Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive AX

Bad tfd effects on tagging
re: this tfd is biased because the tfd wasn't tagged inside the title of the template box. I had to lts four other templates before I could figure out where the "orphaned" template deletion message was located. I'm not sure of where she applied the tfd closing '}}' pair, and the history diffs aren't displaying the change in red as usual. Can some template savvy Admin take a look and get the tfd message inside the title section, with a proper subst. I think the tfd needs closed and reopened with a valid tagging. Best regards // Fra nkB 02:30, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * All fixed. &mdash;Cryptic 02:49, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that. The instructions on Template:Tfd are quite clear but a useful sentence "This code will work as is; there is no need to replace PAGENAME with the actual page name." wasn't included in the instructions I was following on Templates for deletion, and I needed that clarification!  I've added it there now, to avoid anyone else making the same mistake.  My thanks to Cryptic for sorting it out. PamD 07:22, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Linking a citebook to an article
Hi, I just found an article which cites a book by someone who has an article (currently orphaned). How can the citebook thing used for the reference be made to link to the author please? DuncanHill 23:53, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Ilink the name of the author or use the parameter authorlink (authorlink=name of the target article). There should be more details on the template page.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 00:57, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks - I did the authorlink thing and it worked! DuncanHill 01:18, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Calling ye template gods
Don't know if this is possible, but I have a question. Can you pass a variable from one template to another? I came across the Johnny Cash template and loved its format for things that have many groups and subitems. Each group is collapsible AND you can set a parameter so for a certain group, only that group is shown. For instance, if you go to the June Carter Cash article, only the Family group is shown, all others remain collapsed. You do this why adding the group's paramater you want such as, so the Family group is now shown. I took this concept and rewrote several university templates including University of Oklahoma, University of Texas at Austin, Oklahoma State University, University of Michigan, Ohio State University and maybe a couple others. I decided it might be worthwhile to create a template to make converting these easier. So, today I created Navigation with collapsible groups. But, after creating in my userspace and moving the template space, one huge issue occured to me. Can I pass the paramater from the article to the university template to the base template. So far, no success. I've tried dissecting the code to Navbox and Navbox/core to see if something similar is done but I'm getting a headache from staring at it for so long. Any help would be appreciated (I hope I described the issue well enough).↔NMajdan &bull;talk 20:26, 17 October 2007 (UTC)


 * You can pass parameters into and through a template, but not out of one. For example, article calls template A with a parameter intended for template B (and A calls B).  Inside A, you would have something like  .  That passes the value from A's caller (the article) as a named parameter for B.  Hope this helps, Andrwsc 20:57, 17 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I think that worked!↔NMajdan &bull;talk 01:13, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Is there a bug filled on missorting categories?
Category sorting system doesn't recognize various diacritical characters, forcing us to ignore them in category sorting - which can have small impact but also pretty major. Is there a bug filled on that we could vote upon? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:08, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * This is actually the third-most-requested feature ever (after single user login and anon-only blocks): see 164. --ais523 08:07, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

"Revision history of .."
Is there a piece of custom css I could use to not have to see the words "Revision history of .." in front of every page history title?-- VectorPotential Talk 13:20, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It can't be done in CSS, but it would be easy in JavaScript. You might want to make a request at WikiProject User scripts' request page. --ais523 14:17, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I created a Javascript to fix that the day they implemented it:


 * Works fine for me. Anomie 02:18, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Works perfectly.-- VectorPotential Talk 17:35, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Ifeq help
Can anyone figure out why  returns, and how to fix it to not return false (given the same input)? Thanks. --PEJL 08:31, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Don't use  inside the comparison? Someone who is familiar with the code can tell you the details, but from my experiments it seems that each   is changed into a unique tag something like   (the " " represents codepoint U+0007) before parser functions are applied, and afterwards the tag is changed back. The problem with your ifeq is that it sees something like   and thus is always false. Anomie 11:45, 17 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Is it just curiosity or do you need to use this?--Patrick 11:46, 17 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the explanation. This is not just curiosity, it causes a false negative at Template:Infobox Album/color/doc. Can anyone think of an alternate solution? --PEJL 13:24, 17 October 2007 (UTC)


 * See the example in my sandbox. The trick is to return   for the color. You then have to make the comparison against exactly that, but it works, as does the return value since the space is ignored in the style specification. TCC (talk) (contribs) 20:36, 17 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot! (I note that the above doesn't render as intended, it should be: .) --PEJL 21:15, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I know, but after 4 attempts just trying to type the damn thing correctly, I gave up on it. Too much coffee, not enough sleep. TCC (talk) (contribs) 01:02, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

i am new
I am new here, could anyone tell me how to get round? Mdhamiri 09:43, 17 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Dear Mdhamiri, welcome to Wikipedia. I have given you a "welcome box" which you can read by clicking User talk:Mdhamiri. It has lots of useful links explaining how to get the best out of Wikipedia. Best wishes. DuncanHill 11:05, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Parameter expansion inside html
Is there any known workaround for the issue of template parameters not expanding when enclosed in html tags? Happy‑melon 21:40, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
 * An example, please? 1of3 01:19, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * , at least, will not expand correctly, and all references will have the name " ".  I don't think   will expand properly either.  Happy‑melon 08:07, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The problem is not that template parameters won't expand in HTML tags ( is not a HTML tag), but rather this bug. --PEJL 08:20, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Have a look at the output of User:Happy-melon/sandbox2 - I know I'm missing closing braces somewhere but I'm going on holiday in 20 minutes time so I don't have time to check it! See also Help:Template.  You can probably see what I'm trying to do - have a definable reference name and a definable content.  Any suggestions?  Happy‑melon 09:05, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The bug noted above means that you cannot generate tags using templates. --PEJL 09:28, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * The bug noted above means that you cannot generate tags using templates. --PEJL 09:28, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Oddness
Two years of ANI edit history seems to have disappeared. The software thinks that the intermediate edits exist, but refuses to provide a way to go to them. -Amarkov moo! 00:56, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * ANI didn't exist in 2003. It looks like just Jayjg's edit is misdated. . &mdash;Cryptic 00:58, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * That would explain it. It's still odd, though. -Amarkov moo! 01:02, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * This has been mentioned before. On WT:ANI I think. Maybe we need a FAQ for this? :-) Carcharoth 17:18, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, here we go: Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive 4. Carcharoth 17:20, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
 * shows this is one of two Jayjg edits which are recorded as 4 January 2003 but apparently were made 10 March 2005. PrimeHunter 02:09, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Google page summaries
Google generally shows you a piece of text after the title of a page, and generally this is either taken from the page's text or from meta tags. Wikipedia pages have some relevant text which is neither. (For example, search for Al Gore; the snippet begins "Hyperlinked encyclopedia article about the current global climate change activist and former Democratic nominee for President, 45th Vice President..." which appears nowhere in the wiki markup for that page, nor, indeed, in the rendered HTML.) Does anyone know where it comes from? Marnanel 00:17, 13 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I think some Google employee typed that. - BANG  !  00:30, 13 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Apparently it is the description submitted to the Google Directory . Dragons flight 00:35, 13 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I was wondering about that too. I gotta say I don't think much of these descriptions -- they read like advertisements.  I'd rather see them deleted and let the articles be excerpted in Google's usual way. --207.176.159.90 03:17, 13 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Afterthought: But then people who actually use Google Directory lose the benefit of them. Hmm. No win there, I guess. --207.176.159.90 03:18, 13 October 2007 (UTC)


 * It is not up to us to influence the way Google works. If you don't like it, you should discuss that with Google Nil Einne 11:44, 13 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I took "submitted to" to imply that someone at Wikipedia had provided them. 207.176.159.90 01:26, 17 October 2007 (UTC)


 * With the exception of the Google Directory entry for Wikipedia itself. That was woefully inaccurate once, but within a few minutes of a thread starting somewhere here on Wikipedia complaining about it, the entry was corrected. It kind of reminded me of the story told about the Yalta Conference, where people in a closed conference room complained among themselves about the plants and the fish tank, and, as if by magic, a few days later the plants had been replaced and the fish tank freshened up. The thought was that the Soviets had the room bugged. Carcharoth 12:00, 13 October 2007 (UTC)


 * The Google directory gets its data from the Open Directory Project. Many Google search results use ODP descriptions, for example from http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/Society_and_Culture/Politics/People/Gore,_Al/ for the above example. You can suggest a new ODP description with "update listing" but the ODP editor who reviews it may reject it. It can take weeks before a changed ODP description is noticed by Google. PrimeHunter 02:22, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Collapsible tables
Hi, I'm using a local copy of mediawiki-1.9.3 and I can't get collapsible tables to work.

I have copied the code from articles elsewhere in this reference desk:

It works here as you can see:

There was no common.js, so I created one in the root directory of the local wiki. I went to the common.js page on wikipedia, pressed edit, then copied and pasted the code into my common.js. It contains: function collapseTable( tableIndex )

I tried editing my LocalSettings.php and added the following lines at the bottom: // Rob's changes $wgUseSiteCss = true; $wgUseSiteJs = true;

I also tried using {| class="collapseTable" width="60%"...

but I'm not sure what I'm doing.

Can someone help?

Dragonfallrob 14:49, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Is collapseTable the only function you grabbed? You also need createCollapseButtons and the call to addOnloadHook you'll find right below it. The class needs to be "collapsible".
 * You also need the var hasClass = (function js near the top of the file.

TCC (talk) (contribs) 00:04, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I copied the entire contents of http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Common.js. It contains the two you mentioned. I just re-copied it again just to be sure you are looking at the same code as me. The tables display, but are not collapsible. Dragonfallrob 08:32, 11 October 2007 (UTC)


 * You will also need to copy the "collapsible" classes defined in Common.css. — Edokter  •  Talk  • 17:34, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I don't see any related classes there. I also think that the redirect that you just used is invalid and should be deleted. Most likely Dragonfallrob's Common.js either doesn't work (try to insert ) or has some errors (look at error console in Firefox or Opera) ∴ Alex Smotrov 18:25, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * There are no related classes. Class "collapsible" is a pseudo-class used by createCollapseButtons to locate tables it needs to set up, but there's no code for it in any of the style sheets.


 * The only thing I can think of -- and here I'm just guessing -- is that Common.js isn't being loaded for some reason. If I'm not mistaken, it needs to be in the MediaWiki namespace. So you need to create a MediaWiki:Common.js.


 * If, as Alex says, errors are preventing it from executing to the point where the hooks are running, Firebug is a nice Firefox extension with a Javascript debugger. TCC (talk) (contribs) 23:20, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I think you may have cracked this one TCC. I looked for MediaWiki:Common.js and found a page with just a single comment on it. No code. Unfortunately, it won't let me update it. I'll have to wait a few days until the guy that built the Wiki returns - I assume he must have created some kind of admin userid that can get to it. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks for now. Dragonfallrob 12:20, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Finally got the password. Pasted the code into MediaWiki:Common.js and everything works fine. Many thanks guys.Dragonfallrob 08:25, 17 October 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.140.245.163 (talk)

Error in Wikipedia logo
The devanagiri character in Wikipedia logo is incorrect. It does not take the complex character rendering into account when rendering the phonetic "wi" in devanagiri. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Manishxjoshi (talk • contribs) 12:33, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, a lot of people are aware, including The New York Times. It really should be fixed, but there are copyright and other issues, including the actual ability to recreate it. --MZMcBride 20:13, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
 * This is another FAQ isn't it? Is there a page where this is explained? Carcharoth 22:09, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
 * If there isn't there probably should be. I wonder if Wikipedia has room for a project trivia page... :) Tuvok[T@lk/Improve me] 01:04, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
 * There is some very old discussion here. At the bottom of that page, there are links to more discussion. As for an actual FAQ, I don't believe one exists. --MZMcBride 01:05, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
 * WP:FAQ. This question is not frequent enough, based on a glance in there. There is Miscellaneous FAQ 1of3 15:15, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

pages stuck in a category
Sometimes, when a template is listed for deletion, all pages transcluding it will remain in CSD even after the template is fixed. You can see what I mean by looking at the history of this template: Ireland-writer-stub, which was fixed, but dozens of pages stayed in CSD until they were "touched" by me with edits like this:. Is there a way to remove them from the category without having to make null edits? --W.marsh 13:55, 13 October 2007 (UTC)


 * The job que is a background process that will "touch" all articles affected by edited templates and such, so no need for null edits. Except the que sometimes get very very long, so it may take a while for the update to probegate. Check Special:Statistics to see how big the current que is. If you can't wait for the que to catch up I'm afraid null edits are the only other alternative. --Sherool (talk) 14:00, 13 October 2007 (UTC)


 * You can tack "?action=purge" to the end of the urls of the articles and the cat to attempt to nudge the updating process. It's like a "null edit" without changing the article. Gimmetrow 14:03, 13 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, thanks... I'll just wait, then... I wasn't sure if it would get fixed automatically or not. I tried the manual purge thing and it didn't seem to work. --W.marsh 14:04, 13 October 2007 (UTC)


 * As an aside, you don't actually have to change the article when you touch it; just edit and save. It won't show up in the article history that way, either. &mdash;Cryptic 14:30, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a great tip. I didn't realize you could make a true null edit that updates the article but doesn't show in the history. -- Satori Son 14:32, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Why does plainlinks not set the color to the darker blue
What is the purpose of plainlinks, except to make a link that really is internal (to an edit page, or to special:log, or to history) look internal? Why, then, is it different in color? So many bytes have been spilled, so to speak, over this issue on various templates. Can someone explain this to me? —Random832 04:05, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * In a way, because there is no guarantee it is internal. Plainlinks can be used for other stuff, and saying more is probably a case of WP:BEANS. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 04:08, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

If you have a long list of links, putting the external link icon next to each is ugly. Also it can be removed to prevent the remote possibility of confusing noobs in instructional messages with such links. That's about it. 1of3 00:55, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Popups causing Internet Explorer to freeze up
Recently, Internet Explorer began to freeze up when I attempt to edit any article. The matter was resolved when I turned the popups off. When I turned it on again, the crashes occured again. However, I have no problems editing Wikipedia with popups when I used Opera. How can I fix IE? Thanks in advance.-- Alasdair 14:47, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, Popups is not compatible with Internet Explorer. Sorry, that applied to Twinkle. Popups should work according to the talk page, but may have problems. — Edokter  •  Talk  • 15:42, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Popups are sort of compatible with IE, but only to a limited extent. Most of the major features still work, but it's subject to periodic freezes, crashes, and so on. Also the menus aren't arranged as nicely in IE.  Like most JavaScript on Wikipedia, popups were written with Firefox in mind. And while most things that work on FF work on other browsers too, IE is usually the exception. -- VectorPotential Talk 19:10, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
 * What version of Internet Explorer are you using? —Remember the dot (talk) 20:50, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Automatic name disambiguation pages using DEFAULTSORT on biographical pages
I recently updated a disambiguation page (Aaron (name)) by looking at Category:Living people, which is fairly well sorted. I'm currently wondering whether to make another big push to get a supercategory set up for all people articles (dead ones as well as living), as the use of DEFAULTSORT seems to be fairly widespread now, so such a supercategory would really help with keeping dab pages up to date (similar in a way to how List of People by Name used to try and do this). Have a look at User:Carcharoth/List of living people compact index. It doesn't do anything the category system doesn't do already, but I think it would be nice to be able to do this for all people articles. Of course, getting an automated list would be even better. At the moment, the special prefixindex function will find all pages starting with a particular string, but what would be even better is if a page could be automatically generated to show all articles with the same surname in their DEFAULTSORT magic word! Of course, people would still be needed to annotate the dab pages, unless infobox information could be used to do that... I'm throwing this idea out here to see if people think it sounds  feasible and worth the effort of finding people who could make this work? Carcharoth 05:20, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It might be possible to do via bot, but the list of disambigs would need to be generated by hand and the sort key that we are using. βcommand 20:26, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm going to copy this to BOTREQ as well. :-) Carcharoth 13:41, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Tracking use of magic words (again)
I'd like to raise this issue again, or if no-one here has any further advice, to ask where to go next. See here for the previous discussion. What I'd ultimately like to see is something like Category:Default sort key missing for biographical articles (probably on the talk page), so they can be worked on. At the moment, there is Category:Biography articles without listas parameter, but that only works from a talk page template parameter (specifically, listas in WPBiography) and doesn't truly reflect DEFAULTSORT usage (it would only reflect the usage if the two values were synchronised on all pages). Ultimately, it all comes down to this simple question:"'Which biographical articles lack DEFAULTSORT'?"

Surely a simple question like that can't be that difficult? :-) Carcharoth 04:43, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Please see WP:BOTREQ, or I may do this. βcommand 20:28, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Copied over to BOTREQ. Carcharoth 13:38, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Problem with reverting back to the default skin
I am having problems accessing the Skin section in the My Preferences. Is there anything I can do. Caribbean1 15:23, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * See the FAQ section at the top of this page. The seventh bullet point may be just what you want.- gadfium 19:20, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Overlap
Screencap in Firefox 2.0.0.6 ) There seems to be a pretty bad overlap between the Wiktionary template and the cleanup templates.--69.118.235.97 12:58, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It's a known issue with most browsers. A solution is being considered. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:48, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * P.S. I think a good solution has finally been found. Let's hope we can welcome this in the coming week. --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:00, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Server load due to Search
I use Wikipedia very often in the course of my work. As a convenience, I've added a Wikipedia search widget to my browser's toolbar. When a query is entered, the search widget constructs a url using this template:

""

This should be equivalent to the Go button

Many queries exactly match an article title, except for capitalization. The vast majority of my searches are immediately redirected to articles. Only a few searches, perhaps 1%, return a list of results. I've set my preferences to restrict searches to the Main namespace and the Wikipedia namespace. I perform a few dozen to a few hundred searches a day.

Does this type of usage significantly affect server load? Various Wikipedia help pages suggest it does not, but I though I'd ask. There are a couple other ways I can achieve similar functionality without using Wikipedia's search function. &mdash;Ryan 02:53, 11 October 2007 (UTC)


 * That sounds just like the Wikipedia search that comes bundled with Firefox, so I doubt there are any problems. —Remember the dot (talk) 03:58, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * All Wikipedia pages contain a tag that suggests to some web browsers (at least Firefox 2, and possibly others) that they should do precisely what you're doing now. Besides, the traffic caused by that option looks the same to the servers as traffic by users searching via the Go button on Wikipedia itself, and a few hundred searches a day is hardly anything compared to the number of searches on Wikipedia altogether. So I don't think you need to worry about causing excess server load. --ais523 08:48, 11 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it's pretty unlikely I'll single-handedly bring down all of Wikipedia. I haven't been worried about that since 2004!  And while much has changed in the last three years, it sounds like search best practices are still the same.  Thanks for the replies, Remember the dot and ais523.  &mdash;Ryan 21:23, 14 October 2007 (UTC)