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. Problems with user scripts should not be reported here, but rather to their developers (unless the bug is exigent).

Newcomers to the technical village pump are encouraged to read these guidelines prior to posting here. Questions about MediaWiki in general should be posted at the MediaWiki support desk.

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This page is automatically archived by Werdnabot. Any sections older than 7 days are automatically archived to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive. Sections without timestamps are not archived.

These discussions will be kept archived for 7 more days. During this period the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page if appropriate. After 7 days the discussion will be permanently removed.

Naphthalene = +RON ?

How much truth are there in the myth that if you add Naphthalene balls (Moth Balls) to your fuel tank, it will increase the RON value of the fuel. We live with a very poor 93RON unleaded wich causes a lot of problemes for slightly higher compression motors. I know some people use Xylene but things like these are just as difficouleto get as Aviation and Racing fuel.

Regards, Bennie.

You're probably looking for the reference desk. This page is for reporting technical issues with wikipedia--VectorPotential^Talk 20:47, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Transparency issues

This image shows up as solid gray with a white number and white trim in my browser (IE6). When I downloaded it to fix it, the gray areas come into my MS Photo Editor as transparent (which is correct). So the png appears to be right. Is this something I have to live with in my browser, or can I tweak the png to show the transparency correctly? I noticed that roughly 90% of the uniforms in Template:Basketball kit properly display the transparent areas, (Image:Kit body aab.png for example). What's different about those? Hoof Hearted 19:01, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, IE6 doesn't support png transparency, and is entirely a failing of IE6. Bassgoonist 19:39, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

As our article on PNG details, while IE6 does not support alpha-channel transparency, it does support the simpler palette transparency (which is the same you would find on GIF images). Indeed, a quick look at both examples you gave with the sng tool show that Image:Kit body bb whitetrimnumbers.png is a truecolor image with an alpha channel, while Image:Kit body aab.png uses a palette, with the first entry transparent. It shouldn't make any difference, if it weren't for that MSIE bug. --cesarb 00:38, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Using IE7, all I see is a white shirt, no number. Corvus cornix 03:34, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Since the number is white opaque, you may not see it until you put the entire image over a color. Hoof Hearted 12:29, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

File:Kit body bb whitetrimnumbers test.png Is this correct? I undestood from your exposition that the image should be transparent, instead of gray, with white background and white number (tested with MSIE 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254). Btw, I did save the image as bmp, and then I created the png again. Rjgodoy 11:53, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, RJgodoy's image is showing transparent in my browser. Was saving as a bmp first the key? Would you be willing to fix roughly 70 images on the Basketball kit so they'll show up properly in browsers like mine? If not I'll see if I can duplicate your fix and try it myself. Hoof Hearted 12:29, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, now I'm really confused. I downloaded your test image (which is transparent) to transfer, but when I upload it to the right location it comes in gray. Somehow my computer is cancelling out the changes Rjgodoy did. Hoof Hearted 12:45, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps my cache needed clearing, suddenly it's fine. Thanks Rj! Hoof Hearted 13:31, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes... I also experienced problems whit the cache when trying to see the new version of the image. For bypassing the cache (using MSIE6) you can press CTRL F5. More detailed instructions for MSIE6, as well as instructions for other browsers are given in WP:CACHE.

About your request, I can help but I have no experience with Template:Basketball_kit so I don't know which images have this problem. It would be helpful if you can provide me a list of such images (e.g. you can post their links in my talk page).

About the workaround I followed, the idea was to "regenerate" the palette (since User:Corvus cornix pointed that it was the problem). Note that some programs won't work: for instance, mspaint cannot handle these images properly, so I used MS photo editor 3.0 (hmmm... shoud I say I love old software?)

Rjgodoy 00:39, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

I think that it is transparent, as the background to the english wiki is blue. However, the number is not transparent. I belive The editor made the number white but not transpartent. Coastergeekperson04 19:40, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Page size messages

Someone has changed the messages we get when we edit so that it no longer gives the page size. It was very, very useful to know the size. Does anyone know who changed it and why, or where it was discussed? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:07, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

The exact size is still available if you hit the history tab (it shows up after every edit now), but it was nice having the reminder on the edit page. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 02:10, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry if I'm being dense, but I don't follow. I can't find the sizes anywhere I look now. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 02:42, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

If you click on the history tab, after each user name and (talk contribs) is a number, which is the number of bytes in the page at that point. This gives you the total page size. The old notice on the edit page only gave a specific size when a page was over about 30k, so in many ways the history tab is more helpful. There are javascript tools to get other sorts of page size info (size of reference text, for instance). Gimmetrow 02:45, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

For me the top revision of this page in the history is:

02:42, June 29, 2007 SlimVirgin (Talk | contribs | block) (68,485 bytes) (→Page size messages - reply to Seraphimblade) [rollback]

So the pagesize is given after the username and before the edit summary... WjBscribe 02:46, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I see now, thank you. It's not as helpful as before, in my view, because when you wanted to see whether removing a section would substantially reduce page size, you could remove it, preview, and check the difference. Now you'd presumably have to save before you'd see it. Does anyone know where the discussion about this took place, or can be started? SlimVirgin ^(talk) 04:44, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

You can use a bookmarklet (a favelet) to get a poor alternative. Add javascript:alert((""+window.getSelection()).length) to your bookmark. Now, select some text and click the bookmark, it will pop up the size. So, while editing, select the entire text, click the bookmark and you will know the size (Technically the number of characters, since WP uses Unicode which is 2 bytes per character, the size is twice the length). --soum ^talk 12:27, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

No, Unicode is not 2 bytes per character. UTF-16 and UCS-2, which Wikipedia do not use, are (ok, sometimes UTF-16 is 4 bytes per character). Wikipedia uses UTF-8, which is a variable length encoding (but, most of the time for English, 1 byte per character). --cesarb 21:23, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Er, what's missing where? --brion 14:18, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

It was this change in MediaWiki:Longpagewarning, now reverted. SlimVirgin: next time go to Special:Allmessages (warning: a huge page), find corresponding Mediawiki message, check page history ∴ Alex Smotrov 14:33, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Patrol Log

What's this supposed to be for?--VectorPotential^Talk 16:41, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

It does nothing here on the English Wikipedia. On some MediaWiki wikis (including some Wikimedia wikis), a feature known as 'patrolled edits' is enabled (in my opinion, it works best on medium-sized wikis). It enables a Recent Changes patroller to indicate that they have already checked a given edit; any edits that haven't been 'patrolled' have a ! mark next to them, and it's possible to hide patrolled edits in Recent Changes. This allows RC patrollers to load-balance their patrolling better. The patrol log indicates who's been patrolling which edits, so if a user is repatedly patrolling vandalistic edits without reverting them (which is a form of vandalism itself, as it makes it less likely that other RC patrollers will revert the vandalism) this will become apparent in the logs. See w:fi:Toiminnot:Loki/patrol for an example. --ais523 16:49, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

(I think you might have to have the permissions to patrol an edit to actually be able to see the patrol marks in Recent Changes, though.) --ais523 16:54, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Double redirects

Why there is no message prompting to fix double redirects after moving a page anymore? I'm guessing that they are fixed by a bot anyway and there is no need to do it manually anymore. Is that correct? Jogers (talk) 13:29, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

The convo at MediaWiki_talk:Pagemovedtext#.241_and_.242_in_fullurl:_don.27t_work seems relevant. It looks like the mesage was moved from MediaWiki:Pagemovedtext to MediaWiki:Movepage-moved. fake example. --Splarka (rant) 07:15, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Anon election notice

A well intentioned admin added a notice about the WMF election to Mediawiki:Anonnotice, the site wide notice shown to not logged in Wikipedia visitors. Since non-editors can not participate in the election, I feel this is a pointless distraction to the vast majority of Wikipedia visitors, and he disagrees. Since nearly no one watches Mediawiki talk pages, I am posting in a couple common places to hopefully draw further attention to this.

Please comment at Mediawiki talk:Anonnotice#Election notice is bad. Dragons flight 03:34, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Nested tables class="collapsible collapsed"

If someone knows of a workaround for this issue, I'd like to know what it is too. I couldn't find anything for it in Bugzilla either.

I have some nested collapsible tables coded up roughly as follows:

{|class="collapsible collapsed"
!Outer table header row
|-
| interesting information
|-
|
{|class="collapsible collapsed"
!Inner table header row
|-
| more detailed interesting information
|-
|
{|class="collapsible collapsed"
! Inner inner table header row
|-
| Even more detailed information that's not particularly interesting
|}
|}
|}

Here's what it looks like:

Outer table header row
interesting information
Inner table header row more detailed interesting information Inner inner table header row Even more detailed information that's not particularly interesting

All of them should be collapsed by default. But when you expand the outer table, all the inner tables expand as well -- but their "show" links say "show". The Javascript apparently doesn't know they've expanded. When you click on "show" it changes to "hide", but doesn't do anything else. After that, the link works normally.

Any thoughts? TCC (talk) (contribs) 09:58, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Looks like you aren't using it in the way it was intended. Looks like it doesn't support nesting. I'll take a look around and get you an answer and the correct code in a bit. —Andrew Hampe ^Talk 23:17, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Just so you're aware then, one requirement is to be able to specify the initial state, which is why I'm using the table instead of NavFrame, etc. TCC (talk) (contribs) 01:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

HEEEEEEEEEEELP! EMERGENCY!!!

Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/Twinkle has done something very wrong to my monobook page. Now what I do? Who can help me with this? Aditya Kabir 10:47, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Looks fine for me. To judge from the note at the top of the script page, that's to be expected for browsers other than Firefox at the moment. Or perhaps the version in your browser cache was picked up when it was being edited, and it's unstable. Try bypassing your cache. TCC (talk) (contribs) 19:17, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

If you mean the colors, that is normal, if you mean the page looks screwed up, click here to fix. Prodego ^talk 19:38, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

How to vote in Board Elections

I a so very sorry but I do not understand the instructions the Help Desk is giving me regarding how to vote in Board Elections. I registered in May of 2006 and have 24,000+ edits on the English Wikipedia. I am following the link at the top of my Watchlist on the English Wikipedia to get to the voting. When I do that I am immediately switched to Wiki Commons. If I do not sign in at Wiki Commons, I clearly cannot vote. If I do sign in, I am ineligible as I have no edits there, never having been able to figure the Wiki Commons instructions. The Special:Boardvote (the link given to me by the Help Desk) leads me to the same situation.

Am I allowed to vote, and if so, how? Please forgive me for asking this question. And please to do look down upon me for asking the question in two places as the Help Desk seems to have no more help. Sincerely, Mattisse 11:29, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

When you go to the secure server (you may have to accept the self-signed SSL certificate, depending on how your browser is set up), do you see Welcome Mattisse@enwiki! anywhere? If not, it's most likely a cookie problem. You may, for example, have your browser set up to only selectively accept cookies (which is a good thing, by the way). In that case, you need to permit the webserver at wikimedia.spi-inc.org to set a cookie on your machine. The easiest way to do that is to just temporarily allow all cookies (allowing them just for this session is fine), go to your watchlist or any other page that requires you to be logged in to this wiki and then go to Special:Boardvote. There's no need to log in to Commons. --S ^up? 13:40, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

You should end up here with "Welcome Mattisse@enwiki!" on the page. There is no way you could get to commons, perhaps you mean meta? Prodego ^talk 18:40, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

I do end up where you say I should. But I still must register on Wiki Commons and there I am inelegible to vote. I think I am not allowed to vote because I am not an inner circle wikipeida person where all the important stuff takes place. Sincerely, Mattisse 23:01, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

What on earth would give you that idea? You're eligible to vote; if you're unable to do so, then it's a technical problem, either on your end or ours. Have you enabled the reception of cookies from wikimedia.spi-inc.org? That is what this problem sounds like to me. Additionally, you keep saying "Wiki Commons"--do you mean commons:, meta:, or another wiki? There is quite simply no way that visiting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Boardvote could land you at Wikimedia commons, at least no way I could fathom. AmiDaniel (talk) 23:10, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Line spacing change when using references

When inserting references the line spacing seems to double. This makes some paragraphs appear to be two or makes it hard to see actual new paragraphs. Example:

This is
oneparagraph.

This is a new paragraph.

This appears to be 3 paragraphs when it is only 2. The reference seems to increase the line height and so the line spacing for the other letters. This can get rather confusing for large articles with multiple paragraphs. Is there any way to prevent the references from changing the spacing or alternatively decrease the line spacing on lines containing references? -196.207.32.38 16:50, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

CURRENTMONTHNAME

Is there a constant like CURRENTMONTHNAME that would give me next month? I guess I could make a template with parser functions if there isn't. --BigΔT 21:17, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

See here for a list of "magic words." There isn't a magic word for the next month. Just use ParserFunctions. Cheers. --MZMcBride 21:34, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

{{portalwarning}}

After seeing a ton of portals not updated today, I have created a template called {{portalwarning}}. If you place the template on your user page for a portal that interests you, you can get an automatic warning that a monthly portal page doesn't exist. It will warn you if either this month's article or next month's article is missing. Example:

{{portalwarning|portal=College football|page=Selected article}}
{{portalwarning|portal=College football|page=Selected picture}}

Enjoy! --BigΔT 00:04, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Bengali text

Bengali text on my computer overlaps part of other text (see image). Any clue on how to fix it? borgx ^(talk) 08:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

You wouldn't happen to be using Firefox on Linux, would you? The issue might have to do with Pango text rendering in that case; try launching Firefox with MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO=1 firefox in a terminal. æ² ✆ 2007‑07‑08t03:38z

It works, Thanks. I'm using Firefox on Windows. borgx ^(talk) 09:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Passing (parts of) a table as a parameter

I hope I can make myself clear, since I'm no native speaker. I'm trying to make a template, where the parameters it evaluates are supposed to be parts of mediawiki-coded tables with | |- |} etc... . The problem with these things is that the Mediawiki software thinks these tablecells etc. are new parameters for the template, which ofcourse they aren't. Say I want to pass as a parameter exactly this line :

| blahblahblah 

How can I get this line passed as a parameter without Mediawiki thinking the vertical line | is just a new parameter? 82.169.140.227 08:57, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Here on Wikipedia, you can use the template {{!}} as a workaround (it's a delayed-action |). On other wikis, you can use the same technique but may have to create Template:! first. --ais523 09:07, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Help formatting template please

I have drawn up a template here for the British Odin class submarine. I copied the template from the S-class submarines here but I've obviously cocked up somehow as the links at the top left (to View, Discussion and Edit) don't work. Could someone advise please? (My first attempt at a template, so apologies if I've missed something obvious.) Kim Dent-Brown ^{(Talk to me)} 10:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

You need to include the template name in the second parameter of {{tnavbar-collapsible}}, which I have done for you. Hope that helps, mattbr 14:37, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

help

Why does on Queensland state rugby league team players, the template {{leagueicon}} suddenly stop working in the "2007 series" section. The template outputs little square coloured boxes. as it has done so, throughout the article, then the first one it works, but the rest it dosent?? Why. There dosent seem to be anything wrong.

SpecialWindler talk 02:53, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. It has to do with Template limits. A template can only be transcluded so many times, and a larger template will hit the limit sooner. Cheers. --MZMcBride 03:02, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

help again

Obviously there are some limits, to how many transclusions you can have on a page. But on Queensland state rugby league team players, it happens again, where at the end of the article, the template stops working. Now I need to have those little things next to every name on that sheet, how do I work around this? SpecialWindler talk 10:56, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

PS. The limit is crap (sorry for rudeness) SpecialWindler talk 10:56, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Try substing the templates. (The limit is to prevent you creating a page which is too heavy on the servers to render; the limits were originally set to half their current value, if I remember correctly, and increased due to complaints, so any page even getting anywhere near them is probably a problem.) --ais523 11:28, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

New searching features

Tim and Rob upgraded the Lucene search engine (which is used for Wikipedia) over the week-end, and we now have lots of exciting new searching features. Read all about it here. AmiDaniel (talk) 20:22, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

"Unknown exception in diff."

This diff fails to show a difference between two revisions that are actually different (I removed two quotes: '"elected"' -> 'elected'), diplaying a message 'Unknown exception in diff.' instead. Same with this diff link for the same edit. Is this a known bug? Regards, High on a tree 22:09, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Here somebody observed the same error message in April. Regards, High on a tree 22:15, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

New Message Banner

Something is wrong with my new message banner. It is appearing constantly (even after checking last change). The help desk suggested I bypass my cache. I tried this and I tried to clear my cache. Neither worked. Please advise.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 17:10, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

What about logging out and logging back in? That might help clear out a stuck cookie that doesn't realize you've check your talk page. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:31, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Colours

Hello, I've noticed that on various infoboxes (and some user signatures) a variety of different colours are used. When I look at the code, the code for particular colours usually looks something like #FEDABC or something. The trouble is I have no idea how to use these codes to make the colours I want. Does anyone know where I can find out? G-Man * 20:37, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

It's hexadecimal. A byte for red, a byte for green and a byte for blue. #RRGGBB. Try looking at Web colors and other related articles. --ɐuɐʞsəp (ʞɿɐʇ) 20:41, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh, thanks that answers my question. G-Man * 23:29, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

can article visitor-traffic be measured, as it can on a website?

Hi - Is there a tool that shows how many visitors read an article during a certain day, week or month?

I'm just wondering if there is any way to measure the results of improvments to articles and improvments to inter-article linking by watching the changes in traffic over time.

Not looking for information about individual user names accessing articles, just general statistics for particular articles.

Thanks --Parzival418 _Hello 21:01, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki does have a built-in hit counter, but if implemented on Wikipedia it would take up a lot of server load. There is an external tool called Wikicharts, however. It analyzes approximately one out of 6000 page hits on Wikipedia, so it a reasonable statistical sample. The only problem is, it appears to be down. Gracenotes^T § 22:07, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I seem to remember that there was a page visit counter operating in the early days of wikipedia. But it was disabled yonks ago and never re-started. Presumably because it slowed everything down. I agree it would be nice though. G-Man * 23:32, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah it would be a useful tool. Well, thanks for the info. Have a good day... --Parzival418 _Hello 01:44, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I find that Google PageRank varies among Wikipedia pages: Main page = 9, RSS = 9, China = 8, Pescadores = 6, Leonidas Alaoglu = 5. This presumably is a measure of inbound links. Generally you just open the article using a browser in which the Google Toolbar has been installed and read off the PageRank. EdJohnston 02:13, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi - that sounds interesting, thanks. It's not what I was trying to do though. My thought was to get an idea of traffic within Wikipedia, to see how actively visted any particular article is - in other words, I think there are lots of editors working on obscure pages that are not receiving much traffic from people looking up those topics. If someone wants to edit those pages because they like to, that's great, then we'll have deep knowledge here. But sometimes I wonder if maybe a page I'm working on would be better left in a less developed state, in favor of working on a related page that is getting more traffic from readers - that way, the more visited articles would be of higher quality in shorter time. Just an idea, maybe it's not practical. But I know for sure of some editors who have fully beautified articles that may be read by almost no-one. I'm not saying it's a problem, just noticing that it's happening. --Parzival418 _Hello 02:39, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

You might have a peek at WikiCharts. Data seems quite up-to-date and accurate. AmiDaniel (talk) 03:54, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. That's an interesting tool! I wonder if that script could be modified to find the stats for an article by inputing its page name. Maybe I'll email the developer of the tool. It seems like if the data is already there it might not be hard to format the inquiry differently. Well, maybe that's a bit farfetched, just a thought... Anyway, Thanks again!- -Parzival418 _Hello 05:20, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Oops, that must be the link! Gracenotes^T § 06:01, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh .. I do apologize. I didn't realize you had already linked to it above =D. Maybe next time I should read through the thread before posting to it -- anywho, glad some good (the correct link) came out of my laziness. AmiDaniel (talk) 07:13, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Hm, that's odd. Last time I checked Wikicharts, it was down, so when I saw that your link worked, I assumed that there was something wrong with my link :) Gracenotes^T § 07:29, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi - I checked the first one when you posted it, and it was definitely down. Then I checked the second one when it was listed here, and it worked. So when I saw this conversation, I checked the other one and now they both work. But the first one is in German and the second one is in English. I think the program was down before and is working now, but the extra code in the second link makes it appear in English... it seems... --Parzival418 _Hello 07:46, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Edit conflict page not working in Macintosh Internet Explorer browser, no editing icons, and Javascript inserting symbols not working

The Internet Explorer browser for Macintosh (version 5.2) keeps shutting down rather than show an "edit conflict" page. I think a Wikipedia developer should try to fix that problem. Normally when I save an edit on Wikipedia, everything works fine: the edit gets saved, and the updated page gets fully loaded. But when there is an edit conflict, I briefly see the title "Edit Confict: [whatever the name of the page is]," and then the entire browser shuts down and I have open it up and try to save it without an edit conflict occuring all over again. It is very frustrating. Also on this browser, there are no helpful editing icons on the edit pages (eg. the "insert links" icons, the "nowiki" icon, the "insert signature" icon, etc.). Also, when clicking on the Javascript links on the bottom of the edit pages, the respective symbols are not inserted into the edit box. — 216.250.39.226 21:04, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I have found a shortcut around the problem: Safari. It looks exactly the same as Internet Explorer for Mac except that it actually works. All of the problems I stated earlier do not exist with Safari. --216.250.39.226 21:45, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

That version of Internet Explorer is seriously obsolete. You are much better off using Safari. Mike Dillon 23:44, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I have to echo that statement. Microsoft abandoned IE on the Mac side several years ago (around when Safari was launched). Ultimately, though, nobody should ever use IE... so many problems. EVula // talk // ☯ // 17:20, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I was able reproduce the crash on edit conflict here on Wikipedia (IE 5.2.3 on Mac OS X 10.4.10 Intel) but haven't been able to reproduce it on a local wiki installation. I can only assume it's a weird interaction with _something_, which could be very difficult to track down.

There's no useful debug symbols in the backtrace I get from the system, either. While I do my best to keep IE/Mac from breaking outright, I do have to concur with the recommendation to use anything else if you can! :)

Safari or Firefox work great on modern Mac systems (OS X 10.2 or later). If you're stuck on a really old 10.x or OS 9 system, you might have to use an old Mozilla release, or give iCab a try. --brion 20:24, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Image thumbnail issue back?

I noticed tonight that Image:2005PoinsettaBowl-Navy-LOS.jpg wasn't showing up. I tried purging the page cache and re-uploading it. (This image had been working just fine.) The 400px version [1] displays just fine, but the 800px one [2] doesn't. When I try the 800px version, I get this error:

Error generating thumbnail
Error creating thumbnail: convert: Insufficient memory (case 4) `/mnt/upload3/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/2005PoinsettaBowl-Navy-LOS.jpg'.
convert: missing an image filename `/mnt/upload3/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/2005PoinsettaBowl-Navy-LOS.jpg/800px-2005PoinsettaBowl-Navy-LOS.jpg'. 

Yes, I've cleared cache, tried a different browser, etc. Any thoughts? --BigΔT 05:56, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

It looks like creating the thumbnail is generating too much server load for some reason, so the server's refusing to thumbnail the image. I'm not sure why this would be, though. --ais523 16:34, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist message

Is there some monobook way to hide that "this page has been added to your watchlist" message that now appears when you click the watch tab? >Radiant< 09:42, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

div#mw-js-message {display: none; }

• Thank you. >Radiant< 16:19, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

List template with inclusion of overview?

I have seen many lists like the List of network theory topics. I wondered if it would be possible to use something like the sortable table technology to include the overview/introduction of each link on this page. This might be useful in category displays as well. I was thinking that this would be a clickable that would show or hide these details. Currently such lists require that the user clicks each one and then backs up when they are trying to find relevant entries.

I guess this may not be possible due to performance issues. However, I used some templates on Comparison of Gnutella software and it seems to load as fast as any other pages. This seems so useful that maybe such a thing already exists? Bpringlemeir 16:38, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

~~~~ seems to be broken

The four-tilde signature (~~~~) appears to be broken; it results in this:

[[User:Tualha|Tualha ([[User_talk:Tualha|Talk]])]] 14:37, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

It appears that some of the brackets are misplaced. I don't recall that ~~~~ includes the talk page; is this a recent change? Tualha (Talk) 14:37, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

This seems to be related to the "raw signature" option in user preferences. It happens if that is unchecked, but not if checked. Tualha (Talk) 16:26, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, if it's unchecked it will link whatever you put in "Nickname" to your userpage. Raw signature means that you have to link everything manually. AmiDaniel (talk) 16:37, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

That would be "Signature:" not "Nickname:" thanks to what is probably my most important edit ever, made on 21:20, 28 June 2006. :) Prodego ^talk 02:58, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Audio on English Wikipedia via .de

Hello, I reported this to GMaxwell but wonder if anyone else here can hear any audio on the English Wikipedia? Two examples that do not "play in browser" here are 1 and 2. Thanks for any information. -Susanlesch 17:12, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

• P.S. Here is one I can hear 3 from tools at .de. -Susanlesch 17:16, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks anyway, another editor confirmed the Wikimedia Player is not functioning at this time. -Susanlesch 00:22, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
• At this time I have the same results. I can hear 3 and not 1 or 2. -Susanlesch 22:14, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
• Looks fine now. Thanks to whoever fixed whatever it was. Best wishes. -Susanlesch 22:19, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Please unlock the schizophrenia wiki page; it is incomplete.

Please unlock the schizophrenia wiki page it is incomplete. It does not list anhedonia as a negative symptom of schizophrenia, which it is. Many websites make this mistake because anhedonia is not well understood, but it is truly a negative symptom of schizophrenia that more knowledgeable sources will note.

I have been diagnosed with schizophrenia and diagnosed with having anhedonia as one of the negative symptoms. So I kn ow what I am talking about. I know what anhedonia is because I experience it and am being treated for it.

Wiki pages should NOT BE LOCKED. I can understand some barriers for spammers, but it defeats the purpose of Wikipedia to lock pages.

Please unlock the schizophrenia webpage.

HopeMr 20:49, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Well-answered on the Schizophrenia talk page where I was about to suggest HopeMr address his suggestion (but he already had). Pete St.John 22:02, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually the thrust of the question hasn't been answered. The page is only semi-protected, as such you'll be able to edit it after a while HopeMr. If you want to request unprotection, Wikipedia:Protection policy tells you how and also explains why articles are semi-protected. In this specific case it was semi-protected in January so someone might be willing to give it a chance. However due to the nature of what it covers, this may not work out Nil Einne 20:16, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I made a mistake. Indeed it was semi protected in April after a brief unprotection attempt [3]. Given the history, I'm doubtful you'll be able to convince an admin to un-semi protect it Nil Einne 20:12, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Search button question

Using the "Search" button gives different results for Bevo and "Bevo". Does anyone know why? - Bevo 00:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

This morning it seems to be fixed (both terms now result in returning the same set of links) - Bevo 13:46, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Getting a 404 for some uploaded images

I've stumbled across a few images lately in which the latest uploaded version appears not to exist. Clicking on the image yields a 404. Examples:

• Image:TomKing.png
• Image:Tom King.png
• Image:Emmerdale-RK4.png
• Image:Skullmonkeys-6.jpg
• Image:Geoffrey Richman -1950.jpg

What's the deal? —Bkell (talk) 04:48, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Looks like we had some files go missing -- I'll try to find out what's going on and if they can be recovered. AmiDaniel (talk) 16:56, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

They should all be fixed now, except for a few missing old revisions. -- Tim Starling

Thanks Tim =D. AmiDaniel (talk) 08:13, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

CAT not shown

The article StumbleUpon is assigned to three categories, but these are not active. What's wrong? -- Scriberius 13:49, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. One of the references wasn't closed. See my edit summaries in the article history - the offending reference probably isn't a reliable source anyway. Graham87 15:03, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Database server lag

The lag is up to over a half hour now, is something busted?—Elipongo (Talk contribs) 20:11, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Likewise - I've become used to the occasional "server lag" notification on watchlists; usually, it is only a matter of minutes. However, it has suddenly gotten way behind, and my most recent "Watchlist" request returned "Due to high database server lag, changes newer than 2002 seconds might not be shown in this list." Any idea what's happening? --Ckatz^chat_spy

Thanks to Tim, it should now be fixed. May take a while for everything to catch back up, though it looks fine on my end. AmiDaniel (talk) 20:28, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! it all looks good now. —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 20:35, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks as well. --Ckatz^chat_spy 20:50, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Creating new article problem

Hello, I have a problem. I used the "create article box" (using the inputbox option) in the Romanian Wikipedia, and I was wondering why there is a problem with it there and here not. If you register to ro.wiki and go to http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilizator:Danutz/Cutie you will see that at the bottom of the page there is a problem with it, the page is not displayed properly. I hope you see what I mean, but I repeat, that only happens when registered (logged in). The same problem appears with the box on ro.wikinews.org . If you understood what I mean, please write here about how this problem, please tell me how this was fixed on the english wikinews. Thank you! --Danutz 21:41, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

The page linked looks fine to me, logged out and logged in. What os/browser/version are you on? Or...do you mean the edit page? This bugzilla entry might be relevant to you. --Splarka (rant) 07:32, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes I ment the edit page. The "minor edit" checkbox and the watch checbox are displayed wrong. But this boxes appear only when a user is logged on, that's why I prompted for log on. I tried making that change to Medawiki:Common.css, now we should wait and see if the problem dissapears. --Danutz 08:40, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Ahh. The simple answer is that those checkboxes only appear for logged in users (anonymous users cannot do minor edits, nor have watchlists). The actual problem is with the editintro url parameter, which the devs are aware of but not able to easily find/fix yet. The CSS fix should work fine. --Splarka (rant) 07:07, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Page history visualizers

Are there any current/working/lightweight versions of the Wikipedia History Contest concept? Of the 4 versions listed, 2 are inaccessible, and 2 are greasemonkey scripts that don't seem to work.

Also, are there any usable variations of the more abstract historyflow? (This seemed like the place to ask :) --Quiddity 06:00, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Bizarre template behavior: {{{parameter}}} inside [url] inside {{#if}}

The following links seems to screw up in interesting ways. Why are the link brackets shown in the rendered HTML?

• {{{1}}}
• [4]
• {{{foo}}} (this one works.)

Note that the {{#if:x|...}} wrapper is required. Without that, things work as expected:

• {{{1}}}
• [5]
• {{{foo}}}

Likewise if the [link brackets] are omitted:

• http://example.com/ {{{1}}}
• http://example.com/{{{1}}}

It also works if you include an explicit alternative:

• {{{1}}}}
• [6]

I'm at a bit of a loss to explain this.

If it's something obvious, have a look at Template:arXiv, where I had to use the kludge above to work around the problem. You might clean it up before I do.

P.S. Am I encountering mediazilla:5678? And the changes aren't in Template:arXiv; they also depended on {{#pos}}, which is a StringExtension that WP doesn't support ATM... 71.41.210.146 07:43, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Icons do not line up properly

This has been discussed and reverted back and forth many times but there is still no solution to this dilemma. See here and follow the long tedious discussions leading to nothing. I'm not expecting a miracle here but does anybody have absolutely any idea how to fix this? We've tried everything! Its surprising how such a simple thing can cause a lot of headaches for a lot of users. --_Hdt83 ^Chat 08:28, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Pop ups stopped working

Hi, my popups seem to have stopped working - anyone know why/how to fix them? I know next to nothing about how these sort of things work. DuncanHill 16:45, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Try clearing your cache in your browser and force-reloading a Wikipedia page, that might help. - CHAIRBOY (☎) 20:26, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Edit icons disappeared

The icons at the top of the edit box have disappeared (I mean the ones for "nowiki", "redirect" etc). DuncanHill 16:46, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

That reveals an easy answer to both of your questions: it is very likely that your browser, or an extension, has blocked JS for this domain, either by your inadvertent intervention or because of a reinstall/rollback/crash/error/gremlin. Delete as appropriate. Adrian M. H. 19:33, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, I purged my cache twice, and now pop ups and the edit icons are back working. DuncanHill 20:31, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Bot needed for Category:Foundation schools

Is there a bot available that can look for the phrase 'foundation school' (ignoring caps) in articles and then allocate the article to Category:Foundation schools, please? TerriersFan 17:02, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a job for AWB. Prodego ^talk 18:12, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Showing log for a deleted page without going to log gone?

What happened to the deletion log showing on the actual page when you navigate to a previously deleted page (ie. without clicking on deletion log). It no longer shows on the actual page. It just has the link to the log. R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 20:20, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

The log shows when you attempt to edit, not when viewing the article page. I don't believe the log has ever shown on the article page. --- RockMFR 20:28, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Oh...I guess I didn't notice that it only showed in edit mode. Thanks. R ^ParlateContribs_@ (Let's Go Yankees!) 23:28, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, it did, but only for about a week or so. It doesn't make much sense to warn the user about recreating a page until he's actually about to recreate it. AmiDaniel (talk) 00:07, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Hit lists

Is there a top 100 list of hits on Wikipedia pages? Also, is there anyway of finding the hits on individual pages, please? TerriersFan 23:27, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

The top 100 list is here. There is, however, no way of finding the hits on pages other than those listed by that tool. Warofdreams talk 04:21, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Main Page styling

Would it be possible to put all of the styles that are currently inline on the Main Page into MediaWiki:Common.css or another style sheet, and use classes instead? It would make styling with user CSS much easier. (I brought this up around the time the Main Page was redesigned last year, but never received a response.) æ² ✆ 2007‑07‑08t03:32z

Reflist issues

I mentioned this on Template talk:Reflist, but I haven't heard anything. The problem is that whenever I view a page that uses {{Reflist|2}}, the references are only extended half-way across the page. See Image:ReflistAU.jpg for what I'm talking about. It's not an issue with simply {{reflist}}, just when two columns are enabled. Anybody else having this issue, or know how to fix it? - auburnpilot talk 03:41, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

It looks OK for me today using FireFox and the default MonoBook skin. Can you give a few examples of other articles that fit that pattern of double column formatted references that you see as single column? - Bevo 17:33, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Help talk:Variable history is screwed up

Help talk:Variable is not displaying correctly for me (for one thing, authors' names do not appear.) Is this a problem with all discussion pages pointing to history on meta? BenB4 12:53, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

The bot maintaining that page history made some markup errors during transwiki, which you can see if you view the source. æ² ✆ 2007‑07‑08t16:28z

Sorting of articles in categories

I think this falls into the technical part of Wikipedia. I was wondering if you all agree that the categories should be sorted by {{PAGENAME}} instead of {{FULLPAGENAME}}. For example, all templates go under "T" because the namespace starts with a "T", right. The current best way to get around that is by writing {{DEFAULTSORT:{{PAGENAME}}}} into all the templates. But why? Shouldn't all pages be defaultsort:pagename anyway? Am I missing something? Why are all pages sorted by fullpagename by defaulst? --Steinninn 15:28, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Categories aren't usually supposed to contain pages from different namespaces. Even in those exceptional categories that are, it doesn't really make much sense to mix the Template, User and Wikipedia pages with mainspace articles; if anything, they should be separated under their own headings like subcategories and images. --Derlay 21:40, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Yea, so let's say there is a category for Templates. They all go under "T". Does that make any sense? Let's take Category:Convenience templates for instance. Someone took the time to go through all those templates and sorted them by PAGENAME, as they should've been. It's much more organized that way. Now I couldn't find any category here, but I know of one on is: where people don't have the time for (let me say) stupid cleanup jobs like this. is:Flokkur:Þemasnið is very badly organized, because less then half of them are sorted by PAGENAME. The better half is sorted by default (FULLPAGENAME), and thus, go by "S". Am I making myself clear? --Steinninn 23:36, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes you are. I totally agree with you man. --Stefán Örvarr Sigmundsson 02:21, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. -- nae'blis 06:02, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Navigation

Template:30 most populous cities of Norway has a problem: the header is two lines high, but the second line overlaps the body. Template:Navigation is a but too cryptic for me, and it's locked anyway; can anyone fix this please? – gpvos (talk) 21:56, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I've fixed it, is that better? --ST47Talk 23:03, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Special:Fewestrevisions

I think that REDIRECTS shouldn't be listed at Special:Fewestrevisions, make confusion, there are hundreds of thousands of redirects with fewer that two revs. Maybe the same thing should bbe applyied with moved pages --Andersmusician VOTE 04:18, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Replacing the logo in my monobook.css

I replaced the logo using:

#p-logo { 
   background: url(http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n41/thesublime514/Temp/TransNikipedia.gif) no-repeat; 
   display: none
   position:absolute; /*needed to use z-index */
   top: 8;
   left: 15;
   height: 0;
   width: 0;
   padding: 0 0 154px 154px;
   overflow: hidden;
   padding-top: 5
   padding-left: 10
}

However, when I did it, the logo ceased to be a link back to the main page. Is there a way I can make it be a link again? — thesublime514 • talk • 04:29, July 9, 2007 (UTC)

Try this instead. --Splarka (rant) 07:06, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

#p-logo a { background: url("http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n41/thesublime514/Temp/TransNikipedia.gif")
    center no-repeat !important;  }

You can't make it display perfect for everyone, Titoxd. --Splarka (rant) 09:38, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

That works, thanks — thesublime514 • talk • 18:36, July 9, 2007 (UTC)

Diff not showing all changes

This diff looks like it just removed a single byte, but really did more than that (36 bytes added according to history). How is that possible, is this a bug? If so, it is possible someone was deliberately using this bug to vandalize the page without being noticed, as the hidden changes were vandalism. --PEJL 11:12, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

The diff seems to have missed something. I don't see any deletion logs, I'll file a bugzilla. --ST47Talk 11:52, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Bug 10511 submitted. --ST47Talk 12:00, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Random interjection, it works if you swap them. --Splarka (rant) 07:13, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Creating an Infobox

I have created a new Infobox for characters in the Dune Universe which I believe will be useful. However, I don't known how to create an actual "copy and paste bit" for pages that want the Infobox added to them. If anyone could help, that would be great. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blurgle Fragle (talk • contribs)

I can see you've made the page at {{Dune character box}} and the text on there at the top left can be copied and pasted to put that infobox on pages. I've fixed a couple of missing parameters so the text should now be OK. Tra (Talk) 15:47, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm afriad I don't quite understand. What exactly do you mean by the "top left corner", and when I actually paste the Template title on the page all I get is the {{{name}}} bit and the Real-Life information title, with no space for adding the actual information.Blurgle Fragle 17:27, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

You may want to look at Template:Heroes_character_box and some of the pages using it. -- User:Docu

I deleted the actual example infobox from this discussion, since it was floating to the bottom of the page, away from the article discussing it. If you need it for further discussion, dig it up from the History and then put it in a talk page somewhere, and provide a link here. Pete St.John 19:03, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

What I mean is that there is a box on the template page that looks like this:

{{Dune character box
| name = 
| image = <!-- Wikipedia image of the character. -->
| caption = <!-- Caption for the image. -->
| alias = <!-- Pseudonyms and special monikers, not nicknames. -->
| gender = 
| born = 
| died = 
| occupation = 
| spouse = 
| parent(s) =
| child(ren) = 
| sibling(s) =
| other = 
| affiliation = 
| portrayer = 
| debut = <!-- First book the character appeared in. -->
| departure = <!-- Last appearance of the character -->
}}

What you need to do is copy the text in that box, paste it into an article and then fill in the details by putting the facts to the right of each equals sign. Tra (Talk) 19:09, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Password emails

I've been getting a lot of emails with temporary Wiki passwords over the past few weeks - almost every day. It seems someone is trying to hack my account; I've seen a hacked admin account in action and it isn't pretty. I have a secure password, but if someone requests a temporary one and then is able to intercept the email sent by Wikipedia to my account, my password won't matter. Is anyone doing anything about this? Is there a relevant discussion somewhere? Surely I'm not the only one this is happening to. Kafziel ^Talk 18:50, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

As long as nobody else sees the temporary passwords in the e-mail, you should be fine. If you're worried that the e-mail could be intercepted, you can remove the e-mail address from your preferences to dissable these e-mails. Be aware that this will have the side effect of preventing people from e-mailing you through Special:Emailuser and will also mean that if you do actually forget your password, you won't be able to retrieve your account. Tra (Talk) 19:17, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I can't remove my email. People need to be able to contact me. I get at least one email per day, from confused new users, spammers I've warned, users I've blocked, etc.

I know this doesn't seem like much now, but it's a potentially serious security breach. Nobody realized it was important to encourage complex passwords until it was too late, and although this seems like a minor annoyance for the moment (which is why I waited so long to look into it) it will develop into something much worse the minute someone finds a way to do it properly. This should at least be being discussed somewhere. Kafziel ^Talk 19:35, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that the automatically generated email with password changes, include the IP address and date of the original request. When you legitimately ask for a password change, you would just be seeing your own IP address, which is no privacy violation. You would only be seeing someone else's IP in the case that they requested the password change with your account ID. However, the likeliest cause is probably just a user with a similar name making an honest mistake, e.g. someone named Kafzeal has forgotten how he spells it, himself. But if you had the IP you could at least post a question or remark to their default login page; you would also be easily able to spot a kid brother hack, because he is using your own IP, etc. Pete St.John 20:17, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

The emails do include the requesting IP, but it's always different. And it's quite unlikely that there is anyone with a very similar name to mine (if there was, they'd be blocked) and even more unlikely that they forget their password each and every day. I'd suggest limiting the number of password requests to one or two per month, as well as some kind of security question necessary to generate the email, at least for admin accounts. At least, that would be my suggestion if there was a forum for them, which there doesn't seem to be. That's what I think is odd. I can't be the only admin with this problem. Kafziel ^Talk 20:48, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

If your in doubt you might be able to ask a checkuser to look at other accounts on those IP's because they could becoming from a sockpuppet/vandal/open proxy. ^∆ 01:34, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I've been getting at least one of these a day now for weeks and weeks. Perk of the job. --John 01:38, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

help with using multiple #ifeq:

Hi. I'm currently using this (long) code:

{{#ifeq:bird|{{{1}}}|[[Category:Bird-stub]]}}

{{#ifeq:bird|{{{2}}}|[[Category:Bird-stub]]}}

{{#ifeq:bird|{{{3}}}|[[Category:Bird-stub]]}}

on is:wikipedia. Dose anyone know if I can make this code shorter? Something like

{{#ifeq:bird|{{{1}}} or {{{2}}} or {{{3}}}|[[Category:Bird-stub]]}}

But I tried that, and couldn't get it to work. --Steinninn 20:25, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Try #switch. AmiDaniel (talk) 21:01, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks AmiDaniel. I think this should work:

{{#ifeq:bird|{{{1|}}}{{{2|}}}{{{3|}}}|[[Category:Bird-stub]]}}

--Steinninn 21:19, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

That works, but (discounting weird coincidences) it's an xor, not an or. Depending on how you want the template to work, {{#switch:bird|{{{1}}}|{{{2}}}|{{{3}}}=[[Category:Bird-stub]]|#default=}} might do the trick. Depends, again. Gracenotes^T § 22:00, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Well, my suggestion did not work. most of the categories don't show. It's a long template so it's going to take some time to retest it with another code. Here's the link is:Snið:Stubbur/test. --Steinninn 01:13, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Ok, it only works with #switch. There's just one more thing. What dose #default= do? I couldn't find anything about it on meta. --Steinninn 01:31, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Never mind. --Steinninn 01:58, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

template problem - > number of apperances in a page

Hello. Someone is working on this page on the romanian Wikipedia: ro:Lista piloţilor de Formula 1 (List_of_Formula_One_drivers). There seems to be a problem with the {{flagicon}} template. It's only working up to the letter W. Suddenly the flag is no longer showed in the list and it is replaced by a link to the template page: ro:Format:Flagicon. I believe the problem is related to the number of apperanaces of a template in a single page. How can this number be modified? I counted using a text editor, and it seems that it is working correctly only the first 752 times it is used...rather strange number. Please answer on my ro.wiki talk page: ro:Discuţie Utilizator:Bekuletz. Thanks. ro:Utilizator:Bekuletz

I've replied at the user's talk page. It's most likely a problem with template limits. Graham87 06:40, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Featured article's picture on the Main Page doesn't appear, but does within the article itself

Anybody know what causes this? I've only noticed it with Explorer 6.0 so far and only for certain featured articles on the main page. If you like I can go back and figure out which ones. For example, today's featured article doesn't show its picture on the Main Page. Ideas? --Meowist 00:04, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

You've probably heard this before, but you should get IE7, or even better, Firefox. This may fix your problem, at a guess. --Deskana (talk) 00:49, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, IE6 is rubbish. IE7 and Firefox are free downloads so there is no reason to use an outdated browser. --John 00:51, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

For the love of god, you're suggesting IE7?! It's even worse than IE6. Get yourself Firefox or Opera--there are other decent browsers out there, but those tend to be the best (unless you're a w3m kinda guy =D). In any case, we still haven't answered the fellow's question--I've no explanation for it, though I will go try to figure it out right now. Just because we can all agree that IE is shit doesn't mean we're free from having to support it =D. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:04, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Google Analytics stats on a website I run (it's a site of limited interest, and these figures only reflect 585 visitors, 60.5% of those being new visitors)shows that browser usage by visitors to that site in the last month break down as follows:

• 58.46% IE
  • 33.04% v7.0
  • 65.79% v6.0
  • 0.58% v5.5
  • 0.58% v5.0
• 35.04% Firefox
  • 76.10% v2.0.0.4
  • 11.22% v1.5.0.12
  • 4.88% v2.0.0.3
  • 1.95% 2.0.0.1
  • 1.95% v1.0.7
  • 0.98% v2.0.0.2
  • 0.98% v1.5.0.11
  • 0.49% v2.0
  • 0.49% v1.5.0.9
  • 0.49% v1.5.0.10
• 4.62% Opera
  • 70.37% v9.12
  • 11.11% v9.21
  • 11.11% v9.01
  • 3.70% v9.10
  • 3.70% v9.20
• 1.2% Safari
  • 42.86% v419.3
  • 42.86% v312.6
  • 14.29% v522.12
• 0.34% Netscape
  • 50.00% v8.1.3
  • 50.00% v8.1

I think the technical point of concern for Wikipedia is not what browser any particular visitor might be using, but rather how far Wikipedia websites should go towards accommodating older browsers which are still in use. -- Boracay Bill 01:53, 10 July 2007 (UTC) (copyedited 01:56, 10 July 2007 (UTC)}}

I agree that the issue is how far Wikipedia should go to accommodate its users. Judging by those percentages above...we should at least try to figure out why IE 6 does this. Just for the record...I use Firefox at home, but I'm forced to use IE 6 at work (I can't even upgrade the trash). Hmm... I'm using Firefox 2.0 right now and looking at the Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 2007 page and going through to recall which articles haven't worked before and curiously...the ones that didn't work also don't have their pictures visible in the archive listing - namely Ebionites and West Wycombe Park. For June archive: Final Fantasy VI. So, the problem is not just with IE 6, it's also with Firefox 2.0. --Meowist 08:19, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I think I've discovered a possible cause that is connected with similar issues I've had on other pages. I believe the cause is the number of px in this : Image:West Wycombe 3 (Giano).gif|120px|West Wycombe's double colonnadeWest Wycombe's double colonnade, the image tag within the FA's brief description bit that appears on the Main Page. When a number higher than 120, say 130 is tried, the image displays, but at 120 nothing. For example, a link to the image is in this post right now... if you see no image within my text... then you have this problem too. This (not 120, other numbers) seems to be the cause in the other 3 main page FA article pictures. I've also run into a problem like this one on some supernova remnant pages. See Special:Contributions/Meowist for some supernova articles I've edited by changing the image's px value because I thought the no-display issue was not just mine. Anyone know why/how too low px values cause this? Can anyone else confirm it happens to them as well? I'd really appreciate figuring this out. --Meowist 08:38, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Weird edit I made; any ideas how this happened?

In trying to cast my !vote in an RfA, I seem to have inadvertently loaded and edited an earlier version of the page. Here's the diff. Now I can just about believe I somehow loaded an earlier version (perhaps because I came to the RfA via another editor's contribs?), but what I cannot easily understand is how I saved it. I definitely would have noticed the red warnings you normally get when saving an earlier version of a page (usually when reverting) and so I can say with confidence that I never received a warning. Any idea what's going on? --John 00:08, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

This is typically a browser caching problem and has been known to happen several times in the past. What web browser are you using? If you've recently made any changes to your settings concerning caching, cookies, etc., do revert them. AmiDaniel (talk) 01:07, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer. I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.4 and I haven't changed anything recently. --John 01:31, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Links embedded in Euromoney article

Somebody look at the ref tags used in Euromoney; are these PHP arguments sneakily meant to inform the Euromoney webmasters when someone was "referred" to their site via Wikipedia? (If so, they weren't competent enough to actually make the links render.) –Unint 00:51, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Could be, I suppose. In any case, it's clearly someone without much computer know-how ... AmiDaniel (talk) 01:10, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

If I were to visit the URL would they receive the message? (Sorry about the long line.) –Unint 01:16, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Your browser actually tells the server where you followed a link from (via the HTTP "Referer" header), although this can be disabled in some browsers. Hidden messages can be sent in the manner you describe, since that website's server probably keeps a record of requests sent to it (I know that Apache does, although this one uses Microsoft-IIS, version 6), although you can actually send a message to a website without connecting to it (has to do with DNS lookup). Gracenotes^T § 04:04, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Thumbnails (A sugestion, to check consensus)

Currently, the thumbnails of images are generated in the same format the original picture was uploaded in (save for SVG). Wouldnt it be better if there was a user-selectable preference option that would let them choose the format of the thumbnails (between JPG or PNG, much like size is selectable). That way users who (or when) want the images to download quickly (say, when on mobile or dial up) could choose JPG and when they want a better quality would choose PNG. --soum ^talk 12:01, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Another weird glitch

The link "older edit" from here links to here (which is in a different namespace, although the h1 makes it seem like it's in multiple namespaces, an article which has lots of edits from just a few minutes ago). --PEJL 19:45, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Same problem here. I tried to change the session by logging off/on but in vain. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 19:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Some sort of ID corruption probably. --PEJL 19:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm getting it too, seems to be happening every time I try to look at a diff past the most recent edit. Just started a few minutes ago.--Fyre2387 ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:51, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

For the past 10 minutes, every time I try to do something on Wikipedia, the text Wikipedia:Wikipedians is somehow included in the URL so I end up at Wikipedia:Wikipedians if I am using the comparison between revisions. I know I am not explaining this very well but does this ring a bell with anyone? Joie de Vivre ^T 19:50, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, there's a thread on ANI and it's hitting lots of users.-Wafulz 19:51, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

3 threads at AN as well. KOS | talk 19:59, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Something similar has happened before, see this. That problem was apparently due to desynchronisation between the servers. Either way, Brion is currently working on the problem Brion has apparently fixed the problem. --Deskana (talk) 20:02, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry guys, I broke it and then fixed it. :P --brion 20:14, 10 July 2007 (UTC)