will help my guys at work, please? (aeropagitica) 20:21, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * User:Graham87 is blind and accesses Wikipedia using JAWS (screen reader). -- Rick Block (talk) 20:26, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * They can go to their Special:Preferences and change the skin to MySkin or Chick, both of those have minimal header text, and have most of the navigation-box links at the bottom.
 * You can even view an article without any skin at all, using action=render. Though I don't know if that's more useful or not...  certainly the extra links in the skin are useful sometimes.  Also, I'm not sure whether there's an easy way to stay in "no skin" mode, since clicking on a link takes you out of it.--Interiot 22:33, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * What screen reader are they using? I still use JAWS 5.1 which doesn't read wikipedia's CSS properly (basically because it's Internet support is unstable even without full CSS support). I use the monobook skin because I've become used to its quirks. To find the text of an article I just move to the first heading - in wikipedia's case "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia". It sounds like the software the blind user is using doesn't do much to virtualise webpages to optimise them for speech. In the edit page, I have learnt to filter out the text of the sidebar when arrowing through to find where to place an edit. I locate the other forms (edit summary, watch this page, ETC) by pressing tab. To find the "article" and "discussion" tabs I go to the "Views" heading, but if the software has a find feature that would also be useful for finding the tabs. Do the access keys work? Like "alt-c" for article, "alt-t" for discussion". Graham 87 05:28, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe that they are using the latest version of Dolphin, a UK screen reader programme http://www.dolphinuk.co.uk/ over IE version 6. I know that it has a focus option but I think that one user has a problem where the focus starts in the navigation sidebar and not the article pane. I will ask for more details from them and make the suggestions that you have recommended above. Any other assistance is very much appreciated! Regards, (aeropagitica) 20:51, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I can't get the demo installed here, but I've been able to read the help files which can be found here. The find feature (activated with f3) seems to be useful, as well as the heading navigation links of dolphin key+insert and dolphin key+delete (dolphin key is probably caps lock). Control+shift+left arrow might be useful for skipping links. Dolphin screen readers might process the user monobook.css or common.css correctly so fiddling with that to turn off the sidebar with display:none might work for the user. The Chick skin or MySkin may work, as well as the classic skin. If using the classic skin, dolphin key+delete should get to the first heading and thus the page's contents without the sidebar clutter. Graham 87 04:56, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, I will see what I can get done today with your suggestions. I'll be back when I get further feedback! Regards, (aeropagitica) 05:57, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Viewing user contributions to deleted pages?
When a page gets deleted, edits to it no longer show up in user contribution lists. Is there anyway to see them? My interest is for evaluating vandals. Often, I'll look at the user contributions of a suspected vandal and see that they have made very few edits. In reality, they've created many junk articles, all of which have since been deleted. There doesn't seem to be any way to tell one case from the other. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:09, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * One used to be able to see the edit summaries of people's deleted edits, but we had problems with vandals putting stuff (like personal info of other users) in edit summaries so this feature has been disabled. There isn't any way to see them other than for admins and then only by going to the page history. That is, afaik.—WAvegetarian&bull;(talk) 20:15, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Image Problems
Why does this image not appear right??? Chris5897 (T@£k) 17:42, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Well. It looks like you made the page, but there's no image. Try uploading the image again. (And this time around, try exporting to a .png or something instead of using the .svg.) ~user:orngjce223how am I typing? 18:10, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Template won't close
Template:HP-project seems not to "close" when transcluded… all the text following it seems to be put into the manilla box. (See Talk:Harry Potter.) I don't know how to end the template. --Fbv65 e del / ☑t / ☛c || 17:12, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I fixed it; it needed another  at the bottom. Tra (Talk) 17:27, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Phew, thanks so much! --Fbv65 e del / ☑t / ☛c || 17:28, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, in that same template, it appears it doesn't show when the article is not assessed by importance. It's like the importance parameter is optional. Can you change that so that it appears whether it's rated or not? Thanks. --Fbv65 e del / ☑t / ☛c || 17:51, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Done. Tra (Talk) 18:14, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot, you've been a lot of help! --Fbv65 e del / ☑t / ☛c || 18:17, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

An element allowing for different content in a given box
Navigational templates allow the reader to "show" or "hide" a certain block of wiki syntax. I was wondering if a similar gadget would be possible inside the wiki/html syntax which would allow the user to browse through several possible contents of a box. That is, there would be a certain list c1, c2, ..., cn of blocks of wiki syntax in the article source (inside the html syntax that would do the trick), and by clicking on a simple control the reader would be able to show successive ci in the given space. This would be useful in situation where one would like to present many tables with same headings at once - listing 20 tables at once would look really bad and the huge animated pic instead of a table is awful for many obvious reasons. Ideas, comments? Thanks --Dzordzm 04:14, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Possibly useful for non-content (maintenance, administration, configuration, discussion, etc) pages, but content pages should generally be printable rather than interactive. --Splarka (rant) 08:37, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Maybe it should be set so that for non-javascript enabled browsers and when printing, the sections are put one above the other, but on screen, there could be tabs to select between the different sections. It could perhaps be implemented in a similar way to how the tabs in Special:Preferences work. Tra (Talk) 14:37, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * That would be a simple CSS trick, which shouldn't be too hard to impliment (I would assume). That could prove most helpful for large templates; for example, Mortal Kombat series could have individual tabs for the games and characters, while taking up a fraction of the space. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 22:56, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
 * It would be JS, actually, not CSS, but still simple. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 01:58, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

WP:LA
There is an strange issue on this page. I noticed a strange occurance which after a certain length, the page seems to misuse the template admin. (i.e. the very end that lists admins 67-89 or so).

Instead of listing admin names like it's supposed to like this:


 * 1) 10 October 2006

It viewed like this:
 * 1) admin - 10 October 2006

The template admin doesn't seem to be the issue and when User:NoSeptember edited the page with a new template that mocks the other called admina, all it did was list it like:
 * 1) admina - 10 October 2006

Does anyone know why it would do this or if there is a limit to how long this page could/should go? semper fi — Moe  22:39, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * If you look at the html source right at the spot where it changes, you will see:




 * Which can be found in parser.php under "# Error, oversize inclusion". I'm positive is set by $wgMaxArticleSize so you should file a bug report on bugzilla for a dev to increase it. GeorgeMoney (talk) 03:33, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I wondered why this is happening to admin but not admin-abbr (which I use on one of my pages dozens of more times - I still list formers), and also why this only started to happen very recently. The answer I believe lies in this edit to the template, which added much text. Perhaps the immediate solution is to remove some of this verbiage, since it appears to get counted towards the oversize inclusion computation. NoSeptember  08:13, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Rolled back my change to :tl:admin for now. Anyone wants to re-incorporate the spirit, please feel free. Rich Farmbrough, 10:34 3 December 2006 (GMT).
 * OK, the short term issue is resolved. Based on the amount of verbiage removed, we will run into this problem again when we hit 1500 admins. Long term solution: 1) George's suggestion for a bugzilla request (but perhaps the limit is there for a reason - to discourage mega size pages), and 2) create a stripped down template just for this page. The full blown admin could be used on the hundreds of pages it is currently used on, but use admina(which I just created again) on WP:LA (note how the four log links are reduced to one - so the pull down menu needs to be used to get to the log you want). Other ideas?  NoSeptember  14:49, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * WP:LA is a bit too big. When I clicked on the link, my browser (IE7) hung (non responsive) for 22 seconds as it loaded the page. When I attempted to scroll down, it still took a few seconds to recognise this. The page needs to be either split on to multiple pages or have the links removed and just display a raw list, which would load faster. Tra (Talk) 15:06, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't mind removing many of the links on the page, we don't really need a bunch of links for each admin. A single link to their talk page is all that is really needed IMO. I wouldn't like to divide the list up any more because people move from section to section all the time and separate pages would make editing much more bothersome. NoSeptember  15:40, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Another possible solution is to request for a new magic word to be added __NOMAXSIZE__ but then that might encourage vandals to use it to make huge pages. Or we could just add a property to each page that only admins can edit, but that would be too much of a new feature for something as small as this. I think just using a cut down version of the admin template would be the best solution. GeorgeMoney (talk) 18:33, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The developers added this restriction to prevent server loads that were too high. The basic rule about performance is something like "don't worry about it; if it's getting to be a problem, the developers will implement a technical measure to prevent problems rather than asking for a new policy". In the case of a page that's so long that its hitting the pre-expand include limit (which was raised once already, IIRC), it's probably best to split or simplify it rather than ask for more complexity (a page that big is really hard to load anyway on a small computer). --ais523 17:10, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Eh?
Ethel_Smyth - Why does the link to The Wreckers (opera) show the code? Adam Cuerden talk 22:00, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * A  was mistyped as a  . I've fixed it. Tra (Talk) 22:07, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Republic (Plato)
Someone deleted the Plato's Republic article. How do I restore it? - Darkhawk
 * It's still there. ~ trialsanderrors 21:48, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * That's because I just fixed it by purging the cache. Tra (Talk) 21:51, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Stuck in Chick
Is there a direct way to access Special:Preferences &rarr; Skin. Because I just switched to Chick to check if layouts work in other skins than Monobook, and it turns out I can't click on the Skin link from Preferences, so there is no (obvious) way for me to switch back. ~ trialsanderrors 21:14, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * As it says in the FAQ at the top of this page, click on this link then click Skin. Tra (Talk) 21:36, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks ~ trialsanderrors 21:48, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Search feature doesn't work properly
I've been experiencing this problem since a couple of days now. The search feature doesn't work properly. It generates the following messsage:
 * There was a problem with your search. This is probably temporary; try again in a few moments, or you can search Wikipedia through an external search service

Sometimes it works after a couple of clicks. --  Szvest   Ω  Wiki Me Up ®  20:21, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Use the Google link, it's a much better search than the internal search service. If you have any qualms or issues about Google, feel free to ask here, because as far as I know, there's practically no reason to use the internal seach instead of Google search.  --Interiot 20:28, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * This link will take you to the Google site search for Wikipedia. Tra (Talk) 20:32, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks guys. --  Szvest   Ω  Wiki Me Up ®  20:56, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

When I searched for "User Talk:Cacycle/wikEd", I got nothing. Yet the page is at User Talk:Cacycle/wikEd. Will (Talk - contribs) 06:16, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Is there a SEARCH bug?
I have the same problem as the original poster.... hitting the "Search" button finds nothing.. just gives that error. And searching for known existing articles brings up the same error message, i.e the "Search" button is not working AT ALL. Is this an internal Wikipedia bug or is it a problem with my browswer (Mozilla Firefox)? Was something done to Wiki that hosed all the Mozilla browsers out there? Fountains of Bryn Mawr 14:30, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * There's nothing wrong with your browser, it's an internal Wikipedia bug. As mentioned above, use Google site search instead. Tra (Talk) 15:00, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Blank Cell for Table

 * I'm running into a roadblock with the following table. On the bottom three rows, I have subdivided cells (on the left hand side), but on the right, they're one whole cell. I'd like to standardize both sides to be solid cells, rather than subdivided ones. The problem is, deleting "|" before the "Monstrous Strength" parameter just bumps the "Monstrous Strength" parameter left across the rows, resulting in one giant cell on the bottom and to the right of said parameter. Terek 10:09, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Are you looking for something like this? (I just added "colspan" in the column before Monstrous strength to make a single cell stretch across multiple columns. --Interiot 17:13, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * When collapsing columns on the right hand side of the table, the colums are formatted in a cell that looks simmilar to the cells above it in terms of border; it's a light border. On the bottom row of cells there is a "thick" border; what I'm trying to get at is this light border on the left hand side, not the bolded heavy border with or without cells. Terek 18:06, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Ahh, I got it. I just added a "rowspan" parameter to achieve the desired effect. Thanks! Terek 18:14, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know what browser you're using, but is there a reason for the extra row on the bottom of the table? I saw the extra row on some of the pages you're working on.  Unless you're going to fill it out with columns in the near future, it should probably be removed.  This may be the cause for the "darker border" that you're describing.  --Interiot 18:37, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Odd category URL
Can someone tell me what's up with this category? Why is it different from this one:, and how do I fix it? Why is the %E2%80%AC tacked onto the end of the URL? -Freekee 06:15, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * This is due to an invisible unicode character (%E2%80%AC - POP DIRECTIONAL FORMATTING (whatever that means)) in the category tag on those pages. You can fix it by deleting it from the pages in question (which someone obviously cut-paste in accidentally). Might be easier to delete the line and replace it with: . --Splarka (rant) 08:02, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Addendum: after you empty the typoed category, go ahead and add   to the category and category talk page. --Splarka (rant) 08:05, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I've orphaned and deleted the category with the stray Unicode mark in its name. Kimchi.sg 13:56, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, all! -Freekee 16:29, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * MediaWiki supports bi-directional text. These invisible unicode characters are text direction indicators that are displayed in some contexts.  When you copy a link you can sometimes accidentally include one of these in what you copy (since they're invisible, it's sort of hard to tell when this happens).  This happens often enough that I've entered a bugzilla entry for it, see 8124. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:37, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Edits going Crazy
Maybe I'm just going crazy, but the previous few edits I made (or actually, semi-bot (not bot) User:AZPR) were messed up. When I edited Peer review/Distillation, this occurred (when I meant this). Similarly, this happened when I tried to start a redirect page. Even more weirdly, take a look at Peer review/Automated/December 2006. Then, click "Edit this page" and look at the source code… there's something in there about some Flight 940. I tried bypassing my cache several times as well as other things, but nothing seems to fix it (though now when I edit, everything is back to normal). What is happening?! AZ t 00:29, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Okay, so I'm not the only one. It turns out that John Calder Brennan, created just 2 days ago, exactly matches the result of this edit. Glitch (and is there a way to fix this easily - I don't want to have to type Peer review/Automated/December 2006 all over again, and the raw version isn't right either)? AZ t 00:33, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, hey, I got the same error here. I certainly didn't add a page on John Kerry to the afd. Is something wrong? -Patstuart(talk)(contribs) 00:34, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Saw something similar at Cream (band). Previous revision showed as blank even though the edit was very minor. Seemed to have fixed itself in the past 10 minutes. *Spark*  00:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

It seems to have been widespread, although perhaps short lived. —Doug Bell talk 00:37, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Recently I edited my user page and changed a small amount of the code (simply changing the 'stress-level indicator'), however later I discovered that the edit had deleted everything on the page and replaced it with some conversation I have never seen before. This conversation comes from somewhere in Wikipedia, but I have no idea how it came onto my user page. The edit that put all of the weird information on my userpage is listed as an edit by myself User:DanielBC, however I am certain I did not put that text in the edit box, I was changing a small amount of code at that time. Why did this occur and how can I be sure to avoid it happening in the future (especially if I am editing mainspace articles). Thanks, DanielBC talkcontrib 00:37, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The edit glitch that originally occurred is here
 * The edit that I was attempting to make (and is now my user page) is here
 * The history page is here, we are looking at the edits of 1 December 2006


 * This may be the same thing I just noticed. I added a short comment on a users talk page, and noticed on my watch list that he reverted it with the comment 'huh?' I went to the history to see what he reverted, and it was truly bizarre. Instead of my short comment showing up on his talk page, 'my' edit had removed his entire talk page and replaced it with the content (text and photos) from the page Shamu. I swear I'm not making this up. And I've never even been to the Shamu page. Here is the dif: My edit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Priyanath (talk • contribs) 00:45, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * So is there a way to fix the problem, especially for pages that were just created and can't simply be reverted? Peer review/Automated/December 2006 is a new page w/ 18000+ characters, so it can't be easily reverted... AZ t 00:47, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't know, hopefully somebody who does will be along shortly. —Doug Bell talk


 * See Brion's note on wikitech-l. 309 edits on enwiki were found bad and are being fix-ed (full breakdown). --Splarka (rant) 01:30, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes I got hit with this for some weird edits. Rich Farmbrough, 22:37 2 December 2006 (GMT).

This happened to me a while ago. When I saw this at the Manchester article, and no sign of an edit like that in the edit history, I tried reverting. Nothing worked, then I protected the page and this happened, which is quite obviously impossible for the page protection function. Turned out it was something to do with different mirrors unsyncing or something? I can't remember exactly. --Deskana talk 02:05, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Here are two more examples:, causing some confused discussion and this one by myself where I did a section edit and the whole page was replaced by some AfD discussion. In both cases, the strange edits have disappeared from the history. If it was any manual intervention that repaired the wrong diffs, it would have been appropriate to label the items in the history, because this way it was really, really, confusing. Han-Kwang 22:01, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure, but possibly it's related to this. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Major edit glitch 1 Dec 2006, around 23:00 UTC
The edit at was certainly not intended, and I don't believe  was either. Was this some sort of known glitch or database hiccough, or should we be concerned? I changed my password as a precaution. -choster 00:23, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

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