Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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Parser cache not invalidated for redirect pages

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 When IP editors use redirecting links such as WP:RD/L or WP:RD/C, they receive an out-of-date copy of the target page.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

Problem state:

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

After purge of RD/L redirect:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bumping the timestamp as there is still a chance we could get comment from ops. Franamax (talk) 21:26, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Problem with Decade NavBox

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

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

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

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

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

For further discussion of {{Cat topic year}}, please see my talk page. Certes (talk) 12:21, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

JS help

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

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

if (template == 'cite web') {

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Odd RevDel result

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strange typeface on editing pages

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

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

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

Disabling WP:LOCO on certain pages?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, that should be OK, actually. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 15:54, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Removing external link icon for internal links

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

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

Wikipedia MusicXML (or similar) interpretation?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arthur Cayley article

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

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

Error with block logs in contribs

When I click this link to see user contribs [1], I see a pink box at the top about a block, but that block is from the distant past. Do other people see that too? What's up? — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:16, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

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

Reports of pornography where it ought not be

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

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

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

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

Hello,

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

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

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

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

Thanks. I will ask there. Teofilo talk 18:52, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Avoiding edit conflicts when you submit twice

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

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

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

Template incorrectly adding a category

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

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

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

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

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

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

Article not showing up in Articles Created - toolserver issues

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

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

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

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

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

Preview blanks a section

When I preview a section, sometimes it is shown like I have blanked the section when I have not. When I then click "save" it blanks the section. This happened a minute ago on the section "Redworms and BSFL"[2]. It has happened before on this article. I'm using Chromium web browser. Rudork (talk) 21:34, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

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

Spaces after pasting

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

becomes:

• foo

• bar

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

Where is this week's Signpost?

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

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

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

Collapsing references when editing

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

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

I guess I have to start learning to use LDR, as I'm as guilty as anyone in how I add references, no point me showing irritation with things as they are if I'm not willing to change myself.--KTo288 (talk) 15:40, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

See User:PleaseStand/References segregator. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 15:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Problem with file renaming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question about revdelete/oversight and page moves

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

Revdelete/oversight and page moves - part II

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

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

Odd bug with templates linked to in headers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did you mean...?

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

I get "Did you mean Samuel Kanyon Doe?" when I search without quotes [3] but not with quotes [4]. Did you use quotes? I don't know whether that is supposed to activate "Did you mean?". PrimeHunter (talk) 14:21, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I think the two are independent from one another. It still has "There is a page named "Samuel Kenyon Doe" on Wikipedia" below. --Anime Addict AA (talk) 00:37, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Odd block log entry

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

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

ERR_READ_TIMEOUT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That looks to me like the type of error thrown when there is a general problem with Wikimedia servers, and is not necessarily a consequence of the edit that you were making. Was this message on a background consisting of a horizontal white band between two pale blue bands? --Redrose64 (talk) 16:29, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, the problem was probably that the edit was taking so long to save that the caching proxy layer gave up waiting for a response from the backend server, hence the ERR_READ_TIMEOUT error. The output would use the same template as any other error where the cache layer can't get content from the backend. Anomie⚔ 18:39, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that is exactly the screen I saw. I tried repeatedly over the course of a week to add the full template with the same results, so it does not appear to be a temporary fluke. In the mean time, I have found a work around by breaking up the template into a couple of smaller sub templates that are called by a master template. These templates work well together so that problem is now essentially solved. Thanks for everyones feedback. Boghog (talk) 19:07, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Skin problem?

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

Templates with bugs in coordinates

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

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

In Byllis, the problem with using |coordinates= instead of |latitude=|longitude= is that the pushpin map only works if |latitude=|longitude= are given. {{Infobox ancient site}} will display coordinates upper right when |latitude=|longitude= are given, provided that |coordinates_display=inline,title is also given.

The problem at Butrint is that {{infobox settlement}} doesn't recognise |latitude=|longitude= - you need to use |latd=|longd= instead, and also give it |coordinates_display=inline,title. The {{coord}} near the bottom does need to be removed though, if not the page will show up in Wikipedia:Database reports/Articles containing overlapping coordinates when that gets rebuilt on 2 February. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:43, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Removing incorrect interlanguage links?

The page Polyptoton links to ru:Традукция as its in-other-languages equivalent, but I can tell you that the article Традукция does not discuss anything remotely like polyptoton, and ru.wiki does not seem to have a page on полиптотон or многопадежие yet. However, I'm concerned that simply removing the code from the English-language page will only trigger a global bot to reinsert the link. Is there any way to make sure that the global bots will remove ru:Традукция from the Polyptoton inter-language "web" (i.e. across cs.wiki, de.wiki, ...), rather than reinserting it on en.wiki? Thanks. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 16:05, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

See also here. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 16:13, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

At a guess, I'd say that removing the incorrect links from Polyptoton and from ru:Традукция would do it for the en <--> ru links. As for the others, wouldn't they have to be looked at case-by-case to determine whether or not they are correct? --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 16:15, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand why it would be case-by-case – polyptoton is a literary technique (juxtaposing different grammatical forms of the same word), whereas the traductio article talks about a rhetorical term (something akin to analogy). I don't see why these two should point to each other as equivalent. It Is Me Here ^{t / c} 17:31, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

If the Russian article shouldn't be associated with any of the other articles, and you want to break if free, you have to manually remove it from all the links in the web. - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 17:30, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

I recently had a bit of a tussle with bots incorrectly linking cs:AMD K8 to en:K8 and fouling up all the other languages too. If I removed or fixed a bad link, a different bot would then re-establish the error. In the end, I found that instead of removing the bad links, they should be placed inside HTML comment tags, which you will see if you examine K8. It seems that you can fool the bots in this way: if a bot wants to add [[cs:AMD K8]] to en:K8, it will see that the line <!-- [[cs:AMD K8]] --> is there, and assume that the link is also there already.

For good measure, I went around K8 and AMD K8 in all the languages that were involved, and checked individually: commenting out the bad links, manually adding good ones. Here's the Czech AMD K8 example, which I think was one of the worse cases. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:27, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you need to remove all the bad interwiki links by hand (HTML comments are really ugly in this case IMO, and should be used as an absolute last resort). See User talk:Yurik/Interwiki Bot FAQ. Graham87 03:33, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

BTW, I've removed all the offending interwiki links from the above-mentioned articles. Graham87 03:35, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm, the entry on that FAQ about removing a bad interwiki link seems to have been updated since the last time I checked it. Graham87 03:41, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Actually, ru:Традукция = fr:Traductio = es:Traductio. You should not just remove links from Russian article, but to split all the mess to 2 clusters. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 18:40, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

...which is what I meant by "case-by-case," above. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 20:05, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Category tree

If anybody has any thoughts regarding this, could they please add them there. We need a bit of community consensus to remove all category trees. Regards, Rcsprinter (shout) 17:58, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Persistent Talk Page Links

A common issue I've found is, someone will post a link to a talk page (or a village pump discussion or whichever), and then you click on it and get the most current version of the talk page with the content of that link archived. From that point you could try searching for that page, but finding an archived copy of a talk page based on a broken link can be painful. My proposal - I'm not sure. I mainly just wanted to say this is an issue in Wikipedia.

One possible solution, that would need fleshing out... Maybe next to section headers on talk pages/village pump pages there could be a link that says "permalink"? Jztinfinity (talk) 18:09, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

I've been moaning and groaning for years about broken/stale links to past discussions. I usually just end up manually fixing the links myself. -- œ^™ 14:38, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

This is something that the archiving bots ought to fix at archiving time. Josh Parris 14:41, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

User:ClueBot III does. Anomie⚔ 17:32, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Example. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:52, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

help with enwiki_p data issue

There are four articles that, although they have been deleted, still have rows in enwiki_p.page. This is causing problems with some of my Toolserver reports. Can someone help me get the rows deleted? These are the articles:

• Rob Shift
• Summer Fun (2012 film)
• The Adventures of Miranda O.
• The Part of Awesome

Thanks, --JaGa^talk 19:59, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Check your email, DaB sent an email about the s1 cluster and data corruption see http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/toolserver-l/2012-January/004680.html ΔT _{^{The only constant}} 03:35, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

That would explain it. Thanks for letting me know. --JaGa^talk 23:40, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Booted out of Log In

I just got booted out of my Log In by clicking on the "Help" link for Wikipedia Help. Odd thing. Maile66 (talk) 20:27, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

People often lose their login. See Help:Logging in or just blame the Cookie Monster. It's surely a coincidence it happened when you clicked that link. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:38, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

If you switched from http to https (or vice versa), that could explain it too - I can't say how many times I've clicked a link sending me to the wrong version of the website... --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 20:03, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Disabling e-mail for IPs

What use is enabling the "e-mail blocked" parameter for blocking IPs when IPs aren't allowed to use Special:EmailUser anyway? Jasper Deng (talk) 22:57, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

While it's not configured that way here, it is possible to configure MediaWiki so that IP users can use Special:EmailUser. Anomie⚔ 03:15, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

How would that work? Don't you need an existing e-mail address to do it? Jasper Deng (talk) 05:17, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

D'oh, you're right. Anomie⚔ 17:43, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

This option prevents logged-in users from using email. It was added in 2009, see mediazilla:18860. — AlexSm 18:42, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Free software portal link for articles has had generic "Portal-puzzle" image for too long

The Free software portal link in articles has had the generic "Portal-puzzle" image for too long. Here's how the link currently exists:

At the very least, the image used on the portal's header could be utilized – [[File:Computer-aj aj ashton 01.svg]] (below):

The page to revise the image is indefinitely semi-protected, so it appears that only administrators can alter it: Link Here.

Rather than having this generic portal puzzle image, could an admin add the graphic? It sure would look better in articles this way.

 — Northamerica1000^(talk) 07:05, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

It is cascade protected. The preferred method of requesting edits to protected pages is to use {{edit protected}} on the template talk page. — This, that, and the other (talk) 07:19, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the timely, helpful info. It would have taken a long time to find the information how to make the request. I've placed this request and the {{edit protected}} on the talk page for the image (link above). Northamerica1000^(talk) 20:31, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Broken bullet points

I don't know if this is a new issue, but I've never encountered it before until twice recently: Bullet points and numbered lists failing to wrap around floating images (example) breaking away from their sentences. (I can't remember the other example!) There's a similar, not-so-critical problem with indents not working when placed to the right of an image. Can this be fixed with code or is it a software issue? nagualdesign (talk) 07:56, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

What browser/OS are you using? Your example looks OK to me using IE8 on Windows 7 (but I think I remember seeing the problem you have described using IE9 on Windows 7). DH85868993 (talk) 08:11, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes I've seen it with Win7 & IE9. Roger (talk) 08:20, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Win7/IE9, yes. I found another example, too. Edit: On my computer the bullet points float above the image on the far left. nagualdesign (talk) 08:32, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

I've rearranged the images, adding {{-}} to prevent text-wrapping. Goodvac (talk) 08:25, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you but that was not what I wanted, and moving the panorama down was unnecessary either way - it's the smaller image causing the interference. nagualdesign (talk) 08:32, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

I moved the panorama because it just looked odd at the top of the article. Feel free to move it back up if you so wish, but {{-}} is the key to fixing the text-wrapping. Goodvac (talk) 08:39, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

It's a small bug in the CSS implementation. The bullets/numbers are placed outside the list item content (list-style-position: outside;). This is fine when there is nothing in front of them, but interferes with floating content. What basically happens is that the list margins are ignored. Using inside would fix lists beside floating content, but will break list indenting. — Edokter (talk) — 11:17, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Examples in IE today 29 Jan 2012

Has the bug always been there? The layout isn't ideal in IE8 or IE6 either (see screenshot). I don't recall seeing this before. - Pointillist (talk) 11:40, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it has always been there. — Edokter (talk) — 11:55, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

It's been there as long as I can remember (May 2009). I try to avoid placing left-aligned images low down in a section, in case they protrude into the next. Right-aligned images protruding into the next section are less of a problem. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:12, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you to those who have taken the time to follow this issue up. Whilst it is arguably very minor it's certainly worth adding to the To do list for the programmers. Internet Explorer with all of its quirks is the bugbear of many a website designer, but design for it we must. 'Favouring the other leg', so to speak, is not technically a solution. nagualdesign (talk) 11:20, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not just IE; all browsers exhebit this behaviour. And as I explained above, there is no solution. It's basically a design consideration. — Edokter (talk) — 11:27, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Would adjusting the right-hand margin of left-floated images to a more happy medium help? - Jarry1250 ^{[Deliberation needed]} 14:08, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

That may cause excessive space between the image and normal text. — Edokter (talk) — 14:41, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Nesting templates

I found general discussion when searching the archives, but nothing specific to my question. This edit to Template:Copied multi/Copied effectively unsubsts {{diff}}, {{history}}, and {{no redirect}}. The nested templates include extra logic and redundant plainlinks (they should be enclosed within {{Copied multi}}, which uses {{tmbox}}). Using nested templates benefits from any improvements or updates to them, but I think that changing the basic index.php syntax is unlikely. Any input on whether I should revert the unsubsts? Thanks. Flatscan (talk) 05:32, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that basic templates should not utilize other basic templates if not necessary. It adds to the complexity of the template and adds unneeded transclusion depth which may cause problems. Since those templates add no functionality (and basically make them unsubstable), I think reverting those changes is the best option. — Edokter (talk) — 11:25, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Wayward letter heading on category page

I'm baffled how Category:Serbian sport stubs appears under a second letter M heading on Category:Sport in Serbia. Is it some apparent bug as per this old VP discussion, or am I just not seeing something?--A bit iffy (talk) 12:20, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

No, see WP:SORT, more specifically the entry near the bottom: To place entries after the main alphabetical list, use sort keys beginning with tilde ("~"). Other characters used for this purpose are "µ" (mu), used to place stub categories at the end of subcategory lists; "β" (beta) for Wikipedia books; "Ι" (iota) for images; "Ρ" (rho) for portals; "Τ" (tau) for templates; and "Ω" (omega) for WikiProjects. (Wierded me when I first say it as well)Naraht (talk) 12:26, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

See also: Template talk:Stub category#Sorting. — Edokter (talk) — 12:33, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and if you copy the letter heading and paste it into your Wikipedia search box, you'll see that it is actually a Greek "Μ", capital mu, not a Latin "M". --Redrose64 (talk) 12:45, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I have suggested a change from Μ to Σ at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting#Category sort of stub categories. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:25, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Previously, category sorting was case-sensitive, so those categories would actually appear under the distinctive lowercase μ, not under uppercase Μ (which is pretty much identical to Latin M). Changing the letter to some more distinctive uppercase Greek letter seems like a good idea. Ucucha (talk) 13:47, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation people. I've responded to PrimeHunter's suggestion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting#Category sort of stub categories.--A bit iffy (talk) 16:30, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Two problems with a table

What's wrong with this table (permanent link here, last relevant change here) that causes the following two problems with it:

• the table won't sort when the header of the last column ("Total apps") is clicked;
• some (but not all) of the cells that are supposed to be enclosed by a red border have this border on three sides only?

--Theurgist (talk) 17:19, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I think that both problems are caused by the merged cells which are found in most rows. You might be better to use single cells; i.e. instead of this:

| colspan=3 bgcolor="#efefef"|

use this

| bgcolor="#efefef"|

| bgcolor="#efefef"|

| bgcolor="#efefef"|

--Redrose64 (talk) 18:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Revert/rollback notification

Is there any tool or feature for being notified if one of your edits is reverted? —danhash (talk) 21:45, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Not really. As far as the system is concerned, it's just a normal edit - the only distinguishing feature is the edit summary. So, make sure that pages that you're interested in are on your watchlist.

Personally, I have all the settings from My preferences → Watchlist  → Add pages I edit to my watchlist onward turned on, so that everything I do is watchlisted. I do take pages off my watchlist after a period though. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:56, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

That works fine for pages which I routinely edit or have an interest in keeping on my watchlist long-term. But a lot of my edits are simple fixes or technical edits and I have no interest in keeping some pages on my watchlist. I edit a large variety of pages and it is impractical to keep them all on my watchlist indefinitely. In any case, a reversion of an edit of mine is of more interest to me than constructive edits after mine. A tool such as the one I'm asking about would likely be best written as a toolserver script. I was pretty sure that most reverts were technically the same as any other edit (is this true of "real" rollbacks too?), but most reverts, including reverts made with Twinkle and some other tools, include "reverted" or "undid" in their edit summaries, and as there are tools for searching edit summaries, it doesn't seem like a stretch that a tool could be written which takes as its input a user's contributions and outputs a list of edits whose edit summaries seem to indicate reversion. If such a tool does not exist, would anyone care to code one? —danhash (talk) 22:17, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Since bugzilla:21860 was fixed, once MediaWiki 1.19 is deployed to WMF wikis it will be possible to use Wikipedia's API to get checksums for each revision of a page, and that could be used to create a tool which checks the edit right before yours to determine if its checksum is identical to some of the edits made after you have edited the page (that would mean your edit was reverted, since the content of the two versions are the same). Someone could develop such a tool on Wikimedia Labs, where MW 1.19 is already installed for testing purposes. Helder 15:20, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Another useful tool is User:Markhurd/hidetopcontrib.js, which allows you to view pages you have edited recently but someone else has edited since.-gadfium 00:15, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Remove a category which seems to be included using a #babel tag

Please help me remove User:Altaïr from the speedy deleted Category:User simple-N. As far as I can tell, the category is included using a {{#babel}} at the beginning of the page. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:25, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Why? The babel system categorises user pages by the languages that the user understands, and by the level of understanding. If you are looking for a translator, it's better to look for somebody in the lang-N category than in the lang-1 category. --Redrose64 (talk) 11:05, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Not only that, but the babel system automatically re-created the category too. Unfortunately, since r105540 it appears to be impossible to override this (or any of the "default" babel templates or categories). Anomie⚔ 12:29, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Combination of Template:Dts and Template:Birth date and age2

Hello Pump.

Is there a template that is the combination of Template:Dts and Template:Birth date and age2?

Background: I'd like to be able to create wikitables that are sortable and present the athlete's age at a certain point, for instance at the beginning of a tournament. The Dts is sortable, but is not able to calculate and present age. The Bda2 calculates age and presents birth date and age, but is not sortable (well, it's sortable, but you know what I mean).

In other words, I'm looking for a template that essentially achieves this:

{{sort|1991-01-02|2 January 1991 (age 21)}} or {{sort|1991-01-02|January 2, 1991 (age 21)}} (depending on date format) from parameters date-of-birth, date-starting-point and date-format.

HandsomeFella (talk) 18:04, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

proposals to improve assessment of reliability of wikipedia articles- making a quantitative and visible index

Currently, assessing the reliability of a given wikipedia article is difficult.

Problems: 1.Some heuristic methods are intuitively developed by people to make this assessment (length of article, number/quality of references, etc..). However, this heuristic is not made by most people, who often remain confused on this matter. This erodes the overall credibility of the encyclopedia.

2. Articles are sometimes flagged, or put in some categories, (and on the other hand, very few articles are classified as "Featured/good articles). But it must be recognized that this organization is very rudimentary. More efficient tools are needed and possible.

Proposals:

1. build a quantitative index of assessment of the probable "reliability" of an article. This index includes: length of article, number/quality of references, people's judgment about the reliability, etc..

2. Improve visibility of this index: adopt a color code. Instead of a uniformly white article, color each article and/or each paragraph, and/or each sentence with (the "whiter", the more "possibly reliable" the information is). Page ratings are not widely used nor visible.

It will also give incentives to good participation, as their changes will be more visible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mokotillon (talk • contribs)

Interwiki links

Resolved: Should be fixed now. --slakr^\ talk / 00:35, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Is it just me or has something gone really weird with interwiki links? Jenks24 (talk) 00:16, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Not just you, I see it too. It reads de:Players Tour Championship in the "Languages" panel instead of "German" and the turn red if I purge the cache. Armbrust, B.Ed. ^{Let's talk}_{about my edits?} 00:19, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Same here. Also, newly added iw links will appear as redlinks at the bottom of the page. Lithoderm 00:19, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

All interwiki links are acting up, not just new ones. Jeancey (talk) 00:21, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Not just you. Interwiki links are shown just below TOC; and there is no interwikis at usual place (at some moment there was a list at usual place with text "lang_code:name_of_article" instead of usual "language name"). Every interwiki link just goes to the current wikipedia, like "en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fi:Wikipedia:Kahvihuone_(tekniikka)&action=edit&redlink=1". Seems to be bug of mediawiki. `a5b (talk) 00:22, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

This is wikipedia-wide, not just en. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 00:26, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

From Server admin log: "February 1. 00:05 logmsgbot: reedy synchronized php/cache/interwiki-pr.cdb 'Updating interwiki cache'". — AlexSm 00:27, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Meaning? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 00:28, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

According to meta:Wikimedia Forum#interwiki's, "Interwiki map was updated very recently, techs are working to see what has gone wrong." Jenks24 (talk) 00:35, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

After third update "00:33 logmsgbot: reedy synchronized php/cache/interwiki-pr.cdb 'Updating interwiki cache' " all works again. `a5b (talk) 00:36, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I can confirm this, it works again now. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 00:41, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

BTW I would say, this is a problem with interlanguage links, as commons: and wikt: work. Armbrust, B.Ed. ^{Let's talk}_{about my edits?} 00:32, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, it's fixed. --Anime Addict AA (talk) 00:40, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I also confirm, that it works. Armbrust, B.Ed. ^{Let's talk}_{about my edits?} 00:44, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to be working for me - edited Bungotakada and the interwiki links still seem to be displaying incorrectly, Thanks, Maculosae tegmine lyncis (talk) 00:50, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I purged the page and now it seems to display correctly. Maybe it is an issue when the last edit was done during the time the cache was still updating? --FordPrefect42 (talk) 00:57, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Interwiki on United States Department of Commerce

For some reason, the interwiki is showing up as in-page redlinks on United States Department of Commerce; I'm sure there's some incredibly simple explanation for this, but I can't figure out how to fix it. Anybody more technically minded care to take a look? -- Khazar (talk) 00:29, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

see above :) Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 00:30, 1 February 2012 (UTC)