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 BugZilla.

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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Plan to reduce Template:Convert

11-Feb-2011: The essay about redesigning Template:Convert, to use condensed subtemplates, rather than 3,400 (of 24,000 needed) is titled "WP:A plan to reduce Convert subtemplates".
Currently, {Convert} is a vast contraption, so immensely huge that no single person really understands all of it, and parts of Convert are used (incorrectly) deep in the innards of some other templates, but never used directly by people writing articles. Hence, the improvements to Convert are chasing a moving target, of over 15 types or sub-families of conversion formats.
The redesigned, extended prototype has suffix "-x" as Template:Convertx which would allow comma=in, comma=out, comma=off, and other new features:

• {{convertx|9,250|km|mi|comma=in}} → Template:Convertx
• {{convertx|9,250|km|mi|comma=out}} → Template:Convertx

The only hope is this hybrid approach which "morphs" the current Convert subtemplates into updated forms, which allow passing new parameters to handle the new options. Essentially, each unit (such as: ft, m, km, sqft, oz-f) would choose between the new or old style of processing conversions. Unused units would not change (because who cares). The performance overhead is perhaps 5 levels lower for the expansion depth, but about 100 bytes more in post-expand size, for the new features, such as Convert using 300 bytes when Convertx would use 400 bytes of post-expand size. -Wikid77 05:46, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

"Comma in" and "comma out" contradict everything about proper number formatting and WP:MOSNUM. If you want to write 9250 km, then you need to write 5720 mi. Mixing styles is not appropriate. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:05, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think mixing of styles was requested by people wanting to put direct quotes from some ignorant imbecile like Isaac Newton, or Max Planck, or Albert Einstein, who only spoke 5 languages, and did not understand the life-critical importance of using commas. Those guys never did anything more than develop reflector telescopes, or Planck's law, or relativity theories (E=mc^2). There's even talk of how they wrote unformatted equations, by hand, without using the Unicode &minus! Perhaps if WP:MOSNUM had existed centuries ago, then those guys could have been stopped, most certainly, before they became notable. -Wikid77 13:18, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, and if you want to quote them verbatim, you don't need convert templates, because I doubt Newton et al. wrote things like "A sphere of Template:Convertx, ...". If an editorial note, parentheses should not be used for this, but rather square brackets. "A sphere of 9250nbsp;km [5,750nbsp;mi / 5750 mi], ..." And take that crass attitude of yours elsewhere. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:06, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

• Sorry, I thought the joke was obvious, but I should have said how Template:Convert, for years, has been used inside direct quotations, with equivalent amounts in editorial brackets "[ ]" despite no commas in the quoted text. -Wikid77 14:12, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

This outburst is not helpful to your cause, and I think you know it. You should be encouraging people to focus on the issue at hand, not encouraging them to follow you down a tangent. Happy‑melon 13:57, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I guess I forgot how some people dislike jokes about WP:MOS. Perhaps I should have said that Convert supports conversions going back over 3,000 years ago, with or without commas in their stone carvings. -Wikid77 14:12, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Any plans on using the convert extension mentioned in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-01-31/Technology report? -- WOSlinker (talk) 13:24, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I was planning on starting a discussion about that soon on Template talk:Convert, but there are a few more features I wanted to implement and stabilise in it [the extension] first. Happy‑melon 13:57, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

• Template:Convert currently allows dynamic definition of thousands, and thousands, of new units (within a few minutes each), depending on which measurement units are used in each culture, as described in millions of articles of the other-language Wikipedias. We recently added the famous Egyptian cubit, and also added the French arpent (there are other arpents, both linear and square), due to widespread use in French colonial culture. Google estimates 143 million webpages about the word "measurement", but Convert also handles calendar dates, gun-barrel calibre, and musical notes, so we had to make Convert be a highly dynamic system, to allow users to add new units every hour of the day, and convert the words, not just numbers. Reality is so much more complex than just a list of 400 or 900 commonly used units. -Wikid77 14:12, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
• When reducing the internal structure of Convert, then some new features will also be added. For example, numbers will be displayed up to whole billions, with end-zeroes, to allow showing $billions of dollars, but then use scientific notation for larger amounts. For example, converting billions of dollars-per-pound:

• {{convert|32,000,000,000|$/lb}} → $32,000,000,000 per pound ($7.1×10¹⁰/kg)

Adding new features, while reducing the structure, will take full advantage of changing the fully-protected subtemplates in Convert, to test both the reduction of old subtemplate structures, as well as adding the new features, at the same time. -Wikid77 17:50, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Somebody should write an extension/parser-function for converting units. 68.69.54.2 (talk) 18:14, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Transclusion of Special:Watchlist

How can I transclude Special:Watchlist onto my userspace? I want to make a page with my article alerts, watchlist for the past 12 hours, and other useful stuff that I make use of commonly. However, transcluding Special:Watchlist creates a plain link to it.

How can I do this? If it can't be done, can we make it possible? Even if it just transcludes the watchlist of the user looking at it (or "you are not logged in" for IPs), that would work for privacy concerns. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 02:54, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe it's currently possible, perhaps the reason being that if someone were to come across a random page that shows their watchlist, then they'd be quite alarmed. That's why nothing that is personalized to a single individual can be entered onto any page. Gary King (talk · scripts) 07:13, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Seems a silly reason. They'd come to the village pump and be informed that "somebody is transcluding special:watchlist. Whoever is viewing it will see their own watchlist." The ability to create a customized watchlist with your own gadgets. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 14:43, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Not silly at all. Imagine browsing Facebook and seeing comments from your profile posted on another person's profile, or your email from Gmail posted on another person's Google profile. If you browsed around here and came across Example and it showed your watchlist because a vandal transcluded it, and you were a newbie and so never heard of the village pump (I can certainly attest that it's quite difficult to find, considering someone had to point me there early in my wiki days when I screwed up a few times), then it can be quite difficult to grasp that someone merely "transcluded" your watchlist to a page. It's also hard for a newbie to explain what exactly is going on when the page looks a bit different to everyone who sees it. Gary King (talk · scripts) 16:09, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

The real reason it can't be done is because it would break caching. The transcludable special pages are the ones that don't have different output depending on which user visits them. Mr.Z-man 23:26, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Anyway, methods of achieving your desired effect:

1. Write a script to querying the API and insert it into the page. Unfortunately, the parse API is rather broken [1]. Using iframe or AJAX also works.
2. Create a sub-page linking to page and use {{Special:RecentChangesLinked/User:Floydian/Watching}}. More cumbersome to add pages.
3. Just use bookmarks or have a script to add links/HTML to Special:Watchlist.

See guys that wasn't so hard. — Dispenser 02:45, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

The API has a specific method for grabbing the watchlist [2] Platonides (talk) 20:43, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Er... Ok, I get 2 and 3... But how do I call a php script from within wiki? Would it be something I'd write into my .js?

Better yet, are there any examples of code calling the API onto a wiki page that I can take a look at? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 15:09, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

(e/c)You have to write a JavaScript to get your watchlist from the API (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w/api.php?action=query&list=watchlist) then parse that, and dynamically add it to wherever you want it added in Wikipedia. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:20, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Gah! I can't wrap my head around javascript. It's the most confusing programming language to me. It doesn't help that the way it must be implemented on wikipedia just makes my brain explode. Just put a script on the page doesn't work, it just displays it as a piece of code. You can't just call a script from a page either, because that requires a script to call the script function. Its seems you have to set up the javascript to (using that script) detect when you are on the correct article, and insert it onto the page in the correct place.

User:Floydian/callwatchlist.js is one of a few attempts. I've tried longer more complicated codes that have a bunch of stuff that makes no sense on them. I've tried ajaxinclude, function include, plain ol' include, and the results is it displays the link of the api query. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 20:02, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Anyone that can point me in the right direction / bump to avoid archival - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 22:44, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

User:Animum/watchlistUpdate.js is an interesting script I found, that automatically updates your watchlist. So, you can use that as a basis on determining how to fetch your watchlist, and then it can be manipulated with JS afterward. Gary King (talk · scripts) 01:27, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I have created a script for you: User:Svick/transcludeWatchlist.js. To use it, put importScript('User:Svick/transcludeWatchlist.js'); to your skin.js page. To transclude it on a page, use the code <div id="transclude-watchlist" /> like here. The appearance is based on normal watchlist (although far from the same) and can be tweaked by changing the result.innerHTML += … line (but you'd have to create your own copy of the script, since you can't edit other people's javascripts). Svick (talk) 02:16, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh wow! Thank you! I was trying... but what I was getting was a page that loaded, then went blank and displayed "function toString() { [native code] }function toString() { [native code] }"... Like I said, javascript kills me. Again, thank you very much! - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 03:45, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Would someone mind adding to the code, to make the watchlist auto-refresh, and open links in a new tab? I sort of guessed at User:JohnnyMrNinja/AppTab.js, but I don't actually know JS so I'm not surprised it didn't work. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 04:50, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I have added the ability to auto-refresh. Just add something like transcludeWatchlistReloadTime = 60; // 1 minute to your Special:MyPage/skin.js. To enable opening links in new tab or window (depends on browser settings) use transcludeWatchlistNewWindow = true;, but it currently doesn't work for links in edit summaries. Svick (talk) 14:41, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Bloody awful appearence

All the gadgets stopped working, the stuff from the top of the page (my talk, prefs, etc, and all the page/discussion/edit etc) all jumped down to the bottom of the page, and it ll generally looked hideous. Now in the edit screen, it's almost back to normal but the edit box toolbar has changed its appearence and the cite hutton etc has disappeared. Is this one of the regular "improvements"? I would upload a screenshot, but the upload screen seems to have changed again and I can't find the option for WP screenshots (which I'm sure there was for a while). DuncanHill (talk) 10:18, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

That was another attempt to deploy MW 1.17. They've already reverted it. MER-C 10:23, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

IT's still taking ages for pages to load, the "discussion" and "edit" tabs at top of page are overlapping. Mjroots (talk) 10:28, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

• Well, the blackscreen gadget is working again, but the tbs and links are still in the wrong place. Edit screen (I unchecked the beta thing referred to in the post above) now has no edit toolbar at all, and the special characters are all showing up at once with no drop-downs, and no clickability. DuncanHill (talk) 10:39, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

We're in software upgrade mode, and various parts of the server structure are getting hammered. Hold on to your hats, and hopefully things will settle down again soon. Happy‑melon 10:53, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, it's called a maintenance window for a reason, and some strangeness was expected. Good news, all ok now, and were running 1.17. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:43, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

All ok, except blackscreen gadget not working (except in edit screen, when the pge loads without the blackscreen and then the blackscreen "switches on" after it loads), pop-ups not working, and the clock gadget not shoing up on watchlist (or anywhere else except in the edit screen). So not all OK at all. DuncanHill (talk) 12:00, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I think he means that, unlike the previous attempts to deploy MW 1.17 which crashed the entire cluster, this deployment has been successfully implemented. There was plenty of warning that there would be bits of user JS and CSS which would need fixing after deployment. Happy‑melon 12:04, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

And HotCat isnz't working either. Are any of the gadgets in user preferences working? DuncanHill (talk) 12:05, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

And, for the record, where were these warnings? I never had any warning that all the gadgets would stop. DuncanHill (talk) 12:09, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The CentralNotice that you've probably hidden :P And all over wikitech-l, the techblog, etc. Happy‑melon 12:10, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

No offense to you personally, but using centralNotice as the only onwiki channel for critical issues is very stupid. It has so often been abused for trivialities and outright spam that many editors have disabled it. — Gavia immer (talk) 12:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

(ec)If a Central Notice is the same thing as the bloody fundraising banners, then of course it's hidden. I'm pretty sure it's not been on a watchlist notice. No idea what wikitech-l is, and not an habitué of the techblog. DuncanHill (talk) 12:18, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

It's been posted to every major Wikimedia mailing list, and here at the tech village pump. And if you're at all interested in Wikimedia technical matters, the techblog is an excellent way to keep up. I'll admit that a watchlist notice might have been a good idea though. the wub "?!" 12:24, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

My interest in Wikimedia technical matters extends to "does it work?" and "will someone please make it work again?" DuncanHill (talk) 12:29, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Then you should read the many other venues that the wub pointed out. We can't read peoples minds and magically figure out who wants what information directly delivered to his brain at what time. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:48, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I shouldn't have to traipse around "many other venues" to find out if Wikipedia is working, or if anything is being done to fix things that are broken. DuncanHill (talk) 22:22, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Yet you would complain if we constantly had banners stating what was broken (couple dozen things every day), because they would be constantly in your face and you wouldn't be able to use the encyclopedia. I mean, you can't have it both ways. In situations where things constantly change, break and get repaired, there is no informing that will ever satisfy your criteria of not being spammed, yet being constantly informed of everything. Perhaps not ever making a change would be an idea ? But then developers would of course be shouted at by the other users clamoring for new functionalities and worried that the non-patched security issues are exposing their private information. I leave you all in this discussion, with this very nice column I once read. If Architects would work like software engineers. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:49, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Hey, how about a venue where people could come and ask what's gone wrong without being blamed for not reading the notice that was hidden from them? And to be frank, if you can avoid demanding money from me with disturbing pictures, I really wouldn't mind too much getting messages! DuncanHill (talk) 14:20, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

It's very easy to make the mistake of thinking that the MediaWiki world revolves entirely around enwiki and that everyone should use enwiki's preferred notification methods to inform about changes like these. This deployment affected all 850 wikis in the Wikimedia cluster; there is no justification for saying that the sysadmins should have laboriously gone around and identified the preferred channels for each and every wiki, including those in languages they don't even speak; and equally no reason for enwiki to get any special treatment. Rather, the sysadmins used the channels which are already set up to allow crosswiki communication. It's unfortunate that you've chosen not to receive those messages, but really not anyone's fault but your own. Happy‑melon 12:35, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I chose not to receive poorly written and offensive begging messages. I don't see why editors and readers should be expected to spend their time on a techblog just in order to have some idea of what is happening. When you find that your method of communication is not working, blaming the people you have failed to communicate with just comes across as arrogant. DuncanHill (talk) 12:45, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd say that it would be claiming that one particular person, group or community should be given special treatment in that communication, which comes across as arrogant. By hiding the CentralNotice you have also hidden information about the Steward elections, Wikimania, and various other Wikimedia-wide issues. It's entirely reasonable to say that you are not interested in crosswiki issues, and to hide the entire CentralNotice. Or it's reasonable to say that you only dislike the fundraiser banner, and to hide that specifically. But to say that you want to be kept informed of crosswiki issues, and then to deliberately block out the communication channel which has been created for those issues, is counterproductive at best. Happy‑melon 13:04, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Had Centralnotice not been abused for those ridiculous Jimbo fundraising banners, few people would have disabled it. From then on, Centralnotice has been perceived as spam. And the WMF has only itself to blame for it. --Morn (talk) 13:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Happy-Melon, I didn't realise that we weren't allowed to want to know about changes to Wikipedia unless we also wanted to know about lots of other irrelevant stuff. And, FWIW, I have seen messages about the Steward elections, and Wikimania. Like (I suspect) most editors and readers I really do not care much about cross-wiki stuff, but I do care about the reading and editing environment here. You obviously don't regard that as acceptable - it's "all or nothing". DuncanHill (talk) 13:30, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Anyway, the thing I've got suppressed is "display of the fundraising banner", according to my prefs/gadgets. Doesn't say anything about "suppress notice of planned cross-wiki disruption" DuncanHill (talk) 14:34, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

You certainly don't seem to realise that you're not allowed to expect other overworked and un- or under-paid people to alter their professional behaviour to accommodate your personal definition of what is and is not "irrelevant", no. Essentially this is a "the world does not revolve around you" discussion, and I doubt it's going to go anywhere productive. Happy‑melon 14:45, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Umm, just a note here - I am not sure what you mean by CentralNotice, since I also have only the Fundraising banners disabled (and that only after a glitch appeared that made them reappear immediately after they were dismissed). I can see and do notice all the other stuff at the top of pages, such as the Stewards' election notice. And I didn't see word one about this rollout on en.wiki; in fact I specifically looked for a notice about it after I saw it on de.wiki. I suspect you will find it did not actually get advertised on en.wiki. (Whether users should have been alerted that "We are enabling a new feature" means "Your preferences may get mucked up" in addition to "Things will be a bit wonky while we fine-tune this" is a separate issue.) Please stop assuming bad faith when folks tell you they didn't see the notification. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:15, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

According to this the generic maintenance CentralNotice about this upgrade ran from 06:00 to 12:00 UTC on the 16th. Now, I am certain that I didn't see it when I came online on the 16th. Is it possible to check if it actually deployed properly? Also, does the "suppress the fundraising banner" option given to all logged-in users also suppress other notices, such as this one? DuncanHill (talk) 14:30, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

This is actually my mistake. Because the fundraising people didn't use proper CSS ids and classes, i was forced to adapt the fundraiser gadget to suppress all centralnotices. The idea was that the gadget would be removed after the fundraiser, so it wouldn't be a problem, but I (nor anyone else though) remembered. That's the problem with these kinds of hacks, they have a way of backfiring. I'm removing the gadget now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Firstly, six-hours is an inadequate time-scale, as the disruption was somewhat longer. Try leaving it up until the major issues are fixed. Secondly - thanks for the apology. Next time someone says they didn't get any notification, check first that you actually did notify them. DuncanHill (talk) 22:22, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

As long as we're reporting issues here, I have another one: loading my watchlist in Firefox 3.6.13 now renders almost all of the way and then hangs briefly, obviously due to some javascript not loading properly. I haven't been able to work out the exact cause, so I will simply note that it is definitely a 1.17 issue. — Gavia immer (talk) 12:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

There's another change under Help, which gives the user a lot fewer options when searching Help. Now you get "Browsing", "Editing", "Guidelines", "Communication", "Questions", "Technical". OK for somebody Wikipedia savvy enough to know words or phrases to narrow their search. But what about someone who has never used Help before? If you want to narrow your search down to, say, only finding a template or a wikiproject, you need prior knowledge of Wikipedia to know to put it all in the search bar. The user does not have check boxes to help him/her narrow their search. Maile66 (talk) 12:37, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I suspect that's a completely separate issue - someone tried redesigning Help:Contents (it's been reverted for now). Discussion at Help talk:Contents.

Thanks. Maile66 (talk) 13:01, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The new messages bar appears to be partly broken, it still links ok, but the colour is wrong (Firefox). Mjroots (talk) 14:30, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, mine too (baby blue instead of the "orange bar of death" we've come to know and love). This is in IE. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:43, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

That's the expected behaviour (r76017, Template:Bug). No comment on whether it's a positive development... Happy‑melon 16:59, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Hm, it's definitely not the best colour choice. Would have missed it if someone didn't mention it. It really should be more of an obnoxious blue, like the {{talkback}} template uses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dorsal Axe (talk • contribs) 17:12, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

You can change it. I changed mine to screaming bloody red as a joke a few months ago and realized I liked it so I never switched back. Just add

.usermessage {

background-color: #ff0000

border: 1px solid #ffa500;

color: black;

font-weight: bold;

margin: 2em 0 1em;

padding: .5em 1em;

vertical-align: middle;

}

anywhere in your CSS file and it will override the default appearance. (I don't remember if the attributes for things other than the colors are redundant or not.) —Soap— 22:09, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

This has already all been sorted out down at #Blue_new_message_bars.3F.21 :) - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 22:13, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Editing

The new editing template is a disaster. Clicking on Advanced, Special characters and Help does nothing (Windows XP). Please don't tell me that I need to change my IE8 settings. I want them as they are. As a chemist I need to have superscript and subscript readily available for chemical formua such as O₂⁺, not two clicks away. Also the Courier font is unpleasant to use. BTW the special characters did not work with the previous edit template, but one could get round that. Petergans (talk) 11:06, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Another issue: the link to citation template gives an old version. Petergans (talk) 11:23, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The preferences were temporarily incorrect after the upgrade, the preferences are being restored as we speak to their pre-upgrade settings. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:47, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

12:47 < RoanKattouw> thedj: Known issue, running a script to (partially) fix it like right now. The ones still having the issue will, unfortunately, have to switch it off again —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:48, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Clarification: the script fixed most of the mess, but due to a minor FUBAR we were unable to fix the fact that certain users that had previously disabled the edit toolbar will now have it enabled again. These users will have to go to Preferences -> Editing -> Beta features and uncheck "Enable enhanced edit toolbar". There are about 4,200 affected users on English Wikipedia, if memory serves.

I realize this is an annoyance to these people, and I apologize for messing up. However, I'm sure you would've been more annoyed if you'd gotten the new toolbar and the preferences interface would refuse to turn it off, which is what would've happened if we hadn't done anything at all :) --Catrope (talk) 15:12, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, that is exactly what is happening to me. Regardless of the state of the checkbox, I have the enhanced edit toolbar active. There is no way for me to get the old one back. -- Whpq (talk) 15:15, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Could you try again now? --Catrope (talk) 15:25, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I followed the instructions given above and I am back in working order again. Thanks! ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 15:29, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Reply - Still doesn't work for me. I am using Firefox version 3.6.13 on Windows XP. I shut down the browser and started it again. The checkbox was clear, but I had the enhanced edit tool bar. I checked the box and saved my preferences; opened a page to edit and confirmed I had the enhanced edit tool bar. I then unchecked the box and saved my preference. I opened a page to edit, and the enhanced edit tool bar is still there. -- Whpq (talk) 16:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Try WP:BYPASS? –xeno^talk 16:18, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Reply - Still broken for me. I cleared my entire cache and it made no difference. For extra fun, I switched to Chrome. Same problem. I then switched to IE8, and again, the same problem. Note that with IE8, I've never even visited Wikipedia so there's no way anything is cached. No matter which browser I am using, I only see the enhanced edit toolbar regardless of my preference setting. -- Whpq (talk) 16:32, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

UPDATE - I found a way to get the toolbar back! In your preferences, under the editing tab, there are two checkboxes that are related to beta features. The first is supposed to toggle between the old edit toolbar and the advanced edit toolbar. The second relates to some features. Previously, the state of the second checkbox was irrelevant. Now, in order to get the old toolbar back, you need to uncheck both boxes. -- Whpq (talk) 21:15, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this is what the real issue was: the behavior of the second box change. The whole database thing turned out to be a red herring. I've deployed a prospective fix that should restore the old behavior, please tell me if it works. --Catrope (talk) 22:48, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I am able to toggle between the classic toolbar and the advanced toolbar regardless of the state of the state of the "Enable Dialogs" checkbox. This is the behaviour that is expected and matches the behaviour prior to the upgrade. So inthat way, it works. This may perhaps be unrelated. The classic toolbar itself seems to have changed. The "cite button" which is the one most used by me, is on the far left of the toolbar instead of on the far right, next to the "ref" button. And when the "cite button" is clicked, the toolbar formatting gets whacky. The "cite" button moves to the top on its own. The series of template buttons are below that with their bottom edge overlapped with the rest of the classic toolbar (minus the "cite" button. -- Whpq (talk) 18:25, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Edit toolbar preference no longer works

The new editing toolbar will not go away even when "My preferences" -> "Editing" -> "Show edit toolbar (requires JavaScript)" is cleared. :( —Lowellian (reply) 11:53, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

See thread above, this is in the process of being fixed. the wub "?!" 12:04, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

What has been done by now to fix it? Who was that who coercively enabled this so called "enhanced editing toolbar" ? And when this is going to be reverted? — Klimenok (talk) 06:58, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Some revisions didn't make 1.17

It seems the changes to the diff-engine didn't make it into 1.17, especially revisions 75658 and 75662, which would have fixed some minor display issues in diffs. Were they entered in the wrong branch? — Edokter (talk) — 14:07, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

They were reverted because they changed the wrong piece of software: Wikipedia uses wikidiff2, not the PHP difference engine. The fixes were ported to the latter, but I don't know if it's been upgraded. I'll ask. --Catrope (talk) 15:14, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

DifferenceEngine.php was renamed to WikiDiff.php; the patches are still there. — Edokter (talk) — 15:02, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Resource loader and Tracing CSS

With the new resource loader, all CSS is loaded through load.php, making it impossible to trace the origin of CSS declarations. Adding the ?debug=true to the URL does not change that. Is there another solution that enables me to trace CSS to its origin? — Edokter (talk) — 14:27, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

There's currently no way, no, though I guess it would be helpful. You can find some information in the modules= parameter to load.php, but that's it. Comments indicating where a file ends and the next one starts could be useful here. You can file a enhancement request on Bugzilla. --Catrope (talk) 15:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Comments wouldn't help; the files are still loaded seperately as modules. However, if the module names were to match the filenames (or add a dummy parameter indicating it's origin), it would solve my problem. — Edokter (talk) — 15:24, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, ?debug=true does work for me. Using that tells me the correct line number for CSS declarations. If the URL already has a "?", then you need to use &debug=true instead, though. Gary King (talk · scripts) 01:28, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I still get the same cryptic URLs (starting with load.php), except that it shows 'debug=true'. I don't see linenumbers or what else. I'm using Webkits Web Inspector. What are you using? — Edokter (talk) — 12:56, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

You don't see any line number next to load.php? It should tell you line number 1 if you have debug disabled (by default). With debug enabled, it should give you the line number. It works for me in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. In Web Inspector, try enabling resource tracking with the Resources panel to see if that helps. Gary King (talk · scripts) 16:44, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

OK, I see them. I still have to skim the entire file to find the original location though. — Edokter (talk) — 16:57, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

If you click on the line number it should jump you directly to it in the file. Gary King (talk · scripts) 19:08, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I know, but I still have to find out what file it comes from. Modules are merged in one big load, hence why I need to skim the file for the filenames. — Edokter (talk) — 19:16, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I need to load debugged scripts. How can I load debugged resources? Kwj2772 (talk) 10:05, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

You add debug=true to you page url. It's only been mentioned 3 times in this very thread. :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:18, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Links aren't being underlined

See above. I've force-refreshed, I've gone into my preferences and set from 'Always' to 'Never' and back again, and still links aren't being underlined. --Golbez (talk) 14:31, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

They underline fine for me. Have you checked your browser settings? — Edokter (talk) — 14:34, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Broken for me since the upgrade too. Not a browser issue. tedder (talk) 14:42, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Me as well. I haven't changed a thing considering it happened sometime while I slept. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:45, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

What browser are you using? — Edokter (talk) — 14:57, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Firefox 3.6.13. No browser settings were changed between yesterday and today. --Golbez (talk) 15:00, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

3.6.13 here too. I fired up Chrome and it's broken there too. tedder (talk) 15:02, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I have FF 3.6.13 as well. But IE Tab also doesn't underline them. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 15:01, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

What skin are you guys using ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:26, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

MonoBook. tedder (talk) 16:31, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Same for me, no underlining under Firefox or IE 8.0 using the MonoBook skin. Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:48, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Same here, I'm on Minefield (Firefox 4 pre-release) and Monobook. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 18:21, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Same for me, on Monobook and no underlining on both Opera 11.01 and Chrome 9.0.597.98. Nate • (chatter) 21:28, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Filed as bugzilla:27468. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:35, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

This is still a problem (I dunno how much who's changing what, granted), and honestly it gives me a headache. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:37, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Since it's only a visual bug, it will get low priority from people. We can fix this in two weeks if we have to, more important broken things require attention atm. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:42, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Low priority? Huh. Some people won't edit Wikipedia until you bother to fix it. --Ghirla^-трёп- 21:11, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Meanwhile, plenty of other people will. No need to take it personally, but minor interface issues (on the no-longer-default skin) are just lower on the priority list than some of the other upgade-related issues. That doesn't mean that the people having the issues are lower priority, just that fixing underlined links isn't the most important thing. In the meantime, I'd think tweaking your monobook.css page would fix it. (yes, it's not the best long-term solution, but it'll work in a pinch) EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:17, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

For the moment you can add a { text-decoration:underline !important; } to your monobook.js (or inject the same using appendCSS or GM_addStyle). ―cobaltcigs 21:47, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to fix it. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 23:08, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I meant .css, oops. ―cobaltcigs 00:30, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh I see what you did. You need the “a” in front as it represents the tag-name of the links, to wit:

a { text-decoration:underline !important; }

―cobaltcigs 00:33, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks very much for that work-around. I certainly understand why the developers would downgrad the problem in favor of other, more pressing fixes, but it was surprisingly difficult to edit without the underlines! Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:01, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, THIS seems to work. Thanks. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 01:12, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! Sorry, I'm one of those who is still stubbornly stuck in 2006 and need the woobie that is underlining. Nate • (chatter) 10:16, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Adding a { text-decoration:underline !important; } made no difference for me. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 18:05, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, to .css, yes it did. Thank god, links are back! It's quite hard to edit without them. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 18:07, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

But now my font in edit mode and preview has changed. :( SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 20:29, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Hey Slim, see section below #Edit box font forced to Courier. 68.69.54.2 (talk) 18:00, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Incidentally, has anyone said what the big benefit we're getting from this software upgrade is, that justified the multiplicity of problems created? Is this an upgrade for the sake of an opgrade, or what? Beyond My Ken (talk) 11:01, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes developers spend a couple of hundred thousand hours of their collective time because they are plain bored and ponder whole days about how to mess up your life with a little missing line. The links have been posted a couple of times on this page and many other places, I'm all out of silver platters though, so please go look for them yourself. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:06, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Dude, I understand that you're getting frustrated, but seriously, you're coming across as a total dick at times. Comments like that don't help anything. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:43, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I know. I just get tired of answering the same question over and over and people demanding to be informed while they don't invest time to inform themselves by following the channels that are provided for informing them. It's not OK of me though, I should know better. Luckily the software switch will soon be over, and I can descend from my developer role back to my reader role and comment from afar, how editors haven't yet finished writing their articles before putting them online, that they haven't had their prose reviewed by an expert yet, that there are lots of errors, 'destroying' peoples lives, that there are many missing articles and that 'the editors' aren't correcting those problems soon enough. </trying to communicate my frustration to a domain the average editor might understand> —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:43, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I certainly sympathise with TheDJ's frustration, and I think he makes an excellent analogy to justify it. A lot of people here are not accepting of the fact that MediaWiki is a volunteer-led free-content project just like the English Wikipedia, and that its volunteers deserve to be treated exactly the same way for its inadequacies as editors here are. There is no fundamental difference between a bug in a MW module which has not yet been fixed, and a factual error on an enwiki article which has not yet been corrected. My additional point would be that the MediaWiki world does not revolve around enwiki, that while it might be the patriarch of MediaWiki instances, it is not special. The MediaWiki developers are playing to a much wider audience with this update than the watchers of this village pump; enwiki is to MediaWiki as an enwiki reader is to this project. Editors of this project are appreciative of polite and constructive comments on where the project warrants improvement, and encourage such points to be raised in appropriate forums; editors often jump straight to correcting such issues when it is simple for them to do so. Enwiki editors are not appreciative of aggressive denigrations of the work the project has already done; they do not tolerate rudeness directed at the good-faith actions of its contributors; and while agreeing that the project is imperfect and incomplete, they do not accept that the world will end as a result of those imperfections not being immediately rectified. Do not treat MediaWiki developers as enwiki's playthings, treat them as established members of an entirely separate free-content project with related but entirely separate goals to enwiki. Treating them in the same way as you treat Commons editors would be a good way of thinking about it. Happy‑melon 14:04, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Hang on, though, HM, when an article is messed up, it affects only that article. I've spent hours trying to work out what happened to the underlining. I updated my browser, checked other browsers, sat staring at preferences, asked friends for help, etc etc. It's a minor thing, I know, but it's a time-consuming minor thing, and multiply those hours by the large number of editors who did it, and are probably still doing it, unaware of this thread. So some understanding on both sides would be good. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 20:34, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, it might have been a significant disruption to you, a minor thing which is nonetheless disproportionately inconvenient and problematic. In much the same way that a factual error in an article can be disproportionately damaging to those who read it and mistakenly believe it. No one is denying that issues like these are problematic and need to be fixed in the fullness of time. But while no one denies that the issues tracked by CAT:B are problematic and need to be fixed in the fullness of time, there is a recognition that enwiki editors are only human and that it is not reasonable to expect either all errors, or errors which affect a given reader, to be fixed immediately.

Enwiki's audience is its readership, a small fraction of which will have been negatively affected by any given imperfection in the project. MediaWiki's 'audience' are individual wikis, the 850 Wikimedia wikis, the 165 thousand Wikia wikis, Citizendium, Uncyclopedia, the UN Development Program wiki, countless known and unknown private wikis, public wikis, documentation wikis, internal company wikis, and so on. There are many more active wiki installations, each with its own community large or small, than there are active editors across all Wikimedia projects. That's the understanding, the sense of perspective, which some people are lacking. The developers are extremely sympathetic to the issues you identify with the new software; indeed identifying and fixing them is the purpose of the MediaWiki project. All you need to do is present such issues politely and clearly, much as a enwiki reader would point out a flaw in an article, or you as an enwiki editor would point out a flaw on Commons or another project. Happy‑melon 10:47, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

And then wait for the requisite number of years or decades until someone possibly gets round to addressing your issue... --Kotniski (talk) 14:15, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

HM, I've never managed to get a response from a developer about a technical problem; at least not from someone who I know to be a developer. Perhaps as they are reading this: the other thing that happened yesterday is that my font changed in edit mode, and I can't seem to fix it. Is that also connected to the recent changes? SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 02:08, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

[Copying this from below, as I didn't see this thread}

A couple of days ago, my links stopped being underlined, which is making editing more awkward. My preferences say always underline links. It's only happening on Wikipedia, it's with all browsers, and it's only on Monobook. Does anyone know what might be causing it? SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 12:18, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Fix

I've found the cause for this problem, and a fix, review and deploy are awaiting, but I think we should see this fixed no later than monday evening european time. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:44, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Fix deployed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:02, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot - I can properly see links again in both en: and cs:. :-) --Miaow Miaow (talk) 15:35, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

StupidNah, it's not stupid, it's just annoying banner is not working

Resolved

The stewards elections banner keeps appearing and disappearing whenever I reach a page. Before I can click it, it disappears. --Perseus8235 15:43, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

It's probably an old banner that you already dismissed. You can clear your cookies for en.wikipedia.org to make them all reappear again. — Edokter (talk) — 15:52, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The fact that the banner appears before it disappears was fixed recently; it was a problem with the steward elections banner borrowing very old code. --Catrope (talk) 22:49, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Missing on toolbar - Cite button and cite templates

Resolved

Once again, the cite option on the Editing toolbar is missing, as are the cite templates. Maile66 (talk) 16:53, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

... and for me. Tried changing skin, toggling refTools, edit toolbar with cache clear. Fiddling with vector.js didn't help either. Thincat (talk) 18:04, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

... and for me. I've really become quite dependent on the availability of the Cite button and templates. Darrell_Greenwood (talk) 19:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

And for me. --j⚛e decker^{talk to me} 20:22, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Following this advice above, here is a faltering start towards a work-round (for me). In My preferences, Editing turn off the two options very near the bottom under beta features "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" and "Enable dialogs for inserting links, tables and more". Save. Then, when editing, position the cursor appropriately in editing window, scroll up the window (not merely the editing box) and click the button marked {{CITE}} (last on the right). Select appropriate button appearing underneath. "Preview citation" works but, sadly, "add citation" seems to do nothing. I still have "Show edit toolbar (requires JavaScript)" and "RefTools" on and I don't know whether their status matters. Thincat (talk) 22:31, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but this does nothing for me. I have Firefox. Since today (and not before), if I uncheck the suggested boxes in Preferences and Save, it tells me the Preferences were saved. But it puts the check marks right back. I have the old toolbar. It's just the Cite button that is missing. Also, some interesting funky stuff that is probably related to what they are working on. On any edit page, on the upper right, I get a red lettered "Page notice", and if I click on it, it tells me there is no Template with the name "Template/EditNotices/Page/whatever page I have open". So, I think they're still working - because I don't think that Page Notice is supposed to be there. Hopefully, the Cite button will come back soon. Maile66 (talk) 00:06, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

This is (mostly) fixed now. You'll have to bypass your cache. They removed the variable that I was using to detect whether the toolbar was enabled. The script will still be broken if you have dialogs disabled as I don't know how to detect whether the dialogs are enabled or not. Mr.Z-man 01:12, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Consider this a virtual dancing in the aisles. The Cite button is fixed!! Thanks. Maile66 (talk) 01:16, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm still a wallflower waiting for a dance;-( For the last three options in My Preferences, Editing ("Beta Enhanced toolbar", "Beta Enable dialogs for inserting" and "Labs Enable preview dialogs"), if all are off I get a {{CITE}} button which goes fine until the last moment when "add citation" does nothing. This has functionality for fillling in other fields from data extrracted from the supplied URL. However, if the last two options are off and on (in order) I get no cite option. Otherwise, I get the previous "Cite" tab (after "special characters...help") which seems to work as before. Thincat (talk) 09:28, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah ha! I have switched from Vector to MonoBook skin after reading this. Now, with the three options I mentioned above Off, Off, On I get a working "Cite" button (new style). I have kept "edit toolbar" and "RefTools" On and I think this is also a requirement. Thincat (talk) 09:46, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

RefTools not working

Hi there. Since Wednesday, 18th February 2011, I've noticed that reftools is no longer working on my browser (I'm using Windowx XP, Firefox 3.6.13). Been using reftools since 2009 without any issues. I've tried out all options both in "Appearance" and "Gadgets" in the Preferences menu, yet the reftool bar doesn't appear each time I edit an article. (btw, I have java installed on my system as well). Any idea why I can't access reftools anymore? Amsaim (talk) 09:36, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

This side of the dateline: confirming. They're broken. --Old Moonraker (talk) 10:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

For the original edit toolbar, the only way to make it work is to disable wikEd either in gadgets or on the fly with the on/off button on the wikEd toolbar. For the enhanced toolbar, it works more often, but sometimes the cite window becomes wider than my browser window and there's no horizontal scroll bar. I greatly prefer the original toolbar & refTools plus anyway. I actually don't need the rest of the toolbar because I have wikEd, I just need the cite button. I don't like the ProveIt UI. I'm running FF 3.6.13. —UncleDouggie (talk) 11:15, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

This is also being discussed above at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Missing_on_toolbar_-_Cite_button_and_cite_templates. Thincat (talk) 12:22, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I see I am not alone in being affected by the recent media wiki and reftools changes. See Wikipedia talk:RefToolbar 1.0#broken since 14 February 2011? where I tested various Gadget combinations. I still wish that the old toolbar was brought back ([3] [4]), but this combination at least gets me the new-style Cite button working on Firefox 3.6.13 with monobook:

"Show edit toolbar" off

"refTools" Gadget ON

"Enable enhanced editing toolbar" ON

"Enable dialogs for inserting links, tables and more" ON

-84user (talk) 12:45, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Also on FF 3.6.13 and having gone to Monobook (for exactly this reason), this gives me the Cite tab as previously but not the new Cite button. For this I need (as I reported above)

"Show edit toolbar" ON

"refTools" Gadget ON

"Enable enhanced editing toolbar" OFF

"Enable dialogs for inserting links, tables and more" OFF

"Enable preview dialog" ON

I would prefer your setup if it worked for me. Thincat (talk) 13:06, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Maybe something changed in media wiki very recently but I can now get the old edit toolbar plus the old "cite" icon with this combination:

Preferences / Editing / Advanced options : ON: Show edit toolbar (requires JavaScript)

Preferences / Editing / Beta features  : OFF: all options

Preferences / Gadgets / Editing gadgets  : ON: refTools

I tested the icons B, I, #R, <ref /ref> and <<CITE>> for web and news.

Here is the combination that gets a working new-style toolbar plus working new style cite (it previewed and inserted citations for {{cite web}}):

Preferences / Editing / Advanced options : OFF: Show edit toolbar (requires JavaScript)

Preferences / Editing / Beta features  : ON: Enable enhanced editing toolbar

Preferences / Editing / Beta features  : ON: Enable dialogs for inserting links, tables and more

Preferences / Editing / Labs features  : OFF: Enable preview dialog

Preferences / Gadgets / Editing gadgets  : ON: refTools

I have no other Editing gadgets on, but I do have Browsing gadgets / Navigation popups ON; I also have this monobook.js. -84user (talk) 13:47, 17 February 2011 (UTC)expanded the prefs. -84user (talk) 13:55, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Correction to my preferences above. It appears that the above preferences do not get the old CITE working. Instead I forgot that I still had "importScript('User:Apoc2400/refToolbar.js');" in my User:84user/monobook.js. That line is essential. Without it there is no CITE icon displayed in the old style edit toolbar. -84user (talk) 20:11, 17 February 2011 (UTC) strike through correction; I can confirm Kaldari's report that the old settings work again. Thanks all. -84user (talk) 10:53, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

OK, all the RefTools stuff should be fixed now. Feel free to go back to your old settings. Kaldari (talk) 02:45, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

For remaining issues with wikEd compatibility, see Wikipedia_talk:RefToolbar_1.0#wikEd_compatibility. —UncleDouggie (talk) 07:58, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Disable smaller font size of elements gadgets no longer works without javascript

The gadget "Disable smaller font sizes of elements such as Infoboxes, Navboxes and References lists" worked fine without javascript until today with Mediawiki 1.17. I prefer to leave javascript off most of the time, but I also love being able to read the references etc text at the same font size. Is there a way to resolve this (new) issue? TransUtopian (talk) 17:52, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

What browser and skin are you using? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:45, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm using Opera 10.60 and Monobook. TransUtopian (talk) 23:09, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

It should work even without JS enabled for your browser, since it uses CSS, not JS. Gary King (talk · scripts) 01:25, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it now relies on the resource loader, which is javascript, to load all the gadgets. I don't know if gadgets required javascript before the update. — Edokter (talk) — 01:32, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Since I disable JS unless I specifically need it for something, I'd say this gadget didn't require it before. Is there something I can add to my CSS that'll duplicate the gadget, or can specific gadgets be removed from using the resource loader (or have a duplicate version that doesn't use it)? TransUtopian (talk) 12:01, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

(←) Put the following line at the top of your skin CSS file:

@import url(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-NoSmallFonts.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css);

That should do the trick. — Edokter (talk) — 12:46, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

That workaround works. Thank you very much, Edokter! And thanks to everyone else for helping in the process. TransUtopian (talk) 16:25, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Update: The NoSmallFonts works, but it disables the non-display of citation needed tags I added long ago to my skin CSS. (I briefly reverted to confirm.) My CSS includes

.Template-Fact {display:none;}
.Inline-Template {display:none;}

Can you please tell me if there's a way to make this work again? TransUtopian (talk) 18:18, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

That is weird, but try the following:

.Template-Fact {display:none !important;}


.Inline-Template {display:none !important;}

— Edokter (talk) — 20:09, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I tried it but I'm afraid it didn't work. FYI, I also have .ambox {display:none;} in there to suppress maintenance boxes, which still works fine. I tried the two lines you suggested atop the ambox line, and then with ambox in the middle (its original position). Do you have any other ideas? TransUtopian (talk) 21:30, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

There were some chages in CSS with regards to specificallity; that may be the cause. Try the following:

span.Template-Fact {display:none;}


span.Inline-Template {display:none;}

— Edokter (talk) — 23:03, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Tried it and a couple variations (moving them around, adding a period before span), saving the CSS each time and force-refreshing a page with [citation needed]s. I can still see them. I'm willing to try more ideas if you've got them. TransUtopian (talk) 00:19, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

OK, I need to know what you ar trying to hide, so I can come up with the proper CSS. — Edokter (talk) — 00:21, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

(←) OK, I found what you need:

sup.Template-Fact {display:none;}


sup.Inline-Template {display:none;}

— Edokter (talk) — 00:25, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid that didn't work either. You're correct that I'm trying to hide the superscripted templates (I assume that's what sup means) at Wikipedia:WikiProject Inline Templates, primarily Template:Citation needed. "View source" told me it's based on Template:Fix so I tried sup.Template-Fix {display:none;} after I tried Fact, but no dice. TransUtopian (talk) 02:09, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

YES! It finally works, after reordering the elements, like so

@import url(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Gadget-NoSmallFonts.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css);
.ambox {display:none;}
sup.Template-Fact {display:none;}
sup.Inline-Template {display:none;}

Result: No small text, no maintenance amboxes, no citation needed inline templates. I don't know why only that order works, but I'm thrilled it does. Thank you again, Edokter, for your invaluable and patient help. TransUtopian (talk) 19:01, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Glad it works. Yes, the @import line should be at the top, but I already said that :) — Edokter (talk) — 21:04, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you did. :) I played around with it afterwards just to see if everything would quirkily work in another position. The .ambox has to be above the sups to make everything work. Having it below or between the sups was making the sups not work. TransUtopian (talk) 21:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I can't explain that one. Oh well... — Edokter (talk) — 22:05, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Blue new message bars?!

Is there a CSS snippet I can get to change it back to orange? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 19:09, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Better still, change it back. I don't remember seeing any discussion or consensus for this change. Mjroots (talk) 19:15, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Is there a good reason (or consensus, for that matter) for the change in the first instance? Should be restored in the common css, imo. –xeno^talk 19:15, 16 February 2011 (UTC) (FWIW, it is still orange for me, on monobook)

Yeah, I like the orange one better too. Catches your eye better. --T H F S W (T · C · E) 19:25, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't care what color the bar is, but if someone is going to change the 'new message' notice, could I make a plea for the addition of a history button? "Last change" fairly often leads me to miss messages (when multiple edits are made to the page in short succession). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:32, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

div.usermessage { background-color: #FFCE7B; border: 1px solid orange; } in your css would change it back, I suspect. @WhatamIdoing, there's some script to do that I believe, I'll see if I can find it for you (here you go) . - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 19:38, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Whose decision was this? Bad. Very bad. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 19:49, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Someone isn't reading what is written. I don't want to have to go round fiddling with codes that I don't understand to get back something that appears to have been changed without discussion and therefore without consensus. I want the message bar changed back to how it was. A RFC or similar should then be opened on whether or not the community desires the change, or whether it should be an option, like the [edit] button at the end of header text instead of at the right side of the page. Mjroots (talk) 19:55, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I believe this can be easily fixed by editing Mediawiki:Common.css (or maybe just MediaWiki:Vector.css) and I have suggested it be changed back at MediaWiki talk:Common.css#MW 1.17 now live, juicy style/script excitingness for all. –xeno^talk 19:58, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Mr. MediaWiki 1.17 isn't very nice. --Perseus8235 19:56, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Now that's not very fair, I wouldn't put it down simply because it changes the colour of the new messages banner. Just to better explain how to apply my piece of css up above, simply visit Special:MyPage/vector.css, click edit, paste in div.usermessage { background-color: #FFCE7B; border: 1px solid orange; } and then select save. Everything will be back to normal for you. If we placed this code in the MediaWiki:Vector.css as xeno mentions, it would be back to normal for everyone, but we'd need consensus for that. For those asking why this was changed, it was originally changed at another wiki (they do exist) specifically for vector, because it works better with the colour scheme. It was discussed briefly at bugzilla (I believe). - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:11, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think we need consensus to restore the status quo. Why was it changed globally, instead of for the particular wiki that requested it? –xeno^talk 20:14, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Consensus???? Per Xeno. Despite your sracasm Kingpin most of us are aware that other wikis exist. Pedro :  Chat  20:23, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Could you clarify what you mean by "consensus??"? I think xeno meant it wasn't needed to restore it at enwiki, not that there was no need for consensus to restore it globally.. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:28, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that would be the "per Xeno" bit. Pedro :  Chat  20:38, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Well it was to start with, you see it was changed for that particular wiki first, and they decided it worked well enough to make it global. Yeah, maybe we can just change it back, I guess the only problem is we want to be sure, so we're not going backwards and forwards with the common css files - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:21, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I must admit, I'm fairly confused as to why that this change was made without local consensus. I understand that en.wiki is not the only Wikimedia project, but it is the largest. And we have a hard enough time getting changes through where unanimous local consensus exists - why was this changed without so much as a "hey, we're planning on doing this?" (I realize you personally were not responsible, do please don't take this as shooting the messenger - my question is to whoever knows the answer) –xeno^talk 20:24, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

this is the dumbest thing I've seen lately; this bar is not supposed to blend in, it's supposed to pop out at you. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 20:22, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Geez, people could show some appreciation for the work that went into this update, it's not particularly "dumb". After-all you don't want it flashing-bright-pink do you? :). It's really a matter of personal preference, and I've given you some code up above which allows you to set it on a personal level. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:28, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, flashing-bright-pink would be even better than orange. People are supposed to see it. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 20:30, 16 February 2011 (UTC)#

If you say so, but I doubt many would agree with you about that, - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:45, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate the hard work that developers do, and generally cringe when I see them being bitten; but I think that they would be even more appreciated (and incur less bite marks) if they asked us, or gave us a heads up, prior to making a sweeping change like this. The new messages bar is a central component of Wikipedia that has been orange for as long as I can remember. Do you happen to have any links to where this was discussed? I couldn't find anything using an advanced bugzilla search. –xeno^talk 20:34, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Don't worry, it's not your comments I have an issue with. Yeah, bugzilla's search is impossible to use, here's a link to a discussion about it. I got that from searching through my history, I think I originally went there from another discussion on-wiki about the changes. Apparently my memory may be a little bit wrong, and the German Wikipedia didn't actually implement it as a standard, just as a common change users made. - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 20:45, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the link. Based on that, I'm still pretty astonished that it went through on a global basis despite the objections raised there. –xeno^talk 20:49, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

← I've initiated an editprotected request at MediaWiki talk:Vector.css#Change "You have new messages bar" back to orange. –xeno^talk 20:49, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Status Quo restored. However might I suggest we look at ways to make the messages bar more "vector" like, but keeping it more visible ? I think that is the least we can do. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:04, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable, as long as the discussion is well-trafficked and widely-advertised and so any changes have consensus and do not take users by surprised. Thanks for fulfilling the editprotected request. –xeno^talk 21:11, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

They've been made aware of our displeasure at the lack of discussion over at bugzilla. As I stated earlier, this should really be the subject of a RFC, with all options explored (status quo, change to blue, enable blue [and possibly other colours] as a user option etc). Mjroots (talk) 21:19, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Parkinson's Law of Triviality is in full effect. the wub "?!" 22:35, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes the color of the bike shed really does matter (it might seem trivial to you, but the neighbors have to see it too). —Emufarmers^(T/C) 23:32, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

In this instance, a better analogy might be "the color of the life raft." The bar's appearance was based upon something other than aesthetics, and it appears that this fact was overlooked/ignored (even after it was pointed out). —David Levy 00:28, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

The orange has always driven me crazy, but I agree that the light blue was worse because it didn't stand out at all. Thanks to this thread, I now have my own pleasing medium purple. It might be a good candidate for other vector users as well. I rounded the corners slightly, but less than the blue version. —UncleDouggie (talk) 11:00, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

You have new messages (last change).

I've reverted it in revision 82315. (X! · talk)  · @064  ·  00:32, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Is Phase3 the live version? Or do we have to wait until 1.18? — Edokter (talk) — 00:40, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

"Phase 3" simply means MediaWiki. The key part of that path is "trunk", which is the current development branch (1.18alpha). Wikimedia sites are running the 1.17wmf1 branch, and it hasn't been reverted there. Reach Out to the Truth 03:04, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Yay, this seems to be fixed. However, is it just me or are redlinks appearing in a darker red? Can I have the CSS snippet to change that back to #CC2200, or is this not possible? /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:11, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

They look identical to this text sample that is #CC2200 for me. —UncleDouggie (talk) 09:14, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, it was different before (I compared) but looks back to normal now to me. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 22:23, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I like the purple bar, but I just don't know if it's obnoxious enough. Amazingly, some people claim to not even notice the retina-burning orange bar. :/ --Dorsal Axe 21:20, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps you would prefer one of these? —UncleDouggie (talk) 01:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

You have new messages (last change).

You have new messages (last change).

You have new messages (last change).

This might be even more obvious:

<div style="background-color:#5aed43; border:1px solid #ff570a; color:#cc0bbd; font-weight:bold; margin:2em 0 1em; padding:.5em 1em; text-align:left; Template:Border-radius; Template:Box-shadow; 3px;">You have new messages (last change).

Unfortunately, the text-decoration:blink property is apparently blocked by MediaWiki. Sadness :( /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 21:21, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

No it's not, but it isn't support by Internet Explorer or Google Chrome. — Dispenser 22:47, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Can I make a suggestion here? something I used to do was resize the message bar and make it fixed position, so that it would always pop up on my browser window in the same position. I'm not suggesting anything that drastic, but, we could keep the vector blue message bar (which looked nice) but add in a small, separate fixed-position div of some bright color that would always be visible onscreen when you have a message waiting. best of both worlds that way. I'd give a demo, but (if I remember correctly) fixed position divs get flagged by the vandalism software because of abuses. --Ludwigs2 23:02, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

The new edit box

...sucks. How can I change it back? Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 20:56, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Why does it take huge amounts of consensus to activate even the tiniest useful features, yet all these garbage front-end visual changes are shoved down our throats with asking? Change the vertical linespacing to the same as the regular edit window and get the vector-style tool bar out of monobook. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 21:00, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Editing above. -- Whpq (talk) 21:09, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

(e/c)Because errors are made and not everything can be fixed after an error. See comments by catrope in #Editing. And for the last FREAKING TIME assuming some god damn good faith on part of the developers. OR F'ing leave. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:10, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I mean it by the way, I have totally had it with people complaining about the work that the developers are doing. I've warned some of these people multiple times on this page, I can't believe I would have to go towards throwing official warnings on talk pages and entering the process towards a block of a user, don't make me go that way. You people should know better. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:14, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

By all means, and lose your privileges for making a shitty decision based on your emotional reaction to the situation. I have every right to complain and assert that no consensus was attained to make such changes. I have every right to assert that the new appearance looks shitty in my eyes. Please, start blocking users by this reasoning so we can open an WP:RFC/U and you can become a regular user. Developers act on a job that is given to them. Who told the developers to do this? That's who I am criticizing, not the developers that merely programmed the code as they were instructed to. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 22:19, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

And don't vandalize my talk page either, TheDJ. Disagreeing with others opinion is not assuming bad faith. Nobody has to like what the developers make. We aren't obligated to applaud what they put out. Just as you placed a warning on my page, I have now placed one on yours; both are equally unwarranted. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 01:50, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

If we required consensus for each and every little thing (including wiping one's butt), then nothing new would ever get implemented due to the fact that some people just don't like change, period. –MuZemike 21:13, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

And that's why reftools still isn't turned on by default, despite actual consensus? You're right, people don't like change. The correct action to such a situation is to give users the option of "upgrading" to the new appearance. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 22:19, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The reason RefTools have not been turned on is that we were waiting for the 1.17 rollout to happen to enable it. But don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 01:59, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I think the point is that this change is seen as an attempt to "Vectorize" the monobook style. It seems bizarre why this change would be made in the first place. At the very least, these types of changes should be opt-in, not opt-out. SnottyWong ^confer 21:15, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Read !!!!!. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:20, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

DJ, I know this is stressful on your end, and the unnamed developers. Sometimes, unless somebody like you puts that directive about "Read!!!", it's not always easy to find on this page who is saying what that impacts one's particular case. And sometimes...the issue is not about this upgrade, but it just seems to be. So, thanks to the developers and what they are trying to accomplish. Hope it gets better for us all.Maile66 (talk) 21:42, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

FWIW - I was dismayed to find the new toolbar when I logged in; but found what I needed here to unclick the button I had set in my preferences & it's back. So, no big deal, really. As long as we can get back the toolbar we're used to seeing, life is good. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 22:25, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I totally agree. Thanks to the other users who helped me retrieve my sanity by actually making the effort to explain what to do to get it working properly again. I am, however, concerned about the hundreds of users who must be having the same experience and the same difficulty in tracking down a sensible answer. Deb (talk) 08:23, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, it seems really bizzare that they would enable this for everyone again. Surely the only people who had it disabled in the first place are the people who want it disabled? --Dorsal Axe 21:24, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

If you would read the other section linked by TheDJ above, you'd see this was an accident affecting about 15% of the users who had turned off the new toolbar, and it happened because I was totally wrong about the cause of a bug I was trying to fix. We change the default value of a preference sometimes (affecting all users who had set the preference to the old default), but I don't think we would ever change the preferences of users who consciously opted out of a feature that some people seem to hate with a passion; we're not evil, you know ;) --Catrope (talk) 22:57, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, good to know. Both the cause, and the evil thing. :p Thanks for having the patience to put up with us unruly masses. --Dorsal Axe 21:30, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Table show/hide disfunction

If I am on the right place: when asking for an uncollapse, it does not happen and my screen jumps to top-of-page. Example: (see also page Unicode character property):

General Category (Unicode Character Property)
Value	Category Major, minor	Basic type	Character assigned	Count (as of 15.1)	Remarks
L, Letter; LC, Cased Letter (Lu, Ll, and Lt only)
Lu	Letter, uppercase	Graphic	Character	1,831
Ll	Letter, lowercase	Graphic	Character	2,233
Lt	Letter, titlecase	Graphic	Character	31	Ligatures or digraphs containing an uppercase followed by a lowercase part (e.g., Dž, Lj, Nj, and Dz)
Lm	Letter, modifier	Graphic	Character	397	A modifier letter
Lo	Letter, other	Graphic	Character	132,234	An ideograph or a letter in a unicase alphabet
M, Mark
Mn	Mark, nonspacing	Graphic	Character	1,985
Mc	Mark, spacing combining	Graphic	Character	452
Me	Mark, enclosing	Graphic	Character	13
N, Number
Nd	Number, decimal digit	Graphic	Character	680	All these, and only these, have Numeric Type = De
Nl	Number, letter	Graphic	Character	236	Numerals composed of letters or letterlike symbols (e.g., Roman numerals)
No	Number, other	Graphic	Character	915	E.g., vulgar fractions, superscript and subscript digits
P, Punctuation
Pc	Punctuation, connector	Graphic	Character	10	Includes spacing underscore characters such as "_", and other spacing tie characters. Unlike other punctuation characters, these may be classified as "word" characters by regular expression libraries.
Pd	Punctuation, dash	Graphic	Character	26	Includes several hyphen characters
Ps	Punctuation, open	Graphic	Character	79	Opening bracket characters
Pe	Punctuation, close	Graphic	Character	77	Closing bracket characters
Pi	Punctuation, initial quote	Graphic	Character	12	Opening quotation mark. Does not include the ASCII "neutral" quotation mark. May behave like Ps or Pe depending on usage
Pf	Punctuation, final quote	Graphic	Character	10	Closing quotation mark. May behave like Ps or Pe depending on usage
Po	Punctuation, other	Graphic	Character	628
S, Symbol
Sm	Symbol, math	Graphic	Character	948	Mathematical symbols (e.g., +, −, =, ×, ÷, √, ∊, ≠). Does not include parentheses and brackets, which are in categories Ps and Pe. Also does not include !, *, -, or /, which despite frequent use as mathematical operators, are primarily considered to be "punctuation".
Sc	Symbol, currency	Graphic	Character	63	Currency symbols
Sk	Symbol, modifier	Graphic	Character	125
So	Symbol, other	Graphic	Character	6,639
Z, Separator
Zs	Separator, space	Graphic	Character	17	Includes the space, but not TAB, CR, or LF, which are Cc
Zl	Separator, line	Format	Character	1	Only U+2028 LINE SEPARATOR (LSEP)
Zp	Separator, paragraph	Format	Character	1	Only U+2029 PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR (PSEP)
C, Other
Cc	Other, control	Control	Character	65 (will never change)	No name, <control>
Cf	Other, format	Format	Character	170	Includes the soft hyphen, joining control characters (ZWNJ and ZWJ), control characters to support bidirectional text, and language tag characters
Cs	Other, surrogate	Surrogate	Not (only used in UTF-16)	2,048 (will never change)	No name, <surrogate>
Co	Other, private use	Private-use	Character (but no interpretation specified)	137,468 total (will never change) (6,400 in BMP, 131,068 in Planes 15–16)	No name, <private-use>
Cn	Other, not assigned	Noncharacter	Not	66 (will not change unless the range of Unicode code points is expanded)	No name, <noncharacter>
		Reserved	Not	824,652	No name, <reserved>

-DePiep (talk) 22:03, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Collapsable and Sortable don't mix very well. — Edokter (talk) — 22:28, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Metoo: seems to be related (so: combination => bug) -DePiep (talk) 23:39, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Since? -DePiep (talk) 22:29, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

This is probably caused by a conflict between MediaWiki:CollapsibleTemplates.js and the new MediaWiki 1.17 JS code. Kaldari (talk) 22:29, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, that's on Commons. The code here is in MediaWiki:Common.js. Kaldari (talk) 22:32, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, it looks like it is introduced (broken) by 1.17. What do we do? -DePiep (talk) 22:34, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Best ask Krinkle, he made some modifications to common.js today. — Edokter (talk) — 22:53, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Are we 100% sure this ever worked ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:57, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it worked. btw, I asked Krinkle at their Commons talkpage. -DePiep (talk) 23:01, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Eh, TheDJ, why the question? Anything strange in template's history or usage? -DePiep (talk) 23:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Because I wanted to make sure that we weren't misdiagnosing a problem. And we were, the root problem was always there, it was just less visible before. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:15, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Strangely, this bug doesn't happen if you're looking at the table in an edit preview, only on live pages. Kaldari (talk) 23:34, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Come to think of it, this probably is because the sortable code breaks the collapse code. Krinkle will probably deal with that tomorrow. load order will probably matter in this case. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:47, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The sortable code hasn't changed and is deprecated (soon to be replaced, for now the legacy ts_sortable will just continue to work). The collapsing code is not part of core and made on Wikipedia. Neither has changed recently, so I'm not sure how I can be of help. I doubt this ever worked. Since there's a lot of my agenda right now so I'm going to skip this for now since it's deprecated. The new collapser part of core (will be released in 1.18 or sooner) works fine with the tablesortable code as you can see on this demo page which has sortable and collapsible tatbles and what not all working fine. Krinkle (talk) 19:34, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Again, yes it did work. Very unsympathic, this suggestion (and no more than that) (earlier written by TheDJ here), that it might not have worked before. If you doubt it, please reinstate the previous situation. E.g. the template here did sort&hide well since last August. Other formerly well functioning templates: {{Bidi Class (Unicode)}}, {{Unicode blocks}}, {{ISO 15924 script codes and Unicode}}. This is just my own catalog.

Whatever the code background, it was broken recently. "deprecated" is no reason to break it. "is not part of core" is not so either.

In general: a working thing is broken. So we should restore somehow. If Krinkle is short in time, just revert or ask someone else. -DePiep (talk) 20:02, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

This is probably caused by the JS using killEvt() which is deprecated now. See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ResourceLoader/JavaScript_Deprecations. Kaldari (talk) 05:17, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

So: deprecated yes, unavailable no. If I read the link well, the deprecated functions are still available now (in 1.17), but not for ever. This gives "us" the time to replace then with modern variants. All right then. Replace with something new if and when it works, I'd say. On top of this, is it required to push these changes while 1.17 is rolled out as it is? Is there something in this development-to-production stream I do not get? -16:55, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I have an explanation. This edit replaced addOnloadHook(createCollapseButtons) (which means onload these days) with $(createCollapseButtons) (which means $(document).ready) making it run a bit sooner than before. As a result, sortables_init() from wikibits is now executed after createCollapseButtons() and the code cell.innerHTML += ... of course removes the handler. — AlexSm 18:29, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Is there any way to fix this problem? Lonelydarksky (暗無天日) _{contact me (聯絡)} 09:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Sure, just ask any sysop to revert that particular change: addOnloadHook() is going to stay with us for a while. Another option is to switch collapsible code back to href=javascript just like in other type of collapsible (NavigationBar). P.S. Looks like the sortable innerHTML issue was fixed in wikibits.js but did not make it to 1.17. — AlexSm 19:27, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

What is sysop? Probably theDJ, Kaldari, Krinkle, maybe even Edokter -- all present in this thread, should have reverted at first notice, instead of deflecting. But hey, they seem to have toes. -DePiep (talk) 20:28, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

The fix for the old sortables code is marked for deployment to the live website. But it's weekend, and system administrators have weekends as well. Roan already worked 6 hours in his spare upaid volunteer time yesterday, to take care of some important issues, but he did not yet get around to this one. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:13, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh, it's weekend now. That explains it all. Very amateuristic to mention that as an explanation for untested changes. I posted here Wednesday. Very disappointing you introduce the personalised approach, TheDJ. -DePiep (talk) 21:22, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

In order to keep things related to this central, I will respond to this message over here. I apologize if I broke anything during my "migration"-edit. My intention was and still is to prepare the wikis for the upcoming change. Some may think that moving away from deprecated functions now is too soon, but I don't think so. Right now we can move away from them and move back and forth whenever we want, because both old and new are available now. Therefore this is, in my opinion, the perfect time to atleast attempt to switch, and test to see if everything still works like it should. Anything that broke ? Revert me, please do so, and then let me know what exactly broke with 1.17 and/or my edits. I love bug reports (that is, if something brakes, I rather hear about it so that it can be prevented in the future then it be silently fixed).
AlexSm is right in that the replacing of HTML is cause (atleast one of the causes) of any handlers being removed (such as collapsing and/or sortable clickable images and texts). I noticed during the development of another plugin in MediaWiki that it was being canceled somehow in table cells. It was caused by innerHTML and was fixed in trunk (rev:78893) which I've tagged to be merged to the live site, this will hopefully fix this!

I didn't mean to sound uncaring about this problem, but I can't fix everything everywhere and this particular script issue does not seem to be caused by something I did. I'm happy to check it out and perhaps be able to fix it, however from what I can see this issue may not have been noticed before but is not new and doesn't occur in most cases. Since a jQuery plugin has added to the repository (jquery.makeCollapsible) which does not seem to have any of the bugs, it would make sense to migrate to that instead of fixing or rewriting the current script. If you like I could install jquery.makeCollapsible locally on en.wikipedia (as it was not deployed) so you can check it out and start using it. That way, when it is deployed for real, it can simply be removed and everything will still work great. Let me know what you think, thanks, Krinkle (talk) 22:23, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Pardon me if I appear ignorant about what's going on. I'm under the impression that somebody recently introduced new changes to the original script or something, and that resulted in the problem with the collapsible and sortable functions. Am I correct? Anyway, I hope the experts can fix the problem as soon as possible. Thanks. Lonelydarksky (暗無天日) _{contact me (聯絡)} 07:33, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

No, that's not correct. The problem addressed here when a table is both wanted to be handled by the tablesortable-script and the collapsibletable-script is not new. Due to the recent changes people are testing scripts and this bug was finally found, but I'm fairly sure that this is not a new bug. Anyway, the new makeCollapsible module is a lot more flexible, can collapse both devisions, tables and lists and is also localized by using interface messages and works together with the sortable script. See it live here. Krinkle (talk) 13:27, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the load order changes from ResourceLoader are probably what made this issue more visible and possibly affecting more browsers. But I'm guessing there. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:08, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I still don't see why you both refuse to change that line back to addOnloadHook, be it for a day or for a week. You did not even try to estimate how many articles are affected right now, instead you just explain how nice everything will work in the future. — AlexSm 14:44, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Krinkle, I don't mind or know about code, I don't, cannot and will not edit or revert in Commons. I am an editor here, who stubled upon the bug I reported here. Now, I'll repeat it: it did work. The example page in my OP, and the example templates I mentioned here later on, I build and tested and used: as expected. It is getting annoying (to state it friendly) the you keep suggesting that there was "an issue" ot that is was an existing bug; TheDJ suggesting the same. Then, krinkle, you repeat something about "deprecation". Whatever that may be, that is not an argument to introduce breaking code. End of argument. Also, what you call "testing", is now actually in production code here at en.wikipedia.

The procedure is quite simple: it failed in production, so revert. Then there is time to improve & test before reintroduce. -DePiep (talk) 21:34, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I have tested this, extensively, for weeks. On test.wikipedia, test2.wikipedia, translatewiki.net and (even before all that) on my own wiki server. I have not changed English Wikipedia's Common.js (not Commons ) to "see if it works" or "testing". I changed it so that edgecases are discovered, which, afaik, it didn't reveal (except maybe this thread). Also, not untill now do I read that this problem was made worse by my edit (- addOnloadHook( createNavigationBarToggleButton );   + $( createNavigationBarToggleButton );), if somebody had mentioned so earlier I would have reverted that part of my edit, sorry if I missed that. Anyway, my fix to the sortable-code is now live, so this bug should be dead now. Greetings, 213.34.64.218 (talk) 10:47, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I explained it in this edit and even put it on the left (with no indentation) to make it more visible. Well, doesn't matter now. — AlexSm 19:22, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

 Done The fix for this issue has been deployed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:35, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. -DePiep (talk) 21:37, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

For the record, deployment of the fix is done by Catrope, recorded as rev:82533 - which was originally committed as rev:78893. 213.34.64.218 (talk) 10:47, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Then have that record show my compliments to Catrope too. -DePiep (talk) 11:23, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorting at Template:US executions is now broken for me (clicking sort links leads the browser to jump to the top of the page) on Firefox 3.6.13 for the second and third columns (sorting on the first column works fine). Ucucha 14:40, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

This is related to the use of class='sortbottom' in that table. Ucucha 14:44, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Cause found bugzilla:27339. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:55, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but the link you gave is to a tracking bug—what is the specific bug report? Ucucha 15:57, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Lol, sorry about that, bugzilla:27608 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:00, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

RSS feeds?

Why have RSS feeds stopped working? Specifically the one for new pages. — [[::User:RHaworth|RHaworth]] (talk · contribs) 22:06, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Another unrelated regression. When I am doing speedy deletions, I used to get the reason supplied automatically for me from th speedy tag. This has stopped. Why? (I believe it was a bit of javascript.) — [[::User:RHaworth|RHaworth]] (talk · contribs) 22:11, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't know but it's working for me. —Soap— 22:34, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Worksforme. Happy‑melon 22:49, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Which is working for you? Deletion reasons or RSS feeds? Atom feeds also seem to be broken. — [[::User:RHaworth|RHaworth]] (talk · contribs) 01:21, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Speedy-deleting_oddity for speedy deleting issue. Atom feeds seem to work for me, in Chrome 9. Gary King (talk · scripts) 01:31, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

This is crazy! I have tried with Chrome and all I get is about a dozen links to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ . Same with rss. I have e-mailed you specimens. These were created with Lynx which, I think, can be trusted to give the raw feed as sent by Wikipedia. Nothing has changed my end - as far as I know. What is happening? — [[::User:RHaworth|RHaworth]] (talk · contribs) 14:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Please compare and contrast:

• http://starwars.wikia.com/index.php?title=Special:NewPages&feed=rss - generated by MediaWiki 1.16.2
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:NewPages&feed=rss - generated by MediaWiki 1.17wmf1

But why is no-one else complaining - that is what puzzles me. — [[::User:RHaworth|RHaworth]] (talk · contribs) 15:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I received your email. What you sent to me is what I see in my browser, which outputs nothing, so yes, that is definitely broken. What does work for me are feeds for page histories. Gary King (talk · scripts) 16:36, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

The new pages RSS feed is fixed now. --Catrope (talk) 23:18, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Rollback quirk

Today's changes affected the rollback "button". In Firefox, I used to be able to <Ctrl><Click> on the rollback button to roll back vandalism from my Watchlist in a new tab. Today that no longer works. <Ctrl><Click> rolls back the vandalism in the current tab.

Not a big deal, but it was a convenience to preview the edit in Pop-Ups, roll it back in another tab, and continue down the Watchlist. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 22:47, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't have any issue doing this still. As far as I know ctrl+click is a browser thing. Killiondude (talk) 07:26, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

What browser are you using? I'm experiencing this problem on Firefox 3.6.13 and 4b11 on different machines, and it started yesterday. As far as I know, nothing changed in my browsers on Tuesday night. Thanks. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 19:41, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

 Works for me in FF 3.6.6 (monobook). Try disabling all user .js and gadgets maybe, then re-enable one-by-one if the functionality comes back? –xeno^talk 19:46, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for that suggestion. (I'm kicking myself for not thinking of it myself.) Unchecking the gadget "After rolling back an edit, automatically open the contributions of the user rolled back" solved the problem. Thanks again. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 20:08, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

No problem =) –xeno^talk 20:09, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Disambigs, main topics, and dablinks

Today, I had to go through and about 200 links of proper names to a table, knowing that on initial entry many of these links would be "wrong", pointing to the wrong topic or a disambig page. No problem, I thought, I'll just dablinks on the toolserver to resolve them. However, I realized that dablinks only checks if the link goes to a disamb page and that's it, and so only 11 of what I'd estimate are 50 problem links were caught.

I was wondering if dablinks can be modified with two features:

• First, taking the case where "Topic" and "Topic (disambiguation)" exist, Dablinks should recognize that the disamb page exist and highlight that area for the user, likely a different color, using the dab page to get that data. The user may have intended "Topic" in which case the user ignores the change, but if not this gives them the chance to change it.
• Second, in cases where "Topic" exists, there is no "Topic (disambiguation)" but one or more "Topic (other term)" exist, it would be helpful for dablink to at least notify the user that other pages like "Topic" exist; I wouldn't expect Dablinks to list out them all but at least notification would be helpful.

I would expect this could be easily done with dablink programming and the addition of a hidden template on the affected pages, but this can be done automagically through the {{otheruses}} family of templates. --MASEM (t) 22:58, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I don't get all of your question, but this might be relevant. {{dablinks}} is a part (only) of Hatnotes world. Another metatemplate used is {{rellink}}, btw. All in all there are ~100 hatnote templates, based on these two meta T's (mostly actually using one of these). The automated (dab)-check you are mentioning, is currently applied by using multiple intrinsic options per template (overloaded templates, software speaking). So the 100 different templates can produce 200+ different hatnotes. Before we would apply your proposal, I'd like to get how the current situation will be covered, and how non-dab links (such as {{main}}) can go along. Hatnotes are not just disambiguation, really. -DePiep (talk) 23:54, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

He's talking about the Dablinks tool. I had at least partial implementation of both method in Dab solver, but found they unsatisfactorily solved the problem. I since removed the kludge that was the code and an unfortunately busy reimplementing stuff that mw 1.17 broke :-(. — Dispenser 02:56, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

CSS for new edit toolbar

Where is the CSS for the new (ajax) edit toolbar located? I suspect it's not editable, but it does have an error that needs adressing. — Edokter (talk) — 23:46, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Where in the toolbar and how is it wrong ? Then I an use webkit inspector to find which part loads it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:29, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I also use the webkit inspector; it shows the URL for the edit page. Anyway, to see the problem (which I already fixed in common.css), click Help on the toolbar; the 'What you type' column suffers the same (now fixed) monospace fontsize bug. — Edokter (talk) — 12:23, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

The resourceloader inserts that into the head of the document when it is actually needed. It is in extension, WikiEditor/modules/jquery.wikiEditor.toolbar.css —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:04, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Cheers for finding that. I've filed a bugreport. — Edokter (talk) — 18:48, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Show commons categories on Wikipedia image page

When one clicks on a Commons image in Wikipedia, one gets a page of metadata along with a note that says "This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. Information from its description page there is shown below." Most of the information in the Commons file is copied over, but the Commons categories are not and I often find I need to go to the Commons file to see those categories. It would save me a lot of time if the Common category links could be shown on the initial Wikipedia image page, perhaps in the same box as the "This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons..." note.--agr (talk) 00:26, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Make a feature request in bugzilla: —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:28, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Done. Bug 27501. --agr (talk) 18:19, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Speedy-deleting oddity

(boldly moved from WP:AN, Magog the Ogre (talk) 00:56, 17 February 2011 (UTC))

I am an admin. Until recently, when I speedy-deleted a page, the start of the contents of the text box created by the speedy-delete tag, appeared on the deletion window as the reason for the deletion. That saved much time. But, after today's Wikipedia downtime, the reason for the delete always appears as "Other reason", and I must type a reason in. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 23:25, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

This seems to be an erratic problem, it works fine for me. What skin are you using? Have you tried purging your cache? Happy‑melon 23:28, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

This is happening for me as well. The original tagger's deletion criteria no longer appears when I hit the 'delete' tab from the article page. --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 00:06, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

That's not been working for a while now but at least I can pick one of the reasons from the box rather than having to type it in. CambridgeBayWeather (talk) 00:43, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm quite sure this is a bug related to the Mediawiki upgrade to 1.17, correct? Magog the Ogre (talk) 00:57, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

• Not a cache problem - I have tried three different browsers - all the same. One clue: in Firefox when I go into the delete screen, I get the message "Transferring data from meta.wikimedia.org" which does not go away. — [[::User:RHaworth|RHaworth]] (talk · contribs) 01:32, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

• Just a note, but clicking on the word "deletion" inside of the templates still auto-populates the deletion summary, with the added benefit of automatically including information in the template, such as the URL for a copyvio. Cheers, everyone. lifebaka++ 02:02, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

• I get the same "Transferring data from meta.wikimedia.org" message in my browser's status bar that doesn't go away even though the page is finished loading. But it happens on every page for me, not just the delete screen. I also can't get the revisionjumper gadget to work.. -- œ^™ 02:14, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

• The only thing coming from meta.wikimedia.org is JavaScript from Special:BannerController. It loads fine though, so I don't know what the browser is talking about... Reach Out to the Truth 02:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

• I just tried to do a speedy delete, and I clicked various occurrences of the word "deletion" on the page to be deleted and in the deletion window, and the reason for deletion stayed as "Other reason". I use Firefox. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 06:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Broken MediaWiki:Sysop.js loading perhaps ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:27, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

• I have the same problem - as of this morning (UTC), the deletion reason has to be selected manually. Windows 7/Firefox, but also Chrome - not a browser issue. This is a pain, I hope it can be fixed soon. One oddity - which may help diagnose it - after deleting a page, when you click to delete the talk page, "G8: Talk page of a deleted page" does get automatically filled in. JohnCD (talk) 12:28, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Should be fixed now. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:55, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
    • It is! Thank you. JohnCD (talk) 18:42, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
      • What does the "transferring data" browser status mean anyway? I'm not an admin and have seen this permanently since the update. Jared Preston (talk) 22:07, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
        • It means something's downloading. As previously pointed out, that something is JavaScript from Special:BannerController on Meta. I don't know why it stays in the status bar after it finishes downloading though. Reach Out to the Truth 23:43, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Interface issues

The recent MediaWiki 1.17 release caused a number of problems on my editing interface. By the way, I'm using monobook. First, vertical strip along the left side of the page is unusually shifted down (see screenshot). Can anything in my monobook.js (possibly the script labeled "Personal toolbox - from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Brian0918/monobook.js", which appears below the standard links on the left hand side) be modified to fix this? Also, I got the old toolbar (for monobook) back by unclicking the options under "editing" in preferences, but the Wikipedia:RefToolbar 1.0 button shows up on the far left instead of the right. Any code to fix this? Thanks in advance, Goodvac (talk) 04:24, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Right, I'm using MonoBook too, and the logo on the top left starts off a bit left and then moves right every time I open a new page, which slows down the opening. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 06:14, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Just try removing components that you think are problematic. That or using a JS console/debugger is likely the only thing you can do about it. The more work you do to prepare and pinpoint the problem, the less time other admins or myself have to invest to help you. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:25, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

How do I remove compnents I think are problematic? The logo? I can remove that? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 08:40, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes you can remove the logo but the problem will still persist. My logo is switched off and i'm also having the same problem. Plus all my interwiki links are gone. ќמшמφטтгמ^torque 09:55, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

You edit your skin script page, and remove everything. No more userscripts, means no more user scripts messing things up. Then you just copy and past and test till you find what script specifically in our skin script page was causing the problem. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I've never touched my skin script page before. What is the code that would make the logo stop moving (or rather show up correctly the first time), and the code that would remove this newfangled grey bar? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 21:41, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I found what was causing the problem: User:Omegatron/monobook.js/floatingSidebar.js. Now is there a way to modify that to be compatible with the recent update? Goodvac (talk) 09:34, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

The problem might be caused by the horizontal box at the bottom of any page on monobook, the one with the yellow border containing wikimedia foundation logo on the left, media wiki logo on the right and some info in between. This box is overlapping the floating sidebar. I dont think it was overlapping before this problem arose. ќמшמφטтгמ^torque 14:11, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

SVG not rendering

Resolved

 – U+003F^? 16:08, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

no longer displays for me on any of the (many) pages that use it. I'm running firefox (3.6.13). Any ideas what's happening? U+003F^? 10:42, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I think I've seen it mentioned somewhere that Mediawiki 1.17 is more picky about SVG namespace declarations than 1.16. So maybe that's the problem? --Morn (talk) 11:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I've fixed it. The issue was that the SVG tags used <svg:something> instead of just <something>. --Morn (talk) 12:59, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Could you fix Commons:File:Current event template.svg as well? — Edokter (talk) — 13:22, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Remark: what a shame that mediawiki decided to discard all the changes prior to yours today, Morn. Check it out: commons:File:Soccerball current event.svg#filehistory Magog the Ogre (talk) 13:53, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

All old versions are still there; MediaWiki just refuses to render them. — Edokter (talk) — 13:42, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh, right, invalid SVG. Duh. Magog the Ogre (talk) 13:53, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Uh oh, quite a few other icons are broken too: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Time-related_icons#Sports Not good. This whole 1.17 upgrade is really an epic fail so far. --Morn (talk) 14:03, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

You don't have to fix the svg:svg case. That is actually a bug in the parser, that i have already fixed and that simply needs to be deployed yet. The cases of missing xmlns namespaces are a problem (these svgs will display an error in you open them in safari). Look in my Commons contribution history to see how to fix cases like that. A texteditor and some googling will do the trick. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:50, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Writing user scripts for ResourceLoader

Knowing that use of the new modular JavaScript libraries will become necessary in a future version of MediaWiki, I am attempting to update User:PleaseStand/highlight-comments.js to not use any deprecated functions. My new version is at User:PleaseStand/highlight-comments-dev.js, and I have decided to add a feature to highlight other user's comments, not just one's own. My work on implementing this feature raises a few questions. What will be our replacement for importScript? Why aren't mw.Map and mw.user.name() (as documented on the MediaWiki site) exposed to user scripts in the currently live version of MediaWiki? What should be the standard way to give custom settings to user scripts? PleaseStand ^(talk) 12:31, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Roan and Trevor have told me that those are all features of Resource Loader 2.0 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:13, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Noticed any random script problems? wgVectorEnabledModules

I was having problems with some of my scripts not running... and from some of the posts above it seems that others in the last few days have as well. For me it was killing easyblock and some others, but I was able to track the JS error back to a protection script. It seems like wgVectorEnabledModules has either been deprecated or is not valid in all skins (and I'm using vector). I tried to put some error protection around it, but if anyone notices problems with my kludgy coding the feel free to revert back to this version of the protection script. If you are having other problems with your scrips you may want to look at whether it uses wgVectorEnabledModules.  7  13:21, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

wgVectorEnabledModules was removed; I guess that may not have been the best idea, because things were relying on it. However, there is now a generic interface for grabbing preferences (mw.user.options.get('preferenceName')) that you can probably use to do the same thing. I've filed a bug for reintroducing wgVectorEnabledModules and wgWikiEditorEnabledModules for back compat at Bugzilla. --Catrope (talk) 23:23, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Catrope!  7  00:21, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Problem with monobook

I see the ongoing hoopla over some changes that were made but can't see anything directly related to my problem. User:Brad101/monobook.css is supposed to set gray backgrounds but it's changed into this nauseating robin egg blue. Hope somebody can help me before my eyes start bleeding. Brad (talk) 14:24, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Replace the second line with the following:

div#content { background: #CCCCCC; }

And you're done. Gary King (talk · scripts) 16:27, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

The specificity of the monobook script was raised, requiring this change. The monobook css is a bit 'safer' now, and harder to mess up. Before it was very easy to pick your own classnames that happened to match a monobook class and use it in the wiki code. Then you would get the monobook css and weird effects. This makes it harder to fall into that trap. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:16, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Ahhhhhhh it's gray again. Let us rejoice. Thanks! Brad (talk) 17:20, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Reference not working

 Fixed

On Max Page (actor) reference #2 isn't displaying right.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:44, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

|title= had a newline. PS— IMDB is not a reliable source. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 14:49, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I am aware of that, but until I can find something better it'll have to do wherever I need to use it. I'm not certain but I think this applies mainly to trivia and not to lists of shows' or movies' casts. Thanks.Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 14:51, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

FN SCAR infobox template

The infobox template in the article FN SCAR is broken. The template appears to be choking on the "variants" argument, but I'm not sure why, since it works fine on other articles that use the same infobox template. Anybody know what's wrong with this one? —Lowellian (reply) 15:08, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I believe it's your bullet points: < li > Templates don't seem to like those. Brad (talk) 15:23, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I tried removing those < li > elements (and BTW, they're not my bullet points; I didn't add them) from the "variants" argument even before I asked, and that doesn't fix it. Moreover, they do not appear to be the problem, as the template still breaks at the "variants" argument, rather than further down the template where the first < li > elements are used, assuming the ones in the "variants" argument are removed. —Lowellian (reply) 15:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I just had a look myself, Template:Infobox weapon has recently been updated. The same issue is seen on all pages that use this template (eg AK-47, V-2, MIM-104 Patriot etc). Might be worth giving whoever edited it a heads-up. Nanonic (talk) 16:04, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. Someone reverted that change and the infobox looks good again. —Lowellian (reply) 20:26, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

NPP script broken

I do a lot of NPP (particularly in the lesser namespaces, where spam and defamatory content can hide for days if not weeks), and to make it easier I use a script that user:Mr.Z-man wrote for me.

However, it's stopped working -- now it tells me that there's been a "Session Failure: There seems to be a problem with your login session; this action has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking."

I've left Mr.Z-man a message, but he's quite busy, so I'm wondering if anyone else might have an idea as to how to fix this. DS (talk) 15:10, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I believe scripts always have to use patroltokens and the API now... Not 100% sure, but I read something like that in the IRC channel I think. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:35, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

There are 2 scripts. The autopatrol script, which I migrated to jQuery and the API last month, and the links script, which just adds a "patrol" link to each entry on Special:Newpages to allow people to manually patrol. From a quick look, the manual patrol links now also require a token, so the script will need to be modified to get the tokens to put in the links, or just use JS and AJAX to patrol the page, the latter is probably better, but I won't have time to actually do it until Monday at the earliest. Mr.Z-man.sock (talk) 18:44, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

"widen searchbox"(gadget) is dead

How come? Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 17:59, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Fixed —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:09, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

ah, thx Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 18:10, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Editing box distorted

The buttons above the editing box are distorted, much in the same way as New Features reformed this part of Wikipedia. Most of the buttons are gone, including bluelink, strikethrough, superscript. I have disabled New Features a long time ago. I can't find anything relevant in My Preferences to change it back. Help! Geschichte (talk) 18:57, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Try Special:Preferences → Editing, "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" (uncheck). –xeno^talk 19:00, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes see pages without any CSS for a split-second?

Sometimes, for some reason during when a page is loading, I'll see the page for a split-second without any CSS whatsoever. So, the background would be white, and the text would be pretty big and take up 100% of the width—similar to how the wiki would look to a mobile browser. This shouldn't be happening since CSS applies pretty quickly, especially since it should be cached by my browser. Is anyone else experiencing this? When a page loads for me, it now does so in three, recognizable steps: load the content; apply global/user CSS; apply user JS. I can see a page transform through each process. Gary King (talk · scripts) 19:16, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Here's a screenshot to show what I'm seeing. I just so happen to hit the Stop button while the page was loading to catch this moment. Gary King (talk · scripts) 21:54, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm getting the same thing. Overall the page loading seems a little slower, but maybe that's just do the jumping formatting.   Will Beback  talk  22:08, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Page loading seems perhaps a tad faster for me, actually, which was the whole point of 1.17 so I guess they kind of succeeded. However, by far the biggest culprit for slow loading time is server-side rendering, which has always been the cause of the slowness. I assume that things are already cached as much as possible but really, about 80% of loading time is still spent on the server-side. Gary King (talk · scripts) 00:15, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

There's no "sometimes" about it for me: there's always a one-to-two-second delay from when the page text shows up to when the formatting shows up, with the side effect that section links are only approximations. --Carnildo (talk) 00:16, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Still happening, hmph. Gary King (talk · scripts) 01:30, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Links not being underlined any more?

I'm still using the classic look, rather than the new one which didn't grab me.

As of today links in articles are no longer being underlined (until you move the mouse onto them).

Sometimes in past years this has happened before for an hour or two, until (presumably) somebody has restored the code to what it was without the bug. This time it seems to be taking longer?

Does anyone know whether this time the change was intentional? (ie is this a bug, or a misconceived unwanted new feature?) And if it is here to stay, how do I get my underlined links back?

Thanks, Jheald (talk) 19:35, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

See here. Gary King (talk · scripts) 19:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Edit toolbar (once fixed) is now broken again

Yesterday I was able to restore my edit toolbar by running through they typical steps: My preferences → Editing → Beta features → unclick "Enable enhanced editing toolbar". Everything was working fine until now, when all of a sudden the "cite" button on the toolbar disappeared. It was working fine and then *poof*. I'm using Monobook/Firefox. Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 20:26, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Sigh...you're correct. It was working fine this morning. Now the Cite button is gone again. I'm also Monobook/Firefox. Maile66 (talk) 20:33, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Ditto for me, I'm using the same as Ponyo, unclicked "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" to get the cite button back yesterday, but it just disappeared again. Davewild (talk) 20:36, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

It is also gone for me. I am on Firefox 3.6.13 with the vector skin, and the old toolbar (both beta features checkbox are cleared, the refTools gadget box is checked. -- Whpq (talk) 20:50, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

It seems to be fine again. At least for the last 10 minutes. But ever since the update, it does take an awfully long time to load above the edit field. Jared Preston (talk) 21:12, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes it's back again now for me. Davewild (talk) 21:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

There is still some problem here. The cite button appears to have moved from the right hand end of the bar to the left end of the bar away from the <ref></ref> button. Much easier with the two buttons together. Keith D (talk) 21:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Gadgets stopped working

Pop-ups, clock/purge, blackscreen have stopped working. Were working earlier today. Monobook, Chrome, WinXP. DuncanHill (talk) 21:08, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, and now they are back but not when in the edit screen. Predictive search also not working. DuncanHill (talk) 21:28, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Gadgets and predictive search are working for me in Monobook, even in the edit screen. Gary King (talk · scripts) 21:56, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Related to my note above? See here - do you use any scripts that use wgVectorEnabledModules? Run the page in firefox and bring up a Java console window and you should be able to find the error.  7  22:42, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea if I run anything that uses wgVectorEnabledModules, whatever they are. How would I know if I did. I really don't want to have to download and install yet another browser - . Anyway, gadgets are now coming and going randomly. Added to the much slower page-loading since the upgrade, I think I might as well call it a day. DuncanHill (talk) 16:28, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

• Well, they were working again earlier today, now they've stopped again (except in the edit-screen). DuncanHill (talk) 17:44, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Weird grey bar

I suddenly seem to have this weird grey bar appearing at the top of every page. It's pretty annoying. Just wondering if it's related to anything that's been changed recently? Or perhaps caused by a moment of dumb on my end? --Dorsal Axe 21:13, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Could that be another Monobook problem? I use Vector and can't see what you mean. Jared Preston (talk) 21:18, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

• See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 84#Grey stripe at top of pages (part two) for some information. –xeno^talk 21:23, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Well that's the one. Can't seem to get rid of it though. Appears in both Monobook and Vector too.--Dorsal Axe 21:33, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

But the solution there is to use some JS code. Since JS code is now at the bottom of the pages (whatever that means, I'm not tech-savvy enough to comprehend), then that grey bar will always load before vanishing again – like the watchlist banners. I'm not sitting in the same boat as Dorsal Axe, but can imagine that must be quite annoying and at the very least a major distraction. What is causing the grey bar exactly? Jared Preston (talk) 21:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Right, both this and the amazing swerving logo have shown up on my Monobook in the last two days. Presumably the same is true for everyone who uses Monobook? Shouldn't this be fixed by whoever made the changes to the code in the last two days? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 21:40, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I've never seen that grey bar and I've been using Monobook for years now. Gary King (talk · scripts) 21:55, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Allright, the grey bar has vanished, at least on my monobook. The swerving logo is still here, though. Any chance it'll disappear too? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 22:27, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

The grey bar has also vanished for me too now. Very strange.--Dorsal Axe 22:37, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Dorsal, are you having problems with your logo? Is it starting out a bit to the left and then moving to the right a few seconds later? (the Wikipedia logo) All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 22:44, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Can't say I've noticed the logo thing. :/ --Dorsal Axe 21:32, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

So, that's it, is it - the logo thing is permanent? Or what? Who is it that keeps making these brilliant changes that make everything slower and then doesn't stick around to explain them? All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 07:49, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Question marks appended to redlinks?

It seems that redlinks now have a question mark appended to the end of them by default. Why was this done? Adding punctuation to a link creates confusion and ambiguity in articles. For instance, consider how silly these sentences with redlinks look:

• In 1960, the internet was invented by Al Gorbechev. He asked, "What is the purpose of all these redlinks?"

Did someone decide that coloring the links bright red wasn't sufficient to identify a link with no destination? Again, these types of changes should be opt-in, not opt-out, although I don't even see an option to opt-out of it. I'm sure there is probably some custom CSS that you could append to your monobook.css, but that's not the point. The average casual reader here will almost certainly be confused by these question marks, and they will certainly not be interested in looking at css code. Was this change discussed somewhere? SnottyWong ^confer 22:11, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps it's a bug from the upgrade and you need to clear your cache? I see no question marks after redlinks, and I checked both logged in (using my custom CSS and Monobook skin) and logged out (Using "normal reader" CSS and Vector skin.) ^Avic_ennasis @ 22:40, 13 Adar I 5771 / 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Ditto, I'm not seeing that, either. There's a user preference that makes redlinks appear as plain text with a question mark (found on the "Appearance" pane under "Advanced options"), but I don't think I've ever see what you're describing.--Fyre2387 ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:49, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. Well, if I use Firefox the question marks go away. But I can't get them to go away in Chrome, even after clearing the cache and following all instructions at WP:BYPASS. Using Chrome 9.0.597.98. What I see is the entire word is red, and there is a red question mark appended to the end of the word. The whole thing (word + question mark) is the hyperlink. SnottyWong ^comment 23:06, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I would try opening an incognito window and look at a page with redlinks. You'll be logged out in that window, and there will be no cache or anything else to interfere, due to how incognito works. If you don't see question marks in that window, stay on the page and log in, and see if they come back. ^Avic_ennasis @ 23:10, 13 Adar I 5771 / 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Opened incognito window, question marks were gone. Logged in while still incognito, question marks came back. In my prefs, I'm using monobook and I have the "Format links to non-existent pages like this (alternative: like this?)" option un-checked. Any ideas? SnottyWong ^squeal 00:44, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I checked in my prefs (also monobook) and I had that box checked. When I un-checked it, I saw the question mark after the redlink, as part of the link. Re-checking it returned them to normal (without the question mark.) So, I would actually put a check in that box, and see what they look like. (May have to bypass cache blah blah blah.) ^Avic_ennasis @ 00:50, 14 Adar I 5771 / 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Yep, the box has to be checked. Jared Preston (talk) 01:03, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, that seemed to work. That was weird. Before I checked the checkbox, it was reading: "Format links to non-existent pages like this? (alternative: like this?)", which is why I didn't check it originally. However, after checking the checkbox, now it reads correctly: ""Format links to non-existent pages like this (alternative: like this?)". Anyway, problem solved. Thanks for the help! SnottyWong ^spout 15:29, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

It's supposed to be checked if you want red links to be red. That's the intended behaviour. The "alternative" is what you get if you don't check the box. Both have to be shown for the user to make an informed decision. Since that preference is selected via checkbox option, both link styles are shown to the user as part of the same label. I wonder if that preference can be changed to use radio buttons, so that the two styles are displayed separately from each other. I'll try poking at Preferences.php and see what I can do. Reach Out to the Truth 00:04, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh yeah, and after setting it I see that it does look different in the preferences. I imagine people generally set it and forget it, or after realizing the effect it has they rush back to their preferences and click the box again without rereading it . Reach Out to the Truth 03:11, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Broken link formatting options presented with radio buttons

Okay, I messed around with Preferences.php and managed to make this. It uses radio buttons instead of a checkbox. Does this look better? Reach Out to the Truth 03:11, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we should just kill that option? It's from the 2001-2004 days, it's highly confusing for people and probably just a super small amount of people are using it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:52, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I think removing the option is probably the best bet. Using nonstandard formatting for wikilinks to nonexistent pages can be done with javascript if anyone actually wants to do that. Also, the standard formatting is so ingrained in everyone's consciousness anyhow that I just completely blanked out for a minute attempting to write the previous sentence without the word "redlink". — Gavia immer (talk) 09:17, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd be fine with removing it too. It's confusing and useless to most people. Those who do want it can recreate this behaviour with custom JavaScript or even CSS (:after). bug 27619 Reach Out to the Truth 03:11, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Confused

I heard We were rolling out Media Wiki software updates and today I see alot features that are popping up. Is there some place where I can read about all the new features in simple terms? I am not a programmer but would like to know what the average Wikipedia can now do now that we couldnt do before. The Resident Anthropologist (talk) 22:17, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

It was yesterday, I believe. Here's a list of what changed: [5]. It should be mostly accurate; I don't know if all the changes are live here. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 23:24, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

The biggest change is probably the implementation of ResourceLoader, which is supposed to basically speed up the loading of CSS and JS files, essentially making pages load faster. So it's mostly advantageous for developers as they should be implementing it into their scripts. Gary King (talk · scripts) 00:13, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

WP:BRION</shameless self plug> Also check out the issue that comes out on Monday for coverage :) - Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 17:30, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

ClueBot NG down?

It would seem ClueBot NG is down, no edits for the last two days. I would poke the maintainers but neither have edited in the last two weeks. Can anybody help? Rjwilmsi 22:20, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

WP:STiki is working if you change the queue from ClueBot NG to STiki Metadata to get recent changes. It uses the ClueBot NG queue by default, which will only show unreviewed edits from prior to CBNG going down. It's not fully automated, but much better than just going through the RCs. —UncleDouggie (talk) 01:20, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I've sent User:Crispy1989 an email and left a message on his IRC channel. Nothing yet. —UncleDouggie (talk) 03:38, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

CBNG is down due to a server problem that seems unrelated to the MediaWiki upgrade. —UncleDouggie (talk) 04:08, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

It's now running! —UncleDouggie (talk) 05:49, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Finding permanent url

I don't know if this is the right place to inquire about this issue. If not, then please refer me to the relevant page. Here is the problem I am faced with. I wanted to add a reference to the Farouk Sultan article. More specifically, I wanted to provide a link to his CV page located in the official website of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt. The problem is that the page is written in Javascript, and opens only in Internet Explorer (not Firefox). The specific url of the page is not displayed in the address box. I would like to know how to find the specific permanent url of the CV page so as to be able to link back to it in the aforementioned Wikipedia article.

• Here is the main page with a list of all the members of the court: http://www.sccourt.gov.eg/CourtMembers/CurrentCourt.asp
• Farouk Sultan's photograph is the first one displayed on the page (see enlarged version). When I click on the Arabic-language name below his photograph, his Arabic-language CV page opens. However, instead of getting a normal url starting with http, this is what I get:
  javascript:memberCv(95,'%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%B4%D9%83%D9%8A%D9%84_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%89_%D9%84%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AD%D9%83%D9%85%D8%A9');
• My question is: how can I manage to find the permanent url linking to the CV page?

I'm not sure if I have made myself fully understood. If things are not clear, then please tell me so I can rephrase myself. Regards. --BomBom (talk) 00:52, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I hate websites that use that kind of design.

Looking at various CVs, it looks like they use a single URL -- http://www.sccourt.gov.eg/CourtMembers/memberCv.asp -- to display each member's CV. I looked at the Javascript code for the main page, and saw that the main page has a memberCv function that sends a POST request to the CV page with a couple of parameters, one of which is named MemberId, to tell it which CV to display; since it's a POST request, there's no URL querystring shown in the address bar on the CV page. The Javascript code you posted for the link calls the memberCv function with the MemberId set to 95 and the other parameter set to some Arabic text.

The good news is that, according to my testing, the CV page can be accessed with a GET request (which enables a querystring), so I constructed a URL with the querystring (including a MemberId -- the other parameter, which was the same for all the members, appears to be unnecessary) manually added. Here you go: http://www.sccourt.gov.eg/CourtMembers/memberCv.asp?MemberId=95

Lucky Wizard (talk) 02:41, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, I think "Wizard" is the right word rather than "Lucky". If I had spent my whole life studying the problem I would never have come up with that! Thincat (talk) 18:26, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Thincat. I would have never been able to find the URL all by myself. Thanks a lot, Lucky Wizard! --BomBom (talk) 13:08, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Unblockself permission

Who can assign or remove the "unblockself" permission that's mentioned in the new release notes? When I look at another admin's user rights management page, I don't see such a permission either in the list of rights that I can change or in the list of rights that I can't change. Nyttend (talk) 01:46, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

All admins already have it. It's in Special:ListGroupRights as part of the admin package. The only way to remove it is to modify the server configuration. T. Canens (talk) 01:58, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

You don't assign individual permissions, you assign groups that contain those rights. Special:ListGroupRights lists each group and the rights those groups have. Reach Out to the Truth 05:02, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, okay; thanks for the help. Other than removing the "edit" permission from the occasion vandal or spammer, I virtually never modify permissoins. Nyttend (talk) 04:27, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

watchlist not loading in Ta.Wiki

We are facing a strange problem in Tamil wikipedia. The watchlist is loading as a blank page since yesterday (feb 17). The page loads first, but when it tries get data from toolserver.org ("transferring data from toolserver.org"), it goes blank. If i hit the stop button in the broswer before the query to toolserver.org initiates (say while "bits.wikimedia.org" is being contacted) the page is fine. From my very limited technical knowledge, i am guessing something is broken in toolserver and the query on watchlist page load, to it is not returning pages/data.

Can anyone help throw some light on this?--Sodabottle (talk) 04:36, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

document.write is used in ta:MediaWiki:Common.js at line 785, conditional on the page being the watchlist. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 85#Cannot view m:Talk:Spam blacklist: empty page for discussion of a similar problem; the fix applied there should be able to be easily adapted to your situation. Anomie⚔ 04:59, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a ton Anomie :-). I have fixed the issue now--Sodabottle (talk) 05:47, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Gallery not centered anymore

Hello. Does anyone have some information about <gallery> since the Feb.17th update ? It is now aligned on the left and one has to add <center> everywhere, or is it temporary ? Thanks, Jack ma (talk) 06:56, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

• 
  Sunflower
• 
  La Joconde
• 
  A hamster

I'm quite sure that gallery has always been left aligned. Perhaps you are confusing with one of the many gallery templates ? Someone correct me if I'm wrong. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:47, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

It is implemented as a list instead of a table, which I’m pretty sure is new. More strangely it forces a white background to stretch all the way across the screen. Could someone kindly get rid of that? See screen-shot. Thanks. ―cobaltcigs 17:38, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

That is new indeed, but the alignment has not changed, which is what the question was about. I think the white background was already made transparent in trunk. commit "Took out fix for bug #27458 (“<gallery> has a white background now”) since bug conflicts with a fix for bug #26470". Ok, that even has me confused. Will look further into it tomorrow. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:23, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

For the moment, could we address this locally by using ul.gallery { background-color:transparent; }? In any case making the gallery float in the center (without clumsily centering everything inside it) would require setting an arbitrary width other than the new default of 100% (which is different from the old default of 4× the cell width). ―cobaltcigs 04:05, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Gallery formatting not working either

As well as no longer being centered when using the <center> tag, which used to center the gallery in the available space (for instance, between the left margin and an infobox's left edge), gallery images are no longer being formatted by widths="XXpx" and heights="XXpx". This is under both FireFox and IE, with both monobook and vector skins. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:06, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

After a little more investgation, it seems to be the "perrow" variable which is messing with the centering, and only in spaces constricted by infoboxes. Here's a sample gallery in which the image sizes have been overrridden by "widths" and "heights", but no "perrow". It centers properly the the space between the left margin and the infobox:

35 East Wacker
Former names	Pure Oil Building North American Life Building Jewelers Building
General information
Location	35 E. Wacker Drive Chicago, Illinois
Height
Roof	159.41 m (523.0 ft)
Technical details
Floor count	40
Design and construction
Architect(s)	Joachim G. Giaver Frederick P. Dinkelberg

• 
  Sunflower
• 
  La Joconde
• 
  A hamster
• 
  test
• 
  test

Here's the same gallery, with the "perrow" set to 3. It no longer centers in the space:

• 
  Sunflower
• 
  La Joconde
• 
  A hamster
• 
  test
• 
  test

Both galleries center properly when there's no infobox:

• 
  Sunflower
• 
  La Joconde
• 
  A hamster
• 
  test
• 
  test

• 
  Sunflower
• 
  La Joconde
• 
  A hamster
• 
  test
• 
  test

I hope this helps to locate the problem. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:34, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Things fall apart, the <center> cannot hold. It does not noticeably center the gallery as a whole because the gallery now has 100% width unless otherwise specified. This is clearly evidenced by the long white banner seen above and in bugzilla:27458. Whilst deprecated the <center> element does center the individual cells within this horizontal space, with the caveat that a trailing partial row will be centered differently. It also centers the text in the image thumbnails, which is surely undesirable. To center a gallery as if it were a table I suppose you’d need to constrain the width to roughly 162px times the desired number of photos per row.

Choosing what how many cells per row would be appropriate requires guessing screen-size and is therefore a fool’s game. I’m pretty sure the entire point of abandoning tables/cells is to make the thumbnails wrap along to subsequent rows much like plain text (within whatever horizontal space is available rather than forming a strict grid based on a poor estimate). Thus I advise against using the above code and defeating that purpose. ―cobaltcigs 21:32, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Since we posted at virtually the same time, could you re-jigger your explanation with reference to the samples I gave above? Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:38, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, upon further observation I see the max-width property is exactly how the perrow pseudo-attribute is implemented. Get the firebug extension and you’ll see what I mean [6]. The other thing I noticed is that using perrow causes a noticeable over-estimation of the required width (for the specified number of cells at the specified size). Normally one would be able to fine-tune this, except that existing CSS properties are discarded completely, see:

collapsed again for readability
Using: <gallery perrow="4" style="max-width:648px; margin:auto; background:green; border:1px solid orange; text-decoration:blink; font-size:200%;"> Sunflower Sunflower Sunflower Sunflower Sunflower Sunflower The resulting style attribute is malformed, too wide, and missing the desired properties: <ul class="gallery" style="max-width: 680px;_width: 680px;">

Is there a bugzilla ticket for this? ―cobaltcigs 22:01, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Let's see.

1. It's intentional that the gallery is now free flow in width. That this may affect rendering is logical and expected. Free flow full width galleries have been one of the longer standing feature requests that is now finally implemented.
2. <center> is deprecated HTML and we should avoid using it (HTML5 doesn't even support it anymore).
3. <gallery> has never supported a style= argument. Note that it is a wikicode extension, not HTML. It could, but no one has implemented that so far. Might be something to file a bugzilla ticket about.
4. Due to the new full width, the caption is now not properly aligned at times bugzilla:27540
5. the malformedness of the perrow css is intentional in order to support browsers (mostly IE) that don't have max-width support.
6. the perrow width is indeed overestimated for some reason. bugzilla:27577.

—TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:12, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

1. Good.
2. Yes, I already remove it wherever I find it.
3. <gallery> appears to support style attributes without unexpected tampering in other cases (as long as perrow is not used), see below:
4. Not sure what you mean, but ok.
5. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
6. Thanks.

Gallery style example:

<gallery style="background-color:lightgreen; border:3px solid black; text-decoration:blink;">

• 
  Sunflower

<ul style="background-color: lightgreen; border: 3px solid black; text-decoration: blink;" class="gallery">

―cobaltcigs 11:41, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, now I understand. Fixed in r82538 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:32, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Fix for the broken styles on perrow now deployed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:54, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

MediaWiki software and scripts

I have recently been experiencing problems when running scripts since about Thursday 17 February. Note that I have had similar problems before, but they went away. Recently, the problems resurfaced.

I run a number of regex-based scripts (which can be seen among the stuff at my user page). I made some changes to one of them yesterday, after which I can no longer access any of the sidebar script buttons. I reverted back to an earlier version that I know worked yesterday, but still no joy. The earlier problem was due to a fatal error in the script – another editor who uses my scripts (including the one changed) noticed the script became inaccessible, and informed me. After I had fixed the bug, it resumed working for him; my cupboard remains bare. :-( My friend uses FF on Mac; I have had no success when running FF, Chrome or Safari on Windows. I then tried removing the script from my vector.js, expecting most of the scripts to be restored, but still no.

I suspect the problems may be caused by the MW software, with which I have noticed recent instabilities, which included (amongst other problems) pages 'disappearing' from browser history when surfing WP – I go forwards several pages, but some of the intermediate pages in history are not accessible when I navigate back using the back-arrow; also some pages load without the skin. Does anyone have any similar experiences with scripts recently? --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 08:36, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

E-Mail User Links not Working

When I click to email someone via Popups, I get the message: "You have not specified a target page or user on which to perform this function." When I go to the Special page, I get: "You have requested a special page that is not recognized by Wikipedia. A list of all recognized special pages may be found at Special:Specialpages." Both times, it gives me a link to the Main Page to click. Is this related to the 1.17 update? - Neutralhomer • Talk • 09:00, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

bugzilla:27526. I can fix it for popups, but this is just a bug in the new software and really should be fixed there. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:34, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I have never been good at filing BugZilla reports. If you can fix it, please feel free. I have also posted this at the Popups page. - Neutralhomer • Talk • 09:54, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

• Popups are not working for me at all. Glad not to be the only one... --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 10:04, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Fixed in r82392, but it may be some time (hopefully only a couple of weeks) until that's deployed to the WMF cluster. Happy‑melon 11:30, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Editing page visuals

I'm not sure this has been discussed before on this page. I use Firefox. Both phenomenons are cleared temporarily (and only temporarily) by selecting "Preview". Never had this problem until the recent changes. These two things have been happening for a day or two:

• When editing, sometimes, too frequently now, when I place the mouse cursor somewhere on the page, the blinking cursor disappears, leaving me to wonder if it's where I want to be on the page. I figure out where I am by hitting the Spacebar and watching the text move. This phenomenon clears up if I do a "Preview".
• The Insert Link option works fine, but goes a little whacked after one or two uses. I can insert link #1, perhaps even #2 and #3. But at some point when I select the link button, the popup is so large it engulfs my page to the point I can't move it from side to side to see what I'm bringing up. This never happens on the first "link" of the edit, or the first "link" after a "Preview". Clicking on "Preview" clears the oddity, but only until I want to insert more than one or two links.

Maile66 (talk) 12:54, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I find the editing page has been jerky & jumpy since yesterday. When one adds or deletes words while editing or posting (even in edit summaries), the thing jumps at the touch of any keys. GoodDay (talk) 14:04, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh, yeah...and the jumping. I thought it was just me. Thanks for mentioning that.Maile66 (talk) 14:13, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm experiencing the same issue ("jerky & jumpy") with Internet Explorer. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 20:29, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

We're also getting reports of that at the Vietnamese Wikipedia. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 19:42, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

$(document).ready not working in edit mode

I have this script and tested with alert, which is not firing in edit mode, this worked before 1.17version. Kindly help me to fix. -- Mahir78 (talk) 16:14, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Still waiting for a help. -- Mahir78 (talk) 06:36, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Does $(function () {alert("It works!";}); work? – Minh Nguyễn (talk,

contribs) 19:44, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I commented jquery - UI file, which is now defaulted with the new version 1.17. Now it works. Thanks Minh Nguyễn. Both $ and $j works. -- Mahir78 (talk) 07:49, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Google Chrome

I don't see anything in the Pump search regarding this specific issue, so: Can someone comment on (or point me to) any known issues in editing with Google Chrome? Specifically, I am seeing the insertion of additional line breaks and, in a few case, extra indentions upon saving comments. I am kind of "forced" to use Chrome on one of my main access computers, so changing back to Mozilla (in which I had no problems) or something else is not really an option. David Able 18:36, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Also have twinkle issues for me; will not open user talk pages after reverting edits. --Perseus8235 19:15, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Did you get an error message of any kind? Did it say "We received no revision; something is wrong. Bailing out!" ? —Soap— 16:08, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

User Interface Gadgets-Display assessment

New quirk. More than an hour ago, maybe something happened in the system. I did a couple of edits that didn't show up on my Watch List, Contributions, or the actually edited pages for about half an hour. That particular thing cleared up. There have been no changes in my profile. During that same time, and since, if I change the page assessment on a Talk page, it will show on the Talk page fine. But on the main page assessment display at the top, it doesn't update. I changed the assessment on Homeboy Industries, and the display on the main page shows the old assessment. I have Firefox and Monobook. Maile66 (talk) 19:37, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

When the servers are very busy, at times it can happen that they serve you outdated content. (There are multiple servers handling the requests, and when they are really busy, they sometimes get out of sync with eachother.)—TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:19, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Jumping to the wrong section

I've had several incidents since the MediaWiki upgrade where clicking a section link from a different article or an edit summary takes me to the section immediately after what is in the link. When it happens, it will often keep happening on the same link several times and then it starts working once I have clicked any item in the TOC of the destination article. Once it starts working, I can't induce another failure even if I close the tab completely and reopen it. It just happened to me on Talk:Scientology#Call_Hubbard_a_.22Science_fiction_writer.22, which I clicked on from the edit summary by RUL3R in the page history. —UncleDouggie (talk) 20:48, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

So if I understand correctly, you clicked on that link and landed at "Image for Auditing subsection" ? Which browser are you using ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:02, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's right. I'm using FF 3.6.13. It's got to be something with the browser jumping to the section before all the scripts run at the end with ResourceLoader and that somehow repositions the cursor. Others have reported strange jumpy behavior. In this case, I didn't scroll the window at all, it just immediately went to the wrong section. It happened more than once and on the subsequent incidents I was very careful to not scroll. Unfortunately, it corrected itself before I could get into serious troubleshooting. —UncleDouggie (talk) 08:27, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

When completing the edit of this very section, I first see the properly formatted #MediaWiki software and scripts section and about 1 second later it jumps down to this section. That's probably due to the auto collapsing of the header FAQ. Perhaps I had something similar but it didn't reposition to the proper location for whatever reason. My browser is running a little slow at the moment because I probably have 40 tabs open, but it was never a problem before the MediaWiki upgrade. I guess it's time to save off all the stuff I have in progress and restart. —UncleDouggie (talk) 08:38, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah right of course. It's a bit of a Firefox bug, but an annoying one for sure. Something we might be able to fix in the collapsing code though. (Remember that the collapsing code is an en.wp extension and not part of the MediaWiki software.) —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:13, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I am experiencing the same issue on this pump since the 1.17 upgrade. Svick (talk) 21:10, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I've got something similar and I'm using Google Chrome. When I navigate to a section (on pages with no collapsed text or anything like that), it first jumps to the right section and then, when the browser stops loading, jumps a section or two up the page. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:34, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

After lots of testing, I finally figured out what's happening. Any script that modifies the page can cause this behavior. It's a race between the page updates and the section jump. Before ResourceLoader, page updates usually won. Now it's a 50/50 proposition and it's worse if your network connection is congested because the scripts take longer to load. The biggest culprit for long talk pages is the gadget "comments in local time.js" because it changes so much text on the page. I run an enhanced version of the gadget, but the same thing happens with the stock version. Since I have my own copy, I made a quick change that has fixed the problem most of the time, although a big jump still happened once when my wireless link was overloaded running a backup. When I had this script disabled entirely, I still saw an occasional jump of a few lines. The culprit may have been the steward election banner that I hadn't dismissed in Safari where I was testing. Also strangely, in FF the jumps are always past the desired section and in Safari they are always before the desired section. I give up on that one. —UncleDouggie (talk) 07:32, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Atom feeds no longer work to track contributions for a certain user or IP

I'm sorry if this issue has been already reported or if this isn't the right place to announce it, but I've just found out that, as I state in title, Atom feeds for any contribution page are empty, no matter how many editions the user (or IP) has done.

Thank you. --Canyq (talk) 21:51, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

You are right. Thanks for reporting it. Filed as issue bugzilla:27339. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 23:59, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Excellent! Thank you very much.--Canyq (talk) 00:11, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Old Username stticking around in watchlist

My watchlist currently shows User:Bot337 as the last person to edit WT:CHUU. They've gone through a rename however, and are now just User:336, although my watchlist still shows their old username. This is on the latest Firefox 4 beta. I don't think this is a cache error, I've cleared my cache and it still does it. I probably should have taken this to bugzilla, but I thought I'd get input from the pump first. demize (t · c) 01:57, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

The rename appears to be very recent. Sometimes, they take a while for everything to be updated. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 04:24, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm aware of that, it just seems odd, and it showed as User:336 in the history, but as User:Bot337 in my watchlist (and still does). If it stays this way, I may take it to bugzilla, since it's unexpected behavior, but the page will probably drop off my watchlist soon. demize (t · c) 00:57, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I think that is because the watchlist is generated from a recent changes feed, which is not updated with changes like user renames. For example, when a page is edited and then moved, your watchlist will also show the pre-move edits under the old name. Ucucha 18:59, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

That would make sense, but in my opinion (to make things less confusing) things like username changes should be updated in it. Page moves being updated would be more confusing, however, and I don't think it would be easy to make certain things update while others not, and making anything update would probably be hard on the server. Thanks. demize (t · c) 19:11, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Search box not clearing prompt text

If I click in the search box before the page finishes completely loading, the string "Search" goes black and becomes part of my query instead of vanishing as it should. This is clearly due to resource loader not loading the script that clears the box until the end of the page. It's very annoying because I frequently open a new tab with just my user page to give me a new search box when I need to bring up something in addition to whatever I have open. I recommend that we delete the "Search" prompt from the box on initial load. Once the java script is loaded, it can then fill in the prompt text because it will be in control to also remove it should the user click on the box. I'm running FF 3.6.13 and this never happened prior to MediaWiki 1.17. —UncleDouggie (talk) 04:56, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Issues with "Search" becoming real text were reported on bugzilla at least 4 times (including my own report), see bugzilla:25683. Meanwhile, the following code in your vector.js will allow you to open search results in a new tab by pressing Shift-Enter (or Shift-Click on dropdown suggestion):

$j(function(){
 $j('#searchform').bind('keyup keydown mousedown', function (e){ 
   $j(this).attr('target', e.shiftKey?'_blank':'')
 })
})

— AlexSm 05:23, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Wow, more magic Javascript to go horribly wrong during the next MediaWiki "upgrade". :-) Thanks! —UncleDouggie (talk) 08:47, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Featured article tools not appearing at FAC nominations

For some reason, the toolbox and article links template are no longer appearing at FAC noms: compare Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Irresistible (Jessica Simpson song)/archive1 to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Me and Juliet/archive1. I suspect it has something to do with the code at Wikipedia:Featured article preload. Can somebody take a look? Dabomb87 (talk) 17:07, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

The problem is with the new version of MediaWiki, the sixth entry under "Bug fixes in 1.17" is "Preload parser now parses <noinclude>, <includeonly> and redirects.". Before 1.17, a preload would not parse these tags, so they would just appear with their content fully intact. Unfortunately the featured article preload had relied on this "bug"/"feature" to allow the transclusion of the tags themselves, most importantly the <noinclude> tag, which previously allowed the toolbox to be loaded surrounded by noincludes, so it would appear on the review page but not on the main candidates page. I'm looking into a solution. Intelligentsium 18:07, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I've come up with something that, while not pretty and indeed rather barbaric, should work. You can check my work at [7]. Intelligentsium 18:29, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

The rather less horrible <noin<noinclude/>clude> also works. This change actually allows the preload to be made less hackish, not more, as you can eliminate the use of {{void}} for the reverse process (genuinely wanting something to be shown only on the page itself, and not included when it's used as a preload). Happy‑melon 19:11, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's working now. Thanks for your help. Dabomb87 (talk) 01:51, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Mentioned above, BTW. Anomie⚔ 01:55, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

How are code updates scheduled?

This MediaWiki code patch applies HREFLANG to links to other-language Wikipedias. How can I tell when, or whether, it will be applied here? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:41, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

It's live right now in the 1.17wmf1 branch, which all Wikimedia projects are currently running. Reach Out to the Truth 20:53, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

How come I don't find the string "hreflang" anywhere in the source of pages with such links, then? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:21, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

You can see that particular change in action on zh: for instance. If you look at the source of pages there, you will see that there are now link elements for the different variants, that carry the hreflang string. That is all that that patch changed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:46, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you; but by here, I mean en.wikipeida. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 11:19, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

The English wikipedia doesn't have any language variants to link to, so you wouldn't expect to see any change here. Are you sure you understand what that revision is supposed to change? Happy‑melon 11:47, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

To clarify "This MediaWiki code patch applies HREFLANG to links to other-language Wikipedias" is incorrect, should be "it applies HREFLANG to <link> elements (not weblinks, which would be <a> elements) of other-language variants of Wikipedias". It basically makes sure that google understands that the chinese variants urls are indeed duplicate content, but not to be ignored duplicates, because they are in other userlanguages. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:59, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Apparently not, Happy-melon; though it was that change to which I was referred when I asked about adding HREFLANG and rel="alternate to one or other of two types of link. For example, the en.wikipedia article Birmingham has a link, <a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham" title="Birmingham">Deutsch</a> to which such attributes could be applied; and could have <link rel="copyright" href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham" rel="alternate" lang="DE" hreflang="DE"</link>. Adding one or both of these would facilitate auto-detection. That said, my principle question here was "how can I tell when, or whether, [a given change] will be applied here?" Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 17:14, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

This is a rather long story:

1. Almost all commits go onto trunk. Most recent commits, browse trunk.
2. A bugticket is usually considered closed and fixed, as soon as the change is made to trunk
3. Every commit has a number. This is just an index number. It is usually added to the ticket when the ticket is closed
4. Every commit than has to be reviewed. For example, this recent change shows as status "new", and some (senior) developer other that the committer needs to mark the commit as "ok" or "resolved". Every developer can leave questions and observations about the change there as well.
5. Some commits require later commits (related fixes, fragmented work, whatever). The directly related commits are listed just above the comments under Follow up revisions.
6. Now before something goes live, it has to be moved to the current wmf branch. At the moment, the current wmf branch is 1.17wmf1 chronologically browse
7. For this move to happen, someone (usually the original committer) adds the 1.17wmf1-tag to the original commit. The tags are listed at the top of the review page of the commit. Usually only critical bugfixes are eligible for direct deployment. Non-critical issues and new features will eventually end up in the next version (atm 1.18). At the moment the commits also often get the 1.17-tag to indicate the change should also be backported to the 1.17 branch that will at some point form the actual 1.17 release (1.17wmf1 is a prerelease of 1.17)
8. Then one of the WMF senior developers (Usually Tim Starling, Roan Kattouw (catrope) or Trevor Parscal) will go trough the list of 1.17wmf1-tags and decide which of those commits require actual deployment to WMF sites. They do this on their own schedule, whenever they see it fit or are able. They do a second review to determine immediacy, importance, and affect of the commit. If they are unsure of the performance of something for instance, they might skip one of the items in the list and take care of it at a later time.
9. Eventually at some arbitrary time, they either OK the change for WMF, or they deny the change. When they deny, they just remove the 1.17wmf1-tag from the review page. If they approve, they also commit the change to the 1.17wmf1 branch. The change then gets a new commit number.
10. This new commit number usually will show up in the original commit as a "Follow up revision", below the Diffs, and above the comments of the review page. It usually has the following format: 'branch where was moved to: MFT (moved from trunk), revisions number(s) that were moved'.
11. This new commit then needs to be deployed to the actual websites, usually done at the same time as moving the commit to the wmf branch. Often this is logged on server admin log, but not always.
12. The Special:Version page lists the version the servers are running (again 1.17wmf1), and the last commit/revision upon that version. commit/revision numbers of different MediaWiki versions are mixed, so the 'height of the number' says nothing about wether a commit was deployed, it only indicates that something newer has been deployed, but without looking at the total record, you can't really be sure what that is.

So 'what is deployed' is a rather big puzzle, and 'when is something deployed' is 'whenever the senior WMF devs decide is appropriate, but after something has been tagged as '1.17wmf1'. Does that answer your question ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:49, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I can't speak for Andy, but I found that explanation really helpful - how the live code is controlled has been confusing me for a while. Thanks! the wub "?!" 12:02, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I think what you are looking for would be this bugzilla request: bugzilla:4901. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:49, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT sort keys and talk pages

The {{DEFAULTSORT:}} magic word sets a WP:SORTKEY. This affects only the category sorting for the page upon which it is placed, and not that of the associated talk page (see, for example, the cats of Charles Burrell & Sons, where the page is sorted under B, and of Talk:Charles Burrell & Sons, which is sorted under C), so I know that the sort key is definitely not inherited by the talk page. Is this non-inheritance (a) a MediaWiki limitation; (b) a deliberate omission for performance reasons; (c) a bug that can be fixed or (d) a feature which it's possible to implement? If it were possible it would do away with the need for (virtually?) every WikiProject banner template to provide a |listas= parameter. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:51, 19 February 2011 (UTC) amended Redrose64 (talk) 21:07, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I think (d) is correct, but it may be hard to do it or do it efficiently, so (a) and (b) might be on the right track too. I think you should try filing a bugzilla request and see where it goes. Svick (talk) 21:20, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

bugzilla:27596 raised. This was my first Bugzilla ticket, so I hope I've done it correctly. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:29, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

importScript > mw.loader.load

I'm trying to replace (soon to be) deprectated code in my vector.js page, but mw.loader.load does not work as expected. Does it expect a full URL? — Edokter (talk) — 23:53, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

It looks like it requires the argument to start with "http://" or "https://". Gary King (talk · scripts) 01:00, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Though deprecated, it is expected that a next version of resource loader (which will be more focused on userscripts) will bring a true replacement for importScript(). also, importScript() is so widely used that any definitive deprecation of it will be a huge amount of work, so a few extra won't really hurt. Of all the deprecations in the JS core, replacing importScript() is most likely the least important one. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:16, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

IP user subpages?

A discussion at WP:AN has made me wonder: is it possible for IPs' userspace to have subpages? I've never seen an IP with a userpage (presumably because they can't create pages in userspace?), let alone subpages thereof or talk subpages. I'd like to try creating one, but I don't feel like testing live pages if someone already knows the answer. Nyttend (talk) 04:29, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

There should be no reason why not. I admit I've never seen an archive of an IP's talk page either, but there are some highly active users with static IP's, so either they're deleting their old talk page content manually or they're out there somewhere. —Soap— 12:50, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

IP's can have both user pages (must be created by an account) and talk archives. See for example User:87.58.61.162 and User talk:74.178.230.17/Archive. I haven't seen non-talk user subpages for IP's but they must be possible. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:40, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Indeed such pages do exist. There is 1504 subpages of User or User talk pages of anonymous users (the parent page itself doesn't exist oftentimes). Examples include User:110.175.42.35/Shannon is totally cool, User:130.216.172.138/Republican Movement in New Zealand and User talk:116.14.26.124/Polychora. Svick (talk) 15:03, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Note that userpages for IP users are rather less useful than userpages for registered users, as the interface normally links to the contributions page for the IP instead of to the (usually non-existent) userpage. Anomie⚔ 15:22, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

It appears that both user pages and user subpages need to be created by a registered user. Once they exist, IPs can edit them, unless the pages are semiprotected. To verify this, log out and notice which pages present you with 'View source' tabs rather than 'Edit' tabs. Sometimes you will get 'Unauthorized' when trying to start a page with an IP. These experiments don't require making actual edits with an IP. EdJohnston (talk) 20:17, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

No, I edit alot under an IP and I can't! Not even a vector.js! --173.49.140.141 (talk) 20:31, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Per Special:ListGroupRights, Everyone (Including IPs) can create talk pages - "All: Create discussion pages (createtalk)" However, only Users (i.e., registered accounts) can do otherwise - "Users: Create pages (which are not discussion pages) (createpage)" Hope that helps.^Avic_ennasis @ 21:44, 16 Adar I 5771 / 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Links no longer underlined in Monobook

A couple of days ago, my links stopped being underlined, which is making editing more awkward. My preferences say always underline links. It's only happening on Wikipedia, it's with all browsers, and it's only on Monobook. Does anyone know what might be causing it? SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 12:18, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

#Links_aren.27t_being_underlined. Please remember to search the page before you post new questions. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:28, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Will copy my comment there, sorry. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:59, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Stop adding the spaces in headers by default

First I am assuming this should go here because it may require one of the wikimedia programmers action if approved but if need be Ill move it just let me know.

I would like to propose that we stop adding spaces to the headers of content when we create them. For example whenever a new section or article is created using Wikipedia by default it ads a space between = and the wording of the title like this == Title == rather than this: ==Title==.

This makes the article look sloppy and for some editors more difficult to read. This also adds more bytes to the content and its history every time the article is saved which takes up more space on the servers. Individually 5 spaces doesn't hurt the article but multiple that by 3.5 million articles on the English Wikipedia alone and then times that by 10 saves (many articles have hundreds of saves) and you are left with several GB's of storage saved.

If this is determined to be too difficult or if it doesn't meet consensus for a widespread change as a compromise please allow the individual editor an option under preferences or as a gadget to eliminate the spaces by default if they do not want to add them. --Kumioko (talk) 14:01, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

No, just no. Read Wikipedia:Don't_worry_about_performance. Not specifically relevant, but it's on the same track. Don't even bother starting to make that change. Reedy (talk) 14:14, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't see the point. The article looks the same with or without spaces inside section heading and I find the added spaces makes the subsection heading more readable in the edit window. There is no "savings" in removing the white space because the HTML will be rendered the exact same way. In fact, editing to remove the spaces creates another copy of the articles on the servers which actually "wastes" more space in the process. And finally, there is WP:PERFORMANCE, which states that we should not worry very much about the site performance, which includes any "disc storage". —Farix (t | c) 14:16, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Also, see mw:Manual:$wgCompressRevisions. Which is enabled on all WMF wiki's (see [8]). Reedy (talk) 14:17, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

@Reedy. Yes it doesn't save much on the individual articles but as a whole it makes a difference of time. Also, this isn't just for space but for readability.

@Farix Yes it looks the same when your reading it but when you edit the article and there are spaces around everything its hard to read and messy and at least for me and some other editors so I admit that might be different for others but why should one group of editors be forced to view it the same way as the other. Can't we both have what we want? We do that everywhere else on WP. I am also not saying that we should go removing all the spaces as its own edit. What I am saying is that we should at least have the option as editors whether we want them or not. As things are now I have to manually remove them from the articles I create or maintain regularly and I think I should have the option at least when I create an article or section to remove them by default rather than be forced to do it manually. I also think that removing them along with another more significant edit should be allowed. The benefit of this change isn't just for saving space but for readability when editing. --Kumioko (talk) 14:31, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

The MOS permits both section headings with and without spaces and an ArbCom ruling prohibits changing from one excepted style to another without a substantial reason. (And I don't see any substantial reasons for removing the whitespace.) So no, you shouldn't be removing those whitespaces while making another edit to begin with. —Farix (t | c) 14:42, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Background: Kumioko has been pushing this in various forums for a while now, and has recently had AWB access removed for making this and other trivial changes. See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Kumioko and WP:ANI#Kumioko and AWB access for details. I'm glad to see Kumioko finally bring this up for real discussion instead of it being a side issue when he is being criticized for making all sorts of automated edits against consensus. Anomie⚔ 15:40, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

As for the proposal, I still oppose it. "Makes the article look sloppy", if we assume 'article' means 'wikitext of the article', is a matter of opinion, and the opinion that lacking the spaces makes the wikitext look sloppy is equally valid. "Makes the article [...] for some editors more difficult to read" works exactly as well as an argument against removing the spaces. If the storage for these spaces were an issue, the people whose job (paid or volunteer) it is to actually monitor that sort of thing would certainly tell us; until then we shouldn't worry and random speculation on the topic is not a convincing argument. Allowing individual editors to randomly change header spacing will just clutter diffs and annoy everyone, which is certainly not worth the reduction in a minor annoyance for a few editors. So it all comes down to keeping the status quo or forcing everyone to change because of a minority who just doesn't like it; we may as well keep the status quo and save the hassle of changing. Anomie⚔ 15:40, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate you taking the time to comment but I wasn't making automated edits and they weren't against consensus. Just 1 editor so please don't try and diminish my credibility over 1 rogue editor who disagreed with an edit I made. --Kumioko (talk) 15:47, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - I specifically make a point of doing the following when I rewrite an article, all of which have no impact on the resulting page:
  • Adding spaces between the = and the header title
  • Making citations vertically formatted with the = signs all lined up, and a blank link after the Template:Cite foo, but before the first parameter
  • Adding a blank line at the end of a section before the next header
  • Starting text following a citation template on a new line
• This makes the edit window cleaner, far easier to read and much more organized. Regardless of the result of any discussion, I will continue to do so per WP:IAR as it is an improvement; nobody can argue that the opposing formats are easier to read and back it up with logical reasoning (unless your computer is switching whitespace to square blocks). Anyone who has meddled with wikipedia templates knows the pain. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 16:08, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

For what its worth I completely agree with the last three points and do those myself. --Kumioko (talk) 16:14, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

@Floydian: arranging citation templates like that is fine if they are newly added, and also are added to the end of an existing paragraph. If a multi-line template is added in the middle of an existing paragraph, or an existing template which was previously laid out in-line is reformatted as multi-line, it makes diffs more difficult to read. This is because the later part of the paragraph is now on a different line, so now shows on the left as red-on-yellow removed text, and on the right as black-on-green newly-added text. It's hard to decide if that portion is the same as before or not: see this diff for example - is the sentence beginning "During the 1960s ..." the same or different? What has been added to or removed from the {{cite book}}? It's hard to tell. In fact not one thing changed in the paragraph, save for the insertion of line breaks into the {{cite book}}, so it's a complete waste of time, both for the editor who did it, and for me when I examine it carefully looking for changes. Please don't insert unnecessary line breaks, and please don't reformat templates, whether these be citation or anything else. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:46, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I can regularly achieve the same effect by adding a new line of text to an article, or by rewriting a single sentence in the middle of a paragraph. The diff tool doesn't always work that well. Keep in mind that I'm doing this often in the process of expanding the article three to five times its current size. If you're relying on diffs at that point, you're just setting yourself up for a headache. Following this advice would also mean that if someone inserts a horizontally-formatted citation mid-paragraph in an article that otherwise has vertically-formatted citations, it would have to be left to avoid confusing someone reading the resulting diff? The community will suffer under my tyranny then, I suppose. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 17:15, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

FWIW, I find the spaces make the edit window slightly harder to scan. But it seems to be a matter of taste, so let's not worry about it. Rd232 ^talk 16:55, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

It is a small thing, == are delimiters like () [] {} <> and we don't put spaces inside those. FWIW the actual usage in mainspace is 5:1 in favour of no spaces, which given that all the tools produce spaces is quite remarkable. Rich Farmbrough, 20:07, 20 February 2011 (UTC).

The lack of spaces really bugged me when I started editing years ago and I would add them if other headings with spaces already existed. Now I much prefer the look with no spaces. My theory is that people resist the no space look at first because they aren't used to seeing any other text formatted that way. However, after lots of editing, we learn that the unnatural look is a benefit because the headings jump out from the body when quickly scanning the page. WP:wikEd helps somewhat by rendering headings in bold, but body text can also be bold and I find the ==look== even more visually striking than bold. —UncleDouggie (talk) 09:24, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

PDF icon changed

Resolved

 – Redrose64 (talk) 19:14, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

It seems that the PDF icon has changed, perhaps this was MediaWiki 1.17, perhaps it wasn't, but I only noticed it today. Links ending in .pdf (whether bare, enclosed in single square brackets (such as this one) or formatted using {{cite web}}) formerly displayed with the red-and-white curly thing that we associate with Adobe. Now they show what appears to be a generic "document" icon. This is the same in IE7, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 9 and Opera 11 - the only difference that I notice is that it's grey in Vector, light blue in Monobook. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:20, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

The Adobe PDF icon is copyrighted. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:36, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Where did this come from? There were several discussions on Commons about the use of a pdf icon, each time resulting in the understanding that it's use was not infringing in any way. — Edokter (talk) — 16:51, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

{{SCOTUSLinks}} may need updating as it has a hardcoded icon. -- WOSlinker (talk) 17:24, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

The file in that template is Image:Icons-mini-file acrobat.gif which is held on commons; and commons takes a very dim view of copyright violations. It appears to be tagged as Copyrighted free use. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:30, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

"Dim view"? Commons takes copyright very serious. It's trademark that's is treated more loosely. And since trademark is outside the scope of any copyright policy, there should be no problem here. — Edokter (talk) — 18:19, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

You seem to misunderstand the phrase. From the OED: "take a dim view of" = "regard with disapproval". --Redrose64 (talk) 19:19, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

That image passed a deletion request. And it is still defined in MediaWiki:Common.css. The audio icon defined in Common.css has changed as well. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 18:13, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Icon defined in Common.css	Icon now showing
	http://example.org/x.ogg
	http://example.org/x.pdf

That speaker icon in Common.css is for the Listen template, not for links to audio fragments. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:48, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I was mistaken, the PDF logo is actually a local change we have here on en.wp. It was broken due to higher CSS specificity of some skin elements after 1.17 and Krinkle has removed it on top of that, because he thought it was the same icon as the skin provided icon. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:45, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

 Done now working again --Redrose64 (talk) 19:14, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

The css icon decleration looked much alike, since having two dozen selectors for an icon that is already defined in core is a significant ( ~ 800 bytes per page view on first hit), I removed as duplicate. However I didn't notice the icon was a different one though. Perhaps this kind of icon swapping should be done in MediaWIki core ? Although the Acrobat icon may be a problem, if it's not a problem on Commons and as icon on wmf wikis, it shouldn't be a problem in MediaWiki core and vica versa (if it is a problem, it shouldn't be on Commons either). For the record, the current icon for PDF links in MediaWiki (without the en.wikipedia override) is http://bits.wikimedia.org/skins-1.17/vector/images/document-icon.png Krinkle (talk) 15:40, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

An odd bug

An odd bug has appeared recently. When I am on some language version (like serbian, czech, polish), sometimes it is hard for me to remember/know/use all the local names their namespaces. That is why I always use these names (Wikipedia, Template, User) in English. But now, when I enter some pagename to Search window with prefix Wikipedia: instead of getting to some page, I am redirected to english Wikipedia. This cripples my work quite a lot. Is there some way how to remove this bug, or some setting how to bypass this? I know there were some difficulties because of the software update, but I think lot of these were resolved. This one, however, wasnt. Thank you. --Aktron (t|c) 18:43, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I get the same result. You should use "Project:" instead of "Wikipedia:"—that does work. Ucucha 18:51, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Just to explain a little, there are canonical namespace names, namespace aliases and the actual localized namespace name. names like Template:, File:, Project:, User: etc. are the canonical namespace names (as well as the localized names for the English language projects). This bug you encountered most likely was on a wiki that wasn't part of the Wikipedia family, rather a Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikibooks etc. Over ther you can either use the canonical 'Project', '(Projectname)' (eg. Wiktionary) as alias, or the actual localized version "ויקימילון" (Hebrew Wiktionary). wikt:he:Project:Test wikt:he:Wiktionary:Test wikt:he:wikipedia:Test. Krinkle (talk) 15:50, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

What's happening?

Within the last few minutes, rendering is all screwed up. Firefox using Monobook. Article elements are all over the page. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:24, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm getting "Simple"...now monobook?! --173.49.140.141 (talk) 20:25, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Now vector?! --173.49.140.141 (talk) 20:25, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Now it's some weird skin? --173.49.140.141 (talk) 20:26, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Same thing happened to me, but in the process of typing this up it appears to have resolved itself. I'd be curious to hear what happened. –Grondemar 20:27, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Resolved for me as well. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:29, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah! Just noticed that links are underlined again in Monobook, so perhaps it was a changeover. Beyond My Ken (talk) 20:32, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Roan deployed the underline fixes yes. Something went wrong for a sec, but quickly restored. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:01, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm happy to have the underlines back, my thanks to the developers for that, and I'm glad the SNAFU was so short-lived. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:25, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Wierd clash of monoboo/vector and loos of java scripts

I'm using Google Chrome (latest version) and Monobook. The background just turned white (in every namespace) and I've lost every single one of my java scripts (from big things like Twinkle and popups to some much smaller ones). HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:28, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh, it's back now, but that was very weird. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:28, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Same with me when I was logged in. --173.49.140.141 (talk) 20:30, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Post-rollback redirect broken

When I rollback an edit by an account with spaces in its name, I get redirected to an incorrect contribution page with plus signs instead of spaces in the username. For example, after two rollbacks on User:Ucucha/sandbox I get redirected to https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Special:Contributions/Ucucha%2Btest%2Baccount. I'm not sure whether this is an error introduced by MW1.17, but I think it is. (Of course, I have the " After rolling back an edit, automatically open the contributions of the user rolled back." gadget enabled.) Ucucha 21:41, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I found the cause and reported it at mw:MediaWiki talk:Gadget-modrollback.js. Ucucha 21:49, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

The cause isn't in Wikipedia's javascript but in the software core. It falsely puts the username in the url with a '+' where a space would normally be (whereas in the wiki-way this is encoded into an underscore). Opened bugzilla:27606 (rawurlencode, urlencode, wfUrlencode). Krinkle (talk) 15:20, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Edit box font forced to Courier

Since the upgrade, the edit box is using Courier rather than my preferred monospace font. It actually comes up for a split second in my font and then changes. Presumably someone's hard-coded Courier somewhere in a CSS file, which isn't really acceptable.

I see a couple of other people mentioning this above, but nobody's claimed it's been fixed. – Smyth\^talk 22:15, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

There's no hardcoded font in the MediaWiki CSS or any skin CSS for the edit box. Double-check your browser settings. — Edokter (talk) — 23:27, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

The line spacing is definitely greater than normal for me. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 23:45, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

That they did change, with the new edit toolbar. That can be corrected with textarea#wpTextbox1 {line-height: normal !important;}. — Edokter (talk) — 00:00, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Additionally, you can specify #wpTextbox1 {font-family:whatever !important;} where whatever is the name of your preferred font, and need not be fixed-width necessarily. 68.69.54.2 (talk) 17:53, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Well that's weird. My browser settings have indeed changed without my intervention. Maybe caused by a Chrome upgrade that happened at roughly the same time? – Smyth\^talk 10:35, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

The font in edit mode changed for me too yesterday. Does anyone know how we can fix it? SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 02:09, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Very strange behavior

Blood+ is the only page where I have see this and only when I am logged out. There are no tabs at the top and no sidebar. I use Mozilla Firefox 3.6 and Google Chrome 9.0. Has anyone else encountered this? – Allen4names 22:21, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Looks fine to me logged out on Safari 5.3, Chrome 9.0, and Firefox 3.6.13 on Mac OS X 10.5.8. When you load the page, do the sidebar and tabs show for a moment before disappearing? Ucucha 22:31, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

It seems to have been fixed (using Chrome) but I will check again using firefox after I log out. – Allen4names 22:37, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

I logged out and nothing seems wrong now. Very strange. – Allen4names 22:39, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikimedia prototype wiki vandalized

Hi. I'm not sure whom to contact, so if you have any idea feel free to contact the right person for me.

The page http://prototype.wikimedia.org/sandbox.4/Main_Page is being vadalized by a spam bot. Could someone protect the page or something ? Cheers, Dodoïste (talk) 23:20, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. You have to solve a CAPTCHA when creating an account, but not when adding external links. Bad configuration. Are they hitting any other pages, or just the main page? Either way, WEST Regau is on the case. Reach Out to the Truth 01:22, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

They've been globally blocked, but as there is no SUL on that wiki, IDK if steward actions reach that. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 05:31, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

So far only the main page is affected by this spam bot. Thanks to WEST Regau then. Cheers, Dodoïste —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.173.207.141 (talk) 08:21, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Page background colors not working with Vector

I had just learned how to change my page background so that I can tell when I'm logged in/out, but a couple days back I realized everything has reverted to white. Even when I change the hexacode in my vector.css page, I can't get the colors to show up in the preview--whereas it could do that last week. This is a problem on every computer I've used and it doesn't matter which browser. help! Aristophanes68 (talk) 01:16, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Some CSS has changed that requires some more specific CSS declaration on your part. I've fixed it in your vector.css. (BTW. It seems yo have the whole of common.css copied in your vector.css; this is generally not needed, and there is a lot of deprecated code in there. You only need to put any changed CSS in your vercotr.css.) — Edokter (talk) — 01:51, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

something wrong with this page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bulgakov —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.183.64.225 (talk) 01:19, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

What's the problem? Nothing on that page strikes me as particularly odd. Reach Out to the Truth 01:24, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Ditto - anything more specific? Skier Dude (talk) 03:54, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Pages using Template:Outdent are freezing my browser

I hope this works - I had to open this edit window by directly typing the URL because due to the nature of my problem I am unable to open a usable version of the page itself. I am using the native Android browser v2.2 on my Droid2 to view and edit Wikipedia. I have been using for a good while without having any major issues. However starting in the last day or so the browse will freeze up on any page that uses the {{outdent}} more than once. I can scroll and read the page, but the outdents themselves remain invisible and I can't navigate away from the page by any means, neither clicking on links, hitting the back button, nor typing the address bar will work. I have to go into the operating system settings and force close the browser and restart it. I was having no issues Saturday evening, but today I'm stuck. The size of the page doesn't seem to be an issue; I can navigate the larger articles and help pages, but I get stuck on the outdent template page itself. I don't think I got a recent browser or OS update, have there been any changes on the Wikipedia end? Thanks! —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 04:44, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, an upgrade to MW 1.17. I don't know if it's related or not, though. I don't know why the template would cause you problems. It only outputs text. Gary King (talk · scripts) 04:51, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm still having the issue. I've redacted my statement above because I was mistaken, a single use of Outdent causes the problem. I've also tried changing to simple & monbook skin and there's no change in the problem. I discovered the problem when I made this edit adding an outdent to the discussion. I see that Outdent uses the padleft magic word, could that be the problem? —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 18:04, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

That seems unlikely, since your browser wouldn't see that magic word. Is it perhaps related to the special characters the template uses? Do you have the problem with the page User:Ucucha/sandbox? Ucucha 18:11, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Nope, your sandbox works fine for me. —Elipongo (Talk contribs) 18:25, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

When undoing an edit, edit summary is not "recognized" when edit summaries are required

In my Preferences, I have enabled "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary". If I click on "undo" on an edit, then don't modify anything and just hit "Save page", then I am told that "You have not provided an edit summary." even though the default undo edit summary is there. I can merely just hit "Save page" again on the warning page, and the edit summary appears. This appears to have begun happening since MediaWiki 1.17. Is anyone else experiencing this? Gary King (talk · scripts) 04:49, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I normally have the switch turned off, but I turned it on to check, and undid one of the last edits, and it saved properly. (Firefox, Monoboox). Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:31, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay thanks; I'll go through my scripts then. Gary King (talk · scripts) 16:08, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Undo worked fine just now, so it was probably just a temporary glitch. Perhaps session data was lost for that moment, which sometimes, although pretty rarely, happens to me. Gary King (talk · scripts) 03:32, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Bugs

Just want to say thanks to whever fixed most of the recent bugs. Simply south...... 10:38, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

What Links Here

County municipality templates should populate out the individual municipality links under "What Links Here". The last page I created where this worked correctly was Morman Mill, Burnet County, Texas on Feb 13. When I created Quihi, Texas and Estacado, Texas on Feb 19, the county municipality templates were no longer populating out the individual municipality links under "What Links Here". They should, and they haven't after waiting two days for it to occur.Maile66 (talk) 11:20, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Probably related to the job queue—that is, you'll have to wait a little. Ucucha 15:30, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer. What is "a little" by your terms? It's been two days already, so does this mean a week or more? Maile66 (talk) 16:36, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure; based on my recent experience with Nelsonia, it may be as much as five days. You can also make null edits to article to clean up the whatlinkshere page. Ucucha 16:44, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, Thanks. I had already done experimental null edits with a couple of municipalities on the templates. That worked as far as making those specific municipalities show up on "What Links Here". But those experiments did not free up all the municipalities on the templates. Nor did doing null edits on the templates. Doing null edits on Estacado and Quihi did nothing at all. But thanks for some kind of answer there. Maile66 (talk) 17:00, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Which links exactly did not show up on what Whatlinkshere page? Ucucha 17:56, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

• For Quihi, Texas, there is this Medina County, Texas municipalities navbox at the bottom of the page. Normally, when I set up a new page and put that kind of navbox at the bottom, all the cities and communities listed in that navbox will populate out individually on "What Links Here". That didn't happen, except where I where I experimented with the null edit on the town of Castrolville.
• For Estacado, Texas. the navbox communities that should have populated out concern these two navboxes Crosby County, Texas and Lubbock County, Texas. Those municipalities also did not populate out individually on "What Links Here". Only the individual municipalities where I experimented with a null edit populated.
  • The reason these nav boxes populate out, is because the appropriate county navbox is also on each of the municipalities listed in the navbox. As long as that is true, and it is, the individual populating of the cities and towns happens on all their "What Links Here". The only place that is missing is on Quihi and Estacado.

Maile66 (talk) 18:24, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Null edits

As of right now, the system is not even processing null edits. It goes through the motions, but in the history page or watch list, it's as if nothing happened. Maile66 (talk) 22:54, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, that's pretty much the definition of a null edit: "A null edit will not record an edit, nor make any entry in the page history or in Recent Changes, [watchlists] etc." Intelligentsium 23:58, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes. I think you've found all there is to be found out about the issue: if you do a null edit on an article, it'll show up on other articles' whatlinkshere lists, and otherwise you'll have to wait for the job queue to catch up. Ucucha 00:01, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah.... Maile66 (talk) 00:10, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Special:NewPages only displaying the latest 50 new pages

Has anyone else noticed this since 4 days ago? The backlog is only showing new pages of today's date. --Kudpung (talk) 13:42, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Filed as bugzilla:27339. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:55, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

That's the tracking bug. You mean bugzilla:27607. Reach Out to the Truth 18:05, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I investigated the issue, I can't find anything wrong. The newer 50, older 50 links work as expected. Perhaps you are confused by the "hidepatrolled" setting, which all new pages older than a day apparently are atm. I guess patrolling is going better than you are used to ? :D —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 00:04, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Ha! I noticed hidepatrolled was enabled, so I clicked the link to show all changes. I didn't realize that clicking that also removed "dir=prev" from the query, so I saw the front of the backlog and thought it was the back! Maybe we should slow down our new page controlling; it's causing us all to get confused. Reach Out to the Truth 03:37, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Problems displaying changes

Is anyone else having problems of changes being displayed following an edit since the software update? Many times after saving an edit to a page the unedited page is displayed again. Purging the page usually gets the edited page to display but sometimes it takes several purges to get the updated page to show. Keith D (talk) 19:08, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but not exactly as you are. My issue is when I re-assess a page on the Talk page, it is supposed to instantly show up on the assessment display at the top of the main page. Since the software update, the change will not show up for hours - not until Wikipedia clicks over to a new day. Almost like magic, the minute UTC time is a new day, the changes show up. And not a minute before then.Maile66 (talk) 19:18, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Confused about editing image description

I'm trying to add a little descriptive text to an image here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rideau_Canal.jpg

But when I click into that page, I see "Create", not "Edit". I tried Create, but that's not what I want. Ideas? Maury Markowitz (talk) 22:08, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

The file is at the Commons: commons:File:Rideau Canal.jpg. Lupo 22:11, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Ahhh! Perhaps we could have an "edit on the commons" button or such? Maury Markowitz (talk) 22:14, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I see a gray box right under the image that tells you it's actually on commons and with a link to it there. The weirdness is how seemlessly the commons stuff passes through into the en.wp interface, confusing I bet! DMacks (talk) 22:16, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

And the Wikipedia edit notice at the edit/create page also links to the Commons page. – ukexpat (talk) 22:19, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

... unless he has non-default language set in preferences; the sure proof link to see the message is this. One could suggest a better wording at MediaWiki talk:Newarticletext. P.S. By the way, German Wikipedia changes "create" link to point to Commons with some javascript. — AlexSm 22:22, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) If the image is set up properly on commons, it will have section headings, each with it's own [edit] link, which will edit the commons file not the phantom en:wp file. This image has such headings, so click the edit link to the right of the "Summary" heading. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:24, 21 February 2011 (UTC)