Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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Log in at English Wikipedia only

I can't log in locally! Why not? How can I do it?--89.110.14.211 (talk) 21:25, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Are you saying that you can log in elsewhere? If so, where, and under what user name? --Redrose64 (talk) 21:46, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

I can log in at all Wikimedia projects together, but I can't log in at one of them only, being logged out at others, because there's not a box for it. Earlier, there were 2 boxes: the 1st was "Remember me (up to 30 days)", and the 2nd was for logging in locally. But now I can see the 1st one only.

I think, my username doesn't matter. Sorry for bad English.--89.110.14.211 (talk) 22:14, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, the checkbox was titled something like "Log me in on all WikiMedia projects"; there certainly isn't anything resembling that any more. It seems as if Special:UserLogin has been altered. I'm afraid that I can't find how that page is built up, nor where the components are. All I can tell is that the components have names like customusertemplate-ACP2-login. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:59, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! I really did talk about "Log me in on all WikiMedia projects" checkbox on Special:UserLogin. My English is not perfect:)

I want to know, is that a temporary bug, or a purposeful alternation? And if that's a purposeful alternation, could I see the relevant discussion on Meta?--89.110.14.211 (talk) 00:29, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Just out of curiosity, why do you want to log in locally? Is it helpful to be logged out when going to other sites? --NYKevin @134, i.e. 02:12, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Potential Change Needed to GeoLocate Link on Anon Footer

On all anon contrib pages and talk pages, there is a "GeoLocate" link, that link goes to ip2location.com. A couple months back, ip2location.com started using a "credit" system for IP searches. They also took away the Google Map that was quite useful when trying to figure out where users were located in emergency situations. For any admin who uses the "GeoLocate" link often, the "credit" (of only 20 per day) would be used up quickly (it is not renewed for 24 hours). There is another and better option, infosniper.net. Gives all the information that ip2location.com once did, the useful Google Map and no "credit" system.

I would like to propose that the "GeoLocate" link on the contrib pages and talk pages of anon accounts be changed from ip2location.com to infosniper.net. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 18:37, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I think WhatIsMyIPAddress.com would be better. It includes a proxy checker, which is useful (even though sometimes it's not right), and the focus is on the data rather than on the map.
FYI: the page to change would be MediaWiki:Sp-contributions-footer-anon. I think this would be uncontroversial enough to request on the talk page. Goodvac (talk) 00:21, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Infosniper.net's map can be shrunk so you see more information and less map. I perfer the map when checking to see if I have an IP hopper in a certain area (plus I just like maps). Since one offers proxy information (WhatIsMyAddress) and one offers technical information (InfoSniper), could we compromise and have a link for each? Just mark one as "GeoLocate - Proxy" and one as "GeoLocate - Technical". The user or admin could choose which one to use based on what information they need at that moment. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 15:48, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

With the SOPA blackout now over, could the request raised here be acted upon? - Neutralhomer • Talk • 19:58, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

• Got tired of waiting for responses, moved discussion to ANI for more eyeballs and faster responding ones. Neutralhomer • Talk • 12:06, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Seems that whatismyaddress returns no timezone (ditto for http://en.utrace.de ) while infosniper returns inaccurate timezones. We normally prefer zero information to inaccurate, right? LeadSongDog come howl! 17:15, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Might be important if we actually used timezones for anything. This is for GeoLocation by IP address and proxy information. A correct timezone is the least of our needs...but if we really need one, it isn't tough to figure out. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 19:46, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Parser cache not invalidated for redirect pages

This problem has been reported by anonymous editors on the RefDesks for at least a year now, but we have some better data now. When IP editors use redirecting links such as WP:RD/L or WP:RD/C, they receive an out-of-date copy of the target page. Here is the session data from IP 82.45.62.107 with a clear browser cache, accessing WP:RD/L:

Problem state:

<!-- Saved in parser cache with key enwiki:pcache:idhash:2515121-0!*!0!!en!4!* and timestamp 20111226125457 generated by srv197 -->
<!-- cache key: enwiki:resourceloader:filter:minify-css:4:c88e2bcd56513749bec09a7e29cb3ffa -->

After purge of RD/L redirect:

<!-- Saved in parser cache with key enwiki:pcache:idhash:2515121-0!*!0!!en!4!* and timestamp 20120117192449 generated by mw36 -->
<!-- cache key: enwiki:resourceloader:filter:minify-css:4:c88e2bcd56513749bec09a7e29cb3ffa -->

The current WT:RD thread is here, previous VP/T threads are here and here, a possibly related Bugzilla report is here. This is the first hard indication I've seen that the problem exists beyond individual users having local caching problems. Three different IPs (different ISPs, all in the UK) are seeing the problem in the current thread at WT:RD: anonymous editor accessing page through redirect gets stale copy from parser cache. This could all localize to a problem with an edge-caching service providing to the 3 different ISPs in the UK, or it could be a genuine problem with MW not properly invalidating cache for redirecting pages. The timestamps in the above example put it beyond just overloading of the job queue, so there is definitely something else happening. Can anyone seriously tech-inclined shed some light? Franamax (talk) 22:55, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

FYI, the problem is not confined to ref desk redirects (though it seems more regular there, and the pages can sometimes be stale by weeks). It is a fairly regular occurrence for me across the whole of Wikipedia: articles, talk pages, and very occasionally even edit history pages. Usually I notice it when I make an edit to an article, then go back the next day or whatever and see that my changes have gone, but actually I'm just seeing an old page.* The existence and documentation of the "purge cache" kludge indicates that this is a known bug, but, as I have mentioned a number of times before, no one in ten years seems to have been able to fix it. It really would be great if the developers could make a concerted effort to sort this out, rather than (as I get the impression) perpetually sweeping it under the carpet (no offence intended). Something is definitely not working correctly. 86.146.104.200 (talk) 12:26, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

* these are cases when I have previously successfully displayed the up-to-date page (after editing), there have been no further changes to the page, and yet some time later I revert back to seeing an older version. 86.146.104.200 (talk) 12:36, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I was under the impression that IPs always got cached pages. Is this not just another example of the typical and expected behaviour? fredgandt 13:28, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, IPs get cached copies. The point is that WP:RD/L should be identical to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language, but it is not: the cached copy of the page accessed via a redirect is not the same as the cached copy of the true target page. If I log out, and access this particular page as WP:VPT, the bottom post is signed "Maile66 (talk) 23:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)"; if I access it as Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), the bottom post is signed "PrimeHunter (talk) 17:37, 21 January 2012 (UTC)", a difference of 42 hours. For comparison, when logged in, the bottom post is signed "PrimeHunter (talk) 17:37, 21 January 2012 (UTC)" whether accessed directly or via redirect. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:44, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Just logged out and tried again - Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) brought back a copy whose bottom post was signed "Edokter (talk) — 17:06, 14 January 2012 (UTC)" - over a week ago.

Hypothesis: there are several cached copies, and the one that you get is random. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:49, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually that wouldn't surprise me. An aside (although not that far aside) is that serving cached pages to users seeking help is likely to cause more confusion in many cases than it solves. It might be an idea for all help pages (categorization of some kind) to never serve cached copies. In the meantime, would always providing a index.php...&blah=purge (guess who can't remember the correct format) ?action=purge link to the final destination (not the shortcut) help? If that would ensure IPs were sent to the right place, at least it's a start. fredgandt 19:01, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

We have {{Purge}} whoot! fredgandt 19:10, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Your hypothesis is correct, each server has it's own cached pages. Note that there are two different issues at play here. One is "normal" behaviour, when a underlying page or template or category is changed, all the redirects / pages calling the template / categories above are invalidated in cache, but this is done via the job queue, so there is a lag. Sometimes the job queue can get heavily backlogged (say someone has changed a hugely-used template) and this is what the ?action=purge is for, as the page in question is updated in the foreground. The other behaviour seems to be a problem, where the invalidation jobs seem to get dropped altogether. I asked about this on #wikimedia-tech yesterday but didn't really get any answers... Franamax (talk) 20:38, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

For info here are the servers, here is the number of jobs on the queue. Franamax (talk) 20:47, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

If there isn't an easy way to fix this, how much would it hurt the servers to just turn off caching for everything except the article namespace? While the problem could still cause issues in the article namespace, it's probably not such a big issue (usually, seeing an out-of-date version of an article doesn't cause any serious problems - seeing an out-of-date version of a discussion page can be completely useless). --Tango (talk) 22:07, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I am still slightly confused. When (as is fairly regularly the case), I see stale pages that aren't redirects, and where the staleness has nothing to do with templates or other inclusions, then is that "expected behaviour" or is it a bug that should in theory never happen? Typically the pages are many hours or a day or two stale. For example, it is now 22:41, 21 January 2012 (UTC), and I just looked at Phobos program, an article that I have recently edited, and saw the version of 04:06, 21 January 2012‎. This is typical. 86.181.206.213 (talk) 22:41, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

It is expected behaviour if you are not logged in, see Wikipedia:Purge#How it works. Users who are logged in will always receive the latest versions of a page. It's easy to register an account, and then you can log in. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:34, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I have looked at that explanation before, and I still do not understand how it accounts for the behaviour that I see. To me it seems to be saying quite the opposite -- that everyone should always see up-to-date pages, except changes to transcluded items. It seems to be saying that this "purge" thing is only necessary in the case of transcluded items. That is definitely not the case. See also my old comment at Wikipedia_talk:Purge#How_it_works. There is a whole category of stale page problems that the docs do not seem to acknowledge exists. 86.181.206.213 (talk) 00:49, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ All pages are cached by the servers. All IPs are given the cached page that the server dealing with the request is holding. Each server may have a different version of each and every page. Purging, updates the cache of the page on the server dealing with the request (but not the cache of the page on any other server). Thus, being registered and logged in is the only way to guarantee that you will always get the up to date version of the page, without having to purge the page every time you visit it (whichever page it is). On top of that system we have a browser cache and a possible proxy cache imposed by our internet service provider. Caching is a pain in the butt, but without it Wikipedia would grind to a halt. fredgandt 01:02, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. I have never seen any similar "stale page" problems on any other sites with frequently updated content that I use (e.g. forums), so I'm assuming that the problem I see is purely a Wikipedia one. Ignoring the (possible) special cases of redirects and changes to transcluded items, under what circumstances are the cached versions of articles (or other pages) updated when the underlying article is edited? Is there a queue that some process grinds through that may take hours or days? Is that the cause of the staleness? I mean, eventually the cached version must be updated, right? 86.181.206.213 (talk) 01:13, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I've asked our WMF community liaison if she can find a heavyweight ops person to comment on this. There's not much us garden-cariety volunteers can do here. Might take a few days... Franamax (talk) 23:30, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Can we have this? Have we already got this? fredgandt 01:02, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I guess that extension is not yet ready for deployment on wmf clusters. Srikanth (Logic) 18:49, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

whether redirecting asteroidette articles would relieve the server burden at all, or significantly

It has been stated that if all of the articles such as this one (10335) 1991 PG9 were moved to redirects such as this one: (10556) 1993 QS, it wouldn’t relieve the demands on the servers on Wikipedia. I don’t know how many they are, but there are many thousands of such articles. Imagine there are one, ten, or one hundred thousand such articles; would it lighten the load on the servers in any significant way?

To give you an idea how many articles we’re talking about, have a look at this picture. Please click on it so you can see it full size:

. The user was stopped before he completed the task of creating an article for each one. I can’t tell how far along he’d gotten.

Actually, even just doing it once, given that “nothing is really lost”. as they say, wouldn’t it actually be ‘’adding’’ to the sever burden to convert any article into a redirect? I mean, the old article is stored there somewhere even after it’s been turned into a redirect to the chart, I gather, is that not the case? Suppose we deleted all of them instead. Would that relieve the burden on the servers, at all, minimally, or significantly, or would the servers still contain copies of the deleted articles, thereby actually adding to the server burden, if we deleted them all, or would it be pretty much the same because the server stores copies of the deleted articles?

Wondering, Chrisrus (talk) 07:22, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

There would be no appreciable impact on Wikipedia's servers by doing something like this. In any case WP:DWAP. A decision like this should only take in to account what would provide the highest quality reader experience. If we are proposing creating millions of articles about every rock in the solar system, you'd want to consider whether they could ever be more than 1 line stubs. Personally I lean towards the list form, unless the minor planet has particular notability. Prodego ^talk 07:25, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for answering my question. I think you've misunderstood, though, the context of the question. They've already been created; we stopped him before he had finished, but he was pretty far along. We are to turn them into redirects. Just there was the claim that doing so wouldn't relieve the burden of the servers, and I wondered if that were true. Anyway, here is not the place to discuss any but the techincal question, and you've done so: neither redirecting them nor deleting them, the options at this point, will it relieve the server to redirect or delete them, so thank you very much for answering. I wonder now if I understand you correctly that the answer to an interesting question that I didn't ask, did user's creation of so many thousands of tiny articles in the first place add significantly to the server burdern, you've answered I understood, no, it didn't. I gathered that from what you said, but that wasn't my original question because it's too late: that's already been done. Now we can either leave them, turn them into redirects, or delete them. The plan is to turn them all into chart redirects, somehow, see WP:NASTRO, "dealing with minor planets", for more information. There is no plan to continue making them in violation of NASTRO. So thanks again for having answered my question. Chrisrus (talk) 08:13, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

In general, don't worry about performance, as Prodego says—focus on what's best for the readers, and let the Wikimedia ops team figure out whether it'll hurt performance.

That said, I don't see how redirecting these articles could help performance. The mere existence of an article is not a significant burden on the server, and even if we were to redirect them, the content of the old versions would still be in the database. Edits to the database are relatively expensive, though, so realistically if you were to edit thousands of these articles to make them into redirects, that's what would hurt performance the most. But again, don't worry about it. Ucucha (talk) 13:35, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Incidentally, it seems that we're talking about some 20,000 articles—about 0.5% of Wikipedia's total. Ucucha (talk) 13:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Wow. I'm amazed. That's huge!

It's a technical problem beyond me: how to automate WP:NASTRO#Dealing_with_minor_planets. That section has been evolving and may need to be rethought given this information. 20K+ articles! Here's something to watch while you think about it: [1] Chrisrus (talk) 05:54, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

As others have said above, I think either deleting or redirecting the articles won't significantly affect the storage load on the servers. But I think converting them to redirects would increase the runtime load on the server to a minor degree. Consider that currently, when a reader clicks on a link to (10335) 1991 PG9, Wikipedia's server sends the contents of the (10335) 1991 PG9 article to the reader's computer, which looks to me like roughly 1k bytes (including the transcluded templates). But if (10335) 1991 PG9 was redirected to List of minor planets: 10001–11000, then when the reader clicked on the link, the server would send the contents of List of minor planets: 10001–11000 to their computer, which looks to me more like 50k bytes. But, having said that, WP:DWAP. DH85868993 (talk) 15:54, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Progress in this area:Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Astronomical_objects#Step_Two_Reloaded.Chrisrus (talk) 00:38, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

The readonly parameter during edit conflicts and on protected pages

In a recent update to the backend over the past year, a change was made to the way the edit textboxes are treated when you can't save a page. Until this change, it was still possible to fiddle with the text box before copy and pasting where you needed to go. Now, the textbox is greyed out and you aren't allowed to touch it. This is especially annoying for someone like me that is denied the hopes of being an admin because of my use of expressive language (and this is not the time to start throwing around the pointless and meaningless WP:NOBIGDEAL, because it don't mean CRAP at RfA) yet am capable of reading and manipulating some of the most complicated templates we have. It is annoying when a page is locked temporarily and you want to write out an edit ahead of time. It is most annoying because it is ill-conceived as an html parameter rather than a css style that could be overridden by editors.

So, can the readonly=readonly lines be removed from the code never to be seen again? I don't remember any community input on implementing this, but feel free to point me to it if there was. The only people benefitting from them are the people that don't read and get annoyed when they can't save their edit because they aren't aware of their surroundings; we shouldn't cater to the lowest common denominator. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 13:58, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

For protected pages, the readonlyness seems to go back much further than "the past year". As far as I can tell, viewing the source rather than being redirected to the rendered page when trying to edit a protected page was added in r2127 in December 2003, and even then the text box was displayed read-only. I may be missing something, of course.

For edit conflicts, the readonlyness of the second box was indeed changed recently: see bug 28287http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28287 and r88122.

I doubt either of these will be changed at the code level, as the justification is that you can't do anything with the edited text so there's no point to edit it (and if you want to edit it for use elsewhere, you can copy it elsewhere first rather than last). A user script something like this might fix the problem for you (note, completely untested):

$(document).ready(function(){
    var textbox = document.getElementById('wpTextbox1');
    if(textbox) textbox.readOnly=false;
    textbox = document.getElementById('wpTextbox2');
    if(textbox) textbox.readOnly=false;
});

It could be made more user-friendly by setting styles to keep the greyed-out appearance, of course. HTH. Anomie⚔ 15:44, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Although the edit box is greyed out, in Windows browsers you can still click in it, mark a passage (with the mouse, not the keyboard) and copy that to clipboard. If a passage is bigger than the edit box, you can mark it by dragging the mouse below (or above) the box edge. To mark all of the edit box contents, click anywhere in it and go for Ctrl+A. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:28, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I want to edit it with the wiki textbox, where I have access to the edit toolbar and the insert characters bar which I make regular use of. The warning that you cannot save should be enough. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 17:13, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Presumably you want to reuse the code in a page for which the edit box is not greyed out. Go to the protected one, copy all relevant text to your clipboard, go to the one where you want to reuse it, paste it in at the very bottom, and then use normal editing methods to manipulate the bits you're interested in, finally delete the leftover odds and ends. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:43, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Could have a small script that would make a red "→ Sandbox" link to load the (latest version of) wikitext into your own sandbox; something like ... + wgUserName + '/Sandbox/' + wgPageName + '?action=edit&preload=' + wgPageName. — AlexSm 18:16, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• Always use edit-preview first and then go-back: I think the idea is to re-edit the attempted SAVE as easy ("one-window") as possible; so instead, get in the habit of always doing edit-preview, then upon an edit-conflict (or protected page), just go-back to the prior edit-preview version and fiddle the edit-buffer there, to later try another edit-preview before attempting a re-save. The extra edit-previews might seem like too much effort, but they are a lot easier than finding "Your text" of an edit-conflict to copy/paste in another window of re-editing the page. Instead, using the Go-back to edit-preview is much easier most times (but DO NOT delete browser "temporary files" meanwhile, or there will be no edit-preview to go back to). Always edit-preview. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:07, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

  You cannot change text or do previews on protected pages, so this advice is misplaced. — AlexSm 18:16, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The "Show preview" button never throws an edit conflict, because no save is being requested. Clicking "Show changes" can show you (by examination of the diff) that you are about to revert something that was saved after you went for "Edit", but this can throw a false positive if that save was to a section different from the one that you're editing.

For protected pages, you can't even get that far because the "Save page", "Show preview" and "Show changes" buttons simply don't appear; nor can you alter the contents of the edit box in any way. When attempting to edit a protected page, you find out that it is protected in at least five ways: (i) the page has a "View source" tab instead of an "Edit" tab; (ii) when you click "View source" you get the message "This page is currently protected and can be edited only by administrators."; (iii) the edit box is grey instead of white; (iv) you can't change its contents; (v) the "Save page" buttons are absent. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:22, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Exactly. Since we can't stop stupid, lets get rid of two of those 5 ways - the edit protected textbox. Why are people coming up with these big fancy ways to get around it: Just disable the readonly mode on the textbox, no fancy way needed. Like I said, you can't stop stupid, and I bet those same people that would edit and then complain when they can't save would complain regardless when the page they want to edit is un-editable. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 16:18, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Search icon

Where is Wikipedia's search icon CSS located? A default installation of MediaWiki and the necessary extensions results in the search button being slightly lowered from the middle. Using Firebug, I've tracked the CSS to this page, but I don't know what the actual page to edit is, given that ResourceLoader has minifed everything.

Thanks. Cheers, —mc10 (t/c) 19:56, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

That's /skins/vector/screen.css, part of the core CSS. It cannot be edited. The search icon positioning has been fixed in the upcoming 1.19. — Edokter (talk) — 20:29, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks. I have access to the backend, so I'm able to edit it. Cheers, —mc10 (t/c) 22:30, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome. To 'unminify' code, put ?debug=true in the URL. — Edokter (talk) — 14:43, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Sort icons

I know this is a pretty random question, but is there any way to change the colour of sort icons in wikitable headers such as this?

Example

Column 1	Column 2
asdf	jkl;
qwer	uiop
zxcv	nm,.

Thanks in advance, —WFC— 13:55, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

The arrows are background images. It is possible to override those images in your personal CSS, but that means you would have to create your own images and upload them. — Edokter (talk) — 14:42, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing that up. —WFC— 03:53, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Different views with compatibilty view turned on and off

In East London line extension I'm noticing lots of white space (beside the route maps). This goes away and the text flows when I turn compatibility mode on. I'm using IE9 (9.0.4). Thanks Edgepedia (talk) 21:45, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

By "route maps", do you mean the RDTs or the maps like this one? --Redrose64 (talk) 21:51, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

The problem seems to have gone away. I'll come back if I find something out. Edgepedia (talk) 21:56, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

OK Weird. Thanks RedRose, I mean the RDTs. On this version, I'm seeing lots of white space to the left of the RDT. On the current version the text flows as I would expect. The only difference is the caption on the first image. Edgepedia (talk) 22:03, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

OK as this edit seems to break it (and that really doesn't make sense), I'm going to assume that something has been fixed and I'm having problems with cached versions. Edgepedia (talk) 22:10, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Haven't looked at this ye, but compatibility mode will break a lot of other things for you. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:38, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Isn't IE wonderful? "Erm....no." fredgandt 22:41, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

OK I've found how to do this; it's to do with the balance of text (+ TOC) & images before the first section header and images after the header. I've a wide screen monitor; the other important piece of information in duplicating the problem. I'll set something up in a sandbox later. Edgepedia (talk) 08:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

This is probably not exactly related to the question raised in this thread, but problems with large unwanted chunks of whitespace are quite common when articles are viewed in IE. I've corrected dozens, perhaps even hundreds, over the years. It's to do with the different way that IE flows text and images, and tries to keep images next to the related text (different compared to what the editor who created the layout obviously saw on whatever browser they were using). In the common cases I've seen, IE is flowing the page in the logical way, given the source. However, because everyone (no reference to anyone in this thread) is so anti-IE, they automatically think that any difference in rendering between IE and other browsers is always a bug in IE. 86.181.206.213 (talk) 22:52, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Believe it or not, the way a browser is supposed to render floats is defined in the HTML specifications. And historically IE has not followed these rules (which carries over into newer versions' "compatibility view"), while Firefox and other browsers have. So quite often, the difference actually is a bug in IE.

The behavior in the revision linked above is an example of this misbehavior on IE's part; whether or not you consider it not "logical", the behavior defined in the HTML specifications is that shown by other browsers and by IE8+'s non-"compatibility view". Note that, should someone want the whitespace rather than the image being separated from the associated section, this is easy enough to accomplish in a standards-compliant browser (in wikitext, just use {{clear}} before the section header). Anomie⚔ 04:38, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Something going on?

Access is very slow and the interface is coming in raw and unformatted. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:26, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Ditto here. Maile66 (talk) 23:33, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Same, but it seems to be fine now. Jeancey (talk) 23:34, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Ditto, but only on my watchlist ... Chaosdruid (talk) 23:35, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Not here (England,Vector,Chrome,XP SP3). Sounds like stylesheets aren't loading. Try purging something  fredgandt 23:36, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Mine cleared. But it was whacked for a few minutes. When I went into my browser View/Find Source, I saw messages advising someone to purge the server, so maybe someone did and cleared things.Maile66 (talk) 23:39, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Ditto here just now, I get completely blank rendered pages with Opera 11.60 browser unless I set style to user mode or accessibility layout, both logged out and in. The secure server works better. But problem cleared up once I tried with Firefox portable and returned to Opera. -84user (talk) 23:40, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

My watchlist looked like old school HTML with no CSS. I saved a dummy edit to the raw watchlist and it now appears normal. Other pages all look normal. I use Firefox 9.0.1. Certes (talk) 23:44, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

There was a problem with the wikibits server (which serves the CSS) yesterday. A network configuration error (or rather, an attempt to fix it) caused it to develop a race condition and overload itself. It was quickly resolved. — Edokter (talk) — 14:48, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Problem with Decade NavBox

The navbox for categories of “Decades in Italy” eg Category:2000s in Italy works ok to navigate to previous or subsequent decades but tries to refer to Category:20th-century in Italy when it should be Category:20th century in Italy with a gap not a dash. So a redlink in the box (though the category is avaliable below anyway) but where can this problem be referred to or fixed? Hugo999 (talk) 01:25, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

The dash is added by {{BDDecadesInCentury}}, which is used by {{ItalyDecade}}. The problem may be that {{BDDecadesInCentury}} treats the century as an hyphenated adjective (e.g. 20th-century books) but the Italy pages treat it as a noun (20th century in Italy). Perhaps {{BDDecadesInCentury}} could be changed to accept a new optional parameter to replace the dash by a space. Certes (talk) 02:46, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing that; now I have a request for a new type of year navbox covering several years, to be like that used for Category:Terrorist incidents in India in 2010, but designed for year series similar to Category:Alaska elections, 2010 with a “comma and space” rather than “in” in the title before the year. With each US state now having an election by year category this would be quite a useful navbox! Hugo999 (talk) 03:49, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Aswn improved the template whilst I was looking at it, so there was nothing for me to fix. I have just created {{Cat topic year}} which is a bit more flexible, and added it to Category:Alaska elections, 2010 as a prototype. I haven't attempted to roll it out to other years or states. (If you wanted to use it on similar pages but not that one, please feel free to revert my change.) Certes (talk) 21:17, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the new navbox which can I see be adjusted to various spacings eg every two years (even years) for most US state elections, but occasionally for a special or local election an odd year eg Category:Alabama elections, 2009. Should its avaliability be notified on a US Politics project page? New Zealand has a three year election cycle so they can be in odd or even years. Hugo999 (talk) 22:45, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Highlighting changed in edit differences window

A while back, perhaps a few weeks, I was pleased to see that a change of punctuation would also cause the adjacent word to be highlighted in red in the differences window. What a nice feature, I thought, why didn't someone think of that before, because it makes it so easy to see where a hyphen or comma was inserted or removed. Now that highlighting improvement has disappeared. I looked for a checkbox on "My preferences" that might control this feature, but there is none. What happened? Chris the speller ^yack 16:42, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't know whether the diff engine has changed or the behavior you describe were for specific diffs which would still look like that today due to the precise context of the punctuation. But there is an alternative User:Cacycle/wikEdDiff which usually makes it easier to see such things. It can be enabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:47, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I use wikEd most of the time, but I have to turn it off to run scripts, and that's when I really need to see what punctuation the script changed; if I make a change manually, I know what changed. I didn't know about the wikEd diffs window option when not running wikEd. Good tip. Another tip is to look for the Δ (delta) button below the standard diffs window. I finally figured out to press that. Cheers! Chris the speller ^yack 18:46, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Nothing has changed, but it soon will. To preview the new diff display, try "Display diffs with the new yellow/blue color scheme that improves accessibility" under gadgets. One implovement is that even spaces are highlighted. — Edokter (talk) — 17:56, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

That's more good news. I will try it out. Thanks much! Chris the speller ^yack 18:46, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I for one am pleased that the red text highlighting in diffs has reverted to the behaviour that it had prior to MediaWiki 1.18 (October 2011), that is, changed text is delimited by either spaces or punctuation. For the three months where spaces alone were used as delimiter, a change of one character in a template would cause a sea of red and it was difficult to sort out the changed from the unchanged. For example, this change - there are two stretches of red text, and they are the bits that have been added. Under the version that was current from October 2011 until today, the three portions of text

• Town<ref>
• http://www.halesowennews.co.uk/news/9468327.Cradley_Heath_firm_releases_new_images_of_proposed_light_rail_link/
• </ref>.

would also be red, and it would be difficult to spot whether they had really changed or not. Amended URLs are often worth double-checking. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:12, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I think a checkbox on the preferences page would be helpful. Switching between the two behaviors might be desirable, not only for different user tastes, but also for the same user, depending on what kind of edits are being made. Chris the speller ^yack 01:58, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Editnotice of my talk page

Is there some to disable the "This is a talk page. Please respect the talk page guidelines, and remember to sign your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~)." group notice on my talk page. I have a big talk page editnotice and it's redundant. Armbrust, B.Ed. ^{Let's talk}_{about my edits?} 17:23, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

The text is from MediaWiki:Talkpagetext. It is technically a system message and not an editnotice. I don't think it can be disabled. The same was asked at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 45#Talk page text. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:37, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

You can remove it for yourself by adding

#talkpagetext { display: none; }

to Special:MyPage/common.css, but that won't remove it for other people. Ucucha (talk) 21:10, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers. At least I don't see it. Armbrust, B.Ed. ^{Let's talk}_{about my edits?} 21:40, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Text wrapping

This is partially out of curiosity and partially to have a good userpage (In my opinion), so at my sandbox how would I make my "on technology" section wrap to the left of my userboxes? Best, --Kangaroopowah 05:06, 22 January 2012 (UTC) (Never mind, I found an alternative). --Kangaroopowah 05:08, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Copyright violations?

I see over 600 pages tagged, but I don't see how they were tagged or why. Category:Candidates for speedy deletion as copyright violations--SPhilbrick(Talk) 13:51, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Most of the pages have images, such as Picture of the Day, or userboxes containing an image, is that what is going on?--SPhilbrick(Talk) 13:56, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

It's because of Wikipedia:Motto of the day/January 22, 2012, which contains a two-line quote from a copyrighted song and was therefore CSD'ed by someone. Ucucha (talk) 14:01, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I see it has been resolved.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 14:27, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

"Download as PDF" to print in Letter size instead of A4 size

Each time I use "Download as PDF" (under "Print/export" on the left margin of many Wikipedia pages), I get a pdf of paper size 8.27x11.69 inches (ISO A4 paper) I would like to get pdf files with paper size 8.5x11 inches (US Letter size). I believe that the pdf is created by a tool at Wikipedia, and is not associated with the local Acrobat program. I cannot find options or preferences on the Wikipedia site to change the tool to render the output in Letter size. Can someone help?
PS: I am not an experienced Wikipedian, but this topic was referred here from the new user Help Desk: Wikipedia:Help_desk#.22Download_as_PDF.22_to_print_in_Letter_size_instead_of_A4_size — Preceding unsigned comment added by PittsJD (talk • contribs) 16:08, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

A4 is standard in metric countries of which the US is not. I've filed a bug: bug 33882http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33882.Smallman12q (talk) 17:07, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Sharebox is a script that reorders your toolbox. It adds new buttons that make it easier to mail, print or share an article on Facebook or another linksharing service. You must have an account to add Sharebox to the sidebar. See User:TheDJ/Sharebox for more information. It also includes a PDF tool that should work for you. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:22, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Weirdness at Help Desk

Folks, for about the last 10 minutes, every time I try to access the Help Desk I get automatically redirected to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User:Dream Focus blocked. Anyone else seeing this? If so I am guessing that there is a "problem" with one of the transcluded HD header templates, but I cannot access the page, even in edit mode, to troubleshoot. I have bypassed, purged, rebooted etc. Thanks. – ukexpat (talk) 16:44, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Access is fine for me. fredgandt 16:54, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

{{Al}} was vandalized to make a page-size link. Vandal is blocked, template has been protected. — Edokter (talk) — 16:58, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Brilliant, thanks for the quick fix. – ukexpat (talk) 17:03, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

CSS not loading on the secure server

The Vector skin is not loading correctly when I access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page. The only error I get from Firebug is

jQuery is not defined.

at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:BannerController&cache=/cn.js&303-4. Any ideas? —mc10 (t/c) 23:47, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Confirmation: I am observing the same thing, regardless of which page I view or browser I view it with. WBTtheFROG (talk) 23:52, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

This is wikipedia-wide (all languages). Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 23:54, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Is working again. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 23:59, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Talk pages as forum threads

Any reason why a Talk page cannot be implemented as a simple forum? Editor's can then create new "threads" (Sections), which have a proper "reply" button, that ensures they are properly and consistently formatted, and new threads appear at the top of the page, so that older threads are automatically "archived" on additional pages. --Iantresman (talk) 19:05, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

See WP:LiquidThreads. So far, it has had various problems that have resulted in lack of acceptance by the community, and is currently undergoing a rewrite. Anomie⚔ 20:14, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Some Wikimedia projects do have a "threaded discussion" feature, such as MediaWiki and the Hungarian Wikipedia - if you visit those, you should find an extra "my new messages" link upper right, between "my watchlist" and "my contributions"... at least, I do in MonoBook skin with interface language set to "en - English". The Preferences page should also have an extra "Threaded discussion" tab, plus two more options in other tabs: "E-mail me on replies to a thread I am watching" in "User profile", and "Watch threads that I create or reply to" in "Watchlist". --Redrose64 (talk) 20:59, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Template include size is too large

On Bisphenol A the {{reflist}} and all templates below are not expanded. When I edit and preview, I get the message, “Warning: Template include size is too large. Some templates will not be included.” What can I do to see the references? —teb728 t c 20:45, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Try deleting the infobox and previewing again - that works for me, though obviously this is not a proper fix. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:51, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I fixed this by changing some of the citation templates to {{vcite journal}} and friends, which are lighter than their cite friends. However, that makes the citation style inconsistent, and in the long run it'll be better to fix up the article by making it read less like a news ticker. Perhaps some of the subtopics should be split off into their own articles. Ucucha (talk) 20:53, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

archiving talk pages

Hi,

Someone set up an archiving system on my talk page which works great. I'm wondering, does it automatically make another archive when needed? Or do I need to make one? (I don't understand the code or how it works.)

Thanks, MathewTownsend (talk) 21:00, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

The bot will begin a new archive automatically when it sees that the first is full. See User:MiszaBot/Archive_HowTo#Example_2_-_incremental_archives. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:06, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I looked around at archiving help pages, but didn't come across that one - the one I needed! Thanks again. MathewTownsend (talk) 21:10, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

JS help

Resolved: Never mind. This disabled it. Goodvac (talk) 05:20, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm trying to modify User:Apoc2400/refToolbarPlus.js so that (1) "archivedate" input box by default contains the current date (variable used is "newtime") (2) "archiveurl" and "archivedate" input boxes appear under "cite news" as well. I removed

if (template == 'cite web') {

and the end } from the script, but it doesn't work. My attempts can be seen at the history of User:Goodvac/reftoolbar.js, and I believe I've correctly imported it to my monobook.js. Thanks in advance for any assistance, Goodvac (talk) 00:15, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

What exactly doesn't work? Have you looked at a JavaScript error console to see whether there are any syntax errors? I don't see anything obviously wrong. Ucucha (talk) 02:40, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, doesn't look like there are any syntax errors. Did you clear your cache fully? Ucucha (talk) 02:46, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I just tried it again, and to no avail. Goodvac (talk) 02:49, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

To be specific, both the things I want to accomplish aren't working. The current date isn't showing up in the archivedate box; when I click the "cite news" button, there are no "archiveurl" and "archivedate" fields. Goodvac (talk) 02:51, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Just to be clear: The archive date is not usually the current date— it is the date that the web page was actually archived. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 11:36, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

No, I'm aware of that. It's just that I usually archive the url for my citations (through WebCite) when I add them. Goodvac (talk) 17:17, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Either my browser cache is not being cleared or I'm not importing the script correctly. I removed the word "Newspaper" from the script, but I'm still seeing it when viewing the "cite news" part of the tool. Any ideas? Goodvac (talk) 03:08, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I just found out that Reftoolbar is no longer opt-in; it's a built-in feature, so that's why it's been overriding my changes. Is there any code to disable the feature so I can use my own version? Goodvac (talk) 03:33, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Edit history funny

Hi, at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page&action=history, the most recent entry that I currently see is:

16:42, 23 January 2012‎ Fæ (talk | contribs)‎ m (14,634 bytes)

When I click on this, I get, as expected, taken to a page headed:

This is the current revision of this page, as edited by Fæ (talk | contribs) at 16:42, 23 January 2012. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this version.

However, included in this page is my edit of 22:43, 23 January 2012:

"In a referendum, Croatian voters back membership in the European Union." This does not seem like correct English to me. Shouldn't it at least be "membership of"? 81.159.111.139 (talk) 22:43, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

My edit does not, however, appear anywhere in the edit history. What's going on? 81.159.111.139 (talk) 01:06, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

The section of Talk:Main Page that you edited ("Errors in In the news") is actually a section of a separate Main Page subpage (Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors) which is transcluded into Talk:Main Page. Your edit appears in the edit history of Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors. DH85868993 (talk) 01:36, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Aha, thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.159.111.139 (talk) 02:31, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Page titles with italics do not display in Firefox (9.01) - leave unsightly tags

Page titles that display in italics in IE (e.g Fever_Pitch_Soccer don't display in italics in Firefox (9.01) . They display as < i >article title< / i> (without the spaces in the tags, obviously)

Can this be fixed? DHooke1973 (talk) 02:43, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm also using Firefox 9.0.1 (on Mac OS X), and the title displays correctly. If I recall correctly, this issue is caused by some Firefox add-on, perhaps StumbleUpon. Ucucha (talk) 02:45, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah! I disabled StumbleUpon and it went away. Thanks DHooke1973 (talk) 02:55, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Odd RevDel result

Curious, why can't I see the recently RevDel-ed edit in the history of Back to the Planet? I'm an admin, so I can see normal uses of RevDel, and the log says that the RevDel was done by Salvio giuliano, who isn't an oversighter. Nyttend (talk) 03:46, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

It does seems that that edit has genuinely been put beyond admins; which, as you say, is not an ability Salvio has on paper. Perhaps he might know? - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 11:53, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

The action you have requested is limited to users in the group: Oversighters. Maybe it has been oversighted after being revdeleted. Do oversights produce logs? -- Luk ^talk 12:00, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I expect the edit was later oversighted. It's a fairly common use of revdel to temporarily apply it to revisions which are going to be oversighted. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 12:00, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Yep, I revdeleted a couple of edits there, because they contained potentially libellous bits of info and then I submitted an oversight request. More info here. Cheers. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 12:13, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, I considered a later oversighting, but I'd completely forgotten we don't log oversights publicly. that would rather explain it! :) - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 12:48, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Strange typeface on editing pages

Suddenly, the appearance of any pages I open for editing has changed, to show a new typeface. This has never happened before, and I haven't (consciously) done anything that might have changed it. Any explanation? Or, how can I get back to my old style? I am using Firefox. Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:01, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Does it help to clear your entire cache? Does it happen when you are logged out? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:17, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

It seems to have cleared itself while I was logged out. Odd. Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:01, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Disabling WP:LOCO on certain pages?

Does any code exist to exempt a given date/time from the WP:LOCO gadget? I ask because I was on the page WP:AUSC/2012 recently, and its countdown thing read "The current time and date is 6:07 pm, Today" for me, which is obviously not hugely helpful. Thanks in advance. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 18:12, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

No, but you could add some hidden code to "break" the timestamp so that the script doesn't process it. For instance, add an extra space, or some hidden code (I don't think you could add empty code like <b></b> because it wouldn't be processed, but something similar should work, such as bolding a single character such as the colon or something). Gary King (talk · scripts) 05:09, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't quite understand how I would do that since the relevant code uses magic words (no actual numbers/colons there):

The current time and date is {{CURRENTTIME}}, {{CURRENTDAY}} {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTYEAR}} (UTC).

It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 12:03, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

You can still do it. The script just reads whatever is outputted by the page, not what the code is. HTML, on the other hand, generally appears the same when you type it and when it is outputted by the browser, so placing that in the middle of the magic words will work. It's not the prettiest solution, but this is the first or second time that I've heard about this request and so don't think the script really needs to implement this. I don't know how much slower the script would get if it had to check for certain code if it still has to work quickly, either. Gary King (talk · scripts) 17:33, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

If you hover over the timestamp, the tooltip will show the original UTC timestamp. Is that sufficient? --NYKevin @139, i.e. 02:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Removing external link icon for internal links

Full URLs to internal destinations and internal links generated by some templates (like {{newsec}}) have an icon indicating that they are external links (examples: template link, diff link). I believe I found a way some time ago to make links such as these appear internal, but I have not recently been able to find a way. How can you make links like these appear just like normal internal links? —danhash (talk) 19:35, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

See Template:Plainlinks . Naraht (talk) 19:43, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia MusicXML (or similar) interpretation?

Over on the Help page, someone noted that the last two notes on the score of the Washington Post March were wrong, and the response(correctly) was that the score on the page was an image, so it would have to be regenerated and reuploaded to fix. Given the Wikipedia support for LaTeX for match programs and Template:Chess diagram for Chess problems, would it be a reasonable expansion of Wikipedia to support a Music notation method such as MusicXML and output the results as a score? I'm sure there are those who understand whether MusicXML is free enough for Wikipedia usage (OGG is, but I don't understand that sort of stuff), but it is used by Wikifonia (which I don't believe to be part of WMF). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Naraht (talk • contribs) 19:39, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

You may want to take a look at mw:Extension:Score, which is on review queue of MediaWiki extensions waiting for deployment. If you have a Bugzilla account, you can also watch/vote on bug #33193. Helder 20:40, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

The score on Washington Post March is a JPEG, a format which is (almost) acceptable for photographs, but downright poor for monochrome diagrams where everything is supposed to have a sharp edge. I think that creating a SVG file would be a possible route to follow. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:38, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Would {{MusicScore}} be of help? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:46, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

MusicScore was closer to what I had in mind, but its clear when looking at how it is done that it is really only for single notes. More complex things like bridges connecting notes would require something closer to LaTeX.02:34, 25 January 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Naraht (talk • contribs)

At the least, if someone regenerates it using MusicML or some other standard that has a plain-text representation, would be great to put that text on file's talk-page or in a collapsed box. That would enhance its reusability and ability to be improved in the future. Raises a question though...what is the copyright situation for musical scores? Obviously this one's original by Sousa is expired, and I asume simple transcription of a recent sheet-music would be copyvio. What about fake books and other "here's the music that I hear, written out"? DMacks (talk) 23:46, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

In the US (which is all that matters in this case), basically if it was published 1923 or before it's ok, and 1924 and later it's not. There's potentially other reasons something might be ok, but it mostly holds true. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 01:06, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I found a PDF of the original in the Levy archives here. LeadSongDog come howl! 03:50, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

"Copyright 1889 by Harry Coleman 228 N. 9th St. Phila. Pa.". Brilliant! Create a file showing a short extract of the score (eight bars or so), upload to Commons, link to that PDF as a source, give it {{PD-US}} and {{PD-old-75}} for good measure, no worries. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:39, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Maybe PD-old-80? (Harry Coleman died in 1918?) - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 16:50, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Coleman was the publisher, not the author. He'd have copyright by assignment, not droit d'auteur unless for the border illustration of the cover. I can't imagine his death-date being relevant. John Philip Sousa died in March 1932. The first page when enlarged sufficiently shows a legible but incomplete image of the review in the Washington Post (newspaper) of June 16, 1889 covering the debut performance of the piece: "Mr. Sousa's march, dedicated to THE POST, is a light and melodious composition and was heartily applauded. The enthusiasm with which Mr. Sousa and his musicians entered into the affair added largely to the success of the occasion. ..." Of course, the review might not have been entirely impartial, but it is a neat bit of self-referential publishing. It might be worth digging out a copy of that newspaper to get the whole review. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:09, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, fair play. I hadn't appreciated the more complex aspects of this case. Mea culpa. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 23:17, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Arthur Cayley article

What is going on in the Arthur Cayley article in the Legacy section? It looks like its saying that Cayley diagrams are used for finding craters on the moon, but this is garbled rendering - look at it in edit mode. Firefox 3.6.25. SpinningSpark 23:31, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

The section includes a bunch of links in a multi-column setup, and then two separate links after it, which makes for odd layout. I've fixed it by including those links in the multi-column list. Of course, a "legacy" section should ideally not be a list. Ucucha (talk) 23:37, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Error with block logs in contribs

When I click this link to see user contribs [2], I see a pink box at the top about a block, but that block is from the distant past. Do other people see that too? What's up? — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:16, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I think this is bugzilla:32859. It's been reported before, but the devs don't seem very interested. Ucucha (talk) 03:22, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Reports of pornography where it ought not be

The help desk (not long ago) got two reports from two different IPs of two different articles displaying (or linking to) pornography. The two reports are here and here which were posted within minutes of each other. Was there any template vandalism or the like which might explain it? fredgandt 04:21, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, probably related to this incident. Goodvac (talk) 04:39, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Goodvac. fredgandt 06:50, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Meaning and purpose of "action=clicktracking", "token=", and "articleFeedbackv5_click_tracking" in the edit links of some articles

Hello,

I have been doing a few minor edits in article HMS Titanic and found that the edit link's urls are extremely long with strings of characters including "action=clicktracking", "token=", and "articleFeedbackv5_click_tracking" . Could you help me find answers to the following questions :

• Is there a Help: page or a Wikipedia: page or a Mediawiki page where I could read further information about this?
• Is this "articleFeedbackv5_click_tracking" thing connected with Wikipedia:Article Feedback Tool ?
• Is my small edit understood by the tool as a "feedback" ? Then what are the consequences of a small edit ?
• Why do these long urls show up only on some articles but not on some others ?

Teofilo talk 17:42, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

That is definitely connected to the Article Feedback Tool. See WP:AFT5, or ask on the talk page (WT:AFT5) if you have any questions about that tool. — This, that, and the other (talk) 23:29, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Avoiding edit conflicts when you submit twice

Our software seems to be in most instances pretty intelligent in avoiding edit conflicts... but there is one situtation it occurs where I have always wondered why it does it. When you try to submit something, then realize you forgot to say, sign the message. You stop the loading, add your signature, and submit. Edit conflict: The only difference is - ~~~~

Can this be adjusted so that it doesn't produce an edit conflict when some text is appended and the previous edit was by the same user? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 18:23, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Going for the "stop" button in your browser doesn't stop the submission going through, it just stops reload of the post-save version. Upon receipt by the MediaWiki software, the save is processed and the session ID is invalidated, so that when you then try to edit using the same session ID as previous, it doesn't like it. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:49, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Template incorrectly adding a category

Please fix Italian North Africa presently (current revision) has [[:Category:Former colonies|Italian North Africa, Italy]] at the top of the page. In addition to the fact that this category text is at the beginning of the article, the article isn't categorized in it, the sortkey is nonsense, and the sortkey pipes the word "Italy" into a link for some reason... Can someone amend this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Koavf (talk • contribs) 19:05, 25 January 2012‎

I've made a change. The infobox template creates the category; one of the arguments used by the template was wikilinked by you, which broke it all. Let us know here if anything else is still broken (apart from your piped wikilink, which if you want to take it up should be discussed on the template's talk page.) --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:37, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

What? I didn't link anything in this article. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:07, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikilinked by someone. Calm down. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:15, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

The problem was the use of |empire = [[Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)|Italy]] which is wikilinked, instead of |empire = Italy which isn't. The infobox expects to find a bare name here, because it uses that to construct the proper wikilink and also to add categories. If the category so added is misconstructed as a result of the unexpected wikilink, in this case [[Category:Former colonies|Italian North Africa, [[Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)|Italy]]]] it falls out of the infobox. Since you can't nest wikilinks (except when adding an image), the outer double pair of square brackets appears as plain text: [[Category:Former colonies|Italian North Africa, Italy]]. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:06, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

The bad link was added here and amended here and here. --Redrose64 (talk) 00:12, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Article not showing up in Articles Created - toolserver issues

On 01:23, 25 January 2012 I created a new Wikipedia article Guylaine Saucier ‎ (←Created page with 'Guylaine Saucier, is a corporate director of the Bank of Montreal, Petro-Canada , AXA Assurances Areva, Groupe Dannone, and Wendel. She is a for...')

This article is still not showing up when I click "Articles created" at the bottom of my Contributions page. Is this a normal lag? Ottawahitech (talk) 20:46, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

yeah the toolserver is having issues. ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 20:47, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. Looks like the toolserver (whatever it is) is still having issues. I wonder if there is a place on Wikipedia where one can check on progress? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:43, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Toolserver replication lag graphs. English Wikipedia is, I believe, on s1. --Redrose64 (talk) 23:11, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Preview blanks a section

When I preview a section, sometimes it is shown like I have blanked the section when I have not. When I then click "save" it blanks the section. This happened a minute ago on the section "Redworms and BSFL"[3]. It has happened before on this article. I'm using Chromium web browser. Rudork (talk) 21:34, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like something a broken browser extension, a gadget or a userscript would cause. disable them one by one (keep track on a piece of paper, because if you have a lot it's hard to keep track) until the problem no longer occurs. Once you have identified the culprit, report it here please. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:09, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Spaces after pasting

I'm using Google Chrome at the moment (not my usual browser) and when I copy and paste most things (not everything, but I haven't decerned what circumstances) it pastes in prefixed space and a suffixed space. For example, I might copy "thing" and past " thing ". This is rather weary. Also, sometimes all's fine in the edit window, but after previewing there is a line break. It's certainly not just matching up with the end of the line: sometimes new items in lists seem to attract blank lines above and below them. This in the edit window
* foo
* bar

becomes:

• foo

• bar

Any suggestions (I apologise if this has come up before, but I certainly don't remember the spaces thing)? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 23:26, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Where is this week's Signpost?

Anybody know why this week's Signpost hasn't gone out? Maile66 (talk) 00:01, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I think the SOPA blackout may have disrupted it. Looking at the newsroom, the Discussion report hasn't been started yet. --NYKevin @181, i.e. 03:21, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

More a lack of contributors for the centrepiece N&N and ITN reports than anything else... volunteers for that (or the now on hiatus discussion report) always welcome :) - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 20:00, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Collapsing references when editing

Would it be possible to have a gadget or option that would collapse the contents between the <ref></ref> markup when editing. In some articled with extensive references it becomes difficult to find the section of text that one wants to edit. If its the actual reference that needs to be edited it could always be expanded as needed.--KTo288 (talk) 08:39, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

While not a complete solution, I use WP:LDR mainly to keep the edit window a little tidier. That said, such an option would be welcome, as LDR format is present in a decided minority of articles.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 20:05, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Problem with file renaming

I've been doing a batch of file renames, and one particular file does not seem renameable.

File:NMS.PNG, which I'm trying to rename to "Northeast Middle School (Midland, Michigan).png" or some such. I keep getting "Target file name invalid".

I've tried variations on the name, with and without "File:" prepended (doesn't work). I've tried renaming other .png files (works fine). I've tried renaming other .png files from the same uploader (works fine). I've asked other admins to try renaming this file (3/3 admins were unable to do the rename).

Now, in and of itself, this is not a major problem, and it could probably be circumvented by just deleting and re-uploading. But I'm concerned that it could be a symptom of something larger. DS (talk) 15:17, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

My first instinct is that filenames may not be allowed to contain certain characters. Are commas legal in Wikipedia filenames? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:32, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Very much so. DS (talk) 15:38, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Problem resolved - Betacommand pointed out that the image history included an older, corrupt version. Once this version was deleted, the rename took hold. DS (talk) 16:09, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Question about revdelete/oversight and page moves

On 14 January 2012, Fæ moved User talk:Fæ to User talk:Fæ/2012/F. The logs for the current User talk:Fæ show revdeletions/oversights which were applied to the old page (now called User talk:Fæ/2012/F, if you're following). Conversely, the history for what was formerly the talk page show that certain diffs have been revdeleted or oversighted (see 16 November 2011, for example) but there is nothing in the logs for this page. It appears that the logs have not been correctly associated with the moved page. Is this a known problem? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:55, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Revdelete/oversight and page moves - part II

Possibly separate from the question above (but possibly related), the logs show that User:AGK revdeleted/oversighted some edits on 28 December 2011 but restored them on 29 December 2011. There are no other entries in the log, but those edits are revdeleted/oversighted in the page history. There is nothing in the logs for the page under its new name either. Is this related to the page move/log weirdness? If the edits were revdeleted/oversighted after the page move, why is there nothing in the logs? Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:55, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

To clarify, there was no suppression action on this page at the time in question. I only revision-deleted the edits now at User talk:Fæ/2012/F, and the log of oversighted edits is not publicly viewable (in order to preserve privacy). Nevertheless, it does seem that the deletion log was not moved when the archive was created by pagemove, which I presume is indeed a bug. AGK [•] 22:55, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Odd bug with templates linked to in headers

Take a look at the mouseover text of the edit button of this section. The heading consists of this:

== {{[[Template:ANI-notice|ANI-notice]]}} talkback ==

which renders as expected. But the mouseover text of the section edit link transcludes the text of {{ANI-notice}} and appears as:

Edit section: ==Notice of discussion at the Administrators' Noticeboard == Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at [[Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents]] regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. talkback

Seems like a pretty minor bug overall, although theoretically it might be able to be abused with malicious code. (Theoretically a BEANS issue too; if so, delete this notice.) —danhash (talk) 20:04, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Confirmed. That indeed looks like a MediaWiki bug; I'll see whether I can find the cause. Ucucha (talk) 20:22, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I've never seen the need to put templates like {{tl}} in headers. They often cause trouble there. If it's necessary to link to a template, use a normal wikilink, don't bother representing the double braces. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Regardless of that, this is a MediaWiki bug—the text apparently gets parsed twice. It turns out it's already been reported as bugzilla:32802; I've submitted a patch. Ucucha (talk) 21:26, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Did you mean...?

To my surprise, searching for "Samuel Kenyon Doe" did not return one of those "Did you mean Samuel Kanyon Doe?" comments at the top. Any idea why not? Please note that I created Kenyon as a redirect after I performed this search. Nyttend (talk) 03:23, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I get "Did you mean Samuel Kanyon Doe?" when I search without quotes [4] but not with quotes [5]. Did you use quotes? I don't know whether that is supposed to activate "Did you mean?". PrimeHunter (talk) 14:21, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Odd block log entry

Look at the fifth entry from the top here. How is it possible to get the system to display a number rather than a username? Nyttend (talk) 13:45, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

He was clearing an autoblock, which the MediaWiki software automatically adds to prevent the IP of the user just blocked from creating another account to continue vandalizing or spamming. You can see a large number of autoblocks at Special:BlockList. Hope this helps! Reaper Eternal (talk) 13:48, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

ERR_READ_TIMEOUT

I am trying to expand the {{Homologene2uniprot}} template to approximately 4X its present size (see the last indent of the thread started on User talk:A2-33 for a justification). I promise that this template will not grow any larger than 4X its present size. I receive a ERR_READ_TIMEOUT error message which is quite understandable given the size of the template. I have created and successfully used larger templates in the past (see {{Pfam2PDBsum}} as an example). I have two questions. First, have the timeout limits recently decreased? Second, assuming templates of this size are permitted, is there any alternative way of loading these large templates that circumvent the ERR_READ_TIMEOUT error? Boghog (talk) 20:33, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Where do you see that error message? All of the pages where the template is used load for me. Did it perhaps happen when you previewed the template with an increased size? I don't think there's a set limit on template size that triggers that error; it's probably rather the time it takes MediaWiki to parse the wikitext.

I'm not sure what made you think a 144 KB template is a good idea, much less a 600 KB one. Ucucha (talk) 20:55, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry for not being clearer. There is no problem with the use of the template. The problem I am running into is trying to increase the size of the template by editing it. The current template is not complete and needs to be expanded 4X its current size. When I try to do so, the ERR_READ_TIMEOUT error is returned when I add the new text and press the "save page" button:

If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below.

Request: POST http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Homologene2uniprot&action=submit (redacted to remove my IP address).

I totally agree that that a 600K template is not a good idea. A much better solution would be to convince the external Protein Data Bank to support Homologene queries, but I am in a much stronger position to do so, if I have a working Wikipedia template. (See for example this request and this and this response). Boghog (talk) 21:19, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Skin problem?

Can anyone throw some light on this thread at the New contributors' help page please? -- John of Reading (talk) 22:20, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Templates with bugs in coordinates

• Coordinates in {{Infobox_ancient site}} don't show up at the top of the article as they do in {{Infobox Historic Site}}.. Try it at Byllis.
• {{Infobox settlement}} falsifies coordinates when given like longitude=49.12345. Compare source and geohack-link in Butrint. -- Kr51-2 (talk) 10:48, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

1. {{Infobox ancient site}} has parameters for latitude, longitude and coordinates. Don't use latitude or longitude; use coordinates and the {{coord}} template with desired display options.
2. Butrint has decimal coordinates in the infobox but then it has {{Coord|39|45|N|20|01|E|type:city}} near the bottom of the markup, which renders at the top of the page. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:13, 28 January 2012 (UTC)