Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 68

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Village pump (technical) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (technical). Please do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to revive any of these discussions, either start a new thread or use the talk page associated with that topic.

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Pages that serve no purpose but to disparage or threaten their subject or some other entity. These are sometimes called "attack pages". This includes legal threats, and biographical material about a living person that is entirely negative in tone and unsourced, where there is no neutral version in the page history to revert to. Both the page title and page content may be taken into account in assessing an attack. Articles about living people deleted under this criterion should not be restored or recreated by any editor until the biographical article standards are met.

Preview

This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion. The given reason is: It is a very short article providing little or no context (CSD A1), contains no content whatsoever (CSD A3), consists only of links elsewhere (CSD A3) or a rephrasing of the title (CSD A3). Please consider placing {{subst:empty-warn|Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 68}} ~~~~ on the User Talk page of the author.

I posted the above design to the usability wiki a few months ago and not much has happened since. I imagine that the system uses AJAX categories to organize the hierarchy. When a user selects a template they'll be prompted to fill in parameters (similar to wikia). There needs to be more machine readable meta-data for this to happen, see DBpedia discussions. — Dispenser 05:38, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

This might be useful in conjunction with template forms, the plan for which is more concrete, I think. There are three main challenges I see with this idea: that of design (how to make the hierarchy itself usable), that of maintenance (will adding new templates on be complicated, controversial, or a chore?), and that of inclusiveness (do we put every template into the system, or some subset? Which subset? Which subset is usable?). That being said, it's an interesting idea and I'd like to see further thought on it. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 03:24, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

File:Vamana1.jpg

I cropped this image for a DYK (that appeared on 19-10-09). The cropped version is seen in Wikipedia:Recent additions 249, but not in Vamana, Onam etc. articles. What is the problem? --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 06:39, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I purged the image's description page on commons and now the new version can be seen everywhere. Sometimes when you upload a new version of an images, its thumbnails aren't regenerated and it has to be done manually. Svick (talk) 13:21, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

It does not show on Vamana, Putana etc, but shows on Balipratipada. Puzzled??? --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 13:50, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

It does for me. Try bypassing your cache (in most browsers, just press Ctrl+F5). Svick (talk) 14:06, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Archive

I tried to fix /Archive 67 after ClueBot's error. Can somebody check that I didn't forget some thread? Was this the only broken page? (Since that error was with ClueBot's “unarchiving” and I didn't find any other in its recent contributions, I hope it was.) I also turned on archiving of this VP by MiszaBot (and turned off ClueBot), because ClueBot isn't currently working. Are there any other pages that should be switched? Svick (talk) 22:07, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Noindexed pages

The category Category:Noindexed pages is added automatically when the magic word __NOINDEX__ is used in a permissible namespace, that magic word is also added by template:NOINDEX, which also adds Category:Noindexed pages (relics from when the autocategorization didn't exist), so this adds redundancy and lists pages which are in fact not noindexed, for example those in mainspace - so the categorization can be wrong. Thus I propose we depopulate Category:Noindexed pages, starting by removing it from template:NOINDEX.

Also, it seems possible to filter Category:Noindexed pages by namespace via MediaWiki:Noindex-category, I'm not sure there's interest in dividing by namespaces, let me know what you think; we could at least distinguish between pages and categories, explicitly with

{{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}|{{ns:category}}|Noindexed categories|Noindexed pages}}

. Cenarium (talk) 01:01, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree. But {{NOINDEX}} could add a special tracking category when it is placed on the wrong pages (when used in namespaces where it has no effect). We can already find and fix those cases by using "What links here" and choosing what namespace we want to see. But causing a visible category (with a long descriptive name) at the bottom of the page, and having an explanation on the category page what needs fixing, makes other editors do the fixing for us continuously. It saves us work, and the pages get fixed even if we are on wikibreak, and it means more editors learn how and when to use and not to use the template. We use this method to good effect in many other templates, see for instance Category:Wikipedia message box parameter needs fixing.

And I agree about filtering. I see that Commons use ParserFunctions in MediaWiki:Noindex-category so it seems it can handle that. It is usually very useful to split large categories into sub-categories. And I think you should filter on more of the namespaces, since I see that {{NOINDEX}} is used a lot in several other namespaces too. So the magic word is probably also directly used a lot in many namespaces.

And when this discussion is done, then I suggest we copy it to the talk page of {{NOINDEX}}, so it is visible there for future reference.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:19, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I've removed Category:Wikipedia noindex pages from {{NOINDEX}}, it's going to take some time to update. A tracking category for wrong uses would depend on how the template is used; it's transcluded in several templates for example, such as speedy deletion templates; maybe we should use __NOINDEX__ directly for them. Cenarium (talk) 16:02, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Firefox crashes

If I attempt to visit any Wikipedia page on my home computer, my Firefox crashes. This is a new phenomenon since the end of September 2009 (I've been away). Is there anything I can do to my Firefox settings to fix this problem? I'd rather not go for an update because when it works my present version of Firefox runs much faster than newer ones do.

(Sorry, I don't know the version number, but it was installed in August 2004)

David Fremlin, 28 Nov 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.31.207.41 (talk) 18:26, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Version numbers are available from Help > About, and will probably help (personally I'm baffled). Does it break on any other websites? Does it just freeze, or do you get any sort of error message? - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 18:31, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for replying so promptly! It's "version 1.0", so I see that it was a bit of an antique when I got it -- Yes, other sites have given the same problem, I just didn't care so much -- It doesn't freeze, it dies altogether, reporting "segmentation fault" (I have some sort of Red Hat, I believe). I note that the other computer I'm typing on now, though it can cope with Wikipedia pages, is spectacularly slow.

For what it's worth: on my "version 1.0" machine, I can get the base page http://wikipedia.org, but both http://en.wikipedia.org and http://fr.wikipedia.org kill the firefox program. Also for what it's worth: I copied http://en.wikipedia.org onto my own webpage, and there "version 1.0" reads it without any problem at all, but of course missing quite a lot of the decorations, so I guess the problem is somewhere in the stylesheets. David —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.31.207.41 (talk) 18:43, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

P.S. This page crashes my Firefox too. I wonder if the trouble is in the left-hand column? presumably this is in a different frame from the rest? David —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.31.207.41 (talk) 10:16, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

You really should upgrade your Firefox. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:32, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I would agree. If 3.5 is much slower than 1.0 then you're doing something wrong :P - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 13:34, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

extending programming language (templates with more programming capabilities)

I've written a couple of templates on Wikipedia. It is much like trying to paint with your hands cuffed behind you. It is very limited as a programming language. In my initial attempts to search for more information on Templates and how to manipulate variables/looping, I found this past discussion on the Village Pump [1] that followed a question about whether the Variables extension was installed. Anomie posted a link to a discussion about extending the programming language on wikipedia [2]. When I asked Anomie recently if anything came out of this discussion, she said this:

• The replacement language must be securely embeddable (e.g. no way to break out of the sandbox)
• easy to resource limit (no way to DoS the WP servers)
• easy to learn (bonus points if contributors are likely to already know it)
• have a pure-PHP implementation so sites on restrictive hosting that cannot install PHP extensions and cannot shell out to an external executable can still reuse templates from Wikipedia.

This last is the real killer."

My question is, are there any statistics on how many sites there are using Wikipedia software, that on restrictive hosting such that they would have to be able to reuse the Wikipedia templates? What percentage of the user base are they talking about? Thanks stmrlbs|talk 18:24, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

I run a site on the MediaWiki engine for what it is worth. I also run a private wiki on the same software. I have full root access to both machines. We can really only go so far to accommodate people who set up their servers with a control panel and have no real control over the internals. When you run a server on such restrictive hosting you are hobbling yourself. While a pure-PHP implementation is a "nice to have", it is by no means a requirement for development. ^Chillum 18:28, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Pure PHP was considered a design requirement by Brion et al. the last time this went around on wikitech-l. Personally, I largely agree with that. The portability of wikicode would be greatly hobbled if it becomes difficult to reuse templates. While it is easy to make fun of people with small sites and limited hosting, there are huge number of small hobbyist sites that have adopted Mediawiki and I think that is to be encouraged. Dragons flight (talk) 19:17, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

We get *quite* a few people looking for support and are in restrictive hosting environments and they are unable to install PHP extensions or shell out to external scripts. It really is the hardest part of the problem to solve, PHP sucking the way it does and all. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 18:44, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

make deletion log searches more user friendly

I have submitted a bug report to make searching the deletion logs more user friendly and consistent with search engine usage on the internet. At the present time, you have to enter the exact title, with the exact punctuation of the article deleted, in order to find information on deletion log about that article. The log search should work like other searches, and should be able to find information on a deleted article based on a keyword from the article title. This would cut down on confusion by people using the log search like they use all other searches in Wikipedia and not being able to find information on an article. If you agree with this enhancement/bug, please vote for this report on bugzilla: Bug#21555: search on keyword - rather than requiring exact title including punctuation. Thanks. stmrlbs|talk 01:42, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Toolserver IP editing logged-out again

Toolserver IP, 91.198.174.201 (talk · contribs · WHOIS), is editing logged-out again. Why can't that IP be soft-blocked? There is no reason for it to ever edit logged-out, is there? Wknight94 ^talk 15:44, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

People have previously argued that the bots running on the Toolserver, being approved, are doing no harm if logged out. I'd disagree, because bot-like edits from an IP always cause half a dozen admins to drop what they're doing and rush to check. So anon bot editing is certainly a timewaster, if not an actual showstopper. ⬅ ❝Redvers❞ 15:49, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I'll point out (again) that the Toolserver rules are explicit about editing anonymously. Feel free to softblock the IPs. --MZMcBride (talk) 15:53, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Dispenser said in a previous dicussion about this that some read-only (and thus anonymous) toolserver bots stop working when they are blocked from editing. So, unless those bots are fixed, I think that this IP shouldn't be blocked. Svick (talk) 19:58, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Given the already clear rules, and the need for accountability of edits, the IP should be soft-blocked immediately and any broken bots fixed afterwards. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 20:29, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I would also support this, if one more voice toward consensus is needed. The read-only bots should remove the pointless "am I blocked?" check, or create an account if for some strange reason that is infeasible. Anomie⚔ 23:05, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes soft block this range is appropriate. Otherwise people will continue to not fix the pywikipedia framework and other stuff and it will get harder. The current edits aren't really a problem since they are slow and well documented (and therefore no less accountable than any random IP, more so in fact), but the principle is still valid. Rich Farmbrough, 12:58, 27 November 2009 (UTC).

Why shouldn't helperbots be patched (using assert=bot) if its the reason for the problem? Also, if 91.198.174.203 is blocked some web tools which do HTML scraping may break or become less functional. — Dispenser 03:08, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Why shouldn't both be done? Anomie⚔ 21:06, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Then those tools should be fixed to not break when they're prohibited from doing something that they don't actually need to do. Mr.Z-man 21:13, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

OK I put a 3 hour trial soft block on that IP. Rich Farmbrough, 16:09, 30 November 2009 (UTC).

Sizing of per-page granularity on user-blocks and admin tools

Anyone familiar with the code have any feel for the effort to add per-page granularity to user blocks: For example, if an administrator wanted to block a user from page X or all pages in category Y, but let him edit the rest of the wiki.

Similarly, how much code change would be needed to grand administrative tools on a per-page basis to a given administrator: For example, allowing a 'crat to give new administrator W the right to delete pages in category X, or block users whose user pages are in category Y or on list Y from editing articles in category Z. Or, more simply, to manage protection on pages in category X.

I would expect this is non-trivial, but is it something that could be made to work in a matter of weeks, a matter of months, or is it bigger than that given the size and workload of the current developers?

See here for the reason I'm asking. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:56, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

In 2005, there's been a proposal for per-article blocking which gained large support. Since even before (2004), there's T2674 to develop per-article - and per-namespace - blocking, no success until now. All attempts to deploy it failed, and I suspect the other suggestions are equally or more difficult to implement. Considering our short supply in developers, we could not have this bug fixed before as many years. Cenarium (talk) 02:37, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it's not the easiest bug to fix. Like Cenarium said, all attempts thus far have failed, miserably. I know the last attempt was really bad and got backed out pretty quickly. FWIW, the entire blocking code sucks and needs to be rewritten. It's been on my back burner for a very very long time, if anyone feels like trying to motivate me :) ^demon^{[omg plz]} 03:34, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not really difficult to implement, but it's difficult to implement well, without introducing more horrible kludges to the blocking system. — Werdna • talk 00:38, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

WP:FILTER should be able to do it? I guess it would be hard to maintain, but I guess a special addition could be made to maintain a list of users and their forbidden pages. I also assume that categories could be added to filter criterias?? --Stefan ^talk 14:04, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Recent discussion on "per-page-bans"

Didn't we just recently discuss allowing admins to hand down "discretionary per page bans"? And according to the summary at the bottom of the page, did not find consensus for such things? –xeno^talk 15:53, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Doing this by admin bot proxy

I doubt it would be accepted on :en any time soon, but some of the smaller wikis might benefit from bots which did specific tasks on behalf of specific, whitelisted users. For example, if an established user was a mentor to a particular user, an admin-bot could be called upon by the mentor to block the protegee. Likewise, members of a vandal-fighting group could have access to a bot that would block users for up to a pre-determined amount of time and protect pages for a pre-determined maximum time.

From a coding-the-bot perspective, does this look hard? To work well on a large wiki and not cause massive confusion, you would need to add "impersonation" to the wiki code, so the bot's actions were logged as the editor not as the bot. Is adding impersonation code a large task? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 05:53, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

bot level coding is a lot easier and is fairly doable. β^_command 23:18, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

This would give us very fine control of how non-admins perform admin functions. I don't think impersonation is that important of the invoking user's name always prefixes the edit summary and it keeps detailed logs of its own. This could be very helpful in enforcing page bans where the criteria are clear and objective. ^Chillum 23:21, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Ewwwwww. — Werdna • talk 00:38, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Could you elaborate on this? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 15:38, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Text shift

For some reason, this single edit consisting of one word made the Text all drop to the botton of the biobox? Handicapper (talk) 16:40, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I see no formatting change between those two revisions. What browser are you using? Try changing the size of the window. --King Öomie 20:17, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

"5 facts about wikipedia ad" Images

The images placed on that ad dont really look well placed, please re place them.Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 20:10, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Mr.Z-bot is stepping out

Over at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Philosophy, user:Mr.Z-bot has posted the same message 14 times during the last 40 minutes, would an admin kindly stop it? Paradoctor (talk) 02:52, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Kill the bot owner, I say. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:01, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Note that the messages are different. There's one for each task force that requested a report. But all of the task force talk pages redirect to the main project talk page. It would probably have been better if it created a summary message, but I didn't anticipate a situation where multiple projects would share a talk page. (Note that the bot actually stopped editing about 2 hours ago.) Mr.Z-man 03:03, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

There are probably words that convey the depth of my embarassment, but I'm afraid a heartfelt "oops" is the best I can come up with at the moment. And for the record: I vehemently oppose Mr. MZMcBride's proposal. We need all our, errm, "specialists" to keep the vandals in check. Paradoctor (talk) 03:38, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

"Translating" coord numbers to lat_deg, lat_min, lon_deg and lon_min

Hi! I'm asking about syntax for Template:Location map

The Wikipedia page for Pag (town) gives its coordinates as follows:

• coord|44|26.61|N|15|03.27|E

Template:Location map gives syntax for the same town as follows:

• |lat_deg=44|lat_min=26|lon_deg=15|lon_min=3

So that's fair enough. However, a page I made has the following:

• coord|59.9108|10.5920

This gives the right location in Google Maps, Yahoo Maps or the like - cf 59.9108°N 10.5920°E / 59.9108; 10.5920 - but when I try to insert the numbers into Location map syntax, like this: |lat_deg=59|lat_min=91|lon_deg=10|lon_min=59, I get:

Skallum

Skallum (Akershus)

This is not the correct location. I don't really have any idea what minutes and degrees are anyway. What am I doing wrong? Geschichte (talk) 21:22, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Degrees are 1/360 of a whole circle. Minutes are 1/60 of a degree, and seconds are 1/60 of a minute. So to convert the fractional part (e.g. 0.9108) into minutes, multiply by 60 (e.g. 0.9108×60=54.648 minutes). See Degree (angle)#Subdivisions for more details. Anomie⚔ 21:28, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I was looking forward to explaining you how degrees and minutes work (it's quite simple, really), but then I found out that I don't have to. Such a disappointement. :-)

If you have coordinates in decimal representation, i.e. only degrees, not degrees and minutes, you can put them directly into {{Location map}}'s lat_deg and lon_deg. See example below. Svick (talk) 21:39, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Have have added code to the sandbox that would make the min and sec optional. — Dispenser 07:47, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Skallum

Skallum (Akershus)

Script donation links are not usable with middle click

I wanted to use the donate link. My natural course of action was to middle click the button/link in Firefox and in the meantime continue reading the current page. But since the button is javascript only, this did nothing useful. Does the donate button really need javascript? Why put a small annoying barrier in the way of the main source of funds? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aaron Lawrence (talk • contribs) 05:19, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

It allows for better tracking of where people come from, allowing other people to optimize the banners presented to the audience I think. The banners require JavaScript anyways. I do agree however, that it is a tad annoying. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:43, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Image annotation in WP

Why image annotation appears only in Commons and not in Wikipedia? Most likely, many people are being unaware. I think it would add EV if fixed. Brand[t] 06:58, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

"EV" means "encyclopedic value", for those who are unaware. Graham87 09:56, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Nobody has installed it here. And as the author of that thing I'd really appreciate it if en-WP could hold off another two or three months before doing so. That gadget over at the Commons has been updated at the end of October to also show annotations directly on thumbnails in articles. To my knowledge, that version of the gadget is not used anywhere else yet. It would be rather risky to deploy it first on the largest WMF project. The current plan is to first deploy it at a smaller Wikiversity project and see how it goes. If all is well, we can then consider using this on larger projects (de-WP, en-WP), too. But not right now, please. Anyway, there would need to be community consensus for it to be activated here; and people should also have hashed out how they want to configure it. Lupo 15:52, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

dead interwiki prefix

Ok, I just stumbled on an article, W (Double You), which had an external link below interwiki linking to ThePPN: W. I followed it, and the site that it really links to, http://wiki.theppn.org/W, has moved to a different domain. (ThePPN's former domain, a .org, seems to be owned by a denim company!?) Some searching later, I found that the correct link is to http://wiki.jpopstop.com/wiki/W.

Seeing as there are many other Japanese artist pages that have external links to ThePPN using interwiki links, I decided to do some research and found this on the Help Desk archives: Wikipedia:Help_desk/Archives/2007_June_25#How does this "ThePPN:" link works?, dated 2007.

More research led to this: http://community.livejournal.com/theppnwiki

So, as ThePPN is now Jpop Stop!, can someone with database access go in and systematically remove/replace ThePPN with Jpop Stop! in the interwiki database, and (might as well) do the same in all articles that have links pointing to it? --Geopgeop (talk) 11:32, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

The interwiki database is controlled by the interwiki map on Meta, and can only be edited by Meta administrators. See this talk page archive, particularly the sections about removing ThePPN prefix and adding a prefix for Jpop Stop! Graham87 12:30, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Highly Technical Question: wink,wink,nod,nod

Why is my !@#$%^&* signature red when almost all others are blue? Coffee and sympathy glad accepted. Can't drink tea.

Tapered (talk) 01:38, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Because you have not created your user page at User:Tapered. You can just click the red link on your username, write something and save. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:43, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Speed of Google listing new pages

My fellow Wikipedians, I am minorly concerned at the speed in which Google lists new articles into its search engine. I do a fair bit of new page patrolling and I tag a lot of pages as copyright violations. In order to find the source of the suspected violations I will copy and paste a few lines of the suspect article into Google. Invariably, the very first thing to appear is the article itself. I just ignore it and go onto the next until I find (or don't find) the source. However, I am just a tad concerned that Google is sucking in and possibly caching a large number of articles that will soon be deleted for a variety of reasons. So, does this present any issue? I think it would be a good idea to have a 12 to 24 hour wait on google listings, just to ensure that the article isn't speedily deleted or subject to other major modifications. Thoughts? Basket of Puppies 19:14, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

We supply Google with a feed. I think it might make sense to set up some technical jiggery to automatically {{NOINDEX}} unpatrolled pages. Jehochman ^Talk 19:16, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Jehochman, I think that is a good idea! Delaying the Google feed until an article is patrolled sounds like a good idea. I'd also consider extending it to pages marked for Speedy Deletion. Basket of Puppies 19:23, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Does the feed just cover new pages or all revisions? If it's the latter case, we might also consider delaying IP and new user edits (along the flagged revisions theme).LeadSongDog come howl 19:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

That's a slippery slope, as most IP edits are good. At least for new pages until they are patrolled, and possibly for those that are subject to CSD. Basket of Puppies 19:49, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

At the moment CSD tagged pages are NOINDEXed already (or should be), but it can take Google a while to update this sometimes. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:09, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

{{NOINDEX}} doesn't work in mainspace, though, and that's a deliberate decision. — Gavia immer (talk) 20:30, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I see that NOINDEX does not work in mainspace. Is there a way to enable it. Or, more precisely, to enable it for only unpatrolled pages and CSD candidates? Basket of Puppies 21:38, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Sure there is. Just convince the Foundation that they're wrong about that policy, convince the community that you're right about it, and convince the tech staff to change it. But this is unlikely to happen, of course. — Gavia immer (talk) 23:28, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

The main issue with adding it to the CSD tags is that if you add it after the page has been indexed, it won't have any effect until they crawl it again, which might be hours or days. So you'd have to add the tag extremely quickly after creation, which is typically frowned upon. Mr.Z-man 23:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Do we? I had gotten the impression from somewhere that Google chose to discontinue that relationship in favor of simply customizing the Googlebot to efficiently capture Wikimedia content directly. (I would guess by tracking recent changes, though I don't know that.) Dragons flight (talk) 22:31, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, not all pages actually do get patrolled. What would be needed is a delay of a few hours in permitting the bot on new unpatrolled articles. We'd have to do it, not them. I think there might possibly be some agreement for it, if it were technically feasible. I do not see what the foundation has to do with the policy--it's an enWP decision. DGG ( talk ) 22:48, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with DGG. Some delay before feeding new articles to Google is essential, otherwise a new article can be used for promotional purposes (e.g. to create buzz for a new product / service / film / album / policy / method for cold fusion) without any editorial oversight. The period should be longer than "a few hours". though: it should be at least long enough for someone in the same time zone to see the article and correct it. 18-24 hours would make more sense (e.g. user A writes a puff article about local company B at 1800 local time, user C sees it at 1000 the next day and completes xis checks by 1200). There's also an argument for noindexing unpatrolled articles and not feeding them to Google until they are patrolled.... - Pointillist (talk) 23:35, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Why don't we just let Google decide what pages to index? I don't think it's a good idea for us to second-guess what Google and searchers want. Sometimes finding recently created articles is useful. --Apoc2400 (talk) 16:33, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Doesen't COI BOT do searches for new pages and tag them if they are copy-paste's? Tim1357 (talk) 17:00, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Speaking as someone who does a fair bit of new page patrolling, I will say that the COI BOT misses a great number of the copy-paste new articles. I end up tagging 5-10 within an hour as copy-paste copyright violations. Basket of Puppies 22:38, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Just FYI, Google's listing of new pages does seem to be very fast. For example, EuroVoice European Music Contest was created at 2145 UTC today, and listed on Google within six minutes of being created (search results: ‎EuroVoice European Music Contest site:wikipedia.org). I find that a bit horrifying. Actually in this example the NPP system worked well: the article was automatically tagged "possible autobiography or conflict of interest", then an editor patrolled it and marked it advert, I templated it {{db-spam}} and SchuminWeb has already deleted it less than an hour after it was created, so that's OK. But it might have been a nasty attack on a living person – ther are still unpatrolled BLP pages over three weeks old in the NPP backlog – or even a dastardly attempt to undermine confidence in the financial system. Anyway, if bad people get the idea they can get top listing on Google by creating a new article that may not get patrolled immediately, that won't be good for Wikipedia. IMO there should be a wider debate about the idea of letting raw content go onto Google before any human has reviewed it. - Pointillist (talk) 22:49, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I noticed this issue separately some time ago and was extremely irritated by it, but I didn't bring it up because I thought my opinion was just coloured by my personal dislike of Google. I assumed that everyone else would be all like "Oh but it's Google! And they're so wonderful that nothing they ever do could be wrong!". Anyway, the rate at which they get modifications from Wikipedia pages now is ridiculous. It's not just new pages. They already have your above comment Pointillist: [3]. They seem to get changes into the search snippets (sometimes) within minutes, which is dangerous from a BLP point of view -- personal attacks must begin to taint the associated keywords of a page and person at once. Some goon at Google has clearly hooked their bots up to the RecentChanges feed in complete ignorance of the consequences of Wikipedia's influence. • Anakin 23:33, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

an option could be a landing page, google indexed one to fast, and makes a link on the search page, in the mean time wikipedia (we) delete it for spamming or other reasons, so we link to the landing page, with "your search engine is not up to date" we removed the article for policy reasons, which is much better than "this article doesn't exist" Mion (talk) 23:47, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

It would be nice if the reason for exclusion or discussion is auto included in that page for understanding but that needs some software work Mion (talk) 23:57, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Thinking of it, real time internet, what this is about, the real time collaboration, we can discuss the minutes we need to first check a new article, or edits, I think we need to template new articles as new article, with al pro and cons of new articles, as not checked. Mion (talk) 00:10, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

And for templates, I favor navigational templates, and hate hit and run templates :)Mion (talk) 00:12, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Can I remind everyone that one of the strongest pillars of Wikipedia atm, is it's current events coverage ? Putting all new articles in a 24 hour index hold, might significantly hurt ourselves. noindex for unpatrolled pages is something I can imagine, but a 24 hour block seems a bit too much, if it isn't better thought out. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:36, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, if an important new article is unpatrolled after 24 hours, letting it reach Google isn't the only solution. The creator can always ask someone to patrol it. If the NPP backlog is an issue perhaps we need to give patrollers more support, or maybe require new editors to make a minimum number of unreverted edits to existing articles before they can create new articles, etc. - Pointillist (talk) 11:11, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Deleted page caches can be removed from Google

1. You need a google account to do this
2. Go here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals
3. Click "New removal request" button
4. Remove what? --> Information or image that appears in the Google search results. --> Next
5. How was it removed? --> The site owner has modified this page so that it no longer contains the information or image that concerns me. --> Next
6. Enter the wiki page URL in the first textbox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroVoice_European_Music_Contest
7. Enter words from the deleted page that are no longer searchable on the URL. This part is a bit tricky because you can't enter the article name as an example, because the page title still comes up on that URL, but now saying "Article foo does not exist." Instead you need to include some word that WAS in the deleted article that does not appear in the deletion page notice. The cached page removal will be denied if the word is findable in any context within the deletion notice page, in the sidebar, or in the foundation donation banner at the top of the page.
8. Submit request to Google
9. Wait up to 2-3 days for Google to act on the removal request.

If successful the cached page of the deleted article will be removed, and all that will remain is the search URL without the cache link, and going only to the deletion notice page.

This cache removal submission to Google could probably be automated as part of the page deletion process. 64.91.85.115 (talk) 20:12, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

This is good info, actually, because it almost certainly could be done programmatically when whole pages are deleted. The big issue would be history merges and cut-and-paste move repair, both of which leave a page temporarily deleted. — Gavia immer (talk) 20:18, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

VPR

Oddly, the same discussion seems to be happening at VPR: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Mark_pages_less_than_24_hours_old_for_no-indexing. Personally, I see no policy reason why pages should be indexed immediately (with rare exceptions for topical articles, and I could live with even those waiting 24 hours - WP:NOTNEWS). Rd232 ^talk 22:24, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Incorrectly numbered/linked notes in article

In the article Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the numbering of the notes in the text and those in the "References and Notes" sections don't match. For example, the note numbered [2] in the infobox links to 19; hence all numbers between 3 and 18 inclusive link incorrectly. I've tried making a trivial edit and re-saving, but it doesn't make any difference. So I assume there must be some kind of technical error. Could someone knowledgeable look at this please? Peter coxhead (talk) 10:56, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

The article uses the old {{ref}} and {{note}} system instead of cite.php. It should probably be converted. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 12:36, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

It looks a lot of work to do the conversion; is there a tool? Peter coxhead (talk) 19:20, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, User:Cyde/Ref converter. Always double-check the changes it makes. Graham87 14:13, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the documentation for the converter, the problem is that the source of the error seems to be a reference within the {{Infobox}} template. (Numbering is wrong after this one.) User:Cyde/Ref_converter#Converting_references_within_Templates suggests that "There is a bug either in mediawiki or the Ref/References extension that can cause issues on the page the template is included from." I think it's this bug that is likely to be the source of the problem on the page, not the old style citing system. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:08, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki interface messages

We now have a new central page for discussing MediaWiki interface messages: Wikipedia:MediaWiki messages. It is kind of a "Village pump (MediaWiki messages)". So ladies and gentlemen, if MediaWiki interface messages interest you, consider adding that page to your watchlist.

--David Göthberg (talk) 20:14, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

A user has suggested that we delete all MediaWiki messages which are now identical to the default messages, since he has heard that performance is slightly improved if the local MediaWiki message is deleted (or remains uncreated). This concerns a couple of hundred interface messages. If anyone knows anything about this, would you care to comment over at Wikipedia:MediaWiki messages#MediaWiki:1movedto2?

--David Göthberg (talk) 19:15, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Upload in progress dialog

File:Upload in progress.png

When uploading an image, occasionally I get this dialog box. Perhaps 1 time out of 20. It always hangs at 0% and I have to restart the process to upload the file, then this dialog does not pop up. Any ideas on what is triggering this? ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:14, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

From the UI, it looks like something the Usability team has been cooking up. My guess is that this is very much a beta feature and is either a) unstable or b) only enabled some of the time. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 04:40, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Per the discussion below, I added this rule to Adblock Plus:

|http://en.wikipedia.org/w/extensions/UsabilityInitiative/*

From there on, every attempt at an upload resulted in the stalled "upload in progress". ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:12, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Sort of, it's part of the improved uploading pack, related to the Firefox addon "Firefogg" - Preferences > Gadgets > Add mwEmbed support for... Have you got that box ticked? - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 19:18, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah— yes. I have disabled it and will see what happens. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:57, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

This dialog is not the Usability Initiative's work, it's Michael Dale's. Adblocking UsabilityInitiative should not affect this in any way (in theory). --Catrope 20:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Catrope (talk • contribs)

I disabled "Add mwEmbed support for..." and still got the dialog. I notice an "Add media wizard" icon on my toolbar that brings up a dialog box with the same style. I uses monobook if that is relevant. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:51, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Top line placement still broken

Previous: Main space right-aligned title elements broken again

Is this a serious enough problem in article space for someone to fix now? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:14, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

This is probably due to something with the fundraiser banner. I'll see if I can make a new temporary fix. You can also use the beta Vector skin, which does not have this problem. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:19, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Are you using the gadget to hide the banner btw? I've been looking at this problem, but it will have to wait until after dinner for me. It's too complicated to solve properly without taking good testing time etc. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:59, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Due to incredibly annoying nature of central notices, especially when it comes to fundraisers, I was unable to find a proper detection method for the fundraiser, so for now the workaround is simply permanently enabled. diff —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:23, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

This problem occurs for me when I edit my User:84user/monobook.css to remove the wikipedia logo and background image (I prefer the cleaner layout). The coordinate template code somehow overlays the top of the article just as OrangeDog shows above. The same edit on my German de:Benutzer:84user/monobook.css does not produce this problem - the coordinates appear under the tab bar line, just above the fundraiser banner. See my edit histories in both CSS files. I do not hide the fundraiser banner, but I do have a lot of gadgets enabled in my English account. I tested Como, Merate, Wellington and their German equivalents de:Como, de:Merate and de:Wellington: the en: pages have overlapping coordinates, the de: pages are fine. -84user (talk) 21:08, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

The CSS and Javascript use caching. As such you will need to bypass your browser cache, before you will experience the fix. Simply restarting your browser might clear you cache as well. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:19, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I bypass cache each time. The problem still exists for me, also on other browsers, logged in or out. I may have narrowed it down to the CSS used for the span that has the id "coordinates". I can "move" the coordinates line away from the hatnote text by changing the served html from this:

<span id="coordinates">

to this:

<span style="position:absolute; z-index:60; right:35px; top:-40px;">

The 35 px is to allow space for the top "[ edit ]" link (enabled in my preferences) and the -40px moves the coordinates to above the line (where I prefer it); -20px would place it just below the line but clear of the hatnote text. The coordinates are normally located at the same line as the line "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia", which my monobook.css removes. That line is also missing from OrangeDog's screenshot. -84user (talk) 22:18, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, THAT is the reason. You are out of luck then, the fix I created was for the majority of the readers, not for those who hack up their own style. :D You will need to manually add the following to your own monobook.css file:

#bodyContent { position:relative; }

topicon {
  top:-3em !important;
}
#coordinates{
  top:-1em !important;
  right: 0px; !important;
}

The bodyContent, is what is active to fix the position during notices. This is also permanently applied under Vector. The topicon changes are needed to correct for both the default position, and to account for the missing 1em height of the "From Wikipedia the Free encyclopedia." tagline. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:58, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree, readers before hackers. Your fix works now for logged out users also on Chrome and old Netscape browsers. Thanks for the CSS snippet above; it had no effect inside User:Test84user/monobook.css, but did work when wrapped inside an appendCSS call in User:Test84user/monobook.js (I added a dot and removed a semicolon):

appendCSS('#siteSub {display:none !important} \n#bodyContent { position:relative; } \n.topicon { top:-3em !important; } \n#coordinates{ top:-1em !important; right: 0px !important; }');

This javascript has a minor oddity: coordinates cross the line in Cantu but are Ok in its redirect, Cantù. (User:Test84user is an account I use for testing) -84user (talk) 04:17, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

The notice "redirected from" again adds the same space that otherwise "From Wikipedia..." would add :( —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:04, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion for improved search technique

I think wikipedia is a brilliant project. However one thing is still missing, that might enhance systems usability greatly. It should be possible to search by means of any combination of keywords. Then a specialt page should appear containing links to every one of the matching articles. Ideally the following (advanced) search possibilities should exist side by side:

1. Only the articles containing ALL the keywords (in a text-field for this) shorld be found. 2. Only the articles NOT containing any of the keywords (in a text field for this) should be found. 3. Only articles containing ANY of the keywords (in a text field for this) should be found.

If only one search filed is provided, a syntax using & for logical AND, | for logical OR, and ! for logical NOT (perhaps even including the use of parentheses)

An example: I wish to find all the articles containing the words Cowboy and Indian but neither the word Movie nor the word Fiction. Then I might use this search-string:

Cowboy & Indian & !(Movie | Fiction)

Harlekin96 (talk) 07:02, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Well.... of course we already have this, had it for years in fact.. just need to look a bit harder.. Your query in wp would be Special:Search/Cowboy Indian -(Movie OR Fiction). So, AND is implicit, OR is or.. and NOT is shorthanded as minus sign, just as in any other search engine... "Did you mean" on other hands does need to be smarter, but oh well.. :) --rainman (talk) 12:07, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia's search engine has always been a bit primitive. The developers have improved it a lot lately, but given the amount of work they have, I can't see them working on this anytime soon. In the meantime, try Google Advanced Search. — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:07, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Search contribs for new pages

Is there an easy way to search my own contributions (or any user's) for new pages? I am just trying to get a list of articles I have created.—NMajdan•talk 19:31, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

There are quite a number of tools on the toolserver which allow you to do this. But nothing built into MediaWiki itself, as far as I'm aware. Soxred93 has a collection of tools, here. The one you are looking for is this. Best, - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 19:40, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Perfect. Thanks!—NMajdan•talk 21:02, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

It's included in the box at the bottom of everyone's "User contributions" page - labeled "Articles created". -- Quiddity (talk) 21:00, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Blocking the Usability Initiative

I have figured out how to get rid of the problems that the Usability Initiative was causing me.

I guess many of you by now have heard about the Usability Initiative. And that you have noticed the problems it causes, since they are inserting experimental code. It seems that users are randomly picked to for instance run their ClickTracking JavaScript and new features, so the usability people can test and study how we behave and how their new features work. And it seems each user runs this for some hours, then it is turned off and perhaps comes back some hours the next day, and so on. So far so good, I don't mind that.

However, I have an old computer, so loading and running all their code make my page loads ridiculously slow. And sometimes their code is very buggy and causes all kinds of problems. I am here to code templates and do other productive stuff, so I don't have the time to be their guinea pig. So I figured out how to get rid of this problem:

I have Firefox with the excellent add-on "Adblock Plus". So I added this rule to its filters:

|http://en.wikipedia.org/w/extensions/UsabilityInitiative/*

That rule blocks all the JavaScript and CSS files from the Usability Initiative. And wow! Now I can edit Wikipedia again! And pages are rendered at an acceptable speed again.

And before anyone says: "That was probably just a coincidence". Well, I have tried every now and then to turn that rule off, and every time I have it off (and at the same time is picked to run their experimental code), then things get slow and buggy again. And I have read their code, it repeatedly uses functions that we tell our JavaScript coders here to avoid, since we know those functions slow things down too much. So no, it isn't a coincidence.

Don't add that rule to your Adblock filtering (or whatever ad-blocking program you have in your browser) if you are using the Vector skin, since the Vector skin is dependant on the Usability code.

--David Göthberg (talk) 05:28, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

David, thanks for saying this, since it make a huge lightbulb flash directly over my head. I've had recent intermittent churning that I couldn't identify, and this fixed it. Incidentally, my suspicion is that the churning in my case was caused by the use of NoScript; if the usability project has been loading arbitrary scripts from hyperspace, it's possible they weren't on my whitelist even though I've whitelisted en.wikipedia.org. If anyone else is having problems, this might be the culprit. — Gavia immer (talk) 06:20, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Could you be specific about the evil stuff we're using that we're not supposed to? --Catrope 20:49, 1 December 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Catrope (talk • contribs)

Catrope: Sure. The specific evil is the getElementsByClassName() function. It is a very heavy function. So the more experienced JavaScript coders here have told us to avoid that function. And I see that those experienced coders themselves go to great lengths in their own codes to avoid using that function. But I know it is a very nifty function, I have been tempted to use it myself...

I am just a js newbie, but as far as I can see you use that function several times in the oldSizzle() function in your code, and that function under some circumstances gets assigned to the Sizzle() function that then is used all over the place. That's in the js2.combined.min.js file.

But anyway, no matter the exact reasons, as I explained above: If I don't block your code then editing Wikipedia becomes too slow, and sometimes buggy. (But I don't mind the buggy part that much, after all your code have to be live-tested sooner or later.)

I think there should be a gadget that allows users to opt-out from your testing. Since some of us simply don't have the hardware and/or bandwidth available to run it. Unfortunately that will only help the small number of users that are both logged in and aware of the gadget. So perhaps you could automatically measure the page load+rendering time for the user and store a cookie that tells to not load your code if the user has a too slow hardware. Would that be doable?

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:20, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Well wether or not that is a heavy function rather depends. Does you browser have a native implementation of it, then it's not that bad. The biggest problem is, what entry point is used for starting that function. On an entire document, it indeed can be a rather dramatic speed bump. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:31, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

All this Sizzle stuff is part of jQuery, which is a library we use. I see how that could be slow on some older browsers, but I don't see what buggy behavior could occur. Could you describe this? --Catrope 20:37, 3 December 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Catrope (talk • contribs)

Keyboard/character question

Trying to enter an rfc on a discussion page. It seems to require a verticle straight line which doesn't exist on my 9 yr old keyboard. Can any other character be substituted? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tapered (talk • contribs) 07:27, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Are you sure it isn't there? It's should be on the same key as backslash (\) only with Shift pressed. Have you tried using English keyboard layout, if you are using other national layout? As a last resort, you can always copy it from somewhere (e.g. here: |). Also, depending on what exactly do you need it, it could be substituted by the string {{subst:!}}. Svick (talk) 09:06, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

My relatively new HP keyboard lacks the piping symbol as well (my backslash key shift option is '?'). I have to cut and paste it each time, and I use it alot. Drives me mad. --Jezebel'sPonyo^shhh 15:41, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Without any insult intended to anyone, the "pipe" character is usually displayed as a broken vertical line, not a solid line as it displays here. On a standard keyboard the "?" character is SHIFT+/ (slash, not backslash). The backslash character is "\". The "pipe" character is SHIFT+\. Delicious carbuncle (talk) 16:11, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Not always; my Dell kbd has a solid line for pipe. Anyway, if you still can't find it, try this. Beneath the editing window, and the "Save page" etc. buttons, there is a little pull-down menu, which defaults to "Insert". Select from that one of the following:

• "Wiki markup", which should produce {{}} {{{}}} | [] [[]] and more stuff. The pipe symbol is between the triple-curly brackets and single-square brackets.
• "Symbols", which should produce ~ | ¡ ¿ † ‡ and more stuff. The pipe symbol is second (between tilde and upside-down exclamation point).

Click either pipe, and it'll insert a pipe at the cursor position. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:17, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

My insert menu at the bottom of the editing box became disabled once I activated the 'reftools' gadget. Regardless, Delicious carbuncle pointed out that the pipe character on my keybord exists, however the character appears as a broken line, which led to me overlooking it. Thank you kindly to all for the help, you have saved this editor from certain madness. --Jezebel'sPonyo^shhh 16:37, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

(ec) I've found another, in the abovementioned menu: selecting "IPA" produces loads of stuff finishing with ˩ ꜛ ꜜ | ‖ ↗ ↘ k͈ s͎ {{IPA|}}. The pipe symbol is just before the double bar and the two diagonal arrows. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:41, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

First, thanks for all the help and the informative discussion. It IS the character over backslash, in spite the deceptive symbol on the key. Is this the same for Apple products? Before I discovered this, I resorted to copy and paste. Thanks again Wikipedians! Tapered (talk) 22:19, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Block logs for a CIDR range?

Is there any way to view a block log for an entire CIDR range, as opposed to IP-by-IP? Thanks. —Zach425 ^talk/contribs 18:19, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Sure, just go to Special:Log/block and enter e.g. User:169.204.0.0/16 (result). If you were asking about searching for all individual IP blocks from this range, then no. — AlexSm 19:18, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Good point, that was a bit ambiguous. I was wondering about searching for individual IP blocks in a given range. A disappointing answer, but thanks for providing it. —Zach425 ^talk/contribs 02:26, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

You might want to take a look at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#New_tools Ive got two tools. one for all current blocks and one for the whole block log. enjoy. β^_command 08:59, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks so much! —Zach425 ^talk/contribs 17:48, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Random article from category

I think a tool that selected a random article from a category would be useful in maintaining Wikipedia. Currently we have several housekeeping categories, e.g. Category:Unreferenced BLPs, that have a large number of entries, filling many pages. An editor wishing to spend a little time on cleanup, must do some work to find a good place to start. A random-article-in-category widget could be added to such category pages or to pages listing cleanup work that needs doing. It shouldn't be hard to implement and I think it would make cleanup chores more enjoyable and hence there'd be more effort put in to badly needed work.--agr (talk) 22:20, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

You can use the random article tool on toolserver. Svick (talk) 22:37, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that tool seems do much of what I want -- the hard stuff really. But it's a bit awkward to use and shows up as an external link when embedded in Wikipedia pages. I added a link using it to Category:Unreferenced BLPs. I think there should be a random article link like that for every category listed on Category:Wikipedia backlog or a WP:Backlog random page. It would be nice to have an easier way to do that.--agr (talk) 18:02, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

article Alfred de Grazia

Amideg On December 1, 2009, I made edits and added references to the article mentioned above. All edits and references were deleted after less than half an hour by editor named ItsmeJudith. Today, December 3rd,I see that my edits and references of December 1st no longer appear on the history page of the article, nor is there any trace of ItsmeJudith's deletions. How is this possible??Amideg (talk) 15:04, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Your edits still seem to be there, listed in the article's history, but they were reverted. You'll also see that the editor who reverted you explained why in the edit summary they left, and also contacted you about it on your talk page (your talk page is at User talk:Amideg if you've not found it yet). It's for the best if you don't keep re-adding material that has been removed by someone else. If something you add is removed, ask the person who removed it or ask on the article talk page (Talk:Alfred de Grazia) for information and advice. Good luck! ⬅ ❝Redvers❞ 15:16, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Help needed with Kingbotk plugin

Hi. Does anyone here know VB and so could help out with the Kingbotk plugin. It's not working to spec in the new builds of AWB per Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs#Kingbotk plugin not assessing in SVN version. Thanks. Hiding T 17:28, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I would like to second this call for a talented programmer to work with the plugin. –xeno^talk 17:38, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

RfC Question

Just posted my first RfC. I listed two categories. It has only appeared in the list of the first category. The article is in this category, but for the issue in question, the second category is probably more relevant and likely to draw comment.

Question: does only the first category automatically post the its respective list? If so is there a way to post to the second list? If not, is it permissible to reverse the order of listing to post to the more relevant list? Do I need to delete and start over?

Tapered (talk) 22:33, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

The guide WP:RFC says that you should use one {{rfctag}} with multiple parameters to list a RfC in more categories. I merged the {{rfctag}}s in your RfC this way, so, hopefully, RFC bot will figure it out. If not, you can add the RfC to the second category manually, but then don't forget to remove it after the RfC ends. Svick (talk) 00:43, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Now I understand. My hasty reading and the way it's illustrated led me to believe I'd done it the right way. Thanks again. 69.226.245.37 (talk) 04:40, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Edits sticking but not showing up in watchlist or contribs list or history

anyone else noticed this? YellowMonkey (bananabucket) (Invincibles Featured topic drive:one left) 01:05, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Yep and for deletions too - seems to be a 12 minute server lag presently - Peripitus (Talk) 01:22, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I saw this too, however it appears to be remedying itself. I suspect some sort of delay between the database and its web caches? Sam Barsoom 01:26, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

This is actually happening to me currently. AniMate 03:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It's known, the smart people are looking at it. Should be good once the replag comes back down. Q ^{T C} 03:37, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

New messages bar not disappearing

I logged in a couple minutes ago and saw the "new messages" orange bar appear on my screen. I clicked on the link and went to my talk page, then clicked on my watchlist; however, the orange bar did not disappear when I clicked away from my talk page, and in this very edit screen that I am writing this message the bar is still there. This problem persists even after logging out, closing and re-opening my browser, and logging in again. Does anyone know how to remove it? I have purged and bypassed my cache, and have Firefox 3 on Windows XP. Thanks, Dabomb87 (talk) 01:06, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

OK, after further investigation, this seems to be the result of high server lag (more than 12 minutes as of this comment). Dabomb87 (talk) 01:13, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Probably related to the issue in the above thread. Sam Barsoom 01:27, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

New article not appearing

On November 22 I submitted a new article on Harry H. Halsell, but as of today it does not show up in a search, nor do preexisting links to this subject (such as may be found in the article on Grace Halsell) indicate that it exists. The article does appear under my contributions, but does not seem to be available to the general public. As far as I can tell, I followed the guidelines for submission, and have found nothing in the help files to indicate why it wouldn't appear. Any ideas what's going on? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xenon456 (talk • contribs) 04:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi Xenon. The article was created and existed until moments ago as a subpage of your user space at User:Xenon456/Harry H. Halsell. In order to have it in mainspace, where articles reside, it had to be moved to Harry H. Halsell. I have done so for you. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:18, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Category:Redirects

Yes, it exists... It's unsustainable though, so there's no real point in having it... except if the category is automatically added by the software. This seems possible, since it's done for example with Category:Noindexed pages. But it should be only for redirects in mainspace; or there should be a category of redirects for each namespace. So, do you think we should request this at bugzilla, for the mainspace at least ? Cenarium (talk) 00:02, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I think a new special page (Special:Allredirects) or just a checkbox on Special:Allpages would be better. Mr.Z-man 03:51, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Why do we need this at all? It seems to be categorization for categorization's sake (and a special page would be equally pointless, as far as I can see). But if people have some use for it, then the special page seems more in line with what the software normally does than an automatically generated category.--Kotniski (talk) 07:52, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I personally don't see the point of such a category, too; though I expect some people might find it useful since it's been created. Special:Allpages should definitely have a way to exclude redirects, and also exclude non-redirects. Cenarium (talk) 18:55, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

One of the purposes is to keep track of the different kinds of redirects, including Category:Unprintworthy redirects, Category:Protected redirects and Category:Wikipedia soft redirects, all important information to have. Also, as far as I can tell, it is well-maintained. It is automatically populating the root category that would be unmanageable and of no use. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 20:16, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

The category page even states that the category contains only categories and pages about redirects, and should not contain any redirects themselves. But 953 of the 1046 pages in the category at the moment are redirects. I could easily enough run a bot over the category to remove "[[Category:Redirects]]" from all those redirects and then repeat periodically to keep it clean, if there's consensus to do that. Anomie⚔ 22:08, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'd be in favour.--Kotniski (talk) 09:42, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

They should be removed regardless of an an automatic categorization, manually it's untenable. Cenarium (talk) 04:28, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

I nominated for deletion the stunning Category:Uncategorized redirects. Cenarium (talk) 00:38, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

I have found some advantages in an automatic categorization of redirects though: we can see recent changes to redirects, on the category page it provides a link for new/inexperienced users who are often confused by them, and if T20596 is resolved, we'll be able to know if a page is a redirect in the interface (so editnotice for redirects, useful for new users). Cenarium (talk) 04:28, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

So in light of this, shouldn't we request this ? Cenarium (forever) 16:25, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

OK some categories of redirects are useful - "with possibilities" is the one that springs to mind. Therefore screening all redirects to see if they are in that category is also useful. The use of an "uncategorized category" is a way to do that, as is maybe the category "redirects". Rich Farmbrough, 21:50, 15 November 2009 (UTC).

You well know that no bot would be approved by BAG to add Category:Uncategorized redirects to millions of redirects, so what's the point of having one with only a few thousands of redirects ? When bots add a category, they should check the database directly (and it doesn't really matter if the redirect has another category or not). Categories like 'with possibilities' (I agree it can be useful) can only be added by humans on a case by case basis, when you stumble across the redirect, it would be a daunting work to screen the category for them.

However, as I said, I would be in favor to make the software automatically add Category:Redirects to mainspace redirects (the category about redirects could be renamed 'Redirects on Wikipedia'. Because then, we can see recent changes to redirects, the category link is handy to help confused new user, with T20596, we'll be able to know (at least in the interface) if a page is a redirect, and I suppose it can help bots and automated scripts. Cenarium (talk) 22:10, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

This remark is probably a bit late, but we have a Special:ListRedirects. Intelligentsium 00:31, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

This is fine but it doesn't give the advantages a category would (though it has others, too). Cenarium (talk) 16:27, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Shouldn't this category be named Category:Wikipedia Redirects (since it contains pages about redirects, clearly a project related category) ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.66.197.2 (talk) 04:25, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that one should be renamed. Though since it's unlikely that Category:Redirects will be used for content, we could use it for redirects in the case we autocategorize them. Cenarium (talk) 00:48, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Autocategorization of redirects

So back to the original point, should we request at bugzilla that all redirects in mainspace be automatically categorized (like noindexed pages) in a category such as Category:Redirects ? It would offer several advantages:

1. provide a way to detect and screen redirects for automated processes
2. allow to see recent changes to redirects (through related changes)
3. provide a link to new users who are sometimes confused by redirects
4. once T20596 is resolved, we'll be able to use an editnotice for all redirects (again, useful for new users)

Cenarium (talk) 22:27, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, if we can get the devs to spare 15 minutes or so. The redirect flag is already stored as a boolean column in the database (page.page_is_redirect), so this should be a cinch. — This, that, and the other (talk) 06:37, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

In that case, it sounds good (I like enabling an editnotice, for one thing). File a bug and list at WP:DevMemo. Rd232 ^talk 06:43, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

CSD F3 uploads

Not sure if this is the right spot to start this discussion, but... Is it possible that when someone uploads a file that immediately is tagged at upload with the Only non-commercial or educational use of this file is permitted restriction (& the F3 template is added) - that at the same time the same warning template is placed on the uploader's talk page. I don't think this would be bot-worthy, as the files are usually deleted very quickly. The reason for this is that the uploaders often do not read this warning, and other users (admins) are forced to repeat the warning message when explaining why the image/file was deleted. Suggestions? Skier Dude (talk) 04:08, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't twinkle do this ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:01, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

When you select "The copyright holder gave me permission to use [this] on WP only" the copyright tag assigned is a speedy template. (See Special:Upload and the licensing preview functionality.) MER-C 03:58, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Exactly - is it possible when these are uploaded that the this option is selected, the same message that placed on the image description page is placed on the uploader's talk page as well? Skier Dude (talk) 08:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

how to tell if a "new" article has been deleted in the past

I'm looking for a way to see if a newly created page has been previously deleted. Is such a privilege available to mere mortals (or rollbackers or the auto-confirmed or whatever). I see there was some discussion on view-deleted-pages that appears to be on hold.--RadioFan (talk) 21:06, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

If you go to an article's history, you will see a link at the top: "View all logs for this page". There you can see all action that have been logged, including deletions. — Edokter • Talk • 21:16, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

But, unfortunately, not the User name of the person who created the article originally. That would be very useful. 99.166.95.142 (talk) 16:44, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

You'd need a log event 'create', which doesn't exist and isn't requested AFAIK - but I'm pretty sure it's been discussed somewhere already. I agree it would be useful. Logs still can't be filtered by namespaces though. Cenarium (talk) 23:15, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Searching only main page, not sub page

I would like to search, for example, prefix:Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests but only the main page (where the arbcom decisions have been made) not the subpages, "Workshop" "Evidence" etc.

Is that possible?

Examples are always best, so lets say for example I am searching for the word "decorum" a favorite of the Arbcom.

Thank you. Ikip (talk) 21:38, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

No because that page is entirely made of transcluded (sub)pages, and internal search engine doesn't resolve that. Even if it weren't we don't support searching single pages, you can do that in your browser, or write (or get someone to write you) a two-line script that fetches one page and then does grep on it. If you on the other hand want to search multiple subpages together, you can use syntax like prefix:prefix1|prefix2|prefix3. --rainman (talk) 11:13, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I was't clear enough. sorry. I want to search only on the pages where the final arbcom decision is made. So I would like to search these pages, and all other final decision pages for certain terms:

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/A_Man_In_Black

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/194x144x90x118

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Lapsed_Pacifist_2

But NOT the subpages of theses cases, such as:

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Lapsed_Pacifist_2/Evidence

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Lapsed_Pacifist_2/Workshop

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Lapsed_Pacifist_2/Proposed_decision

Maybe that is clearer, is that possible? Ikip (talk) 17:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately not. --rainman (talk) 17:24, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

AWB? Not ideal, but you could do it (particularly if it were a one-off). - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 20:52, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Gentlemen, thank you for being so helpful. I will look into AWB. Ikip (talk) 06:20, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Experts' forum to reduce costs of Wikipedia

Why not create an expert forum to find new ideas or technical solutions to reduce costs of wikipedia?

To do this we need first to Know how are composed costs of wikipedia.
And than experts had to write ideas and envolve other experts to find new solutions

We can create some general issiues like:

- how to reduce energy consumption
- how to reduce CPU usage
- how to use (if it is possible) CPUs of online users instead of server CPU
- how to reduce band used
- how to improve caching
- how to reduce total byte downloaded by users
- how to etc....

Can anyone post some informations about costs of maintenance of wikipedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.4.249.168 (talk) 11:15, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Although I applaud the idea, I have to point out some things

1. We have plenty ideas. It is resources that are our limiting factor atm. See also http://strategy.wikimedia.org for all the ideas that exist.
2. Technology wise, we probably already run far more efficient than many other of the top 10 websites. This is a direct consequence of having limited resources. You need to use everything to the max because of that.
3. The budget is about 3 million USD a year in hardware and bandwith atm if I remember correctly. Depending on donations etc that might be something like 5 million USD next year. The biggest advantadge can probably be made by optimizing the software further, but that requires a lot of man hours and employees.

—TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:35, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

87.4.249.168, you might want to try the existing mailing list, wikitech-l. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 15:23, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

DevMemo awaiting response

WP:DevMemo for November 2009 (Wikipedia:MediaWiki/DeveloperMemo/November2009) is now closed, awaiting a response from developers. (The next one, Wikipedia:MediaWiki/DeveloperMemo/December2009 is now in draft, seeded with the old issues.) Could someone please notify developers of the memo, and ask them to respond to the November memo? Thanks. Rd232 ^talk 19:54, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Autocategorization of redirects

Could we have more input on the proposed autocategorization of redirects: more support would be needed for a site request. Thanks, Cenarium (talk) 23:19, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

How do regex backreferences work in AWB?

(I tried to find some help on IRC but there doesn't seem to be anyone available right now.)

I'm trying to replace

[http://www.sclegacy.com/encyclopedia/starcraft_story.php#(\S+) Transcript]

with

[http://web.archive.org/web/20040810213217/http://www.sclegacy.com/encyclopedia/starcraft_story.php#$1 Transcript] (Archived from [http://www.sclegacy.com/encyclopedia/starcraft_story.php#$1 the original] on 2004-10-08)

Basically, just tacking a web.archive.org link to the front of dead links, and using the backreference to preserve the anchor that was in the original hook. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 23:29, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

You didn't ask anything specifically, so I assume you want to make this regexp work. You have it almost correctly, you just have to escape the square brackets:

\[http://www.sclegacy.com/encyclopedia/starcraft_story.php#(\S+) Transcript\]

The replacement is okay. Svick (talk) 00:16, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! That fixed it (when I tested it before, it recursively replaced itself over and over again, I assume because of the un-escaped brackets). Best, rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 00:41, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Secure server

I have written a page explaining the secure server: Wikipedia:Secure server. I'd like some native English speakers and some technically minded people to check if anything needs fixing. (I'm not a native English speaker.) And I'd love questions from beginners on its talk page, since then we will know if any part of that page is unclear.

I made that page since there seems to be no documentation anywhere about the secure server. I have searched the English editions of all the Wikimedia projects.

When that page feels ready, then I intend to add a link to that page from the secure server login page. See MediaWiki talk:Loginend#Brush-up of code.

--David Göthberg (talk) 15:59, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Log in page changes

We are also doing some other changes to the log in page. See MediaWiki talk:Loginend#Brush-up of code. (I forgot to mention that in the above section.)

--David Göthberg (talk) 09:11, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

[New intermittent problem?] Saving comment deletes others (no edit conflict warning)

I've seen two occurrences where saving a comment apparently deleted previously saved comments. Both saving editors indicate they got no "edit conflict" (or any notice of problem). Both were baffled and apologetic when their (unintentional) deletions were brought to their attention.

The two diffs I've seen.

• Talk: Roman Polanski (The comment at the bottom was the addition. The flag change by another editor was unintentionally undone, as well as a previous comment).

• at an AfD (An especially unfortunate place for unintentional deletions of other's comments)

New problem? Proofreader77 (talk) 22:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

This is a very old bug that I have experienced on other mediawiki wikis as well. I don't know the nature of the bug, but I do know it is not common and has been happening for a long time. I assume there is some sort of unintentional race condition. Sam Barsoom 01:28, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks. Perhaps its good that there are such transient technical glitches ... so we may always pause before leaping to conclusions about motives (e.g., that someone has been acting dastardly by deleting our messages). Programs are never perfect. But we fall into believing the software never fails. (Even those with MS degrees in Comp Sci. Blush.) Proofreader77 (talk) 07:36, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

These editors may have accidentally edited old versions of pages on Wikipedia. Click previous edit on the examples a couple of times for evidence. They should receive a warning about editing an old version of a page. Even Jimbo Wales once made this mistake - it's not uncommon. Graham87 14:36, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Graham. I hadn't thought of that possibility. (When I've edited an old versions, it was always intentionally reverting vandalism ... Will now ponder how to get there by accident — but clearly it can be done. :-) Cheers. Proofreader77 (talk) 15:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

looking for template help

Resolved

 – rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 15:45, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

A while back, I made {{mountain index row}} to help create tables for mountain set index articles. But, the template has been broken, and intermittently emits spurious carriage returns. See, e.g., List of peaks named Bear Mountain for the problem.

Can a template expert help me fix this template? I've been puzzled about this for a long time. Please respond at Template talk:Mountain index row (edit | template | history | links | watch | logs). Thanks!! —hike395 (talk) 04:33, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Quote style

WP:PUNC says to use typewriter/straight apostrophes and quotes ('' and "") and not typographic/curly apostrophes and quotes (‘’ and “”). However, beneath the edit window and the "Save page" etc. buttons, the Insert menu begins with

– — ‘’ “” ° ″ ′ ≈

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the third and fourth clickable items here look awfully like curly apostrophes and quotes. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:23, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Just because WP:PUNC says not to use them in normal writing doesn't mean they should never be used. For example, to write an article about punctuation, or to write the very message you just wrote, you would need curly apostrophes and quotes. rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 16:56, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

That is MediaWiki:Edittools.js and MediaWiki:Edittools. See the talk page for pas discussion on the inclusion of glyphs that are not used per the MOS. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:51, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Outdated block notices showing as current

When I was working on an unblock request for an IP user, I checked the contributions log and saw a block notification at the top of the page. All well and good, except that the block notification was from a block issued for 2 weeks on January 15th of this year. Is this a bug? -Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Stop... at a WHAMMY!!)} 20:25, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

EDIT) The same seems to be happening with Special:Contributions/207.69.137.22. -Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Stop... at a WHAMMY!!)} 20:29, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The above has been recently blocked again:

01:16, November 30, 2009, Dominic (talk | contribs | block) blocked 207.69.136.0/22 (talk) (expires on December 14, 2009 at 01:16, anon. only, account creation blocked) ({{checkuserblock}}) (unblock | change block)

Seems the block notification at the top still displays when the user is blocked but only displays 'previous blocks' and not the current one. -- œ^™ 23:04, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The thing is, I never noticed Dominic's block in either the block log or the contribs list heading, likely because it was a rangeblock. Wouldn't it be a good idea to have the contribs page log, at least, also note rangeblocks? -Jeremy ^{(v^_^v Stop... at a WHAMMY!!)} 00:53, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Firefox crashes

My regular Firefox browser (version 1.0, 2004) crashes whenever I try to access a Wikipedia page. Does anybody know what's happening? can this be fixed by changing the settings? (I asked this before, but the thread seems to have vanished.) Fremdh (talk) 16:18, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It's almost certainly worth updating your Firefox (2004?!), as this will help not only with the Wikipedia problem—probably—but also with the rest of the Internet! ╟─TreasuryTag►belonger─╢ 16:27, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I saw that thread not too long ago - it has since been archived to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 68#Firefox crashes (VPT gets archived pretty quickly, mainly due to the number of new threads that get started). However, it wasn't posted by User:Fremdh (who only has five contributions: the one above, and four to Roop Nagar), but by IP user 82.31.207.41 (talk) 18:26, 28 November 2009. See that thread for information posted by other users, but you should place additional comments here. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:45, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks everybody, but I'd have liked an answer to my question... Fremdh (talk) 11:48, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

We though we had... Firefox 1.0 is pretty much obsolete, so best to upgrade it. The most recent is 3.5.5, which (I think) was released yesterday. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:18, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

When asking about problems with quite obsolete software, especially free obsolete software, the usual answer is to update to the latest release, and try it again. With Mozilla Firefox, it is possible to upgrade to older versions than the current one, but I do not know why you want an older version, unless you are running on Windows 95 or another old operating system which (potentially, at least) has problems with the most recent Firefox, which is version 3.5.5. --DThomsen8 (talk) 14:25, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Look: Wikipedia is supposed to be for everybody, not just those with equipment and software younger than their pet mice. Pretty clearly nobody knows what's caused the problem. I think it must be in a stylesheet change sometime in the last three months; I say this because if I copy a Wikipedia page to my own site, it loads perfectly well, though of course without most of its decorations. I don't believe that the change was in any strict sense necessary (did any of you notice a change in the general formatting of Wikipedia pages?), and I think Wikipedia should try to avoid such tinkering as far as possible. Fremdh (talk) 10:39, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Problem solved: block javascript. There is a downside to this, but I can live with it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fremdh (talk • contribs) 20:24, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is supposed to be for everybody, but we would be doing the majority of our users a disservice as well as making software development unnecessarily difficult and slow if we continued to support old technology indefinitely for the sake of < 0.1% of users^source. I would also point out that even Mozilla doesn't officially support any versions of Firefox older than 3.0. Personally, I would be more concerned about unpatched known security holes than with sites not working properly. Mr.Z-man 21:35, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

actually, firefox crashes regularly when I go to wikipedia - it seems to hang on an editing cycle (hangs on a preview or save). I have version 3.5.5. It doesn't crash me anywhere else except on a wikipedia edit cycle. However, I have determined it must be one of my add-ons. It doesn't seem to happen when I bring up Firefox in safe mode. So.. if I figure out which add-on is causing the problem, I will post it here. The problem is that it doesn't happen all the time. It seems to take repeated views in the edit cycle for it to happen. So - I will just keep playing around with it until I can narrow it down. stmrlbs|talk 22:29, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Footnote markers

Some other language versions of the project use just a superscripted number to denote a footnote, but the English version uses a number in square brackets. Why is that? Using just a number would be far more pleasing to the eye and would improve readability. -Rrius (talk) 09:15, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

This has come up before (I think on VPR last time), but to cut a long story short, the brackets are used for two main purposes AFAIK: to increase the clickable area of the footnote, and to easily distinguish one from another when two (or more) are used in conjunction with each other, thus avoiding a "pileup" of numbers (^{1 7 12 27}). I don't think an obvious solution was found to either of those issues last time this came up for debate. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 13:02, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive 38#Turn off display of in-line cites by default from November 2008. If you want to see the cites fainter, off, or bolder when logged out and you have Stylish (or Greasemonkey if you prefer) see Salix alba's Wikipedia - hide reference links, or my amateur adaptation of User:Mzajac's idea at Wikipedia - fainter inline cites and its complement Wikipedia - bolder inline cites. The last time I tested these was a year ago, though. They should be easy to modify to make them appear how you want. -84user (talk) 00:14, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Copyright symbol

I've often found myself looking for the © symbol, and it's always a pain to have to go and copy/paste it from elsewhere. Is there any chance it could be added to the insert menu (unless I'm just being dim and it's already there)? PC78 (talk) 19:47, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

It's not, but what would be the use? In any case, you can also type &copy;. — Edokter • Talk • 20:04, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Convenience, obviously. The same reason we have an insert menu in the first place. PC78 (talk) 20:12, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I think what Edokter meant was more along the line of 'What would be the use on Wikipedia?' Is this a character that editors are using in articles, and if so, for what purpose? I may be missing something totally obvious here, but off the top of the head I can't think of any place where we'd want to use it. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:11, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I tend to use it in fair use rationales when naming copyright holders. The insert menu is already loaded with a multitude of obscure symbols which won't be needed by most editors (I don't even know what many of them are). I'm not asking for much. PC78 (talk) 22:46, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The insert menu is MediaWiki:Edittools.js and MediaWiki:Edittools; you can discuss this on the talk page. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:52, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Cheers, I'll move my request there. PC78 (talk) 15:02, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Annoying bug

Thread moved from help desk, as advised.

This may be a long shot, but I'm wondering if anyone who has any influence in such matters could press for a long-standing bug (and, for me, regular irritant) in Wikipedia's "diff" generation to be fixed. This is a typical example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nonsuch_Palace&action=historysubmit&diff=328327302&oldid=283689391

You can see that several paragraphs that are identical or substantially identical are flagged as completely different, due to the software getting confused for some reason that I do not fully understand. I believe this is logged as a known issue, and has been for some time, but is seen as low priority and appears unlikely to ever be fixed without a prod from someone. If there is a more appropriate place for me to post this request then please let me know. 86.146.46.190 (talk) 21:58, 5 December 2009 (UTC).

Yes, it is known. One of the Village Pump sites, probably technical is the best place to discuss it further.--SPhilbrickT 22:15, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, this is not an easy problem to solve, and there are no free diff software packages available that perform any better than the one we have now. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 21:10, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Login while editing

Hello fine folks. I was think whether it would be possible to provide a login-while-editing option in wikipedia pages. That is, suppose you are not logged in. You want to edit a page, and you want to do it under your ID, not anonymously. Currently you have to first click login which leads you to the login page. Then you enter your login info and click login which leads you back to the article page. Then you click edit and you can edit under your ID. What I am proposing is, can't we provide a system in which you don't have to first login and then click edit. Instead, you simply click edit, and provide the login information on the edit page itself (kinda like what livejournal and blogger do when you want to post a comment). It saves two page-loads (three if you include logging out). This can be very useful for users who want to make a quick edit but don't because they don't want to go through the process of logging in and then logging out. just for a single edit. Such people may either not want to use thet "stay logged-in" option or may be using a different computer. I don't see any problems with protected pages etc. that can't be easily solved while using this scheme. What do you think? --ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 03:26, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, you can already do something similar. Clicking login while having an edit window open takes you back to the edit window when login is completed. Intelligentsium 03:28, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Whoa! Yeah it does now - when did this happen? Uptil the last time I edited clicking login while having an edit window open always took me to the article page, which I is the thing I found nonsensical, and a major motivation for this messge. I guess that's still one extra click but certainly more tolerable than before. Still what do you think of the idea of adding a couple of textboxes for login info right on the edit page? --ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 06:57, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

If that is too visually distracting, you can also open a new window, log in, then preview your edit before saving it. Strictly speaking, preview is not needed but it's one way to be certain your signature line works as intended. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:37, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Still, do you see any downside to adding a couple of textboxes for login info right on the edit page - which make the whole thing simpler? ReluctantPhilosopher (talk) 06:57, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, more elements to a page makes it harder to understand. We are actually in a process to make the edit page visually more lean atm. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:46, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

There are some tips for ensuring you are logged in at WP:LOGGEDOUT. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 16:29, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Question about templates and page loading time

Hi, I'm trying to write something up about citation templates and page loading. It appears that when an article contains lots of citation templates, it becomes increasingly slow to load. I don't know whether that's because of the templates directly, or whether it's simply that longer articles may have more templates and the length also happens to make them slow to load. Does anyone know the answer? SlimVirgin 12:33, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Citation templates likely use a lot of parserfunctions. That adds complexity to the page, which causes it to take longer to parse and render. Especially when you are logged in, you will notice this, because then you are often not served with a cached copy of the page. You can see the complexity and rendertime of a page when you look at the page's html source. There are the following comments:

<!-- 
NewPP limit report
Preprocessor node count: 3144/1000000
Post-expand include size: 64735/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 32961/2048000 bytes
Expensive parser function count: 1/500
-->

This says how many parserfunctions and wikicode elements are used. The first number of the line is the usage, the last number is the maximum allowed.

<!-- Saved in parser cache with key enwiki:pcache:idhash:5554932-0!1!0!mdy!!en!3 and timestamp 20091206124419 -->

After a page is parsed (but before it is rendered to HTML), it can be stored in the parsercache. This line says WHEN and with which number it was stored. This cache is updated when the page changes (or it's templates, categories etc). Things like {{CURRENTTIME}} might be bad for the parsercache I presume... Not sure actually.

<!-- Served by srv173 in 0.912 secs. -->

This is the last important comment in the page source. It tells you which server rendered the HTML and served it to you. When you are not logged in, it is likely however that this is an "earlier" result that was cached by one of the squid servers. It might be given to you significantly faster then.

You might remember that when Michael Jackson died, the servers almost went down. The page was very large and very intensive to calculate (over 10 seconds i believe). It was however edited so often that the parsercache and the squids had to update several times a minute. That was putting an enormous strain on the core of the services, that they couldn't handle it anymore. We had never before had so much traffic on a single page before. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:55, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

An active followup thread can be found in Wikipedia talk:Citing sources #Making pages faster to load. Eubulides (talk) 04:11, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Bug for this?

Anyone know if there is a bug for this particular issue?

<div>[[foo]]<br>
[[foo]]<br>
[[foo]]<br>
[[foo]]<br>
[[foo]]</div>

outputs the following html

<div><a href="/wiki/Foo" title="Foo" class="mw-redirect">foo</a><br />
<p><a href="/wiki/Foo" title="Foo" class="mw-redirect">foo</a><br />
<a href="/wiki/Foo" title="Foo" class="mw-redirect">foo</a><br />
<a href="/wiki/Foo" title="Foo" class="mw-redirect">foo</a><br /></p>
<a href="/wiki/Foo" title="Foo" class="mw-redirect">foo</a></div>

which displays

foo

foo
foo
foo

foo

— RockMFR 18:37, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I couldn't find a bug that fit exactly. The behavior is somewhat similar to bugzilla:5718 and bugzilla:4780 but I can't immediately tell if the cause is the same or different. Dragons flight (talk) 19:13, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I ran this through HTML-Kit and invoked HTML Tidy. The breaks are certainly being converted by Tidy, but I don't see that it is adding the <p>...</p> tags. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 12:57, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Auto-playing audio

Is there any way to make the Greensleeves file in my user page start playing immediately as the page is loaded, without the reader having to click on it? --___A. di M. 22:21, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Userpages are not MySpace profiles. Auto-playing audio is bad. EVula // talk // ☯ // 22:26, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Ditto above. If a user wishes to listen to it, they can click on it. Its fine if you use a visual to point out where the play button is, but don't make the decision for users. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 22:31, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Would there be a way to add this option to Preferences? I'm not saying that it's there now, but could it be an upcoming feature? Woogee (talk) 00:05, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I cannot foresee any encyclopaedic use to this. Most people would not wish immediately to hear a piece of music upon visiting an article about that piece of music; that some music cannot be played (for copyright reasons) also creates inconsistency in articles. Intelligentsium 02:00, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there's any conflict between auto-playing music and copyright concerns (Fair Use sounds would just be small snippets is all, and it'd be odd to hear a random selection of a song.
Now, that said, even though there's no autoplay/copyright conflict, there's most certainly an autoplay/good taste conflict... EVula // talk // ☯ // 20:06, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

You could write some javascript which would cause it to autoplay, then talk people into including it in their personal .js. I'm not sure why anyone would want to do that, though, since autoplaying music is the spawn of hell. Algebraist 17:58, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Sophisticated hacker vandalism to 2009 Flu Pandemic article -- unfixable by users

Resolved

 – Simple vandalism that was taken care of swiftly. No biggie. EVula // talk // ☯ // 00:33, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Sophisticated hacker vandalism to this important public health page,

2009 flu pandemic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic

Instead of using hacking skills to puncture the ego of publicity-hound, a hacker has chosen to vandalize the "Vaccines" section of this page, by adding

"This is in strong contrast to the 1976 swine flu outbreak, where mass vaccinations in the United States caused over 1,000,000 cases where peoples heads fell off.[71]"

The attempt at humor is buttressed by coding that makes it impossible for an ordinary user to remove it, so that when one goes to the "edit" screen to revert the vandalism, the "funny joke" is not found there. If one prints a preview of the text on the edit screen, the text is not found there, either. Same results for the edit screens of either the Vaccines section or for the entire article.

Need to identify the hack and hacker, and take steps to remove both from the site.

MAIN ARTICLE CONTAINS THE VANDALISM

Vaccines

Main article: 2009 flu pandemic vaccine As of November 19, 2009, over 65 million doses of vaccine had been administered in over 16 countries; the vaccine seems safe and effective, producing a strong immune response that should protect against infection.[67] The current trivalent seasonal influenza vaccine neither increases nor decreases the risk of infection with H1N1, since the new pandemic strain is quite different from the strains used in this vaccine.[68][69] Overall the safety profile of the new H1N1 vaccine is similar to that of the seasonal flu vaccine, and fewer than a dozen cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome have been reported post-vaccination.[70] Only a few of these are suspected to be actually related to the H1N1 vaccination, and only temporary illness has been observed.[70] This is in strong contrast to the 1976 swine flu outbreak, where mass vaccinations in the United States caused over 1,000,000 cases where peoples heads fell off.[71]

There are safety concerns for people who are allergic to eggs because the viruses for the vaccine are grown in chicken-egg-based cultures. People with egg allergies may be able to receive the vaccine, after consultation with their physician, in graded doses in a careful and controlled environment.[72] A vaccine manufactured by Baxter is made without using eggs, but requires two doses three weeks apart to produce immunity.[73] As of late November in Canada, there have been 24 confirmed cases of anaphylactic shock following vaccination, including one death. The estimated rate is 1 anaphylactic reaction per 312,000 persons receiving the vaccine. However, there has been one batch of vaccine in which 6 persons suffered anaphylaxis out of 157,000 doses given. The relatively few remainder doses of this batch are being held pending investigation. Dr. David Butler-Jones, Canada’s chief public health officer, has stated that even though this is an adjuvanted vaccine, that does not appear to be the cause of this severe allergic reaction in these 6 patients.[74][75]

EDIT PAGE DOES NOT CONTAIN THE VANDALISM

Vaccines

Main article: 2009 flu pandemic vaccine

As of November 19, 2009, over 65 million doses of vaccine had been administered in over 16 countries; the vaccine seems safe and effective, producing a strong immune response that should protect against infection. The current trivalent seasonal influenza vaccine neither increases nor decreases the risk of infection with H1N1, since the new pandemic strain is quite different from the strains used in this vaccine. Overall the safety profile of the new H1N1 vaccine is similar to that of the seasonal flu vaccine, and fewer than a dozen cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome have been reported post-vaccination. Only a few of these are suspected to be actually related to the H1N1 vaccination, and only temporary illness has been observed. This is in strong contrast to the 1976 swine flu outbreak, where mass vaccinations in the United States caused over 500 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome and led to 25 deaths.

There are safety concerns for people who are allergic to eggs because the viruses for the vaccine are grown in chicken-egg-based cultures. People with egg allergies may be able to receive the vaccine, after consultation with their physician, in graded doses in a careful and controlled environment. A vaccine manufactured by Baxter is made without using eggs, but requires two doses three weeks apart to produce immunity.

As of late November in Canada, there have been 24 confirmed cases of anaphylactic shock following vaccination, including one death. The estimated rate is 1 anaphylactic reaction per 312,000 persons receiving the vaccine. However, there has been one batch of vaccine in which 6 persons suffered anaphylaxis out of 157,000 doses given. The relatively few remainder doses of this batch are being held pending investigation. Dr. David Butler-Jones, Canada’s chief public health officer, has stated that even though this is an adjuvanted vaccine, that does not appear to be the cause of this severe allergic reaction in these 6 patients.

THE EDIT PREVIEW PAGE ALSO DOES NOT REVEAL THE VANDALISM

Editing 2009 flu pandemic (section)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Preview

Remember that this is only a preview; your changes have not yet been saved!

Vaccines

Main article: 2009 flu pandemic vaccine

As of November 19, 2009, over 65 million doses of vaccine had been administered in over 16 countries; the vaccine seems safe and effective, producing a strong immune response that should protect against infection.[1] The current trivalent seasonal influenza vaccine neither increases nor decreases the risk of infection with H1N1, since the new pandemic strain is quite different from the strains used in this vaccine.[2][3] Overall the safety profile of the new H1N1 vaccine is similar to that of the seasonal flu vaccine, and fewer than a dozen cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome have been reported post-vaccination.[4] Only a few of these are suspected to be actually related to the H1N1 vaccination, and only temporary illness has been observed.[4] This is in strong contrast to the 1976 swine flu outbreak, where mass vaccinations in the United States caused over 500 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome and led to 25 deaths.[5]

There are safety concerns for people who are allergic to eggs because the viruses for the vaccine are grown in chicken-egg-based cultures. People with egg allergies may be able to receive the vaccine, after consultation with their physician, in graded doses in a careful and controlled environment.[6] A vaccine manufactured by Baxter is made without using eggs, but requires two doses three weeks apart to produce immunity.[7]

As of late November in Canada, there have been 24 confirmed cases of anaphylactic shock following vaccination, including one death. The estimated rate is 1 anaphylactic reaction per 312,000 persons receiving the vaccine. However, there has been one batch of vaccine in which 6 persons suffered anaphylaxis out of 157,000 doses given. The relatively few remainder doses of this batch are being held pending investigation. Dr. David Butler-Jones, Canada’s chief public health officer, has stated that even though this is an adjuvanted vaccine, that does not appear to be the cause of this severe allergic reaction in these 6 patients.[8][9]

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.165.11.37 (talk) 00:10, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Hm? It seems to now be fixed. Perhaps you should try refreshing your browser cache? Calvin 1998 ^(t·c) 00:14, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes it is more dangerous to overestimate one's enemies than to underestimate them. There is no "hacker vandalism". It was only simple vandalism which was reverted so quickly that between the time you loaded the page and click the edit button, it was removed. Intelligentsium 00:21, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposal - replace minor edit box

I have found and seen a lot of people comment that the minor edit box is misused a lot. Many people, even some veteran editors, simply do not know or bother to follow the guidelines as to what is considered a "minor" edit. They use it to lazily not explain a more major edit, or attempt to slip by a controversial change.

An idea I came up with to solve this problem is to replace the minor edit box with several other boxes that could be checked in lieu of one called "minor edit." Anyone who is making any such minor edit would check the appropriate box. All others would be compelled to explain.

Some possible boxes would be as follows (though the number should be reduced to simplify it):

• Spelling correction
• Caps
• Punctuation
• Minor word correction (addition/removal/change of words without changing meaning, such as a to an when needed)
• Formatting fix (e.g. italics, headings)
• Spacing (e.g. more or less white space)
• Image resizing
• Linking a word/phrase already in page to another Wikipedia page
• Addition of a template (e.g. a navbox)
• Removal of vandalism
• Removal of spam
• Removal of inappropriate external link(s)

With this proposal, there would be the option of checking multiple boxes.

If the edit summary is left blank, what is in the checked box would automatically become the edit summary.

I am not saying all these examples have to be listed, or that other suggestions can't be added. But one thing for sure is it'll stop the incorrect use of the minor edit box. Sebwite (talk) 05:33, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

How would these options foul up users that are abusing the existing system? If someone wants to "slip by a controversial change", they could still just mark it as "formatting". EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:22, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

There is a degree of honor. But a list of what is considered "minor" will have the psychological effect of others knowing what a minor edit is without having to click any further, and would segregate boxes for different types of minor edits. It would also specify what certain types of minor edits are and automatically fill in edit summaries when not used. That way, if, for example, one was adding a new navbox to numerous pages, they could do it more efficiently. Sebwite (talk) 14:43, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Not necessarily. They'd have to check a single box several more times (one for each page), versus just a single box each time. (and they could copy and paste their edit summary for each page; that's what I do when I do mass edits) EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:06, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

For me, I don't really notice misuse of minor edits, but then, I don't think I notice whether edits are marked as minor to begin with. I use the minor box myself, but I don't really pay attention to the marking all that much on other edits. Nevertheless, if there is a problem, it's not major enough to warrant a software change; I also doubt any software change would occur that made the edit page more complicated than it is. Equazcion (talk) 17:15, 8 Dec 2009 (UTC)

How about simplifying the above list to the following four boxes:

• Spelling, punctuation, caps, or grammar fix
• Wiki-format fix
• Addition of new template
• Removal of vandalism, spam, or external link(s)

Sebwite (talk) 17:44, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Please take note of the fact that the usability team is considering moving the "minor edit" part into a "publish dialog" in the future. See experiments here (Choose the Publish button). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:00, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

merge proposal that is redundant and unremovable

I was looking at the Charles Cullen article and noticed a merge template that seemed redundant but it does not appear in the edit page. I am not sure how to remove it Matt (talk) 11:21, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting this. The problem was a merge tenmplate added to Template:Infobox serial killer. I have wrapped it in "noinclude" tags. If you refresh the page (e.g. Shift+F5 in Firefox) the message disappears. - Pointillist (talk) 11:39, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I think template merges should be on the doc page. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 17:48, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

WP's CSS stylesheets

I'm thinking of making something similar to the special characters input tool (underneath every edit window) for a site of my own, and I've been snooping around the page source trying to figure out how it works. Specifically, I'm looking at this part of the page's source code:

<div id="editpage-specialchars" style="margin-top: 15px; border: 1px solid #aaaaaa; padding: 2px;" class="edittools-text edittools-version-019">
<p><b>Copy and paste:</b> – — ‘ ’ “ ” ° ″ ′ ≈ ≠ ≤ ≥ ± − × ÷ ← → · §   <b>Sign your posts on talk pages:</b> ~~~~
</p>
<hr />
<p><small>
{{}}   {{{}}}   |   []   [[]]   [[Category:]]   #REDIRECT [[]]   &nbsp;   <s></s>   <sup></sup>   <sub></sub>   <code></code>   <pre></pre>   <blockquote></blockquote>   <ref></ref>   
{{Reflist}}   <references/>   <includeonly></includeonly>   <noinclude></noinclude>   {{DEFAULTSORT:}}   <nowiki></nowiki>   <!-- -->   <span class="plainlinks"></span>

</small>
</p>
<hr />
<p><small>
<b>Symbols:</b> ~ | ¡ ¿ † ‡ ↔ ↑ ↓ • ¶   # ½ ⅓ ⅔ ¼ ¾ ⅛ ⅜ ⅝ ⅞ ∞   ‘ ’ “ ” «»   ¤ ₳ ฿ ₵ ¢ ₡ ₢ $ ₫ ₯ € ₠ ₣ ƒ ₴ ₭ ₤ ℳ ₥ ₦ № ₧ ₰ £ ៛ ₨ ₪ ৳ ₮ ₩ ¥   ♠ ♣ ♥ ♦   m² m³   ♭ ♯ ♮   © ® ™<br/>
<b>Characters:</b> Á á Ć ć É é Í í Ĺ ĺ Ń ń Ó ó Ŕ ŕ Ś ś Ú ú Ý ý Ź ź   À à È è Ì ì Ò ò Ù ù    â Ĉ ĉ Ê ê Ĝ ĝ Ĥ ĥ Î î Ĵ ĵ Ô ô Ŝ ŝ Û û Ŵ ŵ Ŷ ŷ   Ä ä Ë ë Ï ï Ö ö Ü ü Ÿ ÿ   ß   à ã Ẽ ẽ Ĩ ĩ Ñ ñ Õ õ Ũ ũ Ỹ ỹ   Ç ç Ģ ģ Ķ ķ Ļ ļ Ņ ņ Ŗ ŗ Ş ş Ţ ţ   Đ đ   Ů ů   Ǎ ǎ Č č Ď ď Ě ě Ǐ ǐ Ľ ľ Ň ň Ǒ ǒ Ř ř Š š Ť ť Ǔ ǔ Ž ž   Ā ā Ē ē Ī ī Ō ō Ū ū Ȳ ȳ Ǣ ǣ   ǖ ǘ ǚ ǜ   Ă ă Ĕ ĕ Ğ ğ Ĭ ĭ Ŏ ŏ Ŭ ŭ   Ċ ċ Ė ė Ġ ġ İ ı Ż ż   Ą ą Ę ę Į į Ǫ ǫ Ų ų   Ḍ ḍ Ḥ ḥ Ḷ ḷ Ḹ ḹ Ṃ ṃ Ṇ ṇ Ṛ ṛ Ṝ ṝ Ṣ ṣ Ṭ ṭ   Ł ł   Ő ő Ű ű   Ŀ ŀ   Ħ ħ   Ð ð Þ þ   Œ œ   Æ æ Ø ø Å å   Ə ə   {{Unicode|}} <br/>
<b>Greek:</b> Ά ά Έ έ Ή ή Ί ί Ό ό Ύ ύ Ώ ώ   Α α Β β Γ γ Δ δ   Ε ε Ζ ζ Η η Θ θ   Ι ι Κ κ Λ λ Μ μ   Ν ν Ξ ξ Ο ο Π π   Ρ ρ Σ σ ς Τ τ Υ υ   Φ φ Χ χ Ψ ψ Ω ω   {{Polytonic|}} <br/>
<b>Cyrillic:</b> А а Б б В в Г г   Ґ ґ Ѓ ѓ Д д Ђ ђ   Е е Ё ё Є є Ж ж   З з Ѕ ѕ И и І і   Ї ї Й й Ј ј К к   Ќ ќ Л л Љ љ М м   Н н Њ њ О о П п   Р р С с Т т Ћ ћ   У у Ў ў Ф ф Х х   Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш   Щ щ Ъ ъ Ы ы Ь ь   Э э Ю ю Я я   ́ <br/>

<b>IPA:</b> t̪ d̪ ʈ ɖ ɟ ɡ ɢ ʡ ʔ   ɸ ʃ ʒ ɕ ʑ ʂ ʐ ʝ ɣ ʁ ʕ ʜ ʢ ɦ   ɱ ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ   ʋ ɹ ɻ ɰ   ʙ ʀ ɾ ɽ   ɫ ɬ ɮ ɺ ɭ ʎ ʟ   ɥ ʍ ɧ   ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ   ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ   ɨ ʉ ɯ   ɪ ʏ ʊ   ɘ ɵ ɤ   ə ɚ   ɛ ɜ ɝ ɞ ʌ ɔ   ɐ ɶ ɑ ɒ   ʰ ʷ ʲ ˠ ˤ ⁿ ˡ   ˈ ˌ ː ˑ ̪   {{IPA|}}
</small>
</p>
</div>

I assume the important thing here is the class="edittools-text edittools-version-019". I looked around the 6 or 7 stylesheets that are linked at the top of the source code, but I couldn't find this object anywhere. Does anyone have any idea where it might be located?

Thanks, rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 20:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Edittools for the basic version. For en.wp's version, you also need MediaWiki:Edittools.js and the "Edittools javascript loader" code that we have in MediaWiki:Common.js/edit.js (which you can put in MediaWiki:Common.js for your own site). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:32, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The edittools-version-* class is checked by the Javascript, to see if the javascript might be outdated. Javascript is cached, so if it's own version is 18 and it sees 19 in the classname, it knows that it is outdated and should force a reload of itself) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:34, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps we need [[Help:Edittools]] to explain all of this. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:09, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Or just an expansion/addendum to the info given at the top of MediaWiki talk:Edittools. -- Quiddity (talk) 22:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, guys! rʨanaɢ ^talk/_contribs 22:23, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Edit toolbar citations / Access date format

I noticed that the "insert citation" feature in the edit toolbar now automatically inserts access dates as "8 December 2009" instead of "2009-12-08" as it did previously. Why has this been changed? I thought the consensus at Wikipedia:Mosnum/proposal on YYYY-MM-DD numerical dates was to keep the YYYY-MM-DD dates in footnotes (especially for access dates). Another reason why this change is bad is that the previously inserted access dates are still mostly YYYY-MM-DD and the new ones are not, which creates inconsistency (which is a major problem.) Can this change to the toolbar functionality be reverted somehow? Offliner (talk) 03:08, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

The proposal on YYYY-MM-DD numerical dates failed; there was no consensus. Thus it can't be used to support the notion that we should "keep" the YYYY-MM-DD dates in footnotes. There has never been any agreement to use YYYY-MM-DD dates in footnotes, so it makes no sense to talk about "keeping" them, except in individual articles where they might be used. --Jc3s5h (talk) 03:32, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

All right, forget it about the RFC. But what is the reason for this change? It should be a good one, since it leads to a major inconsistency. Offliner (talk) 03:35, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

The default edit toolbar has no facility for entering references. You must have chosen some option in your preferences. I suggest you figure out which preference setting you changed to add the reference editing facility, and let that guide you to who made the change. --Jc3s5h (talk) 03:43, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I mean the User:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar tool. Looks like the author changed on 19 November because someone thought the YYYY-MM-DD isn't allowed anymore: User_talk:Mr.Z-man/refToolbar#Date_formats. Offliner (talk) 03:49, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

It all started here (sorry). OrangeDog (τ • ε) 20:24, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Missing article

I am extremely puzzled by not being able to locate an article that I know for a fact existed. I once read the article myself and I have even found websites that quote the article :ORSAT Analysis

[redacted/possible copyvio] --RAM (talk) 04:52, 9 December 2009 (UTC) suspected copyvio removed davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 05:19, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I think I found what you are looking for, Orsat analysis. It was deleted as a suspected copyright violation. See WP:COPYRIGHT for information on Wikipedia and copyright. On that basis I redacted your text. However, this web site purports to quote the article as it existed in 2006. The text appears to be from this Excel spreadsheet with an internal date of 2000. It is possible that this date is incorrect and the Wikipedia page was created first. Other web sites containing the same text have dates of 2007 or later. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 05:19, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I have already had to deal with someone ripping off a Wikipedia article I have contributed heavily to, taking images I created for Wikipedia for plenum cable, putting the images in a PDF on their website, and then claiming copyright of the images. If it weren't for the fact that I retained my originals created in a weird way in a non-SVG format, there would be no way to prove that the article was not a ripoff of my work, and it becomes the word of the contributing editor against the person taking material freely offered and claiming as their own.

If the wikipedia article was the original, but someone takes it, makes PDF out of it, and backdates the creation/modification date of the PDF to before the article existed, and then the content thief posts a copyvio flag on the wikipedia article claiming it contains their copyrighted material, how can you prove the material on Wikipedia is not a copyvio? There appears to be no protection of and no defense for freely distributed content being subject to such abuse.

In such a case Wikipedia administrators are likely to bow down to the thief and just remove the article originally non-violating wikipedia content, since that is the easy route to dealing with the raping of Wikipedia's free distribution policy, as opposed to taking the thief to court or trying to get them to stop claiming copyright.

So how am I, a non-administrator, to determine if this deleted article is in fact not a copyright violation, if it has been removed from Wikipedia? It appears I have to accept the judgement of whoever deleted it and there is no option for a "copyleft activist" like me to review the deletion to make sure this wasn't a similar "theft and false claim of ownership of freely given content". DMahalko (talk) 05:43, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

In this case, the Internet archive page http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.cheresources.com/excessair.xls shows that the text of the deleted article existed at http://www.cheresources.com/excessair.xls 5 August 2003. As an administrator I can see the deleted Orsat analysis. It was created 17 September 2005 by the IP 203.199.51.148. It contained an unformatted word for word copy of the "Description" tab in the Excel spreadsheet. Deleted articles will not be made visible to all editors. See Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Deleted pages should be visible. PrimeHunter (talk) 06:26, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

To be exact, the spreadsheet starts "The Orsat Apparatus is used ..." while the Wikipedia article started "The Orsat Analysis is used ...". Apart from this, it was an identical copy including where to place double spaces. PrimeHunter (talk) 06:40, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Cant read Bengali articles on Wikipedia

Hi,

I am using Windows XP, Service pack 3 v.5512. Though I can operate the google toolokit, but I cant read the bengali articles that are uploaded in wikipedia. Kindly let me know how to go about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.162.43.57 (talk) 06:27, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Check out Bangla script display and input help on the Bengali Wikipedia, particularly the instructions related to Windows XP. Graham87 14:50, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Also see Help:Multilingual support (Indic) on the English Wikipedia. Graham87 15:01, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Annoying javascript bug(s) with banner

Resolved

1. Cookies/cache don't keep the fundraising banner closed, and I'm pretty sure that it should be based on the behavior of other such sitenotices...
2. Hitting [close] sometimes opens the fundraising page for some annoying reason

Using Firefox 3.5.5 on Vista on the beta skin. Are these supposed to be bugs or are they intentional? :x --Izno (talk) 08:42, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Looks like a glitch in CentralNotice script. Somehow the whole div.siteNoticeBig received onclick=goToDonationPage(), so naturally clicking on [hide] takes you to the donation page as well. — AlexSm 16:01, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Update: only banners with actual donation examples are affected, so (until this is fixed) just avoid clicking on those if you want to hide the banner. P.S. The problem is also apparent on this meta page. — AlexSm 16:32, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Trevor and Roan report that this should be fixed now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:31, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

"What links here" problems

Let's say template A contains a link to article B and is transcluded on article C, when checking "What links here" on article B, C is on the list. The problem I found is that if the link on the template is changed to point to D, C will still show up on the list even though there is no link to B, transcluded or otherwise, on C. Is this a known issue, does it take time to update, or am I doing something wrong? Keyed In (talk) 18:18, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I would assume it just takes a while to update. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 18:33, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. That's interesting though, because other pages (not templates) update immediately... I'll try again later.Keyed In (talk) 20:54, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

It's a recurrent issue. See this discussion, for example. --AndrewHowse (talk) 20:59, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, and it's more obvious, because the job queue has been rather large lately. Special:Statistics puts it at 48 million jobs atm. It will take weeks to get that down again. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:25, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Do we know if it's growing or shrinking? - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 22:22, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

It was 56 million earlier this week, and I know that Tim and domas took a few "noop" jobs from the queue by applying queries on the database by hand. Other than that, i'm not really sure (Haven't been that many "heavy use template" changes in the past 2 days though, so that surely should help a bit) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:33, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to all for your help. Keyed In (talk) 22:43, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

IP blocking policy

Please see discussion at WT:Blocking IP addresses#Updates required? and respond there. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 20:26, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

SVG refreshing

Hey, I've had this issue before and I can't remember how I solved it, or if I really did, but a SVG file that I updated with a newer version yesterday refuses to appear updated in the PNG files. Here's the file, and Here's how its supposed to look. I've checked around, and I don't think its just my machine. It doesn't usually take this long to fix itself, so is there something I can do?-- Patrick {_oѺ^∞} 19:52, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I purged the page. If you bypass your browser cache, it should appear fine now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:08, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll remember that if this comes up again.-- Patrick {_oѺ^∞} 16:09, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

How to enable Huggle on user page?

Resolved

 – config corrected  7  07:16, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

How do I enable Huggle? I have the (that I understand) correct values set here, but when I try to log on with Huggle it says "Huggle is not enabled on your account, check user configuration page." What am I not doing? Thanks. --Mike Allen ^{talk · contribs} 06:05, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Have you tried adding "enable:true" at the top per Wikipedia:Huggle/Download?  7  06:31, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I think that's the problem - not sure where "enable-all" came from but if you look at mine you can see it just says "enable:true" and mine works.  7  06:33, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

I got it from here. Just tried what you suggested and it worked. Thank you. --Mike Allen ^{talk · contribs} 06:42, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

No prob - that's the project level config which is really meant for turning on and off huggle for everyone from Meta (don't worry - it doesn't do anything when users use it). Glad it works.  7  07:16, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Twinkle

I have a question about Twinkle (user, TW). I am tagging articles for CSD but the tab for CSD doesn't work. All of the other menu in Twinkle does work, but CSD doesn't. This was the first time happened since I start to use Twinkle.--JL 09 _^q?c 15:51, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

"Doesn't work" is not a good bug report. What are you doing, and what happens when you do it? Algebraist 15:54, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, sorry for the choice of word. Whenever I click the CSD tab, nothing pops out, just, nothing. Unlike the XFD tag, prod or rpp where a menu pops out to let taggers choose what kind of criteria should be applied.--JL 09 _^q?c 15:57, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Talk pages not archived correctly

Resolved

 – Fixed. Peachey88 ^{(Talk Page · Contribs)} 23:13, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

The talk pages of KAL007 have been archived. The problem is two-fold:

• Only 5 archives are listed on the current talk page. But, there are actually 6 of them. The only way to get to number 6 archive, is to click the link to number 5, and then change the "5" to "6" in the URL box, after number 5 is displayed, and then "enter" again.

• Part of the archive 6 is missing, if you read the page in the normal way. However, if you open the edit box, and read the html, the missing parts are there, but with a light orange background color.

I do not know if that page (number 6 archive) was done automatically by a bot, or if someone did it manually. Either way, I think the situation needs to be repaired, so that the entire talk history of KAL007 is fully preserved and accessible. I am reluctant to try to fix it myself, because of the admonition that archived pages should not be edited.

Here are the links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007/Archive_5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007/Archive_6

Can someone fix it? EditorASC (talk) 22:56, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

• That is a manually generated archive box used on that page, you need to manually update it by looking for the {{Archive box}} on the talk page and add the relevant information. Peachey88 ^{(Talk Page · Contribs)} 23:13, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Search page help links

The help links on the search page got removed (without any discussion) when the new search interface was deployed some time ago. There is a discussion about adding them back. See MediaWiki talk:Searchmenu-exists#Renewed request.

And a reminder: We now have a new central page for discussing MediaWiki interface messages: Wikipedia:MediaWiki messages. It is kind of a "Village pump (MediaWiki messages)". So if MediaWiki interface messages interest you, consider adding that page to your watchlist.

--David Göthberg (talk) 03:12, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikimedia virus

Resolved

 – Tagged link is now listed as safe. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:41, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Norton Safe Web from Symantec has tagged wikimedia as having a virus at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2b/AVMeiyappan_young.jpg . Perhaps Norton should be notified of an error...or is there really a virus sitting on wikimedia?Smallman12q (talk) 00:56, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Since the detected threat is "Trojan.Maliframe!html", which "is a generic detection for HTML files containing malicious code", I'd say this must be a mistake, since the address is an image file, not an HTML file, and contains no code. Equazcion (talk) 01:00, 9 Dec 2009 (UTC)

There was actually a comment at the end of the jpeg file that had an HTML iframe tag, which is presumably the trojan detected; I don't know whether any browser would actually have been affected by that. If an admin wants, they could delete the old version of the file. Anomie⚔ 01:40, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I posted to ANI about this. Hopefully an administrator will delete the old version of the file. In any case, the Foundation is the only one with the authority to ask Symantec to review their claim, but that shouldn't happen until after the image is gone. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:48, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Why should any authority be needed? Of cource, in practice, Symantec would probably take more notice of a formal request from the Foundation, but I don't see why any concerned reader shouldn't report this, and I see that 16 people have already done so. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:12, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

To click on the "Site owner? Click here" button and initiate re-checking procedures, you have to own the site. The comments are open to all, as you noticed. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 00:09, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Multi-user Contribution page

This is sort of a technical proposal, so maybe it's in the wrong place. I was thinking recently about a possible tool, essentially a Contribution page (like [4]) that you could add multiple users to. It would presumably sort edits chronologically- the purpose being to see all of a sock puppeteer's edits in-line with his socks, for a more complete overview of their editing style, and to spot 3RR-by-proxy, etc.

Would this be technically difficult to put together? And again, is this the wrong place? --King Öomie 15:33, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

You are in the right place. Many technically minded Wikipedians are reading this page so here you can get good feedback. Thus this page is a good place to start.

And yes, your idea seems very useful. I guess it could be implemented as a tool on the toolserver for starters, since I think the toolserver has access to the contribution data. Are there any toolserver coders here that can confirm that?

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:29, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Toolserver would work, though I'd been assuming it would be something more like User:Lupin/Monitor_my_watchlist, something on-wiki so Popups et. al would be able to function. --King Öomie 17:05, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I've seen a load of similar sock-related tools on the toolserver that sound similar. I'm sure someone will be able to provide the link in a minute :) - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 17:53, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

King Öomie: Right, having it on-wiki would be better. But usually it is quicker to get something implemented at the toolserver. Another option that seems possible is to code it using javascript and some ajax calls to the API. Although that is way beyond my javascript abilities, and it would anyway break popups etc.

Jarry1250: Yeah, I hope you are right!

--David Göthberg (talk) 18:14, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

A tool that can do this: http://toolserver.org/~erwin85/contribs.php. Not exactly what you want, since it's on the toolserver rather than on-wiki, but better than nothing. Maralia (talk) 19:30, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks much. Looks promising. *Pores over sockpuppet conspiracy theories* --King Öomie 21:35, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Persistent time out errors at List of Wii games

I and other users have expressed persistent time out errors when comparing histories or previewing changes at List of Wii games. This problem seems to be specific to this article. Any help appreciated. Error message for reference:

Request: GET http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Wii_games&action=historysubmit&diff=330867755&oldid=330850001, from 68.14.224.197 via sq33.wikimedia.org (squid/2.7.STABLE6) to 208.80.152.29 (208.80.152.29) Error: ERR_READ_TIMEOUT, errno [No Error] at Fri, 11 Dec 2009 18:47:57 GMT

Aether7 (talk) 19:14, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

I think it's because that page is too big and complex. It uses almost half of the allowed preprocessor node count (Preprocessor node count: 493958/1000000). It could be caused by the extensive use of {{dts}}. I guess it would be worth trying to replace them with some simpler template or no template at all. Svick (talk) 19:28, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks alot. We are currently trying to find ways of condensing information on the list, so its good to know the dts template may be a problem. Do you know of any simpler template that can be used for date sorting? Aether7 (talk) 20:20, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

There is {{dts vgr2}}. I switched the article to this template, and it uses much less preprocessor nodes now, but I had to change dates like “Q4 2009” to just “2009” and dates that use {{TBA}} don't sort properly. The latter issue could be easily solved by not using that template, but I don't know how to solve the former. Svick (talk) 22:01, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Excellent. I'm not getting any more timeout errors. Aether7 (talk) 22:39, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Strange edit history

Could someone take a look at the edit history of Talk:Jack Sarfatti (edit | article | history | links | watch | logs)? The two edits made by 98.234.144.82 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) recently have been greyed out and the logs give no indication of what has happened. __meco (talk) 08:41, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Those edits have been oversighted. ≈ Chamal ^talk ¤ 08:51, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I see. There ought to be something one could click on to get that explanation right away. __meco (talk) 09:46, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmm.. yes it should, maybe a letter bit that features a tooltip (perhaps the letter "O" (eg: O)) or put something like "(Oversighted)" at the end off the edit summary area like the edit filters do with their automatic tagging. Peachey88 ^{(Talk Page · Contribs)} 10:08, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Another confusing thing probably limited to administrators (who cannot see oversighted edits): I see the unlinked text "(del/undel)" to the left of the edits at Special:Contributions/98.234.144.82 (but not in the page history). PrimeHunter (talk) 10:37, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Please revert my changes

To http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Magdalene

I was attempting to fix a reference and got lost in a web of references and my brain isn't functioning in undo mode tonight.

Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Levalley (talk • contribs) 06:22, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I think I fixed it. Equazcion (talk) 06:30, 13 Dec 2009 (UTC)

Problems with showing PNG images?

I opened this page López and it looks ok. But if I opened Lopez, which redirects to the same page, the PNG image is not scaled, it occupies all the screen. Tried in Firefox, IE, Chrome, it acts the same. Weird, now after 2 minutes, in Firefox looks ok, but not in IE and Chrome. Maybe depends on the way you link it? test Ark25 (talk) 22:35, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Looks fine to me, using FF 3.5.5 ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 23:07, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Fine in IE8 and Safari as well. Intelligentsium 23:10, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like there was some caching involved - not sure what the original issue was, since neither the article nor the image seem to have been modified lately - but I'm guessing the various caches between the server and your screen were conspiring to delay you seeing the fix. (See WP:Bypass your cache)

The redirect has both a different URL, so separate browser cache entry; and additional content (the "Redirected from..." line), so potentially separate server cache entry too. - IMSoP (talk) 19:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Import sources enabled on the English Wikipedia

It's now possible to import revisions from Meta and the Nostalgia Wikipedia to this site]]. It would be nice if that functionality could be extended to other language Wikipedias, but this is a very good start! Graham87 02:54, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Excellent news! So, where do we file revision import requests? :) –Whitehorse1 03:01, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

You can import pages from Commons, Foundation-wiki, Fr-Wiki, and the Czech-wiki to Meta, so if there is something very important to be moved here from one of those it could be done stepwise (it's also possible to import from De-Wiki and En-Wikibooks to Commons, so a three-stepper is possible, but would be annoying). MBisanz ^talk 03:57, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, I suggest WP:Requests for page importation be created. MBisanz ^talk 03:57, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I've just cobbled together Wikipedia:Requests for import. I started this a while ago but I had other priorities. :-) Graham87 04:10, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

According to this page about importing on Wikibooks, imported pages go to "Transwiki:Pagename" by default. How do we get that enabled here? Or am I missing something? Graham87 05:56, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I feel like it has to do with the MediaWiki:Configure-setting-wgImportTargetNamespace or MediaWiki:Import-interwiki-namespace setting. MBisanz ^talk 06:05, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Importing edits from the Nostalgia Wikipedia seems to do interesting things to old usernames. Many of the edits by User:Larry Sanger are recordede both here and at nost.wp under the username "Larry_Sanger"; edits where the username contains an underline are inaccessible using Special:Contributions. However, when an edit is imported, the username changes from "Larry_Sanger" to "Larry Sanger" and the edit can be accessed in the normal way. The early contribution list of Larry Sanger, especially before January 2002, now looks quite interesting! There are no edits recorded under the name "Larry Sanger" in the Nostalgia Wikipedia, because every edit is recorded with the username "Larry_Sanger" or "LarrySanger" there. See bug 323. Graham87 14:11, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

As an addendum, I would strongly advise against using the import feature for the soul purpose of fixing underlined usernames. The devs can do that job far more efficiently, and the Nostalgia Wikipedia doesn't have any edits after 21 December 2001. Graham87 14:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

It's now possible to import revision histories from the German, Spanish, French, Italian, and Polish Wikipedias. Graham87 01:14, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Last chance to vote in the Arbitration Committee Elections

This is a brief reminder to all interested editors that today is the final day to vote in the December 2009 elections to elect new members to the Arbitration Committee. The voting this year is by secret ballot using the SecurePoll extension. All unblocked editors who had at least 150 mainspace edits on or before 1 November 2009 are eligible to vote (check your account). Prospective voters are invited to review the candidate statements and the candidates' individual questions pages. Although voting is by secret ballots, and only votes submitted in this way will be counted, you are invited to leave brief comments on the candidates' comment pages and discuss candidates at length on the attached talkpages. If you have any questions or difficulties with the voting setup, please ask at the election talkpage. For live discussion, join #wikipedia-en-ace on freenode.

Update: The voting period opened on 1 December and will close on 14 December 2009 as advertised. However, that due to the configuration of the SecurePoll extension, the voting period may not extend to the previously announced time of 23:59 UTC on 14 December 2009. The software developers have been contacted and we are working to extend the voting period to the full two week period. This message will be updated to reflect any such changes, but barring intervention, votes cast after 00:00 UTC on 14 December 2009 (midnight tonight) will not be accepted by the software.

Follow this link to cast your vote

For the coordinators,  Skomorokh  13:00, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Strange map display problem in FF

I have asked about this at help desk & been supported via IRC but not solved the issue. Using Firefox (3.5.5) & when I am logged in the red location dot on Brompton Regis & other articles is outside the boundary of the county. I have checked the coords on streetmap & they are correct. This doesn't happen if I am not logged in or if logged in using IE8. On advice I have removed User:AndyZ/peerreviewer.js from my monobook & cleared cache without any change. Any advice appreciated.— Rod ^talk 15:40, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

I think it's because of User:Dispenser/alttextexplorer.js you have in your monobook.js. If you remove it, it should be fixed. Svick (talk) 15:52, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks that seems to have fixed it. Resolved.— Rod ^talk 18:49, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Reason field in moves: lack of limit on characters leads to botched edit summaries

In edit summaries we are limited to a certain number of characters from on high. We know what can fit because it's WYSIWYG; you can only type up to the number of characters that will show when you save (which can be increased by 50 characters in your preferences [in Gadgets → User interface gadgets: editing]). When moving pages, by contrast, you can apparently type an unlimited number of characters into the equivalent "Reason:" field which provides an edit summary when you perform the move. I sometimes go over the limit without realizing it and get a botched edit summaries, being cut off in midsentence à la here, which resolved on three more words. Of course, there's also no preview for a move, so you can't simply click a button to see if you've gone over the limit. Any possible fixes for this?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 00:30, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

HTML textareas are unable to hardcode a maximum number of characters, as opposed to text fields, which is why it's like this. However, JavaScript can be implemented to do this. Gary King (talk) 07:31, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

A "preview move" might be good enough. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 07:43, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Why don't we change that textarea to a text field then? Svick (talk) 11:25, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Why is that a textarea, anyway? The only effects I've ever noticed are the above and the fact that pressing return makes a useless newline rather than submitting; there doesn't seem to be any benefit. Algebraist 12:55, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

rev:45571. I disagree totally with Brion's reason, but that's the cookie trail to the discussion. Happy‑melon 22:17, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

<input> only displays as one line of text. <textarea> displays as multiple lines, so you have more visual room to write lengthy reasons without having to scroll back and forth, but historically has not permitted maxlength. It permits maxlength in HTML5, so I've added it in r60054, but it doesn't work in all browsers (works in Chrome 4, so probably also in recent Safari; doesn't work in Firefox 3.5 or Opera 9.22; on Linux and don't have IE to test with). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:13, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Title problems

How can the title of I-Télé be changed to i>Télé? There must be a solution since it's i>Télé on the fr wiki: I've looked thru {{wrongtitle}} and the like but there seems to be nothing. ChrisDHDR 17:30, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

The French really shouldn't be doing that. > and < are reserved characters in MediaWiki (and on the Web in general, I believe). The <h1> heading should always be copy-pasteable for creating links. It's not possible to insert >, <, [, ], |, and some other characters into page titles on this and most wikis, nor should it be. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:39, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, perhaps it should be (on the readers-before-editors principle), but English Wikipedia is configured so it isn't. (The French one seems to be using a hack that positions the desired title text so that it lies on top of the real title - I've seen this done here in user space, but it wouldn't be approved of in an article.) --Kotniski (talk) 18:07, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

PS. More info on these restrictions is at WP:Naming conventions (technical restrictions) and Help:Page name.--Kotniski (talk) 18:10, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't &gt; work? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:36, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

We could use a look-alike character, such as "˃" (U+02C3). However, the character entity &gt; would not work, as page titles cannot contain HTML character entities. (It is not possible to create the page [[>]]). Intelligentsium 01:33, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

You don't need to create the page [[>]], you just use a &gt; in the {{DISPLAYTITLE}} and article text. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:24, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

That won't work in DISPLAYTITLE, will it? (Since it's configured only to accept strings that could be pasted as links to the actual page title.)--Kotniski (talk) 13:36, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

So it would seem. It would need turning off, or the adoption of the French hack. Either way, it' probably not a good idea. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 20:13, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

How to stop user pages to be indexed at bulk

One user has hundreds of user pages that have become a very high ranking in the search engines. I know the NOINDEX tag can be attached to each page but as there are so many pages and the topic of the articles is a bit problematic. Is there a way to automatically block all his user pages from being indexed? IQinn (talk) 12:41, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki:robots.txt. β^_command 16:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

This has been discussed several times and each time consensus was not found to noindex user pages. See WP:NOINDEX for a link to some of the past discussions. –xeno^talk 16:11, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Need image help

I have a question for an admin, or maybe just someone familiar with the history of how images worked on Wikipedia. Any idea why the image on File:Fr unapproachable east.jpg is unrestorable? Might be interesting to know if it's because the file is older than ones I've successfully restored. It was created on 8 December 2004 and deleted on 22 November 2005, if that helps. BOZ (talk) 15:38, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

When restoring a file, it should show a page history and a file history. The file history is missing for this image for some reason, thus it cannot be restored, but I don't know why it is missing. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:59, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Images deleted before 16 June 2006 cannot be undeleted. Graham87 16:00, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - I suspected it was something like that. BOZ (talk) 16:02, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Script documentation

We are about to deploy automatic detection of script documentation pages. All .js and .css pages will automatically show a box with a link to their doc page, if a doc page exists. See MediaWiki talk:Clearyourcache#Script documentation, {{script doc auto}} and Template talk:Script doc auto if you want to discuss this.

--David Göthberg (talk) 16:28, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Archiving email and pseudonymous remailer

I would like a preference that would cause all my incoming and outgoing email to be pseudo-anonymized and archived, visible to highly-privileged users, e.g. checkuser. What do I mean by this? It means if I send someone an email, it gets archived for posterity and the return address is somethingunique@editors.wikimedia.org or some such. Any reply would also be archived and, if it was a true reply and included magic words in the email headers, reverse-anonymized.

This would provide several benefits:

• More control over my email address
• People would be deterred from using email to harass those who have enabled this setting or otherwise abuse email
• Administrative flexibility to force-set this setting instead of disabling email entirely for editors who mis-use email
• Future administrative flexibility to restrict emails by person/group, for example, enabling a person to email to/from a mentor and nobody else, or not between two particular editors.

Is this worth adding to the code? If it were available, would you support including it as a user preference in the English Wikipedia? Would you enable the bit yourself? I would. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:59, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I support the expansion of collaborative tools in Mediawiki in general. I'm less sure whether Wikimedia would want to start archiving private emails (privacy issues) or providing anonymous email addresses (which would seem to encourage some people to use them to harass third parties). Dragons flight (talk) 03:19, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

The idea is these would go hand-in-hand, and would be optional. When sending to an editor who set that check-box, you would be warned that your email would be anonymized and stored. When receiving mail from such a person, you would be warned that any reply would be anonymized and stored. Storage would prevent shenanigans, and there would be no privacy issue since everyone would either opt-in or be on notice if mailing someone who had opted in. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:10, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

TBH, I really don't think this will help much. We still get plenty of vandalism, spam, and other abuse, despite every on-wiki action being logged; suggesting logging really isn't that much of a deterrent. Mr.Z-man 05:24, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Deletion notifications

I want to be notified whenever an article I have edited is listed for deletion (either PRODded or listed on AFD). Is there some bot out there doing this, and if so, how can I opt in to its notifications? —Lowellian (reply) 12:40, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

AFAIK there's no bot with this sort of task (although, that's something worth thinking about). However, procedure clearly states that people adding a PROD or starting an AFD are supposed to notify authors. If that hasn't happened, that seems to be a good subject to bring up with the person who added the PROD or started the AFD.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 13:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah, you might want to check that procedure again. From Wikipedia:Articles for deletion#Notifying interested people:

...While not required, it is generally considered courteous to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the articles that you are nominating for deletion.

In practice, this virtually never occurs, and the process page probably ought to be updated. At best, the article creator may be notified. As it turns out, going out of one's way to contact lots of people who have contributed to an article tends to generate a spurious appearance of support for the article's retention in the AfD discussion. At AfD, what we ideally want is a group of impartial individuals to evaluate the article's adherence to Wikipedia policy on its own merits; recruiting all of the people who have ever edited an article tends not to generate a disinterested, neutral pool of evaluators. (Indeed, there is an explicitly-noted tension between the suggestion that editors be informed and the risks of violating WP:CANVASS.) The instructions at WP:PROD better reflect the way things usually happen. Step 4 of the nomination process simply asks the nominator to "consider notifying the article's creator or significant contributors...".

There exists a reasonable presumption that editors will watchlist articles in which they have an ongoing interest, and thereby find out about any deletion nomination. (This is why it is absolutely essential to use a clear and unambiguous edit summary when making a deletion nomination. A clear edit summary is absolutely essential, and I believe that point has been reinforced in arbitration.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:56, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Watchlisting is not a practical solution for long-term, high-edit-count editors like me, who have tens of thousands of edits across thousands of articles over a period of years. With that many articles, it's not practical to review every single edit every day to see if it's a PROD or AFD. —Lowellian (reply) 19:46, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Erwin85Bot_8 currently notifies editors whose article they created is put up for deletion, and editors with signifigant edits to an article. At User_talk:Erwin/Archive/2009#Barnstar User:Erwin states that "The bot actually already notifies all authors with more than 5 non-minor edits." Here are the talk page edits of the bot: [5]

I have seen many editors be notified of an AFD with erwinbot, but a casual glance at contributors and creators talk pages seems to show that the bot misses some editors sometimes. Ikip (talk) 15:05, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

If User:Erwin85Bot is supposed to be notifying editors of deletions, then it's not working properly, because I've had experiences of articles I've started or edited getting PRODded or put on AFD or even deleted without my ever finding out about it until months later. —Lowellian (reply) 19:46, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Do either of you have specific examples of missing notifications? The Erwin85Bot task notifies editors with a minimum number of edits (the request specifies 5 non-minor) to the article nominated at AfD. Recent examples would be better, as the task was approved July 2009 and was offline for some time due to Toolserver problems. Flatscan (talk) 03:49, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

According to the BRFA and the bot's contributions, it runs once per day on the previous daily log. Flatscan (talk) 05:51, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

"At AfD, what we ideally want is a group of impartial individuals to evaluate the article's adherence to Wikipedia policy on its own merits". OTOH, we also want editors who actually know something about the topic, as they are likely to also know whether sources are available and such. The past contributors to the article and the members of associated WikiProjects are probably the best way to find these people. Anomie⚔ 15:29, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Looking for an experienced editor to help advise on new wiki site

I'm a web developer working on a Wikipedia-type website called Preceden. My goal with it is to be the Wikipedia of timelines. Down the road I'd like to have every major event in history represented on the site.

I'm at a point now where I need to make a lot of small but important decisions, and I'm looking for an experienced Wikipedia editor to serve as an adviser. For example, I'm trying to decide whether the page revisions should have an "undo" button or a "restore" button (some sites use one, some the other, and I'm not sure what works best) and I don't have enough experience to know what's best. Other things include methods for preventing vandalism, how to recognize the top contributors, etc.

If you're interested in helping shape Preceden's future, please shoot me an email: preceden@gmail.com

Thanks.

(PS -- I originally posted this in the policy section, but it was removed because it was not the appropriate place for it. I'm still not sure what the appropriate place is. The technical sections seems like a good place to find the type of adviser I'm looking for; if not, please advise where to go.)Preceden (talk) 22:24, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

This place is run by some of the Wikipedia volunteers, they will be able to help you. --rainman (talk) 20:25, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Deletion reason no longer pre-selecting based on tag

It used to pre-select the deletion reason for me based on the tag placed on the page. Any reason it's not doing it now? –xeno^talk 15:17, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Worksforme. Something must be wrong with your personal js. Try looking through your error console, if you have one. Happy‑melon 15:32, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

What the hell, working for me now too. Clearly you did something to fix it and make me look the fool. (glares) ;> –xeno^talk 15:41, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Btw, would be nice if you reported this at MediaWiki talk:Sysop.js instead of here. — AlexSm 15:46, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I'll keep that in mind for next time, so I can look dumb in front of a fewer number of people. =) Thanks, –xeno^talk 15:47, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

No history button

My history button is missing from articles. Don't know where it slinked off too.

Heres a screenshot in-case nobody else is having this problem. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 17:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Er0r

It'll be in the page tab - looks like you've added a tab gadget. Nancy ^talk 17:40, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

That may explain it. I was fiddling with my prefs yesterday so I may have enabled some tab organizer thingy. Thank you :) - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 18:25, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Gadgets → Add page and user options to drop-down menus on the toolbar. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:50, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Why not add Wikimindmap support in wikimedia?

Hello, Please check out http://www.wikimindmap.org/ is a very good application, isn't it? for example: http://www.wikimindmap.org/viewmap.php?wiki=en.wikipedia.org&topic=Wikimedia_Foundation&Submit=Search If every wiki page add onebutton to generate the mindmap, is that cool?

so,,,,Why not add Wikimindmap support in wikimedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Litingjun (talk • contribs) 16:31, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's giving out false licensing information, it's on a site written by an illiterate, and to cap it all, it doesn't work. What would I be seeing if I wasn't seeing just a Flash oval with "undefined" written in it? Algebraist 16:45, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, it sort of fans out, mind map style, with (+)Cats and articles (everything eventually leads to an article!). If you (+) you fan out a level and so forth. I don't like it much mind. - Jarry1250 ^{[Humorous? Discuss.]} 18:38, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Looks like an interesting tool, kind of alternative navigation of categories, wikilinks, etc. Could it be an 'External Tool' like the ones listed onthe history page?Cander0000 (talk) 23:59, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

At present, I believe that would violate our copyright policy, since the site falsely claims that all the Wikipedia material it provides is available under the GFDL, which means some stuff there will be violating copyright. Algebraist 00:15, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

It's kind of cool. Maybe we could spend more time working with people who do these kinds of awesome things and less time being an ass about what is, essentially, a nitpick. — Werdna • talk 12:58, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Disappearing No longer online source: Editor & Publisher

Wikipedia has over 600 links to the legendary publishing periodical Editor & Publisher, which is now ceasing publication. I suspect that the website will soon be shuttered as well. We need a massive effort to 1) preemptively archive (via WP:WebCite?) many of these articles as possible and 2) repair already dead links (via WP:WAYBACK?). The list is here Please see Wikipedia talk:Linkrot to help coordinate. --Blargh29 (talk) 03:27, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

They're not burning every copy they printed are they? Off-line sources are still sources. If they're that legendary I'm sure libraries will have them. By all means preserve useful on-line links, but remember it's not the end of the world. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 19:27, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I gave you the incorrect impression that libraries were burning copies of this periodical. I will try to be more clear for you in the future. --Blargh29 (talk) 07:38, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

My point was that WebCiteBot's priority should be sources that are only available online. It's only the loss of these that makes content unverifiable. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:42, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

You should talk to the people who wrote WebCiteBot. They're more likely to be helpful rather than snarky. — Werdna • talk 13:00, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

param name capitalization in templates

Is there any way that we could make template parameter names insensitive to capitalization (aside from manually adding them to every template)? Even if only the first letter were insensitive, that would seem to be a big improvement.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 12:09, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

This is bugzilla:4964. Algebraist 12:46, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

After all that discussion, is there any hope that template parameter names can be made insensitive to capitalization? I would like that to happen. For example, I see "Class=start" and "Importance=high" parameters, which mean that the Wiki project does not get a class or an importance when that mistake is made. --DThomsen8 (talk) 18:10, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Improving Bugzilla

Separated from the above discussion Mr.Z-man 17:38, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

OK but, so what? Bugzilla is abandoned.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 12:50, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Hardly, Bugzilla is commonly used every day, please give some thought before making comments like that. Peachey88 ^{(Talk Page · Contribs)} 13:45, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

It looks like nobody's paid much attention to that bug recently. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:01, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

It's used, sure, but there's never any action taken through it. It seems that it's only there as an outlet, which is then studiously ignored by... well, everyone. Linking to a bugzilla is essentially a way to politely say "STFU".
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 14:04, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

No action taken? (1) 36 bugs have been closed as fixed since the start of this week and 10 closed under different reasons, so you clearly can't state that nothing is ever done via it. Just because something is submitted into bugzilla doesn't mean people that can/want to work on know about it, it is easy to miss the emails sent to the mailing-list or someone that could work on wasn't around when it first filed, and it helps if the report was filed correctly as well. Peachey88 ^{(Talk Page · Contribs)} 14:18, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

So, it's simply a scratch pad and apparently a poor man's version control for MediaWiki developers. Fine by me, that I can understand at least. That makes the encouragment for people here to go there and file a report even more of a mistake though, if not an outright attempt to shut people up. It's no wonder we have problems with communicating with the developers... MediaWiki != Wikipedia.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 14:57, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Wrong, and more wrong. Bugzilla's function is not version control, that is handled by separate tools. Bugzilla is for tracking bugs, their symptoms, the conditions under which they are reproducible, independent confirmation by other testers, the severity of their impact, etc. It allows for sensible priorities to be assigned to bugs when using the scarce resource of developer time. It has its own flaws, but so far it has worked out pretty well for Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, MediaWiki, Apache, many Linux distributions and many other collaborative developments. Don't blame the tool.LeadSongDog come howl 16:37, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Someone's obviously drinking the cool aid... Thanks for the (inaccurate and misleading) lecture on the precise meaning of VCS, but you've completely misinterpreted what I've been saying. The "don't blame the tool" comment makes it even more obvious that the misinformed groupthink continues. I don't blame the tool, especially since I use it myself for my own work; what I blame is you (and Peachey88 and Algebraist) for misguiding folks to believe that using bugzilla ourselves will have any notice or effect. I probably shouldn't lay all this on your shoulders though, since you folks are likely just misguided dupes, but there's no one else to blame, and you three have put yourselves out front to be blamed. It would be nice if someone would get off their ass and actually do some work on Wikipedia itself, though.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 17:10, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I feel I should point out that I didn't provide any guidance on the usefulness of bugzilla; I merely provided information relevant to your request which I felt you might be able to make use of. This is the last time I will try to help you, or indeed communicate with you in any way. Algebraist 03:12, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki != Wikipedia, but you're not asking for a change to Wikipedia, you're asking for a change to MediaWiki. Linking to Bugzilla is not a way to say "STFU" (and your unwillingness to WP:AGF here is frankly astounding) Its simply a way to say that its been requested before, or at the very minimum, a note so that a duplicate bug won't be filed. In some cases the bug may have reasons why it hasn't been done yet. Requesting on Bugzilla might be slow (please remember you're dealing with volunteers for the most part), but letting it disappear in the archives of the village pump is definitely a worse option. If you want it done faster, there are additional options to contact the developers. Mr.Z-man 17:03, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Who or what should we blame then? Something's clearly not working (grumble, alphabetical order still not fixed after more than 5 years and 100 votes, grumble). (Though on the parameter names issue, we'd have to be careful about fixing it, in case there are templates around that deliberately use case-differentiated parameters.) --Kotniski (talk) 17:07, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why someone needs to be blamed. Blaming volunteers for not working hard enough is not a very good way to encourage them. Mr.Z-man 17:35, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

See, here's a huge part of this problem. It's possible that a change in the code base would be required to accomplish this (hell, it may even be probable), but that doesn't mean that MediaWiki itself needs to change! It's no wonder we have such an issue in this area. I don't care one iota if a change is made to MediaWiki... but anyway, I saw where this was headed 5 hours ago. It's not going to happen, so screw it. I'll just keep working around the problem, as usual.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 17:16, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

(e/c w/ Chillum)I'm not sure what you mean, if a change in the code needs to be made (which it would), then MediaWiki would need to be changed. As I said, developers are mostly volunteers. If you're only going to criticize them, and expect them to do nothing, then that's exactly what you're going to get. Most new features proposed by someone who doesn't know PHP are generally require a little bit of work on the proposer's side to go on the mailing list or the IRC channel and find a developer willing to work on it. Mr.Z-man 17:35, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Umm, Mediawiki and the code base are basically the same thing. If volunteer development is not moving at a fast enough pace, one could always learn PHP, repair the problem, and submit a patch. Chillum ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 17:34, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki and Wikipedia's code base being the same thing is just plain stupid. Shockingly stupid. (and, reading over the MediaWiki site, this idiocy is apparently intentional!) The admonition to leave the poor volunteer developers alone is just dumb, and misguided, as well. Besides, isn't MediaWiki OpenSource? Where's the forked Wikipedia specific code base? Is anyone actually running this site, or is WMF too preoccupied with fundraising to actually do any work? This is amateur hour stuff!
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 17:55, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

The core is the same. There is a specific code base (branch, rather) lying around, but it only has things like the beta skin and extensions in it, I think. Could be more in there, but not much. Also, don't bite the devs. --Izno (talk) 18:51, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not saying "leave them alone." I'm saying the opposite really. If you want to get something done, find a developer and talk to them (i.e. convince them to work on what you want). If you just put it on Bugzilla, it'll eventually get done, but things like low-priority feature requests are going to take a while if you're just waiting for a developer to find it, as they tend to take a back seat in favor of actual bugs, more important features, and things that already have a patch. But just repeatedly insulting people is not going to get anything done. I fail to see how not pointlessly forking the codebase is stupid. A fork would just mean Wikipedia has fewer developers; we wouldn't get any of the work done by developers not associated with Wikipedia (Wikia, wikiHow, corporate users, etc.). MediaWiki grew out of the software used for Wikipedia, not the other way around. They just realized that if they didn't hardcode "Wikipedia" all over the place (as some ancient versions of MediaWiki do) that it would work as a good general purpose wiki engine. The branch used by Wikimedia is here. Its basically a snapshot of the trunk version of MediaWiki from a couple months ago, with a few bugfixes from more recent trunk revisions and a handful of Wikimedia-specific tweaks. Wikimedia runs hundreds of servers on 2 continents with a tech staff of 8 (only 4 do most of the sysadmin work), plus one advisory board member who does database work, its hardly "amateur hour." Again, your complete unwillingness to assume any good faith on the part of Wikimedia staff or developers is just shocking. Mr.Z-man 19:44, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

The OP's complete ignorance of how Bugzilla, MediaWiki, MW development and the WMF developers interact, and no interest that I can see in either building a better mousetrap or providing any criticism more constructive than "volunteer, work for me", doesn't give me much confidence that the bugs he supports represent the best use of my freely-donated time. Which is a shame, because on its own merits the particular bug mentioned is perfectly reasonable, and useful. Code, editor, SVN. I'm aware that MW development does have a serious problem with patch review. You write a patch, I'll pledge to review it. No one would stand for you bitching about the content of an article when the edit button is right there. MediaWiki is absolutely no different, whether you deign to recognise that or not. Something's broken. {{sofixit}}. Happy‑melon 22:11, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

1. Only a limited amount of work can get done. There's no way all desired features can get added or bugs can get fixed; we don't have anywhere near enough developers. The same is true for every complex software project. This is not a conceivably fixable problem until the invention of strong AI, and not worth complaining about.
2. Bugzilla is the correct means for tracking bugs and feature requests. If a bug has been filed there and is being ignored, it means that developers are spending their time on one of thousands of other bugs or feature requests. This will inevitably be true for most bugs (see point 1), but Bugzilla is still the best place to start, because it centralizes whatever discussion and attention the bug might get. (Which might well be none. See point 1. This is not Bugzilla's fault.)
3. If you want to get something done, you can try to persuade a developer to do it. If you're capable of writing code, then offering to write a patch is a very effective way to help your case, although correspondingly time-consuming. If a developer isn't willing to help (see point 1), you're out of luck.
4. "MediaWiki" is just the name of the software that Wikipedia runs on. It is Wikipedia's codebase. In the old days Wikipedia used some different wiki software, but some people decided to write new software, and they eventually called the new software "MediaWiki". Changing "Wikipedia's codebase" is logically equivalent to changing "MediaWiki" because those are two names for the same thing. Wikipedia is run by the Wikimedia Foundation and MediaWiki is also developed by the Wikimedia Foundation. The core developers of MediaWiki are mostly paid by Wikimedia. It doesn't have to be forked because Wikimedia already controls the project, and has since day one. Most features added to MediaWiki are for the sake of Wikipedia, and nothing is allowed that would break Wikipedia. I'm not sure how to be clearer on this point, but if you think a tautology is amateurish, I'm pretty sure you're misunderstanding something.
5. See point 1. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:54, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm also getting sick and tired of this continuous hostility towards the mostly volunteer based mediawiki development team (and I'm an outsider). If it's not going quick enough, petition the foundation to hire more developers. I would actually support that, cause I have the feeling that since brion left as CTO, the software development has basically ceased. Tim is stuck in codereview (which was 4-5 months behind), paid devs are working on usability/media projects, volunteer devs work on stuff Wikipedia doesn't need (which is there full right) or they are stuck in keeping the project running at all. We need a new CTO, and we need him quick and we need a fulltime Wikipedia core developer. I realize they are hard to find, but it's critical that they are found soon. That said, an opensource project is what it is, if you don't like it, join Wikia.com instead and make your demands there. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:24, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there's hostility towards the developers as people, but there seems to be something wrong with the system by which they work and by which they communicate with editors. Effort is being misdirected, since the bugs that are getting solved seem never to include the ones that we know would make our lives much easier and the encyclopedia much better. Devs have even admitted here that they take little notice of the number of people voting for a bug at bugzilla. Given that we're all working towards the same goal (or should be), we really need some way of providing actual useful dialog (of the type "this would be nice", "wouldn't work but maybe this would do", "or how about this", "yes, that's feasible") involving editors and devs, instead of separate dialogs within two separate communities.--Kotniski (talk) 07:52, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

But it is perceived as hostility, ungratefulness and lack of understanding. Like I said, get the Foundation to hire professionals to develop. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:50, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Effort is not being misdirected. It is being directed to exactly where the people expending the effort want it to go. Volunteers do what they want, which may or may not include what would make your life easier or that you think would make the encyclopedia better. Most paid developers, on the other hand, pursue either large-scale projects that will do a great deal of good in the long run (FlaggedRevs, LiquidThreads, usability, new-upload), or pressing day-to-day concerns (code review, election/fundraising software). Everything is working very smoothly, and nothing is broken, except that we could always use more manpower.

Just as an example, much of my recent development effort has gone into 1) HTML5 support, because I think it's essential to the long-term health of the web, and "Wikipedia has switched to HTML5" could have considerable political impact in the standards world; 2) external authentication, which does absolutely nothing for Wikipedia but is useful for my own wiki. You probably don't care about either of those things. But that's fine. I don't have to have the same priorities as Wikipedians do. Why should I? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:32, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I think there's also a little bit of misunderstanding as to the role of the developers. The developers do not serve the projects in the same way as the stewards and the OTRS team. MediaWiki is its own project with its own community. There's some overlap in the same way that some editors here may also edit Wiktionary. The relationship is more like that between editors and readers than between stewards and editors. While its generally a good idea to listen to the Wikimedia projects as they're the biggest user of MediaWiki, the developers are not bound to do so. Mr.Z-man 20:03, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Of course no-one's bound to do anything, but I presume there are many developers who are devoting their time to this project because they support Wikipedia's ideals and want to make it work better - we're pointing out that they would be more successful in achieving that goal if the dialogue between them and the people who use the software were more efficient. The paid developers, though, do have some kind of obligation to use their time to make the WikiMedia projects work better (effectively it's us who pay their wages, in a sense) and really ought to make themselves aware of what in the software is actually obstructing the building of good works of reference, including by listening to the people who are doing the building.--Kotniski (talk) 07:15, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

No, the paid developers work for the Foundation, not for us. Petition the Foundation, more specifically, our CTO, or atm our interim CTO Erik Moeller. 1 paid developer (Tim Starling) is working on 4 months of review backlog (that's several weeks of fulltime work), 1 on LiquidThreads (werda, parttime project), 1 on fundraising (Tomasz Finc), 1 on media (michael dale, fulltime project), a team on usability (mostly fulltime, project). Tim is basically the only fulltime mediawiki core (as in not project bound) developer we have and he is usually too busy with software work to spend time on features. There aren't as many paid developers as you seem to think. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:14, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

If you think there are particular things developers could do to help Wikipedia, maybe you should start a page on it, like commons:Commons:Bugs. I suspect you're simply underestimating how many essential things the paid developers are doing. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:18, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

• The best analogy I can think of to how people seem to view the developers is to look at how the outside world views Wikipedia:Requested articles. They think we are lazy pokemon-crazed editors who refuse to write their articles on famous professors and notable events, while it is just that we are volunteers with specific interests and that the interests of those request articles and those writing articles will not always overlap well enough to keep both sides happy. MBisanz ^talk 08:07, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
  • That certainly is a good analogy. We also are so lazy that we haven't removed all spelling errors and all issues identified atop articles. Some of those are also VERY important. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:50, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

New Code Maintenance Engineer

Priyanka Dhanda joins Wikimedia tech team one step closer I guess. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 04:10, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Broken map

Hi there, asking here as advised...

Anyone got any ideas about the problem described at Talk:Rùm#Map is broken? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.152.243.195 (talk) 20:04, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

What browser do you use, and which version of it? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:20, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

IE 8. 86.152.243.195 (talk) 21:01, 15 December 2009 (UTC).

I'm using IE8 and the same thing happens to me. 99.166.95.142 (talk) 17:33, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Idle Twinkle question

There are some scripts (such as Twinkle) which are restricted to certain users (usually autoconfirmed, sometimes on a certain list). But couldn't a user circumvent these restrictions simply by pasting the full source code of the script into their monobook, or whatever? Intelligentsium 00:47, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Or they could just run the code locally with greasemonkey or whatever. Algebraist 00:48, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Easily. People doing this in order to use the script for some kind of abuse can simply be blocked, however. And most scripts with a requirement have it for a reason - e.g. if a script checks whether youre an admin, you can remove the check, but you still won't be able to block anyone. Of course, you can make the security in a script more obscure, but that would only deter non-coders (and even then, only for a while). Ale_Jrb^talk 23:21, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Blocking a former username?

Discussion at the "Bowei Huang" section of Wikipedia talk:Reference desk makes me wonder: if a username is changed, what happens if you try to block the old username? I recently finished deleting a group of redirects to userspace for another user who had changed names recently and wanted the redirects to be deleted, and this question occurred to me then, although rather idly. FYI, I'm well aware of what happens if you forget this lesson, so I'll not test something for the sake of testing it. Nyttend (talk) 06:06, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

You can't. There is no user with that name, so there is no one to block. If a new user registers that name, that user could be blocked. Prodego ^talk 06:22, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Not sure if it helps - but this ANI discussion back in May talked about something similar (which actually happened to me as well). It seems that when CHU-ing a "ghost" account is left behind (Anonymous Dissident's words)... not sure if this "ghost" does anything, or if it is just a redirect to the newly changed name. In the ANI case above a user had either re-registered a number of former user names who had been CHU'd, or they had somehow been otherwise hacked.  7  07:04, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

There was at some point an option made to create an account with the old account's name when renaming a user, however I do not know if that was ever turned on. It would be a different user if so. Prodego ^talk 18:41, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard/Archive 12#New rename feature: "Block the old username from future use" (now disabled) for background on that. –xeno^talk 18:47, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Missing revisions

Another editor put it better than I can:

Odd, something is broken in the wiki. It looks like all edits between http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Elephant_Man_%28film%29&oldid=9292943 (21:01, 11 January 2005) and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Elephant_Man_%28film%29&direction=next&oldid=12776317 (02:37, 25 April 2005) got fubared. They show up as blank versions, which isn't logical. They should either be there, be missing entirely and not in the edit history if they were deleted but not restored, or have strike-throughs if they've been rev-deleted or oversighted. Well, probably not worth fixing. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 22:49, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

From: [6] --Drogonov 11:33, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

bugzilla:20757 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:33, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

New WP 1.0 bot in beta test; looking for another developer

The WP 1.0 bot is used to track the assessment templates that are put on the talk pages of articles. These are used by over 1,500 WikkiProjects, with over 2.5 million articles tagged. A new version of the WP 1.0 bot is in initial beta testing.

I'm posting to this page because I'd like to find another person interested in working on the bot. Of course you can choose your own level of involvement. The bot itself runs on the Wikimedia toolserver, using Perl and mysql, but I am language agnostic. I would be happy to have a new developer at any experience level, and working with this bot would be a very nice way to learn database/web programming in the context of a real project. If you're interested, please contact me on my talk page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:51, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

"This wiki has a problem" error message

In the past week, I have received the following error message at least once or twice each day:

This wiki has a problem
Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.
Try waiting a few minutes and reloading.

(Cannot contact the database server: Unknown error (10.0.6.32))

Is anyone else experiencing the same problem? Thanks, –BLACK FALCON ^(TALK) 21:53, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes. I am as well. --William S. Saturn (talk) 21:55, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Me too - now, does anyone know why we are getting it? LadyofShalott 21:59, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Because we haven't had enough donations yet? –xeno^talk 22:01, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

If you really want to get to the bottom of such things, note not only the error and the server it occurred on, but the time the problem occurred as well. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:11, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

It happened to me just now few times. Same message, same IP address. Svick (talk) 00:20, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Ditto - just happened to me about 5x in a row trying to refresh this vandals contribs - about 90 seconds ago.  7  00:26, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

This problem was reported on the #wikimedia-tech irc channel. The word from the site admins is that (1) they have logs of when it happens, (2) it is very intermittent, and (3) they are planning maintenance tomorrow to fix it (hopefully). If it becomes persistent or lasts more than another 36 hours, please report it again. Unfortunately there is nothing else that can be done at the moment. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:58, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Sigh, "This wiki has a problem" even the servers have their opinions about the state of Wikipedia. Chillum ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 01:06, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

(←) More occurrences - about 2 min ago from this sig. Same server as above. For this page [7].  7  08:45, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually - also happened about 5 times while trying to save this page here... the wheels are coming off - time to donate.  7  08:46, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Just in case this is a different problem than the devs are thinking of, could you report the exact error message that you get (from the bottom of the error page)? The "Wikipedia has a problem" text is used for several different types of errors. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:04, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Just had this happen again, 30 seconds ago:

This wiki has a problem

Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties. Try waiting a few minutes and reloading.

(Cannot contact the database server: Unknown error (10.0.6.32))

— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 17:07, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

enwiki switched to different build at 11:09 UTC that should eliminate the issue. We have enough of logging to see when this happens ;-) Domas Mituzas (talk) 13:51, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Math "essays"

Resolved

 – I'll put the list at WT:WPM. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:55, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Is there an easy way to get a list of all articles that are listed in the List of mathematics articles that have been tagged with the essay or personal reflection template? Michael Hardy (talk) 00:54, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I can do this with a database query, but it will take me a little while to get to it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:22, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) You can use the CatScan tool to find all articles in subcategories of Category:Mathematics that contain that template: [8]. Svick (talk) 01:24, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Svick and CBM.

Svick, you misunderstand something: very very few of Wikipedia's more-than-20,000 mathematics articles are in Category:Mathematics. That category has 55 subcategories, and at least one subcategory has more than 30 subcategories, and many of the subcategories have a dozen-or-so subcategories, so we're talking about hundreds of categories. But the list of mathematics articles, on the other hand, has it all. Michael Hardy (talk) 05:33, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

....I'm getting a "SNAFU" message from "CatScan". Michael Hardy (talk) 05:37, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

The CatScan does scan also the subcategories, so it would list all articles about Mathematics, that contain the mentioned template. Unfortunately, that Category contains so many subcategories, that CatScan refuses to scan all of them. Also, it seems not to work right now, but it worked yesterday. Svick (talk) 12:14, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

It's easy to do from the toolserver, but they're having a hiccough right now and I'll have to try again in a few hours. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:23, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Twinkle / Friendly choking

Anyone else seeing it? Happened both when trying to CSD a page and when trying to welcome-coi the user. Locks up at "Tagging page: data loaded..."  7  01:45, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

In my experience, the answer to this sort of question is almost always server lag. Probably the same problem that causes the "Wikipedia has a problem" messages. Intelligentsium 01:51, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Traduction Translate in Template:Info samba school

Help me in traduction Template:Info samba school of . Some technical aspects are incorrects. I'm use this template in all samba schools articles. Thanks. Quintinense (talk) 14:23, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you had valign="top" class="hiddenStructure", so I removed it. From what I know of the Romance languages, I presume "traduction" is Portuguese for "translation"? List at WP:NOTENGLISH. Intelligentsium 23:01, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

yes, rsrsrsrs. Translate by Joel Santana! Quintinense (talk) 03:50, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Translate in portuguese => "tradução". [:P] Quintinense (talk) 04:04, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

moving pages to begin with lowercase

Resolved

These two pages, ITunes Live: London Festival '09 (Snow Patrol EP) and ITunes Live: London Festival '09 - EP (Kid British album), should be moved such that the spelling is "iTunes" like with iTunes Live from London. I tried to move them but it says the page can't be moved to itself. How is such a change made? If somebody does it, please change the default sort tag to "Itunes" such that it get filed in a sensible manner. Jason Quinn (talk) 20:33, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

It's unpossible, just add {{lowercase}} to the page. –xeno^talk 20:36, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

"unpossible"?
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 20:48, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

D'oh! Brainfart! I knew that. Well, it is a Friday afternoon. ;-) Thanks, xeno. Jason Quinn (talk) 20:50, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Quite =) –xeno^talk 21:02, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Checked and fixed the entire set of articles with prefix iTunes. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:45, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Filters

I think we should incorprate filters in What links here.

For example, in this page, we have a whole bunch of pages that are not article pages. Most of the are user pages, but some of them are user talk pages and wikipedia and wikipedia talk pages.

We can use the pull down menu for only User pages, or Wikipedia pages, but I think we should also have a system that that can filter out these 2 categories as an example; if say I want to see which articles need pronunciations converted to IPA, not only do I have to go through so many pages but some of them are even archives.174.3.102.6 (talk) 21:35, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you just filter out all non-article pages, like so? Intelligentsium 22:49, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

However, it probably is not appropriate for that mainspace template to be on userpages. Intelligentsium 22:49, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Watchlist token

My watchlist token keeps setting itself after I blank it. Is this normal? Also, does anyone know who, besides developers and the like, can see watchlists and watchlist tokens without knowing the token? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 22:51, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Only developers can see watchlists and tokens that don't belong to them. Graham87 01:12, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Good to know, but it's still puzzling why it keeps re-appearing as a new random string when I blank it. Is this normal? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 02:57, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Fairly sure it's just a bug. It's set to auto-populate for convenience, but the developer who wrote it didn't seem to think of the use-case where a user would want to simply disable the feature altogether. I'd suggest filing a bug. Also, the term is "system administrator"; "developers" are just people who, instead of contributing content on the wiki, contribute PHP to the wiki's code base. There's some overlap between the two, obviously, but the distinction is an important one. --MZMcBride (talk) 03:35, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I assume by system administrators you mean admins and those with higher user rights? Can the 1400+ admins see everyone's watchlist and/or the token? I just assumed developers could, because they could rewrite Wikipedia to make it so if they could not currently. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 04:00, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

No, local administrators (also called "sysops" sometimes) cannot see others' watchlists. Nor can CheckUsers, Oversighters, or other user groups. Only people with access to the databases directly can, and that would be System administrators. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:02, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

In case others wonder what "watchlist token" means: See "my preferences - watchlist" to see your watchlist token. (It took me a while to figure out what they were talking about. This is not about cookies.)

davidwr: Right, it seems if we blank the watchlist token it is automatically filled in with a new random value. But don't worry about that, since the length of that random value means it is pretty much impossible for any one to guess that value.

As far as I have understood: The "developers" can only contribute code to MediaWiki, but they don't deploy the code. It is the Wikimedia "system administrators" that double check the code and then choose to add it or not add it. We who are just admins (local, here at the English Wikipedia) can't see any of your "my preferences" settings, and we can't see what pages you have on your watchlist.

--David Göthberg (talk) 10:15, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

A man in the middle sniffing your unencrypted traffic could retrieve your watchlist token and watch your watchlist forever after, so it's not totally secure. On the other hand, any such attacker could probably also steal your username and password, so it's not really a big deal. And yes, it's only people with shell access or better (~20 of them, most employed by Wikimedia) who can view the database and see private data like watchlist tokens. And toolserver admins, which is another three or four. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 23:37, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

What, you don't use the Secure Login from a bootable CD on a computer that's stored in a tamper-evident case??? davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 23:47, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

How would you get the CD in? OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:46, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

If your watchlist token was blank, then presumably anyone could view your watchlist =) –xeno^talk 14:04, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

On many systems, "blank" or "undefined" equates to "locked." davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:13, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I doubt that's the case here. The token basically functions as your password for RSS feeds. The fact that it fills in automatically if you blank it is probably a security precaution rather than a bug. Equazcion ^(talk) 14:15, 15 Dec 2009 (UTC)

No, it is the case here. My original (very hacky) design had the token blank by default, making the feature opt-in. Werdna changed it to auto-generate the token (a change I agree with). This was supposed to make it opt-out, but actually seems to have made it always on with no opt-out. I don't think this was intentional. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 16:34, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

• Is there any way to use the watchlist token to see a normal watchlist (i.e. complete with diff links and such), instead of only through the RSS feed? –xeno^talk 18:08, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

  Er, why don't you just go to Special:Watchlist if you're not using an RSS reader? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:36, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

  Because I want to be able to view it from another account, for example, one with lesser max_values so I don't kill my data plan. –xeno^talk 20:42, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

  So you're using separate accounts to maintain separate versions of your preferences for mobile and desktop use, or something like that? Have you thought of, e.g., setting your preferences to only show a few entries, and manually hitting "all" every time you visit your watchlist and want to see all of it? Or keeping separate bookmarks for full watchlist and small watchlist? You can already view different-sized watchlists with URL parameters, like http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Watchlist&days=0.5 to get only things from the last 12 hours. Or am I misunderstanding what "lesser max_values" means? —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 20:12, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I filed this as bugzilla:21912. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:48, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia

Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia

Why is this category hidden? 2,000 entries on this category, only linked to by three on-wiki pages, two for the template which adds it to an article and one link on Talk:Illness among Jews an article reviewed for deletion and merged with Medical genetics of Jewish people. ~ R.T.G 15:25, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

A search for the mention of this category anywhere on Wikipedia] reveals nothing but the category itself and yet there are almost 2,000 articles in the category and it is hidden from view like a maintenence tag category. Not implying sinister motives but I don't know how to unhide a category either. ~ R.T.G 15:30, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

It is a maintenance category. A content category would be something like Category:Judaism. This category is just an attribution category, added by placing the {{JewishEncyclopedia}} template on an article.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 15:39, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

It attributes the whole article in the places were I have seen it. Sources are quoted not "incorporated". We are not the Borg. Why should this volume be exempt from 1,800 citations and hidden, without acknowledgement, beyond review? wether good or badly intentioned, this work should receive no special or unusual treatment. I am interested to know what other "Hidden category" of incorporation we have floating around... ~ R.T.G 15:43, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

i.e. it's not a maininence category, it is a sign that one book is repeatedly used as a source without citation to the tune of over 1,800 articles worth. ~ R.T.G 15:48, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

It's hardly receiving special treatment. It's being treated in the exact same manner as all other public domain sources are treated. For a direct corollary, see Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, {{1913CE}}, or any of several other attribution templates in Category:Attribution templates.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 16:11, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

These categories and the citations from them should be apparent as any other work, an acknowledgement and a route of access. Just because they are public domain and the plageurising authors are anonymous doesn't mean that the citations and categories should be irrelevant or obscure to view. Quite the opposite would be more encyclopaediac, informative. Uninformative cats should be hidden. Informative ones should be clear to view. Imagine how much pop-press The Times and other papers get out of wiki-cites^[1] and now imagine how many articles wave that little note at the bottom and people didn't even notice. It's non-standard and it's unfair. Treating someone special doesn't mean you are preserving their interests. Quite the opposite (sorry!). Try going to some pop-page like Barack Obama and seeing how many cats appear at the bottom of the page - 41!! There are cats and citations all round for the value of the article. Anyone who changes that should be stopped, right? ~ R.T.G 18:07, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

You're as free as anyone else to propose changes to how we handle copyright and attribution issues. I'm not sure that I see what the problem is, or what you think the solution should be, but no one is stopping you from making a proposal.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 19:33, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Um, un-hide the categories and cite the books when they are used just like any cites? ~ R.T.G 20:27, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

The difference between using public domain works such as the Jewish Encyclopedia and copyrighted works is that we can copy whole paragraphs from them. Also usually (I have no idea whether this is the case), encyclopedias aren't considered to be reliable sources, so we shouldn't cite them, but we can copy text directly from them. Svick (talk) 20:44, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Um, they do have "regular" citations. {{JewishEncyclopedia}} adds the text "This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia article ..., a publication now in the public domain.", and the other PD source templates do the same. What is the problem? The category is just a maintenance cat for keeping track of these templates. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 21:34, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

:A lot of the articles in those categories are prone to no inline citations, and besides, is there a category of major use of old PD documents? Really, can I see it? No? Why because you did some nice little artistry on your template? Well to hell with the referencers while we have this artistic template. Nobody wants to reference those things. That's not encyclopaediac. Showing those categories to people who might be interested would be just said-so dumb. Those categories are for spying on articles not enhancing the available information. What class of idiot would even want to look through a category like that? What do they think that respectable works of PD are prized and researchable? No way. I didn't understand you. You make note sense. That's oft topic any way. What you think this is a reference bible or something? ~ R.T.G 08:09, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

That didn't make enough sense. What I am saying is that no, the trend is often not to bother citing them inline and if there is a category of articles incorporating text of special interest, should not be hidden? Isn't this the kind of place where we would list all those articles where people could learn about it rather than hiding it away only to be found by accident? they are definitely not "maintinence" categories. Maintinence categories are "stub tags" etc. which need fixed (i.e. categorised for stub sorting etc.) Wikipedia is a reference bible of sorts so showing those categories would hardly be unconstructive...? ~ R.T.G 13:05, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

If you want to learn about the Jewish Encyclopedia then go to Jewish Encyclopedia (linked to from the citation) or Category:Jewish encyclopedias. If you want to browse the Jewish Encyclopedia then go to http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com or s:Jewish Encyclopedia (both linked from Jewish Encyclopedia#External links. You won't learn anything about the Jewish Encyclopedia by looking at Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia. It is purely for keeping track of meta-information for maintenance purposes, the same as all 3,811 other Category:Hidden categories. We don't have in-line citations for it because it is a tertiary source. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 20:01, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

No, we don't have inline citations because we are incorporating text from the source without attribution--maybe a sentence, maybe the whole article. The goal is to no longer incorporate text from it, by remanding the info to citations or working off other sources. Protonk (talk) 06:58, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Minus signs in sortable wikitables

At WT:MOS we've just learned from User:davidwr that −, the HTML minus sign, does not sort properly in a sortable wikitable. User:Eubulides made a suggestion to improve ts_parseFloat:

A much better solution ought to be to replace this:

num = parseFloat(s.replace(/,/g, ""));

with something like this:

num = parseFloat(s.replace(/,/g, "").replace(/−/g,"-"));

in wikibits.js.

This looks to me too like it would solve the problem. Note that the first dash in the new replace statement is a minus sign and the second is a hyphen; the sortable wikitable already properly handles hyphens. Can someone make this change? (Or is there something we're not considering?) Ozob (talk) 04:24, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

− is not the same as − however, so you would have to unescape html entities before you make that conversion I think. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:57, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

User:Ms. 45 has suggested:

.replace(/−/gi, "-").replace(/&(?:minus|#x0*2212|#0*8722);/gi, "-")

which will probably do the trick. However, while looking through the code, I noticed that ts_currencyToSortKey doesn't handle minus signs properly, either. Right now, all it does is strip all characters other than digits, periods, and commas, then call ts_parseFloat. It's not even compatible with hyphens used as minus signs; so you can't write a debt as $-100 or -$100 (and especially not as $−100 or −$100) and get it to sort properly; it'll get sorted as if it were 100.

I think the right solution is to unescape HTML entities before calling either of these functions—in principle, after all, one could write an escaped HTML entity for a plain old number, and the table still ought to sort correctly. Ozob (talk) 15:24, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion: "talk" to user whose text needs a citation

I hope this is the right location to suggest a new technical feature to be added to Wikipedia or maybe something that a bot could do. I'll be brief: it might be useful to put a note a user's Talk page if his or her text inside an article has "{{citation" right after it. It's logical to expect the user who added text to know where he or she read something that needs a citation. This won't always work, but if it's a single line of text that starts with a capital and such, Wikipedia should be able to give us information about who put it there. If there is a match, that user's Talk page could say: "A text (<text>) you added on <date> to the article <name> appears to need a citation. If possible, please try to help out." --82.171.70.54 (talk) 14:02, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

This is a nice idea (with drawbacks) I will copy this to WP:BOTREQ. Rich Farmbrough, 22:03, 20 December 2009 (UTC).

Signatures

Whenever I post something on a discussion page, my post is signed by a bot--even though I always add my signature. How can I correct this problem? --Lucas Brown 18:03, 20 December 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lucas Brown 42 (talk • contribs)

The bot adds a signature for new users who don't sign with anything it recognizes as a signature. Since the links in your signature don't match your username, the bot doesn't recognize your signature and signs for you with correct links. The fix is for you to sign with links that match your username. If you're the same user who previously registered as User:Lucas Brown, I'd suggest sticking to that account; if you're not the same user, then you shouldn't be linking to their talk page in your signature. — Gavia immer (talk) 18:22, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

RTFM User:SineBot#Single_person. Rich Farmbrough, 21:52, 20 December 2009 (UTC).

Slow loading of history pages

It's taking a LOOOOONNNNNGGGGG time to load history pages, and then, if I try to do a diff, it takes an ever longer time to display the diffs. This is happening on every history page I look at, this just started yesterday. I'm using Firefox, which I switched to a couple of years ago because this was occurring with IE, and was not happening on Firefox till yesterday. Woogee (talk) 22:31, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Are you still seeing slowness? History and diffs are working very fast for me: under a second for default list of 50, 5 seconds for the 250 list. On Firefox, Chrome and Opera. I do recall general slowness with wikipedia yesterday though. Do you have any non-default Special:Preferences? -84user (talk) 01:26, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Still happening, and no, I don't have anything set in Preferences. Woogee (talk) 05:48, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

LiquidThreads almost ready to deploy

(cross-posted to foundation-l, wikitech-l, Village pump (proposals))

Hi all,

With the Foundation's support, I've spent the last few months churning away at Extension:LiquidThreads, a new discussion system that is proposed for use on Wikimedia projects.

Essentially, it's an attempt to marry the radical openness of the wiki paradigm with the usability and practicality of a forum-like system. As the name implies, LiquidThreads is designed to allow any user to easily refactor discussions while maintaining edit history, to edit other users' comments, and to collaborate on a summary of an ongoing discussion. LiquidThreads also brings many standard communication features lacking from wiki discussion pages, such as watching and protecting individual discussion threads, RSS feeds of comments in a discussion or on a discussion page. In the world of online communication, its approach is entirely unique.

LiquidThreads has been in alpha testing on Wikimedia Labs for several months, and, more recently, it's been used in a production context on the strategy wiki, where it has been quite well-received. It's been easy to run these smaller trials, as the extension allows the activation and deactivation of LiquidThreads discussions on individual pages with a simple parser function.

While there are still some issues remaining before wider trials, I believe I can resolve most of them quite quickly (within a few weeks when my vacation finishes at the end of next month), and I'd like to get the ball rolling in proposing small-scale trials on some of the larger wikis, so that a full discussion can be had, and so that adjustments can be made on the basis of ongoing feedback. I'd especially like to see LiquidThreads used on some of the higher-traffic discussion pages on English Wikipedia (such as the technical village pump), and progressive rollout on some of our mid to large sized wikis.

So, I'd like to encourage you to have a play with LiquidThreads, either on the strategy wiki or on the test site (which generally runs a newer version). Tell me what you like about it, and (far more importantly) what improvements you think it needs before we can expand our trials to wider parts of the Wikimedia Universe, and perhaps move towards a full rollout of this very exciting technology.

I should give the following caveats about LiquidThreads as it stands. These are all issues that I intend to address before any trial expansion occurs.

• Presently the system is somewhat vulnerable to abuse. I intend to make changes to the way signatures work, and improve tracking and listing of thread actions by specific users.
• While LiquidThreads allows for thread summaries and discussion headers, the system does not currently have support for collaboratively-edited posts which are unsigned or signed by a group of people. These are a key piece of any decision-making framework, and I intend to make adjustments to make this possible.
• There is no support for embedding LiquidThreads discussion pages on other pages.
• There are plenty of minor interface issues which I intend to clean up.

Feedback is best directed to the dedicated Feedback page, or, alternatively, to bugzilla (although before filing a bug, you should check the list of existing LiquidThreads bugs).

— Werdna • talk 20:57, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

bugzilla:21256 looks like a blocker to me. Also the inability for non-admins to delete vandalism, and the fact that after taking a few days break I would have had to dig through huge blobs of pages with half the comments hidden for being too deeply nested rather than just finding December 12 in the history and hitting the "(cur)" diff link. Anomie⚔ 04:01, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I like it for talk pages (not for the articles, of course). Being able to "watch" a discussion would make participating on any of the large noticeboards so much easier. To have to watch a whole board to follow one discussion out of 30 (or more) is a pain. However, is there a "new posts" feature? How do you tell which posts are new from the last visit? Also, is there a way to specify that you want to see the threads displayed with full nesting (all replies to all threads displayed, instead of just the first post of each thread). (I see both forms are on the page) thanks stmrlbs|talk 05:20, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I certainly shudder when I read something like LiquidThreads is designed to allow any user to ... edit other users' comments. 99.166.95.142 (talk) 16:44, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Have you ever heard of a wiki? ╟─TreasuryTag►draftsman─╢ 16:46, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

My only issue there is that people's personal comments are something that generally should not be edited by others. We even have policy to that effect already. That aside though, the implementation that Werdna came up with in this respect seems rather elegant, to me. If another user edits someone else's post on LiquidThreads, then the post is marked with a prominent "This has been edited" flag.
— V = I * R (talk to Ω) 17:11, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I think the reason that Werdna announced it is that there is often concern that if people could not edit others' comments, it would be too hard to remove vandalism, remove {{editprotected}} templates, etc. We can do this right now because we can edit other people's comments, and the new system needs to preserve that flexibility. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:14, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Sounds excellent. I expect this feature to generate waves of new activity.Cander0000 (talk) 04:42, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Where can I comment on talk page template?

Where can I comment on this talk page template: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File_talk:Qxz-ad15.gif&action=edit

Source code:

<div class="editnotice-area" style="clear: both;"><div class="editnotice-namespace"><table id="filetalk-namespace-editnotice" class="plainlinks fmbox fmbox-warning filetalk-namespace-editnotice" style="">
<tr>
<td class="mbox-image">

Found it: Template:Editnotices/Namespace/File talk

Ikip 19:31, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Template talk:Editnotices/Namespace/File talk. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:42, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Mixup in design for "Crab" page

I don't know if this is the proper place to post this query; I hope some Wiki-aware editor will Talk to me.

Crabs (Clade Meiura) comprise Brachyura (true crabs) and Anomura (hermit crabs, etc.) This much is not controversial; see e.g. Wikipedia, or even Merriam-Webster:

crab [OE crabba; OHG krebiz; OE ceorfan == to carve]
  1 any of any of numerous chiefly marine broadly built decapod crustaceans:
  1a = any of Brachyura
  1b = any of a group (Anomura) resembling true crabs
  [e.g. king crab "any of several very large crabs ..."]

Wikipedia has pages for "Crab" and "Anomura"; no pages for "Meiura" or "true crab"; "Brachyura" redirects to "Crab". This can be confusing (proofs: Casual glance at the page convinces one king crab is in Brachyura; I was confused, however briefly.) There is a page "Crab(disambiguation)" but it does not address the confusion at all.

There certainly should be one "main" page for "Crab"; the present page may be well-written; I don't know to what extent its remarks apply only to Brachyura or to Anomura as well; perhaps this should be addressed in the main article.

Perhaps a "True crab" page should be created with "Brachyura" redirected to that. I don't know; just know the present setup is more than slightly flawed. Jamesdowallen (talk) 16:02, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

This is a content issue, not a technical one. Take it up at the article's talk page, or with the good folks at Wikipedia:WikiProject Marine life or WP:ARTH. --King Öomie 16:44, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Image caption text size

I just noticed that image caption text is smaller than article body text. Is this new, or am I imagining? Also, why is it smaller? --Apoc2400 (talk) 19:37, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, thumbcaptions have always had font-size: 94% —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:12, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Special:Notepad

I would like to see Special:Notepad be a private scratch-pad, possibly visible to privileged users, intended for people to keep working notes that aren't meant for the public eye. It's easier for me to keep my wiki-related notes on Wikipedia than on, say, a Google application or a local document, but I don't always want the public access that an on-wiki page has.

I'm not picky if this is a Special: page, a part of Preferences, or a user:-space page that is not readable to unprivilaged users. I'm soliciting feedback on the general concept of "private" space within Wikipedia.

Before I open a bug/feature request, I wanted some feedback. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:26, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, you can use the watchlist token for storing very very short notes to yourself, such as a tinyurl or something similar. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 21:30, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

I support creating a private development space visible only to the user and to admins. A protected branch of user space feels most natural to me. It would allow user space content development without arguments about google indexing or the inappropriate use of nonfree content. As long as admins can see it, we can still avoid the worst problems of WEBHOST. Dragons flight (talk) 03:13, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

bugzilla:541#c2. --Splarka (rant) 08:19, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I have a lot respect for Brion, but he is not employed by the WMF any more, and even when he was employed I'd like to think that he could generally be swayed by the desires of the community. Rather than simply referencing an old comment, could you actually give an opinion on the merits? If the primary concern is the use of private space for non-wiki activities, there are relatively easy ways to mitigate against that. Dragons flight (talk) 11:19, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I support this. I'm not sure why admins would need access though. I'd rather limit access whereby admins can delete the space (for indef blocked users, for example), but not actually view it. I'd like to hear why people think admin access should be necessary. If they do need access, I'd like to see some strict rules about when it's appropriate to do so; namely that it almost never is, and perhaps implement a system to publicly log each viewing. For me, a private scratchpad would be useful, among other things, to store thoughts on disputes, other issues, and comment wording I plan to use in the future. Being that admins are also regular users who could be involved in those disputes, I wouldn't want them rifling through my stuff to gain an upper hand. Equazcion ^(talk) 11:39, 15 Dec 2009 (UTC)

If you've run out of dead trees, you could always use Google Docs or similar. Wikipedia is for collaborative work, not private notes. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 13:49, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I can think of about 100 Wikipedia features that don't fit that definition. Wikipedia is for collaborative works as well as any tools that help editors accomplish that goal. As for the need for this particular one, versus using other text editors, it would help to be able to save and view notes specifically via mediawiki code and rendering. Equazcion ^(talk) 13:55, 15 Dec 2009 (UTC)

It's not necessary that admins can see it but if it's known that someone can see it, whether that someone is a small group like oversighters or a larger group like admins, it can help deter abuse or the perception of facilitating abuse. Your comments on admins needing to not examine them due to privacy or wiki-privacy issues are well noted. I imagine this had been available 2 weeks ago numerous editors would have used it to record notes related to the recent elections. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 14:18, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what kind of abuse could be perpetrated though, with a private space no one can see. If you personally attack someone there, who's gonna know, and why would it matter? The only possible damage I can see being done by allowing the space to be entirely private is some kind of technical hack; and on a page that can only be rendered by one account, it's doubtful any technical attack could actually be perpetrated. Equazcion ^(talk) 16:42, 15 Dec 2009 (UTC)

It could be used as a communications network by terrorists? –xeno^talk 16:46, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, so could GMail, and it would be easier to use, too... ╟─TreasuryTag►ballotbox─╢ 17:06, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Good point. I was focused on abuse of Wikipedia rather than laws. I can see the need for admin access, but would then like to see strict rules on viewings, and have those viewings publicly logged, so they can't just go in and read people's private notes on a whim. Equazcion ^(talk) 16:50, 15 Dec 2009 (UTC)

I'm struggling to figure out what the use case for this would be. What kinds of private data are users working with that they would need to store it on Wikipedia (meaning it should be somehow Wikipedia-related)? Mr.Z-man 19:05, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

And why can that private data not be stored in a file on their own computer? Anomie⚔ 03:31, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Hit lists? –xeno^talk 14:32, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I can imagine things for which one really would want privacy for the sake of privacy, such as evidence for Arbcom, sockpuppet investigations, copies of off-Wiki correspondence relating to on-wiki work, etc. Other things could be made private because a user wants to work on them but they don't really belong on Wikipedia in their current form, such as various deleted pages. However, the main use I would see is in drafting. I don't know about you, but I find it embarrassing when people stumble across half finished pages that I have started to write. Unfinished content isn't really suitable for placement in article space because it is incomplete, and even in user space they can be found my looking at contribution lists or in some cases even by Google. Reluctance to show the world incomplete works is enough of a deterrent to me personally that I often avoid drafting new content on Wikipedia itself, but writing offline drafts means that I don't have easy access to seeing how the page will look. Do we need a private space for drafting? No. Obviously we can function without it. But at the same time I think it would be more friendly and convenient to have such a space. Dragons flight (talk) 14:58, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

Working in secret with no collaboration isn't very friendly. It could also lead to WP:OWNership issues. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 20:04, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I honestly find this comment somewhat offensive. On the occasions when I work up new things from scratch, which admittedly isn't very often, I prefer to see that they are complete and somewhat polished before letting the world see and rewrite them. I care about the quality of my work, and unlike some Dogs, I have a real world persona linked to my account. If you prefer that every rough draft and scribble you write be public, then fine for you, but I think it's wrong to pretend that other Wikipedians don't sometimes want to write drafts in private before submitting text to Wikipedia. Dragons flight (talk) 20:25, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

No offence meant. I'm simply pointing out that this is an "encylopedia that anyone can edit", where "all ... content is edited collaboratively", where every edit (including this one) is "irrevocably" released under CC-BY-SA 3.0 and the GFDL, and "if you don't want your material to be edited mercilessly, don't submit it here". I just don't see how hosting private user content is compatible with this, nor what the problem is with storing private information somewhere other than a high-traffic public website. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 21:34, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I have no strong feelings about this. I counsel folks to not write drafts of contentious user/project related things on wiki, because it generates more drama than necessary and may cause other problems (unfinished RfCs could be seen as threats, user conduct scratch pads have been interpreted as hit lists in the past, etc.). At the same time, Google docs, a regular text editor, or any word processor works fine for this. I can't imagine pushing strongly for some new feature which is wholly duplicated by so many existing external products, seeing as the primary need to have it "on-wiki" is gone when the space becomes private. Protonk (talk) 07:09, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

I could have good use of a private scratch-pad. I have my to-do list and notes off-wiki. But that means I don't have access to my notes when I am at my girlfriend's house, so then I can't do the work I do here. I know many Wikipedians who edit from different computers at different places.

Some of the reasons why I can't have my notes on my user page are these:

• Lots of people are watching my user page. When I have noted on my user page things I am planning to do, people have started to ask about it. Before I have even thought enough about it myself and written down any explanations.
• As soon as I add a link on my user page to a new template I am building people come there and start using it and questioning it, before I have even finished coding it and before I have documented it.
• I have notes about vandals I am investigating.
• I have notes about security problems in MediaWiki...

An on-wiki scratch pad could also have the benefit of having working wikilinks, something a text file on my hard disk or on some other server doesn't have.

I think that the personal scratch-pad needs to be visible to some users, for instance admins. Since otherwise people will use it to store any amount of text for other non-Wikipedia uses. (And it would be nice if the scratch-pad displayed a list of who had viewed it lately.) And the scratch pad probably should have some size limitation.

--David Göthberg (talk) 23:56, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Remove the "edit summary is too long" before saving

For example, a recent post of mine was "::::This seems to be pretty OK (like the one similar to this). Although the "He served 1939–1941" example needs to be thrown out and something saner picked instead. It seems essentially to be status quo + allowing for "Seifert–von Kampen". Which is much better than the status quo. ~~~~", which I copy-paste in the edit summary since the beginning of a post is a very quick way to summarize the post. However, this is longer than that 255 character limit (or whatever it is), changing the edit summary box in red as a warning (fine), and preventing me to make my post until I fixed the length (horrible!).

PLEASE revert to the old behaviour of simply truncating the summary (the warning is fine and should probably stay). Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 16:45, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't experience that problem, for me it just truncates and never gets red, just as usual.

I tried the Gadget "Allow up to 50 more characters in each of your edit summaries" but that doesn't cause it.

I also tested to use the beta version of Wikipedia. (See upper left corner of page "Try beta".) But that doesn't cause it either.

My guess is that it is one of the scripts your are loading in your User:Headbomb/monobook.js. Try remarking them all away, then wait one minute, then bypass your browser cache. I bet that your problem will be gone then. Then you have to add them one by one to figure out which it is, then contact the author of that script.

--David Göthberg (talk) 00:39, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar problem

Resolved

Please look at User talk:Vossanova.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:23, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Look better? --Onorem♠Dil 18:28, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 18:29, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

iPhone and rollback

I find my iPhone handy for checking my watchlist when I have a few minutes to spare from other tasks. The problem I'm having is that there are so many links on the watchlist page that it is hard to scroll the touch-sensitive screen without occasionally hitting a link inadvertently. For the most part, that's a minor nuisance--I just cancel the page that's being loaded. But if I accidently hit a rollback link, there is no way to stop the resulting action. I've done this a few times now. I can rollback myself when I notice, but my fear is accidentally rolling back an edit without noticing. Ideally, I'd like a user option of having rollback ask for confirmation, or at least a way to turn rollback off and on. As more touch sensitive devices come on the market, I suspect others will encounter the same problem. I realize having rollback is considered a great privilege by some and I don't want to sound ungrateful, but all in all I'd rather be able to use my iPhone to edit than have rollback.--agr (talk) 21:38, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

If you want rollback removed, you can ask at WP:PERM. If you have any suggestions as to how this problem could be dealt with, please make them! My initial thought is a option to require confirmation of rollback, either with an OK/Cancel box, or a CAPTCHA or something? ╟─TreasuryTag►duumvirate─╢ 21:42, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I had written a script for this (User:Zvn/confirmwatchlistrollback.js); haven't tested on iPhone though. --Zvn (talk) 21:55, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Funny, got my iPod Touch a couple weeks ago and have made the same mistake at least twice.—NMajdan•talk 22:07, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I've made this same mistake on my extra-large touchpad as well, so it's not confined to small devices (though probably much more of a problem on them). An option to require an extra click for rollback is a good thing. — Gavia immer (talk) 22:15, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Was this using the mobile site (I dunno how far that actually got) or the main site? If someone is using rollback and tabs, for example, I can see an extra click being a significant inconvenience. An option to require an extra click, or require confirmation on mobile devices would be awesome. :) Ale_Jrb^talk 22:36, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

It was the regular site. I think the watchlist would be too cumbersome on a mobile site, but I haven't tried it. For me, a user preferences option to require confirmation would be ideal. I think ok/cancel would be enough. I'll try to check out Zvn's script in the next day or so.-agr (talk) 23:17, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Uh, the whole POINT of rollback is the simplicity of a single click. Otherwise, it's not really any different than undo for most edits. That said, I've mentioned before about not wanting it on the watchlist page, and both times got firected to the script, so I guess that's the only way it's gonna happen. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 23:09, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I know the whole point. That's why it would be an option. ╟─TreasuryTag►draftsman─╢ 23:26, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Make an alt account without rollback for iPhone use? Intelligentsium 23:18, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

My solution was to add a stylesheet for iPod/iPhone use. My vector.js page has three sections: the functions themselves, and a section activating all the functions. That section has two halves, and one is chosen based on the browser. If it's an iPod/iPhone, the second half is chosen, and it includes a line importStylesheet('User:' + wgUserName + '/vector-ipod.css');. Then I remove rollback links from my watchlist on that CSS page, along with a few other tweaks—that admittedly I haven't polished much—like making the tabs bigger and removing the sidebar completely (unlike the toggle-able option for normal browsers). Is that a useful approach for anyone? {{Nihiltres|talk|edits}} 15:31, 23 December 2009 (UTC)