Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive AH

Scanning for subcategory contents
There were several requests to make AutoWikiBrowser get contents of not only given category, but its subcategories too. I can easily enable this feature, but I'm not sure if it will turn AWB users into server hogs. So I'd like to see more input on this. How time-consuming getting category content can be? Max S em 15:09, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Potentially very, if you're looking at recursion. Many categories have hundreds or even thousands of eventual subcategories, frequently with one or more loops as well.  Try finding all the direct or indirect subcategories of something like Category:Medicine, for instance.  That isn't to say doing something like that might not be often worthwhile, of course. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 18:37, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Is this related to what User:PockBot does? John Broughton  |  Talk 02:42, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Seems to be. Again, it's not necessarily a bad idea, provided it's not used at super-high activity levels.  I'm not comfortable being any more specific; I suggest you ask Tim Starling about whether this is a performance issue and, if so, what steps to take. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 21:40, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Image rendering
Why does Image:US 1-9.svg seem to render properly at every dimension except 25px (which, inconveniently, is the dimension most commonly needed)? I've tried every combination of purging and what refreshing I could think of, but still could not get the image (found at the bottom of the table on U.S. Route 1 in New Jersey as well as here: ) to show up. -- NORTH talk 09:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I fixed it. What I did was I right clicked the image, went to properties, found the image URL, typed that into my browser and added a 1 on the end, then refreshed a couple of times and it worked. Tra (Talk) 13:51, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I knew there was something else I could do with adding a ?1 at the end, but I couldn't quite follow what it was. -- NORTH talk 23:39, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Firefox, Opera, DIV, DOCTYPE
Consider the following DIV construction, which I have on my user page:

  SOME TEXT HERE  

The above renders correctly as I intended in IE6. However, on Firefox 1.5 and Opera9, it does not. I messed around with the source that Wikipedia is generating, and I realized that if I remove the first line from the source:

 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> 

then it will render correctly in Firefox1.5 and Opera9. Can someone explain to me why that DOCTYPE line causes it to render incorrectly, and also, can someone help me by explaining how to modify the DIV construction I have above so that it will render correctly in Firefox1.5 and Opera9 (since there's no way to remove the DOCTYPE line that Wikipedia automatically generates)? Thanks. &mdash;Lowellian (reply) 05:18, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * XHTML tags and attributes are case-sensitive and in lower case whereas your code above uses upper case. Try using lower case and see what happens. --TheParanoidOne 06:25, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * In fact, this is listed as one of the common errors on the XHTML page ("Using uppercase element or attribute names"). --TheParanoidOne 06:28, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki normalizes it to lowercase, so that could not be the problem. More likely the problem is the illegal contents of the "style" attribute; browsers may be more forgiving in "quirks mode" with the doctype missing. Remove the curly braces { ... } and it should render fine. --brion 09:03, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The error you have is exactly what brion said:

Alerta: Esperada declaração mas encontrado '{'. Passando para a próxima declaração. Arquivo-fonte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lowellian Linha: 0
 * This comes from Firefox's JavaScript error console. When something on a page doesn't work right on Firefox, the first place to look is the error console, as often a warning is left on it (it does not show only JavaScript errors; in fact it has been renamed on recent versions to a more general name). --cesarb 18:41, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Ah, okay, thank you guys for the quick and helpful responses! I was able to get it to work by removing the braces, as suggested. Thanks! &mdash;Lowellian (reply) 01:41, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Example heading
edit

Third example heading
This bug has been around for as long as the Monobook skin. Can't we fix it? See TVedia, for instance. A string of floated images causes the edit links for subsequent sections to float all in a clump near the last image, since the edit links are floated, too. But c'mon... Surely there's a way around this by editing the site's CSS. Any ideas? — Omegatron 02:00, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Please see How to fix bunched-up edit links and 1629 (which it links to). -- Rick Block (talk) 02:35, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * But I want to get rid of the problem, not work around it.
 * Provided we want to maintain current float behavior, this bug is unfixable until CSS improves.
 * :-/ Somehow I doubt that. — Omegatron 03:20, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * At the expense of an extra blank line or two per heading (and the possibility of the edit link overlapping text of a very long heading), the markup I've added above works. The point of the links, particularly the bugzilla one, is that this is not a problem that people are simply ignoring.  -- Rick Block (talk) 04:11, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Um... no it doesn't work. Now it doesn't work for me, while it did before. -Amarkov blahedits 04:31, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * What browser and OS? -- Rick Block (talk) 05:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Let me clarify: provided we want to maintain current float behavior, I know of no way to fix this and have seen no proposal that would fix it until CSS improves. And by the way, the bug predates Monobook: all skins exhibit this problem. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 18:31, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Broken/
I am just wondering what is happening with article Broken/. It seems to contain some text when one tries to edit it, but there is no history and it is shown as having a length of 0 in Special:Shortpages (#36 in the list). The text itself provides some suggestions about what may be happening, but I have no idea what is the correct answer. Any knows more about this ? Schutz 22:47, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * That page is weird, I can't edit it (I get an edit conflict) and it displays MediaWiki:Missingarticle in the edit page as well as the page. Prodego  talk  23:14, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know what was up with it, but I was able to delete it. -- Renesis (talk) 23:15, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Page names like this are typically used for problematic stuff that turns up in automatic scripts that are run on the database. For instance, renaming a namespace moves any unresolvable conflicts to a page name not unlike that.  Dunno what this specific one was, though. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:54, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Some spam bots also create pages ending in / from time to time. -- ReyBrujo 19:01, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

interwikis
I have one technical question. Is it possible to generate a list of article that have no interwiki links? Some time ago we had a talk about it at Slovenian WP and we think it would be nice to connect all unconnected articles. Thanks for help. --Tone 13:41, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * At Special:Lonelypages, you'll find a list of pages that have no incoming wikilinks. John Broughton  |  Talk 13:53, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * For interlanguage links, you could try typing in a URL like http://sl.wikipedia.org/w/query.php?what=nolanglinks&nllimit=50&nlfrom=A to get a list of all of the articles wthout interlanguage links. This will only give you the first few articles in the alphabet, so you would have to change nlfrom=A to other letters to get the rest of the articles. Once the articles have at least some interlanguage links, a bot should be able to fill in the rest. Tra (Talk) 14:06, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

What Links Here broken?
See. Why are almost all the pages under the "File Links" category not actually using this image, and rather using the SVG equivalent, even after purging the page? Does it take a week to update or something? &mdash; Dark Shikar</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000">i</FONT> <font color="#000088">talk/contribs 11:50, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Talk:Proverb was the first item on the list when I looked at it. A null edit took it off the list. So I guess it's just a case of waiting for the job queue to go over them (assuming it does that). Failing that, null edits on them all should do it. --TheParanoidOne 13:53, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Unwatching watches and vice versa
Discovered this by accident and not certain if this is something that needs to be fixed at the Wiki level or the code level, but if one clicks the watch tab and tries the the (unwatch) link in the body of brief page that pops up for a few seconds before redirecting you back to the article, it tries to unwatch the wrong article. The same applies in reverse if you hit the unwatch tab on a watched page and click the (watch) link. Therror is that where spaces are in the article name, pluses are used instead. Thus for example for today's FA "Arthur Ernest Percival", if you try to quickly reverse you decision to watch or unwatch via the parenthesised link in the transition page it tries to act on the non-existant article "Arthur+Ernest+Percival". Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines 06:13, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The problem seems to stem from MediaWiki unwatch page which generates the "unwatch" link using mw:Extension:Urlencode. The fullurl in there already seems to do encoding, so I'm not sure what purpose urlencode is serving. I'm tempted to remove it but am not sure what impact it will have. --TheParanoidOne 06:42, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I've removed it. Let's see what the fallout it ... --TheParanoidOne 06:53, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Fixed the immediate problem, so the only question is whether there is an unintended side effect. Caerwine <small style="font-family:sans-serif;color:darkred">Caer’s whines  08:52, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Image formatting strangeness
Could someone look at this dif and explain to me why the pictures in the tryptichs are so big in the first version? I don't know what changed over time, so I copied the text from to an older edit that worked. The problem seems to have been fixed, but I don't understand how I fixed it. Were there some hidden characters? Did I miss something? -- Samuel Wantman 04:28, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I believe you'll find the answer at Extended image syntax, and also further down the page. "Frame" doesn't support resizing, which is why the triptychs showed at their full width.  For resizing, it seems, you have to use "thumb" or the default type.  I think I've run into this before, and ended up doing the same thing you did, i.e. reverting myself.  -- Visviva 08:15, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

The “Content Box”
How do you align the content box to be left, right, or center? I've seen it before, but I've forgotten how to do it. Thanks - <font color="Black">The  <font color="Black">RSJ  ( <font color="Blue">Sign my book  ) ( <font color="Blue">CCD  ) 22:27, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You could use TOCleft or TOCright to put the contents box in the left and right hand sides of the page and have the text flow around it. Putting it in the centre of the page is very rarely done, though. If these templates don't do what you are trying to do, you could always put the Toc inside a table or div to set it to exactly where you want to put it. Tra (Talk) 22:39, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist Numbers
On my watchlist I have been recently noticing red or green numbers that read (+24) in green of (-7) in red. Are these numbers perhaps related to the amount of text added or removed? - AMP&#39;d 18:13, 1 January 2007 (UTC)


 * You're right, they are the number of bytes added or removed on the last edit. You can read more here. Prodego  <sup style="color:darkgreen;">talk  18:31, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist notifications by email
Someone's asked me if there's any way for Wikipedia to send emails to people when a watched page is modified; is there any (easy) way of doing this at present? Are there any plans to add this in future? Cheers, &mdash; Matt Crypto 17:53, 1 January 2007 (UTC)


 * MediaWiki supports this, but this feature is disabled on Wikipedia (likely due to the high volume of mails this would generate. Possibly up to hundreds of mails per edit?) —Ruud 18:39, 1 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It would be a nice feature to have, though, for rarely-edited articles or people who rarely edit. Maybe the deluge of emails would be self-limiting?  Maybe not. — Omegatron 02:02, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Disappearing TOCs in Talkspace
Am I the only one who's seeing this? For example, Talk:Ban Ki-moon has approximately 1 gazillion headings, but no table of contents. Same for every other talk page I check. I just checked my preferences, and TOC display is (as always) on. Is it possible that the "NOTOC" magic word has been added to a meta-template somewhere? Or is this a new feature of some kind? Or am I just insane? -- Visviva 14:56, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I fixed it. It's because Talk:Ban Ki-moon transcludes Korean, which in turn transcludes WikiProject Korea/to do inside a show/hide box. Since Wikipedia:WikiProject Korea/to do contained several headings and it was at the top of the page, the Toc appeared immediately before those headings, hidden away inside a show/hide box. I fixed the problem by converting the headings to bold text. Tra (Talk) 15:32, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Aha! Thanks a bunch.  -- Visviva 15:39, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Cquote
Template:Cquote lists Lorem ipsum iterate as transcluded, and thus any page that uses Cquote displays Template:Lorem ipsum iterate as transcluded, however, I can't figure out how this is happening and how to make it stop. Any clues? --MZMcBride 22:28, 31 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I just filed a bug about this. I noticed it after I added OCLC to the cite book template.  The What links here for OCLC lists every article with a cite book in it, even if the OCLC was not used. — Omegatron 22:36, 31 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Well known. A side effect of calling a template in a template. This "bug" will most likely get a "won't fix", as the cost to "fix" it would be rather high (design change in the MediaWiki software). --Ligulem 09:17, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Cquote defaults the quoted text to Template:Lorem ipsum, so if the template is not subst'd there is a reference (granted it's effectively in the "else" clause of an "if"). It seems reasonable to me for this to show up as a reference. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:54, 31 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I think I may have been misunderstood. I'm trying to determine why Template:Cquote lists Template:Lorem ipsum iterate as transcluded. There's nothing in Cquote's code or Lorem ipsum's code to explain why the redirect page Template:Lorem ipsum iterate is being listed. Thanks. --MZMcBride 22:57, 31 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Listed in what context? Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Lorem_ipsum_iterate doesn't list it. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:13, 31 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Nevermind. The issue seems to have cleared up on its own. --MZMcBride 23:44, 31 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Fixed --Ligulem 09:17, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

New feature: protected templates list
I've enabled a new feature: the templates list on the edit page now indicates whether a template is protected or semiprotected. (8392)

This should make it easier to track down vulnerable templates on high-profile protected pages. --brion 22:01, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
 * admin-only? Agathoclea 18:02, 1 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Nope, everyone can see it. Prodego  <sup style="color:darkgreen;">talk  18:05, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

T-square disambiguation
Hello. Should I create a disambiguation page and redirect these articles? What should be redirected where? I'm not sure I can do it but will try. "T-Square" is currently redirected to "T-square". -Susanlesch 19:22, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
 * T-square, the drafting and technical drawing tool
 * T-square (fractal), in mathematics, a two dimensional fractal
 * T-Square (software), the early drafting software program
 * Also adding to the confusion, a merge proposal. (I haven't heard back from anyone in WikiProject Computer Science, WikiProject Early Computers, or PDP-1, and am tempted to abandon that.) -Susanlesch 19:25, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Sounds like you want a disambiguation page at T-square (disambiguation). Then instead of putting the other T-square articles in the "See also" section of T-square, you'd put a link at the top of that page which said something like "For other meanings, see T-square (disambiguation))." In any case, you'll find a lot of information at Disambiguation and Manual of Style (disambiguation pages).   (And if T-Square (software) gets merged out of existence, that's not really a problem - you'd just change one entry on the disambiguation page.) John Broughton  |  Talk 00:55, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. Thank you very much! -Susanlesch 09:46, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

New password e-mail
I was wondering if Wikipedia has ever considered adding an option to "my preferences" that would disable the emailing of new passwords to users (while keeping my email address entered). I have a username that is constantly "under attack". My username is short and common, so people are always clicking the "send new password" button in the login page. So I get email frequently with a new password that I didn't ask for. At first, I was afraid that my old password would get trounced, so I hurriedly went over to sign in with the new one. I soon realized Wikipedia has a more sophisticated system that allows multiple passwords (the old and the new). However, I still find it disturbing and often login and reset my password (I'm afraid of the highly improbably "man in the middle" attack--call me paranoid). In short, I would like to be able to keep my email for authentication with administrators, for example, or for other administrative email. However, I will not forget my password and I would like this option disabled. Another option would be to keep the "email new password" option available, but maybe there would be a way to filter spurious attempts. For example, a simple question/answer filter like, "What is your mother's maiden name?". Upon success, the new password could be mailed. This would help enormously. Thoughts? Todd 12:03, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * You could configure your e-mail software to block the address wiki@wikimedia.org then unblock it whenever you intend to actually send yourself a password confirmation e-mail. Tra (Talk) 16:05, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, but my goal is to avoid having my password churn and also avoid the possibility of someone intercepting a new password (I know the chance is remote). Many other websites have a verification question in place as a low-level guard against wanton requests. Todd 23:31, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * If you're that concerned about security then asking a question like 'what is your mother's maiden name' would probably not provide adequate protection since answers to these questions can often be obtained by social engineering. Other options available are for you to remove your e-mail entirely and ask that people use another method to communicate with you if they wish to do so confidentially, e.g. a disposable e-mail account. If you need to use Wikipedia's e-mail-user feature to verify the identity of someone who is contacting you, you could enable it temporarily for that conversation. Tra (Talk) 23:53, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * My main goal is to avoid getting two or three clicks on the "send me a new password" button per week. I'm just uncomfortable with that much churn to my secondary password. The filtering questions are easily worked around, but having a question like this would immensely cut down on spurious clicks. I used to wonder why large sites have such "low security" features. Now I understand--they're just filtering a flood of bogus "email me a new password" requests. (BTW, Happy New Year!) Todd 12:42, 31 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The suggestions I made above should help stop these problems but if you're still interested in having a verification question asked, you could make a request at Bugzilla but the problem is that it may take a while for the feature to be implemented so, for now, you would have to settle for some of the suggestions I have made. Happy new year to you, too. Tra (Talk) 02:32, 1 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the suggestions. I think you're right. I'll just have to live with it (I just got two additional password changes in the last 24 hours). It's filed as bug 8460. Todd 12:11, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Idea for prevention of widespread template vandalism
Yesterday I spent a good while protecting some obvious templates that had been left unprotected with thousands of transclusions. This may be a way-out-there idea, but if we could get a feature that would automatically full-protect templates with more than X (such as 500 or even 100) number of transclusions, we'd really only need to worry about protecting incidental Featured Article of the Day templates, and we'd hopefully be done with the template vandalism problem. -- Renesis (talk) 23:12, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Sure worth for further thinking. But it might be surprising for users when they are right in the middle of doing a series of edits or trying to fix their own mistake on a template while some other wikipedian inserts call number X into an article at the same time. Non-orthogonal functions tend to shoot back :-).
 * From the technical side I fear the runtime costs for that feature would be too high because there is probably no counter of transclusions stored in the database. And updating such a counter might be difficult too, especially with regards to templates transcluding other templates. So I doubt this has realistic chances to get implemented anytime soon.
 * A technical complication I see is with pages that are transcluded into noinclude parts of a template (see template:cite web, which uses Template doc page pattern). Those doc pages should remain unprotected even if their transcluding template is fully protected.
 * In general, I do have a strong "can of worms" feeling when thinking about implementing this. But I'm not a MediaWiki developer :-).</b>
 * BTW see also 8392. --Ligulem 23:57, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Rough idea for an implementation design:
 * Create a new database flag "autoprotected" for each page.
 * A page is then considered fully protected if the existing manual protection info says so or the new autoprotected flag is set.
 * The MediaWiki server does only automatically set the autoprotected flag but never automatically reset it. It can only be manually reset by an admin. So that would need a new admin user interface (new UI needed).
 * If a user edits a page and hits save, the autoprotected flag is checked: If it is already set, the server rejects the edit if the user is a non-admin.
 * If it is not set, the server determines the number of pages transcluding the page at hand (n). That's probably the costly part with regards to CPU load, maybe this could be deferred into the job queue processing together with item 6 below and skipping item 7.
 * If n is larger than X, the server sets the autoprotected flag.
 * If the user is not an admin and n is larger than X, the edit is rejected.
 * There might be a need for an additional "autoprotection enabled" flag per page (UI access for admins only) for boundary cases where admins can deliberately turn off this new mechanism for a specific page. When this new flag is added to the database its default is "false", so each page behaves as it is now until an admin enables autoprotection for that page. If everything looks good the default for "autoprotection enabled" for new pages can be changed to "true" ("autoprotection enabled" = "true" could then be limited to newpages in the template namespace). Sorry for my long brain dump :-).... --Ligulem 10:37, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Variant: instead of the "autoprotected" flag create a "peak transclude count" database field for each page. Store n into "peak transclude count" when a page is saved and n is larger than the old "peak transclude count" (mabe defer this updating into the job queue). Treat "peak transclude count"s larger than X as if "autoprotected" were set. Display the "peak transclude count" somewhere in the UI. Read X from a page in the MediaWiki namespace. --Ligulem 11:12, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * This sounds pretty much like what I was thinking, although (if the server could handle it) I was thinking that it would check before it ever lets them attempt an edit. As far as the performance hit on the count goes, I don't think it would be bad at all.  We would only need to check if number of transclusions is OVER a certain number, not count the total transclusions.  The number would be around 500 or even less, so it would only take as long as it takes to bring up the 500-per-page "What links here" page for that template (which is, in my experience, less than a second). And, as you said, this information could be cached or only done once, etc. -- Renesis (talk) 21:38, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, couldn't a bot generate a report of templates that are used on X number of articles, and then the admins protect them? It'd have the same result. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 00:03, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I like EVula's solution better. It doesn't have the problem that you have to be sure any template that passes the arbitrary number required should be protected. -Amarkov blahedits 00:05, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm confused -- isn't that exactly the problem that solution has? -- Renesis (talk) 00:50, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, the pages that were vandalized on WP:TFA were not highly-transcluded templates, so it doesn't get rid of that problem... Tito xd (?!?) 06:44, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * One of them just yesterday was Template:Redirect, so it would have prevented that one. -- Renesis (talk) 07:13, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Wow, this would be very annoying. I sometimes improve templates like this, and would no longer be able to do this if they were protected. --NE2 21:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Any templates with this many inclusions should be protected anyway, and probably will be soon. You can still use . -- Renesis (talk) 22:42, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * As I said, it would be very annoying, needing to find an administrator every time I want to add a field. --NE2 22:52, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Have you been following the template vandalism reports/discussions at all? That is much worse, in my opinion.  I know that having to request an edit sucks, but so do graphic images on the main page for extended periods of time. -- Renesis (talk) 23:40, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * None of these templates are ever used on the main page, so that is a strawman. They are very rarely used in featured articles. If bug 8322 is fixed, that vandalism will be much easier to find and thus revert. --NE2 23:54, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I guess you haven't been following the issue, or else you wouldn't call that a straw man. Much of the vandalism has been on the Featured Article of the day, which could have any kind of template transcluded onto that. -- Renesis (talk) 00:42, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You talked about "graphic images on the main page for extended periods of time". Now you are talking about featured articles. Which is it? --NE2 01:43, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Both of those are known issues that have been/are being discussed elsewhere. This thread, however, is discussing the protection of templates that appear on a large number of pages, i.e. not necessarily the Main Page or other high visibility pages but where the number of pages that the templates appear on makes the templates, and any vandalism they receive, more visible. Tra (Talk) 02:25, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Exactly -- read my original post. Just because I said it's a bad thing on the main page doesn't mean I don't think it's a bad thing on FA or TFA too. -- Renesis (talk) 04:19, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Why are you proposing to protect templates that aren't being used on the current featured article? The problem has only been on the current one, since that's where new visitors are likely to go. By the way, a few edits were just made to template:infobox Interstate, a much-used template, by a non-admin. --NE2 04:57, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The main page is not the only problem. In fact, it could possibly worse on templates not used on the current featured article, because it could be on more pages at once but not caught by any editors as fast.  You don't see graphic images being included on thousands and thousands of articles as a problem? I guess that's where we differ.  By the way, I never claimed "non-admins" don't edit those templates. -- Renesis (talk) 18:37, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I see not being able to improve the encyclopedia as a worse problem than momentary vandalism. The more pages it's on, the faster it will be found, and the faster it will be reverted. --NE2 23:19, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Changing the font I see
No one ever answered a question I asked at Meta:Help talk:User style. Basically, I would like to change my Monobook.css to have Wikipedia use a serif font. It is tough to tell some characters apart as is. I prefer Times New Roman.

It might be better if you respond at the Meta page listed above. Thank you for helping. My CSS knowledge is lousy. Will (Talk - contribs) 06:03, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Bad text
The "good article" notice (sample given below) needs to be changed. The phrase "but did not to meet the good article criteria" is not English.

The Dresden Dolls was a good article candidate, but did not to meet the good article criteria at the time. Once the objections listed below are addressed, the article can be renominated. You may also seek a review of the decision. Kdammers 01:00, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Typo corrected. You can do this yourself next time, just click "edit" for Talk:The Dresden Dolls, and look at the list of templates at the bottom of the page (outside the edit window). Click on the one you need, in this case Template:FailedGA, and edit the text to correct the mistake. Carcharoth 01:26, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the tip, but I can't find that template in the list of templates (neither by scanning quickly nor by using a page search with 'falied.' Kdammers 01:46, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * When you follow the instructions above, you should end up at this edit page. Look past the edit summary window, all the way down to the bottom, and you should see this:


 * Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page:
 * Template:! (protected)
 * Template:FailedGA
 * Template:Talkheader (semi-protected)
 * Template:Unsigned (protected)


 * Do you see that? Carcharoth 02:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, thanks. I was looking at the list of templates linked-to above that. Kdammers 02:52, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

What can I save my file as before uploading?
I am a new member. I wrote an article, but I am having trouble uploading it. The problem is with how the file is saved in my computer before uploading. I tried saving my file as .doc .txt and .html. What am I doing wrong? Am I way off? Please advise. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gadflyucla (talk • contribs).


 * I've placed introductory materials for editing on wikipedia on your talk page, User talk:Gadflyucla. The short answer is that wikipedia uses an entirely different method for editing articles:  not text, not word, etc.  —EncMstr 01:03, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Table not centered in Mozilla
The main table in UK railway stations - P (and companion pages) is left justified in Mozilla on Windows XP, but fine in IE. Any suggestions for a fix? thanks --Tagishsimon (talk)
 * Yup. You need to use  and not   (which is depreciated). I've fixed it for the P article. There might be a WP:MoS policy against center aligning tables for list only article, but I'm not aware of it. To learn more, look into Cascading Style Sheets. --<font color="CEBE70">MECU ≈ talk 20:13, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Bot out of control?
I noticed that User:Betacommand which might be a bot just went wild and reverted all my work today. What can be done? or should be?--Filll 18:33, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I see you found Betacommand's talk page. If you mention fixes here, it would save folks like me from going to look :-) His contributions history is astronomical. Peter H. St.John, M.S. 18:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Beta has said on his talk page that it was a mistake. John Broughton  |  ♫♫ 19:38, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

showing elevation on drawings
how do you show elevation of a lot on drawings
 * Hello! You can help us by giving some more details. Give an example of the kind of drawing you have in mind if possible. Also did you try those words : elevation, drawing, here at Wikipedia search ? And please sign you posts. -- DLL .. T 19:23, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Background Image
I was just told to ask this question here. Is there a way to havea background image on a table, I've been asking around, and a few are saying it is possible and a few are saying it isn't, and I just don't want there to be a way and be ignorant of it. Thanks for any help! --<font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:15px;">DanielFolsom T|C|U 16:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You can probably do it using HTML/CSS trickery. See the userpage of Ed g2s. But I'd be careful about cross-browser compatability, especially if you intend to do it in article space. In fact I would personally avoid it in article space altogether if it's nothing more than a flashy gimmick. the wub "?!"  16:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * As stated, usrs can only do it via CSS offsets, which assplodes in some browsers (like many versions of IE). If you have a valid, multi-useable, and project-worthy reason to want a background image on a table, you can request it as a new class (which is very browser friendly) at MediaWiki_talk:Common.css. --Splarka (rant) 08:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Kudos!
I'm loving the colorful addition to the refs. Makes it so much easier to find the reference in question on well-cited articles. Gzkn 02:26, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I would hug him or her, if that were possible. -- ReyBrujo 05:39, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It was added to MediaWiki:Common.css by User:Omegatron. It was suggested by User:TheMuuj on meta.wikimedia.org. Mike Dillon 06:26, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Could someone please explain? I didn't see any change to the refs.--SidiLemine 14:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Me neither. Carcharoth 14:29, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah. You have to actually click on a ref, and then, when the view switches to the bottom, you see the selected ref has been highlighted (previously only the little ^ was highlighted). Carcharoth 14:51, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Is this something which works on all browsers? TIA HAND —Phil | Talk 15:05, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It doesnt seem to work on IE when I checked. Works splendidly on Firefox, though. Great addition. Love it!--thunderboltz<sup style="color:green;">(Deepu) 15:16, 17 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Two things:


 * This only works in browsers whose CSS support includes the ":target" pseudo-class and "child descendent" selector: "parent > child"
 * You may need to clear your cache


 * After that, if you don't see a light blue background on the selected reference in the references section when you click on a ref number in the body of the text, your browser probably doesn't support this. Firefox 2.0 supports it, for one. I'm not sure which versions of IE support it, if any. Mike Dillon 15:17, 17 January 2007 (UTC)


 * According to Comparison of layout engines (CSS), it doesn't look like this will work in any version of IE because the ":target" pseudo-class is not supported. The child selector is supported in IE 7.0. Mike Dillon 15:22, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I also just noticed, and was looking for a place to say "AWESOME!" --Merzul 16:09, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I am glad that all of the comments are happy ones. :-) — Omegatron 16:41, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Awesome indeed. Wikipedia is not paper, yay. --Interiot 16:50, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

vandalistic moves hard to repair
In the wake of attempting to clean up an un-discussed move by someone who wasn't thinking clearly, it occurred to me how a malicious non-admin can cause quite a bit of damage that takes a long time to fix. Suppose Joe, a non-admin, uses the existing article renaming mechanism to rename the Foo article to bzzlskdireufno. This can be undone by any user watching Foo. Now suppose Joe also creates a new Foo page to replace what is now under a nonsense name. Non-admins cannot fix this. A potentially lengthy petition must be started to get the attention of an admin to fix the damage. Furthermore, unless you have an account that's already watching the attacked article, you cannot figure out what the original article was renamed to. --Frotz661 01:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Doesn't this seem kind of like a WP:BEANS type thing to post? --Wildnox(talk) 01:28, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is. ;-) It is true though, but admins can remove that type of vandalism quite easily, just 1 or 2 extra clicks. Prodego  <sup style="color:darkgreen;">talk  01:56, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, admins are needed for this kind of thing. What would be the alternative, though?  Allow moves to overwrite any one-revision redirect, not just one pointing to the moving page?  Then you can move pages and have the record vanish from history, only present in the move log. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:47, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Then the vandal can just do some edits to satisfy the one-revision hurdle. What about requiring all moves to be assisted by an admin?  How often are moves done, anyhow?  Frotz661 06:51, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That might put an undue burden on admins. I've moved content more than I thought I would in my brief time here. Most of them are done to satisfy naming conventions (John smith -> John Smith). Gzkn 08:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The page log will show what the original article name was. Genuine vandalism is bad, but some page moves are well-meaning, and what some page names should be are genuinely unclear. Carcharoth 14:18, 17 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Generally, I think sysop response time is satisfactory. If you want to revert the edits above, you can move Foo to a new page and then move the offending page move back.  I don't think we really need to fix this, because of the sysop speed.   x42bn6  Talk 17:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't quite understand. I moved the Foo to Foo_(delete me), then attempted to move Foo_(nonsense) back to Foo.  I couldn't do the second step because Foo still exists as a redirect to Foo_(delete me). So, in an attempt to fix things as best I could, I redirected Foo to point at Foo_(nonsense). --Frotz661 20:26, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Missing page hit count in the database dump?
Hi, I noticed that the page hit count in table page is missing. Is this normal or a faulty dump? Specifically, I'm looking at stub-meta-current.xml.gz from the dump on 20061130. Alternatively, would stub-meta-history.xml.gz have the page hit count instead? Thank you! --WikiInquirer 11:58, 16 January 2007 (UTC) talk
 * The hit counters were turned off for performance reasons, so I wouldn't expect their data to be in the database dumps. --ais523 12:12, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Wikicharts offers a machine-readable version of its data, which will give you approximate hit counts for the most viewed pages recently. Tra (Talk) 16:07, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I checked Wikicharts but it can show the hit counts for the top 1000 (or so, but less than 1100) most viewed pages. Are there any other internal or external tools out there that has captured the hit count of each page in the English Wikipedia? --WikiInquirer 01:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)talk to me

And I suppose the Hitcounter table is also empty in enwiki? Sigh --WikiInquirer 01:33, 18 January 2007 (UTC)talk to me


 * Pagecounts are certainly disabled on enwp - we'd bring the servers to their knees in a snap otherwise. Wikicharts is the only statistical data I am aware of, unfortunately - and it's really only a rough sampling, since it takes one in every few hundred visits. Sorry there isn't more - we'd like it too... Shimgray | talk | 01:37, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * And it likely won't be ever enabled, or at least not anytime soon. It requires a massive change of Wikimedia's network infrastructure, as the Apache servers do not handle the vast majority of page requests. The way it is set up currently, it would only record page views by registered users, which are few and far between when compared to anonymous reader. It also would entail more database writes... overall, a bad idea. Tito xd (?!?) 05:19, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Tra and Shimray, for your replies. It's understandable and hey looking at the silver lining, this is a good sign -- Wikipedia is growing and growing! --WikiInquirer 05:05, 18 January 2007 (UTC)talk to me

Why not use these url instead
i found out that if i type http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?action=history i can get to the history page. So why not use this url since it's nicer —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 219.74.233.75 (talk) 15:36, 13 January 2007 (UTC).
 * The other form (/w/index.php?...) is used so that Google doesn't index it (Google is forbidden from visiting anything under /w/). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 138.246.7.106 (talk) 16:43, 17 January 2007 (UTC).

Statistics again...
Why is September and November missing here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Winterus (talk • contribs)

diff=cur doesn't work on redirects
If you go to any redirect, we'll use Main page which redirects to Main Page, and you use the diff=cur method in the URL, it shows the diff, but for Main Page but not Main page. (try ) GeorgeMoney (talk) 20:36, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It's been reported already at 4973. BryanG(talk) 23:09, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Highlighting a reference
I've noticed now that after I click on a reference number in the text of the article like [1], the reference it's linked to below highlights blue, I suppose so as to distinguish it from the other references, and to show a newbie that you didn't just wind up at some random other place, you clicked on a reference # and this is the reference. Is this a new initiative? --Fbv65 e del / ☑t / ☛c || 05:02, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes. Just happened in the last week. I haven't actually seen any official announcement - anyone know where that might be?   John Broughton  |  (♫♫) 15:10, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

change that doesn't show up in watchlist
If one goes to any image and chooses "Upload a new version of this file", one can put any other image in that spot, but the change does not appear in watchlists. Seems to me that this is something of an unnecessary risk. — coe l acan t a lk  — 02:21, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Old bug. It's reported as Bug 778 in BugZilla, and we're getting close to 8,500... Tito xd (?!?) 05:06, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

A problem w/ Talk:.NET Framework
The talk page cannot be edited as the standards buttons on top don't appear. The bottom of the talk page is full of edits in small fonts. -- <font size="2px" face="Verdana"><font color="DarkSlateBlue">Szvest  - <font style="background: gold">Wiki me up ®  17:45, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't have the same problem with that page. I see the normal buttons at the top; I can click an "edit" link on a section and edit it (I didn't actually do any edits, but I did click an "edit" link to verify); I can click the "+" at the top of the page to add a new section (again, clicked but didn't do any edits). Assuming you are using the monobook skin, you might try purging your cache and see if that helps. --Tkynerd 17:54, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Right. I purged the cache and it works fine now. Thanks Tkynerd. -- <font size="2px" face="Verdana"><font color="DarkSlateBlue">Szvest  - <font style="background: gold">Wiki me up ®  17:57, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Consistent Link Colors
Is there anyway to define the color of links and have it be consistent for the whole page (don't worry, I'm not doing this on a actual page, but I may do it on my user page or a template). I've asked everywhere and the only responses I've gotten have been, "Yes, but I don't know how" - so I figured you guys were my last hope - so if you could take some time to respond I'd really appreciate it. Thanks either way! --<font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:15px;">DanielFolsom T|C|U 16:24, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * You could do it for all pages, and have it visible only to you. But to make it look that way on for one page for everyone, you would probably have to set each link's color by hand. Prodego  <sup style="color:darkgreen;">talk  17:17, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * As Prodego says, you can change your user CSS to change the appearance of links to your own view. If you want others to see the differently-coloured links, you have to write out each link separately (you may want to transclude a page in your userspace to make this easier). --ais523 17:27, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The deleted histories
Is there any reason that the histories of deleted articles are still unviewable -- provided that since March 2006 there is technical possibility to only hide the summaries of the edits, and leave the contributors' names viewable?

In addition to this, I wish that every user could view his own contributions, together with their summaries and text. Is this technically possible? --tyomitch 14:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Bitfields for rev deleted is not yet finished. Prodego  <sup style="color:darkgreen;">talk  16:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Template limit?
Is there a limit to how many times a template can be used on an article? Another editor in a WikiProject I'm involved with is using a template I designed A LOT in his article (see Georgia Bulldogs football (all games)). The template is working fine until the very bottom. I see nothing wrong with the code in the template or on the page. If I preview just that section, it appears fine but then still messes up when I view the whole article. Any thoughts?--<span style="font-size:11px; font-weight:bold; font-family:verdana, sans-serif;">NMajdan &bull;<span style="font-size:9px; font-family:verdana, sans-serif; color:#000000;">talk 20:58, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * There is a limit. If you look at the HTML source for the page (once the page is loaded), near the bottom it will show:

It appears that he's used up the limit as he's at 2046188/2048000. I never thought I'd see the day that limit would be reached. --<font color="CEBE70">MECU ≈ talk 21:03, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Looking at the source, it also has dozens of warnings: So I guess the page is simply too big. Jayden54 21:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Doc transclusion on the Template:CFB Schedule Entry fixed the issue. New stats below.

--MZMcBride 21:58, 17 January 2007 (UTC)


 * See also Template limits and Template doc page pattern. --Ligulem 22:07, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Anything else to do?
On 2007 NCAA Division I-BS football rankings (no, the BS isn't vandalism, it means Bowl Subdivision) I'm using a template system I created Template:16ColPollTable. The main problem in hitting the limit is that it calls Template:CC over and over (25*15=275 times per table, used 6 times on the page, so 2250 times, plus a 8colpolltable which uses 175 times) for a total of 2475 times!). I did the doc trick for CC after it didn't load the page the first time and I got it to fully work and load. But, my concern is that when the data is populated, it will balloon and hit the limit quite easily. Here are the sizes: Is my theory correct, that once data is populated into this, the pre-expand size will increase? If so, is there anything else to reduce the size of CC or the ColPollTables? Neither have large items other than template code on the main template page anymore, so the doc trick is used up. Would creating a template for each poll, like Template:2007 AP Poll which used the 16colpolltable and then just transclude onto the article page solve this problem? or would it not help, since subtables still add into the pre-expand size? Any other ideas on things to do? Thanks. --<font color="CEBE70">MECU ≈ talk 16:52, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Just for curiosity, reduced Pre-expand include size of  from 1815546 bytes to 1662771 bytes,  to 1623971 bytes. So CC is the key point here, every little byte there costs ($$O\left({n^2}\right)$$ → Big O notation). This is especially difficult because CC contains a switch, which is always costly with regards to template limits. Rough ideas (1) further reduce CC (why so many case values, in upper and lower case?) (2) split up CC into multiple templates (3) Don't use templates for this :-). --Ligulem 23:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I removed all the upper char cases and it's down to 1427546 bytes. So we're buying more margin. I don't think there's a way to split up the use of the CC template. And the template was created to eliminate the nightmare of using a table to do this (as we did on the 2006 and 2005 rankings page, ugh). With all that said, my original question hasn't been answered: Will the inclusion of data in the template increase the size of the pre-include? --<font color="CEBE70">MECU ≈ talk 02:37, 19 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Splitting-up: instead of calling, , ... you could create and call , , . "Will the inclusion of data in the template increase the size of the pre-include?": I suggest doing tests in a sandbox. This test revealed: Before: Pre-expand include size: 215220 bytes, Post-expand include size: 23607 bytes, Template argument size: 46 bytes; After: Pre-expand include size: 215220 bytes, Post-expand include size: 23857 bytes, Template argument size: 296 bytes. According to  ("The new behaviour is to limit both the pre-expansion size and the post-expansion size"). Post-expand seems to be less critical here, though. --Ligulem 10:10, 19 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your help. I thought of the sandbox test this morning in the shower but you beat me to is. I guess I can keep the cc split idea in the back pocket and if we need it we can throw it in. It should be easy since just put and it should come out like  . So the syntax by the end users wouldn't need to change. Thanks again for your help. --<font color="CEBE70">MECU ≈ talk 14:07, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Displaying "hide" when the content is hidden
Why does the template hidden display "hide" when the content is hidden? I asked there but nobody has responded. This is only when I open the template page, after clicking "hide" it starts to behave normally. I'm using FF 2.0 and Windows XP. --Eleassar my talk 13:04, 19 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Because someone was trying to default the display to hidden and the NavFrame code that implements the hide/show behavior doesn't check the initial state of the container. It assumes that it always starts in a visible state. Mike Dillon 14:43, 19 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Interesting. Can you fix it then? It's still wrong. --Eleassar my talk 16:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I looked at fixing it once, but NavFrame also has some autohide behavior when the number of instances on a page exceeds a certain threshold (3 or 4, I believe). It wasn't clear to me what the behavior should be when some of them are already hidden. Mike Dillon 16:26, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Redirects to anchors.
Question. I noticed that fairly recently, redirects to anchors now work and will boot you to the correct spot... maybe? To use examples from some CVG lists, it seems to work just fine for, say, Cliff Fittir or T-elos, but not for Kefka Palazzo. As I had to use an in order to get that changed, I am now feeling very silly that it doesn't seem to actually work. Do redirects to an anchor only work for top-level headers or something? Or am I missing something obvious? The source shows that all the anchors are in there just fine... SnowFire 07:38, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It works for me... try purging the server's cache, and deleting your browser's cache to see if that helps. Tito xd (?!?) 08:04, 21 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It was the browser's fault. Anyway, I see the problem- because it never noticed the redirect, it was asking for the last updated time on the target page.  Since the target page hasn't been changed, the browser assumed nothing was different, and continued with the cache version on its merry way...  tricky. SnowFire 08:11, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Transcluding a page with a category
Hi, I noticed that this user's sub page is in the category for Category:Wikipedia features.

The user's sub page shows up in the category, because the user has transcluded a page that contains the category. The user's sub page does not belong in the category.

The only way I can figure to fix this is to remove the trascluded page from the user's page, but this renders that sub page useless. The user's talk page indicates that they are no longer active, so I don't think it helps to discuss it there. Is there another way to fix this, or should the transclusion be removed and replaced with a link? --FriendlyDalek 06:53, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Wrap the category call with tags. Tito xd (?!?) 07:12, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I've made the change. I was reading the help pages when I ran into this problem, but I still have a lot of documentation to get through. --FriendlyDalek 07:38, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Access to deleted article's history?
I offered my opinion in a sockpuppet / COI case. One or more editors are suspected of editing on behalf of, or with a COI with the Bridgestone Tire Corp. I pointed out one user's edits to the now-deleted article Rubber dam where the text was copied and pasted from the Bridgestone Corporate website. Google Cache of page. The article was speedy deleted for being a copyvio, and with that action, the editor in question's edit history of contributions to that article were deleted as well. Can they be retreived? By any Admin? Where would I ask if that's the case? Thanks Fairness And Accuracy For John Titor 18:40, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, administrators can retrieve and restore the different versions of a deleted article MoRsE 18:43, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Minor question
Is it just my eyes, or is the text on Wikipedia different? Everything seems bolded. --66.218.18.106 15:39, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It's your eyes. (It's also possible that you changed a browser setting inadvertently. In Firefox, under the View menu, for example, you can decrease or increase text size.)  Do non-Wikipedia pages look bolded too?  03:38, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

link to 00
The source code on the page 0 contains (in the "see also" section) the text * 00.

However, this link does not appear as 00, but rather as boldface text 00. Is this a bug, or am I cross-eyed? If I try to add 0 to the page 00, I also get 0 instead of 0.

Note: a link 0 should appear as 0 on the page 0 itself, and a link 00 should appear as 00 on the page 00. But 0 and 00 are not the same; perhaps the software has problems distinguishing the two?

I searched the bug reports for "00", but could not find any.

--Aleph4 17:53, 17 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The same happens when linking, for example, from a page named 0010 to 10, 010, 00010, etc. I assume the compare operation that determines whether a link leads to the current page is just a ==, which in PHP (as I just tried) thinks "010"=="10" is true. I'm filing a bug. --Dapeteばか 18:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
 * bug 8678 --Dapeteばか 18:56, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. It wasn't a <tt>==</tt>, but it was the same class of problem. :) 81.156.126.223 11:43, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Quick question about marking edits as verified
I was doing some patrolling in other Wikipedias (I have accounts in many to update wikilinks and update Commons images there), and noticed the following text in the Italian: [Segna la modifica come verificata] (something like "sign the modification as verified"; the text may not appear if you don't have an account there). The wikilink had action=markpatrolled in there, along with a rcid. I did not pay attention in the other Wikipedias, so this is probably a beta testing (when clicking it, I got the La modifica selezionata è stata segnata come verificata.). I know there had been many discussions and proposals before, but if this is implemented, would it be similar to the way the Italian Wikipedia is handling it? -- ReyBrujo 17:52, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Patrol functionality has long been in the software. It's just not enabled on enwiki because there's no agreement that it should be.  It was once, though, I think. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:04, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
 * More Wikimedia projects use it than one might think, like notably enwikt, but they have  set so most people never notice ^_^. Wikia had it enabled globally for registered users for several months, and it was very annoying and almost completely ignored by the users. --Splarka (rant) 08:32, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Note also the existence of the Patroller extension, which is a workload-sharing interface that is designed to allow multiple people to do patrolling at once. It's not live anywhere, though. 81.156.126.223 12:03, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Same problem
i am havng the same problems too. i tried doing that when i saw this but it did not work. 74.110.226.150 21:08, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Userpage
How do I design my userpage like everyone else? Also, how do I format my signature? Thanks. Real96 07:06, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Put whatever you want into your user page as long as you follow the rules. To make changes or create your user page, click your user name at the top of the page.  If you aren't taken to the edit page, click Edit Page.


 * You could simply leave your sig alone if you choose. If you want to change it, use the sandbox to figure out what you want.  The go to Special:Preferences, and edit the Signature field.  Note: Most complex signatures, including mine, require that you check the "Raw Signature checkbox.


 * Does that help? Will (Talk - contribs) 07:47, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * If you're looking for fancy stuff, try WikiProject User Page Help and/or User:The Transhumanist/User page design. -- John Broughton  |  (♫♫) 03:40, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, thanks for all of the help!  Real96  12:23, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Article creation problem
I know how to and have created article. However, at times i run into a problem. I add my information and don't click save. I then click another button to check on something. However, when i go back to the editing area, the information is gone so i have to start again. Note this is before i have clicked save to create the article. Is there any way to sort this out? Simply south 00:04, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Before you click any of the links, click Show preview first, then you will be able to just press back to return to your article. If you then make any further changes to the article, you will need to click Show preview again immediatly before clicking any of the links. Tra (Talk) 00:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * If you use SeaMonkey or FireFox, they preserve the contents of the edit box for when you press "back". Internet Explorer in particular almost always loses the edit box contents.  —EncMstr 00:20, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Try opening the thing you're checking on in a new tab or window; that's what I do when I need to look something up when editing. --ais523 17:25, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, you right click on the link, then you get "open in a new tab". 193.253.141.80 02:36, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion please respond
Ok guys Wikipedia is great however i was wondering why dont we add a bit of videos or something of the sort to give people a view of what the articles are about?. i know uploading videos to wiki will take up too much bandwith but what about embbeding? from one site to another. also if embedding doesnt work then why dont we add a external link to the article instead that way the videos can be seen elsewhere *like the original site* without taking up wiki resources. I know alot of articles that will benifit from this (video games, Location ones, animal ones, etc.) to ensure that the sites are clean we can use the most trusted ones like youtube or yahoo media or google media. all im saying is think of the possabilitys!. dont be afraid to tell me what you think after all it is a suggestion!

Maverick423 18:31, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Copyright violation issues.
 * Spam
 * Hearing or watching Britney Spears while patrolling is not considered my ideal day in Wikipedia.
 * YouTube is a trusted site? You just closed the discussion on this matter.
 * Just link to the legal site with the video. And only if absolutely necessary. -- ReyBrujo 18:44, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

heh i get what ya mean verywell then with all that i withdraw my suggestion =) it would of been pretty cool though Maverick423 18:51, 15 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Honestly, something like this will probably be developed here eventually. It seems inevitable that Wikipedia will, given its medium, one day utilize videos in the same way pictures are utilized now.  Of course, a lot will have to be done first; copyright issues will have to be addressed, policies for when and how to use videos will have to be developed, ways of integrating them will have to be established...  But, again, that's going to take a lot of time (a matter of years, not months).  --The Way 19:30, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Years eh wow still it would be awsome it will be more virtual then anything and even better maybe we can have videos explaining everything instead of just showing you. a good example would be like nuclear explosions. you see the video and throughout the video its explaining to you what is going on during the explosion and everything =) i cant wait for this day to comeMaverick423 21:08, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * With the ubiquitous cell phone cameras, people can take videos and upload them with public domain or creative commons or GFDL licenses. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:06, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * But the video could not be distributed as its contents is still copyrighted by the copyright owner. There is a similar discussion about screenshots in WP:CVG. -- ReyBrujo 17:18, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Huh? Why would there be any more restriction on self-released videos than on self-released photos?  User:Zoe|(talk) 17:27, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Let's see if I understand your comment... 24 debuts a movie. The first session is only for the press, but someone sneaks a camera in, manages to record the full movie, and uploads it to some torrent site. Now, Fox can't sue this guy, because he recorded it with his own cell phone camera and uploaded it with public domain or creative commons license. Am I right? A similar question was brought here. -- ReyBrujo 05:41, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * No, wrong; the unauthorised reproduction would still be an infringement of Fox's copyright on the material, and so they could still sue. It's not legal to licence something you don't have copyrights to. 164.11.204.56 18:59, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Where did I ever make any such proposal? Where did this discussion even begin to discuss video recording of copyrighted material?  User:Zoe|(talk) 20:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I put an extreme example, but I can give you one related with this, it is irrelevant: You talk about using a cell camera to record a game session, right? So, I could record the intro from, say, World of Warcraft, and upload it with a free license. Then someone else could use it as the intro for his own game. Is this a better example? -- ReyBrujo 20:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, there is a misunderstanding. The original user talked about creating videos for, between other things, video games. Obviously I was talking about copyright violation, while you were talking about legitimate free videos. Sorry for the confusion. -- ReyBrujo 20:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)


 * This probably could be useful for Wikiversity. Why hasn't it been done? Technical complexity, mostly, although a lack of an open-source, free, widespread video format doesn't help much either. Tito xd (?!?) 05:25, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Videos do exist on Wikipedia (mostly because I pushed the issue hard about two years ago and made Jimbo make some hard decisions). There still aren't many, owing (a) to a lack of free content, (b) to a lack of people with the technical chops to produce them, and (c) the software out there is generally of poor quality. However, there are instructions at Media, and videos do exist in some articles Raul654 05:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Transclusions taking a long time to complete?
Since sometime yesterday afternoon, pages which include transclusions (such as WP:DRV, WP:AFD, WP:AN/I, etc.) are taking a long time to load. I thought there was something going on on my home computer, but it's happening on my work computer, too. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:16, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * If you look at the bottom of the html source you should see a commented footnote similar to this:
 * That's the information i got for loading this village pump page. If the number of seconds is high than it's server lag. Otherwise it's your own connection(s). If all other factors are equal, the same amount of text should load at the same speed whether the wikitext is all on one page (like WP:AN/I), or on several transcluded sub-pages (like a daily AFD log page), because building the full html document from the transcluded portions occurs in the server, not in your browser. — CharlotteWebb 18:09, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That's the information i got for loading this village pump page. If the number of seconds is high than it's server lag. Otherwise it's your own connection(s). If all other factors are equal, the same amount of text should load at the same speed whether the wikitext is all on one page (like WP:AN/I), or on several transcluded sub-pages (like a daily AFD log page), because building the full html document from the transcluded portions occurs in the server, not in your browser. — CharlotteWebb 18:09, 15 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It's also possible that Javascript load time is contributing. The pages mentioned are quite large and there has been some site-wide JS code added recently to wikibits.js that is sensitive to the overall page size. Mike Dillon 18:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)


 * In fact, the JavaScript code in question has already been optimized a bit in the latest svn revisions, so things might improve once the Wikimedia servers are synced from svn. I also made some optimizations on an unrelated piece of code that was taking a long time on pages having lots of bulleted lists, which might also improve the loading time of AfD for example.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:13, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The optimizations are live now. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:30, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

For the past 24 hours or so, pages are taking an unusually long time to load on my home and work computers as well. Newyorkbrad 18:22, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Whatever the problem was, it seems to have gone away ... now if I can just get Symantec to acknowledge that my virus protection, which I just renewed, hasn't expired .... User:Zoe|(talk) 17:05, 16 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Heh, bloody Symantec. Re-run the little "check my subscription status" tool and it should pick it up. 81.156.126.223 11:48, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It didn't. I had to sit in their phone call line for an hour before they did something on their end.  User:Zoe|(talk) 20:02, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

a link is wrong
Hi anyone rading. I lack the technical knowhow to fix the erroneous link I found. It was from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_19 and was meant to be a link to "Bicycle Day" but led to the history of LCD instead. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 212.240.35.42 (talk) 09:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC).
 * That's because the Bicycle Day article automatically redirects to the History of LSD article, which is correct (since Bicycle Day was nothing more than a short article on an event in the history of LSD). Jayden54 10:58, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Problems with AFD 2007 January 23
Today's AfD Seems to be having an issue with an entry. Multi article nom A Best 2, A Best 2 -Black-, A Best 2 -White- occurs multiple times throughout the day's articles. I've tried removing the entry (there is only one in the edit screen) to no avail. There were a few problems with the AfD, none of which affected the discussion page any, however. --wtfunkymonkey 07:47, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Some joker have been adding to the top of a bunch of other AFD subpages. Took me a while to find because normaly you section edit AFD's and this was located outsite the section so the only way to see it is to open the AFD subpage and then hit edit for the whole page. Gonna have a word with that user. --Sherool (talk) 08:33, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Help with Userpage (Userboxes and div)
I'm having some difficulties on my user page. For starters given an apparent overflow I've tried to set up half my userboxes to be onthe left (using float) and half on the right - however sadly it seems like they are stuck on the right side - and I have no idea why. In addition to that, one of my userboxes (that I created) is taking up more room than it should (there is a fairly large gap in between it and the next userbox) - it's the first userbox you see. I really appreciate any help anyone could give here.--<font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:15px;">DanielFolsom T|C|U 03:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm no expert, but it may have something to do with having multiple divs. You might have better luck trying substing the code from and  and alterting the code for them. --Deskana  (request backup)  03:20, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Kill your &lt;dif> tags. They aren't helping. Rather, pass "align=left" to the first call to userboxtop and "align=right" to the second userboxtop call. That should get you what you want.

In my test of your page, I got the following code to do what I think you want. (The sample is simplified for convenient display purposes.)

BTW: Let me know if you would like help converting your tables to Wiki table syntax. It's more compact. Also, my wiki syntax editor shows your table tags as deprecated.

Will (Talk - contribs) 05:08, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

TOC layout when multiple floating boxes
Looks like the TOC can expand to fill the space remaining after the first floating box with which it collides, not the widest one. So if there are two right-floating boxes and the first is narrower than the second, the TOC is allowd to expand up to the edge of the narrow one and overlap the wider one. A common example is when a talk page has both a shortcut and a Archive box, such as WT:UTM. Any technical or wiki-markup solutions? DMacks 02:49, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Protection expiry option
Another of Werdna's contributions: page protections can now have an expiration time added. The accepted input format is the same as for custom block times.

While we've put it through its courses, it's possible there's still some minor issues or corner cases, so give a shout if you notice anything awry! --brion 21:12, 22 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Please see Administrators%27_noticeboard for the work-in-progress discussion on this. — xaosflux  <sup style="color:#00FF00;">Talk  03:29, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Template Q
Do you guys know how there are some templates where for every parameter you have to say Template|a=b|c=d ect. and then there are some where you just do Template|b|d - well for the latter, is there any way to skip b and just put d in (as in Template||d - that's all I can think of, but it doesn't work). really appreciate this everyone, --<font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:15px;">DanielFolsom T|C|U 20:09, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Use . Positional parameters can be specified explicitly by using their number as a parameter key. Be aware that the template may require both parameters and might be breaking for that reason. Mike Dillon 20:27, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Possible bug, and a suggestion
Hi!

I believe I may have found a bug in MediaWiki. For example, when I type " ", it produces "Sandboxes". As I understood the syntax, the link should instead appear as "Sandboxes". Am I correct, and is this unintentional? Oops, this has been fixed since I last saw it! *Looks embarrassed*

Also, I have a suggestion: why not just provide the diff when clicking on the undo button in diffs, instead of an entire edit box?

Cheers,

Yuser31415 19:56, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Um, it does? Only that the point of "undo" is for a user to confirm his edit, because undo isn't automatic as administrative rollback. Tito xd (?!?) 00:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

CSS issue in Firefox 2.0.0.1?
The following style declaration is apparently causing some random ill effects in Firefox 2.0.0.1, such as all links being underlined:

/* VALIDATOR NOTICE: the following is correct, but the W3C validator doesn't accept it */ /* -moz-* is a vendor-specific extension (CSS 2.1 4.1.2.1) */ /* column-count is from the CSS3 module "CSS Multi-column Layout" */ /* Please ignore any validator errors caused by these two lines */ .references-2column { font-size: 90%; -moz-column-count:2; column-count:2; }

It produces this warning in the firefox error console:

Warning: Unknown property 'column-count'. Declaration dropped. Source file: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&usemsgcache=yes&action=raw&ctype=text/css&smaxage=2678400 Line: 38

And some subsequent style is ignored (seemingly) producing the "all links underlined" effect. - Planders 17:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Update: While I am still getting the above warning in the console, I'm not getting the "links underlined" effect on a different system with Firefox 2.0. It may be a problem specific to my computer. - 71.145.129.173 18:35, 22 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Read the FAQ at the top of this page. As to the warning, ignore it, it's harmless (it only means Firefox does not understand ). --cesarb 23:01, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I should have mentioned this but I did already read the FAQ and I have both cleared my browser cache and tried a force-reload operation many times. Also tried the ?action=purge trick. When I view link (A) elements in DOM Inspector it says no styles apply. I don't doubt that something is wonky with my installation and/or firefox prefs I just dont have a clue yet what it is. - Planders 23:44, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Update (again) Apparently my wiki preference to underline links was set though I don't recall ever consciously setting that. Weird.  Well at least I know now. Sorry for the confusion. - Planders 23:50, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Userbox2
Why is it that for the regular userbox simplified code (where you don't have to say id1-fc =...) you can't control things like border or font color?--<font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:15px;">DanielFolsom T|C|U 16:29, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Because the authors of the templates didn't add anything for that. You can ask for changes on the talk page. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:59, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Creating a stat template
I would like to create a statistic table or chart that would continuously tell me the most popular page in the last hour and in the last day, how would I do so? A template? And what would be the best way to measure the "most popular" page? By page edits, page views, a combination of the two? Bottom line is I would like a statistical measure for what people are "swarming". Is this possible? - WilsonjrWikipedia (talk) 01:37, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The most popular page on Wikipedia? That would not be possible, as the hit counters for the site are disabled. The WikiCharts listed on Special:Statistics can help, but from live data, no. Tito xd (?!?) 01:40, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * And the reason that the hit counters are disabled is the transaction volume - there are something like 20,000 requests per second (a request can be for a logo, a template, etc., as well as the text of a page) to Wikimedia Foundation servers, I believe I read somewhere, recently.  -- John Broughton  |  (♫♫) 02:30, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * 30,000, if I recall correctly. Tito xd (?!?) 02:32, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * However, note that Tim Starling has said that now sampled logs are going to be kept, and the full logs will be made available for analysis if someone's willing to write something to process the full volume using reasonable resources. So this whole no-stats thing may become a thing of the past. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That is really good news. IMO this should be a priority for a lot of reasons to help improve wikipedia's quality. -- Stbalbach 02:59, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

You have new messages....
When I was logged out the "You have new messages" lit up, but it won't go away, even after I read the IP's talk page for my IP. How do I solve this problem?? --SunStar Nettalk 20:10, 21 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Try making a minor edit to your Talk page. User:Zoe|(talk) 20:31, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Try purging the server's cache. Tito xd (?!?) 22:13, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Server's cache or browser's cache? LinguistAtLarge 01:51, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Both. First the server's cache, to generate a new version of the page. Sometimes, the browser just goes and reads the new version. If it doesn't work, then purge your own browser's cache. That way, your browser reads a version that [hopefully] works. Tito xd (?!?) 23:03, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Custom sort order in wikitables
The "sortable" parameter in wikitables is a nice feature; but is there a way of applying a custom alphabetical sort order? The specific problem I'm having is with accented Chinese Pinyin: all accented vowels seem to be sorted after Z (eg Ānhuī comes after Xīzàng). Any solutions—or do I need to write some script? NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 11:15, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The sort order may depend on the user's browser — it's just using the standard JavaScript string comparison operator. It might not be too hard to extend the code to allow specifying a sort key in a custom attribute; the biggest challenge would probably be making sure the attribute gets properly passed from wikitext to the browser.  I might take a look at it at some point if I find the time.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 11:54, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I particularly appreciate your offer as the default sort order, which is causing me a problem, suits the Finnish order as it is! (Zulu, Äiti, Öljy). NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 12:38, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Mail authorization/activation
(A FAQ, I fear. If so, please point me to the relevant page.)

The email address I provided for WP died on me last week. I have a new address. I attempted to register the new address with WP (and also an independent wiki running what appears to be the same software). I was told I'd get a message that I'd have to act on for the new address to be activated (or whatever the term is). I've waited a day or so: Nothing. (For the other wiki, the message came within a few minutes.)

My new address is actually a forwarding service provided by pair.com (which hosts a domain of mine). This employs spam filtering. I've left the spam filtering level at the standard paranoia level, plus Bayesian filtering. I shouldn't have thought that a message from WP would smell much like spam. However, pair.com does use greylisting among its ploys. Could this be the problem?

I could go to pair.com, turn spam filtering off, change my email address at WP, and then turn spam filtering back on again, but I fear that I then wouldn't receive legitimate mail from WP users.

Or I suppose I could set up a Hotmail or similar account merely for WP purposes, having it forward everything to the pair.com-hosted forwarding address. But am I missing something obvious?

In the meantime, please don't bother to (attempt to) email me. -- Hoary 04:42, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

RC Patrol...
I'm new at RC Patrol, and I was wondering if there were any tools besides Vandal Proof to help me revert vandalism or at least enter an automatic edit summary (such as rv edits by username1 to last version by username2). Thanks! --Nevhood 02:54, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Never mind, I found a very helpful tool! --Nevhood 03:18, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Blatant vandal template
Hi,

I am curious why the Blatantvandal template does not include four tildes to sign your name, is there a reason for this? If not, can it be edited to include a signature? Thanks! --Nevhood 00:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * No warning template includes tildes; when warning a user, use " ~ ". Cheers! Yuser31415 (Editor review two!) 02:05, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * They don't yet. But that could change in the new user-warning templates. DMacks 02:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Alright... thanks! --Nevhood 02:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Bug with interlinking of Ref/Note
I noticed something on ASCII. The lettered ref marks in the table do not jump to the notes when clicked, though the notes jump back to the ref marks. Anyone else seeing this? I was unable to find a recent change that might cause this. Gimmetrow 20:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Tried all of the ref/notes in ASCII and all of them worked for me. Does it still not work for you? I tested in Firefox 2.0.0.1.Jeltz talk  21:16, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The numbered refs work (created with cite.php), the lettered refs still do not (created with ref/note). They worked about a week ago. Gimmetrow 21:21, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Lettered refs work for me in the ASCII article. (Firefox, 1.5.0.9).  -- John Broughton  |  (♫♫) 21:26, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Odd since the Template:Ref and Template:Note doesn't seem to have been changed this year other than the addition of an interwiki link. Jeltz talk  21:31, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Peculiar. It still doesn't work for me on ASCII or on another article, but it seems to work OK in the Sandbox. Don't see what the difference is. Gimmetrow 21:54, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Tested it in Lynx just to make sure it wasn't just Firefox and they all worked there too. This is sounds like a really weird problem. Maybe you should try to clear your browser cache if somehow a bad version of the page could be there. Jeltz talk  21:58, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It works on other browsers. Must be something odd with Seamonkey/Mozilla 1.1. Gimmetrow 03:50, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * ASCII had several edits recently, you might have one or more versions in your browser's cache. (SEWilco 04:12, 24 January 2007 (UTC))

Locating a page version via date?
I'm working on locating old (or rather, ancient) page versions or sections of history. These pages sometimes have LONG histories, and it's a massive pain. I seem to recall, though, that there was a way to get around in the history via the date of the revision, is that right? And do you do it?Circeus 18:33, 23 January 2007 (UTC) Never mind. I'm an idiot. Circeus 18:40, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Problems with template fields!?!?
Does anyone know how to input a table as an entry for a template field? For example, in field2...how do I input the sample table such that the entire table displays properly???

Sample Table

Example:

field1  = entry| field2  = sample table here| field3  = some other entry|

Should I use XHTML syntax for tables?

--J4nus 05:31, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, you have to use either HTML/XHTML tables or Template:!. Jeltz talk  21:29, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Display number of talk edits since last visit
For personal usability/productivity reasons, I would like to see the number of edits to my talk, and to each page's talk, since my last visit, to be displayed.

For instance, using the Cologne Blue skin, next to "My talk" would be displayed "(2)" if there were two edits since I last looked at my talk page. And when I'm looking at an article, next to "Discuss this page" would be displayed "(7)" if there were seven edits since I last looked at that article's talk page.

I think this would do a better job of telling people that there's new talk to look at for an article. Also, I think this would get people (especially newcomers) using talk pages more.

I'm not married to exactly how I described this feature working, but I wonder if others think this would be a worthwhile change in the Wikipedia. Thanks! Stevie is the man! Talk &bull; Work 01:04, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


 * For performance reasons, Wikipedia does not record, in the database of pages, who viewed the pages. (There are something like 20,000 server requests per second; these get logged, but the log probably gets flushed after a week or so, I'd guess, due to size - or archived off to tape or whatever.)  So the quick answer is:  not possible: Wikipedia has no idea when you last looked at a page.  -- John Broughton  |  (♫♫) 21:35, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, it doesn't now, but the schema could be changed. This wouldn't be a noticeable performance hit, I should think; you'd just store a number (of revisions) instead of a boolean flag.  The issue of logging every view is completely different from the issue of logging a tiny subset of views. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:55, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Also, there's currently a mechanism for notifying a user when their talk has new messages, and that notification is cleared upon viewing the talk page. In that case, Wikipedia could be storing an integer (# of edits) rather than a boolean (edited?).  For article talk pages, I assume that it would be totally new functionality, and thus somewhat more complicated, but not impossible.  Stevie is the man!  Talk &bull; Work 07:50, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Userbox
So why can't I do this:

But I can do this:

Really appreciate any help here--<font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:15px;">DanielFolsom T|C|U 16:29, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

It's because linebreaks and other white space are not stripped from unnamed parameters. If you use <tt>| 1 = orange</tt> or <tt>| id-c = orange</tt> you can keep the linebreaks in place. See also Template talk:Userbox. — CharlotteWebb 01:27, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

How to supress display of the page name of an article
Can anyone point out how to keep a page from displaying the article name/page name at the top of the page? An example is Wikipedia's Main page. I scoured the Main page source code but came up empty. Either there's some magic going on or I'm losing my skills of observation.

Thanks. LinguistAtLarge 01:49, 22 January 2007 (UTC)


 * If I remember correctly, it's got something to do with the first few lines in MediaWiki:Monobook.css. It's not really appropriate to do that for any other page. Since it's a CSS thing, only an administrator can change it for everyone anyway- you could edit your Monobook.css to do it, but that would only affect you. --Deskana (request backup)  01:52, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quick reply Deskana. I agree that it's only appropriate for the Main page.  It's actually for the Main page of another wiki.  Anyway, I have another question-- I added what looks like the appropriate CSS to the MediaWiki:Monobook.css of the other wiki, cleared my cache and it doesn't appear to do anything.  The CSS I added is:

/* Don't display some stuff on the main page */ body.page-Main_Page #lastmod, body.page-Main_Page #siteSub, body.page-Main_Page #contentSub, body.page-Main_Page h1.firstHeading { display: none !important; } LinguistAtLarge 02:31, 22 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Per-page CSS wasn't added until recently -> 17119. If you have an older version of MediaWiki than 1.9 r17119 you'll have to use javascript instead (like this dirty hack). --Splarka (rant) 08:42, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Any client-side change like this is a dirty hack. It should be done server-side, but it can't currently without a hack. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:49, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the help guys, I think I'll have to try to upgrade to the latest version of MediaWiki.LinguistAtLarge 03:04, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The Signature Bot
I know this subject has come up before, but I couldn't track down the discussions previously had about it. I hope this is the correct Village Pump for this topic. The bot that posts peoples signatures to AfD's is a good idea and is quite helpful, however as it stands now it has a couple flaws that I believe should be addressed. First of all, it is a bit too fast. I just posted something to an AfD and forgot to sign. I immediately edited it again to add my sig, but the bot had already done it. Now, this would be fine if it weren't for the fact that the way in which the bot signs a person's sig makes it appear as if the person who forgot to sign did so purposely. Is there really a need to have the bot write that, to paraphrase, the unsigned statement was made by so-and-so and end with an exclamation mark? In my opinion, the bot should simply sign in the same way as a normal signature is done. In other words, it should be impossible to tell whether the user or the bot did the signature. Anyone else agree? --The Way 21:22, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The easiest way is to just overwrite the bot's automatic signature. The bot uses the default unsigned template, which is an adequate solution. The only way a bot can access the signature of a user is for it to have access to the user table in the database, which contains private data protected by the Privacy policy, and most importantly, the password field for users. While the passwords are stored salted on the table, having public or semi-public access to it is still something that would make me extremely uncomfortable. Tito xd (?!?) 21:30, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * An interface could always be made for the bot to access just the signature parts of the user preferences, and nothing else. On the the other hand, it would probably be easier to just use this page to opt out of having your comments signed. Tra (Talk) 22:51, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It is not that easy. There is no individual field for a signature; all the preferences are stored as an array in the "user_preferences" column of the table. Also, I'm not sure this will be even accepted by the developers; they take privacy issues very seriously. It's easier to just opt out. Tito xd (?!?) 23:23, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It doesn't necessarily have to be the exact same signature that the editor uses. My problem lies in the fact that the bot uses really small text and phrasing that seems to suggest that the editor who forgot to sign did something wrong.  I know absolutely nothing about programming bots, but it seems clear that the bot is programmed to write out the sentence it currently writes.  I'd prefer that the bot simply leaves the editors username in a regular sized font rather than saying "this unsigned comment was left by...". --The Way 23:51, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * If you want the wording changed, you would need to ask Hagerman, who operates the bot. Tra (Talk) 00:24, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

My problem with the bot is that sometimes on talk pages I layout lists and stuff for people to collaboratively work on, and then the bot sometimes sticks signatures in where they are not wanted (I usually leave a little section where people can sign to indicate they have changed stuff in the collaborative area). I normally just overwrite or remove the bot's unsigned stuff if it is not needed. Carcharoth 00:30, 21 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I believe that you can also block the bot from editing any given page - at least, that has been discussed. Perhaps you might want to add a block to a talk page until the colloboration is done?  -- John Broughton  |  (♫♫) 03:36, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * HagermanBot is one of only a few that have implemented respect for the nobots template, and it has its own opt-out page at User:HagermanBot/OptOut. I too wish it would operaet slower, because I usually catch my own lack of signature as I'm unclicking 'Save page', but Hagerman feels that would lead to more edit conflicts. -- nae'blis 18:46, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The reason for the speed, is to prevent edit conflicts. → Aza Toth 19:07, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Backgrounds
Hey, what's with the backgrounds of articles and other pages? Is it just my imagination, or are the backgrounds for the articles pure white, and for other things, a very slight blue? (I'm under monobook skin btw). Milto LOL pia 13:27, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Your imagination is correct :-). --Ligulem 15:15, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Imagemap: functioning properly only for images from Commons
Hi! I wonder why does the imagemap extension work only for images from Commons while not also for local ones in Slovenian Wikipedia. I have tried using it in sl:Predloga:Wikipediasister. If you look at it, you'll see that only two images are clickable. In English Wikipedia (Wikipediasister) it works just fine for local images too. --Eleassar my talk 11:27, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The problem is that provided coordinates are relative to the original size of the image; so the  is only a few pixels in size for some of them. Either increase the box size to 5000 or something, or make one   and add a   link, like this example (the extension requires one non-default definition, so the rect is unavoidable):
 * --Dapeteばか 12:05, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
 * --Dapeteばか 12:05, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, I see. Thanks a lot. --Eleassar my talk 12:16, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Macintosh Automator issue
I want to download Wikipedia's featured pictures using Automator, as described here:. I just want to know if there is a page that has thumbnails of the featured pics linked directly to the images, or if there is a way I can work around this problem. Thank you. (I already tried WP:FPT, and it didn't work. Ab e g92 contribs Boomer Sooners!  02:51, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Problem with monobook.js files
If someone with some tech savvy could look at the AfD page "Category:AfD debates (Not yet sorted)"; you will see this: * User:Bbatsell/monobook.js   * User:Circeus/monobook.js    * User:Adavidw/monobook.js    * User:SeizureDog/monobook.js    * User:Mikm/monobook.js    * User:Flyingtoaster1337/monobook.js    * User:Fredrick day/monobook.js

Evidently there is something in this template that is causing these user pages to show up in the AfD pages! This was fixed once before, a couple of months ago, but evidently the creator of this monobook file didn't follow through all the way!

Thanks in advance - and if you could leave me a fix for this on my talk page, I'll "sandbox" it for future reference! SkierRMH 00:48, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * They contain the string, which is causing the corresponding template to somehow get transcluded behind the scenes.  I'd say this is almost certainly a MediaWiki bug, but until it is fixed it can be worked around by mangling the string so that it doesn't get parsed as an actual template transclusion, for example by replacing   with  .  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 02:53, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for taking care of it. —<b style="color:#333333;">bbatsell</b>  ¿?  04:00, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * While I've fixed the scripts that were in that category, the underlying bug — assuming it is one — should really be fixed properly. I've filed it as 8761. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 04:12, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Vanishing edits
As shown by this diff, it looks like a number of comments were deleted from Templates for deletion/Log/2007 January 19; however, User:Heligoland denies having done this, and suggests a technical problem either with the history, or with page corruption. I have seen this happen a number of times recently, with different users, but never so extensively. Do we have a serious problem? Can some friendly admin merge the removed comments back in, or must I re-add mine by hand? Robert A.West (Talk) 20:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Probably was a mistake. I'd imagine he went back and checked the diff links until he found who made the sigless edit, and then accidentally hit the edit link on the diff page rather than clicking "project page" and hitting the edit link there. --- RockMFR 21:04, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * A possibility. I would rather believe user error than a serious software problem any day. Robert A.West (Talk) 23:02, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Deleting Pages
Is there any quick and easy way for a non-admin user to delete a page? I understand the non-immediate process involved with deleting an article for some reason, but what about a "sub-user-page" that is of no consequence for anybody but the author to care about. An example of what I'm calling a "sub-user-page" would be like User:Fife_Club/The_Andy_Griffith_Show_screenshots. Please do NOT delete this page - I'm just showing an example of a page I created "underneath" my user page, which is only useful to me since it's not a "real" article. Before I create any more pages like that one I'd like to know if I can just delete it/them when I'm done without a big hassle. Thanks. Fife Club 17:30, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You can tag them for speedy deletion. You would use the db-author tag. -- JLaTondre 17:45, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The more accurate template to use would be db-userreq. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 17:49, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * So no way I can do it myself but there is a specific template to make it quick and easy for user subpages. Cool.  Thanks for the help.  Fife Club 17:58, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Strange problem with new messages
Does anyone know why my new messages won't go away even tho I've visited it several times? There has only been one change, check the history of my talk. It doesn't appear to be a cache issue since i've used control+reload (IE) and it also occurs on pages I've never visited before. I've never had this problem when I'm logged in (I have an account but due to a rather nasty experience with one wikipedian I'm avoiding it for now) 203.109.240.93 16:10, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what's causing it, but you're not the only anon it's happened to (other anons have been reporting this problem recently). --ais523 16:13, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes just noticed that. Incidently, purging my talk page, and other pages doesn't help nor does bypassing the cache as I mentioned earlier. Tried changing my talk page too but didn't help either. 203.109.240.93 16:20, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It's disappeared now (well a while ago but I just noticed. 203.109.240.93 17:01, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Subject / headlines on Talk Pages (or the lack thereof)
I have noticed that if you are the first person to make a comment on a Talk Page, the instructions say to just type in the box below, etc. But if you do that, your comment will not have a Subject / headline (unless you manually enter it with the ==x== function). However if, instead of following the instructions, you simply click on the + next to edit this page, the Subject/headline box automatically appears! So I guess my suggestion is that "we" either change the instructions to tell people to click on the + next to edit this page, rather than just typing in the box below, OR change the format of the page, so that it automatically includes a Subject/headline box. I KNOW that this can be done, because on the Help page, when you click on Click here to ask your question about using Wikipedia, the page that comes up DOES have a Subject/headline box! Thanks for your help! ~Newbie Mpwrmnt 08:49, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The MediaWiki:Noarticletext system message could be changed to add "&section=new" to the end of the edit page when it is in a talk namespace. The wikitext for the URL construction would be something like:




 * This change would need to be made by an administrator. It might also be worth changing the wording of the call to action. This covers the case of going to a new talk page without the "action=edit" parameter. The case you're talking about is actually covered by MediaWiki:Newarticletext, since clicking on a red link adds "action=edit". In that case, it might be better to add a new bullet point about adding a new comment with the link above. Something like:


 * * [ Start a new discussion section] 


 * This change would also need to be made by an administrator. I'm not sure where discussions for changes to system messages normally take place, but I don't think the decision will be made here. Mike Dillon 16:25, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Mike! I'm glad to have received a reply from someone who actually understands what I'm talking about! I'll ask my favorite admin where to go from here!  Mpwrmnt 08:39, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Displaying image with forced Height
I know it's easy to set an image size by width. At the article Palm Island, Queensland there are some good images in a section "Environmental Clean Up", but they are in different proportions. Is there an easy way to leave the width to be "whatever it needs to be to stay in proportion" yet force the height so they look better side-by-side?

Thanks.Garrie 02:28, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * That would be an exceedingly impossible thing to fix; simply changing the font size changes the overall height, meaning that even if you could set it, it would most likely be wrong for a lot of other people. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 03:02, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Use WWWxHHHpx, where the image is scaled to fit within a box of WWW pixels by HHH pixels. --brion 07:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * But that would distort the image, but there is a not-to hard way: First, determine the desired uniform height UH. Next, from each source image i get the unscaled total height Hi and width Wi (obtained from the image page if available, otherwise download and check with something like Photoshop), compute an image ratio Ri = Wi/Hi. For each image i, compute Wi = Ri * UH. Setting these values into the image width will give a consistant height.


 * To get the consistant height irrespective of text size, do not use labeled "thumb" images, rather title the images separately as done below.


 * Example, desired hight UH 200 pixels, one image 400W by 300H, another 550W by 500H. R1 = 400/300 = 1.33333333 and  R2 = 550/500 = 1.1. Then W1 = 200 * 1.3333... = 266, and W2 = 200 * 1.1 = 220. Check: 266 * 300 / 400 = 199.5 and 220 * 500/ 550 = 200, so to compensate for rounding might want to add a bit to W1 (server functionality dependant). Example follows - Leonard G. 20:52, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, this does not distort the image as it would lead you to believe. Compare


 * [[Image:SFOakBBLaticeBeamsClose.jpg|left|168px|]]
 * with
 * [[Image:SFOakBBLaticeBeamsClose.jpg|left|200x168px|]]
 * 168px wide
 * 200x168px
 * }. --<font color="#CC0018">T <font color="#0000C0">M F Let's Go Mets - Stats 21:17, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * 200x168px
 * }. --<font color="#CC0018">T <font color="#0000C0">M F Let's Go Mets - Stats 21:17, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The above example would not' distort because it is a square imag. However, an experiment to the right shows that the server preserves the image aspect ratio and determines which value H or V in the image size declaration to use. So simply use very large values for the width and the image will be set to the height declared, irrespective of image aspect ratio - this assumes that all browsers will behave accordingly.


 * Left: Image size is 600 x 600, shown as 168 wide
 * Center: image size is 800 by 720, shown as 187 wide
 * Right: Image size is 400 by 300, shown as 223 wide

Source for this is:


 * Left: Image size is 600 x 600, shown as 168 wide


 * Center: image size is 800 by 720, shown as 187 wide


 * Right: Image size is 400 by 300, shown as 223 wide


 * Thanks, Leonard. That sort of maths is exactly what my lazy brain was trying to avoid! I understood that concept already, I was "just" hoping for something easier. But it is good that you spelled it out for anyone else who might be interested, and it validates what I was about to go ahead and do... :( Garrie 22:11, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Here is the same image set using width greater than necessary, all at same height. This does work as expected, but note that lowercase "x" is required


 * Left: Image size is 600 x 600, shown as 300 wide, 170 high, syntax "300x170px"
 * Center: image size is 800 by 720, shown as 300 wide, 170 high
 * Right: Image size is 400 by 300, shown as 300 wide, 170 high

Linking to user CSS
(I've just posted a similar question on the Help Desk, but it seems that this may be a more appropriate forum. I didn't intend to waste anyone's time through duplication.)

Can I link to my own Monobook.css in a Wikipedia article I'm editing? I want to do this to make the wikitext cleaner—in other words for the usual reason one uses CSS! If it's possible, how do I do it? NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 23:36, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Not really. Actually, your styles should be applied to articles you are working on, as long as you declare new styles for the existing classes and ids. I think :-) -- ReyBrujo 23:48, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * If you want to include css on a page for everyone to see, there are two ways of doing it. Either you could format the markup using style="..." or you could ask an admin to add the relevent css code to MediaWiki:Common.css. You can't specify custom stylesheets to be applied to a page. If it's User:Ndsg/Sandbox that you're asking about, and you're trying to give different pieces of text in different colours, you might find it easier to use something like ab to give ab . If that's not the page you're talking about, then it might help if you say what effect you're trying to achieve on what page. Tra (Talk) 23:54, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Aside from font tags being the devil, that's sound advice (an XHTML-friendly version would be <strong style="color: green;">ab to get <strong style="color: green;">ab ). EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 03:04, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your detailed answers. I certainly wasn't going to use ; but I would have preferred to use something like, which would be more transparent & quicker to type. Anyway, I think I now see how it works. NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 10:21, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I certainly feel your pain; I had some pretty grandiose ideas for my userpage, only to find out that I had to do pretty much everything in-line (which meant I couldn't use any pseduo-classes). I was very disappointed. EVula // talk // &#9775;  // 15:25, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

It would be much better to add it to the site-wide CSS and use a span class="", if this is something that will be used on many articles. If not, use span style="". — Omegatron 15:32, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

User_talk:Undo
Can someone assist me in sorting this out? Admins will be able to see the whole sordid past of this page, but the short story is that some userscript is goofing up and placing user warnings here. I haven't the faintest idea how to go about notifying/locating the creator, so we can stop making this page accidentally. No such user by this name exists now to my knowledge, but if they ever did, I can only imagine the confusion when they start getting warnings not meant for them. -- nae'blis 19:09, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not an admin so I can't see the content of the page, but according to the deletion log one of the creators is Geoffspear, who has quite an extensive monobook.js with various tools. The most likely culprit are the "Revert tools by Lorian", since that's the only one that does a GET request for a user page and posts warnings. Might want to contact Lorian to try and track this problem down. Cheers, Jayden54 20:14, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


 * You could always ask that the page be permanently protected. (And no, I'm not sure if I'm joking.) -- John Broughton  |  (♫♫) 21:29, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * No, I'd actually considered that option myself as a form of salting the error, but I'm not sure what Bad Things&trade; that will do to the userscript when it runs into a protected page. I'll try contacting Lorian... if I had to guess, I'd say it happened at the same time the [undo] link was added to page diffs. -- nae'blis 00:05, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Problem was the addition of the undo link, have updated the code. Of course I can't make people update it on their JS pages... --LorianTC 21:58, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, now at least I know where to point people if/when it happens again... cheers! -- nae'blis 03:54, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Duplicate image names in en:wp and commons
There are two different images under Image:Erica tetralix 2.jpg. How do I reference the one in commons? Is there some kind of special prefix that I can include (similar to including "en" in commons references to english WP). Thanks, User:Leonard G. 04:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The one is commons is inaccessible if the local wiki has the same named article/media. At least I've never seen a way of bypassing it.  —EncMstr 05:23, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Disturbing. Yet another way to hijack an image. Are you sure something like :commons:image.jpg won't work?  Zun aid  ©  ®  07:26, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I wasn't positive, but here is a test case for experimentally inclined individuals. My test images are
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Test_image_commons.png and
 * http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Test_image_commons.png
 * Here are the straightforward references: commons:image:Test_image_commons.png [[image:commons:Test_image_commons.png]] [[image:common:Test_image_commons.png]]  [[image:wikicommons:Test_image_commons.png]] [[image:wikicommons:Test_image_commons.png]] —EncMstr 07:57, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Note that if a Commons image exists then uploads are disabled at the same location on en.wikipedia, unless done by an admin. The only way around it is to upload one of the files to a new location, and tag the clashing file for deletion with the appropriate tag. I'd suggest the en hosted image would be the beneficial one to use; as this would allow it to be immediately available to other projects (if you upload it on commons...).--Nilfanion (talk) 08:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Now uploaded to Commons as Image:Erica tetralix 2B.jpg, three article references updated to that image, so I will request a delete - can anyone do this for me? thanks - Leonard G. 03:59, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, or you could do it yourself. See Template:ncd. --<font color="CEBE70">MECU ≈ talk 04:12, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Empty Contribs On New User Log No Longer Appear Red
The contribs on the new user log all show in blue now. This makes it difficult for me to check new user edits. It may just be the computer I am using, it is a public access system. I was wondering if anyone else was experiencing this. 黒雲 01:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The links to Special:Contributions showing blue was a new feature. However, it began causing many unnecessary queries to the database, so it was disabled. Tito xd (?!?) 01:15, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * For the time being, at any rate. It could be improved a good bit, performance-wise, using caching.  People were getting 10+ seconds for watchlist views. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * ...and other optimizations: presumably any contribs links on the watchlist, on recent changes or in article histories should show up blue in any case. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 15:43, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Parameters to user template ignored
Why do I have problems passing parameters to User:Will Pittenger/templates/Summary Consistently Omitted? The template acts as though the parameters weren't passed. At first, it saw the first one during previews, but since I tried to save, I get no parameters. I normally use a shortcut, User:Will Pittenger/SumCO, but I tried to the name just in case to no avail. Will (Talk - contribs) 21:14, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Update: I found the template had been reverted to before the parameters were part of the template. However, while that fixed one parameter, the other is still ignored. Will (Talk - contribs) 23:50, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Both substitute correctly when I try it. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:05, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Both parameters? Or both the shortcut and non-shortcut? Remember, should be a URL to a diff. Will (Talk - contribs) 20:20, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Both parameters. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 02:52, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

This is too weird. When I enter the text in the pre box below, I get what is shown below for the first sentence. What do you get? Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) Will (Talk - contribs) 21:24, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Result:I have noticed you commonly don't enter an edit summary as you didn't when you edited Wikipedia:Village pump (technical).


 * The problem is the equals sign in the URL. It's making the parser switch from interpreting it as unnamed parameters to named parameters. It thinks the second parameter is named "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title". You could either use "2=http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29&curid=3252662&diff=102983949&oldid=102982630" or switch to named params. Mike Dillon 21:30, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Finally. Thank you. I suppose I should have seen it before. I'll explicit use the 2.

BTW: Is there any chance that a future MediaWiki version could ignore equal signs that it sees in a unnamed parameter that begins with " http:// "? If so, we could get rid of this problem completely. I would pass the version numbers seperately and have the template build the URL, but obtaining the numbers by themselves is tough with the tools I have (strictly what is online). Will (Talk - contribs) 23:45, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Special:Booksources
How can one set to see Booksources instead of MediaWiki:booksources-text on Special:Booksources? I would like to set something similar up for Slovenian Wikipedia. --Eleassar my talk 15:40, 21 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Create the appropriate page in the project namespace; MediaWiki will automatically use it instead of the message page. 164.11.204.56 18:51, 21 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It works! Thanks a lot. --Eleassar my talk 11:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Glitch Article
I was going through random articles to fix up, when I came across P&O Stena Line. I noticed the fact that there was a lot of text struck out rather then simply removed right away. However, when I went to fix it, I was taken to the article for "P" instead. The message displayed was "For technical reasons, the emoticon :P takes you here as : is an unsupported character. If you were looking for information on this emoticon, please visit the List of Common Emoticons." So... how do I fix the article? Coolgamer 01:10, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * What did you do to try to fix it? For me, clicking the "edit this page" link at the top and clicking the "edit" link on the first section (where there's text with strikeout) worked normally, displaying an edit page with the article content in an edit window. What skin are you using? --Tkynerd 01:13, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * MonoBook skin, Firefox 2.0.0.1 version. I tried the top edit button, and for the separate sections. All redirect to "P". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Coolgamer (talk • contribs) 01:20, 20 January 2007 (UTC).
 * What's the exact URL that appears in your browser address bar both when you view and try to edit the article? Tra (Talk) 01:39, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * article and edit attempt Coolgamer 01:47, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You're not using the edit link in the article, I think. That edit link replaces (or at least should replace) the & in the URL with the numerical entity equivalent. The fact that that isn't happening is causing it to go to an edit page for P rather than for P&O Stena Line. --Tkynerd 01:58, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The HTML code for the 'official' edit link looks like this:  where the & has correctly been changed to %26. Perhaps a script somewhere is changing the link to point to the wrong location. I can't see anything in your monobook.js; are you using any FireFox extensions that modify the appearance of Wikipedia pages? Tra (Talk) 02:05, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I've had the [edit top] extension blow up on me with ampersands before. The tab [edit] link at the top never fails to work correctly, though. -- nae'blis 18:43, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I've fixed the article in any case, hope you don't mind. Oh and if it helps I'm using IE6 and both the edit at the top and edit in the secion worked 203.109.240.93 16:30, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Categorising sections of an article
The recently implemented "anchored redirects" feature (where a redirect can now take you directly to a section of an article) means that it is possible to categorise sections. This can be done either as: (a) a placeholder for a future spin-off article; and/or (b) to populate a category using a mature, well-written section, instead of an article. (It can also be used to create categories of minor characters, with redirects pointing to the section of the article covering those minor characters, but that is an example where sections of a large article are created by merging smaller articles). The developers did say that this redirect feature should be used with caution. Is the used described above acceptable?

The example I've created here is Bibliography of J. R. R. Tolkien, a redirect that I created to point at the relevant section of the author's article. I've also categorised the redirect at Category:Bibliographies by author, so I have in effect categorised a section, rather than an article.

The main problem with this is that someone changing the section headers partially breaks the redirect (which sends people to the article instead of the section). Also, the category tag doesn't appear on the main article itself (sometimes good, sometimes not).

A final example of my use of this feature is at Category:Republic of Korea Navy ships, where many of the ships are former US Navy ships, and are currently mentioned only as sections in the relevant US Navy ship articles. Nevertheless, these ships can now be found in the category system, though one disadvantage is that the absence of a red-link might discourage turning of the redirect into an article.

Again, I'll try and bring this up at the relevant areas (Redirects and Categorization), but I wanted the developers views on whether this is OK from their point of view. Carcharoth 14:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)


 * This doesn't depend on anchored redirects, as far as the category listings go. We've already been able to do that, even if a link to the redirect wouldn't be effective to get to the section.  The only difference is that such a link in a category now will take you to the specific section, rather than just the article.
 * You don't have redlinks in categories anyway. In most cases, there is no good reason to encourage separate articles for the same ship.  Being able to go to a specific section through the links should reduce the temptation to create separate articles—and that's a good thing.
 * A question: do you still need to put the categories in the redirect on the same logical line as the redirect itself, to avoid messing up something else? There has been a longstanding problem with using categories on redirects, and that probably hasn't changed, has it? Gene Nygaard


 * You seem to be forgetting one thing: Category links work both ways.  Not only can you go from the category listing to the article, but you can also go from the article to the category through the links at the bottom of the page.  For example, from the article at USS New (DD-818), which includes the section USS New (DD-818), you ought to be able to get to Category:Republic of Korea Navy ships, but you cannot.  That category does not appear at the listing at the bottom of the actual article; it appears only in the listing at the redirect at ROKS Taejon.  Gene Nygaard 17:01, 22 January 2007 (UTC)


 * That is indeed a problem, and one I've discussed elsewhere before. The only way round it so far is to have separate articles, or to come up with a related category, but not the same category. In this case, the US ship article (USS New (DD-818)) is categorised in Category:United States Navy ships transferred to the Republic of Korea Navy. This still allows people to see the Korea connection in the category list at the bottom, but doesn't incorrectly categorise the USS Navy ship in Category:Republic of Korea Navy ships. I did forget one step, which was to link from Category:United States Navy ships transferred to the Republic of Korea Navy to Category:Republic of Korea Navy ships. I've done that now. So people at the USS Navy ships can still see the Korea connection in the category list, and can reach the Korea Navy category in two clicks. Does that work? Carcharoth 15:44, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * A similar example is Migrant Mother, a famous photo. That link is a redirect to the name of the person in the photo. Most people will recognise the name given to the photo, rather than the woman's name, so that should be what appears in the category. But how to remove the Category:Photographs link at the bottom of the woman's article? Someone suggested splitting into two articles, one focused on the person, with a summary of the photo and a link to the new article, focused on the photo and photographer. Personally, I'd move the entire thing to Migrant Mother, and have the person's name redirect to the photo, which is what I'll do now. Carcharoth 15:44, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Deletion tables vs archiving
Are there any developers around who could give their input on whether the deletion function should be being used as a readily-accessible (by admins at least) archive? I've noticed that people often suggest deletion for articles whose talk pages may have a substantial history of discussion, and also for Wikipedia namespace pages of organisations that have a substantial history. Some people argue, when others suggest keeping the discussions and history, that they can always be retrieved by getting an admin to undelete if needed. This suggests to me that people are, and have been, thinking of the deletion function as not only for deletion, but as a way of 'sort of archiving things'. I realise that deletion only 'hides' stuff, and that deleted stuff is 'still there', but there have been cases in the past where stuff in something called the 'deletion table' was lost. I'm sure this is mentioned elsewhere on Wikipedia, but the conversation I point people to involves the following exchange: "I know asking for deleted pages is fairly easy, but the trick is knowing they exist in the first place. I'm in the "keep all the history" school of thought, especially as past assurances that deleted content will never be permanently lost have weakened somewhat. I vaguely recall Jimbo himself saying this. Give me a moment... Here we are: (my initial comment);  (Geni's response);  (my response to Geni);  (Jimbo's comment later in the thread). The relevant bit of what Jimbo said is: "In general, I am in favor of keeping most deleted material around indefinitely, but on the other hand, most of it is of zero value so I am not a big stickler about it." - though thinking on this a bit more, I guess it will ultimately come down to a developer at some point 'dumping' old stuff. I wouldn't rely on deleted stuff always being available. If we want to keep stuff for historical reasons, keep it properly. Don't (as Geni said) use the deleted area as a way of storing stuff." (Carcharoth - 29 December 2006 )

The reason I'm bringing this up now is that I've commented on this in at least three MfDs (1; 2; 3), and I really would like the situation clarified as a general principle. Can developers guarantee that deleted stuff will never be permanently deleted? Thanks. Carcharoth 13:56, 17 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I, for one , fail to see why this is of any importance at all. The things that *should* be getting deleted should be failing policies for inclusion, such as not being verifiable, hoaxes, personal attacks, etc. If the article is questionable or it's a notability thing, then yes, I can see a reason for that. But for articles that are clearly garbage, it's a waste of time. My understanding of the system (and from what I've seen as an admin on another MediaWiki site) is that deleted things are simply not accessible to the general public and are not "permananently deleted" unless and until the devs do some sort of work around (possibly in the DB) to purge the history. --<font face="Verdana"><font color="SteelBlue">Elar a <font color="SteelBlue">girl  Talk 18:05, 17 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree that garbage should be deleted. Most of my arguments don't apply to articles. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I just want to see a clearer distinction drawn between deletion and archiving. The two functions are being mixed up precisely because people think "oh, it's not really deletion", when history (funny that) shows that in fact deletion has, for some of the very early stuff, meant permanent deletion (inadvertent, but still permanent). Carcharoth 18:47, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

'''Deletion means deletion. The deleted page archives ARE TEMPORARY TO FACILITATE UNDELETION OF PAGES WHICH SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN DELETED and are subject to being cleared or removed AT ANY TIME WITHOUT WARNING. --brion 00:50, 19 January 2007 (UTC)'''


 * Ah. Thank-you. I suspected that was the case. I'll try and correct people's misunderstandings about this where I find them. Let me just save the stone tablet... :-) Seriously, thanks for that. Carcharoth 02:48, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I can't even count the number of times things have been deleted with the argument "oh well we can always bring it back if needed". Well, I'll help to spread the word whenever I see this mentioned. --- RockMFR 15:30, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I think I know the answer to this, but does anyone know for certain?
If a redirect is created to a page, and the redirect is used by very large numbers of people each day to visit that page, will it create This is relevant to a discussion on Talk:Main Page. --ais523 09:10, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
 * no more server load than if everyone visited the page directly,
 * more server load once when the redirect is cached, then the same server load as if everyone visited the page directly (until the next time the redirect or its target is edited), or
 * a lasting increase in the amount of server load generated?
 * It's either 2 or 3. However 3 is a little silly IMHO. There's no reason to assume people are going to keep using the redirect. I presume this is related to the main page-portal:main page debate and as has been pointed out before, we have no way of knowing how main people will be using the redirect and we definitely have no reason to assume it will remain a substanially number for all eternity. Assuming it is originally a resonable amount, it will likely taper off over time so it won't be a lasting increase 203.109.240.93 10:05, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh should also point out it is important to keep things in perspective. It's my understanding that redirects don't add much load. Obviously if there really is a substanially number of people it will be somewhat more substanial then normal. But I believe there is an example given somewhere that editing a page to remove a redirect likely imposes a significantly greater load then a resonable number of people using the redirect. For all we know the load resulted from the protacted debate is greater then the total load the redirect will add (and the redirect load is obviously going to be more greatly spread out) 203.109.240.93 10:11, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Redirects don't add noticeable load. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:19, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Lasting but infinitessimal. — Randall Bart 09:28, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * In addition, a developer (I can't remember which one, apologies to the developer in question) said that we shouldn't worry about problems like server load, as they'll do something about server load if it becomes a problem. --Deskana (request backup)  09:30, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The page you're looking for is Don't worry about performance. &mdash;Cryptic 12:43, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Ogg Codecs
Help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have downloaded the codecs, and on Windows Media Player I went on options to make it play the codecs, I check the little boxes and apply the options, but when I go back, it keeps getting un-applied!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Send me a reply at email removed !! Please HELP!!!!!!!

Merlot70 06:57, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Email address removed to prevent spam. --cesarb 16:35, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * In future, please reduce the number of exclamation marks you use. Try seeing if there are any other media player programs on your computer that are changing the .ogg file extension to point to that application instead. Tra (Talk) 17:21, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Is there any other audio format that is acceptable on Wikipedia and yet widely used, e.g., .wav? The whole ogg business strikes me as the community doing a WP:POINT on itself. Raymond Arritt 17:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


 * No. .wav files are far too big, and ogg's the best non-proprietary mp3-type solution. yandman  17:33, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Scrollable table cells?
I have a table at User:Will Pittenger/templates that is unable to contain the template samples and still fit into the page. I wanted the template cells to scroll as needed so those cells would take up no more space than needed. However, my attempt to add doesn't appear to have worked.

Can someone help? Will (Talk - contribs) 01:51, 22 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Did you try  ? LinguistAtLarge 02:13, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. It works now. Why is this arrangement interpreted differently from what I tried earlier? Will (Talk - contribs) 06:01, 22 January 2007 (UTC)


 * You defined the size as atributes on the HTML tag, it needs to be defined as part of the style sheet in order for the style sheet flow controll to pick up on it. It's two entierly different ways to format an element, and using HTML code for formating is depreciated and no longer valid in the latest version of HTML. --Sherool (talk) 11:06, 22 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Improper mixing of HTML and CSS elements causes some pages to display strangely under some circumstances. It's especially bad whne a page is alid ut by someoe with a wide window, and then when viewed in a narrow window the picture is overlaying the text. — Randall Bart 08:08, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the CSS way requires more typing. Will (Talk - contribs) 09:24, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Old version is shown upon saving an edit
The FAQ says that database lags cause old versions not to appear immediately. This happens even after editing an article and saving it. The response to the save sometimes shows the unmodified version. Needless to say this is utterly confusing. &minus;Woodstone 21:13, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I've had that happen several times, and a hard refresh (ctrl+F5) in my browser usually fixes it. I just assumed it's a browser caching issue? Jayden54 22:29, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I have had a worse problem: your edit appears in the page, but does not appear in the history of the page (which is where I check whether my addition has been accepted or not). While yes, showing the old version is fixed with CTRL+F5, this one is not, and you need to wait a minute or so until it appears in the history and you can move on ;-) -- ReyBrujo 22:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I have had cases where ctrl-f5 (or even ctrl-shift-f5) still brought up the version before my edit, so this is lag across the WP server farm. When I am switching tabs for editing, I go to a tab and see it's not modified.  I think "I thought I changed this tab", so I hit ctrl-f5, it reloads, but it's still not modified.  I think "I guess I didn't", I click "edit" and see it's already changed.  When working on Javascripts, I have to use ctrl-shift-f5, but still lags of 30 seconds or more are seen.— Randall Bart 07:46, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

nonsense in article
Someone has added racial and profanity content to the Hurricane Katrina article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrican_Katrina. It didn't show up in the editing box when I tried to delet it. Hopefully you guys can get rid of it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 146.129.246.254 (talk) 22:08, 26 January 2007 (UTC).
 * Uh, I can't find it? If you refer to this, it was about two hours ago, and lasted at most for a minute. Try purging the server's cache and bypassing your own browser's cache to make sure you get a "fresh" version of the page. Tito xd (?!?) 22:14, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Would this be the place to ask about...
Running a Perl script that was once used to keep the WP:GA page updated? The person who created it and ran it left the project suddenly over some fair use thing, but now nobody really knows how to run it :/. It's at User:Cedars/gaauto.pl, and he's the user who left. I think I managed to get the cURL thing installed because it shows up as a Perl package in the Activestate perl package manager thing, but the cURL commands still aren't recognized, and i'm at a bit of a loss as I can't program in Perl.... Homestarmy 18:59, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

How to do email/mailto links and/or how to embed php or javascript
You can create an email link by typing something like mailto:fred@imaginary.com. But now it's completely visible on the page. What I'm trying to avoid is to have spam crawlers find and suck up the email address.

So I can create a macro that you'd use like this: so that it constructs the mailto line for you, but in fact that gets me nowhere because it both displays it on the page AND because of the way the pages are generated, doing View Source ALSO shows the email hardcoded.

Anyone know if there's a way to create an email link without it being visible to automated searchers? (Javascript & such don't seem to work on wikipages...?)

Or, otherwise, is there a way to embed javascript or php code into a macro so that it's processed rather than appearing as just plain text? (And this would be primarily for a nonWikipedia site, since I suspect that this feature, if it is in the mediawiki software, would b edisabled for Wikipedia.) Elf | Talk 00:40, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Two ideas:
 * Pipe the external link to say something different. For example, this [mailto:fred@imaginary.com link] also leads to the email. However, using the "Edit this page" to view the source can easily give you the email address; clicking on the link also reveals it.
 * Since I'm assuming that you're using this on your userpage or other personal subpage (not a real article!), if you have checked off on your preferences the "Enable e-mail from other users" option, other users can e-mail you via the "Email this user" link on the lefthand toolbar when on your userpage. You could also set a link to Special:Emailuser/INSERTUSERNAMEHERE.
 * This might be completely irrelevant to your question, but I hope it helped. AZ t 01:43, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Not irrelevant at all; you're on the same track I'm on. I used a piped link and a macro to try to get the full link out of the source, but as you say, to no avail. I didn't think about using the special link for users...that's a good thought and I'll see what it does for me-- but I'd still need something for those annoying random email addresses not attached to any user (e.g., webmaster, info...). 75.18.173.107 03:59, 26 January 2007 (UTC)# (That was me not logged in. Elf | Talk 19:36, 26 January 2007 (UTC))
 * Wikipedia is a big target; if a way of obfuscating e-mails becomes well known, the spammers will simply incorporate it in their scans. Notinasnaid 09:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, good point. Sigh. 75.30.115.213 19:34, 26 January 2007 (UTC) (Me again. Elf | Talk 19:36, 26 January 2007 (UTC))
 * I'm not sure what policy is regarding images that appear only on user pages, but if they're okay, then creating an image that is simply the text of your email address would be an option. (Anyone wanting to email you would have to type the whole address out, of course, but that doesn't seem like that big a deal.)  -- <font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:18px;">John Broughton  (♫♫) 15:35, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Site leeching live from Wikipedia
According to this, I threw a message at the wikimedia-tech channel, but since I don't like talking without anyone acknowledging me, I left. Just in case, I post it here. See here for the discovery. Apparently, www.prescriptiondrug-info.com is leeching live from the English Wikipedia. There are some examples in the second wikilink I leave here. Cheers! -- ReyBrujo 22:35, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I sincerely hope they leech the very, very latest version of my user page (as freshly edited by me, I mean; vandalism may follow). Or does WP:CIVIL apply to slimeball pill-pushers too? Hoary 02:39, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
 * There is another here, at thagodz.com. -- ReyBrujo 04:54, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Article contributor analysis
I've found the tool that analyzes an editor's contributions (even though I don't remember the name nor link chain that I used to get to it), and I started thinking it should be possible to have some bit of code look at an article's history and draw up a summary, effectively identifying the editors who would be candidates for thinking that they own the article (actually, I was looking at the history of a talk page when I got this idea, and wondered if the 2-5 most frequent talk page editors over the last 3-6 months would be the ones I would hear from if they didn't like the edits I made).

Did that make sense? (ignore me if it didn't) Xaxafrad 02:40, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Found it! ...While diving through the bot requests archives looking for an old request a made a few weeks ago (I couldn't find it; now I have to dive into my own contributions). Xaxafrad 02:57, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Ask someone to create a table for Bug 7988 to be enabled. Tito xd (?!?) 07:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * And a similar tool, I think, is here. -- <font style="font-family:Monotype Corsiva; font-size:18px;">John Broughton  (♫♫) 15:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Problem with links that include diacritics
I'm guessing (hoping) this is reported/addressed elsewhere, so thanks in advance for any pointers.

Since around 4:40am UTC on January 18 (i.e. a couple of days ago; cf here) I've found that links to article and image names which include diacritics are dysfunctional. For instance, the image mentioned in the thread linked above is Image:Cristo Velázquez lou2.jpg, but following this link takes me to (the non-existent) "Image:Cristo VelÃ¡zquez lou2.jpg". (The image is also, therefore, not displayed here in the template being discussed.) Similarly, I've just tried following a link to Brčko District, but am taken to (the non-existent) "BrÄko District". Help, please!

I'm currently using Firefox 2.0.0.1 on a PC running Windows XP SP 2.

Thanks, David Kernow (talk) 12:32, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I can't tell you why you're seeing this, but the strange character strings are UTF-8 characters misencoded as ISO-8859-1 characters. In the "Glitch Article" section above, User:Coolgamer was also having a weird encoding problem with Firefox 2.0.0.1, although the problem there was a lack of URL encoding, not a UTF problem. Have you added any extensions to Firefox? Mike Dillon 14:54, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for responding, Mike. Yes, I currently have the following add-ons, all working before and since this problem appeared. (Similarly, I'm pretty sure none were updated just before the problem appeared.) :
 * Adblock Plus 0.7.2.4, AniDisable 1.1, Bookmark Duplicate Detector 0.6.3, Download Statusbar 0.9.4.5.1, Fasterfox 2.0.0, Flashblock 1.5.2, Open Image In New Tab 1.0.1, Redirect Remover 2.0, Tab Mix Plus 0.3.5.2, Thumbs 0.6.3 and the default DOM Inspector (1.8.1.1) and Talkback (2.0.0.1)
 * Yours, David (talk) 11:16, 22 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't know whether the add-ons could have any effect, but it's easy enough to disable them through the "Addons" dialog and doing so removes a possible variable. That being said, I could see the problem being with "Redirect Remover", since it rewrites link URLs, but I don't have it installed to test. The main reason you might want to check that is that Firefox 2.0.0.1 on Windows is probably fairly common, so I'd think we'd be seeing more of this issue if it was related to a default install. Mike Dillon 15:48, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * There's been an update to Redirect Remover today, so will see if there's any improvement. Otherwise I'll also try disabling the other add-ons one by one. Thanks again, David (talk) 19:28, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * ...Yes, that update seems to've solved the problem. Best wishes, David (talk) 10:40, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

The names of the days are gone
On Portal:Current events, the individual days used to have headings such as January 28, 2007 (Sunday), but now have January 28, 2007 , ie the day of the week has disappeared. The template which produces the heading is Portal:Current events/DateHeader2, which hasn't changed recently, so I presume this is some MediaWiki change. Has there been a change affecting the templates WEEKDAYNAME or JULIANDAY? I see they've both been recategorised very recently.- gadfium 07:30, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Now fixed.- gadfium 08:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Section link problems
When I create Talk page sections with characters in the header title that aren't alphanumeric or spaces, I have problems linking directly to the section. Strangely, the link in the TOC for the page works fine. What is wrong? Here is a sample link. Will (Talk - contribs) 10:53, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It seems to get confused when there are two spaces in a row (like there are in that section, after the full stop); even if I type " " or "__" in the link anchor, only one underscore appears in the URL (but there are two in the anchor on the page you linked). --ais523 16:36, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I've replicated the problem in my sandbox: permanent link. It seems that the two spaces are indeed the problem. --ais523 16:41, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

After further information, I have found that it is possible to recreate this problem without double spaces. Will (Talk - contribs) 04:14, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Details: The problem occurs any time the section header includes a non-visible character sequence other than a single space by itself. For instance, put a link into a header.  You will have problems getting the section link to work.  Try " == User:Will Pittenger == ".  I submit that will be enough.  Also causing problems would be any formatting characters (like you want the text in italics because its a title). Will (Talk - contribs) 06:37, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

FYI: I moved this section down here because people appear to have been assuming the problem was solved. However, if you read my last two posts, you will see otherwise. Will (Talk - contribs) 06:44, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

What changed about javascript?
I'm returning from an extended wikibreak, only to find that my monobook.js no longer works. Can someone tell me what is wrong here? --Ryan Delaney talk 20:36, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The layout of the monobook skin changed slightly. Ask Simetrical for more details, as he is the one who did that... Tito xd (?!?) 20:53, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * You seem to have an old version of the "add edit section 0" script, which used a fragile way of adding tabs that broke when an extra &lt;div&gt; tag was added to the tab bar HTML recently. Go get the latest version from here, it's been improved quite a bit in other ways too.  In fact, while you're at it, you might want to check for new versions of any other user scripts you're using too.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:26, 27 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Has any friendly sysop considered mass-correcting all of these add-edit-section-0 JSes? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:57, 28 January 2007 (UTC)


 * There seem to be [ quite a lot of them]. I'd probably have to write a script to fix the scripts... :-/  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 10:56, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Inline frame
I remeber that about a year ago there was a way to enter an inline frame (similar to this, except that what's inside is not from a file but from direct text in between the tags) - and I used it myself on a talk page, but I can't remember where. &lt;iframe&gt; is not listed in Help:HTML in wikitext and doesn't seem to work. Any hints? (I posted this on WP:HD yesterday, but no one knew.) &mdash; Sebastian 20:22, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * To use it w/ the URL bar, you can do (this edits the sandbox):


 * More details can be found at WikiProject User scripts/Techniques. AZ t 00:34, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * On second thought, that's probably not what you're looking for. Try using  (replace 150/300px with the new sizes, and replace TEXT with whatever you want to place in there, like the transclusion of another page, remove the border if you don't want it, etc). Example:

See, now the scrollbars appear, making it somewhat resemble an &lt;iframe&gt;. To transclude another page, just use normal Wiki-syntax. This isn't exactly the same as an &lt;iframe&gt;, but it works just like it. Other tags also can be thrown into here.
 * I don't believe it’s possible to directly add an &lt;iframe&gt; without the usage of javascript, and that would be individually based (as I noted above). AZ t 20:22, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Template display
Why isn't the template I'm using in Los Gigantes displaying as it should according to its example at Template:Infobox City Dotmap? It's got lines in it between the parameter Province and the not used parameters. Including test values doesn't change anything. - Mgm|(talk) 11:55, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Please answer on my talk page if you can. - Mgm|(talk) 11:55, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Replied on your talk page. —EncMstr 07:37, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist editing
My watchlist now has 9,902 entries. When I try to edit it to remove items all I get is a blank page. I've edited it with over 9,000 entries before but either the system has changed or the list has passed a threshold value. I've tried at different times of day with no luck so it appears that the system isn't just timing out. Any thoughts? -Will Beback · † · 10:56, 26 January 2007 (UTC) See Village pump (technical)/Archive 126. Carcharoth 12:02, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I think there's some watchlist managing tools in WP:TOOLS. - Mgm|(talk) 11:56, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * And if you can't access the list, I suggest you use your contributions list to build up a list of several hundred pages you know you have watchlisted, and manually unwatch them until you come below the limit again. And then do some seriously housework on cleaning up your watchlist! :-) Carcharoth 12:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict)I have the exact same problem, it's defenently not a timeout, I used a packet sniffer to monior the HTTP requests and I get a normal "everyting is fine" headers from the server but the body part of the transmission is zero byes (this only happens on Special:Watchlist/edit, don't have this problem on any other page (that I know of)). Sometimes it works though (like once every 20-30 reload attempt or so), so I suspect it's an issue with some SQUID servers or some other load balancing/routing feature or something, but that's just a guess. guess it could be a size cutoff to, but then why does it work ocationaly and what is the cutof anyway? If it is a size cutof we need to be told about it so we know when we enter the "danger zone" and get an intelligent error message, not just a blank page. --Sherool (talk) 12:54, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It probably got killed by querybane, but I don't know. That's just my guess. Tito xd (?!?) 20:56, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I took Carcharoth's advice and manually removed articles from my watchlist. When the number got below 9800 the ability to edit the list directly returned. Since I was testing it repeatedly I think it was directly tied to the number, not other network settings -Will Beback · † · 19:31, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I think Titoxd is right, if it was directly tied to the number my watchlist would never work. But if I reload enough times sometimes it does. So it is probably a function of server load. If load is light the querry will run faster and I get the list, but if load is high the querry takes too long and is killed before it has a chance to return any data resulting in a blank page. Too bad there seem to be no user level documentation about this anywhere. I'll add a note to the Wikipedia spesific section of Help:Watching pages using your number as the "upper limit" for relatively save watchlist editing operation. --Sherool (talk) 14:05, 27 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Do we send an appropriate HTTP response if the request times out? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:53, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Audio
Is there a way to get audio to play within a browser?--Elatanatari 01:47, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Media help --TheParanoidOne 11:34, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Ive been there before.Elatanatari 21:07, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Look, if it doesn't work, just remember that last time I checked, it was a beta. 68.4.3.209 16:24, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Elatanatari, we could help you better if you would be more forthcoming about what you've done and what is or isn't working. --Tkynerd 16:51, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Pipe bug with cite * template inside
If wikilink in a template field of cite web or cite news has pipe, and citation is inside ref element, wrong output is produced, for example
 * <tt> </tt>

comes out as
 * "'State within a state' should be demolished",  Sabah (newspaper) , 2007-01-29. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.

Hevesli 12:36, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


 * This has been listed at Help:Pipe_trick and WP:FN for a while. Since the pipe trick is only a shortcut (that not everyone knows about), and is expanded to Sabah anyway, the immediate solution is to write out the link rather than use the pipe trick. With such a simple workaround, fixing it is probably fairly low priority. Gimmetrow 14:41, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Trim function for template parameters?
I was notified that the Infobox Album was not working correctly because variables are giving spaces as values. In example, the line "| Cover = " assigns " " (a space) to Cover, and a check like  {{#if: {{{Cover|}}}  does not work (it thinks there is an album cover). The correct way to do it is "| Cover =", but someone may copy the infobox from another article with cover and leave a space after removing the old cover. Does a trim-like function exist, or how this problem should be fixed? -- ReyBrujo 00:54, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That is odd. It definitely used to automatically do that, so I'm not sure why you are having the problem... -Amark moo! 00:58, 28 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I can't reproduce what you are reporting. Tests: . --Ligulem 01:04, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I found the problem. Some invisible Unicode character managed to get in, so it wasn't counted as a space. -Amark moo! 01:07, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
 * A left to right mark, if anyone cares. -Amark moo! 01:13, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Nice, thanks. Just wondering, where did the unicode character appeared? Not the infobox template, right? -- ReyBrujo 01:49, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Nope, it was in the article. -Amark moo! 16:28, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Unicode problem
Hi. When I try to edit articles, I get a message that "Your browser is not unicode compliant, which can make it difficult to edit pages with non-Latin characters. To work around this problem, non-ASCII characters will appear in the edit box below as hexadecimal codes." I am using Internet Explorer 7 ang it defenitely supports unicode. May be some settings are wrong? How to solve this problem? Eugene. 17:42, 27 January 2007 (UTC)


 * On an edit page, try selecting Page -> Encoding -> Unicode (UTF-8) if it's not already selected, reload the page, and see if that helps. If that does fix the problem, then you can try and figure out how to set IE7 to display all pages in Unicode (I can't seem to find that setting).  If that doesn't fix the problem or Unicode was already selected, then I can't help you (but someone else that comes along may). — Mets501 (talk) 15:53, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Browser encoding has already set to Unicode. But for some reason Wiki server doesn't know about that and send me numbers instead of characters... Eugene.

Watchlist issues
Firstly, I was just trying to catch up on my watchlist, only to find out that it doesn't load for the 20 days of backlog I have; it doesn't even do 15, though 10 do work. Any reason for this, and any workaround?

Secondly, Special:Watchlist/edit doesn't load for me, either.

Help? &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 01:10, 21 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Both work for me. Try again later? Carcharoth 01:21, 21 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Could it be related to the admittedly rather large size of my watchlist? I would expect the software to be able to handle it, though... Mh. &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 01:23, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

A large watchlist will cause MediaWiki to automatically limit the number of entries on display, although the editing mode should still show up everything. 81.156.126.223 11:38, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Mh. Is there anything to be done about that? &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 12:13, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Try splitting the watchlist up into thematic groups and listing the pages in a group on a subpage of your user page. Then use 'Related Changes' (Special:Recentchangeslinked) on that subpage to watch for changes to pages linked on that page. To avoid polluting "what links here", you can put ":" in front of the link (I only learnt this the other day, so I'm not sure if using ":" affects how RelatedChanges works), or blank the list (leaving some expanatory text) and revert to it from the page history when you want to check the changes to the pages on the list. One diasdvantage of this is that it makes your watchlist public. Carcharoth 14:50, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Mh, yeah, that's one problem; another is that it makes things rather complicated (especially as far as adding pages to my watchlist is concerned); and the third problem is that I can't even access Special:Watchlist/edit... sighs Argh. &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 16:48, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I've suggested a solution at Village pump (technical)/Archive 126 below. Carcharoth 12:06, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Huh. I didn't know that link thing. I don't think that is intended behavior. Tito xd (?!?) 23:39, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Really? Oh. Let's see if we can attract the attention of a developer who can tell us whether this is (a) true and (b) intended behaviour. DEVELOPERS. I wonder if a version of the 'help' template could be used to attract developers to a question? Actually, I believe several developers do watch this pump, so maybe we'll hear something. Or open a Bug request? Carcharoth 00:46, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I might answer, except that I can't figure out what the question is. What is it that we're supposed to say whether it's true and/or intended behavior? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:49, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That prepending a colon in front of an internal link removes it from whatlinkshere. Tito xd (?!?) 07:57, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Uh . . . that seems very unlikely to be intentional. Or if it is, it's probably not the best way to do whatever's being attempted. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:42, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Riiight. So anyone else know any more about this? Simetrical, would you be able to get a definitive answer from someone? Carcharoth 00:01, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
 * How embarassing. I've done some tests in a sandbox, and it seems this effect doesn't actually happen at all (unless someting got changed recently). I now need to remember where I heard this. I assumed at the time that the person who said it was correctly describing what the system did. Carcharoth 00:07, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

The 'prepended colon in internal links' thing was metioned here. I've asked the editor who mentioned it there (Guinnog) to comment here. Carcharoth 00:14, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

...Though unfortunately Guinnog is on an extended wikibreak according to the user's userpage. Oh well. Hopefully this can be clarified anyway, without knowing where the idea came from, or whether the system ever really worked like this. Carcharoth 00:18, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Recent chnages q
You know in the "my contributions" page you see "(top)" by a page no one has edited since the user your looking at, well just woundering if there is any way to have that in the recent chnages list. Would help to know which chances have been reverted already to avoide edit conflicts and time. Think outside the box 13:08, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You may be interested in bug 8482. --ais523 13:15, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Uploading of SVG... how?
How to I upload an SVG image? Do I need to install additional stuff to my box? I was able to upload -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Information_icon.svg but it doesn't show any thumbnails of it.

Thanks!

--- Laibcoms (talk | Contribs) 09:02, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * You upload them as any other image. The image you link to already exist and is protected though, so no wonder you could not upload under that name. If you mean download, then yeah you need a program that can read SVG files, the Windows explorer will not render thumbnails for them without additional plugins if that is what you mean. See SVG image support for more info about Wikipedia's SVG support and such. --Sherool (talk) 09:17, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Restriction on length of external link captions?
Is there a restriction on how long external link captions can be? In this version of Sparks Lake the link shows up weird even though I tried escaping the ampersand to see if that was the problem. Flyingtoaster1337 03:18, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * If there is a limit, it's nothing that any caption should ever reach. The problem with that version is that there is a carriage return in the middle of the link.  If you remove it, it will work normally. Warofdreams talk 03:28, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * There's not a significant limit that I know of, but I know that link captions can't contain line breaks. The parser must interpret the line break as the end of the external link, so in that case it acted strangely because it thought there was no closing bracket. Graham 87 03:36, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Argh! Silly me... I thought that the line was wrapping normally. :-( Flyingtoaster1337 04:07, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Regex help
My second question today. I'm using AWB to tag some articles for a WikiProject. Some articles are tagged and some aren't. I'm trying to get AWB to skip the articles that are already tagged but as I can only have one "normal" criteria at a time, I have to turn to regex which I know little of. How can I get AWB to skip articles with the following two tags: and  ? Thanks in advance.↔<span style="font-size:11px; font-weight:bold; font-family:verdana, sans-serif;">NMajdan &bull;<span style="font-size:9px; font-family:verdana, sans-serif; color:#000000;">talk 21:38, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Not sure about AWB, but the regex to match either of those would probably be simplest as:  (or   if literal) --Splarka (rant) 08:31, 30 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you, I'll try that.↔<span style="font-size:11px; font-weight:bold; font-family:verdana, sans-serif;">NMajdan &bull;<span style="font-size:9px; font-family:verdana, sans-serif; color:#000000;">talk 13:13, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Javascript help
Look here and here. What bodes ill with the warning and the code. For I fixed it then it "died" on me. The code did what it was supposed to, then it quit working. Also in an attempt to fix it I reverted it back to its original form, but it did not work. Please find a Java validator & or help please. --D.H. ( T | C ) 21:23, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You haven't defined topaz (which has no portable meaning as far as I know), you haven't placed any sort of quotes around the string literals in your monobook.js, and you're trying to manipulate window.onload rather than using addOnloadHook. All of these could lead to confusing errors. (Note also that MediaWiki:Youhavenewmessages was changed and reverted recently, which may have affected your script.) --ais523 09:42, 30 January 2007 (UTC)