Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive B

What pages are not on anyone's watchlist?
Is there any way to get a list of how many watchlists a given page is on? This would give an indication of how closely watched a page is, and allow people to identify pages that were not being watched at all. Thanks, Intrigue 22:09, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * There's currently no way to do this. Shane King 04:58, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)


 * And the problem with doing it is that it would practically invite vandals into little-watched pages. Also, it's not clear how useful it would be for any other purpose, because a page might be watchlisted by someone who only logs in once a month. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:03, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)


 * I would also like to see this feature. The vandalism problem could be addressed by only making the info available to admins. Your second concern could be addressed by listing pages that have not recently been displayed on a watchlist. This would involve timestamping all articles on the watchlist in the process of displaying it, though, and that might incur excessive database activity. PhilHibbs 11:41, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I see no problem with such a list. With the use of the Related Changes function it could immediately become a communal watchlist, thus reducing the risk of vandalism to these articles. - SimonP 18:43, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)


 * I guess that if it isn't too hard to implement, it might be worth trying, but if I were a malicious vandal I would look for what was on the list, promptly watchlist them myself (so they would no longer be on the list) then vandalize on the theory that there's a fair chance I was the only one watching. The question is, how many people do we have who are that into vandalism for its own sake rather than wanting to vandalize particular articles. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:57, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)


 * It would take a very dedicated vandal to watchlist a page, wait several weeks for the unwatched list to be updated, and only then vandalize it. A bigger issue would be the thousands of pages only watched by users who are no longer active. - SimonP 01:54, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)


 * A possible solution to the vandal watching the non-watch list... would be to keep a page on the list until there are X number of admins watching it.  i.e. 2.  or just have it so that there are X number of people in general watching for it to drop off.  i don't think that vandals are roaming around here in packs.  though, SimonP brings up a great point.  and a solution would seem to bloat the script as would the solution i propose.  i feel that keeping scripts simple is important until there is the server strength to deal with regular users and complicated scripts.  (though that is a side note) Ramius V. Schweitzer 04:21, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)

Universal Logins
I've always wondered why one rarely sees vandalism on Wikibooks, Wiktionary etc. But, it could start soon as they are not as well protected as Wikipedia, making them 'soft targets'. What I was thinking is, wouldn't it be nice if one could log into every Wikimedia project in every language with the same Username without having to keep setting up a new username on each wiki. Admins could 'administrate' on Wikiquote too, for example. The 'recentchanges' and 'User Contributions' could have 'Show Wikisource' as well as 'Show bots' and so on. This may sound far fetched, but please notify me on my talk page of any comments/criticisms and of when you reply to this. I can't watch this page for reasons I won't go into, but messages on my talkpage come up in the pretty orange box. Thankyou,--[[User:Gabriel Webber|Gabriel Webber (babble were rig)]] 17:30, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * This has been discussed ad nauseum for months. The issue is that nobody has written the code to handle doing it. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 19:08, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * It does happen. PhilHibbs 11:46, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Categories
I attempted to make a new category, but simply typing in at the bottom of an article, but after I saved it, the category had not been created. I checked the FAQ to see if there was anything there about this, but sure enough, there was not. So how does one go about making a new category? This did not work. --ScottyBoy900Q &#8734; 00:26, 02 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * What you did was exactly right, but the category link will remain red until you edit the category itself. Each category should be assigned a parent, for example Category:Mass murderers (the lead colon here prevents the Village pump being assigned to the category, just like your Nowiki syntax above), and possibly a sentence or two explaining what the category is for. See also Categorization.-gadfium 00:58, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

link in sig
How can I display my sig so after my SN a link to my talk page would appear

for example: GregNorc|talk The "talk" part would link to my talk page. GregNorc

GregNorc|talk -- Jmabel | Talk 00:50, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

Because what you put into the signature box in your Preferences is really just placed inside a , the way that should be entered into your signature box in Preferences is User:GregNorc|GregNorc]]|[[User talk:GregNorc|talk. BLANKFAZE | (&#1095;&#1090;&#1086;??) 01:15, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Oops. Sorry. -- Jmabel | Talk 05:30, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)


 * Hm. I can't get this to work. My nickname contains this:

&lt;nowiki>&lt;/nowiki>]] &mdash; PhilHibbs | [[User talk:PhilHibbs|talk
 * and it produces this:   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 17:27, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Good lord, it does work! I was testing it in my talk page, it must be that you can't link to a page from within itself!   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 17:28, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for the help, I'm off to test my new sig in the sandbox GregNorc

red link to blank page (VfD replacement)
I've been hearing for some time about a proposed feature which would make links to blank pages red, as if they pointed to a nonexistant page. This would mean that VfDs, and the resulting flame wars, would be obsolete. Any contributor could "delete" an article by blanking a page, and any other contributor could "undelete" it by reverting the blank. Is this really being worked on? If so, how is the work progessing? If not, then why not? I mod for a MediaWiki-based wiki, and we're really starting to need a deletion policy... crazyeddie 09:08, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Offhand, that sounds like a terrible idea. VfD may not be ideal, but it centralizes a type of decision that is inherently major and makes sure it is not overhastily. I'd say that one out of every ten VfD nominations simply draws attention to an article for which the person who originally posted to VfD lacked context and that simply needs some TLC. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:29, Nov 30, 2004 (UTC)

One of the things that working with wikis has taught me is that centralization does not scale. This method would decrease the importance of the decision, since any contributor who disagrees could undo it. At worst, this could lead to a revert war, which we have developed countermeasures for. Some other, less controversial, method could be found to draw attention to that 1 out of 10 VfD articles that need TLC. But I'm not here to debate wether or not this is a good idea, I'm here to see if anything is actually being done with it. Is there? crazyeddie 00:38, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I intend to work on "something" in regards to the whole vfd mess. What that "something" is I'm not sure yet, as there are a lot of options and not much consensus on which direction to proceed. I had some initial ideas here that just involved making the current vfd situation more workable. I still think that implementing that solution is the least likely to cause mass controversy, so may proceed along those lines. There are other ideas at Deletion management redesign, but little agreement on what to do with them (the blank page idea is amoung them). I think one of the reasons nobody has tackled them is because nobody really wants to stick their neck out and write a feature that many people are going to disagree with. On the other hand, if a feature gets written, at least the debate will come out of the abstract and gain some urgency. Shane King 00:52, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure our current approach is really "centralization" since we now maintain a separate VfD page for each VfD'd article, linked from the article itself. All that is really centralized is what is effectively an index of all of these, for those of us who want to make sure none of them go by unseen. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:57, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)

"Centralization" was probably a poor choice of words. One of the things I like most about wikis is that they, on the whole, function as an Anarchy - a society where everybody works towards the common good without need for outside coercion. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, and the whole problem of deleting entire pages is probably the messiest of them. I personally like the blank page idea because it takes the problem out of the mods' hands and puts it back into the common contributors'.

The reason I'm asking this question is that the wiki I mod for is getting to the point where we need to come up with a deletion policy - and the blood stains from the VfD pages aren't exactly encouraging. It sounded like the blank page idea might solve the problem, and I was hoping that we could put off a decision until the hoped-for miracle popped out of the MediaWiki coding room. Doesn't look like it, from what y'all are saying.

It sounds like nothing is being done because it would be a huge change to the status quo. So why not do a test case first? The Powers-That-Be at my wiki haven't made any decisions - but I think I could sell them on the blank page idea, at least in priniciple. But I think it's more than what our own coding staff want to bite off.

So if we did decide to go that way, would somebody be willing to do the coding? And, just to be on the safe side, what are some of the objections to the blank page idea? crazyeddie 06:29, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * If you read the meta page I linked to (and associated pages), it goes into the various options, including the blank page idea. Like I said, I do plan to code something, I just don't know what yet, because I'm still weighing up the pros and cons of various approaches. I think whatever gets done is always going to by necessity have an element of unilateralness on behalf of whoever writes the code. That's unfortunate, and I think it's why nothing has been done so far. It's getting to the point where anything would be better than doing nothing, so I guess someone just needs to wear the flak they'll get for changing the status quo. Shane King 03:40, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

It's 2AM local, so I'm not sure how lucid this is going to be. I suppose I should just wait until morning, but I'd like to keep this discussion live. I did read that meta page, after I posted my last comment. I even added some comments to the blank page proposal's talk page. None of the objections I've seen look like a show stopper to me. Does anybody have any fresh ones? I've put the matter before my wiki's Moderator's Council, but I haven't heard anything back yet.

About coming to a decision on this issue: Like I said, Anarchy is the best way to run things - if you can do it that way. When you can't, democracy is the next best thing. I wish the Wikipedia had some policy making body for situations where there isn't a clear consensus and not much chance of one. Like a moderators' council or something. But that's for a different thread. At any rate, our wiki is still pretty young, and where it isn't an Anarchy it's a dictatorship/oligarchy - which we're working on. Getting a definte answer one way or the other shouldn't be a problem.

Our wiki doesn't currently have a system similar to VfD - so any system is a step up. We have a lot fewer users than the Wikipedia, so if there is a bug hidden in the idea, the explosion will be smaller. We run on MediaWiki, so porting the patch, once it's been written, is no biggie. As you said, an actual implementation should bring the discussion to a head, and having the results of a test case in the bag will be good - for whichever side. Shane, I realize you might not want to put much effort into an idea you aren't exactly sure will pan out. I'll understand if you don't want to do this particular route. If you do decide you don't want to go this route, do you know of any coders who support the idea who might be willing to put their money where their mouth is? Assuming the leadership of my wiki actually agrees to this of course. 68.184.13.240 08:24, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oops - forgot to log in. crazyeddie 08:27, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * This is a FABULOUS idea, it is much more in line with the spirit of wikis, scales well, and meets the needs of both inclusionists and deletionists. The decision is reversible, so mistakes can easily be corrected. Let's go! Intrigue 22:46, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Well, the 1.4 release of the software is currently in beta, so any changes aren't going to make it into that. 1.5 is hoped to make it about February, so there's plenty of time to get the feature into it. I don't think it's a big deal about effort: writing the code to do the blank page stuff should be fairly easy. Maybe what I should do is write it as an optional feature. That way, it can default to off, but since the code is there, we can get an actual vote going as to whether people want it turned on or to retain the existing VfD system. I think people need a concrete alternative before they're going to OK a change. Shane King 23:07, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

It does sound like a great idea. One minor thing though is that it will probably still be required to be able to edit/remove a specific historical version of an article to satisfy potential legal requirements for things like libel or copyright violations where there is a determination that content actually be deleted. This should hardly ever occur and could probably be left in the hands of the founding fathers of a particular wiki. --KayEss 04:49, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes, please make it an option! Wikipedia is not the only wiki that uses MediaWiki and these other wikis might not have as big a coding staff as the Wikipedia. And, yes, the sysop ability to "hard delete" illegal pages should be retained, IMO. crazyeddie 09:20, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Nippori station - wrong location
I notice that Nippori station is on the Taito ward page. It is actually in Arikawa ward. The Taito/Arakawa borderline is along the west edge of the station. Rather than mess things up trying to correct the problem, someone in authority should fix it. Dick


 * There is no one in authority except the person who spots the error and knows better. ;) Go ahead and change it! -- ran [[User talk:Ran|(talk)]] 17:12, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

rcdumper
The live Recent Changes feature, rcdumper, merely displays the header with no data. Perhaps I am not waiting long enough? Ancheta Wis 10:49, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Tentative inclusion into a category
Have you ever seen edit wars on whether an article should be put into a given category or not? Today I tried a new way to resolve one such dispute by creating a specially titled redirect page that bears the disputed categorization, and I hope others might find this approach useful. Details at User:BACbKA. Feedback welcome at my talk page. BACbKA 22:00, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Frequent type of disagreement, but not all that often one that I've seen real disputes around except where the category itself is called into question. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:06, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I don't like your solution: we could propagate far too many of these, because they give a way to fail to resolve matters that ought to be resolved. As for the specific case, Hasbara is certainly "propaganda": as the both the article Propaganda and the text on category:propaganda point out, although the word tends to be used as a pejorative, that is not inherent in the word. If it were, it wouldn't be NPOV and the entire category would be invalid. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:13, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)
 * As for the specific case, I welcome you to discuss it on the specific talk page and not here, although in general I do support the inclusion in that case. In general, I think that the approach gives a possibility of publishing both points of view with relevant attribitions with respect to the inclusion, and a way to stop an edit war where one party adds and the other removes the categorization. Just extending the NPOV principle to categorization. BACbKA 11:16, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sect-stub
Due to some changes in the MediaWiki software, the   template no longer functions properly. I have no idea how to fix it. It use to allow the section number to be inserted but this is no longer the case. I do not know what went wrong, but unless this technical problem is not resolved, the template must be deleted. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:14, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Er... I did some strange fudging around.  Apparently, my fudging has made it work again.  I have no idea how.  Or for that matter, why it works this way, but not any other. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:38, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Nevermind... apparently people don't read the usage of this stub. -- AllyUnion (talk) 12:46, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New Messages
Every time that I fire up Wikipedia, I get the message "You have new messages. But when I click on the link to see my User talk page there aren't any. Any ideas? Jeff Knaggs 17:02, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the first Wikipedia page you see you are pulling out of your computer's browser cache. Try refreshing it right after it loads (shift-refresh on IE, other ways on other browsers) to see if you still get the new messages note. Antandrus 18:38, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Also, try making any trivial edit to your user talk page. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:10, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

Update of uncategorized pages
In the past the uncategorized pages were updated once a week. But now, the first 1000 uncategorized pages of the Catalan version are always the same since one month ago. Could the list be updated once a week again or could show ALL the uncategorized pages and no only the first 1000? Llull 14:39, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm planning to increase the sizes of many of the special reports. Also on my to do list is making more of them automatic and as many as possible updated daily. I expect I'll update them next week but it's not guaranteed - lots of other things happening at the moment on the technical side. Jamesday 08:01, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * OK. Thx. Llull 09:07, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Feature Suggestion: Signature to include link to revision
I would like to be able to sign my comments including a link to the diff that I have just created. For instance, if I put, I would get ... wait for it .... this: PhilHibbs 11:48, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC) diff

The advantage would be that I could then defend myself more easily in the case of a who-said-what war, and more to the point, prominent users such as Jimbo could use this to ensure that no-one can credibly impersonate them. PhilHibbs 11:53, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Alternatively, a magic tag that could be put into a sig, like this: PhilHibbs | talk | &#948; 16:37, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * What? Surely an impersonator could just manually include a link to the diff. I don't see the point. Shane King 04:43, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)


 * The diff page shows the user that made the change, and the content of the change. It can't be faked.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 11:20, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * OK, if you actually click on the diff and look for the diff link, I see what you mean now. I'll look into whether this is possible. Shane King 01:10, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)


 * As per the bug in bugzilla, I don't think it's really practical to do this right now. Shane King 02:16, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)


 * The closest they could come would be to find another page where Jimbo says something contextual like "I agree" and link to that.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 11:33, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

History more than 5000 edits ago
I'm wanting to see the history of the Requests for adminship page, but I've got a problem. You can't see past 5000 edits ago. Here's the link to the 500 after 4500. Is there some way that I don't know about? -- user:zanimum
 * There's a deliberate hard limit at 5000 for resource usage reasons. Unfortunately at the moment the query has to fetch all 5000 rows and then only display the last 500, which is bad enough, if you could go back further it would really bog the database down. So I think you're out of luck. Shane King 00:55, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)


 * Here's a way. Type the numbers you want in the URL itself.  For example, I changed the numbers in the URL line so that the records start at an offset of  5500 with a limit of 500, so here are edits from 5500 to 5999:  It seems to work. By the way, this way you can get more than 500 at one fetch (change the "limit" number to whatever you want). Hope this helps! Antandrus 01:09, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Please use caution when it comes to changing the limits. In particular, do not: While we have measures in place to limit the harm these things can do, large limit changes can cause unpredictable site response time and annoy people, so it's good to try to do these things off peak. The right edge is the current UTC time; you can see the previous day to the left. We expect MediaWiki 1.5 to have enhancements which will make it possible to remove the limit on how far back in article history you can go. Jamesday 10:56, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * use multiple browser windows or tabs
 * try again within five minutes of the first attempt
 * retry more than once within an hour after receiving a database error saying that the database server has shut down

Is the watchlist system faulty?
I have been taking part in the efforts to refine the No Original Research policy, and have these pages tabbed for my watchlist.The last one I received on my watchlist was dated the 14 Dec, yet on going into the page just now I see that are a number of contributions later that day and a number today (Dec 15). Is anyone else having this kind of problem? Apwoolrich 18:36, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * No its not. I had not realised that each sub-page needs to be watched as well. Yet another case of my not reading the manual!! Apwoolrich 18:42, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Now there's an interesting feature possibility, although Votes for deletion would quickly force it to its knees. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 20:26, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

article tampered with
The communism acticle has been tampered with and I would wish to request that it be repaired. thank you.

If this is the wrong area to report stuff like this. Can you please send me the area to report stuff like this at ghostrecon7@hotmail.com.


 * The best place to report ongoing vandalism is Vandalism in progress. Any given article can, of course, be fixed by whoever noticed the vandalism. I'll write "ghost" to explain. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:55, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Please answer my question (customizing look of Wikipedia)
Hello Im was looking on the internet and I found this place. I read what it was about and decided to join. I have a question for the other wikipedians. How do you change the color of the text if at all possible. Thanks,


 * If you just want to change the color that your username appear from red to black blue like most other people's usernames, just edit your user page (not the talk page). It only appears red because that page is blank.
 * If you want to customise the look of Wikipedia, firstly look at your preferences->skin and try the different options. I prefer the "Classic" skin myself. You can customise a skin, but I haven't tried that myself.
 * If you want some text in an article to appear with a specific color, I believe that you can do that with standard html markup, but it's not normally a good idea. No reason why you couldn't do this on your talk page, however.-gadfium (talk) 21:25, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Gadfium

Queries about template-generated auto-categorisation
I have a couple of questions about automatically generated categories - the type where you add a template and hey presto your article's categorised. Grutness talk 11:04, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * 1) There are now some 5000 geo-stubs sitting in one category. Of these, a couple of hundred (at a guess) are New Zealand places. How do I create a "NZ-place" stub template... or if that?s an admin only task, who would I ask about creating one?
 * 2) A similar question about pictures. I have uploaded several pictures using the ?Non-commercial use only? template. They are now in a category with nearly 300 other images. The template at the top of the category page says: ?Please consider placing your image in a new or existing subcategory if this category is too large.? How do I go about creating a subcategory in Non-commercial use only pictures? Surely if I put a category message on the image page the ?N-C U O? template would still add the image to the parent category as well - or am I missing something here? Again, if that?s an admin only task, who would I ask about creating one? Even just subcategories for ?portraits? and ?places? would be useful.


 * Create a page at Template:NZ-stub (or something similar) and then use it like . See Template:Australia-stub for an example. Same sort of thing goes for question 2. Shane King 04:11, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)
 * ok, thanks. I think I'll use Template:kiwi-stub. Grutness hello? [[Image:Grutness.jpg|30px|]]
 * Bear in mind that you can actually use a "private" user sub-page as a template. You could therefore create  and add that to the sub-category you want to use; then include   in each of your pictures and you're cooking. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 08:15, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)
 * ah! Thanks. I wasn't aware of that. Grutness hello? [[Image:Grutness.jpg|30px|]]

Thumbnail not updating
I'm having some issues with the University of Canterbury page. I uploaded an image of the library (which ended up being sideways) to the Commons. On discovering it was sideways I decided to upload a different image. My issue is that in the article it is still the sideways image (well to me anyway) and when you click on the image you get the updated image but all blown up way too much because it is being stretched to the resolution of the old image. I hope that people will understand what I mean. Evil Monkey &rarr; Talk 05:16, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)
 * Looks fine to me. Probably your browser is caching the old image.-gadfium (talk) 05:39, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Good to know that its just me. Evil Monkey &rarr; Talk

Display of the special characters toolbar won't work anymore with MediaWiki 1.4
You have at MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning some javascript:insertTags from wikibits, so people can add special chars when editing a page. This doesn't work anymore with MediaWiki 1.4. because it won't leave the html tags untouched, but makes a "& lt;a href.." out of a "<a href.." Is there an other way or a workaround? 80.133.91.221 09:36, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Speed limit for bots going up?
There is a proposal pending on Wikipedia talk:Bots to raise the speed limit for bot edits to "sequential edits only" from one every 10 seconds. Please comment before 18 Dec 2004. Evaluation (postitive or negative) from people familiar with system load issues is desired. -- Beland 00:07, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Search index crawl scheduling
How often does the search index get updated completely? If I edit an article, how soon will that change be reflected in a search? Jewbacca 00:01, Dec 13, 2004 (UTC)


 * About twice a week. May be less often if other things are happening which either make completing the job impractical or leave me without the time free to do it. May be omre often if I can find a way to make it practical. Jamesday 02:53, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Getting right-to-left text to display correctly
See the source for Gabriel Asaad. Apparently, on my browser, the first line of text reads:


 * Gabriel Asaad (in Syriac: 1907) ( [Syriac text], Midyat–1997) ...

So in this case, the right-to-left text "leaks" to other text following it. Is there a hack I can use to display it correctly? Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 04:44, Dec 12, 2004 (UTC)

Use the character entity &amp;lrm; to display the following text from left to right. This is an example. Susvolans (pigs can fly) 10:13, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New version of MediaWiki
Firstly, please reply on my talk page. OK, I see further up this page, that MediaWiki 1.4 (I think) will have a feature enabling a user to say that s/he has checked an edit? Well, excellent idea. When will it be up and running?--Gabriel Webber (babble were rig) 18:16, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I also think this feature will be very useful :). Thue | talk 22:30, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In use now at Commons and meta, en willl be one of the last to be converted because we don't want to inflict any bugs or load issues on the biggest project, with the largest audience, first. Likely to be completely rolled out gradually over the next two weeks. Jamesday 00:08, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Editor has no listed contributions, even though I see them
User:Arnold1 recently made these edits: and. However, Special:Contributions/Arnold1 is claiming that he has no edits at all. What's going on? -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:52, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Try this link:   I see two edits.  I navigated there manually. Antandrus 18:05, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I had the same symptom as first described, via both the methods mentioned, but when I looked at one of the diffs, and then hit contribs, everything looked OK. Cacheing problems, probably.  Noisy | Talk 18:33, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)


 * I also notice that my watchlist does not show the latest changes, and also the missing user contributions mentioned above. Most likely this is because one (or several) or the squids lost connection to the database server, and then serve older versions. It's a bit hard to do vandalism watching when this happens, but normally the squids get in sync again after some time. andy 09:33, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Rather than the Squids, this is usually the database slaves. At present they give you the most up to date information which has reached them. In MediaWiki 1.4 they will wait up to a few seconds to get the latest information - until updates on the master at the time you requested the page have reached hte slave or until a few second timeout expires. Jamesday 00:06, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Births by Year
So here's a question for you: There are categories for births in various centuries, such as Category:13th century births, that have a super-category of Category:Births by year. So why aren't all those century births sub-categories showing up on the births by year category page? Is it some template wierdness? Thanks. &mdash; RJH 21:56, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * It's some template weirdness. You can use a template to place an article in a category, provided the category is constant.  If the category is not constant, but is derived from parameters passed to the template, then it doesn't work properly.  Placing a category in a parent category is essentially the same as placing an article in a category.  So, I recommend that you place  directly in all the "Category:xx century births" pages, instead of attempting to get a template to do it for you.  &mdash;AlanBarrett 08:31, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Yes that seemed to work, although now the 'Category:13th century births' has two categories for Births by year. Maybe that will be fixed in a future revision of this Wiki? Thanks. &mdash; RJH 19:48, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * The duplication is because you still have it in the template. &mdash;Mike 00:58, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)
 * I've been using a lot of templates recently, most with categories, both using and not using parameters to determine the category. They work.  (However, after editing a template, one may need to edit the category [adding a comment, for example] to get the new category/ies to show up). – ABCD (talk) 22:28, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Maybe Category:Births by year needed a purge ? -- User:Docu

User contributions
Will I ever be able to see my most recent edits on my User contributions page?  18:01, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

My contributions are appearing and recorded in the articles' histories, but my own "User contribution" page does not list recent contribs. Wonder why Ensiform 18:55, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * well, it's fixed now Ensiform 20:00, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Are you sure?  17:55, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)


 * Now an interesting new phenomenon&mdash;at least new to me&mdash;has appeared: Whenever I want to click on "My contributions" the whole line at the top jumps to the left.  17:58, Dec 1, 2004 (UTC)


 * Still the same. I know that my last edit was John Cameron, but it just doesn't show up at my user contributions, whatever I do. And the whole line at the top is afraid of the mouse it seems. What on earth is going on? And why am I always the only one?  22:05, Dec 6, 2004 (UTC)


 * It's usually a brief delay and depends on the particular database slave your particular query was sent to and its load at the time. Some enhancements in MediaWiki 1.4 make it less likely that you'll see this effect (thouugh at the cost of waiting a bit longer for the page display instead of getting the best immediately available result). Jamesday 00:02, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Page not found error" when viewing old version of Chatham Albatross
Hi, I just got the following message when trying to view an old version (from 10:09, 21 Sep 2004) of Chatham Albatross.

The database did not find the text of a page that it should have found, named "Chatham Albatross,oldid=7902235". If it is a recently changed page, trying again in a minute or two will usually work. Alternatively, you may have followed an outdated diff or history link to a page that has been deleted. If this is not the case, you may have found a bug in the software. Please report this to an administrator, making note of the URL.

The URL is http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Chatham_Albatross&oldid=7902235

-- S.K. 17:22, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * This is currently routine when the database slaves lag a little, or sometimes longer if they have been very busy or a fault of some sort has stopped replication. Version 1.4 of MediaWiki, being rolled out gradually now, has improvements to this which cause the web server to wait up to a few seconds for the updates to make it to the slave. 1.4 is currently in service at Commons, Meta, September 11 and a couple of others smaller wikis. Recent changes, watchlists and article histories are also affected by this and may currently miss the most recent updates sometimes. Jamesday 23:58, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A question concerning page refresh rate and search
Not being the best speller in the world, i typed in februrary into the search and then opened up dictionary.com in another window to varify my spelling. i found about 10 sites that had the incorrect spelling of february and fixed them. well, that was 24 hours ago, i did the same search today and came up with the exact same 10 pages though they had been fixed (and yes, i checked to make sure that february had not been spelled wrong in some other location on the pages. my question is: how long does it take the servers to recognize a content edit like that.Ramius V. Schweitzer 20:19, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)


 * Should be instant.
 * You probably have copies of the old pages cached on your computer. Try refreshing the page to get the latest copy.
 * Maxx 09:48, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks, though in my defense, i did delete the cache, history and cookies. i even went so far as to open a different browser.  my thought is, having some experiance with linux and it's finder/locate command, is that to constantly index every page and every update would overload the servers...  so, like most systems, i now assume that the pages are indexed once a day and not all at the same time.  this would make sense due to some lag i've noticed in the early morning hours US EST. Ramius V. Schweitzer 21:19, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)


 * Search is typically updated twice a week. I and others continue to research and implement ways to make it more frequent but so far growth has succeeded in always eating the benefit of any improvements...:) For smaller wikis than those operated here, the updates are immediate but that become impractical for us for load reasons, with some 250,000 changes per week in the English language Wikipedia alone. Jamesday 23:54, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject computers
Hi all,

I've started a new Wikiproject on one of our favourite items: computers! We have an absolute ton of computer experts and enthusiasts on Wikipedia, all willing to edit computer related articles. Now is the time for us to start on the structure as I've only made the initial shell of the project.

Please, all feel free to contribute!

Ta bu shi da yu 07:49, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Registration Deletion
Is there a way to have my registration deleted??? Kind regards eliZZZa 17:54, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)eliZZZa
 * Put a tag on your user page, and I or some other admin will delete it. This won't stop you logging in if you change your mind, but your user page and talk page will be gone. I won't delete it just with the message on this page in case you accidentally left yourself logged in and someone else used your account.-gadfium (talk) 05:12, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * If you mean your user account, it's impossible for accounts to be deleted. Rdsmith4 (talk) 16:32, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What to use instead of id=toc to give TOC-like table settings?
It became commonplace to use 'id=toc' to give a pleasing format to tables in articles. I recall seeing somewhere recently that a new id had been created for this purpose, rather than using the TOC id which was not intended for that purpose, but I can't remember what it was nor where I read about it. What should I be using? &mdash;Morven 16:57, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)


 * I think it's . Rdsmith4 (talk) 16:48, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Category creation
I attempted to create a category Category:Australian Cabinet ministers, but when I open it I see a message telling me the page does not exist, even though the articles which I have linked to it (Edmund Barton, Austin Chapman) appear in this non-existent page. Have I done something wrong? Adam 09:36, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * In addition to adding the tag to articles, you have to create the category page itself. The category page should contain category tags for parent categories (I created that one and added Category:Australian politicians) and optionally a brief description with a link to the main article about the topic if one exists. - Fredrik | talk 12:42, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

And how do I create a Category page? This contradicts the information at the Help page, which says you just add a tag to a page and the Category page comes into existence. Adam 14:06, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * The help page is indeed in error if that is what it says. Category pages must be created, and they are created just like regular articles. Category pages are normal pages, with the added feature that pages that have a category link to them get listed at the bottom. Fredrik | talk 14:17, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * You edit the page for the new category just like any other page. The articles with the new category tag will be added to the page for the new category automatically, but you should add some categories to it so that the new category finds its way into more general categories (in your case, for example, Category:Australian people and Category:Politicians are probably appropriate); optionally, you can also add a description, e.g. "This category includes Australian Cabinet ministers - see List of Australian Cabinet ministers."  I think Fredrik has done if for you already. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:19, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wiktionary
What happened to Wiktionary? pstudier 00:31, 2004 Dec 16 (UTC)


 * Is this a trick question? Wiktionary just turned one year old. Is it unhappy someone forgot its birthday? -- Jmabel | Talk 01:01, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)


 * I should have been more specific. Your link "Wiktionary" is broken, and Wikipedia's main page's list of sister project lists Wictionary as "Temporarily unavailable".  One might expect something under Announcements, but I don't see anything.  pstudier 01:17, 2004 Dec 16 (UTC)


 * Works for me. Maybe you need to clear a cache? -- Jmabel | Talk 01:55, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)


 * Wiktionary.org was allowed to expire, and was then reregistered. Your DNS server may not have caught back up. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 02:32, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Automated HTML tables to Wiki markup tables
Surely someone has written a macro or script or something that converts a simple HTML table to Wiki table markup. I could sure use it. Hate to have people re-inventing the wheel. Niteowlneils 21:30, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * There was a bot running at the German Wikipedia after the advent of the Wiki table style, which converted all the tables over there. However there were several cases where the bot made the table worse, falling in the pitfall of optional HTML elements, web browsers allowing broken table syntax and still displaying something reasonable etc. The bot used the user name de:Benutzer:Zwobot, and IIRC de:Benutzer:Head was one of those who managed a good deal of the table conversion. andy 22:35, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * See Tools.-gadfium (talk) 22:41, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I have just added Kevin Rector's tool to that list: it lives here. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 09:16, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)

Great. Thanks guys. I added the Tools page to the Village Pump Resources section to make these easier for people to find. It helped me with Rockingham County Public Schools, Washington, DC schools, and Rhode Island Schools, so far. Niteowlneils 20:16, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

country maps in different languages
Quite a number of country articles use country maps from the CIA world factbook (which seems to be public domain). I have noticed that some of these maps have been reworked (at least in the German and Dutch Wikipedia) to have country names, ocean names etc. in the language of the Wiki. We need such maps for Low Saxon (nds.wikipedia.org), and I would like to know how to do that. Kind regards Heiko Evermann 22:56, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * 1) Has anyone already made Gimp-files with a proper layering, where the names can be changed easily?
 * 2) if not, would it be worth to start that, and if so, how? Where could such maps be stored?

--Halibutt (talk) 03:07, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)
 * 1) You should ask at the WikiProject Maps, perhaps someone there might help you
 * 2) Definitely the commons is the place to go :)

Transcription of arabic names, could it be uniform?
Hassan al-Banna, Darul Islam... These transcriptions show no common criterion. We should say Hassanul Banna and Darul Islam or Hassan al-Banna and Dar al-Islam, which I prefer because it shows the word unchanged in different syntactic functions and separated from its article, so it is clearer both for arabists and non-arabists. Of course, there's the question of transcriptions which have already been fixed in the press. Even in this case I would prefer to ignore it and follow the encyclopedia criterion. For instance, if we have already chosen to write "bin" we should write "Ladin". Both "bin Ladin" or "ben Laden" would be correct, but there is no reason to write "bin Laden" except for the fact that it is the way in which the press writes it. I think an encyclopedia should be more careful than press in these questions. And nothing prevents users to be redirected from "bin Laden" to "bin Ladin", for instance.


 * The convention I can refer you to is Naming_conventions_(common_names). "Bin Laden" may be "incorrect" to you, but is common.  Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 21:19, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)
 * That reminds me: I've been wondering--anybody know why we use "al qaeda" (800k hits) while most everybody else uses "al qaida" (3 million hits)? Niteowlneils 03:34, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * That it's common isn't reason enough. We shouldn't spread common misstakes just becuase of that they are common. That's just a reaosn for having a redirect that redircts you to the correct name (or one correct name if there are several). Now I don't know anything about this specific case (arabic names) but in Sweden the media use "bin Ladin". Jeltz 18:49, 2004 Dec 12 (UTC)
 * Actually, most common name is the standard naming convention for articles. And in cases of transliteration from non-roman alphabets, where there may be any number of "correct" variations, the most common usage is the best guide. older &ne; wiser 19:04, Dec 12, 2004 (UTC)
 * Yes, as long as the most common one is correct. That was what I meant. There are a few cases where things most commonly are refered by an incorrect name (can't think of any good example for th moment), and then it shouldn't have that title. Jeltz 21:49, 2004 Dec 12 (UTC)
 * Not just when the most common one is correct. When it's the most common. The idea is that people who use it in the most common way should end up at the place they expect. The article itself should definitely give any preferred or alternative forms (and those should have redirects). In English the rule is fairly simple: the language is what the people say it is, even if you and I know better in theory...:) There's no language council to decide on official names, it's all based on usage. Jamesday 02:46, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * You are correct. There is no correct way to transliterate anything from non-Roman into Roman than the common usage.  Since the most common English usage is bin Laden, that's what it should be.  Correct in this sense is what the people make it, not what a professor who sits around with too much time on his hands thinks it should really be.--naryathegreat 02:49, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

Self-duplicating categories?
When I posted the article on The Dark Frontier I decided to put two categories at the end of the text: "Novels" and "1936 books". Apart from other things which were unnecessarily added (for example, "See also 1936 in literature")&mdash;without anyone else editing the text!&mdash; the novel is now in four categories, one of which is "Literature", which does not really fit.

What is going on here?  01:11, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)
 * You used braces – instead of brackets . The former include a template, which in this case was probably intended for use within a category, not within an article.-gadfium (talk) 01:32, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * How stupid of me! Thanks a lot, and all the best,  01:51, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)

Bizarre...
Images on the pages I updated yesterday aren't displaying... for some reason "300px" (e.g.) in the tag is being interpreted as part of the image's filename (as in "foo.jpg-300px" or something like that), and the image as originally named doesn't display. Anyone know what's up with that? jkl_sem 18:19, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Prob appears to have gone away... jkl_sem 18:43, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Nemo
Two images on Captain Nemo appear dead, but can be accessed by other means: Talk:Captain_Nemo. Server error? Anárion 12:32, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yep - there is a problem with uploading and displaying images at the moment. The developers (in particular Tim Starling) are working on this as we speak. -- sannse (talk) 12:50, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Stubs
Two problems - I don't think they're related. I added the kiwi-stub info to the Template_messages/Stubs/By_region page, and instead of the picture and text of the stub message, the link Template:MetaPicstub appeared. It looks like this has happened to about 50% of the listed stubs.


 * That's because the templates listed use Template:MetaPicstub - and each template can only be used on any one page 5 times or so. -- sannse (talk) 14:25, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Second problem, a png for NZ-geo-stub that I uploaded successfully earlier today (at Image:SimpleNZtiny.png) seems to have died in the last hour or two. It was there, but now all I get is a red X. Grutness hello? 13:28, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Same problem??
An image I uploaded Image:Ostrya virginiana.jpg only comes up as a red 'x'. I've tried re-uploading three times, from two different browsers, same result each time.

Also another existing image at carriage, when I copied it to a second page cartwheel it only shows as a red 'x', although it still shows at carriage. - MPF 13:36, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yep - all these image problems are part of the same thing - all to do with server setup complications. --sannse (talk) 14:05, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Looks like they've fixed the problem folks. Some images may need to be re-uploaded I think -- sannse (talk) 14:31, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I took the liberty of deleting the two redundant versions out of the four on Image:Ostrya virginiana.jpg. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 19:28, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

funny things going on with uploads
Anyone else having trouble. I uploaded a couple of images, first they wouldn't work, thne they did and now they've disappeared and I can't upload them again, even with different filenames. I've tried reloading not from my cache. erm... Dunc|&#9786; 17:49, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I'm experiencing the same problem. It appears to have only affected newly added images.  GRider\talk 18:07, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Should be resolved now. Requests for uploads were being sent to the wrong server. --Brion 22:58, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Has this problem come back again? I just uploaded two images, the image page, reported size and comment seem ok but no image to be seen... Andreww 12:14, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Special:FindSpam
What is this page, how do we use it, and what does it do? &#8212;Charles P. (Mirv) 00:17, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * You can see the source code for it at . It's sort of like Special:Contributions, but it works across all Wikimedia wikis. It uses the rc table so it will only show edits made in the last week or so Goplat 00:38, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Double blocking
Could someone settle what happens when someone is blocked twice? Is it cumulative, or does the higher, lower, or last of the two blockings count? &#0xfeff;--fvw *  23:22, 2004 Dec 16 (UTC)
 * I think the earlier expiration date/time is used. Could anybody confirm this? -- Chris 73 Talk 02:21, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)

Search results without the term searched for
I expect that the Wikipedia search engine has been discussed ad nauseam, but why is it that it sometimes returns hits that appear to have nothing to do with the querey you searched for? I had just searched for "thier" as a common misspelling that I figured would be in several articles, found >100 hits using the Search function, and not one of the first ten contained the word "thier". Should I just use Google? &mdash; Asbestos | Talk 09:35, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Stranger and stranger. Just tried the same search and found a spelling error on the first hit which was Batman. Checked further articles but found no more errors so returned to Batman to correct the spelling and the error was no longer there (or should that be thier :)). Maxx 16:57, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I don't know the details of the Wikipedia search crawl, but in general most sites only schedule it once or twice a day. Also, between various caches and squids along the way, there is sometimes a delay before changes are seen. In any case, "thier" was fixed in the Batman article in the "Revision as of 01:49, 14 Dec 2004". In general, typos caught by search engines are often fixed before the search results refresh, especially on something as dynamic as Wikipedia. I doubt any alternative would produce better results. For example, searching the full net, adding a 'minus' term to a google search often increases the number of hits found, for reasons I can't fathom. Niteowlneils 18:43, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the info - that's obviously what causes odd results. I do sometimes find that searching wikipedia through Google (using site:en.wikipedia.org) finds results that the search bar doesn't, so Google is often my first choice.   &mdash; Asbestos | Talk 11:40, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Spam protection filter"?!
I tried to move Hawaiian sovereignty movement from Category:Hawaii to a new, more specific Category:Hawaii politics. After hitting the save button, I got a message I've never seen before: "The page you wanted to save was blocked by the spam filter. This is probably caused by a link to an external site." The link in question was to a valid article on the subject that merely happened to be posted on an angelfire personal web page.

I don't know how or why this got set up, who or how websites and hosts are included for filtering, but this is unacceptable. The result is that either someone must delete a proper link from the article, or the article is blocked from editing. At the very least, there should be an admin override. Does anyone know the story behind this and how this unwise change can be undone? Postdlf 03:13, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * First I've heard of this, and I monitor the Village Pump regularly. If something like this has been recently added to the system, was there any sort of announcement? Discussion? If so, can someone please link to it from here? -- Jmabel | Talk 07:27, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)

Starting yesterday we have a new spam filter in use, courtesy of Tim Starling. It has been preloaded with a large list of blocked domains which have been involved in blog spamming so there are probably going to be more false alarms. Meta sysops and can change the blacklist by editing Spam blacklist. Changes there take effect immediately. This list affects all wikis hosted by Wikimedia. I removed angelfire. Jamesday 07:54, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Also note that there has been a spam filter in place for quite a while, it's just had a very limited set of triggers. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 07:55, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * So, do I understand correctly per Postdlf's account that if any of these are in an existing page, and you edit the page, you won't be allowed to save unless you identify the problem link and delete it? And does this include talk pages? -- Jmabel | Talk 21:22, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)
 * Yes to the first question, and I don't know about the second question. Postdlf 21:53, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Yes to both. Applies to all pages on all wikis. Ask on the talk page over at meta and one of the meta admins wil take care of it. Jamesday 00:12, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If this "protection" thing is to stay, there must be a very quick way to remove URLs from the list per request of any Wikipedian with little or no complications. Basically, any user should be able to ask for an URL to be removed (at m:Talk:Spam blacklist and it should be done by a sysop after just a casual check). Otherwise, this filters becomes a bigger problem than spam ever was.

Even better would be if the filter was temporarily disabled and someone did a global search for all occurrences of these links, and then manually checked them. We can safely assume that if something is already on Wikipedia is was not reverted, it's probably not spam. Otherwise most people just remove the good link in their first edit, because they can't save the page otherwise.

And, BTW, any semi-literate spammer can find the way around this filter in about 15 seconds (includes testing). Whoever added this filtering to WP made a big mistake. Paranoid 01:35, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Checking them all is not going to happenm unless you want to do it or can find another volunteer. The technnical people have far too many things going on to do it right now and got that in place to provide some quick relief from the spammers. No article update is so critical that it can't wait a day or two for any admin on meta to notice and remove any unfortunately included item. Jamesday 00:12, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I disagree. The only two articles I tried to edit yesterday, including my own talkpage, were blocked in a similar fashion. I was just trying to add an interwiki link to a bio-stub. The spam block discourages casual editing. Writing answers on my talkpage and interwikiing articles ought to be trivial procedures - now I need to involve a Meta sysop every time I'm going to do some small maintenance task on a page with exterior links? Don't the Meta sysops have better things to do with their time? --Woggly 10:22, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Problem of displaying Wiki Pages
I have problem of displaying the Wiki pages Nim and Last stone game. Both seem to take forever and can never be downloaded and appear on my computer screen. What causes this problem? --Ling Kah Jai 10:14, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia Logo Problem
This only happens on IE and not Firefox - it's very strange, when the page loads, the Wikipedia logo appears ok for a brief moment, and then the logo will shift a little to the right, and the words "Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia" will develop some kind of ghosting. The strange thing is that the exact same image doesn't have problems at the Wikipedia article. I've also tried clearing my browser cache to no avail. Can anyone else reproduce the problem? Cheers. Enochlau 10:10, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Confirmed on MSIE 6 SP1. I think it's the logo fix rules in the stylesheet. Anárion 10:12, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Fuzzy main Wikipedia image
I am not using my regular computer, due to a broken 230V power input socket, so I'm not sure if my problem is a result of this specific PC. I am currently using Internet Explorer on Windows XP, with the default skin. This is the logo that I see, after having scrolled down one Wikipedia page. I now permanently see the image on all pages. Refreshing makes the logo look 'normal' for less than a second, then it reverts to the same, messed up image.

Personally, I am not that bothered, but I feel attention should be drawn to it, in case it's as a result of the MediaWiki upgrade. SimonMayer 04:04, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I see the same thing on my screen! This just happened after the MediaWiki upgrade. Anyone know what the problem is???  --brian0918 talk 04:12, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * And notice how my signature command is doubled. It also indented my message twice instead of once.  This is all very odd.  Everything is doubling...  --brian0918 talk 04:15, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * The Wikipedia logo thing is a known bug and is being worked on. The reason brian0918's signature is broken is because it is broken. MediaWiki 1.3 handled the broken signature in such a way that it appeared to work. Your signature reads as

[[User:Brian0918|brian0918 talk]]
 * I mean, really. That's just nasty. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 06:24, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Uhhh.... okaaaaay....... --brian0918&#153; 18:52, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Netoholic graciously ran his NetBot to fix the broken signatures on this page, but it "fixed" my example of the brokenness. Now restored to its previous ugliness. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 08:22, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Five tildas = timestamp, now broken?
Entering " " no longer produces just a timestamp, instead it produces a signature and timestamp (= "~" ) followed by a "~". For example if I enter " ", I get:

Paul August &#9742; 04:15, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)~

Is this a bug or a feature? Paul August &#9742; 04:16, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)


 * It has to be a bug... --[[User:Brian0918|brian0918 talk]] 04:16, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I noticed it too. Now it's six tildes to produce a timestamp: 04:21, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC). Odd. --Ben Brockert 04:21, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)


 * No, six is even. But awkward... Can we get this fixed? -- Jmabel | Talk 06:09, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Bug filed. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 06:19, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Bug fixed. --Brion 07:46, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * ...and four tildes does weird things to "customised" signatures at the moment, too, showing the square brackets and "User:Name". What gives? [[User:Grutness|Grutness hello? [[Image:Grutness.jpg|30px|]]]] 06:21, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Your signature is broken, and has been. Look at the markup generated. MW 1.3 handled your broken syntax in a manner differently from 1.4. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 06:26, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * But what is the problem with the signature? In my case, my signature is set to:
 * &#8706;brian0918/&#8706;talk
 * and when I type: --~, I get this: --&#8706;[[User:Brian0918|brian0918/&#8706;talk]] 06:45, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * What's the problem?


 * The problem is that the "nickname" pref has never worked the way you thought it did. What it does is it takes the "nickname" and sticks   in front, and    behind it. Thus, your signature becomes

&#8706;[[User:Brian0918|brian0918/&#8706;talk]]
 * which is horribly broken. It has always done this. It's just that MW 1.3 handled the broken syntax in such a way that it appeared "correct". -- Cyrius|&#9998; 06:54, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Well, firstly I'm sorry, but I don't undertand what you mean by MW 1.4 and 1.3, and second, it isn't just my signature. There seem to be loads of them doing it - look at Brian0918's, Halibutt's, Poccil's, and GRider's - all above on this page. And there are other well-known users with the same problem (I noticed Aranel's signature playing up like this, for one) . And why has it only started happening today - if my signature was broken, I wouldn't have ben signing quite normally with it for the last three weeks. Grutness|hello? [[Image:Grutness.jpg|30px|]]


 * MW stands for MediaWiki, the software that runs Wikipedia. It was upgraded from 1.3 to 1.4beta3 only a few hours ago. The reason there are loads of signatures doing it is because there are loads of people who didn't check that their signatures were actually working the way they thought they were. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 06:54, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Serves me right for just copying the way i did my sig from the way other people did theirs! Now all I've got to do is work out how to put new batteries in my computer mouse and I'll be a tech-savvy as the next guy. Grutness|hello? [[Image:Grutness.jpg|30px|]] 07:28, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[''My messy tests were removed. Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 07:55, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)'']


 * Okay... so on the above I rewrote my sig by hand so that it worked the same way as Cyrius's. Perfect. it worked. Then I too that and copied it into my preferences. Beautiful. It worked once, then reverted to the double-bracketing problem. My preferences tell me that it's still done as:

Grutness hello?


 * but it appears as [[User:Grutness|Grutness|hello? [[Image:Grutness.jpg|30px|]]]] 07:51, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I've no idea what Poccil's suggestion means - what is a .js, how do I put the jpg in there - any suggestions?


 * Because that's what you told it to do. Put this into your "nickname" field:

Grutness]]|hello? [[Image:Grutness.jpg|30px|
 * When MediaWiki prepends and appends what it sticks on there, you should end up with

Grutness hello?
 * Which is what you want.


 * The fundamental problem here is that the nickname field does not do what it is widely believed to do. It does not take what's in the field and make that your signature. Brion claims to have warned us all back around the 1.3 upgrade that this would happen. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 07:56, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Okay, he says it was probably earlier than that, but whatever. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 08:01, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Those were just signature tests. Finally, it works again. Look at how I have my "nickname" field. Note the space at the beginning.

]]Peter O. (Talk, automation script)[[


 * Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 07:53, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)


 * Ok folks, I've added a "raw signatures" option for ya. If you check this in your preferences, the will add the nick as raw wiki text without the surrounding user page link. So if you've got a broken fancy nick and you can't/don't want to run the funky workarounds, check that and your new edits will skip the extra link markup.


 * Please, please check over the output to make sure it's right when making a fancy nick -- the output you create now will stick around for a long time, and as you can see it's a bit embarrassing when your name appears incorrectly on ten thousand pages because you didn't double-check that it did what you thought it did. :) --Brion 08:33, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

...or even if you did double check - and then the system changed from MW1.3 to 1.4 Grutness|hello? 09:18, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * The system did not change. The "nickname" option has always put the signature between User:Username and  .  It should be clear, after one has double checked, that [[User:Username|Username]] was probably not going to do as expected.   &mdash; Kate Turner | Talk 15:59, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)

Redirect image
The new image that is shown on redirect pages is fugly. Have we never heard of anti-aliasing? Why is it so large? Why is it necessary at all?

And hello, I'm Ben Brockert, long time editor, first time reader of the Village pump. --03:46, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

SimonMayer 04:04, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I agree, I dislike the image, I'm not sure it serves any worthwhile purpose, please could someone correct me if I'm wrong?


 * Yeah, I'm pretty sure people have complained about this on the mailinglist a while back. Let's get rid of it or at least replace it please. &#0xfeff; --fvw *  04:13, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)


 * WOW. That is one gross image. BLANKFAZE | (&#1095;&#1090;&#1086;??<b style="font-size:90%;">)</b> 04:14, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Somehow, it is not announced in this section, so I am doing it. Now there is this page Redirect_arrow_contest. Tomos 11:02, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Underlining links
I have my browser (Mozilla on Linux) set to not underline links. This works with every web page, with all other Wikis in other language where I am not logged in and it defaults to monobook. It stubbornly insists on underlining links if I am logged in and have my preference set to monobook; it works (ie, it leaves links not underlined) if my preference is set to classic. Any ideas? Djnjwd 20:54, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * It's probably the EN CSS settings at Mediawiki:Monobook.css over-ruling your settings. <b style="font-size: 74%;">BLANKFAZE</b> | <b style="font-size:90%;">(&#1095;&#1090;&#1086;</b><b style="font-size:70%;">??</b><b style="font-size:90%;">)</b> 04:17, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Chinese interwikis not functioning correctly
I've been having trouble with some of the Chinese interwiki links. For example, on Arthur Rubinstein there is a link to zh:& which doesn't seem to work as it sends the user to a page called "É?¿å?¾å°?·é²". This seems to be a result of the Chinese name having the · character (which is used to separate Western first names from last names). If they ever finally get around to converting the English wiki to Unicode we won't have these problems, but for the meantime it needs to be fixed somehow. &#1051;&#1080;&#1074;&#1072;&#1081; | &#9786; 16:56, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * If you replace the "·" with an explicit &amp;#xB7; in the link, it will work: zh:& -- Curps 20:58, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Village pump in 'navigation' section
Is there any way I can get a link to the Village pump in the 'navigation' header to the left, possibly by using CSS? Anárion (talk) 08:18, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Have a look at User:Kate/myskin.js, which adds several links to the sidebar in a separate section - putting them into an existing portlet instead shouldn't be too difficult.  &mdash; Kate Turner | Talk 16:11, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)

boldness
Am I making some stupid mistake so obvious I can't see it at Rail Band, or is there a bug in 1.4 making the bolding messed up there? It looks normal in the edit window, but doesn't display right. Tuf-Kat 06:32, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)


 * I find it really hard to count those apostrophes when they get dense too ... I think it's fixed now. Happy editing! Antandrus 06:34, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ramsey Kanaan
I created Ramsey Kanaan today, but experienced some difficulty (even after saving it said the page did not exist, then mysteriously it did). For some reason, he now appears four times in Category:Anarchists. Can an admin fix this somehow? Thanks. --Tothebarricades.tk 05:48, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I tried a few things, but the only thing that worked was to delete and restore the page. Looks like you created the page during the database problems I mentioned above. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 07:45, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Peculiar pic problem
...so I upload an image Image:NIriver1.jpg and give it a suitable description. I'm told it uploaded successfully, so I go to its page to put on a copyright tag. The picture and my description appear as expected. When I click on edit to add the tag, there's no sign of my description, which I think was a bit odd, but I add the tag anyway and save. When the image page reappears, there's no desxription, no copyright tag, and a message saying "Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name". Is this yet another of the glitches with MW 1.4, or has something else strange happened? Grutness|hello? 00:19, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * There were some database problems around the time you wrote this comment which may have been responsible. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 05:36, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.4
Hi,

At our luxembourgish Wikipedia ( http://lb.wikipedia.org ), we have, like the german did, created a discussion page to discuss problems with the new MediaWiki version ( http://lb.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:MediaWiki_1.4 ). We were wondering where to send our complaints, bug notices etc. so that they can be fixed. Thx =)

Briséis


 * Your best bet is to enter them into Bugzilla. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 22:56, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

redirects
How do I change the redirect image on my Wikipedia? I want to upload a different image, with Hebrew text and the arrow being on the other way around.


 * I'm not sure what you mean, but you can't. I presume you have another wiki somewhere, this is the Wikipedia(tm).  You can either upload the new image with a new name, and change all pages on which it is to the new name, or you can reupload the image with the same name and it will overwrite it, though the wiki will keep the old version in the background in case you want to revert. Dunc|&#9786; 19:58, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I meant the image on the redirect pages themselves (like on here: ). It doesn't look pretty good on RTL wikis. For example,.
 * It doesn't look very good on the LTR wikis either: one of those things where someone let the software guy do the graphics? Could someone do a better image? (I do agree, though, that the RTL languages probably need a mirrored version of whatever we come up with.) -- Jmabel | Talk 22:08, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)
 * Oh I see. Why bother?Dunc|&#9786; 20:42, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Undeleting selected revisions
crossposted to Village pump (policy)

Sysops now have the ability to undelete selected revisions of a deleted article. Please see Viewing and restoring deleted pages by sysops for explanation of this feature (what I've figured out by playing with it) and Wikipedia talk:Undeletion policy for some questions on its use. &#8212;Charles P. (Mirv) 13:19, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Strange search problem
It seems that in the last couple of days (i.e., since MW 1.4), if you do a search on multiple terms, only the last term will be searched. For example, I just searched to see whther we had an article on Titahi Bay, and the search returned with any article containing the word bay. Any clues as to what's going on here? Grutness|hello? 08:56, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Fixed. Default was to OR, should have been AND. --Brion 10:06, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Unable to revert--what's going on?
About five separate times tonight I have attempted to revert vandalism in the usual way, by bring up the edit history, making current the last good edit, clicking edit-this-page, and then clicking save. It's not working. What happens is this:


 * 1) If I make no change, nothing saves. The vandalism remains, and no edit by me shows up in the edit history.
 * 2) If I make a single trivial change in the previous good version, it saves the most recent, i.e. vandalized version, but with my trivial change. You can see an example of this at .  I was finally able to revert the page only by copying the entire text out of the old-good-version edit window and pasting it into the edit window of the newest revision.

Is this happening to anyone else? Honest, I'm not smoking crack, and I do vandalism watch fairly regularly here; I'm not new at this. Antandrus 06:50, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * This has been happening to me as well. I tried to do a series reversions with edit summaries, but they failed. I was instead forced to use the rollback tool. - SimonP 07:08, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)


 * This just happened to me too. Maybe it's a bug in MW 1.4? -- Walt Pohl 07:51, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I think I've found the problem; it's embedding the wrong edit timestamp for old revisions, which wrongly triggers edit conflict merging. This was caused by the fix to the problem with 'preview on first edit' mode; initialization got done twice, with wrong results for old page loads. Should be all fixed now. --Brion 08:42, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * It's working now. Thanks Brion and happy holidays. Antandrus 16:55, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Template:Welcome
There appears to be a rendering problem with Template:welcome. The tildes included as instruction do not appear properly when the template is used with subst:. They appear normal when the template is just done as. See User:Whosyourjudas/sandbox for a side-by-side comparison. Has anyone seen this before/know what's wrong? --Whosyourjudas\talk 00:47, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * See my comment a few entries up. --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 12:09, 2004 Dec 24 (UTC)

Why has my four-tilde signature gotten munged? Never mind, figured it out.
In Preferences, I've just double-checked and my "nickname for signatures" is

Dpbsmith (talk)

When this is rendered without nowiki tags, it looks like this, as I intend:

Dpbsmith (talk)

But this is what I get when I type three tildes: [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]]

And this is what I get when I type four tildes: [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 00:21, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It appears as if something has decided that the signature XXXXXXX should be expanded to XXXXXXX

Should I do something about this? Did something change? Is it just a bug? Or have my signatures been screwed up for months and I just never noticed it before? Dpbsmith (talk) 00:21, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Never mind, I just noticed the "raw signature" checkbox. Here come four tildes: Dpbsmith (talk) 00:27, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Actually, this does need to be addressed (again). Your signature has been screwed up for months. You just never noticed because MediaWiki 1.3 was rendering it such that it appeared correct.
 * It appears as if something has decided that the signature XXXXXXX should be expanded to XXXXXXX
 * This has always been the behavior. The raw signature box was something brion just hacked in to deal with people's misunderstanding of the field. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 01:31, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Hack or not, the raw signature box is brilliant. -- RM 03:48, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)


 * It's the way it should have worked in the first place. The actual operation was unexpected and poorly documented. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 08:24, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I don't have any problem with the change, but what is it retroactive? All of my old signatures are broken. It's somewhat disconcerting. I thought that old signatures were hard-coded in. (Can this be fixed?) -Aranel (" Sarah ") 00:41, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * There was no retroactive change -- old signatures were hard-coded in. Your old sigs now are coded exactly the same as the way they were coded three days ago. They have not been changed. Due to serious bugs in the old version, the invalid code used to display differently from the way it does now.


 * The broken code used to produce nested links, which are illegal HTML -- this would cause inconsistent behavior on different browsers and completely break the site in a demanding XHTML-mode reader. (The HTML specification is very clear that links cannot be nested.) Now the bug has been fixed, and the illegal nested links are not created when rendering a wiki page into HTML. The wiki text is the same as it always was, but it displays differently.


 * If it really bothers you (and others who relied on this buggy behavior without realizing it) you might track down the folks who are running bot editors to perform maintenance tasks like cleaning up language links and categories. It should be possible to whip up a job which tracks down and fixes broken signatures for those who have requested it. --Brion 08:14, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oddity in Redirects
I'm not sure if this is a bug or intentional:

At Square matrix it has a redirect to Matrix (mathematics) and if you click on that it takes you to halfway down the matrix article where it talks about square matrixs. But if you go to an article that links to Square Matrix like Symmetric matrix and click on square matrix it takes you to the top of the article instead of the section on square matrixs.

Is this a known bug/feature? RJFJR 00:09, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)


 * Redirects to sections don't work. It's a known limitation and a consequence of how redirects work. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 01:33, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Dialect template-like feature
I'd be nice if some day this encyclopedia had a simple dialect feature that would substitute from a transliteration dictionary depending on whether, for example, the reader was using US English or the Queen's English. For example: "dialect{US=center}" could print "center" for a US reader and "centre" for a Brit. reader. &mdash; RJH 17:15, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * "My back was so sore that I could barely elevator my luggage when getting off the plane." --brian0918&#153; 18:56, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * lol! - Ta bu shi da yu 21:00, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Actually, now that MediaWiki 1.4 supports conversion between traditional and simplified Chinese, I see no reason why this can't also be applied to US / International English, which is much easier to convert. -- ran(talk) 19:42, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

My feeling on this: Jeez, lighten up! Is there anyone who reads either U.S. or British English who actually finds the other hard to understand? -- Jmabel | Talk 21:29, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)


 * Americanisms can be discomforting in text, especially in an encyclopedia where I expect proper (UK) spelling. As long as it is not slang it is not hard to understand though. Anárion 12:12, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.4
Ooooh, nice. Dude, sweeeeet. I'm one happy Wikipedian. Thanks, developers! – Quadell (talk) (help)a|  14:49, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
 * Apart from better performance, what's changed? Dan100 15:26, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
 * signatures and templates are broken, there are some new skin images... Anárion 15:36, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Not so negative! We have listing of included templates when editing, a template can be used as often as you like per page instead of just five times, you can jump to diffs in one go from contribution lists. And then there's that ghastly redirect picture that's already been bludgeoned&hellip; &#0xfeff; --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 15:52, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)
 * A diff page now has links not only to the two revisions it's comparing, but to the previous diff and the next diff if they exist. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:38, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Am I the only sysop who notices that Special:Specialpages has changed? Does this mean access levels are now in en? Pakaran (ark a pan) 15:59, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * What's up with the Wikipedia logo? Since the update, whenever I look at it, I feel like I'm drunk of something.  All the letters are blurry... it's really annoying!  Is that showing on someone else's browser or is it just me? Redux 17:54, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Yeah, scroll up a few topics and you'll find a post about it. Scroll up another few topics and you'll find another post about it. You're spoiled for choice. --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 19:20, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)

The features page mentions a patrol feature where you can mark pages as checked/patrolled from recent changes. That feature is also in the mediawiki 1.4 I installed locally. Why isn't it in the english wikipedia/when will it be enabled? Thue | talk 21:13, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

nowiki in templates (template:welcome and possibly others)
Using works fine, but  gives some oddity in the bit about the tilde signing. I quote: ''Talk and vote pages using three tildes, like this: NaodW29-nowiki4cc7a9f15ab4deee00000001. Four tildes (NaodW29-nowiki4cc7a9f15ab4deee00000002) produces your name and the current date''. &#0xfeff; --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 14:22, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)
 * Comments are also giving problems: The subst:sandboxpaste is no longer inserting the comment after . &#0xfeff; --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 16:50, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)

"Templates used in this article"
I like the new listing of templates shown when editing. I think it may be a little bugged, though, including more than just the templates directly included in the article. One good example is at Wikipedia talk:Find or fix a stub where the list is huge. violet/riga (t) 13:55, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Yes, there are some issues. For starters, linked templates (as opposed to included ones) get shown too. &#0xfeff; --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 14:22, 2004 Dec 23 (UTC)
 * This would be fine if they were displayed with indenting to show how the indirectly-linked templates are related. Also it would be nice if the list changed for preview mode. --Phil | Talk 14:55, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)
 * Or when I'm editing a page that has no template at all and it's listing Template:In the news and Template:Cohort. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:36, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Image:Frederick Jackson Turner.jpg
I can't see Image:Frederick Jackson Turner.jpg on the Frederick Jackson Turner page. This has happened before (about a year ago or so), and back then I uploaded the image for a second time. Now the same thing has happened again.

Please don't tell me it's displayed fine on your screen. This doesn't help a lot. I'd like to find out what is wrong here. <KF> 17:47, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)


 * It's getting more weird by the minute. I chose [[Image:Frederick Jackson Turner.jpg]] as the header, and not even that is displayed. <KF> 17:52, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)


 * All right, it should probably have a colon in front and read Image:Frederick Jackson Turner.jpg, which then works (but there's still no image):

Image:Frederick Jackson Turner.jpg <KF> 18:03, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)


 * I added colons in front of the first two image links because that guy was just creepy. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 19:26, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * The reason it won't display is that it is stored by wikimedia at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ad/Frederick_Jackson_Turner.jpg. Note the /ad/. My guess is that your ad blocking software is blocking all images from servers with ad in them. Evil Monkey &rarr; Talk 01:27, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)

Image map
Is it possible to somehow create an image map in wikipedia? Specifically, I wanted to make [[Media:American Civil War Battles by Theater, Year.png|this image]] clickable, so that clicking on a specific county will bring you to a Civil War battle article or a list of battles in that county. Thanks. --brian0918&#153; 22:28, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * There is no support for imagemaps. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 22:37, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There are no pages that link to this image file (but there are)
On the page Image:2004 Indonesia Tsunami Complete.gif, the "File links" section says there are no pages that link to it, and the "What links here" reports the same. So you might think it's an orphan that could be deleted. But it's not.

The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake page links to it. However, it does so using the Image:.... syntax instead of the syntax. That's because it's a 1 MB file, so you don't want it appearing inline within the article by default; rather the users must explicitly click on a link to get it.

It's important that such a file not be mistaken for an orphan. -- Curps 07:21, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * The Template:Notorphan is for those cases. I've added it. Anárion (talk) 07:34, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * That may be related to a bug in the software, bug 85, I think. <b style="font-size: 74%;">BLANKFAZE</b> | <b style="font-size:90%;">(&#1095;&#1090;&#1086;</b><b style="font-size:70%;">??</b><b style="font-size:90%;">)</b> 08:31, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Duplicate entry
Hi

It appears that there is a duplicate entry for my new article on Louis Siminovitch (click on the Canadian scientists category and you will see two entries). Can someone delete one of them? Or will this fix itself in the future. Is there a more appropriate place for these kinds of posts?

Thanks, --YUL89YYZ 21:59, Dec 30, 2004 (UTC)


 * Looks like you hit save twice. For some reason, sometimes MediaWiki doesn't catch that and manages to create two entries in the database for the same article. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 01:55, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

New messages broken
I have a weird problem... my User page tells me I have new messages, but there are none. It only shows up on my user page. -- AllyUnion (talk) 02:18, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Nm... went away after I edited the page... how very weird. -- AllyUnion (talk) 02:20, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Maybe it was pulling the page out of your cache, including the "You have new messages!" banner, until you forced it to change its cached copy. Antandrus 02:22, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Japanese interwiki problem
In the article Chicken soup, I tried to make an interwiki link to ja.wp's article ja:&#12481;&#12461;&#12531;&#12473;&#12540;&#12503; but could not. Against my expectation, I see a thing just like &. Could you please tell me the why? Sylphie 11:10, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)


 * I assume you mean that you're trying to paste in ja's title, and it's saving a thing with a bunch of numbers and ampersands. This is normal. ja is using UTF-8, which allows for the direct storage of Japanese language symbols. en is not, so Japanese cannot be placed directly into a page on en, even in an interlanguage link.


 * The thing with the numbers is an encoded form of the Japanese you're trying to save. MediaWiki did the conversion for you automatically on page save. It's a feature. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 18:29, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Thank you for answering my question. Yes, the first time I pasted so but the result was not good. With your advice and the info on help pages, I retried with copying the %xx hex code from that ja's article's URL, then successfully done. Again, thanks. Sylphie 11:38, 2004 Dec 30 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Disambiguation gives php error
Disambiguation is giving me this error and has been for maybe 30 minutes. Refreshes etc don't help. Anyone else getting this? Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.4/includes/SkinTemplate.php on line 328

Grox 11:03, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Edit: Bad_jokes_and_other_deleted_nonsense is giving the same error as well.

Edit 2: Issue seems to be resolved now. Grox 12:08, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Problem with Subst
I am a member of the welcoming committee. I have created a welcome message at User:Utcursch/wel. Earlier, I used to type on the user page, when I had to welcome a user. But since, my welcome message changes frequently, I decided to use. But this doesn' t display the tildes properly. I replaced tildes by HTML character codes, but that doesn't help. I wonder if I am doing something wrong. Sorry, if this is the wrong place to ask, I could not find any other area. utcursch 08:20, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)


 * It's a new known bug with subst: and nowiki. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 18:24, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Recent changes page and History page don't do diff as expected!
Go to the history page of any rapidly changing page, such as 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, namely http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake&action=history

Wait a while for additional changes to be made to the page, or if you're impatient, open a new browser window and make a change to the page there.

Go back to the original browser window and click on "Compare selected versions". The two selected versions (radio buttons) should be the top line and the second line. However, what you will actually get will be a "cur" (difference with current version)... NOT the actual difference between the two selected versions that you selected.

This is because the diff will get executed as:
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake&diff=0&oldid=NNNNNNN

instead of:
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake&diff=MMMMMMM&oldid=NNNNNNN

Or if you click on the "last" link on the top line of the history, you get the same thing... an URL with "diff=0" rather than a specific timestamp "diff=MMMMMMM"

The Special:Recentchanges page works the same way. If you see a line like:
 * 04:26 Pygmy Mouse-lemur (diff; hist) . . UtherSRG (Talk)

and click on the "diff", what you will get will be a "cur" (difference with the current revision), not the specific change that "UtherSRG" made. Again, the URL generated will have "diff=0" instead of a specific timestamp ("diff=MMMMMMM").

THIS IS A BIG PROBLEM when dealing with a flurry of vandalism, when there may be as many as three or four changes per minute. If it is impossible to tell what the diffs are between two specific versions, it is hard to revert vandalism properly.

So should always use a specific timestamp (always generate an URL with "diff=MMMMMMM" and never with "diff=0" unless the user clicked on the "cur" link).
 * the "diff" link in each line of the Special:Recentchanges page
 * the "Compare selected versions" button of the History page when comparing with the top line of the history
 * the "last" link in the History page for the top line of the history
 * The diff=ID is not a timestamp, it's an old_id from the "old" table of the database. There is no old_id for the current revision of an article so it is not possible to generate such a URL for the current version.  You can instead try using &diff=next instead of diff=0.  This problem will not go away until MediaWiki 1.5 at the least.   &mdash; Kate Turner | Talk 11:10, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)

-- Curps 04:40, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't have a Mediazilla account and don't wish to create one just for the purposes of creating a bug report. Could someone perhaps do so?

Once again, this is a major problem when dealing with a vandal who vandalizes a rapidly changing current-news page. One user can mistakenly assume that another legitimate user is a vandal, because he did a "diff" and got a result that corresponded to somebody else's change, but didn't realize it. I believe this has already happened on at least one occasion.

-- Curps 04:44, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Solving the problem is unfortunately quite involved due to past design decisions. It's definitely not getting solved before activity dies down to sane levels on the earthquake article. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 07:31, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

user Preferences page, selection menu for "Interface language", zh-cn and zh-sg
Go to Special:Preferences, and go to the "Interface language" selection menu. At the bottom, the text for zh-cn and zh-sg are wrong. It should be &#20013;&#25991;&#65288;&#31616;&#20307;&#65289;, however the first character after the parenthesis shows up as a square dot instead.

I would report this as a bug to Mediazilla but don't want to create a login and passwords just for that purpose. -- Curps 19:17, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Looks fine here. Maybe a browser/font issue? &mdash;Korath (Talk) 23:47, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm using Win XP and IE, all the latest upgrades. The characters appear just fine on this page, and all the other characters in the select menu appear fine (Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Greek, Korean, and all the other Japanese and Chinese characters). Just the one character &#31616; appears as a centered square dot instead within the select menu. -- Curps 01:53, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Cutting and pasting from view-page-source gives: &amp;#20013;&amp;#25991;(&amp;#31616;&amp;#20307;) -> &#20013;&#25991;(&#31616;&#20307;)

Maybe this should be changed to use Chinese character full parenthesis instead: &amp;#20013;&amp;#25991;&amp;#65288;&amp;#31616;&amp;#20307;&amp;#65289; -> &#20013;&#25991;&#65288;&#31616;&#20307;&#65289;

Or maybe the parenthesis "(" should be replaced by &amp;#40; -> &#40;

It does seems to be a bug within IE code... I suppose it doesn't like mixing the ASCII "(" with Unicode characters within a select menu, even though this displays just fine within a web page. -- Curps 01:53, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have just checked with an XP-IE combo. They look fine to me. IE 6.0, XP SP2. I also checked them with FireFox 0.8, and again found no problem. Is this because someone fixed the problem? Tomos 11:19, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm still seeing the problem. Win XP Professional, English version, SP2.  It's weird that no one else can reproduce it. -- Curps 17:27, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Tooltips not displaying link text.
Go to Chess for an example. The tooltip reads "From left, a white, black and , white , black , and white ." Note the spaces where the links should be. Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 18:10, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)

Transcluding Timestamps
shows something that can be uised for transcluding timestamps (although right now it transcludes the SERVER). One problem though is that it needs to be saved twice. --SgeoTC 20:29, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)


 * You can see what it does (when saved ONCE) [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Sgeo/demo&action=edit here]. --SgeoTC 03:30, Dec 28, 2004 (UTC)

Stuck watchlist item
I'm cleaning up my watchlist (it took several minutes to load), and I can't get Votes for deletion/Vaughan Secondary School off. It says Couldn't remove item 'Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Vaughan Secondary School'...done. An extra oddity is that when editing my watchlist, it doesn't appear at the correct point in the alphabetical order but at the top. If I go to the page in question (the redirect) and click "watch", it gets added a second time, at the correct point in my watchlist. This second entry I can remove correctly, but the original entry at the top remains. Is this a database corruption or some odd software bug? --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 15:28, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)


 * It is most likely because redirects are different with the software change. It is probably the same cause which prevents templates from being displayed on the redirect pages.  &mdash;Mike 01:54, Dec 30, 2004 (UTC)

Template appropriate?
I'm doing some work in mathematics sections and using -1 a lot. Would this be an appropriate use for a template like ?
 * Knock yourself out I'd say. Doesn't really reduce the amount of typing needed by much, but if it makes your life easier and nobody wants to put something else in the inverse template&hellip; --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 16:46, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)
 * But don't we have a limit of using a template only 5 times on a page? This seems like a liability, more likely to confuse newbies than help. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:07, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)
 * Nope, not anymore; Since the upgrade to 1.4 you can have as many inclusions of a template as you want. Given that, I don't think will confuse newbies more than -1 . --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 19:10, 2004 Dec 27 (UTC)


 * You might be better off typing in as this would put the contents of the template into the page instead of just a reference to the template.  Also have you considered cut-and-paste?  That would be much simpler.  &mdash;Mike 01:50, Dec 30, 2004 (UTC)

What links here
It's doing some odd things. is pointing to Talk:Shock site! Can anyone see why? - Ta bu shi da yu 20:58, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Corrupt link table entries. The easiest way to fix these is to go to the bogus page, click edit this page, and save without making any changes. That'll update the outbound links from that page, without marking you as a contributor. There's no way to easily force such an update across all the pages linking to a particular page. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 01:48, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Kate's Tools 2
(bumm13): BesigedB: kate wrote them in java (BesigedB): so why did java work then but not now. (bumm13): and kate isn't allowed to use java on the servers now
 * May I convey a wikislap to whomever made this decision. --BesigedB (talk) 15:18, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * A wikislap? May I convey a large slap on the head with a wet trout to whomever made this decision... ugen64 16:58, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I agree thoroughly. Bring back Kate's Tools. Rdsmith4 (talk) 17:01, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Actually, without wanting to incite language/VM wars here, I don't think it's the worst of decisions.
 * The decision was actually slightly more subtle than that; software which is not considered "open source software" is not allowed on the cluster. The technical merits of such software was not considered at all. Kate
 * I do miss the tools however. The degrees of separation thingy might be harder, but I'm sure the edit count script shouldn't be too hard to hack up in a different language? If nobody else does it I'd be happy to hack up a perl script, I've been looking for an excuse to install mediawiki locally anyway. --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 11:09, 2004 Dec 31 (UTC)

I put an old version of the edit count script online at http://zwinger.wikimedia.org/~kate/cgi-bin/count_edits.cgi. HTH, Kate.
 * Yes it does, thanks! --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 23:31, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)

Kate's Tools
User:Kate informed me that she took down her "Kate's Tools" site before resigning as a developer, adding that any other developer is welcome to take up the idea. I (and many others, I'm sure) would be so grateful to any developer willing to do so. I loved that site and visited it daily to check my edit count, and I sure hate to see that facility go. Is any developer willing to take over from where Kate left off? David Cannon 00:01, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Were the tools not GPL or some other free license? If so, do we have a backup copy or something? I'd hate to be without them. &#0xfeff;--fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 16:50, 2004 Dec 15 (UTC)
 * Why did she resign? :( --Golbez 19:26, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)
 * The source was never published as such, but it's free software if anyone wants it (I forget if I put a header on the source files, but consider it public domain). If anyone wants to bring it back, the source lives in /home/kate/tools/ on the cluster, and runs on larousse (tomcat installed in /usr/tomcat/, see /etc/rc.local for how to start it).  I doubt bringing it back will be too high on most people's list of priorities, though.  Kate.


 * It would be a pity if no-one would bring the tools back, the tools are great! (And Kate, I think it's a pity that you're not a developer anymore, I hope you will be back somewhere in the near future). Fruggo 07:37, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Very useful both as a curio and for more serious reasons. Shame to see them, and kate, go and I hope someone takes up the torch. :( --BesigedB 14:33, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Kate's tools were indeed very cool :( &mdash; Matt Crypto 16:13, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I miss Kate more than Kate's tools, however, having them back again would be very very nice. --Alterego 20:24, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * They appear to be back now . Kate, don't discount your contribution, they are very useful. As is everything else you have done for the Wikipedia. --Ben Brockert 04:28, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Wiki very slow
These items don't seem to have received an admin' response yet.

Shouldn't there be some explanation on the Wikipedia entry page on this issue (updated daily to keep users informed on the situation?) Thanks in advance for any information. Wikityke

The wikipedia is extremely slow today. Should I blame my end of the connection, or are others also seeing this? Anárion 09:22, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * No, it a problem at the server, there are simply not enough Apache servers as five are down. However according to the WikipediaStatus now five new ones are in action and that should solve the problem. Also the MediaWiki1.4 update should increase speed. There is still hope. andy 09:32, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It's still getting worse and worse, I'm afraid. Shouldn't there be something right at the beginning of the main entry page advising users of this?Wikityke 15:21, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree, IT'S A NIGHTMARE! for me it is almost unusable.... no response a lot of the time.. ?max rspct 16.56 29 Dec 2004

It appears to be occurring in the late afternoon (GMT) every time, I assume it's a cron job running on the database that's causing the problems. Anything that could be done on a non-live copy of the database perhaps? Or is it the making of the database copy itsself that's causing the problems? --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 17:26, 2004 Dec 29 (UTC)

Wikipedia has been sporadic for a number of days, and Wikinews has been down for at least eight hours, at least from my location. If scheduled server tasks are causing the slowdown, is there an announcement page somewhere so we know when it is futile to try connecting?

If there is no longer enough hardware to run this site at a reasonable speed, I hope the server administrators will make an announcement to that effect. Perhaps that will be the justification to start another fund-raising drive. &mdash; DV 15:17, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Tables 100% width ruins width compliance
Seems Wikimedia is a little liberal with tables if they are set to 100% width:

I came across this in Donations_for_victims_of_the_2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake.

The work around I used for Firefox is width = 99%;

which doesn't work for IE... 98% will work for IE too. - RoyBoy [ &#8734; ] Second, we're all collaboratively editing here. I didn't imply you originated the "100%" width thing at all, I just asked why you didn't simply omit them. I don't think variable-width tables look amateurish, but I don't mind the full-width tables either, so better go with those. And if "98%" is what gets the job done, when you don't necessarily care about "really" getting the table to span the full page width, then by all means use that. JRM 18:29, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)
 * These sound like hacks. What's wrong with omitting the width and letting the browser determine how wide the table should be? Don't be overspecific. JRM 08:29, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)
 * Huh? I didn't put the widths at 100%; someone else did. When I initially removed the widths the page didn't look as good since tables were of variable widths... it actually looked quite amateurish. So I tried to find a compromise in accordance with WikiLove. Question, I do not understand the use of the word "hacks" in this context. - RoyBoy [ &#8734; ] 17:24, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Sorry, slanging. I mean this kind of hack (note that our article on it is poorly organized, this definition gets to the point sooner). It looks like a hack because if the actual intent is to make the tables span the full width of the page, giving them "99%" or "98%" width is a hack: something you do to get a desirable effect, even if its not the "obvious" or "proper" thing to do. This is not your fault, because the software isn't supposed to muck this up, but it does. I don't know whether MediaWiki (not Wikimedia, by the way, but everybody mixes this up :-) or the browsers are to blame, though. (I strongly suspect the latter, because this 100% width table above looks fine when editing on Firefox). I'd need to plow through the page source and the CSS standard to determine that for sure.
 * Coo. I'm pretty sure its MediaWiki; since I did a quick test on my webpage and 100% width worked fine for both Firefox and IE. I'm not sure why its fine for you when editing. I've just done a preview with Firefox (1.0) @ 100% and a horizontal bar has appearred. - RoyBoy [ &#8734; ] 19:13, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Weirdness. Well, it works now, so let's forget all about it... Trying to figure out exactly what happens is probably not worth it. :-) JRM 19:48, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)
 * But the bars are proliferating! They could take over at any moment with their lack of compliance!!! Such trauma cannot be easily excised from my WikiSoul. - RoyBoy [ &#8734; ] 06:25, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Italics messes up 800x600 in IE (6.0.2800.1106.xpsp2.030422-1633)
Hey,

I noticed disambiguation notices mess up 800x600 view of pages for me. The reason this occurs is that any Italics text that wraps will make a horizontal bar appear even though it isn't required, which is annoying.

The way I have my browser setup is that it isn't maximized, but it takes up the entire desktop. Because I am a power user (many windows open) I like my windows to open full screen immediately. If I have my IE window maximized new windows would open small... and that won't do.

So who should I talk to about Wikimedia software compensating for this? Or perhaps this is a IE issue? I installed Firefox and it was fine... so it is an IE thingy. I went to MediaZilla to report the bug... but I'm not creating an account just to report a minor bug. Jesus; can't one login work for all Wikis! Is that too much to ask. Sheesh. --RoyBoy 23:54, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * This is strictly an MSIE issue. If text is in italics, it is slanted, and MSIE handles that by adding another character box on the right (which does not flow to a new line). This means that if the page would have just fit in 800x600, the extra character box will make the page too wide, and the scrollbar will appear. Modern browsers handle italics a lot better. Anárion (talk) 00:08, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Bastards! (I mean Microsoft :) Coo... uh could someone make the textboxes for "e-mail" and "your nickname" in User data larger (longer). Part of the reason I hadn't realized that was for custom signatures is because it's so diminutive. But after reading the bug messages on signatures the obvious hit me in the face, hence the new snazzy sig! So thx, and btw your sig looks like this to me {&#9398;&#8469;&#940;&#8475;&#8505;&#8500;&#628;·talk} Ohhhh... "(this should look like, if you have the Code2001 font installed &#8212; spacing is messed up in MSIE, though)." Looks not bad in Firefox... maybe I'll keep Firefox around, for kicks and Tolkienists. :') --RoyBoy [ &#8734; ] 00:34, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Oh, the sig /should/ look like that now &mdash; I removed the Tengwar (looks a bit like m&#776;l&#776;yim&#769;), as that only works with one font. Hurray for multiple templates with the new Mediawiki! Anárion (talk) 07:07, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Question... does SP2 do much to fonts? - RoyBoy [ &#8734; ]


 * Engine-wise: no, at least not that I know of. It is possible one or two fonts were updated, but they all work (and fail) the same way as before. Strictly this is not a font issue, but an issue in how Trident handles text. Anárion (talk) 07:30, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Former User
I'm not sure if this is the right area, but alas... User:Former user is listed as #972 for edit count in the main namespace on this page. However, according to this the user has zero edits...? &#9999; Oven Fresh &#9786;  19:00, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Where do I report this
Going to Apoprotein results in the following error message:

The database did not find the text of a page that it should have found, named "Apoprotein,oldid=7533209".

''If it is a recently changed page, trying again in a minute or two will usually work. Alternatively, you may have followed an outdated diff or history link to a page that has been deleted.''

''If this is not the case, you may have found a bug in the software. Please report this to an administrator, making note of the URL.''

RJFJR 17:56, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)


 * Ungh, ugly bug. Luckily, the last edit was a revert to a previous version, so I reverted again to cover it up. The problem's still there, but with any luck it should get in your way less. Is it me or is the database exceptionally flakey today? --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 18:21, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)


 * It wasn't the result of any flakiness today, at least&mdash;Google's December 24 cache of the page shows the same text. Looks much to me that Cvaneg actually pasted that in. &mdash;Korath (Talk) 18:43, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)
 * Ah, ofcourse. I doubt it was pasted in, but the mediawiki software has an annoying habit of giving you that message as page content if you're editing during heavy server load. If you revert without paying attention to the page contents, it's easy to save that message by mistake. --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 18:53, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)

Same article listed 3 times in Watchlist
Try it yourself. When I add Battle of Suffolk (Norfleet House) to my watchlist, it appears three times, all with the same message:

(diff) (hist). . mN Battle of Suffolk (Norfleet House); 00:48. . Brian0918 (Talk) (new)

(diff) (hist). . mN Battle of Suffolk (Norfleet House); 00:48. . Brian0918 (Talk) (new)

(diff) (hist). . mN Battle of Suffolk (Norfleet House); 00:48. . Brian0918 (Talk) (new)

I've tried unwatching and watching it again. If I unwatch it, all 3 disappear from my watchlist. They reappear when I watch the page again. --brian0918&#153; 07:48, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Yeah, and that's not the only oddity going on. Ever since we came back from database maintenance something under the hood has been very unhappy. It's happened before though, I suspect that if we just wait our valiant developers will fix it. --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 07:53, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)


 * You managed to create the article three times. Congratulations. Don't hit the save page button multiple times, it sometimes confuses MediaWiki. I've deleted and restored the page, which should correct the problem. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 08:41, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, them mediawiki needs a new feature. Disable the 'save' button once it is clicked, by using javascript. - Sridharinfinity<small style="color:green;">*  14:09, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I guarantee you that I did not click the save button repeatedly. This might have been one of the numerous pages that I've created in which, after clicking the save button, it goes to the page but says "This page has not been created yet..." so I go back and hit save again.  This has happened for a couple dozen pages, but this is the first time that a page has appeared multiple times in my watchlist.  --brian0918&#153; 17:26, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Something about 1.4 seems to have made the MediaWiki software more stupid about multiple "Save" hits--the first 'newpages' list I loaded afterwards had many 2, 3, even 4 entries for the same article--annoying, but not the end of the world. I assume they'll figure out the problem and take care of it. Someone else might want to report it--I've stopped reporting bugs since they switched to a bug tracking site that displays email addresses. Niteowlneils 16:10, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for explaining why you hit the save button repeatedly. Should be a useful clue to the people who need to fix it. Basically, if a slave database server doesn't have a requested page, the master needs to be checked, just to be sure. Similarly, when attempting to create the page, a check on the slave needs to be made first but then, if it still looks missing, that should be confirmed on the master before completing the save. When you get that message saying the page has not been created do not believe it - if you got there, it was created. Wait a few seconds and try to go to the article and you should get there. Jamesday 17:04, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

List of bands broken links
Any ideas on why the diacritics seem to break the wiki links on this page (they're even active if you do a Preview, just not when saved)? Niteowlneils 01:02, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * You're going to have to be more specific. It's a big list and I'm not seeing what you're describing. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 05:44, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Grrr. I'm not seeing it today, either. Somebody musta dun sumpin'. Basically, everything with an accent (or whatever) was showing up like "Los Auténticos Decadentes" . Well, glad it's fixed regardless. Niteowlneils 15:52, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Diffs missing from history
See the history of the New York Sun page at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_York_Sun&action=history

There are two recent versions visible: (cur) (last) 21:15, 1 Jan 2005 Curps (rm test)

(cur) (last) 04:12, 22 Dec 2004 Curps (split the historical and modern papers into two separate articles)

However, in between there was a "test" vandalism at 19:58, 1 Jan 2005 by anon user 68.239.183.136 which is only visible in that user's contribution page: but does not show up in the page history.

This sort of thing could have serious consequences: if user A commits serious vandalism and user B comes along a minute later, doesn't notice what user A did and makes a legitimate edit to the article, the history diff will wrongly appear to show that user B did the vandalism. -- Curps 22:53, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * It's showing it now. It's some sort of database lag problem. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 23:20, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I've noticed this problem a lot recently as well. --brian0918&#153; 00:08, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Categories not listing articles within
I've noticed a serious problem with categories not listing the articles within them. Take for example this category, which appears not have any articles in it. If you check this page, however, you'll see that all of those battles are actually in that category, but aren't listed on the category page. I've also noticed that some categories will list some but not all of the articles within. This is happening on several of the categories I've checked. What's the point of categories if they don't list the articles within? --brian0918&#153; 21:56, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * If you go to the parent category Category:Campaigns of the Main Eastern Theater of the American Civil War, you'll see Category:Battles of Burnside's North Carolina Expedition of the American Civil War is listed twice under "B". Must be some kind of database error.  Maybe needs developer or admin attention. -- Curps 23:00, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I remember noticing that, too, and couldn't figure out what the difference was between the two categories. In any case, no battles are listed in "either" of these categories, and this same problem is occuring with numerous Civil War categories I've created, and possibly others.  --brian0918&#153; 00:06, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * There's a bug in the handling of categories with apostrophes in their names.


 * I suspect there's no articles showing in the "Campaigns of" category because there's only subcategories in it and no articles. I'm not going to hunt through Wikipedia to be sure though. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 02:47, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Alright, that appears to be the problem. Have you submitted a bug report, or should I? (or is it already known) --brian0918 &#153;  04:29, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Recent Changes filtered by User pages
Is it possible to view recent changes in my user pages alone? .. For example, recent changes for User:xx, User:xx/page1, ... but not other pages (not containing User:xx). - Sridhar 14:37, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Make a page that links to them (and nothing else), go to it, and click Related Changes. &mdash;Korath (Talk) 14:39, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)
 * I keep adding pages and it will become tedious to update the link-page everytime. Also sometimes minor modifications to the link-page get unnoticed sometimes leading to major change in RelatedChanges - Sridhar 05:33, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Notification on ALL User talk pages
Is there a way to get a notification when somebody edits on of my user pages? For eg., is it possible to get notification message when somebody edits User:username/Page1 ? - Sridhar 14:35, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Backing up user pages alone
How to backup (in any format) my userpages alone? For eg., User:XX, User:XX/Page1, User:XX/Page2, .... Is there an automated script for doing this? - Sridhar 13:48, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC)

wikipedia running slow
seems to be running slow for the last week. I've logged in from different locations (not on same network) and its still slow.

Red links to moved pages
I've noticed a couple of times in the last few days came in that when a page is moved the "move completed" page (the one which asks you to check redirects) gived the new page as a red link (meaning you have to go there and save it). Is it another MW1.4 glitch, or has something else happened here? Grutness|hello? 23:56, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I quite like this change. More often than not one has to edit a page after moving it, so jumping straight to the edit screen saves a few seconds. - SimonP 16:42, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)
 * It's a known bug. --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 17:12, 2005 Jan 1 (UTC)

How make non-breaking in &lt;code>?
In the article matrix (mathematics) there is a comment. Because of the placement of the text and the size of my screen it splits it so the A is one one line and [i][j] is on the next. Any way to make it not line break in the middle of this? RJFJR 04:39, Dec 31, 2004 (UTC)
 * In theory, the Unicode character ZERO-WIDTH NON-BREAKING SPACE (U+FEFF) should do it, but this requires browser support (both IE and Firefox support it, but I don't know about others). If the browser doesn't support it, the results will likely be ugly, with some character substituted for the zwnbsp.
 * Below is a whole row of  with zwnbsps at the appropriate places. Try resizing the browser window and see if they're broken across lines properly.


 * For comparison, here is the same row without zwnbsps:


 * This "solution" is a bit iffy, because consistently adding zwnbsps to all places where lines actually shouldn't be broken is a massive task. Using clearer markup and better browsers seems preferrable. In particular, Firefox breaks the lines appropriately with or without zwnbsps (and the above rows look identical); IE does not. JRM 08:51, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)
 * Update: according to newer standards, using U+FEFF as zwnbsp is deprecated; it's now only the byte-order mark. We're supposed to use WORD JOINER (U+2060) instead. But (you saw this one coming) WORD JOINER isn't supported by IE, which substitutes a box for it. Firefox still doesn't need it, but supports it:


 * JRM 09:48, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)

Extra linebreaks
In articles with a table before the content (e.g. Diana, Princess of Wales and National Treasure), there are extra linebreaks inserted before the table. This results in an unsightly gap between the article header and the content.

The linebreak is in the second row. &#969;hkoh &#91;&#1058;&#93; 01:40, Dec 31, 2004 (UTC)

CHOQ
I had a weird series of problems moving the existing article "CKIE" to the station's new call sign, CHOQ. They're mostly resolved now, but two persist: the article appears twice in the categories Category:Toronto media and Category:Canadian radio stations, and the "What links here" still doesn't list any of the articles whose links I changed from CKIE to CHOQ (ie. List of Toronto media outlets, List of Ontario radio stations, CHYC, CHYK, Franco-ontarian) even though following the links in those articles works properly now. (That was one of the original problems.)Bearcat 18:32, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Image rendering problem
I've been working on editing some images for the Clitoris article. I uploaded two version of the image to the commons, and then made the samples on Talk:Clitoris/Image tests. For some reason, the second image doesn't render properly, but the first one does. Can anyone see any reason for this? I used the same syntax, it really just baffles me... &mdash; &#12510;&#12452;&#12465;&#12523;   &#8362;  04:07, Dec 30, 2004 (UTC)


 * Are you using IE? They're all rendering OK for me, though I do have occasional problems with Wikipedia images.  Usually the problem goes away when I delete temporary internet files (I'm using IE on this computer ... though probably not for long).  Did you make all the images with the same program? Antandrus 16:50, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Wait, so they all render with the image box around them and are inline with the text? Yes, I created them all using Adobe Illustrator. I am using Mozilla Firefox to view the page. The top 3 versions all render as expected. The bottom 3 versions (which all use a different image than the first 3) render as if the image were just there in just a plain old html img tag. In fact, here is what the source code looks like to me when I load the page:


 * <a name="4._Recognition_of_existence"></a>
 * 4. Recognition of existence
 * <a href="/wiki/Image:Clitoris-Vivero-Becker-purp-temp.jpg" class="image" title="
 * The external part of the clitoris amounts to a small, sensitive knob at the anterior end of the visible female ."><img src="
 * http://commons.wikimedia.org/upload/thumb/a/a9/300px-Clitoris-Vivero-Becker-purp-temp.jpg" alt="
 * The external part of the clitoris amounts to a small, sensitive knob at the anterior end of the visible female ." longdesc="
 * /wiki/Image:Clitoris-Vivero-Becker-purp-temp.jpg" /></a>


 * And here is the way the source looks for one that renders right:


 * 3. Recognition of existence
 * <a href="/wiki/Image:Clitoris-Vivero-Becker.jpg" class="internal" title="
 * The external part of the clitoris amounts to a small, sensitive knob at the anterior end of the visible female ."><img src="
 * http://commons.wikimedia.org/upload/thumb/d/de/400px-Clitoris-Vivero-Becker.jpg" alt="
 * The external part of the clitoris amounts to a small, sensitive knob at the anterior end of the visible female ." width="400"
 * height="250" longdesc="/wiki/Image:Clitoris-Vivero-Becker.jpg" /></a>
 * <a href="/wiki/Image:Clitoris-Vivero-Becker.jpg" class="internal" title=" Enlarge"><img src="/skins/common/images/magnify-clip.png" width="15" height="11" alt="Enlarge" /></a>
 * The external part of the clitoris amounts to a small, sensitive knob at the anterior end of the visible female <a href="
 * /wiki/Reproductive_system" title="Reproductive system">reproductive anatomy</a>.
 * The external part of the clitoris amounts to a small, sensitive knob at the anterior end of the visible female <a href="
 * /wiki/Reproductive_system" title="Reproductive system">reproductive anatomy</a>.


 * Clearly the two are different, but I can't see the difference in the wiki-code, just the thml rendered by the pedia software is different, I don't think my browser is making a difference.   &mdash;  &#12510;&#12452;&#12465;&#12523;   &#8362;  18:37, Dec 30, 2004 (UTC)

Flash
When will Wikipedia enter the 21st century and allow Flash files to be imbedded into article pages like images? - XED . talk .stalk.mail. csb  23:53, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * When flash is not proprietary. We may allow SVG at some time. 68.237.137.57


 * But Photoshop is not proprietary and it's used to produce or manipulate many of the images on Wikipedia. Also, Flash files are much more common, as is the ability to view them. My browser (Safari) only has sketchy support for SVG files - XED . talk .stalk.mail. csb


 * Photoshop is proprietary, yes, but that's irrelevent - the images it produces are not. Compare mp3/ogg. &mdash;Korath (Talk) 01:28, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Source files (.fla) could be uploaded. There are other programs, besides macromedia flash, which can produce .swf flash files - XED . talk .stalk.mail. csb 01:52, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Users don't need Photoshop installed to view the images. That's a red herring.
 * The lack of support in some browsers for SVG is a valid argument against using it. One browser I use daily to browse Wikipedia (but rarely to edit it) is Pocket Internet Explorer on an iPaq. It supports neither Flash nor SVG, as far as I know. I've tried a commercial alternative browser, NetFront, but it is worse at rendering Wikipedia, and I doubt it supports those formats either. I can't wait for Minimo to be available for my computer, but what's the chances of Flash being ported to my platform for it?-gadfium 01:38, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I don't know. Possibly less than Flash - XED . talk .stalk.mail. csb  01:52, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Personally I don't see a problem with providing flash files as optional enhancements to articles, as long as these are properly marked up so that I can get good alternate content (image or sound file most likely) due to object fallback. Anárion (talk) 11:23, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm against, link to flash files if need be (even have them uploadable in commons), but not embed into articles. Even then I would pref. it to be an open format, like SVG than Flash. ~ mlk <sup style="color: orange;">&#9993; <sup style="color: green;">&#9836; 05:06, 1 Jan 2005 (UTC) ~

Remember my password across sessions.
That's exactly what Wikipedia has not been doing over the past few days. I have to log in from scratch whenever I turn on my computer. Have I missed out on anything? <KF> 21:13, Dec 27, 2004 (UTC)


 * Still the same. KF, Dec 30, 2004.


 * And again today, but my problems seem to be absolutely completely utterly unimportant and irrelevant. Not a single soul reacting here. I'm the exact opposite of a computer expert, and all I want to know is whether it's my machine / connection (not enabling cookies or whatever) or a bug in Wikipedia or I don't know. I'll keep asking this question until I get an answer, no matter how long it takes. KF, Dec 31, 2004.


 * Is this happening literally every time? Do you have cookies enabled? -- Jmabel | Talk 20:40, Dec 31, 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks for answering. It's happening almost every time, and yes, cookies are enabled (I've checked, and anyway, no one has changed anything there). So can I draw the conclusion that this is not a general problem and must be related to my computer? <KF> 17:43, Jan 1, 2005 (UTC)

PS The "You have new messages" sign has lost all its charm since people I do not know started inundating my talk page with messages. It's particularly the obvious ones like a screenshot I uploaded in 2002&mdash;something everybody can recognize and fix&mdash;that slightly get on my nerves.

Stub threshold
Stub display is not working in pages as it used to. It only works in edit summaries, but nowhere else. Does anyone else have this problem? Peter O. (Talk, automation script) 20:13, Dec 24, 2004 (UTC)


 * Yes, I have noticed this too. Perhaps a 1.4 bug? Antandrus 20:20, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Me too!Tuf-Kat 04:28, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)
 * The stub threshold also appears to work on redirect pages. Tuf-Kat 06:30, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)

I'm still seeing this behavior. Anyone else? -- Walt Pohl 06:55, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Vfd robots="index,follow"
Can we get this set to something else on VfD and it's subpages? Votes for deletion/Gabriel Uzquiano is the number 2 hit for Gabriel Uzquiano. Niteowlneils 03:27, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * And probably all the Wikipedia: namespace, and possibly all the non-article namespace. Niteowlneils 18:33, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * PS This isn't the first time I've seen this--when researching VfDs, all too often the VfD page is one of the top google hits, which I consider a very bad thing. Niteowlneils 20:19, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't hide all the Wikipedia namespace from search engines, but we should block VfD. Where do we go to get this done? JesseW 07:55, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * This seems like a good idea to me. Anyone know if this is possible and how to do it? Paul August &#9742; 03:16, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * There are two ways todo it, either with meta-tags, or just a change to robots.txt file. Intangir 00:11, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Image link within a link problem
I have the following text on my user page (See this version) (an external link contained within an image wiki-link):
 * [[Image:Picture of Ram-Man 300.jpg|thumbnail|175px|(c)2004 Derek Ramsey. License: cc-by-nd-nc]]

The external link ( cc-by-nd-nc ) does not work anymore. It seems to have worked fine in WM 1.3. -- RM 16:14, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)


 * This newly introduced bug has broken nearly all of the "Flag of <Country>" pages, too.
 * Urhixidur 05:57, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)

Edit / Delete Conflict
Wikipedia handles edit / edit conflicts very well. However, when an administrator deletes a page that is being edited by another user, and that other user hits "save page" then a new version is created.

This can be annoying if the second user was just adding a flag. It has happened to me today and a couple of times in the past.

Is there any way that either the "delete" or the "save page" processes can check on this? Jeff Knaggs|Talk 16:56, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

(Oh, and could someone please delete Shitipedia - it isn't really mine!)


 * Done. Jayjg |  (Talk)  18:26, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Saving One's Work
Hey all, I realize this doesn't quite mesh with the mission/goal/concept of Wikipedia, but I really want to save my contributions. This is primarily just because I'm a packrat and a collector like that, but also because I want to, if Wikipedia should ever cease to exist, or the like, still have my contributions. Like most people here, I imagine, I put a lot of effort and time into my entries, and I don't want to rely on just having them on the free-open-source Wiki servers. I want a pseudo-hardcopy on my own HD. Is there a quick mass way to do this? And is there a Wiki-reader program I can use to read these hardcopy files? thanks

LordAmeth 04:42, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * For individual articles, see Special:Export. For the whole database, see Database download.-gadfium 05:19, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

New image prob
Before I start, yes, I have read the faq at the top of the page, and I know there is a delay of "a few minutes". I'm just wondering how many minutes is a few... I uploaded an image (Africastubmap.pdf) about an hour ago. The file is there, but on the image page, in place of the image, there is simply a link to it. This means, of couse, that it is listed as "missing image" everywhere else it appears. And since its an image for use in a stub template, that's quite a lot of places. Fifty minutes plus seems a bit too long for a standard delay - is there something else wrong? Grutness|hello? 00:59, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Okay - I'm an idiot. I can't tell pdf and png apart. Can someone please delete the Image:Africastubmap.pdf page? Thanks. Grutness|hello? [[Image:Grutness.jpg|25px|]]


 * Done. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 17:37, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Security aspects of open Wikis?
This was prompted by yesterday's FBI warning: "False websites have been established that pretend to be legitimate relief organizations asking for donations—one of which contains an imbedded Trojan exploit that can infect your computer with a virus if accessed." As some may know, the article on QuakeAID is undergoing VfD discussion. I perceive the consensus to be that most discussants think QuakeAID is dodgy, and the debate is whether to delete the article or NPOV it. I don't think the FBI was talking about the QuakeAID site. But of course it got me thinking about the issue of Wikipedia containing links to phishing or virus-injecting sites... and to a larger issue.

We normally think of Wikipedia as a passive receptable for receiving and viewing text. That is, the only "viruses" that could be spread are virulent words, thoughts, memes, rumors, propaganda, etc. The open editing process and the skepticism of the reader can take care of this adequately.

But have the Wikimedia designers given careful thought to issues with links, executable content, and so forth?

On a modern browser in a modern OS, fortunately or unfortunately the browser is not a passive viewer of static content. And on a wiki, the content is not subject to much control.

We already know that Wikis are used for googlebombing. They represent a readily available way in which the operator of a website can himself plant links back from other websites (wikis) to his own website.

Any time anyone puts a link on a website, there is exposure because the person placing the link doesn't necessarily know everything about the site that is being linked. This is a greater problem on Wikipedia because there is no authority over who inserts the links; a person with an ill-intentioned link doesn't have to trick another person into inserting it, but can insert it himself.

So far, the main problem we've had with links is spam. But if you recall the history of email, that would have been true of email too a few years ago. Now email is quite likely to encontain embedded executable malware.

This is is really just a question. How much attention has been given to security aspects of Wikipedia, and the potential that people could invent or discover ways to embed executable malware on Wikipedia pages? Or to trick users into loading malware?

I hope this is a stale old issue that has already been addressed. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:15, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * As far as I'm aware, I don't think anything can be directly embedded in Wikipedia articles save images and links. While trying to avoid sounding like a fanatic, some modern browsers on some modern OSes do not have great problems with malware conveyed via the Web, and (while trying to avoid zealotry) if downloading an image or merely clicking a web link can compromise the security of your system, it might be time to avoid Microsoft seek better alternatives; I don't see it as Wikipedia's problem, per se. Ranting aside, though, it's probably worth thinking about ;-) &mdash; Matt Crypto 18:59, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, I'm glad I kept my zeal strictly tongue-in-cheek, considering ;-) &mdash; Matt Crypto  00:45, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * We've gone to a fair degree of effort to ensure that cross-site scripting attacks (eg arbitrary HTML and JavaScript inclusion) are not possible. Of course there could always be something we've missed; if so please let us know.


 * Using a lot of manual CSS styling one could create a page which obscures the main interface, but only in limited ways and this would be detectable and revertable by other users on the site. --Brion 23:42, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

Article seemingly duplicated in the database
Hi. I have posted this request for help at the talk page of the Cesare Pavese article that I have created:


 * Some admin or wikimagician, help fix this page. It seems to have been recorded in the database twice (two links to it appear in each of its category pages) and, though there are a couple of articles linking to it, they don't appear in its "what links here" page. Thanks. RodC 10:13, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I suppose it's related to the lag problem people have written about? - Is it something that is supposed to get fixed by itself? RodC 17:02, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Widow Twankey has exactly the same problem - is actually linked from Pantomime and Aladdin. Jeff Knaggs|Talk 17:24, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Both pages have had their duplicate creation repaired. This process has to be done manually by an admin deleting and recreating the page (it could probably be automated, but hasn't).


 * Why this happens is that users are hitting save page on a new page more than once, which MediaWiki does not handle properly. The reason users are hitting save page multiple times is the lag problem causing delays in things showing up. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 20:21, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Duplicate page
Eh, couldn't find any better place to report this. Category:New Jersey streetcar lines is duplicated due to the lag. --SPUI 14:33, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Repaired. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 20:08, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Rewriting history
Am I going crazy, or does editing and saving an older revision of a page actually erase the complete history of changes made since that revision?


 * Never heard of that one. But there is some weirdness going on with history not being displayed properly related to the problem under the above heading. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 02:48, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Wait a bit; the older changes will eventually appear. --SPUI 06:05, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * And they did! Thanks for replying. While I'm posting here anyway; I have another small issue. It seems you're sending a "must-revalidate" cache directive with all pages, causing the latest non-beta Opera to reload every time one goes back/forward. It is slightly annoying, and also wasteful of bandwidth. So, it would be nice if you could fix that (if it's not too much trouble).

Editing problems
I've tried several times to do a minor edit on the article Stratford, New Zealand. Each time I save, all that is left is the word "Stratford", which doesn't even qualify the article as a substub. Worse, when I gave up and tried to revert to the version before I started trying to change it, that only saved as the one word as well. What gives? Grutness|hello? 00:07, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I have been able to edit articles perfectly, but for the last twenty minutes I haven't been able to save any new ones. Also recent changes, newpages, and user contributions have stopped updating. - SimonP
 * I managed to fix the Stratford article. I've noticed the same problems with deletions not happening&mdash;the page is wiped but the article (in my case, the category) still seems to exist. -Aranel (" Sarah ") 01:14, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Did you encounter a weird group of text eating boxes? That is what I ran into when I tried to revert it. - SimonP 01:25, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)


 * The problem has been diagnosed as a breakdown of the database replication system. The people who can fix it are MIA. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 01:17, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Is everyone suffering from no recent changes, no watchlist, and an inability to save new articles? If so it might be best to lock the database until this problem is resolved. - SimonP 01:25, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)


 * Update: replication has been restarted. It'll take a while for things to return to normal, but it's headed back in the right direction. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 02:18, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Update: databases are caught up. Watchlists and page histories should display properly. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 03:25, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Caught up, maybe...fixed, no. Three times I've tried to start Category talk: Headlands, and each time when I save it it comes back saying that no such article exists. This is getting ridiculous. I've posted more to this forum every day since MW1.4 went in than in the whole month prior to it. There's teething problems and then there's teething problems. Grutness|hello? 05:45, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * This problem is not MediaWiki 1.4. This problem is Wikipedia growing too active for its databases to handle. Things were lagged again a bit later due to some maintenance to the Spanish Wikipedia that caused heavy database load. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 06:00, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Sounds like maybe half of us need to take a week of vacation. :-) &mdash;Mike 08:59, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)
 * Maybe that's the problem - a lot of us are on holiday, so we've got more free time at the computer :) Thanks for the help - and sorry if I sounded annoyed! Grutness|hello? [[Image:Grutness.jpg|25px|]]

Harold Brodkey
I recently created the article Harold Brodkey and it seems to be behaving strangely. In my watchlist and in Category:American writers, the article appears three times. Also, when I click on "What Links Here," no other articles appear even though there are clearly articles that link to it. What's going on here? --Polynova 19:18, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * I believe that the technique for fixing this is to delete and then restore the article, but at the moment deletions are not working, so I won't risk it just yet. -Aranel (" Sarah ") 01:18, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Minor Move niggle
When I move page 1 to page 2, the successful move shows up with page 2 as a red link. When I click on it, it puts me in edit mode. RickK 07:17, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)


 * Been meaning to complain about this one myself. It happens when you undelete a page too. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 08:19, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Request for improvement
I assume this is the right place to ask, but I may be wrong. It has become clear in some contexts that a facility for adding borders to images is needed in Wikipedia. Something like two parameters along the lines of «imageborderthickness="1"» and «imagebordercolor="ABCDEF"». To give specific instances, any image of a flag that happens to have white field portions (e.g. Cyprus, Poland, etc.) will appear incorrect if displayed within a box which itself has a fixed white background. Because borders are not part of a flag's proper design, they should not be included in the images. So we need to link to the image whilst specifying the rendering engine add a thin (typically 1 pixel) line around it (in black, or light grey, whatever).

This shouldn't be very hard to implement, now, would it?

Urhixidur 06:08, 2005 Jan 5 (UTC)

How Often: Feedback?
These last few threads seem pretty serious, to me, and thus I'm surprised that nobody in a position to know about such things has dropped us a hint or two...but I have no idea how often they bother to comment here in the first place. If there were a serious problem, would they be answering these threads, or do they sorta stick to their separate realm, their higher (or lower, depending on one's perspective) plane of movement?


 * They're busy fighting fires. I'm kind of acting as a liason right now.


 * To address the seriousness statement: the problems everyone are encountering are annoying and frustrating, but there is no database corruption happening. If your attempt to edit goes through without reporting an error, it is saved, even if it doesn't show up immediately. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 01:57, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Any idea what could be the problem in the message I posted above in Categories not listing the articles within? It's been a couple weeks and the categories are still not listing all (or any) of the articles in them.  --brian0918 &#153;  02:01, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, answering under that heading. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 02:43, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Serious database corruption? (Answer: No!)
I don't want to be an alarmist, but all of the posts for today make me concerned that there is a serious problem with Wikipedia, perhaps causing serious database corruption. Can anyone confirm or deny this? Should some kind of general warning be issued? Paul August &#9742; 20:23, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)


 * Certainly there's a form of corruption occurring, though it may not be technological. People confused by the lack of appearance, or the disappearance, of a newly or recently created article are likely to try to "fix" the problem, resulting in multiple entries on different actual servers in the cluster. Someone above mentioned multiples of exactly the same entry, with different IDs (which is supposed to be impossible)...that sounds to me like the problem I'm describing.


 * I know that errors I fixed after saving a new article did vanish, probably because my efforts to make the article stop vanishing ended up with the wrong version being officially saved last.Kaz 21:14, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Have you read through the "Edit disappears from edit history" above? This seems like a case of broken backward pointer chains. Seems like this could be serious to me. I would really like someone who is knowlegeable to address this. Can someone who understands how to report bugs report this please. Paul August  &#9742; 22:06, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)


 * Those cases where I missed my edits in the edit history they show up now, so the only thing which remains are multiple instances of the same newly created article in the database. Those apparently can be fixed by admins by deleting und then undeleting the articles. andy 21:48, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Ok, Cyrius has looked into my "Edit disappears from edit history" problem above and believes that it might have been due to database lags, and in fact the problem with the "missing" edit and the edit history for the article in question seems now to have resolved itself. So my fears of "database corruption" have eased considerably. Thanks to Cyrius for responding. Paul August &#9742; 01:36, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)


 * As you said, there's no actual serious corruption going on. The only thing that is suffering corruption is the "links table", which causes weirdness with red links and "what links here", but no loss of article data.


 * If your edit did not die with some sort of error, or time out completely, your edit is stored in the master DB. It just may take some time to show up. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 01:52, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

What about minor database corruption? As you acknowledge in a thread right after this, an entry can get made multiple times, and one reason for that is the "vanishing new article" problem. A number of us have re-created an article because the original vanished, only to have the original come back.

Could you at least suggest that a warning be included in the "this article does not exist" message? Something along the lines of "If you created this article in the last few minutes, it may be missing purely because of lag in cluster updates, please wait N minutes for it to return". Kaz 16:00, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Oh, nevermind, I see you already did that, thanks... Kaz 16:05, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wiki's Not Just Slow...Stuff is Missing...
OK, this is beyond slow. I'm ending up editing four pages at the same time, so I can rotate between them during the five minute wait each may have to update.

But it's worse than just that. I've long had new pages I'm creating show up as "does not exist" when I first save them, probably because of the wait to propogate over the cluster...but now I'm having one appear, then vanish, then appear, then vanish, as I work on it. Not in a "candidate for quick deletion" way, it vanishes and then reappears a minute or two later. Links to it in related articles I'm working on suddenly become red, or I'll be saving the article and suddenly be faced, after multiple instances of it working fine, with the old "does not yet exist, maybe you should create one" message.

The specific page I'm encountering this with is Mound Builders, but I suspect that it's a systemic thing, not specific to that article.

Hmmm...as I've been writing this, I've been trying to re-save my initial version of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Builders -- which has been visible and working off and on for a few minutes, but then became consistently absent -- and it NEVER becomes visible, now. After my save, I always (as of the last fifteen minutes or so) get "does not have an article with this exact name", and no amount of waiting or re-saving my initial article is helping.

This, by the way, reminds me of an urgent suggestion I have:

On the "this page does not exist, maybe you should make one" response page, one of the possible causes mentioned should, definitely, be along the lines of "If you've created this page in the last minute or two, it may not be visible yet because of a delay in update".

That would probably spare people a lot of confusion. Kaz 17:35, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Ditto all that --brian0918 &#153; 17:41, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Check out this new error, obtained when trying to create a new version of the gone again/here again page:
 * A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:
 * INSERT IGNORE INTO `links` (l_from,l_to) VALUES ('1362067','936410'),('1362067','1212012'),('1362067','1362067'),('1362067','591906'),('1362067','804'),('1362067','348454'),('1362067','426768'),('1362067','13209'),('1362067','61810'),('1362067','498651'),('1362067','101188'),('1362067','147257'),('1362067','1360401'),('1362067','903075'),('1362067','33849'),('1362067','48159'),('1362067','50283'),('1362067','1187827'),('1362067','497846'),('1362067','702219')
 * from within function "LinksUpdate::doUpdate". MySQL returned error "1213: Deadlock found when trying to get lock; Try restarting transaction (10.0.0.1)".
 * Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Builders" Kaz 17:51, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I've gotten that error as well. --brian0918 &#153; 18:13, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * The transaction error is "normal with a transactional database, we just don't handle it very well at the moment". If you get the error, wait a bit and then try again. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 01:48, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * One additional comment...in all the lag and delay, a mis-spelling of Mound_Builders reappeared, so that I also ended up with a Mount_Builders page. But this is only an additional complication, all of the above stands as real problems. The correctly spelled page appeared, vanished, reappeared, vanished again, et cetera. Kaz 18:00, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Repaired. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 02:05, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, compared to what I have just read here, what I'm going to say is almost irrelevant: I know that at least four pages -- Family life in literature, 1987 in literature, Heroines in literature and List of books by title (or whatever it is called) link to the newly created article, Ellen Foster (and now of course also this Village pump page). When you click on the "What links here" function, however, you are told that "No pages link to here". Can this be changed, and if so, how? (Deleting the article and saving it again?) <KF> 19:27, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)
 * This is caused by missing entries in the links table, which stores the information about what articles point at what. The easiest way to repair this is to go to the page you know links to the article. Hit edit, then save page without making any changes. This will force an update of what pages it links to, assuming the database is operating at full speed at the time. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 01:45, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot. That's more or less what I figured out in the meantime. <KF> 02:53, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)


 * Bonus points to Kaz for mostly understanding the problem. The reason the article appears and vanishes is that sometimes the query goes to the DB master (which is up to date), and sometimes to the DB slaves (which may not be). Your suggetion for adding a "if you created this article and it's not here" message has been implemented. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 01:37, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Problems creating articles
Right now I've been trying repeatedly to simply create a redirect from Charles Devens, Jr. to Charles Devens. After a couple dozen tries, no luck. I click submit, it brings me to the "Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name." page. No history or anything. At the same time, I successfully created a Charles Devens, Jr redirect. At one point, the first link was created... at least, the redirect text showed up in the edit box, although it still said the page hadn't been created. After reloading the page, however, the edit box was empty again. This has happened at least once before (an article being created, but not showing up except in the edit box, but then disappearing from even the edit box). Wikipedia is having some serious problems. --brian0918 &#153; 17:27, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, it looks like the redirect that I said was successfully created wasn't created. When I first created it, I clicked on the article, and it redirected me to Charles Devens, so it worked once................. --brian0918 &#153;  17:28, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Now it appears that the article that I originally said wasn't being created is now working, while the one that I said was created still doesn't exist................. --brian0918 &#153; 17:30, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Now neither article exists........... --brian0918 &#153; 17:34, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * And now, finally, they both exist. --brian0918 &#153; 21:00, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * There's a general problem and a bug interacting. The general problem is that the DB slaves sometimes get lagged behind the DB master. This means that they don't have the current state of Wikipedia. Which means they may not know you created the redirect yet.


 * The bug is that page load queries are not supposed to go to the slaves unless they're up to date. What you were seeing is that sometimes the query is going to the DB master (which knew the redirect existed), and sometimes to the slaves (which didn't), producing weird behavior where things appear and disappear at random. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 01:24, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Edit disappears from edit history
I've just experience a problem with an edit to the article Order of operations by User:Parabolis, disappearing from the article's edit history, as well from that user's' contributions.

This edit first showed up on my watchlist as:


 * m 09:18 Order of operations (diff; hist) . . Parabolis (Talk) (Changed 'Multiplication/Division' to 'Multiplication, Division' and changed 'Addition/Subtraction' to 'Addition, Subtraction'. The slash wrongly suggests Multiplication and Division are simultaneous.)

and in Parabolis' user contributions (it was the only edit listed):


 * 09:18, Jan 4, 2005 (hist) (diff) m Order of operations (Changed 'Multiplication/Division' to 'Multiplication, Division' and changed 'Addition/Subtraction' to 'Addition, Subtraction'. The slash wrongly suggests Multiplication and Division are simultaneous.)

I reverted this edit by Parabolis, but now this edit does not show up in the articles' history or in Parabolis' user edits (this list now shows no edits at all).

Although I originally saw the above edit listed in the history, the current history for Order of operations now shows as it's last two entries the following:


 * (cur) (last) 11:29, Jan 4, 2005 Paul August (rv edits by Parabolis to last version by Paul August, "slashes" indicate that they have the same precedence)
 * (cur) (last) 15:19, Oct 25, 2004 Paul August m (?See also - fix link)

But it still showes up in my watchlist as the last edit. Something is very wrong. Paul August &#9742; 17:13, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

Curiouser and curiouser. Now the edit history for Order of operations, shows:


 * (cur) (last) 11:29, Jan 4, 2005 Paul August (rv edits by Parabolis to last version by Paul August, "slashes" indicate that they have the same precedence)
 * (cur) (last) 08:00, Jan 4, 2005 82.37.84.192
 * (cur) (last) 15:19, Oct 25, 2004 Paul August m (?See also - fix link)

Paul August &#9742; 17:33, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)


 * I have been encountering this problem for a while, at least a day or two...Edits I make don't show up in the history, or only one of several in sequence shows up. I've been guessing that it's a cluster update problem, though I'd initially wondered if it was a Minor Edit filtering issue of some sort.


 * Now, with all the cases of entire new pages vanishing, reappearing, and then vanishing again, I'm pretty sure it's cluster update related, too. I'm sure I could find this somewhere, but finding info is a pain when the site's so slow; what system is being used for distributed computing here? I suspect that it's one I wouldn't recommend to clients... Kaz 17:43, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

More information, here is the diff for 82.37.84.192's 08:00 edit:, and I've been able to find the diff for Parabolis's 09:18 edit:. However when I first looked at the diff of Parabolis' edit I saw (I think) both of these edits, in the same diff. Paul August &#9742; 17:56, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)


 * At the very top of the page, in big bold letters: "FAQ: Intermittent database lags can make the watchlist, contributions, and page history/old views sometimes not show the very latest changes. This is an ongoing issue we are working on." -- Cyrius|&#9998; 18:19, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * The above events, seem more like the result of database corruption than lags in displaying current information. For example how does a lag account for Parabolis 09:00 edit still not showing up, while my subsequent 11:29 edit does? Paul August  &#9742; 19:44, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

I've looked into this further. Looking at the edit history for: Order of operations here, shows (as above):


 * (cur) (last) 11:29, Jan 4, 2005 Paul August (rv edits by Parabolis to last version by Paul August, "slashes" indicate that they have the same precedence)
 * (cur) (last) 08:00, Jan 4, 2005 82.37.84.192
 * (cur) (last) 15:19, Oct 25, 2004 Paul August m (?See also - fix link)

Clicking on "last" for the most recent edit (11:29), shows the diff for the 11:29 edit, clicking on the "previous edit'" link for that diff shows the diff for the 08:00 edit, finally clicking on the "Next edit'" link for that diff shows the diff for the missing 09:18 edit. This looks like a broken backward pointer chain to me (not a database lag). Paul August &#9742; 20:06, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually, it fits with database lag if you take into account how MediaWiki's database is set up. The current revision is stored in a separate table from old revisions, and is generally retrieved from the DB master and not the DB slaves (although there's a bug that's complicating that). This means that everything after the current revision is subject to replication lag on the DB slaves. There is no "backwards pointer chain".


 * The edit in question is now finally showing up. Also, could you specify that you're not using UTC in future posts of this nature? I was confused for a while because the no revisions appeared to exist at those times. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 00:53, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Ok. I would feel much relieved if this were all due to database lags. Thanks for looking into this. And as far as the UTC thing, are you recommending that I change my time-zone offset from my current -5:00 setting to 0:00? Paul August &#9742; 01:24, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)


 * Just tell people that you're using it so they won't get confused. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 02:08, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Duplicate Articles
I have been noticing many duplicate articles today. e.g. Sofa (band)

They have the same title but different "rcid" e.g. 4838912, 4838867, 4838859 and so on.

That should not be possible. The basic problem seems to be that there are two different ways of identifying a record - a definite no-no I would have thought. Jeff Knaggs|Talk 17:12, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * It is a flaw in the design of the database, but is rather difficult to change. A fix would require a new database design, new code to use it, and conversion of the all the data. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 02:12, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

You have new messages.
On every page I go to, except my User talk page, I see the new message notice. I go to my talk page to make it go away, but it doesn't. --SPUI 15:56, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Eh, it's stopped. The edit was probably showing up in the databse but my going to my user page wasn't, due to the recent lag. --SPUI 18:38, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Odd behavior of page history & contribs, resulting from trailing-white-space edits following own substantive edit
I made a series of edits to the same page between 18:01, 2005 Jan 3 and 06:27, 2005 Jan 4:
 * 1) Substantive edit.
 * 2) Added trailing blank to heading.
 * 3) Added trailing blank to the 'graph edited in edit 1 above.
 * 4) Added blank between the two links of my sig from edit 1.

No other user edited between any two of these edits.

Following edits 2 and 3, the history entry for edit 1 was missing, and only the most recent date and summary showed. The most recent diff available (don't recall if i used "last" or "cur") showed the change i made in 1 as part of what was changed. (I.e., it looked as if the diffs accessed the version produced by edit 1, but the date and summary of edit 1 had been changed to those of edit 2 or 3.) However, i'm pretty sure no summary was displayed for the later of two diff edits.

I'm pretty sure that edit 1 was the only one shown in my contribs until edit 4 (below).

After edit 4, in which i added visible white space, all 4 edits show in their expected places in the page history and in my contribs.

Conclusions:
 * While the odd behavior is short term, at least in this case, it is troublesome for its duration, and IMO not acceptable even if fully documented.
 * I have not tested for a possible long-term effect where different users make the substantive edit and the one with no visible effect, nor where different users make the last dummy edit and the visible-white-space one.

--Jerzy(t) 07:10, 2005 Jan 4 (UTC)


 * Similar has happened to me. I added a new article Widow Twankey - redlinked on Recent Changes, and it just diappeared into hyperspace. If I click on the red link, up comes the text. Very odd. Jeff Knaggs|Talk 14:59, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Database error on watchlist and contributions
Apart from the pedia running painfully slow (which I can handle) I am also unable to access either my watchlist or contributions at present. All I get when I make such a request is:


 * Warning: mysql_query: Unable to save result set in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.4/includes/Database.php on line 312
 * Unable to free MySQL result

I haven't seen anyone else start a discussion based on this above, so I don't know if it's just me or something other people are experiencing, and I probably won't pick up a reply until tomorrow, because I can't get into my contributions or my watchlist... -- Francs2000 | Talk 02:56, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I have been having the same problems all day. I think its mostly related to today's slashdotting. -Ld | talk
 * Jamesday reports that Slashdot has, in the past, increased traffic by as much as 20%. Today's slashdotting apparently increased the number of requests by only about 4%. Wikipedia is much bigger than the Slashdot effect. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 04:18, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * The developers are attempting to work on it. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 04:18, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Help with Javascript
I am trying to add a whiteband to my page in support of the 'make poverty history' campaign. I can't seem to get it to work, the script is: <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/whiteband_small_right.js"> any ideas would be very gratefully recieved. Thanks. And sorry if this is the wrong place for this question. --Solar 16:17, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * You can't insert javascript into wikipedia pages I'm afraid, the potential for abuse would be too great. --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 16:32, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)

Special characters not displaying
Ever since Wikipedia changed its style and font, special characters like fractions, pound sterling signs and certain accented letters have failed to display properly, often just showing up as dots. See my note at the beginning of the Heavy metal umlaut article. Is this just a problem with my browser or is it a more widespread issue? Lee M 14:25, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Works fine for me, using Opera. MSIE user? Then change your 'Latin' font from Times New Roman to Gentium, Arial MS Unicode, or another large font. MSIE is not capable of switching fonts inside codepages, so if your font does not support the full Latin + Latin Extended-A + Latin Extended-B + Latin Additional ranges (which is very likely, and is definitely the case for Times New Roman), some characters will fail. Modern browsers (Opera, Mozilla) can switch fonts per codepage. See also Template:Unicode.

Reload instructions are incorrect
When I edit my monobook.css or monobook.js files, it gives instructions on how to force-reload the files. The instructions for Opera are wrong, however: at least as of Opera 4 and continuing in the current Opera beta, Ctrl+F5 reloads all pages. The correct reload command is still 'F5' or 'Ctrl+R': In Opera a reload always requests a new copy if the server file's timestamp has changed. I cannot figure out what template generates that text, or I'd have done the change myself. Anárion (talk) 07:34, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's a template but something hardcoded. No way to tell without downloading mediwiki anyway. --fvw<SMALL> * </SMALL> 16:35, 2005 Jan 3 (UTC)
 * It's not hardcoded, it's a normal system message which any sysop can edit at MediaWiki:Clearyourcache. You can find this out without downloading MediaWiki by looking at Special:Allmessages.  Kate.
 * Okay, then I'll go find me a sysop. Thanks. Is there any reason this template is not indicated when editing the page? Anárion (talk) 17:34, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * MediaWiki messages aren't shown like normal templates because there are a large number on every page and it'd be unworkable (every piece of text that isn't part of an article is a mediawiki message). Kate.
 * Using my awesome powers of sysopness, I've edited the message. Hopefully I didn't screw it up. If I did, the template has a talk page, leave a message there. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 17:57, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.4
If Wikipedia's been upgraded to 1.4, like it says on Recent Changes, how come there's no way to "patrol" edits, like there is (or was?) on Commons? Please either reply on my talkpage, or tell me on my talkpage when you've replied here. Thanks,--[[User:Gabriel Webber|Gabriel (internal ID number: 118170)]] 11:40, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * It's turned off by default. And check the "raw signature" box in your preferences so you'll stop creating broken sigs. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 18:31, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Really? How do I turn it off in my Preferences?  RickK 00:49, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
 * Second checkbox in User data section after clicking the Preferences link. Niteowlneils 21:14, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

different languages -- duplication of effort?
Wikipedia articles exist in many different languages. Has it occurred to anyone that there is a huge amount of duplication of effort involved in trying to maintain these different versions?

Take for example the articles about Germany, in the German Wikipedia and in the English Wikipedia. Note that the articles have entirely different formats, contain utterly different topics, pictures, and data.

Think about how much more complete both articles could be if all of the collaboration that went into each article had gone into both articles. Does anyone have ideas on how to accomplish this? I just think writing the same article twice, independently, is a huge waste of human effort.

I understand that the same article in different languages actually may want to be different. For example, the article about Deutschland in German may want to focus on issues pertinent to Germans, whereas the English article about Germany may focus more on Germany's foreign relations. Still, there is so much basic data here (such as the names of the states and cities) and pictures that are totally duplicated when they should not be.

Jawed 08:24, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I disagree with your last point &mdash; in practice, it may be the case that various languages' treatment of "home topics" have very different emphasis, but I don't think that we actually want this. A balanced treatment of a topic can be obtained in every language, if we work hard enough.


 * The only mechanism I can think of to minimise duplication of effort on different language versions is to have a bilingual editor "cross-polinate" both versions by copying facts and images back and forth. &mdash; Matt Crypto 09:33, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I strongly encourage translation of articles -- it's a great way to get content -- but, in fact, most people working on the English-language Wikipedia seem to view it as less work to write from scratch than to translate. There is, in fact, an enormous backlog of requests for translation from German (and to lesser degrees from other languages) at Translation into English, and help would be greatly appreciated, but so far the indication is that it's easier to find people to write articles from scratch than to do this translation work. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:33, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)

Weird geostub problem
I've been busily going through the geostubs, categorising them by country/subcategory. I've noticed that several have turned up with the ancient Egypt stub - ones that shouldn't (most recently, Avarua in the Cook Islands). They're not listed in category:Ancient Egypt stubs, but it clearly says at the bottom of the page that they are being categorised there. Any clues? Grutness|hello? 12:47, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * It does not have the category now, and I can find no evidence of the category being put in the article, Template:Geo-stub, or even in Template:Metapicstub. The only explanations I can offer are really weird database stuff or you being mistaken. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 17:10, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I knew I should have taken a screen-snapshot. Believe me, it must be "really weird database stuff". Grutness|hello? [[Image:Grutness.jpg|25px|]]

Backtrace messages
I got this series of messages just in the last few minutes. There was a noticeable delay first. I am posting this because I do not have a Mediazilla account yet, and am waiting for the responding e-mail from Mediazilla. Ancheta Wis 11:33, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC): 1/8/2005 5:16AM CST = 11:16AM UTC Warning: mysql_query: Unable to save result set in /usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.4/includes/Database.php on line 312 Unable to free MySQL result

Backtrace:

* Database.php line 457 calls wfdebugdiebacktrace * User.php line 448 calls databasemysql::freeresult * SkinTemplate.php line 254 calls user::getnewtalk * OutputPage.php line 422 calls skinmonobook::outputpage * OutputPage.php line 611 calls outputpage::output * Database.php line 348 calls outputpage::databaseerror * Database.php line 297 calls databasemysql::reportqueryerror * SpecialWatchlist.php line 102 calls databasemysql::query * SpecialPage.php line 309 calls wfspecialwatchlist * SpecialPage.php line 220 calls specialpage::execute * index.php line 93 calls specialpage::executepath

Corruption of diacritical marks by Wikipedia database itself?
Note the curious case of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requested_moves&diff=9136763&oldid=9131004

from the history of Requested moves

(cur) (last) 20:40, 5 Jan 2005 Austin Hair (&#8594;Notices - Commando (military) &rarr; Commando) (cur) (last) 16:10, 5 Jan 2005 Jnc (&#8594;December 31 - Nippon Culture Broadcasting &rarr; Nippon Cultural Broadcasting - will do the history merge)

Here, User:Austin Hair edited the "Commando" section of Requested moves. But a side effect of this was to ASCIIfy all diacritical marks from the "Zaire" section! This rendered that section completely meaningless, since the discussion was about renaming Zaire to Zaïre.

This is highly unlikely to be vandalism by Austin Hair, because: 1) he doesn't seem to be a vandal 2) unless he faked the edit comment above, he only edited a different section, so the text of the Zaire section never even appeared in his edit window 3) the changes were not just removal of accents (for ô é ï) but ü -> ue and Å -> AA. This strongly suggests that the entire page was somehow run through a ASCIIfy filter, since "ue" and "AA" are indeed used when diacritic marks are not available.  And the ASCIIfy filter must have been run on the article by Wikipedia itself, not by any user.

This is extremely scary. There were major performance issues a few days ago, including worries about database corruption. Can we see "Recent changes" for January 5 20:40 and see if any other articles got their diacritical marks filtered out around that time period? -- Curps 07:13, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Maybe it was his browser that converted the characters? - Fredrik | talk 07:20, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * But he edited a completely different section (unless he diabolically faked the edit comment "(&#8594;Notices - Commando (military) &rarr; Commando)". So his browser edit window only saw the text from the Commando section, not the entire article or the Zaire section.  And in any case I'm not aware of a browser that does this kind of ASCIIfy filtering in its edit window. -- Curps 07:25, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Other edits by the same user to different articles have not resulted in diacritical marks being lost, for instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TV_Azteca&diff=prev&oldid=9156211 -- Curps 07:35, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Of course another possibility is that there was another edit by someone else, which simply didn't show up in the edit history. There was a lot of that happening at the time, but the edits usually eventually did show up in the history. -- Curps 07:26, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * This is generally caused by odd browsers, for instance Lynx set in ASCII mode. --Brion 23:38, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)

Preemptive weirdness notice
Replication on one of the slave databases is apparently broken again. Weirdness with things not showing up or updating properly may be experienced. -- Cyrius|&#9998; 04:28, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Mozilla Firefox Find function
I've recently been using Mozilla Firefox, and on the whole I really like it. Tabs? Rockin'. One thing I find a real liability for Wikipedia work, though: I don't seem to have any way to search in text that I'm editing. I guess one workaround is obvious – copy the text out to notepad, paste it back into the brower edit box – but does anyone know of a way to configure the browser so I don't have to work around it? -- Jmabel | Talk 02:56, Jan 8, 2005 (UTC)
 * In the find box, type what your looking for, and then click "Highlight" and look for the highlighted text in the editbox, which should be easy enough to find... &#9999; Oven Fresh  &#9786;  03:37, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Strange! Firefox won't search the edit box with "Find Next", but it will highlight inside the box. pstudier 04:19, 2005 Jan 9 (UTC)

How to get raw definition/article through Visual Basic or another software program?
Hello!

I am using Visual Basic and I would like to get the definition of words depending on what the word is to be looked up... not really definition, but article/whatever is written for it. For example, "water" - then give the first paragraph or so explaining what water is.

How can I do this?

Thanks

-Matt


 * If you want to retrieve an article directly, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articlename should do. Then you could probably parse the page for the first paragraph. However, you should be aware of the requirements of displaying the GFDL, linking back to Wikipedia, etc. Enochlau 05:10, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * There is also Special:Export if you want text in wiki-markup