Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive Y

What's going on?
Here, Quirkie asked quite puzzled why the page history did not reflect his edit reverting this vandalism. When I got to the page, the vandalism was gone, but the edit history did not reflect who had removed it. So, I thought that the page history entry needed purging, did so, and nothing worked. So, I tried doing a rollback/self-rollback cycle (as a null edit), but the first rollback did not do anything according to the diff function (or it actally reverted a version before the vandalism to the vandalism itself), and then made the vandalism reappear! I then was unable to rollback myself, for a reason I can't understand, then I had to eventually fix everything by hand. Are the database slaves out of sync again? Or what's going on? Tito xd (?!?) 20:30, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Template:doi
Template:doi does not work if the parameter contains some characters. Can somebody look into it to try and figure something? See Template talk:doi for details and examples. Circeus 14:50, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

User Talk page problems
Hello! My Talk page seems to be losing conversation threads. They appear in the history but not on the page and still do not appear when I either rollback to their first appearance or try to cut-and-paste in to the current revision. This is happening through Firefox (latest release) and IE6 on a Windows XP Pro SP2 machine with the latest patches, if that makes any difference. Please try to answer this on my Talk page!  (aeropagitica)   (talk)  10:12, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Diff links would help. I'm not seeing any problems in the last 8 or so changes.  -- Rick Block (talk) 13:30, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Copying a complete edit history
I'd like to copy a couple of articles (some deleted), complete with their edit histories, to a user space for reference. How can I do so? I see how to move, but not how to copy so that the original version isn't affected. I'm an admin, so I have access to the deleted pages. -Will Beback 09:03, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Move, delete the redirect, then restore all edits except the one from the move. I think to do this with the least impact on an existing article you can move article to copy, move copy back to article, delete copy, and then selectively restore copy.  (sorry, this doesn't work, per below) -- Rick Block (talk) 13:38, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
 * That affects the original version (the history can be at only one place, and it'd end up at the user space). Answering the original question: it's not possible, because each revision can be at only one place, and there is no way to copy a revision (without using Special:Export and Special:Import; and AFAIK Special:Import has never been enabled at this wiki). --cesarb 15:12, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
 * You can use Jude's History=>Wikitext tool to make a wikitext record of the history (plus or minus some toolserver lag). --Interiot 16:21, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Editing article titles?
Someone started an article with title "Alexander Kirillov Jnr". This is not common English usage; better would be "Alexander Kirillov Jr" (well, punctuation would be appropriate ...). How should one edit a title --- keeping in mind the need to keep indices and cross-references elsewhere correct? (For example, this article is referred to in the article "Alexander Kirillov" (Junior's father).) --DaveRusin 00:58, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Click on the move tab at the top of the article. Move means rename.  —EncMstr 01:01, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually Jnr is correct in British English, so the article should not be moved unless he was American. 62.31.55.223 00:18, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Monochrome PNG image does not show correctly
1937 Ordnance Survey map of Edmund Street

When I link to this Image:Edmund Street strip map 1937.png using //Image:Edmund Street strip map 1937.png|centre|thumb|300px|1937 Ordnance Survey map of Edmund Street// (brackets for slashes) in an article, all I get is a few black and white dots one or two pixels high. It is a somewhat wide image in 2-bit monochrome, produced withn Paint Shop Pro V7. Is the image corrupt? (it shows fine on its Image page). Can I use this technique for large width/small pixel depth images? Thanks Oosoom  Talk to me 14:29, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Need an Eye Doc?

-Behzad


 * I have no idea. I tried uploading a color version and it still isn't showing up at all. — Omegatron 15:41, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Date format
In the last day or two Wikipedia has started displaying dates in article histories in the form:

2006-08-04T10:34:19

instead of the usual ISO format:

2006-08-04 10:34:19

How can I revert it back to the original format? There is no option for this on the user preferences page. --ozzmosis 00:46, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Looks OK to me now. Is it still doing it for you? -- Rick Block (talk) 01:52, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, the T is still there. --ozzmosis 02:24, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Rick Block: Go to Special:Preferences to Date and Time and look in the Date format block. Does the last example 2001-01-15T16:12:34 show a T where a space should be? It does for me. I think it could be a recently introduced bug, that people won't notice who don't use that date format. --Splarka (rant) 02:56, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah, good point. Yes, it's there in that one date format.  -- Rick Block (talk) 03:06, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Looking into this a bit, I suspect it may actually be a fix rather than a bug. The ISO 8601 date format specifies use of "T" as the separator between the date and time.  I can't find the buzilla entry off hand that might have changed this - perhaps a developer can comment. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:17, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Read on a bit - the same page says the ISO spec also allows for a space to separate the date and time. From a data parsing point of view the 'T' delimeter might make sense, but I think you'd agree that the original format was far more human-readable, so I'd like to see it put back how it was, if at all possible. --ozzmosis 07:16, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * This bugs the heck out of me, too. It wouldn't be bad as an additional available format, but it is replacing a format people use. -- Steven Fisher 22:41, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * This "T" version is bad and ugly. I would like the "space" version comes back. At least both options should be available for use.--Wai Wai (talk) 07:52, 5 August 2006 (UTC)


 * This was introduced by Tim . --Ligulem 14:16, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Underlining
Is it just me, or have all the links in Wikipedia suddenly become underlined? Joziboy 18:18, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * It's a preference setting, under "Misc." I think underlining is the default.  Are you logged out? &mdash; Frecklefoot | Talk 18:21, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * See the third bullet point of the FAQ on the very top of the page. - Mgm|(talk) 18:22, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah okay, thanks :) The lines are gone, and it looks so much better. Thanks guys Joziboy 18:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Links have just started underling - without me changing my preferences. I've looked in preferences, and there isn't an option to stop them underlining - what do I do? Some pages are almost unreadable now :( --DuncanHill 23:25, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't know what happened or who did it, but they seem to have stopped underlining again, so thank you to whoever fixed it! --DuncanHill 23:36, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Underlines appear from time to time after I do an edit. Sometimes they disappear when I do another edit, sometimes they don't. There is no option under 'misc' in the preference settings. I've tried forced refresh (per the FAQ at the top) - again with no luck. I would really appreciate some help on this, as I find it very hard to read articles with underlined links. DuncanHill 19:17, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * What browser are you using? --Splarka (rant) 01:21, 5 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Internet Explorer DuncanHill 06:46, 5 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Try this: View page source (on any Wikipedia page) while logged in. About one page down there should be:

@import "/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Monobook.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css&smaxage=2678400"; @import "/w/index.php?title=-&action=raw&gen=css&maxage= some number &ts= some timestamp "; @import "/w/index.php?title=User: Yournick /monobook.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css";
 * That middle css is the style from the preferences, try going directly to that url: copy it and paste it into your url bar after http://en.wikipedia.org/ (I can't provide a link as the link depends on a timestamp). Sometimes (as stated above) the site returns the wrong preferences, so just reload that link until it shows what you want. If it changes very often, you may have disabled your cache or set your cache persistance too low (non IE user, so whatever the equivalent is in there, fix it ^_^). --Splarka (rant) 07:18, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks Splarka! That makes sense (sort of - I'm not exactly a wizz with these computer thingies, as you may have guessed!). DuncanHill 09:17, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Navigational templates and printing
The other day, on a lark, I print preveiwed an article. To my dismay the navigational template at the bottom of the article would, if printed, take up about half a page or more. So, that got me thinking, can there be a css class for purely navigational templates that would make them not print? Sort of like using "display:none;" for viewing in the browser. I know css, but not that side of it. - LA @ 06:19, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Technical consideration: All you'd have to do is put the template into class="noprint" (which is applied on the print css). Community consideration: probably something to bring up in VP/P (for global application, if there is no such policy already) or on the talk page of navigational template in question. --Splarka (rant) 07:47, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Information on how to construct blocks
The information on the Wikipedia Front Page is organized into Blocks, which in turn display different colors.

I would appreciate it very much if someone here could please throw me some linkage to a place where I can learn how to develop blocks for my own MediaWiki wiki.

Thanks, and have a wonderful evening! :) Jake Ben Delbek 03:51, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The blocks are wikitables, see m:Help:Table. The coloring is done with css styles (most applied to the tags rather than to global style sheets). See w3 for a complete reference (or google for 'css for beginners' for something easier, like changing colors ). And of course, view and copy the source of the main page ^_^. --Splarka (rant) 07:43, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

suggestion on differing interpretations
I have written several technical definitions for Wikipedia. Insofar as I can tell, they have not been attacked for being controversial. However, when I do search a controversial topic, as indicated by the warning stripe across the top of the article, I find differing opinions obliterating one another on a regular basis. Religion and politics appear to be most prone to this.

So my suggestion is, instead of obliterating the text, leave the differing opinions stand, side by side, as it were, and highlight in differing type face or color those sections that would have been obliterated by the new editor. That way, anyone doing research on a given topic will have access to all differing opinions on the subject.

--Plastechie 16:41, 5 August 2006 (UTC)plastechie


 * Sounds like viewing a diff ^_^. Also sounds more like something for Village_pump_%28proposals%29 --Splarka (rant) 07:39, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

What links from here
Hey, there's a special page of what links (to) here.

How about a "What links from here"?

Is it available? If not, can we create one?--Wai Wai (talk) 07:55, 5 August 2006 (UTC)


 * It isn't too hard to make a list of links using query (made for machine reading, not human reading, though). There might even be a template for it already. You could even edit your personal javascript to add such a link to the toolbox.


 * Or you can just scroll down the page and look at the blue text ^_^. --Splarka (rant) 07:30, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Most watched articles
Since access logging isn't available, could someone please publish a list of the 1000 or 5000 most-watched articles? This is perhaps more meaningful for some questions. 71.132.136.162 03:09, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I was about to ask the same thing but in a different context. Is it possible to know the page views/hits for a particular article? Helps to know which ones are the most read so that they can be improved and just interesting to know which articles people read the most. --Idleguy 04:07, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
 * "Is it possible to know the page views/hits for a particular article? " - no. The proxy servers handle most of the page hits, and do not keep traffic statistics (in other words, the data is not being kept) because the size is just too huge. Last I heard, the devs were trying to work out some traffic statistics using sampling. Raul654 04:09, 25 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I wanted to suggest a "most viewed pages" statistic. Pages on this list must be heavily guarded against vandalism, because such vandalism will be viewed by more readers. However, it looks like the limitations of the MediaWiki software mean that this suggestion is not viable. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 04:27, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

No answer after a couple of weeks; so the question is now at Wikipedia talk:Statistics. LossIsNotMore 00:08, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

The most watched might be the least vulnerable to vandalism(?) 171.66.111.20 05:28, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


 * There is a restricted special page called Special:Unwatchedpages (restricted due to high potential for abuse). It would be more useful however to have it sortable (other than aboslutely alphabetically) by most/least revisions, most/least links, and oldest/newest. --Splarka (rant) 07:21, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Coordinates/Audio
How do you add "Coordinates" to an article...like the top right of Duke University? Also, how do you add the audio file up there? Thanks! Lasallefan 12:30, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The coordinates are part of Geolinks-US-streetscale. Which audio file are you referring to? --Splarka (rant) 00:49, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Can you take me through how to add that to another university? I see an audio icon on the top right of some articles. Is that an audio file of the article?
 * It looks a bit complex. Try reading Template_talk:Geolinks-US-streetscale (and asking there if the answer isn't found). --Splarka (rant) 07:12, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Hierachial list of templates transcluded onto a page?
Is it possible for the "Pages transcluded onto this page" list that appears below the editing textbox to show the hierachy of transclusions as well? Currently, if page A is transcluded onto page B, which is in turn transcluded onto page C, the "pages transcluded" list that appears when page C is edited would be:


 * A
 * B

A list that showed the transclusion hierachy would look like:


 * B
 * A

This would be useful, for example, in finding pages mistakenly dumped into CAT:CSD because a page transcluded onto them was speedy deleted. It is also more intuitive. Kimchi.sg 09:47, 5 August 2006 (UTC)


 * It's also potentially more verbose, if for instance both C and B transclude A, you'd have A listed twice. And the information AFAIK is not easily available; the list of "pages transcluded onto this page" comes from one of the database tables, which has the same flat view you are seeing. --cesarb 14:29, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Odd link format bug?
A few moments ago, Wikipedia sent me a page with all the links underlined, and it seemed like the formatting was off. A few moments letter, I reload the same page, everything seems normal again. Odd.. --Alecmconroy 09:00, 5 August 2006 (UTC)


 * See the third FAQ at the top of this page. --cesarb 14:29, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

image appears as dead link
In S.O.S. Mathematics, there is an image which appears as a dead link, as if the image it did not exist (when I click on the link, it prompts me to upload a file). But the image does in fact exist: Image:Logo-cyberboard.png. I bypassed my cache via Ctrl-F5 and I also purged the image description page (both approximately an hour ago), but neither of these worked. Why doesn't Wikipedia recognize the image? Jay Gatsby(talk) 19:42, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * That's because you're linking to Image:Logo-cyberboard.png and the article links to Image:Logo-cyberboard.png%E2%80%8E. Viewing the code for the redlink shows the problem...

Image:Logo-cyberboard.png%E2%80%8E
 * There's some crazy characters at the end... this appears to be quite a bad bug? --Lord Deskana (talk) 19:45, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * That is very strange. It is a persistent bug as well. I uploaded two more versions of the image and the same three characters appear at the end of the link when I change the code and preview the article. Jay Gatsby(talk) 20:43, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * FYI, as mentioned on my Talk page, E2 80 8E is a Unicode sequence for an LRM (Left-To-Right) marker. I suggest you check the file names on your local machine. --TheParanoidOne 22:35, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The problem was not with the uploaded file, but with the article text. When the bogus character was removed from the article text, the problem was fixed. --cesarb 23:46, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Autolifetime template
Hi, I'm hoping this is the right place for this issue. The template that people have started putting at the bottom of biographical articles to automatically generate lifespan categories is causing me some difficulties. It works fine when years are entered, but when one or both of the years aren't entered it defaults to Category:Year of birth unknown and Category:Living people. For the former, this is unhelpful because the majority of articles without birthdates are of people where the birthdate could be found, just hasn't been yet - the "unknown" category is supposed to be for those people whose birthdates have been obscured by bad record-keeping or the sands of time, or is disputed by historians or might never be found. I know this might seem like a pedantic complaint, but one of the main things I busy myself with here is going through the year of birth missing category trying to fill in the dates, so I started trying to keep these two categories separate, a task which isn't helped by this template. In the latter case, the default is even less helpful, since it may result in people dead hundreds of years but with no listed deathdate being categorised as living people. I propose that both default instead to the Category:Year of birth missing and Category:Year of death missing categories, which play the part of some kind of triage. Alas I have no idea how to go about this. How does anyone else view this matter, and could it be changed? Jdcooper 18:44, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * See Template talk:Lifetime. --Splarka (rant) 02:10, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

making corrections
How do you make simple corrections in an article such as a misspelt surname?--Clayto3h 17:25, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Hit the Edit link and make the changes needed. You might want to take a quick browse through the Getting Started pages. --TheParanoidOne 21:47, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * If the misspelling is in the title (location) of the article, you would have to move the page. --Splarka (rant) 01:23, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

PDA / mobile friendly on Wikipedia
Is there a way to get a PDA / mobile friendly on Wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by GivenRandy (talk • contribs) 13:30, 4 August 2006
 * If you mean a way to view Wikipedia on a PDA, please see Browser notes. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:21, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Portal Colour
Hi, I'd like to change the banner colours of Portal:Architecture to something more like:- so that the colour scheme suggests old fashioned Blueprints which seems appropriate. When I look at the code on the portal page there's no 'background:insipidblue color:darkblue' line so I assume it's being picked up from somewhere else.
 * Questions

Many thanks --Mcginnly | Natter 11:51, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Is there any wikipedia policy that states we have to have the portal this colour? Or should I Ignore all the rules and change it.
 * 2) How should I best change the colour?


 * A quick look at the maze of templates and metatemplates used on that portal shows the colour is defined at Portal:Architecture/box-header. Since it's at a portal-specific location, it's obviously meant to be customized for each portal. Hope this helps. --cesarb 14:07, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Many thanks for your help - that's worked a treat.--Mcginnly | Natter 18:37, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Odd page header?
On en.wikipedia.org, where yesterday there was a blurb about the Wikimedia Foundation elections, there is now just a single character (Unicode 0x2003, "EM SPACE"). I expect this is unintentional. &mdash;ptk✰fgs 05:21, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * This now appears to have been resolved. &mdash;ptk✰fgs 06:25, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The usual method of defining a null MediaWiki:Sitenotice so that no appears in the html of every page is to change the contents to a dash: "-". However, due to a default sitenotice being set globally (for the elections), this dash does not cause it not to display, so they changed it to a hidden div. --Splarka (rant) 07:28, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Articles disappearing from watchlist?
Every day it seems like I'm losing articles in my watchlist. I don't get it. The other day for instance I know for certain that I had Tomorrow Never Dies in my watchlist but today, it wasn't listed. I've been using AWB to fix links in some pages that are on my watchlist, is there maybe a bug with that where it's removing them or something? I'm not talking just.. an article or two. It's doing this to 20-30 or so. ?? K1Bond007 21:34, 3 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I had this happen to me too. Removing some items from my watchlist fixed it. &mdash; Frecklefoot | Talk 21:45, 3 August 2006 (UTC)


 * If a sysops protects or unprotects the page, and nobody has edited it since, it also will not appear on your watchlist. I think if a page is moved but not edited yet, the same thing will happen. Kimchi.sg 09:51, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Password
Hi I forgot my password so I clicked the forgot password link and they said a email would be sent to me but I didn't receive one. I did this several more times and still nothing.--207.200.116.203 21:33, 3 August 2006 (UTC) Axeman


 * Special:Emailuser/Axeman gives: This user has not specified a valid e-mail address, or has chosen not to receive e-mail from other users.. Was that your nick? --Splarka (rant) 00:55, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion for Reorganizing Wikipedia Talk Pages
I've noticed that on certain "Talk" pages, e.g. the 2006 Israel-Lebanon Conflict, there is a lot of debate, but no conclusion or action taken. I propose that this is because the discussion is unstructured, and users insert comments wherever relevant, so the discussion doesn't follow a linear pattern (i.e. "Well what about this . . . ", "I disagree . . .", etc.) and no concensus is drawn. I suggest these pages get converted into a forum-based format with posts and threads, like those that are very common on the web. These allow topics to be organized by subject and posts are ordered by date, with the ability to "reply" to someone directly. I know this is a big suggestion and would require a lot of reorganization and system changes and I'm a very new member of the community, so I don't expect to be taken completely seriously. But, on the other hand, I thought if no one suggests it, then that's a greater loss. Also, there are many applications that are designed to implement online forums, so executing this might not be so hard. Mhsia 18:20, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Village pump (perennial proposals). --cesarb 18:36, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Whoa, looks like this has already been discussed at some length. Good to see!  Let me know if I can be of any use to the effort. Mhsia 20:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I think it will take more than that to get concensus over the Israel-Lebanon conflict. Where consensus is possible, the current system does seem to achieve it. Notinasnaid 14:13, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree on both counts. I just think that we could come to consensus quickly, improving the timeliness of our articles.  Also, discussions could be easier to follow, which would make contributing to a discussion easier and help to avoid redundancy.  This is very apparent in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon Conflict article where discussions about title changing frequently repeat themselves. Mhsia 20:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, this is being worked on. See m:LiquidThreads. Tito xd (?!?) 01:51, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Ew! Yuck! Noooooo! That just wouldn't be wiki. SB_Johnny  | talk 02:07, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Content shifting upwards?
Is it just me, or has the top margin of the contents (the stuff below the tabs) shifted upwards a bit? For example, see my my user page. The title "User:Deepujoseph" used to be in level with "a.k.a thunderboltz". The problem seems to be happening only on en.wiki.-- thunderboltza.k.a.D e epu Joseph13:04, 31 July 2006 (UTC)


 * This is due to the sitenotice being changed, which is why css position 'tricks' like this are unstable and should not be trusted.... And don't bother complaining, you won't get anywhere ^_^. The sitenotice is an important tool of a wiki, and by its very nature it is dynamic.
 * One way you possibly could get around this is to put the sitenotice in your offset div as an invisible offset above your offset content, eg:  . Of course, you'd probably have to check if it exists, probably with something like:  . --Splarka (rant) 07:22, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Update: solution workaround bad hack found. See User_talk:Deepujoseph. --Splarka (rant) 00:57, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Left thumbnail image and bullet list overlap issue
Anyone know why if there's a left thumbnail image in a bullet list the list is not indented properly (at least in classic skin with Safari)? See, for example, Denver, Colorado vs. Denver, Colorado. I've added explicit divs 50px wider than the thumbnails in the Landmarks section to "fix" this, but doing this should clearly not be necessary. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:08, 28 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I see no problem with monobook (try adding  to the URL to see it yourself). Monobook seems to use a wider right margin on left thumbnails (the float only pushes the text; the bullets are attached to the left of the text, living inside the margin; if the margin is too short, they'll end up under the image). --cesarb 16:31, 28 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Looks fine in monobook. The HTML looks the same, with the thumbnail inside a  .  Does tleft need to be defined in standard.css?  Is there some reason it's not in common.css? -- Rick Block (talk) 19:07, 28 July 2006 (UTC)


 * is on monobook/main.css on monobook and on common/common.css on classic/standard (see Catalogue of CSS classes for the other skins). Since it can vary depending on the skin (for instance, some skins might want to use a different colour for the borders), it should not be at MediaWiki:Common.css. --cesarb 19:47, 28 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Can we add  to common/common.css (this is in the monobook version)?  Are these CSS files controlled through Bugzilla? -- Rick Block (talk) 03:53, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


 * It's better to add to MediaWiki:Standard.css first; if there are no complaints, you can try adding to all the other skins which use common/common.css (half of them use it; see WP:CLASS); if still there are no complaints, then you can ask on bugzilla for it to be added to common/common.css. --cesarb 16:35, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Image Links
I have been trying to figure out this for a long time. Is it possible to have an image on an article that links to a page other than that image's info page? I could really use some help. BrainiacOutcast 18:31, 3 August 2006 (UTC)


 * See above. --cesarb 18:38, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

How do I separate capitalised/lowercase versions of something?
Hi,

The articles Bet and BET are different. Likewise, Net and NET. I'm trying to create an article at OGA, but I keep on getting Oga when I type it into search. What am I missing here? - Richardcavell 05:15, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The search function tries to find a page with the exact capitalization you provide first, but then tries to look with alternate capitalization, making it harder to create pages. The only way that I know how to create them is by clicking on the redlink above. Tito xd (?!?) 05:28, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I know. And that's what I've done; I've since created the pages. Is there a better way? - Richardcavell 05:30, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * A couple of ways: use the Search button instead of Go, then you get a redlink. Another is to edit the URL in your browser: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELEPHANT does not try to guess capitalization. Though AFAIK special characters make the latter more complicated: ! needs to become %21 etc. Weregerbil 09:45, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Changes being ignored
Today, a lot of the time, when I revert using "popups" it looks like it is being changed, but in the end nothing has happened. If I manually take an older version and edit and save it, same problem, I just tried to remove some vandalism around 10 times over a five minute period. I then switched to another computer, and got the same problem. --Brat32 04:55, 3 August 2006 (UTC)


 * In the above case, I ended up making an edit and a small change, which was accepted, then reverting my change and the vandals changes. Very strange. --Brat32 20:52, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

New blocks: technical blocking question
What does the new "account creation blocked" flag do with respect to blocking registered users? My guess is: blocks account creation with the same duration and scope that the "autoblock" would have blocked edits. But is that what actually is happening? 192.75.48.150 18:17, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Reverts
If an edit is reverted (by an admin, not just manually), is the edit still listed on the user's contributions, recent changes etc., or does it vanish forever? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dbmag9 (talk • contribs) 15:21, 2 August 2006


 * It is still listed. The only differences of the admin revert are that it takes less clicks (which is the whole point of the admin revert), you do not enter an edit summary (as it's automatically generated), and it fails if someone else has edited the article in the meantime (so you cannot accidentally overwrite someone else's edits). Other than that, it's identical to a manual revert. --cesarb 15:45, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Converting a spreadsheet to wikimedia format
Does anyone know of a program that can convert a spreadsheet (csv, xls, OpenOffice, or whatever) automatically to MediaWiki Markup, to produce a table? Obviously all formulas etc would not be convertible, but it would be really useful to be able to convert a spreadsheet which just contains numbers and text strings.

The reason I ask this is that I am trying to sort out the statistics on the page for the soccer player Pele. His goalscoring record is a matter of some debate, but even official sites such as fifa.com list him as having scored over 1000 goals. I have got a list (spreadsheet) of every match Pele played in, and wanted to put it up on a subpage of the Pele article, so that Wikipedians could go through it and note which matches are legitimate and which weren't (e.g., matches Pele played for the Army during national service, commercial tours of the Far East he undertook while playing for New York Cosmos, etc.). My initial estimate is that Pele scored only 700 odd goals in 800 odd official matches: around 500 or so goals short of the total that is normally given!

I think this is a really important bit of work, as the entire world seems confused (or just plain wrong!) as to how many goals Pele scored. I don't think it counts as original research, either; just a really, really, really complicated reference. So, if anyone knows of a way of converting a spreadsheet to Mediawiki Markup, please let me know! Jim (Talk) 11:41, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * You wouldn't have to convert it to wikimedia markup, provided it's just going on a sub page and ease of editing isn't an issue plain HTML should be fine. Most spreadsheet packages now have the ability to export to html, so you could export it to html, open it up in a text editor, copy the table code and paste it into whatever page you want. If you're using Office, though, you might want to download and run HTML Tidy on the file first; Office is notorious for producing bloated, ugly and just plain weird HTML. -- Daduzi  talk  12:06, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * If we had the TabbedData extension installed, you could just dump the output almost directly into the edit box... :) pfctdayelise (translate?) 13:16, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, while you can consider a table of goals just a very complicated reference, the determination of which matches you count as "official" can easily be considered original research. As to converting, I've seen somewhere a HTML table to wiki table converter (which converts HTML-style tables to wiki-style tables); since MediaWiki accepts both, it's not really needed, as long as your HTML table is clean enough (which can depend a lot on your spreadsheet-to-HTML converter), but if you want other people to edit it, converting to a wiki table is a good idea. There's also the sticky problem of copyrights; unless the table was made by yourself, you would need to check its copyright limitations before even thinking of uploading it to a Wikimedia server. --cesarb 15:54, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, CesarB. I take your point regarding which goals should be counted and which shouldn't, but almost every other player on WP only has his competitive goals counted. I don't know if there's some sort of Brazilian tradition of counting every single goal a player scores; if there is, then the career stats for many Brazilian players on here probably need changing as a lot of them don't include non-competitive matches. I think it's just simpler to sort Pele's stats out. There will probably end up being two goalscoring stats for him, one including non-competitive games and one bringing him in line with the norm. Either way, the current stat is just plain wrong in many ways, as it includes goals he played for other teams under his Santos goals - this is what FIFA etc claim too, but it isn't correct. Also, thanks for your point re: copyright. I hadn't thought of that but will look in to it. Jim (Talk) 21:46, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Just to slightly clarify on the copyright side, data cannot be copyrighted but its presentation and arrangement can (provided there's sufficient creativity involved). So if the data was taken from elsewhere and put into a table by you you'd be fine, and even if the table was taken directly from another source it's probably borderline whether there's sufficient creativity involved to make it copyrightable. -- Daduzi  talk  07:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

On removing items from watchlist
At the top of everybody's watchlist there is a note saying:


 * You have ... pages on your watchlist (excluding talk pages); you can display and edit the complete list or remove all items.

I would argue that the link about "removing all items" is not necessary there, and rather belongs in the "Edit watchlist" page, accessible from the watchlist (so that first you see what items you have on your watchlist before deciding if you want to remove all them or not).

Comments on that welcome at MediaWiki talk:Watchdetails. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:06, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that the link should not be there, but should be in the list of items in one's watchlist. Clearing one's watchlist is not frequently done, and there's the danger of someone clicking the link by accident. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 11:57, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Central repository of scripts
For those developers who would rather put their scripts in a central repository, I have created User:Userscripts. (It seems that scripts can't be hosted anywhere outside of the User namespace.) Instructions for setting up a script there can be found on the userpage. Just FYI. Ingoolemo talk 23:13, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Favicons on MediaWiki
Where is the favicon file stored for wikis? If I want to upload a file to use as the favicon for a wiki, can I, or do I have to contact a developer and send it to them? In particular I mean Wikimedia Incubator, which is currently using the same as the Wikipedia favicon. &mdash; D a  niel  (‽) 17:19, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Contact a dev. The file is stored directly on the root at /favicon.ico. --Splarka (rant) 22:06, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks. &mdash; D a  niel  (‽) 09:31, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

white space at top of Infobox
I recently changed template:Infobox Union from the "hiddenStructure" format to Qif. Unfortunately, now there are several lines of white space being produced on the top of articles using the ‘box. Bluemoose posted a solution on the UNISON article by filling in the empty fields, but that's pretty problematic in the long run. Any suggestion?

Thanks.--Bookandcoffee 17:02, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * This is due to the way that parserfunctions, on new lines that return null, still leaving a blank line return. When encountering a blank line the wikicode interprets this as a paragraph break (starts a new  ). As these paragraphs are outside the proper table tag bounds (outside cells, inside the table), they get shoved at the top of the table in some browsers, causing whitespace. The easiest thing to do is just remove the line breaks. It is also possible to use wikitables instead (with !), but there is usually a more complex whitespace problem with those. --Splarka (rant) 22:03, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Done: non-adjacent diff. --Ligulem 22:42, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Addendum: you can have an arbitrary amount of whitespace characters (spaces, newlines) between the opening {{ and the name of the template/parser function. These are thrown away by the parser and not fed to the output of the template. See for an advanced use of this technique. --Ligulem 08:19, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The other approach is to escape the line feeds inside an html comment, i.e. make pretty much every line look like the following. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:36, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

{{#if:{{{image|}}}| {{{image|}}} }} {{#if:{{{full_name|}}}| {{{full_name|}}}  }} Thanks for the help - it is greatly appreciated. --Bookandcoffee 10:22, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

notable wikipedians
hi, i would like to write an article about myself, but i cant seem to move/rename it to Bloodpack --->Ferdinand Ramos Barba anyone help? thanks † Bloodpack  argh! 13:12, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Based on your query there are two possibilities that could do what you desire. The first possibility is that you wish to rename your user page.  This is done by changing your username by placing a request at Changing username.  The second possibility is that you wish to create an autobiographical article in the main article namespace.  If this is your goal I would recommend you read Autobiography. --Allen3 talk 13:29, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * thanks for the info † Bloodpack  argh! 21:07, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

White space at top of UNISON
Why is there a break at the top of UNISON? Usually I can get rid of such things, but I'm stumped. Melchoir 11:40, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * If you fill in the missing variables it is ok, see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=UNISON&oldid=67025025 Martin 11:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Link images to another page instead of its own page
Is there a way to link an image to an article instead of the image's own page? -- faruk ahmet  (talk) 11:17, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * You can use the click template (wich is a bit of an ugly CSS hack) or redirect the image page to an article. Neither of wich are rely recomended since we rely on the image page beeing available to show the legal status of the image. --Sherool (talk) 11:20, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Languages
It seems I must have one login per language I want to contribute in. Are there any plans for making the logins span all languages in the future? I would very much like to know the reason why a seperate login is required for every language. Manos1394 10:22, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * As you can see here, plans for single-user login are underway, and will probably be implemented soon. Luna Santin 12:58, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much! I'll just have to wait a bit then. Manos1394 10:12, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Template:Cavalry Troubleshooting Help Needed
ATF: I am not sure where to ask for help on this troubleshooting issue with a template, but perhaps someone here can direct me to the right area of wikipedia. I have been trying to create a template to allow easy surfing between entries on U.S. Cavalry units, but I have trouble getting the text to wrap around it rather than start in line with the template. Consequently, wherever the template is placed in the entry, that is where the entry begins (instead of at the top and then wrapping around the template when it gets to it). An example is better than words: visit U.S. 1st Cavalry Division and then see if you can fix the problem in the template at Template:Cavalry. Thanks, User:Atfyfe


 * It looks ok here (except the section edit buttons are squished). --Splarka (rant) 22:08, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * ATF: Bizzare. Well it continues to be troubled when I visit the entry U.S. 1st Cavalry Division. There are two infoboxes, and the text of the entry doesn't begin until the top of the second infobox (instead of at the top of the article with the first infobox). Here is a screen shot of what I get when I visit the entry. Notice all the white space before the text of the article begins. Does anyone else see this?




 * Ok, I was able to duplicate that strange behaviour in an old copy of MSIE 5.something. The problem seems to arise from putting the template table in tags and class="infobox" (which applies float:right and clear:right), which are contrary to each other and appear to confuse MSIE. I've removed the center tags from the template and the page appears the same to me in Mozilla. Please see if it has improved for you. --Splarka (rant) 07:13, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * And, finally, the "section edit buttons are squished" can be fixed with the help of the howto at How to fix bunched up edit links. In this case, the "floated div" method didn't work, but the "floated table" method worked. --cesarb 16:10, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * ATF: Yep. That fixes the problem. Impressive work. - User:Atfyfe

HTTP 500 Error
Just tried to edit a page and this error keeps comming up. Martial Law 04:02, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Save function does not function
While placing Glenn Spencer's name in the catagory of notable people from Arizona, the save function is'nt working @ this time. Martial Law 05:05, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The Save button functions intermittantly. Martial Law 05:06, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Stephen Colbert broke wikipedia.     --Interiot 05:30, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Three-revert rule and external link spam
If a user keeps posting the same external link to multiple articles and I keep removing it (within a 24 hour period), am I in violation of the Three-revert rule? --Brat32 01:32, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Have you talked to the other user about it? Rather than continually reverting it would be much better to reach an agreement.  -- Rick Block (talk) 02:43, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * ...and, direct answer, same change to multiple articles does not count against 3RR. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:47, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * It varies, in one case, the owner vandalized my page so further discussion was pointless. One person started following my edits in various articles and vandalizing them. In another, I deleted all his links except one, opened a discussion with him and suggested he discuss it on the talk page of the article, and opened a thread there. Funny co-incidence was that soon after the whole talk page got massively vandalized by a new user and his IP sock puppet but I could not know for sure it was the same person. From my experience elsewhere, SEO's trying to place links for PR are not nice people to talk to. --Brat32 02:59, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a visit to Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents might be appropriate. Admins are here to help.  -- Rick Block (talk) 03:51, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the link. My vandalized user page was caught very quickly by a nice admin before I even noticed it. The massive vandalizing of the talk page, I reported yesterday on Administrator intervention against vandalism and the two users were blocked within a few minutes, amazing. Most of what I'm seeing is small time stuff by people trying to promote their sites, who do not even read the warnings on their talk pages. --Brat32 04:18, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Image Commons vs Upload
I'd like to use images from a non-English version of Wikipedia, licensed GFDL, and with clumsy names. I am not the author. Should I try to upload them to Commons (no experience with that), or should I simply re-upload them in the English version, with meaningful names? (original question). --Cameltrader 00:21, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * If they are GFDL/free (yes) and if they are likely to be used somewhere else (maybe? do they have any text or captions preventing them from being multilingual?), upload them to commons. Uploading to commons is pretty similar to any other wiki upload (you'll have to create a user account if you haven't got one there). Also, label them on the original project with the approrpiate "now on commons" template if available (example: NowCommons, here). Rename them if necessary. --Splarka (rant) 07:32, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Upload them to Commons, please. Multilingual versions of maps (etc) are very welcome. Keeping them all in one place makes more sense than each project having its own version, plus there is always the minor possibility that another English project (simple, wikibooks, wikinews, et al) may want to use it in the future. pfctdayelise (translate?) 13:05, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Transcluded references
In this example in my sandbox, I have tried including a inside an article that is then transcluded into another. As you can see, the reference doesn't appear when the (where pagename is the name of the page you are on).


 * If you are logging in: The form generated when you click the link contains the parameter in the action: . When you submit the form, the html generates (from that parameter) the meta tag to take you to that page:   in the html.


 * If you are logging out: Simply clicking that link takes you to the logout page which contains the meta tag:  in the html.


 * There is no template or wikicode associated with this, it is a function of the php. I don't think you can utilize the &returnto= parameter anywhere but on those two pages (Special:Userlogin and Special:Userlogout). --Splarka (rant) 01:16, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you. -- User:Wikitravel Sapphire

Racing-reference.com
The website is a major reference site for us at WikiProject NASCAR and WikiProject IROC. The website is now called racing-reference.info (note the changed extension). I need to change all "racing-reference.com" strings to "racing-reference.info". I have an AWB, but I don't know how to program it to do the task. Any suggestions? --Royalbroil 21:15, 28 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Special:Linksearch. --cesarb 16:39, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I decided to use the AWB to go through all WikiProject NASCAR and WikiProject IROC article, and I used the replace text function. It worked well. The Special link helped find a few stragglers. Problem solved. THANK YOU. --Royalbroil 03:57, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear - Can't connect using IE
Strangely I can connect using Firefox, but IE won't see WP. Was alright until recently. Perhaps WP board have come to their sense and banned IE users? No? I thought not. Any ideas? (P.S. I can see wiktionary) Rich Farmbrough 00:50 29 July 2006 (GMT).
 * Very strange deleted cache and cookies, now working after several hours head scratching. Rich Farmbrough 00:51 29 July 2006 (GMT).
 * Try disabling javascript. -- King of ♥   ♦   ♣   ♠  01:08, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I had a dream last night. Wikipedia blocked IE users. If you used IE to go to Wikipedia, you'd get a message "Sorry, you're using IE. Therefore we assume you're too stupid and/or computer-illerate to benefit from reading our encyclopedia, or make positive contributions to it. To prove us wrong, please download another browser such as Firefox or Opera and use it to edit Wikipedia. You'll find browsing with Firefox or Opera much safer and faster." (P.S. Sorry, I couldn't resist myself, hope you enjoy the joke.) --J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:41, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Meh, Firefox sucks. Paid for browsers such as MSN are much better.  &rArr;  Jarlaxle Artemis   04:46, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Autoblocker continuously spewing out autoblocks
Ever since I blocked User:Azproductions (company username), the autoblocker has continously produced many autoblocks over several days. I've tried clearing them, but it didn't work. Is there a way to stop the autoblocks? Thanks. -- King of ♥   ♦   ♣   ♠  17:48, 28 July 2006 (UTC)


 * No. --cesarb 16:39, 29 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Not without unblocking the logged in account. The User with the blocked account name is repeatedly trying to edit, and that's causing the autoblocks.  User:Zoe|(talk) 22:31, 30 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Can you no longer stop autoblocks by unblocking the first autoblock? That used to work, and allow you to keep the original blockee blocked. Anyway, try that. - Taxman Talk 13:58, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Azproductions (talk • contribs • [ page moves ] • Current Autoblocks • [ block log ]) seems to be trying to edit every 6 or 7 days, they may be trying to cause autoblocks on purpose. Maybe someone should try and explain it to them?--AOL account 14:01, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Blocking policy revisions fail to resolve problem
I am regularly the victim of collateral damage caused by blocks to User:202.156.6.54, an IP shared by most Singapore users. This has caused me Wikistress, and to lash out at times. Recently, there were several changes to the blocking policy which are intended to prevent such collateral damage. However, they have not been successful at eliminating the problem. I am still the victim of collateral damage caused by autoblocks, although they are not as common, and I am no longer blocked in the event of regular IP blocks. Please note that autoblocks usually last much longer - several hours, compared to 15 minutes to a few hours for regular blocks. Therefore, I am pushing for further changes to the blocking policy and MediaWiki software, to prevent collateral damage by autoblocks. For example, autoblocks could be made optional. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 15:06, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Replied on users talk page
 * User (i.e. me) responded on his talk page. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:42, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Logo weirdness
Any thoughts on this? The St Louis Cardinals logo (:Image:Saint Louis Cardinals Logo.svg) is not coming up at St. Louis Cardinals. For comparison, the Chicago Cubs and other teams' logos come up fine. The logo file exists, seems to be about the same size as the Cubs' logo, and the code uses in the MLB infobox (which calls the logos) appears identical. Kind of puzzled here. Herostratus 21:00, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
 * As a follow up to this, I input the exact code for the template into the Cards article for the time being and changed the pixel size of the resulting image from 100px to 101px. This made the image appear, no clue why it wouldnt appear at 100px though.--Sir hugo 16:06, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Wow, that is weird. Thanks for the solution, inexplicable though it is! Herostratus 00:02, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
 * See bug 5463 - we had a huge problem with this on highway pages (see Interstate 290 (Illinois) for example), but it's been fixed; the images just need a purge. I'll do the Cardinals one. &mdash; Rob (  talk  ) 18:28, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Hiding references
Myself and a few others were wondering if its possible to hide references that take up a large amount of space, specifically on the 2006_Israel-Lebanon_conflict page, as there are almost 150 references as of now. Thanks! Frinkahedr0n 20:03, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

It might be a bit too non-traditional, but you could use a &lt;div style="overflow:auto"&gt;...

Like this...

Like this...

Like this...

Like this...

Like this...

Like this...

Like this...

Like this...

Like this...

Like this...

Like this... --Interiot 02:02, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd see the almost 150 references as a sign of a very well done article rather than a problem to be solved, myself (though there's still a few inline references in the "International reactions" that need formatting). That being said, so many references sugggests that the article may be too long, and indeed at 71k it is. I'd suggest looking at what parts could be spun off into separate articles (the "historical background" section is an obvious place to start), and the introduction is too long as things stand. Other than that, though, I really don't think it's something that needs worrying about, especially not with the 2 column format for the references. -- Daduzi  talk  03:48, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The 2-column format is only supported by a few browsers. Specifically, it doesn't work in Internet Explorer.  But some of the non-technical solutions sound better anyway.  --Interiot 04:50, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Posibly simpelest to just use a show/hide mechanish as for example in Version 0.5. By default the content for some sections is hidden. The user can click a link which expands the section. --Salix alba (talk) 17:45, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Any solution would have to make sure that the references do appear when printed. The overflow:auto div doesn't print in full for me, but this could be changed with a bit of css. (I personally find that quite ugly, though). Lupin|talk|popups 13:04, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
 * If you want to hide them in edit mode, see this. The only limitation is that you cannot go somewhere and then press "back". I believe a hidden table could fix that though...I will work one a script that makes the refs in non-edit mode into a show/hide diff like by RfA js. Voice -of- All  08:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Fonts in SVG
Could someone tell me what fonts are supported for SVGs? Or more specifically, if I was to upload an SVG with DejaVu Sans (as a referenced font, not embedded) could MediaWiki render it correctly? I want to upload SVG renderings of a number of Unicode characters not in most fonts, which are currently GIF and I need to know if I can use DejaVu Sans as text or will I have to convert it to standard SVG paths (easy, but larger size than if it was text) - Рэд  хот  15:00, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Ok I've established by myself, that it can't. But how can font support be added to MediaWiki, especially since DejaVu Sans supports such a wide range of charachters and is free (libre free). - Рэд  хот  15:22, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
 * File a feature request at bugzilla. A server admin should see it soon enough and do something about it.  If not, consider contacting one directly (via their talk page, e-mail or IRC).  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:30, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Battle of Saratoga
Can someone fix the wikiness of this article? The first three "edit" links are groups halfway down the third section in the middle of a paragraph -- Kendrick7 20:43, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Fixed. See How to fix bunched up edit links for a detailed explanation on how to fix it in the future. --cesarb 21:36, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Problem with operation of category pages
A problem has appeared with the operation of category pages. Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs contains entries for articles that are not in the category. Alan Pascoe 22:23, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Might this be related to the above ? Are we having problems with indexes?  (SEWilco 06:02, 30 August 2006 (UTC))


 * I edited one of these articles, which believed it contained the template, and the spurious entry disappeared. Rich Farmbrough 08:40 30 August 2006 (GMT).


 * 7162 was fixed, and the problem apparently was stuff from recent edits being added to edited articles. So the recent flurry of ISBN-related edits was probably seeding this bug with ISBN category tags, which were then added to other articles.  (SEWilco 15:45, 30 August 2006 (UTC))

Multi-line redirects: confirmation required from developers

 * Context - Until recently, redirect pages were storing only the very first line and deleting everything else. Recently, redirect pages have been storing more than the first line.
 * Question - Is this a permanent feature than can be documented, and officially used by editors?
 * Complement - Some have started using this feature for adding information to redirect pages without having to pile everything on the first line (category tags, redirect templates, meta-information in HTML comments, etc.). A new change in MediaWiki, going back to the old single-line behavior, would erase all pages using the useful but currently undocumented feature. We thus need to know if it's officially implemented, or if it's a glitch that we shouldn't use.

-- 62.147.112.177 10:00, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Er, is there no developer on this board? Should it be posted somewhere else? Zero answer seems weird for such a straightforward yes/no question. 62.147.38.54 13:29, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I was also waiting for an answer on this one because of the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Redirect. What I could find is 1476, comment #19, which seems to imply that this is a permanent change. (Liberatore, 2006). 15:00, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * That's a great link! It provides us with an external, authoritative source about the status of both issues. I've added it to the talk page so as to keep it. Meanwhile:
 * I went to #wikimedia-tech and got a partial answer from Brion, then a complete answer from Tim Starling, the short story being:
 * Categories in redirects are officially OK
 * Multi-line redirects are officially OK
 * BUT templates in redirects, such as the "R templates", are not OK for performance reasons, and may be broken in the future.
 * The first two points are good, but the third one will be a problem for the current documentation at Redirect and all the Template messages/Redirect pages
 * The long story and IRC logs at
 * Wikipedia_talk:Redirect.
 * -- 62.147.38.54 17:24, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * OT: Dear 62.147.38.54 (62.147.38.54, 62.147.112.177), may I ask you (two, three?) to create a login so you will have an own talk page. You seem be doing nice work here, so why make it so complicated ;-) --Ligulem 17:48, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Odd results from What links here
What is Compost doing in the "What links here" results for "Tiberian Hebrew"? There are other entries in that list that probably don't belong there either. Is there something inaccurate about "What links here"? --Hoziron 12:26, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't get compost in that list. Try purging your cache on that page: Mozilla/Safari: hold down Shift while clicking Reload (or press Ctrl-Shift-R), IE: press Ctrl-F5, Opera/Konqueror: press F5. — Mets 501  (talk) 13:21, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * That's because compost was just edited. If you edit any page, the links and categories for that article are updated and returned to normal. Gimmetrow 13:25, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I would like the ability to see which pages used to be linked to a page. Also, to see which pages used to be included in a category. Some sort of history page to track these things would be useful at times. NoSeptember  14:07, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree, category history and category watching (so the Category shows up on your watchlist when a page is added to it) would be a great thing. — Mets 501 (talk) 14:08, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Jan Smuts's youth - Footnotes problem
I'm trying to edit the above article, but I am running into a problem with footnotes. In ordinary circumstances this page should have 21 footnotes - but as you will see on the page, these 21 have increased to 42. For some reason the first 21 are listed as per usual, then the list is repeated for 22 through to 42. Furthermore, the footnotes in the text now start from number 22, rather than number 1. Can anyone shed any light on the problem?

X damr talk 23:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Just noticed the solution above - purging the page has done the trick.


 * X damr talk 23:34, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, this appears to be a common problem at the moment - it happened to me last night. Daniel.Bryant 09:21, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Foreign language external links
I notice that these are frequently added to articles such as here but they do not display. What do they do, please? TerriersFan 22:40, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * You'll find them in the left column (outside the main article block). Under the "navigation", "search" and "toolbox blocks", there will be another block called "in other languages". Canadiana 22:47, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Solution to problems with footnotes and references
Putting this in its own section because tons of people seem to be having this problem right now.

Adding ?action=purge to the URL of the page you are having problems with (load the page, then in the address bar, add ?action=purge to the end of the URL and press Enter) seems to fix the problem with doubled footnotes and references that don't work, at least for some people. It worked for me with the Millsaps College article I edited yesterday. I'm not sure this is a permanent fix for the article itself; it may just fix your browser, but I guess it's worth trying.

Credit goes to User:Gimmetrow in the "Mysterious problem involving footnotes and citation templates" above. --Tkynerd 13:44, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I think User:NE2 mentioned it earlier, here. Gimmetrow 13:49, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * It has been noted in Wikipedia talk:Footnotes. (SEWilco 14:38, 29 August 2006 (UTC))


 * It is not browser specific. I tried it on two computers.  It may be User or Page specific. Morphh 18:00, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

As I've been adding a lot of references lately to an article, I've also come across this problem. And I noticed something interesting, thay may hint at the cause of the problem. Editing a section creates a different result than editing the entire page. The footnotes or references start with those that are placed in that section or below, and then the entire article is scanned again, which results in only some footnotes or references being doubled. If you edit the entire page, it essentially does the same, resulting in a complete doubling. Errabee 14:44, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * It just happened to me with the initial version of Gay rights in South Korea. Plain editing did not work, purging did. Cleduc 04:56, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

This is a good fix, but still very annoying. The doubling effect has happened on three articles I have edited references for -- starting yesterday. --MattWright (talk) 17:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I have tried the purge fix on Taxicabs of the United States but its getting worse - can anyone fix this article, please? TerriersFan 18:23, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * It seems fine: 4 refmarks, 4 notes. Gimmetrow 18:28, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, I have edited some other sections and it has fixed itself. Weird. Thanks for looking, though. TerriersFan 18:41, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Has anyone put in a bug report to mediawiki? -- Stbalbach 04:00, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * A bug report has been filed. 86.134.92.120 04:54, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * There is a red notice box presently at the top of this page. For the benefit of archival readers I'll mention 7162. (SEWilco 04:58, 30 August 2006 (UTC))

Footnotes error?
I was just reading Help_desk and thought that it was a problem on that end, solved easily by deleting cache etc. But after I editted Every Song Is A Cry For Love, the same error occured to me. The problem is gone and it's does not matter for me much, but I'm wondering if there's a bigger problem at Wikipedia's end. —Jared Hunt August 29, 2006, 13:28 (UTC)
 * Read this section above. Gimmetrow 13:37, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Whatlinkshere strangeness
I recently checked the "What links here" for the article Arsenal F.C. (e.g. ) and found it now contains a lot of articles pertaining to Italian municipalities (e.g. Camporgiano), a seemingly unrelated topic. I assumed it was something to do with the navigation templates they use (Template:Province of Lucca) but I can't find any link to Arsenal F.C. within the template, nor anywhere else in the article. Checking the "Related changes" link for Camporgiano produces a list of mostly unrelated articles (Arab League, Guadeloupe, MSN), none of which are seemingly linked to in the page. Can anyone shed a light as to why? Qwghlm 09:14, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah. Strange stuff. I haven't tracked down anything yet. For example I'm also utterly puzzled why editing Pope Pius I says it transcludes Template:Comic book reference =:-P. Need having a closer look on templates to make sure nobody vandalized any template. --Ligulem 09:59, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I fixed a html tag error on Pope Pius I. But now we have the doubled footnotes problem there (as reported on this page already, scroll up)... --Ligulem 10:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Could be a database problem. Edit a page and a number of non-present templates are listed, but once the page is saved the template connections seem to get fixed. (Then a purge to fix the foonotes... ;) Gimmetrow 10:36, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * After checking a few articles, I wonder if the template problem is a consequence of the recent WoW vandalism. Various templates were moved around. Gimmetrow 11:26, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The Special:Statistics page shows that the job queue is currently huge, and all cached data and stuff done through templates is probably a couple of hours out of date. Kusma (討論) 11:52, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * 50,000 entries on job queue is nothing dramatic. --Ligulem 11:55, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

The job queue is now over 400,000. Could it be that every page on WP is being invalidated and recached? Gimmetrow 16:31, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Just for the records: Job queue length is now on 890,180. I would say this *is* huge now. Never seen it that high before. --Ligulem 22:02, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know if the two are related, but Whatlinkshere for images was patched very recently, which will require rebuilding the link table for all images. However, I don't know if those are being farmed onto the jobs queue.  Dragons flight 01:24, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I came here to report the same problem, whatlinkshere for PC Gamer reports thousands of links from articles which don't link to it. What's up? - Hahnch  e  n 02:14, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I was just about the report the same strangeness for Louisville, Kentucky. I usually check Louisville redirects to determine whether they were meant to go to University of Louisville.  This current problem is hindering that check.  Stevie is the man!  Talk &bull; Work 02:33, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Haven't found anything in common between various pages. Simple pages seem OK.  Pages for various animals seem OK (these have a taxobox infobox). Minor league baseball teams seem OK (images and simple infobox).  Costa Rica thinks that Saturn and Ashford, Kent link to it; all three of these are somewhat complex and use several images, templates and infoboxes (but different infoboxes).  You don't suppose the Template whose name is an exclamation point is having its name used in a context which makes it be interpreted as a program or SQL "bang" symbol?  (SEWilco 05:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC))


 * Notice below says a category is including articles which do not have the category.  Categories and Whatlinkshere may both be using indexes of some type.  Without looking at the code, I wouldn't be surprised if the job queue is a DB index of some type.  Something wrong with the first two type of indexes might affect the job queue, or perhaps all three things are entangled in some sort of index problem.  I'm painting with a broad brush, but all this will undoubtedly get looked at shortly by someone with more detailed awareness of the system.  (SEWilco 06:08, 30 August 2006 (UTC))


 * Two possibilies: Someone found an unprotected meta template and screwed with it, or the tables are actually screwed up. Of interest to PC Gamer-related issues, Ann_anime is somehow transcluded now or at some point in the recent past to hundreds of pages for an unknown reason. Kevin_b_er 08:02, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Mysterious problem involving footnotes and citation templates
I tried to make a little List of misnamed theorems, but something went terribly wrong and I can't figure out how to fix the problem. For some mysterious reason, all the arrows pointing to the place where a footnote occurs are doubled in the reference section. Only the second of each pair appears to be functional. Please fix it if you can! ---CH 02:57, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * After a WP:PURGE of the page, is it still there? Gimmetrow 02:59, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) Purge the cache. Something is wrong, but that appears to fix the issue, at least temporarily. Here's a screenshot of what's going on (click on the image and zoom in at the top references). Tito xd (?!?) 03:02, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

It seems to come and go. Reloading the page was one of the first things I tried, and it didn't seem to help. To my surprise, just after making the above query, reloading the page did seem to resolve the problem, but this definitely didn't seem to help earlier today. I am still baffled, but the fact that so many are experiencing problems suggests that something in the code might have been broken by a modification earlier today. ---CH 03:09, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I didn't just mean purge the cache. I added ?action=purge to the URL and reloaded. You probably saw the version after I did that. Gimmetrow 03:11, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * ?action=purge has just worked for a similar problem I had. I've never encountered it before, has something changed today? Espresso Addict 04:01, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm thinking there may be something wrong on Wikipedia's end because this is the first time I've encountered this problem, and others as well. Any guesses? —Jared Hunt August 29, 2006, 13:53 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if there's any connection, but I noticed that today I could not reproduce a certain error that has always "worked" in the past, namely leaving out the slash in a closing tag. When it "works" this error captures all or at least a good chunk of the following text, up to the next header, assuming that it's still reading the reference.  However, when I tried it today cutting out the slash produced just the same results as normal in the preview, and when I returned, having cancelled the edit, my footnotes were as described here. -- Antaeus Feldspar 15:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I had the same problem. I'm going to try the purge thing.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 16:16, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that worked.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back 16:18, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

This question is very quickly becoming the MFAQ of the day. Is any permanent solution at hand? -- Lost(talk) 16:23, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The permanent solution is to invalidate every page in the cache (which may be happening, job queue seems fairly large at 420k and growing), and make sure the software invalidates a page with every save. Gimmetrow 16:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I have filed 7166, related to this issue. Dragons flight 18:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * But apperently someone beat me, see also 7162. Dragons flight 18:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Note that it appears on pages that do not use the references comment, such as Gliding and Choe Manri. (Do you need a separate registration for bugzilla?) Gimmetrow 18:38, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I have added a colored box to the top of this page to direct people towards the temporary solution (and to avoid even more sections talking about the same problem). --cesarb 18:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I found this while editing a page. Looking at it from another browser, all was OK. Rich Farmbrough 08:44 30 August 2006 (GMT).

Need help in coding, probably
Due to a second instance of vandalism in my archives by users who cannot edit my user talk page (it was sprotected after it had been vandalized multiple times by IPs of banned users) I had decided to create a subpage that I have transcluded into my user talk page. However, I do not want level two headers nor do I want sections by established users to be superceded by possibly vandalous edits by malicious vandals. Is there a way to either --Ryūlóng 01:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Make it so the unprotected section forces level 3 headers for each section? or
 * 2) Make it so the unprotected section is always at the bottom of my page, and new sections via the new section tab are placed before it?
 * Oh, and I do not feel that unprotection is necessary at this moment in time. Ryūlóng 01:30, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * No. --cesarb 18:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

phtml
If you go to the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/phtml it redirects to Main Page (and uses real http codes to redirect), but if you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phtml it uses the wiki-redirect system to go to PHP.

If you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=phtml it wiki-reidrects to PHP and so does ?title=Phtml.

If you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki.phtml it http-redirects to main page.

So i'm guessing it thinks /wiki/phtml is equivelant to /wiki.phtml.

Is there any reason why it thinks a slash is a dot?

GeorgeMoney (talk) 23:35, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Knowing the usual syntax for regexps, and knowing that that redirect is from mod_rewrite (which uses regexps), I'd say someone wrote  (matches any character) when they meant   (matches a literal dot). Report it on bugzilla (product Wikimedia, component General/Unknown), and a developer will fix it later when they have time. --cesarb 18:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Exactly it. Fixed, thanks! --Brion 11:23, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Strange situation with footnotes
I have an odd situation with footnotes on the United States Marine Corps article. The very first such link (1a in the references) doesn't go anywhere. Moreover, the links to the article and current version show different numbers of footnotes.

I have a feeling it's a malformed footnote somewhere, but are there any clues to where it might be?--Mmx1 23:10, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Having added a closequote to the name="something" field, the # of refs is back to 52. However, the first 2 backreferences (links from the footnotes back into the body of the article) are still broken. --Mmx1 23:19, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Further update: See User:Mmx1/Sandbox2. References are duplicated for some reason. Must be a bug in the cite code. I see the identical bug when logged in via firefox and as anon via IE.--Mmx1 23:38, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what's causing it, but purging fixes it. --NE2 23:52, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Um, every time the page is edited, it destroys the order of the links. It didn't do that before, and you can see what it is doing to Hurricane Katrina. Can a site admin revert any change that happened to cite.php lately? Tito xd (?!?) 02:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Can you describe this destruction in more detail? For instance, is it a doubling of each footnote? --Brion 10:38, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * There are two different phenomena. In one form, the entire list of footnotes is doubled. If there are supposed to be 10 foonotes, there will be 20 (numbered 1-20), with the first footnote in the text starting at number 11. In the other form, every footnote has doubled letters in the reference section, both [a] and [b], as if a named template were being re-used. Gimmetrow 10:45, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * For an example of the first form, see Conservative Judaism (until someone clears it). Gimmetrow 11:17, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm having the same problem (see above #51) and also the person who wrote the note below mine {#52). So far we have received no help. Mattisse(talk) 12:20, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * We know how to fix it short-term. I'm leaving that one un-fixed so others know what we're talking about. Gimmetrow 12:30, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
 * There should be a more pernament and long-term solution than purging individual pages. The sheer number of questions asking the same questions (including me) is amazing. —Jared Hunt August 29, 2006, 14:28 (UTC)
 * The problem only seems to happen for me if I edit an individual section and rearrange the order of footnotes within or add a new one. If I edit from the top of the page things stay in order. In either case, after reloading a minute or two later, the problem seems to resolve itself. It might simply be an issue of the cache being confused. Perhaps it registers only a part of the article updating instead of the entire thing. I'm not a technical expert, but that's my best guess. Ryu Kaze 00:17, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Some articles have been recached. However, I'm the last edit on one article over 12 hours old, and the issue is still present. It also appears after most edits on most articles using cite.php. Gimmetrow 00:23, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Hm. Do you know if anyone's been having the issue whether they edit from the top of the page or just an individual section? Like I said, it's not happened for me at all when editing from the top. Ryu Kaze 00:52, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I haven't done a detailed study, but I usually edit the entire page at once rather than by section. (Editing by section seems to introduce extra line breaks at the end of the section, sometimes.) I still see the problem regularly. Gimmetrow 00:56, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I guess that answers my question. Thanks. I guess it just must be random. Ryu Kaze 02:04, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Miniclip ref numbers duplicated
Something has gone wrong with the reference numbers at Miniclip. The references are duplicated and the first inline reference numbers is 8. No obvious cause. --John Nagle 19:38, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Looks like the same problem reported below with several other articles. Presumably someone broke the cite code temporarily.  It seems to be fixed now. --John Nagle 02:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I confirm the problem still exists as of 14:00 August 29 (UTC). It can be fixed temporarily with a WP:PURGE, but comes back if the article is edited. I first noticed the issue August 28 at 19:20 (UTC) when it was reported at WP:FN. Gimmetrow 14:09, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Doubled references?
I was editing the article on High Technology High School, and I added a new reference. When I previewed the page, everything seemed right, but when I saved the page, the references were doubled. What I mean by this was that there are six references, but reference one became reference 7, reference two became 8, and so on. Has anyone encountered this before, or will it fix itself?

--BadgerOfDarkness 19:23, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Seems fine here. Six references, numbered 1-6. --TheParanoidOne 19:28, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm having a similar problem after editing Millsaps College to add a reference. I've checked twice, and there is only one set of tags in the article; still, the reference is numbered as 2, and there are two identical references in the References section. Am I missing something subtle in the article body? PS Yes, I forced a reload from the server just to double-check. :-) --Tkynerd 19:54, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Silly, silly me. I assumed my problem at List of misnamed theorems was too bizarre to have been reported before, but obviously not.  Sorry for the duplicated question below. ---CH 03:00, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * And few more sightings of this interesting phenomena: Iž and Prvić. Seems like references which more than one occurence get their indexes doubled, and those with only one occurence get doubled... strange... --Dijxtra 15:00, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * See below: Village pump (technical). Errabee 15:08, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Not receiving confirmation e-mails
Help, Mr. Wizard!

No matter how many times I click that button to send a confirmation e-mail to my address, I never receive a single one. They're not even spam-blocked; they just don't come. It's been 12 hours since my first try, and even that one hasn't arrived. I don't use a free address (e.g., hotmail, gmail, etc.), it's a standard e-mail address. I have no idea what's going on here...--TServo2049 17:23, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


 * If you're relating to your WP account : tick the appropriate in your preferences tag "Enable e-mail from other users". -- DLL .. T 19:18, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

That preference has nothing to do with email address confirmation. 86.134.92.120 04:57, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Hello - I am having the same problem, but it's with the 'forget password' link. I do forget my password, but a new one is never emailed to me when I click that link. Help!

Storm may affect Wikipedia servers.
Is Wikipedia servers in Florida prepared for this thing ? IF it hits where they currently think it'll hit, the storm may take down Wikipedia. Ready for a Hurricane ? Martial Law 05:43, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Hi. You must be new. Let me introduce you to 2004 Atlantic hurricane season. In particular, Hurricane Charley. Wikimedia is located in the Tampa area, and they were more than prepared for what happened back then; this storm is not too likely to hit Tampa, but either way, yes, they have plans and know what they're doing. --Golbez 06:03, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * In fact, they did cut power to downtown Tampa during Charley, and the WP servers ran off a generator. --Golbez 06:11, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I was raised as a military brat USAF and US ARMY, w/ some family in classified govt. agencies. In the military, you learn to be prepared, or you end up dead due to enemy action, bad weather, disease. Martial Law 07:01, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * this storm is not too likely to hit Tampa As of 11AM EST Sunday, Tampa is right in the center of the projected track. -anon
 * Latest track data show it may hit Tampa head on. Hope I'm incorrect. Martial Law 02:16, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

There are contingencies established at various levels to handle this sort of thing. 86.134.92.120 04:58, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Script?
Lately, a few times a day, when I'm accessing Wikipedia, my Firefox browser pops up a message about a script that can't run & gives me the choice of stopping it. Does anyone have any idea what might be going on here? (If you do, could you possibly answer here and ping me on my user talk page to let me know to come look? Thanks in advance.) - Jmabel | Talk 18:57, 26 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Doing what? Accessing what? Viewing what pages, performing what actions, etc? Full text of error or warning messages that appear? Name of the script? More information is needed. 86.134.92.120 04:59, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Semi Protection
On wikipedia to edit a semiprotected page a user must have a 4-day old account, but on my wiki (MediaWiki 1.6) a user only needs the account no mater how old it is. What is the cause of the difference? 213.94.234.66 21:24, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I think a better place for that is at mw:Project:Support desk. — Mets 501 (talk) 03:31, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Quick answer; the autoconfirmed group isn't switched on by default; set  in LocalSettings.php to do this. 86.134.92.120 05:00, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikimedia.org server problems
In the past hour or so, http://svn.wikimedia.org (MediaWiki_extensions) has been down. I've looked at some of the status sites, but it's hard to interpret the results on them. Anyone know of the best place to go to check on the most up-to-date mediawiki and wikimedia server status? --J. J. 17:45, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The best place to check the up-to-date status is the IRC channels. --cesarb 22:16, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * There was an odd outage which coincided with Brion being absent for the weekend. Long resolved, now. 86.134.92.120 05:01, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Indeed, I found out on the tech IRC channel. It's amazing how many people were online and willing to respond to my questions there! I meant to respond here earlier to tell Cesar thanks. --J. J. 13:59, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Severe browser compatibility issue introduced... Cannot report with Bugzilla!
Since the Bugzilla page requires registration that includes an e-mail address, I am unable to use it to submit this bug report: The Links 2.1pre4 web browser can no longer view English Wikipedia content as of August 23, 2006 (and possibly up to a month before that). Any attempt to load a Wikipedia page results in much garbage being displayed, instead of readable text. A lot of the garbage shown in the display consists mostly of asterisks (*) and periods (.) with a few alphanumeric characters and punctuation marks.

Spanish, German, and Netherlands Wikipedia are still readable, and all languages are readable in Mozilla and Lynx.

72.49.64.171 08:28, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * This was most likely a temporary problem with the Squid 2.6 upgrade, due to a change in treatment of ETags. If so, this should have been resolved a couple days ago. --Brion 11:39, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Weird error while trying to access some pages.
For some days I've been getting a weird error while trying to access some pages on Wikipedia. It's mostly for the Main Page but I've noticed some other pages have this problem as well. I have uploaded a screenshot of the error here:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/_sleepflower/wikierror.jpg

(It's in Dutch but I trust everyone is familiar with it; it basically asks me if I want to save a file called "Main_Page" that is of unknown format.) I tried to access the Main Page here but all I got was this weird error. This has happened on and off for the last few days, sometimes disappearing and then reappearing again. It seems to be only a problem in IE, as I am using Firefox right now (I couldn't access the technical help page in IE, got the error again) and it works just fine. I use Windows XP with IE 6. Anyone know what this is? 62.163.35.231 10:44, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

In your preferences, under the 'Editing' section, make sure "Use external editor by default" and "Use external diff by default" are off. Prodego talk  13:41, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Um, I'm not a member of Wikipedia so I can't change any preferences. 62.163.35.231 15:54, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Hmmm, I figured you just were a non-logged in user. When you use I.E., are you sure you aren't logged into an account (possibly without knowing it, if "Remember me" is set)? I can't think of any other way for this to happen, unless Internet Explorer is misconfigured somehow. Try resetting it's defaults as well. Prodego  talk  16:00, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I am having the same problem too, got IE 6...I tried restoring to defaults and it is still not working, I can't access the main page or some articles...is something wrong with my comp...or wikipedia?

My guess is something with wikipedia and IE. Firefox seems to work just fine. I also did not have an account when trying this. Have logged into multiple machines with multiple versions of IE 6 running and all exhibit this behaviour.

The main page is working for me now...but still some of the articles are still not working for me...I don't have a account either.

I've found that it can work at times, then try the same page again and the Main_Page download prompt occurs again...

The main page isn't working for me once again as aren't some articles...what is odd...the articles not working for me...keeps on changing. This is very werid.


 * This will have been the Squid 2.6 ETag issue, and fixed as of a few days ago. --Brion 11:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Interesting incident
Special:Contributions/203.134.131.18

My interpretation of the sequence of events here is:


 * someone from that IP vandalized a page and left
 * someone dropped a warning on the IP talk page (but it is not picked up)
 * much later someone starts reading WP from that IP and gets the message.
 * unnecessary grief follows.

Is my interpretation of the technical details of the new message process correct? That is, an IP address receives a new message flag even if they are only reading WP from that address, and no matter how old that message is? That's unfortunate, isn't it? 192.75.48.150 19:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * AFAIK, your interpretation is correct. --cesarb 19:41, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * MediaWiki:Anontalkpagetext could be made more noticeable, such as the design I did here. Gerard Foley 20:52, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Creating an account is useless advice here, mind you. This has to do with people who aren't editing at all. 72.137.20.109 03:38, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * They get the notification only if a session has been opened, which happens if they have attempted to edit a page or log in. Otherwise it's disabled for cache-friendliness. --Brion 11:45, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

User-links alignment broken
Sorry if this has already been discussed elsewhere, but I've been having a weird new display bug since this morning: In IE with monobook skin, the top link bar (the one that contains user page - "my talk" - "my preferences" etc.) is displayed normally as right-aligned, but shifts to left-aligned the moment I hover the mouse over it. (Irritating, if you come to think of it.) It's on all Wikimedia sites apparently. Has some central style sheet been changed recently? Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Seems to have been fixed now. Thanks to whoever fixed it! Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:52, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * This is a bug in Internet Explorer, and is intermittent. Contact Microsoft for support. --Brion 11:47, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Template:IPUser
Exists now, just thought I'd let you know. Happy editing--{anon iso − 8859 − 1 janitor} 23:54, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Back Page
When I use this computer that I'm on currently, and I use the Back Page function to go to the Recent Changes page, instead of giving me the page as it looked at the time that I was last there, it gives me a refereshed page. Any ideas on why? This doesn't happen on my PC at home. I'm using IE 7 here and IE 6 at home, could that be the reason? User:Zoe|(talk) 22:14, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Browser settings? In IE (6), it's Tools > Internet Options > General Tab > Temporary internet Files, Settings... then choose when you want it to check for newer versions. &mdash;Bunchofgrapes (talk) 22:43, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * That's it. It was set to check for new versions automatically.  Thanks.  User:Zoe|(talk) 22:48, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Having trouble with an article I just edited: similar to previous post
This problem is similar to that just reported by Mattisse. I'm adding information with cites to Myopia, but I just noted that a number of cites are doubled or appear multiple times in the References section. I can't figure out what I may have done wrong. Thanks! -AED 21:31, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * In my case it either cured itself (mysteriously} or was fixed when I added a stub at the bottom. Maybe it is some sort of Wiki glitch. Now mine is fine. Try adding the at bottom.  Mattisse(talk) 22:11, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the suggestion. I tired it but it didn't work. -AED 22:20, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm having a similar problem with an article I'm building in my sandbox. Adding a stub tag didn't work for me, either. Zagalejo 22:21, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The very first citation in Myopia is labeled "43". For what it's worth, I found that removing the "References" section changes it to "1"... obviously there are no footnotes then. -AED 22:25, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I added a mere internal link, and now the problem is back again. And that just doesn't make sense. I wonder if I should take the internal link out or revert. Very strange. Mattisse(talk) 22:42, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I reverted to version that was O.K. before and the footnote citations remain doubled. I think it must be Wiki, although I don't understand how. Mattisse(talk) 22:51, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I did a null edit (save the page without changing anything) and it broke again. So might have nothing to do with your edits. --Ligulem 22:59, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * That's what I'm thinking since there is no rhyme or reason to it. Mattisse(talk) 01:21, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Having trouble with an article I just created
The article is called Parchman. For some reason the footnote citations show up twice when I save the aricle. However, upon preview there are the correct number which is three.

Something is doubling the footnote citations and I can't figure out what. Help would be greatly appreciated. I'm sure it is something simple that I'm just not seeing! Mattisse(talk) 21:18, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, now suddenly it is fixed, and all I did was add stub. Don't understand. Mattisse(talk) 21:23, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Now suddenly, the footnote citations are doubled again -- six instead of the three in the article. And all I did was add an internal link. Could it be Wiki?   Mattisse(talk) 22:39, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Hyperlink issues after logging in
Every time I log in using Monobook skin, all hyperlinks appear underlined. It's fixable by clearing my browser cache, but in doing so I lose the download time benefits of having the pages cached. (Note: I use Internet Explorer). C. M. Harris Talk to me 19:38, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * There's a less drastic way: do a forced reload on a single page (like this one). It will download again only that single page, and the CSS files (which is what you want to reload). I believe even a normal reload is enough, which should not download again the images and global CSS/JS. --cesarb 19:49, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki Software Like one on Wikipedia.org
I installed mediawiki software on my server and it works well. There is only one thing missing. Not every template is included. How do I install additional features so that the mediawiki software that I have installed becomes exactly like the one which is running wikipedia.org

Are there additional plugins, etc available which have to be installed.

For example, the following tags are not parsed and look like tags only. The method that I have used is to iimport xml dumps using importdump.php and then browse the pages.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 59.163.2.66 (talk • contribs) 13:25, August 28 2006 (UTC)


 * Install the extensions listed at Special:Version (Cite, ParserFunctions). --Ligulem 14:03, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Interactive Map
I am sure this question has been asked before but I can't find an answer anywhere. I am working on a series of articles for buildings in a suburb. Each building has its own article. I want to show a map of the suburb (which I have) with each building marked. When a reader clicks on the individual building on the map, it will take them to the Wikipedia article for that building. I haven't seen this done anywhere before on Wikipedia - any ideas? amitch 05:50, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * You could try it with Click and use a borderless table to assemble it, but it won't work in all browsers (and images should really just link to the image description page). Alternately you could try Image_label to insert text links. --Splarka (rant) 07:16, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Ugh. Do we really want an article on every building in a city?  User:Zoe|(talk) 16:14, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, this isn't a technical answer, but a stylistic one. You may wish to create the article on the suburb, and then include brief summaries in that article of the buildings that are the most notable. An individual article needs to meet wikipedia's notability guidlines: WP:NOTE. It's unlikely that, say, the building on the corner that used to have a laundromat but now has a falafel joint in it is really a notable building requiring an article, though it may be worth mentioning in a section of the city/suburb's article dealing with economic change in the area. Phidauex 16:28, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * This is for a small number of very notable, historic buildings in the area. Aside from WP:NOTE, I don't think I'd have the time or inclination to do every building! I guess this questions distills down to: is it possible to show a map and depending on where the user clicks, link through to individual articles? There doesn't appear to be a clean solution at this stage. amitch 21:36, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * User:Daanschr/_Maptest <-- an example of Image_label --Splarka (rant) 07:16, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Template:National parks of the United States map <-- another example base on "Click-Inline" --Donar Reiskoffer 07:49, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Those are pretty neat examples. It's worth noting that click-inline works on Camino, Firefox OS X and Safari while Image Label didn't work on any of the three. &mdash; Rob (  talk  ) 11:25, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Commons protection
An idea which is floated from time to time on WT:DYK is to apply for adminship on commons, as often images from Commons need to appear on the Wikipedia front page, and the current process is to save the image from commons, reupload it, protect it, and then delete it once it has gone from the front page. Adminship on Commons would save a lot of time as it removes the need to reupload the image. However, if an image is protected on Commons, does it automatically get protected on all other projects, or could I potentially upload another image to Wikipedia under the same name, thus circumventing the protection? smurrayinch e  ster(User), (Talk) 07:03, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Commons has historically rejected giving adminship to people on other projects unless they are also active contributors on Commons, and yes, your fear is correct, someone could just upload a local image to circumvent protection on Commons. Dragons flight 07:07, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Tables of contents have disappeared
Using Firefox, the TOCs on all Wikipedia pages are gone. (I still see them using IE.) As nobody else has complained, it is probably just me, and could be something I have inadvertently done with the browser settings, but I have absolutely no idea what that could be. Any ideas? Tupsharru 06:35, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * See FAQ question #3 above, and see if force-reloading a page fixes it? --Interiot 06:49, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
 * It did, thanks a lot! (Duh! I should have thought of that.) Tupsharru 06:56, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Can I find a editor's IP?
Is there a way to determine an editor's IP? For example, I would be interested in knowing the IP that the brand-new User:Olmeque used for his/her first posts. Curiously yours, Madman 20:48, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * If you have a compelling reason to do so, you can ask at Requests for CheckUser. However, such information is not given away lightly, so just wanting to know an IP of an editor won't get you anywhere, as that data is protected by our Privacy policy. Tito xd (?!?) 20:54, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * It's certainly not worth suspending the Privacy policy, no. Thanks for your time, Madman 02:59, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Template:European mathematicians
The Template:European mathematicians has some serious issues. Could some kind person please try to fix it? You can see what is doing to all affected categories by taking a look at Category:German mathematicians. Thanks! - GilliamJF 19:24, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Print an article
Hi everyone, I want to print an article in Wikipedia. So I copy it in Microsoft word, but the wiki style will be lost! How can I transfer the info in wiki to Microsoft word if I don't want to change the style? (Like picture place and math formulas, etc)-- MehranVB talk 14:31, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The easiest way to print an article is to click "Printable version" in the toolbox when reading an article, and then just print that page. — Mets 501 (talk) 14:34, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I know this, but I want to edit the article in Microsoft word. -- MehranVB talk 14:39, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Which version of Word? — Mets 501 (talk) 14:48, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Microsoft Word 2003 (I have XP one too) -- MehranVB talk 16:11, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * In the article you can click on 'edit', copy the page source to word, edit it, then copy the new version to a wiki edit window in your browser, click on 'show preview' and print that... S Sepp 16:46, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

How can I remove the border around an image?
I have searched and searched and cannot find the answer. I don't want a border around my image. JadedHeart 09:08, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Don't use thumb or frame.


 * Also see Help:Images and other uploaded files. --Interiot 09:18, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't using either thumb or frame, and the smilies you posted also have a border around them. I don't want the box to show, I think it probably has something to do with the fact that it is a hyperlink, cuz it was purple and after I clicked on it, it was blue. So I guess my question should have been, "How do I make hyperlinks not be framed?"JadedHeart 18:33, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Are you using the skin "MySkin"? That skin always adds the blue/purple border around images.  If that's the issue, then switching to another one (eg. MonoBook) will make the images framed as I described.  --Interiot 06:43, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Editing discographies
I just changed the name of the upcoming Modest Mouse album to We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, however, I can't figure out how to change it in the box at the bottom of all the MM pages. Can someone help me out here? The "the" is clearly lowercase, so the discography box on the MM pages should reflect that. Evan Reyes 03:16, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * This box is a template, see Template:ModestMouse. When you edit an aritlce, all the templates used in the article are listed at the very bottom of the edit page.  -- Rick Block (talk) 03:32, 27 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I've fixed it, but my post here to say so and explain clashed with Rick Block's explanation above.-gadfium 03:33, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Splitting a wikitable
I want to split the table at Huddersfield Town F.C. over three columns with the headings at the top of each. 'How to', please? BlueValour 21:24, 26 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Do you mean something like this?


 * Regards, Lynbarn 21:45, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Many thanks for this. Just a supplementary; is it possible for a small amount of white background space (as opposed to a blank column) be inserted between each pair of columns, please? BlueValour 22:42, 26 August 2006 (UTC)


 * How's this?


 * The amount of white space depends on your browser page width, so it may not be quite what you wanted.-gadfium 00:07, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'll have a go with that, thanks. BlueValour 00:19, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Menu creation
How to create a menu on an article in wikipedia that can be expanded dynamically with a plus sign? One example is to create a detailed menu of a book, so that it will not take much space. If some one can give me a code and instructions to implement, it'll be great. Thanks in advance.  TruthSpreader Talk 15:40, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
 * See Template:Dynamic navigation box. Does it help ? -- DLL .. T 18:47, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Link
How do I link to other wikimedia wikis?--Mac Lover TalkC 20:40, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Well it depends what wiki you want to link to and why you want to link. Can you be more specific please? Prodego  talk  20:41, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * For a different language wikipedia use xx:Article Name, so to link to "Star Trek" on the spanish wikipedia use Star Trek . The link will appear on the sidebar. If you don't want the link to appear on the sidebar put a colon in frount as in es:Star Trek . For a different project try the project name i.e. VB .NET . 213.94.234.66 21:24, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * See InterWiki for a general description, and ask here again if you need further help.-gadfium 01:53, 26 August 2006 (UTC)


 * See also Interwiki_map for a list of possible interwiki link prefixes (you can also link to non-wikimedia sites, actually). (Liberatore, 2006). 22:29, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Joining two accounts
By error I have registered twice ton Wikipedia - after some time of inactivity I couldn't log in so I have registered anew. Now I have found that I have some contribution to both accounts and also some to my IP before I have logged in for the first time. Is it possible to join the three into one account without losing any information? noychoH 19:56, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * No, unfortunatly accounts can not be merged together. Prodego  talk  20:42, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * You could, however, REDIRECT one User page to the other and explain what happened. User:Zoe|(talk) 03:16, 26 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The redirection shall not allow to see the contents of your talk and personal page : copy them first to the account you wish to keep. -- DLL .. T 18:50, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Diff edits
When in a diff page, the edit buttons next to a subject heading dissapears. Has anyone else been having this problem? I am using Linux KDE with Firefox 1.5.0.4. Thanks --liquidGhoul 10:45, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Section edit links only appear when you are looking at the newest version. So when viewing a diff, the newest version must be on the right side. As I understand it, section editing is implemented by merging the changes for the edited section into the newest version. Merging into an older version is not supported. So this behaviour is as expected. The section structure of a page may change significantly over revisions, so the section numbering (which is used for section editing - see the url when clicking on a section edit) might be totally incompatible. --Ligulem 11:06, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
 * It's certainly technically possible... It's probably not implemented because, well, how often do you need to revert only one section of someone's change?  --Interiot 11:22, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Woops. I was pressing diff on the waychlist, but it was a very active page and a new edit must have occured between. Thanks --liquidGhoul 11:45, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Add to search
How long does it take for a new article to make it into the search feature. I search for the title of my article and it does not show up — Preceding unsigned comment added by Involved (talk • contribs) 01:08, 25 August 2006


 * I don't think there should be any delay. To what article do you refer?  I don't see any new page-creations in your contribs list. ~ Booya Bazooka 06:17, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
 * There is a delay of several days, perhaps longer. MECU ≈ talk 12:42, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
 * See the second FAQ at the top of this page. --cesarb 22:26, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Number of edits
On RfA there is usually mention of the number of edits often by type. How do I find out my stats, please? BlueValour 22:08, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * See the links at Edit count. --cesarb 22:43, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Or rather see the links at WikiProject edit counters. I suggest using either Essjay's or Lupin's on enwiki.  --Interiot 06:38, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

template cite news
This is an edit request for protected template:cite news. See template talk:cite news. I would like to have the new doc page pattern completed there. See also Template limits. --Ligulem 16:16, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Done by CesarB. Thanks! --Ligulem 22:30, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Disappearing PNG images while using Firefox/Windows
Is anyone else noticing PNG images disappearing and reappearing in Wikipedia while using Mozilla Firefox for Windows? Is this a browser issue or a Wikipedia issue? (Sorry if this has been brought up before) Stevie is the man!  Talk &bull; Work 15:54, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

More info: The PNG image in question has a transparent background and is being used on the WikiProject Louisville page as well as project templates. Stevie is the man! Talk &bull; Work 20:24, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Downloading sounds
Hi, I think the whole idea of Wikipedia is amazing and it has been the main source of my education for a while now. However,There's just one small complaint, I can never download your sound examples! What file type are they? Is there software I can download for this? Am I doing something wrong? Are they not Wav. files? And if not, why not? Please let me know as I am a composer/sound engineer who would benefit greatly from your examples of sine waves and ring modulation etc.

Will be looking forward to a reply

Sonny Collins


 * See Media help — Mets 501 (talk) 15:07, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Save Page - NOT
The Save Page button is working 1/2 the time or it does NOT work at all. Martial Law 19:18, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * You mean you press "save page" and then the saved page doesn't load sometimes, right? Same thing is happening to me. — Mets 501  (talk) 19:22, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

You press SAVE, nothing happens....
You press the SAVE button, either nothing happens, or you get into a edit conflict - w/ YOURSELF, "Operation has Timed Out" signals. Or it freezes. Martial Law 18:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

can't find article
Hi, I uploaded an article this morning, and can't find it when I browse Google or Wikipedia search. Is there something I need to do so that the page shows up? -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by Annakup (talk • contribs)
 * It will update eventually, just wait :-). Your article (Families for Families) will most likely be deleted as an advertisement however. — Mets 501  (talk) 03:09, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * It's been deleted (not by me) — Mets 501 (talk) 03:28, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * It looks like it was deleted due to copyright violations. --WhiteDragon 18:59, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Multiple refs not working
In the Duke Nukem Forever page, I just tried to add three refs pointing to already existing refs - but only one of them works (#22). The other two (#18 and #19) don't show up at all, instead becoming empty refs down at #23 and #24. THis puzzles me and I am wondering where I messed up. Hbdragon88 03:40, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The original reference (to both) has a missing "=" (the syntax is ).  The subsequent reference looks fine in both cases.  -- Rick Block (talk) 04:11, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I fixed the problem. Hbdragon88 07:08, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

no user id listed at the end of my posts
Why is it that whenever I post something to Wikipedia it dosen't show my user id at the end like it does for other people. I don't know if this is called the signature or not on this system or if I haven't set it up correctly or what the deal is. Any assistance anyone out there can provide me with would be most appreciated.

e-mail removed to prevent spam —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rockerrb (talk • contribs) 2006-08-23 19:39:07 (UTC).


 * I'm not going to email you. You have to sign your posts with either 3 or 4 tildes (  or ~ ).  The latter is preferred since it also adds a timstamp. &mdash; Frecklefoot | Talk 19:43, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Perhaps you're thinking posts should be signed automagically? That would be great for talk pages, but seriously annoying clutter for articles.  —EncMstr 20:39, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, the problem is (whihc might be a good thing) is that WIkipedia handles edits of talk pages in exactly the same way as articles. This is why your messages aren't signed automatically. Jeltz talk  22:57, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
 * LiquidThreads will fix this, IIRC. Tito xd (?!?) 07:25, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Sunscreen affects visibility?
After reverting vandalism on Sunscreen, I added to the offending user's talk page: Sunscreen ~ The preview looked okay, except Sunscreen was redlinked. Assuming I fat fingered it, did the copy and paste again. It was still red linked and there was no obvious problem with spelling—and it didn't seem to be a day when a word like the defied correct spelling.

A while later the red vexed me, calling for more investigation. Clicking the redlink edits a new article named Sunscreen %E2 %80 %8E (spaces added for clarity). Those codes all seem displayable, though checking UTF-8 references, I got more confused: they could be gamma, cedilla, A umlaut. Or they could be circumflex a, control, single shift 2.

—EncMstr 18:33, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) What are those characters?
 * 2) Which interpretation of the codes is the right one?
 * 3) How did they get there? (I think my methods are vanilla.)


 * E2 80 8E is a single unicode codepoint in UTF-8: the "LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK". How it got in there, I don't know. If you edit the talk page, you can actually delete the non-printing character and fix it. &mdash;Bunchofgrapes (talk) 18:41, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Unicode character directionality indicators are displayed in watchlist pages and I'm not sure how many other contexts (MediaWiki now supports bi-directional text interfaces). If you copy the text I think you may or may not pick up the directionality indicator (which is invisible, so it's a little hard to tell if you've picked it up or not).  Unexpected redlinks likely have this character at the end.  I can make these go away (in Safari) by cursoring to the end of the link, making sure to be on the first closing "]" and backspacing from there.  This may be worth writing a Bug report about.  -- Rick Block (talk) 19:02, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * See the above section . Copy/pasting text in a wiki is often a game of chance. This may be yet another worthy of the FAQ (I've seen 3 or 4 in the last month or so). --Splarka (rant) 07:08, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

How to extract link structure of wikipedia.
Hi, I'm not sure sure if this is the right place to ask this... so sorry if I posted on the wrong page. I'd like to extract the link structure of the whole wikipedia to create a (pretty large) link graph and do some research. Maybe you can give me some hints where and how to start. Regards Cyc 12:50, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Take a look at, in particular, the "links" queries. (Liberatore, 2006). 13:12, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, if you need the whole structure, it may be a good idea to download the database and perform the above query locally instead. All data is available at, while the db structure is explained in meta:Help:Database layout (Liberatore, 2006). 13:16, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Nice, didn't know it existed. —Jared Hunt August 22, 2006, 13:36 (UTC)
 * Actually, don't bother doing the query yourself - just talk to the creator of Six Degrees of Wikipedia, User:Kate, who has already gone to all the trouble of extracting this graph. Deco 04:14, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Showing related changes for a WikiProject
Normally, WikiProject templates are placed on the talk pages of articles catalogued for those projects, with the talk pages then automatically categorized for the project. Thus, showing "Related Changes" for the WikiProject category will show the latest changes to the talk pages of those articles. Is there a straightforward way to show "Related Changes" for the latest changes to the articles attached to those talk pages? Thanks. Stevie is the man! Talk &bull; Work 20:50, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The way I've seen it done before (such as at WP:CRIC) is to make a list of all the articles and use the related changes page for that. --Cherry blossom tree 21:32, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I already knew about that, as I've created a special watchlist page for the frequent edited/vandalized articles for a couple projects. I just wish there was an automatic way to do this for all articles catalogued for the project without having to regenerate the full list periodically.  Stevie is the man!  Talk &bull; Work 22:26, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, WatchlistBot periodically generates lists for several WikiProjects, if that makes this method any easier. --Interiot 01:21, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
 * That looks like what I'm looking for. Thanks for the lead! Stevie is the man!  Talk &bull; Work 01:53, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Category:Articles with unsourced statements
Could someone please explain to me what we gain by having a category with 21,008 pages that miss citations? --Ligulem 23:41, 20 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure that this is raises any technical issues. If it does, I'm afraid my answer will ignore them. What we gain is a salutory reminder of just how awful WP is. There are of course several sites that set out to criticize WP, but my cursory examination of a few of them suggests that they're glorified gossip columns, larded with sour grapes; anyway, they don't amount to much. Meanwhile, that twenty-one thousand pages are labeled as having unsourced statements -- let alone all those pages that have unlabeled unsourced statements, etc etc -- yes, that gets me wondering about issues of quantity versus quality in ways that "Wikitruth" and the like do not. -- Hoary 23:55, 20 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Theoretically, people who really want to help us improve will go to that category, pick a topic or topics they are familiar with or are prepared to research, and begin addressing some of our shortcomings on these articles. In practice, I don't think very many people do this (although I did spend some time cleaning up the referencing on Thomas Midgley, Jr. the other day).  However, I think that category would be a fantastic starting point for an assignment for a school or college class -- the students would get an education on how fallible Wikipedia can be, and how to compare our work to that of traditional reference works, and we'd end up with an improved and referenced article out of the deal.  &mdash; Catherine\talk 19:29, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

"Exit" from template execution?
I have a template with some nasty nested #if blocks. I can live with the nesting, but it would be kind of nice there was something like If condition then Exit

Where exit would end any further processing of the template. No more wikitext, no more parser functions would be evaluated.

I assume this, or a workalike does not exist. Correct? -Mak Thorpe 01:07, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Correct. And Starling was dragged into to implementing ParserFunctions, so I don't think this feature proposal stands a snowball's chance in hell. (of course, I could be wrong...) &mdash; Edward Z. Yang (Talk) 02:05, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * There is one way to avoid nesting parserfunctions to achieve a close effect (but it involves nesting div tags, or other block element tags):

This part always shows  This only shows if hide is undefined, and does not require a wrapping parserfunction.


 * --Splarka (rant) 02:19, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Like I said, I can live with it.  Interesting hack with the nested divs though. -Mak Thorpe 03:00, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The only problem with this CSS hack is that it obviously only works for people with CSS aware browsers. For them the hidden part would be visible, and if that is not the disred result it might be best to avoid it. Now most browser do understand CSS but it would be optimal if people could view it in any user-agent without unnecessary cluttering. Jeltz talk  21:20, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


 * See Don't use hiddenStructure --Ligulem 13:42, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Two tools
I'm not sure whether I should report this to Bugzilla, but I post this nonetheless. If you look at the special character insert tools below, there are two  "buttons." Nothing urgent, but I think it should be taken care of at some point. —Jared Hunt August 22, 2006, 13:33 (UTC)


 * No need to report to bugzilla; these tools are in fact MediaWiki:Edittools, and you can suggest changes at MediaWiki talk:Edittools. --cesarb 19:46, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Already fixed :-) — Mets 501 (talk) 19:48, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The fact that I'm not an admin; I can't edit those.  —Jared Hunt August 22, 2006, 23:36 (UTC)

Database problem? discrepancy
When going to Aletheia I see an older version, instead of the most recent version I see when clicking the "edit this page" tab. --Lambiam Talk 03:13, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
 * The problem appears to have disappeared. --Lambiam Talk 10:14, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

"edit" only works for subsections, sends an index.php to client otherwise?
For some reason when I try to use the "edit this page" link on an existing article, or attempt to create a new one, I have an "index.php" sent by the wikipedia server to my client. Here's an example from this very page:

[Process] Type=Edit text Engine=MediaWiki Script=http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php Server=http://en.wikipedia.org Path=/w Special namespace=Special [File] Extension=wiki URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29&action=edit&internaledit=true

To actually edit the page, I have to extract the URL from the above and paste it into my browser. It seems to me that this should be some internal in-server thing causing an HTTP redirect to be issued maybe. My browser version is Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.4) Gecko/20060508 Firefox/1.5.0.4

If I use the "edit" link from any section heading on a page, it does work as expected.

(Sorry if this is rather a bugzilla candidate.) --BACbKA 17:05, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Do you have "Use external editor by default" checked in your preferences under the editing tab? Try unchecking that if it's checked. — Mets 501  (talk) 18:11, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * This is almost worth putting in the FAQ. --Splarka (rant) 22:21, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I have just added it to the FAQ. This has been asked often enough. --cesarb 19:53, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Redirects from Search
I just tried a search for 'Harmony guitars'. It gave me the 'No such page' message and a series of links, none of which went ot 'Harmony company', which is where the information actually resides.

How do I put a link from a particular search to the page on which this information resides. In this case, how do I redirect the search 'Harmony guitars' to the 'Harmony company' page? The only thing I can think of is to create a Harmony guitars page and put a link to the company page, but that seems untidy. I've searched the help pages, but I've either been looking in the wrong place or the info's not there. Deke42 16:51, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * m:Help:Redirect. Create the page as a redirect. --Splarka (rant) 22:20, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Deke42 23:28, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Menu jumps
Why does the menu (either the "Sign in/Create" or the User Menu( username, talk, contibution,preferance .. at the top of the page) jump from one side to the other (usually from Right ro left) as the mouse pointer reaches it and then stays at the Other end( sort of catch me if you can!!). And i "misclick" on the wikipedia image rather on my user page. I have noticed this in my other Language (Malayalam WIki too)..why does this happen...I just checked a fellow wikipedian and seems like this is not same for every body? Thanksactivevoid (talk) 17:03, 20 August 2006 (UTC)


 * This is a bug in Internet Explorer. Please report it to Microsoft if you still experience it under IE 7 betas. --Brion 13:36, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

How to center a template within an article?
I created another template but would like to center it within the article, as it is currently placed on the left side (as by default). How can I enable this formatting? 67.37.227.115 21:17, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
 * If your template is a table, you can center it by adding " " to the first line. If it's some other sort of block, with a style, you can add " " to the style (which will work for most browsers).  The old-fashioned HTML method of surrounding it with   will work, too. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:03, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you. That did it. 67.37.227.115 23:04, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

can't edit windows brings up "picture it"
I've looked for hours for the answer to this.

When I click on "edit this page" widnows responds that the file extension *.php is used by "picture it" instead of opening the edit screen like this one. It does it when I try to invoke the sandbox as well

My firewall settings are default and I tried turning the firewall off for a moment to try to get to the edit screen.

I've looked at mediawiki and that appears to be server software rather than a way to edit or add new articles.

What's up?
 * You appear to have turned on "Use external editor by default" in Preferences->Edit of Wikipedia. Alternatively, you have a corrupted css file, and refreshing your browser cache will fix it.-gadfium 06:34, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Wrap text around a template? Possible to do this?
I have a standard template that has a narrow width. Is it possible to actually wrap text to the side of it? It can be found here: Template:UChicago2

mcshadypl 01:57, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the text will wrap if you set a table width. Change to top line from
 * to
 * where WIDTH is the width of the box in pixels (you probably want around 200px or so. — Mets 501 (talk) 02:09, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
 * where WIDTH is the width of the box in pixels (you probably want around 200px or so. — Mets 501 (talk) 02:09, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
 * where WIDTH is the width of the box in pixels (you probably want around 200px or so. — Mets 501 (talk) 02:09, 20 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry for being somewhat unclear about this. Thank you. This definitely does help in enhancing the template, but is it possible to wrap text around it from the article in which it is placed? If I insert this template, the text of the article appears over and under it, yet only blank space exists to the side. Is it at all possible to wrap THAT text around the template? Again, I apologize for not being more clear. Matt (mcshadypl) 02:15, 20 August 2006 (UTC)


 * If you want the template on the left, add "float: left;" to the style. If you want it on the right, add "float: right;".  -- Rick Block (talk) 03:15, 20 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you! The template now looks exactly as I had intended! Matt (mcshadypl) 03:25, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Formatting for wikitable captions
Currently, there is no default formatting for Wikitable captions, which makes them look small and ugly by default:

This can easily be rectified by adding  to MediaWiki:Common.css. Ingoolemo talk 00:03, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

A well deserved Award
This is my way of thanking the personnel in this area for their outstanding work.


 * Award given by Martial Law 20:14, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Database of the world's cities
I'm about to make a non-commercial web-site for common use. It will contain local information for users comming from all over the globe. In order to implement the localization I need a database with the names of the cities(in english and in the native language of the country, the city is located in). Wikipedia provides such kind of information for the cities in the world. My question is - may I get this database from Wikipedia? maybe, somebody could make a dump of the part of the Wikipedias database with the tables with the information about the cities in the world into a text(csv)-file and make it available for download(it should take just severel minutes)? the information that I need is that one that appears in a small table once you look up a citie's name - name of the city in the native language, in english, position in administrative hierarchie, zip, international telephone code, etc.

thank you in advance Vladimir Pekar--85.250.184.182 19:36, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Edit refused
Everytime I edit anything, maybe even here, I get kicked OFF this site. Martal Law 19:27, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Heard that the site was down. Is that related ? Martial Law 20:05, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Nope. See above. Also consult http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html for information on how to ask questions in the right manner. 86.134.49.147 23:00, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Appreciate the assisstance. I was taught to get to the point, nothing fancy. I was raised as a military brat, USAF and US Army w/ some family who were in certain govt. agencies. That can be a major influence. Martial Law 05:13, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Martial Law, could you please clarify what you mean by "kicked off this site"? Do you mean blocked from editing by an administrator as a result of your edits, or an actual technical issue? - Mark 12:09, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I've made a edit, then when I punched the SAVE icon, I got a "Server NOT Found" message and kicked OFF of the site. The incident happened 24 hrs ago. Working now. Some others have reported that when you save a edit, the SAVE icon does'nt work or works 1/2 the time. Martial Law 18:57, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
 * One other thing, enjoy the Award. You guys deserve it. Martial Law 19:00, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Section edit links look wrong in IE7 Beta 3
The section edit links along the right hand side of articles were small (superscript-looking) in Internet Explorer 6. They are full-sized text in Internet Explorer 7. Not sure if this is a problem with our site or IE7. - Mark 03:23, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Interesting. They've always been full size in Firefox. — Mets 501  (talk) 03:25, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * You may have set your zoom to a level that causes them to go up a point size. Deco 08:25, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * They've always looked full-sized to me (both in IE7 beta 3 and Firefox) Tito xd (?!?) 08:27, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I've prepared a comparison image of the rendering in IE6 and IE7 (the article in question is Closed London Underground stations). The comparison image is here. I wonder what the "intended" way it's meant to look is. - Mark 11:27, 19 August 2006 (UTC)


 * It's rendered in a div with class="editsection", which looks to be intended to be shown as "font-size: smaller". See Catalogue of CSS classes and http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css (don't ask me to explain the syntax used in the monobook skins file - it looks wrong to me, maybe IE7 doesn't like it).  -- Rick Block (talk) 15:19, 19 August 2006 (UTC)


 * * html element is an <= IE6 workaround. <= IE6 will parse it the same as element, but no other rendering engine will. Looks like it might have been fixed in IE7? At least, I think it's a workaround - it doesn't work for me in a quick testcase I built (Firefox 1.5.0.6 / Mac OS X). --jam  es (talk) 15:40, 19 August 2006 (UTC)


 * So it's a workaround to make the edit links look small in IE 6 or previous. But functional browsers aren't showing the small links anyway, so it's a redundant workaround. But maybe 70% or more of our visitors would use IE6, so would be used to the small edit links. - Mark 09:32, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

this is a serious problem and more common than people imagine. see my post, "Articles and their appearance in IE 6" (post #73) above. it needs to be addressed urgently. (sorry if i sound dramatic -- but the problem is serious) --Mowglee 16:45, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Problems with images
Some of the images that I have uploaded have not appeared in Wikipedia articles. For example: Cowdivine.jpg in Sacred Cow, VCAstadiumnagpur.jpg in Nagpur. How do I fix this and avoid such errors in the future? Thanks!Wikindian 20:21, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Hi Wikindian. It looks like you have some extra characters between the ".jpg" and the pipe character "|". I'm not really sure what they are, they aren't even visible in the textarea. I've fixed the image on Sacred cow. Icey 23:09, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't exactly understand what you wanted to say. How exactly did you fix the image on sacred cow?Wikindian 15:36, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
 * There was an imvisible character between the end of the file extension and the first pipe character in the code of the page. I'm not sure how it got there, but I removed that and it worked. To avoid that in future, I would suggest typing out the name of the file when you add it into the page, rather than copying it. If you place the cursor before the last character of the file extension (like 'jpg' for example) and then move right one character at a time you can tell if there's any extra characters because the cursor will appear not to move before the pipe character. Icey 22:39, 19 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Alright, I will try and see if this works. Wikindian 15:32, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Oversight Useless?
I just became an admin over at, and so I've been deleting some pages. When you look at the restore option after a page has been deleted, you can choose which revisions to restore. Couldn't this be used to do this same thing as the oversight ability, to get rid of libelous information? &mdash; D a  niel  (‽) 16:12, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, and it used to be, but the oversight mechanism is incredibly more convenient, especially for articles with thousands of edits. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:19, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * OK. Thanks. &mdash; D a  niel  (‽) 18:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * It's also to remove info that is so bad in one way or another that even sysops shouldn't be allowed to see it. Personal info, etc, that could mean trouble if a sysop went rogue (no, not WP:ROUGE, real rogue). --jam  es (talk) 11:36, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


 * 1) Using Special:Hiderevision is more efficient
 * 2) Using Special:Hiderevision avoids future mix-ups
 * 3) Using Special:Hiderevision is safer from the "zomg libel" point of view

Deleting an entire page and then selectively undeleting revisions means more work for the database servers, and it's caused problems in the past (deleting George W. Bush, for instance)...in addition, there's no guarantee that another administrator won't attempt to remove another dodgy revision in future, and if they do, they may very well forget to unselect other troublesome revisions, undoing your work.

Finally, as pointed out, use of Oversight and Hiderevision means that the deleted data is taken somewhere that core MediaWiki is unaware of, so it's invisible. 86.134.49.147 23:09, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Relevance
Can someone explain why a search for Cornwall gives 100% relevance to Cornwallis and only 95% to Cornwall? - --Mad Bill 11.13 17/08/2006
 * it's a complex "search" algorithm (post the question to Google's technical staff or something) that you should not fret over. for example, i could rationalize your instant search with the following algorithm: (that may not be correct for "all" searches operations you attempt here 'cos it's (perhaps) just a minuscule part of a 10,000 page long search algo.):
 * its 'cos "cornwall" is an alphabetically ordered subset of "cornwallis," &
 * both "cornwall" & "cornwallis" have 15 disambiguations each (excluding redirects): thus a tie. thus "cornwall," after weighting, has a greater association with "cornwallis" than with "cornwall."
 * HTH. --Mowglee 16:40, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

That's all well and good, but what if the user's referring to the internal search engine, which isn't using any Google algorithms? 86.134.49.147 23:04, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Articles and their appearance in IE 6
Articles look formatted differently in different browsers. For instance,


 * in Iron, the template at the top of the page is blocking my view and I can neither read the text underneath the template nor minimize the template. Is this how it is supposed to appear? Is it blocking your view too? Maybe 'firefox' users do not have this problem.


 * in the Main_Page, the top row listing my user name, my talk, my preferences, etc. does not appear after i log in. If i "restore" my "maximized" browser window (thus making the window smaller in girth) by double clicking, the top row magically appears!


 * sometimes "categories" seem to float upwards (instead of being the the bottom of the page).


 * this article reads OK to me but i have heard from a firefox user that the "history" section looks all jumbled up to him.

can someone enlighten me? --Mowglee 09:23, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Interesting...I do not have any of those problems. — Mets 501 (talk) 01:49, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * what browser do you use? also do you mean you can see the template in Iron without it blocking the rest of the text in that article? curious. tia --Mowglee 08:20, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm forced into using IE6 here at work, but I don't have any of these problems. Perhaps you have a stylesheet applied that is interfering with the pages? Go to Tools > Internet Options > Accessibility and see if a user stylesheet is being applied to all pages. Icey 11:40, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * done. there is no "user" style sheet selected as such. but you've helped me narror down the problem to something "specific" to "my" IE6 settings. that's a step forward! --Mowglee 16:37, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

i have figured it out. in IE6, i changed "view-->encoding--->Unicode (UTF-8" to "view-->encoding--->user defined." and all my problems are gone. --Mowglee 10:15, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

time sensitive variables and caching
Can someone who knows more about this than I do explain how caching is handled for pages with references to the 29 and similar time sensitive variables? For example, the main page transcludes. What prompts this page to be regenerated (with the new day's featured article summary) and put in the squid caches every day? Do the Apaches really compute an expiry time based on which of these are present in the page and add an EXPIRES HTTP header or something (in which case, does including on a page effectively make it uncacheable)? I suppose I could go read the code, but if somebody happens to just know please explain. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:21, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * AFAIK, someone just goes and purges the main page by hand every day. --cesarb 02:34, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * And I don't even think you're kidding. Anyone else? -- Rick Block (talk) 18:21, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Kidding he is not. Time-sensitive magic words are really only accurate when subst'd, and must be manually purged. They /could/ probably be made live with a $wgParser->disableCache I think (IANAP), but the servers would assplode if it were used on the main page. So: cache breaks them, they do not break cache. --Splarka (rant) 22:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah, but do not worry! I'm not sure, but I recall reading somewhere that a bot had been set up to do the important job of purging the main page automatically every day after the GMT midnight! --cesarb 01:29, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

The parser cache for each page also expires after a set time which is, IIRC, 24 hours. So if someone forgot to purge a page, it would eventually be updated. 86.134.49.147 23:10, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Sat IP Bug
I have a Bug that allows me to log in, some of the time. Most of the time, it does NOT. I'm on a Satellite IP. How do I or someone else can get this rectified ? Someone editing anything with this going on could be mistaken for a sock. On Aug 10-14, there was a meteor shower. Could the satellite be damaged ? I have to use a improvised sig while this is going on. Right now, I can't log in. Martial Law 18:10, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm currently on the Hughes Satellite ISP. Is the problem with this ISP ? I've actually tried to rectify the problem on my end, w/o any results. Martial Law 18:45, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
 * As if that is'nt bad enough, the Sat ISP will kick you off of the 'net, claiming that, "The Page Cannot be Displayed". Martial Law 19:07, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't bother that much about the non-logged-in editing. Edits of non-logged-in users are equally welcome as any other edit. The main thing is whether you want to have your IP address hidden or not. When not being logged in, your edits are publicly viewable linked to your IP address (the one you had at that moment). As per your internet connectivity, I have to say that we probably can't help here that much, because a working internet connection is truely a prerequisite to edit Wikipedia. The Wikipedia servers seem to work fine at the moment (as seen from my end of the web). But I must admit I do have no experience with sattelite connections. My link is a fat cable modem. --Ligulem 20:25, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Does mediawiki IP lock login sessions? if so then this may be the problem (i assume the sat internet provider is using forced proxying to reduce lag). Plugwash 21:08, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I doubt they do, as many AOL users are able to stay logged in from a wide range of AOL proxy IPs. Anywho, see the above section from another direcpc.com user. I would suggest you direct your complaints to your ISP. --Splarka (rant) 21:29, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

'''You have been told before. Your ISP, like all satellite-based ISPs, uses proxying and caching and all manner of stupidity. There are copious archives on this page regarding the problem; the Chief Technical Officer himself has advised you. Please don't continue to post the same crap on this forum time and time again. Thank you.''' 86.134.116.228 21:10, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I hope that is NOT how people are to be advised if they have a problem with a Satellite ISP, related ISPs. Martal Law 19:38, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Parsing a variable on os Special: page
Please see MediaWiki talk:Linkshere, regarding passing a variable in to this display. Thanks! — xaosflux  Talk  16:17, 13 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Added in version control. 86.134.116.228 21:27, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * This is working, thanks, still having a challenge though, attempting to make an action link out of the $1 we either end up with a broken link (for pages with spaces in their name) or a link to the $1 article. Anyone with an idea please visit the talk page! —  xaosflux  Talk  21:58, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Jumping toolbar
I'm not quite sure what to call it. Those six links ([User name], my talk, my preferences, my watchlist, my contributions, and log out), I'll just call them the toolbar. Anyways, every so often, all of the links suddenly jump to the very left of the page when you try to click on them. It's not a singular computer problem, because I've seen this happen on three different computers. I've seen this question here before, but the only reply was the very ambiguous and unhelpful comment "Tell Microsoft about it." So, why does the toolbar jump to the left?-- the ninth bright shiner   talk 04:36, 5 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The only thing I can say for certain about this is that it seems to be browser related. It may have to do with the way the browser handles style sheets. I was having the same problem but only with the IE 7 Beta version 2. I just upgraded to version 3 and the problem went away.  Try checking for the latest version of your browser to see if that fixes the problem. Epolk 15:59, 8 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm using IE as well, and I'm pretty sure it's the latest version...besides IE Beta v 2...which would be more likely to have problems, as it's a beta program.-- the ninth bright shiner   talk 03:23, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I had that problem when I had to use IE, but It's fine with firefox. Get a real browser.--Mac Lover Talk 16:09, 13 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I had exactly the same problem on both Wikipedia and Commons. I've upgraded to IE7beta3 and it's not happened since. amitch 05:35, 21 August 2006 (UTC)