Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

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The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bugs and feature requests should be made at the BugZilla since there is no guarantee developers will read this page.

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Why not use these url instead

i found out that if i type http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page?action=history i can get to the history page. So why not use this url since it's nicer —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 219.74.233.75 (talk) 15:36, 13 January 2007 (UTC).

The other form (/w/index.php?...) is used so that Google doesn't index it (Google is forbidden from visiting anything under /w/). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 138.246.7.106 (talk) 16:43, 17 January 2007 (UTC).

Statistics again...

Why is September and November missing here? [1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Winterus (talk • contribs)

Problems when saving long text to Wikipedia

Hi everybody. Sorry if this is not the right place to write this... I use a iMac with Mac OS X 10.4.8 and a ADSL line with router. Since one or two months ago, I have got problems when trying to preview or save text to Wikipedia. Short texts are no problem, only long texts (2 or more edition windows) simply do not get saved (Message in browser: in the tab: Loading, and in the status line, in the bottom: Waiting for xx.wikipedia.org). This happens no matter the browser I use (Firefox, Opera or Safari). When editing from the office (with Windows XP) everything works fine. I checked my MTU, and it is 1500, what should be OK. Note that this problem appeared 2 months ago: from August (when I bought the Mac) till November everything worked fine. I suspect two things: a)changes done by my internet provider in his configuration or b)one of the many upgrades in the Mac software I installed. Does someone have the same problem? Any suggestion? Thank you all for your help. Mschlindwein 18:46, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like what I had experienced (see #Can edit only from secure connection, below). Probably something changed on your ISP's proxies. Flyingtoaster1337 12:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Deleted templates leaving inappropriate speedy deletion tags and cats

I've noticed CAT:CSD filling up with inappropriate entries recently. These are often talkpages or userpages, and they appear on the CAT:CSD page despite the article itself not appearing to contain a pink speedy delete box à la

This page may meet Wikipedia’s criteria for speedy deletion.

It seems what's happening is this:

1. A template is transcluded onto one or more pages. The use of {{civil0}} on Talk:September 11, 2001 attacks/archive25 is an example.
2. The template, in this case {{civil0}}, is tagged for speedy deletion
3. As one would expect, pages transcluding the template are therefore also tagged. So far so good.
4. The template is deleted
5. Pages which transcluded the deleted template remain on CAT:CSD. No "pink box" appears. However on editing the page the list of transcluded templates includes a redlinked "dead-template" (the original template, say civil0, which was deleted) "db-whatever" (the original speedy tag applied to the template), "db-meta" and "hidden-delete-reason" as still transcluded by the page.

I wonder if someone who knows more than me about templates could take a look at this (I know next to bog-all about them). Possibly something somewhere should have some <noinclude> wizardry so that the speedy deletion stuff doesn't "bleed" out of templates onto pages that transclude them (though that may be rubbish, as I say, I know pretty much bog-all about templates). And a solution to the mystery of why tags persist as "ghosts" even though the template that put them there has been deleted would be very welcome! Tonywalton  | Talk 13:06, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

You can tag a template with a speedy tag so as not to tag things transcluding it by typing <includeonly>{{db-whatever}}</includeonly>; I'm not sure about how to repair the sort of CSD flooding you describe above, but purging the deleted template might help. --ais523 13:09, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I wonder if the db templates could contain code along the lines of "if this is in the template namespace don't allow these bits to be transcluded", thus automating what you describe. I've tried purging the civil0 template, purging pages that transclude it, and even re-creating the template (containing only a comment), then purging the transcluding page. None of it gets rid of those /expletive deleted/ spurious delete tags. Tonywalton  | Talk 13:24, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

As for the automatic bit you were talking about, I was experimenting with that and found I couldn't make it work with transcluded {{db}} (I could make it work with substed {{db}}, but that would be too much of a change and making {{db}} subst-only wouldn't be worth it). --ais523 15:59, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Having messed about in my userspace I think you may have meant <noinclude> rather than <includeonly>. <includeonly> seems to put the db tag on the transcluding page(s) only, and not on the template, which appears to be the exact opposite to what's required. Regards, Tonywalton  | Talk 13:44, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

You're right, of course, I used the wrong tag. --ais523 15:56, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Situations like this should be dealt with eventually by the job queue. You should be able to wait them out. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 03:17, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, however assuming the "job queue" you refer to is CAT:CSD I'm one of the ones with the broom that's trying to sweep the stuff off the queue in the first place - it rarely disappears by itself :-) (if that's not the job queue I apologise but consider myself confused!) Tonywalton  | Talk 18:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

No, it's not. See Special:Statistics and meta:Help:Job queue. --TheParanoidOne 20:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Aha! Thanks for that - I am no longer confused. Tonywalton  | Talk 20:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Monobook.js deactivated?

Hello. Starting with the last couple of days, most of the "extra" features I've installed using my monobook.js seem to be failing. And today, they're all gone for good. (Sorry this sounds like a medical report, but that's what has been happening) I dont see popups any more, and nor do I see the ARV report tab or the "0" lead editing tab. I haven't made any changes to my monobook.js recently. Also, this problem seems to be happening only on en.wiki. Everything works fine in other wikipedias (using the same code). Could I have somehow disabled my monobook.js file here? Please help.--thunderboltz^(Deepu) 13:53, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Check #Error in js? css?. Mine works, but is pretty simple. Do you have popups installed? -- ReyBrujo 19:50, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

This is the same problem I'm seeing - see above. I have de-installed popups. Could this line

document.getElementById('p-cactions').childNodes[3].insertBefore(y,x.nextSibling);

be causing a problem for both/all of us? Rich Farmbrough, 12:00 10 January 2007 (GMT).

Me too. Same line - same problem. I've resorted to loading new js, - it's good but unfamiliar.Ian Cairns 12:15, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Is it to do with handhedl change? #Weird bar Rich Farmbrough, 15:41 10 January 2007 (GMT).

Check this modification I did on Fang Aili's monobook.js, it worked for me, hopefully for her too, and for everyone else. That is why you should not copy the code, but instead reference the monobook of the keeper :-) -- ReyBrujo 03:41, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

This sort of JS setup is extremely fragile. It broke because it depended on the exact order and structure of descendant nodes, which changed when a wrapper div was added. ReyBrujo's fix will work, but only until the next time someone decides to tweak something in the document structure.

I think it would be good if I added a convenience function to the software to handle this kind of thing easily, so that people don't have to resort to stuff like childNodes[n]. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 04:57, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

A monobook API? I like the idea. Move the burden of keeping compatibility in the framework and not those using it. Another way is to be informed, somewhere, somehow, when the DOM is modified. Not as useful as an API, but at least we would know what broke and how to fix it. -- ReyBrujo 05:08, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks ReyBrujo! That did fix the error. :-) --thunderboltz^(Deepu) 13:23, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

The difference between current and history in the database dump

Hi there. I have downloaded a portion of the English Wikipedia database dump on 30th Nov 2006 and I have imported stub-meta-current.xml.gz (364.7 MB) on my machine. Curiously, I found that each of the following three tables: page, revision and text has exactly 6,635,199 records. As the label 'current' might suggest, is any of the data in the three tables truncated? I have a hunch that the tables revision and text are truncated at whatever the number of records that table page has. Is this correct? What does 'current' actually mean?
Furthermore, I wish to understand what are the differences among the following three files in the db dump:

• stub-meta-history.xml.gz 3.1 GB
• stub-meta-current.xml.gz 364.7 MB -- This is the one that I'm staring at now.
• stub-articles.xml.gz 238.9 MB

Thank you --WikiInquirer 11:36, 10 January 2007 (UTC)(Talk)

Meta current is all pages - including user pages etc.

Meta history has all the history of the pages, so you can analyse changes, authorship or do roll backs.

Articles is just article pages plus possibly a few bits and pieces...

That's my best take on it. Rich Farmbrough, 11:55 10 January 2007 (GMT).

Thanks Rich for the above reply. Does that mean that stub-articles.xml.gz contain only pages and no revisions/text? In stub-meta-current.xml.gz, why would the tables page/revision/text have exactly the same number of records? Any missing data here? --WikiInquirer 04:41, 11 January 2007 (UTC) (Talk)

"Current" means no histories, as opposed to complete or whatever (the much bigger one). Thus for each page, you have one entry in revision (the current one) and one entry in text (that of the current revision). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Simetrical. You answered my question on the spot. --WikiInquirer 07:19, 12 January 2007 (UTC) (Talk)

Watchlist links to other language watchlists

Is there any way I could set my en.wikipedia Watchlist to link to my other language accounts (see user de:samwaltz's Watchlist in German, user fr:samwaltz's Watchlist in French, etc?). I know it is a special page, and has minimal editability; perhaps through a setting? Is there any Wikipedia function which actually allows you to link my accounts across various languages? I know. I'm a horribly horribly lazy person for not wanting to go through three whole clicks (selected_article:German:Watchlist), but programming is here to help us skip over automatable sequences, right? Oh, and please reassure me. I am actually posting this on the right page, right?samwaltz 23:19, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Not possible now. It's a much sought-after "distant future" improvement. And yes, you're posting in the right place. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:05, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! samwaltz 09:04, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Can edit only from secure connection

Recently, I've been unable to make certain edits when using en.wikipedia.org URL - the browser just times out waiting for en.wikipedia.org. For example, I had to make [2] and [3] from secure.wikimedia.org. However, I can still make other edits from en.wikipedia.org, [4] and [5] for example. I've tried editing using Opera and Firefox instead of IE, but they also have this problem. Does anyone have any idea why this happens? FWIW I'm accessing from university network behind NAT. And loading pages from either secure.wikimedia.org or en.wikipedia.org is still fast. Flyingtoaster1337 02:03, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Does your university have a new firewall that could block Wikipedia? (I admit I am not too knowledgeable when it comes to Windows; I am primarily a Linux user.) Yuser31415 05:32, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... It could be my school's proxies. Since the network admins never tell us when they change the network infrastructure, I'll never know for sure. :S Flyingtoaster1337 06:43, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

And now I can edit and save this section via en.wikipedia.org, which means things are working normally again. I guess someone on my school's server was fiddling with configs. Flyingtoaster1337 11:59, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

my watchlist isn't showing everything that changes

For example there has been a small vandalsim/revert war at the Dizzy Gillespie page but my watchlist only shows a few of the changes. Another example is entrie for my own talk page notes my comment about the watchlist irregularity on an editor's talk page I know User talk:Jeff3000 but not his response to me, but then it does show my response to him on my talk page. I haven't done an exhaustive survey for discrepancies but you can see this can get a bit unnerving. I do not see a general failure - things are being added. I don't see a pattern in terms of whether minor vs not-minor changes (that is my watchlist shows minor changes and some of the changes missed have been not-minor.) Anyone got any ideas?--Smkolins 11:08, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

update - I significantly changed my watchlist prefs and that seems to have made things appear right, if a bit more confusing to me.... specifically I changed the default to 6 days worth and I checked "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes". But I'm not sure I like that effect so I may turn it back off and see if the watchlist looses some pages.--Smkolins 00:43, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

As you've noticed, the watchlist only shows the latest change to a page, while the enhanced watchlist allows you to see all the changes within the time period. It might have also been that you have a "Hide certain type of edit" option selcted. If the Dizzy Gillespie doesn't appear at all in the watchlist and you know that it was last edited within the time period selected, then that's a different kettle of fish altogether and something I don't know the answer to. I'm just making sure that the simple causes are ruled outHarryboyles 00:47, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

No it's not whether I'm hiding edits - I'm not. However my experiment tripped the problem again. I unchecked that threading option and it lost the recent edits (back to before Jan 6) to the Dizzy page.--Smkolins 00:53, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Let me be specific - the history section of the Dizzy page says - (adding syntax so that it keeps the line formats)

(cur) (last) 15:19, January 11, 2007 Mlouns (Talk | contribs) m (→Later years and death - Modified internal link)

• (cur) (last) 15:17, January 11, 2007 Mlouns (Talk | contribs) m (→Later years and death)
• (cur) (last) 15:15, January 11, 2007 Mlouns (Talk | contribs) m (→Later years and death - Malcolm X as Attorney General)
• (cur) (last) 21:07, January 10, 2007 Tom harrison (Talk | contribs) m (Reverted edits by 76.181.73.101 (talk) to last version by Jeff3000)
• (cur) (last) 21:04, January 10, 2007 76.181.73.101 (Talk) (→Early life and career)
• (cur) (last) 16:13, January 10, 2007 Jeff3000 (Talk | contribs) (rvv)
• (cur) (last) 15:50, January 10, 2007 209.7.84.2 (Talk)
• (cur) (last) 15:44, January 10, 2007 AntiVandalBot (Talk | contribs) m (BOT - rv 209.7.84.2 (talk) to last version by Robotman1974)
• (cur) (last) 15:44, January 10, 2007 209.7.84.2 (Talk)
• (cur) (last) 12:41, January 9, 2007 Robotman1974 (Talk | contribs) (rvv)
• (cur) (last) 11:35, January 9, 2007 Abreezy (Talk | contribs)
• (cur) (last) 11:31, January 9, 2007 72.10.124.210 (Talk)
• (cur) (last) 09:16, January 9, 2007 Jeff3000 (Talk | contribs) (rvv)
• (cur) (last) 09:06, January 9, 2007 72.10.124.210 (Talk)
• (cur) (last) 19:04, January 8, 2007 Catzrthecoolest (Talk | contribs) m (Reverted edits by 64.252.131.22 to last version by Smkolins)
• (cur) (last) 19:03, January 8, 2007 64.252.131.22 (Talk)
• (cur) (last) 07:57, January 6, 2007 Smkolins (Talk | contribs) (→Later years and death)

while the Dizzy entries on my watchlist are exactly -

m 15:19 Dizzy Gillespie (diff; hist) . . (+31) . . Mlouns (Talk | contribs) (→Later years and death - Modified internal link)

and that's the only entry back to Jan 5th. On my watchlist page I've got namespace set to all and no hiding - same as my prefs. I'm also fairly sure it used to show my Jan 6th edit. If I change to 7 days I then see

14:07 Talk:Dizzy Gillespie (diff; hist) . . (+15) . . Cricket02 (Talk | contribs) ({{talkheader}})

--Smkolins 02:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Later my watchlist shows -

20:25 Dizzy Gillespie (diff; hist) . . (-15) . . Jeff3000 (Talk | contribs) (rvv)

but now the Mlouns entry is gone.--Smkolins 02:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

It looks like your watchlist is only showing the most recent edit of each article, mine used to do that, then I ticked the box for "Expand watchlist to show all applicable changes" in the Watchlist section in My preferences and it started showing every edit. Do you have that box ticked? - MTC 06:34, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

How did this start happening? Yes it goes away if I check the box for expand watchlist - which really means threading and I don't particularly like the effect. But this didn't used to happen and I know other still see it "normal" and get all the history of hits.--Smkolins 03:08, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Infobox alignment

Simple question: How do I align an Infobox, from a CVG template, to the left. Since the usual <div align="left">xxx</div> method doesn't work, I'm pretty much stuck.

Thank you,

~~MaxGrin 15:25, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Because Template:Infobox CVG is fully protected, I put in an {{editprotected}} request to add the feature, see here. --MZMcBride 00:20, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you!

~~MaxGrin 07:06, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

How to find requested but not found articles?

I would like to see a function that list say top200 of requested articles but not found ie like this:

 Someone types 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telex'
   Wikipedia says Telex not found etc..
 Someone types 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kjfdlf'
   Wikipedia says Kjfdlf not found etc..

 Most requested articles:    (under some /wiki/Special: page)
   1. 'Telex'    120 hits
   2. 'Kjfdlf'   90 hits
   3. ...        5 hits
   etc..

Point being people will not add an request (Wikipedia:Requested_articles). So this would be a way to find out what people really type.

Any possiblity to implement this..? Can't be that hard.. Electron9 12:01, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I have always though this wuld be good for identifying mispelling redirects needed. It could probably be picked up by a standard logging option, but care would be needed, ogs can grow very quickly! Also we could use the look-aside toolserver logs woith the database - much nbetter no additonal overhead, hmm. I'll ask Leon. Rich Farmbrough, 20:26 11 January 2007 (GMT).

A crude way could be to collect 10000 entries, pruge 50% which has the lowest numbers. Then continue until presentation say every 30 minutes. Thus large logs avoided. Electron9 20:57, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Some time ago we already discussed this so I filled a feature request on bugzilla: bug 6373. Perhaps you would like to comment it or vote for it. --Eleassar ^{my talk} 21:56, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Disappearing image

An GFDL image used by several pages has disappeared. Stem cell diagram File:StemCellsDia.png that was created by User:Adenosine. Was linked to by Stem cell. Any help appreciated. TimVickers 18:48, 11 January 2007 (UTC) Thank you. TimVickers 19:05, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Should be fixed. The image was moved to Commons but renamed to Image:Stem cells diagram.png which broke the links. -- JLaTondre 19:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Max watchlist size

Is there a cap on the amount of pages in the watchlist? If so - what is the limit? Yonidebest 21:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Yoni is asking on my behalf... I have ~12,250 pages, and noticed today that a certain page suddenly is not shown as having been changed (it was there one moment, gone the next). The page in question is still shown in bold in recent changes, so it is still on my watchlist, but it is not shown. I'm concerned there could be others... Odedee 21:48, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Now I'm thinking this may be related to #my watchlist isn't showing everything that changes. Odedee 21:51, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Images taking a long time to load

Images in image space are taking forever to load, if they ever do. It has been happening all day for me. Is anybody else experiencing this issue or just me? I'm using FF 2.0 on WinXP.--NMajdan•talk 22:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Google search

Which part of Wikipedia is searchable by Google? I have seen things like deletion review logs appearing in search results. Is there some policy defined in this regard?

It's an important policy issue which Wikipedia needs to be conscious of, considering that these pages often contain imprecise information which could be misinterpreted by users. It can put into question the utility of an otherwise valuable resource. -- Knverma 23:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

For the full answer, see http://en.wikipedia.org/robots.txt where the precise rules are listed. To summarise:

• Some badly behaved bots are blocked (Googlebot is not one of them)
• Any URLs starting with /w/ are disallowed (which rules out history pages, diffs etc whilst still allowing the current versions of articles)
• Special:Search is disallowed
• Subpages of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion and Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion are disallowed.
• Robots are limited to 1 page request per second

To answer your question about deletion review logs, these are searchable, and the pages indexed are listed here. Tra (Talk) 23:25, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

AFDs are blocked, but not DRVs. That could be changed. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

From what I could figure out, talk pages (of articles in main space) are disallowed. I would like it to be so. -- Knverma 00:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

From what I've seen there seems to be other restrictions besides the ones in robots.txt. As you've noted, talk pages of articles are one of them. I believe this is done based on the User-Agent HTTP header in the Squid proxy layer. Mike Dillon 06:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it looks like talk pages are allowed if User-Agent contains "Googlebot". I don't know the exact rules, but some of the exclusions are based on User-Agent and enforced by the caching Squid layer. Some of the restrictions are also based on the rel="nofollow" HTML attribute on links. Mike Dillon 06:40, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

This is also handled on a per-page basis. The robots.txt just prevents the bots from even trying certain common paths. If however a bot finds itself trying to index a page such as /wiki/Main_Page?action=edit (robots.txt can't easily block all such possibilities), it will often find: <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" /> asking it kindly not to index (noindex) the page. --Splarka (rant) 08:23, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, such requests to bots are what I had in mind. AFAIK Google considers these requests. -- Knverma

WP article: Link by ID

Is there any way to link to the current version of a WP article strictly by alphanumeric ID number? dr.ef.tymac 04:19, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes. You'll see a "Permanent link" link in the toolbox on the left. That will give you a URL to the specific revision of an article you are currently looking. --TheParanoidOne 06:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

That is not what he means. He is looking for a artcle-move save link. Agathoclea 12:04, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

You can modify the "Permanent link" to do this, just remove title=pagetitle& parameter. Example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Decelea&oldid=87854008
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=87854008

This provides a permanent link to the specific revision (unless it is deleted or oversighted). Note that it thinks the revision belongs to the main page when you do this. You can also do this by ArticleID (which will show the current version):

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?&title=-&curid=1184237

(The title parameter is ignored but required). Unfortunately, the only easy way I can think of to get the articleID# for curid is from recent changes (a diff or history link). --Splarka (rant) 08:12, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The need to include "title=-", as well as the odd behavior of the oldid-only link, are almost certainly bugs in MediaWiki and should be fixed. An easier way to obtain the article ID is to look in the page source, where it is given near the top as the value of the JavaScript variable wgArticleId. The current revision ID can also be found in the same place. Of course, the query.php method given on the refdesk also works. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:46, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Breaking a multiple dif

I check my Watchlist; an article has had 4 edits (say). To see if anything of interest to me has happened here, I click the "changes" link and get an overall dif of all four changes, with the text "(3 intermediate revisions not shown.)" displayed. If I notice that some sensible and some not-so-sensible changes have taken place, I'll want to walk through these edits one-by-one. I ususally do this chronologically, so I next click "Older edit" immediately followed by "Newer edit". Others may prefer reverse chronological order, which can be accomplished by clicking "History", immediately followed by "Compare selected version" (if newest version in the dif was the top). But why not expand aforementioned text to "(3 intermediate revisions not shown. Show first / last revision.)" ? I know, it would save me one click only, but what do you think?--Niels Ø (noe) 09:34, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Coords and Donations

If you don't dismiss the donations banner, it interferes rather nastily with the "coord" template: I noticed it cleaning up Glenforest_Secondary_School. Maybe one of them should be raised or lowered. yandman 13:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Dashes in article names

I've been having the following discussion with 213.155.224.232:

Sorry that I am pestering ;-), but ... At WP:MOSDASH is mentioned: Hyphens and dashes are generally rather avoided in page names (e.g., year of birth and death are generally not used in a page name to disambiguate two people with the same name). (...)If hyphens and dashes are needed to write a page name correctly (e.g., Piano-Rag-Music, Jack-in-the-box, Nineteen Eighty-Four), prefer simple hyphens, and avoid hair spaces, even in the odd case of a range forming part of the title, e.g., History of the Soviet Union (1985-1991). I see some work to do for a bot... --213.155.224.232 20:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Meanwhile I certainly found out the reason. When you save a HTML page, by default most browsers use the title tagged name of the page. Windows or even Windows NT however doesn't save the dashes as Unicode characters but as ASCII-150 (for the m-dash). When now loading the file into IE or Firefox the file name is considered an URL to the local HD, but within URLs only lower case characters are allowed. As a result opening it fails. I am not aware if the problem occurs in Latin-1 based languages as well, but at least in every localised Windows/NT version which primarly uses Latin-2 character sets. It's basically a kind of inconsistency between ASCII and ANSI. I experimentated a bit and it seems that the single quotes (left and right) - but not the abostroph - are causing the same problem. --213.155.224.232 09:50, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

This might be an interesting point to bring up on the talk of WP:MOSDASH or on the technical village pump; at the moment the guidelines would seem to be inconsistent and/or unclear (there are some examples with ndashes in the title on WP:MOSDASH), but if it's causing technical problems that may be a reason to change the guidelines. At the moment, I won't change it back yet again so as not to start a move war (that page seems to have had enough names, according to the number of double-redirs I had to fix), so it's probably worth having some discussion first. --ais523 13:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Could you try to ask there, because my English seems so weird. ;-) --213.155.224.232 13:22, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

The question is, are these technical problems enough of a problem to use a hyphen rather than a dash (seeing as the guidelines are inconsistent at the moment; see my talk page and User talk:Nightstallion), in article titles? (For some context, the article in question is War in Somalia (2006–present), but there's no reason why this wouldn't apply equally to other articles with ranges in their titles.) --ais523 13:30, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

See here for some earlier discussion on this issue, that didn't really resolve it. The same issue applies to scientific concepts named after multiple people, which properly should use an en-dash as with the date ranges. My own feeling is that getting the title of the article correct is more important than avoiding some silly glitch in Windows. —David Eppstein 17:00, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it's important to have article names that can easily be typed by users into the search box. In my view, this means avoiding characters that aren't found on the keyboard, even if this renders the article title less typographically correct. Nareek 17:12, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

As there are usually redirects from the title with hyphens to the title with dashes, this is not a problem. Kusma (討論) 17:18, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

To which I'd add (1) the en-dash and em-dash are easily found on my keyboard, and (2) I think it's also important that the dashed version of the name be found when typed into the search box: even if the article is titled with a hyphen where a dash would be more grammatical, I'd want to see a redirect from the dashed name. As Kusma says, these redirects usually exist in either direction, are supposed to be created by policy, and can be easily created when it is discovered they don't exist. So this really doesn't affect the issue of which name should be primary. —David Eppstein 19:00, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: So you think that good looking (according to proprietary US-english POV) means more than correcteasy access to every user form the Azores to East of New Zealand? Shouldn't it be access first, then optics? You talk about your keyboad. What abut mine? What about that of 5.8 billion people on earth w/o a qwerty keyboad? --213.155.224.232 20:52, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

No, I think that ease of access is important. But I also think that the choice of which character to use in the primary name and which to use in the redirect name makes little to no difference in ease of access, and therefore that we are free to apply proper rules of grammar in our naming conventions. —David Eppstein 23:14, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

But in this case we have a technical restriction which is effecting maybe 90+ percent of mankind, i.e. all who don't use US-en-based computer systems. BTW, we're not talking about applying grammar, we're talking about typography. You didn't get the point: It's not about accessing the file via redirect but it's about problems with saving the article on local hard-disk and accessing it again. Therefore any naming convention which causes problems is no good solution, it it causes technical problems, which the unexperiences user might not be able to resolve. --213.155.224.232 18:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence that any significant number of those people affected are actually saving the article as you describe? This seems like way too minor of an issue to change the guidelines for naming. Mike Dillon 19:30, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't have numbers, but certainly Microsoft knows how many not US-en Windows installations they've sold. OTOH, noone wants to change WP:MOSDASH, but to clarify: Shall Wikipedia should use standard rules of English punctuation for dashes. override what's written later on that page, If hyphens and dashes are needed to write a page name correctly (e.g., Piano-Rag-Music, Jack-in-the-box, Nineteen Eighty-Four), prefer simple hyphens, and avoid hair spaces, even in the odd case of a range forming part of the title, e.g., History of the Soviet Union (1985-1991). (Underlines added by me). Are you particular sure, that the issue doesn't effect users of non-Windows systems, for example? If you'll have a look in the source code of WP articles using em dashes, you'll see that for the mdash the software doesn't use the appropriate unicode but HTML markup, as mdash; . So we're not talking about unicode, but about HTML conversion into windows. (Maybe that even effects US-English users as well, but that you'd have to try out for yourself). --213.155.224.232 22:01, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The test would be: save War in Somalia (2006–present) on your HD (by default IE or Firefox use the article's title as a file name), then close you internet connection and empty the cache. Afterwards load the local saved file in your browser. If it behaves like at me, you'll see the text and all except for any of the images. If so, that's what I am talking about. BTW, I use XP. --213.155.224.232 14:26, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I updated guidance in several places:

Please don't use n-dashes (–), m-dashes (—) or any other type of dash, apart from standard hyphens (-) in page names of content pages, because such symbols, apart from regular hyphens, prevent that some systems (including Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP) could save the page as a file to their computer.

The non-hyphen dashes can however be used in redirect pages if an enhanced precision for the page name is desired for use in wikilinks elsewhere.

Rationale: see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dashes)#Dashes in article names.

Could someone check whether there's a bugzilla: report about this? And if there's none, that one is made? (Possibly the problem could be tackled server-side as I surmised at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dashes)#Dashes in article names...) --Francis Schonken 14:32, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I didn't find this bug so I announced it as a new on, MediaZilla:8660. I hope it's understandable. Maybe the issue can be fixed by the software by converting dashes in articles into normal hyphens. --213.155.224.232 14:58, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

References

Hi, I'd just like to know how to ask for a reference in an article. Does it exist something like {{reference}}? Thanks, Ajor 18:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

What happenned? Ajor 18:04, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

You transcluded the {{reference}} template by accident. I fixed it for you. I restored this section as well, assuming you only withdrew your question because of the ugly red message. Sorry if I assumed incorrectly. --Fru1tbat 18:09, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean like ({{cn}} or {{citeneeded}})? —EncMstr 18:15, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Changing vertical spacing

In the section Support_for_evolution#United_States I am trying to position the statement Table summarizes the results obtained in a 1997 Gallup Poll vertically. I either want it above the table, and close, or below the table, and close, or to make a superscript or reference at the upper right hand corner of the table. Can I do this?--Filll 16:20, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I've reformatted it using the |+ table notation. Is that what you want? --ais523 16:24, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

So is that a sort of title? It might be a start. Can text be moved up and down at all, not just left and right?--Filll 16:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

You can increase spacings using CSS (like I've done with this comment), but reducing them is hacky and not a good idea in articles. --ais523 16:35, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

repetition in a table

In the table at "Blood type#Table of ABO and Rh distribution by nation" is it possible to style the table so the style does not have to be entered with every entry in the table. Snowman 16:34, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I've modified the table formatting there to do this. Tra (Talk) 17:41, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I can do html4 tables, but I find wiki-tables more difficult. Would you look at the consistency of the spacing in the table called "RBC compatibility table" lower down the "blood type" page? Where are the instructions for making wiki tables? Snowman 17:57, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

They are here. —EncMstr 18:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I've tidied up that table. Tra (Talk) 19:03, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. The table looks better. Snowman 19:12, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Units of measurement template

Are there any templates to automatically generate text like "2 in (5 cm)" and the like? I was thinking of something along the lines of {{meas|2|in|cm}}, maybe with one more optional parameter for precision. Yes, the code is a bit longer than the actual text, but since it would perform the calculations automatically, it would make including lots of measurements much easier. Does anything exist? Should I try to write one? --Fru1tbat 18:04, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Look at Category:Conversion templates, in particular {{Inch}} does something that, except for rounding. Logic for rounding is in {{AcreAndHectare}}, {{CubicFeetPerSecAndMeters}} and {{Mile}}. —EncMstr 18:21, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Would it be difficult to make a metric/imperial choice in the "My preferences" features with the use of this template? I'm only interested in seeing metric, so could I turn the imperial portion of this template off? --maclean 06:49, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

One solution would be to wrap all such double-return templates (as well as any instance of both metric and imperial measurements appearing side-by-side) in a pair of spans that users could selectively block in user/monobook.css. For example, if the code on {{inch}} were changed to:

<span class="measureImperial">{{{1|1}}} [[Inch|in]]</span> <span class="measureMetric">({{round|{{#expr:{{{1|1}}} * 2.54}}}} [[Centimetre|cm]])<span> 

you could hide one or the other globally, for example: .measureImperial {display: none; }. This would take a large concerted effort to standardize wikipedia-wide though. --Splarka (rant) 08:23, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Page move function

Which was the earliest version of MediaWiki to use this function?? Or have all versions had the function. --SunStar Net^talk 19:06, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

All I know is that is was before m:MediaWiki 1.5, but I am not sure of the exact reason. Perhaps someone with more expertise on the history of Wikipedia would be able to clarify. Yuser31415 20:16, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

More or less forever. --brion 21:50, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

New user

Hello. I'm a spanish wikipedia user, and I would like to ask something. Excuse me if my english is not good. I'm trying to create a new user with the name Ilfirin, the same I have in es.wiki. Then, the web says: there is another user with that name. Ok, I searched his page, but it does not exist. There is no user with that name, not now, not in the past, because there is no User contributions page of Ilfirin, and no Discussion. I don't understand what is happening. Can anyone tell mw why can't I create that user, please? Thank you, Ilfirin. --193.146.59.37 22:06, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid there is a user with that name, but that user just has no edits. I'm afraid you cannot register with this name. Sorry. And your English is fine; it's very good, infact! --Deskana (request backup) 22:08, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Deskana. Now I know it I've created another one with a similar name. If the other one is not active I think he would not mind about it. Thank you again, and greetings from Spain. --Ilfirins 22:22, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I have formally welcomed you. Hope you have a great time here! Template:Emot Yuser31415 22:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a new policy that allows unused accounts (accounts with no edit history) to be taken over by another user - see Wikipedia:Usurpation. John Broughton | ♫ 15:31, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

need a reference button

Per discussion at Wikipedia talk:Footnotes, there should be a button in the article editing interface that inserts "<ref></ref>" and puts the cursor between the two tags. Kaldari 23:15, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

The place to request this is at MediaWiki talk:Common.js. Since you're an admin, you could add it yourself if you think the Wikipedia talk:Footnotes provides sufficient consensus. Look for mwCustomEditButtons in the code. Mike Dillon 03:37, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I made a button for this a while ago: Image:Button_ref.png. Suggested code below. --Splarka (rant) 08:21, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

   mwCustomEditButtons[mwCustomEditButtons.length] = {
     "imageFile": "http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c4/Button_ref.png",
     "speedTip": "Ref tags",
     "tagOpen": "<ref>",
     "tagClose": "</ref>",
     "sampleText": "references"};

R. Koot has been protecting the toolbar images, so this one will need to be protected as well if it is added to Common.js. Mike Dillon 16:15, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

null (?) edits appearing in page history

Why do these "edits" [6] [7] appear in the page history if no changes were made? Interestingly, User:VoABot II gives a warning [8] to this IP and claims to have reverted the same edit shown in the first link. Here is more strangeness from the same IP address: [9] [10] [11]. — CharlotteWebb 06:08, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

A "null edit" usually means that the previous version was deleted due by oversight. I don't know if that's the case here, but I know that's one way it happens. --Golbez 06:48, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

That was my first thought, but those edits are pretty darn recent and the edit summaries imply that the user intended on making a null edit (hence saying "you can't revert this!", because rollback or reverting doesn't work on null edits). The only other thing I can think of off the top of my head is that perhaps there are some ASCII or Unicode control characters in there that diff isn't picking up? That's really scraping the bottom of the barrel though, I have no earthly idea. —bbatsell ¿? 06:52, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Golbez, I do not think oversight is the case here. If the anonymous user made an edit and it was oversighted, the history would appear to show VoABot_II reverting an edit that no longer exists, which is not the case.

In the bot's message at User talk:71.138.132.40, the bot says "your edit has been reverted" and links to the first of two edits which both obviously still exist, and implies that the bot at least attempted to revert that edit. So this probably means that the bot made a truly null edit while attempting to revert, just as I did when I hit [rollback].

So it could be that B is different enough from A to be a newly saved revision, but A isn't different enough from B for the software to allow us to revert back to A, or something.

Or it could be that the first edit differs from the original in some way that does not appear in the diff, and the second edit is reverting back to the original, and the bot was slow on the draw and made a null edit after 71.138.132.40's edits, maybe...

My head hurts. — CharlotteWebb 07:29, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Maybe we should block the IP for disruption. — CharlotteWebb 07:30, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Tim Starling is looking into fixing it. I shan't give people ideas by saying what causes it. Angela. 22:18, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Dated prod was broken on usertalk? underscores in namespace variables

Template:dated prod was broken on usertalk pages (I think I patched it up for now), apparently because {{NAMESPACE}} and {{ns:3}} disagree on the underscore in "User talk" so the comparison failed. Was the output of these variables recently changed? Femto 12:03, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

{{ns:}} returns the underlined namespace in 1.7. Looking at the CoreParserFunctions.php revision history shows $param = str_replace( ' ', '_', strtolower( $part1 ) ); hasn't been changed in the 3 months worth of revisions I checked (and probably more). Using {{NAMESPACE}} should have always been broken, was it not? Try using {{NAMESPACEE}} which returns the namespace with underscores. --Splarka (rant) 22:19, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

That could be it, the functionality may have been broken all along, but it just wasn't noticed until 3 days ago due to the low volume of prodded user talk pages. I've implemented NAMESPACEE in the template. Thanks! Femto 12:51, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Quick question about marking edits as verified

I was doing some patrolling in other Wikipedias (I have accounts in many to update wikilinks and update Commons images there), and noticed the following text in the Italian: [Segna la modifica come verificata] (something like "sign the modification as verified"; the text may not appear if you don't have an account there). The wikilink had action=markpatrolled in there, along with a rcid. I did not pay attention in the other Wikipedias, so this is probably a beta testing (when clicking it, I got the La modifica selezionata è stata segnata come verificata.). I know there had been many discussions and proposals before, but if this is implemented, would it be similar to the way the Italian Wikipedia is handling it? -- ReyBrujo 17:52, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Patrol functionality has long been in the software. It's just not enabled on enwiki because there's no agreement that it should be. It was once, though, I think. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:04, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

More Wikimedia projects use it than one might think, like notably enwikt, but they have $wgOnlySysopsCanPatrol = true; set so most people never notice ^_^. Wikia had it enabled globally for registered users for several months, and it was very annoying and almost completely ignored by the users. --Splarka (rant) 08:32, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

diff=cur doesn't work on redirects

If you go to any redirect, we'll use Main page which redirects to Main Page, and you use the diff=cur method in the URL, it shows the diff, but for Main Page but not Main page. (try //en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_page&diff=cur) GeorgeMoney (talk) 20:36, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

It's been reported already at bugzilla:4973. BryanG^(talk) 23:09, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Tools tabs

I used to have extra tabs appear at the top of the page (next to "discussion", "edit this page", etc.). One of them appeared when I edited talk pages, and I'd have options like {{test1}}, {{test2}}, etc. Another appeared to help close AfDs quicker. For some reason, these tabs have disappeared. I haven't been messing around with my monobook or anything. I really don't know how these things work, and I'm hoping someone can tell me what happened. The tabs made it a lot easier to do certain things, and I'd like them back. I'm using Firefox on Windows. I tried opening Wikipedia in IE, but had the same problem. I have been using Firefox for ages. Thank you, Fang Aili ^talk 22:58, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

By any chance, do you use popups? There have been some reports that popups is apparently broken, possibly breaking javascript after it. Try removing popups and a full refresh. -- ReyBrujo 23:03, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Check #Error in js? css? and #Monobook.js deactivated? for further information. -- ReyBrujo 23:05, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I do, but I don't use them. Actually they're kind of annoying and I'd like to remove them. How do I remove popups? I don't know anything about javascript. Interestingly, some of my other functions still work, like I still have the protect/unprotect tab, and various other links in the left-hand toolbox that I added. --Fang Aili ^talk 23:09, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the links to the related problems too, Rey. Unfortunately I'm kind of confused and not sure if there was a solution stated in there somewhere.. I don't know how to "restart" my monobook per se, other than just blanking it. And the AfD tab, for instance, appeared when I became an admin, so I don't see how changing my monobook would fix the problem anyway. Sorry to be so ignorant of these technical details. --Fang Aili ^talk 23:16, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I hate messing with other's people monobook.js, just like with monobook.css. But you can edit User:Fang Aili/monobook.js, search where you have the text:

 // User:Lupin/popups.js - please include this line 
 document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' 
              + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/popups.js' 
              + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>');
 simplePopups=true;
 popupAdminLinks=true;
 popupStructure='menus';

and delete it all. Then do a CTRL+F5. My guess is that what is above popups is working fine, but what comes after does not. -- ReyBrujo 23:22, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the help. Unfortunately it didn't work. Any other ideas? Feel free to putz around with my monobook if you like; it can always be reverted. --Fang Aili ^talk 02:56, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I copied your full monobook.js, and noticed an error:

 [Exception... "Node was not found" code: "8" nsresult: "0x80530008 (NS_ERROR_DOM_NOT_FOUND_ERR)" location: "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:ReyBrujo/monobook.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s Line: 491"]
 491 document.getElementById('p-cactions').childNodes[3].insertBefore(y,x.nextSibling);

Apparently, the layout of the page changed, and that element does not exist anymore. I will check to see if I can fix it now. -- ReyBrujo 03:30, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Done, hopefully :-) -- ReyBrujo 03:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Fixed! ReyBrujo is teh awesome. ;) --Fang Aili ^talk 05:14, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject CCT (Current City Time)

Your assistance and technical expertise is required for the developement of WP:CCT. Any comment is greatly appreciated on that articles discusion page. Thank you! --CyclePat 00:29, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

This will not work as you intend, because content is heavily cached. The listed time will be that of the last time the page was edited or purged. For even the largest cities, that's probably a few hours out-of-date on average, making this pointless. It will be weeks or months out of date for mirrors using HTML dumps (and please see WP:ASR; don't say something like "click here to purge cache" on article pages, because we write our content with the intent that it be mirrored and such a link would do nothing on a mirror).

I recommend you not spend more time than you already have on this. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:13, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Image Problem With Eskimo Article

The text of the "Eskimo" article is partially obscured by one of the article's images when viewed with MS Windows XP Professional Version 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600 running Internet Explorer 7 Version 7.0.5730.11 and MS Windows 98 Version 4.10.1998 running Firefox Version 2.0.0.1. I don't know if this is a technical issue with Wikipedia, a mistake in the article mark--up, or a rendering problem with the browsers I'm using.

Akulo 07:20, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

How about now? I reordered the images. -- ReyBrujo 07:45, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Forgetting to log in; appending username to an edit

I unfortunately forgot to log in during a recent edit, and just the IP address is displayed for one of my edits in the edit history. I'd kindly prefer for my username to be there instead. Also, I'm also kindly noting that that IP address reflects a number of edits associated with it from a while back that are not mine. Is there a way that, say, an administrator can fix this one recent mistake? Thanks! —Catdude 08:19, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

You could request that the edit you made be oversighted, if you are concerned about your IP address being revealed to others. As far as the other edits attributed to the address, IP addresses are often shared, especially in the case of IPs assigned to ISPs. The edits were presumably made in the past by someone else who was temporarily assigned the IP. --Slowking Man 08:45, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

• Thank you very much, Slowking Man, for the reply and valuable information! —Catdude 09:19, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Disabling warnings

I want to know if there is way of hiding all the warning messages that are displayed each time I try to edit an article, talk page or upload a file. Messages like: "Articles that do not cite reliable published sources are likely to be deleted.", "Do not copy text from other websites without permission. It will be deleted", "Because Wikipedia's content is freely copyable under the terms of the GFDL, your file will be deleted within one week unless you provide both:", "This is a talk page. Please respect the talk page guidelines, and remember to sign your posts using four tildes (~~~~).". I find it annoying to see so much unnecessary text (for me that is) splattered on the page having been around for 3 years. Any solution would be welcome. Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:33, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

You can accomplish that with your monobook.css. By adding

#editpage-copywarn { display: none }
#editpage-copywarn2 { display: none }
#editpage-copywarn3 { display: none }

you'll disable copyright reminders,

#newarticletext { display: none }

will remove the new page warning, and

#talkpagetext { display: none }

will hide the talk page notice. MaxSem 09:41, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, the two worked. I tried to do the same for the uploadtext function but it does not work. Can I disable that too? Better still can I retain the inner template of mediawiki:uploadtext? Regards, =Nichalp «Talk»= 10:02, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

To make upload text hideable, you need to modify MediaWiki:Uploadtext a bit, so that it would start with <div id="uploadtext". Then, you can disable it in your monobook: #uploadtext { display: none }. MaxSem 10:15, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Er, no you don't. It already was wrapped in such a div. The new id is redundant and breaks XHTML validation(although apparently id's are case-sensitive, so it doesn't break validation). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 00:00, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Cascading protection

I've enabled Werdna's new "cascading protection" feature and set it on the Main Page. The purpose of this is to (temporarily) protect any template or image which is in use on the cascade-protected page, minimizing the damage of vandalizing of forgotten subtemplates on the highest-trafficked pages.

(Note that this doesn't protect commons images on commons.)

If necessary it can be removed from the mainpage by unchecking the "Cascading protection - protect any pages included in this page" box on the unprotect tab at Main Page. --brion 10:00, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeeeeeeeaaaah! :) MaxSem 10:17, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Impressive work, many thanks to Werdna and everybody who contributed to this. See also bugzilla:8575 for tracking any possible issues that might come up (currently none). --Ligulem 10:23, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Accesskeys HTML changed

Simetrical has updated the code for access shortcut keys again, so they now work when JavaScript is disabled and in theory should be less fragile, with easier localization.

Some more effort went into testing and supporting backwards compatibility for customizations than last time, so hopefully it's all working correctly for everyone. (If you have trouble altering or disabling accesskeys with your user JS, let us know). --brion 10:03, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Is this the change to akeytt() in wikibits.js? Cuzza the bare getElementById( 'wpWatchthis' ) instead of document.getElementById( 'wpWatchthis' ) that just showed up at line 599 there is throwing an error on every page for me. —Cryptic 10:13, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

That was a last-minute change that crept in after my last testing. >:( Fixed! --brion 10:24, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. —Cryptic 10:26, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Somewhat related to this, akeytt() and the ta[] array are now considered deprecated (although support for them will probably continue for quite some time, since there are plenty of user scripts using them out there). See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject User scripts#Calling akeytt() for details on how to set accesskeys without them. There's also a new standard helper function named addPortletLink() for adding links to the toolbars and navigation boxes, which should be able to replace a number of widely-copied functions used for the same purpose. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

English Wikipedia in French?

Maybe you already know this, but in many articles in the side bar instead of "cite this article" you see "citer cet article". Any explanation for this? (User:Nitrato in it.Wiki) --84.72.60.47 10:43, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Typo in a localization file update. Fixed. --brion 10:46, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Automated creation of pages in talk namespaces

Recently the spammers have taken to using automated software to do their dirty work, in the process creating lots of pages with nonsense titles. Is there a way to implement some sort of CAPTCHA when IPs create new talk pages, to throw these automated programs off? Flyingtoaster1337 11:44, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I would not be surprised if there is, but I think this would be a bad idea because we are immediately putting newcomers under a shadow of distrust. I, if I was a newcomer to Wikipedia, would think that it would be inconvenient to type in some nonsensical string of characters before creating (or editing) a page, talk or not. There's also the issue where, for example, I think CAPTCHA might be cracked, because a lot of vBulletin forums are receiving a lot of spam nowadays. x42bn6 Talk 21:34, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... or we could prevent page creation where there is an external link but no internal links. Just an idea. Flyingtoaster1337 05:32, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Strange layout problem

I have noticed my talk page had a strange layout (image inside the editing section, navigation, search and toolbox boxes overlapping there, etc. After some minutes, that was fixed. However, now I see Image:Aichi Expo 2005 Hamasaki Ayumi.jpg has a similar layout problem, where the toolbox are below the page contents (if you know CSS, much like if you they were two divs and had forgotten to float the image to the right). Am I the only one noticing this? -- ReyBrujo 13:58, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Problem confirmed for Image:Aichi Expo 2005 Hamasaki Ayumi.jpg. Toolbox is below the page contents. Seems related to #Broken diffs below (second diff). --Ligulem 17:19, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Broken diffs

Is it just me or are some diffs rendering the left toolbox (with Main page, Community portal etc.) to break?

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cristiano_Ronaldo&diff=100654834&oldid=100550720 (toolbox has shrunk, and top tabs are shrunk too)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Computing&diff=prev&oldid=100655776 (toolbox appears at bottom of page)

x42bn6 Talk 14:21, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Got the same with this diff. Maybe someone is playing with the global settings? -- ReyBrujo 14:51, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Just realised - this is related to the heading above, too. x42bn6 Talk 15:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

This is another type of error. I am guessing someone is playing with some CSS, but can't see which one. I couldn't find where mw-headline is defined as well. I also noticed http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=-&action=raw&gen=css&maxage=2678400&smaxage=0&ts=20070114150049 which I am not sure I have in my page. -- ReyBrujo 15:49, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I ran it through the W3's HTML validator and found that there are closed </div> tags http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fw%2Findex.php%3Ftitle%3DWii%26curid%3D421853%26diff%3D100630661%26oldid%3D100561026 when there are no opening tags, which makes me think it might be a template vandal or something - checking now. x42bn6 Talk 16:14, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I can confirm the rendering problem. I made a screenshot of [12] --Ligulem 17:13, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

This is probably a tidy-related regression in Article.php, let me see what I can do. -- Tim Starling 17:25, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks to x42bn6 for pointing out the unmatched </div>, that's a classic symptom of HTML Tidy being disabled. -- Tim Starling 17:44, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Editing watchlist issues

Hi, I have noticed the last couple of days that I am uneable to load the edit watchlist page. That is Special:Watchlist/edit just return a blank (0 byte) page for me. Don't think it's something on my end. I have tried with both Opera 9.10 and IE 6 from my Win XP home computer and with Opera 9.10 on my Linux (Fedora) work computer, I get the same blank page regardles. Is this a know issue or should I submit a bug report? --Sherool (talk) 15:46, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Works for me (Firefox 2.0.0.1 on Win XP Pro SP2). --Ligulem 16:50, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you logged in? Anonymous editors don't have watchlists. John Broughton | Talk 22:06, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Even anons should get "Please log in to view or edit items on your watchlist" message, so it's not the case. MaxSem 23:09, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes I'm logged in and everyting. I just get no data back from the server other than the header. This is all my network sniffer picked up (removed some cookie data for security reasons, but otherwise verbatim):

GET /wiki/Special:Watchlist/edit HTTP/1.1
User-Agent: Opera/9.10 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)
Host: en.wikipedia.org
Accept: text/html, application/xml;q=0.9, application/xhtml+xml, image/png, image/jpeg, image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, */*;q=0.1
Accept-Language: nb-NO,nb;q=0.9,no-NO;q=0.8,no;q=0.7,en;q=0.6
Accept-Charset: iso-8859-1, utf-8, utf-16, *;q=0.1
Accept-Encoding: deflate, gzip, x-gzip, identity, *;q=0
Cookie: dismissSiteNotice=3.2; enwikiUserID=260314; enwikiUserName=Sherool; enwikiToken=[sensored]; enwiki_session=[sensored]
Cookie2: $Version=1
Connection: Keep-Alive, TE
TE: deflate, gzip, chunked, identity, trailers

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2007 00:04:27 GMT
Server: Apache
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.1.4
Content-Language: en
Vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie
Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: private, s-maxage=0, max-age=0, must-revalidate
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
X-Cache: MISS from sq22.wikimedia.org
X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from sq22.wikimedia.org:80
X-Cache: MISS from knsq6.knams.wikimedia.org
X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from knsq6.knams.wikimedia.org:80
Via: 1.0 sq22.wikimedia.org:80 (squid/2.6.STABLE5), 1.0 knsq6.knams.wikimedia.org:80 (squid/2.6.STABLE5)
Connection: close

That's it, no content data of any kind. If I keep reloading 10-15 times I sometimes do get the page eventualy, but it's far from reliable. Some misbehaving squid servers maybe? --Sherool (talk) 00:24, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Template category help

Hello. Could you please help me get rid of the two categories that appear at the bottom of this template? Biruitorul 19:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Those are found at {{Dynamic navigation box}}. I notice one was added recently. You should give an opinion at that template or to the user to see what was the purpose of such categories. -- ReyBrujo 19:37, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

New user preference: don't show page content below diffs

There's now a new checkbox on the last page of Special:Preferences labelled "Don't show page content below diffs". Checking it will cause all diffs to appear like this instead of like this. I expect people doing RC patrol will probably find this useful, since it can significantly reduce the loading time of diff pages.

Incidentally, as the links above demonstrate, the preference may be overridden by adding diffonly=1 or diffonly=0 to the URL, which may be useful when posting links to diffs of very long pages for review. Note that, even with this feature enabled, you can still see the content of the page by clicking on the "Revision as of" links above the diff table.

Ps. This resolves bugzilla:3446. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Very, very nice. I only have a very small qualm: Sometimes I do a diff of a talk page, read a reply, and click the little arrow in the diff edit summary to go to the section to reply. Could this little arrow be modified so that, whenever you are in a diff without the page content, it points to the section of the current page version? That way we would have a one-click link to the section in the current version without having to reload the page and then browse to the section. -- ReyBrujo 20:47, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable. The current behavior (try to go to a nonexistent section on the current page) is certainly broken and needs fixing; I'll go take a look at it. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

As it turns out, the fix was trivial. Thanks for noticing the problem, though. As usual, expect some delay before the change goes live on Wikipedia. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 23:42, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Nice, the change went live. Thanks! -- ReyBrujo 21:02, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh cool! As an avid RC patroller and CVUer, I'm sure this is going to be _very_ useful, since it will cut down loading time immensely ... Yuser31415 23:49, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't work fully on category or image pages. —Cryptic 22:43, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I just committed a quick fix to svn. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 05:04, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks search box bug

Hi, I don't know if this the best place to post this sort of things, but anyway... The search box, the place where you can search for book modules without having to enter the main page of a particular language (at least for me) redirects to Wikipedia, not Wikibooks, which is somewhat weird... Does the same thing happen to all you? --Taraborn 10:25, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

No. Check you search, it should be something like "http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=my_author&go=Go" -- DLL ^{.. T} 17:37, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Got this fixed a short while ago. --brion 17:51, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

"Source" field below "edit summary" field.

On the verifiability policy's talk page, there is an ongoing discussion on how to make the policy easier for newcomers to understand and follow. One of the suggestions is to add a "source" field below the "edit summary" field. As this entails changes to the MediaWiki software, developers and technically-inclined users are invited to participate in the discussion. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 14:02, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Suspect

I have tried on Multiple computers to access the WP:SSP page, but my PC always freezes ont hat page and only on that page. There may be a bug. Zbl 14:50, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I tried on a Single computer and it's OK. -- DLL ^{.. T} 17:33, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Works for me too, but the page does appear to load very slowly. I wonder if this is connected with Zoe's question below. Tonywalton  | Talk 17:39, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Image Resize!

I need help in resizing a image its too big

can anyone tell me how to resize it? if you wanna see the picture for yourself its in haegemonia on the disscussion page

please help me out Maverick423 15:09, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Done already. -- DLL ^{.. T} 17:31, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Transclusions taking a long time to complete?

Since sometime yesterday afternoon, pages which include transclusions (such as WP:DRV, WP:AFD, WP:AN/I, etc.) are taking a long time to load. I thought there was something going on on my home computer, but it's happening on my work computer, too. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:16, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

If you look at the bottom of the html source you should see a commented footnote similar to this:

<!-- Served by srv87 in 1.770 secs. -->

That's the information i got for loading this village pump page. If the number of seconds is high than it's server lag. Otherwise it's your own connection(s). If all other factors are equal, the same amount of text should load at the same speed whether the wikitext is all on one page (like WP:AN/I), or on several transcluded sub-pages (like a daily AFD log page), because building the full html document from the transcluded portions occurs in the server, not in your browser. — CharlotteWebb 18:09, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

It's also possible that Javascript load time is contributing. The pages mentioned are quite large and there has been some site-wide JS code added recently to wikibits.js that is sensitive to the overall page size. Mike Dillon 18:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

In fact, the JavaScript code in question has already been optimized a bit in the latest svn revisions, so things might improve once the Wikimedia servers are synced from svn. I also made some optimizations on an unrelated piece of code that was taking a long time on pages having lots of bulleted lists, which might also improve the loading time of AfD for example. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:13, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

The optimizations are live now. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:30, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

For the past 24 hours or so, pages are taking an unusually long time to load on my home and work computers as well. Newyorkbrad 18:22, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Whatever the problem was, it seems to have gone away ... now if I can just get Symantec to acknowledge that my virus protection, which I just renewed, hasn't expired .... User:Zoe|(talk) 17:05, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Text blacklist?

I know that variations of URLs can be auto-blocked via some magic done on the meta spam blacklist. Can that same code be used to block insertion of a string of text? [13] On that diff you see the text that is a constant battle to remove when it is repeatedly inserted by anons. In any other article that text is random gibberish. SchmuckyTheCat 17:44, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... that is serious. Maybe an oversight should delete those diffs? I would semiprotect the article to prevent new additions. You know, copyright violation and piracy concerns. -- ReyBrujo 18:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Taking one of these actions would create an unfortunate precedent for using oversight and text blacklisting to settle a content dispute. It looks to me like the entire basis for the article's existence is that the full key is widely known (and it is, see [14]), so it seems futile for us to try shoving some genie back in a bottle. Some people might use these letters and numbers illegally, to violate copyright, just as they could if it they were written on a shirt, but nobody would be arrested for wearing the shirt, and just some people can and do dial 867-5309 to make lewd phone calls, but radio stations still play the song every freakin' day. Maybe I've got it all wrong, but I think Wikipedia:Risk disclaimer and Wikipedia:Spoiler warning satisfactorily address issues like these. — CharlotteWebb 18:52, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I doubt it's quite as serious as you make it sound — it's not like anyone who wanted it couldn't just google for the title and see the full key on the first page of the results. While including the full key in a Wikipedia article is probably not appropriate, at least not while there's a chance that anyone might still want to use it, the fact is that having it there isn't really going to help anyone infringe Microsoft's copyright. That particular cat is well out of the bag by now, and has been for years. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)That the key may be widely known does not mean we can include it here. My main concern is allowing others to point to those versions. Remember how the German Wikipedia was used to spread a trojan/virus by pointing to an old version of a page? Anyone could point to that version from their blog or forum thread. We are lucky only "this" particular serial is famous. -- ReyBrujo 19:05, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

The blacklist is for spam and spam only. We shouldn't really start censoring every single license key for every single piece of software, which is time consuming and inappropriate. I would probably just put that up for semi-protection and/or oversight the bad edits (if really necessary). x42bn6 Talk 20:07, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think publishing the key is a huge massive problem for Wikipedia, it's that the constant patrolling of the article to remove it is such a PITA. SchmuckyTheCat 04:20, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Two notes:

1) This is possible to do, and has been done on Wikimedia before, but I believe it requires dev modification of the local files.

2) This only really works to block spambots who don't have consistency in their URLs (or don't add URLs), as it is too easy to bypass by non-robots (spaces, comments, other fun delimiters).

--Splarka (rant) 08:54, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

If you can demonstrate that there really is a clear consensus that the key should not be in the article, then one of the people running anti-vandalism bots (such as AntiVandalBot) might be willing to add that as a special case to their vandalism detection ruleset. It wouldn't be too hard to write a new bot for this specific purpose either, but it'd be easier if it was done by an existing bot that is already watching the RC feed. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:45, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Hehehe, nah, no worries. With articles like FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8, it makes no sense :-) -- ReyBrujo 23:04, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion please respond

Ok guys Wikipedia is great however i was wondering why dont we add a bit of videos or something of the sort to give people a view of what the articles are about?. i know uploading videos to wiki will take up too much bandwith but what about embbeding? from one site to another. also if embedding doesnt work then why dont we add a external link to the article instead that way the videos can be seen elsewhere *like the original site* without taking up wiki resources. I know alot of articles that will benifit from this (video games, Location ones, animal ones, etc.) to ensure that the sites are clean we can use the most trusted ones like youtube or yahoo media or google media. all im saying is think of the possabilitys!. dont be afraid to tell me what you think after all it is a suggestion!

Maverick423 18:31, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

• Copyright violation issues.
• Spam
• Hearing or watching Britney Spears while patrolling is not considered my ideal day in Wikipedia.
• YouTube is a trusted site? You just closed the discussion on this matter.

Just link to the legal site with the video. And only if absolutely necessary. -- ReyBrujo 18:44, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

heh i get what ya mean verywell then with all that i withdraw my suggestion =) it would of been pretty cool though Maverick423 18:51, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Honestly, something like this will probably be developed here eventually. It seems inevitable that Wikipedia will, given its medium, one day utilize videos in the same way pictures are utilized now. Of course, a lot will have to be done first; copyright issues will have to be addressed, policies for when and how to use videos will have to be developed, ways of integrating them will have to be established... But, again, that's going to take a lot of time (a matter of years, not months). --The Way 19:30, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Years eh wow still it would be awsome it will be more virtual then anything and even better maybe we can have videos explaining everything instead of just showing you. a good example would be like nuclear explosions. you see the video and throughout the video its explaining to you what is going on during the explosion and everything =) i cant wait for this day to comeMaverick423 21:08, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

With the ubiquitous cell phone cameras, people can take videos and upload them with public domain or creative commons or GFDL licenses. User:Zoe|(talk) 17:06, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

But the video could not be distributed as its contents is still copyrighted by the copyright owner. There is a similar discussion about screenshots in WP:CVG. -- ReyBrujo 17:18, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Huh? Why would there be any more restriction on self-released videos than on self-released photos? User:Zoe|(talk) 17:27, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Let's see if I understand your comment... 24 debuts a movie. The first session is only for the press, but someone sneaks a camera in, manages to record the full movie, and uploads it to some torrent site. Now, Fox can't sue this guy, because he recorded it with his own cell phone camera and uploaded it with public domain or creative commons license. Am I right? A similar question was brought here. -- ReyBrujo 05:41, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Where did I ever make any such proposal? Where did this discussion even begin to discuss video recording of copyrighted material? User:Zoe|(talk) 20:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I put an extreme example, but I can give you one related with this, it is irrelevant: You talk about using a cell camera to record a game session, right? So, I could record the intro from, say, World of Warcraft, and upload it with a free license. Then someone else could use it as the intro for his own game. Is this a better example? -- ReyBrujo 20:36, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, there is a misunderstanding. The original user talked about creating videos for, between other things, video games. Obviously I was talking about copyright violation, while you were talking about legitimate free videos. Sorry for the confusion. -- ReyBrujo 20:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

• This probably could be useful for Wikiversity. Why hasn't it been done? Technical complexity, mostly, although a lack of an open-source, free, widespread video format doesn't help much either. Titoxd^(?!?) 05:25, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Videos do exist on Wikipedia (mostly because I pushed the issue hard about two years ago and made Jimbo make some hard decisions). There still aren't many, owing (a) to a lack of free content, (b) to a lack of people with the technical chops to produce them, and (c) the software out there is generally of poor quality. However, there are instructions at Wikimedia:Media, and videos do exist in some articles Raul654 05:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Can not edit last section

Is there an error? When I go to edit the last section in an article, I click the edit point at the side of the page and I get a black page. Is the bug because there is a templete box tag the end of the page. Try editing the external links on the "Opera" page. I have tried other pages too. Snowman 18:46, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

The edit tags are defaced, probably due the images. Try clicking the previous edit one. I will see if I can quickly fix that. -- ReyBrujo 18:51, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems to me that the only way to edit the last section on the "Opera" page is to click on tab at the top of the page, but as this take up more wiki-space I will try again later when the bug is fixed. Snowman 18:59, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I reordered some sections, apparently it is fixed now. -- ReyBrujo 19:06, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikitable leaving no whitespace

I'm using wikitable in the Eicosanoid article for three tables. The information displays well, but the body text, especially the EDIT links, runs right up against the edge of the table and looks bad. Am I using the table wrongly? David.Throop 21:04, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Sort of. The style as designed isn't really meant for right-floating tables. I've added a manual override so it works as expected. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 22:51, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks. And I'll copy the change you made into the other wikitables.

Is there another table style that would be a better choice? David.Throop 22:57, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Afraid not. You could ask for a standard style to be added at MediaWiki talk:Common.css. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:26, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Seán Dunne - Poet

I have recently created a page for popular Irish poet Seán Dunne. Yet the link from the list of Irish Poets still goes straight to the page for the politician Seán Dunne; a completely different person. Can someone either rectify this by making the link on the list of Irish Poets go to the "Seán Dunne - Poet" page reather than the politician, or tell me how to do this. Thank you for listening. -Poetry Lover 15/1/07

I've fixed the link. Someone else moved the page to Seán Dunne (poet) to fit the Wikipedia naming conventions. Mike Dillon 22:15, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that Poetrylover 23:52, 15 January 2007

blank pages?

I've noticed that sometimes (only started today I have no changed any settings), when I click to edit a page - it will appear as blank - even thought there is clearly content on the page - this occurs on both article and talkpages. --Larry laptop 22:04, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I had this problem on pages that used the class="sortable" on tables. It turned out to be something in my monobook.js causing it. I blanked it to make sure and it fixed it. Then I had to restore one by one until I found out which was the problem. Hope this helps. --MECU≈talk 23:15, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this should happen anymore (at least not due to the sortable thing). The reason it happened is that in the Monobook skin the runOnloadHooks function is actually called twice, once from a <script> tag at the very end of the HTML content and once from the page's "onload" event. Inside runOnloadHooks, a variable called "doneOnloadHooks" is checked to see if the hooks registered with addOnloadHook should be run. This flag used to be set after all of the hooks had run successfully, but it is now set before any other code runs (thanks to a fix by Ilmari Karonen).

The upshot of this was that if a hook failed previous to the change, doneOnloadHooks would not be set to true and the hooks that had already run would execute twice. This includes the code that installs the JavaScript handlers for sortable tables, since it happens before any hooks added with addOnloadHook. I believe the reason that the page blanks is because the sortable table code uses document.write to include "sortable.js", which doesn't work when it is attempted from an onload hook. It should probably be changed to use something like importScript, which is found in our MediaWiki:Common.js.

I'm not sure why Larry's page is blanking though. Mike Dillon 00:10, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

The whole sorttable.js setup is somewhat hacky. I'm starting to think it might be better to just merge the code into wikibits.js. I'm not even convinced there's any significant performance gain from only including it on some pages — it might even hurt performance more than it helps, since loading it takes an extra HTTP request with all the latency that implies. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 04:29, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Could be, yeah. That might be sensible. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:27, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Headers

I've got a problem with headers.

Basically, i've got an article where i need to use two levels of headers, and the second (lower) level needs the horizontal rule.

The problem is, only the = and == headers have the horizontal ruled line incorporated into them. Since the = header isn't really supposed to be used, we're stuck with using == and ===.

the === header doesn't have the horizontal ruled line incorporated into it, so we tried a ---- below the header. However, this creates a gap between the header text and the horizontal ruled line.

So the question is - does anyone know any tricks that i can use to get a horizontal ruled line incorporated into the === header (like the way the = and == header have lines on them). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saintmagician (talk • contribs)

You could try putting in something like <h3 style="border-bottom:1px solid #aaa;">Insert text here</h3> but it is a bit of a hack and it probably won't look correct when looking at anything other than the default monobook skin on screen. Tra (Talk) 01:39, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

btw, why do you say this won't look right in anything other than the monobook skin? the h3 tag is html yeah? shouldn't it turn out the same no matter how someone's viewing it? --Saintmagician 02:02, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

One good way to test that out would be to play in the sandbox, or create your own sandbox (a subpage of your user page, e.g. User:Saintmagician/Sandbox) and try it there. You'd obviously need to reset your skin to view it in different ones, which is kind of a pain, but it's one way. --Tkynerd 02:13, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

It won't necessarily look "right" for anything other than Monobook because not all skins use the underlining and the border color or thickness may be wrong if they do. Mike Dillon 02:29, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Why does it need the horizontal rule? Mike Dillon 01:44, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Basically, these sections really should be == sections. It's for the digimon article merge that's happening right now. this was the original design (with sections 3-12 all used to be seperate articles, but now merged). However, it does look better to group those sections together as being 'other forms'.

So then it looked like this. With "other forms" being a == heading and the rest being a === heading. But we still wanted the horizontal rule to seperate the different forms. I thought this form looked bad, since there's a gap between the === heading and the horizontal rule we're using.

So i changed it to this - where i have the = and == headers, both with the horizontal rule.

But it seems like some people really don't like the = header in articles.

Just a thought, but does anyone here understand the technicalities of how the horizontal rule is incorporated into the = and == headers on wikipedia? --Saintmagician 01:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

This seems like a personal preference thing, not something needs to be done for everyone reading the article. As for the technicalities of the underlining of section headers, they are controlled by monobook/main.css (the first rule that concerns this starts with "h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6"). It is possible for people who want these sections to be underlined to do so in their personal CSS. I can show you how if you're interested. Mike Dillon 02:27, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Mike, to clarify: You're talking about changing, in one's personal CSS, how the articles one sees will render, right? Not how the articles one edits will render for everyone. --Tkynerd 02:39, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Correct. As far as I can tell, there is community consensus for the way headers currently display. If it really bothers someone that much, they can change the way they see it, but they shouldn't be changing the agreed-upon style of the site without getting some support from others. Style hacks don't help Wikipedia. Mike Dillon 02:42, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Consider that my reply ("Rich's kludge"), offering a simple "solution" to the OP's question, seems to have been missed. Could my use of a "style hack" have contributed to this oversight? Probably. – 2*6 02:51, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Rich's kludge

---

If a rule line-break, but not formal heading underline, would work, you could precede the text section with four dashes, as does this reply. – 2*6 01:58, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Now! Even less kludgier!! Make a normal subsection declaration (with three =) and follow it on the next line with four dashes. Article text follows on the third line. This gives you a formal subsection and the underline. – 2*6 02:17, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

2*6 - regarding your suggestion. No, that's what i was trying to avoid. Using the '----' creates a gap around the horizontal rule and the text above it. Anyhow, i've ended up just using the horizontal rule above the headings. Thanks for all the suggestions never the less. --`/aksha 04:00, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe if the code .underlined-heading {border-bottom:1px solid #aaa;} is put into MediaWiki:Monobook.css and then the headings are written as <h3 class="underlined-heading">Insert text here</h3> then the underlines would only appear on the monobook skin and won't disrupt other skins. Tra (Talk) 16:20, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Why should it be an editorial decision whether to add an underline to subsections? This doesn't seem to me like something that we should be promoting. That being said, you're solution is better than hardcoding the CSS style preferences into the page itself. Mike Dillon 16:30, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Boldness degree of sections and subsections

Section headings, denoted by double =, and subsection headings, denoted by triple =, have their boldnesses backwards IMO. Some article authors, like those of Edgar Allan Poe, kludge their way out of this stylistic ugliness by skipping subsections altogether, going directly from sections to sub-subsections (quad =). I suggest the default CSS sheet be changed so as to make subsections have the boldness of current sections, and sections have the boldness of current subsections. Font height would remain the same (section headings slightly taller than subsections). I don't see how this would break existing article look and feel, and in fact would improve that of articles which already use sections and subsections. (I understand there is a way for a logged-in user to customize his own Wiki CSS, but for most users, and even editors, the default is what we see.) – 2*6 01:50, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, subsection headers have always been bold, but smaller in size than section headers (at least, that's how I see them in mozilla). I too prefer the old style. Tizio 17:51, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

It's true that first- and second-degree headings are not bold, because that generally looks ugly at their font sizes. This was a stylistic choice made by the author of Monobook and can be changed at MediaWiki:Monobook.css. It should not be changed on a per-article basis. If you would like to change it for yourself, you can add h1, h2 { font-weight: bold; } or h3, h4, h5, h6 { font-weight: normal; } to Special:Mypage/monobook.css. Note that boldness as typically implemented is not very granular: things are usually either bold or normal, you often don't have anything in between (although you can). —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:40, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the hints: I have added h3 { font-size: medium; } to my monobook.css, and everything look fine now. Apparently, the font size for headings are specified in monobook/main.css Tizio 13:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

can someone help for a no heat situtation for a mb s320 ?

≈

wikEd, a MediaWiki in-browser text editor script

wikEd is a full-featured in-browser text editor that adds enhanced text processing functions to Wikipedia and other MediaWiki edit pages. It is a JavaScript monobook.js program. Features include:

• Regular expression search and replace
• Wikicode syntax highlighting
• Fullscreen editing mode
• Server-independent local Show preview and Show changes
• Pasting formatted text, e.g. from MS-Word (including tables)
• Conversion of formatted text to wikicode
• Single-click fixing of common mistakes
• History for summary, search, and replace fields

Currently it works only for Firefox and other Mozilla browsers. I am looking for people who can help to make the script work under Internet Explorer 7 and Opera 9. Cacycle 06:07, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Sounds interesting, I will try it out since I can't make the external editors to work without a root account. -- ReyBrujo 06:12, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Missing page hit count in the database dump?

Hi, I noticed that the page hit count in table page is missing. Is this normal or a faulty dump? Specifically, I'm looking at stub-meta-current.xml.gz from the dump on 20061130. Alternatively, would stub-meta-history.xml.gz have the page hit count instead? Thank you! --WikiInquirer 11:58, 16 January 2007 (UTC) ^talk

The hit counters were turned off for performance reasons, so I wouldn't expect their data to be in the database dumps. --ais523 12:12, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikicharts offers a machine-readable version of its data, which will give you approximate hit counts for the most viewed pages recently. Tra (Talk) 16:07, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I checked Wikicharts but it can show the hit counts for the top 1000 (or so, but less than 1100) most viewed pages. Are there any other internal or external tools out there that has captured the hit count of each page in the English Wikipedia? --WikiInquirer 01:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)^{talk to me}
And I suppose the Hitcounter table is also empty in enwiki? Sigh --WikiInquirer 01:33, 18 January 2007 (UTC)^{talk to me}

Pagecounts are certainly disabled on enwp - we'd bring the servers to their knees in a snap otherwise. Wikicharts is the only statistical data I am aware of, unfortunately - and it's really only a rough sampling, since it takes one in every few hundred visits. Sorry there isn't more - we'd like it too... Shimgray | talk | 01:37, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

And it likely won't be ever enabled, or at least not anytime soon. It requires a massive change of Wikimedia's network infrastructure, as the Apache servers do not handle the vast majority of page requests. The way it is set up currently, it would only record page views by registered users, which are few and far between when compared to anonymous reader. It also would entail more database writes... overall, a bad idea. Titoxd^(?!?) 05:19, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, Tra and Shimray, for your replies. It's understandable and hey looking at the silver lining, this is a good sign -- Wikipedia is growing and growing! --WikiInquirer 05:05, 18 January 2007 (UTC)^{talk to me}

SQL error with the Query API

I'm getting an SQL error when retrieving revisions with the Query API, e.g. query.php?what=revisions&titles=Main%20Page&rvuniqusr&rvlimit=3&rvcontent. Might be the result of a recent database change? I only get the error when retrieving the revision content. If the 'rvcontent' parameter is removed it works. Cheers, Jayden54 14:05, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

You apparently also get it right if you remove "rvuniqusr" instead query.php?what=revisions&titles=Main%20Page&rvlimit=3&rvcontent. This may have been fixed by a very recent change to query.php [15] (not live yet). Tizio 17:49, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

track facility

Hi. It would be great if one could have a tree type visual representation in the sidebar of the links one has visited - a sort of tree shaped history sidebar, with the option of allowing a person to save this history.

It's more likely that a feature like that would be implemented in your browser before it'll be implemented here. For example [16].

Alternatively, there's been a discussion of including typed links in each article, for browsers that support that, it's possible that might happen sooner. --Interiot 21:36, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Thx for the links.

References color of Harry Rimmer

I do not understand, but the first reference of Harry Rimmer seems to have a strange blue color. Did I do this? And how?--Filll 20:12, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

False alarm. I fixed it.--Filll 20:14, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

getting content with python

I am trying to learn have to use some of python's HTML parsers and I thought it would be fun to work with wikipedia content. I tried to download a wiki page using the following line in a python script

f = urllib.urlopen("http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pittsburgh%2C_Pennsylvania&oldid=101081233")

but I got the following error

---

Access Denied.

Access control configuration prevents your request from being allowed at this time. Please contact your service provider if you feel this is incorrect.

---

Is there a way to access (read-only) the raw html programmatically in the manner I am trying?

I'm pretty sure of that this is a case of stupid user-agent filtering (a vain attempt to fight spammers i presume). The solution which all spam bot authors alreayd know of is to simply change the user-agent string to something which doesn't begin with "urllib". Below is an example which fetches the page to a file.

import urllib

url = "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pittsburgh%2C_Pennsylvania&oldid=101081233"

class MyEvilBot(urllib.URLopener):
    version = "MyEvilBot/0.0.1"

urlopener = MyEvilBot()

urlopener.retrieve(url, "sumfile")

Jeltz talk 00:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

To add some explanation user agent is a something which the client sends to the server to indicate what program and version he is running. Since it is all up to the client to claim whatever he wish it is a very weak filter easily cricumvented which mostly just annoy legitimate users at no cost for the spammers. Jeltz talk 00:17, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, realized that my posts must sound rude to the sysops who set up this filter. Sorry guys, didn't mean to sound rude but it came out that way. Measures against spammers which hurt legitimate users is a touchy subject for me. Jeltz talk 00:21, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the response, your solution worked. 71.61.219.140 01:29, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what spammers you're talking about; the user-agent filtering is a speedbump to reduce the impact of poorly-written mass-download bots. You can easily set a useful user-agent string which identifies your bot, and always should. --brion 07:17, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for the explanation. It makes sense a lot of sense it is a good convention to have a user-agent string for your bot. I still don't like it but whatever, at least you have a good reason. :) Jeltz talk 12:14, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

vandalistic moves hard to repair

In the wake of attempting to clean up an un-discussed move by someone who wasn't thinking clearly, it occurred to me how a malicious non-admin can cause quite a bit of damage that takes a long time to fix. Suppose Joe, a non-admin, uses the existing article renaming mechanism to rename the Foo article to bzzlskdireufno. This can be undone by any user watching Foo. Now suppose Joe also creates a new Foo page to replace what is now under a nonsense name. Non-admins cannot fix this. A potentially lengthy petition must be started to get the attention of an admin to fix the damage. Furthermore, unless you have an account that's already watching the attacked article, you cannot figure out what the original article was renamed to. --Frotz661 01:25, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't this seem kind of like a WP:BEANS type thing to post? --Wildnox(talk) 01:28, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is. ;-) It is true though, but admins can remove that type of vandalism quite easily, just 1 or 2 extra clicks. Prodego ^talk 01:56, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, admins are needed for this kind of thing. What would be the alternative, though? Allow moves to overwrite any one-revision redirect, not just one pointing to the moving page? Then you can move pages and have the record vanish from history, only present in the move log. —Simetrical (talk • contribs) 05:47, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Then the vandal can just do some edits to satisfy the one-revision hurdle. What about requiring all moves to be assisted by an admin? How often are moves done, anyhow? Frotz661 06:51, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

That might put an undue burden on admins. I've moved content more than I thought I would in my brief time here. Most of them are done to satisfy naming conventions (John smith -> John Smith). Gzkn 08:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

The page log will show what the original article name was. Genuine vandalism is bad, but some page moves are well-meaning, and what some page names should be are genuinely unclear. Carcharoth 14:18, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Generally, I think sysop response time is satisfactory. If you want to revert the edits above, you can move Foo to a new page and then move the offending page move back. I don't think we really need to fix this, because of the sysop speed. x42bn6 Talk 17:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't quite understand. I moved the Foo to Foo_(delete me), then attempted to move Foo_(nonsense) back to Foo. I couldn't do the second step because Foo still exists as a redirect to Foo_(delete me). So, in an attempt to fix things as best I could, I redirected Foo to point at Foo_(nonsense). --Frotz661 20:26, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

After

After we log out when we are on an edit this page page, we should should go back to the page, with any edits we've made, but not submited yet, so we can do so. My user page is 100110100.70.74.35.164 02:16, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Kudos!

I'm loving the colorful addition to the refs. Makes it so much easier to find the reference in question on well-cited articles. Gzkn 02:26, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. I would hug him or her, if that were possible. -- ReyBrujo 05:39, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

It was added to MediaWiki:Common.css by User:Omegatron. It was suggested by User:TheMuuj on meta.wikimedia.org. Mike Dillon 06:26, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Could someone please explain? I didn't see any change to the refs.--SidiLemine 14:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Me neither. Carcharoth 14:29, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah. You have to actually click on a ref, and then, when the view switches to the bottom, you see the selected ref has been highlighted (previously only the little ^ was highlighted). Carcharoth 14:51, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Is this something which works on all browsers? TIA HAND —Phil | Talk 15:05, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

It doesnt seem to work on IE when I checked. Works splendidly on Firefox, though. Great addition. Love it!--thunderboltz^(Deepu) 15:16, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Two things:

1. This only works in browsers whose CSS support includes the ":target" pseudo-class and "child descendent" selector: "parent > child"
2. You may need to clear your cache

After that, if you don't see a light blue background on the selected reference in the references section when you click on a ref number in the body of the text, your browser probably doesn't support this. Firefox 2.0 supports it, for one. I'm not sure which versions of IE support it, if any. Mike Dillon 15:17, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

According to Comparison of layout engines (CSS)#Selectors, it doesn't look like this will work in any version of IE because the ":target" pseudo-class is not supported. The child selector is supported in IE 7.0. Mike Dillon 15:22, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I also just noticed, and was looking for a place to say "AWESOME!" --Merzul 16:09, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I am glad that all of the comments are happy ones.  :-) — Omegatron 16:41, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Awesome indeed. Wikipedia is not paper, yay. --Interiot 16:50, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Deletion tables vs archiving

Are there any developers around who could give their input on whether the deletion function should be being used as a readily-accessible (by admins at least) archive? I've noticed that people often suggest deletion for articles whose talk pages may have a substantial history of discussion, and also for Wikipedia namespace pages of organisations that have a substantial history. Some people argue, when others suggest keeping the discussions and history, that they can always be retrieved by getting an admin to undelete if needed. This suggests to me that people are, and have been, thinking of the deletion function as not only for deletion, but as a way of 'sort of archiving things'. I realise that deletion only 'hides' stuff, and that deleted stuff is 'still there', but there have been cases in the past where stuff in something called the 'deletion table' was lost. I'm sure this is mentioned elsewhere on Wikipedia, but the conversation I point people to involves the following exchange:

"I know asking for deleted pages is fairly easy, but the trick is knowing they exist in the first place. I'm in the "keep all the history" school of thought, especially as past assurances that deleted content will never be permanently lost have weakened somewhat. I vaguely recall Jimbo himself saying this. Give me a moment... Here we are: [17] (my initial comment); [18] (Geni's response); [19] (my response to Geni); [20] (Jimbo's comment later in the thread). The relevant bit of what Jimbo said is: "In general, I am in favor of keeping most deleted material around indefinitely, but on the other hand, most of it is of zero value so I am not a big stickler about it." - though thinking on this a bit more, I guess it will ultimately come down to a developer at some point 'dumping' old stuff. I wouldn't rely on deleted stuff always being available. If we want to keep stuff for historical reasons, keep it properly. Don't (as Geni said) use the deleted area as a way of storing stuff." (Carcharoth - 29 December 2006 [21])

The reason I'm bringing this up now is that I've commented on this in at least three MfDs (1; 2; 3), and I really would like the situation clarified as a general principle. Can developers guarantee that deleted stuff will never be permanently deleted? Thanks. Carcharoth 13:56, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I , for one , fail to see why this is of any importance at all. The things that *should* be getting deleted should be failing policies for inclusion, such as not being verifiable, hoaxes, personal attacks, etc. If the article is questionable or it's a notability thing, then yes, I can see a reason for that. But for articles that are clearly garbage, it's a waste of time. My understanding of the system (and from what I've seen as an admin on another MediaWiki site) is that deleted things are simply not accessible to the general public and are not "permananently deleted" unless and until the devs do some sort of work around (possibly in the DB) to purge the history. --Elaragirl^Talk|Count 18:05, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that garbage should be deleted. Most of my arguments don't apply to articles. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I just want to see a clearer distinction drawn between deletion and archiving. The two functions are being mixed up precisely because people think "oh, it's not really deletion", when history (funny that) shows that in fact deletion has, for some of the very early stuff, meant permanent deletion (inadvertent, but still permanent). Carcharoth 18:47, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Deletion means deletion. The deleted page archives ARE TEMPORARY TO FACILITATE UNDELETION OF PAGES WHICH SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN DELETED and are subject to being cleared or removed AT ANY TIME WITHOUT WARNING. --brion 00:50, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Categorising sections of an article

The recently implemented "anchored redirects" feature (where a redirect can now take you directly to a section of an article) means that it is possible to categorise sections. This can be done either as: (a) a placeholder for a future spin-off article; and/or (b) to populate a category using a mature, well-written section, instead of an article. (It can also be used to create categories of minor characters, with redirects pointing to the section of the article covering those minor characters, but that is an example where sections of a large article are created by merging smaller articles). The developers did say that this redirect feature should be used with caution. Is the used described above acceptable?

The example I've created here is Bibliography of J. R. R. Tolkien, a redirect that I created to point at the relevant section of the author's article. I've also categorised the redirect at Category:Bibliographies by author, so I have in effect categorised a section, rather than an article.

The main problem with this is that someone changing the section headers partially breaks the redirect (which sends people to the article instead of the section). Also, the category tag doesn't appear on the main article itself (sometimes good, sometimes not).

A final example of my use of this feature is at Category:Republic of Korea Navy ships, where many of the ships are former US Navy ships, and are currently mentioned only as sections in the relevant US Navy ship articles. Nevertheless, these ships can now be found in the category system, though one disadvantage is that the absence of a red-link might discourage turning of the redirect into an article.

Again, I'll try and bring this up at the relevant areas (Redirects and Categorization), but I wanted the developers views on whether this is OK from their point of view. Carcharoth 14:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Background Image

I was just told to ask this question here. Is there a way to havea background image on a table, I've been asking around, and a few are saying it is possible and a few are saying it isn't, and I just don't want there to be a way and be ignorant of it. Thanks for any help! --Daniel()Folsom ^T|_C|^U 16:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

You can probably do it using HTML/CSS trickery. See the userpage of Ed g2s. But I'd be careful about cross-browser compatability, especially if you intend to do it in article space. In fact I would personally avoid it in article space altogether if it's nothing more than a flashy gimmick. the wub "?!" 16:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

As stated, usrs can only do it via CSS offsets, which assplodes in some browsers (like many versions of IE). If you have a valid, multi-useable, and project-worthy reason to want a background image on a table, you can request it as a new class (which is very browser friendly) at MediaWiki_talk:Common.css. --Splarka (rant) 08:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

showing elevation on drawings

how do you show elevation of a lot on drawings

Hello! You can help us by giving some more details. Give an example of the kind of drawing you have in mind if possible. Also did you try those words : elevation, drawing, here at Wikipedia search ? And please sign you posts. -- DLL ^{.. T} 19:23, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

link to 00

The source code on the page 0 contains (in the "see also" section) the text * [[00]].

However, this link does not appear as 00, but rather as boldface text 00. Is this a bug, or am I cross-eyed? If I try to add [[0]] to the page 00, I also get 0 instead of 0.

Note: a link [[0]] should appear as 0 on the page 0 itself, and a link [[00]] should appear as 00 on the page 00. But 0 and 00 are not the same; perhaps the software has problems distinguishing the two?

I searched the bug reports for "00", but could not find any.

--Aleph4 17:53, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

The same happens when linking, for example, from a page named 0010 to 10, 010, 00010, etc. I assume the compare operation that determines whether a link leads to the current page is just a ==, which in PHP (as I just tried) thinks "010"=="10" is true. I'm filing a bug. --Dapeteばか 18:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

bug 8678 --Dapeteばか 18:56, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Bot out of control?

I noticed that User:Betacommand which might be a bot just went wild and reverted all my work today. What can be done? or should be?--Filll 18:33, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

• I see you found Betacommand's talk page. If you mention fixes here, it would save folks like me from going to look :-) His contributions history is astronomical. Peter H. St.John, M.S. 18:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Beta has said on his talk page that it was a mistake. John Broughton | ♫♫ 19:38, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Table not centered in Mozilla

The main table in UK railway stations - P (and companion pages) is left justified in Mozilla on Windows XP, but fine in IE. Any suggestions for a fix? thanks --Tagishsimon (talk)

Yup. You need to use style="margin: auto;" and not align="center" (which is depreciated). I've fixed it for the P article. There might be a WP:MoS policy against center aligning tables for list only article, but I'm not aware of it. To learn more, look into Cascading Style Sheets. --MECU≈talk 20:13, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Template limit?

Is there a limit to how many times a template can be used on an article? Another editor in a WikiProject I'm involved with is using a template I designed A LOT in his article (see Georgia Bulldogs football (all games)). The template is working fine until the very bottom. I see nothing wrong with the code in the template or on the page. If I preview just that section, it appears fine but then still messes up when I view the whole article. Any thoughts?--NMajdan•talk 20:58, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a limit. If you look at the HTML source for the page (once the page is loaded), near the bottom it will show:

<!-- 
Pre-expand include size: 2046188 bytes
Post-expand include size: 53101 bytes
Template argument size: 17905 bytes
Maximum: 2048000 bytes
-->

It appears that he's used up the limit as he's at 2046188/2048000. I never thought I'd see the day that limit would be reached. --MECU≈talk 21:03, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the source, it also has dozens of warnings:

<!-- WARNING: template omitted, pre-expand include size too large -->

So I guess the page is simply too big. Jayden54 21:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Doc transclusion on the Template:CFB Schedule Entry fixed the issue. New stats below.

<!-- 
Pre-expand include size: 352571 bytes
Post-expand include size: 69799 bytes
Template argument size: 28016 bytes
Maximum: 2048000 bytes
-->

--MZMcBride 21:58, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Template limits and Wikipedia:Template doc page pattern. --Ligulem 22:07, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Anything else to do?

On 2007 NCAA Division I-BS football rankings (no, the BS isn't vandalism, it means Bowl Subdivision) I'm using a template system I created Template:16ColPollTable. The main problem in hitting the limit is that it calls Template:CC over and over (25*15=275 times per table, used 6 times on the page, so 2250 times, plus a 8colpolltable which uses 175 times) for a total of 2475 times!). I did the doc trick for CC after it didn't load the page the first time and I got it to fully work and load. But, my concern is that when the data is populated, it will balloon and hit the limit quite easily. Here are the sizes:

<!-- 
Pre-expand include size: 1855141 bytes
Post-expand include size: 175502 bytes
Template argument size: 20742 bytes
Maximum: 2048000 bytes
-->

Is my theory correct, that once data is populated into this, the pre-expand size will increase? If so, is there anything else to reduce the size of CC or the ColPollTables? Neither have large items other than template code on the main template page anymore, so the doc trick is used up. Would creating a template for each poll, like Template:2007 AP Poll which used the 16colpolltable and then just transclude onto the article page solve this problem? or would it not help, since subtables still add into the pre-expand size? Any other ideas on things to do? Thanks. --MECU≈talk 16:52, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Just for curiosity, [22] reduced Pre-expand include size of [23] from 1815546 bytes to 1662771 bytes, [24] to 1623971 bytes. So CC is the key point here, every little byte there costs ($O\left({n^{2}}\right)$ → Big O notation). This is especially difficult because CC contains a switch, which is always costly with regards to template limits. Rough ideas (1) further reduce CC (why so many case values, in upper and lower case?) (2) split up CC into multiple templates (3) Don't use templates for this :-). --Ligulem 23:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Article creation problem

I know how to and have created article. However, at times i run into a problem. I add my information and don't click save. I then click another button to check on something. However, when i go back to the editing area, the information is gone so i have to start again. Note this is before i have clicked save to create the article. Is there any way to sort this out? Simply south 00:04, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Before you click any of the links, click Show preview first, then you will be able to just press back to return to your article. If you then make any further changes to the article, you will need to click Show preview again immediatly before clicking any of the links. Tra (Talk) 00:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

If you use SeaMonkey or FireFox, they preserve the contents of the edit box for when you press "back". Internet Explorer in particular almost always loses the edit box contents. —EncMstr 00:20, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Try opening the thing you're checking on in a new tab or window; that's what I do when I need to look something up when editing. --ais523 17:25, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

What can I save my file as before uploading?

I am a new member. I wrote an article, but I am having trouble uploading it. The problem is with how the file is saved in my computer before uploading. I tried saving my file as .doc .txt and .html. What am I doing wrong? Am I way off? Please advise. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gadflyucla (talk • contribs).

I've placed introductory materials for editing on wikipedia on your talk page, User talk:Gadflyucla. The short answer is that wikipedia uses an entirely different method for editing articles: not text, not word, etc. —EncMstr 01:03, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Bad text

The "good article" notice (sample given below) needs to be changed. The phrase "but did not to meet the good article criteria" is not English.

The Dresden Dolls was a good article candidate, but did not to meet the good article criteria at the time. Once the objections listed below are addressed, the article can be renominated. You may also seek a review of the decision. Kdammers 01:00, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Typo corrected. You can do this yourself next time, just click "edit" for Talk:The Dresden Dolls, and look at the list of templates at the bottom of the page (outside the edit window). Click on the one you need, in this case Template:FailedGA, and edit the text to correct the mistake. Carcharoth 01:26, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip, but I can't find that template in the list of templates (neither by scanning quickly nor by using a page search with 'falied.' Kdammers 01:46, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

When you follow the instructions above, you should end up at this edit page. Look past the edit summary window, all the way down to the bottom, and you should see this:

Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page:

• Template:! (protected)
• Template:FailedGA
• Template:Talkheader (semi-protected)
• Template:Unsigned (protected)

Do you see that? Carcharoth 02:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. I was looking at the list of templates linked-to above that. Kdammers 02:52, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Changing the font I see

No one ever answered a question I asked at Meta:Help talk:User style#Are these changes possible with CSS?. Basically, I would like to change my Monobook.css to have Wikipedia use a serif font. It is tough to tell some characters apart as is. I prefer Times New Roman.

It might be better if you respond at the Meta page listed above. Thank you for helping. My CSS knowledge is lousy. Will (Talk - contribs) 06:03, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The deleted histories

Is there any reason that the histories of deleted articles are still unviewable -- provided that since March 2006 there is technical possibility to only hide the summaries of the edits, and leave the contributors' names viewable?

In addition to this, I wish that every user could view his own contributions, together with their summaries and text. Is this technically possible? --tyomitch 14:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

mw:Bitfields for rev deleted is not yet finished. Prodego ^talk 16:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Consistent Link Colors

Is there anyway to define the color of links and have it be consistent for the whole page (don't worry, I'm not doing this on a actual page, but I may do it on my user page or a template). I've asked everywhere and the only responses I've gotten have been, "Yes, but I don't know how" - so I figured you guys were my last hope - so if you could take some time to respond I'd really appreciate it. Thanks either way! --Daniel()Folsom ^T|_C|^U 16:24, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

You could do it for all pages, and have it visible only to you. But to make it look that way on for one page for everyone, you would probably have to set each link's color by hand. Prodego ^talk 17:17, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

As Prodego says, you can change your user CSS to change the appearance of links to your own view. If you want others to see the differently-coloured links, you have to write out each link separately (you may want to transclude a page in your userspace to make this easier). --ais523 17:27, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

A problem w/ Talk:.NET Framework

The talk page cannot be edited as the standards buttons on top don't appear. The bottom of the talk page is full of edits in small fonts. -- Szvest - ^{Wiki me up ®} 17:45, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't have the same problem with that page. I see the normal buttons at the top; I can click an "edit" link on a section and edit it (I didn't actually do any edits, but I did click an "edit" link to verify); I can click the "+" at the top of the page to add a new section (again, clicked but didn't do any edits). Assuming you are using the monobook skin, you might try purging your cache and see if that helps. --Tkynerd 17:54, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Right. I purged the cache and it works fine now. Thanks Tkynerd. -- Szvest - ^{Wiki me up ®} 17:57, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Old version is shown upon saving an edit

The FAQ says that database lags cause old versions not to appear immediately. This happens even after editing an article and saving it. The response to the save sometimes shows the unmodified version. Needless to say this is utterly confusing. −Woodstone 21:13, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I've had that happen several times, and a hard refresh (ctrl+F5) in my browser usually fixes it. I just assumed it's a browser caching issue? Jayden54 22:29, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I have had a worse problem: your edit appears in the page, but does not appear in the history of the page (which is where I check whether my addition has been accepted or not). While yes, showing the old version is fixed with CTRL+F5, this one is not, and you need to wait a minute or so until it appears in the history and you can move on ;-) -- ReyBrujo 22:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)